21 ms·

Stripe’s fifth engineering hub is Remote

587 points by geordilaforge 8y ago

Benjamin_Dobell 8y ago
> While we did not initially plan to make hiring remotes a huge part of our engineering efforts, our remote employees have outperformed all expectations. I wonder what metrics were used. Would be interesting to know whether the main motivator was simply raw performance, or performance/cost.
- jlaurend 8y ago
  Probably both, I'd imagine. Regarding cost, Stripe was pretty outspokenly against Prop C in SF last year (which passed, to their dismay). The result is an added tax on revenue which hits Stripe hard since they have a high volume, low margin business. Not to mention CA is already a very expensive place to run a company. With rising costs in SF, they likely had to explore viable long-term solutions. They can start moving more jobs to their other offices, open new secondary offices, or expand their remote presence. With remote, they're able to keep SF as the HQ while lowering costs. It's also popular among devs, so it'll keep their brand image good amongst their target demo and among their current employee base.
  - pault 8y ago
    Are they not in Austin? I don't see it on the jobs page. Austin is the perfect combination of low COL and available talent in my opinion.
    - Bartweiss 8y ago
      > Austin is the perfect combination of low COL and available talent in my opinion. Some evidence for that: half the game studios I know of have programmers in Texas, or occasionally elsewhere in the southeast (e.g. North Carolina). If you want a dense talent pool around your office, but don't have the margin/capital to pay coastal cost of living, there aren't many other options to rival those.
dhd415 8y ago
Great to see that a well-known company such as Stripe is embracing remote work because they've seen that remote workers are effective, not just as a mechanism to leverage locales with lower wages. Hopefully other companies follow suit.
- throwaway4721 8y ago
  I’m not sure this says anything about the wages being equal. The remote wages are anecdotally lower. Judging by the offers I’ve seen coming out of SF compared to some of their other hubs, it’s significantly lower. Not just in salary, but in equity as well.
  - dhd415 8y ago
    It's certainly possible that Stripe is offering productivity as the reason for their embrace of remote work when it's really about cheaper labor, but I'm hopeful. I know there are other companies where those decisions are transparently about lowering costs, but if what you say about remote workers typically getting less equity is true, too, that's pretty disappointing.
    - throwaway4721 8y ago
      Honestly I don’t know how fair businesses can be with respect to this while being economically rational. Differences in markets are very real, and if you can get good developers who can’t work in the US for less, why not? It’s not surprising the Zoom founder tried so hard to make it to America.
    - Bartweiss 8y ago
      Buffer (which has been remote-heavy for a long time) handled this by explicitly breaking their salary assessment into multiple elements. In addition to base salary-for-role and various experience adjustments, they have a public "price sheet" describing the cost of living adjustments they apply for different locations. It's not a perfect system, I'm sure. CoL is reduced to three fairly broad bands, and other pay elements like experience and performance are potentially skewed by remote status. But I think it's an appealing approach in general. Candidates know in advance what to expect and can move somewhere more expensive without needing to find a new job. Meanwhile, the company saves some money, but still gets access to remote candidates in expensive cities where they don't have offices. I suppose it would drive away any remote worker who's consciously living somewhere cheap to increase effective salary, but presumably that's offset by getting access to people in DC, NYC, Boston, etc. who aren't open to other cost-saving remote jobs.
mahesh_rm 8y ago
..Remote (North America Only)..
- pc 8y ago
  For now!
  - ingenieroariel 8y ago
    If you want to test out workers outside of USA but not have to solve the timezone related issues I recommend Colombia. There is at least one interested person there.
    - kypro 8y ago
      As someone who's worked remote with "timezone issues" before they're not for the company to solve. If you live in Europe but work for a US company that requires you to work US times, it's simple, you work US times. This is how I've worked before and it's worked out perfectly. In fact, I'm a bit of a night owl so I much preferred it.
      - jhgaylor 8y ago
        I work at a company where everyone is expected to be in the office. But we have early birds and night owls employed by the same company to work together. We don't have a formalized solution as night owls do as you described and get on up if they have work due in the morning. Or the early birds will stay up late to help the night owls finish. But a lot of companies take on "Core hours" and essentially solve the timezone problem even with a physical office. With core hours management is deciding that they don't want to solve the "timezone issues". I wonder how well the opposite end of the spectrum would work. Our async communication tools are pretty good these days. You could keep someone solving the problem all day long with just 3 or 4 hires but instead people choose to work on the problem in scheduled bursts of 6 hours with their entire team.
        8y ago
skizm 8y ago
Where do I apply?
- timerol 8y ago
  https://stripe.com/jobs/search https://stripe.com/jobs/search
- patio11 8y ago
  Our jobs page is at https://stripe.com/jobs https://stripe.com/jobs or you can attend a coffee chat with us and then let the conversation continue that way. https://stripe.events/remote-coffee https://stripe.events/remote-coffee
  - mailshanx 8y ago
    Does Stripe pay at FAANG level? Even outside the USA?
    - toephu2 8y ago
      Stripe has no plans to go IPO [1], so with paper money RSUs worth $0 Stripe cannot compete in terms of TC with FANG companies. [1] http://fortune.com/2018/09/27/stripe-valuation-ipo-stock/ http://fortune.com/2018/09/27/stripe-valuation-ipo-stock/
  - selimthegrim 8y ago
    Are there any plans for remote data science or remote data engineering roles beyond those listed on the jobs page?
    - patio11 8y ago
      Specifically: We have remote data scientists (I work closely with one in Tokyo) and will have more in the future. Generally: every engineering workstream at Stripe will have remotes in it.
  - boraturant 8y ago
a9a 8y ago
I hope other companies follow Stripe's lead here. Anecdotally, I've never been as happy and productive as I've been the past few years as a remote worker. It seems to me too few companies are taking advantage of the opportunity here. The few challenges I've encountered seem solvable: (1) effective team culture building: can be solved with travel budget & prioritization of good team cultural norms by team leads (2) whole team collaborative brainstorming (particularly when facing a "fire drill"-type time-constrained challenge): more challenging to solve from what I've seen, but might be solved by some combination of better tech and better work practices I'm interested to hear how Stripe addresses these and which challenges they find. One question at a higher level: what are the immigration law impacts here? Does Stripe need to get H1Bs for internationally located workers? I hope not: effective remote work is fantastic step toward bringing labor mobility more in line with capital mobility, with potentially positive effects on income, taxation, and social policies for people around the world.
- dudul 8y ago
  H1Bs are used for non-immigrant workers to be allowed to work on US territory. So no, no need for H1B if workers live and work from a different country.
- patio11 8y ago
  We have talented lawyers and comply fully with employment-related requirements everywhere we do business. These get rather nuanced, particularly when factual situations get complicated, but if we weren't ready to implement complex state machines and handle edge cases then we picked a really poor line of work. Generally speaking, most Stripes work for a subsidiary which hires them in the standard fashion for professional employees in their jurisdiction. For example, I work for Stripe Japan, K.K., and demonstrated/maintain authorization to work in Japan. We can and do support people moving internally, including regarding immigration status where appropriate.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- ghaff 8y ago
  While it's not sufficient, travel budget is an important element IMO. I'm more or less remote but the ability to get together multiple times a year with both formal team members and other people who I collaborate with is pretty important to me. Also just getting out of the house to have regular contact with other people in the industry. I suppose, I could more proactively do more local events but, generally, I find interacting with people at events an important part of working remotely.
sandGorgon 8y ago
Im wondering what learnings has Stripe figured out that makes their remote workers as productive as their in-office employees. Do they use things like OKR, slack,etc ? What works and what doesn't - is there a cognitive disconnect between remote teams and people who work in office . Is there an expectation of minimum screen time expected from remote employees?
- drb91 8y ago
  Why would you expect remote to be less efficient? Working in an open office is incredibly distracting—of course there’s productivity gains from going remote.
  - domlebo70 8y ago
    I am full time remote for past 6mo. Never been less productive in my career. I'm looking to switch back to onsite as soon as I can. Edit: I'm not saying remote is bad - just that in my experience I'm definitely less productive.
    - zrail 8y ago
      It’s not for everyone. I’ve been remote for the past 6 years and love it, but it definitely had a learning curve. Friends of mine have tried it and went back to the office. One thing that has really helped me I’d having a non-work group of online friends who also all work remote. We can commiserate and trade tips.
      - avgDev 8y ago
        I think this is the key to working remote. Having a network of people who also work remote online. I need to try that. I work half of the time remote and sometimes feel very unmotivated due to lack of human contact. Having someone to just chat with would be awesome. Neat idea I wonder if there is a discord chat for that.
    - SkyPuncher 8y ago
ultra-jeremyx 8y ago
You know who else works remotely? Astronauts.
caprese 8y ago
One thing I've found when working in a silo or remotely is the difficulty of getting accolades. Pretty much all discretionary accolades like "team member of the month" is related to building rapport with the decision maker. This factors into not just the employee of the month, but bonuses and layoffs. I'm not even sure if abstracting this out into specific performance metrics is the solution, an individual will still want to give another certain individual praise at their discretion. Just something to be conscious of. Glad Stripe is having success in this area.
- redisman 8y ago
  I work at a 80% remote company (we have two smallish offices). We definitely get accolades for a well made project once it ships.
IloveHN84 8y ago
Only in North America unfortunately
- ztratar 8y ago
  Stripe has remotes across the world, but we're just formalizing this new "Hub" concept in North America.
jpincheira 8y ago
Love it, and more companies should make it as evident and public as they are doing it today with the announcement. Remote work is here to stay, and certainly the future, and one of the main reasons I am now working full-time in the space with my product, to help improve culture and communication within distributed teams, which is one of the main challenges around remote work. Edit: ps. in case you'd like to check it out it's https://standups.io https://standups.io
pastor_elm 8y ago
I just looked at Stripe's job page and noticed they don't advertise any positions as "Senior" nor do they appear to list 'years required' in any of their listings. Definitely a fresh take, and I hope it actually does yield better applicants and results!
- britt_binler 8y ago
  Apparently, everyone has the "same" title - levels are only reflected in your pay band.
  - ztratar 8y ago
    Correct. I work at Stripe. By the way, this goes almost all-the-way-up. Even people who were former VPs at Google often have the title "Engineering Manager". Sure, they mostly manage other EMs, but it's hard to precisely tell who is super senior and who isn't. This actually plays out nicely, as it encourages everyone to default to each other as equals. Later on you'll hear things like "did you know that person built the entire first version of Atlas by themselves?" only to realize they are, in fact, very experienced. :]
nwhatt 8y ago
This is a great sentence: > We are doing this to situate product development closer to our customers, improve our ability to tap the 99.74% of talented engineers living outside the metro areas of our first four hubs, and further our mission of increasing the GDP of the internet.
ngngngng 8y ago
I've always wanted to switch to fully remote. I worked from home for a couple weeks after my son was born and my current company didn't like it. My productivity was down and they noticed so they informed me I wasn't allowed to work remotely anymore because of it. Obviously it had nothing to do with the fact that they gave me 3 days of parental leave after the birth, so I was trying to help a recovering wife take care of a needy child.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  Have you looked for a new role yet? If not, why not? Start interviewing! Find a company that provides better benefits, better pay, and supports flexible work arrangements. Can't fix your current org having garbage parental leave unfortunately (I mean, you could, but it's a more effective use of your time to just bounce). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19797594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19797594 (May 2019 HN Who's Hiring Thread)
- astura 8y ago
  I don't think that has anything to do with "remote work" vs "working and caring for a newborn at the same time," which, obviously, would heavily distract you from work in any setting.
- throwaway55554 8y ago
  There are pros and cons. I've been partial remote for 6 years and full remote for nearly 5. I can do whatever I need to do to get into the flow of work; music, no music, lights, no lights, etc. I don't have to conform to what happens at an office. I can start early or work late (my "office" is several time zones away). I can take a personal call w/out feeling guilty. What I cannot do is walk over to a colleague's desk and chat. I miss hallway conversations about the project. Phone meetings are always a pain as someone is usually too far from the mic and I can't hear. I don't work in a city that has a "tech" community. I can't take my setup with me and go sit at a coffee shop (part of my project is writing hw controls). I love remote work. But, I miss people.
  - return1 8y ago
revskill 8y ago
Any companies that requires in-house engineering is bad. A good culture doesn't depend on location between participants.
- JimDabell 8y ago
  "In-house" typically refers to work performed by direct employees of the company, in contrast to outsourced work. I think you mean "on-site", which refers to work performed by people in offices occupied by the company, in contrast to remote work.
  - revskill 8y ago
    Yeah, it's what i mean. Thanks for reminding ! Edited.
max_im 8y ago
Bravo Stripe! I work for a company that allows me to work remotely pretty much whenever and it has done wonders for my productivity(no interruptions to flow) and overall happiness level. The 2 hours/ day of time I used to spend commuting are now spent cooking/going to the gym/home improvement/gardening. I save tons of money and have never been healthier or happier. As long as I stay a software engineer I don't think I'll ever take another role that doesn't let me work remotely. Of course I am strict with myself about working during work hours and have good rapport/trust w/ management. Just my 2c
bg4 8y ago
I've been working from home for over a year. Far more productive than working in an office.
astura 8y ago
I always assumed work from home positions were very difficult to get because your pool of competition is so much bigger. Can anyone chime in if that's the case or not?
- sl1ck731 8y ago
  I think there might be fewer people who actively seek them out, so competition might be similar to any other job. I know a common sentiment I see spread around to would-be remote workers is that you need to work on-site for a while and then be given the chance, which isn't always the case. This is just me speculating though. I had no issues finding a fulltime remote gig but I think it might be more common for people like me in the DevOps/cloud area than strict developers maybe.
- Fej 8y ago
  I would love an answer to this as well.
- akyu 8y ago
  They can also be hard to find because they won't be advertised as remote. I'm full time remote but this wasn't mentioned in the job description, and I only found out after getting the job offer. I think management had the sense that advertising the position as remote attracted "the wrong kind of people". I guess technically I have an "unlimited work from home" policy, because I do still have a desk if I want to go in.
  - stevens32 8y ago
    I had no idea there might be some connotation about remote workers as some kind of people, any idea what they may have meant?
    - redisman 8y ago
      One characterization I've heard is the "sits around in PJs and dicks around all day" - like a sickday that goes on forever. Which I have found almost never to be the case, or it was very obvious and they were let go pretty quickly.
deleted 8y ago
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thedangler 8y ago
Where I currently work they wont let programmers work from home because: Jealous coworkers who need to be at work. It's not fair clause. Company insurance doesn't cover people working from home
alexhutcheson 8y ago
Does anyone have experience working remotely in a engineering manager (not IC) role? Did it work for you? What had to change?
- _jss 8y ago
  I’ve been at Stripe for 4 years, joined as an IC then shortly transitioned to an EM. Previously was an EM, and remote for 12 years total. Noticeable differences: - While I’m remote people tend to default to throwing time on my calendar, which means a conversation sometimes doesn’t happen. We use Slack, so I am highly responsive on Slack to ensure I’m still talking with folks I need to and would rather ping someone unnecessarily and ask about something than miss out on information. Ding words and DMs to offset the barrier to adding calendared time to talk. - Capturing all “collisions” (we have awesome stairs to encourage this) is a lot different. As a remote, when I’m in the office it’s a bit special and people come up to me. When working in an office, I get less “Hey, what have you been up to?” conversations. - Timezones are definitely harder in the office. In an office people generally have fixed blocks of time, since commuting has a cost. Being remote (from home) there is no commute cost, so I can split my day up if I need to without working overly long days. I worked with engineers in Europe, so having this flexibility to hop on a call at 6am and then take a break to hang out with my kids before school is super cool. What doesn’t change? I believe the most effective management practices aim for predictability, and having inclusive behaviors. Also it doesn’t change how you show up to the job. When I’m in meetings, I need to look fully engaged and present, whether remote or in the office. I think this can be harder in a home office, being surrounded by your things vs. an empty conference room. Happy to talk more about my experiences here or remote in general!
incanus77 8y ago
This is such a smart move. I was one of the first two simul-hire remotes at Mapbox (when the company was ~12 people) and, until I left in 2017, the longest-term remote there at seven years. I've been fully remote for thirteen years. At Mapbox, I unofficially took on the role of internal advocate for remote culture. It wasn't always easy to be remote, but as the company grew, Eric, the CEO, was fond of saying that "everyone is remote" since more and more physical hubs for work sprang up across many timezones. It was a tough balance, particularly as increasingly more work and customer opportunities centered around the Bay Area, and the spiritual heart of the company switched coasts from the official HQ in DC to the larger and faster growing office in SF. Personally, I can't overstate how much being a remote employee and even freelancer has impacted my quality of life and my opportunities. For the most part, I was able to focus on my work and hook in to the rest of my teammates as needed. The best times of this were when the company engineering culture was very asynchronous and allowed for it. Slack and always-on expectations, as well as much more complex software in later years, made this more difficult, but still manageable. It wasn't without struggle, though. Often it was lonely, isolating, I felt out of the loop on some decisions, I didn't get some in-jokes and nicknames, I missed the non-holiday parties and happy hours, etc. Even with that stuff aside, it takes a real commitment from the leadership to fully integrate remote team members. Kudos to Stripe for putting themselves out there and holding themselves accountable to the goal with a public statement and metrics. The key snippet from the Stripe announcement is this: > improve our ability to tap the 99.74% of talented engineers living outside the metro areas of our first four hubs The future of much of the technical work that needs to happen is remote, and I'm glad to see Stripe embrace that.
- kweinber 8y ago
  "Often it was lonely, isolating, I felt out of the loop on some decisions, I didn't get some in-jokes and nicknames, I missed the non-holiday parties and happy hours, etc." I am in this boat now. . . and find it really tough. Many others I know feel the same way but it is rarely talked about. How do you get over the social isolation of being remote?
  - ghaff 8y ago
kierenj 8y ago
Uhm, "Remote in North America only" though?
- redisman 8y ago
  Setting up payroll, writing employment contracts in different countries, timezone differences etc. are pretty valid but not unmanageable for a company of this size. Hope they expand it later once this turns out to be a great idea. You also need to organize your engineer and product management layers to cover all the new locales which could mean much longer days for those people.
hobofan 8y ago
I've seen a sign on the street level in Berlin of a Stripe office and heard that 10-20 people are working there with half of them in engineering. I realize that this probably doesn't count as a hub, but how does it fit in with what's explained in the blog post? Has Stripe more non-hub locations?
- patio11 8y ago
  Stripe has offices in San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, Seattle, Amsterdam, Bangalore, Berlin, Dublin, London, Paris, Melbourne, Singapore, and Tokyo. Engineering hubs have organizational infrastructure that the rest of our offices may not, like dedicated reporting lines for engineers at the hub, engineering teams which exist at the hub and don't exist elsewhere, and similar. We have engineers who work out of our non-hub offices as well, but there generally isn't intensive, permanent core engineering work being done out of them like there is in the hub offices.
  - jamestimmins 8y ago
    I've always been curious why Stripe doesn't have LA offices. It seems (superficially, at least) to be ideal: same timezone as HQ, multiple top-tier colleges, a desirable climate, and a large engineering pool to source from.
  - hobofan 8y ago
    Thanks for the reply!
paulddraper 8y ago
> There are still some constraints on our ambitions. In our first phase, we will be focused primarily on remote engineers in North America, starting with the US and Canada. While we are confident that great work is possible within close time zones, we don’t yet have structures to give remotes a reliably good experience working across large time zone differences. I get the time zone thing. So why not South America?
- dudul 8y ago
  Maybe they don't have any legal presence there? No knowledge of employment laws, regulations, etc.
  - paulddraper 8y ago
    Do they have any legal presence in Canada or Mexico?
simonebrunozzi 8y ago
Stripe is such an amazing company, and I am really glad that they keep pushing workplace innovation this way. I am currently looking for a new job (exec level) and unfortunately I don't see any great fit with Stripe's current openings, otherwise I would simply love to see how the company operates from the inside. Keep rocking.
deleted 8y ago
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ezekg 8y ago
This is great to see. In the past, I had wanted to apply to Stripe, but left saddened when they didn't offer remote positions as I've worked remote for the past 3 or 4 years.
- ztratar 8y ago
  There are a lot of factors & regulations that make South America uniquely difficult. For example, regulations state that in Brazil the payment processors (like Stripe) cannot pay out funds until 30 days after they are earned. This obviously isn't the best user experience. It will just take longer to build something truly great that can span the globe.
xadhominemx 8y ago
Why does Stripe need 5 engineering hubs? I don't understand what Stripe engineers work on all day.
- TulliusCicero 8y ago
  > I don't understand what Stripe engineers work on all day. Software products are icebergs. For all the things you see as a user, there's way, way more going on under the hood that you never see or think about. Some of that is platform/infrastructural work, some of it is features that target things you don't know or care about.
- ahstilde 8y ago
  You can explore Stripe's website to get an understanding for their product size and scope: https://stripe.com/ https://stripe.com/ . Also, I promise you don't understand how much work goes on behind the scenes at payments companies around fraud detection and prevention. Fraud costs account for ~3% of revenues at large financial firms.
  - redisman 8y ago
    Also how terrible and archaic financial insitutions APIs are if you're used to nice polished REST APIs from the web..
throwaway201905 8y ago
If anyone from Stripe is reading: is there any precedent for taking a remote role with a view to transitioning to an office role in the US while being sponsored for a visa? Who would I talk to about this? Thanks.
Androider 8y ago
HN remote workers, does your company pay for your use of a coworking space? Or even fully manage it? I've noticed that companies I admire greatly like Basecamp, and also in yesterday's Who's Hiring thread, that they list a $200-$300 monthly stipend towards coworking space fees as an employee perk. That doesn't seem quite enough to fully cover a coworking space in NY or SF. I'm tasked with building a remote engineering workforce myself in our business, and was initially thinking that we as the company will be the ones setting up the contracts with WeWorks etc. But perhaps you as an employee would actually prefer to be in control of that? Are there companies that are fully remote but don't contribute anything towards coworking? If you're in that situation, what do you think of it?
- nfriend 8y ago
  Yes, my company (GitLab) fully reimburses me for the coworking space I rent. They don't manage it for me - I just submit the rent as an expense each month. More details on GitLab's coworking space policy here: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/spending-company-money/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/spending-company-money/. (Search the page for "Office space".)
- nfriedly 8y ago
  I work remote for Tanium, and they do not cover the cost of a co-working space, but they do reimburse me for my cellphone and home internet.
- sciurus 8y ago
  Mozilla will either outfit your home office and pay your ISP bill or pay $350 a month towards a coworking space.
- avip 8y ago
  Yes, that seems to be pretty much industry standard for remote full time employee.
- camhenlin 8y ago
  No. I work for a fully remote company, and we decided that individuals within the company could pay for working a coworking space if they wanted, but giving them a stipend for doing so created a benefit for those employees that didn't exist for employees that optimized their home office for remote work. Personally I am in favor of more pay for every employee across the board at an organization rather than trying to come up with lots of extra benefits to take advantage of to collect more money. I think that some kind stipend for office/equipment/etc does make sense for companies that have remote and in-office employees, but feel that it should be a set amount and not tied to actual usage, as I feel that in those cases, the company is getting a clear benefit from the worker being remote, in not having to provide them with space in the office.
mars4rp 8y ago
I embrace remote as the next guy, but if all companies start doing that. how do you think that effects bay area and big hubs wages?
- fiveoak 8y ago
  Probably lower them, which is bad if you're part of that demographic, but better for everyone else outside that very small group (which admittedly is probably a significant proportion of HN readers but a small proportion of the entire population)
phreack 8y ago
It's sad how they don't just have plans to hire in South America, Stripe as a service doesn't even work in South America. It looks like a market that's overdue for disruption.
roland35 8y ago
Are there any other well known Silicon Valley companies that also are committed to remote work? Particularly with a focus on hardware/firmware type engineering? ;)
luminati 8y ago
Million dollar question - how are the remote stripes going to be compensated? Are they going to be compensated pegged on their geo-locale (which then just makes it like international offices without the office)? I'm pretty sure the dublin and singapore stripes are paid much lower than their sf counterparts. How are they going to resolve this for the remotes? Not poking at stripe, but generally as I think of remote work, I think we're probably to going to think of true value based salary scales (you are creating X$ of value, therefore you are to be paid a fraction of that) as opposed to geo based scales (you may be an icpc world finalist living in Kathmandu but you will be paid 1/10th of a boot camper from SF because 3rd world).
- speby 8y ago
  Why is this even a question? If remote workers don't like the comp/pay being offered, they could go looking at other companies in their market (or other remote work opportunities). This is a non-issue.
  - danso 8y ago
    What do you mean “why is this even a question?”? It’s a question that frequently comes up in remote worn discussions. Stripe being a big company, and now making a big commitment to remote work, is likely to be an example other companies draw from.
    - sparkpy724 8y ago
      Can you name a single company that pays Remote Employees SF/Bay Area salaries? Edit: Fair enough. There are companies that pay everyone SF level salaries but you can also find companies like Gitlab - 100% Remote but they explicitly downscale from SF salaries based on location. https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-compensation/#compensation-calculator https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-c...
      - agentile 8y ago
        BaseCamp. https://github.com/basecamp/handbook/blob/master/making-a-career.md#pay--promotions https://github.com/basecamp/handbook/blob/master/making-a-ca...
alieku4722 8y ago
Sd
jamestimmins 8y ago
Is there any information on the application/interview process available?
deleted 8y ago
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throwawaym13551 8y ago
To offer a counterpoint to all the praise of remote working: I'm the living proof of a dysfunctional remote employee. I work effectively 20 minutes a day, sometimes not at all. In the morning meetings it's so easy to just wing something vague and get away with it. I guess the fundamental problem is that I work in a team where everyone more or less owns a separate part of the product and no-one has any insight in other peoples' work.
- bauerd 8y ago
  What do you do all day then? Does no one ever try to get in contact with you?
  - throwawaym13551 8y ago
    Very seldom and when they do it's something really trivial to fix/answer (which I can often do on my phone if I'm out doing... leisure stuff). I more or less have a permanent paid vacation.
    - stevens32 8y ago
      Do you do other things during the work day? How do you fill the time?
fnord77 8y ago
> There are still some constraints on our ambitions. In our first phase, we will be focused primarily on remote engineers in North America, starting with the US and Canada.
deleted 8y ago
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587 points by geordilaforge 8y ago

> While we did not initially plan to make hiring remotes a huge part of our engineering efforts, our remote employees have outperformed all expectations. I wonder what metrics were used. Would be interesting to know whether the main motivator was simply raw performance, or performance/cost.

jlaurend 8y ago
Probably both, I'd imagine. Regarding cost, Stripe was pretty outspokenly against Prop C in SF last year (which passed, to their dismay). The result is an added tax on revenue which hits Stripe hard since they have a high volume, low margin business. Not to mention CA is already a very expensive place to run a company. With rising costs in SF, they likely had to explore viable long-term solutions. They can start moving more jobs to their other offices, open new secondary offices, or expand their remote presence. With remote, they're able to keep SF as the HQ while lowering costs. It's also popular among devs, so it'll keep their brand image good amongst their target demo and among their current employee base.
- pault 8y ago
  Are they not in Austin? I don't see it on the jobs page. Austin is the perfect combination of low COL and available talent in my opinion.
  - Bartweiss 8y ago
    > Austin is the perfect combination of low COL and available talent in my opinion. Some evidence for that: half the game studios I know of have programmers in Texas, or occasionally elsewhere in the southeast (e.g. North Carolina). If you want a dense talent pool around your office, but don't have the margin/capital to pay coastal cost of living, there aren't many other options to rival those.

dhd415 8y ago

Great to see that a well-known company such as Stripe is embracing remote work because they've seen that remote workers are effective, not just as a mechanism to leverage locales with lower wages. Hopefully other companies follow suit.

throwaway4721 8y ago
I’m not sure this says anything about the wages being equal. The remote wages are anecdotally lower. Judging by the offers I’ve seen coming out of SF compared to some of their other hubs, it’s significantly lower. Not just in salary, but in equity as well.
- dhd415 8y ago
  It's certainly possible that Stripe is offering productivity as the reason for their embrace of remote work when it's really about cheaper labor, but I'm hopeful. I know there are other companies where those decisions are transparently about lowering costs, but if what you say about remote workers typically getting less equity is true, too, that's pretty disappointing.
  - throwaway4721 8y ago
    Honestly I don’t know how fair businesses can be with respect to this while being economically rational. Differences in markets are very real, and if you can get good developers who can’t work in the US for less, why not? It’s not surprising the Zoom founder tried so hard to make it to America.
  - Bartweiss 8y ago
    Buffer (which has been remote-heavy for a long time) handled this by explicitly breaking their salary assessment into multiple elements. In addition to base salary-for-role and various experience adjustments, they have a public "price sheet" describing the cost of living adjustments they apply for different locations. It's not a perfect system, I'm sure. CoL is reduced to three fairly broad bands, and other pay elements like experience and performance are potentially skewed by remote status. But I think it's an appealing approach in general. Candidates know in advance what to expect and can move somewhere more expensive without needing to find a new job. Meanwhile, the company saves some money, but still gets access to remote candidates in expensive cities where they don't have offices. I suppose it would drive away any remote worker who's consciously living somewhere cheap to increase effective salary, but presumably that's offset by getting access to people in DC, NYC, Boston, etc. who aren't open to other cost-saving remote jobs.

mahesh_rm 8y ago

..Remote (North America Only)..

pc 8y ago
For now!
- ingenieroariel 8y ago
  If you want to test out workers outside of USA but not have to solve the timezone related issues I recommend Colombia. There is at least one interested person there.
  - kypro 8y ago
    As someone who's worked remote with "timezone issues" before they're not for the company to solve. If you live in Europe but work for a US company that requires you to work US times, it's simple, you work US times. This is how I've worked before and it's worked out perfectly. In fact, I'm a bit of a night owl so I much preferred it.
    - jhgaylor 8y ago
      I work at a company where everyone is expected to be in the office. But we have early birds and night owls employed by the same company to work together. We don't have a formalized solution as night owls do as you described and get on up if they have work due in the morning. Or the early birds will stay up late to help the night owls finish. But a lot of companies take on "Core hours" and essentially solve the timezone problem even with a physical office. With core hours management is deciding that they don't want to solve the "timezone issues". I wonder how well the opposite end of the spectrum would work. Our async communication tools are pretty good these days. You could keep someone solving the problem all day long with just 3 or 4 hires but instead people choose to work on the problem in scheduled bursts of 6 hours with their entire team.
      - 8y ago

skizm 8y ago

Where do I apply?

timerol 8y ago
https://stripe.com/jobs/search https://stripe.com/jobs/search
patio11 8y ago
Our jobs page is at https://stripe.com/jobs https://stripe.com/jobs or you can attend a coffee chat with us and then let the conversation continue that way. https://stripe.events/remote-coffee https://stripe.events/remote-coffee
- mailshanx 8y ago
  Does Stripe pay at FAANG level? Even outside the USA?
  - toephu2 8y ago
    Stripe has no plans to go IPO [1], so with paper money RSUs worth $0 Stripe cannot compete in terms of TC with FANG companies. [1] http://fortune.com/2018/09/27/stripe-valuation-ipo-stock/ http://fortune.com/2018/09/27/stripe-valuation-ipo-stock/
- selimthegrim 8y ago
  Are there any plans for remote data science or remote data engineering roles beyond those listed on the jobs page?
  - patio11 8y ago
    Specifically: We have remote data scientists (I work closely with one in Tokyo) and will have more in the future. Generally: every engineering workstream at Stripe will have remotes in it.
- boraturant 8y ago

a9a 8y ago

I hope other companies follow Stripe's lead here. Anecdotally, I've never been as happy and productive as I've been the past few years as a remote worker. It seems to me too few companies are taking advantage of the opportunity here. The few challenges I've encountered seem solvable: (1) effective team culture building: can be solved with travel budget & prioritization of good team cultural norms by team leads (2) whole team collaborative brainstorming (particularly when facing a "fire drill"-type time-constrained challenge): more challenging to solve from what I've seen, but might be solved by some combination of better tech and better work practices I'm interested to hear how Stripe addresses these and which challenges they find. One question at a higher level: what are the immigration law impacts here? Does Stripe need to get H1Bs for internationally located workers? I hope not: effective remote work is fantastic step toward bringing labor mobility more in line with capital mobility, with potentially positive effects on income, taxation, and social policies for people around the world.

dudul 8y ago
H1Bs are used for non-immigrant workers to be allowed to work on US territory. So no, no need for H1B if workers live and work from a different country.
patio11 8y ago
We have talented lawyers and comply fully with employment-related requirements everywhere we do business. These get rather nuanced, particularly when factual situations get complicated, but if we weren't ready to implement complex state machines and handle edge cases then we picked a really poor line of work. Generally speaking, most Stripes work for a subsidiary which hires them in the standard fashion for professional employees in their jurisdiction. For example, I work for Stripe Japan, K.K., and demonstrated/maintain authorization to work in Japan. We can and do support people moving internally, including regarding immigration status where appropriate.
deleted 8y ago
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ghaff 8y ago
While it's not sufficient, travel budget is an important element IMO. I'm more or less remote but the ability to get together multiple times a year with both formal team members and other people who I collaborate with is pretty important to me. Also just getting out of the house to have regular contact with other people in the industry. I suppose, I could more proactively do more local events but, generally, I find interacting with people at events an important part of working remotely.

sandGorgon 8y ago

Im wondering what learnings has Stripe figured out that makes their remote workers as productive as their in-office employees. Do they use things like OKR, slack,etc ? What works and what doesn't - is there a cognitive disconnect between remote teams and people who work in office . Is there an expectation of minimum screen time expected from remote employees?

drb91 8y ago
Why would you expect remote to be less efficient? Working in an open office is incredibly distracting—of course there’s productivity gains from going remote.
- domlebo70 8y ago
  I am full time remote for past 6mo. Never been less productive in my career. I'm looking to switch back to onsite as soon as I can. Edit: I'm not saying remote is bad - just that in my experience I'm definitely less productive.
  - zrail 8y ago
    It’s not for everyone. I’ve been remote for the past 6 years and love it, but it definitely had a learning curve. Friends of mine have tried it and went back to the office. One thing that has really helped me I’d having a non-work group of online friends who also all work remote. We can commiserate and trade tips.
    - avgDev 8y ago
      I think this is the key to working remote. Having a network of people who also work remote online. I need to try that. I work half of the time remote and sometimes feel very unmotivated due to lack of human contact. Having someone to just chat with would be awesome. Neat idea I wonder if there is a discord chat for that.
  - SkyPuncher 8y ago

ultra-jeremyx 8y ago

You know who else works remotely? Astronauts.

caprese 8y ago

One thing I've found when working in a silo or remotely is the difficulty of getting accolades. Pretty much all discretionary accolades like "team member of the month" is related to building rapport with the decision maker. This factors into not just the employee of the month, but bonuses and layoffs. I'm not even sure if abstracting this out into specific performance metrics is the solution, an individual will still want to give another certain individual praise at their discretion. Just something to be conscious of. Glad Stripe is having success in this area.

redisman 8y ago
I work at a 80% remote company (we have two smallish offices). We definitely get accolades for a well made project once it ships.

IloveHN84 8y ago

Only in North America unfortunately

ztratar 8y ago
Stripe has remotes across the world, but we're just formalizing this new "Hub" concept in North America.

jpincheira 8y ago

Love it, and more companies should make it as evident and public as they are doing it today with the announcement. Remote work is here to stay, and certainly the future, and one of the main reasons I am now working full-time in the space with my product, to help improve culture and communication within distributed teams, which is one of the main challenges around remote work. Edit: ps. in case you'd like to check it out it's https://standups.io https://standups.io

pastor_elm 8y ago

I just looked at Stripe's job page and noticed they don't advertise any positions as "Senior" nor do they appear to list 'years required' in any of their listings. Definitely a fresh take, and I hope it actually does yield better applicants and results!

britt_binler 8y ago
Apparently, everyone has the "same" title - levels are only reflected in your pay band.
- ztratar 8y ago
  Correct. I work at Stripe. By the way, this goes almost all-the-way-up. Even people who were former VPs at Google often have the title "Engineering Manager". Sure, they mostly manage other EMs, but it's hard to precisely tell who is super senior and who isn't. This actually plays out nicely, as it encourages everyone to default to each other as equals. Later on you'll hear things like "did you know that person built the entire first version of Atlas by themselves?" only to realize they are, in fact, very experienced. :]

nwhatt 8y ago

This is a great sentence: > We are doing this to situate product development closer to our customers, improve our ability to tap the 99.74% of talented engineers living outside the metro areas of our first four hubs, and further our mission of increasing the GDP of the internet.

ngngngng 8y ago

I've always wanted to switch to fully remote. I worked from home for a couple weeks after my son was born and my current company didn't like it. My productivity was down and they noticed so they informed me I wasn't allowed to work remotely anymore because of it. Obviously it had nothing to do with the fact that they gave me 3 days of parental leave after the birth, so I was trying to help a recovering wife take care of a needy child.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
Have you looked for a new role yet? If not, why not? Start interviewing! Find a company that provides better benefits, better pay, and supports flexible work arrangements. Can't fix your current org having garbage parental leave unfortunately (I mean, you could, but it's a more effective use of your time to just bounce). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19797594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19797594 (May 2019 HN Who's Hiring Thread)
astura 8y ago
I don't think that has anything to do with "remote work" vs "working and caring for a newborn at the same time," which, obviously, would heavily distract you from work in any setting.
throwaway55554 8y ago
There are pros and cons. I've been partial remote for 6 years and full remote for nearly 5. I can do whatever I need to do to get into the flow of work; music, no music, lights, no lights, etc. I don't have to conform to what happens at an office. I can start early or work late (my "office" is several time zones away). I can take a personal call w/out feeling guilty. What I cannot do is walk over to a colleague's desk and chat. I miss hallway conversations about the project. Phone meetings are always a pain as someone is usually too far from the mic and I can't hear. I don't work in a city that has a "tech" community. I can't take my setup with me and go sit at a coffee shop (part of my project is writing hw controls). I love remote work. But, I miss people.
- return1 8y ago

revskill 8y ago

Any companies that requires in-house engineering is bad. A good culture doesn't depend on location between participants.

JimDabell 8y ago
"In-house" typically refers to work performed by direct employees of the company, in contrast to outsourced work. I think you mean "on-site", which refers to work performed by people in offices occupied by the company, in contrast to remote work.
- revskill 8y ago
  Yeah, it's what i mean. Thanks for reminding ! Edited.

max_im 8y ago

Bravo Stripe! I work for a company that allows me to work remotely pretty much whenever and it has done wonders for my productivity(no interruptions to flow) and overall happiness level. The 2 hours/ day of time I used to spend commuting are now spent cooking/going to the gym/home improvement/gardening. I save tons of money and have never been healthier or happier. As long as I stay a software engineer I don't think I'll ever take another role that doesn't let me work remotely. Of course I am strict with myself about working during work hours and have good rapport/trust w/ management. Just my 2c

bg4 8y ago

I've been working from home for over a year. Far more productive than working in an office.

astura 8y ago

I always assumed work from home positions were very difficult to get because your pool of competition is so much bigger. Can anyone chime in if that's the case or not?

sl1ck731 8y ago
I think there might be fewer people who actively seek them out, so competition might be similar to any other job. I know a common sentiment I see spread around to would-be remote workers is that you need to work on-site for a while and then be given the chance, which isn't always the case. This is just me speculating though. I had no issues finding a fulltime remote gig but I think it might be more common for people like me in the DevOps/cloud area than strict developers maybe.
Fej 8y ago
I would love an answer to this as well.
akyu 8y ago
They can also be hard to find because they won't be advertised as remote. I'm full time remote but this wasn't mentioned in the job description, and I only found out after getting the job offer. I think management had the sense that advertising the position as remote attracted "the wrong kind of people". I guess technically I have an "unlimited work from home" policy, because I do still have a desk if I want to go in.
- stevens32 8y ago
  I had no idea there might be some connotation about remote workers as some kind of people, any idea what they may have meant?
  - redisman 8y ago
    One characterization I've heard is the "sits around in PJs and dicks around all day" - like a sickday that goes on forever. Which I have found almost never to be the case, or it was very obvious and they were let go pretty quickly.

deleted 8y ago

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thedangler 8y ago

Where I currently work they wont let programmers work from home because: Jealous coworkers who need to be at work. It's not fair clause. Company insurance doesn't cover people working from home

alexhutcheson 8y ago

Does anyone have experience working remotely in a engineering manager (not IC) role? Did it work for you? What had to change?

_jss 8y ago
I’ve been at Stripe for 4 years, joined as an IC then shortly transitioned to an EM. Previously was an EM, and remote for 12 years total. Noticeable differences: - While I’m remote people tend to default to throwing time on my calendar, which means a conversation sometimes doesn’t happen. We use Slack, so I am highly responsive on Slack to ensure I’m still talking with folks I need to and would rather ping someone unnecessarily and ask about something than miss out on information. Ding words and DMs to offset the barrier to adding calendared time to talk. - Capturing all “collisions” (we have awesome stairs to encourage this) is a lot different. As a remote, when I’m in the office it’s a bit special and people come up to me. When working in an office, I get less “Hey, what have you been up to?” conversations. - Timezones are definitely harder in the office. In an office people generally have fixed blocks of time, since commuting has a cost. Being remote (from home) there is no commute cost, so I can split my day up if I need to without working overly long days. I worked with engineers in Europe, so having this flexibility to hop on a call at 6am and then take a break to hang out with my kids before school is super cool. What doesn’t change? I believe the most effective management practices aim for predictability, and having inclusive behaviors. Also it doesn’t change how you show up to the job. When I’m in meetings, I need to look fully engaged and present, whether remote or in the office. I think this can be harder in a home office, being surrounded by your things vs. an empty conference room. Happy to talk more about my experiences here or remote in general!

incanus77 8y ago

This is such a smart move. I was one of the first two simul-hire remotes at Mapbox (when the company was ~12 people) and, until I left in 2017, the longest-term remote there at seven years. I've been fully remote for thirteen years. At Mapbox, I unofficially took on the role of internal advocate for remote culture. It wasn't always easy to be remote, but as the company grew, Eric, the CEO, was fond of saying that "everyone is remote" since more and more physical hubs for work sprang up across many timezones. It was a tough balance, particularly as increasingly more work and customer opportunities centered around the Bay Area, and the spiritual heart of the company switched coasts from the official HQ in DC to the larger and faster growing office in SF. Personally, I can't overstate how much being a remote employee and even freelancer has impacted my quality of life and my opportunities. For the most part, I was able to focus on my work and hook in to the rest of my teammates as needed. The best times of this were when the company engineering culture was very asynchronous and allowed for it. Slack and always-on expectations, as well as much more complex software in later years, made this more difficult, but still manageable. It wasn't without struggle, though. Often it was lonely, isolating, I felt out of the loop on some decisions, I didn't get some in-jokes and nicknames, I missed the non-holiday parties and happy hours, etc. Even with that stuff aside, it takes a real commitment from the leadership to fully integrate remote team members. Kudos to Stripe for putting themselves out there and holding themselves accountable to the goal with a public statement and metrics. The key snippet from the Stripe announcement is this: > improve our ability to tap the 99.74% of talented engineers living outside the metro areas of our first four hubs The future of much of the technical work that needs to happen is remote, and I'm glad to see Stripe embrace that.

kweinber 8y ago
"Often it was lonely, isolating, I felt out of the loop on some decisions, I didn't get some in-jokes and nicknames, I missed the non-holiday parties and happy hours, etc." I am in this boat now. . . and find it really tough. Many others I know feel the same way but it is rarely talked about. How do you get over the social isolation of being remote?
- ghaff 8y ago

kierenj 8y ago

Uhm, "Remote in North America only" though?

redisman 8y ago
Setting up payroll, writing employment contracts in different countries, timezone differences etc. are pretty valid but not unmanageable for a company of this size. Hope they expand it later once this turns out to be a great idea. You also need to organize your engineer and product management layers to cover all the new locales which could mean much longer days for those people.

hobofan 8y ago

I've seen a sign on the street level in Berlin of a Stripe office and heard that 10-20 people are working there with half of them in engineering. I realize that this probably doesn't count as a hub, but how does it fit in with what's explained in the blog post? Has Stripe more non-hub locations?

patio11 8y ago
Stripe has offices in San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, Seattle, Amsterdam, Bangalore, Berlin, Dublin, London, Paris, Melbourne, Singapore, and Tokyo. Engineering hubs have organizational infrastructure that the rest of our offices may not, like dedicated reporting lines for engineers at the hub, engineering teams which exist at the hub and don't exist elsewhere, and similar. We have engineers who work out of our non-hub offices as well, but there generally isn't intensive, permanent core engineering work being done out of them like there is in the hub offices.
- jamestimmins 8y ago
  I've always been curious why Stripe doesn't have LA offices. It seems (superficially, at least) to be ideal: same timezone as HQ, multiple top-tier colleges, a desirable climate, and a large engineering pool to source from.
- hobofan 8y ago
  Thanks for the reply!

paulddraper 8y ago

> There are still some constraints on our ambitions. In our first phase, we will be focused primarily on remote engineers in North America, starting with the US and Canada. While we are confident that great work is possible within close time zones, we don’t yet have structures to give remotes a reliably good experience working across large time zone differences. I get the time zone thing. So why not South America?

dudul 8y ago
Maybe they don't have any legal presence there? No knowledge of employment laws, regulations, etc.
- paulddraper 8y ago
  Do they have any legal presence in Canada or Mexico?

simonebrunozzi 8y ago

Stripe is such an amazing company, and I am really glad that they keep pushing workplace innovation this way. I am currently looking for a new job (exec level) and unfortunately I don't see any great fit with Stripe's current openings, otherwise I would simply love to see how the company operates from the inside. Keep rocking.

deleted 8y ago

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ezekg 8y ago

This is great to see. In the past, I had wanted to apply to Stripe, but left saddened when they didn't offer remote positions as I've worked remote for the past 3 or 4 years.

ztratar 8y ago
There are a lot of factors & regulations that make South America uniquely difficult. For example, regulations state that in Brazil the payment processors (like Stripe) cannot pay out funds until 30 days after they are earned. This obviously isn't the best user experience. It will just take longer to build something truly great that can span the globe.

xadhominemx 8y ago

Why does Stripe need 5 engineering hubs? I don't understand what Stripe engineers work on all day.

TulliusCicero 8y ago
> I don't understand what Stripe engineers work on all day. Software products are icebergs. For all the things you see as a user, there's way, way more going on under the hood that you never see or think about. Some of that is platform/infrastructural work, some of it is features that target things you don't know or care about.
ahstilde 8y ago
You can explore Stripe's website to get an understanding for their product size and scope: https://stripe.com/ https://stripe.com/ . Also, I promise you don't understand how much work goes on behind the scenes at payments companies around fraud detection and prevention. Fraud costs account for ~3% of revenues at large financial firms.
- redisman 8y ago
  Also how terrible and archaic financial insitutions APIs are if you're used to nice polished REST APIs from the web..

throwaway201905 8y ago

If anyone from Stripe is reading: is there any precedent for taking a remote role with a view to transitioning to an office role in the US while being sponsored for a visa? Who would I talk to about this? Thanks.

Androider 8y ago

HN remote workers, does your company pay for your use of a coworking space? Or even fully manage it? I've noticed that companies I admire greatly like Basecamp, and also in yesterday's Who's Hiring thread, that they list a $200-$300 monthly stipend towards coworking space fees as an employee perk. That doesn't seem quite enough to fully cover a coworking space in NY or SF. I'm tasked with building a remote engineering workforce myself in our business, and was initially thinking that we as the company will be the ones setting up the contracts with WeWorks etc. But perhaps you as an employee would actually prefer to be in control of that? Are there companies that are fully remote but don't contribute anything towards coworking? If you're in that situation, what do you think of it?

nfriend 8y ago
Yes, my company (GitLab) fully reimburses me for the coworking space I rent. They don't manage it for me - I just submit the rent as an expense each month. More details on GitLab's coworking space policy here: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/spending-company-money/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/spending-company-money/. (Search the page for "Office space".)
nfriedly 8y ago
I work remote for Tanium, and they do not cover the cost of a co-working space, but they do reimburse me for my cellphone and home internet.
sciurus 8y ago
Mozilla will either outfit your home office and pay your ISP bill or pay $350 a month towards a coworking space.
avip 8y ago
Yes, that seems to be pretty much industry standard for remote full time employee.
camhenlin 8y ago
No. I work for a fully remote company, and we decided that individuals within the company could pay for working a coworking space if they wanted, but giving them a stipend for doing so created a benefit for those employees that didn't exist for employees that optimized their home office for remote work. Personally I am in favor of more pay for every employee across the board at an organization rather than trying to come up with lots of extra benefits to take advantage of to collect more money. I think that some kind stipend for office/equipment/etc does make sense for companies that have remote and in-office employees, but feel that it should be a set amount and not tied to actual usage, as I feel that in those cases, the company is getting a clear benefit from the worker being remote, in not having to provide them with space in the office.

mars4rp 8y ago

I embrace remote as the next guy, but if all companies start doing that. how do you think that effects bay area and big hubs wages?

fiveoak 8y ago
Probably lower them, which is bad if you're part of that demographic, but better for everyone else outside that very small group (which admittedly is probably a significant proportion of HN readers but a small proportion of the entire population)

phreack 8y ago

It's sad how they don't just have plans to hire in South America, Stripe as a service doesn't even work in South America. It looks like a market that's overdue for disruption.

roland35 8y ago

Are there any other well known Silicon Valley companies that also are committed to remote work? Particularly with a focus on hardware/firmware type engineering? ;)

luminati 8y ago

Million dollar question - how are the remote stripes going to be compensated? Are they going to be compensated pegged on their geo-locale (which then just makes it like international offices without the office)? I'm pretty sure the dublin and singapore stripes are paid much lower than their sf counterparts. How are they going to resolve this for the remotes? Not poking at stripe, but generally as I think of remote work, I think we're probably to going to think of true value based salary scales (you are creating X$ of value, therefore you are to be paid a fraction of that) as opposed to geo based scales (you may be an icpc world finalist living in Kathmandu but you will be paid 1/10th of a boot camper from SF because 3rd world).

speby 8y ago
Why is this even a question? If remote workers don't like the comp/pay being offered, they could go looking at other companies in their market (or other remote work opportunities). This is a non-issue.
- danso 8y ago
  What do you mean “why is this even a question?”? It’s a question that frequently comes up in remote worn discussions. Stripe being a big company, and now making a big commitment to remote work, is likely to be an example other companies draw from.
  - sparkpy724 8y ago
    Can you name a single company that pays Remote Employees SF/Bay Area salaries? Edit: Fair enough. There are companies that pay everyone SF level salaries but you can also find companies like Gitlab - 100% Remote but they explicitly downscale from SF salaries based on location. https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-compensation/#compensation-calculator https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-c...
    - agentile 8y ago
      BaseCamp. https://github.com/basecamp/handbook/blob/master/making-a-career.md#pay--promotions https://github.com/basecamp/handbook/blob/master/making-a-ca...

alieku4722 8y ago

jamestimmins 8y ago

Is there any information on the application/interview process available?

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

throwawaym13551 8y ago

To offer a counterpoint to all the praise of remote working: I'm the living proof of a dysfunctional remote employee. I work effectively 20 minutes a day, sometimes not at all. In the morning meetings it's so easy to just wing something vague and get away with it. I guess the fundamental problem is that I work in a team where everyone more or less owns a separate part of the product and no-one has any insight in other peoples' work.

bauerd 8y ago
What do you do all day then? Does no one ever try to get in contact with you?
- throwawaym13551 8y ago
  Very seldom and when they do it's something really trivial to fix/answer (which I can often do on my phone if I'm out doing... leisure stuff). I more or less have a permanent paid vacation.
  - stevens32 8y ago
    Do you do other things during the work day? How do you fill the time?

fnord77 8y ago

> There are still some constraints on our ambitions. In our first phase, we will be focused primarily on remote engineers in North America, starting with the US and Canada.

deleted 8y ago

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