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> So if you want to pay everyone the same wage, you either stop hiring from SF altogether or you give everyone SF salaries. The first option is a perfectly rea

> So if you want to pay everyone the same wage, you either stop hiring from SF altogether or you give everyone SF salaries. The first option is a perfectly reasonable position to take. There's less than a million people in SF. There's over seven billion people everywhere else. The people in SF aren't magical; people outside of SF can do the job just as well. > if you pay everyone SF wages, then you might as well open an SF office and hire only from SF. This statement only makes sense if the only thing you are considering is cost. Even if the cost is identical, it's still advantageous to hire remotely. It's easier to hire, there's a much larger pool of candidates, it lets you hire people who would otherwise be inaccessible to you for other reasons, it increases loyalty, there's no commute draining people's energy, etc. > Because remote work has disadvantages, like poor communications In my experience, fully remote teams are much better at communicating than mixed or onsite-only teams. Why do you think remote work brings poor communications?

mikekchar 7y ago
I think taken to this logical extreme, the only conclusion you can come to is that they value having people from more expensive areas. I mean, from a business perspective, it seems insane to hire anybody from SV if you can fill your roster with equivalent people from poorer areas. Some areas are absolutely chock full of experienced developers used to working for a tenth of the salary that a SV developer can demand. So why would any rational company choose to pay up to 10 times more than they have to for workers? I think the obvious reason is because there is more to having a high tech worker than the work they produce. Remember that Gitlabs is still a VC backed company. In addition they still have to exit sometime to pay back all those VC investors. As much as I hate to say it, a startup staffed by people from eastern Europe or south east Asia doesn't have anywhere near the cache of a startup staffed from people in SV. Right now Gitlabs has paying customers, but it's important to understand that its bottom line could depend as much on their investors (and potential investors) than its sales. Not only that, but the buzz you generate from being a SV startup leads to other SV startups using your service. How many companies would (very unfortunately) give Gitlab a pass if it was staffed entirely out of India? I'm extremely sorry to say that I think it would be quite a few. So, as terrible as I think it sounds (especially as a developer who works out of rural Japan), I can completely see the value of paying more for developers from certain areas. SF, LA, New York, London, Paris and even Tokyo are just much more impressive places for your staff to live than We-don't-even-have-a-train kuso-inaka Japan.
bad_user 7y ago
> "The people in SF aren't magical; people outside of SF can do the job just as well." We agree. But if there's expertise in SF that you can't get anywhere else, then you end up hiring from SF too. In my experience this is exactly what happens with companies working with remote workers, they only hire from SF or NYC or other expensive cities when they don't have a better choice. --- > "In my experience, fully remote teams are much better at communicating than mixed or onsite-only teams. Why do you think remote work brings poor communications?" I have more than 10 years of experience working remotely and sometimes I hate it. Functional remote teams are better at communicating, yes, but that's survivorship bias [1] in action ... the people themselves are better, due to the selection process. Communication skills can be honed of course, but the people have to have an inclination for it and they have to be capable of self management. I have no idea if better education and better processes can indeed make a difference, but I've seen people and companies failing hard at remote work and the companies that succeed in working remotely are those with a strong culture for it, a culture that's not easy to build. And their hiring process does tend to select for those capable to function well remotely. N.b. I know this is a total anecdote, sometimes I wish we used the scientific method in advancing this field, but alas we don't. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
- JimDabell 7y ago
  > Functional remote teams are better at communicating, yes, but that's survivorship bias I agree with this, I just don't think that factor has any practical relevance to this particular discussion. Remote companies that aren't good at communicating are dead companies, and dead companies don't hire anybody. So what's the point in even considering them in this type of discussion? In this case survivorship bias is just filtering out irrelevant noise. If a remote company is hiring, then you can be pretty confident they are good communicators. With the exception of extremely early-stage companies of course, in which case all bets are off.

mikekchar 7y ago

I think taken to this logical extreme, the only conclusion you can come to is that they value having people from more expensive areas. I mean, from a business perspective, it seems insane to hire anybody from SV if you can fill your roster with equivalent people from poorer areas. Some areas are absolutely chock full of experienced developers used to working for a tenth of the salary that a SV developer can demand. So why would any rational company choose to pay up to 10 times more than they have to for workers? I think the obvious reason is because there is more to having a high tech worker than the work they produce. Remember that Gitlabs is still a VC backed company. In addition they still have to exit sometime to pay back all those VC investors. As much as I hate to say it, a startup staffed by people from eastern Europe or south east Asia doesn't have anywhere near the cache of a startup staffed from people in SV. Right now Gitlabs has paying customers, but it's important to understand that its bottom line could depend as much on their investors (and potential investors) than its sales. Not only that, but the buzz you generate from being a SV startup leads to other SV startups using your service. How many companies would (very unfortunately) give Gitlab a pass if it was staffed entirely out of India? I'm extremely sorry to say that I think it would be quite a few. So, as terrible as I think it sounds (especially as a developer who works out of rural Japan), I can completely see the value of paying more for developers from certain areas. SF, LA, New York, London, Paris and even Tokyo are just much more impressive places for your staff to live than We-don't-even-have-a-train kuso-inaka Japan.

bad_user 7y ago

> "The people in SF aren't magical; people outside of SF can do the job just as well." We agree. But if there's expertise in SF that you can't get anywhere else, then you end up hiring from SF too. In my experience this is exactly what happens with companies working with remote workers, they only hire from SF or NYC or other expensive cities when they don't have a better choice. --- > "In my experience, fully remote teams are much better at communicating than mixed or onsite-only teams. Why do you think remote work brings poor communications?" I have more than 10 years of experience working remotely and sometimes I hate it. Functional remote teams are better at communicating, yes, but that's survivorship bias [1] in action ... the people themselves are better, due to the selection process. Communication skills can be honed of course, but the people have to have an inclination for it and they have to be capable of self management. I have no idea if better education and better processes can indeed make a difference, but I've seen people and companies failing hard at remote work and the companies that succeed in working remotely are those with a strong culture for it, a culture that's not easy to build. And their hiring process does tend to select for those capable to function well remotely. N.b. I know this is a total anecdote, sometimes I wish we used the scientific method in advancing this field, but alas we don't. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias

JimDabell 7y ago
> Functional remote teams are better at communicating, yes, but that's survivorship bias I agree with this, I just don't think that factor has any practical relevance to this particular discussion. Remote companies that aren't good at communicating are dead companies, and dead companies don't hire anybody. So what's the point in even considering them in this type of discussion? In this case survivorship bias is just filtering out irrelevant noise. If a remote company is hiring, then you can be pretty confident they are good communicators. With the exception of extremely early-stage companies of course, in which case all bets are off.