4 ms·

Time zones and expected levels of education are still significant factors. You generally don't want to be hiring people from regions with a substandard educati

by yarg 3y ago

Time zones and expected levels of education are still significant factors. You generally don't want to be hiring people from regions with a substandard education system - and if they're in another time zone they can spend all night ruining your day before you even start work.

mkl 3y ago
It's the employee's education (& skill, experience, etc.) that matters, not the region's.
- yarg 3y ago
  It's also communication. You can communicate across distance, you cannot communicate across time. > It's the employee's education (& skill, experience, etc.) that matters, not the region's. The quality of educational systems is regionally defined, yes the other aspects are individual, and there's variation in what each individual can get out of the given educational context - but to claim that there's no degree of consistency in the calibre of candidates that come from given regions is ridiculous. There're always exceptions to generalisations - but you seldom want to pick up a single regional employee (except for the smallest of projects), because timely communication is always vital. If the individual is of such an extraordinary calibre that they become a vital hire, it often involves relocation.
viraptor 3y ago
> they can spend all night ruining your day before you even start work. Or they can be saving your service in emergency while you stay in bed. I'm not sure why you'd expect a different time zone to mean lower skills than yours.
- yarg 3y ago
  I'm not - I'm saying that when it's a factor it's a big problem. I've dealt with entire offices of people that were problematic - you could tell when they came in, because builds broke universally in the next half an hour. And that was right at the end of the day. From half four 'till half five I spent my time fucking about rolling back commits and sending emails around the world to tell people to sort their shit out. Yes, there're regions where that's not a problem - the guys in our Poland office had their shit together, but it's not universal.
  - viraptor 3y ago
    That sounds like a management issue. You've got people being counterproductive who were hired, given tasks/permissions at inappropriate skill level and are not being dealt with appropriately. That's really not related to time zone in any way. Sure, it impacts your situation temporarily, but you could experience the same thing from local people working night shift. Let's keep in mind where the responsibility for solving the situation long-term really is.
  - detaro 3y ago
    The only remote (to me) office I had to work with that I'd describe like that was in California. shrug
- bergie 3y ago
  Yep. When I was working with a very geographically distributed team, I loved being able to file a bug in the end of the workday, and have a fix ready for deployment by the time I opened my laptop next morning.
- ElFitz 3y ago
  It’s mostly a problem when the main purpose in hiring remotely is to aggressively save money.
  - viraptor 3y ago
    Yes, it's a problem with management rather than with the workers or the timezone.
ElFitz 3y ago
Then how about hiring people in Canada? Unless Canada somehow has worse education system than the US? Or, if it’s really only about education systems, Finland? Seriously, if it’s only about education, you can do better than the US.
- avbanks 3y ago
  I don't want to be rude but the United States has some of the best Universities in the world.
- 908B64B197 3y ago
  > Then how about hiring people in Canada They all do. But good luck getting a bargain. Canada is a smaller California (population-wise) stretched over 5 timezones. Something you have to keep in mind is that there are two parallel markets over there: SV caliber developers and the rest. The former won't have any issue getting a job in the US (takes maybe a week for a talented engineer to get one). Therefore, comp has to be priced appropriately. The later can't -and likely won't ever be able to- secure a US visa, mostly due to skills (there's a reason they immigrated to Canada, it's way easier and the quotas are close to 10x per capita compared to the US). Some companies leverage this and have floors of international devs they park in Canada for a fraction of their US counterpart through a subsidiary. > Finland The country is a little bit smaller, population-wise, than Minnesota. Great education system, but only produces so many engineers.

by yarg 3y ago

mkl 3y ago

It's the employee's education (& skill, experience, etc.) that matters, not the region's.

yarg 3y ago
It's also communication. You can communicate across distance, you cannot communicate across time. > It's the employee's education (& skill, experience, etc.) that matters, not the region's. The quality of educational systems is regionally defined, yes the other aspects are individual, and there's variation in what each individual can get out of the given educational context - but to claim that there's no degree of consistency in the calibre of candidates that come from given regions is ridiculous. There're always exceptions to generalisations - but you seldom want to pick up a single regional employee (except for the smallest of projects), because timely communication is always vital. If the individual is of such an extraordinary calibre that they become a vital hire, it often involves relocation.

viraptor 3y ago

> they can spend all night ruining your day before you even start work. Or they can be saving your service in emergency while you stay in bed. I'm not sure why you'd expect a different time zone to mean lower skills than yours.

yarg 3y ago
I'm not - I'm saying that when it's a factor it's a big problem. I've dealt with entire offices of people that were problematic - you could tell when they came in, because builds broke universally in the next half an hour. And that was right at the end of the day. From half four 'till half five I spent my time fucking about rolling back commits and sending emails around the world to tell people to sort their shit out. Yes, there're regions where that's not a problem - the guys in our Poland office had their shit together, but it's not universal.
- viraptor 3y ago
  That sounds like a management issue. You've got people being counterproductive who were hired, given tasks/permissions at inappropriate skill level and are not being dealt with appropriately. That's really not related to time zone in any way. Sure, it impacts your situation temporarily, but you could experience the same thing from local people working night shift. Let's keep in mind where the responsibility for solving the situation long-term really is.
- detaro 3y ago
  The only remote (to me) office I had to work with that I'd describe like that was in California. shrug
bergie 3y ago
Yep. When I was working with a very geographically distributed team, I loved being able to file a bug in the end of the workday, and have a fix ready for deployment by the time I opened my laptop next morning.
ElFitz 3y ago
It’s mostly a problem when the main purpose in hiring remotely is to aggressively save money.
- viraptor 3y ago
  Yes, it's a problem with management rather than with the workers or the timezone.

ElFitz 3y ago

Then how about hiring people in Canada? Unless Canada somehow has worse education system than the US? Or, if it’s really only about education systems, Finland? Seriously, if it’s only about education, you can do better than the US.

avbanks 3y ago
I don't want to be rude but the United States has some of the best Universities in the world.
908B64B197 3y ago
> Then how about hiring people in Canada They all do. But good luck getting a bargain. Canada is a smaller California (population-wise) stretched over 5 timezones. Something you have to keep in mind is that there are two parallel markets over there: SV caliber developers and the rest. The former won't have any issue getting a job in the US (takes maybe a week for a talented engineer to get one). Therefore, comp has to be priced appropriately. The later can't -and likely won't ever be able to- secure a US visa, mostly due to skills (there's a reason they immigrated to Canada, it's way easier and the quotas are close to 10x per capita compared to the US). Some companies leverage this and have floors of international devs they park in Canada for a fraction of their US counterpart through a subsidiary. > Finland The country is a little bit smaller, population-wise, than Minnesota. Great education system, but only produces so many engineers.