3 ms·

I'd much rather hire very good and local to the best and remote. Someone who comes into the office adds so much more to the company besides the work they produc

I'd much rather hire very good and local to the best and remote. Someone who comes into the office adds so much more to the company besides the work they produce. They attract other very good people just by virtue of being there. They contribute to things outside their specific job description in ways that a remote person can't (company policies, culture, company direction, leads on customers, etc - often serendipitously). They are frankly worth more in an acquisition scenario because they are more likely to stay with the company. They can grow into senior or leadership roles in a way that a remote person simply can't. Frankly, I think the best and the brightest is kind of a mythical unicorn anyway. If you keep chasing them, you'll end up passing on a lot of great people.

hga 13y ago
This is one of the first really good points I've seen against remote workers, at least for smaller companies. E.g. just because I'm that way, bought my first DECtape in 1978 (sic), backup my home systems on LTO-4 today, I almost always ended up being the guy who did the company's backups at the startups I joined. Especially if you can't afford a tape library, you've got to be there to do that, to make damned sure it gets done. Or someone asks me, a couple of decades ago, "we're dissatisfied with our ISP, you know any good ones?" and I say "well, I've been personally using DIGEX for a few years and they have their act together." Etc. All outside the scope of my official work as a programmer. Or even more obscure, one of the things my family back home back then did was real estate and I picked up a lot of things by osmosis, and later reassured several sets of small company management that the clock cycle of that field was much, much slower than ours, and they didn't necessarily have to be concerned by how long it was taking to get new office space etc. Again, something I'd not be able to contribute without being there to hear them grumbling about the issue. Also, if someone wants to politically trash you, being remote puts you at a terrible disadvantage. I had that happen when I mostly "dissapeared" for 6 weeks to produce a MVP a potential client challenged us to make, because I had a much faster machine at home and didn't have an office mate who's job it was to talk a lot on the phone (yeah, the company didn't get several things). Completely gratuitous, the guy was of ill intent, left the company taking our biggest customer which probably doomed it. But it, well both of those, set up the conditions for my getting constructively terminated as soon as I finished V1.0 with my team, and with the guy I'd mentored on what was almost his first job into a good software engineer, leaving soon after, removing all knowledge of the system's backend from the company, that product died.
parul 13y ago
On the contrary, we have had a great experience with remote working teams. We are a young startup, and we started out wanting to hire the best local folks (that is clearly preferred, if you can do that in a reasonable time). But that was taking a lot of time and/or money (both we couldn't afford to lose much of), and we started working with remote team-members on fixed-term assignments - they got us started quick. After working with them for several months, I can say they are contributions have been invaluable. I'd happily hire them as full-time remote workers. The key, of course, is to find people who are good with the extra communication that remote working typically needs.

hga 13y ago

This is one of the first really good points I've seen against remote workers, at least for smaller companies. E.g. just because I'm that way, bought my first DECtape in 1978 (sic), backup my home systems on LTO-4 today, I almost always ended up being the guy who did the company's backups at the startups I joined. Especially if you can't afford a tape library, you've got to be there to do that, to make damned sure it gets done. Or someone asks me, a couple of decades ago, "we're dissatisfied with our ISP, you know any good ones?" and I say "well, I've been personally using DIGEX for a few years and they have their act together." Etc. All outside the scope of my official work as a programmer. Or even more obscure, one of the things my family back home back then did was real estate and I picked up a lot of things by osmosis, and later reassured several sets of small company management that the clock cycle of that field was much, much slower than ours, and they didn't necessarily have to be concerned by how long it was taking to get new office space etc. Again, something I'd not be able to contribute without being there to hear them grumbling about the issue. Also, if someone wants to politically trash you, being remote puts you at a terrible disadvantage. I had that happen when I mostly "dissapeared" for 6 weeks to produce a MVP a potential client challenged us to make, because I had a much faster machine at home and didn't have an office mate who's job it was to talk a lot on the phone (yeah, the company didn't get several things). Completely gratuitous, the guy was of ill intent, left the company taking our biggest customer which probably doomed it. But it, well both of those, set up the conditions for my getting constructively terminated as soon as I finished V1.0 with my team, and with the guy I'd mentored on what was almost his first job into a good software engineer, leaving soon after, removing all knowledge of the system's backend from the company, that product died.

parul 13y ago

On the contrary, we have had a great experience with remote working teams. We are a young startup, and we started out wanting to hire the best local folks (that is clearly preferred, if you can do that in a reasonable time). But that was taking a lot of time and/or money (both we couldn't afford to lose much of), and we started working with remote team-members on fixed-term assignments - they got us started quick. After working with them for several months, I can say they are contributions have been invaluable. I'd happily hire them as full-time remote workers. The key, of course, is to find people who are good with the extra communication that remote working typically needs.