11 ms·

How to Hire and Build a Remote Team

251 points by WadeF 12y ago

EGreg 12y ago
Yes! A very good overview of how to hire people remotely. Removing extra (often irrelevant) constraints such as location lets you focus on other more crucial things. Also, a remote team leads to more personal freedom, goal-oriented focus, and encourages that you work via a Asynchronous workflow and thus more efficiently.
syntern 12y ago
Thank you for writing a detailed guide about your best practices. It is a long-term struggle to convince managers that good remote work environment can be done (and good for both their budget and their employees well-being), and such stories definitely help this effort.
xentronium 12y ago
Can't help but notice that 8 out of 10 of their accepted applicants' locations are in US. I've been wondering whether american startups even consider hiring somewhere from e.g. eastern europe or africa or central asia.
- dharbin 12y ago
  I have never run a company before but I can imagine it might cause tax headaches.
- cedsav 12y ago
  They do, but all things considered, it's simpler to hire within the US when possible. You keep similar time-zone, work with native english speaker (usually), and have a well understood set of employment laws.
  - mbesto 12y ago
    > have a well understood set of employment laws If you're "hiring" remote workers, you generally don't have adhere with local laws unless you have a physical presence there. What I mean by that is - they remote resource is generally responsible for their own legality.
- byoung2 12y ago
  It looks like they are looking for remote workers nearby Location: Western Hemisphere. If you want to work remote, that's cool. If you want to work near others, that's cool too. Our team is distributed across the world because it lets us work with the best people. You don't have to be located in the USA either, you just have to be talented! 1. https://zapier.com/blog/partner-engineer-liaison/ https://zapier.com/blog/partner-engineer-liaison/
  - WadeF 12y ago
    For this position, yes. For other positions, no. The reason this position is western hemisphere is because most of our partners are western hemisphere so it'll be much easier for you to work with them.
    - byoung2 12y ago
      Ah, that makes sense. I was just showing that job post to my coworker...it has everything I keep saying I would offer if I ran a company, like remote work and unlimited vacation. I like the API call to apply for the job, too!
- lgieron 12y ago
  They definitely do - I'm from EE (Poland) and I've worked remotely at a US startup, and now am discussing another remote position in another US startup. As long as you speak decent English and adjust your schedule so that there's decent overlap (ideally, full) with theirs, there's actually little difference between a US contractor and an outsider. Paperwork and taxes aren't any harder from what I've gathered.
lucb1e 12y ago
> The email is personal, The email is not personal. It has a name and a few words (the "<insert something interesting they mentioned>") but it gives no feedback on why you are not hiring them. Reading the rejection email as someone who might be receiving it, it would leave me wondering and frustrated, and more likely than not I'd reply to ask why I was rejected. You're not going to hire me, there is no reason not to just tell me. Maybe this is just American culture (they seem a bit less straight-forward with negative things than the average Dutchman), but the ever-polite "hopefully you'll stay in touch" is more annoying than nice to me. Staying in touch is regular communication, not a line you should say to everyone regardless of how terrible their resume was and how applicable they may be as a future employee in a different position when really you're meaning to say goodbye.
- corysama 12y ago
  In America, if you discuss why a candidate was rejected and your reasoning can be interpreted as one of the many reasons that have been deemed illegal, you open up your company to being sued for discrimination. Given that your company will likely have many reviewers discussing many, many candidates, the only way to be sure no one ever slips up and gets sued is to have a blanket policy of never discussing why a candidate was rejected. Not with the candidate. Not even with people inside your company but outside of that candidate's hiring process. I have never discussed hiring process with a company that did not have this policy.
  - byoung2 12y ago
    In America, if you discuss why a candidate was rejected and your reasoning can be interpreted as one of the many reasons that have been deemed illegal, you open up your company to being sued for discrimination. This happened at a company where I worked. A candidate who was rejected emailed and asked why he didn't get the job, and one of the interviewers replied that he had a thick Indian accent (coincidentally, the interviewer was also Indian), and that would make it difficult for customers to understand him. He sued and later settled out of court for a rumored 6 figures. After that, rejections were handled automatically via snail mail direct from corporate.
physPop 12y ago
Is it really appropriate to expect a slew of candidates to drop everything and do "sample work" so you can assess them?
- danielweber 12y ago
  Depends on how much work it is. The company should put roughly the same investment of time into you that you do into them. Also: involuntary unemployment happens in our industry. Sometimes it can take a while to find a new job. People who live in top-5 cities might say "any good candidate has offers three deep by the time they leave," but that's just their big city privilege speaking. Since we are talking about remote workers, most of them are in places where this isn't the norm. So, anyway, if one is involuntarily unemployed, it's nice for there to be some employers out there who would say "here, spend 8 hours working on this," because it gives said-unemployed a chance to show off that they would be a good hire. It has benefits and drawbacks to the hiring process, and I definitely worry what would happen if all employers demanded it regardless of the job market. But it sure beats "tell us about your last big project" and then waiting to make sure the candidate says the right buzzwords.
  - AndyNemmity 12y ago
    I think it does mean you're likely to get involuntarily unemployed people vs. employed people. Good or bad, I don't know but you are self selecting for people who have less value for their time.
- rpedela 12y ago
  If the "sample work" only takes a few hours, then I think it is okay. As an interviewer, I would much rather this than ask candidates a bunch of technical questions which probably don't relate too much to the actual job. I also get to see how they write code, use source control, etc. Then the interview time can be spent determining if the candidate has good communication skills, is a nice person, etc. As a candidate, I would much rather a "sample work" test because I am a pretty good software engineer but often fail the brain-teaser technical questions. I would much rather have an opportunity to prove that I have the technical capability to perform the actual job.
mbesto 12y ago
Communication is absolutely key for remote teams to work. That being said, I often find remote teams using hip tools as a crutch for communication. We use Trello/HipChat/Hangouts/etc, but it doesn't mean Asana/Slack/Bootcamp/etc work as well. IMO, I usually rate remote resources on the following: - Are they a resource that will "finish my sentence"? - Do they constantly set expectations about progress and milestones? - Do they tell us when things aren't going well and need help? - Do they update our communication channels frequently? And we do this by putting them in a small project first and then moving forward after. The project typically has very little to do with code, but rather to see if the points are true. Source: I've almost exclusively been running/working-with remote teams for 8 years now.
zackmorris 12y ago
Great list. One thing I want to add/emphasize is to consider the remote worker's motivations. I'm personally not driven by money (it's just a means to an end). So a shortcut to getting bites on a job posting is to understand that there are people working in your field who may very much like to work with you. But they are deterred by past experiences in the office that drove them to work remotely in the first place. Here are a few things to consider with freelancers: * They are often most productive outside normal work hours * Roughly half their time is spent doing research and keeping up with the latest trends * They probably left the workplace to bootstrap their own startup someday * Their productivity usually goes down if they are on call or interrupted often * Beware loose specs and feature creep or you might burn them out and lose them * Their productivity is limited more by time and money than challenge * Sometimes they solve problems completely differently than you imagined and that’s ok * Their short game might stink in some areas so balance them with administrators that take care of formalities * Self-actualization can be more important for them than recognition * Perks and benefits probably aren’t in their vocabularies unless they have families to support By them I mean me, so YMMV..
- beachstartup 12y ago
  > Sometimes they solve problems completely differently than you imagined and that’s ok sometimes this is okay, sometimes this isn't okay. i've seen situations where there is a clear and coherent specification (use django, make a web app, have it call these APIs) to be implemented and the remote contractor completely deviated from it without telling anyone, wasting 2 weeks of time (delivered ruby, not a web app, using different APIs). this was done under questionable-at-best circumstances, saying one thing, and doing another, shirking responsbility for things that didn't tickle the guy's fancy, etc. as a manager you need to be able to terminate and cut sunk costs or one person can derail an entire project. toxic people who say one thing and do another rely on the inability of management to make decisions like that.
- humanrebar 12y ago
  > Their short game might stink in some areas so balance them with administrators that take care of formalities That's true of just about anybody. There used to be people that did this full-time (secretaries/admins). I'm not sure why you wouldn't want a dedicated one per dev team over a certain size (12?).
joesmo 12y ago
> Also, in the job posting, ask them to apply in a unique way—don't just ask for resumes. Instead, try to make the application process prove their abilities for the job. I can't think of a quicker way to turn down top applicants, at least in software, than asking upfront for work that is likely to be rejected. Even the custom contact forms on companies' websites are a drudge to fill in and usually not worth it. Candidates know this and won't bother. The best approach is to have a connect with LinkedIn or just a simple email that can receive resumes. Anything else might make it slightly easier for the company at the expense of losing out on qualified applicant.
- cdr 12y ago
  Good remote work is more of an employer's market than a typical position. Someone looking specifically for remote is generally willing to jump through more hoops, I think.
  - MCRed 12y ago
    The office is very old school- "have everyone there so you can watch them." Having a remote job gets rid of that practice and a lot of unnecessary meetings and the like. Putting up silly hurdles to applicants smells a lot like the nonsense that we have to put up with from old school HR setups (like the "please upload your resume, now give us your complete hob history in this poorly designed form" applications.)
- danielweber 12y ago
  I went through a round of applying for jobs on HN (based on the first-of-the-month posting), and the most common reaction from the company is no reaction at all. I have this nagging suspicion[1] that many job postings are not done to find developers but just as a form of soft advertising to get the name out in the community. [1] I'm heavily biased to find this true, even if it isn't, so be skeptical.
- joncalhoun 12y ago
  This comes up often on HN and I feel like most people who make these comment are missing the point. Interviews are rarely about finding all of the top notch candidates. They are about finding N candidates who are a good fit. That's it. Doesn't have to be the best developer or best communicator, they just have to meet the needs of the position. If one of Zapier's requirements is "you must really want to work at Zapier" then this is a perfect filter. It weeds out developers who are just looking at job openings, and only candidates who are excited about working there will apply. It doesn't matter if they miss 10k great ccandidates. They just need to find enough to fill their open positions
bshimmin 12y ago
There's a lot of good material in this post. It struck me as I read through the traits of "great remote workers" (wondering, as a remote worker myself, if I had these traits and was thus a great one) that it's never going to be easy to hire a junior developer - or a junior anything, really - in a remote role: in particular, the ability to prioritise is something that you can really only acquire with experience, and "propensity towards action" is a little pointless unless you're actioning the right things; likewise, many developers, in particular, take some time to get their written communication up to an acceptable level; and as for trustworthiness... well, a junior developer is just as (if not more) likely to be honest than anyone else, but would you actually really trust that they're doing it right, based on your past experiences? This leads me to the conclusion that remote working is perhaps best reserved for those with a little more experience, and that maybe this great movement away from centralised offices may never quite materialise in the way that some seem to imagine it inevitably will. Perhaps I'm wrong though!
guybrushT 12y ago
There is a recurring theme in this post about "putting candidates to the test" - sometimes simple testing in the hiring form (to select the ones with the highest intent) and them to "test with a project" to find out the best ones. I wonder if this is very practical for a company that isn't a popular/based-in-vally startup. I have a two part question: (a) How successful have you been in getting this level of engagement with candidates before you hired them? I would love to learn more about this. And (b) How well does this work for "non-programming" roles - that is, can you really devise practical projects/problems for people to solve. I know the business development example mentioned in the OP, but that is a small test in the form of a question - but I can't imagine what a real "project" for this type of role would be? -- sorry, thats 3 questions :) .. but I am curious to dive deeper into this aspect of the post.
- mooreds 12y ago
  I did a bit of testing at my previous employer, where I was the hiring manager, but it was in the interview (so candidates had no choice). I think that is a nice compromise--the candidate is fairly far along in the process, and you can still learn a lot about a developer with a small project. Granted, these were junior positions. As far as (b), I have no experience in this, but I can think of problems for a non technical person to fulfill. If confronted with doing this, I'd just ask the hiring manager to list 2-3 pressing problems and have the candidate outline a solution to one of them. Maybe I'm missing the thrust of your question?
tieTYT 12y ago
I have a question as a potential remote employee: If I live in a city with a very high cost-of-living, will it be difficult to find a remote position that pays reasonably well relative to my cost-of-living? I assume one of the biggest benefits to hiring a remote worker is you can hire someone with a very low cost-of-living and pay them relatively relative to that. But if I'm living in a place with a high cost-of-living and the company can hire someone from any part of the world, why wouldn't they wait and find someone that's super inexpensive?
- Swizec 12y ago
  Because you should never compete on price, but on how good you are. If your only value prop is that you're cheaper than somebody else, you have already lost.
skasriel 12y ago
Hi OP, I recently wrote a small eBook about building distributed engineering teams, based on our experience in building the team that builds odesk.com (yes, we eat our own dog food and we've learned a lot along the way). People can get it for free here: http://work.odesk.com/recruit-manage-distributed-engineering.html http://work.odesk.com/recruit-manage-distributed-engineering... Hope this is helpful, I'd love to hear everyone's feedback about it.
idan 12y ago
As someone working remotely, this line rubbed me the wrong way immediately: > More potential warning signs are individuals who are poor at following up via email, forget when the interview was scheduled, or aren't flexible with an interview time. Communication is a two way street. If you're looking to hire people remotely and you expect them to simply adjust to your timezone, you're setting up a bad remote employment relationship. I've worked for years with a 10-hour offset from most of the people with whom I communicate, most recently with Heroku. A large part of what made Heroku attractive to me as a workplace was the pleasantly frank conversation about communication and limits. I'm generally available for meetings (my) 10p-midnight, which is noon-2p in SF. Otherwise, email / trello / hipchat / etc. Obviously, exceptions happen, and they really are exceptional (no "just this week" things that appear every week). I've spoken to a ton of distantly-remote employees over the years and all of the stories that involved radical timeshifting on the part of the remote employee ended in a move to HQ or burnout and quitting — with a lot more of the latter.
clebio 12y ago
Hmm, I don't know. A banner image of a bunch of white guys, and then > Not everyone is cut out for remote work... sort of lost me somewhere between the lines.
- EdwardDiego 12y ago
  What does them being white have to do with anything? Also, I think you may have misgendered one of the people in the banner.
netcan 12y ago
Remote teams is one of those things that can be a secret weapon. I think remote work doesn't work for a lot of companies. A big part of what a company is is a culture and that culture is usually built around a physical place, for better or for worse. But, there is evidence aplenty that culture, great work and collaboration can be happen online. It's a new world and a company needs to find its own way, but if successful a remote working culture that works can be a secret weapon.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
rafe33 12y ago
I'm not sure why any venture backed startup, in an area that has local talent, would want to deliberately go the remote workforce route. It hampers your ability to scale, hurts your future acquisition chances, creates and will lead to communication redudancy, and culture distractions. It rarely works out positively. In short, while I am sure that there are some instances where it works well (eg Basecamp / 37signals), I'd expect that they are the exception to the norm. Note: I did build a remote startup with incredibly talented people and after a lot of soul searching and time required them all to come join us locally (or helped them find a new job elsewhere). Hardest decision we made at the company and certainly the right one. NOTE 2: the best remote recruiting tool we had was to handpick whole invited to work with us. We hung out on mailing lists and read potential employees blog posts to see what kind of amazing open source projects they were sharing with the world, before trying to individually recruit them.
sethammons 12y ago
My only concern would be the requirement for GoToMeeting. Anyone who develops on a linux rig would be unable to meet.
- fernandotakai 12y ago
  company where i work is using fuzemeeting since it supports linux well enough.

251 points by WadeF 12y ago

EGreg 12y ago

Yes! A very good overview of how to hire people remotely. Removing extra (often irrelevant) constraints such as location lets you focus on other more crucial things. Also, a remote team leads to more personal freedom, goal-oriented focus, and encourages that you work via a Asynchronous workflow and thus more efficiently.

syntern 12y ago

Thank you for writing a detailed guide about your best practices. It is a long-term struggle to convince managers that good remote work environment can be done (and good for both their budget and their employees well-being), and such stories definitely help this effort.

xentronium 12y ago

Can't help but notice that 8 out of 10 of their accepted applicants' locations are in US. I've been wondering whether american startups even consider hiring somewhere from e.g. eastern europe or africa or central asia.

dharbin 12y ago
I have never run a company before but I can imagine it might cause tax headaches.
cedsav 12y ago
They do, but all things considered, it's simpler to hire within the US when possible. You keep similar time-zone, work with native english speaker (usually), and have a well understood set of employment laws.
- mbesto 12y ago
  > have a well understood set of employment laws If you're "hiring" remote workers, you generally don't have adhere with local laws unless you have a physical presence there. What I mean by that is - they remote resource is generally responsible for their own legality.
byoung2 12y ago
It looks like they are looking for remote workers nearby Location: Western Hemisphere. If you want to work remote, that's cool. If you want to work near others, that's cool too. Our team is distributed across the world because it lets us work with the best people. You don't have to be located in the USA either, you just have to be talented! 1. https://zapier.com/blog/partner-engineer-liaison/ https://zapier.com/blog/partner-engineer-liaison/
- WadeF 12y ago
  For this position, yes. For other positions, no. The reason this position is western hemisphere is because most of our partners are western hemisphere so it'll be much easier for you to work with them.
  - byoung2 12y ago
    Ah, that makes sense. I was just showing that job post to my coworker...it has everything I keep saying I would offer if I ran a company, like remote work and unlimited vacation. I like the API call to apply for the job, too!
lgieron 12y ago
They definitely do - I'm from EE (Poland) and I've worked remotely at a US startup, and now am discussing another remote position in another US startup. As long as you speak decent English and adjust your schedule so that there's decent overlap (ideally, full) with theirs, there's actually little difference between a US contractor and an outsider. Paperwork and taxes aren't any harder from what I've gathered.

lucb1e 12y ago

> The email is personal, The email is not personal. It has a name and a few words (the "<insert something interesting they mentioned>") but it gives no feedback on why you are not hiring them. Reading the rejection email as someone who might be receiving it, it would leave me wondering and frustrated, and more likely than not I'd reply to ask why I was rejected. You're not going to hire me, there is no reason not to just tell me. Maybe this is just American culture (they seem a bit less straight-forward with negative things than the average Dutchman), but the ever-polite "hopefully you'll stay in touch" is more annoying than nice to me. Staying in touch is regular communication, not a line you should say to everyone regardless of how terrible their resume was and how applicable they may be as a future employee in a different position when really you're meaning to say goodbye.

corysama 12y ago
In America, if you discuss why a candidate was rejected and your reasoning can be interpreted as one of the many reasons that have been deemed illegal, you open up your company to being sued for discrimination. Given that your company will likely have many reviewers discussing many, many candidates, the only way to be sure no one ever slips up and gets sued is to have a blanket policy of never discussing why a candidate was rejected. Not with the candidate. Not even with people inside your company but outside of that candidate's hiring process. I have never discussed hiring process with a company that did not have this policy.
- byoung2 12y ago
  In America, if you discuss why a candidate was rejected and your reasoning can be interpreted as one of the many reasons that have been deemed illegal, you open up your company to being sued for discrimination. This happened at a company where I worked. A candidate who was rejected emailed and asked why he didn't get the job, and one of the interviewers replied that he had a thick Indian accent (coincidentally, the interviewer was also Indian), and that would make it difficult for customers to understand him. He sued and later settled out of court for a rumored 6 figures. After that, rejections were handled automatically via snail mail direct from corporate.

physPop 12y ago

Is it really appropriate to expect a slew of candidates to drop everything and do "sample work" so you can assess them?

danielweber 12y ago
Depends on how much work it is. The company should put roughly the same investment of time into you that you do into them. Also: involuntary unemployment happens in our industry. Sometimes it can take a while to find a new job. People who live in top-5 cities might say "any good candidate has offers three deep by the time they leave," but that's just their big city privilege speaking. Since we are talking about remote workers, most of them are in places where this isn't the norm. So, anyway, if one is involuntarily unemployed, it's nice for there to be some employers out there who would say "here, spend 8 hours working on this," because it gives said-unemployed a chance to show off that they would be a good hire. It has benefits and drawbacks to the hiring process, and I definitely worry what would happen if all employers demanded it regardless of the job market. But it sure beats "tell us about your last big project" and then waiting to make sure the candidate says the right buzzwords.
- AndyNemmity 12y ago
  I think it does mean you're likely to get involuntarily unemployed people vs. employed people. Good or bad, I don't know but you are self selecting for people who have less value for their time.
rpedela 12y ago
If the "sample work" only takes a few hours, then I think it is okay. As an interviewer, I would much rather this than ask candidates a bunch of technical questions which probably don't relate too much to the actual job. I also get to see how they write code, use source control, etc. Then the interview time can be spent determining if the candidate has good communication skills, is a nice person, etc. As a candidate, I would much rather a "sample work" test because I am a pretty good software engineer but often fail the brain-teaser technical questions. I would much rather have an opportunity to prove that I have the technical capability to perform the actual job.

mbesto 12y ago

Communication is absolutely key for remote teams to work. That being said, I often find remote teams using hip tools as a crutch for communication. We use Trello/HipChat/Hangouts/etc, but it doesn't mean Asana/Slack/Bootcamp/etc work as well. IMO, I usually rate remote resources on the following: - Are they a resource that will "finish my sentence"? - Do they constantly set expectations about progress and milestones? - Do they tell us when things aren't going well and need help? - Do they update our communication channels frequently? And we do this by putting them in a small project first and then moving forward after. The project typically has very little to do with code, but rather to see if the points are true. Source: I've almost exclusively been running/working-with remote teams for 8 years now.

zackmorris 12y ago

Great list. One thing I want to add/emphasize is to consider the remote worker's motivations. I'm personally not driven by money (it's just a means to an end). So a shortcut to getting bites on a job posting is to understand that there are people working in your field who may very much like to work with you. But they are deterred by past experiences in the office that drove them to work remotely in the first place. Here are a few things to consider with freelancers: * They are often most productive outside normal work hours * Roughly half their time is spent doing research and keeping up with the latest trends * They probably left the workplace to bootstrap their own startup someday * Their productivity usually goes down if they are on call or interrupted often * Beware loose specs and feature creep or you might burn them out and lose them * Their productivity is limited more by time and money than challenge * Sometimes they solve problems completely differently than you imagined and that’s ok * Their short game might stink in some areas so balance them with administrators that take care of formalities * Self-actualization can be more important for them than recognition * Perks and benefits probably aren’t in their vocabularies unless they have families to support By them I mean me, so YMMV..

beachstartup 12y ago
> Sometimes they solve problems completely differently than you imagined and that’s ok sometimes this is okay, sometimes this isn't okay. i've seen situations where there is a clear and coherent specification (use django, make a web app, have it call these APIs) to be implemented and the remote contractor completely deviated from it without telling anyone, wasting 2 weeks of time (delivered ruby, not a web app, using different APIs). this was done under questionable-at-best circumstances, saying one thing, and doing another, shirking responsbility for things that didn't tickle the guy's fancy, etc. as a manager you need to be able to terminate and cut sunk costs or one person can derail an entire project. toxic people who say one thing and do another rely on the inability of management to make decisions like that.
humanrebar 12y ago
> Their short game might stink in some areas so balance them with administrators that take care of formalities That's true of just about anybody. There used to be people that did this full-time (secretaries/admins). I'm not sure why you wouldn't want a dedicated one per dev team over a certain size (12?).

joesmo 12y ago

> Also, in the job posting, ask them to apply in a unique way—don't just ask for resumes. Instead, try to make the application process prove their abilities for the job. I can't think of a quicker way to turn down top applicants, at least in software, than asking upfront for work that is likely to be rejected. Even the custom contact forms on companies' websites are a drudge to fill in and usually not worth it. Candidates know this and won't bother. The best approach is to have a connect with LinkedIn or just a simple email that can receive resumes. Anything else might make it slightly easier for the company at the expense of losing out on qualified applicant.

cdr 12y ago
Good remote work is more of an employer's market than a typical position. Someone looking specifically for remote is generally willing to jump through more hoops, I think.
- MCRed 12y ago
  The office is very old school- "have everyone there so you can watch them." Having a remote job gets rid of that practice and a lot of unnecessary meetings and the like. Putting up silly hurdles to applicants smells a lot like the nonsense that we have to put up with from old school HR setups (like the "please upload your resume, now give us your complete hob history in this poorly designed form" applications.)
danielweber 12y ago
I went through a round of applying for jobs on HN (based on the first-of-the-month posting), and the most common reaction from the company is no reaction at all. I have this nagging suspicion[1] that many job postings are not done to find developers but just as a form of soft advertising to get the name out in the community. [1] I'm heavily biased to find this true, even if it isn't, so be skeptical.
joncalhoun 12y ago
This comes up often on HN and I feel like most people who make these comment are missing the point. Interviews are rarely about finding all of the top notch candidates. They are about finding N candidates who are a good fit. That's it. Doesn't have to be the best developer or best communicator, they just have to meet the needs of the position. If one of Zapier's requirements is "you must really want to work at Zapier" then this is a perfect filter. It weeds out developers who are just looking at job openings, and only candidates who are excited about working there will apply. It doesn't matter if they miss 10k great ccandidates. They just need to find enough to fill their open positions

bshimmin 12y ago

There's a lot of good material in this post. It struck me as I read through the traits of "great remote workers" (wondering, as a remote worker myself, if I had these traits and was thus a great one) that it's never going to be easy to hire a junior developer - or a junior anything, really - in a remote role: in particular, the ability to prioritise is something that you can really only acquire with experience, and "propensity towards action" is a little pointless unless you're actioning the right things; likewise, many developers, in particular, take some time to get their written communication up to an acceptable level; and as for trustworthiness... well, a junior developer is just as (if not more) likely to be honest than anyone else, but would you actually really trust that they're doing it right, based on your past experiences? This leads me to the conclusion that remote working is perhaps best reserved for those with a little more experience, and that maybe this great movement away from centralised offices may never quite materialise in the way that some seem to imagine it inevitably will. Perhaps I'm wrong though!

guybrushT 12y ago

There is a recurring theme in this post about "putting candidates to the test" - sometimes simple testing in the hiring form (to select the ones with the highest intent) and them to "test with a project" to find out the best ones. I wonder if this is very practical for a company that isn't a popular/based-in-vally startup. I have a two part question: (a) How successful have you been in getting this level of engagement with candidates before you hired them? I would love to learn more about this. And (b) How well does this work for "non-programming" roles - that is, can you really devise practical projects/problems for people to solve. I know the business development example mentioned in the OP, but that is a small test in the form of a question - but I can't imagine what a real "project" for this type of role would be? -- sorry, thats 3 questions :) .. but I am curious to dive deeper into this aspect of the post.

mooreds 12y ago
I did a bit of testing at my previous employer, where I was the hiring manager, but it was in the interview (so candidates had no choice). I think that is a nice compromise--the candidate is fairly far along in the process, and you can still learn a lot about a developer with a small project. Granted, these were junior positions. As far as (b), I have no experience in this, but I can think of problems for a non technical person to fulfill. If confronted with doing this, I'd just ask the hiring manager to list 2-3 pressing problems and have the candidate outline a solution to one of them. Maybe I'm missing the thrust of your question?

tieTYT 12y ago

I have a question as a potential remote employee: If I live in a city with a very high cost-of-living, will it be difficult to find a remote position that pays reasonably well relative to my cost-of-living? I assume one of the biggest benefits to hiring a remote worker is you can hire someone with a very low cost-of-living and pay them relatively relative to that. But if I'm living in a place with a high cost-of-living and the company can hire someone from any part of the world, why wouldn't they wait and find someone that's super inexpensive?

Swizec 12y ago
Because you should never compete on price, but on how good you are. If your only value prop is that you're cheaper than somebody else, you have already lost.

skasriel 12y ago

Hi OP, I recently wrote a small eBook about building distributed engineering teams, based on our experience in building the team that builds odesk.com (yes, we eat our own dog food and we've learned a lot along the way). People can get it for free here: http://work.odesk.com/recruit-manage-distributed-engineering.html http://work.odesk.com/recruit-manage-distributed-engineering... Hope this is helpful, I'd love to hear everyone's feedback about it.

idan 12y ago

As someone working remotely, this line rubbed me the wrong way immediately: > More potential warning signs are individuals who are poor at following up via email, forget when the interview was scheduled, or aren't flexible with an interview time. Communication is a two way street. If you're looking to hire people remotely and you expect them to simply adjust to your timezone, you're setting up a bad remote employment relationship. I've worked for years with a 10-hour offset from most of the people with whom I communicate, most recently with Heroku. A large part of what made Heroku attractive to me as a workplace was the pleasantly frank conversation about communication and limits. I'm generally available for meetings (my) 10p-midnight, which is noon-2p in SF. Otherwise, email / trello / hipchat / etc. Obviously, exceptions happen, and they really are exceptional (no "just this week" things that appear every week). I've spoken to a ton of distantly-remote employees over the years and all of the stories that involved radical timeshifting on the part of the remote employee ended in a move to HQ or burnout and quitting — with a lot more of the latter.

clebio 12y ago

Hmm, I don't know. A banner image of a bunch of white guys, and then > Not everyone is cut out for remote work... sort of lost me somewhere between the lines.

EdwardDiego 12y ago
What does them being white have to do with anything? Also, I think you may have misgendered one of the people in the banner.

netcan 12y ago

Remote teams is one of those things that can be a secret weapon. I think remote work doesn't work for a lot of companies. A big part of what a company is is a culture and that culture is usually built around a physical place, for better or for worse. But, there is evidence aplenty that culture, great work and collaboration can be happen online. It's a new world and a company needs to find its own way, but if successful a remote working culture that works can be a secret weapon.

deleted 12y ago

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rafe33 12y ago

I'm not sure why any venture backed startup, in an area that has local talent, would want to deliberately go the remote workforce route. It hampers your ability to scale, hurts your future acquisition chances, creates and will lead to communication redudancy, and culture distractions. It rarely works out positively. In short, while I am sure that there are some instances where it works well (eg Basecamp / 37signals), I'd expect that they are the exception to the norm. Note: I did build a remote startup with incredibly talented people and after a lot of soul searching and time required them all to come join us locally (or helped them find a new job elsewhere). Hardest decision we made at the company and certainly the right one. NOTE 2: the best remote recruiting tool we had was to handpick whole invited to work with us. We hung out on mailing lists and read potential employees blog posts to see what kind of amazing open source projects they were sharing with the world, before trying to individually recruit them.

sethammons 12y ago

My only concern would be the requirement for GoToMeeting. Anyone who develops on a linux rig would be unable to meet.

fernandotakai 12y ago
company where i work is using fuzemeeting since it supports linux well enough.