Very excited to see more and more companies embracing the "fully remote" culture. I tell this story often on HN, but after an amazing experience working for Edmunds.com, I don't think I could work another job in an office ever (barring C-suite positions). I now work for a very popular media company (think Buzzfeed, but not Buzzfeed) in a fully remote capacity. This is why remote matters to me:
- As a 30-something single guy, it does wonders for my social circle. From my experience, working in tech makes it very difficult to meet the kind of women I'm interested in. It tends to be a male-dominated nerdy/geeky kind of culture which has its charms, but as far as a romantic partner is concerned, I'm looking for other qualities. I frequent a coffee shop in Santa Monica and have become friends with literally dozens of people over the past year-and-a-half.
- My schedule is my own. I generally work a pretty standard 9-5 schedule (when I'm active on Slack/GitHub/JIRA), but sometimes I wake up earlier and want to get a head start. Sometimes, I might write code later at night. Apart from a few meetings, having control over my schedule is amazing.
- No driving! I know this isn't a big deal for most people, but in LA driving is hell on earth.
- Traveling is awesome. I plan on doing a lot more in 2020, but even this year, I spent a month with my extended family on the east coast (spending time with octogenarian grandparents is quite a blessing), and a few weeks here and there hanging out with friends in Pittsburgh, NYC, SF, etc.
- At heart, I'm a startup guy. I'm constantly working on new projects, refining old ones, taking meetings with potential co-founders, etc. Remote work offers me the opportunity to explore my startup dreams while still being able to live a fairly comfortable life.
- Time is our most valuable resource. And at the end of the day, you get more time. Whether you spend it at the gym, with your kids, or traveling, it's up to you!
Hope more and more companies start treating their employees like adults, but I, for one, will never go back to a cubicle.
That's interesting as I've often heard the opposite view: you'd be quickly isolated socially if you don't have a circle of non-work friends. Great that it works out for you!
We don't plan to charge for publishing jobs. This (as well as being focused on remote jobs for software developers) is what sets us apart from the other remote job boards out there.
How do these fully remote companies handle salary compensations? is it generally based on market rate for wherever the worker is remote from?
Curious because a senior position in the bay area would be 2x+ more than most other locations.
I work at Seeq Corporation, which is also a fully remote company with over 100 employees (not on the list). We compensate everyone the same regardless of their location. The other companies that I've worked remotely for (Groupon and a startup) did not do that, and I think it's great. At Groupon, my compensation was adjusted for "Cost of Labor," not "Cost of Living," which was annoying since the calculation was completely opaque. When I decided to move they misinformed me about how my compensation was going to be adjusted.
Anyway, living in a city doesn't appeal to me, so companies that don't incentivize living in a city do appeal to me.
Personally I think that you should be paid the same wherever you live. Why should someone make more money because they choose to live in SF versus a farm somewhere.
Cost of living is funny. Whose cost? What if I want to live like a king in a big house?
> Cost of living is funny. Whose cost? What if I want to live like a king in a big house?
For most people, that's an important metric. Personally I would only relocate to SF (or anywhere else) if the salary difference is big enough for me so that if you factor out the higher cost of living, I'd make more money than the cheaper places. There is nothing in SF that attracts me that bad that I'd pay the premium for. I think it's a reasonable demand.
Even if you disagree that my demand is reasonable, many people hold this view that they want to be paid more in a more expensive place. You asked whose cost of living is important here. It's the cost for the style of living that typical market participants want, not the style of living that you in particular want.
Ultimately, the prices are determined by the market, by the supply and demand curves. If the "people wanting a remote job vs remote offers" ratio looks different than the "people wanting a non-remote job vs non-remote offers" then there will be a difference in salary.
To give an example, lots of programmers want to work in the gamedev industry. Due to this, their salaries are lower and their working conditions worse compared to programmer positions elsewhere. Simply because they are okay to put up with it as they still like building games more than something else.
That being said, there are obviously imperfections in the market. All parties involved are humans instead of perfect market participants. But the rule is still highly relevant.
I like my house more than I like my office. I also prefer saving the 40-60 minutes per day that would have been spent on the road.
100% remote (meaning all employees are remote) is important because it eliminates drive-bys and the water cooler. If only some are remote, those people will miss out on face time and conversations that were held in meatspace. Those people, regardless of their qualifications, drive, and contributions, will be held back relative to their in-person peers.
If you're looking for a remote job, you don't want to have to filter through a bunch of onsite jobs. This site does that for you.
> Why is remote working a good thing?
There are many benefits to working remotely.
- It saves you time and money because you don't have to commute.
- It generally gives you a more flexible schedule, which lets you spend more time doing things you love (hobbies, family, etc).
It's definitely not for everyone - you have to be self-driven otherwise you might have productivity issues. It also means you have to seek out your own community because you won't have as much social interaction with your co-workers.
I've worked remote for 5 years. In my case it's not flexible. I think if I was a pure developer it would be, but I have to be avaiable for requests/customer calls etc same as I would be in the office
For me personally, it alleviates a lot of stress from coming into the office.
I'm way more productive because I'm actually working and not BS-ing with my neighbor in the next cube/desk. This in turn brings down the noise level and reduces interruptions to "flow". For some reason, people will walk up and ask stupidly trivial questions on a regular basis in person, but when in a remote environment they are more reluctant to ask questions over communication mediums. I'm not sure why that is. Concentration++;
I don't waste any time in traffic. I've put about 3,000 miles on my car all year (excluding long travel vacations). I used to average 15,000 miles! One could say this significantly reduces my carbon footprint :)
Not having to waste time commuting to work, commuting to an appointment (e.g. doctor) near my home, commuting back to work then commuting back to my house.
It saves me a ton of money. No fuel expenses, less maintenance expenses on my vehicle, and I don't have to get a babysitter for no-school days.
I dodge the typical office bureaucracy and badmouthing of colleagues.
If I have to attend a useless meeting, I can tune it out and still get work done while they chatter about. In the office I couldn't do that because it would appear "rude" or even some meetings had a no laptop policy.
EDIT: oh another bonus... because i'm not sitting in traffic for 2 hours a day, I get to spend that time exercising or enjoying more quality time with my family.
Companies need to be good at remote for workers to be successful. Merely offering it isn’t an option, you have to know you will be visible and able to not miss out on communication with the rest of the team.
Companies that are 100% have to be good at this. Others may sleepwalk into operational mistakes regarding your career.
I don't think the implication is that "fully/100% remote" is inherently good, but that it is an important quality to a population. For example, I only seek fully remote work, so knowing that a position is 100% remote is critical to my search when looking at jobs.
There's more to it than that. You don't want to be "the remote guy" on the team. You want the whole team to be remote. Otherwise, you are going to have a far less pleasant experience and no chance at career growth.
I don't think you even need everyone to be remote. I've noticed that its enough to just have two separate offices with teams that have a mix of employees between those two offices.
Once you have that, adding people that are fully remote becomes almost trivial, since you are already accounting for most cases where people aren't always in a single space.
It's good for senior developers and the self motivated. Difficult for junior roles which need hand-holding. Difficult for parents or those in condos without a seperate space.
The surprising thing for me working at a fully remote company for the first time (Seeq Corporation - over 100 employees) is that, with the right tools, I think it's actually better for junior roles that need more help. For one thing, there's a lot less friction hopping on a video call than finding someone at their desk. Another thing is that results are the only metric you have to go on, so you don't fall into the mistake of assuming someone is doing okay just because they're sitting in front of their computer and not asking for help.
You really need to have a separate room in my opinion. As a remote worker you save a lot of money not travelling and spending money on lunches, and/or can live where space and housing is much cheaper, so this is possible. I built a home office: https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2013/07/10/garden-office-most-mos...
No I hired a couple of people to assemble it (for about $1200). It certainly would have been possible to build it all on my own - it's just a big, complicated shed kit after all - but it probably would have taken me a month so it made far more sense to hire them. I did give it three coats of paint and stain inside and out though!
We have quite a few parents on our fully remote team and generally remote seems to work well for them as it gives them the flexibility to deal with childcare and allows them to spend more time with their kids. It's not uncommon for babies and sometimes older kids to be passive attendees in our Zoom calls.
So...I pretty much have to work remotely. My wife is a resident and got placed in a small Midwestern city. Throughout her med school and residency, there have been pretty much no local dev jobs. The very few that I have available pay terribly. I either have to live 3+ hours away or - work remotely.
I've worked remotely for the past 5+ years. Most of it has been teams that have been mostly co-located. As a remote worker, this leaves you out of so many important company functions. No water cooler talk, no random whiteboarding sessions, dial-in to a conference room where you can barely hear cross chatter, get left out of in-house announcements, etc. You're really bounded to interacting via email, chat, and project management tools when you're the only remote employee.
100% remote companies have their challenges, but those challenges are shared by everyone. People understand the need to communicate in public places, avoid isolating patterns, and intentionally surface information to larger groups when possible. Nobody really has to worry about getting left out or missing a promotion because they didn't have "face time".
"fully / 100%" remote/distributed is important because it is difficult to be the only remote employee when everyone else is on site. Having remote employees brings a lot of benefits, but it comes with some expenses. Having the tooling/practices for meetings, discussion, whiteboarding, communication, etc. If you're only one of the 5% of the team remote, be ready to be forgotten often for important convos.
Remote working is a good thing for many reasons. No time spent commuting. Possibility to live anywhere you fancy. And for companies, it gives them access to an enormous pool of candidates.
Some people like remote work better for whatever reason. If you are a remote worker it’s often better to be in a fully remote company where all systems and processes are geared towards remote work.
One of my Coworkers wants to RV 100% of the time. She can work anywhere she has sufficient bandwidth. She's a good worker, and having a hard time finding a 100% remote employer. She wants to have 3 weeks at one National Park, then 3 weeks at another...etc.
Because some people dream of moving to the beach and working fully remote from literally a house on a remote beach somewhere. But they still want to make good money and can commit to a solid 8 hours "on" every weekday.
It is easier to find remote work if you are already senior developer. If you live in a small town 3 hours north of NYC like me and are trying to gain experience at a quality company it is nearly impossible to find a remote employer even if you agree to a very low salary and to go in to the city whenever they need you to.
Many do. The living room thing seems like a straw man: The CEO and other employees can have individual offices (not everyone likes to work from their bedroom), or you rent a meeting room when you need one.
Some of the companies on this list are European (e.g. https://teamweek.com/ or https://www.bluelabs.eu/). I wish there were more European companies opening up to working with remote developers.
I wish more companies had this, it's really useful.
I looked into applying at Gitlab, but was able to easily find out their location adjustment and avoided wasting my time or theirs. Unfortunately they pay less in a high cost of living Canadian city than for someone living in Alabama.
- As a 30-something single guy, it does wonders for my social circle. From my experience, working in tech makes it very difficult to meet the kind of women I'm interested in. It tends to be a male-dominated nerdy/geeky kind of culture which has its charms, but as far as a romantic partner is concerned, I'm looking for other qualities. I frequent a coffee shop in Santa Monica and have become friends with literally dozens of people over the past year-and-a-half.
- My schedule is my own. I generally work a pretty standard 9-5 schedule (when I'm active on Slack/GitHub/JIRA), but sometimes I wake up earlier and want to get a head start. Sometimes, I might write code later at night. Apart from a few meetings, having control over my schedule is amazing.
- No driving! I know this isn't a big deal for most people, but in LA driving is hell on earth.
- Traveling is awesome. I plan on doing a lot more in 2020, but even this year, I spent a month with my extended family on the east coast (spending time with octogenarian grandparents is quite a blessing), and a few weeks here and there hanging out with friends in Pittsburgh, NYC, SF, etc.
- At heart, I'm a startup guy. I'm constantly working on new projects, refining old ones, taking meetings with potential co-founders, etc. Remote work offers me the opportunity to explore my startup dreams while still being able to live a fairly comfortable life.
- Time is our most valuable resource. And at the end of the day, you get more time. Whether you spend it at the gym, with your kids, or traveling, it's up to you!
Hope more and more companies start treating their employees like adults, but I, for one, will never go back to a cubicle.