
'The Bay Area is broken': Why Silicon Valley startups are hiring elsewhere - smartician
https://phys.org/news/2018-04-bay-area-broken-silicon-valley.html
======
goo
From an engineering perspective, building a remote-first team was an easy
decision to make after a brief attempt to hire local talent.

Some of the unexpected benefits, in addition to the obvious upsides of better
talent for the same money, an easier time finding them, and better retention:

Documentation gets really good.

Discussions frequently have a written artifact associated with them, which
allows for easy reference later on. (e.g. asana thread, slack discussion)

No open office problems. The dreaded shoulder tap is not a thing.

We have to be clearer and more deliberate about the communication channels we
use and the reason we use, and when and how we choose to do so. This is a good
thing! We use a mix of Slack, Mumble, email, asana, Zoom, and 1:1 video calls.

Our culture is less driven by force of personality than it may otherwise be.
Having a strong leader in the room can be a powerful multiplier. On the other
hand, remote teams can lead to a more subtle and thoughtful type of
leadership, with more of a focus on the team as a system than as a troop. This
is frequently a good thing! Also, if someone important is having a bad day,
there is less of a transitive effect on the team.

Our automated dev tooling got better. (Since futzing around with other
people's computer has a higher barrier, code that does stuff like setting up a
vagrant box on dev machines becomes more valuable. So we keep it in good
repair, and if something about it doesn't work, we fix it right when the
problem comes up!)

The above extends to all code: when your code may break other people's builds,
and you won't be physically around to make it right, I think people put in a
little extra elbow grease and, for example, write one more test than they may
have otherwise.

Our systems for code review are naturally a lot more in line with some of the
compliance requirements we have. All of our code goes into a PR for code
review, and many of our clients need that as part of a comprehensive set of
data protection and security requirements.

Our automated testing via CI got better. Would it have gotten better without
being remote? Probably. But tests are a great method of communicating about
code, and so we started caring more about them.

Team get-togethers become exciting due to their infrequency!

Even beyond all these rational productivity-based arguments, it just feels
more natural and humanistic. Makes it easier to spend time with your kids! To
travel to your dream destination and spend time working from there, as more
than just a tourist! To settle down exactly where you want, with the
continuity of your same team and job and project. No commute if you don't want
one! Less of a second-circuit driven environment! (as defined by
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-
circuit_model_of_conscio...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-
circuit_model_of_consciousness))

Hit me up if you're looking into adding remote work into your organization,
especially if you're early in the process. Let me try to help convince you!

