
Ask HN: On companies hiring remote developers and why don't you do it? - abuiles
Giving the high demand for developers, I've seen more and more
companies who hire developers remotely. Constantly we see posts of
developers saying how awesome it is working remotely and how it has
worked great for them and their companies.<p>Analyzing the "Who's hiring thread" for the last 5 months, I found
that there are a "good" number of companies willing to do this, but
still is not that much and a lot of them say "Just in US"<p>October
Remote: 40 (16.1%), Total Posts: 248<p>November
Remote: 35 (15.8%), Total Posts: 221<p>December
Remote: 39 (17.0%), Total Posts: 230<p>January
Remote: 26 (13.5%), Total Posts: 193<p>February
Remote: 35 (19.4%), Total Posts: 180<p>Number of people re posting
4 times (1), 3 times (5), 2 times (23), 1 time (110)<p>I would like to hear, if your company hire remote developers, how has
it worked for you, how do you find those guys?<p>If your company doesn't, what are the main reasons for this? what would it take you to
consider a developer in other state or country?<p>I've seen startups that are fine hiring "consultancy shops" whose
developers are overseas but not hiring the developers directly, why is
that?<p>DISCLAIMER: I'm interesting in the subject mostly because I'm working
on a current solution to help companies and developers connect through
engager.io, we believe there is a giant market of good developers
outside the U.S, but unfortunately not all the companies want to hire
remotely or can sponsor H1B1 visas.
======
daleharvey
The last 3 companies I have worked for (one of them a startup I cofounded) I
have worked for remotely, I wrote about it
<http://arandomurl.com/2011/09/03/working-remotely.html>

I was actually surprised speaking to a university lecturer today that had no
idea companies like Mozilla hired people remotely. I had somewhat taken it for
granted as the norm.

~~~
abuiles
I remember reading your post. Really good stuff, I remember meeeting a couple
of guys from couchbase in Berlin.

------
elfsternberg
Well, I just got laid off from a company that decided to experiment with
remote workers, then pulled the plug after six months.

They never really made an effort to incorporate remote workers into their
culture. The development team is about 20 people, 4 of whom were remote. It
was a trial and an effort to get work out of them; there were days I wouldn't
have much to do. Managers would book meeting times and then miss them; you'd
spend an hour waiting for a ping on Google Hangout or Skype, then go back to
doing something else. Group meetings required dialing in because they felt
having a spare laptop in the room for a Hangout camera was more effort than
the voice-only conferencing system "we've always used."

Last week I was notified that the remote workers were being given an
ultimatum: move to Silicon Valley or accept a layoff. I have a family, a
mortgage, and roots where I live. I accepted the layoff.

I've worked remotely for three companies. At two it worked: the teams were
small, and coordinated, and serious effort was made by management to involve
themselves in the day-to-day worklives of their developers. Developers weren't
left to wonder for weeks on end what their role, assignment, deadlines and
deliverables looked like. The third left me exactly wondering that, and
wondering why they threw their money away idling us. I guess they just
couldn't hack it.

------
idodevops
I'm in Melbourne, Australia, working (contractor) on a project based out of
Sydney, Australia, with team members working in Georgia (state, not country),
Alabama, California and in the Philippines. In the past, I've worked (from New
Zealand) for a company out of Finland, and (from Melbourne)for a couple of
companies out of SF.

My main experience of remote work is that a 'normal' 8 hour day doesn't work -
everyone needs to be a little flexible with their days and hours of work both
for regularly scheduled standup meetings and for ad-hoc conversations with
workmates. The oft-seen "US only" may be a timezone related concern.

I understand that international payments are seen as comparatively cumbersome,
and (for employees, at least) the tax situation may well be more complicated.

~~~
abuiles
Actually that's something I would like more about, Isn't easy for a company to
hire a contractor in other country?

I've worked as contractor for companies in the U.S and Germany, normally I
would just send them a receipt and received my money without problems in my
bank (I did have to take care of the taxes in my country).

~~~
gustavo_duarte
My experiences with hiring and paying overseas devs have been pretty easy (I'm
in the US).

We have paid using SWIFT transfers, which sometimes require a bit of work to
set up, but nothing too onerous - it's like doing any complicated transaction
at a bank. Once set up, the recurring payments are generally trivial - as you
said, we get an invoice, send payment, and things are merry.

Tax-wise this is an expense like any other to our US-based company. Note that
in this case the developers actually LIVE overseas. If somebody is _in_ the US
but is not a resident / authorized to work, then it's a whole different story.

------
hnwh
Oddly enough, I'm an American developer outside the US working remotely for a
US company.. I'm going to be starting my own company soon (as soon as we wrap
up this funding agreement) and will focus uniquely on hiring remote
(distributed) developers. As you've said, there is a ton of amazing talent
outside of the US, and its actually a win/win by hiring remote. I will
consider it as a competitive advantage until all of the "leading edge",
"innovative", and "groundbreaking" companies out there in SV decide to catch
up

~~~
abuiles
That's true. Also I have noticed a couple of things here, one is that if you
are American companies will have more willingness to hire you remotely or
outsource work for you.

For instance I know at least 3 companies owned by Americans in my city, all
their customers are in the U.S, the developers all locals, and they just act
as "middleman". Seems like there are still some cultural barriers here?

~~~
hnwh
I'm going to confess.. we Americans (I use the term "we" loosely..) often have
a tendency to think that we're the center of the world, and everyone else out
there on earth are no more than a bunch of barely literate savages, that at
best, we have the divine obligation to go bomb, liberate, and introduce to
democracy, freedom, and God. And our media reinforces this belief, so.. why
consider otherwise. From the age of 4 years old, we're drilled with the
doctrine of "We're #1!!" and hold our right hand over our hearts every day
before school, and recite the pledge of allegiance to the flag
<http://www.wvsd.uscourts.gov/outreach/Pledge.htm>

(my gf thought I was making this up)

So yes, there is a cultural barrier. No, its not fair.. neither is life. I
hate it, and even as an American, its still a struggle for me to find remote
jobs. But you know what? honestly? screw them. Money talks in the new age, and
the rest of the world is catching up very very quickly

~~~
wedtm
I really hate to play the douchebag card here, but the US _DOES_ have several
very good reasons to think it's the center of the tech world. Just don't make
me start naming names...

~~~
hnwh
I'm not saying the contrary.. but I'm a dev, an engineer (the real kind), and
also a scientist.. I know how amazing entities in the US are at those fields,
but I've also seen how well places outside of the US can keep up right behind.
I think the legislation in the US has helped it keep is head start in alot of
ways, as the environment just isn't up to par in many countries. But as far as
raw skill of individuals goes, there are many many outside of the US who can
keep up, or completely blow us away in all of those fields

------
eccp
I've worked remotely for the past 4 years as a contractor. I'm in Santiago de
Chile, the headquarters are on Sydney.

It has worked fine most of the time, I remember only a handful of times in
which I've had to stay up very late because of problems on the production
server (we're 12-14 timezones apart!). The support for another of the products
of this business is handled by another developer in Sweden, so it's a very
distributed team :-)

I've also worked as a contractor with another team based in Cape Town, South-
Africa.

To look for remote jobs, besides HN, check on StackOverflow. They allow you to
filter job offerings by those which allow telecommuting, but many of them have
clauses like "work from anywhere in the US" or "must be a US citizen or have a
work permit to work on the US".

------
barrkel
Companies hiring you will likely not want to pay more than the market rate for
you, where "market" is defined as your geographical area. This limits the
desirability of being a remote worker to begin with. It's also a mistake, IMO;
companies that use this approach are likely to find themselves giving
programmers nice CVs, who then go on to move to a different country with a
better "market".

Another big barrier for smaller companies is the logistical difficulties in
payroll, currency, international banking, tax compliance etc. - it's easier to
be a contractor.

Thirdly, the company culture needs to be set up for remote working. Otherwise
you'll have poor communications, and the remote people won't be plugged in to
what's going on.

~~~
abuiles
_Companies hiring you will likely not want to pay more than the market rate
for you, where "market" is defined as your geographical area._

That's true, I remember a client once asking me why was my rate so much higher
than the average (I'm located in Colombia).

------
a_p
One of the most important things in remote development work is good
communication between the employer and the client. This may sound obvious but
it is still important.

If the employer and the client are not comfortable conversing in the same
spoken language, it is almost guaranteed that the project will cost more money
and be delayed. When dealing with a client or employer that does not have the
competence of a native speaker in your language you must specify _exactly_
what you need, as if you were talking to a child or machine. Most of the
horror stories you see on sites like TDWTF are results of poor communication,
not incompetence or malice.

~~~
abuiles
Have you been through one of this situations?

I agree with this, as a freelancer/remote worker, one of your key assets is
communication.

------
issa
I'm going to guess that a lot of people in the US, like myself, have been
brought in on projects that were originally developed overseas--projects that
we're in pretty sorry states when the product owners finally gave up and hired
a US developer. While it is obvious that there must be many excellent
developers from all over the world, I can still say that my experiences with
non-US developers have not been good.

(note: Most of the reason for this is because US companies going overseas are
primarily doing so to save money and probably are trying to cut more corners
than they should.)

~~~
scastillo
Can you articulate more on your bad experiences? and why this experiences are
overseas-only problems?

~~~
issa
I think it's just a question of all the "normal" problems associated with
development but then amplified by language, cultural, and timezone issues. No
big mystery there.

------
mindcrime
Well, we[1] don't hire remote workers, because we don't hire _any_ workers
yet, as a self-funded, bootstrapped startup. But, when we do get to a point
where we can hire people, here's what I'm thinking:

1\. If you limit yourself to "locals only" you stand to miss out on some good
talent.

2\. Distributed software development teams certainly _can_ work in practice,
just look at many F/OSS projects.

3\. Guess what, all our stuff is OSS anyway.

4\. But, there is extra coordination cost and overhead when it comes to
dealing with remote workers.

5\. And there are times you just want everybody in a big room together to hash
things out. This is obviously harder with a distributed team.

6\. All of that said, we'd almost certainly look into remote workers. Within
that framework, I think there might be _some_ slight preference for people in
the US (less language barrier, fewer time zone issues, etc). The idea of
"rural sourcing"[2] strikes me as interesting as well.

7\. But we would definitely consider non-US as well. I've heard good things
about working with folks from Eastern Europe (Latvia, Ukraine, Estonia, etc.),
as well as the Philippines. I think South American countries like Brazil would
be intriguing as well. But, at the end of the day, it's about a match between
talent, skills and the needs, weighed against the tradeoffs of cultural
barriers, timezone issues, language issues, etc.

8\. Perhaps surprisingly, I see India as lower on the list of places to seek
remote talent. Partly because the timezone, language and cultural mismatches
seem more severe between India and the US, compared to some other choices. And
also a perception (which might be flawed) that there are fewer _individual_
developers in India looking for remote work. My perception is that it's all
Infosys and their ilk when going to India, and that doesn't interest me so
much. That said, I'm not saying we wouldn't work with folks in India, just
that some other areas seem like they might be better options. But time will
tell.

[1]: <http://www.fogbeam.com>

[2]: <https://www.google.com/search?q=%22rural%20sourcing%22>

------
msg
disclaimer: all anecdotal experience

I work at a big co on the west coast and we have had developers in India,
hired by the company's India arm, on some projects.

There are coordination issues because it's exactly halfway around the world,
especially if a project requires collaboration with another department.
Projects sent overseas need to be well-defined and self-contained to get a
good result. This alone could cause you to shy away from hiring in other time
zones.

Expectations and the engineering culture are different in the two countries. I
have worked with India developers who produced work that was worse in terms of
depth, quality, and maintainability than the same project later taken up in
the US. I do not have an anthropological explanation, and the developers from
India I've worked with stateside didn't have the same issues. /fireproof

More experience and tech muscle is concentrated in the US team. How about
this: if you were highly skilled and experienced, as a rule you would have
moved to the US for the greater opportunity and the big bucks. There's a
positive feedback loop here, because banging together lots of skilled workers
creates more opportunity and attractive companies, creating more motivation to
come, and so on.

~~~
abuiles
Thanks for you answer :), yeah, I know time zones is one of the main problems
companies faced.

 _How about this: if you were highly skilled and experienced, as a rule you
would have moved to the US for the greater opportunity and the big bucks_

Makes sense, though there are a couple of things to consider one of them is
visa issues. Also, not everyone wants to live in the U.S or Europe or leaving
their hometown.

------
HorizonXP
I'm a Canadian doing Android, BlackBerry 10, and other assorted dev work. I've
done a mix of working remotely and working in the Bay Area. In fact, I'm here
in the Bay Area right now. I don't mind a mix of the two, since it is
straightforward for me to move back and forth. Most startups seem to like
local workers, but it does vary.

------
d0m
From my experience, coding is something really easy to do as a remote worker.
However, if you're more into "product design" or in a position where you have
to take lots of decisions and communicate with the teams, I found it harder.
Also, nothing beats the coffee machine or the beer after work to brainstorm on
new ideas.

------
scastillo
Seems that the nodejistsu guys have a strong team overseas:
<https://www.nodejitsu.com/company>

"8 timezones: Covering the past, present and the future 7 countries: Equal
chances for all employees"

Any Jitsuka here that can tell us more?

------
jorgeecardona
How are this stats correlate with odesk/elance and more companies stats? is
there a similar trend? what about separate them by industry field? I imagine
that financial companies are not hiring that much remote developers.

------
orangethirty
I'm a remote consultant, and I have no issues getting clients. But, I'm in the
USA, and I'm an American citizen. I also have no problem hiring remote
workers. My designer is from Canada (I got him through Reddit).

~~~
abuiles
See my comment here <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5247350> ;)

------
speeder
I am from brazil, and I wonder why noone want to hire me remotely (not even in
Brazil!).

I just don't understand all those "US-only" hiring.

~~~
abuiles
Have you tried writing to the companies who say "remote" in the "Who's hiring
thread"? What do they say?

~~~
speeder
Many of those that say "remote" also specify that it is US-only.

I am wondering why.

And I don't tried to actually get hired yet (I have a startup, that yes, is
running out of money, but no, I won't give up that easily :P)

But I am paying attention, as plan D in case my startup fails in plan A, B and
C.

~~~
thirsteh
It's much less paperwork and trouble hiring somebody who has a U.S. work
permit when you're a U.S. company. No worrying about e.g. Brazil's employment
or tax laws. That's basically it. Boring and unfortunate, but true.

~~~
gustavo_duarte
It is a much better set up if the overseas worker can set up their own
company, especially in the case of Brazil. Then the US company does not need
to worry about any of this, they simply wire (via SWIFT) payments monthly, for
example, and there is very little overhead to the US company.

In the case of Brazil, the worker is also better off in this set up in
general, as they'll end up paying a corporate tax rate, which will be much
lower.

~~~
polymatter
In theory this seems like an excellent idea. But in practice its a bad idea,
for the very same reason as doing this for all your US employees is a bad
idea. Generally if a person works exclusively for a company on an ongoing
basis then they are an employee in the eyes of the law.

