
Q&As with Leading Remote Companies - donutreceipt
https://remote.co/qa-leading-remote-companies/
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joshmarinacci
I've been a remote worker for almost a decade now, and I've been through three
different companies. My effectiveness always depends on how supportive the
company is. As a remote worker I have to spend more time communicating;
overcommunicating usually. It takes time to learn but the end result is worth
it. I feel I have been more effective than I was in person and my quality of
life has greatly improved. (Not to mention being able to afford a house).

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shocks
What kind of work do you do? How did you start?

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joshmarinacci
I started as an engineer but moved into developer evangelism. I was on the
Swing team at Sun which gave me experience speaking at JavaOne. I first went
remote because I got married to a woman in Oregon and Sun was okay with remote
working (depending on the team). After Oracle took over I want to Palm and
then Nokia. I am limited in the companies who will hire me (ex: Google and
Amazon don't allow remote working) but the benefits have been worth it.

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stephengillie
This looks like a good way to break down some of the barriers to remote work.
There are several good strategies, and several problems with good solutions.
Hopefully this will give more managers and business leaders the confidence to
consider remote work as a viable labor solution.

I like how this is organized both by-question and by-company, so you can get
one question answered from different groups, or you can see each group's
perspective by going down their responses on their page.

I feel as though the concept of remote work has moved on past the bleeding
edge and early adopters, and now we're about to see many late adopters
(especially the more nimble BigCos and governmental departments) start to
consider remote work seriously. Within 10-20 years, we might see the "office
culture" become as rare as remote work is today.

Edit: And the site looks to be rather burdened. I'm now getting a database
error instead of a helpful FAQ.

\--- HN is rate-limiting me, so I cannot post more comments. \---

jbob2000 had an interesting comment that is dead for some reason:

 _Most of these companies started remote. I 'm really curious about how to
transition from non-remote to remote. What does a company do with all the
hardware and furniture? What about the administrative staff who would serve no
purpose in an office-less company? How did employees deal with going from
buying a lunch everyday to making one or getting one delivered? etc. etc._

Some groups might let workers transport office equipment home, to be used when
working remotely - if Asim is going to be working from home, let him take his
work chair and work monitors to his home, so he can use them for work from
home.

For some companies, they might consider moving into a smaller office at some
point. Something to consider for an office culture is that a usually-empty
office can be demoralizing when people are used to being infected with their
coworkers' enthusiasm. And it's easier to fill up a small office with a few
people, than to make a large office space feel full with only a few people.

Another large part of an office culture is the lunch routine. This is not just
a common biological need, but it's also a social time for coworkers to both
discuss non-work activities and workplace issues, while networking. Do remote
workers miss out on this? Is this a cause of the rise in popularity of
coworking spaces?

~~~
shocks
jbob2000 would appear to be shadow banned.

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fweespeech
Has anyone noticed the salaries for some of these companies is a bit low and
it seems some of them are doing it as labor market arbitrage? [e.g. A European
company hiring a Brazilian developer for ~10k Euros less than they would hire
a European ]

I see alot of them offering $40k-$50k salaries for positions than [in any
metro area in the US or Europe] would be $70-80k for similar
qualifications/experience.

I'm not saying its wrong, I'm just saying Toggl would be a 40% paycut at the
top end and I don't live in Silicon Valley or NYC.

~~~
NateDad
FWIW, I work for Canonical, which is also all remote work, and I got a
reasonably big pay bump compared to my last job at an office. Yes, of course
someone in Argentina is going to get paid differently than someone in New York
City. I don't know how it works at other companies, but at Canonical, you're
paid a competitive salary for companies in your area. So, for me, that means
companies in the Boston area. I certainly didn't take a pay cut to work
remotely. Obviously, what you get paid is different from company to company,
but I doubt many companies would be successful in hiring quality engineers if
they didn't pay as well as office jobs. Remote work is definitely a big plus,
but at the end of the day, it doesn't pay the bills (it does save some money
though - I don't need to get a $250 monthly train pass or pay gas/parking
etc).

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fweespeech
Yeah, its why I said "some".

Buffer, Canonical, and probably about half pay competitive rates for most of
the US/Europe. The other half want to pay below $50k USD for engineers and
that just isn't worth doing for anyone with 5+ years of experience and/or
college degree.

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vonmoltke
I have noticed an apparent chicken-and-egg problem in this space of the
industry. Increasing numbers of companies want to embrace distributed teams,
but they strongly prefer or only consider people who have worked remotely
before. That makes it hard both to start out in remote work and to find people
to fill your positions.

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jstoiko
We've hired both "experienced" remote workers and "inexperienced" remote
workers. I noticed that those with little to no experience working remotely
are so excited (liberated?) working that way that it almost seem as if they
are extra productive.

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brettfarrow
The site is currently down, but a Google cached version is available if you're
willing to work a bit for the answers.

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kndyry
And to moderately lessen that work, here's the link to the jump-off page:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Smsaa08...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:Smsaa08DDHIJ:https://remote.co/qa-
leading-remote-companies/)

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curiousjorge
Where can I find remote jobs? Other than weworkremotely,odesk which doesn't
seem all that great, I'm interested in other sources or websites.

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crisnoble
[http://wfh.io/](http://wfh.io/) and
[http://jobs.remotive.io/](http://jobs.remotive.io/), you can also sort angel
list to only show remote jobs.

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jbob2000
Most of these companies started remote. I'm really curious about how to
transition from non-remote to remote. What does a company do with all the
hardware and furniture? What about the administrative staff who would serve no
purpose in an office-less company? How did employees deal with going from
buying a lunch everyday to making one or getting one delivered? etc. etc.

