
Ask HN: Been toying with a model for running a company. Critique me please - harel
I&#x27;ve been running a SAAS company for the last 13 years. Its successful but stale due to being too old. 
We&#x27;re relaunching it from scratch now, using our experience from those years. All that is just background.<p>I&#x27;ve been toying with an idea on how to run the new incarnation of the company, drawing
from my 20 years experience launching and working with Internet start ups, and I&#x27;ve 
drawn up a set of ideas that I think could make this fun and successful.
None are ground breaking or never been done before.<p>1. There is no office. Temporary shared space (e.g. WeWork and co.) can be
arranged. Saves lease&#x2F;rent etc.<p>2. No geographical boundaries. You can be anywhere on the planet. 
You can be traveling through India as much as I care.<p>3. No fixed working hours, but you do have tasks and those  are measurable. 
I don&#x27;t believe working 8 hours a day equates to 8 hours of productivity. 
Its half that at best. More important that a task is done by a agreed date.<p>4. Once or twice a year we can bring everyone together, to sync up and have some fun.<p>5. Foster an appreciation for work&#x2F;life balance.<p>6. An employee&#x27;s contribution to the company is directly related to these guidelines
being successful.<p>7. Rules are important but rules that cannot be broken if needed are not worth having. 
Including those above. Pragmatism should always prevails.<p>The ideas is that this requires the right people who can actually work under those
conditions but when found, I believe they would like this arrangement to continue 
and will contribute just the best of their productivity to make this a success. 
I also think hiring should be done on as needed basis and not to accommodate some 
grandiose dreams of uber growth or without a solid requirement for the role.<p>What do you think? I&#x27;ve been thinking about this so much I probably can&#x27;t spot 
my own pitfalls here. Could this model work?
======
sharemywin
I guess the devil is in the details: 1\. How is a task estimated? What if it's
wrong? How many misses before you fire the person? what if that person is
taking more risks and taking on more responsibility and challenging tasks?

2\. Usually you need some kind of process and task dependencies. What if there
is a total bottleneck of "progrmmaing tasks" or "QA tasks" does someone go a
week with pay to "work" for you?

3\. what about benefits? Is this 1099 or W-2 work?

4\. What about team based contributions? I help team mate X out with something
is that a task? Do I get any contribution from it?

5\. Who pays for training and education time? reviewing code?

6\. What kind of rate are you targeting? What would my monthly pay look like?

7\. what about strategic types of contributions. I know guy or I want to take
sub market and run with it? or did you ever think about xyz? If your
piecemeal-ing the work is there an allowance for that?

8\. is there an opportunity to "buy-in" via time or contribution or even real
money and get % of the profits or company?

9\. how does the system evolve over time? fix problems? do "workers" have a
say?

Sorry I'm really into the idea of marketplaces and using technology to build
hyper-efficient eco-systems.

~~~
harel
1\. Task estimation depends on the task really. I always thought a feature is
debated, decided upon and the outcome speced to some degree, wireframed etc.
Duration can be estimated by the developer. Over time people learn to estimate
more accurately. I don't want people to overstretch. I want realism in
estimation. Under those conditions, if I have to fire someone, I'd be pretty
pissed off that they put me in that position after I'm really trying to make
something that works for everyone. You'd have to take the piss quite blatantly
for that to happen.

2\. Some positions are task based, like development. Some are continuous like
QA or admin etc. The flexibility on hours and deadlines is extended where it
makes sense. Its unfortunately not 'every role gets same conditions'
situation. Fairness is the keyword here.

3\. Not sure about that part yet. I'm not American, but my partner is. This is
to be figured out still.

4\. You don't get paid by your contributions. You get paid your salary like
you would in any full time job. But that salary doesn't buy your soul.

5\. You're an employee as every other employee. You were hired when the role
made sense to have. Training is part of the job.

6\. I want to pay well. Above market rate. But I want to hire only when the
money for that person is allocated and put aside a year in advance. If I need
1 developer and can afford one dev, I hire one dev. I've been in scenarios
where I had a budget and was told to buy resources. Those end up with hiring
more resources than you know what to do with and that's not good either.

7\. One thing I want to stop is white labeling and and bending backwards
because client X said they want a feature that makes sense only to them. sub
markets etc. are built into this product. If it makes sense - why not. If it
deviates the product too much, i rather not.

8\. I guess share options would be a thing at some point. We're privately
owned, never took a penny from anyone. Also something to be figured out.

9\. I am open to evolution, hear what everyone has to say, fix what needs
fixing. This is why I've posted this here. This plan has been in my head for a
long time now. I'm not ready to go with it just yet ,and a lot is balancing on
the relaunch and its success. But I rather be prepared for that eventuality.

Thanks for all your points here. It gave me a lot to think about.

------
Mz
Assuming you have a reasonable means to peg pay to productivity and you hire
people who are capable of hitting those marks within a reasonable time frame,
I think this is a great idea.

I worked for a Fortune 500 company that began allowing people to work from
home. They decided people working from home should do an extra 20% or 30%. It
was a number pulled out of thin air and based on nothing whatsoever. The
result: People began working 10 or 12 hours a day to hit that number. Then
they had to make some changes to the program because this was in violation of
labor laws.

So, my point is that if you have ridiculous expectations and want too much out
of people, then what you propose is going to be a problem. But if you
structure it well and hire the right people, this has a lot of positives to
it.

I do something similar. I make money doing "gig work" and I can work where I
want, when I want, and this works far better for me than my corporate job did.
But you will need to be careful that you aren't expecting too much for too
little, basically.

~~~
harel
My expectations are not unrealistic. I don't even care if someone who can
achieve a task in 20% of his time is paid for 100% of his time. The task was
completed, that's all I care about. That, and that the person is happy and
s/he has done the task the best possible way. This is not a scheme to get more
out of people - its an idea to get exactly what is really needed and at the
best quality. This at least is how I work and I don't think I'm alone. I'm
aware this has been done before though the examples of 37 signals and
automatic are the only ones. I would have hoped the idea of a company where
the needs of the company and the needs of its employees are of the same value,
is not so rare that only those two companies come up...

~~~
Mz
Fwiw, I was not leveling an accusation. I think this kind of work is the wave
of the future and I hope to blog more about it at some point. It can be done
badly and cause problems. When done well, I think it gives ordinary people
some of the perks usually only enjoyed by the jet set and well off retirees.

I sincerely hope you pull it off and wish you the best.

~~~
harel
wasn't taken as accusation at all :) I am looking for critique and holes,
caveats and best practices. That's why I posted. I really appreciate your
reply.

------
elviejo
Isn't this how Auttomatic (wordpress.com) and 37signals already operate?

You could learn from their success

[http://smile.amazon.com/The-Year-Without-Pants-WordPress-
com...](http://smile.amazon.com/The-Year-Without-Pants-WordPress-
com/dp/1118660633)

[http://smile.amazon.com/Remote-Office-Required-Jason-
Fried/d...](http://smile.amazon.com/Remote-Office-Required-Jason-
Fried/dp/0804137501/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1457895700&sr=1-1&keywords=remote)

------
mihvoi
The good thing is that you can find more easily good people at low work cost.
However, it might be hard to evaluate the value of the contribution of each
"employee". What if some people throw unreasonable estimates?

One idea to overcome this is: you work by small increments of features. You
put each feature on the table and people bid the time to complete it. You
assign the task to the one with the best reasonable estimate and with good
track on the delivery - depending on the risk of failure. People that don't
offer reasonable estimates can be replaced. The thing is that you know that
without understanding the code, because someone else will bid less time and do
it.

A variant is per-project, "last feature is free". After each feature, you pay
the previous delivered feature, based on hourly time counted by the
programmer. When you find the bill to be overcharged, you just pay the
previous feature and close the collaboration. You might guaranty to pay a
reasonable but fixed sum, in advance or at the end, to reduce the risk of the
programmer to not be paid after too few tasks.

People should also have some stock or bonuses by global performance, otherwise
they would not be also team players. And more than this, they should share a
minimum motivation to be proud of the global outcome, for example because of
how their work is making the world a bit better. Money if not always enough
for people to really want to make it work.

~~~
prmph
> "The thing is that you know that without understanding the code, because
> someone else will bid less time and do it."

This, one of the fallacies of programming project management. What if I avoid
developing a good architecture and full testing, in order to make it appear I
have done the same work in less time and cost?

I see this all the time, the fact that something seems to "work" just now does
not necessarily mean the job has actually been done.

------
brianwawok
So I think all of this is good, and am all for work from home and work remote.
I work remote, and don't see going back to an office ever.

I assume by you posting this that you come from a more traditional setup?
Office of a bunch of local people? I suspect the biggest surprise you will hit
will be with

> No geographical boundaries. You can be anywhere on the planet. You can be
> traveling through India as much as I care.

If you get async communication down, you can work this. However for async
communication to work well, I find you need to all be on the same page. If you
start in an office with 6 people then go move apart.. you still have the same
brain space and same goals. If you just hire 6 people in 6 random countries?
You will all have VERY different worldviews and ways to work and end goals in
mind. One guy may just want to make crap work. One guy may just paste stack
overflow code. One guy may like to write really high performance code. One guy
wants to write very concise code. etc.

So I think your biggest challenge will be getting all people on the same
brainwave. Even with a meeting or two a year in person, what keeps you looking
for the same goals? In person we generally hire people very much like us.
Which is good from the same brainwave view, but bad for a diversity point of
view. Your worldwide company will have a lot of diversity and unique ideas,
but also a lot of people fighting and clobbering each other as you head for
disparate goals.

So my best ideas is maybe start with 1-2 local guys, get a tight bond... and
then use them to hire future guys, to try and keep the culture the same as you
grow.

~~~
harel
I actually come from multiple backgrounds. In the last 20 years I've done
mostly startup environments and a bit of corporate in 3 countries/cultures.
I've also done a fully remote startup which later evolved (and died) into a
more traditional office based situation. I started thinking about it based on
observations on how I work and how productive I am, as well as people around
me. I never understood the 8 hour workday, not to mention those who go over
it. Not that I didn't pull all nighters or the rare 48 hour work day but I
never liked it. I worked with people for whom this setup would simply not
work, and those who will find it liberating and will be hyper productive.

I like the idea of starting local and expanding. Its a good point and it makes
sense. Thank you.

------
matt_s
This sounds like a culture that prioritizes work-life balance, independence,
and self-motivated employees. You're not aiming to measure butts-in-chairs
time but delivery of working software as far as performance is concerned.

Focus on those specifics when hiring and not something like specific
technology stacks. Once you narrow your talent pool to that philosophy and
then narrow it further by tech stack you may end up with so few people to
choose from that you will end up with people that match the tech stack but not
the philosophy and they won't work out long term.

It's SaaS, which means web application, which means your tech stack really
doesn't impact success||failure. So choose smart, agile learning people that
match your work philosophy and they can learn whatever stack needed. You say
"we" so maybe you already have a team - in which case they may not agree with
your new philosophy or they may not want to change tech.

Make sure the compensation, HR stuff like benefits, etc. match this
philosophy. By that I mean make employee contributions tied to something like
profit sharing, equity, bonuses, etc. That can help motivate and enforce the
delivery of value priority over hours worked (aka here's a salary for 40 hour
weeks).

Also have legal/HR stuff figured out in case - employment laws differ by
country and if someone decides to work/travel through Europe for a couple
months, does that have tax/finance impacts on your company or employee? Do
they need a work visa? How will internet be funded? How will pay be handled
for work locations with different costs of living ... will it be "fair" if
someone chooses to live in SF area and gets higher pay than someone in Belize?

These are all rhetorical questions but if you have this stuff figured out,
people might want to hear the approach.

------
gpresot
It seems to be working for Basecamp (formerly 37Signals, creators of the
Basecamp project management software). Read their two books REWORK and
REMOTE,where they explain how they did it. You can also find the basics
reading around their founder's blog (
[https://m.signalvnoise.com](https://m.signalvnoise.com) ), where they also
lists some other companies that share this approach (buffer, zapier...)

------
seeing
2\. No geographical boundaries.

Reading this always feels wrong to me. Face to face communication is higher
bandwidth than text or video.

~~~
harel
Yes, that is always an ideal but the right kind of people make it unnecessary.
I've been involved with hiring for other companies as well as working with
remotes. Its very hard getting the right people for both scenarios. In fact
getting someone who is invested in your project half as you are is rare in my
experience. Most of the time I see people are invested in their colleagues and
environment more than the product itself (from my feedback post employment
with those I stayed friends with).

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dmarlow
I like what you have, but feel something like this would be helpful for your
employees to know how their contributions ultimately benefit them long term.

[http://slicingpie.com](http://slicingpie.com)

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sunkan
Mokriya works this way. We work with companies like Intel, Google, Twitter,
SanDisk, Salesforce etc, with workforce spread across the globe with no set
timings and very little management or bureaucracy.

~~~
harel
And what's your impression of this arrangement? What does your colleagues
think?

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ZeroFries
This sounds ideal to me. Where do I apply? :P

~~~
harel
Unfortunately nowhere at this point. Its not ready just yet... :)

~~~
pixelfiesta
IMHO, there are a two things very critical for your plan — Finding people who
are articulate and communicate really well. In remote teams this is very
critical. Secondly getting people who share the same passion as you do. You
should hire them only if they can be the CEO of your product/ company.
Anything less, do not even think. You need a team with lots and lots of
passion and self motivation. And there aren't many people out there actually.
Let me know when you begin.

~~~
harel
Agreed. I'll ping when ready :)

