
Why Coinbase is now hiring remote engineers - barmstrong
https://medium.com/@barmstrong/coinbase-is-hiring-remote-full-time-engineers-here-s-why-and-how-to-apply-if-you-re-interested-69af208fb75#.owq44lepr
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shadow0
Interesting. I interviewed with them once. Their interview process was pretty
strange: after a technical round they wanted me to work full-time for them for
a week as a next step. Wat? How do I do that if I have a job? Plus, it seemed
like they pay their engineers way below the average. Not surprising they are
having hard time hiring and had to move on to hiring remote workers.

~~~
jph
I concur. I've had interactions with that team, and they've all been strange.
The engineering and security are buggy and poor, and attempts to get to the
bottom of issues are stonewalled and shunted.

~~~
RightWingRabble
Is it so strange? If their engineering and security are poor, they wouldn't
want that fact exposed by somebody outside the company. A reputation for poor
engineering is the touch of death for a startup. Especially a bitcoin startup.

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millstone
I dislike working with remote engineers:

1\. Time zone differences are very real. A 14 hour difference only allowed for
a brief window of reasonable real-time communication. Latency went from
seconds to half a day.

2\. My project had a hardware component, and we could not easily assist each
other with electrical or mechanical issues, or even things like firmware (e.g.
"why won't this board boot?")

3\. Meetings were worse. Video conferencing often had technical problems, and
we'd waste time trying to get it to work. Normal human interaction (body
language, nonverbal cues, etc.) was lost. Remotes frequently interrupted,
through no fault of their own.

4\. I came to resent the remotes for enjoying this unequal perk, one that
inflicts a cost on the rest of the team. Why don't they have to sit in traffic
and then in this noisy room with the rest of us? What makes them special?

~~~
RyanZAG
_> 4\. I came to resent the remotes for enjoying this unequal perk, one that
inflicts a cost on the rest of the team. Why don't they have to sit in traffic
and then in this noisy room with the rest of us? What makes them special? _

Seriously? Because your working conditions are terrible, remote engineers are
bad for having good working conditions? Here's a hint - stop wasting your time
hating others for being happy, and work out how to improve your own working
conditions into something you enjoy.

~~~
millstone
"Hating others for being happy?" Where the hell did that come from?

I resent my peers being given visibly unequal treatment. It's no different
than if some engineers get free lunches and others did not. I guarantee you
there's onsite engineers in Coinbase who feel the same way.

As for "improving my own working conditions," that's exactly what I did, by
quitting that job and taking one with a co-located team, and I'm much happier
because of it.

~~~
RyanZAG
So you're happier now because everyone else has to suffer in the same way. You
still have to sit in traffic. You still have to sit in the noisy room. Nothing
has changed for you. You're just happy now because you can't see other people
who are avoiding it?

Let me repeat it again - for you, nothing at all has changed except that other
people around you are also suffering. Your attitude is awful.

If someone came tomorrow to your office and gave a million dollars to each of
your team members and $10K to you, you would resent your team members for
receiving more money than you, right? People like that are only happy to see
others clawed down to their own level.

~~~
millstone
I'm happier now because I no longer have to deal with the issues in my top-
level post. I spend less time being blocked, and I am more effective at
unblocking other people. Yes, commutes and open offices suck. But the team as
a whole is better off if we sit together, and that makes it worth it to me. I
prefer to work with people who feel the same way.

That there's no (visibly) unequal treatment is definitely part of it. I want
to work for an employer that I believe is _fair_.

> If someone came tomorrow to your office and gave a million dollars to each
> of your team members and $10K to you, you would resent your team members for
> receiving more money than you, right?

I take it you're a fan of Jeb's tax plan.

~~~
andrewvc
Dude, I hear your protests, but your attitude really does suck. Life isn't
fair. The sooner you learn to be happy for others versus trying to keep score
the more people will like you.

You sound very bitter. I hope you find what you need to cure that, but please
don't pollute hacker news with your sour grapes. I'm sure there's a nice
person underneath that veneer and I hope you can find a way to be that person
more often.

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drawkbox
_But in the past year we’ve had a few engineers who needed to move (due to
various life events). We didn’t want to lose them, so they became remote
employees on our team. In some cases it worked really well._

Remote work is a big part of the future in development. It is a big favorite
of developers who are self starters, good communicators and deliverers.

Over time it will take longer to build bigger things and people do indeed move
in some cases every couple years for many reasons, doesn't mean they aren't as
committed because they can't be within 2 hours of an office. Remote works
biggest benefit is keeping a team of professionals on the team even if lives
change and locations move, might even be a big advantage to those currently
that can do it well.

Every remote capable organization has better communication virtually and
better external views of themselves. This is also key for working with
clients/customers (almost always remote) and other offices (again remote
offices in the same company). Remote work can even improve intra-office
communication/information flow as many times even though you go to the office,
you work with many people in the building or the building over remotely just
closer in vicinity.

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shawnps
I've worked remotely for the past year and it has by far been the most
productive year of my career as a software engineer. I'm not sure if I will
ever want to work in an office again. In my experience, when working in an
office environment, people will interrupt you while you're in the middle of
writing code. You'll be asked to attend meetings that are ultimately
pointless. You'll feel bad about wanting to work from home or from a cafe. The
amount of freedom and the feeling of finally being treated like a responsible
adult that comes with working remotely is addictive to someone like me who
just wants to code all day.

~~~
lucaspiller
I started working onsite a couple of months ago, after working remotely for
two years, and yes it is as bad as you remember. As I'm a contractor I don't
even have proper equipment, so I'm stuck with and old broken chair, an old
broken table and my 13" laptop vs my setup at home.

I understand how for some people remote just doesn't work, but I think that's
mainly because the company doesn't know how to work with remote engineers. The
best company I've worked with in terms of remoteness had teams in India
(+5.5), Greece (+2), London (+0) and LA (-8).

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mpermar
In my view, onsite work is only good for two things:

1\. Team building. There is no doubt being around the office is good for
socialising and creating stronger bounds.

2\. Stronger junior people or people that need direction. Many, many, many
developers are only good when they have the superstars around. It's people
that need direction and help. Having the stronger workers around make these
other average workers stronger.

If your team is made of superstars/hyper-professionals then there is no
obvious reason not to be doing remote work. If on the other hand your team is
mostly made of regular 9-5 workers, well, not doing remote work must just be
the excuse for hiding some other bigger issue in the organisation.

~~~
colmvp
I do remote work and I honestly miss the team building.

There's an incalculable benefit to me to socialize on a daily basis with a
consistent group of people. A great deal of ex-coworkers from non-remote work
jobs are still good friends of mine who I communicate on a weekly basis. And
it came from gradual and steady interactions. Being remote has made it very
hard to build closeness with a lot of the people within the company,
especially the newcomers. It's arguable whether or not closeness or friendship
is important to a team, but I'll say that I perform better when I personally
care about the people I'm working with.

Furthermore, by not being there (while others are) I also miss out on
spontaneous information sharing that happens between people in moments like
sitting away from the computer, having lunch together, or lining up to wait
for something. It's also difficult to participate with small groups who go on-
site to observe customer behavior.

I'm not against remote work because the benefits largely outweigh the
negatives. It's just after over two years of doing so, I've gradually moved to
the belief that I really prefer a split solution where I come into the office
once every few days to energize/adjust my connection with the team.

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iopq
"If you have a passion for bitcoin, a computer science degree, or experience
with one of the languages we use"

Doesn't mention which languages in the post. Am I supposed to know this?

~~~
sergiotapia
Here's what they use:
[http://stackshare.io/coinbase/stacks](http://stackshare.io/coinbase/stacks)

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ruffrey
I've had nothing but success working remotely on projects. It's all about
having communicative remote people, having the onsite team use the same
chat/screenshare/video systems. I can get so much done with absolute focus yet
still come out for big meetings a few times per year. It gives flexibility to
the onsite people to work from home occasionally, too. On a team with poor
cohesion or a lot of strong introverts, it might not work.

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phantom_oracle
Kudos to you for embracing the remote culture (partially).

However, you should take it a step further and not "fly them out to visit HQ"
but instead:

Take the entire team out for some team-building and working from a different
locale (you can stick to the US - as most remote-first companies do).

Your company is not exactly the same as the next advertising-eyeballs SV
startup, so perhaps getting out of the Silicon Valley hype-train and "pat each
other on the back" environment, exploring a different area/wilderness will
open your team up to greater innovation and lateral thinking.

See Automattic for a reference-point of how to do it.

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sanatgersappa
Great move. Love the 'self-starter' bit. People who need to be constantly
monitored and told what to do aren't worth it, even if they're easier to hire.

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zhte415
This hiring practice far more suits an outsourced development system than
hiring for a week per time.

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navinp1912
Can someone give similar hackerrank/job challenge + resume links for other
orgs ?

