

Ask HN: Why are fewer companies doing remote - ruffrey

my general experience is that software startups are not doing distributed teams as much as it seemed like they used to. This is not exactly backed by data - which seems contradictory lately too.<p>Does anyone know why? Or is my experience skewed?<p>(links to reliable data would be amazing, too)
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eshvk
Because it is a hard problem to solve. I think most good organizations make
remote work an exception rather than the rule.

I think the reason is because very few people are able to manage the trials of
working for a large organization and work remote. It involves being able to
distinguish between when to converse via the written text and when to get
ready to jump on a call or talk face to face. Consequently, it also imposes an
overhead on the part of the non-remote team to assiduously convert all in-
person/ad hoc conversations into text and loop the remote person in.

It also sometimes necessitates a person who is able to be high functioning and
effectively independent of the rest of the team.

Now in cases where both of these are possible, I can imagine a startup letting
some people do remote. Personally, I would think of this as an unnecessary
overhead if I were to start an early stage startup.

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danieltillett
I have often wondered if the remote communication problem (ie the remote team
members being out of the casual conversation loop) could be solved with enough
bandwidth. In theory you should be able to stream the office environment
between all team members.

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jtfairbank
Working remote is especially hard for small startups to do because it limits
speed, adds overhead, and most importantly excludes an early member from
adding directly to the culture. The startups I know either do not allow remote
work at all, or have almost an entirely remote team / culture (> 50%).

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mswen
100% remote can work just fine for start-ups. That way everyone gets used to
the communication methods. I was part of a team that built an award winning
platform that was eventually acquired. We had people scattered around the US
and in India. Technologically it was a success but sales traction sucked and
so we disbanded but eventually the founder located a larger company willing to
buy the technology platform and he joined as their CTO to adapt it to their
needs. Would we have succeeded on the sales side if we were all in one place?
I don't think so but it is unknowable at this point.

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phantom_oracle
Maybe using Google and their "trending" tool and searching for: remote
software jobs

Might yield some data.

The volume (vs. quality) of remote jobs over time might be another source.

There are plenty crap Work From Home jobs. It is the high-paying software-
engineer jobs that matter (from an HN perspective).

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stephengillie
Does anyone scrape the HN Hiring threads for data on how many of them offer
remote?

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phantom_oracle
quite a few do.

See here: [http://hnhiring.me/](http://hnhiring.me/)

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milspec
It's horribly insecure to keep the company's source code on a computer with a
connection to the Internet. For example, this is how the F-35 secrets wound up
in China.

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vinceyuan
I have the experience of working remotely. The biggest problem is in
communication. I think that's why most companies don't accept remote.

