So, you're paying more money to make things worse for employees.
Additionally, if you're all in the relative area of a city and really need to meet there are often coworking spaces you can use.
I'm really curious about this. I did full remote for about 3 months and I thought I was going to go crazy.
I work from home, but also rent an office downtown because the value of actually getting dressed, leaving my house, and interacting with people is worth more than the monthly rent.
I find that I'm more productive and focused when I'm "at work." I have to overcome so many distractions at home that it feels like "trying to work." Big difference.
Relatively few live in Dayton, Ohio (random example) and even fewer are willing to live there.
The advantage of remote working is you can draw from talent all over the world (or at least all over the US) without having to worry about the fact that a lot of people would be unwilling to live in your particular LCOL area.
You say this, but others say there is a chronic shortage of talent in the area. Having the largest concentration of X does no good if local demand is X+Y.
I personally will not go near the Bay Area for less than $200k base. Considering the Bay Area exodus story posted yesterday, it sounds like there are thousands of people with similar opinions.
> Relatively few live in Dayton, Ohio (random example) and even fewer are willing to live there.
Fortunately Dayton is one of hundreds of decent-sized metro areas that are not the Bay Area. Every one has negatives and every one has people not willing to move there. So does the Bay Area.
> The advantage of remote working is you can draw from talent all over the world (or at least all over the US) without having to worry about the fact that a lot of people would be unwilling to live in your particular LCOL area.
I think the idea is to do clusters. Do light offices in any metro area where you hire more than one person. It provides the flexibility of a distributed team with the benefits of having some people colocated.
There's a shortage in the market, but at least there is a market.
If I wanted to hire a team of 20 Go engineers, I could do it in SV. It might be expensive but I could do it relatively easily. I'm unconvinced I could hire the same team for less in Dayton.
> I personally will not go near the Bay Area for less than $200k base. Considering the Bay Area exodus story posted yesterday, it sounds like there are thousands of people with similar opinions.
Neither would I. The problem is that the alternatives to SV are different for everyone. For example, I'd be happy to live in Vermont or Minnesota. But you'd have to pay me even more than $200k to get me to live in the South. Meanwhile, there are thousands of other people who would never live in Vermont.
Remote working lets everyone live in their personal "best value" city. If you're insistent on having people colocated, you're still going to be better off having your offices in a place which enough people are attracted to that it's not hard to convince people to live there.
> Do light offices in any metro area where you hire more than one person.
I don't really see the benefit of this. You're incurring all the costs of having a distributed team but not gaining some of the biggest benefits (letting people work from wherever they want).
Also, if we're talking about being frugal rather than relying on VC money, why not pick an area with a good university but not so much of a "city scene"/VC-land-ness, and hire college students? For example, Urbana-Champaign, IL. That way you're drawing from a pool where not all the talent has been snapped up yet, and the rent is usually reasonable because students have to live there.
just go remote all in
Don't forget that, in working from home, you do want to have an office; its just a home office. For a lot of people, that means paying more for a home with an office room. Overall, working from home doesn't save money, it saves time (which is, at least to me, worth more than the extra money is costs to work from home).
But if the company is assisting remote work, e.g. paying for coworking space with an allowance that is probably still cheaper. Consider a team of 10... Even at a $200 / mo allowance for coworking that it still only 20~30% of what it would cost per month for a decent space in most major cities and there's no long term commitment.
So I think when you scale it out for small to medium teams it is cheaper and would be cheaper for a lot of startups that weren't already in a shared space.
Even if every employee worked in their own coworking space, the advantage is that they can choose one within walking distance of their front door.
No-one needs to cause carnage to their family life if they are forced to change jobs multiple times. The idea that to find a job, you have to relocate and separate your children from their friends, clubs and schooling is quite horrifying really.
It saves money if you cast off things you don't need, such as an extra car (my wife and I now car share), business casual clothing, eating out, &c, and if you live somewhere cheap. I live somewhere cheap (Louisiana), so I have a house with a couple of spare bedrooms from which to work.
Depending on your locale and situation, you might get tax breaks and/or company subsidies for a home office and equipment as well.
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FieldGuidetoDeveloper... (Kind of old, but still applicable.)
Supplying an allowance to rent somewhere with a good workspace or set up an office is still mostly cheaper than renting an inner-city space with private offices... and then you don't have issues with VCs thinking you're burning their money unnecessarily.
Developers on Gigster are often able to work fewer hours and yet are more productive - As a developer, you can work from anywhere. It gives you the freedom to live outside of major urban centers where rent is cheaper.
There are remote controlled robots with iPad faces, but I think those are more of a gimmick.
So really just evolutionary, nothing revolutionary.