Ask HN: How to recruit great hackers in a remote location? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to recruit great hackers in a remote location?

9 pointssjwalter6 comments

I work for a small company based in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, a few hundred kilometers south of the Arctic Circle. The company, ssimicro.com, is a great place to work, has many qualities of a startup (although we've got enough funding that we pay very well), has opportunities for entrepreneurship from within, and desperately we need great hackers.

The problem so far has been that most of the people we've contacted or who've contacted us are unwilling to move to what they perceive as the cold, dead arctic. All the people we've interviewed said they loved the job atmosphere and what we're doing (the fully-loaded bar/beer fridge, pool table, huge TV + PS3 tend to help with that). But they feel like they won't enjoy Yellowknife at all, so they don't respond.

How can we go about more effectively finding great hackers to help us build software services that make use of our unique, satellite/microwave-last-mile network?

If I were in your shoes, I would try to find out what gets people to go live in Antarctica. Here is a super short article about life as a "Polie": http://www.worldhum.com/travel-blog/item/life_as_a_polie_at_...

And I would do some web surfing about The Mojave Desert and Barstow California. I lived on NTC for a while. The High Desert and Barstow had some phenomenal info on the web at that time about all of it's "assets": Natural beauty, solitude, etc (ie it's remote and there's virtually no sign of civilization). It used to crack me up. Funny personal anecdote: My spouse tried to get out of going there because he was sure I would divorce him over it. Then we (the whole family) loved the place and tried to extend our stay. :-D

You need to figure out what would motivate someone to go where you are and you need to figure out where to look for people with that type of motive. I would work on developing that understanding by looking at similar examples elsewhere as best I could.

I would love to move out there as long as there is a powerful internet connection and easy access to vegetarian food. Though I'm out in Hong Kong ;) How about simply telecommuting - if it is software development.

are you sure most people are unwilling? especially when they contact you and you don't respond?

Getting to know more of the world and working in a remote location close to nature are actually huge pluses for a lot of people (myself included). You just need to find those people and keep the hassle level as low as possible. Relocation assistance is important.

Damn, you're making me seriously consider submitting a resume...

Being flexible might help. Hire part-time. Have them stay over for few months and also allow working remotely. Make them visit once in a while. That's the mode I engage with companies who have good problems to solve and it works.

We are currently working on something like this. We call it "Incubator Projects". How it works is we're setting up a recruitment website, and on it contain various projects we hope you're interested in.

After interviewing (on site, on our dime, sparing no expense) and acceptance, we provide candidates with free accommodations, free car, and some sort of pay otherwise (we figured between $800 and $1000/week). Then you can come up and take a no-risk paid trial, during which you can find out if you like us and we find out if we like you.

We're still working on it, but it's very expensive and we're hoping to find other ways (hacks?) that might get us some visibility.

The thing is, we are doing really cool innovative stuff. We don't lack interesting work, we pay well... We're just in the North. It seems like that last little detail shouldn't make recruitment so difficult.

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