My company: 5 months work from home, one month work in a 5 star hotel | Hacker News Reader

My company: 5 months work from home, one month work in a 5 star hotel

blog.cubeofm.com

236 pointsmaxklein108 comments

I don't think this particular model is all that great, but I applaud maxklein's willingness to work with a distributed/remote team.

[ rant begins ]

For people who (for whatever reason) can't move to Silicon Valley, it is excruciating to watch all the cool startups in the USA and be stuck with an outsourced enterprise maintenance crap job because that is all that is available locally.

It sucks when you read a startup dev job description, know that you'd be great at it and the very last sentence is "you should be a US resident. No remote working". I understand why people would want that, but it sucks anyway :-P.

I am luckier than most developers in Bangalore - I work on Machine Learning/AI projects, which is where my expertise lies - but working alone is a bit of a drag and if I could work for (just as an example) ReThinkDB without having to move to the USA, I would apply in flash. Working with some of the people I "met" on HN would be awesome. I would happily take a paycut.

Once my present project ends, I'll probably do something like this.

[ rant ends ]

Nutshell: I am very appreciative of any and all attempts by HN folks to work distributed/remote. Go @maxklein!

I share your frustration. Although I do live in the USA, not all regions of the USA are equally prosperous. Though patriotism leads people here to shut their eyes to it, the economy in the state I live in has more in common with third world countries than first world. Yet my wife refuses to move to any other state, so I'm forced to watch countless opportunities to advance my career slide by because they don't allow you to work remotely, while I plod along in a job much less technically interesting than what I'm capable of. It's not a case of fewer engineers competing for jobs at a smaller number of technology companies, it's a case of fewer engineers and exactly zero technology companies. It doesn't matter if there are also fewer skilled/educated workers to compete against, it's still division by zero.

1. Please show me a state with a per capta gdp that approaches one from the third world.

2. Your wife may be forcing you to stay in state to be with her. Either celebrate your marriage and don't bitch about how it's bringing you down or move on.

It's not a dichotomy; you could equally tell his wife to "celebrate their marriage and not bitch" about moving to somewhere with more opportunities. You should not think about someone's happiness, that does not also think about your own.

I think you making a totally fair point about the symmetry of the situation. However, I think his attitude (and by symmetry probably hers too) is an unhealthy one. He can always think, "were it not for her attitude I, errr we, could be more successful". This is quite a negative thought to hold in your head with someone that you should have an amicable rapport with.

>You should not think about someone's happiness, that does not also think about your own.

I guess you can live by that, but I certainly don't like the dynamics of this towards the limit. If somebody is hurting I don't mind trying to say something. Suffering isn't cool.

Are you married? There is much more to marriage then love. It is a legally binding contract and there are serious consequences for breaking it. Not to mention the social and emotional consequences. There are usually children involved.

If that is your line of reasoning for staying married, it's an unhealthy situation, probably not good for the kids, etc.

People in such situations should focus on communication and progress, possibly with the help of a therapist. Or end the marriage. But plodding along blaming your spouse for your terrible lot in life is no way to raise a family (or save some money).

I've been married 10 years. It's up and down, but in the end, it's what you make of it.

Point taken, but sometimes people just like to bitch about things. It doesn't always mean much. There is always a struggle between selfishness and selflessness. Sometimes marriage is a zero sum game.

GDP is a really bad measure in this case. First of all, the cost of even living, even 3rd-word-level living, is substantially higher here. Additionally, a lot of those 3rd world economies are composed largely of "non-market operations" (subsistence farming, for example) that don't get counted in GDP since they're not a cash transaction.

Also, though the state overall may not be that low, there may be parts of the state that are pretty bad. Rural parts of West Virginia come to mind.

An aside: The area with the 2nd-worst standard of living in the Western Hemisphere is in the US. It's the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. It doesn't quite apply to this conversation since it's an Indian reservation, but it is a good reminder of just how badly we screwed over the natives.

Hey guys, I'm the one he was criticizing, and I'm voting him back up off 0 on this comment.

1. That may have been hyperbole. A better way to phrase it would be "A state where the tech sector seems to have as little presence as a country with no tech sector at all."

2. My wife and I talked after this. She said she understands the sacrifice I'm making to stay here. I said I I understand that she wants to live near her family.

so his choice is to either celebrate his marriage, or celibate it? I'll take celebrate for 900, Alex.

WV ?

Get involved in open-source, it is the best way to be apart of things you wouldn't otherwise have access to as the requirements are simple: 1) show up (virtually), 2) be polite. You seem to have the inclination to be the second. id like to encourage you to do the first.

More like division into zero right? If it was by zero, then there'd be no engineers and an undefined supply of jobs.

But more to the point, there are lots of ways to be technically engaged. Elance, guru.com, hireacoder kind of places need technical people and they don't care where you are.

The startup phase into a life style like that (this), can be long and arduous, but also something you can do in your spare time. Point is, if you want to be in a rural area and still have your fingers in technical stuff, there are avenues to that -- the internet.

That's the beauty of the internet. You can do almost anything technical from anywhere, like the main post to this thread... Lots of people, myself included, do. When I talk to my clients/customers, they're always like, "Where are you now?" It's awesome.

Arg. It's not division by zero, it's zero work divided by a finite number of workers. Nor is it an undefined supply of jobs-- should you need the quantity "workers per unit work", then, finally, you'd have an undefined quantity.

I was calculating number of engineering job applicants divided by the number of places to work. That is, supposing there were 100 people and 10 companies, or 20 people and 2 companies, that's still the same ratio of 10 engineers employed per company as you think smaller. But when you scale down far enough, you reach a point where there are zero companies in the sector, yet there are still non-zero number of people wishing to have that kind of job if they could. So you're dividing a nonzero number of people across zero opportunities, and the result is undefined.

In theory, I could do almost anything technical from anywhere, and that's what gives me hope. But society doesn't always change as fast as technology could enable it to - I have yet to find a company actually willing to let me work completely remotely, even though programming or circuit design work could be done that way.

But that's why I am involved in a startup as a side job, and I hope one day we'll be able to employ 100% of our workforce 100% remotely, because there are many capable people living in backwater places. That's the interesting thing about dividing by zero - introducing an undefined result breaks the rules of the system.

Is there a job site targeted at skilled international workers like you? How do you look for work, and how would people find you?

"Is there a job site targeted at skilled international workers like you?"

As far as I know there isn't. Most people are (rightly) trying to outsource just the grungy bits for which they (rightly) seek low cost folks through elance etc.

"How do you look for work, and how would people find you?"

I can't answer the general question but as for me specifically,

I have a bit of a unique skillset (AI/ML/compilers, reasonably strong math skills), which, while not in wide demand in Bangalore/India is sufficiently compelling for the few people who do want it (e.g some folks in the local Defence Research labs, telecom companies, financial trading folks and so on). More importantly, over the years I've made a bit of a reputation for straight dealing and delivery on time/below budget.

I have never actively looked for work since I left ThoughtWorks (6 years ago now , yikes! where did the time go?). And I left TW because I was tired of working on enterprise sw. The company and my co workers were great - the work was terrible.

I have enough work for the next five years. Research + coding projects tend to be like that. I constantly turn down projects.

So far so good. The problem is that the "rare skillset" bit cuts both ways - I've been working alone for the last 6 years and would love to work with great people (ideally much smarter than I am) again. That part doesn't seem to work out so well hereabouts. There are some interesting startups coming up but still very early days here. Bradford Cross (of FlightCaster) and I (along with a couple of others) wrote about this at http://measuringmeasures.blogspot.com/2010/02/globalization-... )

Nutshell: As of now I get work via word of mouth from satisfied customers. I don't use any websites etc.

OK, at the risk of getting called out for spamming I can't help but interject here.

I am the founder of a company who's goal is to create an environment where remote contributors are the company. I have one other co-founder and a few more interested in it. None of us live in the same city. I really want to get at least one more really talented person as a co-founder.

Please have a look: http://www.fireworksproject.com/pages/extraordinary_people.h...

We have a small distributed development team. We are three people in Sweden, two in London UK, two in San Francisco US. (We also have five non-developers, in London and the Netherlands.) We are not looking to add any further developers outside of these three locations at the moment, as we often have team meetings via Skype and it is a quite hard to keep organized with three time zones already. Especially with the time difference between EU and CA. I spent a couple of months in Asia this winter and it really didn't become any easier.

I suppose it all depends on how the team is used to work and communicate, but I do wish we could have everyone in the same office more often. We have a team meeting in the same location once every six months for 4-5 days, but you can only achieve so much in a few days.

With everyone either having partners, children or both to take into account it isn't always so easy to fit everything together.

"We are not looking to add any further developers outside of these three locations at the moment, as we often have team meetings via Skype and it is a quite hard to keep organized with three time zones already. Especially with the time difference between EU and CA. I spent a couple of months in Asia this winter and it really didn't become any easier."

This is completely fair and rational. You shouldn't have to make any irrational sacrifices to work with people in far away places.

The way I look at this is - I am not (yet, perceived as,) good enough for people to want to work with me in spite of the distance/time difference etc. Lars Bak (for example) [1] is so good that he can work from somewhere in Europe and the rest of the team (and Google) make whatever compromises are necessary. In my opinion the best way to overcome this is to become (and be seen to be) way better than the average. "Be so good they can't ignore you" is good advice.

So, back to work!

[1] From Wikipedia

"In 2004, Bak was hired by Google to work on what was to become the Chrome browser. He did not return to the United States, preferring to work in Denmark where his daughters were also receiving their education. With a team of 12 engineers, Bak has been coordinating the development of the JavaScript machine for Chrome which he has code-named V8, to mirror the powerful automobile engine"

Is it difficult to get the paperwork and permits in order to employ people from multiple countries? I've often wondered how that works.

I'd imagine it's done by having a separate entity in each country, or even having each employee incorporate himself.

Indeed. Our organisation is incorporated in the Netherlands and four people work there. In all the other locations each "employee" is incorporated under their own name and works as "consultants" for our organisation. It is a higher administrative burden on the individual, but by far the most flexible way of doing it, and probably less work and certainly cheaper than incorporating an entity for our organisation in every country.

Doing this would be more work and would require actually having to employ people in these countries, not to mention consolidated accounts from three subsidiaries, with local accountants, audits etc.

For people who can't move to Silicon Valley, it is excruciating to watch all the cool startups in the USA and be stuck

Guess what, that was exactly the genesis of our startup. Startups are bound to go virtual. The Silicon Valley model should become accessible to anyone with an Internet connection, from anywhere in the world.

So we did http://fairsoftware.net. The only problem, is the imbalance between people with ideas and people willing to implement them.

Working with some of the people I "met" on HN would be awesome.

Totally agreed. That's why we even considered highlighting people from the HN community on our site, kind of like adding a badge of quality/honor. Who knows, we may eventually do it. Because trust and shared passion is so important to starting something together.

I've worked at a company that operated like this. It's great if the company is the only thing going in your life, and that's how you like it. It's not great if you want to take a night class, or have a regular volunteer obligation (I was a math tutor) or play on an after work sports team, or are in an amateur orchestra, or have a regular fitness training regimen, or are dating, or have a garden, or a dog, or simply don't like living in hotels. For me, the end result was having a life not unlike George Clooney's in "Up in The Air."

Edit: it's actually quite similar to a management consultant's schedule. Except instead of Bangkok, you end up in Houston.

Houston? You're damn lucky if you end up in Houston! More likely you're in Ames, Iowa or Ft. Wayne, Indiana.

Consulting is far more brutal. Out Monday, back Friday, every week, unless you're between projects. On the upside, you do get weekends off. On the downside, you'll spend all weekend either sleeping or doing chores.

I did get to go to some cool places as a consultant, but the truth is, airports, taxis, meeting rooms and hotels are the same everywhere in the world. Having great colleagues is a must, there are some good times to be had. But you can't live like that for more than a few years without going crazy.

One competitor company of ours would enter a new territory by renting a nice house in that country and a few people from other offices would all go live there. Like MTV's The Real World. They would be the nucleus and the rest of the office would be made up of traveling consultants and local hires.

The concept seems cool, but if people really do have family lives, a month away is too long (IMO).

I also think the 5 month cycle between trips could cause a lot of repetitions of falling back into a boredom mode.

Seems more like 1 week together every 8 weeks would be more manageable and logical overall.

Yes, but very expensive. The trips are not cheap at $700 a flight.

Ship captains and oil rig engineers leave their family for 6 weeks or more at a time. There are some people for whom this type of travel is workable, and some for whom it is not. If oil rig engineers can keep families and be away so much, so can programmers.

Oil rig engineers have to be away that much, or they're no longer going to be oil rig engineers. They also make disproportionately more money doing that particular job than they would if they did something else.

There's no natural requirement for programmers to leave their home/families (unless they're consulting). I suspect you're not giving your employees "hazard" pay either, are you?

If it were me, I'd want to bring my family along and turn it into a work vacation.

But what if this is condition of the job? When you apply, you are informed that you have to do this. If its unacceptable, you simply do something else.

Then you might miss out on a lot of talented people, because being away for a month at a time is a strange requirement for a programmer. Most people have families, friends, significant others, pets, or WoW guilds they simply don't want to be away from for a month at a time. The emotional toll of homesickness could very easily end up costing you.

Not to mention, if your employees are in committed relationships you're also subjecting them to a month without sex. I don't know if it's worth $2800/month to have two months a year where your employees are homesick and sexually frustrated.

Absolutely true. However it also frees them to hire people who live anywhere in the world, which gives them access to a lot of cheap talent that they otherwise would find hard to access.

Given that they have 5 employees in 4 countries scattered across 2 continents, this is a pretty big benefit.

There are a lot of talented people in the world and Max needs to hire, hmm, five or ten of them? Being a Japanese salaryman probably wouldn't sound that attractive to the average American but there are a few of us defective types who do/did it anyway.

(Speaking of quirky individual preferences: I'm a strict Catholic. Two months, huh. <dry>How ever would I cope.</dry> You can probably find five or ten other people with similar preferences -- it is a big Internet.)

Oh definitely, I'm not saying he won't be able to find people. All I'm really saying is I wouldn't accept a job that required that of me, and I wouldn't be happy if my work implemented this policy.

Different strokes for different strokes I suppose. <Insert celibacy joke here.>

Imagining an existing company implementing a policy like this and forcing it on its employees is pretty different from a small startup deciding on it (with the enthusiastic buy-in of the principals) and then going off and hiring people who are excited about it.

I've worked as a consultant for years. It's a job that requires a lot of travel. We don't hide this from prospective hires, and despite having a schedule that's a lot more rigorous than 1 month in 6, and going to places that are a lot less swank than a five-star in Bangkok, we've never had trouble recruiting.

Actually I think there are a lot of people for whom the possibility of traveling twice a year to some semi-exotic locale and having their food/drinks/entertainment comped would be a big draw. As long as you're okay with the demographics that tends to lean towards -- young people, probably fresh college grads -- you might end up finding people willing to work for less, because they'd see the travel as a benefit, than if you were hiring for a cube job.

A lot depends on how you spin it, and what kind of people you try to recruit. It's going to affect the character of the company a lot though.

How would being religious affect anything? Aren't there Catholic churches in pretty much every major city?

He's referring to the lack of sex issue.

I'm an atheist ex-catholic and I don't get the joke. Why would you downvote me for a legitimate question?

I think he's an unmarried Catholic, so he's not having sex already; two months of not having sex amidst a lifetime of not having sex isn't really an issue for him.

He'll change his tune pretty quickly, I'm sure, after getting married (from one "strict" Catholic to another).

>Not to mention, if your employees are in committed relationships you're also subjecting them to a month without sex.

Dude, they went to Bangkok.

Turning into a working vacation works until your kids reach school age, or your significant other gets a job of their own that they can't just "put on hold" for a month.

Typical oil rig work is 6 weeks on, 4-6 weeks off, as in, actually off, there's no office you have to show up to. So that kind of lifestyle can work pretty well, you can look after the kids or do DIY or just relax full-time between stints.

$700 is pretty cheap... Go look at what business-class flights cost on Expedia.

I would not pay business class flights and actually in Bangkok we stayed two per room. I remain a cheap guy :)

If you're there for a month, I imagine a few of your employees might want to "get acquainted" with the locals (more likely other tourists, in reality, but makes little difference.) Perhaps a spare room is in order? ;)

Also: I think this idea is pretty cool. I might side with others that four 2-week trips would be preferable, but traveling like this is definitely something that appeals to me.

Your current proposal is two trips per year. My idea was 6,or 4 extra trips. If it's $700/pp and you have 5 people, that's $3500/trip. So, my recommendation adds an extra $14K to your yearly budget.

However, staying some place for a week vs. a month should cut the hotel bills and food/meal/bar bills by 75%. You reference $200/day for food/bar. Two month-long trips is 60 days of this expense. 6 week-long trips is 42 days of this expense, or an 18 days savings, or a $3600 net savings. Factor that against the $14K increased flight cost and you're adding $10K/year, or $830/month increase. Based on the way you presented the finance details, this still doesn't seem like a big factor, and could potentially remove a lot of stress from employees personal lives if they don't have to be gone for month-long stretches. Of course, if your employees LIKE a big break from their family, then this may not add any value for them :)

You may have a point on 4 trips per year being better than 2 trips. Two weeks will certainly be more interesting, but I'm afraid that the amount of productivity may not be quite as high. If the trip is too exciting, it will drop productivity, but if people have time to get used their surrounding, they will settle down and start working.

Well, in reality if you have to keep bringing people together for a month at a time to an exotic place, you have a larger problem looming.

Assuming you have decent people and an engaging goal in the company, then these jaunts should really be more about strategizing and prototyping vs. doing "actual" work.

I would consider these more like regular "Demo Days" and brainstorm sessions. My personal bet would be that higher-frequency, shorter duration meetings would allow every one to come together, collaborate, get inspired, and then go off on an 8 week productivity binge. These little trips SHOULD be mini vacations for the team.

The more I think about this, I almost think you're doing it backwards. You'll get 2 months of high-productivity work (the 2 months the team is all together under your plan) and another month of mid-productivity work (the first 2 weeks of the next month after each trip) and then (IMO) a steady taper of productivity back toward zero until the next month-long getaway.

I think these meetings can serve to add momentum to your org. Keeping an object in constant, regular motion is usually more sustainable if the object gets a "shove" at more frequent intervals.

the other issue too may be driving each other crazy after 3 weeks and having to go another week with each other. One week seems like a good amount of time to spend in close proximity without getting burned out from each other. Maybe it will take some time to figure out the best ratio. You guys seemed to do really well with 1 week - what extra benefit does 3 more weeks at the same time provide?

I like how he refers to his "programmer" like it's his pet monkey.

Sounds like a great plan, but is it sustainable? Is it really solving the problem?

Edit: iPhone apps. Not sustainable. OP even agrees. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1060019

If the company generates 40k a month without expanding, and the break costs 2.8K a month then it is sustainable. But the trips are a clear aid to expansion meaning potentially a lot more revene generation. So it's actually in the interests of the company to do this from what he is saying.

eh, it was 40k for just one month. No mention of previous months and not enough information to predict future months. Not convinced it's sustainable given the information.

Last 6 months have been high enough to sustain this, but who knows that the future will bring. If ever income drops down, then one would simply stop this, and look for solutions that fit the income level.

I enjoy reading Max's posts, but find it odd how secretive he is about what his actual business is.

What would folks think of a chain of high-quality coworking sites in low-cost destinations -- so you'd be sure of having comfortable desks, big monitors, reliable bandwidth, whiteboards, and a projector when you need them?

I would use the hell out of such a thing, but I expect that I'm a pretty small niche market.

Possible prototype. Rick's "coworking retreat"

"The first location is on a remote island in Bocas del Toro, Panama, right on the ocean, by a coral reef, on an island with no cars. We use solar power, have running water, propane refrigerators, and, of course, reliable Wifi. We're right on the border to Costa Rica, and the closest airport is 30 min away by boat.

This is definitely a place for seriously adventurous souls - you can be working online one minute, and snorkel or kayak the next, or go for a hike in the jungle, or snorkel, waterski, ...

We have lots of space -- several common areas to hang out, and a place to stay for everyone. We plan to have 6-10 people there at a time... We have a cook who prepares breakfast and lunch; dinner is self-organized; there are a few restaurants in the area, or we cook together.

As far as I know, this is still a very new idea, and I'm curious how it works out... We're also looking for anchors/volunteers who would like to spend more time there and help run and improve the place, and to help shape the community. Any thoughts on the idea in general would also be appreciated."

http://www.cocovivo.com/

Cocovivo looks pretty neat. Could be a good working vacation for me.

However, there are no indications of cost that I can find -- anyone stayed there before?

From the contact page:

If you don't have time to contribute, you're welcome to offer a donation instead. (Our cost is roughly $20 per person per day, plus your own food consumption)

It really does sound like a cool idea.

This sounds really great. Are you solely looking for long-term guests, or could a group stay for...say...a week?

I don't know the guy. Send him an email - I'm sure he'll appreciate the inquiry.

I wonder what kind of business generates 40k a month with three people remotely scattered around the globe. Sounds like a pretty awesome model. Care to share?

iPhone mostly, and I'm not the only one, check out http://twitter.com/spreadsong, they make even more!

so most of your revenue comes from the "Art you should know" app, listed on cubeofm.com ? or do you have products not listed there?

Yes, I'm also curious. One iphone app generates 40k of income a month @ $.99 per unit? Interesting. I'm surprised more people aren't discussing that, rather than the "omfg you travel" and blar blar blar...

Totally agree...I'm pretty floored that this art app is generating $40k a month. Would not have guessed that. Congrats man. That's newsworthy.

He describes his business in a past HN post: "I sell apps on the app store. A lot of small cheap apps."

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1060019

It start to make sense when he talks about the people in China.

I do something similar, although not as lavish. I'm an independent consultant, and I typically work 4-5 weeks at home, and then co-locate for one week at the client to do planning and design for the next iteration. I've found this to be a perfect balance. I can relate to what he says about the isolation -- missing the camaraderie and sharing in small victories or frustrations. On the other hand, not having to drive into an office every day is bliss. It is a balancing act...you have to find what fits for you and your team.

Beside efficient communication and faster execution, the approach also helps break the lethargic monotony a one man show has to face, be it as a freelancer or an employee in a distributed team. One month 'off' is also a great way to say thanks to everyone for their endless hours and bang-head-against-wall solo session.

Before my time, IBM regularly held a WebSphere Services Technical Conference (WSTC) in Las Vegas and annually flew in a big portion of the team for a week to learn about the hottest features. I am sure my colleagues learned a lot, but the stories I am told these days about those days also go beyond and usually start with someone getting lost on The Strip at 3am.

It probably doesn't have to be that expensive though. I would assume that renting a house wouldn't take away too much from the experience and benefits but would be significantly cheaper (we had a house which could easily fit up to eight people at the ocean, 60km away from Venice in Italy for 500EUR/week). When the team is right, doing simple stuff such as cooking together can be quite fun and bonding.

A related approach: Designer Stefan Sagmeister gives up some of his retirement years and instead takes a one year 'creative break' every seven years. Here's his TED talk:

http://www.ted.com/talks/stefan_sagmeister_the_power_of_time...

So, are you hiring?

http://spreadsong.com/hiring_on_elance_how_to_get_amazing_pe...

> If you’re from India, it’s important to learn English, but it’s not critical. You can get by on Hindi- you can’t get by on Hungarian or Romanian.

I don't think that's true at all. You need to learn English to understand programming manuals, teachers, and reference guides. Effective communication is not required but understanding of the English language is a must.

Actually, you point out a flaw in this model. Hiring has to be very specific - you need people who you can hang around with for a month and they don't drive you crazy with their teeth grinding or something. So my hiring would have to be very careful and would have to lean towards people who are similar in age and interest to the rest of the team.

True. For our startup we experienced the same; we were working with a team of 3 and we could just camp out at one of our houses for a week and do dev'ing during the day and relaxing/drinking in the evenings. When we hired a 4th guy to help out these weeks turned from awesome and productive to a sluggish pita week. He produced great work but hanging around with him in the evenings was more stressing and tiring than all the work together.

Similar age and interest? You can't discriminate based on age or interest - that's illegal

I would not put out an ad asking for people to hire, rather I'd work with people on project basis, and if I found one that is a good fit, I'd ask him to join. Would that be illegal also?

Seems unlikely. Also, given how small your company is, it'd be nearly impossible for someone to prove you've discriminated based on any particular factor, as opposed to just being selective. Not enough employees to demonstrate a pattern. So I doubt this should even be a concern for you.

I assume you're talking about the US (apologies if you aren't) - interest is not a protected class.

The following are protected groups: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protected_class

I'll also state the obvious here - I'm not a lawyer and you shouldn't trust legal advice you receive on the internet.

In the real world, and especially in small companies, people eventually hire people they like and get a good feeling about. You're just not allowed to air your preferences in certain areas or restrict the /chance/ to different people. Behind closed doors, though, nothing is any better than before all these laws. If one didn't want to hire someone with quality "X", is their back-room thinking /really/ going to be entirely non-discriminatory? No chance.

Large companies can get in trouble if they seem to have a demographic pattern different from their industry, though. If you're the only Fortune 500 company in your industry that somehow has almost no black employees, someone will probably notice/sue, arguing that it's implausible you could have a demographic skew so much different from your competitors without a discriminatory policy (i.e. can't be explained just by the demographics of qualified people). Then they'll hope that during discovery they find some smoking-gun emails about it. But yeah, if you have 50 employees, nothing much will happen.

I totally agree. It won't work in big companies, but small companies staffed by small-minded (or, sometimes, simply "realistic") people make up a large chunk of the economy. Some discrimination laws even preclude companies under a certain size, because when you only have a handful of people, it can be both practical and necessary to hire to spec.

I guess a legal alternative is to headhunt rather than advertise positions. In the tech industry, I suspect this is a lot easier (thanks to open source, blogs, etc) than elsewhere. Surely there aren't laws against a company hunting down people they want to hire, rather than hanging out their shingle and waiting for people to submit résumés.

> Large companies can get in trouble if they seem to have a demographic pattern different from their industry, though.

Interesting metric. What happens if the difference comes about because you are more fair than your industry's average?

Say you have more female employees. Could a man sue you?

And how do you tell that `more fair' from `less fair'?

It's a gray area, but you usually have to show a pretty big difference that couldn't have been to due to anything but de facto discrimination of a kind that would've been illegal if it were official policy.

The main reason the idea was introduced was because, during the civil-rights era, a bunch of companies and even state/local governments abolished their official "no blacks" policies, but nonetheless unofficially still didn't hire blacks (or, if they had low-level black workers, had a de facto no-blacks-in-management policy). So the 1964 Civil Rights Act is intended to ban that sort of unwritten-rules discrimination. The background of Jim Crow laws was a motivator as well, since many didn't officially impose any restrictions on the basis of race, but used proxies that happened to correlate well with race; and the Civil Rights Act was intended to do away with all those roundabout methods, too.

Thanks for the explanation.

That's not a lot different from how you'd do hiring for a face-to-face company though.

For a big project, I once recommended to my boss to put us all on a yacht off Key West.

How'd it work out?

he smiled

What's his company called again? Why isn't it linked on his blog?

I was wondering this too. I assumed it was the homepage: http://www.cubeofm.com

But it doesn't have much on it and shows 1 or 2 iPhone apps which I'd be a little surprised if they were making $40k a month. What is the product or company?

OK, so how about some ideas for a bootstrapped company that is no where close to making $40k a month (yet)? In fact, we work remotely for the freedom it offers, but also because we can't afford a space.

It comes down to whether you can afford the flights to bring the team together.

If you can, get a regular, non-luxury cabin/summerhouse in the countryside for a week. Beer in the fridge, hamburgers on the grill and a bonfire at night works every bit as well as Bangkok nightlife for bonding.

Good internet might be an issue, but if you bring a 3G modem and a router, and spend some time setting up a server, so you can bring a local repository, build-server, test-server etc., you should be able to get by.

I've thought about equipping a summerhouse for this model, as a business (good chairs, good desks, good internet aren't usually found in summer houses), mostly aimed at teams that need to get out of the office to bond, kick-start a project etc.

just plain INTERESTING what a simple google search can tell you: www.cubeofm.com/todo/TodoListMaxKlein.pdf

PS: rather funny codename though

Just a quick comment: never tell the world how much you make, unless required by the law.

Why is that? I've seen similar advice elsewhere (for example, 37Signals doesn't disclose revenue etc) but I've never been sure of the reason.

Andrew Warner on the other hand talks about how he was initially uncomfortable with it but decided to do it based on the advice of the Neil Patel and it really helped him establish credibility and build traffic: http://mixergy.com/about/

I'll say one thing - nobody gave a shit about me till the very first time I posted revenue figures a few months ago. Then I went from 40 twitter followers to 300 in a couple of days or so.

Because when you start talking about good revenue numbers you bring in competitors to the market. This advice is especially true in markets with very low barriers to entry like iPhone apps. Would it be easy to duplicate what maxklein is currently doing? Probably not, but $40k/month is going get some people to at least try and those people may end up being his competitors.

Aren't there tax implications for "working" in another country?

Most countries would define "working" as earning money from an employer within that country itself, hence depriving citizens of that country of a prospective job.

That's wrong. I know from big corps that employees always have to ask for work permission when going to the US (or other countries) for things like development, even for one week. For most countries in the world you actually need a work permission to do that. Single exception is when you do customers meetings all the time and have a secretary typing for you.

Except no one can verify what you do exactly. You always tell the immigration officer at the airport (if he/she asks you) that you're visiting for "meetings". But who does meetings 9-5 every day for 2-3 weeks?

Basically you're OK as long as you don't get paid for your work there. My friend works in the oil/gas industry and he keeps flying to different countries frequently and works there for almost 3-4 weeks. But he doesn't get paid in that country (he gets some per-diem allowance but that's all).

There certainly can be - I had a colleague who was working in the US for our UK based company and after a mix up by the tax advisers he ended up being taxed twice.

Not if you're paid in your home country in your home currency. This is how consulting firms do it.

That may be true in some countries, but not all. When I was based in Canada, working on projects in the States, and paid in Canadian dollars, if I spent more than a certain amount of time in the US (I think it was 180 days), I was liable for taxes in the US. Due to the Canada/US tax treaty, I was not taxed twice, but I had to show that I had payed taxes in Canada equal or greater than what I owed in the States (not hard).

Depends on the country. Hong Kong is happy to have me for a month at a time without levying any taxes. In the US, not so much.

I suspect they're doing all of this while on tourist visas, which may or may not be entirely kosher depending on where they're traveling.

Of course, it's also extremely unlikely that they'll get caught (except, perhaps, as a result of bragging about it on the Internet...). A guy, or bunch of guys, sitting on the beach with laptops isn't exactly an atypical sight.

Still, they might want to pick their destinations based less on the quality of the beaches and nightlife, and with more consideration towards those which aren't going to try to skewer them for taxes or visa fees if their scheme gets found out.

I spend 6 months of my year living in N. Ireland while I continue to work for my US based company. The UK hasn't expressed any concern about this so far or asked me to file tax documents. If I was working for a UK company though that would be another matter.

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