A Change of Scenery for Startups
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
For software development, especially, there's really no reason a whole company couldn't be entirely "remote", except that the tooling around it isn't very good.
2.) Remote work is easier when you have fixed analysis, easy to split into individual modules. Startups tend to be in more chaotic "figuring out what we are going to do", trying this and that to see what works phase - making it even more difficult.
3.) Major appeal of startups is lifestyle - ping pong table, staying together overnight, going to pub together and so on and so forth. Remote workers don't fit into that.
#3: I've always been of the mindset that culture is a carrot to try to work down salary (I may be totally wrong.) I think there's a ton of developers out there who either don't care about those things or who that lifestyle is incompatible (say they have a family). I think it's ironic how the tech industry supposedly embraces diversity, so long as you're in your mid-twenties, without kids, and like craft beer.
#3: I agree with you and see those perks as sign of workplace incompatible with family (or with having friends who are not colleagues). I also consider them incompatible with real meritocracy - your ability to be highly social is more important to your career then your ability to produce (including ability to communicate in work oriented situations). However, startups attract and want to attract different crowd of people, so I am acknowledging it as a reality.
Edit: I also found it easier to explain things to juniors in person. A lot of learning (both ways) happened out random remarks or simple questions nobody would call about. The industry should have place for juniors too, for future sake.
#2 Again, not often seen this; unless you start with juniors only (which, personally, I don't think is a good idea; at least get a good tech advisor) it is perfectly fine to build complete tech companies remotely. Two succesful companies I had were done with people I have never met in person. One of them I never even 'voice talked' to. Yet they were highly technical and solid.
#3 Ping pong tables is at least 10 years ago. Like someone else said; fussbal tables, ping pong tables and pinball machines are even in stale old companies now. Staying together late, for many young people, can be done over Skype, although I am older, I often do it and it works akin to being there. Going to the pub, yes, for that you need to fly over, but no need to do TGIF every week, so flying over is not a problem.
I've seen a ping-pong table at a major bank (not to mention more relaxed companies). Right now, startups need to try harder in terms of "culture" perks - dog-friendly startup offices seem to be on the rise for example.
And if you have people in different time zones, then the asynchronous nature of email becomes very useful.
But people don't like to write. This initially surprised me because I love to write. But many people don't. Even people who went through great colleges and who must have written many papers -- they hate to write. I notice it most with salespeople, who are very extroverted. They are good talkers, they feel like they are at their weakest when writing.
In many startups it is crucial that there be good communication between the sales team and the tech team. And if the salespeople feel they are best with verbal communication, then that is a good reason to get everyone into the same room together.
Not every startup needs a sales team, but some do. If you have a product that will be sold to enterprises, then you need a sales team. And most of your feedback, about what the customer really wants, will come through the sales team. So the tech needs good communication with the sales team.
So there are some problems with remote work which I don't think will ever be solved.
A full remote team has a big handicap on that.
Practically every large open source project is coordinated over the internet with limited face to face time, so the concept works well at some level at least.
Given that the model works in theory, it's surprising there aren't many startups trying to go the last mile to make remote working better for a general audience.
Similarly, web programming was over a decade old when Rails was started. You could build Rails as an open-source project. You couldn't build, say, LoudCloud, or Netscape, or Google, or ViaWeb, or any of the other web 1.0 companies where the process of building webapps was not well-understood.
Virtually all profits in the tech industry are made by companies with a short-term monopoly on the technology involved. By the time a problem-domain is solved well by an open-source project, by definition, there is no money in it. Ergo, teams that want to make a lot of money will work on projects where communication costs make remote work very challenging.
Also, the project lead in such project don't pay that distributed team and is not responsible for their effectivity nor turnover, hiring, promotions, salary negotiations etc. Majority of Linux kernel developers are paid for development, but they are paid by various third party organizations.
However for startups willing to pay market or above (while still saving $ compared to SF/SV), there's no reason you can't go remote.
Mono-culture in SV is well known. First, it's simply not possible for poor and middle class people to live there and have any kind of normal life. Second, it's well known (often reported by the companies themselves) that most SV tech companies are dis-proportionally made up of white (and some asian) men.
The mono-culture often makes SV look out of touch with reality. Products like Juicero and Soylent, come to mind. The way Uber has handled sexual harassment claims, is another example. There are examples all over the place.
The only advantage silicon valley has anymore is ready access to money but even that is going away with more VCs paying attention to other areas of the country
Silicon Valley has essentially slit its own throat by pricing out young entrepreneurs and adopting a wall st lite culture imo
The paper title essentially sums up what is interesting: The idea that the culture of startups (build fast, test assumptions, iterate, etc.) is starting to make it's way outside of tech centers, with great benefit.