Comment by incanus77 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by incanus77 | Hacker News Reader

This is such a smart move.

I was one of the first two simul-hire remotes at Mapbox (when the company was ~12 people) and, until I left in 2017, the longest-term remote there at seven years. I've been fully remote for thirteen years. At Mapbox, I unofficially took on the role of internal advocate for remote culture. It wasn't always easy to be remote, but as the company grew, Eric, the CEO, was fond of saying that "everyone is remote" since more and more physical hubs for work sprang up across many timezones. It was a tough balance, particularly as increasingly more work and customer opportunities centered around the Bay Area, and the spiritual heart of the company switched coasts from the official HQ in DC to the larger and faster growing office in SF.

Personally, I can't overstate how much being a remote employee and even freelancer has impacted my quality of life and my opportunities. For the most part, I was able to focus on my work and hook in to the rest of my teammates as needed. The best times of this were when the company engineering culture was very asynchronous and allowed for it. Slack and always-on expectations, as well as much more complex software in later years, made this more difficult, but still manageable.

It wasn't without struggle, though. Often it was lonely, isolating, I felt out of the loop on some decisions, I didn't get some in-jokes and nicknames, I missed the non-holiday parties and happy hours, etc. Even with that stuff aside, it takes a real commitment from the leadership to fully integrate remote team members. Kudos to Stripe for putting themselves out there and holding themselves accountable to the goal with a public statement and metrics.

The key snippet from the Stripe announcement is this:

> improve our ability to tap the 99.74% of talented engineers living outside the metro areas of our first four hubs

The future of much of the technical work that needs to happen is remote, and I'm glad to see Stripe embrace that.

"Often it was lonely, isolating, I felt out of the loop on some decisions, I didn't get some in-jokes and nicknames, I missed the non-holiday parties and happy hours, etc."

I am in this boat now. . . and find it really tough. Many others I know feel the same way but it is rarely talked about. How do you get over the social isolation of being remote?

There are really two different things in that quote.

Being out of the loop on decisions is a combination of a company with a mix of remotes and company locations who would benefit from better documentation/communications practices. In practice, it's also something remote workers often just need to be more proactive about.

The latter is really about separating work as social activity from work as work. You arguably lose something in the process but, if you're remote in a different location, you're not going to be at work happy hours, other gatherings, or software league. What you can do is join other local groups of your choosing.

There are two parts to this: work and your local community.

For work, you're not going to do it alone. Someone on the HR side (or just general management, if the company is still quite small) is going to have to be a willing sounding board for remote employee concerns.

On the social side, this might be supporting a policy (as Mapbox did, maybe still does) of flying remotes to the holiday and other big parties, as well as, if able, just having them in every month or two to work alongside the non-remotes and make those connections. When I first started, I'd fly from Portland to DC for a week every 6-8 weeks. It helped that I lived in DC prior for five years (before Mapbox), so it felt like a natural connection.

On the technical and process side, we had a policy of things not existing (or not existing properly) unless they were in written form. This included decisions, context, back-and-forth reasoning, announcements, etc. We used GitHub for non-code "tickets" this way, almost like an internal blog and topic-focused discussion forum. This broke down in later years, but even to the scale of dozens of people was a great way to make sure that being 3,000 miles away and three hours "behind" wasn't as isolating.

For the local community part, go to meetups. Organize a weekly/biweekly social gathering with likeminded friends or peers. Work in coffee shops or other places out of the house. I found that I went stir crazy when I first started remote, because I wouldn't leave the house and needed some human contact. Placing all of that expectation on your employer and not on yourself is unreasonable. It takes effort.

> On the technical and process side, we had a policy of things not existing (or not existing properly) unless they were in written form. This included decisions, context, back-and-forth reasoning, announcements, etc. We used GitHub for non-code "tickets" this way, almost like an internal blog and topic-focused discussion forum.

We are working on making this process more scalable at Aether’s Pro version, it is especially useful for remote companies as you mentioned. It helps that we are a remote company as well, eating your own dog food is the fastest way to improve. If you’d like to get on the pilot, hit me up and I’ll add you in.

I can't speak for the parent commenter, but for the loneliness aspect I found a coworking space that is focused on community. It's a bunch of remotes and freelancers, so you see the same folks every day. It's kind of a "third place," although I guess that it's a second place since we all work here.

I think it really depends on the person. I had the same feelings of being isolated and not really getting to know everyone. I ended up getting an office job which is great. I love seeing people and having a separation of work and home.

I know others who now do remote and absolutely love it. From what I understand though they are in my same situation but it just doesn’t bother them. It all depends on your personality and what you are looking for.

Perhaps find a local coop workspace where you can go meet other engineers in your situation but then is that even remote anymore?

I agree. It's not really remote if you have replaced the office with some other office that others expect you to be in all the time.

The main reason I still don't work remote is because all the remote roles seem to pay so much less than my non-remote role(s).

Is that common? Anyone else find that?

I've seen 3 general schools of thought on remote pay:

- its a global talent pool, so in raw dollars everyone should be on a level playing field (ie, compete for SF Bay wages no matter where you are in the world since that is generally the top wage market)

- market rate for your current location (ie, whenever you choose to reside, you get paid an amount that provides a comfortable standard of living there, somewhat influenced by what local wages for your role would be - we won't round down if you're in a place where dev salaries are unusually low relative to other industries, but we will round up a bit to be competitive if you're in a market where they're high)

- "remote is a perk" so take less pay in exchange for the freedom

Personally, I currently work at a shop who is doing the second version and everyone seems happy enough with it. I'd never work somewhere who was trying to pitch remoteness as part of the comp package, and I think there are only a handful of companies out there who peg their wages to the most expensive markets in the world (I generally see this kind of position pushed by self-branded "expats" who want to metaphorically live like kings in cheap areas).

Unfortunately there are a lot of companies who have decided they're going to go remote as a cost-savings measure, and that cost-savings mentality permeates everything about the business - including trying to sell being remote as a perk with value and lower wages to go with it.

Well said. I think you're right on the mark with many companies trying to pitch the "remote is a perk" thing and then paying less.

Remote as a cost-cutting measure is the same as offshore, with the same poor results. There is no emphasis on quality; you've traded that dimension for some balance of cost & functionality.

As soon as you move beyond trivial software projects the true effort is in the domain which depends on visibility and communication. You can do this with remote but I think it actually costs more outside of all but the highest tier labour markets.

We really need to work to define remote as a supply sourcing solution and kill the notion of a cost control solution, otherwise we'll never be able to build fully integrated delivery teams out of globally-distributed people.

For sure - if you make all of the same mistakes with remote teams that companies are so prone to making with offshoring companies (little to no integration into the rest of the business, little vetting of individual contributors, using metrics to incentivize all of the wrong kinds of behavior, chasing low costs instead of skill and business value) you'll get all of the same typically-horrible results.

My company offshores, has remote only roles, has an in-house office, and wework offices across captial cities. They also pay their workers based on where the company headquaters is, not their locale.

Work of the future will need to be flexible. I envisage the rat race of the future being for unskilled labour.

As a dev who has worked in lucrative markets (defence contractor, tech-citys) for 10+ years, ive just taken a paycut (30%) to go remote only.

Everyone trades things off differently. I couldnt be more happier. When i was making more money; i had more debt and less time. That equation only gets higher as you get more senior. So yeh, i couldnt care less a google grad is making more then me - i dont work for an evil company, i can work flexibly, i can do overtime without having to travel, i can literly get in my car, travel 1000miles, setup my 4g next to a beach, and goto work. When i have a children i dont have to be an absent parent.

Money / Time / Happiness. Pick 2.

Some countries are just cheaper to employ in. That dooes not mean that people there are any less talented.

I have been working remotely for the last 3 years. I'm a pretty social creature and after doing it for about 2 weeks I was already feeling pretty lonely!... For me, joining a co working space was excellent, can't recommend highly enough

I’ve worked remotely for most of the last 10 years. Don’t buy into the idea that work is your community or social life. That isolation can drive you to go places where people hang out after work (I met most of my friends at the climbing gym), get involved in clubs, etc. work sociality is a weak proxy for real community anyway.

Also, I always work from coffee shops, because I like having humans around.

The truth is that almost half of our non-sleeping lives are spent in the workplace. We are inherently social animals (if not the most social animal on the planet). You've pointed out that there are lots of avenues for socializing outside of work, but I think it may be important for humans to socialize in the workplace too since we spend so much time there. It seems like we are wired to want to gather around the water-cooler and chat. As you mention, there's something quite natural about "wanting humans around".

One way to achieve this need to socialize is to work out of a co-working space or coffee shop.

one practical approach I actually learned from Stripe is to prioritize remote. This can be pretty superficial, like remote always goes first in our daily stand-up, to more material - they don't always get it, but I always consider them first for project assignment, team representation at inter-departmental meetings, etc. Maybe this "affirmative action" could be viewed as unfair, but it's way too easy to ignore and marginalize remote teammates if you don't continually fight the bias.

Stay at hostels, go to coworking spaces.

When building remote teams, we've tried to hire within common geographic areas, so the regional team can meet once per week at a Starbucks or co-working space of their choosing.

The commute may be up to a 1 hour for some members, but it addresses the isolation challenge.

We also try to bring the entire company together in-person once per year an at annual tech conference.

So, not really remote. More like a "work from home" style.

A good remote culture allows someone in any timezone to be part of it or it loses the greatest advantage of remote working.

If working together is the only social activity the person has, he's not cut out for remote work.

Work from home, but primarily accountable to teams in other timezones. The regional teams coordinate their own in-person activities.

Culturally, the concept of remote work is not well understood in countries like the Philippines and India. The occasional social "meeting" is more to convince their family members they have a "real job" with physical place of business.

I would think skeptical families would be convinced by the (hopefully) fat checks in the mail.

For me personally, be proactive and step up the communication. You wouldn't hesitate to walk over to a co-workers desk and shoot the shit or ask a question about something, so you can't hesitate to call them either.

It feels weird and intruding to me still after years of doing it, but it works. I don't feel left out, I don't feel isolated, and while I often feel like an annoyance, everyone tells me that isn't the case.

Also, make sure the communication systems work well. It's invaluable to me to be able to make a video call and just have it work, to turn that one on one call into a group call, to share my screen and notes, to know that everyone on the team has a headset and knows how to use it.

Without that, it just makes the communication that much harder, which amplifies those feelings of isolation and being an "outsider".

I attend a lot more meetups and coffee meetings, myself.

At LightStep where I work we have company wide coffee chats which are fortnightly 30 minute randomly assigned groups of two or three with no agenda, a weekly “virtual water cooler” which is 30 minutes, and my team has a randomly assigned weekly one on one chat as well.

They’re super pleasant and a great way to break up the day and they really help me get to know the people I work with on a personal level.

I would really recommend setting something like that up with your teammates and coworkers or at least being an advocate for such a thing!

There are advantages and disadvantaged to being remote.

One way of getting over isolation is to work in a share office. But even getting out to the library, or a cafe can be good. I used to work in different places, Museums with wifi, art centers, Uni's, almost anywhere.

The lack of parties and happy hours is music to my ears, personally. I can't stand these events, and they often work in the service of this strange social construct that we all know and love - "culture." At some point socializing with your teammates outside of working hours became part of the job. Its strange really, to almost force these things on people, as it doesn't even serve to strengthen the team bond that much. Soldiers don't bond at the bar, they bond on the field; they socialize at the bar.

Loneliness and isolation is often cited as a downside of remote work, but as someone who doesn't like to mix work/personal and has a healthy personal social life, I just can't see it being an issue for everyone.

Also a former Mapbox employee, and the effort that you put in to making it a remote-friendly culture showed in huge ways. I've carried those lessons to other companies, and I'm really grateful for your work <3

What were some of the key lessons or most impactful things?

Some of my key lessons were:

- remote-first meetings; is someone is remote / in another office, everyone takes the call from their laptops. That way no one ends up being forgotten on a screen in a room full of people.

- habitually reverting to written communication, so that information doesn't get lost in 1:1 conversations. That means writing thought processes into tickets, so folks can search for things later. We worked across 3 timezones (including PT to IST, ~12 hours off) so async communication was key.

- not having a central office. "Everyone is remote" wasn't perfect, but there wasn't a true home office in the same way as my current company. For example, it was considered rude to "@here" in the general chat channel for things like donuts, because hey, many folks are in other states/countries, and don't need to hear about y'alls treats. Little things like that make a big difference in employee experience.

Hey Justin, we miss you very much! Happy to see you chime in here.

> it takes a real commitment from the leadership to fully integrate remote team members

This is so true. I thought this would only be manageable for relatively small companies, and that it was natural for Silicon Valley companies to loose this culture as they grow rapidly, so it's very inspiring to see this kind of commitment from a company as large as Stripe.

> improve our ability to tap the 99.74% of talented engineers living outside the metro areas of our first four hubs

Bbbut the only good engineers are in the Bay Area!!!! /s

Most of them are in tech hubs like the bay area. I know it's popular to dismiss that view as unjustified arrogance or whatever, but I've actually made a living in the Midwest and other "not a tech hub" locations. The difference in interest and ability cannot be overstated: my colleagues in SF are heads and shoulders above the typical developer I worked with in those other places.

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