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Comment by navyrain | Hacker News Reader

Allow for telecommuting. I'm surprised this gets so easily dismissed.

Seconded. I understand that SF is the place where all the cool kids play, but it's kind of sad that in this day and age of the internet we're still chained to desks in a particular location.

Another subtle reason telecommuting gets dismissed is that a lot of startups are looking for people who will grow into different leadership roles (architects, mentors, team leads, process drivers and hiring managers to name a few) and it's just much easier to identify those specific strengths in person.

You can call that laziness on management's part but managing remote team members also requires a different kind of discipline that many startups probably don't have yet.

I disagree. My company is a 100% remote workforce, and identifying standouts isn't terribly difficult. I would argue that the fact that everyone is working remotely makes the entire process much more objective, as you don't fall into the standard judgement traps that are well known in face to face interactions. When I'm trying to decide whether a team member should be moved into a team lead role, I'm evaluating them solely on their communication skills, code quality (by looking at commit history), and their effectiveness during meetings. I don't honestly feel like I miss anything by not having onsite interactions.

Great points. Management decisions should be supported by objective data as much as possible but, management can't always get the data it needs to make those decisions and there will always be some uncertainty/subjectivity that requires extra digging to be resolved (and my favorite managers always dig extra hard for the data). My point is just that many startups don't come from virtual team backgrounds and as such won't even begin to know how to fill in the gaps when there isn't perfect information in managing remote teams. This is particularly exacerbated if there is already a local team with a specific communication culture built that clashes with the way the remote team prefers to communicate and neither party recognizes the incongruity.

Once I'm looking to hire someone a thousand miles a way I might as well look for someone cheap on the other side of the planet. A telecommuter in Arkansas is in the same job market as all the guys in Bangalore, not the guys in SF.

Why cheap? Once you cannot find someone good within 10 miles away is that a reason not to find someone good 500 or 5000 miles away?

As with most things, you get what you pay for. If you look to hire someone cheap from the other side of the planet, don't expect them to perform as well as the guy hacking on your SF startup from Seattle.

I'm on the other side of the planet, and I'm not that cheap. I mean, sure, with a SF-level salary you can hire 2 people like me, but you shouldn't expect of me to work for peanuts either.

And sure, you can find devs that are willing to work for 1000 USD per month, but good developers want good salaries, regardless of their location. And emphasizing on cheap will bring you shitty results.

Personally I would hire people from all over the planet not because it's cheaper, but because the poll of talent is bigger and you can find people specialized for the job you need a lot quicker, giving you a better ROI.

Btw, I like working with americans as you guys generally seek value over price better than any other nationality I interacted with, but on the other hand I'm amazed at how few startups are doing offshoring, especially since startups, IMHO, need it the most.

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