Ask HN: What prevents you from hiring remote workers? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What prevents you from hiring remote workers?

3 pointskentich8 comments

There are many innovative remote work products on the market these days.

It looks as if there are products for anything - from hiring to training to creating virtual co-working spaces, etc.

For example, here is a product for training/evaluating remote employees: https://www.background.webcam/

For creating virtual co-working spaces: https://ovice.in/

And there are too many products/platforms for hiring to mention here.

What is still missing?

What prevents you personally (as a CEO) from hiring remote workers?

Your opinion is very appreciated!

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We have remote employees but it is harder due to the following hurdles:

- State specific employment laws in the US. We are in NJ and if I hire out of state, we need to register a business in that new state. Large companies have money and teams for this. Smaller companies, not that easy. I have done it personally so speaking with experience

- Internal hiring can add more issues. SUre we could find a EOR or just do 1099 etc but it is never that simple. I lost a good senior candidate recently because he wasn't comfortable working as a contractor legally since he is in the UK and he would have preferred local UK benefits/tax system etc. He didn't want the hassle of doing his own invoicing etc. We looked into EORs but didn't seem good enough for just 1 person.

- Tax, Labor and Legal implications due to the point above

- Timezone issues. No, a fully remote job cannot be completely asynchronous even in tech. You have to be available for the team whether it is meetings, urgency or collaboration in general. If you want to be fully async, you are better off working as a freelancer (even then, you will need to meet your clients though)

- Remote work in my opinion requires a higher level of discipline, honest and integrity. Yes, I truly believe that as I have experience hiring some terrible remote workers (outright liars) vs some of the best ones. The best ones have all those qualities. Not that easy to find. Lot of people need a bit of discipline frankly and remote work makes it even harder.

It is not that we don't want to hire remotely. We do but the barrier to entry is higher in my opinion especially for smaller companies.

To be honest, one thing which blocks me is people being productive -- although WFH has benefits for work-life balance, people tend to get distracted and produce less than they would otherwise.

My bias currently is to hire and ask someone to come into an office for 3 days a week for several months if they're looking to work remote full time or relocate.

I would like to comment on something slightly tangential. With all this remote talk (other posts as well), you would think pre-pandemic 100% of people were in the office, but people seem to forget most tech companies have always hired some form of outsourcing in other countries and timezones.

For more than a decade I have been working with people in China, India, Mexico, etc., and now some people pretend like WFH is going to change everything. It's a bit hypocritical on the part of companies, and I suspect it's purely because they perceive WFH to be for cheaper, outsourced labor.

This is true, however on the whole hiring remote/off-shore usually implied a cluster of people working together in an office, so you get some synergies in terms of communication/collaboration as well as culture -- but it didn't mean people working from home.

Having a close tribe with strong morale can be powerful. It is in our DNA. Building a company of people who can answer brain teaser questions on a webcam is short sighted. Creativity is more powerful than intellect. But I digress. I've read Remote: Office Not Required, I've done plenty of remote freelancing, I'm not convinced.

I would imagine: immigration issues, tax implications, difficulty of learning unusual environment remotely (such as custom language or tools), old school management insecurity and no shortage of workers.

Complexity/costs/uncertainty of hiring employees located in states other than the one our business is located in.

Thank you everybody for sharing your thoughts!

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