Comment by _jal | Hacker News Reader

Comment by _jal | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

My company went fully remote. Moved the office out of SF proper to avoid the Twitter Tax and downsized it, now it can only hold about half the locals, and most days nobody goes in.

At the same time, we started hiring without geographic concern. The mandate became get the best folks you can, we don't care where they are[1].

It has worked out well for us. We've gone heavily international, and grown our customer base and expanded markets at a slightly faster faster pace than we were before going remote. (I don't think going remote did that - more capital and people did. But it didn't hurt.)

And maybe we're just selecting for folks who like remote work now, but I don't know of anyone who wants to go back to the old days.

[1] With some exceptions, some managers want people in the same timezone, some roles are inherently place-bound, etc.

Maybe a part of the problem is that the two work patterns are suitable for much different personalities, but when switching from all-in-office to remote, the mix of personalities leads to lower aggregate productivity. E.g. someone who needs a periodic tap on the shoulder (nothing wrong with that, I've known plenty of people like this) might do very poorly in a much more loose environment. Of course it could be argued that this is a badly executed remote switch, which could be worked on, but still - I'd guess that when starting out hiring for full remote, you preselect a group that works well in that environment.

My company had a similar experience. They were a smaller Bay Area company only hiring locally, then went remote and expanded their candidate search. They were able to get a much better selection of candidates after they started hiring remotely.

Any kind of return to office is now impossible. Their (now much smaller office) can only hold about 5% of the employees, and the vast majority of employees are now scattered throughout the United States. Not even the founders or any of the executives live near the office anymore; they're all scattered geographically as well.

I was hired as part of the wave of remote hiring, and it seems to me based on the stories I hear from those that worked there in the pre-remote times that the switch to remote hiring really worked out well for them.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com