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Comment by famousactress | Hacker News Reader

"Location—you can’t get the true RG cult effect working remotely, so only apply if you live in NYC or are willing to relocate."

I wish companies would stop saying this shit. The honest translation is usually "We have no idea what it would mean to run a remote team and there's so much on our plates right now that we're not putting any energy into considering it"

Which is fine! I'd much rather people say that than this "It's impossible to be as awesome as we are without sitting next to each-other" bullshit. It has the downside of sending the message to others that you might know what you're talking about, via actual experience.

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It's perfectly possible that they know exactly what it would take to run a remote team, and have decided that the additional overhead isn't worth it for their current stage.

It's also possible that they are completely clueless about what it would take. It appears they live and work out of the same space. This doesn't strike me as a particularly mature company.

Possible? Sure. Likely? Not remotely. Additional overhead? Not in my experience. Sounds like more speculation. At this point I'm comfortable with the bet I made in calling it out.

Hate the game, not the player. I am constantly frustrated with misdirected criticism of the companies locked into nash equilibrium.

Hiring is extremely competitive and if they dont maintain hype(if thats your preferred term) levels they will be overtaken by hundreds of other startups and consequently RapGenius may lose valuable talent.

So the company should lose their competitive advantage in a important business process to accomodate your arbitrary raging? Not going to happen unless everyone does so.

Want to change something for the better? Change incentives and punishments for players and steer them in the right direction. Using "shit" as an argument makes HN quality of discussions worse.

"Location: not NYC. I just want to get the $1k, so interview me please." :-D

Doesn't this show that $1k is a wrong incentive in the first place?

Working remotely gets boring. I love relocating. New environment, culture, people, and having drinks with your team after a long day of work is probably one of the primary things I live for haha.

I feel like I'm the only one who would absolutely LOVE to work at Rapgenius, and I think this $1000 incentive is really frigging awesome.

Good luck to whoever gets in.

Relocating sucks for people with homes, families, childhood friends, etc. I live where I live (Portland, ME) because I LOVE it here. The market for tech is not here (yet, it's growing), so I work remotely for a NYC company.

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