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Ask HN: Why are fewer companies doing remote

10 points by ruffrey ↗ HN
my general experience is that software startups are not doing distributed teams as much as it seemed like they used to. This is not exactly backed by data - which seems contradictory lately too.

Does anyone know why? Or is my experience skewed?

(links to reliable data would be amazing, too)

9 comments

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phantom_oracle
Maybe using Google and their "trending" tool and searching for: remote software jobs

Might yield some data.

The volume (vs. quality) of remote jobs over time might be another source.

There are plenty crap Work From Home jobs. It is the high-paying software-engineer jobs that matter (from an HN perspective).

eshvk
Because it is a hard problem to solve. I think most good organizations make remote work an exception rather than the rule.

I think the reason is because very few people are able to manage the trials of working for a large organization and work remote. It involves being able to distinguish between when to converse via the written text and when to get ready to jump on a call or talk face to face. Consequently, it also imposes an overhead on the part of the non-remote team to assiduously convert all in-person/ad hoc conversations into text and loop the remote person in.

It also sometimes necessitates a person who is able to be high functioning and effectively independent of the rest of the team.

Now in cases where both of these are possible, I can imagine a startup letting some people do remote. Personally, I would think of this as an unnecessary overhead if I were to start an early stage startup.

vinceyuan
I have the experience of working remotely. The biggest problem is in communication. I think that's why most companies don't accept remote.
jtfairbank
Working remote is especially hard for small startups to do because it limits speed, adds overhead, and most importantly excludes an early member from adding directly to the culture. The startups I know either do not allow remote work at all, or have almost an entirely remote team / culture (> 50%).
mswen
100% remote can work just fine for start-ups. That way everyone gets used to the communication methods. I was part of a team that built an award winning platform that was eventually acquired. We had people scattered around the US and in India. Technologically it was a success but sales traction sucked and so we disbanded but eventually the founder located a larger company willing to buy the technology platform and he joined as their CTO to adapt it to their needs. Would we have succeeded on the sales side if we were all in one place? I don't think so but it is unknowable at this point.
danieltillett
I have often wondered if the remote communication problem (ie the remote team members being out of the casual conversation loop) could be solved with enough bandwidth. In theory you should be able to stream the office environment between all team members.
milspec
It's horribly insecure to keep the company's source code on a computer with a connection to the Internet. For example, this is how the F-35 secrets wound up in China.