from Hacker News

$1B Business Where All 700 Employees Work Remotely (2019)

by throwaway3157 on 3/11/20, 4:14 PM with 43 comments

  • by sys_64738 on 3/11/20, 4:35 PM

    If the majority are remote then it can work. Don’t be remote where the company is otherwise geo-located. Hallway conversations often make decisions.

  • by iamcasen on 3/11/20, 4:47 PM

    It really looks like this guy found his calling, good for him! I'm impressed his managed to keep his organization healthy with 700 remote employees, that takes some real business/management talent.

    In my own business, we are a remote team of 6 and we do pretty well. The way we've made it work so far is by doing very little collaboration, and instead opting to each have our own focus with little overlap. There are times when I'd really love to have some other engineers to whiteboard with and collaborate on difficult problems, but that seems impossible to do remotely. At least very easily.

  • by ng7j5d9 on 3/11/20, 4:34 PM

    Not trying to be snarky, but because I think it'll be meaningful to executives: What's the largest profitable remote-only company?

    Sure, your Gitlabs, Elastics, Sonatypes, etc, are remote-only, but they're still in VC-funded, money-losing, growth mode, AFAIK.

    Are there profitable remote-only companies that a more conservative, maybe even non-tech company could look at to get a warm fuzzy rather than being able to dismiss remote-only as a dalliance for tech bros lighting money on fire?

  • by sytse on 3/11/20, 6:02 PM

    I'd be happy to answer any questions about remote work. We've published extensively about this subject https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/guide/ and today we released a remote work emergency toolkit https://twitter.com/darrenmurph/status/1237771768020054016

  • by kuharich on 3/11/20, 7:20 PM

  • by cpach on 3/11/20, 5:51 PM

  • by PunchTornado on 3/11/20, 6:45 PM

    given the majority of coworkers are now remote due to coronavirus, I hate it. I miss just grabbing someone to my computer and have a chat about my problem. now I'll have to arrange a meeting, share screen and all, do you see it, do you hear me?

    plus in meetings remote workers rarely get the chance to speak. otherwise opinionated colleagues are now silent.

  • by dominotw on 3/11/20, 5:38 PM

    I think gitlab has a huge advantage in remote work as in their mission is clearly understood by their employees ( to clone github.com). Its a very outsourcable class of problem where requirements are clearly understood and employees aren't required to really come up anything new or innovative.

    I am yet to see a 100% remote company thats doing something brand new and innovative.