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Remote Work: Hiring, recruiting, and essential tools

by garry on 4/1/20, 3:38 PM with 14 comments

• by remmargorp64 on 4/1/20, 6:24 PM

  I just want to share my favorite remote work pair programming tool for MacOS: Tuple

  https://tuple.app/

  It has much better screen sharing than any of the other commonly used tools (Zoom/Slack/Skype/VNC, etc) with higher resolution, very low latency, and no distracting overlaying UI components (I can't emphasize how important this particular issue is to me).

  It's essentially a reborn and upgraded version of ScreenHero (from back before Slack bought them out and then utterly destroyed what was so great about it).

  I am not affiliated with Tuple in any way, but I want their product to succeed because I love it so much, so I evangelize it whenever I can!

• by jefflombardjr on 4/1/20, 6:43 PM

  > One thing that we're really big on is, wherever we can, we'll engage in a paid trial, or a paid test of some kind. For engineers, this is rather straightforward. We'll basically just ask what their desired hourly or day rate is, and we'll put them on a modular project for them to work on. That kind of doesn't require being highly integrated with the rest of the team.

  This is great for the company. But for the candidate, I'm not convinced.

  If I'm a W2 employee, I don't have any interest in complicating my tax return for a couple of days trial contract. Realistically, how much more are you going to learn about me in that time frame over a 1-2 hour technical interview.

  Some plan on a longer trial contract - I see alot of 3-6 month contract-to-hire situations. This still isn't good enough because in startups the candidate will miss out on stock vesting. In large companies the candidate will be 'other'... there is a clear divide between FTE's and contractors at most large corps/there is a risk that the project might change/role availability will change.

  If a company is serious about hiring employees. I'm convinced w2 from the start is the best.

  It sends the message - we trust you, you belong, you're a part of our team. There can definitely be a probationary period, and there should be a more stringent hiring process. To me this is about signaling. If a company isn't willing to hire full time I think one of the following: 1. You don't have enough funding to do this right. 2. You don't know how to properly interview people. or 3. You think this is being generous but in reality don't fully understand the implications.

  Remote work is about trust. If you don't trust someone - you don't have any business hiring them. Even in the current covid situation I'm seeing people hesitant to hire remotely. It's crazy. It's so much easier to slack off in an office than in a properly setup remote team.

  Contractors are great for remote as well. But set clear expectations - straddling between contractor and employee is counter productive.

• by Finbarr on 4/1/20, 6:07 PM

  Had a lot of fun doing this. Thanks to Garry and Katelin for the opportunity. Happy to answer any questions. AMA.

• by joelrunyon on 4/1/20, 7:16 PM

  One of the things that people are running into is Zoom link overload. My days are back to back

  One thing I don't think they included is scheduling meetings - beyond just a calendly availability.

  I've been using https://Woven.com to coordinate work availability for the past year and it's really helped me get a handle on my time.

  I think time & calendars are going to be the next tools people are really going to need as they have to do a lot more self-directed remote owkr.

• by steve76 on 4/1/20, 5:30 PM

  For the reverse, working remotely, I found:

  - Define a product instead of taking orders.

  - Don't be afraid to cut bait.

  - Work the job while quoting.

  - Clients are not equipped to provide technical direction.

  Maxing out the ratings on Upwork only finds people who work towards that rating, sometimes even complete offshore teams.