We're a new b2b saas company. We just made this exact decision (to locate in sfbay) and the decision not to hire remotely. Reasons to be here are basically we have a deep engineering network for hires, we raised $300k from local angels, most VCs we want to work with are local, and most of our desired customers have their hqs here.
Reasons not to be here are the absolutely ludicrous cost of housing and what that does to salary requirements.
But as a tiny company, execution speed is our single most important attribute and we couldn't work out how to work remotely without damaging that. I'm glad github and others have managed, but you have to wonder if they succeeded despite being remote.
ps -- I've worked remotely before. It's really nice not to start every goddamn meeting screwing with hangouts doesn't connect / lifesize hardware works great but doesn't connect well to mixed hardware + laptop calls / multiple zoom invites with different meeting rooms / go2meeting clients are shitty / etc.
Reasons not to be here are the absolutely ludicrous cost of housing and what that does to salary requirements.
But as a tiny company, execution speed is our single most important attribute and we couldn't work out how to work remotely without damaging that. I'm glad github and others have managed, but you have to wonder if they succeeded despite being remote.
ps -- I've worked remotely before. It's really nice not to start every goddamn meeting screwing with hangouts doesn't connect / lifesize hardware works great but doesn't connect well to mixed hardware + laptop calls / multiple zoom invites with different meeting rooms / go2meeting clients are shitty / etc.