[ecwilson]

Others have mentioned this to some extent, but what I've found the most challenging is when a company tries to do both local and remote, but was not remote-first. People who are remote are de-facto second-class citizens by virtue of the fact that they aren't included in hallway conversations or casual meetings. It's incredibly hard to overcome that. Teams that started remote-first are already well-practiced in inclusion and remote rapport-building, so it's less of an issue for them. But people who have the opportunity to meet locally and build rapport locally tend to get lazy and their remote muscles atrophy over time, unless they are making a very conscious effort, or the habits have already been deeply ingrained in them over time.

I'd add that this culture-setting rolls down from management -- if they aren't setting a good example, others will falter and the remote-supporting culture will fall apart.

Things like payroll, taxes, infrastructure are all solvable today, IMO, with the right resources or tools.

[Benjammer]

>I'd add that this culture-setting rolls down from management -- if they aren't setting a good example, others will falter and the remote-supporting culture will fall apart.

As someone who works at HQ for a local-first company with a significant contingent of remote workers in two satellite offices, it's _exhausting_ to be the developer in the corning who has to say "can we make sure the remote guys can hear OK" or "got a ping from Dan, remote guys aren't getting sound" in every single meeting.

Our office infra guy got a microphone with a padded box around it that you can toss around during the full company meetings so remote people can hear audience questions. The execs talking at these meetings have never once said "hey make sure we pass around the mic," it is always someone sending a text onto the big presentation hangout screen from a remote office saying "can you repeat the questions too please?" while the mic sits there on the little table right fucking next to the main speaker every single time.

When the managers and leadership don't care enough to prioritize it, it's almost impossible to change the culture around supporting remote team members.

[randycupertino]

But why should the local team all have to suffer and endure this hassle just so a few randos can enjoy their life being digital nomads? remote workers chose their bed, they knew the risks, they should deal with it.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

Or, those employees are good, they are strong part of the company and with your life-threatening sacrifice you can... Pass the damn microphone around and get everyone included. Including people who are (not) digital nomads, live in the same city as yours but decided that growing up their kids rather than dropping them at childcare brings more value to society than the next meeting where a company care so much about you that they don't even bother passing around a microphone?

[bwb]

Ya I tend to think you need to run entirely remote, or entirely in offices. Or... you have your remote team running entire projects with an entirely sep organization, although that is hard and I am not aware of any organizations doing it well.

Biggest challenges?

Communications - I think every company has this problem but if you don't solve it when you are remote it will crush the company eventually. Whereas an office company can be shitty at communications and still do ok.

Execution... - LOL, I feel silly saying this but if your devs are split all over it is hard to collaborate, esp depending on speed and size. You need really great organization, focus, and just the right amount of meetings. You also need to do that in a way that gives them the ability to write code without checking in with someone every 10 min or stepping on toes. Esp if you are crossing big time zones, you have to really think and plan who is working on what, and it might even affect the entire design of the app...

quick background - grew a 100% company to ~135 people in 18 countries. Mix of software and dev ops and customer service.

[fro0116]

My previous employer eventually decided to limit hiring to North American time zones so there's a good amount of working hours overlap between team members for actual synchronous collaboration. Without that, we've found it's really hard for a remote team to match to the level of productivity of a fully-in-office team.

[DoofusOfDeath]

Agreed. I've worked for a remote-first company, and another company where for a while I was the only remote employee. The difference has been tremendous.

I'm sure there are some special circumstances where being the only remote worker on a team works out ok, but my experience has been horrible.

[eloff]

As a remote worker my entire career, I can't more strongly emphasize this point. This is the biggest single factor between whether it works for a company or not. I'd argue it's even more important than hiring the best people. A remote first company with B engineers will likely be more effective than a company with A engineers that gets that wrong, especially at larger team sizes.

[vram22]

>Others have mentioned this to some extent, but what I've found the most challenging is when a company tries to do both local and remote, but was not remote-first.

I'm interested in this, as a person who does remote work, and has experienced some of these issues.

So, what are some good remote-first companies? I know of a few that may be: Automattic, Scrapinghub. What others? Asking all here, not just the parent commenter.

Maybe this should become a separate thread. Note: Obvious, but: "remote-first companies" is not necessarily the same as "companies that are hiring for remote positions".

[ecwilson]

Look into Jason Friend -- he literally wrote the book on remote work.

https://basecamp.com/books/remote

As for your actual question, I don't yet know of a great resource for understanding which companies are truly remote-first, but would love it if someone had one to share.

[vram22]

Thanks, I will.