I was one of the first two simul-hire remotes at Mapbox (when the company was ~12 people) and, until I left in 2017, the longest-term remote there at seven years. I've been fully remote for thirteen years. At Mapbox, I unofficially took on the role of internal advocate for remote culture. It wasn't always easy to be remote, but as the company grew, Eric, the CEO, was fond of saying that "everyone is remote" since more and more physical hubs for work sprang up across many timezones. It was a tough balance, particularly as increasingly more work and customer opportunities centered around the Bay Area, and the spiritual heart of the company switched coasts from the official HQ in DC to the larger and faster growing office in SF.
Personally, I can't overstate how much being a remote employee and even freelancer has impacted my quality of life and my opportunities. For the most part, I was able to focus on my work and hook in to the rest of my teammates as needed. The best times of this were when the company engineering culture was very asynchronous and allowed for it. Slack and always-on expectations, as well as much more complex software in later years, made this more difficult, but still manageable.
It wasn't without struggle, though. Often it was lonely, isolating, I felt out of the loop on some decisions, I didn't get some in-jokes and nicknames, I missed the non-holiday parties and happy hours, etc. Even with that stuff aside, it takes a real commitment from the leadership to fully integrate remote team members. Kudos to Stripe for putting themselves out there and holding themselves accountable to the goal with a public statement and metrics.
The key snippet from the Stripe announcement is this:
> improve our ability to tap the 99.74% of talented engineers living outside the metro areas of our first four hubs
The future of much of the technical work that needs to happen is remote, and I'm glad to see Stripe embrace that.
"Often it was lonely, isolating, I felt out of the loop on some decisions, I didn't get some in-jokes and nicknames, I missed the non-holiday parties and happy hours, etc."
I am in this boat now. . . and find it really tough. Many others I know feel the same way but it is rarely talked about. How do you get over the social isolation of being remote?
The lack of parties and happy hours is music to my ears, personally. I can't stand these events, and they often work in the service of this strange social construct that we all know and love - "culture." At some point socializing with your teammates outside of working hours became part of the job. Its strange really, to almost force these things on people, as it doesn't even serve to strengthen the team bond that much. Soldiers don't bond at the bar, they bond on the field; they socialize at the bar.
Loneliness and isolation is often cited as a downside of remote work, but as someone who doesn't like to mix work/personal and has a healthy personal social life, I just can't see it being an issue for everyone.
Also a former Mapbox employee, and the effort that you put in to making it a remote-friendly culture showed in huge ways. I've carried those lessons to other companies, and I'm really grateful for your work <3
Hey Justin, we miss you very much! Happy to see you chime in here.
> it takes a real commitment from the leadership to fully integrate remote team members
This is so true. I thought this would only be manageable for relatively small companies, and that it was natural for Silicon Valley companies to loose this culture as they grow rapidly, so it's very inspiring to see this kind of commitment from a company as large as Stripe.
I hope other companies follow Stripe's lead here. Anecdotally, I've never been as happy and productive as I've been the past few years as a remote worker. It seems to me too few companies are taking advantage of the opportunity here. The few challenges I've encountered seem solvable:
(1) effective team culture building: can be solved with travel budget & prioritization of good team cultural norms by team leads
(2) whole team collaborative brainstorming (particularly when facing a "fire drill"-type time-constrained challenge): more challenging to solve from what I've seen, but might be solved by some combination of better tech and better work practices
I'm interested to hear how Stripe addresses these and which challenges they find.
One question at a higher level: what are the immigration law impacts here? Does Stripe need to get H1Bs for internationally located workers? I hope not: effective remote work is fantastic step toward bringing labor mobility more in line with capital mobility, with potentially positive effects on income, taxation, and social policies for people around the world.
Million dollar question - how are the remote stripes going to be compensated? Are they going to be compensated pegged on their geo-locale (which then just makes it like international offices without the office)?
I'm pretty sure the dublin and singapore stripes are paid much lower than their sf counterparts. How are they going to resolve this for the remotes?
Not poking at stripe, but generally as I think of remote work, I think we're probably to going to think of true value based salary scales (you are creating X$ of value, therefore you are to be paid a fraction of that) as opposed to geo based scales (you may be an icpc world finalist living in Kathmandu but you will be paid 1/10th of a boot camper from SF because 3rd world).
I've always wanted to switch to fully remote. I worked from home for a couple weeks after my son was born and my current company didn't like it. My productivity was down and they noticed so they informed me I wasn't allowed to work remotely anymore because of it.
Obviously it had nothing to do with the fact that they gave me 3 days of parental leave after the birth, so I was trying to help a recovering wife take care of a needy child.
I don't think that has anything to do with "remote work" vs "working and caring for a newborn at the same time," which, obviously, would heavily distract you from work in any setting.
There are pros and cons. I've been partial remote for 6 years and full remote for nearly 5. I can do whatever I need to do to get into the flow of work; music, no music, lights, no lights, etc. I don't have to conform to what happens at an office. I can start early or work late (my "office" is several time zones away). I can take a personal call w/out feeling guilty.
What I cannot do is walk over to a colleague's desk and chat. I miss hallway conversations about the project. Phone meetings are always a pain as someone is usually too far from the mic and I can't hear. I don't work in a city that has a "tech" community. I can't take my setup with me and go sit at a coffee shop (part of my project is writing hw controls).
3 days of parental leave is a travesty. Fuck them, seriously.
Find a company that values you more, and that allows remote (or remote-first). Plenty of companies in the latest Who's Hiring that have fully-remote work-from-anywhere $100K+ positions. Just Do It.
Have you looked for a new role yet? If not, why not?
Start interviewing! Find a company that provides better benefits, better pay, and supports flexible work arrangements. Can't fix your current org having garbage parental leave unfortunately (I mean, you could, but it's a more effective use of your time to just bounce).
dude my productivity went down for like 2 years after having a kid. Griping about productivity during what "should" be parental leave is just wrong. Seriously, consider changing jobs, they'r not all like that.
Great to see that a well-known company such as Stripe is embracing remote work because they've seen that remote workers are effective, not just as a mechanism to leverage locales with lower wages. Hopefully other companies follow suit.
I’m not sure this says anything about the wages being equal. The remote wages are anecdotally lower. Judging by the offers I’ve seen coming out of SF compared to some of their other hubs, it’s significantly lower. Not just in salary, but in equity as well.
Bravo Stripe! I work for a company that allows me to work remotely pretty much whenever and it has done wonders for my productivity(no interruptions to flow) and overall happiness level. The 2 hours/ day of time I used to spend commuting are now spent cooking/going to the gym/home improvement/gardening. I save tons of money and have never been healthier or happier. As long as I stay a software engineer I don't think I'll ever take another role that doesn't let me work remotely. Of course I am strict with myself about working during work hours and have good rapport/trust w/ management. Just my 2c
> While we did not initially plan to make hiring remotes a huge part of our engineering efforts, our remote employees have outperformed all expectations.
I wonder what metrics were used. Would be interesting to know whether the main motivator was simply raw performance, or performance/cost.
Im wondering what learnings has Stripe figured out that makes their remote workers as productive as their in-office employees.
Do they use things like OKR, slack,etc ? What works and what doesn't - is there a cognitive disconnect between remote teams and people who work in office .
Is there an expectation of minimum screen time expected from remote employees?
HN remote workers, does your company pay for your use of a coworking space? Or even fully manage it?
I've noticed that companies I admire greatly like Basecamp, and also in yesterday's Who's Hiring thread, that they list a $200-$300 monthly stipend towards coworking space fees as an employee perk. That doesn't seem quite enough to fully cover a coworking space in NY or SF. I'm tasked with building a remote engineering workforce myself in our business, and was initially thinking that we as the company will be the ones setting up the contracts with WeWorks etc. But perhaps you as an employee would actually prefer to be in control of that?
Are there companies that are fully remote but don't contribute anything towards coworking? If you're in that situation, what do you think of it?
Yes, my company (GitLab) fully reimburses me for the coworking space I rent. They don't manage it for me - I just submit the rent as an expense each month.
No. I work for a fully remote company, and we decided that individuals within the company could pay for working a coworking space if they wanted, but giving them a stipend for doing so created a benefit for those employees that didn't exist for employees that optimized their home office for remote work. Personally I am in favor of more pay for every employee across the board at an organization rather than trying to come up with lots of extra benefits to take advantage of to collect more money.
I think that some kind stipend for office/equipment/etc does make sense for companies that have remote and in-office employees, but feel that it should be a set amount and not tied to actual usage, as I feel that in those cases, the company is getting a clear benefit from the worker being remote, in not having to provide them with space in the office.
I'm having a hard time reconciling
"They see how people purchase food differently in bodegas, konbini, and darshinis. They know why it is important to engineer robustness in the face of slow, unreliable internet connections. They have worked in and run businesses that don’t have access to global payments infrastructure." with this precision.
What's the point of mentioning typical south american or asian shops names and then offer north america only remote jobs ?
Not sure if this is true in Stripe's case, but in some cases contracts with clients (especially governments, financial firms, healthcare companies, and the like) have stipulations as to where work can be performed.
They clearly state in the article that this is because they aren't currently set up as well to accommodate remote people across disparate time zones, but are looking to resolve that.
To offer a counterpoint to all the praise of remote working: I'm the living proof of a dysfunctional remote employee. I work effectively 20 minutes a day, sometimes not at all. In the morning meetings it's so easy to just wing something vague and get away with it. I guess the fundamental problem is that I work in a team where everyone more or less owns a separate part of the product and no-one has any insight in other peoples' work.
I just looked at Stripe's job page and noticed they don't advertise any positions as "Senior" nor do they appear to list 'years required' in any of their listings.
Definitely a fresh take, and I hope it actually does yield better applicants and results!
> We are doing this to situate product development closer to our customers, improve our ability to tap the 99.74% of talented engineers living outside the metro areas of our first four hubs, and further our mission of increasing the GDP of the internet.
I’ve been at Stripe for 4 years, joined as an IC then shortly transitioned to an EM. Previously was an EM, and remote for 12 years total.
Noticeable differences:
- While I’m remote people tend to default to throwing time on my calendar, which means a conversation sometimes doesn’t happen. We use Slack, so I am highly responsive on Slack to ensure I’m still talking with folks I need to and would rather ping someone unnecessarily and ask about something than miss out on information. Ding words and DMs to offset the barrier to adding calendared time to talk.
- Capturing all “collisions” (we have awesome stairs to encourage this) is a lot different. As a remote, when I’m in the office it’s a bit special and people come up to me. When working in an office, I get less “Hey, what have you been up to?” conversations.
- Timezones are definitely harder in the office. In an office people generally have fixed blocks of time, since commuting has a cost. Being remote (from home) there is no commute cost, so I can split my day up if I need to without working overly long days. I worked with engineers in Europe, so having this flexibility to hop on a call at 6am and then take a break to hang out with my kids before school is super cool.
What doesn’t change? I believe the most effective management practices aim for predictability, and having inclusive behaviors. Also it doesn’t change how you show up to the job. When I’m in meetings, I need to look fully engaged and present, whether remote or in the office. I think this can be harder in a home office, being surrounded by your things vs. an empty conference room.
Happy to talk more about my experiences here or remote in general!
One thing I've found when working in a silo or remotely is the difficulty of getting accolades.
Pretty much all discretionary accolades like "team member of the month" is related to building rapport with the decision maker.
This factors into not just the employee of the month, but bonuses and layoffs.
I'm not even sure if abstracting this out into specific performance metrics is the solution, an individual will still want to give another certain individual praise at their discretion.
I always assumed work from home positions were very difficult to get because your pool of competition is so much bigger. Can anyone chime in if that's the case or not?
> There are still some constraints on our ambitions. In our first phase, we will be focused primarily on remote engineers in North America, starting with the US and Canada. While we are confident that great work is possible within close time zones, we don’t yet have structures to give remotes a reliably good experience working across large time zone differences.
I get the time zone thing. So why not South America?
Stripe is such an amazing company, and I am really glad that they keep pushing workplace innovation this way.
I am currently looking for a new job (exec level) and unfortunately I don't see any great fit with Stripe's current openings, otherwise I would simply love to see how the company operates from the inside.
[+] [-] incanus77|6 years ago|reply
I was one of the first two simul-hire remotes at Mapbox (when the company was ~12 people) and, until I left in 2017, the longest-term remote there at seven years. I've been fully remote for thirteen years. At Mapbox, I unofficially took on the role of internal advocate for remote culture. It wasn't always easy to be remote, but as the company grew, Eric, the CEO, was fond of saying that "everyone is remote" since more and more physical hubs for work sprang up across many timezones. It was a tough balance, particularly as increasingly more work and customer opportunities centered around the Bay Area, and the spiritual heart of the company switched coasts from the official HQ in DC to the larger and faster growing office in SF.
Personally, I can't overstate how much being a remote employee and even freelancer has impacted my quality of life and my opportunities. For the most part, I was able to focus on my work and hook in to the rest of my teammates as needed. The best times of this were when the company engineering culture was very asynchronous and allowed for it. Slack and always-on expectations, as well as much more complex software in later years, made this more difficult, but still manageable.
It wasn't without struggle, though. Often it was lonely, isolating, I felt out of the loop on some decisions, I didn't get some in-jokes and nicknames, I missed the non-holiday parties and happy hours, etc. Even with that stuff aside, it takes a real commitment from the leadership to fully integrate remote team members. Kudos to Stripe for putting themselves out there and holding themselves accountable to the goal with a public statement and metrics.
The key snippet from the Stripe announcement is this:
> improve our ability to tap the 99.74% of talented engineers living outside the metro areas of our first four hubs
The future of much of the technical work that needs to happen is remote, and I'm glad to see Stripe embrace that.
[+] [-] kweinber|6 years ago|reply
I am in this boat now. . . and find it really tough. Many others I know feel the same way but it is rarely talked about. How do you get over the social isolation of being remote?
[+] [-] orestes910|6 years ago|reply
Loneliness and isolation is often cited as a downside of remote work, but as someone who doesn't like to mix work/personal and has a healthy personal social life, I just can't see it being an issue for everyone.
[+] [-] kaikai|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mourner|6 years ago|reply
> it takes a real commitment from the leadership to fully integrate remote team members
This is so true. I thought this would only be manageable for relatively small companies, and that it was natural for Silicon Valley companies to loose this culture as they grow rapidly, so it's very inspiring to see this kind of commitment from a company as large as Stripe.
[+] [-] sparkpy724|6 years ago|reply
Bbbut the only good engineers are in the Bay Area!!!! /s
[+] [-] a9a|6 years ago|reply
I'm interested to hear how Stripe addresses these and which challenges they find.
One question at a higher level: what are the immigration law impacts here? Does Stripe need to get H1Bs for internationally located workers? I hope not: effective remote work is fantastic step toward bringing labor mobility more in line with capital mobility, with potentially positive effects on income, taxation, and social policies for people around the world.
[+] [-] luminati|6 years ago|reply
I'm pretty sure the dublin and singapore stripes are paid much lower than their sf counterparts. How are they going to resolve this for the remotes?
Not poking at stripe, but generally as I think of remote work, I think we're probably to going to think of true value based salary scales (you are creating X$ of value, therefore you are to be paid a fraction of that) as opposed to geo based scales (you may be an icpc world finalist living in Kathmandu but you will be paid 1/10th of a boot camper from SF because 3rd world).
[+] [-] ngngngng|6 years ago|reply
Obviously it had nothing to do with the fact that they gave me 3 days of parental leave after the birth, so I was trying to help a recovering wife take care of a needy child.
[+] [-] astura|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway55554|6 years ago|reply
What I cannot do is walk over to a colleague's desk and chat. I miss hallway conversations about the project. Phone meetings are always a pain as someone is usually too far from the mic and I can't hear. I don't work in a city that has a "tech" community. I can't take my setup with me and go sit at a coffee shop (part of my project is writing hw controls).
I love remote work. But, I miss people.
[+] [-] Androider|6 years ago|reply
Find a company that values you more, and that allows remote (or remote-first). Plenty of companies in the latest Who's Hiring that have fully-remote work-from-anywhere $100K+ positions. Just Do It.
[+] [-] toomuchtodo|6 years ago|reply
Start interviewing! Find a company that provides better benefits, better pay, and supports flexible work arrangements. Can't fix your current org having garbage parental leave unfortunately (I mean, you could, but it's a more effective use of your time to just bounce).
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19797594 (May 2019 HN Who's Hiring Thread)
[+] [-] b_t_s|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] megy|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mherdeg|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] dhd415|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] max_im|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Benjamin_Dobell|6 years ago|reply
I wonder what metrics were used. Would be interesting to know whether the main motivator was simply raw performance, or performance/cost.
[+] [-] sandGorgon|6 years ago|reply
Do they use things like OKR, slack,etc ? What works and what doesn't - is there a cognitive disconnect between remote teams and people who work in office .
Is there an expectation of minimum screen time expected from remote employees?
[+] [-] Androider|6 years ago|reply
I've noticed that companies I admire greatly like Basecamp, and also in yesterday's Who's Hiring thread, that they list a $200-$300 monthly stipend towards coworking space fees as an employee perk. That doesn't seem quite enough to fully cover a coworking space in NY or SF. I'm tasked with building a remote engineering workforce myself in our business, and was initially thinking that we as the company will be the ones setting up the contracts with WeWorks etc. But perhaps you as an employee would actually prefer to be in control of that?
Are there companies that are fully remote but don't contribute anything towards coworking? If you're in that situation, what do you think of it?
[+] [-] nfriend|6 years ago|reply
More details on GitLab's coworking space policy here: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/spending-company-money/. (Search the page for "Office space".)
[+] [-] camhenlin|6 years ago|reply
I think that some kind stipend for office/equipment/etc does make sense for companies that have remote and in-office employees, but feel that it should be a set amount and not tied to actual usage, as I feel that in those cases, the company is getting a clear benefit from the worker being remote, in not having to provide them with space in the office.
[+] [-] preinheimer|6 years ago|reply
People who work from home, we buy the equipment they need. Laptop, nice chair, whatever.
[+] [-] sciurus|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mahesh_rm|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] C4stor|6 years ago|reply
What's the point of mentioning typical south american or asian shops names and then offer north america only remote jobs ?
[+] [-] organsnyder|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jon-wood|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hyeomans|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pc|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] jimmaswell|6 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] throwawaym13551|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bauerd|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pastor_elm|6 years ago|reply
Definitely a fresh take, and I hope it actually does yield better applicants and results!
[+] [-] britt_binler|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nwhatt|6 years ago|reply
> We are doing this to situate product development closer to our customers, improve our ability to tap the 99.74% of talented engineers living outside the metro areas of our first four hubs, and further our mission of increasing the GDP of the internet.
[+] [-] alexhutcheson|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _jss|6 years ago|reply
Noticeable differences:
- While I’m remote people tend to default to throwing time on my calendar, which means a conversation sometimes doesn’t happen. We use Slack, so I am highly responsive on Slack to ensure I’m still talking with folks I need to and would rather ping someone unnecessarily and ask about something than miss out on information. Ding words and DMs to offset the barrier to adding calendared time to talk.
- Capturing all “collisions” (we have awesome stairs to encourage this) is a lot different. As a remote, when I’m in the office it’s a bit special and people come up to me. When working in an office, I get less “Hey, what have you been up to?” conversations.
- Timezones are definitely harder in the office. In an office people generally have fixed blocks of time, since commuting has a cost. Being remote (from home) there is no commute cost, so I can split my day up if I need to without working overly long days. I worked with engineers in Europe, so having this flexibility to hop on a call at 6am and then take a break to hang out with my kids before school is super cool.
What doesn’t change? I believe the most effective management practices aim for predictability, and having inclusive behaviors. Also it doesn’t change how you show up to the job. When I’m in meetings, I need to look fully engaged and present, whether remote or in the office. I think this can be harder in a home office, being surrounded by your things vs. an empty conference room.
Happy to talk more about my experiences here or remote in general!
[+] [-] caprese|6 years ago|reply
Pretty much all discretionary accolades like "team member of the month" is related to building rapport with the decision maker.
This factors into not just the employee of the month, but bonuses and layoffs.
I'm not even sure if abstracting this out into specific performance metrics is the solution, an individual will still want to give another certain individual praise at their discretion.
Just something to be conscious of.
Glad Stripe is having success in this area.
[+] [-] astura|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bg4|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] paulddraper|6 years ago|reply
I get the time zone thing. So why not South America?
[+] [-] simonebrunozzi|6 years ago|reply
I am currently looking for a new job (exec level) and unfortunately I don't see any great fit with Stripe's current openings, otherwise I would simply love to see how the company operates from the inside.
Keep rocking.
[+] [-] unknown|6 years ago|reply
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