How to Hire and Build a Remote Team

https://zapier.com/blog/how-to-hire-remote-team/

by WadeF • 12 years ago

251 93 12 years ago

EGreg• 12 years ago

Yes! A very good overview of how to hire people remotely. Removing extra (often irrelevant) constraints such as location lets you focus on other more crucial things. Also, a remote team leads to more personal freedom, goal-oriented focus, and encourages that you work via a Asynchronous workflow and thus more efficiently.

syntern2• 12 years ago

Thank you for writing a detailed guide about your best practices. It is a long-term struggle to convince managers that good remote work environment can be done (and good for both their budget and their employees well-being), and such stories definitely help this effort.

xentronium• 12 years ago

Can't help but notice that 8 out of 10 of their accepted applicants' locations are in US. I've been wondering whether american startups even consider hiring somewhere from e.g. eastern europe or africa or central asia.

dharbin• 12 years ago

I have never run a company before but I can imagine it might cause tax headaches.

cedsav• 12 years ago

They do, but all things considered, it's simpler to hire within the US when possible. You keep similar time-zone, work with native english speaker (usually), and have a well understood set of employment laws.

mbesto2• 12 years ago

have a well understood set of employment laws

If you're "hiring" remote workers, you generally don't have adhere with local laws unless you have a physical presence there. What I mean by that is - they remote resource is generally responsible for their own legality.

byoung24• 12 years ago

It looks like they are looking for remote workers nearby

Location: Western Hemisphere.

If you want to work remote, that's cool. If you want to work near others, that's cool too. Our team is distributed across the world because it lets us work with the best people. You don't have to be located in the USA either, you just have to be talented!

1. https://zapier.com/blog/partner-engineer-liaison/

WadeF3• 12 years ago

For this position, yes.

For other positions, no.

The reason this position is western hemisphere is because most of our partners are western hemisphere so it'll be much easier for you to work with them.

lgieron• 12 years ago

They definitely do - I'm from EE (Poland) and I've worked remotely at a US startup, and now am discussing another remote position in another US startup. As long as you speak decent English and adjust your schedule so that there's decent overlap (ideally, full) with theirs, there's actually little difference between a US contractor and an outsider. Paperwork and taxes aren't any harder from what I've gathered.

lucb1e• 12 years ago

The email is personal,

The email is not personal. It has a name and a few words (the "<insert something interesting they mentioned>") but it gives no feedback on why you are not hiring them. Reading the rejection email as someone who might be receiving it, it would leave me wondering and frustrated, and more likely than not I'd reply to ask why I was rejected. You're not going to hire me, there is no reason not to just tell me.

Maybe this is just American culture (they seem a bit less straight-forward with negative things than the average Dutchman), but the ever-polite "hopefully you'll stay in touch" is more annoying than nice to me. Staying in touch is regular communication, not a line you should say to everyone regardless of how terrible their resume was and how applicable they may be as a future employee in a different position when really you're meaning to say goodbye.

corysama5• 12 years ago

In America, if you discuss why a candidate was rejected and your reasoning can be interpreted as one of the many reasons that have been deemed illegal, you open up your company to being sued for discrimination. Given that your company will likely have many reviewers discussing many, many candidates, the only way to be sure no one ever slips up and gets sued is to have a blanket policy of never discussing why a candidate was rejected. Not with the candidate. Not even with people inside your company but outside of that candidate's hiring process. I have never discussed hiring process with a company that did not have this policy.

byoung24• 12 years ago

This happened at a company where I worked. A candidate who was rejected emailed and asked why he didn't get the job, and one of the interviewers replied that he had a thick Indian accent (coincidentally, the interviewer was also Indian), and that would make it difficult for customers to understand him. He sued and later settled out of court for a rumored 6 figures. After that, rejections were handled automatically via snail mail direct from corporate.

Spooky23• 12 years ago

I had this happen to me in a promotional situation. My use of the magical HR words that mean nothing didn't help too much.

I had a complaint filed against me for age discrimination. It was ultimately deemed unfounded, it wasted a lot of time and left the candidate ee picked in limbo for a few months.

corysama5• 12 years ago

Judging from the comments I've repeatedly heard from Europeans, Americans are generally a lot more friendly to strangers than the average European. They are a lot more likely to reach out and strike up a random conversation with someone they have never met and will likely never meet again. Apparently, Europeans a more binary -lots of communication or none at all. Being open to any communication is the norm in America. Implying otherwise is unusual and indicates something is wrong. In practice, it's not expected that a very loose connection will actually say a whole lot, but the channel is never closed without strong reasons.

From all that, saying "stay in touch" is just being polite and making sure the other person doesn't get negative and assume you are thinking "I'd prefer to not speak to you again." -which would be an overly strong rejection (even if it's true).

a3159499• 12 years ago

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DvidoBBJSRA

BTW, there is no "stereotypical European" or "average European". But I got used to the American notion of European = British.

I personally would describe "stay in touch" as "fake", definitely not "polite" or "friendly".

alphydan• 12 years ago

Americans are generally a lot more friendly to strangers than the average European

Americans include Bolivians, Chileans, Colombians, people in Alaska, New Yorkers ... Is the average a Guatemalan?

Europeans include Southern Spaniards, Finns, Germans ... is the average a Luxemburger?

physPop• 12 years ago

Is it really appropriate to expect a slew of candidates to drop everything and do "sample work" so you can assess them?

danielweber3• 12 years ago

Depends on how much work it is. The company should put roughly the same investment of time into you that you do into them.

Also: involuntary unemployment happens in our industry. Sometimes it can take a while to find a new job. People who live in top-5 cities might say "any good candidate has offers three deep by the time they leave," but that's just their big city privilege speaking. Since we are talking about remote workers, most of them are in places where this isn't the norm.

So, anyway, if one is involuntarily unemployed, it's nice for there to be some employers out there who would say "here, spend 8 hours working on this," because it gives said-unemployed a chance to show off that they would be a good hire.

It has benefits and drawbacks to the hiring process, and I definitely worry what would happen if all employers demanded it regardless of the job market. But it sure beats "tell us about your last big project" and then waiting to make sure the candidate says the right buzzwords.

AndyNemmity2• 12 years ago

I think it does mean you're likely to get involuntarily unemployed people vs. employed people. Good or bad, I don't know but you are self selecting for people who have less value for their time.

rpedela3• 12 years ago

If the "sample work" only takes a few hours, then I think it is okay.

As an interviewer, I would much rather this than ask candidates a bunch of technical questions which probably don't relate too much to the actual job. I also get to see how they write code, use source control, etc. Then the interview time can be spent determining if the candidate has good communication skills, is a nice person, etc.

As a candidate, I would much rather a "sample work" test because I am a pretty good software engineer but often fail the brain-teaser technical questions. I would much rather have an opportunity to prove that I have the technical capability to perform the actual job.

AndyNemmity2• 12 years ago

Personally, I would never do sample work, but perhaps I'm not the target candidate.

I've been working remotely for ... 8 years now? I've worked for startups through that time and it's always been companies that were already aware of my work.

I don't think I'd ever go through a proving process, but I've been doing this a long time. Perhaps for someone new, it makes sense to do that.

To me it feels insulting, and I've heard stories from friends that they've done sample work that has been used within the company, but they didn't get the job.

WadeF3• 12 years ago

I just updated the post to include some more context:

The test should only take a few hours. We want to be cognizant of everyones time. If it is more than a few hours we always pay the candidate for their time.

arenaninja• 12 years ago

Here's a long story: I did a sample work test last week, limit 4 hours; it was for a LAMP developer position (if you check my post history you can see for whom!). The entire time I spoke with an HR rep, which I've no issues with but felt very impersonal. I was e-mailed the project and requirements, and there was no vagrant included. I had a few vagrant boxes of my own but I figured I'd just get a new one from puphpet... HUGE mistake. puphpet box requires latest version of Vagrant. Vagrant successfully updated after over 40 minutes (this includes Vagrant updating ALL existing boxes). New and shiny puphpet box didn't work. Try existing LAMP box, something went wrong with the update, it's broken. Too much time lost, install WAMP quick! Uh oh, missing DLL file... Installed wrong DLL (x64? x86? I don't even remember), 2 computer restarts. I had a dev environment after 75 minutes. Water break 5 minutes, I was now stressed out.

I spent the rest of my time with the exercise, already drained but the exercise was very simple which was encouraging. Unfortunately, 2.5 hours just wasn't enough: I missed two of the requirements and I wasn't happy with the UI. The framework for it all was already there, I used PDO prepared statements so I wasn't worried about SQL injection, but knowing that I didn't finish the project I knew my prospects went dim. Oh, and this was after work so I was coding from 8pm-12pm.

I sent it in, two days later, I received an e-mail from HR person saying I wouldn't be moving forward. Overall, a draining experience, nothing gained (usually talking to technical hiring managers you learn something), no consolation prize of a technical review on the project, no offer. I probably won't be doing one again

WadeF3• 12 years ago

That sounds awful in every way.

rpedela3• 12 years ago

Yeah that sucks. I do think it is important that the potential employer make it easy to complete the sample work within a reasonable amount of time. As in your case, they should have taken care of the system admin and given you a Vagrant image or AWS instance or something similar since I am assuming they weren't testing you on your system admin abilities.

Domenic_S• 12 years ago

And once again my skepticism for the vagrant/puppet model (outside of server environments) is validated.

murrayh• 12 years ago

Oh man, I feel for you. If you want to and are legally able, you can send the sample work to me and I will review it for you. (I am firmly settled in a different country -- zero chance of application plagiarism).

georgemcbay• 12 years ago

I have mixed feelings about work sample tests in general but giving someone a work sample test with a hard limit deadline like they are taking the SAT or something is fucking stupid, no mixed feelings there.

Designing the test so you think it will take X amount of time on average to keep things simple for everyone is a reasonable thing to do, but actually putting a hard deadline (at least one that isn't much longer than you expect the test to actually take... like say a week to do something you think will take 4 hours) on it just because that's how tests usually work is just brainless.

Shit happens in life and you should not expect competent people to drop everything just to jump through your hoops for 4 (or whatever) hours straight no matter who you are. A person who can't perform your test adequately isn't suddenly going to power through it because they had more time, they'll just fuck things up even more with the extra time. Even ignoring all that, if you really want to hire the best developers (and lets assume such developers will deal with your work sample test in the first place which surely isn't a given, btw) wouldn't you rather give the dedicated craftsmen who will pour more time than you expected (out of professional pride for things they put their name on) to come up with a really clever implementation to show you what they are actually capable of building rather than just show you what they can shit out in a couple of hours?

Putting a hard & quick deadline on it is such a dumb thing to do. Please don't do this if you are a hiring person, because secretly everyone will shake their heads and laugh at how stupid you are for doing it.

mahyarm• 12 years ago

Sample work in liu of interviews, of the same length, is ok. Especially if your already working and cannot interview during their work hours. Or an interview would be at midnight at someones location or similar.

mbesto2• 12 years ago

Communication is absolutely key for remote teams to work. That being said, I often find remote teams using hip tools as a crutch for communication. We use Trello/HipChat/Hangouts/etc, but it doesn't mean Asana/Slack/Bootcamp/etc work as well.

IMO, I usually rate remote resources on the following:

- Are they a resource that will "finish my sentence"?

- Do they constantly set expectations about progress and milestones?

- Do they tell us when things aren't going well and need help?

- Do they update our communication channels frequently?

And we do this by putting them in a small project first and then moving forward after. The project typically has very little to do with code, but rather to see if the points are true.

Source: I've almost exclusively been running/working-with remote teams for 8 years now.

zackmorris• 12 years ago

Great list. One thing I want to add/emphasize is to consider the remote worker's motivations.

I'm personally not driven by money (it's just a means to an end). So a shortcut to getting bites on a job posting is to understand that there are people working in your field who may very much like to work with you. But they are deterred by past experiences in the office that drove them to work remotely in the first place.

Here are a few things to consider with freelancers:

* They are often most productive outside normal work hours

* Roughly half their time is spent doing research and keeping up with the latest trends

* They probably left the workplace to bootstrap their own startup someday

* Their productivity usually goes down if they are on call or interrupted often

* Beware loose specs and feature creep or you might burn them out and lose them

* Their productivity is limited more by time and money than challenge

* Sometimes they solve problems completely differently than you imagined and that’s ok

* Their short game might stink in some areas so balance them with administrators that take care of formalities

* Self-actualization can be more important for them than recognition

* Perks and benefits probably aren’t in their vocabularies unless they have families to support

By them I mean me, so YMMV..

beachstartup• 12 years ago

Sometimes they solve problems completely differently than you imagined and that’s ok

sometimes this is okay, sometimes this isn't okay.

i've seen situations where there is a clear and coherent specification (use django, make a web app, have it call these APIs) to be implemented and the remote contractor completely deviated from it without telling anyone, wasting 2 weeks of time (delivered ruby, not a web app, using different APIs). this was done under questionable-at-best circumstances, saying one thing, and doing another, shirking responsbility for things that didn't tickle the guy's fancy, etc.

as a manager you need to be able to terminate and cut sunk costs or one person can derail an entire project. toxic people who say one thing and do another rely on the inability of management to make decisions like that.

humanrebar• 12 years ago

Their short game might stink in some areas so balance them with administrators that take care of formalities

That's true of just about anybody. There used to be people that did this full-time (secretaries/admins). I'm not sure why you wouldn't want a dedicated one per dev team over a certain size (12?).

hkmurakami2• 12 years ago

Reminds me that they have this exact sort of setup at Mgmt consulting firms. Seems to work excellently for them.

Swizec2• 12 years ago

As a freelancer I agree with all of this. A few things I'd add:

* Roughly half their time is spent doing research and keeping up with the latest trends

Depends a lot on current workload. Generally speaking I think freelancers spend more time learning than in-house people do. BUT maybe that's just a top-performer vs. normal-performer trait and top-performers correlate well with freelancers for various reasons (the challenges usually come quicker and are more varied than at a company).

* They probably left the workplace to bootstrap their own startup someday

Or just because they have the drive, discipline, and motivation to actually make it on their own. The freedom is pretty great.

* Their productivity usually goes down if they are on call or interrupted often

This is true for everyone on the maker schedule. Even employees.

* Beware loose specs and feature creep or you might burn them out and lose them

Depends on savviness of freelancer. Feature creep ain't bad at all if you're on retainer for X days/week. But sucks tremendously on fixed rate projects.

* Sometimes they solve problems completely differently than you imagined and that’s ok

Everyone sometimes does this.

* Perks and benefits probably aren’t in their vocabularies unless they have families to support

As a 27 year old cynical bastard I don't really need perks and benefits. Just pay me more, I can handle my own "free" lunch and stuff. Promise.

shortsightedsid• 12 years ago

> * Perks and benefits probably aren’t in their vocabularies unless they have families to support
As a 27 year old cynical bastard I don't really need perks and benefits. Just pay me more, I can handle my own "free" lunch and stuff. Promise.

Even as a 35 year older freelancing bastard, I agree completely with this. I have a family to support and I don't care about potato chips and sweet macbooks. It's simple - SHOW ME THE MONEY! That's why I like consulting for startups.

lotharbot3• 12 years ago

"consider the remote worker's motivations."

For example: I love where I live and I'm not leaving. I own the house where I was raised. My grandparents are within walking distance. My parents, some siblings, and other assorted relatives live in this city, and my wife's family is within an easy day's travel. It's got my favorite sports teams, the church of my childhood, beautiful outdoor spaces, an excellent school for my son right down the street...

So I'm not motivated by your company's "great location" in the NY, SF, or Boston area; in fact that's a deal breaker for my family [0]. I'm not motivated by a 50% higher paycheck, most of which would be eaten up by higher taxes and cost of living and flying out here several times a year to be with family. I'm not motivated by a "hip" project that helps people go clubbing or hook up or share more selfies or other things that aren't really interesting to me in my current life stage. If that's your company, target other developers -- but if that's not your company, and you market yourselves like it is, you might lose me. One of my biggest motivations is being able to stay where I am and live a nice quiet comfortable life with my family.

The best fit is a hard challenge with clear requirements that requires expertise in multiple programming languages and paradigms, graduate-level mathematics or logic skills, ongoing learning and self-development/reflection, and that would benefit from long uninterrupted stretches of focus at whatever time of day is most convenient (might be 8pm-4am sometimes.)

[0] I'm a stay-at-home dad; my wife just started a new remote position. You can think of this section of the post as written from our joint perspective.

syntern2• 12 years ago

This.

Also, I'm curious: how do you look for remote positions?

mbillie1• 12 years ago

I love where I live and I'm not leaving.

This is a big motivation for me as well. I live in Salt Lake City and all winter long I can ski at dawn before every day of work, and all summer long I can climb 11k' mountains 20 minutes from my house - benefits I'd be hard-pressed to recreate anywhere else. Moving to NY, SF, etc would be miserable for me as well (I've lived in NY). There are plenty of reasons remote workers prefer to be remote, not just the obvious ones! (Family, grew up there, etc).

The rest of my team is scattered across Europe, so the time difference can make an impact, but once everyone trusts one another I don't notice it making a big difference.

ryanSrich• 12 years ago

I could not have said it better myself. My motivation is actually the opposite of yours. I prefer not to stay in one place for more than 6 months or so. Of course I've stayed longer but I do like to move often.

EDIT: To clarify a bit more. It really has to do with how much a value being able to move whenever I want. If I have a job that requires me to be in the same place everyday, I feel constricted. This often leads to resentment and poor performance.

tvanantwerp• 12 years ago

I would love to live and work remotely nearer to my family. I'm just not sure how I would manage it. My current employer, which I love, would never accept it. And I haven't got the first clue how to find opportunities to work remotely. All my current opportunities have grown out of meeting people in my city and socializing--cutting myself off from that seems like it would make finding work, remote or otherwise, very difficult.

john_other_john• 12 years ago

Possibly your last description of good fit, "long uninterrupted stretches of focus" is the best advantage one can look for, when hiring, as well. If I can be forgiven a few possibly unnecessary words, I got to mismanage remote working and remote employees, a food long time before something very obvious dawned on me:

Although many managers gripe about the possibility for distraction at a home position, I simply cannot believe that a good candidate, who is therefore thoughtful, methodical, consistent, analytical, competent communicator, is going to have more distractions in a environment they control, compared with a office.

Often the most important aspects of any project design, require multi discipline technique and thought, consideration of the problem at deeper levels than the implementation, and long stretches of attention.

My ability to remain concentrated, in the sense of having a problem set or exercise or contemplation loaded in my head, over long periods, is almost always far greater at home, where those around me are usually attuned to my moods, able to accommodate me when I grunt I'm not really available, and I can filter these situations well enough to not become disassociated with my family. Even kids do not really pose a major distraction, when at home, because I attune to them, and can mentally prepare, e.g. for "invasions" such as the end of school day: if you pay attention enough to your kids to know what their day will be like, you can blend in your attention to them, until they have your full preoccupation. I'd far rather have a serious deadline or a crunch problem working around my family, than in any office.

And yet, I like offices, very much. I enjoy office life, not because I no longer lead a primarily office led existence. But the utility I can get from a office, from rapid interaction, from meetings whether formal or at the water cooler are a different structure and utility which I try to appreciate as a different tool set. The office is a tool for me, and I trunk differently when there. I bring everything that requires direct interaction, survey of opinion, consensus or confrontation, of rapid action and installation of need, to the office.

Basically, if you try to apply interchangeability to both office and remote working, maybe you should not expect great results. For a very long time now, it's known to my colleague that when I'm in the office, I am fully theirs, subject usual behavioral norms, that I am there to do something specific, that they can dump things in me if they want, but I will probably work on them if I cannot resolve in the office context, until I come back, and so on. I just present a different "me" by presenting a different activity bias, and even a different language style. You won't find me in deep contemplation in the office, unless others have joined me to hit some long hours together for a specific reason.

Offices are about activity, and programming is not the mind of activity that offices have grown up with, throughout the history of modern workplaces. I dislike to such a degree the standoffishness of donning noise cancelling headsets, of bunker mentality in cubicles, of being present but erecting barriers, that rather than rail against it (even this feels too much the rant) I exclude as much of that possibility by my own actions and behavior.

I couldn't function without my family (maybe too melodramatic, but I've been through divorce once, thanks, before) and yet i'd get withdrawal symptoms from the office. Admittedly, it's "my" office, or rather I was instrumental enough to be heeded and possibly even to set cues for behavior, but I don't think seniority or anything like that alone cues better behaviors, on the contrary I think more junior or even new hires have more influence than they realize. I've sat there as I realize that I have been "losing authority" because new hires are simply leading by - effective - example, which is a feeling that sucks if you don't grasp what are the reasons, i.e. what is being done better. It's not always "just better" but this authority loss experience early on, attuned me to the idea maybe we were expecting the wrong things of people, when really bright talent would rather code on their laptop in the office kitchen, as if it were a Starbucks... only then a colleagues, then another, and the headphones on... so it was time to realize, there was a fundamental impedance mismatch: send people home, but tell them the point is to work on that home balance not to go be isolated. I've no opinions much as to working with anyone remotely exclusively, though I have done in the past, only think that if you have a office, it's possibly rather silly to mandate any way of working.

The upshot when it works, is great: when someone comes into the office, it's because a job is done, because they've got news we need to hear (including not great news, but I feather like the physical drama of the entrance which gains attentive minds) or they have (naturally my favorite) a new idea to present. This keeps the place from stinking of sweat and takeaway food, as much as it has any other benefit. Club house, not doss house.

None of this seems to work for the finance crew as well as it does for production code, but I think it just highlights you have to think differently according to each job. Maybe we don't study ourselves as well as we should: the office is getting to be a old idea, but camping out in Starbucks is pretty tired also. If I could, I'd take a office with a courtyard of garden. In our city, that's a dream for now. But the ne thing I know would make things go better, if not more productively in KLOC or sales, would be fresh air space that's private to us. The immediate thing we're doing, is rigging a better Skype conference setup, using their broadcast edition, so we can use proper cameras - I think poor videoconferencing is awful nervous twitchy time, but a clear fast frame rate on a decent screen is almost relaxing and enjoyable. That's something I think that matters for remote work. Our plan is to buy as close to broadcast kit, hooked up through Skype, as makes sense, to give to everyone who works remotely. I'm that convinced the ease of communication and even intimacy breaks down the remote barrier. I'm convinced also, that if I was contracted and had to conference with management via Skype, I would lay for my own installation. What value is that guy, in the fuzzy stuttery window? I don't know what other practical considerations one can allow remote workers, but to me, anything which makes the relationship smoother, is something I would immediately consider. That went for nice microphones, also, and will probably extend to at least subsidizing new desks for home use. When I think of all the days I got up on the right side of bed, in a great mood, sun shining, birds singing and all that, and by the time I was through the traffic and greeted by who knows what random disgruntlement of petty politics, I cringe. Those great days transformed into a day at home feeling top, writing well, thinking all the better.. they are the real payoff. What I don't know, is how best to integrate a new hire if they are genuinely remote, as in will visit rarely. I loathe enforced office "holidays" ("training days", whatever you call them, they just are not in my experience done in a straight up fashion, there's something dishonest because of trying to mix the objectives, in my mind) but when in the past we nearly were joined by who was happily living abroad, I figured we'd go see him, regular, plain socially half the time, and anyone working with him could, for all I cared, take that as a holiday. I'm that against artificial "bonding" things I put my neck out on that one.

Anyhow, sorry if I went on far too long. There's so much work that just requires pottering about your own home or garden or even playing with the kids, to get to sit with the creative part of one's mind, that I think the mega cute offices of the Google's of this world still miss the point, almost grate even with the conflicting signals of it all. I just happen to really like a smart office like office. I think more people would agree with me, if they had provided a genuinely smart office. Even if we've hard cored all week and are unshaven, why not bust out a new tee (ahem, oxford collar, whatever! )and take a power trip into the office, to deliver I person? I think it works great too, if we have customers about, because they too often have the idea a young firm is going to be slovenly, and worse of remote employees, they genuinely can and do often enough, think we'd all be in mom's basement still, had we not been kicked out. Bottom line, a remote employee can be the best asset, if you realize everything around them and you is part of the capital investment. Theatrics like I like, are just icing on the cake. When time to time we have visitors, I clean out my (very minimal) stuff and put the project / objective lead's name plaque on my door, so it's like they come to meet Bob, to see his new feature, he's lead on, and, yeah, we treat people who write neat new features that well ... would do , if they needed a office full time ~> The salesman in me does this to mess with customer heads...

Ninja edit, will edit better after a cup of tea, lots of silly autocorrect typos, my apologies, I'm actually rather passionate about office and remote working situations...

atmosx• 12 years ago

* Their short game might stink in some areas so balance them with administrators that take care of formalities

hm, sorry, can someone translate that in too plain English for us non-native speakers! ty!

uptownJimmy• 12 years ago

Maybe: they might not be the most socially sophisticated people, or they might not put as much effort into presenting themselves in a polished manner, or they might not be so good at day-to-day organization of their emails and such. I think it means that the person is good for results, but not necessarily the best candidate for corporate management position. Rough around the edges, perhaps.

porker3• 12 years ago

How do you deal with the isolation/loneliness of working remotely? After doing it for over 10 years I'm finding this the killer: sitting at home, me and my cat, talking to nobody.

Sqwiggle helps (seeing the rest of the team's faces) but it's a hard sell to convince others to use it.

Det_Jacobian• 12 years ago

Shell out some monthly cash for a coworking space in your area (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coworking).

Assuming of course you live in a somewhat business-hopping city. If you do, the monthly cost is a no-brainer for the productivity gain of having other people around, having a physical workspace, and a reason to leave the house.

joesmo2• 12 years ago

Also, in the job posting, ask them to apply in a unique way—don't just ask for resumes. Instead, try to make the application process prove their abilities for the job.

I can't think of a quicker way to turn down top applicants, at least in software, than asking upfront for work that is likely to be rejected. Even the custom contact forms on companies' websites are a drudge to fill in and usually not worth it. Candidates know this and won't bother. The best approach is to have a connect with LinkedIn or just a simple email that can receive resumes. Anything else might make it slightly easier for the company at the expense of losing out on qualified applicant.

cdr• 12 years ago

Good remote work is more of an employer's market than a typical position. Someone looking specifically for remote is generally willing to jump through more hoops, I think.

MCRed• 12 years ago

The office is very old school- "have everyone there so you can watch them."

Having a remote job gets rid of that practice and a lot of unnecessary meetings and the like.

Putting up silly hurdles to applicants smells a lot like the nonsense that we have to put up with from old school HR setups (like the "please upload your resume, now give us your complete hob history in this poorly designed form" applications.)

danielweber3• 12 years ago

I went through a round of applying for jobs on HN (based on the first-of-the-month posting), and the most common reaction from the company is no reaction at all.

I have this nagging suspicion[1] that many job postings are not done to find developers but just as a form of soft advertising to get the name out in the community.

[1] I'm heavily biased to find this true, even if it isn't, so be skeptical.

joncalhoun• 12 years ago

This comes up often on HN and I feel like most people who make these comment are missing the point.

Interviews are rarely about finding all of the top notch candidates. They are about finding N candidates who are a good fit. That's it. Doesn't have to be the best developer or best communicator, they just have to meet the needs of the position.

If one of Zapier's requirements is "you must really want to work at Zapier" then this is a perfect filter. It weeds out developers who are just looking at job openings, and only candidates who are excited about working there will apply. It doesn't matter if they miss 10k great ccandidates. They just need to find enough to fill their open positions

joesmo2• 12 years ago

This is advice to other companies not just Zapier. How can one be excited to work for a company the know nothing about? Maybe for a company like Google, but even then, you still have no idea what you're getting into. Until there's an offer, there's nothing to get excited about. This kind of expectation is ridiculous on the part of the company.

Also, what company would not want the biggest pool of candidates to hire from? That's just bad practice. I'm sure it happens because of the proliferation of the "shortage of good engineers" myth. If you make your applicants jump through hoops, just to apply, of course there'll be a shortage for your company.

This is just to apply, where chances are probably greater than 90% that you won't hear anything back. It doesn't matter if the company responds to every application because most companies don't and that's a pretty normal statistic when applying to places. Perhaps they're just looking for truly desperate candidates that are willing to jump through all the hoops on the off-chance that they might get a response. Then they say that they don't want people who are applying for just any job. That's just ridiculous because that's exactly what they're getting. Instead of weeding them out (and why would you?) you're targeting the exact group you're trying to weed out. Stupid.

bshimmin• 12 years ago

There's a lot of good material in this post.

It struck me as I read through the traits of "great remote workers" (wondering, as a remote worker myself, if I had these traits and was thus a great one) that it's never going to be easy to hire a junior developer - or a junior anything, really - in a remote role: in particular, the ability to prioritise is something that you can really only acquire with experience, and "propensity towards action" is a little pointless unless you're actioning the right things; likewise, many developers, in particular, take some time to get their written communication up to an acceptable level; and as for trustworthiness... well, a junior developer is just as (if not more) likely to be honest than anyone else, but would you actually really trust that they're doing it right, based on your past experiences?

This leads me to the conclusion that remote working is perhaps best reserved for those with a little more experience, and that maybe this great movement away from centralised offices may never quite materialise in the way that some seem to imagine it inevitably will. Perhaps I'm wrong though!

guybrushT• 12 years ago

There is a recurring theme in this post about "putting candidates to the test" - sometimes simple testing in the hiring form (to select the ones with the highest intent) and them to "test with a project" to find out the best ones. I wonder if this is very practical for a company that isn't a popular/based-in-vally startup. I have a two part question: (a) How successful have you been in getting this level of engagement with candidates before you hired them? I would love to learn more about this. And (b) How well does this work for "non-programming" roles - that is, can you really devise practical projects/problems for people to solve. I know the business development example mentioned in the OP, but that is a small test in the form of a question - but I can't imagine what a real "project" for this type of role would be? -- sorry, thats 3 questions :) .. but I am curious to dive deeper into this aspect of the post.

mooreds• 12 years ago

I did a bit of testing at my previous employer, where I was the hiring manager, but it was in the interview (so candidates had no choice). I think that is a nice compromise--the candidate is fairly far along in the process, and you can still learn a lot about a developer with a small project. Granted, these were junior positions.

As far as (b), I have no experience in this, but I can think of problems for a non technical person to fulfill. If confronted with doing this, I'd just ask the hiring manager to list 2-3 pressing problems and have the candidate outline a solution to one of them. Maybe I'm missing the thrust of your question?

tieTYT• 12 years ago

I have a question as a potential remote employee: If I live in a city with a very high cost-of-living, will it be difficult to find a remote position that pays reasonably well relative to my cost-of-living?

I assume one of the biggest benefits to hiring a remote worker is you can hire someone with a very low cost-of-living and pay them relatively relative to that. But if I'm living in a place with a high cost-of-living and the company can hire someone from any part of the world, why wouldn't they wait and find someone that's super inexpensive?

Swizec2• 12 years ago

Because you should never compete on price, but on how good you are. If your only value prop is that you're cheaper than somebody else, you have already lost.

skasriel• 12 years ago

Hi OP,

I recently wrote a small eBook about building distributed engineering teams, based on our experience in building the team that builds odesk.com (yes, we eat our own dog food and we've learned a lot along the way).

People can get it for free here: http://work.odesk.com/recruit-manage-distributed-engineering...

Hope this is helpful, I'd love to hear everyone's feedback about it.

idan• 12 years ago

As someone working remotely, this line rubbed me the wrong way immediately:

More potential warning signs are individuals who are poor at following up via email, forget when the interview was scheduled, or aren't flexible with an interview time.

Communication is a two way street. If you're looking to hire people remotely and you expect them to simply adjust to your timezone, you're setting up a bad remote employment relationship.

I've worked for years with a 10-hour offset from most of the people with whom I communicate, most recently with Heroku. A large part of what made Heroku attractive to me as a workplace was the pleasantly frank conversation about communication and limits. I'm generally available for meetings (my) 10p-midnight, which is noon-2p in SF. Otherwise, email / trello / hipchat / etc. Obviously, exceptions happen, and they really are exceptional (no "just this week" things that appear every week).

I've spoken to a ton of distantly-remote employees over the years and all of the stories that involved radical timeshifting on the part of the remote employee ended in a move to HQ or burnout and quitting — with a lot more of the latter.

clebio• 12 years ago

Hmm, I don't know. A banner image of a bunch of white guys, and then

Not everyone is cut out for remote work...

sort of lost me somewhere between the lines.

EdwardDiego• 12 years ago

What does them being white have to do with anything? Also, I think you may have misgendered one of the people in the banner.

netcan• 12 years ago

Remote teams is one of those things that can be a secret weapon.

I think remote work doesn't work for a lot of companies. A big part of what a company is is a culture and that culture is usually built around a physical place, for better or for worse. But, there is evidence aplenty that culture, great work and collaboration can be happen online. It's a new world and a company needs to find its own way, but if successful a remote working culture that works can be a secret weapon.

rafe33• 12 years ago

I'm not sure why any venture backed startup, in an area that has local talent, would want to deliberately go the remote workforce route. It hampers your ability to scale, hurts your future acquisition chances, creates and will lead to communication redudancy, and culture distractions. It rarely works out positively.

In short, while I am sure that there are some instances where it works well (eg Basecamp / 37signals), I'd expect that they are the exception to the norm.

Note: I did build a remote startup with incredibly talented people and after a lot of soul searching and time required them all to come join us locally (or helped them find a new job elsewhere). Hardest decision we made at the company and certainly the right one.

NOTE 2: the best remote recruiting tool we had was to handpick whole invited to work with us. We hung out on mailing lists and read potential employees blog posts to see what kind of amazing open source projects they were sharing with the world, before trying to individually recruit them.

sethammons• 12 years ago

My only concern would be the requirement for GoToMeeting. Anyone who develops on a linux rig would be unable to meet.

fernandotakai• 12 years ago

company where i work is using fuzemeeting since it supports linux well enough.

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