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Comment by maneesh | Hacker News Reader

>> if your job can be done from home, it can be done from anywhere in the world

> I will call anyone's bluff who says this. Do it. Good luck. If you haven't successfully done this already, there is a reason and you know it.

Welp, I'm the CEO of a smart wearable device company (https://pavlok.com). We were based in Boston because everyone told me, and I believed you HAD to be in one place to build a startup, and DEFINITELY for a hardware startup.

Then when I finally closed the Boston office and moved to Medellin, Colombia. Then budapest. Then Berlin. Then Bali. Then Mexico.

All while doing the same for the team -- remote first, work anywhere.

Only then did we begin to explode in productivity and success.

I don't think it's true for EVERY job (tough to do janitorial cleanup from another country). But it is possible for a lot lot lot lot more than you think.

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Sorry I was unclear. What I was trying to say is that if you haven't offshored your team already(i.e. moved part of your engineering operations to E. Europe, Asia, etc.), then you have a good reason for doing so. Offshoring engineering has been going on for decades at this point. Anyone threatening that working from home means your job is a target for offshoring(to someone else, not you in that location) is full of beans. It's an empty threat.

I have no doubt that I could personally move to another country and do my job. I seriously considered it as a way to escape unfair alimony payments, and still might.

> What I was trying to say is that if you haven't offshored your team already, then you have a good reason for doing so.

What if, pre-covid, the reason was "we believe having everyone in one office, regularly meeting face-to-face, is more productive than anything involving videoconferencing" ?

These companies certainly can try and great for them if they can make it work. If it was easy though it would have already happened to a greater extent.

Many companies have a history of failed outsourcing efforts. Or ones that didn't fail, but which failed to realize any costs savings.

And, of course, there are often other similar failures, like failures related to contractors, or failed attempts to switch from internally built software tools to third party vendors.

If a company has been around for 30 years and isn't using an option that seems much cheaper, there is going to be a history behind that.

We have never had the case where _everyone_ has to work remotely.

One of the reasons why offshoring failed is that you needed to be in the office to have a 30 second chat about something that saved you a few minutes of digging to find it yourself, which added up quickly.

This is no longer the case.

There are still reasons to not offshore, but we do not know if they are enough to keep it from happening. These conversations tell you more about the mentality of the people having them than about the viability of offshoring.

> I have no doubt that I could personally move to another country and do my job

Yes, but your compensation will be reduced. You can't take you SF salary into Eastern Europe.

How do you know the success explosion wasn't about to happen regardless?

Because I would have run out of money and died pretty soon after if I hadn’t left

Does that imply the key factor wax runway (captilal) rather than the remote work itself?

I don't think the point being made was that you can't have a remote workplace, it's that you can't just find the place in the world that has the cheapest labor and assume you'll be successful.

I can’t even with this comment.

Not everyone has the resources to make a working place anywhere viable. You seem to have the resources to make a hotel in Budapest or whatever work. Talking so causally about international travel already puts you beyond most Americans’ income.

So yeah it is very, very easy for folks with a job like yours, and with the resources you’re afforded, to work anywhere. The issue isn’t proximity to resources, but the ability to complete work.

It seems to be implied with the closing of their Boston office that the whole staff is remote, not just this person.

also that they had already built a strong team

Staying at AirBnBs in the listed cities and working from there is quite likely cheaper than renting office space in Boston (probably even including airfare). So it’s not about “resources” as in money, it’s about being able to be productive working from all these places, especially when taking into account the time zone difference to other members of the team.

Yes, and... I’d be curious to see which digital nomads follow the local taxes regulations. It’s easy to get in trouble with working abroad.

Fully agreed, taxes and work permit/visa are topics that are likely being neglected by most. Often, there simply isn’t a visa category that allows individuals to work for foreign entities while residing in another country, as regular work visas are for employment with an entity based in the country.

>regular work visas are for employment with an entity based in the country

Usually true. Although some countries (like China) do have a business visa that you're supposed to get if you're e.g. attending a business event.

With a US passport traveling to countries for example, there's nothing keeping you from visiting for a month or two and working from a short-term rental. I don't know all the theoretical rules that may exist but I know traveling partly/fully on business, people obviously do work for their US company all the time without filing any special paperwork.

I met these guys a long time ago in Boston. It's literally a company based on a physical device that shocks you to make you more productive. It's a fucking joke

We’ve sold over 100,000 devices and helped people quit smoking, wake up on time, and lose weight. You can see articles about our users in the NyTimes, Bloomberg, and more. Why such hate, for a product that helps people?

https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/05/02/a-shocking-way-rea...

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/arti...

Don't be daft, an average US salary will get you an above average life almost anywhere else in the world.

Why does working remote-first require more resources from the worker? You don't have a commute and you have the flexibility to choose where to work. In this scenario, nobody is forcing you to travel anywhere—a sharp contrast to non-remote jobs where you have to relocate if you don't already live in the right, usually expensive, place!

Snacking, food, cleaning, equipment etc.

I moved out of Boston because we were spending money too quickly. I dropped non-personnel expenses by 80% by doing so....

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