Comment by jpgvm | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jpgvm | Hacker News Reader

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Having worked primarily remote for the last 10 years I welcome this change in general but also somewhat lament the loss of the old status quo.

It's great because now many others that weren't as fortunate as me are now able to experience something I have had for a long time, many of my friends and family are enjoying new freedoms and greater amounts of personal time because commutes have been eliminated etc.

The downside (however minor) is I can't easily use this as the same proxy for "company I think I would like to work for" that I did in the past. My old formula for evaluating opportunities was to filter for places that would accept full time remote and then filter for those willing to pay full market rates and then decide from there. The latter half of that funnel is still likely to be highly effective as companies attempt to lowball people by making it out like remote is some sort of luxury but the entry to the funnel just got a whole lot bigger so I need to do a ton more filtering now.

I'm optimistic though, this has opened up a lot of companies I otherwise would have liked to work for but had draconian hiring policies w.r.t fully remote.

I have worked remotely for about 7 years now. I share your sentiment.

With that being said, the signals are still there - just a bit more nuanced. Gitlab has good terminology around this: https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/stages/

My signals:

* Do they talk about central office locations where certain people/groups of people work? Does being in that location give you advantage.

* Do they expect you to be in the same chair/desk/location everyday? I don't care to do #vanlife, but I want the flexibility to work from a hotel/other location from time to time.

* How does the team manage work hours? How much of the workday needs to be "the same". In my view, ideal teams have some core hours where it's easy to collaborate then leave it to individuals to round out a productive day elsewhere.

"Do they expect you to be in the same chair/desk/location everyday? I don't care to do #vanlife, but I want the flexibility to work from a hotel/other location from time to time."

Huh. It literally never even crossed my mind until you said that to care about where you are if you are remote. As long as you're doing the job, what does it matter where the "not here" you are?

> As long as you're doing the job, what does it matter where the "not here" you are?

Where you are matter for tax paperwork the company has to file.

It can also have legal implications on the company for "having an office".

I am an employer who has employees in dozens of countries and 28 states in the United States currently. I cannot hire anyone who lives in New York due to New York's extremely draconian and aggressive tax laws. If an employee moves to New York, I am forced to terminate them. It's extremely unfortunate New York has set up its tax laws to be so incredibly greedy.

Could be anything from poor management to contractual/legal requirements. For one client, we had to fly from Canada to the US, but could work remotely from any US site. Usually the client would set us up with a nice office a short flight away from home base. There were very specific legal requirements for them, and I had the impression they were generally as flexible as they could be.

In the US there are tax and employment laws that vary by state. Even for a medium-large sized company these may be complicated.

For us in Europe that works with personal data, things tend to become complicated as soon we leave the EU, since it is often the case that the data must not leave the union.

These are all great.

The last one is super important.

When they talk about core locations/areas a good signal is if they have close to full timezone coverage, i.e Asia + NA + EU. This generally means you will be able to find collaborators that have some overlap and important meetings are likely to be recorded, etc.

There's always other proxies for quality given changing life circumstances. Generous parental leave matters much more to me now than office vibe.

> like remote is some sort of luxury

From personal experience: we are entering times when decent office is actually some sort of luxury. Some companies are closing their offices whatsoever, others are downsizing, and it almost never pretty.

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