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The inevitable future of work will be large remote teams. Stripe, from what I hear, has gone to significant lengths to make a culture that can work this way. Once a few big co prove it, startups will follow suit & create a new, global talent war like we've never seen before.
My understanding is you cannot simply decide you’re going to employ large remote teams. You have to ingrain a culture in a certain way of communicating, making decisions, etc. It will be tough for an est co to shift. We will all need a template to model ourselves after.
Once a successful template exists that a board feels comfortable with, there’s going to be a lot of software tools going from internal use to real products everyone can use. (ie: what slack did to IRC will happen with email lists ala Stripe)
There will be a lot counter arguments to this: (1) how do build a rapport w/ no face time, (2) remote conf is poor quality, (3) managing perf is hard, (4) writing too much is hard, (5) time zone complexity, etc. Each problem is solvable when broken down.
If your workforce is global, you have the ability to compensate fair SV market prices globally. Imagine a smart, self-taught Kenyan (I have family there) engineer who is able to come up + help their family making over $150K/year. Imagine they make $ post IPO & become an investor.
Nearly every company in SV already has a workforce that must accommodate work-from-home. There’s this tension in trust about it but, in order to retain talent, we acquiescence. People want both: they want home & office time. It’s time to re-think how we build our co culture.
There are so many pros imo: (1) better work/life balance, (2) stronger culture of comm + transparency, (3) substantive shift in income inequality, globally, (4) easier to hire for early adopters, (5) stronger decision making - no hallway decisions, (6) global time zone presence
As far as the perk-wars go: if you give employees the perk of working from anywhere because your culture supports it vs snacks, 🏓, gym, nice office decor, 15 min massages, extra $15K. I’d bet most will take the former, not the latter. They’ll just fly in for social time @ HQ.
I think the toughest battle remote work will have is that work is a place like-minded people go to find other like-minded to hang out with. At least it is when you have the luxury of job-choice. Social time & friendships will be more challenging. Would love to hear a solution.
