Remote vs really remote

[benschwarz]

Being from Australia often has advantages and disadvantages, one question that time again stands out while looking for remote work is "how remote?" — Many U.S companies are not comfortable with someone in a different timezone. It'd be great to add some information like:

Company location(s)	Domestic remote	International remote
Melbourne, Kraków	✅	✅

[jessicard]

Good call. Maybe these two columns would be better instead of region on the table? In the company profile, there's a section for "Remote Status" also, which may help: https://github.com/jessicard/remote-jobs/blob/master/company-profiles/example.md#remote-status. What do you think?

[benschwarz]

Hmm. The questions that I like to cover in my own head to become comfortable with a client/company is:

• How experienced at remote are they? What do they have in place to make it work?
• Where are they? (Can I see me being able to deal with the timezone(s)?)
• Can I travel while I work with this company? Is that likely to be a problem?
• How often does the company get everyone together in meatspace?

… Thats all I can think of right now. I think "domestic remote / international remote" goes a long way aside from listing every timezone in the world.

[thefoxis]

+1 on that, there are many companies that say they're remote (e.g. Stripe) but only hire within US. to me that's not really remote, still restricted to a particular region.

I think it would be good to maybe add these questions to the template (just rephrasing what @benschwarz wrote really):

• How long have you been hiring remotely?
• What strategies do you use to make remote work? (ensure inclusivity and good communication)
  • Video chat 1:1s: Yes/No
  • Text communication channels: e.g. Slack, Hangouts, IRC
  • Daily Check-ins: Yes/No
  • Weekly Updates: Yes/No
• What cities and timezones are your employees at?
• Are remote employees allowed and encouraged to travel?
• How often do you organise company-wide get-togethers?

We could add more but that's just what came to my mind immediately and without ☕

[dougaitken]

Wishing I could add a Slack style response to this @thefoxis

A lot of that is ringing even more for me recently after I read Zach Holman's Remote-First vs. Remote-Friendly.

I think with a lot of these different options and needing more clarification, the idea of #Num: #44, and creating a Pages site with ability to filter by different requirements.

[tedmiston]

These are really good points to bring up, especially about timezones.

[travisfont]

Most companies will hire within timezones rather than just regions. I would highly recommend a field for 'accepted timezones'.

[pjazdzewski1990]

In general I agree with the statements above, but ...
In order to make "Remote-friendly companies" more that just a marketing trick I would suggest encouraging companies from the list to show in what way they are friendly for remotes.

IMO it will be extremely hard to do a one-size-fits-all solution for all companies, but if you could create a place where they could link to sites/blog posts/articles describing how they handle remote work. This way you could allow companies (and employees) to speak up, eliminate companies that only pretend and create a really useful database with information on how different companies approach working remotely. This way you could make this "working remotely" movement grow faster and better 🚀

Personally I wouldn't do it as a checklist - lists suggest that companies that scored better are better that those who scored lower. For instance "Video chat 1:1s" mentioned above is a poor condition to me - we don't do formalized 1:1s at all and I strongly believe that introducing them isn't connected to remote work but rather with work in general.
These I my opinions. Hope they help :)

[reinaldob]

+1 on @pjazdzewski1990

[benschwarz]

As I said in my second comment, they're questions that float around my head when talking to people, but I'm sure there is no one size fits all (within the scope of this repo) for describing how a company conducts itself.

@jessicard I think we have consensus that it would be great to cover the 'span of remoteness' — I think domestic / international is a good start, and perhaps a good indicator without getting too far into depth on checklists. What do you think?

[useruby]

may be assume that all the companies allow a fully remote position and add column where companies can describe restrictions if position is not fully remote

comany name	....	restrictions
xxx	....	US candidates only, Work in the office during first two week

Timezone is usually not the main problem when company is hiring developer from oversea. I have never met clients who is required 100% coverage during company work time. Anyway company can add timezone restriction into restrictions column if they have one. Put something like: "must be available from 8 am to 6 pm EST".

[mastermind1981]

+1

[dougaitken]

I'm closing this issue as I believe this issue is covered with the way the readme lists the region.

I know it doesn't a lot of what @thefoxis suggested but without having an employee of each company detail these, it is difficult to answer.

If your company has remote DNA, please do submit a company-profile, or edit your own with more details under "remote status" (I'm toying with adding a "other info" section to the template)