[HN Gopher] Fast-Growing Remote Startups
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Fast-Growing Remote Startups
Author : warp
Score : 153 points
Date : 2020-03-11 17:38 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.freedomiseverything.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.freedomiseverything.com)
| jonahbenton wrote:
| Trick question! Everyone is remote now.
| k__ wrote:
| Pro tip: If you can't land a job at one of those "high
| perferformers" try freelancing.
|
| Freelancer are even accepted as remote workers in non-remote
| companies, after all, you're just another "external" company they
| are working with.
|
| The barrier to get hired on a project are lower than getting
| hired on a permanent position, because the companies take less
| risk.
|
| If you living somewhat frugal, the money you get from 3-6 months
| project work can be enough to pay for the whole year. So you only
| need 1-2 "yes" on your applications a year to get along.
| KyleBrandt wrote:
| I wonder what the criteria is for "startup"? GitHub jumped out to
| me as maybe not a startup anymore.
|
| Glitch, formally fogcreek is 20 years old... Maybe has employees
| about the same age as the company :-p
| itronitron wrote:
| yeah, neither is Elastic which is a public $6B company
| camwoodsum wrote:
| Hey guys! I created the product so I can answer this one.
|
| You're right that Elastic and Github (and Stripe and Twilio)
| aren't startups. The list is really just the fastest-growing
| companies (not necessarily just startups).
|
| This is good feedback. I might clarify this in the text
| before the table itself.
|
| Even though these companies are big, they're growing fast and
| I thought it would be helpful to add them.
| hinkley wrote:
| Maybe at this point 'startup' = 'tech company' in some people's
| heads.
| bigcohoneypot wrote:
| hcaptcha.com is remote only and hiring
| sailfast wrote:
| Can I ask where the rocket is going? Or is that also too
| presumptuous?
| philsnow wrote:
| By "fastest growing" they mean by employee headcount:
|
| > Understanding employee growth numbers: Employee growth measures
| how fast the number of employees has grown. i.e. 100% employee
| growth in 1-year would mean the company has doubled in size in
| the last year. 200% employee growth would mean the company has
| tripled in size.
|
| Revenue growth is a better metric to use for figuring out where
| to apply to.
| DoofusOfDeath wrote:
| >Revenue growth is a better metric to use for figuring out
| where to apply to.
|
| Perhaps revenue-growth and headcount-growth are proxies for
| different aspects of the company?
|
| For example, revenue-growth might signal how long the positions
| are likely to last, and maybe something about chances of the
| company being acquired.
|
| Whereas headcount-growth _may_ be a better signal regarding how
| much the organizational / management structures will need to
| change, and what the odds are for carving out your own role
| amidst the chaos.
| philsnow wrote:
| They're proxies, yes. Headcount is an easier number to come
| by because companies (misguidedly?) think that "we quadrupled
| our headcount in the last 12 months!" is something to brag
| about, so they're more public with these numbers than with
| revenue / cost numbers.
|
| Yeah if you're okay playing game of thrones and don't
| particularly care that the company you work at might not be
| serving a viable market, headcount is a good metric to go by.
| camwoodsum wrote:
| Hey guys! Cam here (the creator of the product).
|
| Thanks for taking the time to check out this list and for
| commenting about it :).
|
| Revenue growth and profit growth would be awesome metrics
| to have but those aren't publicly available for most of the
| companies on the list.
|
| I think employee growth is the best objective metric
| because it captures fundraising and/or profit growth in one
| combined metric (because companies that are hiring either
| raised money, are making money, or perhaps aren't good at
| running their business).
|
| This is really just a starter metric to compare thousands
| of companies to each other but obviously if you were going
| to join one of these companies you would want to do much
| deeper due diligence.
| freenergi wrote:
| Freenergi is a renewable energy startup company based in
| Indonesia. We provide solar power installation, provide solar as
| service, manufacture solar power products to reduce residential
| customers electricity bill and providing clean energy solutions
| for indoor and outdoor. https://www.freenergi.com
| inertiatic wrote:
| My experience is that it's extremely hard to even get to the
| interview stage with most well-known remote companies, I assume
| due to the sheer volume of applications they get.
|
| At the same time, the initial application form for a lot of them
| keeps growing so for myself it just seems no longer worth
| spending the time to craft responses to these questions for a
| very small response rate.
| cheschire wrote:
| So then the process is working. Don't get me wrong, you're
| probably an amazing candidate, but so are 20 others that they
| have to find in the sea of 280 applicants.
|
| Who am I kidding? It's probably 750.
| clarry wrote:
| One remote company I applied to said they got about 2000
| applications, and they interviewed about 2% (me being among
| them).
|
| And it wasn't some prestigious or well known company or a
| startup pulling off something crazy. Just a tiny company
| doing a rather boring web application for businesses.
| jawns wrote:
| I saw Basecamp brag on Twitter that they received 1,200+
| applications for an open role.
|
| To me, that's not something to brag about.
|
| If you get 1,200+ applicants for a single position, you're
| doing it wrong. You've just wasted SO many people's time.
|
| Instead, companies advertising open remote roles should be
| more frank about qualifications (to deter unqualified
| people) and about demand (to save the time of qualified
| candidates for whom it's still a long shot).
|
| If I knew there were 1,199 other people who had applied for
| a position before me, I would likely not waste my time,
| even if the application process only takes a few minutes.
| hbcondo714 wrote:
| Yup, our HR dept posted a remote role on LinkedIn and
| Indeed and got inundated with resumes. I posted the same
| job here on the Who is Hiring thread[1] and received a
| handful of candidates that are all qualified. IMO, when
| it comes to recruiting it's the old adage it's about
| quality, not quantity.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22467200
| camwoodsum wrote:
| You make a valid point. It's important to note that they
| weren't bragging though, they were trying to showcase why
| other companies should hire remotely:
|
| "We ended up with over 1,200 applications for the
| programmer opening at Basecamp. If you're having trouble
| attracting talent, feel free to copy our playbook: Hire
| remote, be explicit about pay, detail job exhaustively."
| [deleted]
| jcomis wrote:
| This is true. Sent my portfolio (I'm a designer) to a few well
| known ones and the longest view I got (of the 3 that even
| opened) was 27 seconds according to hotjar.
| PopeDotNinja wrote:
| I used to be a recruiter. I was never good at screening
| designers because I didn't know what to look for. Y'all have
| pretty portfolios and they all look the same to me. With that
| in mind, if you can bypass the HR screen and get in front of
| someone who can truly scan your credentials, do that. That's
| probably good advice in general, and is likely easier said
| than done, but I'm just sayin' it's a heck of a lot easier
| for me to teach someone how to screen a developer than a
| designer. Or maybe hire recruiters with better design sense
| than myself.
| jcomis wrote:
| Totally, I hire myself and know how intensive it is to
| screen design and how difficult it is to train a non design
| to discern good/bad candidates (it's difficult even for
| some designers).
| brandall10 wrote:
| I've worked at two really great remote companies (including my
| last company), and over the years probably interviewed with
| over a dozen.
|
| Part of the reason I got the response was due to having remote
| experience as a consultant, and highlighting that I had that.
|
| Incidentally I'm actually looking for an office gig now. I
| really miss the social aspects of being in an office, my main
| grievance are terrible commutes.
| jawns wrote:
| You're right. Here's how I see the remote landscape:
|
| * Well-run 100% remote companies - Extremely high application
| rate, not only because the pool of candidates is much wider
| (people all over the country and in some cases all over the
| world) but also because it's a dream job for many of them. In
| order to deal with that extremely high application rate, the
| companies need to figure out a way to turn away the vast
| majority of them as quickly as possible. In many cases, that
| involves up-front hurdles, like passing tests before you even
| get a preliminary call with an actual person. But because there
| is no coordination between companies, you have to jump through
| the same hurdles for every single application, which makes
| these opportunities infeasible for a lot of people who just
| need a job right now. There are a few services, such as
| Triplebyte, that are seeking to reduce the friction by letting
| you apply once and qualify for multiple companies, but their
| support for remote positions is still in its infancy.
|
| * Well-run companies with some remote positions - These
| positions tend to be those that can't be filled locally because
| they are too highly specialized. It is uncommon for traditional
| companies with mostly in-office workers to be looking for
| remote generalists unless they're growing so rapidly that they
| can't even find them in their own market. Instead, for these
| remote positions, you need to have a rare set of hyper-specific
| skills. Chances are that at any given time, a job seeker will
| only match those skills for a handful of companies, so it's
| better if you're just passively looking for new opportunities,
| rather than actively looking for a new job.
|
| * Poorly run companies or those paying below-market salaries -
| These constitute the vast majority of remote positions I've
| seen advertised. They're hoping that the pool of potential
| candidates is large enough that at least a few will be dumb
| enough or desperate enough to apply.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| * Moderately well-run companies who care about retention
| jawns wrote:
| From what I've seen, many of those companies tend to hire
| locally but allow employees to then transition to remote,
| as opposed to hiring a remote role initially. That allows
| someone who's already proven their worth to have more
| geographic mobility, but also gives a preference to local
| hires.
| clarry wrote:
| Depending on where in the world they are, local hires
| just might not be available.
| camwoodsum wrote:
| A fair number of the companies on the list are 100%
| remote and don't have an office or any sort of local
| setup.
| camwoodsum wrote:
| This is a damn good breakdown.
|
| The one thing I'll add about 100% remote companies is that
| because they operate with much more written collaboration
| than a traditional company, the application and interview
| process frequently reflect that.
|
| This is a big part of why you'll very robust application
| processes upfront. They want to see if you can effectively
| communicate your thoughts in writing.
| HRJ7 wrote:
| > Poorly run companies or those paying below-market salaries
|
| I've been interviewing for remote senior engineering
| positions for the past 6 months and all of them pay
| significantly below market (market in my case is third-tier
| 100-person startup in NYC). These were all well funded, well
| known "remote ok" companies.
|
| Now, it _could be_ I 'm overvalued, but afaict nobody is
| paying SV salaries, certainly not FANG salaries, probably not
| east coast startup salaries, and in some cases they're not
| even competitive with boring local companies in small
| midwestern cities.
| jcadam wrote:
| Anyone who says there's a shortage of great software engineers
| is lying.
| [deleted]
| pc86 wrote:
| What does that have to do with inertiatic's comment?
| [deleted]
| polishdude20 wrote:
| To the author: Can you please include a location column as well?
| The non-remote companies don't have a location column and I'd
| like to skim past to see if any of them are near me.
| javiramos wrote:
| I would love to see hardware startups attempting a remote model.
| I think that there is a lot that could be done remotely even in
| the hardware space. New web-based tools like Onshape enable easy
| remote collaboration. I could imagine services that do all
| assembly/prototyping/debugging so engineers don't need to have
| labs in their homes.
| jordank wrote:
| DuckDuckGo should also probably be on this list (and is hiring
| for a couple director-level technical roles IIRC).
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