We've got about 60 people working 100% remote to build the easiest way to setup workflows and integrations between popular SaaS apps like Slack, Trello, MailChimp, etc.
Great question. Another section of the book we need to update. We have quite a few folks with kids (maybe half?) and a 14 week parental leave when you have a kid or adopt a kid. We've learned a decent amount on making kids and working at home a good experience.
I think this system breaks down more than the imperfect implies, but still works alright. Let's say I live somewhere that cost of living is more than Chicago, but less than SF/NYC, such as DC. You are now asking people to take pay cuts, which reduces the potential employee pool, certainly one of the perks of being a remote company. Of course, the reverse also occurs where people living somewhere with a lower cost of living would probably really want to work for you guys thanks to a much larger salary, so I suppose it ultimately balances itself out.
Yeah. This stuff is hard when you're a startup and can't pay Google rates. But as we've grown we've generally been able to grow salaries so folks are above market in the market they are in. Sometimes we lose out on folks in really high cost of living areas. But it's happening less often.
Thanks, knowing this I would avoid working for Zapier and would tell others not to, as you don't pay based on merit, but based on "what you need" based on cost of living. If a person is not limited to employment within a commuter distance then they have no reason to limit their salary based on the salarys within a commuter's distance.
A remote worker's "market" is the world, so you are competing with other remote companies, not other local-to-me companies.
We absolutely hire based on merit. People are living in rural areas making a great salary because we pay mostly fixed to Chicago market.
We don't downsize your salary. But sometimes we can't upsize it. There's a few companies we can't compete with on salary like Google. Most of those employers seem to be in the bay area. Sometimes we lose out. A lot of times we don't. The world isn't quite so black and white here.
Yes, you do downsize salaries. Paying Jill less than Bob where Jill is a better worker because she lives in Little Rock Arkansas and Bob lives in NYC is downsizing Jill's salary.
Jill can do better. Hopefully other remote companies seek out the Jills and pay them what they are worth.
I suppose that is true in the narrow case of SF/NYC. We're working to grow profits to make it so that isn't the case in the couple places that have the highest cost of living in the world.
I read the rest of the comment chain - just responding here.
My 2c: You don't have to accept the job offer if you don't like the salary. Hiring is a 2-way street, if the employee and employer aren't both happy with the salary package - then bail. Plain and simple.
I don't think most employers are struggling for a lack of employment pool. The economy and unemployment is pretty shit world-wide right now. The only people making out like bandits are the high specialized folks that can demand it.
A follow up to this, how do benefits work for team members who are not in the USA? I imagine things like health insurance would be different, for example
Hi HN! Co-founder & CEO of Zapier here. We wrote this book a little over a year ago. It's mostly up-to-date though there's a few things I need to update.
I'm unavailable for about ~2 hours but you can AMA and I'll respond later. :-)
Hi Wade,
Love how outspoken you guys are about Remote work!
I'm actually starting a podcast to help others learn about Remote development by interviewing developers that work remotely and sharing their experiences. Would any developers at Zapier be interested in coming on?
Hi Wade, great guide. In chapter 6 Sqwiggle is mentioned as a tool to help build strong relationships as a team. I know you used to use Sqwiggle. We did too until it shut down earlier this year. I'm curious to know if you ever came across any alternatives or what you use now?
Disclaimer: I'm lead developer on our replacement for Sqwiggle which is currently in open beta, PukkaTeam.
I'd be interested to know why you didn't "take to it"... was it because you were already using other tools that created functionality overlap? Price? Or were there more philosophical reasons like some teammates didn't like the camera being always-on or the ease of interruption?
You guys should sign up for the remote working conference this December. http://remoteworkingconf.com
There will be a lot of non-tech presenters there as well, I think you can still even submit a talk.
We get asked this a lot and unfortunately don't have any immediate plans to release it in any way. It's pretty tied into Zapier and would involve a decent chunk of work to decouple the code base to make it more general.
Someday it would be good to release.
You can probably replicate it with P2 the WordPress theme which is where we started before building Async.
P2 wasn't working for us. We wanted something that used the same authentication as Zapier so it could just be one account. We also had a few other features we wanted to customize a bit too.
+1 this would be great for our team. Things get lost in chat, and email really isn't great for group discussions. Plus most email has a bit of a formal tone in our company, but Async looks like due to the reddit style people would be a bit more relaxed and we could develop some culture that way.
We have on institutional VC and no outside board. Remote is more and more common especially with engineering and support teams so they didn't have any pushback. I think if we weren't performing as well they might have more concerns.
The first thought is to have a successful compang that'd be worthy of investment. Next, show they've thought about the trade-offs, which I'd say these docs prove. Lastly, don't hear no when a VC says they don't invest in remote companies, but be prepared the address in a short response how you understand why they feel that way, why it is a non issue, and then leave the door open to let them changd their minds.
Looks like you're developing 3D tech. Maybe the VC's in that space believe physical interaction is important since it's a nascent tech without a proven business model.
Awesome stuff. Can you comment of the actual production of the book, how it was written, marketed, etc? Seems like a nice content marketing case study.
Most of these started as one off blog posts. After a while we built up enough chapters that it didn't seem like it would be that farfetched to make a book. So we filled in the gaps on some chapters that were missing and turned it into a book.
