Gergely Orosz

18 months after remote work became the norm within tech, I’m now observing a large wave of engineers *permanently* move countries/states, having negotiated permanent remote with their workplace.

Feels like the inflection point for perm remote to stay - for hybrid orgs as well.

My theory is this:
- Mar 2020: “remote work for a month. Ok, yay!!”
- Nov 2020: “ok, so back in the office the spring. Oh, well.”
- Mar 2021: “back to office the fall? Ok, I’ll wait it out.”
- Nov 2021: “I’ve been doing this for how long?! Might as well do it from a nicer place.”

Feels like we’ve had a “first wave” of people who always wanted to do remote, and took the leap of faith in 2020 - early 2021, a kind of “YOLO”.

This group feels larger, far less “YOLO”, decisions made after long deliberation, moving often w families, decisions not be reversed.

Writing @Pragmatic_Eng & @EngGuidebook. Advisor @mobile__dev. Uber & Skype alumni. Career opportunities for software engineers & EMs: https://t.co/MJ0eAtlaS1

Remote work plus the influx of capital for startups is breaking what “competitive compensation” means outside US East/West Coast outside “Tier 3” companies.

People in the US, Western EU and India are leaving with packages their current employer cannot possibly compete with.

By “Tier 3” this is what I mean: https://t.co/BHWctPBJLE

Increasingly seeing Series A and beyond startups paying $ up to 150K for the right senior engineers, up to $200K for key managers/staff in base salary, almost globally. Plus stock.

I’m researching more on how remote is impacting the top end of the market.

In low cost markets in these remote, well-funded places can even pay more (or at least match) than eg Amazon, Microsoft… and even Google.

Feel free to DM if you have data and will share details I have.

Contrarian take: observe what poor managers do, make notes & remember these.

There’s a good chance one day you’ll be asked if you want to be a manager.

Say yes. If you don’t repeat the things you wrote down, you’ll already help many.

(And ask for/get training, mentorship) https://t.co/nYekcFnm1s

The reality is that tech grows so fast that there’s a huge need for managers.

It’s easy to say “lol no thanks. I saw enough bad managers. Looks like a hard job.”

It’s no easy job, but folks who observed bad managers tend to make far better ones as far as I’ve seen.

The best way to help more great managers be in tech is by being this role model.

Know what to avoid. Know what you stand for. Make your immediate team a better, more equitable and fairer place where everyone is heard and is seen.

Then pull those people up to be managers.

Coming from the person who built Uber in NYC from the ground up, I’m a bit surprised.

Uber as a concept has been successful because of the central entity that was always accountable. Customer support & fraud detection was always central and key to Uber gaining trust. https://t.co/nJZ3om8q6K

This “central accountability” is the reason no peer-to-peer Uber alternative was ever successful.

Did a driver rip you off? Uber: “here’s a refund.” Non-centralised version (P2P or web3): “Better luck next time”

Same with fraud, safety concerns, need for support…

Finally: regulation. As soon as you have people transported in noticeable numbers, government gets involved on health & safety grounds.

This is where it *could* get interesting. How would a government interact with a… DAO/coin facilitating this with no POC or local subsidiary?

On the transporting people with no local entity, I suspect no sane government would allow this.

It’s either licensed transport entrepreneurs (aka taxi drivers) who use a P2P/web3 network. Or a local subsidiary registering w the government: just like Uber did in every country.

Don’t let this stop anyone: Uber started as a concept few thought would work (“we have taxis!”)

But anyone innovating in space needs to do something better than taxis (individual service providers w some coordination) AND Uber (central entity coordinating on-demand ridersharing)

There's an even bigger issue with live coding than "just" the potential impact on diversity.

If you do stressful live coding, you're excluding a massive population.

"A large population of people are impacted by performance anxiety (est. 40% of all adults in the U.S. [23])." https://t.co/NLwmloNY28

See the full report done by NC State University and Microsoft here.

Big Tech has the luxury to exclude a large percentage of the engineering population from their interviews. The question is: does your team and company do?

https://t.co/Wa8RXkUrXW https://t.co/6P332ro9w2

Playing devils advocate: if you *do* want to hire people who don't have performance anxiety, live coding, brain teasers on the spot and others *will* do this filtering. And this can be a deliberate strategy (I suspect it is for several startups/companies).

Cher Scarlett

Jenn Creighton

Erin Fox

Time to rethink the live coding interview for any company wanting to hire women, from underrepresented groups and those with performance anxiety.

Don't take it from me. Take it from @cherthedev, @gurlcode, @erinfoox, and dozens of other engineers who shared the same in private. https://t.co/COO5KnSiNJ

Take it from @cherthedev. Read the whole thread and the responses:

https://t.co/LYWm2LPVhS

Take it from @gurlcode and @erinfoox. Listen to the episode on how interviewing is like and the unnatural expectations live coding created: https://t.co/7EcOy728cE

A woman engineers shared: "They expressed it so much better than I could have ever. And I feel the same."

Take it from the first hand experiences of so many developers of all backgrounds who all freeze on these interviews:

https://t.co/xavcnFYwSQ

https://t.co/18YZAKyJp0

https://t.co/3PEe6B9J1t

https://t.co/oivcXtheQ5

https://t.co/eLhp4odoSl

Finally, take it from me: a hiring manager who had been doing live coding interviews for years

It now all clicks. The people who had years of experience, yet inexplicably froze and whom I rejected.

Looked a few of them up on what they do now. Wow. They can code... what a miss.

Take it from researchers - from  NC State University who ran and published a study with 48 participants. They're the first such study I am aware of and the results are damning, but also in-line with all the stories and anecdotal evidence.

The study: https://t.co/xiJUqvQFVp https://t.co/jrPCgG1Nhe

Take it from people working at FAANG who did hundreds of interviews, then bombed it when it came to them interviewing.

Or the person who got bad news on the day of the Facebook interview so bombed it but got the Google offer from another day.

https://t.co/IFAdg76k21 https://t.co/hJKBIsyNzh

"Why are you making your PDF samples of all your books a one-click download? You could collect email addresses and then upsell."

It's because I personally hate this practice. Same with email popups on blogs. They annoy me. Even if it would 'convert' more, I won't do it.

Here's examples where people keep suggesting I collect emails, then increase revenue.

https://t.co/qN4ggV4dqE

https://t.co/9qWfKYUltP

I passionately hate this practice. So less revenue it is. But I won't do upselling practices I would not want myself.

After a long conversation with someone trying to convince me I'd make more money this way (true, at least on the short term) plus trying to get me to use their product that specializes in collecting emails, here's where I ended with. https://t.co/6I8ZXIrRpf

This thread highlights the benefits of owning your own intellectual property.

Had I published through a publisher: it's the publisher's decision.

If I was an employee at a company selling these books... I'd be incentivized to increase $$, collect emails, and get a nice bonus.

If you asked my two years ago: I would have told you live coding interviews are fine (*I* don’t mind them).

I since got to know women developers who get stressed, freeze up and get rejected on live coding interviews & whiteboards.

The crazy thing is they’re all solid engineers. https://t.co/hFbiEewqX3

Where do most of these engineers end up working?

At places which don’t do live coding or whiteboards. Ones that do eg takehomes or code reviews.

If you do live coding / whiteboards, you are probably biased against underrepresented groups.

“But there’s no data that shows that live coding interviews bias against women.” Most woman devs I know share stories doing very, very poorly on this format vs reality.

And a study from NC State University with a limited sample size hints at this as well: https://t.co/xiJUqvQFVp https://t.co/Q90k7mvuNj

“What are alternatives to this process?”

One thing that more companies started to do like GitLab and I’ve heard others… a code review interview! Collaborate reviewing a pull request that you can prepare for ahead of time: https://t.co/V4BtTJoy8q

Another approach is to realize that all approaches bias towards certain groups. To be inclusive, offer a choice on how you evaluate technical skills. Yes, this is more work for the hiring team… and also a more inclusive process: https://t.co/Pk02CpxRMu

Finally, challenge the status quo, especially for experienced candidates with a track record.

@Fonoa_HQ (where I’m an investor) does not do technical assessments for senior candidates. They found the coding signal for sr engineers… gave them no real signal so they removed it: https://t.co/2aph1AGeNK

A friend is interviewing with a dozen startups in this hot market.

Considering how most of them struggle to hire, half the places have hiring processes that contribute to this.

Not communicating what the process is like. Disappearing for a week. Automated coding challenges.

The difference a well-oiled process, trained interviewers, involved hiring managers and great recruiters make is immense.

This is the edge all startups have at their ready, yet so few use. Throwing more money won’t help if candidates drop out of the process before offers…

Also, let’s be honest:

Most engineers are *terrible* interviewers.

This is where training, someone shadowing & giving feedback is *so* important.

Yet what do most startups do? “Your first interview is a technical screen with {developer}” (who never got this, or any training).

My other favourite:

“We have a hard time hiring women / other minorities.”

“Where do most candidates drop out?”

“On the technical screen. How odd.”

“Conducted by who, exactly? Trained folks?”

“Oh. Guys with no bias awareness or training or any training for that fact…”

This is why joining fast-growing startups/scaleups in their growth stage can be such a great career move:

1. The company makes it big. Yay! You’ve also (probably) made it big.

2. The company slows in growth. You leave. So do others. But now you have an *incredible* network. https://t.co/8j5yxKkYGY

I’ve benefitted from this approach. Two notable ones: Skype and Uber.

Was lucky to join during a growth phase: large numbers of ambitous and entrepreneurial folks also joined.

Most of them now moved on… to other high-growth places. Many of them founders. An awesome network.

The approach of “how to network” that has worked most for me was to be curious at work, talk with people, help them (without expecting anything in return) & collaborate. Get stuff done & ship it.

In a high-growth company w an open culture, there are few better ways to “network”.

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