Tech giant dominoes are falling for Remote

Justin  0:39  

All right, let's go ahead and bring everybody's faces in. Let's go back a slide because I index too quickly.

Welcome to Episode 10 of remote voices. We are excited to have gotten all the way to 10. It wasn't that hard. We just did a stream every week. But what's nice about these streams is we get to kind of just talk internally talk to people on the interwebs and bring in some really cool voices from kind of the remote community. So we've got a vert here from duelist. And Eva is gonna tell us all about his job and how he's awesome and why we should all just follow him on on all the socials and follow his lead. So ever kick it off. Who are you? What do you do? What's your job?

Evert  1:25  

I'm a Evert Velthuizen, I work a Doist. We are a remote company. We are the developers behind todoist which is a to do list app that helps you declutter your mind and achieve great goals. And we have an app called twist, which is a remote based monitoring most basic, remote optimized team communications app. I'm I've been with this since 2017. And I've been the head of support since December last year.

Justin  2:00  

Awesome and what, what are the Genesis is of these names? Do you know like, why twist? Why is it called twist?

Evert  2:08  

I can't tell you. I mean, I've seen the discussion. I know there were some other names, but we ended up with twist.

Justin  2:13  

Okay

Evert  2:14  

I can't tell you what how

Justin  2:15  

The domain was available. That's got to be what it was.

Evert  2:18  

Well, it wasn't even though we were twist app before. But now we twist. So yeah,

Justin  2:22  

yeah, it's we're Yac Chat. And now we are Yac. So they go all good companies go through that same kind of Exodus, I guess. So, if you've seen the stream before, we're just kind of going to bring up some tweets we're going to talk about, like I said, on our last stream, we learned after converting this to an audio podcast that the whole Google Slides format doesn't make a lot of sense. So we're just going to read the tweets out loud, even if we're sharing it up on the screen so that everybody catching this on the audio side can kind of join in and understand the context of what we're talking about. So let me cue up this first one here. Let's see what we got. Alright, so now that everyone at Google is forced to use Google meet on a daily basis, it's seen more improvements in four weeks than the entire time it existed before that. Evert, did you use Google meet? Do you guys use meeting solutions? What's your meeting solution?

Evert  3:17  

We're using Google meet and zoom.

Justin  3:20  

You use both?

Evert  3:21  

Yeah, yeah. Sort of like we have people who prefer zoom. We have people who use Google meet. Now we're sort of switching back to Google meet.

Justin  3:28  

Is that like a pain for pleasure type thing? Like you just want as many bad conferencing solutions as possible?

Evert  3:33  

Yeah, I guess, right. I guess, gotta suffer a little bit.

Justin  3:37  

But I do find this interesting. You know, we talked about this a lot at Yac how every day we're using Yac constantly, internally, that dogfooding approach of just like, finding the the problems of a user because we're users of the product ourselves. Are you guys heavy twist users, you know, over at doist?

Evert  3:53  

Absolutely. Yeah, I think we're the number one twist user. We developed twist because we had problem with the team communication, working with a remote team across the globe, it's hard to keep up with chat based communication tools. Twist allows us to actually have deeper discussions and store that information in a way you can find it again 10 years from now.

Justin  4:19  

Yeah. Jordan, what do you think of teams that build products and then don't use them themselves? Do you think it's possible to build a good product if you're not constantly using it?

Jordan  4:29  

I mean, sure, it's probably possible to build something. The question is, you know, How good does it end up getting? I think you build a certain threshold or ceiling for yourself, if you don't use it internally, you know, because if you're not solving something, you know that you need yourself, how are you going to, like, solve other people's needs? So I think it's really hard to but sure, you can probably build something. Is it going to be good, probably not.

Justin  4:54  

And Hunter, you talk to our customers every day. So you might be a proponent of it's okay as long as you're talking your customers. Do you think that that's a valid point?

Hunter  5:03  

Yeah, it's interesting. I guess this what I find really interesting about this tweet is that it implies that Google wasn't using Google meet every day. What what tool were they using before this? I actually really like Google meet. In fact, like a few days ago, I made a tweet that said, A unpopular opinion Google meet is greater than zoom. It actually went a little viral over, I think, 25,000 impressions on that 32,000 impressions. So clearly, it struck a chord. A lot of people were talking about the bugs and how zoom is just better all the way around. But apparently, Google's on the on the mixtrack. Now, so it's pretty cool to see that they're actually like improving it and not just letting it die.

Justin  5:43  

Yeah, I mean, I think what's probably more likely here is that well, I do think that they were forced to use it because they're more remote now. You know, Google was a client of ours at so friendly. So we did meet with them pretty often. And they did use Google meet. They all had to go into physical conference room. To meet with us, they never did it like remotely or, you know, just like at a desk, they had to go into a room and use like a conference bridge inside of that, like a screen inside of that room. But I think what's more likely the scenario here is that all of a sudden conferencing software became a very hot commodity in terms of IP that your company could own. And so, yes, I'm sure that it's gotten much better. You know, because people are using it, they're finding these issues. But I'm also sure that it's gotten much better because suddenly having a really good conferencing experience adds a lot of value to your company. So dev resources are going into it design resources are going into it. And if we know anything about Google, it's not their messaging strategy is crap. You know, how many different failed messaging in social platforms as Google put out like the last like five years, we've got duo Allo meet Hangouts chat, hangouts meet, and we have like their slack rip off, but like, I don't even know if it's available. You know, there's, there's so many different messaging solutions that Google puts out. And I guess it's clear that you know, conferencing is actually going to be where the money's at. So they finally decided to put some resources into it.

Hunter  7:08  

Hey, Evert, I'm actually really curious. Do you prefer meet or zoom?

Evert  7:13  

I prefer mates i think is I like just how easy it is to use. I use Google Calendar as well. So it's just flawless integrated. Yeah, that's it.

Justin  7:23  

Maybe it might be the problem here is this whole time there's been a massive misunderstanding and people in Silicon Valley saying that they prefer meat is just really not going over with Google just had a misfire with their naming again, Google meat. Google meat, just it. It sounds very non vegetarian.

Jordan  7:43  

We just made a new conspiracy theory.

Justin  7:45  

Yes. Conferencing software that is run by vegan empires. Is Zoom vegan? That's the ultimate question now. All right. What are we okay,

Jordan  7:55  

yeah. Anyway, next one.

Justin  7:56  

Oh, come on. Let me have my like, Dad on As of today, Shopify is a digital by default company we will keep our offices closed until 2021 so that we can rework them for this new reality and after that most will permanently close remotely or most will permanently work remotely. Office and centricity is over. This is a very damning tweet a very you know, big statement here. This isn't a like, I think we'll go remote. This is Yep, we're just going to close and, and we probably won't ever open up again. You know, Every, you guys are completely remote, right? You have no offices at all. And

Evert  8:39  

we have a shared workspace. But that said, we have a shared workspace in Porto, but no office really No.

Justin  8:45  

Is that just because there was a you know, generic gathering of humans and that is I made it convenient. Absolutely.

Evert  8:51  

Yeah, absolutely.

Justin  8:52  

Yeah. I mean, what do you think about companies doing this? You've been you guys have been doing it forever. So it's not a change. Do you think that this will Rock the Boat of a company like do you think people will adjust forever? I think I think in the minds of a lot of employees, we all thought, yeah, I'm sure there's a lot of employees on all these companies that are going remote saying, well, it's fine. Like for six months, or like for a year, this will be the change. And now all of a sudden, the CEO comes out and says, Yeah, you know what, like, we're not going to change it. Do you think these employees will go seek, you know, places to have offices? Do you think it will cause issues where they feel like they never got to go back to normal? I don't know. Just kind of give me your brain dump on this?

Evert  9:32  

Well, I think I think it's great that people are starting to think about remote as a serious option, right? I think a lot of time is wasted and being in traffic. Being in meetings, you don't need to be in being disrupted in the office. I think remote is the future. If it works for everyone. I don't know. We've had people at our company that just it just didn't work, right. They need that human interaction. They needed that part of the routine. It's not for everyone, but I liked I like that the option is being created.

Justin  10:03  

Do you think software can solve some of those things, though? You know, do you think apps can, you know, that provide presence or better communication can solve some of those things that are lacking?

Evert  10:14  

You know, to a certain extent, I mean, we're doing casual hangouts with accompany just so we get that human interaction. But still, it's different when you have when you interact like this when you're in a room together.

Justin  10:25  

Do you do your casual Hangouts on Google Hangouts. Yeah.

Jordan  10:32  

What is up with all your terrible puns?

Justin  10:34  

It's not a terrible pun, it's a valid question. I mean, there's there's a lot of companies that have made these types of claims. I mean, I think there's even maybe one or two more of these slides. I think Facebook being probably the biggest one. And if you've ever been to, you know, the Facebook campus, it's a sight to behold and I think hunter and I talked about this a lot about how important an office is. Sometimes just a culture fit like it's, you know, you go in there. We talk about offices a lot. It's like not even the place that you get work done. It's just kind of the place that like defines how fun your job could be.

Evert  11:09  

Yeah, definitely. And also how fun your job isn't right before I worked in the gray building where everything was gray. And there was no joy there at all in that building. But people said you had to come into the office. You have to come in the office, even though it didn't make sense. But you have this management style where people want to know exactly what you're doing. And it doesn't matter if you're more efficient, remotely or not. You have these type of managers that just want to control their team. And I think for them, it's going to be the biggest challenge.

Justin  11:48  

Yeah, I think that that's we talked about that a lot. Just that it's typically down to the team leads that they need to adjust their management style, their micromanagement or their fear of the unknown. needs to change so that this can be successful. But, you know, Hunter, what do you think about these big companies that to some degree, I feel like you might go get a job there because of the Google campus or the Facebook campus or the free snacks, you know, like, do you think that that's going to change? How people look at what companies are hiring?

Hunter  12:19  

I don't know it. Well, for me, it's like there's no i don't think i don't think the offices are actually going to be a place of working anymore, which sounds kind of weird. I get I talked about last week hell like at Google, they have like Guitar Hero up in the window. So you can tell it they're obviously like hanging out. But what I would just what Evert just reminded me of is that they had surfboards like, you can walk by their little thing and they've got like a little dog park. And they've got surfboards lined up and bikes. And basically, it's just, I wouldn't say it's a storage facility, but they're encouraging them to hang out outside of the office. So it's really just like a place where you come and grab your stuff. And then you go and explore the city. So I can definitely see a world where The office space isn't really for working. It's more of just like, Let's go play guitar hero. It's like, well, I don't own that. Let's just go to let's just go to the office.

Justin  13:08  

Yeah, I mean, we talked about this I think man like the first or second episode, that idea of like maybe office spaces will become rented shared spaces for like, we're multiple companies all kind of like pony up some cash together to have like a fun place for people to hang out. But it's all shared, you know? So Google and Facebook share one building instead of having separate campuses. I don't know I'm sure there's a startup in there somewhere. Maybe this is where Airbnb ends up pivoting into is, you know, renting out like shared co co fun spaces. It's not co working anymore. Jordan, do you do you think that that will have an impact on hiring?

Jordan  13:45  

Yeah, I mean, I think it will, but I think what I'm most interested in is for some reason like these massive companies is like the justification that some other smaller companies need to like go remote like a bunch of people are like Alright, well now that Facebook now that Shopify is doing it like I guess we'll go remote So it's like weird to me that like people are gonna like it tells me people were already thinking about going remote. And for whatever reason, not the big guys are going remote. They're like, they feel validated, able to like, oh, okay, well now I can do it. I see a weird thing to do

Justin  14:14  

with like, you know, we read books from Peter teal and we're like, Alright, this is the way to build your business because he was successful. I assume it's the same thing, right? Watch Facebook be successful. Yeah, mimic their behavior. Okay. offices are obviously very important. That must be some like secret key to success is having an office and now all of a sudden, the big company says we're not doing it anymore. And everybody can go, Oh, yeah, maybe it wasn't a key.

Hunter  14:39  

Well, it's, it's also a competitive advantage, right? Like we just hired a really talented developer because simply we allow for remote work. So if you're gonna force people to come into your office, it's like, almost a disadvantage now. So you have to make it either a fun place or not required. So we'll see. We'll see how it turns out

Justin  14:59  

really good point.

Jordan  15:00  

What will be really interesting, I think we have a tweet about it later. But it's like, you know, some people want to go into an office because they don't have like the at home set up like to work remotely. So it's like now our company is going to have an obligation to like help pay for like, you know, people that home setups like an extra room at your place. Like, I don't know, we'll talk about it when we get to that suite. But I think the infrastructure conversation is really interesting as well.

Justin  15:22  

Yeah. As I was gonna ask aver, like, Is that something you guys do it do it like, do you handle like, obviously I was talking about this with the team last night is all these companies these startups that like provide snacks and like soda fountains and like, chefs to, you know, your kitchens at your office? Like they I don't have clients anymore? Do you guys have alternatives to that that like, fit the remote work lifestyle? Like do you have a snack machine you shipped everyone's house?

Evert  15:48  

Well, we have perks right. So we have a bunch of that we can spend on healthy food and snacks that we can spend on wellness

Justin  15:58  

and that's just a stipend that they give you.

Evert  16:00  

Yeah, yeah, everyone gets it.

Justin  16:02  

How do you guys distribute that? Like we use zestful which is like, not for health stuff, but you can you know, you can spend Spotify if you want.

Evert  16:12  

Well, you just have this budget and you can use a company card and you have a max every month.

Justin  16:18  

That's awesome. Well, yeah, that's cool. I think I think a lot of companies are gonna have to start doing things like that. As you know, the the cool office space is no longer a factor in hiring you're gonna have to give at home perks as well.

Jordan  16:31  

All right, so cool to begin. Oh, yeah, here it is.

Justin  16:34  

Yeah. You want to read this one out, Jordan?

Jordan  16:36  

Yeah, sure. So this tweet says this realization just hit me today as work from home continues and potentially becomes permanent companies are basically shifting their burden onto employees who need an extra bedroom as home office to stay efficient, insane. Should employers subsidized your mortgage then?

Justin  16:50  

Oh, I didn't even know it ended with your mortgage bank subsidy. Yes. I hadn't read the

Jordan  16:55  

Yeah. What do you what do you think Justin?

Justin  16:58  

Well, I would love that. I'm in a room dedicated to my office. That's the only thing I do. I talked to hunter last night with his new lease, he's specifically looking at a two bedroom just so that he can have a room dedicated to an office. You know, we we talked about this on capiche. They did that ama with like remote workers. And my piece was specifically around a tip for you know, working at home. And my tip was have a dedicated space that is literally just for work so that you go into that space like focused and you don't get distracted, and that you can leave that space when you need to leave work because I always talk about this problem of like, you know, sure I never had to go to work but I also never got to leave work, you know, and that's kind of the downside of remote work. Exactly. You don't have to disconnect ever. Do you have a dedicated room for work or do you just like work at your kitchen table?

Evert  17:51  

No, no, I have a dedicated office. It's just on the third floor does nothing else here the main does a guest bedroom next door. So this is my zone right now. If I want to step out of the office, it's one meter away, and I can just shut it at the end of the day. I think it's essential. I know some of my colleagues don't have that. But then they make use of CO working spaces. Because, yeah, it's so hard to work and live in the same space and get to disconnect and recharge, I don't think a lot of people will be able to do it that way.

Justin  18:20  

I think that's an important distinction to make. I think a lot of folks think that work like remote work equals work from home. And in this scenario, it happens to because of the virus, but that's not always the case. I used to do the same hack when I had a smaller house. I specifically had a co working membership, because I had to get out and go to like a focused place because I didn't have that that spot at my house. And that was that was huge for me. In fact, the agency that I worked with, I don't know, five years ago, that was actually a stipulation as part of my hiring is I asked that if I was going to be working remotely for them, that they put some time have like a budget for co working space. You know whether it's just like 250 bucks a month for me to have like a personal membership at some co working space, that was actually a requirement that I gave them because I needed to get out into a focused work environment.

Hunter  19:16  

What's Dan's on here? Hey says Yep, helps keep yourself sane. I think that was actually the first comment we've ever gotten on stream yard. This is our second stream here is kind of cool. But what's what I don't think so the question here says, should employers subsidize your mortgage, I don't know if that's necessarily the case. But like, in my case, I'm getting a whole second bedroom just for office space. Like there's literally not even going to be a bed in there. It's just for the office. And so if the difference between a two bedroom and a one bedroom is like 300 bucks, I can see that but not the entire freakin mortgage or rent. Probably. Yeah, I mean,

Justin  19:53  

I was thinking about this the other day when, after you and I talked was, I wonder what will change in the tax Law around that tax break you get for like using a home office. I wonder if they will appear if they'll limit it because now everyone is claiming it, if they'll make it easier, like there's like all kinds of crazy rules, like one of the rules is you can't have a television in the room, which is absurd. Like having a TV in your office is actually nice to be able to like put stuff up on the screen, like a calendar, share something if somebody else comes over and works with you. Like we used to have a TV in my home office to do that kind of stuff. So I wonder if they will either relax or restrict those tax breaks here in the US at least. Jordan, what do you what do you think?

Jordan  20:38  

Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think something will change. Yeah, I'm sure it will get relaxed. I think. Dane says no TV, what's the computer screen and if not a TV with superpowers.

Justin  20:50  

You said it. He should read what's definitions on best.

Jordan  20:55  

What's also interesting though, is like then do employers have an obligation to like pay Like the tools like a desk monitors computers, right? Like when you go into an office, you kind of get all that out of the box. So ever like do you guys like do you guys currently give employees like all that or like what do you guys do?

Evert  21:13  

So we have a co working space budget and we also have a hard wired budget. So you get a welcome budget, which you can spend on tech and then every two years you get a budget for hardware. So I basically upgraded my entire PC setup. Nice budget.

Justin  21:36  

Yeah, that's awesome. Is it specific to what kind of hardware I could buy or could I you know, buy like an Xbox?

Evert  21:43  

Well, I haven't I haven't gotten that. I don't think anyone's tried

Hunter  21:46  

that yet. On our system,

Justin  21:48  

life hacks go get it. Yeah, well,

Jordan  21:53  

but you the Xbox browser to do all your work on how amazing

Justin  21:57  

without a Google meet certified

Evert  22:00  

If you can be more efficient than just any other person in company on an Xbox, then I think it's valid.

Justin  22:06  

It works. Okay, as long as you can prove that

Jordan  22:09  

I'm switching up my workflow now.

Justin  22:11  

Yeah, I mean, we just did this yesterday, we just hired a new employee or gave them an offer letter. And part of it was I'm leaving a job, they're going to take my laptop with me or with them. You know, I'm going to need a new MacBook. And I said, Yep, we'll buy your brand new MacBook 16 that'll be part of like your welcome package. Don't worry about it, I'll take care of it. And I do think that will become more and more common. But I also think that will extend to things like a desk or a monitor or a TV with superpowers. Because I think that that's going to be normal. I see a couple startups that are doing this I think I can never pronounce it's like grow work. Good work. Yeah, is the name of the company but they they do like mass purchasing. So like if you have a company like 60 people you get like better pricing and you can like buy desks or at least desks from them. And then like When that employee leaves, you just like reallocate that desk and they take care of everything for you, but it's it's like shipped to people's homes. So there's already startups kind of solving this problem.

Jordan  23:10  

I think it'll be really interesting. So like, for us, obviously, we've been working remote for a while, so they kind of know what to do. But like the people who are just kind of like discovered remote for the first time, like, I know, there are people who have no, you know, setup at home and it's like, impossible for them to get any work done. So I think that's, I think that's really interesting. The people who like aren't really techie, if you will, but like are being forced to kind of figure it out. Like, you know, oh, Lily said, well, the employers who already have desk and such receive a stipend anyway, do you guys think?

Justin  23:41  

I mean, to be fair, you would kind of have to, like, you can't, right? You can't like punish someone for having a better setup. When they got hired, right. You need to like go into something else. I think maybe that's what Avery was saying is that they have like a budget for health and wellness and stuff. Like I know I worked at a company years ago that gave a budget for education, which I thought was really cool. And that didn't necessarily mean you had to go to college. But it meant that you could pay for like ebooks or like you could go take a community conferences if you wanted to, or a conference like I used mine for CES one year. Yeah, I would assume they would, they would have to do something you would have to be some generic budget, you know, in case someone didn't want to give up their existing desk setup.

Hunter  24:28  

Yeah. And then to answer the question about what happens when a person leaves Avery, I'm actually curious to hear your answer. But typically, what we do is if we just like, give you a loaner, like make it really clear, but most people nowadays will just buy it for them. Like our new developer that just came on, we're going to be buying him a MacBook. And that's part of like a good faith like upfront to say, like, we really want you and like, you know, obviously it's a perk but then at the same time, it's like about employee retention. Like we were used to work with the same team now for three years. For years and we've basically retained almost every single employee and just like doing stuff for them like that. Like, we're not going to sit there and nickel and dime and be like, well, we give you a 1600 dollar laptop. Now you either owes 1600 dollars to ship that back like, yeah, that's just not the remote or like trust lifestyle. So in April, I'm actually curious what what your stances on that because you just upgraded everything you have to give it all back if you decide that you believe,

Evert  25:23  

well, we have the same faith in people, right? Like it's an investment you do in your employees. And we also don't, I mean, I'd like to think that people in our company wouldn't wait till they have this hardware budget, unlock again, and then say they quit. Good luck with that, but I don't think that's really the part of our core value. So I don't think they would have lasted this long in our company if they were this type of person. I

Justin  25:49  

mean, we talked about this all the time, like the core tenets of remote is trust and that trust goes both ways. A team manager trusting that you're getting your stuff done and an employee trusting that the company will take care of them and the employees you're trusting that the employee won't screw them over. So you know it all. It's all just like giant circle of trust.

Hunter  26:07  

Yep. And if you don't have that trust, that's more of a hiring issue, not a stipend management issue, in my opinion.

Evert  26:15  

Yeah, absolutely.

Justin  26:16  

Definitely. So this this next tweet was, I tried to figure out why zoom socializing is so exhausting. And I ended up being kind of glad that it is. So I don't know if you guys saw this, but she basically wrote this. It's like a huge opposite. Like, it's a huge piece about why zoom fatigue is a real thing. And you know, we talk about zoom fatigue a lot. And I think one of the things that people fail to understand, I guess, is the biological, psychological, kind of human element, you know, behind talking and speaking and, you know, just like we're being on the stream I've got, it's like a crazy thing that I'm trying to manage right now. And we'll see how it comes off in the stream. But you guys are actually like down here, because my laptop is down here and my camera is up here. And so I'm like trying to talk to you but look into the camera lens at the same time. And it's super difficult because I want to look good on the stream. But I'm used to looking at humans when I speak. And so it's actually kind of uncomfortable. And her whole peace kind of goes to this concept of like, no one is used to sitting for an hour staring forward into like a grid of eyes. Like that's not the way you speak to humans, right? You You're close to them, your eyes are connected to them. Or if you're in a group, you're standing back and they're in like a circle like you don't you just don't talk to people in like a 2d plane in a grid of boxes on a normal basis. And it was very interesting how she like dives into we as humans are not used to this. And so yes, doing six hours of this a day is exhausting because it's not the way our brain expects to communicate. I don't know you guys what you guys must meet at some point I'm sure that you have limited because of you know, amazing tools like twist, but you know, do you experience the zoom fatigue? And why do you think it is?

Evert  28:09  

I definitely experienced it at the height of the of the lockdown here because I was just so exhausted. And socializing is also exhausting, right? Because it's nice to to just work, do some deep work and then log off, not do a little bit of work, then have a talk, do another bit of work and have another talk because you're constantly switching tasks. And you're also sort of starting to have the same conversations with everyone. And yeah, I don't I don't know how much do you gain from that right? This is your this is your work time, and you can use it the way you want. And I maybe sounds a little a social I enjoy deep working more than socializing for a large number of hours per week. I have a team of 12 so we have a monthly meeting. Every month with the individual and then two team meetings, one with the Americas and one with people in Europe and Asia. Then I also have a meeting with my brothers, which are see, oh, so I already have a lot of meetings and I really get to socialize in these meetings. So I try to keep my additional meetings to a minimum. I also live with my partner and my kid. So I also I do get to socialize if I would be living by myself. I think I needed a lot more.

Justin  29:31  

Yeah, Jordan must really need that bad buddy.

Jordan  29:34  

Up, you know me, I'm introverted as is I'm, I'm happy as hell. I couldn't ask for better.

Justin  29:39  

Like you like being alone.

Jordan  29:41  

Yeah, I like I like my space. I mean, you guys know this about me?

Justin  29:45  

Yeah, I mean, I think it's interesting how the socialization efforts are shifting. You know, we talked on two weeks ago, just about how fortnight is now a place that you socialize. And what's interesting about that is how it is a little bit opposite. Of what zoom is, right you project your voice through a character in a different plane of existence. You know, you don't. You don't have to stare into people's eyes the whole time. There's no pressure to even be like present necessarily. Like you can actually join fortnight through the mobile app and not even play the game, but just join like the party chat. And I think that that ambient communication is going to be where things take off like, I'm assuming you didn't miss it a vert but did you see the whole buzz about clubhouse on Twitter over the last couple weeks?

Evert  30:34  

No, I didn't see it. So I didn't, man. So

Justin  30:37  

it's it's essentially discord for VCs. So that's been a thing that randomly got funded by Andreessen. I get the vibe though I understand it. I think that talking in like a open channel with your friends or with people that you want to meet or no, I think that there's premise there like it makes sense. Especially because we've already identified issues like this with like zoom fatigue, where it's not fun to stare at a screen and just talk to a box, you know, grid of boxes for eight hours, but it would be fun to like cook and relax and maybe hear other people's voices and chat back to them without that like, weird requirement or pressure to like, stare at them. So it's interesting how people are, I guess, as humans, we are adapting to different ways of socializing. And some of them have like these high friction points like zoom maybe where you're just not used to it at all. And it's very difficult to enjoy a zoom call. where some of them like a discord or a clubhouse though seem a little bit you know, more interesting. I think house party is doing that as well. And one of the things that Neil I talked about on the verge with with house party was that the cool thing about house party is that it you don't get a phone call and you don't pick up it's just you like open a room and you say look, I'm available to hang out. And if somebody wants to come in and hang out, they can come and hang up. And he said, You know, one of the most nerve wracking things in the entire world is like facetiming somebody because you don't know like, they could be like, you know, on the toilet, right? Because you're just like, instantly, you know, hitting their video camera. And he said, That's such a like stressful thing for both parties is like, I don't know where they're at, or I can't pick up but I should pick up because it's ringing and it'd be rude to decline it. But with stuff like house party is it's a little bit more passive. You have to you just choose, you're like, yeah, I'm interested. I'm gonna hop into this chat. You know, Hunter, what do you think about that? I know you're a fan of house party.

Hunter  32:43  

I get so my buddy. His name is George fury. And I went out to a house party and I just saw fury cheeks, right click on it. And then all of a sudden I was in the I was in the chat. There was no ringing or anything. I wasn't. I wasn't sure what I was going to what I was expecting fury cheeks. So all of a sudden, I just saw face. He's like, Hey, what's up, I was like, it's kind of cool. But after a little while, kind of weird just standing there with my arm in the air, just by myself. And it was like 11 o'clock at night didn't mean to calm and just happened. So I feel this man, zoom socializing is completely exhausting. I mean, after doing a podcast for a while, I'm like, I need to just like take a break and take a nap. Yeah, like so I can imagine people that are doing all day long. It's ridiculous.

Justin  33:26  

Yeah, I definitely think that there will be someone that figures out the magic formula to socializing, post COVID-19 as well. It's kind of like, post any of the existing apps that we have now? I don't know maybe Facebook rooms there's Zoomer IP office. They answer somehow,

Hunter  33:42  

can be Justin before we move on to the next one. Emanuel, so what's your advice for looking? What's your advice to start looking for fully remote software engineer architect jobs. I don't know if we're, I don't know for hiring.

Justin  34:01  

Where do you guys post your jobs to?

Evert  34:04  

Let me think.

Justin  34:07  

Totally.

Evert  34:09  

I think remote, okay might be one. It might be, but I can't think of the main one that we use right now. But I know someone from our company is in the chat, so maybe they'll be able to share this.

Justin  34:20  

I mean, also just like generically on Twitter if you just like search, like Remote Jobs and search, like there's so many things that come up. So we actually posted to Almanac a guide for how we hire so reverse engineer that and you will find your answer, because we don't look on your typical job boards like I'm not browsing monster.com or indeed to find good candidates. I'm actually typically on Twitter, Reddit, sometimes Upwork because sometimes I'll like hire somebody there and they work out really well. We'll hire him full time. But yeah, I think you know, check out the guide on Almanac that probably be a great place to start because I kind of outlined how we hire for remote and it will also give you a good Set of tips on expectations and things to do and don't do to kind of optimize for like a remote quote unquote interview. And a lot of it has to do with communication where we find you how you present yourself. I think moving forward, every single job board on the planet is going to have a remote tag now because they just be insane not to, although that does seem like a great startup opportunity. Now, a website that does only non Remote Jobs, we could make that like one company very happy who refuses to move. But yeah, I mean, moving forward, it won't be hard to find a remote gig.

Jordan  35:37  

Okay, anyway, Mr. DHH. You want to read this tweet, Justin.

Justin  35:41  

Yeah. hunter who doesn't know who DHH is should should read it, but I'll do it. The best thing about Twitter Shopify and Facebook going remote, is that we can finally kill the nonsense about where the magic happens. that argument just got turned into a believing joke. I mean, it always was, but now every One will be laughing man. He is so snide sometimes. I mean, he's right, though, especially when we we talk about the fact that Yac is is built out of Florida, Orlando, Florida, although I guess Orlando is where the magic happens. But, you know, we talk about all the time that Silicon Valley bubble, that concept that everybody has to be, you know, on the boardwalk or, you know, on, you know, a certain street in New York or a certain street in the valley to kind of be in that environment. And I think that he's right, we will finally be able to get to a point where a company can just be founded anywhere if you want to start a start up in Ohio. You're more than happy to do that. Avery, where where did you guys headquarter at like, Where did you guys start?

Evert  36:45  

I think we started in Chile. And then the first job listed was already a remote position. So that was already our intention. Like we wanted to find great talent. Why would we limit ourselves to just this place right?

Justin  37:03  

Yeah, definitely. And I think, like we said earlier, it also has the reverse effect. You know, we just had a guy that worked with us years ago, come back and say, Hey, I went and got my fancy job out in the valley. You know, I need I want to travel the world now. And they told me, well, we don't support, you know, people working outside of the US. So as long as you stayed within, you know, the US, you'd be fine. It's like, well, I want to go to Georgia, you know, and not the state. And they said, Well, that would make it really complicated to pay you. So I guess you'll have to leave. And we kind of welcomed in with open arms and said, Yeah, dude, absolutely. We'd love to have you back. That'd be fantastic. And I think that not only does it open us up as a company to better talent, but the talent actually now has more opportunities to go work where they want to work, and not where maybe they're pigeon holed, you know, into working but you know, Hunter you lived out there. At least I guess in the LA kind of area. What What do you think will help into the magic in that area. Do you think it'll maintain anything people will leave?

Hunter  38:05  

already seeing people are leaving a lot of people in San Francisco and Silicon Valley? I think it might actually be on one of our slides here. I'm not sure. But they're saying like, if everyone's leaving, why aren't rent prices going down yet? So maybe the magic isn't really happening there anymore. workwise but there's still the demand there. But I don't know man. Like when I lived in LA, there's a there's a sense of pride in every city. Most cities I would say actually have like a sense of pride you see in Orlando, Baltimore certainly has it la San Francisco, New York City. I just think that there might be the magic there because of the social interactions and the opportunities. But I don't necessarily know if work wise like you need to be in the same room as your co workers for that magic.

Justin  38:50  

I agree with that a lot. I think I don't think the tweet is in our deck for today. But there was another tweet that we dropped in our channel on slack. That was someone saying I think people under estimate the Lord to the cities is not about the jobs. It's about the fact that you can open your door walk out and like go hang out with people, you know, inside of like 20 feet because it's just so compact. So many people that are like minded, same age, in an area where there's a lot to do. And I do think that that has a lot of bearing. But I also don't know that that's for everyone. And I'm sure there's a lot of people that live in those areas that did just because they had to, and now have the ability to kind of exit Do you ever do you live in a in an area that's has a similar vibe? Are you in a farm town like me?

Evert  39:36  

I'm in a farm town. Yeah,

Justin  39:38  

that's the way to do it.

Hunter  39:39  

which country are you in?

Justin  39:39  

Absolutely. We have the largest and cow population of like the US in the city that I live in. So it's lots of cows here.

Evert  39:48  

There you go. I live in the Netherlands.

Justin  39:51  

Oh, very cool. I've got like rolling hills and clean air.

Evert  39:55  

Well, we got Yeah, we got no hills at all. We're just as flat as Denmark. We got good air.

Justin  40:04  

Good air. Well, I was the one thing that I liked about kind of that side of the world was I feel like the air just smelled better.

Jordan  40:13  

And I probably just didn't think they

Dayton in the chat wants to know the name of your city where you live.

Justin  40:19  

Oh, I Where are you Mr. Yac

It makes me sound like like an Asian CEO. I am Mr. Yac. I live in St. Cloud, Florida, which is like Osceola County. So it's like outside of Orlando, but it's Yeah, it's just a bunch of like farmland, the

Jordan  40:34  

land of orange farm and cows. Yeah.

Justin  40:40  

Oh, we added this one last minute. And this is my favorite, especially having just hired a new engineer today. To all the engineers in the US celebrating work from anywhere you are losing leverage. Do you have any idea how many engineers in India are patiently waiting to do your job for a fraction of the cost and if you think this isn't about an economic system, By CEOs, you're crazy. I actually agree with this. I don't agree with it in such a like doom and gloom scenario. I agree with it more. So in a step up game scenario, you previously had the ability to be very complacent, you were their only option. They couldn't really go anywhere else. And they weren't going to find anyone cheaper or better in that area. But now that's no longer an issue. So I don't think that it is a losing your leverage and your jobs are just going to be replaced by offshore. I think it is a nowadays time to prove your worth. And I think that there's probably a lot of engineers out there that did not previously really have to worry about that or think about that, because they were just placed because of kind of local geographical reasons. They were conveniently located, checked all the boxes on a resume, and they, you know, hit whatever budget they had for that hire. And I think CEOs are going to have to rethink about retention who they keep who they don't keep who's a good engineer who's not A good engineer. I mean, we don't have to worry about this right? Like, average team is hiring globally anyway. So we're already hiring the right people for the right reasons. aver Do you think this will have an impact on the talent pool in places like the valley or New York City?

Evert  42:17  

Oh, absolutely. You'll find that now you have to prove your worth, not just are you? Are you willing to relocate? Are you the best of the best? And I, I really like this right. I like competition. I know that there are people that are better than me out there, you know, bring it on. And I think that's the kind of attitude you should have as an employee.

Hunter  42:37  

Favorite part, part of this thread actually had to do with support too. Because if someone someone else said something about how like, supports the same way, like as soon as you can get outside of the office at like, let's say Google, that means that all your jobs are going to the export into India as well. So obviously, you're not in India. You're in the Netherlands. So I'm curious. What you think about it? Obviously, you're already working remote and your whole team is so like, what do you think about all your jobs being shifted over to India simply because of cost?

Evert  43:10  

Yeah, well, I'm pretty confident in our CEO and the way he works. Then again, if they find someone better, and this is better for the company,

Justin  43:23  

Somebody better

Evert  43:24  

Exactly  it's a business. It's hard to argue against that. Yep. Yeah.

Justin  43:30  

Yeah, definitely. Dayton in the chat is just like crushing it with these amazing questions. And how do you handle payroll, cross borders? So this is a huge issue for us. We actually just saw one of our favorite companies deal, I think, got 14 million in funding. Do you know if the number was correct?

Jordan  43:48  

I hope they did. Like that. Yeah,

Justin  43:50  

I think was like 14 million in funding. So they just got funded. I just announced their funding like three days ago. Let's deal I think calm. Yeah, no, you got it. Right. Let's It's two E's. So d L, let's deal calm. We use that for contractors. We don't use it for employees, because we already had gussto, which handles this just horribly. So I don't recommend that for that. Although Jordan discovered today that it automatically filed our new employee hire in Washington, which are the

Jordan  44:19  

Yeah, finish your part. And then I'll say something later.

Justin  44:22  

Yeah, I mean, so deal is great. Big fan of them, they've done a great job. One of the cool things that they do is they automatically know the compliance for each country or state. So like California has different like labor laws, and so it will automatically put these clauses in your contract. If you are hiring somebody in California, Washington has like a different requirement around worker's compensation. And you know, Florida has different laws around like state tax and so it'll automatically figure that stuff out and put it into your, your system for you. And so what's really nice about that is like I don't have to worry about researching that now. Conversely, Unfortunately, you do have to hire or file in each state. And if you're going to give equity that brings into a whole nother you know thing where you need to get legal involved. But at least for payroll taxes, we have a couple members like we have one in Mississippi, one in California, one in Washington now, we just have one in New York as well as each individual state, we have to, what I do is I set their home address as an office location, quote, unquote, not really an office location, but we have to treat it as like a Nexus for the company and pay taxes inside of that state. There is going to be a startup and actually hope it's deal but there's going to be a startup that one day nails that part, not necessarily the paying of the of the employees, but the registration. I mean, Jordan, I'm sure you can rant about this forever, but it's awful registering in these states like it is not easy.

Jordan  45:48  

Yeah. So for context, I do all of this for us. The one thing that I will say kudos to gusto gusto for is that it at least puts it all in one spot. So like say we like we're hiring this new guy in Washington. I at least have All like the links and documents that I need, right in one place, so good for them for doing that. But yeah, I mean, it would be amazing if somebody like solved the problem of like, knowing what I encountered during the registration for a haircut, it changes and it's like subjective to each state. So it's like, you gotta go to this website for this date this website for this date, oh, you need this Weisinger, this thing for this state. It just is like, it's such a pain in the butt. And then also just kind of like in general, dealing with government agencies is got to be one of the worst things that exists. Yeah, I mean, like you said, Every state has terrible gov website. It's atrocious. So yeah, I mean, it would be amazing if somebody solve this problem, amazing.

Justin  46:36  

So free startup idea to any of the people watching this right now. Go out and build some thing that just like proxies to every government website out there so that us at Yac and do us and other amazing, remote companies don't have this massive pain in the ass where we have to register through your terrible government website with zero instructions. And all kinds of differing information. I mean, just getting our business tax license for like our local area was this battle of telling one entity at a state level or at the city level that we needed our license and them telling us we needed it at our county level. We went to the county them telling us we needed it at our city level, don't get the county level. And we're like,

Jordan  47:21  

do violet. Yeah. If I just got to a point where I was like, stop, like, just give us this. We keep hearing the same thing. 50 times in a row,

Justin  47:29  

like get on the phone together, and you guys decide because you both don't even agree this is ridiculous. Avery, I assume you don't run into this that often because of your position, but you know, yeah. So do you know how do a solves this? Do you guys have something like deal or do you just do it all manually because you're bigger and better than us and probably have actual processes in place?

Evert  47:51  

Um, well, we're all contractors for Doist. So that was it ourselves? Yeah.

Hunter  47:59  

I didn't Just a question he said he bought outside the United States. Yeah, you have to treat his contractors, right. How do you grant equity? I actually don't know the answer to that last part, the equity question,

Justin  48:09  

but sure it would be complicated. The one. We have a developer in Venezuela, one that does mobile work for us, and he's treated as a contractor. But I pay into a US bank account that he has. So even even though he's in Venezuela, he has a US bank account that's legitimately set up. But we tend 99 him, and Well, technically we don't turn 99. And either he just is like a expense at the end of the month. Essentially, he doesn't get like tax paperwork. But I think definitely giving them equity would complicate things, another startup idea. International equity cap tables, I don't know carta maybe can get on that they had like 1400 employees or something ludicrous like that. I'm sure they could build out some like international cap table stuff. Figure it out. Yeah.

Jordan  48:58  

But

Justin  48:58  

all right, that brings us to the End of the stream ever Can you kind of like cap us out here? Where can people find you? What apps should they download? What apps should they not download? Where can they get in contact with you guys? Where are your jobs posted? I don't know. Give us give us the rundown.

Evert  49:16  

All right. Well, I'm not too active on social media. I like to do more reflecting on my own and write down my thoughts and, but you can find me on LinkedIn. If you just type in my name. You'll find me if you type in LinkedIn dot com slash Avery Altizer. You'll find me. I'm also on Twitter but I'm just there to see what's going on sometimes. You're aware my handle is it's a red v. You should you should download to do is if you want to achieve great things, if you want to declare things if you're trying to figure out you know your life right now to do is is a great tool to set things up. Divide tasks with your partner, or your housemates, or even people

that you just want to collaborate with on any skill you can do with

a twist is another great tool, which I definitely recommend. I tried slack for, I think a good 10 minutes. And I really realized that's not a tool I ever want to be a part of twists actually allows you to have topical channels and threads in there. And you can actually have discussions that stay on topic. I think that's one of the greatest features about twist.

Jordan  50:34  

Awesome, love it. Thanks, man.

Justin  50:36  

We'll drop some notes in the we'll drop some download links in the notes when this post to YouTube and we will tweet this out with a lot of links. And we're just going to tweet your Twitter profile so that everyone can follow the guy who never tweets just sure thanks. Sounds good. Well, I'm gonna go ahead and queue this out here. Thanks for joining us. Let's play our music and we'll see you guys on the other side!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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