I don't believe this question is interesting because I think we know that most HN readers will prefer remote working instead offices. It doesn't matter whether it's semi-private cubicles or noisy open floor plans. Offices suck. Commuting sucks too. Probably 95+% would prefer remote work if they could get it.
>Do you think we should have kept our office or closed it?
The more interesting question & answer is how the 100% remote strategy helps your business. Yes, you save $86k/yr in office rent. However, does the remote arrangement boost your employees' productivity so much that it helps Buffer beat other competitors (Hootsuite, Sprout, etc.)? Is the remote productivity enabling the ability of engineers to add features at a faster rate that you noticed subscriptions going way up? Etc.
That's the business calculus that's more interesting to discuss. To be fair, it looks like author Courtney Seiter's background is writing/marketing and not business/engineering so it's understandable if she doesn't emphasize this angle. Also, the blog post is only 4 months old so they don't have a year's worth of financial performance to evaluate its effectiveness.
Well, even though the post is 4 months old, we've had remote employees from Beijing to SF for a while now. The economics of productivity is a super interesting question. And to share my thoughts on that, we have a company that basically never sleeps. At any given time there are a group of people working on stuff there. We have paid for tools that help us communicate in a manner where on a project, I can pick up where someone else left off. Whether we've beaten our competitors is a question I admit I Dont know the answer to. And I'm not sure if owning the entire space is something we want to do either. One of our bigger guiding principles is, do we have a solid product that people love using and are they happy with the support they get. On this front we know that the answer is yes. We always want to continue improving but we also are very happy with what we've created and done today :)
I know some HN'ers like to pit this as BigCorp simply trying to save money/control the workers, but in fact, if you're a true knowledge worker, it might be worth it to build you a small castle with a butler. The leverage a good worker creates is peanuts compared to any kind of working arrangement.
So, as you pointed out, we get to the nitty-gritty part of this: do whatever you want for whatever reasons you want, but at the end of the day, is it helping you execute your mission better? Much better? Then keep doing that until you find your next improvement.
86K/yr for an office is nothing if your productivity suddenly starts tanking, or you're unable to adapt to rapid change. In fact, it's comparing a static number with a highly dynamic one. I'm not sure if such a comparison really makes much sense.
I don't believe this question is interesting because I think we know that most HN readers will prefer remote working instead offices. It doesn't matter whether it's semi-private cubicles or noisy open floor plans. Offices suck. Commuting sucks too. Probably 95+% would prefer remote work if they could get it.
>Do you think we should have kept our office or closed it?
The more interesting question & answer is how the 100% remote strategy helps your business. Yes, you save $86k/yr in office rent. However, does the remote arrangement boost your employees' productivity so much that it helps Buffer beat other competitors (Hootsuite, Sprout, etc.)? Is the remote productivity enabling the ability of engineers to add features at a faster rate that you noticed subscriptions going way up? Etc.
That's the business calculus that's more interesting to discuss. To be fair, it looks like author Courtney Seiter's background is writing/marketing and not business/engineering so it's understandable if she doesn't emphasize this angle. Also, the blog post is only 4 months old so they don't have a year's worth of financial performance to evaluate its effectiveness.