The article is full of contradictions. For context, we're not a FAANG, we have limited resources, but we have been way more productive remotely as a team.

The first few points mention that not every company is a FAANG, and companies have limited resources, but then goes to address global presence which is most likely the case for multinationals. Again, for context: we're a tiny team that just happens to have people in a few cities because we told people to go wherever they want to.

Second, it addresses laws against unlawful termination. Unlawful termination, whether remotely or not, still is unlawful.

Payroll taxes would still have to be paid. If it's not remote work, then you'd have to attract talent to wherever you are. If you're a global company, you most likely have subsidiaires. Not saying it doesn't add complexity, just saying that for different modes there are different problems.

The 'law' states that the software economy, not the economy, is bigger than you think.

We also happens to have developed an 'IoT', read a device that talks to a device, which is how the plain internet worked before a guy who has been sleeping for years woke up with an idea he thought original of "what if like, things could like send information to like other things.. Whoaaa".

>The biggest hurdle employees face in remote/home offices is lack of focus and direction.

Not new or proper to remote work. It used to be called bad management. Goes on about it and all these can be not only overcome, but leveraged if one runs a tighter ship.

The question then becomes: how does management get their shit together after all those 'leadership' seminars and workshops they attended. Ready, steady, lead.

How we've done it: about two years ago, I got a bit paranoid about the fact we relied too much on people being present for work to be done, and was bothered seeing the team suffer commute at least 4 hours daily. We started experimenting with different schemes, sometimes working a full week remotely, seeing what 'broke', and addressing that. We wanted to get over the mistakes while we could afford it, and we wanted to be able to hire elsewhere after we had learned these lessons. The idea was to expose the crutches we relied on to get work done. For example, peculiarities in the code you tell your team over coffee about is a hidden crutch, because you unknowingly assume that the team is there and that you can address everyone. Working remotely for a few days exposes that because your colleagues hit that problem and you didn't tell them. Which means you have to document things, and institutionalize knowledge. I know it's a big word, but when you join a company and a year later the co-founder and CTO resigns without notice, you learn your lesson and establish processes so that if you disappear or are not in the capacity to help the team, there is enough knowledge to go by[0]. So the first few days, everything I did was documented in a git versioned handbook. I went so far as to document with pictures how to fill a cheque for taxes, what to write, where to sign, where to pay with a picture of the building, its GPS location, what floor. It was called an "Operator's Manual" so that anyone could take it and operate this. We have hired for that role later, and we just handed that person the manual so we could focus on other things.

Everything went there. Our corporate clients, addresses, points of contact. I didn't want anyone to go over a crappy handover if I wasn't there.

Things aren't always the way we want them to be.

- [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25025253