Remote Work

“One of the things you lose when you are not physically in the same city, in the same room as other people, are those chance encounters and also those planned encounters where you get together and you hatch an idea.”

“Remote work, when it does work, is, ah, when there's a very intentional effort to bring people together physically, all in one place, in the same room, breathing the same air, and having a synchronous experience, but also having some leeway, you know, that inf…”

“I think it's a tragedy, actually. Unless you've made it. If you've made it, work from home, maybe.”

“A junior person is not going to suggest an idea in your company. If you walk by the hall and I'll walk into his office, like, what are you working on? And like, well, we have this crazy idea. They're not going to call my assistant, make an appointment to do a …”

“And so if you're just working at home, isolated from everyone, the chances you're going to have a marvelous random bumping are small.”

“First of all, I don't think remote works. Generally, it only works for Shopify, and that's because we built more software to make remote work than anyone reasonably thought we could. And I think the jury has fully come back on this topic, that companies that a…”

“Well, I got, I say it's white collar fraud.”

“When I look at my own career, I would not be where I am today if in my twenties and thirties I was working remotely.”

“When people stop, stop hiring and start firing, we're going to find out who gets fired first. And if you don't have any, if you're not built up any kind of face time or any kind of social capital in your organization, you're, you, it's much easier for you to b…”

“Remote work actually works best for like an AI brain within a company because everything is recorded and you have to record all your meetings and transcripts.”

“The remote work shift is permanent. The occupancy story doesn't recover.”

“Most companies are remote. As soon as you start being on two floors, three floors, you don't know the people in your company. Whether they're sitting on the third floor or they're at home, it doesn't really make a difference to you, right?”

“I used to think pure remote would scale for early stage companies if you have the right culture, but I don't think that anymore. I think you've got to be in person at least a few days a week.”

“There's a difference between Between remote work where somebody works at home and they're like in boxers and then a suit. Okay. Versus we have an office in every major city in the world and whatever city you're in, you're going to that office every day, five d…”

“If I started a new company, I believe I would start it in person, and I would have an agreement that at some level, say, a 150 people were all going to turn remote.”

“It's just way more productive. My last company, we were remote, so because it was during COVID, and I think there's pros and cons of that, but I think overall, just personality-wise, it just comes down to the founder's personalities. Like, Ashwin and I are doi…”

“I think remote work is a disaster for young people. I think they need to meet each other, learn how to read the room.”

“For me, I don't like remote businesses. I really like running a business in person. I think that, like, intensity of team is so much cooler than endless Zoom meetings.”

“There are benefits to being remote. So I won't knock all those down, but culture definitely takes a hit. Zero doubt about that. Humans need to be together to establish culture.”

“Then there was the idea that basically all, you know, all work becomes remote, or at least all knowledge It becomes remote, and I would say, like, that has not stuck that well.”

“New people entering the workforce had a much worse experience, right? And so the COVID was sort of a, there was this sort of dichotomous experience where if you were like a 20 or 30 year veteran of a company and like a high ranking official, it was Absolutely …”

“Remote work is generally not great for innovation unless you're truly in an online collaborative environment.”

“I think for the remote roles is difficult because we're just equalizing the world. And then sometimes, you know, if you're based in developing country, you can create value to a company in, in developed market. And then it's things changing. So it's not only w…”

“Even in face masks, I required everybody to come back to the office and I still require that today. Which is its own conversation, but I'm not a believer in remote work”

“What we know from our companies is that remote work is not working”

“The young generation is being damaged by this. That means they may or may not be on your particular staff, but they are being left behind. They're being left behind socially, ideas, meeting people.”

“The thing that we have seen, and interestingly, we measured this before COVID, because we were doing a lot of remote hiring, and we wanted to see how much we should lean into it, is that it is not good for early career people. We can actually measure it in our…”

“So, I do think that's something, if you're 22 and you're starting out, my number one advice for you, do not take a remote.”

“It's still hilarious to me that everyone's convinced themselves that we're optimizing by doing this remote thing, and we're just not.”

“I think it's very, very hard to build an early stage company remote, and the reason I say that is unless you, you've worked with each other before, I view there to be a well of trust that is created when you work together in this, you know, the reason why peop…”

“The whole remote work trend is actually a multi-decade trend, where people, No, you know, it's still, like, under hyped in many ways, and it hasn't had the level of impact that it will when people realize, like, oh, I can go. Move to a small town with a group …”

“Everybody that has hired a remote team in the past knows that remote teams do not work as hard. They do not work as many hours.”

“And the reality is I was dead wrong. We're getting back into the office. The collaboration, the productivity, like, it's not even close, and it's very painful getting back into the office, and you know what is worse than that? It's not getting back in the offi…”

“There are many people who are actually quite, you know, well motivated. They can see the goal. They don't need a reminder of their colleague. They got the colleagues in their heads. They don't need to see the building. They don't need to see the logo. They don…”

“If you're optimizing for cost, absolutely be remote. If you're optimizing for creativity, which I think that software and product building is a creative endeavor, if you're optimizing for creativity, it's kind of like composing an album. You can't do it on the…”

“Humans have been like building relationships and working together in person for thousands of years, and I don't think that that's gonna go away instantaneously through technology. I think that that's a, it's a pretty high bar to kind of declare that the domina…”

“Not thinking that it is a way of operating and just thinking that it's something like you can keep flipping back and forth. Like you have to build the whole company around being a remote culture and not just decide one day that, okay, today we're remote and th…”

“We definitely wouldn't have built Tinder if we were remote, that's for sure.”

“It is Of course possible to build a career remotely and not in a city. It's just the challenge. It is kind of like playing on hard mode versus easy mode. You get the, it's like in a video game, you're putting the attributes into comfort. You're putting all you…”

“Like you have a plan. Now let's go execute it. And we're all executing to the plan, and we're not really planning to change the plan much. That can be done more effectively, probably remotely than putting everybody in the same office, because you're not, you k…”

“I would argue there's a very extreme barbell which is you either need for truly creative work like defining a new product building something new. I would argue it's a full barbell, which is you either need everybody like right there in person for the reason th…”

“Well, the investors invested commercial real estate are different than the investors that invest in companies. And so it's different people. So that's not literally happening.”

“My view is that's actually a fake problem. That, that, that the real problem was they weren't working hard to begin with. And they were goofing off 20 hours a week in the office already. And so yeah, they're goofing off at home, but they were goofing off in th…”

“One thing he said was that, you know, if you think you're communicating a hundred percent accurately, that's probably a 60 or 70% for the other person and shoot for like a 150%. And so that's something that I think really helps in that environment.”

“I, I've come to think it's, especially in our business, just doesn't work.”

“Well, if you are concerned about people working, you have a hiring problem.”

“If you're working remotely from a computer, what you're doing perfectly fits the definition of a video game.”

“Because I can't think of a role which is done better remotely, and people disagree with me. And I'm always open to have my mind changed.”

“They don't feel trapped in the office. They don't feel like they have to show up early to do FaceTime. They don't feel like they have to be the last one to leave. They don't have to pretend like they're busy. It's so life enabling to them that they're grateful…”

“I don't know any role that is better performed remotely, even engineering scrums, the collaboration that devs need together with product, with sales, with customer success.”

“My rough rule of thumb is if you had a hour long commute each way, we probably get half of that back in terms of work.”

“Some companies operate a two-tier system where they say you can work remotely, but that is a second-class career path, and we're reluctantly doing that. That's remote or distributed in name only, and you're not going to get the best people.”

“I don't think so. And I say that as someone who is a homebody and loves being remote, but like, it's honestly like having even, I mean, if you have a suit, maybe, but having the suit and just the random quirkiness and the thing, like the things around our work…”

“I have so much more faith in the opportunity to improve the remote experience. And so I think long-term it's going to triumph.”

“Pre AWS, we're all, all the servers were like in the office, literally. And AWS made it so you could just like build stuff from your laptop. Maybe you don't have to think about it. And I think the same thing is happening with remote work, which is like, you ca…”

“It actually turned out that some of the people who are most eager to return to the office are people with young kids, because it's super annoying to try and get your work done when the kids are pestering you.”

“Everything that has to do with planning that has to do with aligning on strategy, figuring out architecture, you know playing thoughts back and forth. These things work way better. I do think if you have a plan, if you need to deliver if it's like very clear, …”

“One way is to just try to find people who are experienced both with remote work. And with their specific field, because that, that decreases the need of how much to how much, how close the need to communicate.”

“I think remote work is Very, very difficult to achieve a build a company culture. I think individuals can succeed. I'm incredibly productive working in my house with there's no distraction. I'm incredibly productive individual contributor, but great things get…”

“By the way, I think remote work can really work, but it's not going to benefit the people who think like, it's not going to be people making 250,000 dollars a year hanging out in Jackson Hole. It's going to be geniuses in the developing world Making, you know,…”