> Half the team is remote! Kudos to them for making this work.

FWIW, I believe they're retrenching heavily on this. I remember reading articles about how they're trying to centralize management, and if you look at their jobs page (https://github.com/about/jobs#positions) most of their eng positions are SF only, at least the three or so I looked at. Only their support positions seem to be remote.

They still had remote positions the last time I looked but they were more client facing roles. Sales and tech consultants.

From looking more closely at the job descriptions, it seems most of them are tied to a geographic location, as opposed to previously, where remote was always an option. Seems like now remote has to be offered explicitly for your position.

>Half the team is remote! Kudos to them for making this work.

Are you being sarcastic (esp, in light of your point 1) )?

Out of curiosity from someone not in the know, would remote employees cost more or less than ones made to come in every morning?

> Are you being sarcastic

Definitely not, I work remote. I feel I am more productive as remote employee, probably about 10-20% more. I read somewhere that for every 10 miles you commute daily, it costs you $10,000/year in gas/vehicle wear-and-tear/health and psychological side effects, etc, not to mention the lost hours sitting in traffic.

Would you rather have your employees sitting in traffic, or working on critical projects?

According to that I am net negative when I go to work. (Although I too am significantly more product at home)

I would love to see your source on that. (I think you're right, just want to read the original paper)

joeax means managing / coordinating remote workers is often harder than on-site workers because of different time zones and conference software problems.

That is true there is a cost to managing remote workers. But after 1 or 2 workers the cost diminishes as there are established practices in place to ensure productivity: Slack, Skype or appear.in, join.me, Google Hangouts.

For more tips on managing remote workers, check out remotive.io (disclaimer: I am not affiliated with them at all)

At GitLab we're completely remote, all our processes and documentation on this is open, here: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/

Much less. Not just localized salaries (GH didn't used to do this, they may do now) which are always cheaper than SF, but for employees outside of the US no benefits cost, health insurance etc.