I was not a fan of Zapier's interview process. You're actually timed on your project and you have exactly 2 hours to do it. I was ultimately turned down after doing it because they said there were linting errors and they said I was using hooks incorrectly. My usage of react hooks was straight from the documentation and I showed my solution to several other people in the industry and they saw no issue with it. I was under the impression the purpose of those coding assignments is to deliver something imperfect but functioning and talk about how to improve it.<p>The main problem I see with a lot of remote companies is that they seem to be overloaded with applications to the point they are making strange decisions about how to filter applicants. They also almost always require you to do some type of project which is a big commitment if you're applying to a lot of places. My best application experience apart from the one that hired me was Duck Duck Go. They pay you to do the project and I feel that is a far better approach. That way they don't have to feel bad about turning you down because hey you get paid, and you don't feel so bad about not getting it because hey you got paid.<p>I ultimately got a much better position at a fully remote company than I would have gotten at Zapier so it wasn't a matter of me overestimating my worth either.<p>I also found that a lot of the well known fully remote companies take forever to respond to you, gitlab, zapier, and DDG were the most responsive and communicative during the process, but I have some that I applied to 2 months ago that are just now emailing me to set up video screens. Startup companies tend to be the most responsive, I would get video screen invites sometimes within minutes after sending an email out.
I'm a recent hire for one of the companies on that list. It seems to me that by allowing your company to hire from a much larger pool of candidates allows you to be more selective for talent. The amount of talent that I'm exposed to is incredible, something I'd never be able to experience in my own city.<p>There's a whole slew of unfamiliar problems that come with remote work - and I believe that these companies are pioneering something that will become the norm one day. Work life balance is a serious problem, as well as relationship building. It seems to me that distributed companies have a hard cap on size before the disadvantages of remote become too cumbersome. These problems require creative solutions, and it's awesome to be able to contribute to it. However, it's difficult for me to identify which problems are caused by the remote-first culture, and which problems can just be attributed to the company itself.
I really think remote-first still hurts workers over all, and is just taking advantage of offering relief from atrocious open-plan offices.<p>For example, Gitlab’s “compensation principles” [0] are horrifying to me. I could absolutely never work for an employer who openly acknowledges people who provide the same value to the company are <i>explicitly</i> paid less because of location, in a situation (unlike with physical offices in different locations) where there is no excuse for it.<p>[0]: <a href="https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/global-compensation/#compensation-principles" rel="nofollow">https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-group/global-compen...</a><p>Notably it’s not just about paying different rates to different locales. They also actively adjust your salary if you move, even though it has no effect on them at that point (they are already paying you a certain rate at that point and don’t depend on your location). And they control the definition of multiplicative factors that determine pay between locations (instead of it being a negotiation), and those multiples are often ludicrously wrong (e.g. NYC & London compared to SF).
Percona as well
<a href="https://www.percona.com/about-percona/careers" rel="nofollow">https://www.percona.com/about-percona/careers</a>