Crowd Fusion needs to add three more solid developers ASAP just to work with our existing customers, but we hire really slowly because these aren't traditional developer jobs.
I mentioned that Craig posted to Authentic Jobs looking for developer talent. That got me thinking about the people we've worked with at Weblogs, Inc., Blogsmith, Netscape and Crowd Fusion who were a successful fit. Many of them had run their own personal consulting businesses or startups before they worked with us. That makes sense. If someone understands how to get enough done to pay their rent each month, how to land new customers while not disappointing existing customers, how to deliver projects on time AND how to do all of that from home, then they've probably got what we need.
Being a developer at Crowd Fusion is not like being a developer at a bank. Crowd Fusion is a totally virtual company. Everyone works from home. There are some downsides to this, like we don't go to lunch together every day and you can't have an assistant come and work out of your house while you're away on a business trip, but the good far outweighs the bad.
37signals talks about the dangers of interruptions in the workplace and even call it the interruption tax. I'm sitting at my desk, trying to get into a problem solving zone, and you come and stand in my doorway because you've got something you need to talk to me about right now. Those interruptions are a killer. Most of the things you want to discuss can wait. Send me an email or a text message. Open a ticket in Assembla and assign it to me. Type your question into our Campfire group chatroom. Just don't stand in my doorway and stare at me.
I've been working out of my basement office since 2002 and I don't miss the workplace interruptions, but working from home doesn't mean you don't get interrupted. I've got three kids and three dogs so there is plenty going on!
To be successful at working from home you need two important things: 1) personal discipline and 2) cooperation from your family. If you aren't a self-starter, you can't work from home. If the people (or animals) you're living with equate you being home with you being off the clock, then you're just trading one set of interruptions for another.
There's an old saying in basketball that I heard a lot when the Jeff Van Gundy took the New York Knicks to the NBA Finals and their center Patrick Ewing was injured along the way. I was at MSG when the much shorter Knicks team lost to the San Antonio Spurs and their two seven-footers, Tim Duncan and David Robinson. That saying is "you can't coach height." Van Gundy could teach the Knicks a lot of things, but all the coaching skills in the world couldn't make his team taller.
Someone with solid development skills in another language like Java can be trained to make great Crowd Fusion PHP code, but I don't believe you can easily train someone to be an effective virtual employee. I'd rather find a responsible, passionate person who can learn to code better, than find a smart developer who needs to be in an office with co-workers to get things done.
Comments (8)
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Brian Alvey 1098 days ago
Funny enough, a few hours after I posted this I was talking to one of our investors and he told me, "You do know that at some point you are going to need office space, right?"
Me: "Oh yeah. Of course."
But I'd love to see how far we can go without it!
Brian Alvey 1098 days ago
And in IM someone else told me: "Anyone can learn to code, but the kind of responsibility you need to work from home you have either learned by age 10 or you never will."
Nice!
Brian Alvey 1098 days ago
The investor comment wasn't about looking legit. The customers we're getting are huge, so that isn't holding us back.
It was more about how there's no startup that grew past 50 people that didn't get office space. At Weblogs, Inc. Jason and I did everything from home until after AOL bought the company. Then we only had offices for salespeople. Sales teams need offices and land lines, it seems. It's pretty simple to scale blogging from home. Also I know how to scale designing and developing from home. But sales?
Again, I'd love to prove him wrong, but I get where he's coming from. ;-)
Brian Alvey 1097 days ago
That's really kind Matt. Thanks!
It's easy to stay strong while we've got no two employees living in the same city, but we can't avoid that forever.
Matt Heerema 1097 days ago
Wrote something similar up in an email to my new employeer when talking about hiring some other remote guys. I should have blogged it. Of course, you're a much better writer, so I'll just link to yours instead :) Nicely written.
Stay strong on the no offices thing! Figure out a way for sales people to work from home! (maybe?)
Dossy Shiobara 1098 days ago
I've been 100% telecommute since 2006, and it's really tough trying to find a new job that's also 100% telecommute. I've been playing with CrowdFusion and have been cooking a biz idea around it, but working with/for you guys would be really awesome, too ... but, I'm probably not good enough to compete with the kind of talent you're going to attract, so I'll just keep on keepin' on ... ;-)
Joel Fisher 1098 days ago
Great post and I think you hit a lot of points square on the head.
I do question though your investors comment.
Do you really need office space to seem legit? I don't think you do.
As an investor, does it make it more real if you have your name on the door and paying rent?
I think you are smarter if you can work across a distributed model, keep overhead down and still remain productive.
With technology today, going into an office everyday really doesn't offer much benefit, except getting away from the kids/dogs. Working remotely is the future and a totally sustainable model.
Just me. Good luck with your search. Being picky is a good thing in the long run.
Tracey 990 days ago
Love both points.
1 - When you're any army of 1 - few, making the rent, getting & keeping customers, etc isn't easy - it's a tonne of tenacity. Thanks for the 'ata boy'.
2 - My husband's #1 complaint "The only time I can get any of my own work done is from home & on the skytrain [Vancouver's version of a subway]." notable... he's a developer.