Why you should consider continuous remote options for your engineering team.
With the new situation, many people are adjusting to working remotely. While right now your team might be de facto remote, there is also the case to be made for seeing this as an opportunity to consider a remote or hybrid team as a lasting option.
Allowing developers to work from wherever they’re located is a great way to grow your talent pool. However, it takes a lot more than simply declaring “our developers are everywhere” to effectively source, hire, and retain remote developers.
If the added benefit of widening your talent pool beyond your location isn’t enough to convince you to offer remote working options, consider how the hiring landscape has changed:
- A study by the Harvard Business Review found that remote workers were not only happier and more productive, but were far less likely to quit.
- The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics found that remote work is more prevalent than ever, with 38% of workers in management, business, and financial operations saying that they did some or all of their work at home.
- In a study of 500 managers, supervisors, and executives, 15Five found that 37% of companies have a main office with some people working remotely.
- In the 2019 survey among almost 90,000 tech workers around the globe 32% said, that the option to work remotely is one of the highest-ranking factors that would make them choose a job.
We asked respondents to picture themselves comparing two jobs with the same compensation, benefits, and location, and consider which characteristics would most influence their choice between the two.
How Stack Overflow has remote culture built in
While we have offices in New York, London, Munich and Austin, Stack Overflow was born remotely and it still shows in our culture. Before going fully remote under the current situation, we already had 39% of our employees working remotely across 14 countries. And an even higher number on the engineering team, where 80 % work remotely. Read more on how we build our remote culture or learn from experienced Stack Overflow employees about how to make the best of working from home.
So if you want to take the upcoming weeks and months to fully commit to remote, we create a two part guide. The first part focuses, amongst other things, on stakeholder buy-in and remote-friendly job listings and is if you will a starter’s guide to remote work. The second part helps to identify those who will succeed at remote work, make developer interviews work remotely and keep your decentralized team happy and productive with a strong remote culture.
