A few years ago I sold all my stuff to explore the world, creating 12 startups in 12 months and building $1M+/y in companies as an indie maker such as Nomad List and Remote OK. I'm also a big pusher of remote work and try to analyze the effects it will have on society. Follow me on Twitter or see my list of posts. My first book MAKE is out now.
Oct 19, 2013

Remote working is the future

Remote working, Society, Tech

The Bay Area, center of tech, has become too expensive to live for many. Most other big cities like New York, London, Paris are not far behind. Big cities are increasingly becoming a playground for the rich. If you’re building a start-up, you don’t have time to play and you’re probably not rich (yet).

Remote working can be the answer to the problem. It makes the labor force more flexible and can help spread out our resource usage over larger geographic areas than just cities. It used to be an oddity to go the other side of the world and work from there, limited to mostly TropicalMBA-type internet marketers. But increasingly tech start-ups are considering it, simply because it’s cheaper than renting an office. And with automation pushing labor costs lower, it may become the inevitable future of employment. And with that, a force for good.

Good because working remotely can enable a lower cost of living for employees, make their work more efficient, put them in a more inspiring environment and offer them a better quality of living than in a busy metropolitan area with bad air quality, long commutes and expensive housing.

Remote working also has one incredible competitive advantage. Your hiring pool becomes potentially worldwide. For example, if you’re looking for a front-end developer, why limit yourself to recruiting the best front-end dev in your town, when you can hire the best in the world?

P.S. I wrote a book on building indie startups called MAKE. And I'm on Twitter too if you'd like to follow more of my stories. I don't use email so tweet me your questions. Or you can see my list of posts. To get an alert when I write a new blog post, you can subscribe below:

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