10 Companies that Will Allow You to Live Anywhere You Want – Issue #29

For knowledge workers, the days of being forced to commute back and forth for your job may finally be coming to an end. Yay! 🎉🎉🎉

We were talking about telecommuting, distributed teams, and remote work decades ago when I worked for IBM. But, it was lip service. Technology didn’t support it very well.

I should also say that management didn’t seem to support telecommuting either. They would say that it was ok to work from home a day each week, but it upset some of your coworkers (e.g., “We have an important meeting today. Why aren’t you here?”). Big companies started pulling their employees back into the office.

However, I think the pendulum is swinging back again. Younger, modern companies are embracing remote work. They have discovered how hard or expensive it is to hire local talent. Some are even become fully distributed and everyone works remotely. The technology has also reached a point where remote work feels viable.

For the past 9 years, the majority of my work has been performed remotely. I do occasionally meet with my clients in person. I won’t deny that working together in person adds an additional level of connection and effectiveness. Some things simply do work better face to face.

But, we primarily talk on the phone, videoconference using Zoom, and communicate daily in a private Slack team. It’s pretty amazing. It’s what I had hoped for two decades ago.

Most of the entrepreneurs I know work remotely or they’re even full-time digital nomads. Grab your laptop and phone and go anywhere in the world where you can find internet access. I wish this had been an option when I was just starting my career. The good news is that this flexible lifestyle isn’t only available to entrepreneurs.

Employers are embracing remote teams

With a few notable exceptions of companies who seem to be backsliding, a significant number of enlightened companies have discovered the power of a remote team. Companies often benefit from reduced facilities costs, lower turnover, increased productivity, higher morale, and reduced environmental impact.

One study by Nicholas Bloom, professor of economics at Stanford University, found:

• A 13% increase in performance for employees who worked from home

• Greater work satisfaction

• Attrition dropped by 50%

• Cost savings was ~$2,000 annually per employee

Some companies have mixed environments with a number of offices around the world, but also allowing employees to work from home (or wherever they chose). Some companies have fully embraced virtual teams and don’t even have the concept of a “main office.”

When does remote work work?

I’ve worked remotely off and on during my 26-year career as an employee, consultant, and business owner. I have also had people on my teams working remotely, sometimes in other countries all over the world. Now, I have clients who are having mixed results working remotely for their employers.

Sometimes collaboration and communication work very well. But, there are times that the remote relationships are challenging.

There are challenges when only part of the team works remotely and the company does not ensure best practices. If a company is primarily structured with employees in their headquarters and a few employees working remotely, those remote employees can be at a disadvantage.

The home office forgets to dial people into meetings. Even when they remember to set up the call, there are subtle nonverbal cues and physical activity taking place in the room.

People write on the whiteboard and forget to describe what’s happening for those on the phone. People together in the room have quiet side conversations. People nod or wink at each other. It’s hard to feel like part of the discussion when you’re sitting on the phone hearing people whispering and mumbling or when the room goes silent.

The home office will also have celebrations and parties without remote employees. People have hallway conversations. Local employees take advantage of proximity to have lunch or coffee with upper management.

However, remote work does work well when the entire company is distributed and the company adheres to best practices. Everyone is on a level playing field. Everyone has to dial into meetings. Everyone chats on Slack. Everyone has to make sure to document and share things.

No employee has unfair access to upper management and leadership. Anyone can set up a meeting and call their boss vs. bumping into someone in the hallway or cafeteria.

However, human beings do need contact to collaborate well together. I’ve found that distributed teams should come together physically about once a month. The most effective distributed companies hold retreats and offsite to bring the whole company together for a week.

People meet face to face. They get to know each other better. They share meals and have fun.

Physical proximity builds rapport. It helps the remote relationship considerably. I’ve always found that I work better with people once we’ve spent time together side by side and shared a few meals.

10 interesting remote companies

The following companies have organizations where some or even all of the team would be considered “remote.” Some do have a primary office location or even distributed global offices, but they have embraced teams who work where they need to around the world.

1. AgileBits

I’m a big fan of the password manager 1Password, which is made by the folks at AgileBits. They have a team of over 65 people and 80% of them work remotely.

Check out their open roles on their career site.

2. Automattic

You may not recognize the name Automattic, but I bet you have heard of their open-source software WordPress. They are also behind WooCommerce, Jetpack, Simplenote, Longreads, VaultPress, Akismet, Gravatar, Polldaddy, Cloudup, and more. They are a distributed company with 585 employees in 57 countries, speaking 79 different languages.

They have a number of open positions and you can choose to work from wherever you want. They do like to bring the whole company together once a year for seven days so that people can bond and have fun!

3. Balsamiq

Balsamiq is the company that creates Balsamiq Mockups, a rapid wireframe mockup and prototyping tool. The team is made up of more than 25 people and 70% work remotely.

Learn more about the company and how they work. Then check out their current job openings.

4. Basecamp

Basecamp was named “37signals” for their first 15 years, which might be more familiar to you. Their most popular product is “Basecamp,” a web-based project management tool that integrates features such as to-do lists, milestone management, messaging, file sharing, and time tracking. They are a team of 50 people distributed across 32 cities around the world. Everyone who works at Basecamp is free to live and work wherever they want.

You can learn more about the company and check their open positions.

5. Buffer

Buffer provides social media management tools that are used by over 60,000 paying customers. You can actually see their team of 72 people across 53 cities in 10 different time zones.

They have an extremely open and honest culture. You can see their salaries, equity formula, pricing structure, revenue, and more. Learn more about how they work and check out their job openings.

6. Doist

Doist creates the Todoist productivity app and the Twist communication app. It is a bootstrapped, independent, and profitable company with a fully-distributed team of over 5o people spread across 20 countries.

Learn more about working at Doist and check out their open positions.

7. Edgar

Edgar is a self-funded and profitable company that provides a social media management service. Work-life balance is important to them and they believe in “clocking out” at night to have a personal life. They have a team of 30 who work 100% remotely.

Check out their job openings and learn more about how they work.

8. Flexjobs

Flexjobs helps people find legitimate flexible roles, telecommuting jobs, part-time jobs, and freelance work. So, it’s probably not surprising that their 67 employees are 100% remote as well.

Check out their open positions.

9. Hotjar

Hotjar is a privately owned and funded company that provides research and optimization tools for web businesses. They offer a cloud-based tool that gives your insights from your web and mobile sites (e.g., using heatmaps, funnel tracking, user polls, surveys).

The CEO, David Darmanin, was interviewed recently and described how he grew the company to $9.4M in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) with a 100% remote team of 42 people. They also have an interesting philosophy about how they flexibly manage the team.

Check out the careers at Hotjar.

10. Zapier

Zapier provides a service that connects over 750 web apps, allowing you to create powerful workflows. They have a 100% distributed team of 80 people across 13 countries. They also have a useful ebook that you can download, The Ultimate Guide to Remote Work.

Check out their current job openings.

You have options

All too often, frustrated people tell me that they feel trapped in a bad job and there is nothing they can do about it. When I dig deeper to understand why one of the reasons is that they feel that there aren’t many other opportunities where they live.

Tech folks in Silicon Valley have it a little easy. They can drive down the freeway past hundreds of companies that are hiring. This isn’t the case in other places around the world.

Yes, people could move to be near the opportunities that do exist, but there are many reasons that they can’t just pick up and leave. Cost of living, family, friends, kids in school, etc.

Therein lies the beauty of the rise of these remote companies with distributed teams. You don’t have to go to the job anymore. The job comes to you. You no longer have to sacrifice having a great job so that you can live where you want to live. The examples I listed above are just the tip of the iceberg, there are hundreds of companies waiting to hire someone like you.

Speaking of remote jobs…

Remote Jobs

• Production Artist at 2U. They’re looking for a motivated production artist to join their growing creative team. This position reports to the graphic design manager and works closely with graphic designers and various stakeholders in the marketing department to produce final files on a wide variety of marketing projects for their university partner programs. Projects include digital advertisements, emails, web pages, and some print.

• Front-end Engineer at TED. They create the TED Talks video series, the globe-spanning TED Fellows program, the TED-Ed movement to support learners of all ages, and many more idea-driven initiatives. And it’s all powered by their world-class technology. TED’s Technology Team focuses on continuous improvement for users to easily access ideas and spread them far and wide within their communities. This is an opportunity to join a team that believes passionately in the power of ideas to change attitudes, lives and, ultimately, the world. They are looking for a Front-end Engineer to help them to deliver best-in-breed web experiences at worldwide scale.

• Director of Sales at Chili Piper, which helps businesses help their buyers. Unlike the traditional method of inbound lead management, Chili Piper uses smart rules to qualify and distribute leads to the right reps in real-time. Their software also allows companies to automate opportunity distribution from their SDR’s to their AE’s, and book meetings from their marketing campaigns and live events. Companies like Square, Twilio, DiscoverOrg, SalesLoft, and SiriusDecisions use Chili Piper to create an amazing experience for their leads, and in return experience higher conversions for their business.