My job entails emergencies from time to time, and it's rewarding to solve an issue at the customer, before it gets out of hand, while still solving problem on the long-term roadmap during the day.
What I do regret is the complete lack of remote, meaning I will pretty much leave this job soon, as my fiancée is currently living on the other side of the planet.
It's great to see companies that do care for employees well-being in other ways than office perks, and I'd love to see more of that in the future. Are you still looking for applicants?
i don't recruit on hn. i will say this though: most people like you, if given the opportunity to work for a smaller, unknown firm for less money remotely, and a larger well known 'famous' firm for more money on-site, they will usually choose the latter even if they really want to work remotely.
in other words, "i want to work remotely" usually really means, "i wish i had all the upsides of BigCo with none of the downsides."
I can't blame you on that one.
Still, I want to address something. Remote work is a different paradigm, it doesn't make a lot of sense to compare the two of them. The upsides are pretty different, and so are the downsides.
I'm sure some people do not realise it requires a wildly different skill set, as well as a different mindset, to work remotely. The first thing that comes to mind is communication, the next is processes, and that's not the end of the list.
I'd take the job getting me closer to my loved ones any day over a job at BigCo personally, especially considering I feel strongly about the upsides. To each his own, I guess.
Are you willing to share any communities or other resources you do use for recruiting? No pressure at all here, just curious.
(Not always successfully -- I have to admit -- but I try).
I've seen a couple of such shitstorms where we had to hack on production systems to get them back to work quickly before thoroughly fixing the actual problem. Almost always, it could have been prevented with proper unit testing, code reviewing and more thought-out deployment processes.
"a reliable person who can actually, really, like, totally for real drive a problem to resolution and then go spend time with family. if there's an emergency, they pick up their phone and try to help."
this is a small percentage of the population, but big enough. it's why we (based in california) have a 75% remote workforce. hint: we still pay california $. that's how you retain talent. everyone on my team lives in huge houses and i live in an apartment.
you'd (well maybe not you, but you know what i mean) be surprised at the number of super-intelligent ("smart") people who can't solve problems when the pressure is on.