Getting A Remote Job Faster By Deciding What Environment You Want to Work In
Each Environment Is Different and Is Looking for Its Own Type of Person
I’m a startup guy. Always will be. I love the challenge of setting a direction for a product, and the number of fairly predictable, but also unique, problems that face companies at the earliest stages. And of course, I love the outsized impact I can have at this stage of a company’s life.
On the other side, I enjoy Small to Medium businesses with a settled business model, a dedication to high quality work, and several people in the org who have stuck around for a long time to build out their career and develop a clear and distinct presence in this business. This is how I started my career, and I’d do it all over if given the chance.
The environment, and particularly the business approach and size of the org, has a huge impact on your experience with the company. More importantly, each environment requires you to position yourself slightly differently, and approach the whole process, from job search to interviews, with a different style.
So today, let’s look at the different sizes and business types that exist in the remote world, how you can know which are the best fit for you, and how to think of your background and positioning differently. By the way, the numbers in the () are just estimates. Take them with a grain of salt.
Remote Start Ups (1-50 people)
A remote start up is the most exciting remote work environment to be a part. While this might sound nice, not everyone wants to be excited all the time. Many of us want to do our job, log off, and relax.
If that’s what you want, remote startups probably are not for you.
This is because the source of excitement at a remote start up is uncertainty: uncertainty over what the product is and who it’s for, uncertainty over how to manage certain processes, and uncertainty over how long your colleagues will stick around.
This is not a bad thing because it means there are many problems waiting to be solved to reduce uncertainty. If you are driven to solve problems, you don’t mind uncertainty, and you’re excited about the idea of reaching a point where high-growth becomes the norm, remote startups are a great place for you to work.
Remote Scale Ups (80-200 people)
Remote scale-ups are similar to start ups in that they have a lot of uncertainty and many challenges, but different in that the fundamental challenge of finding a way to grow the businesses revenue and customer base is no longer present.
What makes remote scale-ups challenging is the
Ambitious goals
Adjustments that a team needs to make around how they work
The pace of change in general
For #1, ambitious goals help prove that the company is able to quickly and continuously grow. This is particularly important when the company is venture backed, as investors want proof that the company can continue growing for a sustained period of time while remaining operationally sound.
For #2, teams need to adjust to a more process-driven style of working. While they may have reached early success through a combination of hard work and good luck, in this phase of a company’s life they need to embrace process.
For #3, the pace of change will come rapidly. Scaling a business requires a fair amount of experimentation and may require that whole new teams are born in a few weeks’ time. Other teams may vanish in a quarter or be greatly diminished if they are not helping the business grow.
All these factors make working at remote scallops interesting and challenging, ideal for people who like to bring order to a chaotic environment, and enjoy driving rapid change in the service of growth.
Remote SMBs (20+ people)
Interestingly, remote small to medium businesses are a little different from remote startups or scale ups. They may be larger agencies or other service providers, or they may be product companies that have decided not to try to service a huge market. They are frequently boot-strapped, and this can suggest a preference for quality over speed, and for craft over customer growth.
They will likely want you to be more experienced and possibly more specialized, but the exchange will be a better overall work-life balance. You’ll also need to align closely with their values and goals. In the end, working for such a company requires a combination of patience and focused discipline, as you will likely be expected to perform at a higher level on more focused tasks but also in a reasonable amount of certainty about how to do your job.
In short, if you consider yourself highly competent and semi-specialized, and you prefer stable work where there are clear boundaries around how you contribute value, an SMB is a great work environment for you.
Remote Public Companies (200+ people, often much bigger)
Finally, we have remote public companies. These are companies with multiple successful product lines in a defined vertical, or they potentially operate with products and services in many vertical (show me a company that does this, I haven’t heard of one!)
These companies are not dissimilar from the brand names we become familiar with over the last 2 decades in big tech: Google, Facebook, Amazon and more.
What makes these companies so different is they tend to value pedigree or extensive specialized experience. If you want to work with Amazon, you should have held your role elsewhere, proved your competence, and then be willing to prove your fit for Amazon when the time comes.
It’s the same with an Remote Public company, and landing a job there will require proving significant differentiation and specialization. It may also be you need to show you are a good culture fit, as these companies will often have distinct, well-defined culture you need to plug in to.
The biggest benefits of these companies are:
Opportunities for career development are higher because these companies will invest more in your growth and development
Stability. Usually, even if these places are challenging to work in, they are also more stable.
So if you want stability and specialization, a remote public company is probably right for you!
Action Item
Take some time to consider which of these company types sounds most interesting for you. I’ll be sending an email shortly documenting a number of jobs you can go for, and I encourage you to try to identify which company type each job is for.
Did I miss any company types? Probably! Tell me about them in the comments.