We've tried and found that remote engineers are less effective, they miss out a lot from group whiteboard discussions, overhearing office chatter "Hey bill, service XX crashed again because of YY (and Mike overhears and says "Oh yeah, I saw YY in service ZZ too and fixed it"), and just general team cohesiveness. In theory we could hire more people for less salary if we had a remote workforce, but we're still a small company (less than 100 people) and it's a lot harder to manage a 100 person geographically spread out engineering team than a 50 person local team). Paying the San Francisco premium for salaries (and rent and everything else) is less than the cost to build and manage a distributed team. As we grow, that will likely change as we'll be able to have specialized teams and open satellite offices, but for now hiring in the Bay Area makes the most sense.
We could likely build an accomplished team in any major metropolitan area, but since our investors and board members are here (as are the other companies they invest in and manage), it makes sense to have the company here. (not entirely our choice, when someone invests millions of dollars into a company, they want to be close to it)
We could likely build an accomplished team in any major metropolitan area, but since our investors and board members are here (as are the other companies they invest in and manage), it makes sense to have the company here. (not entirely our choice, when someone invests millions of dollars into a company, they want to be close to it)