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Deel CEO 的远程宣言——7500人、110国、零办公室，从卧室造出十角兽

Deel 创始人 Alex Bouazizi 用 3333 字和 7500 人的实战数据证明一件事：所有大公司本质上都是远程公司，办公室只是包裹在数字协作外面的一栋建筑——真正决定胜负的是按能动性招聘、30 天内让新人打出第一场胜仗、OKR 透明到人人裸奔、以及经理必须亲自下场干活。

2026-02-09
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核心观点

  • 所有大公司早已是远程公司，只是不承认 一楼不认识三楼，苹果工程师在 Slack 审 PR，谷歌 PM 跨城市开 Zoom——超过 15 人同桌协作就不存在了。办公室是心理安慰剂，不是生产力工具。Deel 20 个月从 100 万 ARR 到 1 亿，速度超过 Slack 和所有历史 SaaS，全程零办公室。
  • 招聘的核心变量是能动性（Agency），不是简历 7 个面试问题全部指向同一件事：这个人会不会在没人要求的情况下自己动手。"你做过最棒的事是什么——而且没人让你去做？"这一题直接筛掉 80% 的候选人。SpaceX 和哈佛的秘密不是培养，是筛选。
  • 30 天影响力窗口决定一个人的存活 第一周上手工具和认识 3 个关键人，第 8-30 天必须交付一个可见成果。经理每天 10 分钟站会不是汇报而是清障。团队对新人的信任 = f(早期可见产出)。前 3-4 个月刻意高强度，不适合的人会自己走。
  • 经理必须是实践者，否则团队必然平庸 纯管理者失去判断绩效的能力。Deel 的规则：即便管理管理者的人也必须有 IC 任务。项目失败先看经理，不看 IC。
  • 远程的结构性成本优势是复利级别的 纽约雇 1 人的钱全球雇一个团队；省掉办公室后跑道直接翻倍；远程招聘消除了面对面偏见（残疾、新妈妈），视频面试更客观。每 1000 人每年省 50 万小时通勤。

跟我们的关联

1. 我们就是远程团队，这篇是操作手册 Deel 的 30 天影响力窗口、每日 10 分钟清障站会、OKR 透明到人人可见——这些不是理论，是可以明天就抄的 SOP。问题是：我们现在的新人 onboarding 有没有"第一场胜仗"的设计？ 2. 按能动性招聘的 7 个问题值得直接偷 尤其是"你做过最棒的事——没人让你去做"和"6 个月从零学到能教别人"，这两题对筛选 AI 时代的自驱型人才特别有效。 3. "经理必须干活"这条规则对小团队更致命 小团队里如果有人只做协调不做产出，成本是大公司的 10 倍。每个人都必须是 player-coach。

讨论引子

  • Deel 说前 3-4 个月刻意高强度让不合适的人自己走。我们的团队有没有类似的"自然筛选机制"，还是在用善意拖延不匹配？
  • 7 个面试问题里你觉得哪个最能区分"真自驱"和"面试型自驱"？我们下次招人要不要直接用？

你可以在卧室里打造一家十角兽

故事时间：这是我和朋友 Sami 在 2014 年伦敦一场黑客松期间，小睡了 2 小时的合影。这张照片浓缩了早期 Deel 那种标志性的“黑客卧室氛围”（尽管这张照片拍得更早）。

随着 Deel 从 5 名员工增长到 7000+，无数善意的祝福者劝我们“长大一点”，建一个总部（HQ）和办公室。我写这篇文章，是想解释为什么我们选择拥抱这种黑客卧室氛围——也许会一直如此。

所有大型公司都是远程公司。

一楼的人不认识三楼的人。当他们需要协作时，他们互发消息、打电话、打开一份共享文档。这就是远程工作。

苹果的一位工程师打开笔记本电脑，查看 Slack，在 Zoom 上参加站会，然后审阅一份来自从未见过面的同事的 pull request。谷歌的一位产品经理写一份 spec，发出来征求评论，然后和工程、设计与管理层连续开视频会议——这些人要么在不同楼层，要么在不同城市。微软的一位销售登录 CRM，给经理发消息，并与跨越三个时区的同事一起参加销售管道评审。这就是远程工作。

在这些公司里，真正“当面”一起工作的人，只有那 10 个或 15 个坐在彼此听得见的距离内的人。其他所有人都在通过屏幕协作。今天工作如何被完成的整套基础设施，本质上都是数字化的。办公室只是包裹在其外的一栋建筑。规模到了一定程度，每家公司其实都已经是远程的。

大多数创始人会卡在一个问题上：我该建一家线下公司，还是一家远程公司？这个问题的前提是：它们是两种本质不同的工作模式。其实不是。10 个人在一间屋子里，线下工作是成立的。但只要你增长到超过这个规模——多间会议室、多层楼、多个办公室——不管大家是不是都通勤到同一栋楼里，工作都会变成远程协作。你不做远程工作，就不可能建成一家大公司。

Deel 在 110 多个国家有 7,500 名员工。我们在 20 个月内把年度经常性收入从 100 万美元做到 1 亿美元；在当时，这个速度超过了 Slack 和历史上任何一家 SaaS 公司。我们在六年出头就跨过了 10 亿美元营收，同时连续三年实现 ebidta+。这一切我们都是从第一天起就以远程方式完成的，连一个办公室都没有。很多人问我们怎么做到的。下面这 3,333 个词，就是答案。

我会谈到：

  1. 关于工作本质的现实检验。

  2. 让远程工作运转起来的可执行打法。

招聘

第一个月

OKRs

会议

  1. 全文总结（如果你只想看 TL;DR，可以直接跳到这部分）

现实检验

  1. 最好的工程师也许在旧金山。但认为他们只在旧金山，是个误区。

你们是在为一小撮人争抢。即便他们很有才华、也很勤奋，供需关系也会把他们的价格推高，却未必同步提高质量。

纽约（NYC）和旧金山（SF）会吸引有野心的人，但优秀的公司也一样。在圣保罗、克拉科夫、班加罗尔，以及上千个其他地方，都有很出色的人——他们从来没有必须搬走的理由。把网撒得更大一些。

而且这些人会留下来。如果你拥有一份很棒的远程工作，薪资显著高于本国平均水平，那么再找到一份类似的工作其实很难。你并不是在同一个劳动力市场里竞争。你是在一个竞争压力小得多的市场里竞争，在那里，做一个好雇主真的能形成差异化。

  1. “只要我看得见他们，他们就没法装作在工作。”

不想工作的人就是不会工作。你无法激励一个人去做他根本不想做的事。把他从 9 点锁到 5 点也改变不了这一点。事实上，这反而更方便他们少做点事、还自我辩护，因为“我在办公室呢，我就在工作”。

你不可能靠一堆规章制度把慢运动员变成快运动员。如果他们想一整天泡在 Reddit 和 YouTube 上装作在工作，他们就会装。当你需要站在某人身后他才肯干活，那一刻起他就不该待在你的公司。

真正有效的是：让人对结果负责。设定目标，围绕 OKRs 做规划，给出明确截止时间。我们是一家非常 OKR 驱动的公司。每个团队、每个人都有 OKRs，且对当前进度完全透明。如果你连续两个季度达不成 OKRs，通常就会出局。于是，“干成事的人”文化就这样被塑造出来。不做事的人一旦意识到自己混不过去，就会很快离开。

  1. 没有人能连续六个小时保持创造性产出。

真正的工作日是 9 点到 11 点，然后休息；12 点到 2 点，然后休息；3 点到 6 点，然后休息。人就是这样运转的。在办公室里，这些休息会很尴尬。你要么假装自己很忙，要么一离开工位就内疚。在家里，你可以在一阵阵高强度工作之间过日子：健身、打个盹、吃午饭、跑个腿，然后更清醒地回来。

有些人等孩子睡着后夜里更专注，有些人则在清晨更专注。在中国，很多人午饭后会睡一小时，因为那会儿确实工作不起来。远程工作让你能获得更多深度工作时间，因为你可以管理自己的日程。灵活性让这些生产力的“爆发段”都能被充分利用，而不是被压平进一个 9 点到 5 点的模板里。

  1. “在家工作干扰太多。”

办公室更糟。你每次在办公室工作，总有人拍你肩膀、约咖啡、要你“就一秒钟”。如果你是管理者，所有人一整天都想占用你的时间。你不会把这些算作干扰，你会把它们算作工作。于是你的深度工作只能被挤到剩下的零碎时间里。

并不是每间办公室都能给每个人足够空间隔离出来做深度工作，但在家里人人都做得到。在家工作一个上午（四小时），一个人能做完的事往往相当于在办公室的八小时。

远程也不意味着被困在家里。我们给员工提供 WeWork 会员。大家在共享办公、咖啡店或任何让自己最清醒的地方工作。而当你需要别人给你一个快速答案时，你也不必去拍肩膀。我们建立了庞大的内部知识库。有人有疑问，翻翻我们的文档，30 秒就能找到答案。

  1. “如果员工更喜欢远程，那一定是想偷懒。”

对员工友好并不等于对雇主不友好。唯一重要的是设定合适的目标并达成它们。从经济上看，替员工决定他们在哪里工作并没有好处。让他们自己选择，会给他们自由。为了继续享受这份职位带来的好处，他们反而会更努力。

在 Deel 的前三个月我们刻意安排得很高强度。这是个非常典型的 sink-or-swim 环境。人要么迅速成长，要么就撑不住。很多人在一两个月后看到这种强度和速度，就会自己离开。文化会自我筛选。

  1. 每天通勤两小时，对谁都没好处。

把工位放在床边，就消灭了通勤。这是每天 2 小时、每名员工每年 500 小时。按 1,000 名员工算，你能省下 500,000 小时。即便他们不把这些时间全部用来工作，也是赚的。这是每天多出来的 2 小时人生，不必耗在地铁里。

我远程工作时，可以下床就立刻开工。对很多人来说，只要翻个身，走到自己的工作区域，打开笔记本就开始，这种能力意义重大。

  1. 书面沟通比口头沟通更清晰。

物理上的近距离会让你因为对方就在旁边而去说话，而不是因为这真是最好的沟通方式。口头沟通更含糊，可解释空间很大。而且如果对话没有记录，谁都不会觉得自己需要负责。我们的大脑会骗我们。远程公司不得不把事情写下来，而这对所有人都更好。

  1. 远程公司在结构上有成本优势。

建办公室或租一层楼都很昂贵。在纽约打造一家全员到岗的公司成本极高，而且你还得说服人们远离家人搬来。远程公司可以用在纽约雇 1 个人的价钱，在全球雇到优秀工程师，并且因为固定成本更低而拥有更多资本。你融到 500 万美元，我的跑道（runway）就会长得多。

当你面对面见到候选人时，谁被你雇用会受到很强的偏见影响。我在布达佩斯有位员工，两年来一直做得很好。当我邀请他参加公司活动时，他告诉我一件他从未提过的事：他有严重残疾，无法出行。

我认识一些纽约的人，他们不会雇用刚当妈妈的人。他们不会明说，但确实在这么做。远程招聘是一个强力的均衡器。视频面试更客观、干扰更少、不那么容易被迷惑，也不会因为近期的近距离接触而影响你的判断。

我们如何让远程工作运转起来

一句话总结：招聘那些有能动性、愿意拼命干的人，在前 30 天把他们搭建起来，配备实干型管理者，在文化与激励上都以 OKR 为驱动，并且让大家隔三差五见一次面。

  1. 按能动性（Agency）招聘

SpaceX 或哈佛的关键，并不在于它们“培养”出高质量的人，而在于它们“筛选”出高质量的人。最优秀的创始人会搭建正确的系统去吸引他们。

我们要找的人非常具体：高能动性、高强度、自律、愿意努力工作、渴望快速推进。如果你自己不是好工程师，你就很难识别好工程师。这类人很难找，但我们用这些问题来筛选：

Q1: “如果你能把 20 岁的自己克隆出来，你会把他送上哪条职业路径？”用来检查自我认知、兴趣广度和驱动力。

Q2: “告诉我一个你在不到六个月里从零学到‘可以教别人’的主题。”用来检查学习速度。

Q3: “加利福尼亚州医疗健康的州预算是多少？带我走一遍你会怎么估算。”用来检查第一性原理思维和心智敏捷度。答案没那么重要，过程更重要。

Q4: “给我解释一件你理解得很深、但大多数人觉得无聊或很蠢的东西。”用来检查工作伦理和辨别关键问题的能力

Q5: “过去两年里，有没有什么事情让你改变了看法？”用来检查自我（ego）以及处理新信息的能力。

Q6: “你有没有想做一件事，但缺资源，最后还是做成了？”用来检查高能动性。

Q7: “你做过的最棒的一件事是什么——而且没人让你去做？”用来检查内在动机和主动性。

我们不会发一份文化文档。我们只在面试过程中把话说清楚：期待是什么、我们怎么工作、我们怎么沟通。把工作强度的真相讲出来，会吸引那些寻求挑战的人，也会把不适合的人推走。人们在接受 offer 之前，应该清楚自己将走进怎样的环境。

  1. 一个月的影响力窗口

我们希望你在第一个月就能产生影响。经理的工作，就是让这件事发生。

第 1 周，你完成上手：工具培训，认识你必须认识的 3 个关键人物（你的经理、一个同级同事、以及你互动最多的那支团队中的某个人），以及阅读内部知识库。这不该超过一周。接下来你就要下场作战。

第 8–30 天，你拿下第一个胜利。经理的头号工作，是帮助新人在团队面前交付一个可见、重要的成果：工程师修掉一个挂了几个月的 bug；销售拿下第一单；市场做出一个能被全团队分享的发布。新人的有效性与团队对“他是否胜任工作”的信念成正比。如果团队早早看到结果，大家都会愿意和他合作；看不到，就不会。

在最初 30 天里，经理每天都会做一次 10 分钟站会。不是状态汇报，而是清障会议：你在做什么？什么在拖慢你？你需要我做什么？在办公室里，新人会被动吸收上下文；远程时不会。这样的 check-in 用来补上缺口。30 天后，把频率逐渐降下来。到那时，他们应该已经能独立运转。

最初 3–4 个月我们刻意安排得很高强度。人要么快速成长，要么意识到这个节奏不适合自己。很多人会自己决定这不是合适的匹配。

  1. OKRs 与绩效

如果公司没有设定目标，就无法正确运转。如果目标只是松松地握着，公司也无法向前。OKRs 让一切有序。

每个团队、每个人都有 OKRs，且对进度完全透明。绩效按交付评估，而不是按工时。每个岗位的衡量方式都不同：销售看配额与销售管道质量；工程看他们交付了多少高质量代码、速度有多快；管理看团队结果，而不是个人产出。你不能把运营、HR、财务、销售和工程放进同一个桶里。不同的工作需要不同的衡量方式。

如果有人持续错过目标，就必须改变一些东西：目标、支持，或者匹配度。人会去做你要求他们做的事，所以要去要求正确的事。

  1. 不要啦啦队式经理

当一个经理不再是实践者（practitioner），他就失去了判断绩效的能力。他会变得平庸，他的团队也会变得平庸。

一条规则：不要纯管理者。即便是管理其他管理者的人，也必须有直接的 IC 任务。我们要的是能干活的经理。而且我们对经理的要求比对 IC 更苛刻。多数公司在项目失败时会怪个人贡献者（individual contributor）；我们先看经理。他们要对团队目标负责。

  1. 帮助你的人彼此见面

远程不意味着人们永远见不到彼此。它意味着你要有意识地决定他们何时、为何见面。我们每年举行两次高管 retreat，每年一次总监 retreat，为整个 go-to-market 组织举办 SKO，按需组织团队 offsite，此外还有差旅预算、季度城市晚餐，以及当管理层到某个城市时的 exec drop-in。

我成长于电子游戏的年代。我这辈子玩得最开心的一些人，是我从未见过面的人。Deel 的第一位员工，是我从 Reddit 的一条帖子里招来的。我四年后才第一次见到他。但即便对我这样的人来说，当面见一面也很重要。所以我们会在这上面投入。

如果你“乐观但怀疑”，我的建议是

如果你读到这里，把所有要点放在一个地方如下。

心态转变：

  • 所有大型公司其实早已是‘远程’的。只要你有不止一层楼，大多数人就会通过屏幕协作。同桌协作也几乎是远程协作。

  • 不想工作的人就是不会工作。办公室解决不了动机问题，而且还会让装作在工作变得更容易。

  • 没有人能连续六个小时保持创造性产出。远程工作让人们在最锋利的时候工作，而不是被强行塞进 9 点到 5 点的模式。

  • 办公室可能比家更容易让人分心。

  • 员工更偏好远程，并不意味着他们想偷懒。这意味着他们想在最适合自己的环境里做出最好的工作。

  • 按 1,000 名员工算，每天两小时通勤会浪费每年 500,000 小时。

  • 最好的工程师不只在旧金山。人才无处不在；省下办公室成本后，你可以在全球组建一整个团队，而且他们会留得更久。

  • 远程招聘让评估更客观、更聚焦能力。

  • 远程公司在结构上有成本优势。

让它运转起来的打法：

  • 按能动性招聘。筛选强度、自我驱动、速度与主人翁精神。使用那七个面试问题。不要妥协。招错人会复利般恶化。

  • 用好一个月的影响力窗口。帮助新人在前 30 天落地一次胜利。每天做一次 10 分钟 check-in 来清除阻碍。第一个月后逐渐降频。

  • 为每个人、每个团队设定完全透明的 OKRs。衡量交付，而不是工时。不同部门用不同指标。如果目标持续未达，就改变目标、支持或匹配度。

  • 每个经理也必须亲自干活。让经理为团队产出负责。

  • 帮助大家彼此见面。Retreat、offsite、差旅预算、季度晚餐。

我对别人说的最可执行的一条建议，就是：先试试。先在全球招几个人。如果你觉得在法律上很复杂，就用 Deel。看看他们表现如何，看看他们是否适合你的团队。很多人把全球招聘想得太复杂了——但其中大多数人其实从未真正试过。

让所有人永远和你待在一个地方当然有价值，但利弊相权，弊大于利。

Deel 有 7,500 人，分布在 110 个国家。你看到的每一家顶尖创业公司都在做远程工作。每一家《财富》500 强公司都在做远程工作。所有大厂有 99% 都是在做远程工作。每一家成功的企业都有多层楼、多个办公室，人们通过屏幕协作。远程不再是实验。它行得通。

链接: http://x.com/i/article/2018514651592687616

相关笔记

Storytime: This is a picture of me and my friend Sami in 2014 taking a 2-hour nap during a hackathon in London. This photo encapsulates the 'hacker-bedroom energy' that was characteristic of early Deel (though this was taken much before).

故事时间：这是我和朋友 Sami 在 2014 年伦敦一场黑客松期间，小睡了 2 小时的合影。这张照片浓缩了早期 Deel 那种标志性的“黑客卧室氛围”（尽管这张照片拍得更早）。

As Deel went from 5 employees to 7000+, countless well-wishers asked us to 'grow-up' and build an HQ and an office. I'm writing this essay to explain why we've chosen to embrace the hacker-bedroom energy, possibly forever.

随着 Deel 从 5 名员工增长到 7000+，无数善意的祝福者劝我们“长大一点”，建一个总部（HQ）和办公室。我写这篇文章，是想解释为什么我们选择拥抱这种黑客卧室氛围——也许会一直如此。

All large companies are remote companies.

所有大型公司都是远程公司。

The person on the first floor doesn't know the person on the third floor. When they need to work together, they message each other, get on a call, and open a shared document. This is remote work.

一楼的人不认识三楼的人。当他们需要协作时，他们互发消息、打电话、打开一份共享文档。这就是远程工作。

An engineer at Apple opens her laptop, checks Slack, joins a standup on Zoom, and reviews a pull request from a teammate she's never met. A product manager at Google writes a spec, shares it for comments, and gets on back-to-back video calls with engineering, design, and leadership, all on different floors or in different cities. A salesperson at Microsoft logs into the CRM, messages his manager, and joins a pipeline review with colleagues across three time zones. This is remote work.

苹果的一位工程师打开笔记本电脑，查看 Slack，在 Zoom 上参加站会，然后审阅一份来自从未见过面的同事的 pull request。谷歌的一位产品经理写一份 spec，发出来征求评论，然后和工程、设计与管理层连续开视频会议——这些人要么在不同楼层，要么在不同城市。微软的一位销售登录 CRM，给经理发消息，并与跨越三个时区的同事一起参加销售管道评审。这就是远程工作。

The only people truly working "in person" at any of these companies are the 10 or 15 sitting within earshot. Everyone else is collaborating through screens. The entire infrastructure of how work gets done today is digital. The office is just a building around it. Past a certain size, every company is already remote.

在这些公司里，真正“当面”一起工作的人，只有那 10 个或 15 个坐在彼此听得见的距离内的人。其他所有人都在通过屏幕协作。今天工作如何被完成的整套基础设施，本质上都是数字化的。办公室只是包裹在其外的一栋建筑。规模到了一定程度，每家公司其实都已经是远程的。

Most founders get stuck on the question: should I build an in-person company or a remote company? The premise is that these are two fundamentally different modes of work. They aren't. In-person work is possible with 10 people in one room. The minute you grow beyond that, multiple rooms, multiple floors, multiple offices, it becomes remote work regardless of whether everyone commutes to the same building. You can't build a large company without doing remote work.

大多数创始人会卡在一个问题上：我该建一家线下公司，还是一家远程公司？这个问题的前提是：它们是两种本质不同的工作模式。其实不是。10 个人在一间屋子里，线下工作是成立的。但只要你增长到超过这个规模——多间会议室、多层楼、多个办公室——不管大家是不是都通勤到同一栋楼里，工作都会变成远程协作。你不做远程工作，就不可能建成一家大公司。

Deel has 7,500 employees across more than 110 countries. We went from $1M to $100M in annual recurring revenue in 20 months; at the time, faster than Slack and any SaaS company in history. We crossed $1 billion revenue in just over six years, while being ebidta+ for three consecutive years. We did all of this working remotely, from day one, without a single office. A lot of people ask us how. This is that answer in 3,333 words.

Deel 在 110 多个国家有 7,500 名员工。我们在 20 个月内把年度经常性收入从 100 万美元做到 1 亿美元；在当时，这个速度超过了 Slack 和历史上任何一家 SaaS 公司。我们在六年出头就跨过了 10 亿美元营收，同时连续三年实现 ebidta+。这一切我们都是从第一天起就以远程方式完成的，连一个办公室都没有。很多人问我们怎么做到的。下面这 3,333 个词，就是答案。

I'll talk about:

我会谈到：

  1. A Reality Check on the nature of work.
  1. 关于工作本质的现实检验。
  1. Actionable Playbook to make remote work.
  1. 让远程工作运转起来的可执行打法。

Hiring

招聘

First Month

第一个月

OKRs

OKRs

Meetings

会议

  1. Summary of the whole essay (skip to this part if you just want a TL;DR)
  1. 全文总结（如果你只想看 TL;DR，可以直接跳到这部分）

A Reality Check

现实检验

  1. The best engineers might be in San Francisco. But the idea that they're only in San Francisco is a mistake.
  1. 最好的工程师也许在旧金山。但认为他们只在旧金山，是个误区。

You're fighting over a limited pool of people.Though very talented and hard-working, supply is driving their price up without necessarily increasing quality.

你们是在为一小撮人争抢。即便他们很有才华、也很勤奋，供需关系也会把他们的价格推高，却未必同步提高质量。

NYC and SF attract ambitious people, but so do great companies. There are exceptional people in São Paulo, Kraków, Bangalore, and a thousand other places who never had a reason to move. Cast a wider net.

纽约（NYC）和旧金山（SF）会吸引有野心的人，但优秀的公司也一样。在圣保罗、克拉科夫、班加罗尔，以及上千个其他地方，都有很出色的人——他们从来没有必须搬走的理由。把网撒得更大一些。

And those people stay. If you've got a great remote job paying significantly above the average salary in your country, it's very hard to find another one like it. You're not competing in the same marketplace. You're competing in a much less competitive one where being a good employer actually differentiates you.

而且这些人会留下来。如果你拥有一份很棒的远程工作，薪资显著高于本国平均水平，那么再找到一份类似的工作其实很难。你并不是在同一个劳动力市场里竞争。你是在一个竞争压力小得多的市场里竞争，在那里，做一个好雇主真的能形成差异化。

  1. "If I can see them, they can't fake work."
  1. “只要我看得见他们，他们就没法装作在工作。”

People that don't want to work will not work. You can't motivate someone to do something they don't want to do. Locking them in an office from 9 to 5 doesn't change that. In fact, it's easier for them to do less and justify it, because “if I'm in office, I'm working.”

不想工作的人就是不会工作。你无法激励一个人去做他根本不想做的事。把他从 9 点锁到 5 点也改变不了这一点。事实上，这反而更方便他们少做点事、还自我辩护，因为“我在办公室呢，我就在工作”。

You can't convert a slow athlete into a fast athlete with a bunch of rules. If they want to be on Reddit and YouTube all day and fake work, they will fake work. The moment you need to be behind someone for them to work is the moment they shouldn't be at your company.

你不可能靠一堆规章制度把慢运动员变成快运动员。如果他们想一整天泡在 Reddit 和 YouTube 上装作在工作，他们就会装。当你需要站在某人身后他才肯干活，那一刻起他就不该待在你的公司。

What works instead: hold people accountable. Set goals, plan to meet OKRs, give people deadlines. We're a very OKR-driven company. Every team and every person has OKRs with full visibility on where they stand. If you don't hit your OKRs for two quarters in a row, you're usually out. A culture of doers gets built in consequence. Non-doers leave as soon as they realize they won't make it.

真正有效的是：让人对结果负责。设定目标，围绕 OKRs 做规划，给出明确截止时间。我们是一家非常 OKR 驱动的公司。每个团队、每个人都有 OKRs，且对当前进度完全透明。如果你连续两个季度达不成 OKRs，通常就会出局。于是，“干成事的人”文化就这样被塑造出来。不做事的人一旦意识到自己混不过去，就会很快离开。

  1. Nobody has six straight hours of creative output.
  1. 没有人能连续六个小时保持创造性产出。

The real workday is from 9 to 11, then a break. 12 to 2, then a break. 3 to 6, then a break. That's how people actually function. In an office, those breaks are awkward. You're pretending to be productive or feeling guilty for stepping away. At home, you live your life between the bursts. Gym, nap, lunch, errand, and come back sharper.

真正的工作日是 9 点到 11 点，然后休息；12 点到 2 点，然后休息；3 点到 6 点，然后休息。人就是这样运转的。在办公室里，这些休息会很尴尬。你要么假装自己很忙，要么一离开工位就内疚。在家里，你可以在一阵阵高强度工作之间过日子：健身、打个盹、吃午饭、跑个腿，然后更清醒地回来。

Some people are more focused at night after the kids are asleep. Some in the morning. In China, people sleep for one hour after lunch because they cannot actually work. Remote work allows you to get more of your deep work hours because you can manage your schedule. Flexibility gets you all those bursts of productivity instead of flattening them into a 9-to-5 pattern.

有些人等孩子睡着后夜里更专注，有些人则在清晨更专注。在中国，很多人午饭后会睡一小时，因为那会儿确实工作不起来。远程工作让你能获得更多深度工作时间，因为你可以管理自己的日程。灵活性让这些生产力的“爆发段”都能被充分利用，而不是被压平进一个 9 点到 5 点的模板里。

  1. "Working from home is full of distractions."
  1. “在家工作干扰太多。”

Offices are worse. Every time you work from an office, people tap your shoulder, want coffee, need "just a second." If you're a manager, everyone wants your time all day. You don't count those as distractions, you count them as work. But your deep work got squeezed into whatever time was left.

办公室更糟。你每次在办公室工作，总有人拍你肩膀、约咖啡、要你“就一秒钟”。如果你是管理者，所有人一整天都想占用你的时间。你不会把这些算作干扰，你会把它们算作工作。于是你的深度工作只能被挤到剩下的零碎时间里。

Not all offices have enough space for everyone to isolate and do deep work. But everyone can do that at home. In one morning working from home (four hours), a person can get as much done as eight hours in the office.

并不是每间办公室都能给每个人足够空间隔离出来做深度工作，但在家里人人都做得到。在家工作一个上午（四小时），一个人能做完的事往往相当于在办公室的八小时。

Remote doesn't mean stuck at home either. We give people WeWork memberships. People work from coworking spaces, coffee shops, wherever they're sharpest. And when you need a quick answer from someone, you don't need to tap a shoulder. We've built a massive internal knowledge base. Someone has a question, they look into our docs and find the answer in 30 seconds.

远程也不意味着被困在家里。我们给员工提供 WeWork 会员。大家在共享办公、咖啡店或任何让自己最清醒的地方工作。而当你需要别人给你一个快速答案时，你也不必去拍肩膀。我们建立了庞大的内部知识库。有人有疑问，翻翻我们的文档，30 秒就能找到答案。

  1. "If employees prefer remote, they must want it so they can slack off."
  1. “如果员工更喜欢远程，那一定是想偷懒。”

Employee-friendly doesn't mean employer-unfriendly. The only thing that matters is setting the appropriate goals and hitting them. There's no economic benefit in choosing where people work from. Letting them choose gives them freedom. They'll work harder to keep enjoying the benefits of their position.

对员工友好并不等于对雇主不友好。唯一重要的是设定合适的目标并达成它们。从经济上看，替员工决定他们在哪里工作并没有好处。让他们自己选择，会给他们自由。为了继续享受这份职位带来的好处，他们反而会更努力。

The first three months at Deel are purposely intense. It's a very sink-or-swim type of place. People either thrive or they don't make it. A lot of them, after a month or two, when they see the intensity and the speed, just leave on their own. The culture self-selects.

在 Deel 的前三个月我们刻意安排得很高强度。这是个非常典型的 sink-or-swim 环境。人要么迅速成长，要么就撑不住。很多人在一两个月后看到这种强度和速度，就会自己离开。文化会自我筛选。

  1. Two hours on a commute every day does no good to anybody.
  1. 每天通勤两小时，对谁都没好处。

Having your workstation next to your bed eliminates commuting. That's 2 hours per day, 500 hours per employee per year. At 1,000 employees, you save 500,000 hours. Even if they don't use all of that time to work, it's a win. It's 2 hours of daily life not spent in a tube.

把工位放在床边，就消灭了通勤。这是每天 2 小时、每名员工每年 500 小时。按 1,000 名员工算，你能省下 500,000 小时。即便他们不把这些时间全部用来工作，也是赚的。这是每天多出来的 2 小时人生，不必耗在地铁里。

When I’m working remotely, I can get out of bed and start working right away. The ability to just roll over, go to wherever your area of work is and turn on your laptop, that's really big for a lot of people.

我远程工作时，可以下床就立刻开工。对很多人来说，只要翻个身，走到自己的工作区域，打开笔记本就开始，这种能力意义重大。

  1. Written communication is clearer than talking.
  1. 书面沟通比口头沟通更清晰。

Physical proximity means you talk to people because they're there, not because it's the best way to communicate. Verbal communication is more ambiguous. There's a lot of room for interpretation. And if there's no transcript of the conversation, no one feels responsible. Our minds trick us. Remote companies write things down because they have to, and it's better for everyone.

物理上的近距离会让你因为对方就在旁边而去说话，而不是因为这真是最好的沟通方式。口头沟通更含糊，可解释空间很大。而且如果对话没有记录，谁都不会觉得自己需要负责。我们的大脑会骗我们。远程公司不得不把事情写下来，而这对所有人都更好。

  1. Remote companies have a structural cost advantage.
  1. 远程公司在结构上有成本优势。

Building an office or leasing a floor is expensive. Building an all-in-office company in New York is very expensive, and you have to convince people to relocate away from their families. Remote companies can hire excellent engineers globally for the same price as 1 in New York and have more capital because of the reduced fixed costs. You raise $5 million, my runway is significantly higher.

建办公室或租一层楼都很昂贵。在纽约打造一家全员到岗的公司成本极高，而且你还得说服人们远离家人搬来。远程公司可以用在纽约雇 1 个人的价钱，在全球雇到优秀工程师，并且因为固定成本更低而拥有更多资本。你融到 500 万美元，我的跑道（runway）就会长得多。

There's a strong bias to who you hire when you see them in person. I had an employee in Budapest who'd been doing great work for two years. When I invited him to a company event, he told me something he'd never mentioned: he had a severe disability and couldn't move.

当你面对面见到候选人时，谁被你雇用会受到很强的偏见影响。我在布达佩斯有位员工，两年来一直做得很好。当我邀请他参加公司活动时，他告诉我一件他从未提过的事：他有严重残疾，无法出行。

I know people in New York who won't hire new mothers. They won't say it, but they do it. Remote hiring is a very strong equalizer. Video interviews are more objective, fewer distractions, harder to be fooled, and no impact from recent proximity influencing your judgment.

我认识一些纽约的人，他们不会雇用刚当妈妈的人。他们不会明说，但确实在这么做。远程招聘是一个强力的均衡器。视频面试更客观、干扰更少、不那么容易被迷惑，也不会因为近期的近距离接触而影响你的判断。

How we make remote work

我们如何让远程工作运转起来

Summarized in one line: Hire people with agency who want to work hard, set them up in the first 30 days, have practitioner-managers, be OKR driven both in culture and in incentives, and help your people meet every once in a while.

一句话总结：招聘那些有能动性、愿意拼命干的人，在前 30 天把他们搭建起来，配备实干型管理者，在文化与激励上都以 OKR 为驱动，并且让大家隔三差五见一次面。

  1. Hire for Agency
  1. 按能动性（Agency）招聘

The key to SpaceX or Harvard is not that they produce high-quality people. It's that they filter for high-quality people. The best founders build the correct systems to attract them.

SpaceX 或哈佛的关键，并不在于它们“培养”出高质量的人，而在于它们“筛选”出高质量的人。最优秀的创始人会搭建正确的系统去吸引他们。

What we look for is specific: high agency, high intensity, self-discipline, desire to work hard, desire to move fast. You can't spot a great engineer if you aren't one yourself. It’s hard to find these people, but these are the questions we use to do so:

我们要找的人非常具体：高能动性、高强度、自律、愿意努力工作、渴望快速推进。如果你自己不是好工程师，你就很难识别好工程师。这类人很难找，但我们用这些问题来筛选：

Q1: "If you could clone yourself as a 20-year-old, what career path would you send him along?" Checks for self-awareness, breadth of interests, and drive.

Q1: “如果你能把 20 岁的自己克隆出来，你会把他送上哪条职业路径？”用来检查自我认知、兴趣广度和驱动力。

Q2: "Tell me one topic you went from zero to 'ready to teach' in less than six months." Checks for learning speed.

Q2: “告诉我一个你在不到六个月里从零学到‘可以教别人’的主题。”用来检查学习速度。

Q3: "What is California's state budget for healthcare? Walk me through how you'd estimate it." First-principles thinking and mental quickness. The answer matters less than the process.

Q3: “加利福尼亚州医疗健康的州预算是多少？带我走一遍你会怎么估算。”用来检查第一性原理思维和心智敏捷度。答案没那么重要，过程更重要。

Q4: "Explain something to me that you understand deeply but most people find boring or dumb." Checks for work ethic and ability to identify what matters

Q4: “给我解释一件你理解得很深、但大多数人觉得无聊或很蠢的东西。”用来检查工作伦理和辨别关键问题的能力

Q5: "Is there something you've changed your mind about in the past two years?" Checks for ego and the ability to process new information.

Q5: “过去两年里，有没有什么事情让你改变了看法？”用来检查自我（ego）以及处理新信息的能力。

Q6: "Have you ever wanted to do something, lacked the resources, and did it anyway?" Checks for high agency.

Q6: “你有没有想做一件事，但缺资源，最后还是做成了？”用来检查高能动性。

Q7: "What is the best thing you've built that no one asked you to build?" Checks for intrinsic motivation and initiative.

Q7: “你做过的最棒的一件事是什么——而且没人让你去做？”用来检查内在动机和主动性。

We don't send a culture document. We just say it in the interview process: what's expected, how we work, how we communicate. Telling the truth about the job's intensity attracts people looking for a challenge and moves those along who aren’t. People should know exactly what they're walking into before they accept.

我们不会发一份文化文档。我们只在面试过程中把话说清楚：期待是什么、我们怎么工作、我们怎么沟通。把工作强度的真相讲出来，会吸引那些寻求挑战的人，也会把不适合的人推走。人们在接受 offer 之前，应该清楚自己将走进怎样的环境。

  1. The One-Month Impact Window
  1. 一个月的影响力窗口

We want you to have an impact in your first month. A manager's job is to make that happen.

我们希望你在第一个月就能产生影响。经理的工作，就是让这件事发生。

Week 1, you ramp: training on tools, meeting the 3 key people you need to know (your manager, a peer, and someone from the team you'll interact with most), and reading the internal knowledge base. This shouldn't take more than a week. Then you're in the trenches.

第 1 周，你完成上手：工具培训，认识你必须认识的 3 个关键人物（你的经理、一个同级同事、以及你互动最多的那支团队中的某个人），以及阅读内部知识库。这不该超过一周。接下来你就要下场作战。

Days 8-30, you land a first win. The manager's #1 job is to help the new hire deliver a visible, meaningful result in front of the team. An engineer ships a fix for a bug that's been open for months. A salesperson closes their first deal. A marketer launches something the team shares. A new hire's effectiveness is directly proportional to how much the team believes they're good at their job. If the team sees results early, everyone wants to work with them. If they don't, nobody does.

第 8–30 天，你拿下第一个胜利。经理的头号工作，是帮助新人在团队面前交付一个可见、重要的成果：工程师修掉一个挂了几个月的 bug；销售拿下第一单；市场做出一个能被全团队分享的发布。新人的有效性与团队对“他是否胜任工作”的信念成正比。如果团队早早看到结果，大家都会愿意和他合作；看不到，就不会。

Every day for the first 30 days, the manager does a 10-minute standup. Not a status update, a blocker removal session: What are you working on? What's slowing you down? What do you need from me? In an office, new hires absorb context passively. Remotely, that doesn't happen. The check-in fills the gap. After 30 days, taper it off. By then, they should be operating independently.

在最初 30 天里，经理每天都会做一次 10 分钟站会。不是状态汇报，而是清障会议：你在做什么？什么在拖慢你？你需要我做什么？在办公室里，新人会被动吸收上下文；远程时不会。这样的 check-in 用来补上缺口。30 天后，把频率逐渐降下来。到那时，他们应该已经能独立运转。

The first 3-4 months are purposely intense. People either thrive or they realize the pace isn't for them. A lot of them decide on their own that it's not the right fit.

最初 3–4 个月我们刻意安排得很高强度。人要么快速成长，要么意识到这个节奏不适合自己。很多人会自己决定这不是合适的匹配。

  1. OKRs and Performance
  1. OKRs 与绩效

Your company can't operate correctly if there are no objectives set. It won't move forward if goals are loosely held. OKRs are what bring order.

如果公司没有设定目标，就无法正确运转。如果目标只是松松地握着，公司也无法向前。OKRs 让一切有序。

Every team and every person has OKRs with full visibility. Performance is evaluated on delivery, not hours. Every role is measured differently: Sales on quota and pipeline quality. Engineering on how much high-quality code they ship and how fast. Management on their team's results, not their individual output. You cannot put operations, HR, finance, sales, and engineering in the same bucket. Different work requires different measures.

每个团队、每个人都有 OKRs，且对进度完全透明。绩效按交付评估，而不是按工时。每个岗位的衡量方式都不同：销售看配额与销售管道质量；工程看他们交付了多少高质量代码、速度有多快；管理看团队结果，而不是个人产出。你不能把运营、HR、财务、销售和工程放进同一个桶里。不同的工作需要不同的衡量方式。

If someone consistently misses their objectives, something needs to change: the goals, the support, or the fit. People do what you ask them to do, so ask for the right things.

如果有人持续错过目标，就必须改变一些东西：目标、支持，或者匹配度。人会去做你要求他们做的事，所以要去要求正确的事。

  1. No Cheerleader Managers
  1. 不要啦啦队式经理

When a manager stops being a practitioner, they lose the ability to judge performance. They become average, and their teams become average.

当一个经理不再是实践者（practitioner），他就失去了判断绩效的能力。他会变得平庸，他的团队也会变得平庸。

One rule: No pure managers. Even people who manage other managers must have direct IC tasks. We want managers that are doers. And we're tougher on managers than on ICs. Most companies blame the individual contributor when a project fails. We look at the manager first. They are accountable for their team's objectives.

一条规则：不要纯管理者。即便是管理其他管理者的人，也必须有直接的 IC 任务。我们要的是能干活的经理。而且我们对经理的要求比对 IC 更苛刻。多数公司在项目失败时会怪个人贡献者（individual contributor）；我们先看经理。他们要对团队目标负责。

  1. Help Your People Meet Each Other
  1. 帮助你的人彼此见面

Remote doesn't mean people never see each other. It means you're intentional about when and why they meet up. We run executive retreats twice a year, director retreats once a year, SKOs for the full go-to-market org, team offsites on request, plus travel budgets, quarterly city dinners, and exec drop-ins whenever leadership is in town.

远程不意味着人们永远见不到彼此。它意味着你要有意识地决定他们何时、为何见面。我们每年举行两次高管 retreat，每年一次总监 retreat，为整个 go-to-market 组织举办 SKO，按需组织团队 offsite，此外还有差旅预算、季度城市晚餐，以及当管理层到某个城市时的 exec drop-in。

I'm from the generation of videogames. Some of the people I had the most fun with in my life are people I've never met. My first employee at Deel was someone I hired off a Reddit post. I didn't meet him for four years. But even for people like me, meeting in person matters. So we invest in it.

我成长于电子游戏的年代。我这辈子玩得最开心的一些人，是我从未见过面的人。Deel 的第一位员工，是我从 Reddit 的一条帖子里招来的。我四年后才第一次见到他。但即便对我这样的人来说，当面见一面也很重要。所以我们会在这上面投入。

My Advice If You're Optimistically Skeptical

如果你“乐观但怀疑”，我的建议是

If you've read this far, here's everything in one place.

如果你读到这里，把所有要点放在一个地方如下。

The mindset shift:

心态转变：

  • All large companies are already ‘remote’. If you have more than one floor, most of your people collaborate through screens.Same-desk work is almost remote as well.
  • 所有大型公司其实早已是‘远程’的。只要你有不止一层楼，大多数人就会通过屏幕协作。同桌协作也几乎是远程协作。
  • People who don't want to work will not work. The office doesn't fix motivation. And it makes it easier to fake work.
  • 不想工作的人就是不会工作。办公室解决不了动机问题，而且还会让装作在工作变得更容易。
  • Nobody has six straight hours of creative output. Remote work lets people work when they're sharpest instead of forcing them into a 9-to-5 pattern.
  • 没有人能连续六个小时保持创造性产出。远程工作让人们在最锋利的时候工作，而不是被强行塞进 9 点到 5 点的模式。
  • The office can be more distracting than home.
  • 办公室可能比家更容易让人分心。
  • Employees preferring remote doesn't mean they want to slack off. It means they want to do their best work in the environment that suits them.
  • 员工更偏好远程，并不意味着他们想偷懒。这意味着他们想在最适合自己的环境里做出最好的工作。
  • Two hours on a commute wastes 500,000 hours per year at 1,000 employees.
  • 按 1,000 名员工算，每天两小时通勤会浪费每年 500,000 小时。
  • The best engineers are not only in San Francisco. Talent is everywhere, and with cost savings on an office, you can hire a full team globally, and they stay longer.
  • 最好的工程师不只在旧金山。人才无处不在；省下办公室成本后，你可以在全球组建一整个团队，而且他们会留得更久。
  • Remote hiring makes it more objective and about ability.
  • 远程招聘让评估更客观、更聚焦能力。
  • Remote companies have a structural cost advantage.
  • 远程公司在结构上有成本优势。

The playbook to make it work:

让它运转起来的打法：

  • Hire for agency. Screen for intensity, self-direction, speed, and ownership. Use the seven interview questions. Don't compromise. Bad hires compound.
  • 按能动性招聘。筛选强度、自我驱动、速度与主人翁精神。使用那七个面试问题。不要妥协。招错人会复利般恶化。
  • Use the one-month impact window. Help the new hire land win in the first 30 days. Run a daily 10-minute check-in to remove blockers. Taper off after the first month.
  • 用好一个月的影响力窗口。帮助新人在前 30 天落地一次胜利。每天做一次 10 分钟 check-in 来清除阻碍。第一个月后逐渐降频。
  • Set OKRs with full visibility for every person and every team. Measure delivery, not hours. Different metrics for different departments. If objectives are consistently missed, change the goals, the support, or the fit.
  • 为每个人、每个团队设定完全透明的 OKRs。衡量交付，而不是工时。不同部门用不同指标。如果目标持续未达，就改变目标、支持或匹配度。
  • Every manager must also do the work. Hold managers accountable for their team's output.
  • 每个经理也必须亲自干活。让经理为团队产出负责。
  • Help people meet each other. Retreats, offsites, travel budgets, quarterly dinners.
  • 帮助大家彼此见面。Retreat、offsite、差旅预算、季度晚餐。

The most actionable thing I tell people is to just try. Hire a few people globally. Use Deel if you find it legally complicated to do so. See how they do. See if they fit with your team. A lot of people overthink global hiring. But most of them have never actually tried.

我对别人说的最可执行的一条建议，就是：先试试。先在全球招几个人。如果你觉得在法律上很复杂，就用 Deel。看看他们表现如何，看看他们是否适合你的团队。很多人把全球招聘想得太复杂了——但其中大多数人其实从未真正试过。

There would be value in having everyone in one place with you all the time, but the cons outweigh the pros.

让所有人永远和你待在一个地方当然有价值，但利弊相权，弊大于利。

Deel is 7,500 people across 110 countries. Every top startup you see is doing remote work. Every Fortune 500 company is doing remote work. All of big tech is 99% remote work. Every successful business has multiple floors, offices, people collaborating through screens. Remote is no longer an experiment. It works.

Deel 有 7,500 人，分布在 110 个国家。你看到的每一家顶尖创业公司都在做远程工作。每一家《财富》500 强公司都在做远程工作。所有大厂有 99% 都是在做远程工作。每一家成功的企业都有多层楼、多个办公室，人们通过屏幕协作。远程不再是实验。它行得通。

Link: http://x.com/i/article/2018514651592687616

链接: http://x.com/i/article/2018514651592687616

相关笔记

You can build a Decacorn from your bedroom

  • Source: https://x.com/bouazizalex/status/2020159203382550530?s=46
  • Mirror: https://x.com/bouazizalex/status/2020159203382550530?s=46
  • Published: 2026-02-07T15:34:21+00:00
  • Saved: 2026-02-09

Content

Storytime: This is a picture of me and my friend Sami in 2014 taking a 2-hour nap during a hackathon in London. This photo encapsulates the 'hacker-bedroom energy' that was characteristic of early Deel (though this was taken much before).

As Deel went from 5 employees to 7000+, countless well-wishers asked us to 'grow-up' and build an HQ and an office. I'm writing this essay to explain why we've chosen to embrace the hacker-bedroom energy, possibly forever.

All large companies are remote companies.

The person on the first floor doesn't know the person on the third floor. When they need to work together, they message each other, get on a call, and open a shared document. This is remote work.

An engineer at Apple opens her laptop, checks Slack, joins a standup on Zoom, and reviews a pull request from a teammate she's never met. A product manager at Google writes a spec, shares it for comments, and gets on back-to-back video calls with engineering, design, and leadership, all on different floors or in different cities. A salesperson at Microsoft logs into the CRM, messages his manager, and joins a pipeline review with colleagues across three time zones. This is remote work.

The only people truly working "in person" at any of these companies are the 10 or 15 sitting within earshot. Everyone else is collaborating through screens. The entire infrastructure of how work gets done today is digital. The office is just a building around it. Past a certain size, every company is already remote.

Most founders get stuck on the question: should I build an in-person company or a remote company? The premise is that these are two fundamentally different modes of work. They aren't. In-person work is possible with 10 people in one room. The minute you grow beyond that, multiple rooms, multiple floors, multiple offices, it becomes remote work regardless of whether everyone commutes to the same building. You can't build a large company without doing remote work.

Deel has 7,500 employees across more than 110 countries. We went from $1M to $100M in annual recurring revenue in 20 months; at the time, faster than Slack and any SaaS company in history. We crossed $1 billion revenue in just over six years, while being ebidta+ for three consecutive years. We did all of this working remotely, from day one, without a single office. A lot of people ask us how. This is that answer in 3,333 words.

I'll talk about:

  1. A Reality Check on the nature of work.

  2. Actionable Playbook to make remote work.

Hiring

First Month

OKRs

Meetings

  1. Summary of the whole essay (skip to this part if you just want a TL;DR)

A Reality Check

  1. The best engineers might be in San Francisco. But the idea that they're only in San Francisco is a mistake.

You're fighting over a limited pool of people.Though very talented and hard-working, supply is driving their price up without necessarily increasing quality.

NYC and SF attract ambitious people, but so do great companies. There are exceptional people in São Paulo, Kraków, Bangalore, and a thousand other places who never had a reason to move. Cast a wider net.

And those people stay. If you've got a great remote job paying significantly above the average salary in your country, it's very hard to find another one like it. You're not competing in the same marketplace. You're competing in a much less competitive one where being a good employer actually differentiates you.

  1. "If I can see them, they can't fake work."

People that don't want to work will not work. You can't motivate someone to do something they don't want to do. Locking them in an office from 9 to 5 doesn't change that. In fact, it's easier for them to do less and justify it, because “if I'm in office, I'm working.”

You can't convert a slow athlete into a fast athlete with a bunch of rules. If they want to be on Reddit and YouTube all day and fake work, they will fake work. The moment you need to be behind someone for them to work is the moment they shouldn't be at your company.

What works instead: hold people accountable. Set goals, plan to meet OKRs, give people deadlines. We're a very OKR-driven company. Every team and every person has OKRs with full visibility on where they stand. If you don't hit your OKRs for two quarters in a row, you're usually out. A culture of doers gets built in consequence. Non-doers leave as soon as they realize they won't make it.

  1. Nobody has six straight hours of creative output.

The real workday is from 9 to 11, then a break. 12 to 2, then a break. 3 to 6, then a break. That's how people actually function. In an office, those breaks are awkward. You're pretending to be productive or feeling guilty for stepping away. At home, you live your life between the bursts. Gym, nap, lunch, errand, and come back sharper.

Some people are more focused at night after the kids are asleep. Some in the morning. In China, people sleep for one hour after lunch because they cannot actually work. Remote work allows you to get more of your deep work hours because you can manage your schedule. Flexibility gets you all those bursts of productivity instead of flattening them into a 9-to-5 pattern.

  1. "Working from home is full of distractions."

Offices are worse. Every time you work from an office, people tap your shoulder, want coffee, need "just a second." If you're a manager, everyone wants your time all day. You don't count those as distractions, you count them as work. But your deep work got squeezed into whatever time was left.

Not all offices have enough space for everyone to isolate and do deep work. But everyone can do that at home. In one morning working from home (four hours), a person can get as much done as eight hours in the office.

Remote doesn't mean stuck at home either. We give people WeWork memberships. People work from coworking spaces, coffee shops, wherever they're sharpest. And when you need a quick answer from someone, you don't need to tap a shoulder. We've built a massive internal knowledge base. Someone has a question, they look into our docs and find the answer in 30 seconds.

  1. "If employees prefer remote, they must want it so they can slack off."

Employee-friendly doesn't mean employer-unfriendly. The only thing that matters is setting the appropriate goals and hitting them. There's no economic benefit in choosing where people work from. Letting them choose gives them freedom. They'll work harder to keep enjoying the benefits of their position.

The first three months at Deel are purposely intense. It's a very sink-or-swim type of place. People either thrive or they don't make it. A lot of them, after a month or two, when they see the intensity and the speed, just leave on their own. The culture self-selects.

  1. Two hours on a commute every day does no good to anybody.

Having your workstation next to your bed eliminates commuting. That's 2 hours per day, 500 hours per employee per year. At 1,000 employees, you save 500,000 hours. Even if they don't use all of that time to work, it's a win. It's 2 hours of daily life not spent in a tube.

When I’m working remotely, I can get out of bed and start working right away. The ability to just roll over, go to wherever your area of work is and turn on your laptop, that's really big for a lot of people.

  1. Written communication is clearer than talking.

Physical proximity means you talk to people because they're there, not because it's the best way to communicate. Verbal communication is more ambiguous. There's a lot of room for interpretation. And if there's no transcript of the conversation, no one feels responsible. Our minds trick us. Remote companies write things down because they have to, and it's better for everyone.

  1. Remote companies have a structural cost advantage.

Building an office or leasing a floor is expensive. Building an all-in-office company in New York is very expensive, and you have to convince people to relocate away from their families. Remote companies can hire excellent engineers globally for the same price as 1 in New York and have more capital because of the reduced fixed costs. You raise $5 million, my runway is significantly higher.

There's a strong bias to who you hire when you see them in person. I had an employee in Budapest who'd been doing great work for two years. When I invited him to a company event, he told me something he'd never mentioned: he had a severe disability and couldn't move.

I know people in New York who won't hire new mothers. They won't say it, but they do it. Remote hiring is a very strong equalizer. Video interviews are more objective, fewer distractions, harder to be fooled, and no impact from recent proximity influencing your judgment.

How we make remote work

Summarized in one line: Hire people with agency who want to work hard, set them up in the first 30 days, have practitioner-managers, be OKR driven both in culture and in incentives, and help your people meet every once in a while.

  1. Hire for Agency

The key to SpaceX or Harvard is not that they produce high-quality people. It's that they filter for high-quality people. The best founders build the correct systems to attract them.

What we look for is specific: high agency, high intensity, self-discipline, desire to work hard, desire to move fast. You can't spot a great engineer if you aren't one yourself. It’s hard to find these people, but these are the questions we use to do so:

Q1: "If you could clone yourself as a 20-year-old, what career path would you send him along?" Checks for self-awareness, breadth of interests, and drive.

Q2: "Tell me one topic you went from zero to 'ready to teach' in less than six months." Checks for learning speed.

Q3: "What is California's state budget for healthcare? Walk me through how you'd estimate it." First-principles thinking and mental quickness. The answer matters less than the process.

Q4: "Explain something to me that you understand deeply but most people find boring or dumb." Checks for work ethic and ability to identify what matters

Q5: "Is there something you've changed your mind about in the past two years?" Checks for ego and the ability to process new information.

Q6: "Have you ever wanted to do something, lacked the resources, and did it anyway?" Checks for high agency.

Q7: "What is the best thing you've built that no one asked you to build?" Checks for intrinsic motivation and initiative.

We don't send a culture document. We just say it in the interview process: what's expected, how we work, how we communicate. Telling the truth about the job's intensity attracts people looking for a challenge and moves those along who aren’t. People should know exactly what they're walking into before they accept.

  1. The One-Month Impact Window

We want you to have an impact in your first month. A manager's job is to make that happen.

Week 1, you ramp: training on tools, meeting the 3 key people you need to know (your manager, a peer, and someone from the team you'll interact with most), and reading the internal knowledge base. This shouldn't take more than a week. Then you're in the trenches.

Days 8-30, you land a first win. The manager's #1 job is to help the new hire deliver a visible, meaningful result in front of the team. An engineer ships a fix for a bug that's been open for months. A salesperson closes their first deal. A marketer launches something the team shares. A new hire's effectiveness is directly proportional to how much the team believes they're good at their job. If the team sees results early, everyone wants to work with them. If they don't, nobody does.

Every day for the first 30 days, the manager does a 10-minute standup. Not a status update, a blocker removal session: What are you working on? What's slowing you down? What do you need from me? In an office, new hires absorb context passively. Remotely, that doesn't happen. The check-in fills the gap. After 30 days, taper it off. By then, they should be operating independently.

The first 3-4 months are purposely intense. People either thrive or they realize the pace isn't for them. A lot of them decide on their own that it's not the right fit.

  1. OKRs and Performance

Your company can't operate correctly if there are no objectives set. It won't move forward if goals are loosely held. OKRs are what bring order.

Every team and every person has OKRs with full visibility. Performance is evaluated on delivery, not hours. Every role is measured differently: Sales on quota and pipeline quality. Engineering on how much high-quality code they ship and how fast. Management on their team's results, not their individual output. You cannot put operations, HR, finance, sales, and engineering in the same bucket. Different work requires different measures.

If someone consistently misses their objectives, something needs to change: the goals, the support, or the fit. People do what you ask them to do, so ask for the right things.

  1. No Cheerleader Managers

When a manager stops being a practitioner, they lose the ability to judge performance. They become average, and their teams become average.

One rule: No pure managers. Even people who manage other managers must have direct IC tasks. We want managers that are doers. And we're tougher on managers than on ICs. Most companies blame the individual contributor when a project fails. We look at the manager first. They are accountable for their team's objectives.

  1. Help Your People Meet Each Other

Remote doesn't mean people never see each other. It means you're intentional about when and why they meet up. We run executive retreats twice a year, director retreats once a year, SKOs for the full go-to-market org, team offsites on request, plus travel budgets, quarterly city dinners, and exec drop-ins whenever leadership is in town.

I'm from the generation of videogames. Some of the people I had the most fun with in my life are people I've never met. My first employee at Deel was someone I hired off a Reddit post. I didn't meet him for four years. But even for people like me, meeting in person matters. So we invest in it.

My Advice If You're Optimistically Skeptical

If you've read this far, here's everything in one place.

The mindset shift:

  • All large companies are already ‘remote’. If you have more than one floor, most of your people collaborate through screens.Same-desk work is almost remote as well.

  • People who don't want to work will not work. The office doesn't fix motivation. And it makes it easier to fake work.

  • Nobody has six straight hours of creative output. Remote work lets people work when they're sharpest instead of forcing them into a 9-to-5 pattern.

  • The office can be more distracting than home.

  • Employees preferring remote doesn't mean they want to slack off. It means they want to do their best work in the environment that suits them.

  • Two hours on a commute wastes 500,000 hours per year at 1,000 employees.

  • The best engineers are not only in San Francisco. Talent is everywhere, and with cost savings on an office, you can hire a full team globally, and they stay longer.

  • Remote hiring makes it more objective and about ability.

  • Remote companies have a structural cost advantage.

The playbook to make it work:

  • Hire for agency. Screen for intensity, self-direction, speed, and ownership. Use the seven interview questions. Don't compromise. Bad hires compound.

  • Use the one-month impact window. Help the new hire land win in the first 30 days. Run a daily 10-minute check-in to remove blockers. Taper off after the first month.

  • Set OKRs with full visibility for every person and every team. Measure delivery, not hours. Different metrics for different departments. If objectives are consistently missed, change the goals, the support, or the fit.

  • Every manager must also do the work. Hold managers accountable for their team's output.

  • Help people meet each other. Retreats, offsites, travel budgets, quarterly dinners.

The most actionable thing I tell people is to just try. Hire a few people globally. Use Deel if you find it legally complicated to do so. See how they do. See if they fit with your team. A lot of people overthink global hiring. But most of them have never actually tried.

There would be value in having everyone in one place with you all the time, but the cons outweigh the pros.

Deel is 7,500 people across 110 countries. Every top startup you see is doing remote work. Every Fortune 500 company is doing remote work. All of big tech is 99% remote work. Every successful business has multiple floors, offices, people collaborating through screens. Remote is no longer an experiment. It works.

Link: http://x.com/i/article/2018514651592687616

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