Sid Sijbrandij: “People don’t want to commute; they just don’t want to miss out”
This transcript was shortened and partly edited to bring out the best parts of this interview. It’s still probably 80% intact – all parts were so good to us. If you'd still prefer to listen to the whole thing, the interview was recorded by the folks at GitLab and is available at http://youtu.be/EeUhxQn_ct4/ .
Dominic: Whenever I'm talking to new founders who are just starting building a remote company they’re always saying “We want to make it work like GitLab is making it work”. GitLab is always one of the first examples. Maybe to start with a bit of a loaded question: How did you get here or what did it take to get here?
Sid: I think when we realized that we were going to be remote , we tried to accommodate it. We try to make sure that we're intentional about informal communication, want to make sure that we stimulate informal communication because that tends to get lost if you're remote. Another thing was that our values are very conducive to working remote. And maybe a third element is that there was scepticism from our investors whether if remote will work. From a very early start, we were forced to articulate how we were accommodating for remote. And that helped to maybe spread the word a bit. And maybe that's also why we're one of the better known remote companies now.
Dominic: When exactly did you feel like this is the time to go remote and what was the decision process behind that?
