One such place I worked for had the non-distributed HQ and it housed the execs and some of the local team (being non-specific here on purpose).
I switched from working remotely to working locally, which involved a change of country, and I realised that I couldn't justify my own position after that.
As far as it goes with productivity and satisfaction, I thought the decision to go half-in on remote was a mistake.
My take away was that a startup does not necessarily have the maturity to maintain the balance between local and remote while also focus on making things happen. It was totally a setup that was so advantageous to the staff that the business itself suffered, as I saw it.
In those terms, you get a reprioritisation or a negligence and productivity suffers because you've just resigned to the reality that it's really hard to manage it all. Yet still, you feel entrenched so the best you feel you can do is to just... do nothing.
I would say that a small startup depends on fluid interaction between founders and the various 'makers' on board who help fulfil the vision. If you're 50/50 on how you facilitate that then you get a lot of mediocre when you could have had one solid thing and your foundation is built upon a compromise.
If I found myself in a leadership position in such a scenario again I would hope that I could stomach the firing act and invest in the culture that suited us best. But I don't think that's so easy to do with a small team.
I switched from working remotely to working locally, which involved a change of country, and I realised that I couldn't justify my own position after that.
As far as it goes with productivity and satisfaction, I thought the decision to go half-in on remote was a mistake.
My take away was that a startup does not necessarily have the maturity to maintain the balance between local and remote while also focus on making things happen. It was totally a setup that was so advantageous to the staff that the business itself suffered, as I saw it.
In those terms, you get a reprioritisation or a negligence and productivity suffers because you've just resigned to the reality that it's really hard to manage it all. Yet still, you feel entrenched so the best you feel you can do is to just... do nothing.
I would say that a small startup depends on fluid interaction between founders and the various 'makers' on board who help fulfil the vision. If you're 50/50 on how you facilitate that then you get a lot of mediocre when you could have had one solid thing and your foundation is built upon a compromise.
If I found myself in a leadership position in such a scenario again I would hope that I could stomach the firing act and invest in the culture that suited us best. But I don't think that's so easy to do with a small team.