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Writer's pictureSara Schrage

Why 100% Remote Was Right for Splice Machine


Why Going 100% Remote Was Right for Splice Machine


Splice Machine moved from an office in San Francisco to a 100% remote workplace in August 2018, before the pandemic. Our decision to make this change was deliberate and driven by our need to overcome common hiring challenges. In this post, we share examples of use-case and data sources that educated Splice Machine on remote working.


Meeting Hiring Goals


Though hiring may not be a current high priority at your company, now may be the time to evaluate the effectiveness of your recruiting strategy and implement change. Many companies that take a hard look and compare job vacancy status reports against hiring plan schedules, realize that their recruiting strategy could be more effective, less expensive to scale, or both. Remote workers and distributed teams may be a valid solution for both challenges.


Common Recruiting Costs


Every company faces costs associated with recruiting in addition to salaries, including recruiting agency fees, talent brand marketing, job advertising, referral incentives, and recruiter salaries. When we looked at Splice Machine's hiring statistics competing in the hyper-competitive AI/Big Data market and its overall effectiveness, we decided it was time to change our strategy. Before becoming a remote-first, fully distributed company, we were competing with an endless list of companies for the same local talent in the Bay Area. Instead of relocating our office to another less expensive city or sacrificing great talent for mediocre, we looked for alternatives.


Building Our Case for Change


We began the process of finding a more effective strategy to recruit and hire by making a list of some of Splice Machine’s unique cultural traits and key strengths. Knowing our core strengths helped us select possible alternatives and pass on others.


Splice Machine had a great communication infrastructure in place and a seasoned team of people who were already building a collaborative and autonomous work environment. This was largely due to Monte Zweben, CEO of Splice Machine, who hired the founding team. He sought out professionals with specific values and critical soft skills in addition to hard skills, knowledge, and experience. As Splice Machine grew and a People Ops team was hired, these values and soft skills were woven into Splice Machine’s recruiting process.


Remote-First as a Solution


Once we identified some of our team’s core strengths; communication, collaboration, and working autonomously, the suggestion was raised by the People Ops team, “Why not broaden our reach and become a fully-remote company?”. The idea made sense, but before making such a major organizational change, People Ops spent almost a year researching and debating the advantages and trade-offs of a remote-first model with various stakeholders in the company.


Remote-First Case Studies and Data Sources


Zapier made a splash in the media and caught our eye when Wade Foster published his "Delocation" blog in March 2017. Zapier, like hundreds of other companies, has always been 100% distributed. We read through their generous list of blogs and resources including their survival guide to working remote as well as their list of “25+ Fully Remote Companies That Let You Work From Anywhere” which pointed us to a broader group of remote-first companies and tools. People like Adin Hodovic and companies like Remote.io maintain comprehensive lists of remote-first companies and point you to numerous resources from other companies including Gitlab’s Remote Work Resources, and Buffer Remote Work Archives.


Researching the topic of remote work was both fun and overwhelming, the volume of content was endless then and has since grown, especially after COVID-19. Splice Machine’s People Ops team sought out use-cases and data on remote-first advantages and disadvantages from companies who either started as a remote company or had implemented a remote-first strategy at their company. When researching, our goal was to understand the variables that impacted the successes and struggles of other remote-first companies, assimilate the data to determine if remote-first was right for Splice Machine, and make our proposal. In the long run, all the research benefited the People Ops team because by the time we presented our proposal, we had a pretty good grasp on what to expect and how to achieve success.


Not all companies have the time and resources like Splice Machine’s People Ops to do due-diligence on implementing remote-first operations. While we wouldn’t recommend relying solely on Splice Machine’s journey to base your decision and implement remote-first at your company, we believe that by the time you have read through our 12 posts or ebook, you will better understand the options, challenges, and advantages of building a remote-first company.


Watch for our next post which will focus on 3 critical topics that impact remote-first teams; time zones, compensation, and compliance. You may also view all of our posts on Splice Machine’s career page or download theSplice Machine Journey From Office to 100% Remote ebook that our posts are based on.

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