The SEC has temporarily halted trading of Neuromama Ltd. - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-15/a-35-billion-stock-was-just-halted-on-manipulation-concerns <comment><USER2> Trading was just halted in Neuromama (OTC:NERO), a startup with a $35 billion market cap. They have a search engine ([https://neuromama.com/](https://neuromama.com/)), a social network ([http://vica.life/](http://vica.life/)), and claim "heavy ion fusion" and oceanfront property in Mexico. The CEO got out of prison 6 years ago.

WTF?

<comment><USER3> Very helpful explanation from a thread about this on reddit (narrated from the first person perspective of the scammer):

It's pretty beautiful in an illegal sort of way: So the clever short sellers borrow and sell 100,000 shares of stock at $2 each, hoping to profit when it crashes to zero.

By hypothesis, there are no buyers. But we buy. We buy those 100,000 shares for $2 each, laying out $200,000. Now we own 300.1 million shares, out of 300 million outstanding.

On Thursday we go to our brokers and say "you know what, we changed our minds, we want our stock back from whoever you loaned it to."

So the brokers call in the short sales.

The short sellers can't borrow the stock anywhere else. We own it all. So they have to close out their short sales by buying in the stock.

But they can't buy the stock anywhere else either. We own it all. So they have to buy it from us. How much do we charge?

Yeah, $15. Or $20 or whatever, I don't know. We can charge whatever we want. If the short sellers don't buy the stock, they're breaking the law. So they'll pay whatever we ask.

They pay $20 to buy back the shares they sold us at $2, making us a $1.8 million profit.

source: [https://www.reddit.com/r/investing/comments/4wvlkv/a_scam_wi...](https://www.reddit.com/r/investing/comments/4wvlkv/a_scam_with_354b_market_cap_dafuq/d6absj0)

[edit: formatting]

<comment><USER4> This sounds pretty amazing but I can't figure out bindings for all the pronouns.

Who are the short sellers? Who are the brokers? are they complicit? Is one of them acting as the market maker for the stock? When the con is exploded and the money gets paid back, where did it come from? The short sellers? the brokers? thin air?

<comment><USER3> Haha yeah the pronouns are not the clearest in this. Let me try:

Let's set up three parties to this scam: 1\. The Scammers - these people start the company 2\. The Short Sellers - these are the "smart money" who uncover some fictitious/sketchy company and want to profit 3\. Brokers - these are the intermediaries through which both The Scammers and The Short Sellers trade

First, The Scammers set up the company and take it public on some sort of lightly regulated exchange (look up pink sheets, over-the-counter trading, etc.). These are not the NY Stock Exchange where an IPO has to be somewhat legitimate.

Second, The Scammers lightly trade the stock up among themselves over time until it looks overvalued enough for The Short Sellers to notice it in their quantitative screens and get interested.

Then, expecting the price to drop, The Short Sellers decide they want to sell short the stock. This would generally mean that they borrow the shares from someone that has them (e.g., borrow 100 shares at $10 a share), sell them to someone else (e.g., all 100 shares at $10 a share), and buy shares again when the price goes down (e.g., buy 100 shares at $2 a share) to repay the person they bought them from (to whom they owe 100 shares, regardless of share price).

So, in order for the Short Sellers to orchestrate this, they turn to Brokers, who match buyers and sellers. Since this company is a scam, only The Scammers have any shares. So the Brokers go find The Scammers (hopefully not realizing they are scammers), and ask them to lend their shares to The Short Sellers. The Scammers gladly do this.

Next, the Short Sellers want to sell their borrowed shares back to someone, so they are set up for when the price drops. Again, The Scammers are glad to buy these shares (putting up some cash to do so).

When enough Short Sellers get involved, or when The Scammers feel like it, they will call up their Brokers and ask for the shares they loaned back. There are some rules around this, but they can generally call them back. Now begins an epic short squeeze - the Short Sellers don't have any shares, but they owe them to someone, not realizing that the person they borrowed from is the same as the person they sold to (The Scammer in both cases).

So, the Short Sellers go out looking for shares to buy to repay their loan (again, denominated in shares, not cash). But since only The Scammers have shares, they can demand any price, and they do. They demand higher and higher prices, until the Short Sellers finally have to pay up exorbitantly for shares to pay back their loan. The Short Sellers buy shares from The Scammers at wildly high prices, and return them (through a Broker) to The Scammers, who are very pleased with themselves, having both sold their shares for 100s of times what they bought them for, and having gotten the shares returned to them.

<comment><USER4> Ok, that is helpful. I'm still a bit confused though. (where's collida when you need him?)

So I get the point where the scammer is selling options amongst themselves to get the stock price to rise. I put out an "ask" and then later come back with another shell company/identity and buy that stock with my "bid". Brokers are handling these transactions by connecting the buyers to the sellers (which happen to be the same people so they can buy an sell at an arbitrary price and only the brokers are making any money on the transaction fees.)

Now you stipulate this causes the stock to show up as "over valued" based on pretty standard technical analysis. Sort of "look no revenue but people are buying this stock for $2? WTF?"

So our short seller (who isn't a scammer right? they are being scammed?) goes to their broker and says we think this price is too high and its going down, so we want to sell a put option (that is the promise of a sale) of these shares at $2 a share, 6 months from now. Since they are an options trader and they know how these things go, they also buy a call option, to buy shares at $2.25 6 months from now. This is known as a "butterfly" if the shares go up you will be able to cover your put options with shares from the call option and "lose" only 25 cents per share, if the shares go down, the person on the other side of your put buys your shares for $2 and you sell them for less than $2 and pocket the difference.

What I don't understand is what broker is going to play the other side of the short seller's order book?

If our scammers agree to sell a call option at $2 to counter balance the short seller's put option, they are forced to sell at $2, they can't decide to sell at $20.

How does the scammer get the short seller's broker to take a bath here? They aren't some dupe in an investment club who things "its going to the moon!" and so buying what ever comes out, they are trading options on high risk securities over the counter (in many ways the highest risk securities).

So the only way I see this working is if the broker in this melodrama is corrupt and telling someone to short a stock which the broker does not ever get control over (essentially con them into a naked short).

<comment><USER5> But there are no options involved here. Short selling is a separate strategy that doesn't involve options at all (as far as I understand).

Your point still stands and in respect to broker(s), I wonder if they:

* knew, but could ignore it, because it is legal and they wanted to collect the fees

* didn't know

* knew, and should have done something, but didn't, and thus broke some law.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "He left prison in August 2010 after being sentenced for five years for defrauding investors, in a $1.8 million scheme through misrepresentations tied to the renovation of a Las Vegas casino. The Ukrainian immigrant was sued by the SEC in the 1990s for orchestrating a $12 million penny stock scam. He was ordered to pay more than $21.6 million in disgorgement and penalties for selling unregistered securities from 1993 to 1996."

Why isn't this guy on the bad actors list?

<comment><USER7> club fed is a financial crime postdoctorate

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> With the apparent gold mine of batshit footage[0][1][2][∞], horrifying failed PR stunts[4], pdfs[5], and fake products, I really, really, hope someone with the right skills picks up the documentary ball here...

[0] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok-8uVR4Pa0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ok-8uVR4Pa0)

[1] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZhI5zRJ8zw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZhI5zRJ8zw)

[2] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hreCQlJB7bE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hreCQlJB7bE)

[3] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23C_fKGuSls](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23C_fKGuSls)

[4] - [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1rbxisJGJ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1rbxisJGJ4)

[5] - [https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&biw=&bih=&q=site%3...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?hl=en&biw=&bih=&q=site%3Aneuromama.com+pdf)

[∞] - [https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbSwch2hCQcgy- ecz1Z_guQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbSwch2hCQcgy-ecz1Z_guQ)

edit: spacing

</comment><comment><USER9> > The SEC has pushed to keep shell companies out of the hands of fraudsters, > who manipulate their shares to make illegal profits through a so-called > pump-and-dump scheme.

So if you wondered what a shell company is, one way to get a publicly traded company is to buy the "shell" of an existing company that is already public but wound down operations.

Sort of a take over of just the name, incorporation documents and exchange documents that let it list. You'd then delist and have your shares only trade OTC. This helps explain why they haven't filed any financials for the past few years.

If you look at its trading history, NERO US Equity<HP GO> if you have a Bloomberg terminal, you can see that it traded a few hundred shares a day and slowly climbed up each day. This probably indicates that the shares are very tightly held. So the owners can't really cash out by selling their shares, but they can possibly use the shares as collateral.

Being so tightly held also eliminates the possibility of shorting the company, though shorting any OTC symbol is always a bit sketchy.

</comment><comment><USER10> For comedic gold visit [http://investor.neuromama.com/](http://investor.neuromama.com/)

<comment><USER11> Gold for sure.

[http://investor.neuromama.com/uploads/2/4/6/9/24695823/impor...](http://investor.neuromama.com/uploads/2/4/6/9/24695823/important- disclosure-.pdf)

<comment><USER11> > NeuroMama.com is a large online platform, kind of like a large plaza, which > has everything you need, and if you will start using NeuroMama, you don't > need any other sites.

> NeuroMama.com is the best in the world Search Engine and Social Network, > researched, designed, developed and implemented based on Neural Technology > and artificial intelligence ..... Developed by the best International team > of mathematicians, and computer analysts.

<comment><USER12> Finally! The dream that was Zombo.com has been realized!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> What is this[1]?!

"To fully understand the difference between our Business Opportunity ad and all the other business opportunity ads you've been reading, the first thing you must know is that we are offering an overflowing profit palette of business 'opportunities', not just a single business 'opportunity.'..."

Plus 30 more paragraphs of similar madness.

[1] [http://investor.neuromama.com/licensing- territories.html](http://investor.neuromama.com/licensing-territories.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> I found this on the "Special Password Protected Area for Original Baja California Investors" page:

> Why would it make sense for APPLE Computers to acquire NeuroMama, Ltd.

> (1) If APPLE acquired NeuroMama, Ltd. it could potentially generate $100 > billion, by selling advertising, in new revenues per year within 5 years by > replacing GOOGLE with Neuromama.com's Search Engine based on Neural > Technology in APPLE's browser - SAFARI. Of course, it no longer will be > NeuroMama.com search engine .... it will be APPLE Search Engine.

...what?

<comment><USER15> > Of course, it no longer will be NeuroMama.com search engine .... it will be > APPLE Search Engine.

Of course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> (Sorry bout this folks - just trying to wrap my head around it)

What we seem to know and the unanswered questions:

\- this seems to be an atrociously bad startup (their "search engine" proxies Google but can be easily tripped)

\- it seems to have been a genuine IPO (2000???) that then failed (see search engine) and yet the outstanding shares trade OTC (between large institutions privately - a very common method)

\- the scam that seems to be happening is curious (See good explanation about Eve down thread). The idea is bad scammers can trap genuine hedge funds into a short squeeze on this very rarely traded stock. But no sane hedge fund will short the stock without also buying a call option - and so it seems only insane hedge funds get ripped off here.

My questions:

Why on earth are these stocks still lying around and being traded OTC. This seems the sort of thing that would never get allowed on any genuine exchange (the company could barely fulfill minimum reporting requirements)

Why did anyone take this as a "naked short"? Options trading is risk risk risk and people do this for a living aren't fools. Are they?

Even if this got public in the dotcom boom, why is such a scammy company still allowed to operate with outstanding shares ? I mean they have only just halted trading on a company that proxies Google ... Why give the imprimatur of SEC over the past few years to such crap?

<comment><USER17> _But no sane hedge fund will short the stock without also buying a call option_

Bill Ackman reads this and says "Oh, shit ... you can do that? Why didn't someone tell me that before I lost about $1 billion shorting that POS Herbalife pyramid scheme?"

In other words, sometimes "insane" hedge funds are run by BSDs[1] who are convinced they are the smartest guys in the room. They're so convinced that a stock is worthless that they don't bother doing something prudent like buying protective calls.

And then guys like Carl Icahn buy HLF stock just for the lulz, knowing that they are giving Ackman a very painful galactic wedgie.

Wall Street is definitely Adult Swim. And occasionally joker hedge funds need to be reminded of that.

[1] not Berkeley, but Liar's Poker

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> All their website does is scrape Google and return the results. I found this by causing an error by accident which shockingly exposes this error page: ([http://i.imgur.com/w0tgNUA.png](http://i.imgur.com/w0tgNUA.png))

<comment><USER19> Was just about to post the same.

[https://i.imgur.com/pSWLXIx.png](https://i.imgur.com/pSWLXIx.png)

The rotating carousel backgrounds on their homepage are comically bad Photoshop jobs, and the logo looks like it's traveled here from the early 2000s.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Why on earth does NASDAQ make it look so much like Neuromama (NERO) is a real NASDAQ-listed company? If I was trying to fool investors, this is the link I would use:

[http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/nero/stock- chart](http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/nero/stock-chart)

</comment><comment><USER21> The Business Insider headline (original, and yes Business Insider is terrible) from today was quite funny.

"This $35 billion company supposedly owns 'a clone of Amazon' and is developing atomic fusion — and the SEC thinks something might be wrong."

</comment><comment><USER22> This makes no sense...OTC stocks are almost never bigger than a billion dollars. This used to be at $28 in 2012, which meant is was still worth over $20 billion but the SEC didn;t notice then. No information about this company. not even a wiki page. I think the $35 billion may be a typo and it's only $35 million. There is something missing in the reporting. Maybe it traded at a penny and went to $55 ,maybe it wound be worth billions but it never got lower than $10

<comment><USER23> There were strange things going on with the numbers of shares outstanding in 2013, I wouldn't jump to conclusions about historical prices/market-caps without double checking.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Read the (Important Disclosure) pdf at the bottom of [http://investor.neuromama.com/](http://investor.neuromama.com/) \- It's amazingly crazy.

<comment><USER25> Here: [http://investor.neuromama.com/uploads/2/4/6/9/24695823/impor...](http://investor.neuromama.com/uploads/2/4/6/9/24695823/important- disclosure-.pdf)

It's a 68 page, haphazardly stitched mess of documents. Can't say they're not confident in their product:

From page 37: "NeuroBrowser of NeuroMama.com is the best, easiest to use, and blocks all kind of viruses and pop-outs on your screen...In 2 years the NeuroMama stock will be the most popular and will make NeuroMama shareholders and employees very, very rich. NeuroMama.com is the best Search Engine in the world."

<comment><USER26> The best description I can find of this "company" lies on page 37: "[https://neuromama.com/](https://neuromama.com/) \- Search Engine based on Artificial Technology....."

<comment><USER27> "Artificial technology" is an apt way of describing it, too. It's a Google scraper. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Wow - They don't even bother actually building a realistic-looking product. Their NeuroMama search engine doesn't seem to work at all and it has pictures of (Russian-looking) priests and clowns in the background.

I think this is pretty much like gambling though... Not so different from how most people deal with the NYSE or NASDAQ (most people know nothing and make decisions based entirely on hype/media). People gamble on horses and lottery, and they also gamble on stocks... I think if someone can pull this off, they deserve the money as much as any legitimate company on the NASDAQ or NYSE.

A lot of these NASDAQ/NYSE companies have overinflated valuations (far beyond their real intrinsic value); it's the same thing except in this case, the intrinsic value is 0.

</comment><comment><USER29> Who honestly believes this company is worth anywhere near $35B?

<comment><USER30> A couple of suckers who got conned into buying in at that price.

<comment><USER31> They're not even trying to make it not look like a scam [http://investor.neuromama.com/](http://investor.neuromama.com/)

I'm reminded of Cormac Herley's theory about Nigerian scammers acknowledging they're from Nigeria because they prefer to deal with people naive enough not to see that as a red flag [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/publication/why-do-...](https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/research/publication/why-do-nigerian-scammers-say-they-are-from-nigeria/)

Unlike your average Nigerian scammer, these guys also presumably had the ability to afford a web designer and someone to write copy that looked vaguely legitimate if they'd wanted to. Trouble is, investors that aren't ludicrously unsophisticated are more likely to ask awkward questions and get lawyers involved...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Tiajuana, Mexico? Siberia? Sounds like the makings for a 'Red Dawn 2: Putin and El Chapo" where Trump is holed up with the NRA as patriotic rebels protecting Hillary, the POTUS ;)

The 2012 film remake of Red Dawn made China the bad guys compared with 1984 original Red Dawn where Russia and Cuba were the bad guys.

But seriously, could this be used to launder money, or the scam wouldn't allow for it based upon the setup of the short squeeze? Could money be put in the system this way and cleaned and turn a profit at the same time?

</comment><comment><USER33> NeuroMama, LTD. is a development stage company which designs and implements the Internet Platform containing all of the popular components used by majority of population. NeuroPlatform offers its users more search relevancy, privacy and FSR - Frequent Search Rewards. NeuroPlatform consists of NeuroMama.com search engine, based on Neural Technology (Artificial Intelligence), secure e-mail service - Neuro-Mail, NeuroBrowser with a special version for children, NeuroMania social network with multitude of features such as Video management system, marketplace and auction, TviMama.com Video On-Demand and Live Broadcasting Infrastructure, functioning as the next generation Internet Content Distribution Platform (CDP). The NeuroZone online shopping mall is in implementation stage that will offer its users and vendors unique online shopping experiences, provide its e-commerce merchants with ability for instant integration to NeuroZone platform, and reward users for shopping at NeuroZone merchants. The flagship store for NeuroZone will be NeuroMania Department Store with large variety of products sold under the NeuroBrand such as NeuroPad, NeuroPhone, NeuroBook, etc. The company is currently in the process of establishing its presence in China to sell advertising and to establish Joint Ventures with manufacturers in China in order to deliver large profit margins in NeuroMania online store and brick and mortar store locations as part of its licensing program. NeuroMama, Ltd. is in the process of researching, designing and implementing its licensing program to accelerate growth of revenues worldwide. NeuroMama, Ltd. is currently implementing revenue generating infrastructure to sell advertising on its Internet Platform.

[http://seekingalpha.com/symbol/NERO](http://seekingalpha.com/symbol/NERO)

</comment><comment><USER34> I trade this market professionally, and it is quite easy to massively elevate your stock price if you control most of the floating shares. These sorts of price run-ups happen very regularly, but, to their credit, the SEC normally stops them before they get this far. They are typically able to halt trading by the time it's worth a billion dollars, two tops. :/

</comment><comment><USER35> TL;DR (DontRead)

Some con artist gets expelled from US after spending 6 years in prison for investment fraud. Tries new pump and dump gig from Mexico called NeuroMama, deliberately hilariously crazy stupid.

Issues some 650M shares, sells 200 for 50$, probably to himself, gets stopped by SEC. Holds the remaining 650M-200 shares, that's where the trillion dollar figure comes from.

Time to stop calling virtual shares 'market cap' or even 'worth'!

That's pretty old and boring, the 'new' attempted twist is called short squeeze, see and thank @thegranderson for explanation.

Shun the Neuromama meme.

This gives a whole new dimension to the word 'pump and dump con artist': [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1rbxisJGJ4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1rbxisJGJ4)

</comment><comment><USER36> I got very nice error from their search engine, revealing a bit where they get results from :)

[http://pastebin.com/RnsB33Ea](http://pastebin.com/RnsB33Ea)

</comment><comment><USER37> WHY WOULD THEY JUST SUSPEND THE STOCK TRADING, WHAT IS THE ILEGALITY HERE? THAT THEIR STOCK TRADES AT $56DLLS AND THEY HAVE LOW VOLUME? OR THAT THEY HAVE NOT FILED THEIR FINANCIAL DOCUMENTS? I HAVE READ ON ONE OF THEIR CONTRACTS THAT THEY PERFECTLY STATE THAT THEIR COMPANIE USES INVESTORS CAPITAL SEED TO FUND PROJECTS. WELL LETS JUST WAIT AND SEE WHAT HAPPENS ON THE 26TH OF THIS MONTH

</comment><comment><USER38> That "search engine" looks like it was never really build to be used. I searched the term "blender" and got this:

`ErrorException in getResults.php line 45:`

[https://neuromama.com/get/web/blender](https://neuromama.com/get/web/blender)

</comment><comment><USER39> [http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_i...](http://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=124531379)

This forum post has links to some of their financials which are just comical.

</comment><comment><USER40> $35 billion market cap, but it looks like the daily volume is never more than ~$200,000...

</comment><comment><USER41> Screenshot of a search for "8 billion" on neuromama.com [http://imgur.com/a/Y1Ior](http://imgur.com/a/Y1Ior)

</comment><comment><USER42> >To read more about the saga of Cynk, click here.

...with no link to click on

</comment><comment><USER43> This is like watching a flaming dumpster fire.

</comment><comment><USER44> Bloomberg's headlines are _infuriatingly_ clickbaity these days.

<comment><USER45> How so? That article is amazing, and I think the title reflects it.

<comment><USER31> Blatant penny stock scams /= "a $35 billion stock"

<comment><USER11> ...hence the halting on manipulation concerns</comment></comment></comment></comment>


ASK HM: Why Trademark domain name? Supply.com vs Svpply.com - <AUTHOR>

When i go to a website I see some have trademarked their domain name. My question is lets say Supply.com trademarked "Supply.com" would they be able to sue Svpply.com. Supply seems to me to be a generic word. Lets say they were both in the same space. This is all hypothetical. I ask because if someone bought Faceboook.com/Faceebook.com/Fadebook, then Facebook.com would be able to sue.<p>But since Supply is such a generic term could they really sue? again i only use this as an example because most people are probably familiar with Svpply. <comment><USER2> It varies. Usually a trademark is specific to an industry or field so Delta Dental and Delta Airlines are okay because they are in a different industry. It gets funky when there are overlaps in industry or the two operate entirely in the same space doing the same thing.</comment>


Lenovo's 13-inch LaVie Z laptop is lighter than a MacBook, has multiple ports - <AUTHOR> http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2015/05/04/lenovo_s_13_inch_lavie_z_laptop_is_lighter_than_a_macbook_has_multiple_ports.html <comment><USER2> No USB-C port. Why can't they have at least one? Let's make a quick transition to the new smaller, reversible standard.</comment>


No checkouts, no chocolate: Online shopping hits impulse buys - <AUTHOR> http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/11/27/us-retail-consumer-checkouts-analysis-idUSBRE9AQ0GG20131127

<comment><USER2> Interestingly, I find that online shopping permits me to diversify my impulse buys to products I normally wouldn't ever have the option of buying.

The chocolates and gum in supermarkets, convenience stores, and pharmacies are all the same 50 or so products everywhere you go, sold by the same half-dozen candy companies. Instead of getting these candies, I can instead buy more interesting candies and other foodstuffs that I've not yet tried or find hard to get.

Online shopping is going to hurt the fat tip of the power-law distribution and move things out towards the tail. Furthermore, I wouldn't be surprised if there was an otaku of impulse candy buyers already out there or forming now, who focus on blogging and tweeting about more interesting candy than those at the fat tip of the curve.

<comment><USER3> I want to subscribe to one of those as soon as I have disposable income - [http://skoshbox.com/](http://skoshbox.com/) / [http://www.candyjapan.com/](http://www.candyjapan.com/) (sends you a box of japanese candy each month!)

<comment><USER4> Thank you for making me aware of that candyjapan service, it seems to be the greatest thing ever. Definitely going to subscribe!

<comment><USER5> Coincidentally, its creator is also an HN user: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2745694](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2745694)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> _" In Britain, the country where e-commerce is most popular, about 13 percent of people do all or most of their grocery shopping online. Yet this only accounts for 5 percent of overall spending, suggesting consumers spend more when they visit a store."_

I don't think you can draw that conclusion from the evidence. Perhaps the people who shop online are the ones who spend less - there isn't likely to be a linear relationship between spending and impulse buying, and people who spend less are possibly more likely to be the ones who go online first (no kids, relatively affluent, time poor seems a likely demographic). As someone who doesn't like being in a supermarket I went in, got what I needed, and got the hell out as fast as I could. I don't impulse buy because I'm focused on speed. I don't browse. When online shopping came along I was a _very_ early adopter - I switched my supermarket brand choice so I could use it.

</comment><comment><USER7> On the flip side, online retailers have a much stronger opportunity to up-sell products -- they can up-sell on a per-product basis, whereas physical retailers are bound by shelf space to up-sell/cross-sell.

Online can match products by consumer, too, and even do small A/B tests on pricing of individual items. That's powerful. Grocery stores have a much harder time price testing.

</comment><comment><USER8> "Companies most at risk are Mondelez International, Mars Inc and Nestle, the top three candy makers, soda makers like Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, and magazine publishers like Time Warner and Hearst Corp."

All companies that arguably are doing nothing for betterment of humanity. Perhaps this Internet fad is a good thing.

<comment><USER9> If you think humanity would be better off without the occasional ice cold Coca-Cola, I think you don't understand much about humans.

We don't work just to 'better ourselves' as philosophers and artists, we work to enjoy things in life. Maybe Coca-Cola doesn't do it for you, but everyone else who enjoys it isn't necessarily brainwashed.

<comment><USER8> When a bottle of coca-cola is cheaper than a bottle of water, yes I think that that company, out of many, deserves a little less market share.

<comment><USER9> But that's not what you said. You claimed Coca-Cola was doing "nothing for the betterment of humanity". The billions of dollars people spend on their products suggest they're either providing some benefit or have brainwashed their customers. I guess I have a little more faith in humanity than you do.

<comment><USER8> I urge you to step into a supermarket or corner store/dairy, in any country outside of an area of affluence. Are you familiar with the concept of Food Deserts?

"Because of the Agriculture and Food policies soon people living in food deserts will have only a couple of food producers to choose from: Coca-Cola, Nestle, Kraft and Kellogg's."

[http://saynotofoodwaste.org/2013/06/03/food- deserts/](http://saynotofoodwaste.org/2013/06/03/food-deserts/)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert)

<comment><USER9> Coca-cola disappears tomorrow and what happens to that food desert? It gets better? How?

<comment><USER8> Really? You think it's OK that hundreds of thousands of people strangely only have access to pre-processed foodstuffs, because shipping and storage regulations, geographical distances, poverty etc mean they can't put fresh healthy items alongside their emblazoned Coca-Cola refrigerators? In rural areas like Mexico where tomatoes are left on the vine because NAFTA made it cheaper to buy U.S. vegetables and corn (thanks subsidies), and a bottle of water DOES cost more than a can of coke and it's still owned by Coca-Cola.

Coca-Cola, Nestle, Kellogs, Kraft: they all make sugar water and empty calorie products, providing cheap consumables to the population thanks to agricultural subsides and tax breaks. There is nothing good, at all, about these companies and if they all disappeared tomorrow perhaps for a day or two we'd be oh! where's my coke! And then buy some caramel coloured pop from somewhere else. Do you miss Asbestos and CFCs? Weren't they convenient also?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> So basically, online shopping hits big food corporations because they can't exploit people's basic instinct to trick them into buying something they don't really _need_?

That's actually a _good_ thing.

</comment><comment><USER11> In public, an impulse shopper might buy $3-$10 worth of chocolate and magazines, but in private they might buy $30-$100 worth of Kickstarter kipple.

</comment><comment><USER12> I would think the upsell happens in email before, during the shopping experience, or completely after the online checkout is done, not during the checkout process. Upsell during checkout is kind of a grocery store concept. At least those is common in my industry.

As it's hinted to at the end of the article, better consumer habit tracking and targeted discounted low friction shopping cart adds with would probably make up for a lot of what is lost trying to port real world shopping behaviors into online stores (an utterly different experience)

</comment><comment><USER13> I think it is just a question of habit. When I started online shopping, I have reduced impulse buys (candies, ...). Now, I add them to the list.</comment>


Stripe's fifth engineering hub is Remote - <AUTHOR> https://stripe.com/blog/remote-hub <comment><USER3> This is such a smart move.

I was one of the first two simul-hire remotes at Mapbox (when the company was ~12 people) and, until I left in 2017, the longest-term remote there at seven years. I've been fully remote for thirteen years. At Mapbox, I unofficially took on the role of internal advocate for remote culture. It wasn't always easy to be remote, but as the company grew, Eric, the CEO, was fond of saying that "everyone is remote" since more and more physical hubs for work sprang up across many timezones. It was a tough balance, particularly as increasingly more work and customer opportunities centered around the Bay Area, and the spiritual heart of the company switched coasts from the official HQ in DC to the larger and faster growing office in SF.

Personally, I can't overstate how much being a remote employee and even freelancer has impacted my quality of life and my opportunities. For the most part, I was able to focus on my work and hook in to the rest of my teammates as needed. The best times of this were when the company engineering culture was very asynchronous and allowed for it. Slack and always-on expectations, as well as much more complex software in later years, made this more difficult, but still manageable.

It wasn't without struggle, though. Often it was lonely, isolating, I felt out of the loop on some decisions, I didn't get some in-jokes and nicknames, I missed the non-holiday parties and happy hours, etc. Even with that stuff aside, it takes a real commitment from the leadership to fully integrate remote team members. Kudos to Stripe for putting themselves out there and holding themselves accountable to the goal with a public statement and metrics.

The key snippet from the Stripe announcement is this:

> improve our ability to tap the 99.74% of talented engineers living outside > the metro areas of our first four hubs

The future of much of the technical work that needs to happen is remote, and I'm glad to see Stripe embrace that.

<comment><USER4> "Often it was lonely, isolating, I felt out of the loop on some decisions, I didn't get some in-jokes and nicknames, I missed the non-holiday parties and happy hours, etc."

I am in this boat now. . . and find it really tough. Many others I know feel the same way but it is rarely talked about. How do you get over the social isolation of being remote?

<comment><USER3> There are two parts to this: work and your local community.

For work, you're not going to do it alone. Someone on the HR side (or just general management, if the company is still quite small) is going to have to be a willing sounding board for remote employee concerns.

On the social side, this might be supporting a policy (as Mapbox did, maybe still does) of flying remotes to the holiday and other big parties, as well as, if able, just having them in every month or two to work alongside the non- remotes and make those connections. When I first started, I'd fly from Portland to DC for a week every 6-8 weeks. It helped that I lived in DC prior for five years (before Mapbox), so it felt like a natural connection.

On the technical and process side, we had a policy of things not existing (or not existing properly) unless they were in written form. This included decisions, context, back-and-forth reasoning, announcements, etc. We used GitHub for non-code "tickets" this way, almost like an internal blog and topic-focused discussion forum. This broke down in later years, but even to the scale of dozens of people was a great way to make sure that being 3,000 miles away and three hours "behind" wasn't as isolating.

For the local community part, go to meetups. Organize a weekly/biweekly social gathering with likeminded friends or peers. Work in coffee shops or other places out of the house. I found that I went stir crazy when I first started remote, because I wouldn't leave the house and needed some human contact. Placing all of that expectation on your employer and not on yourself is unreasonable. It takes effort.

<comment><USER5> > On the technical and process side, we had a policy of things not existing > (or not existing properly) unless they were in written form. This included > decisions, context, back-and-forth reasoning, announcements, etc. We used > GitHub for non-code "tickets" this way, almost like an internal blog and > topic-focused discussion forum.

We are working on making this process more scalable at Aether's Pro version, it is especially useful for remote companies as you mentioned. It helps that we are a remote company as well, eating your own dog food is the fastest way to improve. If you'd like to get on the pilot, hit me up and I'll add you in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hope other companies follow Stripe's lead here. Anecdotally, I've never been as happy and productive as I've been the past few years as a remote worker. It seems to me too few companies are taking advantage of the opportunity here. The few challenges I've encountered seem solvable: (1) effective team culture building: can be solved with travel budget & prioritization of good team cultural norms by team leads (2) whole team collaborative brainstorming (particularly when facing a "fire drill"-type time-constrained challenge): more challenging to solve from what I've seen, but might be solved by some combination of better tech and better work practices

I'm interested to hear how Stripe addresses these and which challenges they find.

One question at a higher level: what are the immigration law impacts here? Does Stripe need to get H1Bs for internationally located workers? I hope not: effective remote work is fantastic step toward bringing labor mobility more in line with capital mobility, with potentially positive effects on income, taxation, and social policies for people around the world.

<comment><USER7> > _The few challenges I 've encountered seem solvable_

I see a lot of people saying this.

I never see anyone saying "We _have_ solved these problems"...

<comment><USER8> Well, they're probably ongoing challenges that any company needs to consider-- and I'd argue that culture and communications can be challenges even within a company location as it scales. I'd shy away from ever saying they're "solved."

But the fact that there are successful companies with a significant percentage of remote and/or distributed workers suggests that they can be solved well enough.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Million dollar question - how are the remote stripes going to be compensated? Are they going to be compensated pegged on their geo-locale (which then just makes it like international offices without the office)?

I'm pretty sure the dublin and singapore stripes are paid much lower than their sf counterparts. How are they going to resolve this for the remotes?

Not poking at stripe, but generally as I think of remote work, I think we're probably to going to think of true value based salary scales (you are creating X$ of value, therefore you are to be paid a fraction of that) as opposed to geo based scales (you may be an icpc world finalist living in Kathmandu but you will be paid 1/10th of a boot camper from SF because 3rd world).

<comment><USER10> They are compensated according to locale. Our Google sheet of offer anecdata contains a few entries for Stripe, some remote and some SF. I've seen a salary difference of 30%. I don't know the people who entered them personally so I can't speak to how well they performed during the interview, so take that with a grain of salt.

<comment><USER11> I just don't understand this.

If a company knows how to get choose a USD200k engineer in SF and get a good return for the company off that engineer, then why wouldn't you pay USD200k in all areas?

USD200k is a good carrot where I live, so you would be able to attract the _best_ engineers living here (with far less competition and far less churn).

I get it that SF has network effects, but good remote engineers also tap into the same network.

<comment><USER12> > then why wouldn't you pay USD200k in all areas?

Because they don't have to. Peoples' expectations of salary are likely in line with their local job markets, so even great developers living in a rural area will likely either accept the average base salary for their locale, or move to SF for the larger payday (and all of the expenses that come with it).

<comment><USER13> This should be reversing because the internet grants us easy access to this data, so market signals should be forming, but it isn't reversing, which is suspicious. Getting the data is harder, but we do already have data sets to compare to (and can apply inflation, CoL, other adjustments as time goes on).

The only real reason for zip-code adjustments would be some labor-related, CONUS, or state laws that I'd be unfamiliar with.

If I deliver the same business value as a Silicon Valley engineer, and you're paying me less, I'm getting arbitrage'd.

<comment><USER14> I agree, if we're getting paid differently based on zip code but producing the same business value we're getting arbitrage'd. The question is; how do we as developers make money off this market inefficiency?

We have a few options. 1\. Negotiate better salaries. This is only possible when the purchasing price of the next best developer also increases. This already happens in the Bay area market. It is happening slower outside the Bay. 2\. Start own our business. We hire the best developers at a higher rate which raises the market rate for a developer. This is happening in the Bay but much more slowly outside. 3\. Move to a better geographic market. A lot of people who can chose this.

Developers probably can't exploit/correct this market because we have no way of directly/quickly making profit from the price difference.

I would love for developers to capture a larger share of the value they create. Does anyone have any ideas on how to restructure the incentives of the market to make this happen? (Cooperatives?)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've always wanted to switch to fully remote. I worked from home for a couple weeks after my son was born and my current company didn't like it. My productivity was down and they noticed so they informed me I wasn't allowed to work remotely anymore because of it.

Obviously it had nothing to do with the fact that they gave me 3 days of parental leave after the birth, so I was trying to help a recovering wife take care of a needy child.

<comment><USER16> There are pros and cons. I've been partial remote for 6 years and full remote for nearly 5. I can do whatever I need to do to get into the flow of work; music, no music, lights, no lights, etc. I don't have to conform to what happens at an office. I can start early or work late (my "office" is several time zones away). I can take a personal call w/out feeling guilty.

What I cannot do is walk over to a colleague's desk and chat. I miss hallway conversations about the project. Phone meetings are always a pain as someone is usually too far from the mic and I can't hear. I don't work in a city that has a "tech" community. I can't take my setup with me and go sit at a coffee shop (part of my project is writing hw controls).

I love remote work. But, I miss people.

<comment><USER17> There are certain jobs that I think could really benefit from pairing, akin to pair programming. I used to do compliance work for a bank, and I think as a whole our reporting defect rate would have plummeted had we worked in pairs. Obviously for some jobs this is cost prohibitive and otherwise impractical, but an ideal working environment for me would be remote and part-time pairing. You get consistent human interaction, information flow across the team, and the benefits of remote work.

<comment> benji-york We've done a few "mobbing" sessions with three remote people and it worked out very well. We got a lot done and we all felt a high level of energy for days afterward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Great to see that a well-known company such as Stripe is embracing remote work because they've seen that remote workers are effective, not just as a mechanism to leverage locales with lower wages. Hopefully other companies follow suit.

<comment><USER10> I'm not sure this says anything about the wages being equal. The remote wages are anecdotally lower. Judging by the offers I've seen coming out of SF compared to some of their other hubs, it's significantly lower. Not just in salary, but in equity as well.

<comment><USER18> It's certainly possible that Stripe is offering productivity as the reason for their embrace of remote work when it's really about cheaper labor, but I'm hopeful. I know there are other companies where those decisions are transparently about lowering costs, but if what you say about remote workers typically getting less equity is true, too, that's pretty disappointing.

<comment><USER19> Buffer (which has been remote-heavy for a long time) handled this by explicitly breaking their salary assessment into multiple elements. In addition to base salary-for-role and various experience adjustments, they have a public "price sheet" describing the cost of living adjustments they apply for different locations.

It's not a perfect system, I'm sure. CoL is reduced to three fairly broad bands, and other pay elements like experience and performance are potentially skewed by remote status. But I think it's an appealing approach in general. Candidates know in advance what to expect and can move somewhere more expensive without needing to find a new job. Meanwhile, the company saves some money, but still gets access to remote candidates in expensive cities where they don't have offices.

I suppose it would drive away any remote worker who's consciously living somewhere cheap to increase effective salary, but presumably that's offset by getting access to people in DC, NYC, Boston, etc. who aren't open to other cost-saving remote jobs.

<comment><USER20> Why would the cost of living factor into salary at all?

I write the code. I offer architectural decisions. I'm working on the most demanded features by the customers, bringing more value to the product.

What if I pair program on a feature from a person in SF? My efforts are still paid less.

Who cares if I wrote the code from SF or Vietnam.

I wish more remote workers would stand up to these businesses looking for a way to lower their costs.

As for the engineers, the whole "midwest nice", "flyover feebleness", "sure is great to just have an opportunity to work remotely" mindset has to change. Don't let them discount your value.

<comment><USER21> Stand up to them by doing what? Moving to SF? Turning down the job and working for a local company that pays even less?

<comment><USER20> Put multiple offers against each other?

If you're already in a remote engineering position, show that you bring more value than Tom in SF, even though he's paid more.

<comment><USER22> That's pretty difficult right now since not that many companies offer remote (yet).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Bravo Stripe! I work for a company that allows me to work remotely pretty much whenever and it has done wonders for my productivity(no interruptions to flow) and overall happiness level. The 2 hours/ day of time I used to spend commuting are now spent cooking/going to the gym/home improvement/gardening. I save tons of money and have never been healthier or happier. As long as I stay a software engineer I don't think I'll ever take another role that doesn't let me work remotely. Of course I am strict with myself about working during work hours and have good rapport/trust w/ management. Just my 2c

</comment><comment><USER24> > _While we did not initially plan to make hiring remotes a huge part of our > engineering efforts, our remote employees have outperformed all > expectations._

I wonder what metrics were used. Would be interesting to know whether the main motivator was simply raw performance, or performance/cost.

<comment><USER25> Probably both, I'd imagine. Regarding cost, Stripe was pretty outspokenly against Prop C in SF last year (which passed, to their dismay). The result is an added tax on revenue which hits Stripe hard since they have a high volume, low margin business. Not to mention CA is already a very expensive place to run a company.

With rising costs in SF, they likely had to explore viable long-term solutions. They can start moving more jobs to their other offices, open new secondary offices, or expand their remote presence. With remote, they're able to keep SF as the HQ while lowering costs. It's also popular among devs, so it'll keep their brand image good amongst their target demo and among their current employee base.

<comment><USER26> Are they not in Austin? I don't see it on the jobs page. Austin is the perfect combination of low COL and available talent in my opinion.

<comment><USER19> > _Austin is the perfect combination of low COL and available talent in my > opinion._

Some evidence for that: half the game studios I know of have programmers in Texas, or occasionally elsewhere in the southeast (e.g. North Carolina). If you want a dense talent pool around your office, but don't have the margin/capital to pay coastal cost of living, there aren't many other options to rival those.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Im wondering what learnings has Stripe figured out that makes their remote workers as productive as their in-office employees.

Do they use things like OKR, slack,etc ? What works and what doesn't - <USER2> there a cognitive disconnect between remote teams and people who work in office .

Is there an expectation of _minimum screen time_ expected from remote employees?

<comment><USER28> Why would you expect remote to be less efficient? Working in an open office is incredibly distracting—of course there's productivity gains from going remote.

<comment><USER29> My experience is that some people genuinely are less productive without the social pressure net of their co-workers around them, or literally the boss on- hand as a sort of "productivity enforcer." It's varied wildly from job to job, office culture to culture, and at an individual level, but I take all those experiences with me and it tints my perceptions of productivity as well.

I remember when I was a recruiter it was a life of KPIs handed on down from on high. Management would pat you on the shoulder as they walked by if you were on a call, expressing approval of your activity. We'd crack jokes only somewhat ironically like "any time is a good time for a client call!" If you were still in the office at 7, you could expect a heartfelt appreciative email from management. If you hadn't been on the phone for an hour, a boss may shout across the room "bit quiet over there, someone check if komali_2's napping!"

Then on the days that all of management was at an off-site, things got a lot "looser." Less calls, less grandstanding, more hanging out in the kitchen, longer lunch etc. I don't know if productivity was actually lower ( it probably wasn't ) but it felt that way, because of the culture of our work place.

To that business, the idea of working from home would be laughable. Never mind that there were independent recruiters working out of their house and pulling in literally millions in revenue. How could you be as productive as an office of hardcore recruiters with their managers setting excellent KPIs and tracking goals and establishing milestones and shouting "a bit quiet over there!" occasionally?

Of course now that I'm an engineer I'm easily more productive on my own at home or at a cafe than I am in my office for a multitude of reasons. My purpose is to explore and explain why some people, particular management, believe remote to be less efficient.

<comment><USER30> "If you were still in the office at 7, you could expect a heartfelt appreciative email"

This sort of thing is horrible. Stop normalizing this. It's OK not to work all day.

My kid goes to bed at 7:30 and I hate that my colleagues are so willing to work late, normalizing the idea that 6-7PM calls are OK. I mean, I get it - it's not their fault I had a kid, but hell, when IS it OK to stop working?

<comment><USER29> I don't intend to normalize it. I think it's bad. That's why I became an engineer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> HN remote workers, does your company pay for your use of a coworking space? Or even fully manage it?

I've noticed that companies I admire greatly like Basecamp, and also in yesterday's Who's Hiring thread, that they list a $200-$300 monthly stipend towards coworking space fees as an employee perk. That doesn't seem quite enough to fully cover a coworking space in NY or SF. I'm tasked with building a remote engineering workforce myself in our business, and was initially thinking that we as the company will be the ones setting up the contracts with WeWorks etc. But perhaps you as an employee would actually prefer to be in control of that?

Are there companies that are fully remote but don't contribute anything towards coworking? If you're in that situation, what do you think of it?

<comment><USER32> No. I work for a fully remote company, and we decided that individuals within the company could pay for working a coworking space if they wanted, but giving them a stipend for doing so created a benefit for those employees that didn't exist for employees that optimized their home office for remote work. Personally I am in favor of more pay for every employee across the board at an organization rather than trying to come up with lots of extra benefits to take advantage of to collect more money.

I think that some kind stipend for office/equipment/etc does make sense for companies that have remote and in-office employees, but feel that it should be a set amount and not tied to actual usage, as I feel that in those cases, the company is getting a clear benefit from the worker being remote, in not having to provide them with space in the office.

<comment><USER33> Tacking the would-be stipend onto base pay can remove the feeling of the benefit being provided at all.

e.g.

A: You get a salary and we also cover your gym membership

B: Your salary of $100k already includes a baked-in $50 a month for a gym

That said, definitely agree the stipend shouldn't only be for employees who choose a coworking space. Provide $X for either office space, or home internet & office expenses

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> ..Remote (North America Only)..

<comment><USER35> I'm having a hard time reconciling "They see how people purchase food differently in bodegas, konbini, and darshinis. They know why it is important to engineer robustness in the face of slow, unreliable internet connections. They have worked in and run businesses that don't have access to global payments infrastructure." with this precision.

What's the point of mentioning typical south american or asian shops names and then offer north america only remote jobs ?

<comment><USER36> "And though we intend to hire remote engineers in Europe and Asia eventually, our hubs in Dublin and Singapore are not sufficiently established to support remotes just yet."

<comment><USER35> I read that, but the timezone problem doesn't really explain why south america was slashed.

Overall it seems a bit strange to explain "we officially have a remote hub" and "remote workers need to be supported by physical hubs".

<comment><USER37> "There is substantial organizational, legal, and financial infrastructure required to support each new jurisdiction we hire in, so we have to be measured in how quickly we expand."

Each country you want to pay salary in comes with legal aspects. Therefore they have to be a bit tactical with where they try to hire people.

<comment><USER38> As remote guy I see potential for disruption in this area. So far umbrella subsidiaries or agencies and invoice-based contracting does the job, but stuff like IP rights and liability is quite complex. We would need some Stripe-like service for employment matters.

<comment><USER31> In the US there are PEOs (professional employer organizations) that function as virtual co-employers that allow companies to hire in all 50 states without establishing a physical presence, handles payroll, state taxes, health insurance and benefits in all the states etc.

Something like that, but on a global scale, would be amazing for remote hiring. What unfortunately now seems to happen is that remote foreign employees get classified as contractors (which probably wouldn't stand up to any real scrutiny), which isn't great for either party.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> To offer a counterpoint to all the praise of remote working: I'm the living proof of a dysfunctional remote employee. I work effectively 20 minutes a day, sometimes not at all. In the morning meetings it's so easy to just wing something vague and get away with it. I guess the fundamental problem is that I work in a team where everyone more or less owns a separate part of the product and no-one has any insight in other peoples' work.

<comment><USER40> What do you do all day then? Does no one ever try to get in contact with you?

<comment><USER39> Very seldom and when they do it's something really trivial to fix/answer (which I can often do on my phone if I'm out doing... leisure stuff). I more or less have a permanent paid vacation.

<comment><USER41> Do you do other things during the work day? How do you fill the time?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I just looked at Stripe's job page and noticed they don't advertise any positions as "Senior" nor do they appear to list 'years required' in any of their listings.

Definitely a fresh take, and I hope it actually does yield better applicants and results!

<comment><USER43> Apparently, everyone has the "same" title - levels are only reflected in your pay band.

<comment><USER44> Correct. I work at Stripe.

By the way, this goes almost all-the-way-up.

Even people who were former VPs at Google often have the title "Engineering Manager". Sure, they mostly manage other EMs, but it's hard to precisely tell who is super senior and who isn't.

This actually plays out nicely, as it encourages everyone to default to each other as equals. Later on you'll hear things like "did you know that person built the entire first version of Atlas by themselves?" only to realize they are, in fact, very experienced. :]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> This is a great sentence:

> We are doing this to situate product development closer to our customers, > improve our ability to tap the 99.74% of talented engineers living outside > the metro areas of our first four hubs, and further our mission of > increasing the GDP of the internet.

</comment><comment><USER46> Does anyone have experience working remotely in a engineering manager (not IC) role? Did it work for you? What had to change?

<comment><USER47> I've been at Stripe for 4 years, joined as an IC then shortly transitioned to an EM. Previously was an EM, and remote for 12 years total.

Noticeable differences:

\- While I'm remote people tend to default to throwing time on my calendar, which means a conversation sometimes doesn't happen. We use Slack, so I am highly responsive on Slack to ensure I'm still talking with folks I need to and would rather ping someone unnecessarily and ask about something than miss out on information. Ding words and DMs to offset the barrier to adding calendared time to talk.

\- Capturing all "collisions" (we have awesome stairs to encourage this) is a lot different. As a remote, when I'm in the office it's a bit special and people come up to me. When working in an office, I get less "Hey, what have you been up to?" conversations.

\- Timezones are definitely harder in the office. In an office people generally have fixed blocks of time, since commuting has a cost. Being remote (from home) there is no commute cost, so I can split my day up if I need to without working overly long days. I worked with engineers in Europe, so having this flexibility to hop on a call at 6am and then take a break to hang out with my kids before school is super cool.

What doesn't change? I believe the most effective management practices aim for predictability, and having inclusive behaviors. Also it doesn't change how you show up to the job. When I'm in meetings, I need to look fully engaged and present, whether remote or in the office. I think this can be harder in a home office, being surrounded by your things vs. an empty conference room.

Happy to talk more about my experiences here or remote in general!

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> One thing I've found when working in a silo or remotely is the difficulty of getting accolades.

Pretty much all discretionary accolades like "team member of the month" is related to building rapport with the decision maker.

This factors into not just the employee of the month, but bonuses and layoffs.

I'm not even sure if abstracting this out into specific performance metrics is the solution, an individual will still want to give another certain individual praise at their discretion.

Just something to be conscious of.

Glad Stripe is having success in this area.

<comment><USER22> I work at a 80% remote company (we have two smallish offices). We definitely get accolades for a well made project once it ships.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I always assumed work from home positions were very difficult to get because your pool of competition is so much bigger. Can anyone chime in if that's the case or not?

<comment><USER50> They can also be hard to find because they won't be advertised as remote. I'm full time remote but this wasn't mentioned in the job description, and I only found out after getting the job offer. I think management had the sense that advertising the position as remote attracted "the wrong kind of people".

I guess technically I have an "unlimited work from home" policy, because I do still have a desk if I want to go in.

<comment><USER41> I had no idea there might be some connotation about remote workers as some kind of people, any idea what they may have meant?

<comment><USER22> One characterization I've heard is the "sits around in PJs and dicks around all day" \- like a sickday that goes on forever. Which I have found almost never to be the case, or it was very obvious and they were let go pretty quickly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I've been working from home for over a year. Far more productive than working in an office.

</comment><comment><USER52> > There are still some constraints on our ambitions. In our first phase, we > will be focused primarily on remote engineers in North America, starting > with the US and Canada. While we are confident that great work is possible > within close time zones, we don't yet have structures to give remotes a > reliably good experience working across large time zone differences.

I get the time zone thing. So why not South America?

<comment><USER53> Maybe they don't have any legal presence there? No knowledge of employment laws, regulations, etc.

<comment><USER52> Do they have any legal presence in Canada or Mexico?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Stripe is such an amazing company, and I am really glad that they keep pushing workplace innovation this way.

I am currently looking for a new job (exec level) and unfortunately I don't see any great fit with Stripe's current openings, otherwise I would simply love to see how the company operates from the inside.

Keep rocking.

</comment><comment><USER55> Love it, and more companies should make it as evident and public as they are doing it today with the announcement.

Remote work is here to stay, and certainly the future, and one of the main reasons I am now working full-time in the space with my product, to help improve culture and communication within distributed teams, which is one of the main challenges around remote work. Edit: ps. in case you'd like to check it out it's [https://standups.io](https://standups.io)

</comment><comment><USER56> This is great to see. In the past, I had wanted to apply to Stripe, but left saddened when they didn't offer remote positions as I've worked remote for the past 3 or 4 years.

<comment><USER44> There are a lot of factors & regulations that make South America uniquely difficult. For example, regulations state that in Brazil the payment processors (like Stripe) cannot pay out funds until 30 days after they are earned.

This obviously isn't the best user experience. It will just take longer to build something truly great that can span the globe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> If anyone from Stripe is reading: is there any precedent for taking a remote role with a view to transitioning to an office role in the US while being sponsored for a visa?

Who would I talk to about this?

Thanks.

</comment><comment><USER58> Uhm, "Remote in North America only" though?

<comment><USER22> Setting up payroll, writing employment contracts in different countries, timezone differences etc. are pretty valid but not unmanageable for a company of this size. Hope they expand it later once this turns out to be a great idea. You also need to organize your engineer and product management layers to cover all the new locales which could mean much longer days for those people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> I embrace remote as the next guy, but if all companies start doing that. how do you think that effects bay area and big hubs wages?

<comment><USER60> Probably lower them, which is bad if you're part of that demographic, but better for everyone else outside that very small group (which admittedly is probably a significant proportion of HN readers but a small proportion of the entire population)

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I've seen a sign on the street level in Berlin of a Stripe office and heard that 10-20 people are working there with half of them in engineering. I realize that this probably doesn't count as a hub, but how does it fit in with what's explained in the blog post? Has Stripe more non-hub locations?

<comment><USER62> Stripe has offices in San Francisco, Chicago, New York City, Seattle, Amsterdam, Bangalore, Berlin, Dublin, London, Paris, Melbourne, Singapore, and Tokyo. Engineering hubs have organizational infrastructure that the rest of our offices may not, like dedicated reporting lines for engineers at the hub, engineering teams which exist at the hub and don't exist elsewhere, and similar.

We have engineers who work out of our non-hub offices as well, but there generally isn't intensive, permanent core engineering work being done out of them like there is in the hub offices.

<comment><USER63> I've always been curious why Stripe doesn't have LA offices. It seems (superficially, at least) to be ideal: same timezone as HQ, multiple top-tier colleges, a desirable climate, and a large engineering pool to source from.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> Any companies that requires in-house engineering is bad.

A good culture doesn't depend on location between participants.

<comment><USER65> "In-house" typically refers to work performed by direct employees of the company, in contrast to outsourced work.

I think you mean "on-site", which refers to work performed by people in offices occupied by the company, in contrast to remote work.

<comment><USER64> Yeah, it's what i mean. Thanks for reminding ! Edited.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Why does Stripe need 5 engineering hubs? I don't understand what Stripe engineers work on all day.

<comment><USER67> You can explore Stripe's website to get an understanding for their product size and scope: [https://stripe.com/](https://stripe.com/) .

Also, I promise you don't understand how much work goes on behind the scenes at payments companies around fraud detection and prevention. Fraud costs account for ~3% of revenues at large financial firms.

<comment><USER22> Also how terrible and archaic financial insitutions APIs are if you're used to nice polished REST APIs from the web..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> It's sad how they don't just have plans to hire in South America, Stripe as a service doesn't even work in South America. It looks like a market that's overdue for disruption.

</comment><comment><USER69> > There are still some constraints on our ambitions. In our first phase, we > will be focused primarily on remote engineers in North America, starting > with the US and Canada.

</comment><comment><USER70> Are there any other well known Silicon Valley companies that also are committed to remote work? Particularly with a focus on hardware/firmware type engineering? ;)

</comment><comment><USER71> Where I currently work they wont let programmers work from home because:

Jealous coworkers who need to be at work. It's not fair clause.

Company insurance doesn't cover people working from home

</comment><comment><USER63> Is there any information on the application/interview process available?

</comment><comment><USER72> Only in North America unfortunately

<comment><USER44> Stripe has remotes across the world, but we're just formalizing this new "Hub" concept in North America.

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> Where do I apply?

<comment><USER62> Our jobs page is at [https://stripe.com/jobs](https://stripe.com/jobs) or you can attend a coffee chat with us and then let the conversation continue that way. [https://stripe.events/remote-coffee](https://stripe.events/remote- coffee)

<comment><USER74> Are there any plans for remote data science or remote data engineering roles beyond those listed on the jobs page?

<comment><USER62> Specifically: We have remote data scientists (I work closely with one in Tokyo) and will have more in the future. Generally: every engineering workstream at Stripe will have remotes in it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


GitHub burndown chart in your browser - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/radekstepan/github-burndown-chart

<comment><USER2> Ah, totally missed my own project showing up on GitHub; thanks for liking it gwintrob.

For anyone interested, am working on a better version of the chart and moving it to [https://assembly.com](https://assembly.com).</comment>


Ticket Scalpers Seatwave Take $25 Million Series C - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/02/11/ticket-scalpers-seatwave-take-25-million-series-c/ <comment><USER2> They're already in 36 million and only since 2006? Where does all of this money go?

<comment><AUTHOR> Server infrastructure and developers would be my guess. Probably a fair bit goes towards "misc. marketing expenses", which == bribes/kickbacks/gifts. :)

</comment></comment><comment> daniel-cussen I don't hate scalpers. To me, they're just part of the invisible hand.

</comment><comment><USER3> I really don't get VCs. So many wonderful, LEGIT, LEGAL ventures that would improve life don't get funded, yet they pour (read: waste) this much money into a borderline-illegal piece of junk like this that does nothing but piss off many people.

Oh and this article is wrong. The guy involved in this also has a U.S. version of this under a holding company; I know this because I tried to get Lily Allen tix from a venue in NYC and even though I got there like literally 10 minutes after tickets went on sale, I was told that they all "sold out".

"Impossible!" I claimed. Then I was told about this company - basically all they do is hire a bunch of low-lifes (read: college students who want quick pot-cash) to just hang around for hours before the tickets go on sale and they then just buy up all the tickets and resell them for 5-10X original cost.

Seriously who sees a future in a company that gets people aggravated by design and ads zero value to the process?

Are VCs that dumb, or just that desperate?

<comment><USER4> The fact is, tickets are incredibly under-priced if the secondary market is able to do this profitably.

If tickets were sold direct by the venues with some kind of demand or time based auction model, every single one of these brokers would immediately go out of business.</comment></comment>