Why aren’t more companies remote-first?
I&#x27;ll try to answer the question from my perspective as the CEO of GitLab with 650 people in 50 countries and shared offices.<p>First of all as an industry we haven&#x27;t agreed on a term. Remote first or remote friendly are used by companies that do have a headquarter but are open to remote work like Stripe. Since remote can have a negative connotation some companies like Wordpress like distributed but that is also used by companies that have offices in multiple locations. At GitLab we prefer to use all remote <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;about.gitlab.com&#x2F;company&#x2F;culture&#x2F;all-remote&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;about.gitlab.com&#x2F;company&#x2F;culture&#x2F;all-remote&#x2F;</a><p>The three biggest companies as far as I know are Wordpress, InVision, and GitLab. Wordpress and InVision both have around 1000 people while we&#x27;re 45% smaller. I&#x27;ve heard that InVision has people work east coast hours but that doesn&#x27;t show in their job listings.<p>I think remote will become much more popular. It saves people commuting time and gives them more flexibility to care for family, go to the gym at a convenient time, travel more, and deal with sick children. For the company you are able to hire outside of competitive metro areas and you save money by that <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;about.gitlab.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;02&#x2F;28&#x2F;why-we-pay-local-rates&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;about.gitlab.com&#x2F;2019&#x2F;02&#x2F;28&#x2F;why-we-pay-local-rates&#x2F;</a> and on office costs.<p>It is early days for remote and it is still viewed as a risk by potential investors. But with tools like Zoom and better tools for asynchronous collaboration like InVision and GitLab I think it will become popular rapidly. Because you have to adjust you communication <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;about.gitlab.com&#x2F;handbook&#x2F;communication&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;about.gitlab.com&#x2F;handbook&#x2F;communication&#x2F;</a> I think new startups will be all remote while existing companies will find it much harder to change.