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Peter Levine
Peter Levine

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The Story of RemoteInclusive - How we got here

The first and foremost core value of RemoteInclusive is transparency. We genuinely believe that for a company to claim to be inclusive, they must start with hiring first.

I have been quite lucky in my career in tech to be both a hiring manager and an individual contributor. Over the past fifteen years, I have moved from a web developer, software engineer, senior software engineer, lead engineer, and ultimately engineering manager. Over the past few years as an engineering manager, I have had the privilege and honor to manage some very talented software and QA engineers. Unfortunately, due to unforeseen circumstances of the pandemic and managing a SaaS meant for small to medium-sized businesses. The pandemic ended up hitting the SMB segment pretty hard.

The organization decided to do some layoffs at the early stages of the pandemic. Luckily through some transparency of some of the higher-ups in the company, I was lucky enough to see this coming. Before the layoffs, I worked with my team to do resume reviews. I had my team pick out some jobs they could see themselves working at, and we updated their resume/linked-in profile to target those particular positions. Over the next few weeks, we met quite often to discuss interview processes, pay, policies, and how it seems like we are in the Wild West as each company does its own thing.

One of the most prominent topics of discussion for my team was pay. What should they make in their particular location? What companies should they apply to meet their needs for total compensation, benefits, etc.? When meeting quite regularly, we shared stories of how some positions wouldn't even provide a pay range until the individual completed the interview process. As someone who managed a team of nine engineers and QA, I am lucky to have a lot of diverse voices.

My team consisted of women engineers, people of color, and engineers working outside the United States. Every one of their own stories is quite different. Some of my team have children and don't have the time to maintain side projects. Some engineers are incredibly talented but don't want to spend hours completing unpaid take-home projects outside of working hours. In speaking with my team, they shared that they would decline to proceed with the interview if the process did not meet their personal needs.

I'm thrilled to say that every one of my engineers actively seeking positions landed at organizations that genuinely fit them. The problem was how much work it took to get there. However, what would have been excellent for them was having a site like RemoteInclusive. A job site to answer most of their questions without even getting on a phone or providing their current salary first would have saved them quite a bit of time!

If you've made it this far subscribe to my upcoming producthunt launch! https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/remoteinclusive

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