2024 has marked the return to the office. Major tech companies like Amazon and Dell have ended their remote work programs, while other entities are also tightening their hybrid work policies.
However, in a notable exception, a San Francisco-based company has successfully maintained a fully remote workforce.
Living off of remote work. Founded in 2019 by French entrepreneur Alex Bouaziz, Deel operates in the fintech sector. Additionally, it’s backed by prominent investors such as Andreessen Horowitz and the startup accelerator Y Combinator, supported by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Deel’s primary business revolves around managing the recruitment and payroll of remote employees for other companies. As a result, remote work is a central aspect of its operations.
Only remote workers. Managing remote employees for other companies is one thing. Having remote employees within your own business model is completely different. A good example of this is Zoom. Deel should take all the credit it deserves.
Despite being a relatively young company, Deel has grown to employ 4,500 people globally. According to Bouaziz, this makes it the company with the highest number of fully remote employees in the world. Interestingly, although Deel is headquartered in San Francisco, the CEO has New York as his location on his X account.
A distributed team. According to Bouaziz, the company operates in more than 104 countries, with employees working 100% remotely. Deel workers manage the payments and payrolls for their clients’ remote employees from their homes (or wherever they choose to work from). Additionally, the CEO says the company has sent more than $11 billion to its workers in more than 100 different currencies.
This distributed structure simplifies local management for clients, making it more intuitive compared to companies with the majority of their staff located in a different time zone. This has posed a challenge for team management at other companies like Eventbrite, which, although smaller, also operates primarily remotely.
Employee satisfaction. Employee satisfaction ratings on the Glassdoor portal indicate that Deel offers excellent working conditions, with an average rating of 4.6 out of 5. What’s more, 91% of current employees would recommend the company to a friend.
Among the key advantages highlighted by users on Glassdoor are flexible hours and working remotely, which many consider a dream scenario for digital nomads.
Potential employees are everywhere. Deel currently has several job openings, and all of them are remote and full-time. Notably, instead of listing specific cities, the job vacancies are organized by countries and geographical regions, emphasizing that location isn’t a constraint.
In its recruitment model, Deel capitalizes on one of the major benefits of remote work: access to a wider pool of talent without geographical limitations. In contrast, companies that require in-office presence restrict their employees to opportunities within their immediate vicinity.
Image | Windows
View 0 comments