Working remotely is becoming increasingly mainstream, with forward-thinking organizations like Stripe, Atlassian, and others making headlines by announcing a growth in remote hires. In retrospect, I realized I’ve been working, and leading teams, remotely for over a decade before “remote” even became a thing.
Back in 2006, I operated my first company, SocialPicks, remotely; I was based in the Bay Area, my co-founder Keven was in Vancouver, and our lead engineer Olivier was in Toronto. This was pre-Slack, pre-Zoom, pre-Trello. Back then, it was especially hard to grow our remote team, as this would require, essentially, trusting strangers on the internet to join us on the intense rollercoaster ride of startup life.
Fast forward to 2019. While it’s improved, the remote space still has its challenges. Remote hiring today is still hectic, time-consuming, and a gamble for quality. The bulk of remote hiring services are still focused on finding short-term freelancers, rather than thinking of remote work as a genuine full-time employment option. It’s clear that the friction of going remote is still too high for many organizations and individuals. This is why we are launching Arc: to change the way we hire and work remotely.
Introducing Arc
Arc is an all-in-one remote hiring experience you’ll actually enjoy. It’s more than just a rebrand of our existing CodementorX remote developer hiring platform. It’s a new, complete, and geographically-unbound remote work solution. With Arc, we aim to lower the friction of remote work for both sides of the hiring equation. We chose the name Arc because we aspire to be the bridge that connects great talent with opportunities around the globe.
Our new logo also reflects this vision:
For developers, the logo symbolizes our vision that Arc is like a programmable function: it returns a better you. We believe you don’t have to live in a major tech hub to do great work. Arc aims to connect you with world-class opportunities regardless of your physical location.
Great talent is global, but for most organizations, hiring is still local. But why should ideas, talent, and vision be limited by geographic location? Arc creates a seamless remote hiring experience by vetting developers to make sure they are remote-ready, qualified, and trustworthy.
Our Roots
In 2014, Codementor was created as a global community for software engineers, aspiring developers, and technical talent. Codementor allows people with coding questions, or who otherwise need technical help, to connect with experienced mentors online in real time.
The Codementor platform grew, with tens of thousands of junior developers thriving under the guidance of experienced mentors. Some of these developers grew to become mentors themselves. From a handful of early adopters, we now have over half a million users across 90+ countries and 770+ cities.
Although it wasn’t part of the original plan, we started getting inundated with requests to hire our expert mentors as developers. Built on top of our thriving community, we launched CodementorX in 2016. CodementorX enabled organizations to hire great remote developers via Codementor for contract work.
Through CodementorX, we’ve seen first-hand the impact of connecting organizations with great developers around the world. Some of these developers already had prominent professional profiles, while others built up their profiles through CodementorX. We’re proud to have connected hundreds of these developers and organizations worldwide, such as Nestle, Chegg, and Hims (just to name a few).
As CodementorX grew, it became increasingly clear that remote work wasn’t just a temporary trend, but a fundamental change to the way we work. We quickly realized that our remote hiring platform CodementorX had outgrown its original name.
What does this mean for Codementor and CodementorX?
Codementor will continue to be a mentorship platform under Arc, where developers can share their knowledge with one another. The existing CodementorX opportunities will be incorporated into Arc’s expanded hiring solution (retiring the name CodementorX).
From Codementor to Arc, we grew from a guy with an idea to 30+ team members across three continents. What started as a way to provide developers with mentorship evolved into something far bigger: a mission to help everyone access and enjoy the benefits of working remotely.
Today is day one of our new journey, and we’re not stopping here. The team is working hard to bring Arc’s vision to life, and we’re excited about the potential. To our entire team, our community, and our supporters everywhere: thank you for being a part of Codementor and CodementorX. We hope you’ll join us as we embark on this new adventure!
Check out Arc on Product Hunt today!
