Geographical discrimination in the age of COVID-19: does location still matter?

Remember a time before 2020? Before we even knew what COVID-19 meant? Or owned a variety of reusable face masks that you washed with your delicates? It’s hard to imagine that there was a world before the one we live in now. Before COVID-19, remote work was tricky to come by, and most clients needed to see the people they were dealing with face to face. 

Well, we’ve seen significant changes since then. 

HutSix has been around since 2010, and we’ve seen a lot happen over the last decade or so. From mass ransomware attacks, changes in technology, and what we actually do as an organisation – pretty much everything has changed. When HutSix started up, we had clients who were mostly in Alice Springs or the NT. Any clients located outside of the NT once had their head office here. We’ve still got quite a strong presence in the NT, but with the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve seen a burst in clients who aren’t located in the NT who’d like to work with us. 

So, why the sudden surge? What’s changed?

We think one of the biggest changes is geographical discrimination, and how we fall victim to this assumption with our work. Geographical discrimination is discrimination based on the region a person or organisation is born, or is based. Assumptions are made about their region, which are presumed to hinder their abilities.

We have often fallen victim to this type of discrimination: losing contracts due to our remote location; not getting a foot in the door, as everything has to happen on site; and having people assume we don’t really know what we’re doing, compared to similar businesses on the east coast. This hasn’t just happened to us with interstate clients – it’s actually happened to us with clients from within the NT!

The idea that, because we’re based in the Northern Territory and South Australia, we’re not as talented as east-coast developers in Sydney and Melbourne is quite a common experience for us. We have clients that often assume we aren’t up to date with best practices, or that we don’t have enough experience. We’ve been spoken down to in conference calls by fellow city-side developers, had our point of view not taken into consideration, and our remote experience dismissed by both clients and people in the industry. We can be stereotyped as backwards hicks, or stuck in our ways (we’re quite stubborn, so we can kind of see where that comes from). The evidence is clear when we almost never lose work based on price. It’s usually due to our location and the lack of ‘face to face’ opportunity with a city-based head office. 

This has just been ‘the way things are’ for us in our Alice Springs-based head office. We’ve always felt a bit like an underdog, like we’re sitting at the kids table at a grown up dinner party. Some of this chip-on-our-shoulder attitude has come off in our communication with our clients – which we apologise for; we’re working on our people skills, we promise! These experiences have given us a bit of imposter syndrome too, that helps us strive to be better at our jobs, and to keep innovating our services and systems. 

Breaking down barriers

As border restrictions went up and we all moved to work from home over the last 18 months, suddenly, the rules changed. It doesn’t matter how flash someone’s office is – if they can’t communicate well, it can be really difficult to establish and maintain a strong working relationship. We’ve seen a complete shift in the way that we communicate both internally and externally, as expectations have truly shifted in workplace relations. 

We’ve noticed that we’ve become more open with our clients, and they’ve become more open with us. It’s tricky to not share a bit about your personal life when people can see your cat jumping around your kitchen during a Zoom call. 

We’ve also seen a shift in our perceived expertise. With restricted borders, we’ve actually been getting more enquiries from NT businesses who would traditionally go outside of the NT for technological solutions. We’re able to take ourselves more seriously and bring a vote of confidence that people in the NT aren’t just the east coast’s poor cousin. Not only that, people from the east coast are realising that there is more talent out there. Some of our new clients have come to us because they were on the fence with their current provider, and COVID-19 was the final push to look for something better. 

The remote specialists

With beginnings in Alice Springs, we understand what it’s like to live in a remote area: extremes in climate, poor access to resources, terrible internet connectivity (what NBN?), and a small pool of people to rely on is our bread and butter. We’ve been able to become remote specialists in the last year, pivoting what we always thought was our biggest failure into our biggest strengths: 

• Working somewhere where you don’t have phone range? No problem.
• Do you have employees with English as a third, fourth or fifth language? Easy.
• Struggling to keep up with reporting requirements imposed by a wide variety of funding bodies? We can automate those reports with our eyes closed. 
• Working with clients who don’t have a consistent email address or phone number? Facebook validation can solve that problem. 

What we thought negatively impacted our ability to get work, has actually made us expand our reach. It has helped switch our geographical discrimination on its head. Suddenly, every tech company in Australia (and the world) is on the same open playing field. Companies can no longer hide behind flashy offices or fancy lunches – all the cards are shown, and talent and know-how are what’s on display. 

Has this truly been a result of COVID-19? Or are we, as a company, getting better at communicating with our clients and taking things a bit less personally? We’ve had some big organisational changes in the last 18 months; everyone we’ve hired in the last two years are all excellent communicators, and we’ve fully embraced the Agile methodology. Maybe the chip on our shoulder is slowly being filled in with understanding, compassion and, of course, Portugese tarts from The Bakery next door. 

Our team is happier, calmer and better at communicating internally – maybe this is rubbing off on our clients, and helping us keep and win contracts? Or maybe clients are more accepting of remote-based companies now, and prepared to go the distance with us to deliver something truly remarkable – software that’s the equivalent of an invisible skyscraper. There’s no way to know, but we hope that this phase of HutSix is here to stay for a little while longer.