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>Have in-person meetups 2-4 x a year for beneficial face-time and for people to get to know each other better on a personal level. This is a turn-off for me as

>Have in-person meetups 2-4 x a year for beneficial face-time and for people to get to know each other better on a personal level. This is a turn-off for me as a full-time remote worker. When I browse remote job listings, a lot of companies list this like it's a perk. Maybe it's a perk if you're a 23-year-old single guy, but it's not a perk for me; it actually flies in the face of why I'm a remote worker, which is that I want to focus on my work with minimal interference on the other components of my life (which are what really matter to me). I don't want to travel. I find planes immensely uncomfortable and telling the employer that I only fly first-class is usually not an option. I don't want to be stuck in a room with everyone from the company for a week or more while I miss everything that's going on at home, and like most company functions, skipping out on this also isn't really an option if one wants to remain politically viable. One of the great things about remote work is that it takes a great deal of bullshit out of the employment process; you don't have to worry about if you're making the wrong facial contortions, if you're offending someone by slouching, if you look bored, or if you laugh hard enough at someone's bad attempt at a joke. The work is the focus. There are few social signals to misinterpret or blow out of proportion. I think a remote-first culture is one of the best ways to secure a meritocratic working atmosphere, simply because it removes so much of the irrelevant noise, like personal charisma, that people misinterpret as being relevant to the performance of job duties. Occasional company meetups only serve to dampen this focus on actual working output. I prefer to keep a professional emotional distance from my co-workers, generally speaking, which I think is for the best. If we really hit it off, there's no reason we can't arrange our own meetups, but for most colleagues, we develop a strong sense of professional respect for one another and that's plenty sufficient. No need to mess that up with personal elements. I understand that these company meetups may be great if you're looking for companionship, but I don't really think a lonely person is well suited to remote work anyway. At home, I have a wife and several children to hang out with, plus a few close friends and a group of loose associates from hacker meetups, community functions, and/or church.

taurath 11y ago
2-4 times a year is not really asking for much out of anyone. The fact is that relationships and trust especially can fray after a long time without actually meeting with people (most of the time, you may be a special case). Its a lot harder to know what a person has been actually doing and working on without a little bit of occasional face time - you may be in a very special situation where there are almost no benefits to actually knowing your colleagues better than what you can say over IRC, but for me its always been very helpful to get a good feel for who is on the other end of the keyboard, which becomes super useful for collaberations.
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  >2-4 times a year is not really asking for much out of anyone. Sure, I agree it's not "asking much" relative to the requirement of a lot of employers that you be in the office every day. That doesn't mean it's something to advertise as if it were a perk. >Its a lot harder to know what a person has been actually doing and working on without a little bit of occasional face time I don't get this. You only find out what your remote colleagues are working on 2-4 times a year when you have a company retreat? >but for me its always been very helpful to get a good feel for who is on the other end of the keyboard, which becomes super useful for collaberations. Yeah, I just don't see this either. I think I collaborate fine with my colleagues. I think the focus on work-related things that occurs in IRC makes it easier to respect one another professionally. It's not the best medium for some things, but it's a great medium for collaborating on a work-related issue, especially issues that require the sharing of logs or lines of code; it's a lot easier to send the message in Slack and collaborate that way than trying to do it in person and cram around one guy's computer.
  - taurath 11y ago
    True, work things are generally fine over the wire. I've found that even in a professional relationship it's nice and even advantageous to know whats going on with your coworkers!
beachstartup 11y ago
> One of the great things about remote work is that it takes a great deal of bullshit out of the employment process; you don't have to worry about if you're making the wrong facial contortions, if you're offending someone by slouching, if you look bored, or if you laugh hard enough at someone's bad attempt at a joke. The work is the focus. all this still happens on the phone, and in chat, and in ticket updates. little textual mannerisms, passive aggressive bullshit, inappropriate comments, inattentiveness, over-attentiveness, obsessive compulsive typing habits, deliberately ignoring stuff, the list goes on and on. and video chat is its own can of worms. but you're just better at that particular game, so you prefer it. you spent 6 paragraphs rationalizing it, but really, you just prefer one pile of shit to another. other people don't have that limitation, we can operate in person just fine.
- cookiecaper 11y ago
  Nah, it's a lot less intense on IRC solely because there is a lot less data to read bad information out of. Paranoid people will always find something to be paranoid about, but there's a much smaller attack surface, and "Sorry, it must have come across wrong via text" is a pretty good catch-all excuse if anything goes awry. I disagree that it's about being better at operating in one context or the other. It's about minimizing the issues. I've managed people in face-to-face work settings and over IM/email/whatever text-based. People generate far fewer petty grievances over a text-based medium, at least fewer grievances that they're willing to air, and it shouldn't be difficult to see why that's the case (there's very little non-work activity to get offended or suspicious about). It works much more smoothly in general, unless you have people that just can't read (which are plentiful).
  - beachstartup 11y ago
    "nah" is a perfect example of what i'm talking about. a tiny little passive aggressive textual slight that would go unnoticed by most, but allows you to exercise a smidgeon of that petty vindictiveness you are so incapable of dealing with (or delivering correctly, i suspect...) in person.
    - 11y ago

taurath 11y ago

2-4 times a year is not really asking for much out of anyone. The fact is that relationships and trust especially can fray after a long time without actually meeting with people (most of the time, you may be a special case). Its a lot harder to know what a person has been actually doing and working on without a little bit of occasional face time - you may be in a very special situation where there are almost no benefits to actually knowing your colleagues better than what you can say over IRC, but for me its always been very helpful to get a good feel for who is on the other end of the keyboard, which becomes super useful for collaberations.

cookiecaper 11y ago
>2-4 times a year is not really asking for much out of anyone. Sure, I agree it's not "asking much" relative to the requirement of a lot of employers that you be in the office every day. That doesn't mean it's something to advertise as if it were a perk. >Its a lot harder to know what a person has been actually doing and working on without a little bit of occasional face time I don't get this. You only find out what your remote colleagues are working on 2-4 times a year when you have a company retreat? >but for me its always been very helpful to get a good feel for who is on the other end of the keyboard, which becomes super useful for collaberations. Yeah, I just don't see this either. I think I collaborate fine with my colleagues. I think the focus on work-related things that occurs in IRC makes it easier to respect one another professionally. It's not the best medium for some things, but it's a great medium for collaborating on a work-related issue, especially issues that require the sharing of logs or lines of code; it's a lot easier to send the message in Slack and collaborate that way than trying to do it in person and cram around one guy's computer.
- taurath 11y ago
  True, work things are generally fine over the wire. I've found that even in a professional relationship it's nice and even advantageous to know whats going on with your coworkers!

beachstartup 11y ago

> One of the great things about remote work is that it takes a great deal of bullshit out of the employment process; you don't have to worry about if you're making the wrong facial contortions, if you're offending someone by slouching, if you look bored, or if you laugh hard enough at someone's bad attempt at a joke. The work is the focus. all this still happens on the phone, and in chat, and in ticket updates. little textual mannerisms, passive aggressive bullshit, inappropriate comments, inattentiveness, over-attentiveness, obsessive compulsive typing habits, deliberately ignoring stuff, the list goes on and on. and video chat is its own can of worms. but you're just better at that particular game, so you prefer it. you spent 6 paragraphs rationalizing it, but really, you just prefer one pile of shit to another. other people don't have that limitation, we can operate in person just fine.

cookiecaper 11y ago
Nah, it's a lot less intense on IRC solely because there is a lot less data to read bad information out of. Paranoid people will always find something to be paranoid about, but there's a much smaller attack surface, and "Sorry, it must have come across wrong via text" is a pretty good catch-all excuse if anything goes awry. I disagree that it's about being better at operating in one context or the other. It's about minimizing the issues. I've managed people in face-to-face work settings and over IM/email/whatever text-based. People generate far fewer petty grievances over a text-based medium, at least fewer grievances that they're willing to air, and it shouldn't be difficult to see why that's the case (there's very little non-work activity to get offended or suspicious about). It works much more smoothly in general, unless you have people that just can't read (which are plentiful).
- beachstartup 11y ago
  "nah" is a perfect example of what i'm talking about. a tiny little passive aggressive textual slight that would go unnoticed by most, but allows you to exercise a smidgeon of that petty vindictiveness you are so incapable of dealing with (or delivering correctly, i suspect...) in person.
  - 11y ago