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One thing to look out for is remote-first companies, not just remote-ok companies. Zach Holman has a good post on this: https://zachholman.com/posts/remote-firs

One thing to look out for is remote-first companies, not just remote-ok companies. Zach Holman has a good post on this: https://zachholman.com/posts/remote-first/ https://zachholman.com/posts/remote-first/ If you're one of few people in the company working remotely (or worse: one of few in your team), you get cut off really easily. Remote practices won't be up to scratch (because most people aren't using them), meetings will happen in person and dialing you in will be a chore, and things won't work as well. You'll hear about major events by email that everybody knew about last week from office chatter. This isn't to say it'll be a disaster, but it'll be less effective, and less fun. Companies where everybody works remote by default meanwhile are a different ballgame. Everybody understands how remote interactions should work, and that's what gets used to get everything done. People are good at using the tools and processes required to pull this off well, and the company will be better at managing solutions to the downsides of remote work (by flying everybody into a summit to see each other in person every 6 months, for example, or covering coworking space costs). You're no longer the great developer they want _despite_ you working remotely - you're now one of many people, all working remotely, and all working together on the same playing field.

elcct 10y ago
Oh and that in the company some people can view your remote working as a special treatment and there will be an active look out for on-premise replacement - which doesn't help with maintaining healthy relations. If company is not remote first, having contractor relationship is much healthier in my opinion.
- k__ 10y ago
  Right. I am currently working in one, where I'm the only remote guy. The already tried to replace me.
  - philbarr 10y ago
    Yep - happened to me too. Was working in a team where everyone was working remotely. Then a few things went wrong and one of the directors blamed the "remoteness", set up an office, and gradually forced all the remote employees to either come to the office or get out.
    - k__ 10y ago
      Best people are always seeing the others as problems. ;)
sz4kerto 10y ago
Seconding that. Our company is 100% remote. Before that, I worked remotely for a company that had an office -- the difference is night and day.
pionar 10y ago
Yes. Management remotely when everyone else is co-located is even worse. For instance, there was a nasty bug discovered late last week, and I didn't find out about it until Monday morning, and that's MY team. I feel like I look like an idiot to my superiors, and is one of the reasons I'm moving back to be co-located. I started at this company in the office as a developer, and went remote after about 3 years because of personal reasons (actually remote - I moved 5 hours away). That's normally not really an issue with my company - a good chunk (maybe 40%?) of our developers are remote, so we're used to it. However, shortly after I went remote (about a year), I moved into management, and all hell broke loose. I feel I'm not as effective as I could be because of my team, I'm the only one that's remote. I find myself finding things out after the fact, having less effective 1:1's because of the remoteness, I find it hard to build the relationships that are vital in management. I'm moving back "home", so to speak, in June directly because of this. My wife has been very understanding, as it was mostly because of her that we moved away in the first place (pursuing her career).
- saganus 10y ago
  You probably considered this already but, could you move to a technical management position? I understand that working remotely while having to manage people can't be easy either way, but could being in the tech side make it easier or not really?
agbell 10y ago
I agree with this. One middle ground that I have found to exist, between totally distributed and all in one office is the multiple distributed offices model. If the development team is scattered among several corporate offices, they tend to meeting using video chat and slack and a remote person can drop right into the team without issue.
markbnj 10y ago
I've been working remotely for ten years and I also strongly agree. In a remote-only company you're a team member like any other. When the org simply "tolerates" remote work there is always the sense that you're the outsider.
thinkindie 10y ago
I agree with you. I work in a team split into two and it used to be balanced between the two locations (Berlin & Zurich) but then Zurich had an additional engineer there and I immediately felt the difference of another person there coz the other person in Berlin is the Product Manager, therefore the inbalance is even greater.
nextos 10y ago
Would it then make sense to join a company that is mostly composed by remote workers? Not sure how easy that would be in case of ML. But in other areas it's not impossible. E.g. GitHub. I'm sure other HN readers will have much more info.
gibrown 10y ago
Like many others I agree with this. My company is completely distributed (we prefer "distributed" over "remote" because we aren't remote from anything) and has employees in 50+ countries. There was a pretty good book written a few years ago by a former employee of ours about how distributed work and culture go together: http://scottberkun.com/yearwithoutpants/ http://scottberkun.com/yearwithoutpants/
realbarack 10y ago
That said, I've heard it's much more challenging to get jobs at remote-first companies because they have a larger pool to draw on. Does anyone know if this tends to be the case?
- DominikR 10y ago
  Getting the job - not necessarily harder, but keeping it - definitely. The thing is that these companies need their remote employees to be persons with exceptionally strong discipline who are also self driven. So you can be a very good engineer that also performs given tasks within a reasonable timeframe, but if the person managing the team has to constantly hold your hand (which is harder remote) or you are too passive you'll be fired quickly. Regarding the skill level (at least what I've seen until now): Yes, generally these people have more experience than the average engineer (of course I'm not talking about the average Google or Facebook engineer here), but it's nothing insurmountable, almost anyone could do it provided the will to improve.

elcct 10y ago

Oh and that in the company some people can view your remote working as a special treatment and there will be an active look out for on-premise replacement - which doesn't help with maintaining healthy relations. If company is not remote first, having contractor relationship is much healthier in my opinion.

k__ 10y ago
Right. I am currently working in one, where I'm the only remote guy. The already tried to replace me.
- philbarr 10y ago
  Yep - happened to me too. Was working in a team where everyone was working remotely. Then a few things went wrong and one of the directors blamed the "remoteness", set up an office, and gradually forced all the remote employees to either come to the office or get out.
  - k__ 10y ago
    Best people are always seeing the others as problems. ;)

sz4kerto 10y ago

Seconding that. Our company is 100% remote. Before that, I worked remotely for a company that had an office -- the difference is night and day.

pionar 10y ago

Yes. Management remotely when everyone else is co-located is even worse. For instance, there was a nasty bug discovered late last week, and I didn't find out about it until Monday morning, and that's MY team. I feel like I look like an idiot to my superiors, and is one of the reasons I'm moving back to be co-located. I started at this company in the office as a developer, and went remote after about 3 years because of personal reasons (actually remote - I moved 5 hours away). That's normally not really an issue with my company - a good chunk (maybe 40%?) of our developers are remote, so we're used to it. However, shortly after I went remote (about a year), I moved into management, and all hell broke loose. I feel I'm not as effective as I could be because of my team, I'm the only one that's remote. I find myself finding things out after the fact, having less effective 1:1's because of the remoteness, I find it hard to build the relationships that are vital in management. I'm moving back "home", so to speak, in June directly because of this. My wife has been very understanding, as it was mostly because of her that we moved away in the first place (pursuing her career).

saganus 10y ago
You probably considered this already but, could you move to a technical management position? I understand that working remotely while having to manage people can't be easy either way, but could being in the tech side make it easier or not really?

agbell 10y ago

I agree with this. One middle ground that I have found to exist, between totally distributed and all in one office is the multiple distributed offices model. If the development team is scattered among several corporate offices, they tend to meeting using video chat and slack and a remote person can drop right into the team without issue.

markbnj 10y ago

I've been working remotely for ten years and I also strongly agree. In a remote-only company you're a team member like any other. When the org simply "tolerates" remote work there is always the sense that you're the outsider.

thinkindie 10y ago

I agree with you. I work in a team split into two and it used to be balanced between the two locations (Berlin & Zurich) but then Zurich had an additional engineer there and I immediately felt the difference of another person there coz the other person in Berlin is the Product Manager, therefore the inbalance is even greater.

nextos 10y ago

Would it then make sense to join a company that is mostly composed by remote workers? Not sure how easy that would be in case of ML. But in other areas it's not impossible. E.g. GitHub. I'm sure other HN readers will have much more info.

gibrown 10y ago

Like many others I agree with this. My company is completely distributed (we prefer "distributed" over "remote" because we aren't remote from anything) and has employees in 50+ countries. There was a pretty good book written a few years ago by a former employee of ours about how distributed work and culture go together: http://scottberkun.com/yearwithoutpants/ http://scottberkun.com/yearwithoutpants/

realbarack 10y ago

That said, I've heard it's much more challenging to get jobs at remote-first companies because they have a larger pool to draw on. Does anyone know if this tends to be the case?

DominikR 10y ago
Getting the job - not necessarily harder, but keeping it - definitely. The thing is that these companies need their remote employees to be persons with exceptionally strong discipline who are also self driven. So you can be a very good engineer that also performs given tasks within a reasonable timeframe, but if the person managing the team has to constantly hold your hand (which is harder remote) or you are too passive you'll be fired quickly. Regarding the skill level (at least what I've seen until now): Yes, generally these people have more experience than the average engineer (of course I'm not talking about the average Google or Facebook engineer here), but it's nothing insurmountable, almost anyone could do it provided the will to improve.