4 ms·
Overall a well written article with some valid criticisms. After 2 years working remotely I observed roughly the same facts, but have a slightly different spin
by shanemhansen 10y ago
Overall a well written article with some valid criticisms. After 2 years working remotely I observed roughly the same facts, but have a slightly different spin on the whole thing.
Like everything in life, working remotely has tradeoffs. One person's pro is someone else's con.
Pro: I potentially gained hours of my life back every day. I know many people who work for similar companies who spend more than an hour commuting every day. They take less-desirable jobs and leave behind their coworkers just so they can get an hour of their life back and reduce their commute from 2+ hrs to 30 minutes.
Pro: I can disassociate my COL from the company's choice of office location.
Pro: I can cook food in the crock pot on a regular basis without worrying about my house burning down.
Pro: I can walk my dogs during my lunch break (or pick up food from the grocery store or run some other errand).
Pro: (subjective) My coworkers competence is higher than what I typically observe from companies that limit their hiring pool to people who live within a few minutes (or hours) of one office building.
Pro: I can and have worked from a hammock, a camper van in a state park, a car on a road trip, and a cafe in Paris.
Pro: No requirement to waste literally hours of my day in bullshit pre-lunch planning, post-lunch coffee, etc. When I'm onsite I'm happy to spend lots of time on watercooler talk, but I'm not obligated to do it every work day.
Pro: I can go hiking on my lunch break.
Con: I don't see anyone but my spouse. I have to go to additional meetups in order to make up for this.
Con: Not as much face time with execs. This can matter politically and for your career.
- geerlingguy 10y agoMy list is pretty much the same—for an introvert who values deeper relationships with fewer people, the cons aren't too bad. And being a meetup organizer for two different meetup groups means I'm forced (a good thing for an introvert) to see other people in the area who work in the same area. I've been working 100% remote for 5 of the past 10 years, and part-time remote the other 5, and in none of this time have I gone stir-crazy or felt depressed about my work... some people are able to thrive in a remote/isolated environment (I still do video calls 2-4x a day for different projects, so it's not like total isolation), while others really need a group of people working with/around them to thrive. It also helps to have a family or more than one other person living in your residence if you choose to remote work from home—it forces you to have face-to-face human interaction (to the extent you choose to put down smartphones, laptops, etc. outside of work hours).
- shanemhansen 10y ago> And being a meetup organizer for two different meetup groups means I'm forced (a good thing for an introvert) to see other people in the area who work in the same area. Funny you should mention that. I'm a co-organizer of a pretty active meetup. The first tuesday of the month is the highlight of my social calendar.
- shostack 10y agoWe were also worried about burning our house down with a slow cooker. So we grabbed an Instant Pot pressure cooker (among other functions) and it can do in under an hour what takes a slow cooker an entire day. Just something to consider investing in.
- johnward 10y agoAt first getting commute time back was awesome. I was averaging 2.5 hours a day also. Now I just work because I don't have a good excuse to leave physically. Then the 7am - 7pm days creep in with a mandatory 10pm meeting. It still feels better than sitting in traffic though.