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I'm the only one at our small company that works remotely. I miss so much of what is going on decision wise. Any talk of new clients, potential new business, l

I'm the only one at our small company that works remotely. I miss so much of what is going on decision wise. Any talk of new clients, potential new business, larger future projects are all communicated to me once they are mostly already hashed out. This keeps me from playing a bigger part in the company and thus the work they throw my way is more on the grunt/boring side. I love working remotely though and I'm not working in the tiny open office they have. I would be interested in seeing what the dynamic is like with a full remote team.

Taniwha 9y ago
I've mostly worked at home since my son was born (he's 26 now). I used to go in one day a week, I worked for startups for years and would start full time, drop off to 4->3->2 days a week. These days I never go in (I live 10,000km away at the moment, it's no longer a 1 hour drive in the Valley). I think there's a few things you have to realise about working at home: - you get to avoid almost all office politics - you will eventually lose at office politics Essentially you need to have a manager who will step up and root for you, and you guys need to talk so he/she knows where your head is at
- timmaah 9y ago
  > you will eventually lose at office politics Yup. We are small enough that we all report directly to the CEO. Though anywhere I've worked remotely or not it is always me looking out for me. Never had a manager help with that.
  - Taniwha 9y ago
    I've found that having that explicit discussion with every new manager helps a lot, eventually you get a crap one and lose, but then that's probably time to move on
jon-wood 9y ago
That's a very real pain when only one or two people are remote. I spent the last five years in that environment and definitely missed out on a lot of relevant discussions. I'm now leading a team which is about 50% remote, with the remaining people working from home a few days a week, and it makes a huge difference. Discussions naturally occur on Slack, often spinning out into a few people jumping into a Hangouts call. For people in the office we've got the meeting room set up for video conferencing which makes it practical to have mixed local/remote meetings without the half hour of trying to get things set up. Overall I'm a big fan, and hopeful that we can make people working remote even smoother as time goes on.

Taniwha 9y ago

I've mostly worked at home since my son was born (he's 26 now). I used to go in one day a week, I worked for startups for years and would start full time, drop off to 4->3->2 days a week. These days I never go in (I live 10,000km away at the moment, it's no longer a 1 hour drive in the Valley). I think there's a few things you have to realise about working at home: - you get to avoid almost all office politics - you will eventually lose at office politics Essentially you need to have a manager who will step up and root for you, and you guys need to talk so he/she knows where your head is at

timmaah 9y ago
> you will eventually lose at office politics Yup. We are small enough that we all report directly to the CEO. Though anywhere I've worked remotely or not it is always me looking out for me. Never had a manager help with that.
- Taniwha 9y ago
  I've found that having that explicit discussion with every new manager helps a lot, eventually you get a crap one and lose, but then that's probably time to move on

jon-wood 9y ago

That's a very real pain when only one or two people are remote. I spent the last five years in that environment and definitely missed out on a lot of relevant discussions. I'm now leading a team which is about 50% remote, with the remaining people working from home a few days a week, and it makes a huge difference. Discussions naturally occur on Slack, often spinning out into a few people jumping into a Hangouts call. For people in the office we've got the meeting room set up for video conferencing which makes it practical to have mixed local/remote meetings without the half hour of trying to get things set up. Overall I'm a big fan, and hopeful that we can make people working remote even smoother as time goes on.