17 ms·

Working remotely, 4 years in

424 points by samdk 9y ago

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
houqp 9y ago
Any recommendation for video conferencing? We are using hangout and it is not reliable at all :(
- michalrentka 9y ago
  https://appear.in https://appear.in has been fine for me mostly
  - thejosh 9y ago
    Yeah appear.in works quite we for us as well, low latency voice is nice.
  - mycelium 9y ago
    No-install, no sign-in is amazing. Appear is one of the services I've referred people to the most, for just that reason. The main critique I have is their push to monetize as of late has been clumsily executed in my experience of the product. The expanded "pro" features have shifted around without enough heads up. The chatroom ownership system is not at all clear in how it interacts with paid accounts. We abandoned a few rooms used widely in our org until we figured out whose random account we had used to own a room earlier (from a prior push by Appear for room ownership) and got ownership transferred to a paid account.
- amingilani 9y ago
  We use Zoom.us at my startup and it works great. Not very updated UI design but so much better than Hangouts
- yla92 9y ago
  We use zoom ( https://zoom.us https://zoom.us ) and works quite well. Beside that, I heard a lot of good things about Jitsi ( https://jitsi.org https://jitsi.org )
  - BillFranklin 9y ago
    Yeah, Zoom has been good for us. It's good quality, and you can still see other participants during a presentation. On the free plan there's a one hour cap to meetings, which is ideal as nobody wants to be in a meeting longer than an hour.
    - Dunedan 9y ago
      > It's good quality, and you can still see other participants during a presentation. I regularly use Hangouts, Slack calls and Zoom and I totally agree. Especially quality of Slack calls is awful. Just earlier today we had a call, where audio was delayed ~2s while video was perfectly fine. And Zooms grid view is so nice. I wonder why their competitors don't offer the same functionality.
  - NationOfJoe 9y ago
    I second zoom. I found it has the clearest video for screen sharing. I use it alot for pair programming. At least once a day. Really easy to share control and read the other screen. The 1h cap is no issue. Great time to have a 5min break before starting again. Every person i talk to who sets it up the first time always struggles to click the "audio by computer" button and i have to spend the first 2-3min explaining how to get their mic working. But it saves the setting after that. Only ever an issue once per person.
- lima 9y ago
  We use the open source Jitsi Meet tool[1], hosted on our own infrastructure with no third party in-between. Screen sharing is a bit unstable, but conferencing is rock-solid. It's connected to our phone system so people can call in and out [2]. [1]: https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet [2]: https://github.com/jitsi/jigasi https://github.com/jitsi/jigasi
- HarveyKandola 9y ago
  Try https://www.daily.co https://www.daily.co
- program 9y ago
  In my remote team we use appear.in. It's a great product.
- zerr 9y ago
  Skype seems to have a better quality compared to WebRTC based solutions nowadays.
- dejv 9y ago
  We do use Uberconference. Conference sign in could be confusing for first timer, but otherwise it is solid (with some glitches from time to time).
- rwmj 9y ago
  Others have recommended a bunch of services. I'm going to recommend that you also take a look at your conferencing hardware. A good speaker/microphone/camera set up can really make a difference. You need to spend at least $200 (but can spend upwards of $1000). I'd recommend looking at the Logitech BCC950 (about $200) or one of the Jabra Speak table conference mics (about $100 but you also need a camera). Polycom IP phones and desk conference devices are also worth looking at, but they get very expensive.
  - sdoering 9y ago
    Exactly that. And don't let high price or fancy bling bling blind you. We got some high end blue tooth speakers that are crap (but cost upward of 4.000€ for 4 pieces). I just asked Google for these things and found them to be Sennheiser TeamConnect Wireless. At least connecting to them with a MBPro when you also want to use AppleTV wireless just isn't a solution. Never hat so much hassle with setting up conferencing. Give me a good landline for voice and a camera/Tv setup for image.
  - badpun 9y ago
    > Jabra Speak table conference mics My experience with them is that they are not that great - you need to be wary of being close to them and speaking in their direction or they'll have trouble picking up your voice.
    - rwmj 9y ago
      I didn't have problems with the Jabra Speak, except that it shipped with bad USB firmware and required an update (using a Windows machine). The Logitech has absolutely excellent microphone/speaker separation and echo-cancellation.
- quadcore 9y ago
  Tried amazon chime 2 times I think. As far as I can tell, software seemed good.
  - Dunedan 9y ago
    I'd love to have a look at Chime as well, but unfortunately they neither offer a Linux client nor browser support.
    - quadcore 9y ago
      Well that's a shame.
- sdoering 9y ago
  I have no real good recommendation (so I am thankful for all ideas in this thread), but I would not recommend Hangouts and Slack. We use both in the company I work for and it is a pain in the ass to use. and the image quality isn't really that great. But both are at least usable. More important is imho that people know how to use the tools. Give people room to interrupt/ask questions. Make breaks in between your thought units a little bit longer. Because you won't have non-visual signals that someone wants to ask a question. And on the other hand: Give people the chance to bring their thoughts to an end. Don't interrupt premature. Be more considerate and kind. Go out of your way to compensate for the non-visual signals of communications, that regularly help a lot in f2f situations.
- zlatan_todoric 9y ago
  At my company we used Jitsi (and also tried with hosting our own instance) and Appear.in. Both worked kinda fine and appear.in has limit to number of people unless you go to pay option - with more people quality would simply drop and we do have 20+ people in company meeting. We decided to try old school - we hosted our own Mumble and while maybe not nice UI/UX, it works perfectly for 20+ people. Also I recommend as well having good headphones (with integrated mic) to avoid potential echo (jitsi echo can be annoying without headphones).
- svec 9y ago
  Zoom.us is GREAT! Video and audio quality are great, hiccups are rare, the screen sharing features are good, and it integrates easily into our physical offices with a decent iPad app. (I've tried hangouts, hipchat video, appear.in, and a few others, but Zoom is much better.) I also highly recommend the Owl 360 degree video camera/speaker: https://www.owllabs.com/ https://www.owllabs.com/ As a remote employee, the Owl makes it much easier to be a part of a discussion around a table where most of the meeting participants are in a room at HQ, and a few of us are remote. (I know some of the employees, so I'm biased, but I like to think I would love the Owl even if I didn't know some of the team.)
  - robgurley 9y ago
    Thanks for mentioning this camera; it's a huge step up from the system that my company has (hardwired) in conference rooms, and I'll look into purchasing one to trial.
markbnj 9y ago
Almost 10 years for me. The main thing from this post I would emphasize is the point about the company culture. My current employer is all remote, and so support for and integration of remote engineers is natural for them. By contrast I worked at another small company where the engineering management admitted remote employees only reluctantly. Meetings were a nightmare, and the remote attendees could often not even hear or see what was going on. Every now and then the SVP in charge of the group would remind us all that having remote employees meant "twice the effort for half the results." This was the same person who told me during our interview that he only considered remote engineers because it wasn't possible to find good engineers in the small southern city they were located in ("they" meaning the company; the SVP himself was located on the west coast and commuted). Needless to say I didn't last long there.
blauditore 9y ago
The author initially writes, > Before we get into the struggles of working remote, [...] but then never gets around to describe those struggles. I wonder what they are.
- ratsimihah 9y ago
  He mentions being lonely during the 3rd and 8th months and provides links I believe.
  - ubernostrum 9y ago
    He mentions being lonely during the 3rd and 8th months and provides links I believe. The author's name is in large type at the top of the page.
    - sdoering 9y ago
      I am with you. It is. And assuming a male gender isn't really helpful - but we all fall for this trap sometimes. I try to stay with the gender neutral "they". Especially if it just isn't of any relevance for the topic/discussion at hand.
      - anoncoward111 9y ago
        additionally "the author writes," is a perfectly neutral and grammatically correct way of expressing oneself
    - jvns 9y ago
      I think on about 30% of my blog posts that end up on the hacker news front page: * someone refers to me as "he" * someone else corrects them to "she" * an extended argument ensues about whether "he" is a gender neutral pronoun, whether "they" is a gender neutral pronoun, whether it matters if you refer to a woman as "he" or not, whether the original author cares whether they're referred to as "he" or "she", and on and on and on :) From my perspective (since I've seen this argument so many times) this argument is very repetitive and doesn't add a lot of value to the HN comments -- I think it would be much better if people just accepted being corrected with "it's she" and then go back to discussing the actual contents of the article in an interesting way (in this case, a lot of people are sharing their experiences with working remotely and it's been really interesting to see what everyone's different experiences are!) so if you care about this topic I would humbly suggest that you don't comment further about pronouns and instead maybe share your experiences with working remotely! =)
biztos 9y ago
I've been working remotely for about 8 years, and I have to say it's a challenge. I have great colleagues and a great manager and we work on stuff we care about, so I am in no position to complain. However, all things being equal, I would much prefer to be in the office 3 days per week (not 5!). For all the advantages of working remotely, the social isolation is extremely unnatural and not good for you. Today, for example, I will chat with my personal trainer at the gym, and have a couple phone calls, and that's it for human interaction on a Monday. Also, while heads-down coding is probably better in the home office, brainstorming and whiteboarding and collaboratively figuring stuff out is way better in person. > First, I have 5-6 weekly 1:1s with different people with no agenda That's a great plan, and I wish it were realistic for my team. We've done things like that but they always fall apart once everyone gets really busy. I'd love to blame the 6 time zones but it's not that. Funny, when I was younger and worked remote on a couple of startups, the isolation wasn't that big a deal. But I went out almost every night, and one (hopefully) outgrows that. Anyway, good article, and I hope the author continues making the best of a good but tricky way of working!
- fredley 9y ago
  Depending on the type of work, I find 1-2 days a week working from home to be optimal. It provides good concentration time, but I don't think I could ever consider fully-remote work, it's just too lonely. If you're not good at seeking out social interaction when you're already feeling depressed (like me), it sounds like it just wouldn't be compatible at all.
- jaymzcampbell 9y ago
  Having worked at home for around a year now I have to say I completely agree with your summary. I used to dream of 100% WFH and now realise I am not cut out for it psychologically. I seem to thrive with a certain level of interaction. Companies I've contracted for remotely have been great but it has been extremely isolating. Where I felt like I had a good handle on the overall direction of things when I worked in an office, moving this 100% to slack and google docs has left me often feeling more like a cog on one piece than a part of the overall project.
- randomdata 9y ago
luxurylive 9y ago
I worked as an online freelancer for 6 years. I can relate to the story. Yes its scary and chalenging shift of career.
program 9y ago
I have worked remotely for three years. Here are my tips: Slack is your best friend but if you chat for more than a minute straight about something technical call your collegue otherwise you will lose your time. Written language is not spoken language. Sometimes misunderstandings can arise. Do separate your work environment from your daily life. If your house is small, like mine, light off your computer during lunch otherwise you will find yourself reading some docs, checking some code, etc. Video conferences are not phone calls. When my team need to stay focused everybody have appear.in open in the background. Always dress like you will dress if working in your office.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
plekter 9y ago
I've also worked remotely for 4 years now, but in a company where remote workers aren't that common. I absolutely love it - I love the autonomy, the lack of office distractions, etc. I think the key things for me are - Love your work, motivation then comes for free - Communicate a lot, as the article says. Personally I'm a fan of written communication, as I find that is frequently more impactful. Easier to share, and so on. - 1to1s are also great - Have someone in office you can talk bullshit with over text chat. That helps a lot with the isolation and staying on top of office gossip. - Being remote naturally encourages a more independent working style. Being forced to solve problems myself and actually think has been great for me. Not being in office provides the calm and quiet to do exactly that! - A lot depends on your manager. Mine is trusting and accomodating, and I very much appreciate it. - Finally, having a good internal network in the company is important. Putting in the travels to get some face time is important, as written communication gets a lot better after having met.
- mettamage 9y ago
  Question: how does promotion work within the company you work remotely at?
  - plekter 9y ago
    Yearly reviews, where high performers get recognized and promoted. My career progression has matched that of my peers, so I have no complaints there.
justonepost 9y ago
Bingo: "My current theory about this is – as long as I work on a team with a lot of other remotes, everything will be fine. " reality is, if your team is 80-90% not remote, forget about career advancement. People who show up have two things, a) they want to advance their careers so will use proximity to their advantage and b) don't understand why they can't be working remotely. Plus of course processes and culture aren't going to be tailored to remote folks. The only time I've ever been able to make this work was when the manager was also remote.
- plekter 9y ago
  > reality is, if your team is 80-90% not remote, forget about career advancement. That's quite a sweeping statement - and doesn't resonate with me at all. I fit that statistic, but I work in a company that has a mature process for career advancement and that also has multiple sites scattered across the world. I cannot claim that remote work has held me back career-wise. That is, I'm still quite early in my career, maybe the wall comes later. It has, however, likely steered my career away from management (and thus towards the technical track), which I'll happily admit does not bother me in the slightest :)
  - justonepost 9y ago
    In rare instances it'll work if you're incredibly in the top 5% of gifted. But, the thing with that, is only 5% of engineers are in that group.
    - plekter 9y ago
      So you see it as a general career progression impediment - even the gifted gets "slowed down" progression wise? Are you talking from personal experience, or guessing? I strongly suspect a lot of this depends heavily on how the talent review process works in the company this takes place in. A gifted engineer will likely get recognized anyways, but an average engineer will need the review process to look beyond face value.
bkovacev 9y ago
After working remotely for 4 years I am switching back to the office at least 3 days a week and moving back to our company HQ in the States. Hardest challenge for me was staying in shape, because I lacked self-discipline to workout and eat healthy, but funny enough work didn't suffer and it was the most productive period in my life. It gets extremely easy to start slacking (no pun intended) and not do your work out. You tell yourself "oh let me just push this feature, fix this bug or communicate about a new feature". Work gets prioritized and everything else is put aside. That actually damages your productivity in the long run and the chance of burning out is far bigger than if you dedicate time to do other things. Took me a while to recognize the trap I was in - I felt obligated (no peer pressure, but just the fear of missing out) to always be online, answer emails or slack messages. Of course, my mental and physical health suffered due to this FOMO. Since I have about six months before I get back to the office I promised myself to tackle these things by doing: - Fix morning routine by working out, cooking and taking time to do other things (read, play video games, hobby) - Snoozing notifications at 6pm my time. - Learning to say "It will have to wait 'till tomorrow". - Spend more time outside of my apartment at night. - Dedicate more time to my SO. - Learn Elixir/Erlang during the weekends.
- fyfy18 9y ago
  Could you elaborate a bit more on your morning routine plans? I’d like to get up earlier and do more productive things before I start work (I’m remote and flexible), but as it doesn’t get light here until 8am at this time of year, I find it really hard to get up early.
  - bkovacev 9y ago
    Currently the sunrise here is at 6:45-7am. I'm up between 5:45-6:00 by myself anyway, but I usually just waste that time checking email/reading HN/reddit. I will make sure to not check phone until 7am. These are my plans and of course there is a big chance that I do not achieve all of this at once, it might take some adjustment, but if I do not check my phone, read and workout it's a win for me. I want to allocate 3-4 hours for myself in the morning. Getting up early is an amazing feeling, but I learned that by tiring myself for a week, eventually your body will go to bed earlier and you'll wake up earlier. Do it for two weeks and you should be able to become an early riser. 5:30ish - wake up, bathroom etc 5:45ish - Have breakfast. Want to eat slower so I allocate 30 minutes. 6:15ish - 7:00 - read/cook lunch and dinner. 7:00am - head out to the gym 9:00am - back from the gym 9:30ish shower, eat, check email 10 - start working or an hour long nap depending on how I feel.
harrygeez 9y ago
I just graduated from college any tips on landing the first remote work?
- ataturk 9y ago
  Don't? You are early in your career and the last thing you want is to be a ghost because ghosts are easily ignored/forgotten/dispensed with and that's not something a person early in their career wants.
g051051 9y ago
5 years for me, and counting. I'm so much happier and more productive, especially since where I work went to an open plan office: bright, noisy, visual distractions everywhere, speakerphones on every desk, little "huddle" tables in between developer desks in each 4-or-5 person "cube". I have no problems connecting with people on Lync (or more recently HipChat). Interactions are via phone, email, Confluence and Jira. I get to have a home-cooked lunch with my wife every day. I save all the time I'd spend commuting and dealing with interruptions. No money spent on gas. No getting sick from people coming in and spreading germs (something of an epidemic right now at my office). I'm pretty sure at some point I'll be forced to give this up, but man, it's been a fantastic ride so far.
kamaal 9y ago
Just playing the Devil's advocate here. These days I work with a person who was working remote for around 5 years or so. He now works with us full time. There are somethings you forget and forgive me for saying this, you also gain a lot of bad habits. The worse among them being ability to work with a team and collaborate. You also lose out on learning from technical discussions, practices going on in the industry, colleagues who share things. And most important of all ambition that comes from peer pressure. You sort of lose out on so many things that it will hard to start working with a team again. Sure if you are at the top of your game, you can drive things on your terms. But please rethink your stance. Also, its quite hard for long term remote workers to start working with teams. Many bad habits crawl to the workplace. Most important of them being dysfunctional communication, sometimes its as simple as committing code and writing documentation. Remote workers can be bad cultural fits for almost any culture. Simply due to the fact that they are exposed to none.
ibz 9y ago
5+ years here. Definitely not looking back to go to an office. After doing the DN thing in Asia for a year, I bought a farm house in my home country in Europe and moved over here. Being able to live in nature instead of in a city is an amazing, life changing experience. I often have people over visiting me - either friends or couch surfers. Planning to AirBnB the barn as well, which I converted into a nice big loft. I don't feel much lonely - I can always chat with neighbors - everybody knows everybody here in the village. Or I can drive to the city whenever I feel like. I love the fact that I've never used an alarm clock (except when I need to catch a flight or something). And yet I am always getting up earl and full of energy. I often nap during the day, which I love, and would be hard to do in an office. I sometimes disappear for a couple of hours to do some work in the garden. And I sometimes check on work on weekends. Overall, the flexibility about how you spend your time and where you live is what makes remote work worth it. You also need the discipline though.
- thenaturalist 9y ago
  Mind sharing if/ how it's possible to visit? I'm starting out to work remotely and travel and would come by.
  - ibz 9y ago
    Sure! Email me at hn <at> myusername <dot> me and let's keep in touch! There are very cheap flights from Berlin to here if you're flexible. :) Cheers!
- jamiegreen 9y ago
  What do you do, if you don't mind me asking? (I am assuming developer, but interested to learn more specifically your niche/years of experience)
  - ibz 9y ago
    Python. Data processing and such. I like doing pretty much anything that is not UI. Been in the field (programming, that is) for ~15 years. Currently working for a failed startup that got acquired by another startup. :) Did this satisfy your curiosity?
cagenut 9y ago
"I have 5-6 weekly 1:1s with different people with no agenda." Wow, five meetings a week not even counting project or departmental recurring status meetings or random crop up ones? That would totally annihilate any hope of the uninterrupted 3+ hour stretch it takes to do any real work.
- vanderZwan 9y ago
  She's not counting those meetings because she doesn't have them. Nor a whole lot of other types of meetings, for that matter: > on the remote teams I’ve been on, the the whole team has adopted a working style where all important team communication happens over Slack / video calls / email. In other words, you're thinking of the wrong context, which is impressive since the entire article explains that different context. The part you quote is in response to: > How do you have idle/watercooler discussions? We are already talking about a situation without chats at the watercooler. And when she says 1:1, she refers to her earlier explanation: > One pattern that has been incredibly valuable [to learn from my colleagues remotely] is – meet with $person (on my team) 1:1 every week for months/years and get advice from them about whatever I’m currently working on. One important thing to me in this kind of relationship is that the person be continuously invested/engaged in my work – it’s way more useful to get advice from someone who’s familiar with everything I’ve been doing for the last year than from someone just swooping in with their thoughts. While she explains this in the context of learning from colleagues, it is also a coping mechanism for staying in the loop despite not having normal meetings. Also, maybe it's me, but a 1:1 meeting is usually one where "real work" gets done. Ignoring that, she clearly has more than enough time for long, uninterrupted stretches of work.
- jvns 9y ago
  I think managing calendar fragmentation is important! Added a "calendar management" section to the post to address this :) here are the strategies I use to keep my calendar under control: - try to cluster meetings together (have a 1.5 hour meeting block so I only get interrupted once) - block off 4-hour chunks of “focus time” in my calendar. People are good at respecting that. - add an “end of day” block on my calendar at 5:30pm EST every day. This means that people know not to schedule things with me after I’m done for the day. Sometimes it’s unavoidable because 5:30 EST is 2:30 in the home office, but people always ask if it’s okay to schedule something after my end of day.
toomanybeersies 9y ago
Obviously everyone is different, but I could never work from home. I really need social interaction to get through the day, I struggle even in my office of 8 people. I used to work in a coworking space of 250 people, and I loved it. If I'm being honest it's not great for productivity, but socially it was amazing. It was also a really good way to meet people and make new friends, which was important because I moved to a new city and didn't know anyone. I couldn't handle spending over 20 hours a day in the same building either, I'd get cabin fever. Even spending a whole weekend at home drives me crazy, I have to get out of the house. I could totally do remote working in a coworking space, or the digital nomad thing, but not working from home. I also think that remote working works best if the whole company is remote. You can't have some people remote and some people on location, because you get an "us and them" mentality. It also makes communication difficult, an on-location team member might tell everyone in the office something, but forget to put it in Slack, as an example. At the end of the day though, different things work for different people.
mark_l_watson 9y ago
Except for onsite contracting gigs at Google and a search company in Singapore, I had about 20 years or working remotely from our home in Sedona Arizona. I got really tired of not having a local team to work with so my wife and I moved last summer to a new state and I took a job managing a machine learning team. While sometime I will go back to remote work (and return to Sedona), for now I find it much better to be in an office. My advice would be to not do the same thing for too long without moving on to something different.
ganzolo 9y ago
I had a totally different experience from the author of this article. Maybe, this was due to the fact that I was working remotely for 4 years with different startups maniacs. Biggest issues were : - Nobody sees how much you are invested into your day to day work. They just see bunch of commits / builds and the little gray or green presence indicator on your messenger app. But if you are struggling for 3 days x 10 hours per day to fix a bug, chances are high that nobody will realize this. - You're constantly alone. Even if nowadays we have great communications tools, the reality is that you'll spend 95% of your time alone in front of a computer in an empty apartment. I am excluding working from coffee shops because of the noise and bad setup (chair/table), this can only work once in a while. - There is no separation between private and professional life, unless you have an office space and you dedicate yourself to go there on a daily basis (which is at the end equivalent of having an in-house job...). Being in the same place where you live and work makes it very challenging to not think of job in your private time or vice-versa. I also have to be honest and tell you that temptation of using your working time to do private things are much higher when you are at home. - You need to be everything. In regular companies, you usually have direct manager, human resources, office manager, cleaning personnel, legal department, IT support, etc... When you are alone at home you need to do everything by yourself, organizing/cleaning your space, negotiating your vacations, dealing with your personal issues, etc... So now, let's analyze the most common issues of working in an office is... ... The time lost in transportation. Right now in my new office job, I am spending around 1h30 everyday to get ready and to travel back and forward to the office. At first I started to see that at pure waste. But actually this is not that bad. The days weather is good, I am biking to work and also doing sport, days weather is bad, I drive listening to music and relaxing. With the biggest advantage of not thinking of job as soon as I leave office, I will definitely never go back to remote work!
- baus 9y ago
  Personally I think the best situation is a mix of both. Being able to work remotely, but go to an office for collaboration.
- KeitIG 9y ago
  I think this is not only about commuting time. If you have a wife/husband and children, you do not want to move every 4 months for each new contract you get. Here remote makes perfect sense if you want to live in a fixed city.
cmorgan8506 9y ago
8 years in here. The team you work with really makes the difference. Not sure I ever plan on moving to in-house.
embersdev 9y ago
I have worked remote for the last 3 years and in the office for the 10 years before that at the same company. I can definitely say I will never work in an office again if at all possible. Remote work is definitely not for everyone, but for those of us that prefer it, its more important than pay or benefits. I won't rehash what others have said, but i do have an experience that may be different than most. I work for a company of close to 3000 that has maybe a dozen remote workers. Most of which are sales people, a few workers that work on site all over the country and then me, a developer/analyst. As a general rule, the company allows occasional remote work for select teams (mostly just IT), but as a whole, it's against remote work. I am the only developer (or IT for that matter) that is full remote. Working for a company that is NOT a remote friendly company is an absolute challenge. Here are a few of the additional challenges you deal with above and beyond the normal remote work. - missed conversations. they happen way more in an office that doesn't have remote workers - no advancement possibilities. I'm already sr. so I don't care) - jealousy issues. not a real problem aside from I can't tell people I am working in another state for the winter - you are an inconvenience to everyone. every meeting requires the phone or remote desktop just for you - all processes have to take into account 1 remote worker - missed team events, although I attend most of them since I only live 1.5 hours away (most of the year) - VPN... if there are issues, I am the first to know - expectation of 8-5 m-f. Although I actually prefer it because routine is good and sets defined work/life time Ultimately, if you are not sure if you would like to be a remote worker, I wouldn't recommend it at a company that isn't at least 50% remote (or at least the team you would be on).
- anthony_barker 9y ago
  I am suprised that at 3000 people the company doesn't have offices all over. I worked mostly remotely for one Bank - mostly because I arranged to have 2 desks and then slowly moved home and worked from the different offices. I love face to face sometimes and remote (full concentration) other times. Again I find that a lot of people can't handle it. Like a basic rule should be that you should respond within 1-30 min to any chat message.
  - embersdev 9y ago
blunte 9y ago
Most career stories are unique and driven by the circumstances and the person involved. So one's experiences may be very different from another's. My experience working remotely for 10 of the last 13 years is that it suits me very well and leaves me feeling _differently_ than when I worked in an office. I don't know if I can say I'm happier, but I'm generally more satisfied. I work MUCH harder and I work MANY more hours. Both of these are sort of my choice, but my behavior is driven by my goals to succeed with whatever project I am on or have defined. Thus, I don't know if I'm overall happier; but I feel less like I am just wasting my life compared to when I burned hours in an office at a much lower productivity. Another difference (for me) is that the kind of projects I work on and the clients I work for give me a greater chance of financial success at this point in life compared to a more typical job. It may not be a greater pay-per-hour result when you factor in the hours I work, but I have much more opportunity to be part of a winning ($$$) outcome than I did in the corporate world. And finally, one of my favorite perks is that I can work from anywhere in the world. It's not always easy to work for a month from a Caribbean island while squeezing in scuba certifications, but it makes life a lot more interesting than walking into the same building every day. I doubt I'll ever walk into an office again for anything more than a week or two at a time. Finances aside, that gives me the feeling that I have _won_ the rat race.
- yAnonymous 9y ago
  >It's not always easy to work for a month from a Caribbean island while squeezing in scuba certifications (ง'-')ง
  - andrewflnr 9y ago
    Is that a fisticuffs emoticon? I'm stealing it.
    - blunte 9y ago
      In this case I think it's a flex muscles illustration. Either way, it works!
    - NeoBasilisk 9y ago
arca_vorago 9y ago
On the subject, what are the best places to find remote jobs? (I'm a linux oriented senior sysadmin, currently going to school for data science)
scarlac 9y ago
It's great to hear that some people manage to love working remotely. In this case, there's /some/ difference in time zones (3h). Generally, people don't seem to mention the time zone difference in the commentary each time articles like this gets posted on HN, but I'd actually love to hear where people are working remote from/to, since there can literally be a night and day difference.
riprock 9y ago
Does Stripe (presumably where they work) still allow full-time remote work? I looked at their job board and it seems like none of the job posts are for remote positions.
- jvns 9y ago
  I can't speak for the job board, but there are dozens of full-time remote developers (including me, obviously), and I see remotes devs being hired frequently.
rsbartram 9y ago
I lived and worked remotely for 3.5 years from Lima Peru and it was a life changing event. Learning how to generate income with just an internet connection and my sales and marketing skills I learned in my professional life was a process but have definitely paid off. Having control over your environment is a peaceful and rejuvenating process for your body. Discipline is probably the most important characteristic needed to work remotely. If you don't have it, get it or don't try it.
inertiatic 9y ago
Best thing about reading more and more success stories of working remotely online is, for someone hoping to make the jump eventually, that there does indeed seem to be a trend. I'm not sure there's much valuable advice however, as the way you should set up your process seems pretty obvious once you really decide that including remote workers is a high priority.
nickjj 9y ago
I've been working remotely for close to 20 years, but it's all been a bunch of short contracts (days to months). I've worked with people from all over the world across many different time zones. Email, Google Hangouts / Skype, IRC and Slack are all what I use on a regular basis to communicate with clients and it works out well. I offset working alone from my place of residence by going outside a bunch of times per day for exercise and talking with people around the neighborhood. I also try to goto local tech meetups when I can. Overall I would say I feel happy and generally feel like I'm making the best use of my time. I don't think I would trade this life style in for anything (within reason :D).
- joncrane 9y ago
  What level of urbanization is your neighborhood?
  - nickjj 9y ago
    Typical suburbs. Nothing like a big city, but houses and small businesses are all over the place.
dizzystar 9y ago
I think working remotely has it's pluses and minuses. I'm a few years in and have only had one in-office programming contract. The positive is that I am entirely focused on GSD. I'm not sure about everywhere, but the place I was in-house at was fairly sparse and focused as well. I dread the thought of ever working at a place with pool tables or other distractions. Working remotely puts a lot of trust in my work. They trust that I'm doing what I say I'm doing when I track hours. I've never had an issue disputing hours, so that's not a negative. Working remotely pegs you as one of the smart ones. Apparently I earned the right to work remotely? I don't know, it's just work to me, but I also do a lot of short-term contracts, so the image is probably different. This leads to the big downside. Out of sight, out of mind, out of personally caring. This somewhat goes both ways, but it's difficult to make text friends. Humans are simply wired for face-to-face, and I don't think Skype really replaces that. This causes some problems with impedance. If I ask a question, I would need an answer right away because that's likely a blocking issue. If everyone else is on lunch, in a meeting, and so on, it leaves me hanging. A positive is seeing a whole lot of codebases. It really helps you understand where you and everyone else is in the pecking order. It also brings up a lot of issues surrounding the meaning of good -vs- bad code, experts programmers, and so on. Exposure has shown me that these concepts are murky at best. A negative is that some companies try to pay lower, selling remote work as a benefit. It isn't. I often have to split my day and work odd hours to keep myself on the same page as everyone else, nullifying whatever inconvenience I gain from not going to and from a local company. But, really, it all comes down the company that you are working with. It is obvious when they haven't worked with outside developers, so I think it's a lot more about the company than the actual ability to work remotely. Remote work is just work, and I don't think that, outside of direct human interaction and speed of communication, there is a significant difference between in-house and remote. Either way, code is written and shipped.
err4nt 9y ago
I have been self employed, working from wherever, for just shy of 7 years now. Overall the experience has been life-changing in a positive way, and I would highly recommend people try this arrangement at least once in their careers to see if the tradeoffs give them an advantage. Here are some benefits, in no particular order: - I have the flexibility to rearrange my days so I never have to take time off work for things like shopping, errands, appointments, visits, meetings, and even events I want to attend during the day - Because I can choose when I work, I am able to capture my most creative and productive times during the day for work, and spend my downtime doing chores or things that require little creativity - By changing my surroundings according to my mood, I can 'hack' my productivity to a small extent (going to a lively environment when I feel unmotivated, isolating myself when I need to focus and block out interruptions, etc) - I don't have a set wake up time, nor a set bed time. If I need to work late one day and it works to my advantage to stay up later rather than break, I can 'push' my next day back And here are some downsides, in no particular order: - You can go a little stir-crazy working from home too much, the onus is on your to get out of the house and surround yourself with other people to stay social - Sometimes you will find yourself pushing life out of the way to make room for work because of the same flexibility that lets you push work out of the way for life sometimes. Not having set hours is a blessing and a curse at times, but overall beneficial - It can be hard to gauge how you stack up to others if you're not seeing other people doing the same kind of work as you are. Some people are self-starters and compete against themselves for continual improvement, but if you lack in this area it can be a struggle to not stagnate and get too comfy in your role For me, the benefits have far outweighed the downsides, and I can't imagine ever going back to the 9–5, butt-in-chair-all-day kind of work arrangement. I feel that by working remotely I am doing my best work ever, and I have the freedom and flexibility to improve myself too!
keyboardmonkey 9y ago
14 years as 100% remote... living in the middle of nowhere, 40 acres of land to run around and enjoy (fly huge model planes at lunch time, fire up the bbq with the wife and fams, etc etc) and life is good. I have a reclining workstation that has helped for a number of reasons, but it's made from a chair that's light enough to carry out to the back porch when the weather is nice. Some companies like to take a little off the top of your pay due to being remote, but if you go looking in the right spots you can get remote work at bigger city salaries. Even when the pay was shorted a little, the lifestyle more than makes up for it. ...make sure that you get enough personal interaction (the hardest and most important depending just how "remote" you are), and make sure that you appreciate the lifestyle perk that it is, and be happy. As much as I love it, it's really not for everyone... I've seen some people be allowed to go remote, move away from the office, not be able to deal with the remoteness and quit. It happens.
draw_down 9y ago
The whole reason remote work is feasible, is that the problems we deal with, as well as the politics of the companies we work for, transcend place. In other words, it’s the same as working in an office as far as the actual work and the working relationships are concerned. Sure you video chat more, and eat lunch together less, and try to find ways of addressing that difference. But, in many ways it’s the same. I wish I felt as ecstatic as some of my fellow commenters here claim to. But ultimately, it’s just another way of working, and the basic unpleasantness of working in corporate America/tech industry remains. Don’t get me wrong, I relish the ability to do my laundry when nothing is going on. But it’s not really that different, and the things that bum me out about working are mostly not to do with office space, though I do lament the move to open offices.

424 points by samdk 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

houqp 9y ago

Any recommendation for video conferencing? We are using hangout and it is not reliable at all :(

michalrentka 9y ago
https://appear.in https://appear.in has been fine for me mostly
- thejosh 9y ago
  Yeah appear.in works quite we for us as well, low latency voice is nice.
- mycelium 9y ago
  No-install, no sign-in is amazing. Appear is one of the services I've referred people to the most, for just that reason. The main critique I have is their push to monetize as of late has been clumsily executed in my experience of the product. The expanded "pro" features have shifted around without enough heads up. The chatroom ownership system is not at all clear in how it interacts with paid accounts. We abandoned a few rooms used widely in our org until we figured out whose random account we had used to own a room earlier (from a prior push by Appear for room ownership) and got ownership transferred to a paid account.
amingilani 9y ago
We use Zoom.us at my startup and it works great. Not very updated UI design but so much better than Hangouts
yla92 9y ago
We use zoom ( https://zoom.us https://zoom.us ) and works quite well. Beside that, I heard a lot of good things about Jitsi ( https://jitsi.org https://jitsi.org )
- BillFranklin 9y ago
  Yeah, Zoom has been good for us. It's good quality, and you can still see other participants during a presentation. On the free plan there's a one hour cap to meetings, which is ideal as nobody wants to be in a meeting longer than an hour.
  - Dunedan 9y ago
    > It's good quality, and you can still see other participants during a presentation. I regularly use Hangouts, Slack calls and Zoom and I totally agree. Especially quality of Slack calls is awful. Just earlier today we had a call, where audio was delayed ~2s while video was perfectly fine. And Zooms grid view is so nice. I wonder why their competitors don't offer the same functionality.
- NationOfJoe 9y ago
  I second zoom. I found it has the clearest video for screen sharing. I use it alot for pair programming. At least once a day. Really easy to share control and read the other screen. The 1h cap is no issue. Great time to have a 5min break before starting again. Every person i talk to who sets it up the first time always struggles to click the "audio by computer" button and i have to spend the first 2-3min explaining how to get their mic working. But it saves the setting after that. Only ever an issue once per person.
lima 9y ago
We use the open source Jitsi Meet tool[1], hosted on our own infrastructure with no third party in-between. Screen sharing is a bit unstable, but conferencing is rock-solid. It's connected to our phone system so people can call in and out [2]. [1]: https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet [2]: https://github.com/jitsi/jigasi https://github.com/jitsi/jigasi
HarveyKandola 9y ago
Try https://www.daily.co https://www.daily.co
program 9y ago
In my remote team we use appear.in. It's a great product.
zerr 9y ago
Skype seems to have a better quality compared to WebRTC based solutions nowadays.
dejv 9y ago
We do use Uberconference. Conference sign in could be confusing for first timer, but otherwise it is solid (with some glitches from time to time).
rwmj 9y ago
Others have recommended a bunch of services. I'm going to recommend that you also take a look at your conferencing hardware. A good speaker/microphone/camera set up can really make a difference. You need to spend at least $200 (but can spend upwards of $1000). I'd recommend looking at the Logitech BCC950 (about $200) or one of the Jabra Speak table conference mics (about $100 but you also need a camera). Polycom IP phones and desk conference devices are also worth looking at, but they get very expensive.
- sdoering 9y ago
  Exactly that. And don't let high price or fancy bling bling blind you. We got some high end blue tooth speakers that are crap (but cost upward of 4.000€ for 4 pieces). I just asked Google for these things and found them to be Sennheiser TeamConnect Wireless. At least connecting to them with a MBPro when you also want to use AppleTV wireless just isn't a solution. Never hat so much hassle with setting up conferencing. Give me a good landline for voice and a camera/Tv setup for image.
- badpun 9y ago
  > Jabra Speak table conference mics My experience with them is that they are not that great - you need to be wary of being close to them and speaking in their direction or they'll have trouble picking up your voice.
  - rwmj 9y ago
    I didn't have problems with the Jabra Speak, except that it shipped with bad USB firmware and required an update (using a Windows machine). The Logitech has absolutely excellent microphone/speaker separation and echo-cancellation.
quadcore 9y ago
Tried amazon chime 2 times I think. As far as I can tell, software seemed good.
- Dunedan 9y ago
  I'd love to have a look at Chime as well, but unfortunately they neither offer a Linux client nor browser support.
  - quadcore 9y ago
    Well that's a shame.
sdoering 9y ago
I have no real good recommendation (so I am thankful for all ideas in this thread), but I would not recommend Hangouts and Slack. We use both in the company I work for and it is a pain in the ass to use. and the image quality isn't really that great. But both are at least usable. More important is imho that people know how to use the tools. Give people room to interrupt/ask questions. Make breaks in between your thought units a little bit longer. Because you won't have non-visual signals that someone wants to ask a question. And on the other hand: Give people the chance to bring their thoughts to an end. Don't interrupt premature. Be more considerate and kind. Go out of your way to compensate for the non-visual signals of communications, that regularly help a lot in f2f situations.
zlatan_todoric 9y ago
At my company we used Jitsi (and also tried with hosting our own instance) and Appear.in. Both worked kinda fine and appear.in has limit to number of people unless you go to pay option - with more people quality would simply drop and we do have 20+ people in company meeting. We decided to try old school - we hosted our own Mumble and while maybe not nice UI/UX, it works perfectly for 20+ people. Also I recommend as well having good headphones (with integrated mic) to avoid potential echo (jitsi echo can be annoying without headphones).
svec 9y ago
Zoom.us is GREAT! Video and audio quality are great, hiccups are rare, the screen sharing features are good, and it integrates easily into our physical offices with a decent iPad app. (I've tried hangouts, hipchat video, appear.in, and a few others, but Zoom is much better.) I also highly recommend the Owl 360 degree video camera/speaker: https://www.owllabs.com/ https://www.owllabs.com/ As a remote employee, the Owl makes it much easier to be a part of a discussion around a table where most of the meeting participants are in a room at HQ, and a few of us are remote. (I know some of the employees, so I'm biased, but I like to think I would love the Owl even if I didn't know some of the team.)
- robgurley 9y ago
  Thanks for mentioning this camera; it's a huge step up from the system that my company has (hardwired) in conference rooms, and I'll look into purchasing one to trial.

markbnj 9y ago

Almost 10 years for me. The main thing from this post I would emphasize is the point about the company culture. My current employer is all remote, and so support for and integration of remote engineers is natural for them. By contrast I worked at another small company where the engineering management admitted remote employees only reluctantly. Meetings were a nightmare, and the remote attendees could often not even hear or see what was going on. Every now and then the SVP in charge of the group would remind us all that having remote employees meant "twice the effort for half the results." This was the same person who told me during our interview that he only considered remote engineers because it wasn't possible to find good engineers in the small southern city they were located in ("they" meaning the company; the SVP himself was located on the west coast and commuted). Needless to say I didn't last long there.

blauditore 9y ago

The author initially writes, > Before we get into the struggles of working remote, [...] but then never gets around to describe those struggles. I wonder what they are.

ratsimihah 9y ago
He mentions being lonely during the 3rd and 8th months and provides links I believe.
- ubernostrum 9y ago
  He mentions being lonely during the 3rd and 8th months and provides links I believe. The author's name is in large type at the top of the page.
  - sdoering 9y ago
    I am with you. It is. And assuming a male gender isn't really helpful - but we all fall for this trap sometimes. I try to stay with the gender neutral "they". Especially if it just isn't of any relevance for the topic/discussion at hand.
    - anoncoward111 9y ago
      additionally "the author writes," is a perfectly neutral and grammatically correct way of expressing oneself
  - jvns 9y ago
    I think on about 30% of my blog posts that end up on the hacker news front page: * someone refers to me as "he" * someone else corrects them to "she" * an extended argument ensues about whether "he" is a gender neutral pronoun, whether "they" is a gender neutral pronoun, whether it matters if you refer to a woman as "he" or not, whether the original author cares whether they're referred to as "he" or "she", and on and on and on :) From my perspective (since I've seen this argument so many times) this argument is very repetitive and doesn't add a lot of value to the HN comments -- I think it would be much better if people just accepted being corrected with "it's she" and then go back to discussing the actual contents of the article in an interesting way (in this case, a lot of people are sharing their experiences with working remotely and it's been really interesting to see what everyone's different experiences are!) so if you care about this topic I would humbly suggest that you don't comment further about pronouns and instead maybe share your experiences with working remotely! =)

biztos 9y ago

I've been working remotely for about 8 years, and I have to say it's a challenge. I have great colleagues and a great manager and we work on stuff we care about, so I am in no position to complain. However, all things being equal, I would much prefer to be in the office 3 days per week (not 5!). For all the advantages of working remotely, the social isolation is extremely unnatural and not good for you. Today, for example, I will chat with my personal trainer at the gym, and have a couple phone calls, and that's it for human interaction on a Monday. Also, while heads-down coding is probably better in the home office, brainstorming and whiteboarding and collaboratively figuring stuff out is way better in person. > First, I have 5-6 weekly 1:1s with different people with no agenda That's a great plan, and I wish it were realistic for my team. We've done things like that but they always fall apart once everyone gets really busy. I'd love to blame the 6 time zones but it's not that. Funny, when I was younger and worked remote on a couple of startups, the isolation wasn't that big a deal. But I went out almost every night, and one (hopefully) outgrows that. Anyway, good article, and I hope the author continues making the best of a good but tricky way of working!

fredley 9y ago
Depending on the type of work, I find 1-2 days a week working from home to be optimal. It provides good concentration time, but I don't think I could ever consider fully-remote work, it's just too lonely. If you're not good at seeking out social interaction when you're already feeling depressed (like me), it sounds like it just wouldn't be compatible at all.
jaymzcampbell 9y ago
Having worked at home for around a year now I have to say I completely agree with your summary. I used to dream of 100% WFH and now realise I am not cut out for it psychologically. I seem to thrive with a certain level of interaction. Companies I've contracted for remotely have been great but it has been extremely isolating. Where I felt like I had a good handle on the overall direction of things when I worked in an office, moving this 100% to slack and google docs has left me often feeling more like a cog on one piece than a part of the overall project.
randomdata 9y ago

luxurylive 9y ago

I worked as an online freelancer for 6 years. I can relate to the story. Yes its scary and chalenging shift of career.

program 9y ago

I have worked remotely for three years. Here are my tips: Slack is your best friend but if you chat for more than a minute straight about something technical call your collegue otherwise you will lose your time. Written language is not spoken language. Sometimes misunderstandings can arise. Do separate your work environment from your daily life. If your house is small, like mine, light off your computer during lunch otherwise you will find yourself reading some docs, checking some code, etc. Video conferences are not phone calls. When my team need to stay focused everybody have appear.in open in the background. Always dress like you will dress if working in your office.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

plekter 9y ago

I've also worked remotely for 4 years now, but in a company where remote workers aren't that common. I absolutely love it - I love the autonomy, the lack of office distractions, etc. I think the key things for me are - Love your work, motivation then comes for free - Communicate a lot, as the article says. Personally I'm a fan of written communication, as I find that is frequently more impactful. Easier to share, and so on. - 1to1s are also great - Have someone in office you can talk bullshit with over text chat. That helps a lot with the isolation and staying on top of office gossip. - Being remote naturally encourages a more independent working style. Being forced to solve problems myself and actually think has been great for me. Not being in office provides the calm and quiet to do exactly that! - A lot depends on your manager. Mine is trusting and accomodating, and I very much appreciate it. - Finally, having a good internal network in the company is important. Putting in the travels to get some face time is important, as written communication gets a lot better after having met.

mettamage 9y ago
Question: how does promotion work within the company you work remotely at?
- plekter 9y ago
  Yearly reviews, where high performers get recognized and promoted. My career progression has matched that of my peers, so I have no complaints there.

justonepost 9y ago

Bingo: "My current theory about this is – as long as I work on a team with a lot of other remotes, everything will be fine. " reality is, if your team is 80-90% not remote, forget about career advancement. People who show up have two things, a) they want to advance their careers so will use proximity to their advantage and b) don't understand why they can't be working remotely. Plus of course processes and culture aren't going to be tailored to remote folks. The only time I've ever been able to make this work was when the manager was also remote.

plekter 9y ago
> reality is, if your team is 80-90% not remote, forget about career advancement. That's quite a sweeping statement - and doesn't resonate with me at all. I fit that statistic, but I work in a company that has a mature process for career advancement and that also has multiple sites scattered across the world. I cannot claim that remote work has held me back career-wise. That is, I'm still quite early in my career, maybe the wall comes later. It has, however, likely steered my career away from management (and thus towards the technical track), which I'll happily admit does not bother me in the slightest :)
- justonepost 9y ago
  In rare instances it'll work if you're incredibly in the top 5% of gifted. But, the thing with that, is only 5% of engineers are in that group.
  - plekter 9y ago
    So you see it as a general career progression impediment - even the gifted gets "slowed down" progression wise? Are you talking from personal experience, or guessing? I strongly suspect a lot of this depends heavily on how the talent review process works in the company this takes place in. A gifted engineer will likely get recognized anyways, but an average engineer will need the review process to look beyond face value.

bkovacev 9y ago

After working remotely for 4 years I am switching back to the office at least 3 days a week and moving back to our company HQ in the States. Hardest challenge for me was staying in shape, because I lacked self-discipline to workout and eat healthy, but funny enough work didn't suffer and it was the most productive period in my life. It gets extremely easy to start slacking (no pun intended) and not do your work out. You tell yourself "oh let me just push this feature, fix this bug or communicate about a new feature". Work gets prioritized and everything else is put aside. That actually damages your productivity in the long run and the chance of burning out is far bigger than if you dedicate time to do other things. Took me a while to recognize the trap I was in - I felt obligated (no peer pressure, but just the fear of missing out) to always be online, answer emails or slack messages. Of course, my mental and physical health suffered due to this FOMO. Since I have about six months before I get back to the office I promised myself to tackle these things by doing: - Fix morning routine by working out, cooking and taking time to do other things (read, play video games, hobby) - Snoozing notifications at 6pm my time. - Learning to say "It will have to wait 'till tomorrow". - Spend more time outside of my apartment at night. - Dedicate more time to my SO. - Learn Elixir/Erlang during the weekends.

fyfy18 9y ago
Could you elaborate a bit more on your morning routine plans? I’d like to get up earlier and do more productive things before I start work (I’m remote and flexible), but as it doesn’t get light here until 8am at this time of year, I find it really hard to get up early.
- bkovacev 9y ago
  Currently the sunrise here is at 6:45-7am. I'm up between 5:45-6:00 by myself anyway, but I usually just waste that time checking email/reading HN/reddit. I will make sure to not check phone until 7am. These are my plans and of course there is a big chance that I do not achieve all of this at once, it might take some adjustment, but if I do not check my phone, read and workout it's a win for me. I want to allocate 3-4 hours for myself in the morning. Getting up early is an amazing feeling, but I learned that by tiring myself for a week, eventually your body will go to bed earlier and you'll wake up earlier. Do it for two weeks and you should be able to become an early riser. 5:30ish - wake up, bathroom etc 5:45ish - Have breakfast. Want to eat slower so I allocate 30 minutes. 6:15ish - 7:00 - read/cook lunch and dinner. 7:00am - head out to the gym 9:00am - back from the gym 9:30ish shower, eat, check email 10 - start working or an hour long nap depending on how I feel.

harrygeez 9y ago

I just graduated from college any tips on landing the first remote work?

ataturk 9y ago
Don't? You are early in your career and the last thing you want is to be a ghost because ghosts are easily ignored/forgotten/dispensed with and that's not something a person early in their career wants.

g051051 9y ago

5 years for me, and counting. I'm so much happier and more productive, especially since where I work went to an open plan office: bright, noisy, visual distractions everywhere, speakerphones on every desk, little "huddle" tables in between developer desks in each 4-or-5 person "cube". I have no problems connecting with people on Lync (or more recently HipChat). Interactions are via phone, email, Confluence and Jira. I get to have a home-cooked lunch with my wife every day. I save all the time I'd spend commuting and dealing with interruptions. No money spent on gas. No getting sick from people coming in and spreading germs (something of an epidemic right now at my office). I'm pretty sure at some point I'll be forced to give this up, but man, it's been a fantastic ride so far.

kamaal 9y ago

Just playing the Devil's advocate here. These days I work with a person who was working remote for around 5 years or so. He now works with us full time. There are somethings you forget and forgive me for saying this, you also gain a lot of bad habits. The worse among them being ability to work with a team and collaborate. You also lose out on learning from technical discussions, practices going on in the industry, colleagues who share things. And most important of all ambition that comes from peer pressure. You sort of lose out on so many things that it will hard to start working with a team again. Sure if you are at the top of your game, you can drive things on your terms. But please rethink your stance. Also, its quite hard for long term remote workers to start working with teams. Many bad habits crawl to the workplace. Most important of them being dysfunctional communication, sometimes its as simple as committing code and writing documentation. Remote workers can be bad cultural fits for almost any culture. Simply due to the fact that they are exposed to none.

ibz 9y ago

5+ years here. Definitely not looking back to go to an office. After doing the DN thing in Asia for a year, I bought a farm house in my home country in Europe and moved over here. Being able to live in nature instead of in a city is an amazing, life changing experience. I often have people over visiting me - either friends or couch surfers. Planning to AirBnB the barn as well, which I converted into a nice big loft. I don't feel much lonely - I can always chat with neighbors - everybody knows everybody here in the village. Or I can drive to the city whenever I feel like. I love the fact that I've never used an alarm clock (except when I need to catch a flight or something). And yet I am always getting up earl and full of energy. I often nap during the day, which I love, and would be hard to do in an office. I sometimes disappear for a couple of hours to do some work in the garden. And I sometimes check on work on weekends. Overall, the flexibility about how you spend your time and where you live is what makes remote work worth it. You also need the discipline though.

thenaturalist 9y ago
Mind sharing if/ how it's possible to visit? I'm starting out to work remotely and travel and would come by.
- ibz 9y ago
  Sure! Email me at hn <at> myusername <dot> me and let's keep in touch! There are very cheap flights from Berlin to here if you're flexible. :) Cheers!
jamiegreen 9y ago
What do you do, if you don't mind me asking? (I am assuming developer, but interested to learn more specifically your niche/years of experience)
- ibz 9y ago
  Python. Data processing and such. I like doing pretty much anything that is not UI. Been in the field (programming, that is) for ~15 years. Currently working for a failed startup that got acquired by another startup. :) Did this satisfy your curiosity?

cagenut 9y ago

"I have 5-6 weekly 1:1s with different people with no agenda." Wow, five meetings a week not even counting project or departmental recurring status meetings or random crop up ones? That would totally annihilate any hope of the uninterrupted 3+ hour stretch it takes to do any real work.

vanderZwan 9y ago
She's not counting those meetings because she doesn't have them. Nor a whole lot of other types of meetings, for that matter: > on the remote teams I’ve been on, the the whole team has adopted a working style where all important team communication happens over Slack / video calls / email. In other words, you're thinking of the wrong context, which is impressive since the entire article explains that different context. The part you quote is in response to: > How do you have idle/watercooler discussions? We are already talking about a situation without chats at the watercooler. And when she says 1:1, she refers to her earlier explanation: > One pattern that has been incredibly valuable [to learn from my colleagues remotely] is – meet with $person (on my team) 1:1 every week for months/years and get advice from them about whatever I’m currently working on. One important thing to me in this kind of relationship is that the person be continuously invested/engaged in my work – it’s way more useful to get advice from someone who’s familiar with everything I’ve been doing for the last year than from someone just swooping in with their thoughts. While she explains this in the context of learning from colleagues, it is also a coping mechanism for staying in the loop despite not having normal meetings. Also, maybe it's me, but a 1:1 meeting is usually one where "real work" gets done. Ignoring that, she clearly has more than enough time for long, uninterrupted stretches of work.
jvns 9y ago
I think managing calendar fragmentation is important! Added a "calendar management" section to the post to address this :) here are the strategies I use to keep my calendar under control: - try to cluster meetings together (have a 1.5 hour meeting block so I only get interrupted once) - block off 4-hour chunks of “focus time” in my calendar. People are good at respecting that. - add an “end of day” block on my calendar at 5:30pm EST every day. This means that people know not to schedule things with me after I’m done for the day. Sometimes it’s unavoidable because 5:30 EST is 2:30 in the home office, but people always ask if it’s okay to schedule something after my end of day.

toomanybeersies 9y ago

Obviously everyone is different, but I could never work from home. I really need social interaction to get through the day, I struggle even in my office of 8 people. I used to work in a coworking space of 250 people, and I loved it. If I'm being honest it's not great for productivity, but socially it was amazing. It was also a really good way to meet people and make new friends, which was important because I moved to a new city and didn't know anyone. I couldn't handle spending over 20 hours a day in the same building either, I'd get cabin fever. Even spending a whole weekend at home drives me crazy, I have to get out of the house. I could totally do remote working in a coworking space, or the digital nomad thing, but not working from home. I also think that remote working works best if the whole company is remote. You can't have some people remote and some people on location, because you get an "us and them" mentality. It also makes communication difficult, an on-location team member might tell everyone in the office something, but forget to put it in Slack, as an example. At the end of the day though, different things work for different people.

mark_l_watson 9y ago

Except for onsite contracting gigs at Google and a search company in Singapore, I had about 20 years or working remotely from our home in Sedona Arizona. I got really tired of not having a local team to work with so my wife and I moved last summer to a new state and I took a job managing a machine learning team. While sometime I will go back to remote work (and return to Sedona), for now I find it much better to be in an office. My advice would be to not do the same thing for too long without moving on to something different.

ganzolo 9y ago

I had a totally different experience from the author of this article. Maybe, this was due to the fact that I was working remotely for 4 years with different startups maniacs. Biggest issues were : - Nobody sees how much you are invested into your day to day work. They just see bunch of commits / builds and the little gray or green presence indicator on your messenger app. But if you are struggling for 3 days x 10 hours per day to fix a bug, chances are high that nobody will realize this. - You're constantly alone. Even if nowadays we have great communications tools, the reality is that you'll spend 95% of your time alone in front of a computer in an empty apartment. I am excluding working from coffee shops because of the noise and bad setup (chair/table), this can only work once in a while. - There is no separation between private and professional life, unless you have an office space and you dedicate yourself to go there on a daily basis (which is at the end equivalent of having an in-house job...). Being in the same place where you live and work makes it very challenging to not think of job in your private time or vice-versa. I also have to be honest and tell you that temptation of using your working time to do private things are much higher when you are at home. - You need to be everything. In regular companies, you usually have direct manager, human resources, office manager, cleaning personnel, legal department, IT support, etc... When you are alone at home you need to do everything by yourself, organizing/cleaning your space, negotiating your vacations, dealing with your personal issues, etc... So now, let's analyze the most common issues of working in an office is... ... The time lost in transportation. Right now in my new office job, I am spending around 1h30 everyday to get ready and to travel back and forward to the office. At first I started to see that at pure waste. But actually this is not that bad. The days weather is good, I am biking to work and also doing sport, days weather is bad, I drive listening to music and relaxing. With the biggest advantage of not thinking of job as soon as I leave office, I will definitely never go back to remote work!

baus 9y ago
Personally I think the best situation is a mix of both. Being able to work remotely, but go to an office for collaboration.
KeitIG 9y ago
I think this is not only about commuting time. If you have a wife/husband and children, you do not want to move every 4 months for each new contract you get. Here remote makes perfect sense if you want to live in a fixed city.

cmorgan8506 9y ago

8 years in here. The team you work with really makes the difference. Not sure I ever plan on moving to in-house.

embersdev 9y ago

I have worked remote for the last 3 years and in the office for the 10 years before that at the same company. I can definitely say I will never work in an office again if at all possible. Remote work is definitely not for everyone, but for those of us that prefer it, its more important than pay or benefits. I won't rehash what others have said, but i do have an experience that may be different than most. I work for a company of close to 3000 that has maybe a dozen remote workers. Most of which are sales people, a few workers that work on site all over the country and then me, a developer/analyst. As a general rule, the company allows occasional remote work for select teams (mostly just IT), but as a whole, it's against remote work. I am the only developer (or IT for that matter) that is full remote. Working for a company that is NOT a remote friendly company is an absolute challenge. Here are a few of the additional challenges you deal with above and beyond the normal remote work. - missed conversations. they happen way more in an office that doesn't have remote workers - no advancement possibilities. I'm already sr. so I don't care) - jealousy issues. not a real problem aside from I can't tell people I am working in another state for the winter - you are an inconvenience to everyone. every meeting requires the phone or remote desktop just for you - all processes have to take into account 1 remote worker - missed team events, although I attend most of them since I only live 1.5 hours away (most of the year) - VPN... if there are issues, I am the first to know - expectation of 8-5 m-f. Although I actually prefer it because routine is good and sets defined work/life time Ultimately, if you are not sure if you would like to be a remote worker, I wouldn't recommend it at a company that isn't at least 50% remote (or at least the team you would be on).

anthony_barker 9y ago
I am suprised that at 3000 people the company doesn't have offices all over. I worked mostly remotely for one Bank - mostly because I arranged to have 2 desks and then slowly moved home and worked from the different offices. I love face to face sometimes and remote (full concentration) other times. Again I find that a lot of people can't handle it. Like a basic rule should be that you should respond within 1-30 min to any chat message.
- embersdev 9y ago

blunte 9y ago

Most career stories are unique and driven by the circumstances and the person involved. So one's experiences may be very different from another's. My experience working remotely for 10 of the last 13 years is that it suits me very well and leaves me feeling _differently_ than when I worked in an office. I don't know if I can say I'm happier, but I'm generally more satisfied. I work MUCH harder and I work MANY more hours. Both of these are sort of my choice, but my behavior is driven by my goals to succeed with whatever project I am on or have defined. Thus, I don't know if I'm overall happier; but I feel less like I am just wasting my life compared to when I burned hours in an office at a much lower productivity. Another difference (for me) is that the kind of projects I work on and the clients I work for give me a greater chance of financial success at this point in life compared to a more typical job. It may not be a greater pay-per-hour result when you factor in the hours I work, but I have much more opportunity to be part of a winning ($$$) outcome than I did in the corporate world. And finally, one of my favorite perks is that I can work from anywhere in the world. It's not always easy to work for a month from a Caribbean island while squeezing in scuba certifications, but it makes life a lot more interesting than walking into the same building every day. I doubt I'll ever walk into an office again for anything more than a week or two at a time. Finances aside, that gives me the feeling that I have _won_ the rat race.

yAnonymous 9y ago
>It's not always easy to work for a month from a Caribbean island while squeezing in scuba certifications (ง'-')ง
- andrewflnr 9y ago
  Is that a fisticuffs emoticon? I'm stealing it.
  - blunte 9y ago
    In this case I think it's a flex muscles illustration. Either way, it works!
  - NeoBasilisk 9y ago

arca_vorago 9y ago

On the subject, what are the best places to find remote jobs? (I'm a linux oriented senior sysadmin, currently going to school for data science)

scarlac 9y ago

It's great to hear that some people manage to love working remotely. In this case, there's /some/ difference in time zones (3h). Generally, people don't seem to mention the time zone difference in the commentary each time articles like this gets posted on HN, but I'd actually love to hear where people are working remote from/to, since there can literally be a night and day difference.

riprock 9y ago

Does Stripe (presumably where they work) still allow full-time remote work? I looked at their job board and it seems like none of the job posts are for remote positions.

jvns 9y ago
I can't speak for the job board, but there are dozens of full-time remote developers (including me, obviously), and I see remotes devs being hired frequently.

rsbartram 9y ago

I lived and worked remotely for 3.5 years from Lima Peru and it was a life changing event. Learning how to generate income with just an internet connection and my sales and marketing skills I learned in my professional life was a process but have definitely paid off. Having control over your environment is a peaceful and rejuvenating process for your body. Discipline is probably the most important characteristic needed to work remotely. If you don't have it, get it or don't try it.

inertiatic 9y ago

Best thing about reading more and more success stories of working remotely online is, for someone hoping to make the jump eventually, that there does indeed seem to be a trend. I'm not sure there's much valuable advice however, as the way you should set up your process seems pretty obvious once you really decide that including remote workers is a high priority.

nickjj 9y ago

I've been working remotely for close to 20 years, but it's all been a bunch of short contracts (days to months). I've worked with people from all over the world across many different time zones. Email, Google Hangouts / Skype, IRC and Slack are all what I use on a regular basis to communicate with clients and it works out well. I offset working alone from my place of residence by going outside a bunch of times per day for exercise and talking with people around the neighborhood. I also try to goto local tech meetups when I can. Overall I would say I feel happy and generally feel like I'm making the best use of my time. I don't think I would trade this life style in for anything (within reason :D).

joncrane 9y ago
What level of urbanization is your neighborhood?
- nickjj 9y ago
  Typical suburbs. Nothing like a big city, but houses and small businesses are all over the place.

dizzystar 9y ago

I think working remotely has it's pluses and minuses. I'm a few years in and have only had one in-office programming contract. The positive is that I am entirely focused on GSD. I'm not sure about everywhere, but the place I was in-house at was fairly sparse and focused as well. I dread the thought of ever working at a place with pool tables or other distractions. Working remotely puts a lot of trust in my work. They trust that I'm doing what I say I'm doing when I track hours. I've never had an issue disputing hours, so that's not a negative. Working remotely pegs you as one of the smart ones. Apparently I earned the right to work remotely? I don't know, it's just work to me, but I also do a lot of short-term contracts, so the image is probably different. This leads to the big downside. Out of sight, out of mind, out of personally caring. This somewhat goes both ways, but it's difficult to make text friends. Humans are simply wired for face-to-face, and I don't think Skype really replaces that. This causes some problems with impedance. If I ask a question, I would need an answer right away because that's likely a blocking issue. If everyone else is on lunch, in a meeting, and so on, it leaves me hanging. A positive is seeing a whole lot of codebases. It really helps you understand where you and everyone else is in the pecking order. It also brings up a lot of issues surrounding the meaning of good -vs- bad code, experts programmers, and so on. Exposure has shown me that these concepts are murky at best. A negative is that some companies try to pay lower, selling remote work as a benefit. It isn't. I often have to split my day and work odd hours to keep myself on the same page as everyone else, nullifying whatever inconvenience I gain from not going to and from a local company. But, really, it all comes down the company that you are working with. It is obvious when they haven't worked with outside developers, so I think it's a lot more about the company than the actual ability to work remotely. Remote work is just work, and I don't think that, outside of direct human interaction and speed of communication, there is a significant difference between in-house and remote. Either way, code is written and shipped.

err4nt 9y ago

I have been self employed, working from wherever, for just shy of 7 years now. Overall the experience has been life-changing in a positive way, and I would highly recommend people try this arrangement at least once in their careers to see if the tradeoffs give them an advantage. Here are some benefits, in no particular order: - I have the flexibility to rearrange my days so I never have to take time off work for things like shopping, errands, appointments, visits, meetings, and even events I want to attend during the day - Because I can choose when I work, I am able to capture my most creative and productive times during the day for work, and spend my downtime doing chores or things that require little creativity - By changing my surroundings according to my mood, I can 'hack' my productivity to a small extent (going to a lively environment when I feel unmotivated, isolating myself when I need to focus and block out interruptions, etc) - I don't have a set wake up time, nor a set bed time. If I need to work late one day and it works to my advantage to stay up later rather than break, I can 'push' my next day back And here are some downsides, in no particular order: - You can go a little stir-crazy working from home too much, the onus is on your to get out of the house and surround yourself with other people to stay social - Sometimes you will find yourself pushing life out of the way to make room for work because of the same flexibility that lets you push work out of the way for life sometimes. Not having set hours is a blessing and a curse at times, but overall beneficial - It can be hard to gauge how you stack up to others if you're not seeing other people doing the same kind of work as you are. Some people are self-starters and compete against themselves for continual improvement, but if you lack in this area it can be a struggle to not stagnate and get too comfy in your role For me, the benefits have far outweighed the downsides, and I can't imagine ever going back to the 9–5, butt-in-chair-all-day kind of work arrangement. I feel that by working remotely I am doing my best work ever, and I have the freedom and flexibility to improve myself too!

keyboardmonkey 9y ago

14 years as 100% remote... living in the middle of nowhere, 40 acres of land to run around and enjoy (fly huge model planes at lunch time, fire up the bbq with the wife and fams, etc etc) and life is good. I have a reclining workstation that has helped for a number of reasons, but it's made from a chair that's light enough to carry out to the back porch when the weather is nice. Some companies like to take a little off the top of your pay due to being remote, but if you go looking in the right spots you can get remote work at bigger city salaries. Even when the pay was shorted a little, the lifestyle more than makes up for it. ...make sure that you get enough personal interaction (the hardest and most important depending just how "remote" you are), and make sure that you appreciate the lifestyle perk that it is, and be happy. As much as I love it, it's really not for everyone... I've seen some people be allowed to go remote, move away from the office, not be able to deal with the remoteness and quit. It happens.

draw_down 9y ago

The whole reason remote work is feasible, is that the problems we deal with, as well as the politics of the companies we work for, transcend place. In other words, it’s the same as working in an office as far as the actual work and the working relationships are concerned. Sure you video chat more, and eat lunch together less, and try to find ways of addressing that difference. But, in many ways it’s the same. I wish I felt as ecstatic as some of my fellow commenters here claim to. But ultimately, it’s just another way of working, and the basic unpleasantness of working in corporate America/tech industry remains. Don’t get me wrong, I relish the ability to do my laundry when nothing is going on. But it’s not really that different, and the things that bum me out about working are mostly not to do with office space, though I do lament the move to open offices.