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I've been working remotely for 2 years now and have begun to crave an on-site job. I'm rejecting remote offers nowadays because I really want to move to a diffe

I've been working remotely for 2 years now and have begun to crave an on-site job. I'm rejecting remote offers nowadays because I really want to move to a different country and work with great engineers in an office where we can talk in person and not over Slack all the time. It gets tedious and lonely when the nerdiest person I know around me is me. I can't even talk to my friends or family about the clever hacks I did because they couldn't begin to understand the complexity. I mean, sure, I give dumbed down versions all the time: but they're always met with a customary pat on the back (with a smile) and we move onto another topic that we all know very well.

PenguinCoder 8y ago
Wow, this is surprising to me. I am the exact opposite position. I am rejecting offers that want relocation or NOT offering remote work. I get my social interaction from a few close friends and feel way less anxiety about not having to play office politics to get ahead. As another commentor said, it's especially a huge benefit to me in terms of getting my own te back instead of having a dreadful commute as well.
- amingilani 8y ago
  I suppose there are a lot of other factors at play here as well. You probably still have other physical developer friends, while I'm self-taught and graduated from an unrelated field. My friends aren't technical. I hate commuting as well, but I also feel super unsafe in my country. An acquaintance of mine was running an educational platform online teaching basic and advanced blockchain development courses; their offices were raided because our federal government's investigative wing saw "Bitcoin". Every RTI requires a lawsuit to compel compliance. And so on.
  - PenguinCoder 8y ago
    I do not have any developer friends in the real world. The closest technical minded friends I have are at the level of IT helpdesk. That's okay to me; their technical chops aren't why they are my friends :)
- matt_the_bass 8y ago
  Why do you think there are no office politics for remote positions? Conversely, why do you think that on site must have more politics? Maybe I’m an outlier, but at the company I built there is VERY little office politics. Most of us work onsite most of the time, but most of us also work remote sometimes. Some of my colleagues are about 50/50 in the office. We try to coordinate similar remote schedules to maximize in person communication when people are in the office. We seem to be doing well with most engineers staying at least 5 years and many staying over 15.
  - amingilani 8y ago
    I definitely feel that remote work reduces politics and I'm valued in terms of my performance than anything else. Your organization may have less politics than most, and I commend you but it's easier for politics to creep in on-site. But when your performance is tracked empirically for everyone in the organization to see, everyone knows how much you're worth.
  - PenguinCoder 8y ago
    Oh I'm not meaning to say there are no office politics for remote positions, or for any office role. Just that as a remote employee, I deal LESS with that than on if I were on site. Constantly being a party to those things versus when "someone" specifically chooses to involve me, the remote employee. Being remote, I don't -have- to participate in those politics as a course of just doing my job daily. Whereas when I Was on-site, I seemed to have been pulled into it regardless.

PenguinCoder 8y ago

Wow, this is surprising to me. I am the exact opposite position. I am rejecting offers that want relocation or NOT offering remote work. I get my social interaction from a few close friends and feel way less anxiety about not having to play office politics to get ahead. As another commentor said, it's especially a huge benefit to me in terms of getting my own te back instead of having a dreadful commute as well.

amingilani 8y ago
I suppose there are a lot of other factors at play here as well. You probably still have other physical developer friends, while I'm self-taught and graduated from an unrelated field. My friends aren't technical. I hate commuting as well, but I also feel super unsafe in my country. An acquaintance of mine was running an educational platform online teaching basic and advanced blockchain development courses; their offices were raided because our federal government's investigative wing saw "Bitcoin". Every RTI requires a lawsuit to compel compliance. And so on.
- PenguinCoder 8y ago
  I do not have any developer friends in the real world. The closest technical minded friends I have are at the level of IT helpdesk. That's okay to me; their technical chops aren't why they are my friends :)
matt_the_bass 8y ago
Why do you think there are no office politics for remote positions? Conversely, why do you think that on site must have more politics? Maybe I’m an outlier, but at the company I built there is VERY little office politics. Most of us work onsite most of the time, but most of us also work remote sometimes. Some of my colleagues are about 50/50 in the office. We try to coordinate similar remote schedules to maximize in person communication when people are in the office. We seem to be doing well with most engineers staying at least 5 years and many staying over 15.
- amingilani 8y ago
  I definitely feel that remote work reduces politics and I'm valued in terms of my performance than anything else. Your organization may have less politics than most, and I commend you but it's easier for politics to creep in on-site. But when your performance is tracked empirically for everyone in the organization to see, everyone knows how much you're worth.
- PenguinCoder 8y ago
  Oh I'm not meaning to say there are no office politics for remote positions, or for any office role. Just that as a remote employee, I deal LESS with that than on if I were on site. Constantly being a party to those things versus when "someone" specifically chooses to involve me, the remote employee. Being remote, I don't -have- to participate in those politics as a course of just doing my job daily. Whereas when I Was on-site, I seemed to have been pulled into it regardless.