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Both Remote work and office work can be really great for certain people at certain times. When I was younger I was full-time remote for more than five years, a

Both Remote work and office work can be really great for certain people at certain times. When I was younger I was full-time remote for more than five years, and at the time I enjoyed it. There was some difficulty separating work from life when it all happened in one apartment, but overall it was a good fit. Then I had kids, and that distinction became much harder. Little children have a really hard time understanding that mom or dad is right there in the other room but can’t play now. At that point moving to an office job became a really nice change. As a hiring manager, what I’ve found is that there aren’t so many people who truly want to work from home all the time. Rather, what most people want is flexibility and compromise. For example: - “I want to work from home on Tuesdays and Thursdays so I can easily pick my kids up from pre-school over my lunch break.” - “I want to live in (insert almost any city here) where I grew up and have roots, but there aren’t many good jobs.” Or the similar variation, “I want to live in (place that is very cheap or pretty or both)...” - “My wife and I want to be able to visit both sides of our family that live far away, and the logistics would be a lot easier if I could work remotely for a week here and there to make that work, rather than need 3 extra weeks of vacation.” The best thing about remote is that all that flexibility and freedom is just built into the job, and in my experience it’s easier to find a full-remote job than an office job with comparable flexibility. The downside is you don’t get the fun and energizing environment of working with neat, smart people in person, nor the work/life separation that many people find very helpful. I think most people’s stated preference just reflects which one of those is more important to them in their present circumstances.

brogrammernot 7y ago
This times a hundred thousand percent. I’m battling this hard right now at my workplace, some of my developers live a good 45 min drive from work and that’s just insane to ask them to be in their car for 7.5 hours/week. So what did I do? I went “against” the company policy and had each of my team members work at least 1 day a week from home, now they’re up to 2-3 days depending on the week (humorous part is during the summer they’re in the office more cause it’s more quiet than home cause their kids are out for the summer lol) So we’re still a “work from office” company but I run our team how I want and surprise - zero attrition in 3 years on my team, we meet most of our commitments, developer happiness/engagement is up on my team, our time to first response for production issues is great and all because of a mutual understanding that regardless of the “rules” I’ll take care of my guys/gals.
- alunchbox 7y ago
  You sound just like my new employer, great job on managing the low attrition rates and keeping the workplace a comfortable environment for everyone!
- yitchelle 7y ago
  Interested to hear how HR and OH&S are able to reconcile the situation so that everything is legal. We had a tough situation my workplace to get this going. Once a framework is available and all the legals are checked, it went smoothly.
  - wool_gather 7y ago
    I'm curious what the legal issues would be; could you expand on your concerns?
    - joncrane 7y ago
      Data protection and worker's comp in my experience.
    - JustFinishedBSG 7y ago
      Insurance when the employee is not here I guess
    - ghaff 7y ago
      I assume one potential issue is the question of where people are actually working from. Although in my experience, most people have an official location even if they’re rarely there. It may differ with consultants etc. who may be working from a customer site for months.
      - spyspy 7y ago
        We were told that for tax purposes, employees are only allowed to work in states/countries that already have an established office. My company has offices all over the place so it's not particularly restrictive but still a strict limit from working _anywhere_.
alistairSH 7y ago
You nailed it. Our HQ is outside DC and most new hires (at least one my product) are local. But, we have great flexibility - we can work from home on demand from day 1. And we regularly let employees go permanently remote when their personal situations change. Prospective employees are always glad to hear that's one of the perks working here. Especially those that come from government contracts, where being on-site with a client is generally preferred, if not required.
- tillcarlos 7y ago
  > But, we have great flexibility - we can work from home on demand from day 1 Is there a policy that defines it? Is there a limit? Would love to hear your experience as I'm doing some research into this right now.
  - alistairSH 7y ago
    We don't have a policy beyond "be flexible". Some teams/managers are more open to full-time remote, but everybody within my product line (12 teams spread across US and Bangalore) are ok with part-time and full-time remote. I doubt we'd hire a manager that didn't agree. Younger employees (college hire to 3 years or so) tend to be hired locally, with increasing levels of work-from-home allowed as time goes on, but we're flexible from day 1 in terms of "work from home to let in the plumber" type stuff. Generally, after a few months, we'll allow regularly scheduled work-from-home for "I need T/Th to do day care runs" stuff. And several a year go full-time remote, usually to flee DC real estate prices and traffic. Mid-career employees, we'll hire remote from day 1. With 1/3 of my product's staff in Bangalore, we have to be good at remote work anyway, so there's little, if any, cost to allowing US-based employees to work wherever they want.
pmiller2 7y ago
> As a hiring manager, what I’ve found is that there aren’t so many people who truly want to work from home all the time. I think you might be surprised how many people truly want to give up 40 of their best hours a week at all. Reality is that most people need to work for an income, which, as you’ve laid out for remote work, allows them to do things that they want to do with their lives. I know many people who would quit working today if their rent was paid, food guaranteed to be on the table, and they could travel a little or pursue some other hobbies.
- burlesona 7y ago
  Sure, I agree there are probably a large percentage of people who would opt not to work at all if they had the choice. But I know there are also a lot of people who love their work and would want “work to do” whether they needed money or not. Probably the biggest gap is that most people (have to) choose work based on pay, rather than choosing based on what they enjoy spending their time on.
- bpyne 7y ago
  My employer let me drop to 25 hours/week when I went to grad school. Twenty-five turned out to be a sweet spot. I enjoyed accomplishing goals for my employer each day and had an extra 3 hours daily for family and personal goals. It was the happiest I've ever been in my career. My manager let me work from home as needed during that time. Just having the power to make the decision gave me satisfaction. I used it when I needed it but went in otherwise.
duxup 7y ago
> Rather, what most people want is flexibility and compromise. Yup that's all I want. I want to be in the office for many things, and I wouldn't want to do them remotely. Important meetings, and discussions, just getting to know people, I want to be there. et other times home to get some life tasks done easier (kids), or just hunker down and pound out some work for a while. My love for remote work isn't "remote only" but a lot of news stories about "remote" really mix the ideas and "remote often" and "remote only" are very very different ideas for me.
lostmymind66 7y ago
I've been working remotely for over a decade. I love it because I get to spend more time with my family and have more time to work on my side business. This is mostly because there is no commute. I also have an office (I rent it myself) that I can go to if I want to get away from my house. I really don't want a job that's partially remote. I enjoy working 100% remote. Work/life balance really depends on discipline. I turn everything off at around 5pm, unless there is an emergency. Managers also need to know how to manage remote employees. I've run into issues where a manager doesn't know how to effectively communicate over email/skype, etc, and it results in miscommunications.
- burlesona 7y ago
  How long were you remote before you got the office? In my last year or so of remote I finally went for a cowork space, which was helpful. In the end, an office worked better for me, but I agree the commute sucks. Since I didn’t have one at all for years, I’m very conscious of all the lost time in transit each week, even though my commute is pretty short by local standards (~25’).
  - lostmymind66 7y ago
    "How long were you remote before you got the office?" I was remote for a couple of years from home, traveled around Asia for a year (while still remote), and got an office when I got back (7 years ago). "Since I didn’t have one at all for years, I’m very conscious of all the lost time in transit each week, even though my commute is pretty short by local standards (~25’)." It's more than just that. While I did enjoy having coworkers to socialize with, I realized it wasted lots of time during the day. I can get things done with virtually no interruptions and it's great. I regularly meet people through meetup groups in my area, so I still get to socialize. Just not at work (aside from Webex meetings/phone calls).
codingdave 7y ago
I've been working remotely for most of my children's lives. Kids learn. Yes, there are some days where they don't understand, but you teach them and everything works out fine. That is no more of a learning curve than all people go through when learning to work remotely. Communication is different, work schedules differ... kids just part of the process of learning to work well in a remote environment. As far as flexibility goes, I prefer remote work. I'm OK with office work is the commute is short. But I hate 100% flexibility. I do appreciate the ability to make exceptions to the norm as needed, but if everyone is 100% flexible, I find that is just makes you unsure where people are going to be each day, and doesn't really focus the working habits into one mold or the other. Either way can work, but the least productive teams I've ever been on have been mixed between remote and office.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
GordonS 7y ago
I've been working remotely for years, since before I had kids and now when I do, and it works great for me. I get to have breakfast and lunch with my family every day, which also means I can help out with the kids. I get more sleep, since I don't need to spend half an hour in the car (and when I do go into the office, I have to get up earlier, because traffic). I think the key to having this work well, especially when you have kids, is to have a separate room setup as a home office, so you can close the door and be in work mode. I know it might be a luxury that not everyone can afford, but personally I wouldn't work remotely without it.
retiredcoder 7y ago
Your points are balanced and reflects quite well what I look for. I usually have the mindset to be in everyday of the week 9-5 and that’s how I start my week. But realistically, as the week progress, life gets in the way, I stay late one day in the office, wake up a bit late, etc. So by end of week I am always getting in around 10:30 or just working from home. Also, as honest as I can be, I deliver much more and don’t see my job as a burden/stressor if they grant me this autonomy. It is funny but my wife much rather have me 9-5 because I work less hours this way.
ivanhoe 7y ago
> Then I had kids, and that distinction became much harder. The solution is to rent an office for yourself, or you can work from co-working hubs if you're more on the extrovert side. Even without kids having a separate work space helps a lot in keeping the work/life balance in check.

brogrammernot 7y ago

This times a hundred thousand percent. I’m battling this hard right now at my workplace, some of my developers live a good 45 min drive from work and that’s just insane to ask them to be in their car for 7.5 hours/week. So what did I do? I went “against” the company policy and had each of my team members work at least 1 day a week from home, now they’re up to 2-3 days depending on the week (humorous part is during the summer they’re in the office more cause it’s more quiet than home cause their kids are out for the summer lol) So we’re still a “work from office” company but I run our team how I want and surprise - zero attrition in 3 years on my team, we meet most of our commitments, developer happiness/engagement is up on my team, our time to first response for production issues is great and all because of a mutual understanding that regardless of the “rules” I’ll take care of my guys/gals.

alunchbox 7y ago
You sound just like my new employer, great job on managing the low attrition rates and keeping the workplace a comfortable environment for everyone!
yitchelle 7y ago
Interested to hear how HR and OH&S are able to reconcile the situation so that everything is legal. We had a tough situation my workplace to get this going. Once a framework is available and all the legals are checked, it went smoothly.
- wool_gather 7y ago
  I'm curious what the legal issues would be; could you expand on your concerns?
  - joncrane 7y ago
    Data protection and worker's comp in my experience.
  - JustFinishedBSG 7y ago
    Insurance when the employee is not here I guess
  - ghaff 7y ago
    I assume one potential issue is the question of where people are actually working from. Although in my experience, most people have an official location even if they’re rarely there. It may differ with consultants etc. who may be working from a customer site for months.
    - spyspy 7y ago
      We were told that for tax purposes, employees are only allowed to work in states/countries that already have an established office. My company has offices all over the place so it's not particularly restrictive but still a strict limit from working _anywhere_.

alistairSH 7y ago

You nailed it. Our HQ is outside DC and most new hires (at least one my product) are local. But, we have great flexibility - we can work from home on demand from day 1. And we regularly let employees go permanently remote when their personal situations change. Prospective employees are always glad to hear that's one of the perks working here. Especially those that come from government contracts, where being on-site with a client is generally preferred, if not required.

tillcarlos 7y ago
> But, we have great flexibility - we can work from home on demand from day 1 Is there a policy that defines it? Is there a limit? Would love to hear your experience as I'm doing some research into this right now.
- alistairSH 7y ago
  We don't have a policy beyond "be flexible". Some teams/managers are more open to full-time remote, but everybody within my product line (12 teams spread across US and Bangalore) are ok with part-time and full-time remote. I doubt we'd hire a manager that didn't agree. Younger employees (college hire to 3 years or so) tend to be hired locally, with increasing levels of work-from-home allowed as time goes on, but we're flexible from day 1 in terms of "work from home to let in the plumber" type stuff. Generally, after a few months, we'll allow regularly scheduled work-from-home for "I need T/Th to do day care runs" stuff. And several a year go full-time remote, usually to flee DC real estate prices and traffic. Mid-career employees, we'll hire remote from day 1. With 1/3 of my product's staff in Bangalore, we have to be good at remote work anyway, so there's little, if any, cost to allowing US-based employees to work wherever they want.

pmiller2 7y ago

> As a hiring manager, what I’ve found is that there aren’t so many people who truly want to work from home all the time. I think you might be surprised how many people truly want to give up 40 of their best hours a week at all. Reality is that most people need to work for an income, which, as you’ve laid out for remote work, allows them to do things that they want to do with their lives. I know many people who would quit working today if their rent was paid, food guaranteed to be on the table, and they could travel a little or pursue some other hobbies.

burlesona 7y ago
Sure, I agree there are probably a large percentage of people who would opt not to work at all if they had the choice. But I know there are also a lot of people who love their work and would want “work to do” whether they needed money or not. Probably the biggest gap is that most people (have to) choose work based on pay, rather than choosing based on what they enjoy spending their time on.
bpyne 7y ago
My employer let me drop to 25 hours/week when I went to grad school. Twenty-five turned out to be a sweet spot. I enjoyed accomplishing goals for my employer each day and had an extra 3 hours daily for family and personal goals. It was the happiest I've ever been in my career. My manager let me work from home as needed during that time. Just having the power to make the decision gave me satisfaction. I used it when I needed it but went in otherwise.

duxup 7y ago

> Rather, what most people want is flexibility and compromise. Yup that's all I want. I want to be in the office for many things, and I wouldn't want to do them remotely. Important meetings, and discussions, just getting to know people, I want to be there. et other times home to get some life tasks done easier (kids), or just hunker down and pound out some work for a while. My love for remote work isn't "remote only" but a lot of news stories about "remote" really mix the ideas and "remote often" and "remote only" are very very different ideas for me.

lostmymind66 7y ago

I've been working remotely for over a decade. I love it because I get to spend more time with my family and have more time to work on my side business. This is mostly because there is no commute. I also have an office (I rent it myself) that I can go to if I want to get away from my house. I really don't want a job that's partially remote. I enjoy working 100% remote. Work/life balance really depends on discipline. I turn everything off at around 5pm, unless there is an emergency. Managers also need to know how to manage remote employees. I've run into issues where a manager doesn't know how to effectively communicate over email/skype, etc, and it results in miscommunications.

burlesona 7y ago
How long were you remote before you got the office? In my last year or so of remote I finally went for a cowork space, which was helpful. In the end, an office worked better for me, but I agree the commute sucks. Since I didn’t have one at all for years, I’m very conscious of all the lost time in transit each week, even though my commute is pretty short by local standards (~25’).
- lostmymind66 7y ago
  "How long were you remote before you got the office?" I was remote for a couple of years from home, traveled around Asia for a year (while still remote), and got an office when I got back (7 years ago). "Since I didn’t have one at all for years, I’m very conscious of all the lost time in transit each week, even though my commute is pretty short by local standards (~25’)." It's more than just that. While I did enjoy having coworkers to socialize with, I realized it wasted lots of time during the day. I can get things done with virtually no interruptions and it's great. I regularly meet people through meetup groups in my area, so I still get to socialize. Just not at work (aside from Webex meetings/phone calls).

codingdave 7y ago

I've been working remotely for most of my children's lives. Kids learn. Yes, there are some days where they don't understand, but you teach them and everything works out fine. That is no more of a learning curve than all people go through when learning to work remotely. Communication is different, work schedules differ... kids just part of the process of learning to work well in a remote environment. As far as flexibility goes, I prefer remote work. I'm OK with office work is the commute is short. But I hate 100% flexibility. I do appreciate the ability to make exceptions to the norm as needed, but if everyone is 100% flexible, I find that is just makes you unsure where people are going to be each day, and doesn't really focus the working habits into one mold or the other. Either way can work, but the least productive teams I've ever been on have been mixed between remote and office.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

GordonS 7y ago

I've been working remotely for years, since before I had kids and now when I do, and it works great for me. I get to have breakfast and lunch with my family every day, which also means I can help out with the kids. I get more sleep, since I don't need to spend half an hour in the car (and when I do go into the office, I have to get up earlier, because traffic). I think the key to having this work well, especially when you have kids, is to have a separate room setup as a home office, so you can close the door and be in work mode. I know it might be a luxury that not everyone can afford, but personally I wouldn't work remotely without it.

retiredcoder 7y ago

Your points are balanced and reflects quite well what I look for. I usually have the mindset to be in everyday of the week 9-5 and that’s how I start my week. But realistically, as the week progress, life gets in the way, I stay late one day in the office, wake up a bit late, etc. So by end of week I am always getting in around 10:30 or just working from home. Also, as honest as I can be, I deliver much more and don’t see my job as a burden/stressor if they grant me this autonomy. It is funny but my wife much rather have me 9-5 because I work less hours this way.

ivanhoe 7y ago

> Then I had kids, and that distinction became much harder. The solution is to rent an office for yourself, or you can work from co-working hubs if you're more on the extrovert side. Even without kids having a separate work space helps a lot in keeping the work/life balance in check.