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Why aren’t more companies remote-first?

• so-informative 7y ago
  Gee, hacker news. I was wondering the same thing! Could you please explain to me the headline, and tell me how to think? I think you for your time and effort!
• konschubert 7y ago
  Because it's much harder to keep people motivated and it's harder to create an environment with efficient communication. -------------------------------------------- EDIT: I actually love the idea of remote work and I would love it to succeed. I believe that if a company is 100% remote and adopts it processes accordingly, it might work. I still think that for a traditional onsite business, it's very, very hard to include remote people into the process in a way that keeps them happy and included. PS: You also have to distinguish between "remote" and "async", which do not necessarily need to go hand in hand.
  • ekhornung 7y ago
    I can definitely see that in a non remote first company, but what about a company where remote is in their DNA? I spent some time reading through alley.co ‘s manual on this yesterday and it seems like if you put a lot of thought into it you could mitigate some of that. https://info.alley.co/remote-work https://info.alley.co/remote-work
    • athenot 7y ago
      Yes, you need to put in some thought but it's possible, even for a large organization. Here at Cisco it's about half/half and it lets us dogfood our own collab tools (Webex Teams, telepresence gear, etc).
  • dajonker 7y ago
    Totally agree, although sometimes I feel like I might as well work remote when people sitting next to me start talking to me on Slack. Yes, I'm wearing noise-cancelling headphones most of the time, but that's because we have a very noisy open office with support and sales people and music.
    • joncrane 7y ago
      Do you actually prefer for people to tap you on the shoulder or wave their hand to get your attention?
  • codingdave 7y ago
    I would say it is different, not harder. It requires different styles of leadership and communication, and when you do gather in person, your time needs to be spent differently. It only seems hard if you've never done it and have to learn new habits while losing old ones.
  • JustSomeNobody 7y ago
    I work remote. Have been for 5 years. > Because it's much harder to keep people motivated... What? Are the beatings about to commence? I stay motivated because I enjoy the product I work on. I stay motivated because I'm trusted to complete the work I promise to complete. If a company hires well, they won't have to "keep people motivated." > ... and it's harder to create an environment with efficient communication. Not really. Follow up every important conversation with an email. Do that and you're 99% there.
    • mercutio2 7y ago
      Not every employee has an abundance of intrinsic motivation that pushes them through the day. Many, many people require some extrinsic motivation. In practice, at a reasonably sane workplace, most of this motivation comes from peer pressure of watching your coworkers work hard, not from a manager swinging a hammer. But the extrinsic motivation of colocated coworkers is still very important for many people.
      • JustSomeNobody 7y ago
        > I stay motivated because I'm trusted to complete the work I promise to complete. Part of that is due to peer pressure of not wanting to let my team down. That still exists outside of an office. I believe more people can be trusted to do the right thing than "butts in seats" managers think.
  • gkilmain 7y ago
    Communication is key. Whenever I need direction on a particular problem or opinions on an approach face to face wins (for me) every time.
  • stakhanov 7y ago
    Having clocked several years with remote-only companies and several years with traditional onsite jobs, I would say that, ironically, remote companies have better communication. On any given 8-hour workday, I would probably clock several hours' worth of communication in various shapes and forms at remote companies. For onsite, many of my days might be spent sitting next to a bunch of people in an open plan office not ever exchanging a word.
    • konschubert 7y ago
      Various hours spent per day on communication sounds rather inefficient though.
      • stakhanov 7y ago
        Not at all: In my experience communication is 50% of the job as a software engineer. It's 100% of the job as a software engineering manager of sorts. And remote communication is way more efficient. Things like text chat, comments in ticket systems or project management systems like asana etc are "soft interrupts" that I find surprisingly frictionless. I can stay in concentration until I've reached a natural interrupt of sorts, then answer chat messages or read up on tickets, ask clarifying questions or loop in more people (sending out a soft interrupt, but not waiting for replies), get back into concentration, and restart the loop at the next interrupt. The alternative: It is now 9:35am. You know you have to leave at 9:55 to get to your 10:00 meeting in the meeting room that's 5 minutes away. But 20 minutes is not enough to get into concentration, so you spend that time procrastinating. At 10:00 you're there. At 10:10, the asshole who is always late shows up. The meeting takes 50 minutes, because the only reason to EVER end a meeting is getting kicked out of the meeting room. In this case it was booked for the 10:00-11:00 slot. You spend 5 more minutes walking back to your desk. Within the 50mins of meeting time, you were talking for 5 minutes. 10 minutes of the other speakers' time contained information you actually needed. You arrive at your desk at 11:05. That's 90 minutes flushed down the tube that could have been 15 minutes' worth of text chat, and the timing basically prevents deep work for maybe that first half of that workday.
  • rorykoehler 7y ago
    Remote and async are definitely two separate concepts. I'm a remote CTO but I'm very much sync. I do afford some async to devs though
• loose11 7y ago
  I cant find anything about mental health, right?
• icxa 7y ago
  All of these can be viewed as fallacies to another who has experienced long stretches of remote-only work. It is simply one person's take. Why aren't more companies remote-first? It isn't as popular as it sounds like it is in tech circles, it isn't a silver bullet to the "problem" of work, and it comes with its own set of unique challenges and problems.
• gesman 7y ago
  I'd say "Environment" is on of the biggest reasons. Traffic, pollution, living costs could all be improved by government mandating and stimulating remote-first policies. Without government taking a stance - corporate bureaucrats will insist on usual 9-5 "come to work" nonsense.
• BrentOzar 7y ago
  As a small business owner who’s had remote employees across the US, there are two big problems. (These are specifically about remote employees, not remote contractors.) First, to pay payroll taxes to employees who live in different states, you have to jump through a bunch of hoops with each state’s government. For example, when we had an employee living in Colorado, we had to set up a business relationship with the state of Colorado - using a fax machine. They literally wouldn’t accept paperwork any other way - it had to be via fax. Later, when that employee moved to another state, we had to tear down our relationship with Colorado (or else keep paying business fees to Colorado), plus set up tax paperwork with the employee’s new state. All of this cost us time & money. Second, health insurance was a lot more complex. We wanted to offer the best possible health insurance to all of our employees, but health insurance companies make that massively complicated, with various rules about where the majority of staff lived, where each person lived, which plans were available in which states, etc. If I could do it all over again, I probably would have just given each employee an allowance to use on their local state’s open health insurance market, but that’s a hot mess too.
  • ekhornung 7y ago
    that sounds like a nightmare with CO. I have heard about the nightmare of fully remote outside of the US, but I didn’t realize it was so bad within in
  • rando444 7y ago
    This was my take as well. I am doubtful the author is truly managing people carelessly across 14 time zones without jumping through significant legal hoops, or is rather hiring contractors instead that manage their own legal responsibilities.
  • mac01021 7y ago
    These are definitely real problems. It's possible to have a remote company that only hires employees in one or a few states, though. As an employee, I would much rather work for one of those than one that required me to work from a specific office.
    • 7y ago
• Kiro 7y ago
  > And before I knew it, the clock said 10:30 and I hadn’t accomplished a single thing on my to-do list. Add 6 hours to that and that pretty much sums up how productive most people would be with the freedom of working from home without being monitored.
  • CuriouslyC 7y ago
    If you have a to-do list that is public, and nothing gets done, that is your accountability right there.
    • Kiro 7y ago
      To-do lists are too easy to game. Just add a bunch of nonsense and exaggerate the complexity of your tasks.
      • CuriouslyC 7y ago
        And that is different from how people game any other metric how? You realize that boss buttons and quick alt tabs are a thing with butts-in-seats, so that's not game-proof either. For all the rhetoric about enhancing communication, I'm pretty sure open offices are mostly about getting people to police their coworkers.
  • clarry 7y ago
    Just like nobody ever did their homework? Because after all, nobody sees you not do it and nobody cares if it's not done when it was supposed to be done. And nobody bats an eye when the feature you talked about in the previous standup or meeting somehow mystically never materialized in the project's repo... nobody cares that you never were there to answer your colleagues' needs. Or, you know, maybe people can actually get things done even without a surveillance camera monitoring their butt in seat. The good thing about remote work is that results and communication (i.e. things that matter) are the things people see.
• Sahhaese 7y ago
  Am I the exception? I think Remote work sucks. I'd rather have proximity to co-workers so we can easily share ideas in informal ways. Sometimes you don't want to formally disperse some information but are happy to let people overhear what you think. An environment where people can find meeting rooms when they need them, can find peace and quiet when they need them but also generally have co-location means good team cohesion. If developers are remote, you will find that your code-base becomes the same. That critical FooBarAdapter becomes something that only Naimh can work on because without co-location if another developer is stuck on it, rather than grabbing her for a "Can you look at this?" over the shoulder, it gets slung over the fence in an issue or pull request. Yes, when working face to face too many (formal) meetings can be a problem, but don't abolish co-location just abolish the meetings. And don't be a cubicle farm. Yes, if you think the alternative to remote work is an anonymous grey cubicle on the 5th floor of an anonymous office block (or just as bad, the 'trendy' exposed ducts open plan office), then remote work will look like nirvana. Of course I'd also recommend being somewhere with good public transport and have flexible working hours so people aren't forced into long commutes in poluting personal transport. Also offer and allow occassional remote work to further ease that demand without losing the benefits of co-location. But whole-team remote work? No thanks!
  • WhompingWindows 7y ago
    If remote is the alternative to the open-office, chit-chat hellscape of non-cubicles and non-offices, I'll take remote 100%. If I have to choose between destroying my hearing long term with loud music to drown coworker's conversations and working from home, the decision is simple.
    • Raidion 7y ago
      This is far too reductionist. Of course there is a middle ground, from open work spaces that emphasize quiet (library style), to small "pods" that hold 6-10 people in a team, there are a lot of options that companies provide. You also do not have to "destroy your hearing with loud music" to avoid coworkers conversations. Earplugs are cheap and available, and industrial grade noise protection (25db+) is available for <50 bucks. Unless you're opposed to wearing any sort of headphone/earplug at all, then you have to heavily screen your potential employers to get the environment you want.
• nostalgk 7y ago
  I think that being flexible is much more important than having specifically remote employees. I personally would love if I could work even 2 days a week from home, giving me a lot more flexibility to clear up life admin (when's the last time anyone had time to go to the bank when it's open? not taking PTO for that...).
  • sureaboutthis 7y ago
    In a professional environment, I've always been able to take off for such things whenever I wanted without such things. "Hey, boss, I have to run to the bank. Be right back," was all that was required. I really didn't even have to tell the boss. Often a co-worker or a secretary would do.
  • koboll 7y ago
    Agreed. Sometimes I have heads-down days, where I really just want to immerse myself, and being around coworkers is distracting. And sometimes I have less structured days when informal conversations are more necessary. These are roughly analogous to stages of a sprint or project, so they're roughly synchronized across the team. Fully onsite and fully remote are both suboptimal.
  • deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  • loco5niner 7y ago
    Can't you just go on your lunch? Or even just put an 'out-of-office' hour on your calendar?
    • nostalgk 7y ago
      I work in a rural area, not in a city. No banks within lunch commute at all. All we really have is a Subway.
      • loco5niner 7y ago
        That's a reasonable reason. I would love more flexibility at my butts-in-seats company too, btw.
• sytse 7y ago
  I'll try to answer the question from my perspective as the CEO of GitLab with 650 people in 50 countries and shared offices. First of all as an industry we haven't agreed on a term. Remote first or remote friendly are used by companies that do have a headquarter but are open to remote work like Stripe. Since remote can have a negative connotation some companies like Wordpress like distributed but that is also used by companies that have offices in multiple locations. At GitLab we prefer to use all remote https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/ https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/ The three biggest companies as far as I know are Wordpress, InVision, and GitLab. Wordpress and InVision both have around 1000 people while we're 45% smaller. I've heard that InVision has people work east coast hours but that doesn't show in their job listings. I think remote will become much more popular. It saves people commuting time and gives them more flexibility to care for family, go to the gym at a convenient time, travel more, and deal with sick children. For the company you are able to hire outside of competitive metro areas and you save money by that https://about.gitlab.com/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-rates/ https://about.gitlab.com/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-rates/ and on office costs. It is early days for remote and it is still viewed as a risk by potential investors. But with tools like Zoom and better tools for asynchronous collaboration like InVision and GitLab I think it will become popular rapidly. Because you have to adjust you communication https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/communication/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/communication/ I think new startups will be all remote while existing companies will find it much harder to change.
  • cddotdotslash 7y ago
    One thing I've always been curious about is how you compensate remote employees that tend to move around a lot. Not necessarily full "digital nomads", but ones who say, have a mailing address in NYC or SF and spend > 50% of the year in Thailand or Europe. Is the location factor based exclusively on where the employee is paying taxes?
    • t3rabytes 7y ago
      I’m remote and my company pays SF rates no matter where you live, though I know a lot of companies localize based on employee location. I’m guessing people that are splitting time between the US and Europe are probably having their entire salary/paychecks deposited into an account in one country or the other to make the tax situation more bearable at the end of the year.
• _pmf_ 7y ago
  With presence, a manager's minimum qualification is being capable of comparing "number of hours in attendance required" vs. "number of hours present". Remote work raises the required minimum competency of managers, which most companies will avoid at all costs.
• aphextron 7y ago
  We just need to lose the idea of an 8 hour work day. It's an anachronism from the industrial revolution. Make me come in at 10AM, have standup, maybe a meeting or two, have lunch with colleagues, then everyone leaves by 2PM to work on their respective tasks. The problem with full work from home is that some people take advantage of it more than others, and you lose out on a lot of the "firm effect" that comes with face to face communication. The problem with 9-5 is rush hour, burn out, and inefficiency. Force everyone to show up 5 days a week for 4 hours and you get all the benefits of both.
  • _mcdougle 7y ago
    I really like this idea. I don't think 100% either way is good.
  • Circuits 7y ago
    Interesting you would say that. One of the biggest reasons I would want to work remote is because I can't afford to live in the town that I work in. Small town in Montana big city prices... no, I would definitely want to be able to choose where I live.
  • asark 7y ago
    Well, not all. No broadened talent pool, and you still have commutes. IIRC that's something like 25min each way on average, so (math math math) you're saving people on the order of 200 hours a year by eliminating them, plus gas, car maintenance, maybe making dropping a car possible for two-car households, and we're talking probably 400+ person-hours a year saved, in actual commute time and in hours worked just to pay for commuting.
    • KevinS626 7y ago
      I wish this was addressed more as a massive cost that only the employee must take on in order to even have a job. People have to risk their lives using a machine that they have to source themselves to come into an office everyday while not being compensated for that time, danger, and financial investment.
  • 7y ago
• Analemma_ 7y ago
  I think a big issue is that the costs and benefits are unevenly distributed: the benefits fall mainly on the employee, while the costs are disproportionately on their boss (since managing remote workers can be considerably harder). Since the boss is the one making the hiring decision, this asymmetry means remote hires are a tough sell.
• k__ 7y ago
  I don't know why big corps don't do it more, because they are so big that most of the employees are de facto doing remote work already. Most small companies are probably just too bad to do it. I mean they do it with contractors other companies, so it IS possible. Why? Most <30 people companies simply don't have any management skills yet. They have to get them when they get a critical mass of employees, but before that, they simply meander around with informal processes. Something doesn't work? Let's go to Joe in the next room and ask him!
• patagonia 7y ago
  Our team has slowly, by accident shifted to remote first during summers, when our deadlines are the furthest out. First one person moved, and we let them stay on and work remotely. Then another. Then two of three of the remaining individual contributors switched to core hours, but are otherwise gone. Now my boss has been remote for two weeks. It’s interesting in that it happened without discussion and without proactively addressing the new cultural issues that arose. Communication has dropped unless you’re on a call, and you never know who is on what call so it’s difficult to gauge the tempo of work any given day. Communication has become a “procedure” that must be intentionally addressed, which leads to awkward conversations about the weather in our daily standup that has morphed into a call to keep in touch for the people that are off site and don’t want to be politically left out. It wastes my time. A lot is lost in translation. Productive spontaneous conversation between more than two people is basically gone. A lot of work has disappeared into Slack DMs instof channels, visibility lost there. I understand a lot of this could be fixed with cultural and procedural changes. But I find it weird that you have to implement procedures and controls to replace something you get for free when you are all physically in the same place. And from my experience at least, getting it wrong has absolutely been bad for our team’s work product. Based on this experience I’ll never be working on a remote team again
  • matwood 7y ago
    > A lot of work has disappeared into Slack DMs instof channels, visibility lost there. We announce DM stats in our monthly company meeting. Our goal is everything in a public channel unless it absolutely is a private matter. > something you get for free when you are all physically in the same place. But did you really? Were all those conversations documented? What I realized is that many conversations end up being around what was talked about and what was the decision made X months ago. Many other conversations were around communicating said decision to someone else or someone new. All these telephone game style conversations go away if you can forward someone an email chain.
    • moorhosj 7y ago
      I’ve never run into a colleague from another department on an email chain. It happens frequently in our office kitchen. I don’t that that, or the ability to simply walk over to someone’s desk should be discounted.
• angstrom 7y ago
  After 60 years of advancements in networked computing we should see not just the performance benefits, but also the lifestyle benefits. I don't see the point of sitting in an open plan office especially when you have cliches of people that choose to speak in native languages about technical subject matter. I'm not benefitting from the distraction, nor is anyone else.
• _mcdougle 7y ago
  A lot of it really is about what kind of personality you are. I think there are too many people who need external motivation to get in the zone to get things done. I'm not that person. I would love to work 100% remote, where I can work in my own space without distractions. I'm actually way more productive when I get to work from home (at least with the more low-level tasks like actually coding) -- and from a more selfish perspective, I can slice up my day more efficiently and get my work done WHILE ALSO getting my own things done (exercising during lunch hour and using my own shower!) But TBH I think the most effective option would be to provide an office and sort of let people come and go as they please, maybe with some incentive to get them into the office on average 2 days a week -- for all of the things others have mentioned here, like collaboration, small talk around the office, "hey can you look at this?", etc. etc. Those things are important, and even though I hate coming into the office, I've noticed lately that there have been a number of days when I was working from home and my team had a lot of pings going back and forth trying to figure things out, and I thought it would've been a lot easier to just pop into the office until the issues were resolved.
• kypro 7y ago
  In my experience it can work well for tech-centric companies where everyone, or almost everyone is working behind a computer all day. But in most companies where you might have factory workers, call centres, retail outlets, etc, it begins to make less sense. If you have the office space you may as well use it, and often developers will be required to work closely with other departments in the business - this can get difficult when they're all working remotely. I've worked fully remote and part-remote for almost 10 years and really all I want is flexibility. Can I start a little later when I need to so long as I make back the time? Can I work remotely for a week or two if I need to visit family? These things alone are probably worth $5,000 - $10,000 per year to me. We should also consider working remote full0time can be extremely isolating, and prolonged periods with little to no human contact in my experience was bad for my mental health. I worked in one place for over 5 years and felt like I never really got to know anyone. I made no real friends. And at times I felt like I was little more than a code monkey writing the next piece of code with no sense of a shared goal or purpose - which you often get when working closely with a team. It can also be difficult to separate work and home life for some people, especially if you have a family and kids. I don't, but at times my partner might invite her friends or family around - some of whom do have children. Whenever this happened it was extremely difficult for me to get anything done. A few times I even had family come into my office while I was in a meeting with my boss which is far from ideal. These things are all manageable of course, and I'm sure working fully remote works for some people, but for me I'm much happier working remotely a couple of times a week with some flexibility in my work times.
  • raleigh_user 7y ago
    went through a lot of the same stuff. Its tough to be isolated and mental health is a large driver of why I didn't want to continue working alone on a (small) SaaS app.
• rmah 7y ago
  It's nice that remote-only works well for SureSwift, but they're a early stage finance company. As such, they don't really need a ton of collaboration between internal employees. Many firms with similar internal dynamics (some types of consultants, call centers, etc) can, I suspect, be mostly remote. But not every company operates like they that. Many companies even have, gasp, locations that must be staffed! Factories, warehouses, retail outlets, distribution nodes, etc. I wish pieces like the posted article talked less about the "advantages" of remote work (which seem to be fairly obvious to everyone, no?), and more about the challenges they faced in successfully creating a remote-work culture. And how they overcame those challenges (and what didn't work too). I have found that the effectiveness remote teams is highly dependent on the little details of how they are managed, how communications works, etc. More color on those details might actually be helpful.
• stunt 7y ago
  The flexible environment is what we need to aim for.
• zerogvt 7y ago
  Doing partial remoting atm (50% of the time on site) and having spent a year looking for a full remote job I have a few things to testify from the employee side: 1. Partial remote (sometimes) sucks. Ppl in office either feel they getting less or are bored to go the extra mile to accommodate you (remoting is based on better and more communication) or just ignore you cause it's easier to just ask the next desk. And anyhow you are out of any networking/office politics (not necessarily a bad thing though). 2. Fully remote companies are generally of 3 kinds: a. companies you've heard of and they're serious but since they're looking to hire from a global pool they are extremely picky (Maybe it's easier to get into google than getting into Wordpress). b. companies that are OK(ish) but are in the remoting thing just to cut costs, i.e. they pay peanuts c. companies that are outright dodgy and are looking for suckers or vanish in a puff without a sign. Obviously you'd only care for type (a) but so do thousand others out there. 3. If you happen to be tax-resident on a state where they tax-slaughter contractors (e.g. certain EU states with ~ 70% tax) remoting is devolving to a hobby rather than a job that may sustain you and your family. "Moving" to a tax haven comes with high risks and in the end you end up playing accountancy games rather than focusing on your job. 4. You essentially are a contractor. Few if any or remote companies hire you as an employee (but you are paid as an employee). You can be terminated with a minimal notice and no severance. In case of a mixed mode company non-remoters will probably get precedence over you. 5. Remoting is not for everyone. I personally am fine working like that but I totally understand that a lot of people need the motivation, vibrancy, socializing of the office. 6. Remoting is a very good way to balance work/family (but you might end up doing a half-assed job in both all the time). 7. Remoting it the _only_ way to fight off overheated to the point of surreal rental/housing markets like SF, London, Dublin, Munich. 8. Ecologically speaking the gains are just immense. Dunno if there are any statistics but I wouldn't be surprised if commuting to work is one of the biggest polluting activities overall. 9. Remoting is the only way to do _deep_ work. Focus, get in the zone, minimize disruptions and solve hard problems. Office is better for trivial, communication-heavy tasks. Just my 2 cents from my experience so far.
  • clarry 7y ago
    > 2. Fully remote companies are generally of 3 kinds: a. companies you've heard of and they're serious but since they're looking to hire from a global pool they are extremely picky There are many serious remote companies that will only hire in their country (or worse). > 4. You essentially are a contractor. Few if any or remote companies hire you as an employee (but you are paid as an employee). This doesn't make sense. I am paid as an employee, I am an employee. I agree with most of the rest though.
• Circuits 7y ago
  In my office there are 6 employees. We have group meetings twice a week but otherwise we almost never communicate face to face despite only being 15 feet away from one another. I do enjoy having the option of walking into one of their offices to get a face to face meeting if I need one but I don't see why a call over Skype wouldn't be just as useful. Currently, I can't afford to live in this town which is insane because there are only 50k people living here. I would love to be able to move to some small town where a house of the same quality and size would only cost me 100k or less rather than 300k or more.
• deleted 7y ago
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• lukethomas 7y ago
  The reason why more companies are remote-first is that the manager's schedule is easier to do in the office. Put simply, the people running the teams/companies prefer many of the advantages that being in-person provides. I wrote more about this here: https://www.fridayfeedback.com/p/how-to-make-remote-work-more-common https://www.fridayfeedback.com/p/how-to-make-remote-work-mor...
• twa927 7y ago
  Quite nice presentation about remote work from PyCon 2019: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTWgKyLk6mo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTWgKyLk6mo This is generally pro-remote but it includes research results.
• lundbc 7y ago
  I'm a VP of an established remote-first company, 50+ developers, all US-based. For the most part, remote-first has been a great benefit for us, but there are no silver bullets. Other than the issues mentioned elsewhere re: HR/Payroll complications, our biggest issue is finding junior talent and facilitating individual growth. For the most part we skew towards people who have some amount of remote work experience, which means skewing towards more experienced team members. That can have some knock-on effects that need to be managed: more experienced typically means greater salary, fewer juniors means less visible organizational structure around things like "I manage and mentor a team of 5" which can be disorienting for new hires, and can limit mentorship growth for senior team members. For many senior developers, those knock-on effects could be viewed as positives, but we need to be sensitive to the overall composition of the team. I haven't seen any greater motivational issues at remote-first vs a traditional management position. Like most any job, your motivation is largely a factor of your engagement. It's just as easy to drift on-site, with smoke breaks, lunch breaks, ping pong matches, chatting with your officemates about last night's NBA finals, etc etc.
  • deleted 7y ago
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  • freddie_mercury 7y ago
    This is something I rarely see talked about. How do you hire a grad or junior dev who is remote? How do you mentor them and (over years) help them grow into a senior dev? From where I sit, "remote first" is all too often a code word for "only senior devs need apply".
    • leesec 7y ago
      >This is something I rarely see talked about. How do you hire a grad or junior dev who is remote? You give them an offer. >How do you mentor them and (over years) help them grow into a senior dev? Same way you do in an office but over video chat.
      • jenkinstrigger 7y ago
• bevacqua 7y ago
  Elastic is like this, except 1500 folks instead of 80. We are in over 50 countries, we are 1,500 folks, and we are all distributed, people don't really use offices (esp. not those of us in R&D roles) and almost everyone works from their homes. You get a generous stipend if you want to rent an office like WeWork, etc. We generally gather twice a year in person, but we're not bound by offices so we can gather anywhere there's a large enough hotel or two. I've been with Elastic for 3+ years and after doing remote consulting for ~7 years I can say this company is one of the best, if not the best, at getting distributed work right
• deleted 7y ago
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• dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  I work for a company that has a global presence. Teams are often distributed across a couple locations. We also have some remote workers. We have people in one office who's entire team is in another office. We have people who are the sole person on their team in a given location. There really is no practical difference between working remote or working in a different office at that point. Yes, face to face interaction has a lot of benefits that are noted throughout these comments but once you've incurred the overhead that comes from having more than a couple locations letting people work remote doesn't have any negative impact. I can see why some 20-person trendy startup that hasn't had time to figure out how to effectively coordinate across multiple locations doesn't want to hire remote. They don't want to incur that overhead yet. For bigger established companies there's no good reason not to hire remote or at least allow the flexibility to work remote as needed.
• duxup 7y ago
  Humans are fairly good at face to face communication and bonding. I think there is a natural inclination to in person teamwork and bonding works better and faster in person. That doesn't mean it can't be done remotely, it sure can, but I think there are real complications and it is highly dependent on the use case where remote work could be as simple as "yeah do that" and everything is good, or a situation where it takes a great deal more thought and coordination. Personally I like a mix of both.
• cletus 7y ago
  Personally I think many in the pro-remote crowd have a limited view of what a software engineering job is. If you have a job where your entire job is to crank out some website in Rails or to be the only person building some billing system then sure, remote can make sense. These jobs tend to be on smaller teams with limited scope. But projects can easily get to a size where you need to: - Collaborate with other engineering teams - Work with people on the business side - Work with product managers, data scientists, comms people, etc - Gather requirements because what you have is fairly vague - Determine if what you're doing is having the intended impact and adjusting as necessary While remote can still work in these cases it's much, much harder. It's even harder when you have two teams in different sites even if you're in the same time zone.l Some pro-remote people also say "I don't need the social interaction", which I think misses the point. You might not but what about your teammates? Doing things like having lunch with your team, going on an offsite, etc actually matters. It helps build a better working relationship. This is I think particularly the case for more junior engineers. If one is two desks over from you and swearing at their computer then you can see that and intervene. If all the senior people are remote, who is going to do that? So if you really want to live in [small town X] here and work at home to drop your kids off at school or whatever, that's fine but there's no getting passed the fact that you'll always have less opportunities and only a subset (a small one IMHO) of jobs will be suitable for that. And you just have to accept that.
  • cs02rm0 7y ago
    Fully disagree and your opening line is a little bit patronising. Let me try the same! Presumably the pro-remote crowd are working for tiny little companies where their engineering teams, product managers, data scientists, comms people, etc all fit in the same diddy little office. But projects can easily get to a size where you need to: - Collaborate with various government departments - Work with people in other suppliers - Work with people across an international supply chain - Gather requirements because what you have is fairly vague (isn't this every project ever?) While local work can still work in these cases, it's much, much harder. It's even harder when you have to fly people across time zones. --- Look, this is all silly IMHO - it doesn't have to be this way. The company I work with is setup for remote first, employees get a rundown of how we use tooling to solve all the communication issues that could arise. You can even sit in voice conference with other devs so you can actually hear each other swearing at code - if you choose to. But if people want to colocate the company will pay for them to have office space in a WeWork or similar. FWIW, I make 4x working remote what I ever did for a local company. And the work is more interesting. Accept that!
• dfilppi 7y ago
  Bad habits die hard
• ashelmire 7y ago
  The people at the top like to be seen and heard, feel their own impact, and they don't trust their employees to work if they can't see them. Obviously that's a broad generalization and untrue of places that do allow remote work. And often middle management is happy with remote work, but execs limit it. I see responses like "I'd rather have proximity to co-workers so we can easily share ideas in informal ways." I think that's the exception amongst developers. Informal ideas are just as easily shared on slack, or by email, or on Jira. In fact, I find that getting someone to write something down means you have get better ideas coming your way (and less noise). > "but don't abolish co-location just abolish the meetings." The issue isn't always formal meetings. It's Bob, John, and Shirley coming by your desk. It's Joe and Jane having a conversation 5 feet away from you. It's the weird guy growing strange creatures in the refrigerator with 20 pairs of shoes piled under his desk that comes to bother you every time he's stuck on something instead of working through it himself. And the time savings! An extra hour of life per day if I don't have to commute - and I take a train a very short distance or bike it (ok, I like the biking). For some of my coworkers, they may gain two hours per day. How much happier and more productive would they be? So much more.
• crsv 7y ago
  I've seen absolutely magical things happen with smart people sharing a proximal space. I fully acknowledge the merits, tradeoffs, and viability of a remote workforce and have been remote, worked with others who were remote, seeing success and failure in both. That being said, I've never seen truly magical things happen the way they happen when people are together. For the work, the team, and the way I want the experience for work to feel, nothing beats having folks together in the same space. Of course, YMMV.
• quirkot 7y ago
  > That’s a lot of money to leave on the table. Are those in-person brainstorming sessions really worth $15,000 per year, per person? Depends on your revenue/employee, but if you're at or targeting something over $300k/employee than $15k would only need a 5% over remote
• deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
• raleigh_user 7y ago
  I've only ever worked in an early stage startup I founded. We initially were in same office and transitioned to remote over a 3 year period. (only 5 of us). Early in your career (I wrote all of our product and am 25) working in an office is probably helpful. I am actively job searching now and the top thing I care about is a mentor/peer group. I want to have people to interact with during work. I spent 3 years mainly writing code secluded from the real world (yes, I was going to things like dinners but that isn't the same in my experience). I worked in finance before and use to complain about being at the office. Looking back, I had a quiet cubicle where I was mostly left alone to do my work but would take a break every hour and play some put putt golf around the office with the other interns. I made friends, had a break and did a lot of really great work that summer. Remote work once you're older and have kids + family + roots might make more sense, and I look forward to that! Especially if it allows flexible time so I could drive kids to school. But, while young, I prefer office first w flexibility if needed.
• hartator 7y ago
  At SerpApi (https://serpapi.com https://serpapi.com), we are a remote first company. I agree with the points the article touched. Convenience, environmental conscious, and the variety of location choices are awesome. It’s also awesome from a management perspective. Everything being async and online makes sense for a tech business. Plus creativity wise it allows us a lot more time for deep thinking. There is regulations though we can improve. For example, for w2 you need to register your LLC in some of the states where you have employees working from. It makes w2 a big burden specially when you have people are moving around. Or smaller things. Like having to have a poster about labor laws in your office in Texas. It really doesn’t make when everyone is remote.
• siliconc0w 7y ago
  Effective remote (at least for tech) requires a different culture and often different tool use which make it difficult to be 'hybrid' (i.e some workers are remote and some not). This limits the ability to incrementally adopt remote work and so typically companies have to start with the gene. Stuff like tapping a co-worker on the shoulder for an ad-hoc question is generally an anti-pattern. It likely knocks them out of flow and means your documentation and internal tools don't allow engineers to answer their own questions. But it's so baked into how companies work that you have to start a new company and train engineers to approach knowledge sharing differently. Similarly ad-hoc 'fortuitous' discussions around the automated coffee maker to hatch potential new projects/designs/products or whatever company executives think are happening aren't really the best forum for that - they by chance, they aren't necessarily going to be inclusive, and the premise there is that you're essentially expecting work when the goal is to take a break. The expectation seems to be that I may see Bob from $other_team and query him on his current projects while the automated coffee maker takes a few minutes to cough out a latte-like substance but, again, there should be better ways to let me know about potentially useful team intersections rather than bugging bob while he is trying to get a break.
• notacoward 7y ago
  BrentOzar gives a great answer about financial/legal issues, and sytse gives another great answer about investor risk. I'll add some thoughts from a more "down in the trenches" (and ten-year remote developer) perspective. First, remote work just isn't for everyone or for every situation. Some people thrive on frequent interaction with others, and just don't have the same energy when they have less. Some get outright depressed. Teaching/mentoring also requires frequent interaction, which is an issue for a team with a lot of new people. Sometimes online interaction is an adequate substitute. Sometimes it's not. Also, some people simply don't focus as well and let themselves get distracted too much when they can't literally see and hear others working around them. Second, dealing with remote workers requires a change of habits that many find unwelcome. You have to write more and speak less. When you do speak via phone or VC, you have to learn new conversational protocols. Our subconscious protocols for when it's OK to start speaking and when to listen tend to break down a bit especially with high delay or poor connection quality, so people have to work a bit to make sure everyone gets their say. Anyone who works remotely also has to be hyper-aware of time zones. If folks on the US west coast never want to meet before lunch, it's going to cause friction with people on the east coast who would rather not have meetings after 5pm almost every day. Similarly, if those west-coasters like to do solo work at the beginning of the day and collaborative work at the end (a common pattern for reasons I don't fully understand) they're going to hit that full-day round trip latency for questions and code reviews more often. And that's all with only a three-hour difference. In general, it gets even worse when larger differences are involved. I've been working remotely for a decade. It works for me largely because of how I am and because I very actively try to teach my colleagues about how to make it work. Sometimes it barely works, and I wouldn't count on it working for a different person or a different team/project.
• dpods 7y ago
  We’re a remote first company at Out Of Office, though we’re still small (less than 10 employees). It’s the first remote job I’ve had as a software engineer and I find that I’m more productive than I’ve ever been. I have my days where I can’t concentrate but for the most part I’m able to get more done. We err on the side of too many meetings because we don’t have the luxury of in person conversations, but we encourage people to speak up when the meetings aren’t productive. We also encourage having meetings just to socialize to avoid feeling lonely or get to know each other better. We hold standups on Monday/Wednesday/Friday so Tuesday/Thursday we’re just heads down getting stuff done unless there’s a meeting. We’re building a product for people we want (or already have) location flexibility so we’re practicing what we preach in a sense. We believe the future of work may not be 100% remote but companies will become location flexible, meaning they still encourage employees to work in office but give them one or two flex days to work from home, a coffee shop, or shared workspace. The benefits to the employee are quite obvious—greater flexibility in the schedule and they’re able to take care of life events like kids, doctor appointments, running errands, etc. The benefits to the employer have been shown that it increases employee retention. 84% of workers want location flexibility[1] and companies that support remote workers have 25% lower turnover[2]. 1. https://werk.co/research https://werk.co/research 2. https://www.owllabs.com/state-of-remote-work-2017 https://www.owllabs.com/state-of-remote-work-2017
• traviswingo 7y ago
  > ...so they could be in the same location as their co-workers (who they’ll wind up emailing anyways). This was the sentence that most resonated with me. I think about this almost every time I sit in bullshit traffic when I’m just trying to run to the grocery store. I’m lucky in that the company I work for doesn’t care if I’m in office or remote, but I really wish more companies respected that mentality.
• vikramkr 7y ago
  Because it's hard. Managing remote work is it's own skill that not everyone has.
• edw519 7y ago
  Remote worker off and on for 30 years from both sides: alone at home and in the office supervising others working remotely. There are obviously many pros and cons, but in my experience, there is one huge overriding factor most likely to determine remote success: workers' ability and willingness to read and write. In my most successful remote relationships, almost everything was written down, written well, and read well. I'm talking about all the usual suspects: business requirements, functional specifications, technical specifications, project plans, stories, post-mortems, meeting agendas, code reviews, and of course, test plans. But then again, this has little to do with working remote. You MUST write all of these things down anyway: I have witnessed over and over again a high correlation between writing and reading well and project success, remote or not. If has never really mattered what methodologies or tools were used (yes, email is fine, so are waterfall and agile). You HAVE to write things down in the software building world. Using this line of thinking, remote can actually make your team more effective. You have to get good and reading and writing to succeed. You have much less option of meeting, or huddling, or whatever they call those crutches these days. Write it down and all that fluffy overhead goes away. Wanna go "remote-first"? Learn how to "read-and-write-first". The rest is gravy.
  • jayliew 7y ago
    I think this is key to mastering asynchronous communication in a multiplayer setting, which is key to remote
  • lostmymind66 7y ago
    I've had exactly this issue. I was working remotely a couple of years ago and the project manager couldn't effectively communicate (we were all remote in different parts of the US). The result was a disaster and the project manager playing the blame game. I eventually left.
  • Aeolun 7y ago
    This kind of communication is important whether you are remote or not. Of course you can muddle through on-site. But it is a monstrous waste of efficiency.
• dep_b 7y ago
  As long as startups insist on noisy, open environments I'll work remote. Just like some people can have a conversation while the TV is on some people can work in that environment. And everybody seems to have to adapt to those people nowadays. Currently I'm one of the most productive developers in the company and some people really think I make a ton of hours to get to that level, but the only thing I have are the mornings that are wife and child free and then the afternoons with meetings and other distractions. It really takes four hours of clean concentrated remote work to get there. You can only imagine what would happen if I had four hours more of that in a day.
• jl-gitlab 7y ago
  Here at GitLab we're an all-remote company, and it's been that way since the beginning as I understand it. I've been here about a year now and I've heard so many great stories from people who had remote working change their life for the better. A while back I made a space to collect these, if you're interested in this topic you might find some of these inspring: https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/stories/ https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/stories/
• colinrand 7y ago
  I'm building out a remote team now - nearly 15 developers - as a division in a regular 'on premise' tech company. And all is going well. However, there is one huge problem I haven't heard any good ideas around - how do I onboard young talent? I can't hire an intern or new college grad into an office by them selves and thinking they can work from their parents basement isn't so hot either.
• armatav 7y ago
  Remote is absolute trash for culture and cadence.
• jakobegger 7y ago
  I can imagine that working remotely is really nice if you have only senior developer with a lot of experience who are great communicators. But how do remote companies deal with junior developers? Do remote companies offer internships, and how do remote companies mentor people fresh out of college? I've had a couple of interns, and mentored junior developers, and sitting right next to them makes all the difference in the world -- in my experience. I just can't imagine how that should work over Email or Skype. Or is remote just something for people who are more independent?
• the_watcher 7y ago
  I'm about to leave a big tech company to join a remote startup. I'm pretty excited about all of the work environment benefits. That said, I'm a little worried that I'll just get lonely. I'm pretty introverted and get a lot of the social interactions I need at work, and often enjoy coming home and simply _not_ working. My tentative plan is to push myself to get involved in something that requires regular attendance, right now I'm thinking Toastmasters (public speaking isn't something I fear, but I've got a lot of room to improve) or improv. I'd really appreciate any advice from remote veterans.
• bshoemaker 7y ago
  I've never worked on a team that actually works well together, that worked from home more than 1 day a week. It's much, much more difficult to stay on the same page and in sync.
• tr-gitlab 7y ago
  I'm still new to the all remote lifestyle, but so far I have really been loving it. I work for GitLab, which is entirely all remote and has no central office space. I suspect that may be different from a hybrid approach. Aside from the benefits of being able to be around more with my family and to better handle life events, I've found that I enjoying working this way much more. Working asynchronously forces people to really think about how and what they communicate. I've found that people, including myself, are much more prepared and thoughtful in their work. I also find that there are way less distractions and that meetings with my coworkers are much more enjoyable. I thought I would have a hard time with the random 'coffee chat' but have come to really value them. It's a great way to be social and meet people, without the pressure of having to do it every day.
• GrayTextIsTruth 7y ago
  I work at a 100% remote company, but i think there should be a concept of "company hubs". If you don't live 3 hours from one of the few hubs (or maybe there is a single hub), you're out of the area. Require the employees to come in a couple of times per month/quarter for collaboration and a meal. When its TOO distributed there are a lot of inefficiencies playing against you (timezones, national holidays).
• teamski 7y ago
  Hijacking the thread: What would motivate you to go every day rather to an office instead of working remotely? Give me your top 3 wishes, eg. the new Mac Pro with 2x Apple 6k displays as your personal workstation.
  • diweirich 7y ago
    That would be a tough sell for me personally, but it wouldn't have anything to do with the workstation. 1) Flexible hours. I just can't stand the thought of knowing that between the hours of 9 and 6 I know I'm going to be sitting at a desk for the foreseeable future. I need to be able to mix things up. 2) Easy commute and parking. 3) Genuinely good co-workers and environment that I like being around.
• fxleach 7y ago
  Remote-first is a relatively new idea, that's why. Sure, there are a lot of companies that offer remote days on the schedule, and some international companies that hire certain branches of the business as remote, but the concept of a remote-first company is new and will take time to adopt.
• astura 7y ago
  Its the "nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM" issue. In-person employment has "worked" forever, for some definition of "worked." Its difficult to trade something that we all know to something that is new and has a lot of unknowns.
• vinay_ys 7y ago
  To work remotely and collaborate well, it takes some extra effort and care. When you are present in the office, you can forego that care and still get the job done (albeit poorly). People generally don't have the skill or discipline for remote work/collaboration. With a little bit of coaching, it can be learnt easily but that itself requires effort from both parties. And of course, how teams function, how you get visibility and recognition for your work, and how you are rewarded - all these will be affected by switching to remote – without solid/convincing answers for these - people will be hesitant to go for it. These are the barriers, IMO. Personally, my commute is super long and I get most of my intense deep work done at home (or during commute itself). I wouldn't mind a world where I had to go meet my colleagues for a couple of weeks at a quarterly offsite and work from home rest of the time. That would be perfect balance for me.
• crankylinuxuser 7y ago
  They are. The problem is the companies that are remote first aren't hanging their shingle here in the states. They're hanging them in India, China, South Pacific, and other areas that have developer expectations 1/10-1/5 the price they would pay here. We aren't in competition for "remote first".
• BjoernKW 7y ago
  In order to try and provide answers to that question: Because of work organisation and a cargo cult work culture that’s still stuck in late 19th / early 20th century scientific management (a theory conceived for assembly line rather than knowledge work, no less). Because - while it’s a business’ goal to make profit - the individual agents in an organisation often have different motives: They need to accumulate reputation within the company and that reputation frequently isn’t directly related to attributes such as productivity but rather appearances such as how many people you “manage” or how long you’re sitting in a chair each day.
• robbrit 7y ago
  I think the article might be looking at this from the wrong direction. It's making a straw-man argument by taking a bunch of the advantages of remote work and saying that everyone should do it. It's ignoring the downsides of remote work (i.e. social isolation, communication hurdles). It's possible there is a Darwinian effect going on. If remote-first companies are at such a competitive advantage, why aren't there more of them? I don't have a reason, but the lack of remote-first companies suggests that they are at a competitive disadvantage that is preventing them from proliferating or scaling. It's possible that due to underlying psychological factors, most humans are more productive when working face-to-face with other people in an office.
• shados 7y ago
  Remote isn't flawless. A/V systems are still plagued with issues, tons of people don't have the discipline required, even more people don't live in an environment that allows it (eg: having proper office space), lots of people have family a t home that will not respect their work time, etc. It has plenty of benefits of course, and I can absolutely see how someone can make the argument that the above is a small price to pay for the benefits. They may not be wrong, either. But you have a way of working that has been the norm since the dawn of time, and you have a new way that is still debatable if it's worth it, and the obvious reaction for many is to keep the statue quo. And then there's just preferences. My current company is making a big shift to allow more remote work. Many people, myself included, don't work well in that environment. We're adapting, but if a situation happened and I ended up leaving my current job, I'd actively seek another office-first company.
• ChefboyOG 7y ago
  I've worked in full-time remote, full-time onsite, and hybrid roles. While there are tradeoffs to each and circumstances generally dictate how successful the setup is, there is one big tradeoff that I don't see discussed as much: Mentoring juniors. In my experience, it's really, really difficult to train up a junior (doesn't have to be engineering even) in a remote team. Because the feedback loops are more rigid—the passive communication styles of Slack/other remote tools ensure this—it can make teaching a junior, who is going to naturally have 1,000 questions and need high frequency feedback, extremely inefficient and uncomfortable.
• pritianka 7y ago
  I've been on both sides of the spectrum. At first, I couldn't ever imagine working remote. I was an office rat, spent a lot of time at my desk and then socializing with coworkers at happy hours and such. It was a super fun life. When I got the job offer at GitLab, I was super excited about the opportunity and took it in spite of it being remote. Fast forward to a year later, my perspective has changed. It took me about 3-4 months to adjust but slowly I hit my stride. Today, I can confidently say that I am a lot more productive working all-remote. I don't have to travel or change rooms for meetings, I am fully connected to folks via Slack and Zoom and GitLab issues, and I am working in the comfiest clothes :p. So 8 hours of work in all-remote is equivalent to probably 10 hours in an office. Socially, I do co-working calls with people, hang out in the slack channels (#dad_jokes and #dog being two favorites), and Zoom as I need to. I never feel left out. I have to say though, I would probably not enjoy being remote when others are in an office because then there is a clear hierarchy of social interactions then.
• ShakataGaNai 7y ago
  Why aren't more companies remote-first? Because a lot of the people starting companies or in management positions tend to be older and are more accustomed to "The old ways". Humans are creatures of habit. We like the status quo to stay the same if at all possible. If you've spent 30 years in an office with no remote work, you probably want to keep doing that (you're used to it afterall). You also probably want your subordinates to do the same. After all you've been used to having your boss "right there", your coworkers "right there", your subordinates "right there"... for years Beyond that, which I honestly think is a large portion of "why". There is also logistical complexity on numerous levels, for numerous types of companies. Such as: * Laws & Regulations - Especially in heavily regulated spaces like finance & health * Enterprise Customers - They often are old school and want to see your offices and hordes of people working to justify their multi-million dollar purchases. * All the pay/insurance/tax/reimbursement stuff mentioned a dozen times in this thread. * Employees - As noted here in this comment thread, some people LIKE working in an office * VC/Funding - It's more common now, but supposedly it's still harder to get VC money or funding from banks if the workforce is remote/distributed/virtual (take your pick of terms)
• eledumb 7y ago
  I've been full time remote since 2010 in senior management positions. Meaning that I have direct reports, that have direct reports, who have direct reports, and all are remote. Prior to 2010 I spent 20 years working in traditional office settings. So I've dealt with just about every possible issue that can be encountered in both "normal" and remote environments and I can say that in every case remote is better. One of my employers had mandatory management training quarterly and I worked there for 9 years, so maybe I'm better prepared to manage employees and remote staff than most managers. I find remote staff much easier to manage, because none of the interpersonal issues need to be dealt with, he's parking in my space, someone is stealing my lunch, they don't bathe, they wear too much cologne/perfume, they are always bugging me, it's too loud, it's too quite, so and so is always late, and on and on and on. I also find the productivity to be much higher mostly because people can get work done on their schedule and not be stuck in 9-5. If something is due Tuesday I don't care if it's done by at 11:30 Monday night, just so long as it's done and done correctly. I have a separate dedicated office, I have a couch 4 monitors and a TV for monitoring the world, mostly on Bloomberg TV. The only knock I have on working from home is that that I'm tired of my office and my house. I hate that my lunch room is my kitchen.
• kemiller 7y ago
  I’d love for the world to reframe the remote-vs-commute thing. It’s really network-first or not. If you are network first (some kind of tool is your primary and best-organized repository of information) then people can make the trade offs that work best for them.
• matejtrajkovski 7y ago
  I believe you are one of the few that have made remote-first work for them. I've done most of my work for clients remotely. It takes a very specific kind of person to work like that, and sadly it's not sustainable in the long run. Being alone for that many hours a day starts to get old. Not to mention the communication barriers. You really have to pick the best people to have a workflow similar to an office full of people speaking the same language in the same time and place. Good for you though. I see great potential for remote-first teams as well, it's just that the talent pool is tricky.
• flexer2 7y ago
  I've been fully remote for the past two years at a company that is mostly distributed (we have to have physical operations in markets we operate in, but the tech team is fully remote). Overall, I love it, and it would be a challenge to go back to the office/commuting lifestyle. However, I still recognize that it is a nascent thing and I'm incredibly fortunate to work where I do. If the business goes under, will I be able to find comparable remote work with good pay? To hedge that bet, I still live in one of the larger tech hub cities (born and raised here, so I also don't want to leave it). The thought has crossed my mind many times to move to cheaper locales and take advantage of the potential wage arbitrage that would come with it, but in the end, I like my expensive coastal city, and think it's worth the price. And if push comes to shove, I can commute into an office and make a living. We have periodic offsites where everyone travels to a single place for a week, and those are great to get to know the people behind the webcam. With Slack, Zoom, Google Docs, Github, etc., it really doesn't feel that much different than working in an office after awhile. The hardest part is learning that with remote work, you have to intentionally overcommunicate. When you're in an office you can get a sense of the vibe, which basically goes away when you're remote. It's really important for a company to focus on maintaining culture when you don't see each other in person every day. If I were to found a company, odds are, I'd try to establish it as a remote-first culture (assuming the business could support it, which not all companies will ever be able to do). It just makes sense for a good number of tech startups. The lifestyle isn't for everyone -- some people really thrive in the office environment, and that's great, but the flexibility of remote work is something I wouldn't trade for the world. I'm sure I'm leaving a little money on the table by not working for a local tech company and commuting, but the 10 hours a week I don't spend commuting are time I can spend with my kids, and I'm saving money in other areas like no gas or bus fare or eating out for lunch every day. I think remote work is "a" future (not "the" future) and could be a great fit for many companies, especially businesses that do most of their work online. However, offices will never go away completely, and that's fine, too.
• preordained 7y ago
  Discipline. For every one for whom (they believe) remote work unburdens them of social interaction and unwanted stimuli ergo unleashing a Jedi flow state of crazy creativity and productivity...there are others for whom this idea doesn't hold up...like at all. They are more distracted, aloof, and frankly they try to do just enough to somewhat register as a viable employee. They don't engage unless engaged, and they tell a lot of stories when pressed as to why assignment X is still incomplete. Were they working furiously but blocked by A,B,C? Maybe...who knows...all I can say is the lack of proximity _does_ embolden those who are inclined to be lazy and full of excuses. Some at least marginally productive employees do go full on dead weight under these circumstances, IMO. Anecdotal...but that's par for the course in this thread.
• conductr 7y ago
  Why do office workers still have dress codes? Point being that norms take a long time to change. The hippy generation mostly traded in a neck tie for some khakis, with maybe the bonus of casual Friday. The tech industry’s growing domination is just making a dent in allowing blue jeans daily. Still not super common nationwide
• teslaberry 7y ago
  some people like remote work some don't some like a mix. it seems the ideal solution is to give each group a flexible ability to do all 3 and not mandate anything , to maximize preference satisfaction. no?
• schmudde 7y ago
  In my experience, remote work takes quite a bit of organization which often defaults to hierarchy. Leaner organizations with less management struggle with this. It partially depends on where you want to put your money as an organization.
• mrhappyunhappy 7y ago
  I’ve had positive and negative experiences on both side of the fence. There was one company where I had to commute 2 hours to and from which was absolute hell for me. At that place I worked out of a cubicle which I preferred to an open office. But people also tended to just stop behind me and have a full conversation without so much giving any thought to how they may be disrupting my concentration. Another job I worked remotely without a single problem. The whole time I only met one person from the team but I never felt isolated. It may have helped that it was a young company with young employees. Another job I worked was a failing business that was eventually swallowed up by a larger corporation. That job was fully remote too and without issues until the merger. I was laid off in preference of a team member who I think was chosen simply due to face time in the corporate office. This was reinforced by other remote workers being laid off as well. It probably didn’t help that this was a more traditional company where very few if any people worked remotely.
• ficklepickle 7y ago
  In my limited experience, it is because nontechnical managers are incapable of evaluating our work. Since they can also not ever admit to not knowing anything, they rely on a crude metric like physical presence or time served. Then, they can pretend to be managing you by suggesting buzzwords they saw on linkedin.
• burfog 7y ago
  What about security? The remote worker is going to need a development workstation that can't be accessed by a non-employee. It'll have to be in a room with a lock and an alarm. Houses shared with family members make this difficult. The remote worker is going to need access to the internal network. This means they need a business-class router that can do an encrypted VPN. Trusting the workstation to do this is unsafe. Voice and video also needs to go through that encrypted VPN. Possibly the workstation can provide for this. Whatever the choice of solution, it might need to be always running to accept incoming calls.