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I think that remote working is psychologically hard. I trust that most people can pull it off short term; long term is more difficult. There’s also the fact th

I think that remote working is psychologically hard. I trust that most people can pull it off short term; long term is more difficult. There’s also the fact that most people I’ve known in my work need to learn to work when they graduate (I hire mostly graduates). I’d trust someone with 5 years’ experience to know what is generally expected from them if they work remotely; I’d be much more concerned about a graduate. Telling them what “working” means is much harder than them breathing it daily around them at the office. Another topic is that it can be fairly difficult to measure actual performance, and remote work takes from you several proxies. It might make you more objective - but it might make you less accurate and force you to accept lower performance due to the “benefit of the doubt”.

thomascgalvin 7y ago
> I think that remote working is psychologically hard. I trust that most people can pull it off short term; long term is more difficult. I've been full-time remote for about a year now, and I'm kind of done with it. It was fantastic at first. I live in Boston, and my commute was about an hour and a half in every morning, and about two hours home every night. Being able to step over the dog and be at my office was (and is) awesome. But I never see anyone anymore, and that's starting to wear on me. My wife still commutes, so we have about two hours with each other every night before we have to go to bed and do it all again the next day. If I'm not intentional about it, I'll spend 23 hours a day in my house, and while I'm not the most social person around, I think it's starting to have actual negative consequences for my life. I'm grumpier, I get sick more often, I'm tired ...
- neuland 7y ago
  > If I'm not intentional about it, I'll spend 23 hours a day in my house I think that's the biggest difference with remote. A lot of things that were seamless with physical presence need to be done with intentionality in a remote setup. You need an explicit time for a daily call / team catchup. You need to either make extra effort or explicitly schedule social chats between coworkers (I like inviting people to do coffee or show off some thing they're interested in). And you personally need to make a schedule that gets you out of the house (I go to coffee shops 3-ish times a week). I've been remote for 2 years and don't plan on changing any time soon. Granted, there's a lot of policy- or culture-level stuff that can get in the way. If the rest of you team is co-located and isn't going to remember to bring you in on conversations, remote isn't going to work. Same if your manager equates physical presence to performance.
  - subhobroto 7y ago
    > You need to either make extra effort or explicitly schedule social chats between coworkers (I like inviting people to do coffee or show off some thing they're interested in). And you personally need to make a schedule that gets you out of the house (I go to coffee shops 3-ish times a week). > I've been remote for 2 years and don't plan on changing any time soon. That is very interesting! Mind a chat? Your profile is bare so I'm assuming you don't want to be bothered without you being involved in it, so I need your help. Look at my profile or, please, if you can email me at my handle at gmail, I will really appreciate it. I look forward to a few minutes of a learning opportunity with you.
  - jschwartzi 7y ago
    I've been remote for almost 2 years now, and I have the same experience. It becomes even more important if you have direct reports in the office because co-workers start asking them questions that are more appropriate for you. The other important thing for me is to keep a regular schedule when I'm "on" and then step away from the workspace when I'm "off." Avoid going into the workspace for personal projects. Also as part of my job I make sure to stay in contact with my boss about the things that matter to him like our project plan, release dates, and anything I need from him. Deliberate, open communication is very important. I also find that keeping quality written records is critical too because it's the only way to keep everyone on the same page about what we're working on. And yes, get up, leave the house, and go do something else during the day, every day. I personally go for runs and go to the gym in the early afternoon as a way to be outside. And I spend a lot of time with my girlfriend on weekends too. Neither of us are homebodies when we have free time so that works out very well. Even superficial interactions with other people are enough to fill the cup a little.
  - Breza 7y ago
    You nailed it. I used to be full time remote and I still manage a remote team. We talk about immediate things every day, but we're also have scheduled calls where we talk about the big picture of how things are going.
- sharadov 7y ago
  I've been working remotely for 2 years. What I would do is find a co-working space, where you can get out and socialize, maybe join some meetups. When I actually need to code, I go to coffee shops. These are some of the things that I did and they've helped immensely.
  - thomascgalvin 7y ago
    I looked into coworking spaces. The cheapest option, which is basically "you can sit on the couch if there's still space when you get here," is about $500 a month. Boston is unforgiving.
    - GFischer 7y ago
      Wow, that is ridiculous. I guess there´s an unmet need for coworking spaces in Boston then :)
      - thomascgalvin 7y ago
        There's an unmet need for any kind of space in Boston. Depending on where you are, one bedroom apartments can be $5k a month.
        chrshawkes 7y ago
        It's not abnormal, similar situations in DC/NOVA, LA, NYC & San Francisco.
      - sharadov 7y ago
        I actually looked at some kind of hybrid co-working option where people could join you at your home/apartment for co-working, I would not mind the company.
        GFischer 7y ago
        An AirBnB for coworking space? Sounds interesting!
- LaGrange 7y ago
  > But I never see anyone anymore, and that's starting to wear on me. Work is not a replacement for a social life, and there are more ways to develop one now than ever. And, the social load from people who do their social life at work is actually one of the reasons I prefer working from home: I have only so many spoons to spare, and I'd rather spend them on people I chose to associate with. Those might, occasionally, happen to be coworkers, but even then I'd rather socialize in non-work context. It is a drag when other people still work in the office, or _really want to_ be working in the office, as evidenced by a heavy emphasis on synchronous communication. I'm starting to despise Zoom, for reasons that aren't really directly related to anything Zoom does.
  - rifung 7y ago
    > Work is not a replacement for a social life, and there are more ways to develop one now than ever. And, the social load from people who do their social life at work is actually one of the reasons I prefer working from home: I have only so many spoons to spare, and I'd rather spend them on people I chose to associate with. Those might, occasionally, happen to be coworkers, but even then I'd rather socialize in non-work context. I understand your point but I wonder if working with people who you would socialize with even outside of work makes work more enjoyable? From my rather limited experience of working, I've found that in the end the thing I actually work on matters a lot less to my happiness than the people who I do the work with. Alternatively, maybe I just don't like working as much as other people do? I'm starting to think when looking for a new team I should really be seeing whether I will like my coworkers instead of whether I'll like what I'm doing.
    - LaGrange 7y ago
      > I understand your point but I wonder if working with people who you would socialize with even outside of work makes work more enjoyable? Not really. Who I like to work with and who I like to socialize doesn't necessarily match up. Furthermore, I have limited capacity for social interaction - that is why even _if_ I like the people, I prefer to socialize outside of work. Otherwise both work and socialization suffer. Finally, if your primary source of socialization is the workplace, you open yourself to abuse - companies can, and do, exploit the fact that for many people they become not just the source of income, but also the social support network. > From my rather limited experience of working, I've found that in the end the thing I actually work on matters a lot less to my happiness than the people who I do the work with. I just need the coworkers to not be horrible, and what I work with matters quite a lot - if there's one thing about the IT industry that really grinds my gears, it's how often even apparently socially beneficial products are just covers for privacy breaches and boom-and-bust schemes. > I'm starting to think when looking for a new team I should really be seeing whether I will like my coworkers instead of whether I'll like what I'm doing. You need both, though you might not get them. Just don't let the workplace _own your social life_. If you feel like working remotely means you have no social life, then you got used to that happening, and that will hurt you, remote or not.
- nobodyandproud 7y ago
  For white-collar workers and engineers in particular I think one day a week of remote is beneficial. Monday or Friday, with the other four days reserved for face-to-face. Having a non-meeting day is beneficial for productivity. It does require trust and good work ethics. Also, a quiet home office.
neuland 7y ago
I think there are people that need physical presence at work and people that don't. I've been working remotely for 2 years and don't see myself stoping anytime soon. All my coworkers are in California, but there's no assumption on my team that people will actually be present in the office. So effectively, things are done as if it was a remote team. A huge part of this is selecting the right people. We can only hire people that are able to be effective in that environment. You need people that will reach out if they have a problem (but not before at least trying a little bit to solve it themselves). You need to be able to jump on a call at the first sign that you need a higher bandwidth communication channel than chat. As a senior, I always make abundantly clear that I am available to answer questions or fix things when someone is blocked. I also haven't seen any issues with performance or reviews. Being present at work has nothing to do with performance. Rather, features added, incidencts responded to, tech debt accrued and paid off, etc are how you measure performance and none of those change in a remote environment. You can get an idea of what everyone is up to in a daily call / video chat. And for a more in-depth accounting, you can review git logs, incident notes, support tickets, etc. Basically, performance reviews are not that different in a remote environment.
- harperlee 7y ago
  Yes but you were not born that way. You learnt it, either before or during your professional career. So a select number of companies will be able to hire The Right People, which can be effective working remotely; most of the companies need to have in their team people that, at least for the moment, cannot be entrusted with that.
  - neuland 7y ago
    Yeah, I think I agree with this. I've always worked at companies with increasing autonomy and responsibility. And before that, I was in a number of youth programs focused on accountability and responsibility. And totally agree that not everyone can or should do remote. It makes a lot of people unhappy. And it doesn't work for a lot of employers b/c they can't find enough of the right people. Or they have some real job-related requirement that makes it difficult or impossible to do remote. Like, how do you have a remote welder or a hardware engineer or biologist or forensic tech person. They need access to physical stuff and/or a lab with expensive equipment. So, it's not a panacea. But it works really great for some people if it's setup right. And it can be a competitive advantage.
sharadov 7y ago
It will only work with certain jobs, you need a company-wide buy-in, will not work with only few people working remote and majority onsite, the experience level of the folks involved, communication tools. We have 4-5 offices with people coming into the office or working remote, but we get a lot of work done. But it's because being in office is not a requirement, it is explicitly spelled out that you can work remotely if you want. There is no penalty for not being in the office.
newsgremlin 7y ago
I can relate, I would much rather a 4 day office work week than working remotely. I'm too comfortable in my home to focus on work, and I'd hate being stuck inside my home for most of the day. Younger me would have loved that, but these days I just want any excuse to leave the house.
- GordonS 7y ago
  > I'm too comfortable in my home to focus on work I think one of the key success factors is having a dedicated home office, where you can close the door and be in work mode. Doubly so if there are other family members at home during the day.
rtikulit 7y ago
I have been working full time remote for 10 years, mostly remote for 5 years before that, all at the same SV company. I love it. It does take some discipline, and my work life is entirely separate from my home/social life. I have succeeded by a) a personal commitment to subject matter mastery, no matter what I'm working on, and b) taking pains to understand stakeholders and the full business context and c) making sure my deliverables always contain some valid answer, that they move the ball forward a bit, no matter what point of scale I'm involved in. I do not join herds but I value them and treat them with respect—they are the dominant human condition. To compensate I conspicuously show my peers and my boss that I have their back. I never, ever gossip. I give away my work freely because social capital. This enables me to blow off a lot of the unproductive collaborative make-work that goes on in any big company, without negative repercussions. Which is good because introversion and ADHD. :-)
GordonS 7y ago
I've done it long term, and don't find it in any way psychologically difficult. I totally get that it's not for everyone though - some are too easily distracted, some don't have space for a dedicated home office etc. I do agree about graduates and juniors though, also because it can be difficult to effectively mentor someone remotely. OTOH, we've never had better tooling and connectivity. I recently met a colleague in person, and didn't realise until he pointed it out that we'd never met before! I'd spent so much time in video conferencing with him that I felt very familiar with him. > Another topic is that it can be fairly difficult to measure actual performance This one I don't get though, unless your only measure is how long someone is sat at their desk.

thomascgalvin 7y ago

> I think that remote working is psychologically hard. I trust that most people can pull it off short term; long term is more difficult. I've been full-time remote for about a year now, and I'm kind of done with it. It was fantastic at first. I live in Boston, and my commute was about an hour and a half in every morning, and about two hours home every night. Being able to step over the dog and be at my office was (and is) awesome. But I never see anyone anymore, and that's starting to wear on me. My wife still commutes, so we have about two hours with each other every night before we have to go to bed and do it all again the next day. If I'm not intentional about it, I'll spend 23 hours a day in my house, and while I'm not the most social person around, I think it's starting to have actual negative consequences for my life. I'm grumpier, I get sick more often, I'm tired ...

neuland 7y ago
> If I'm not intentional about it, I'll spend 23 hours a day in my house I think that's the biggest difference with remote. A lot of things that were seamless with physical presence need to be done with intentionality in a remote setup. You need an explicit time for a daily call / team catchup. You need to either make extra effort or explicitly schedule social chats between coworkers (I like inviting people to do coffee or show off some thing they're interested in). And you personally need to make a schedule that gets you out of the house (I go to coffee shops 3-ish times a week). I've been remote for 2 years and don't plan on changing any time soon. Granted, there's a lot of policy- or culture-level stuff that can get in the way. If the rest of you team is co-located and isn't going to remember to bring you in on conversations, remote isn't going to work. Same if your manager equates physical presence to performance.
- subhobroto 7y ago
  > You need to either make extra effort or explicitly schedule social chats between coworkers (I like inviting people to do coffee or show off some thing they're interested in). And you personally need to make a schedule that gets you out of the house (I go to coffee shops 3-ish times a week). > I've been remote for 2 years and don't plan on changing any time soon. That is very interesting! Mind a chat? Your profile is bare so I'm assuming you don't want to be bothered without you being involved in it, so I need your help. Look at my profile or, please, if you can email me at my handle at gmail, I will really appreciate it. I look forward to a few minutes of a learning opportunity with you.
- jschwartzi 7y ago
  I've been remote for almost 2 years now, and I have the same experience. It becomes even more important if you have direct reports in the office because co-workers start asking them questions that are more appropriate for you. The other important thing for me is to keep a regular schedule when I'm "on" and then step away from the workspace when I'm "off." Avoid going into the workspace for personal projects. Also as part of my job I make sure to stay in contact with my boss about the things that matter to him like our project plan, release dates, and anything I need from him. Deliberate, open communication is very important. I also find that keeping quality written records is critical too because it's the only way to keep everyone on the same page about what we're working on. And yes, get up, leave the house, and go do something else during the day, every day. I personally go for runs and go to the gym in the early afternoon as a way to be outside. And I spend a lot of time with my girlfriend on weekends too. Neither of us are homebodies when we have free time so that works out very well. Even superficial interactions with other people are enough to fill the cup a little.
- Breza 7y ago
  You nailed it. I used to be full time remote and I still manage a remote team. We talk about immediate things every day, but we're also have scheduled calls where we talk about the big picture of how things are going.
sharadov 7y ago
I've been working remotely for 2 years. What I would do is find a co-working space, where you can get out and socialize, maybe join some meetups. When I actually need to code, I go to coffee shops. These are some of the things that I did and they've helped immensely.
- thomascgalvin 7y ago
  I looked into coworking spaces. The cheapest option, which is basically "you can sit on the couch if there's still space when you get here," is about $500 a month. Boston is unforgiving.
  - GFischer 7y ago
    Wow, that is ridiculous. I guess there´s an unmet need for coworking spaces in Boston then :)
    - thomascgalvin 7y ago
      There's an unmet need for any kind of space in Boston. Depending on where you are, one bedroom apartments can be $5k a month.
      - chrshawkes 7y ago
        It's not abnormal, similar situations in DC/NOVA, LA, NYC & San Francisco.
    - sharadov 7y ago
      I actually looked at some kind of hybrid co-working option where people could join you at your home/apartment for co-working, I would not mind the company.
      - GFischer 7y ago
        An AirBnB for coworking space? Sounds interesting!
LaGrange 7y ago
> But I never see anyone anymore, and that's starting to wear on me. Work is not a replacement for a social life, and there are more ways to develop one now than ever. And, the social load from people who do their social life at work is actually one of the reasons I prefer working from home: I have only so many spoons to spare, and I'd rather spend them on people I chose to associate with. Those might, occasionally, happen to be coworkers, but even then I'd rather socialize in non-work context. It is a drag when other people still work in the office, or _really want to_ be working in the office, as evidenced by a heavy emphasis on synchronous communication. I'm starting to despise Zoom, for reasons that aren't really directly related to anything Zoom does.
- rifung 7y ago
  > Work is not a replacement for a social life, and there are more ways to develop one now than ever. And, the social load from people who do their social life at work is actually one of the reasons I prefer working from home: I have only so many spoons to spare, and I'd rather spend them on people I chose to associate with. Those might, occasionally, happen to be coworkers, but even then I'd rather socialize in non-work context. I understand your point but I wonder if working with people who you would socialize with even outside of work makes work more enjoyable? From my rather limited experience of working, I've found that in the end the thing I actually work on matters a lot less to my happiness than the people who I do the work with. Alternatively, maybe I just don't like working as much as other people do? I'm starting to think when looking for a new team I should really be seeing whether I will like my coworkers instead of whether I'll like what I'm doing.
  - LaGrange 7y ago
    > I understand your point but I wonder if working with people who you would socialize with even outside of work makes work more enjoyable? Not really. Who I like to work with and who I like to socialize doesn't necessarily match up. Furthermore, I have limited capacity for social interaction - that is why even _if_ I like the people, I prefer to socialize outside of work. Otherwise both work and socialization suffer. Finally, if your primary source of socialization is the workplace, you open yourself to abuse - companies can, and do, exploit the fact that for many people they become not just the source of income, but also the social support network. > From my rather limited experience of working, I've found that in the end the thing I actually work on matters a lot less to my happiness than the people who I do the work with. I just need the coworkers to not be horrible, and what I work with matters quite a lot - if there's one thing about the IT industry that really grinds my gears, it's how often even apparently socially beneficial products are just covers for privacy breaches and boom-and-bust schemes. > I'm starting to think when looking for a new team I should really be seeing whether I will like my coworkers instead of whether I'll like what I'm doing. You need both, though you might not get them. Just don't let the workplace _own your social life_. If you feel like working remotely means you have no social life, then you got used to that happening, and that will hurt you, remote or not.
nobodyandproud 7y ago
For white-collar workers and engineers in particular I think one day a week of remote is beneficial. Monday or Friday, with the other four days reserved for face-to-face. Having a non-meeting day is beneficial for productivity. It does require trust and good work ethics. Also, a quiet home office.

neuland 7y ago

I think there are people that need physical presence at work and people that don't. I've been working remotely for 2 years and don't see myself stoping anytime soon. All my coworkers are in California, but there's no assumption on my team that people will actually be present in the office. So effectively, things are done as if it was a remote team. A huge part of this is selecting the right people. We can only hire people that are able to be effective in that environment. You need people that will reach out if they have a problem (but not before at least trying a little bit to solve it themselves). You need to be able to jump on a call at the first sign that you need a higher bandwidth communication channel than chat. As a senior, I always make abundantly clear that I am available to answer questions or fix things when someone is blocked. I also haven't seen any issues with performance or reviews. Being present at work has nothing to do with performance. Rather, features added, incidencts responded to, tech debt accrued and paid off, etc are how you measure performance and none of those change in a remote environment. You can get an idea of what everyone is up to in a daily call / video chat. And for a more in-depth accounting, you can review git logs, incident notes, support tickets, etc. Basically, performance reviews are not that different in a remote environment.

harperlee 7y ago
Yes but you were not born that way. You learnt it, either before or during your professional career. So a select number of companies will be able to hire The Right People, which can be effective working remotely; most of the companies need to have in their team people that, at least for the moment, cannot be entrusted with that.
- neuland 7y ago
  Yeah, I think I agree with this. I've always worked at companies with increasing autonomy and responsibility. And before that, I was in a number of youth programs focused on accountability and responsibility. And totally agree that not everyone can or should do remote. It makes a lot of people unhappy. And it doesn't work for a lot of employers b/c they can't find enough of the right people. Or they have some real job-related requirement that makes it difficult or impossible to do remote. Like, how do you have a remote welder or a hardware engineer or biologist or forensic tech person. They need access to physical stuff and/or a lab with expensive equipment. So, it's not a panacea. But it works really great for some people if it's setup right. And it can be a competitive advantage.

sharadov 7y ago

It will only work with certain jobs, you need a company-wide buy-in, will not work with only few people working remote and majority onsite, the experience level of the folks involved, communication tools. We have 4-5 offices with people coming into the office or working remote, but we get a lot of work done. But it's because being in office is not a requirement, it is explicitly spelled out that you can work remotely if you want. There is no penalty for not being in the office.

newsgremlin 7y ago

I can relate, I would much rather a 4 day office work week than working remotely. I'm too comfortable in my home to focus on work, and I'd hate being stuck inside my home for most of the day. Younger me would have loved that, but these days I just want any excuse to leave the house.

GordonS 7y ago
> I'm too comfortable in my home to focus on work I think one of the key success factors is having a dedicated home office, where you can close the door and be in work mode. Doubly so if there are other family members at home during the day.

rtikulit 7y ago

I have been working full time remote for 10 years, mostly remote for 5 years before that, all at the same SV company. I love it. It does take some discipline, and my work life is entirely separate from my home/social life. I have succeeded by a) a personal commitment to subject matter mastery, no matter what I'm working on, and b) taking pains to understand stakeholders and the full business context and c) making sure my deliverables always contain some valid answer, that they move the ball forward a bit, no matter what point of scale I'm involved in. I do not join herds but I value them and treat them with respect—they are the dominant human condition. To compensate I conspicuously show my peers and my boss that I have their back. I never, ever gossip. I give away my work freely because social capital. This enables me to blow off a lot of the unproductive collaborative make-work that goes on in any big company, without negative repercussions. Which is good because introversion and ADHD. :-)

GordonS 7y ago

I've done it long term, and don't find it in any way psychologically difficult. I totally get that it's not for everyone though - some are too easily distracted, some don't have space for a dedicated home office etc. I do agree about graduates and juniors though, also because it can be difficult to effectively mentor someone remotely. OTOH, we've never had better tooling and connectivity. I recently met a colleague in person, and didn't realise until he pointed it out that we'd never met before! I'd spent so much time in video conferencing with him that I felt very familiar with him. > Another topic is that it can be fairly difficult to measure actual performance This one I don't get though, unless your only measure is how long someone is sat at their desk.