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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

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.
  - jmg1138 7y ago
    I worked as a remote welder. The company I worked for was 100% remote with no central shop or office. We had mobile welding trucks that were fully loaded with tools and welding generators. We would work with local metal shops to share their space if we needed something like that. We needed access to physical stuff like the metal thing we were welding on, but the employer/employee part was all remote.

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.
- jmg1138 7y ago
  I worked as a remote welder. The company I worked for was 100% remote with no central shop or office. We had mobile welding trucks that were fully loaded with tools and welding generators. We would work with local metal shops to share their space if we needed something like that. We needed access to physical stuff like the metal thing we were welding on, but the employer/employee part was all remote.