26 ms·

People love working remotely

422 points by galfarragem 7y ago

duiker101 7y ago
I love remote work too. But I strongly believe it's not for everyone. Not even 50% of the population. It would be a mistake to assume that it's easy for everyone. For me, going in the office means putting my headset on and doing my work till I need to leave, while having as few interactions as possible; so there are pretty much only perks on working from home. Most people crave engagement without even realizing it. It also really depends on the job and the company. If remote working means never going off, I think it's a company culture problem rather than a problem of remote working itself. It might be true that since remote work is relatively new the boundaries and the culture might not be fully formed yet for many companies but I think everyone that works remotely should realize this and set expectations and boundaries accordingly.
- achow 7y ago
  It has been said enough already but worth repeating - if everyone or most of them is remote in an office then only remote works - not only for business but also for the worker (career growth wise).
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  Totally agree. I love remote work but you have to be cut out for it. A lot of people aren’t. I also may enjoy going to an office more if I actually had an office with a window where i could feel comfortable instead of staring at a gray cube wall and listening to my loud neighbors the whole day.
  - voxl 7y ago
    These strange claims with no evidence. Working from home has to fight existing inertia, you couldn't WFH prior to the internet age, so no one did. Now it's possible and suddenly not everyone is cut out for it. Not everyone is cut out for a 9 to 5, not everyone is a morning person, not everyone likes sitting in a chair all day. But they deal with it, because it's their job. The same will be 100% true for WFH, cut out for it or not, they'll adapt and make it work.
- magashna 7y ago
  Definitely depends on the job and how you're utilized. I know people who work remotely 100% but have been at the same company, same position for years. It's hard to get promotions when upper management doesn't have a face for your name. I think if you're working remotely, you should either visit regularly or use your webcam often
deleted 7y ago
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pikzel 7y ago
I think it's especially popular in the US where they've always had long commutes. I work remotely from time to time, and it works fine when I have a specific task to focus on, but I've never managed to replace the spontaneous talks or meetings by a whiteboard with any meeting tool (be it Slack, Hangouts, Skype, Webex, you name it).
- starvingbear 7y ago
  Came here to say something similar. Love the office but downtown cores where tech companies usually are are getting particularly difficult and unpleasant to deal with. And a lot of people dont pike the office layouts common now as well. Remote preference seems to be a combo of enjoyment of it and the worsening of the office situation
- dx87 7y ago
  I definitely agree with the part about long commutes. Between the drive to work and having to put on work clothes, brush my hair, etc, it's about 1.5-2 hours out of my day that is completely wasted when I can't work from home. I'm more productive at home as well, since I can take breaks as needed instead of having to look busy for 8 hours and getting bored after 4 hours at the office.
taneq 7y ago
I am astounded that the only mention of pants is a tweet regarding "working in lululemon pants" as being a perk. I thought one of the chief benefits of remote work was that pants were entirely optional!
- maxaf 7y ago
  For me the main perk of remote work is that the status of pants is by design entirely unknowable. In practice, this also covers data points such as status or style of shirt, whether I’ve showered that day, where on the planet I happen to be, whether I’m actually in a pool, how far from civilization I am, or whether I’ve injured my leg and didn’t tell anyone because it’s not a big deal and I don’t mind typing while my leg hurts, or whether I have loud death metal playing at top volume. I’m content with all of those things remaining a mystery for my coworkers because none are correlated with quality and timeliness of my work.
- kashyapc 7y ago
  Speak for yourself ;-) Most times I wear good clothes (and sometimes even shoes, when at home).
- wool_gather 7y ago
  Personally I find that getting myself (at least close to) office-presentable even when I'm working from home and nobody's going to see me is helpful to maintaining the "now I'm working" frame of mind -- avoiding distraction, that is. But that may be just me.
nhumrich 7y ago
This article doesn't answer the headline statement. It just says people like it, would recommend it, and that record is in the rise. Simple survey stuff. Doesn't actually ever attempt to answer the question "why" people like it. Except at the very end, with the one question "top 3 reasons to recommend remote work"
- spurdoman77 7y ago
  Looks like an advertisement piece more than an actual research.
chadash 7y ago
> "91% of remote workers said working remotely is a good fit for them." Right, and 97% of current ferret owners say that ferrets make great pets [0]. I'd like the survey to include people who worked remotely in the past and no longer do. Count me in that group. I worked remotely for a six months at a remote-friendly but not remote-first company and here were my findings: * It was lonely being at home. And I wasn't as productive. After a month, I rented space at a WeWork, which helped with both problems. But it requires that you be outgoing to meet people who work in your space but aren't your coworkers. * I didn't like being physically separated from my colleagues. It meant that I wasn't privy to many of the important conversations in the company. * I was always afraid that come a round of layoffs that it's easier to fire the folks who work 1000 miles away. * In a company that isn't remote first, it limits your career growth (most of the time). * Maybe it's just me, but I find it much easier to explain difficult technical things in person. Yes, screenshares are very helpful, but sometimes a hard problem involves going back and forth between monitors, for example. I also like being able to use a whiteboard [1]. * As a software engineer, it's easy to get siloed into only communicating with people on your team and remote work only increases this tendency. If you work in an office, you meet people from other parts of the business in the cafeteria/break room/etc. and that allows you to have a more full understanding of the company. And it's my belief that if you don't understand the business, then you don't understand what your software should be doing. Overall, I didn't hate working remotely but it wasn't great either. I would do it again for a short period of time (e.g. a year while my wife is on sabbatical) without hesitation, but I personally didn't like it for the long term. That said, the ability to work remotely on occasion is something that's very important to me. I personally wouldn't apply to jobs at remote-only companies, but I definitely think this is the way to go if you want to make a career out of working remote as it solves a few of the problems above. [0] Not saying that they don't, for some people. Just saying that asking people who currently own ferrets means your sample is biased. [1] Sometimes old fashioned is best. One of my companies moved to a new office and was thinking of installing "smart boards" at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars, thinking that the engineers would love them. To their surprise, the engineers protested and asked for good quality "dumb" boards instead.
- chapium 7y ago
  Remote first is key. If your team isn't remote, there is assymmetry in communication. This will lead to problems long term.
ptero 7y ago
Remote work can be great, but it requires two key things. First is the ability to actually do useful work at home or other non-office location. This is not hard (I suspect some people working remotely do goof off, but I suspect those people are not super useful sitting in the office either). Second, much harder, is the employer support. Direct manager of remote workers should know how to manage them (which is a rare skill) and be interested in doing it. It means parceling work in a larger, independent chunks, planning integration and communication as needed and spotting and resolving problems early enough with no/rare face to face contact (and face to face does help for this). Fail either of those and working remotely is inviting failure. My 2c.
- oneepic 7y ago
  >First is the ability to actually do useful work at home or other non-office location. This is not hard (I suspect some people working remotely do goof off, but I suspect those people are not super useful sitting in the office either) You'd be wrong to suspect that. I am very productive at work but I just end up getting distracted at home. It is hard. It's a mentality thing. Additionally, when I'm at the office, I can talk to another person and just ask a question in 5 seconds that would take possibly hours to get a reply otherwise.
  - ptero 7y ago
    Agreed, clarification needed. I meant "many/most", but made the sentence read as if I meant "everyone".
- bluntfang 7y ago
  >(I suspect some people working remotely do goof off, but I suspect those people are not super useful sitting in the office either). I've thought about this a lot, and for me, as a remote working, I believe I have about the same amount of productivity as in the office. But instead of water cooler talk and socialization, I find I'm able to take care of chores and keep my affairs in order so that my free time is more free. It makes me much happier to work remote, simply because when I socialize in the office and commute, I find I have no energy to keep my affairs in order.
thieving_magpie 7y ago
I don't believe people love remote work as much as the article suggests, but this does match my own experience. I absolutely love it. I used to work at a very chatty office before they let me work remotely. My productivity and ability to think deeply about problems has skyrocketed. Remote work isn't a catch all solution but it can be really effective if you match it to the right job.
Nursie 7y ago
I work remotely 2 days a week. I'd quite like to go to 3 and might soon. But without being in the office a couple of days a week for collaboration, a lot of stuff just wouldn't work. Conference calls, slack and email are no substitute for the face-to-face conversations that can resolve blocking issues in a few seconds versus a few hours. I'd definitely recommend partial remote working. Not sure I'd want it fully.
- mcpeepants 7y ago
  > Conference calls, slack and email are no substitute for the face-to-face conversations that can resolve blocking issues in a few seconds versus a few hours I don't doubt this is a real challenge for certain teams or types of work. However, in 5+ years of working remotely at fully-distributed orgs I have never experienced this. Not once have I encountered a scenario where being in a room together would have dramatically changed/improved/whatever the discussion. Perhaps it just comes down to having a team that can communicate effectively without being face-to-face, but this always interested me as a common criticism of remote work.
  - Nursie 7y ago
    > Perhaps it just comes down to having a team that can communicate effectively Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if you are working in a more functional team than the one I'm consulting/contracting with right now. I'm not going to name the organisation when I'm bad-mouthing them so much, but there are systemic problems going right up to the top. If you asked me to name somewhere with smart, competent people throughout the org, working well within a lightweight but functional agile delivery process, I wouldn't name the folks I'm with right now. There are a handful of competent developers (all the devs really) and one or two decent ops guys, but everyone from the PO to the Security Architect, to the QA folks is a walking disaster zone, poor communication being a big part of the problem. I'm just glad delivery comes relatively soon and I'm not trying to build a career with them...
- okmokmz 7y ago
  >Conference calls, slack and email are no substitute for the face-to-face conversations that can resolve blocking issues in a few seconds versus a few hours. I haven't found this to be the case
g051051 7y ago
I was full-time WFH for 6 wonderful years. I was happy, my productivity was off the charts, I was saving tons of money because I didn't have to spend it on my car and clothes, I had extra time that I wasn't wasting on my commute, etc. Then, we had a big shake-up. A bunch of senior people left, and new "leadership" came in to "transform" our workplace. All WFH was cancelled in our division (in spite of still being officially encouraged by corporate policy). The big boss said "a 15 minute fact-to-face is better than a multi-day email chain". My response to that is "What about the other 99.9% of my work time, when I don't need to interact with anyone?" Sigh. Since I had left the office, they had redone everything to be open plan, low walls, brighter lights, white noise over the speakers, etc. Contractors are packed like sardines, the noise is insane. We're also "Agile" now, so we spend a ton of time in useless meetings. I'm not very happy anymore.
- mpweiher 7y ago
  > We're also "Agile" now, so we spend a ton of time in useless meetings. One of the crazier things that has happened. When the XP folk said "we do a standup", the idea was that meetings are useless and awful, you shouldn't have them, but if you're going to have them, then let's "encourage" brevity by having everyone stand. Add a few decades of agile certified consultants, sc(r)umification and now "agile" means "lots of meetings". Sigh.
  - jbarberu 7y ago
    I'm so glad my team is distributed across different offices and we do our stand-ups at our desks. Having hypermobility in my knees, and most other joints, I get tired from standing still more than 2-3 minutes...
    - mpweiher 7y ago
      ...and only have those stand for whom it's not a burden. It seems nowadays the "standing" up has become some weird ritual that one must undergo, without questioning, as a sacrifice to the gods of "Agile". Bizarre. All the practices have a purpose. If they don't fit, don't do them. Figure out what works for you. Adjust, adapt. Think! No, the planes of productivity will not come to your fauxgile wooden landing strip.
ken 7y ago
Elephant in the room: how many of these people would prefer it to having a private office? Strangely, this article/survey/infographic never mentions that option. I'd prefer remote work, too, over sitting in an open floorplan office, but I'd much prefer an actual office to either one. The easy "why" is: despite all the drawbacks, a lot of us will do pretty much anything to get out of an open floorplan.
- duiker101 7y ago
  A private office is the worst of both worlds for me. I have to go to the office, be out of everything that is comfortable for me, to be closed in an office for most of my day? No thanks!
- ReptileMan 7y ago
  I don't know. For me commute is the most pointlessly wasted time a person could do. And I have played lineage. So as long as your commute is 10 seconds home office beats real any time. At least until we get the whole teleportation thing nailed down.
  - jbarberu 7y ago
    Not to discredit your opinion, we're all different. For me the commute is worth the benefit of human interactions, seeing my coworkers for lunch and I also go to the gym next to my office. If I could only have my own private office it'd be great...
    - ReptileMan 7y ago
      What prevents you from going out on a lunch with someone or the gym while working remotely? You just have to live in a metro area, not suburbs. I generally have done that for the last 13 years.
      - jbarberu 7y ago
        Well, you answered the question for me "You just have to live in a metro area, not suburbs". I'm not saying I couldn't do both of those things when working from home, merely that as an added bonus of working out of an office I end up doing those things more often.
Frondo 7y ago
If companies paid for commute time I'd feel a lot less strongly about in-office requirements.
jbarberu 7y ago
For me it's: Office with my own office > Working from home > My own cube > the middle of a busy construction site > open office I'm currently in a cube, which is miles better than open office. I say I like working from home, only because I don't foresee getting my own office anytime soon.
- wefarrell 7y ago
  I actually feel strangely productive working in busy cafes. Even though there's a lot of noise and people moving around I'm able to tune everything out. However in an open office because I know the people moving around and the noise has the potential to involve me I have a very hard time concentrating.
  - jbarberu 7y ago
    Couldn't agree more. For me the cafes aren't feasible due to confidentiality, but not knowing or caring about the people making the noise is a lot better.
throwaway242221 7y ago
I "love" it in the sense that I can get paid while watching Netflix, playing games and do whatever I want. I instantly start slacking off and all my working hours become a game to make it look like I'm working when I'm not. This doesn't happen when I'm in a office where I'm "forced" to work. Yeah, you can slack off at the office as well but why? I obviously can't do any meaningful leisure activities there. And yes, it's a tooling and management issue but I haven't come across a single organisation where it's not possible to game it unless your job output is extremely easy to measure. I believe this is way more common than people think.
- cheez 7y ago
  Found the manager.
  - throwaway242221 7y ago
    So it's completely unbelievable that working from home makes some people (some, not all) slacking instead of working? I believe in remote work but it's not just for everyone like so many people seem to believe. I'm a living example of a dysfunctional remote worker.
    - tjr225 7y ago
      Working from home doesn't make you slack off. You make you slack off. Own up to your own decisions. While I don't want to flame you or attack you personally, I probably wouldn't want to work with someone with your attitude on either a distributed team or in an office.
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
- spurdoman77 7y ago
  Once a remote worker frauded a company I was working for a large amount of money. I dont think it was a coincidence that it was a remote worker - I believe it is much easier mentally to behave unethically if you dont see the people f2f you are hurting with your actions.
dajohnson89 7y ago
Has there been a survey of employers/managers/owners, assessing how remote work compares to non-remote? In terms of meeting goals, productivity, team cohesion, etc? I'm all about a workers-first mentality, but workers and managers' perception of remote work could be vastly different.
protonimitate 7y ago
I like flexibility. I don't want to be forced into a open floor plan office. But I also don't want to be full time remote, or forced into a singular private office. I want to be able to go into an office when I feel like. Work out of a small office/conference room when it gets noisy. Sit in the open when it makes sense. Work from home when I need to be heads down. I wish management would stop looking for the "productivity magic bullet" and just start offering options based on their employees. There is no one-size fits all solution here.
- wastedhours 7y ago
  We do that, and to be fair, it's really positive. We have an open plan area, booths if you want quiet work, meeting rooms for, well, meetings - and then you can WFH whenever you want to. It's a great approach, and I've enjoyed it for a good 3 years or so. It has the effect of damaging collaboration though - which for some roles is perfect (where I am, some roles you can be ignored for a good few days), but for ones like mine, it actually makes it hard. It also scratches out pretty much all sense of camaraderie, so it depends whether you want to feel connected with colleagues or not. This kind of agile working is a double edged sword, the benefits give rise to different challenges, challenges I never thought I'd see as such previously. That being said, working from home from 7:30-9, then heading to a coffee shop for an hour, then coming into the office for a bit, and then going home is freedom it'd be hard to give up.
  - Phillips126 7y ago
    Sounds like a dream. I went from private office to WFH (2 years), and now back on-site in a cube farm. My focus, productivity and happiness went from high to very high, then all time low. The cubes I sit in are a mixed environment with developers, reception, IT, etc. so the noise is almost unbearable. I tend to do my best work in complete silence (sometimes low music). Considering asking my boss for a private office and if not then seeking alternative employment.
udayrddy 7y ago
I expected there will be more counter arguments to this, surprised that the most of the people agreed. Now, am I weird ?!
kashyapc 7y ago
[Disregarding the click-bait title and & related bits in the article...] Given the Right Set of Parameters™ (omitting for brevity's sake; much has been written about them), Remote Work can be the "panacea", and a path towards a more serene approach to work and life. FWIW, I'm a long-time remote worker myself, and won't nonchalantly say "would recommend it to a friend" without having a serious understanding of the said friend's propensity for it—lest I would lead them down a steep slippery slope. The boring truth any reasonably experienced remote worker knows is that to be able to sustainably do it in the long run—which is the critical bit—requires a certain "psychological profile": ability to tolerate spells of solitude, having the discipline to do the Right Thing when no one is watching, and so on. So, saying "everyone loves it" is reckless. Not least because the article's sample size is a paltry 486 people.
ubermonkey 7y ago
My current job -- now 12 years -- has always been work from home, but I'm not sure if it's necessarily "remote work." I say this because this company has no office space anywhere. EVERYONE works from home. We're small (~10), but spread out over the whole US. I have coworkers I've never actually seen in the flesh, and I only see my boss a couple times a year. This works very well for us. I'd have a hard time going back to an office. But it's not "remote" in the sense that some folks are in an office and some folks aren't, which I think makes our WFH different from "remote work."
gexla 7y ago
This piece has the feeling of being written by "every Friday is Hawaiian T-shirt day" after his employer went all remote and he needed a new task. I have worked remotely more than not and it's not ideal. I suspect that if teleportation machines existed, then remote work wouldn't be a thing. Once you leave the office for the day (or leave the house to go to the office) then the logistical problems start (where do I find an affordable place to live.) Logistical problems for employees become logistical issues for employers. Working remotely is a trade-off and much of the time it works well enough. I'm guessing that most early remote workers get relatively cushy setups with allowances for equipment and good salaries. As remote becomes more common, then I bet that gets squeezed. Employers shouldn't expect that the average person can make it work. If you don't have a dedicated quiet office area then it gets real difficult. Pets are a distraction. Other people in the home are a distraction (and it's not their fault, they have the right to "be at home".) If you have a significant other living at home full time and that person is in a grumpy mood, then good luck. I feel that people who can make it work are those who either live in a cave with no other living creatures or they have the bread to get a big enough house and funds to create an operations center in a dedicated room. Everyone else should at least get a desk at a co-working space. There's also a lot which gets lost in the communication of remote working. The communication you do have is much more mercenary. A group of special operators can carry out a mission together and even do so with mostly radio silence. But these people lose out of a lot of the more interesting elements of civilian life. Alice is an avatar and emoji's who can get stuff done in remote space. But you don't get to see her world class key short-cut skills from which you could open up a whole new way of thinking about your own operations. You don't see the real pressure your boss or manager is under and you get far less information about how things work because they won't be casually confiding in you at the water cooler. You don't need a NORAD display to show major events and weather conditions around the world to see what challenges your collaborators will be up against in getting things done the coming day. Remote work kind of sucks. Where do I take the survey? ;)
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  I always find any work from home I do to be uncomfortable - my home isn't set up for work, and my house is full of distractions. And the boundaries disappear between the "home" and "work" - I can't just ignore emails if they pop up even if I'm done working, as there doesn't seem to be a discrete line anymore, I'm on call 24/7. I'm always worried about not answering the email, as I'm worried the boss will go "why isn't he working at 4 pm?".
JustSomeNobody 7y ago
I've been WFH for about 6 years. I enjoy the trust I am given to get work done that I promise to get done. I'm in a different TZ, so I enjoy the quiet time I get when the others on the team aren't working. However, as hard as we try, I still miss conversations that happen away from a computer or phone. Also, I do sometimes miss working in person with the people I work with. Finally, I do miss having a proper lab. I look around at the RF equipment laying around my home office and get a bit depressed. Remote work works. Anyone who says it doesn't has an agenda. Like non-remote work, you just have to hire the right people.
JackFr 7y ago
Honest headline "People who choose to work remotely love working remotely."
strenholme 7y ago
I actually prefer working at home in the morning and coming in to the office only in the afternoon. As a software developer, it allows me to focus on my software development and finish the tickets in my sprint without being stopped by support requests, wishlist feature requests, and other distractions from co-workers. When someone has to put a request in writing on Slack or with an email instead of just going to my cubicle and bugging me, it makes it less likely they will bother me with stuff that is not important. In terms of a daily standup, they work just as well using a video conference call, or, better yet, as a written report posted to Slack every day.
teddyuk 7y ago
Having millions of people regularly commuting into major cities is a disaster. You create all this traffic, congestion on trains, sometimes people packed liked sardines for what? To sit in an office and work less than you would in the peace and quiet at home. Much better if governments encouraged people to work from home, maybe have local hubs where people can go to if they can't work at home. Cut down on the traffic and let people enjoy more of their lives. When I don't WFH, I commute 4 hours a day, in and out of london - i'd rather spend that with my kids.
- geddy 7y ago
  Same numbers and thoughts here, except swap London with NYC. The government needs to incentivize behavior that's good for everyone. Offering some incentive to businesses who allow, for instance, 1-2 days a week from home would be huge. The amount of congestion that would cut down alone would be massive, in theory removing 20% of commuters every day.
- hanley 7y ago
  Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker is pushing a tax credit for employers who allow employees to work remotely as a strategy for reducing transportation congestion. I'm not sure I agree with the technique but it is an interesting idea to create financial incentives that encourage remote work. https://www.wbur.org/bostonomix/2019/07/25/governor-baker-work-from-home-transportation-mbta https://www.wbur.org/bostonomix/2019/07/25/governor-baker-wo...
  - nerdkid93 7y ago
    That seems like it just subsidizes the cost of suburbanizing a city, though.
k__ 7y ago
I think the main gain from remote work would be to pour tax money into the countryside.
patagonia 7y ago
To those complaining about the commute. You’re complaining about city and transportation architecture, not workplace design. We are social creatures. I don’t understand the complete lack of addressing the issue: 8 hours a day I’m cut off from people except virtually. Prisons that force virtual visitation are criticized for this exact issue.
- cromka 7y ago
  You don't have to work 8 hours non-stop. You can leave, meet friends (i.e. people you actually want to spend time with, not do because you have no one else) at lunch, talk to family, talk to neighbors, go to the gym, walk the dog, go for a swim (if you happen to live by the water) and still interact with people. But that implies you actually do have a social circle outside of your workplace or social abilities. If you don't have those, I doubt your workplace will provide any meaningful, organic interaction opportunities, either.
- pojzon 7y ago
  I would not agree. I simply loath the open space office.. We are cramped up like industry workers in 1880.. Yes we are social creatures and we need DIFFERENT levels of interaction with others. BUT we are not cattle to cramp us up desk to desk.
- buboard 7y ago
  > You’re complaining about city and transportation architecture, not workplace design. More like, complaining that the whole design of modern city life is around work. As more and more people work remotely, cities will change, habits will change. People who work at home have been largely neglected for decades; we feel out of sync with cities and other people, almost marginalized. This has to change.
- okmokmz 7y ago
  You're really comparing prisons that only allow virtual communication to working remotely? Lets brainstorm a list of ways that you can see people while working from home that you couldn't from prison. 1. If you have any family members that will be home throughout the day you can see them 2. You can step outside and talk to your neighbors 3. You can take a 10 minute break to walk to a local store/park 4. You can go out to lunch at restaurant 5. You can invite anyone to come over at any time 6. Before and after work, you can go anywhere you want, do anything you want, and see anyone you want as well as on weekends So it seems it's not quite like a prison... not to mention you can also call, text, video chat, IM, or communicate virtually at any time rather than only during certain periods of time with certain people as told by the prison. Also, if you're working in an office, how much time are you actually spending socializing and interacting with coworkers vs getting your work done? I understand that some people have a need to interact with people daily, but many of us prefer the quiet/isolation while we work, and comparing remote work to prison is ridiculous
nickjj 7y ago
I've been working remotely for my entire freelance career (~20 years). Very occasionally I'll go on site for certain local clients but that's not the norm. There's huge wins for working remotely that everyone has already stated but the isolation factor is real, especially if you're single. It might seem fun for a while (couple of months) to not wear pants at work and be able to put in 4 super productive hours of work before 10am if you wake up early and those are great things but I have to wonder if working remotely has long term mental health issues. To get human interaction I force myself to leave the house (I walk a few times a day for exercise), have some friends and hobbies, run errands etc. but it's not the same as being out of the house for 8-10+ hours a day. I'd like to see a test done on single people who have been working remotely for 5+ years and seeing if they have higher levels of general anxiety than anyone working a job where they need to commute full time. Even if you have a private office where you spend 95% of your time alone for ~8 hours, that's so much different (arguably better) than not leaving your house or apartment except for occasional short duration activities.
- djhalon 7y ago
  I worked remotely as a consultant for 12 years, before going back to full-time in an office job. The main driving factor for going back was the lack of consistent social interaction. I started my remote career in San Francisco, where I had non-work activities that were very active in the local community for nearly a decade. I was going out regularly and had many close friends. Being in a walkable area with decent public transportation was perfect for ease of social interactions. I later moved to a city in southern California, which was a more suburban environment. It wasn't walkable, you had to take a car everywhere and I didn't know anyone other than my partner when we first moved here. I now was in a situation where I had to re-establish my social connections without my previous activities (I had stopped being involved a few years before the move) and I also didn't have a work environment where I had also made many social connections over the years. For the first 5+ years, this was fine, I was able to make a handful of new friends but many of them started moving because of cost of living and starting new families. At this point, I feel like it really started to become determinantal to my mental health. Honestly, it took a long time for me to even notice and admit it was affecting me, but eventually, it was pretty debilitating. This wasn't the only source, but it was a major factor to be sure. That being said, after being back in the office for 2 years (they have pretty strong no work at home policy) I am ready to go back to remote work. I loved the benefits of remote work but I also now am much more aware of the importance of getting out and finding more social activities to balance this out. Also, I wouldn't go back as a consultant. Having a rotating cast of people you interact with made it much harder to form longer-term social bonds and also there was never dedicated time planned to meet in person at regular intervals, as a lot of remote-first companies do. I love and really miss the flexibility of my schedule and if I can find an environment that supports stable interactions with people and I continue to re-engage in more social activities outside of work, I would jump back into remote work in a heartbeat.
jdavis703 7y ago
What I hate is being lonely. They're shutting down our offices for cost savings. As such I've basically been straight work from home. Working from home reminds me of the isolation of being homeschooled. I love having the flexibility to work remote on certain days, for example when I need to bang out a bunch of code. But, having a place to interact with people is invaluable for me. I imagine countless others feel the same way, hence why companies still see offices as having value. So, for all the remote work evangelists on here: what do you do to counteract isolation?
- anonymous_ch 7y ago
  Couldn't agree more. Flexibility is amazing, but loneliness creeps in all too often.
- Dibes 7y ago
  As someone who has worked from home for over 2 years now, I have found the best way to counteract loneliness for me is to have weekly scheduled time with friends to play board games, hop on and play games at night with friends, and to sometimes go sit in a crowded coffee shop. I have also been remote calling some other friends at work to just shoot the shit, and work on our separate things while in a call. Between those things, it usually sates my need for social interactions. As a side thought, I have noticed that creating a dedicated work space as apposed to working from the sofa or any other place in the house has helped reduce the amount of loneliness or isolation I feel for some reason. That being said, sometimes I do still find myself feeling a tad lonely at times and is something I still am figuring out the best ways to manage. I still believe that the benefits of remote work still vastly outweigh a typical office job and it would be very hard for me to give up my current situation.
- JSavageReal 7y ago
  Try working outside of your home, perhaps in a co-working space or coffee shop.
  - ginko 7y ago
    How anyone can do productive work developing software in a coffee shop, presumably on a laptop, is completely beyond me.
neeleshs 7y ago
At our company (I'm a cofounder), we encourage remote. Some people need f2f once in a while so there is a co-working space we have for that. I split my time 50-50 at office and home. Saved 1.5 hours a day in commute compared to my previous job. It is hard to scale well, unless we built a strong culture of communication and spell out a few things.
anentropic 7y ago
I don't
ken 7y ago
"63% of US companies now have remote workers, according to a 2018 Upwork Study." Hmm, I don't believe this number. According to the SBA [1], there are over 30 million small businesses in the USA (averaging just under 2 people each). These constitute the vast majority (99.9%) of US companies. You probably can't do "an online survey of 1,005 workforce hiring decision makers obtained through a third-party, independent online sample" and get useful information about 63% of all companies. This sounds like Sample Bias galore. There aren't even 19M (.63*30M) companies with offices in this country. [1]: https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/advocacy/2018-Small-Business-Profiles-US.pdf https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/advocacy/2018-Small-...
miguelmota 7y ago
Working remote for 4 out of 5 days is the sweet spot for me. It’s good to come into the office and do a brainstorming and sprint planning session over a physical whiteboard once a week, but also to just do relationship maintenance with colleagues and talk to other people since loneliness can be a real problem over time when working remote all the time.
vfc1 7y ago
If nothing else, remote work means much less sleep deprivation for a lot of people, because they can wake up a bit later. If you have kids to take to school it might not change that much, but if you can take them close to the start of classes it might mean an extra 30 minutes to one hour of sleep a day. No wonder people work and feel so much better, even if its due to that simple factor alone. But of course, there are other things that come to play like the ability to concentrate, limited interruptions, being able to eat proper food, etc.
alkonaut 7y ago
I have done full time WFH for several years. My takeaways are now. - It’s not all positive, but the upsides can be bigger than the downsides. - If you have kids age 1-9 say, that need to be dropped off at school/daycare then WFH is fantastic. The commute time I instead spend working means I can drop kids off at 8 and pick them up and have dinner on the table at 5. - I’d not want to do it full time if I did not have family. The isolation is real even though I do video calls a large part of the day. - If had a choice I’d do 1-2 days in an office, but unfortunately it’s too expensive to pay a full time desk in a co working space and use it just part time. If I didn’t need a big screen etc I’d probably go for a part time seat in a coworking space.
siruncledrew 7y ago
Summarized thread takeaways are: 1. Those that WFH mostly prefer to WFH. Not really a surprise. Akin to "Those that like cooking enjoy making food at home". 2. Plenty of personal reasons why WFH working habits should be generalized across everybody because someone prefers it for themselves. 3. WFH works out better when home is already a convenient place to work; not necessarily if someone lives in a 80 sq ft room or wants to meet people/do things in a certain place.
jefftk 7y ago
> Why Everyone Loves Remote Work ... 91% of remote workers said working remotely is a good fit for them. There's a large gap between "the small fraction of workers who are remote love working remotely" and "everyone loves working remotely". My wife works remotely, and likes it a lot. I've worked remotely, don't like it at all, and am back in an office. (For me, I'm just happiest if I'm in the same place as my coworkers. The place I worked at remotely seemed to do everything right, but I still felt disconnected and lonely.)
reggieband 7y ago
I am in the process of making a major life change to focus on remote first work. I've recently moved and I am currently looking to purchase a house in a small town from where I plan to work full-time. I think the caveats people bring up are serious and require careful consideration. They are part of why I am trying to find a company that is "remote-first" and I would prefer to avoid companies where I am one of a handful of remote employees while the rest of the team is co-located in one or more offices. My major fears are: * I suffer from isolation and loneliness and it impacts my mental well-being * I find my career progression stalled * I miss out on more lucrative compensation * I find my coworkers making decisions without consulting me * I experience an increase in general anxiety * I find my productivity and focus to be significantly less * I am unable to balance work/life when they are combined in the same place The worst case scenario is that a combination of my fears being realized forces me to recognize my unsuitability for remote work. I would then be stuck in a smaller city with less opportunity, potentially with a mortgage. I might be forced to sell my home for a loss, to move back into a bigger city and to attempt to find a normal job to rebuild my retirement savings. My plan to mitigate these is to be aware of my fears and to put into place strategies that can deal with each one. I believe that companies that plan to be remote-reliant in the future will need expertise at the management level to deal with those issues throughout their workforce. Where there is legitimate fear there is also opportunity. I believe that all of the problems associated with remote work can be handled if they are openly discussed.
igor_ch 7y ago
I don't think remote work is that good. It has its benefits like having more time, flexible schedule and work from where you want but this comes at a price: you work alone every day, your colleagues are in different timezones, you need to set hard rules on your work schedule and socializing is a must. Think of all the things you get for granted working from an office: colleagues, events, pair programming, face to face meetings, small talk breaks. Again I do agree the remote work has its benefits but everything comes at a cost.
geddy 7y ago
I work very far from my office, and on the 1-2 days a week I do go in, it's an hour and a half each way. For the wife, it's 2 full hours each way. Totally not worth it day to day, but it's a nice change of pace for the 1-2 days I go in. Keeps things fresh, and I take a bus the whole way there. That being said, if my job was, say, a 20 minute commute, I'd go in probably 3 or 4 days a week, assuming the office was nice. I prefer working in person at times, it really depends on what I'm doing, but the option is what makes it work for me. 100% remote would only make me happy for so long, I think. Also, rarely discussed in these types of posts is that your social abilities definitely diminish if you work from home a lot and rarely interact with people. I've noticed it in myself and made a conscious push to get into the office more often to offset that.
nemetroid 7y ago
Without making a statement for or against remote work, this: > People like to harp on the failings of remote work. Loneliness. Distractions. Not unplugging. Lack of collaboration. Dog hair. > But in reality, people love working remotely. And they’re willing to forgive its failings because it’s just that good. does not follow from a survey asking remote workers if they like working remotely.
zarkov99 7y ago
Yes, but do their employers? It is easy to come up with things that employees or employers will love, it is pleasing the two groups simultaneously that is hard.
donretag 7y ago
I have been working remotely for 3-4 years, and I am currently job hunting. I did not like working remotely honestly. As an extrovert, I did not like the isolation. However, the major drawback was not being able to steer any of the tech/political discussion because I was remote. I had poor managers/CTO that needed a good smack to the head because they were too scatterbrained, but I was not there to do it. Impossible over Slack. Now that I am job hunting again, I am wary of remote jobs. Of the three roles I am pursuing now, only one is remote. I have a good feeling about this one since there already is a sizable part of the office that is remote.
- thrwaway4833 7y ago
  The cost savings to employers is so extraordinary ($0 per square foot in office space, $0 on HVAC, electricity, $0 on corporate wifi and the building's ethernet, $0 on cleaning bills, $0 on toilet paper, ink, toner, desks, etc etc - the employer literally is happy to buy all of the above), and to employees a free 5-20% reduction of work hours due to the total loss of mandatory unpaid commute, plus all transportation costs, that I can't help but think something must be missing. Any employer that could leverage remote workers could have the equivalent of a $1 trillion headquarters employing 1 billion people, tomorrow: at a cost of exactly $0. So it stands to reason that there is SOMETHING keeping remote-only workplaces from eating their competitors for lunch. Something turns off that growth or ruins the economics. What is that something?
  - eckza 7y ago
    Here's my hot take: In places that I've worked, WFH is usually reserved for divisions that are expected to be intrinsically-motivated high performers. Some companies can afford to be staffed with nothing but these types of people; other companies are not so lucky. WFH only works if the people that are W-ingFH are motivated enough by their work to do it without being supervised. And for some job roles in some organizations, the savings from not having to hold an office for a role, are more than offset by the lost productivity from having that role as a remote hire. I'm not trying to say that all HN-ers are magical special large-brained unicorn employees; but I've worked at several places where certain key roles are staffed by people that couldn't figure out how to effectively work remotely if their lives depended on it.
brailsafe 7y ago
I'm currently remote for a grant funded initiative at a University. The work is great, but I'm the sole developer. I move around a lot and don't keep a home office. I like it, it's technically satisfying most of the time, but there are only so many days I can spent just working through technical problems at a coffee shop. It's also really great if I want to go off on a road trip or something. I'd like a bit of diversity in the types of problems I'm working on, and miss building something up with people who have different skills or knowledge than me. So I'm looking for work that's at least partly onsite, but that lets me do whatever I want to isolate myself and work through a problem on my own if necessary (in Vancouver if anyone's looking). At a previous position, eyebrows were raised when I chose to take my laptop away from my desk to sit in the lobby and code so I could get away from Bill, the jackass who brought in a mechanical keyboard and screamed through sales calls on his bluetooth earpiece. Bill, of course wasn't a jackass. I eventually brought him aside and simply asked him to be a bit quieter.
antonioaguilar 7y ago
Many friends from Latin America work via Upwork, but they barely make enough for a living as they charge around 30% commission (end-to-end). I would rather look for companies that focus on remote work. For example, I have a Mexican friend working remotely from SF at www.lionmint.com/en. It's a german IT consultancy that focuses on digital platform development. He told me they pay great rates and have top-notch projects.
wrestlerman 7y ago
I've seen there are plenty of comments that disagree with that statement. I agree, though. I love working remotely. I've been working remotely for a bit less than a year now. I had some few months break at the beginning of this year where I was working on my own product, but I was still at home. Why do I love it? Well, my wife is staying at home with me and we get to spend so much more time together. I think over that period of time we've got closer together. We can chat during the day, eat meals together and stuff like that, it's super cool. More reasons? If I can work asynchronously (not being dependent on the rest of my team) I can schedule my day according to my needs. Need a one hour walk outside? Well, why not:) Even though it's not my company I'm working for I kind feel like I am the boss. I don't have people staring at my screen, I don't have people talking next to me, I can go to a shop and prepare a nice breakfast if I want to. It's really good. I do agree that it gets a bit boring without a chitchat with colleagues. But I try to compensate for it by meeting with my friends and family regularly.
bumbledraven 7y ago
Working part-time is also a game changer.
effnorwood 7y ago
Not really.
notus 7y ago
My main problem with remote work is there seems to be a lack of upward mobility. Most of the interactions I've had that have accelerated my career were face to face and wouldn't have happened over slack or email. Something to consider.
stewofkc 7y ago
I work almost exclusively remotely. It's been great for me. At first, it was hard to stay productive, but I got a dedicated home office and now I love working from home. People get so stressed out from commuting, even if they don't realize it.
ignore-this 7y ago
No. No they don't.
purplezooey 7y ago
That's because, guess what, sitting in an office all day sucks.
xtat 7y ago
Remote for 15 years, twice as a CTO/co-founder and there is no amount you could pay me to go back.
buboard 7y ago
Most comments here are "remote work is great, but"... That's ignoring the inevitability of technologies. This time it's different. Working from home was the norm for centuries, then the industrial revolution happened, and then the internet happened. Nowadays, way too many people don't work from home, for no good reason. As software keeps on eating everything, remote work will cause major disruptions in the way we live, the places we live and our lifestyles. For those of us that learned to work remotely, it is an irreversible change (and polls show that too). Lifestyle adapts to work, not the other way around. As such, we should be thinking about ways in which societies and lifestyles will switch from the 9-5/mon-fri, to something that is very asynchronous yet vibrant and fulfilling. Going back to the office just a dumb desperate solution, considering you are adding back commute time, office politics, useless distractions etc etc. Communication tools are already too good to be ignored. (Also, remote work is an onramp to freelancing/consulting/whatever. Because, if you can work remotely for one employer, why not work for another?) Most of the complaints such as isolation and disconnection are because society has not adapted to remote working rather than the merits of RW itself. Imagine a world where everyone whose job allows it works remotely. That 's basically the majority of workers[1]. Imagine the change in the pace of life and thousands of people feeling as lonely as you. The precipitous fall of real estate prices as commercial properties become vacant. The empty roads that don't need more than one lane. PEople reconnecting with their neighbors by spending a lot more time in physical proximity. Preschools and even schools becoming obsolete and replaced with home/small group schooling. Our current lifestyles are hostile to remote work. We don't want to return to the closed societies of small villages, but we also want to make working at home humane. We should be able to work on this problem and i look forward to the things that people will invent in the next few years. Changes like this have happened before 1. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/4187653/7825806/IMG+graph+1+news+EMPL+A10.png/6c792596-03bb-430a-8807-99c15bf619d8?t=1508758339798 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/4187653/7825806/IMG+...
lwh 7y ago
duh
lwh 7y ago
IRC for whoever is live + good email lists + discipline on wiki|docs + good PM/ticket communications is faster and more reliable than anything in person. Non-remote is a productivity disadvantage to people who need fast communication. A team of people online can say more with no interupt-crosstalk that cripples in-person "collaboration".
RickJWagner 7y ago
I've worked remotely for 9 years. It is the single biggest factor in what I love about my work. If I ever change jobs, the ability to work remote is going to be very high on my must-have list.
lukaszkups 7y ago
I love remote work, I really do, but it's definitely not for everyone or a golden grail of work structure - I've even put my thoughts about it on my website: https://lukaszkups.net/notes/truth-about-remote-work/ https://lukaszkups.net/notes/truth-about-remote-work/ (shameless share, but please let me know what do you think about it if you want ;) )

422 points by galfarragem 7y ago

I love remote work too. But I strongly believe it's not for everyone. Not even 50% of the population. It would be a mistake to assume that it's easy for everyone. For me, going in the office means putting my headset on and doing my work till I need to leave, while having as few interactions as possible; so there are pretty much only perks on working from home. Most people crave engagement without even realizing it. It also really depends on the job and the company. If remote working means never going off, I think it's a company culture problem rather than a problem of remote working itself. It might be true that since remote work is relatively new the boundaries and the culture might not be fully formed yet for many companies but I think everyone that works remotely should realize this and set expectations and boundaries accordingly.

achow 7y ago
It has been said enough already but worth repeating - if everyone or most of them is remote in an office then only remote works - not only for business but also for the worker (career growth wise).
Ididntdothis 7y ago
Totally agree. I love remote work but you have to be cut out for it. A lot of people aren’t. I also may enjoy going to an office more if I actually had an office with a window where i could feel comfortable instead of staring at a gray cube wall and listening to my loud neighbors the whole day.
- voxl 7y ago
  These strange claims with no evidence. Working from home has to fight existing inertia, you couldn't WFH prior to the internet age, so no one did. Now it's possible and suddenly not everyone is cut out for it. Not everyone is cut out for a 9 to 5, not everyone is a morning person, not everyone likes sitting in a chair all day. But they deal with it, because it's their job. The same will be 100% true for WFH, cut out for it or not, they'll adapt and make it work.
magashna 7y ago
Definitely depends on the job and how you're utilized. I know people who work remotely 100% but have been at the same company, same position for years. It's hard to get promotions when upper management doesn't have a face for your name. I think if you're working remotely, you should either visit regularly or use your webcam often

deleted 7y ago

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pikzel 7y ago

I think it's especially popular in the US where they've always had long commutes. I work remotely from time to time, and it works fine when I have a specific task to focus on, but I've never managed to replace the spontaneous talks or meetings by a whiteboard with any meeting tool (be it Slack, Hangouts, Skype, Webex, you name it).

starvingbear 7y ago
Came here to say something similar. Love the office but downtown cores where tech companies usually are are getting particularly difficult and unpleasant to deal with. And a lot of people dont pike the office layouts common now as well. Remote preference seems to be a combo of enjoyment of it and the worsening of the office situation
dx87 7y ago
I definitely agree with the part about long commutes. Between the drive to work and having to put on work clothes, brush my hair, etc, it's about 1.5-2 hours out of my day that is completely wasted when I can't work from home. I'm more productive at home as well, since I can take breaks as needed instead of having to look busy for 8 hours and getting bored after 4 hours at the office.

taneq 7y ago

I am astounded that the only mention of pants is a tweet regarding "working in lululemon pants" as being a perk. I thought one of the chief benefits of remote work was that pants were entirely optional!

maxaf 7y ago
For me the main perk of remote work is that the status of pants is by design entirely unknowable. In practice, this also covers data points such as status or style of shirt, whether I’ve showered that day, where on the planet I happen to be, whether I’m actually in a pool, how far from civilization I am, or whether I’ve injured my leg and didn’t tell anyone because it’s not a big deal and I don’t mind typing while my leg hurts, or whether I have loud death metal playing at top volume. I’m content with all of those things remaining a mystery for my coworkers because none are correlated with quality and timeliness of my work.
kashyapc 7y ago
Speak for yourself ;-) Most times I wear good clothes (and sometimes even shoes, when at home).
wool_gather 7y ago
Personally I find that getting myself (at least close to) office-presentable even when I'm working from home and nobody's going to see me is helpful to maintaining the "now I'm working" frame of mind -- avoiding distraction, that is. But that may be just me.

nhumrich 7y ago

This article doesn't answer the headline statement. It just says people like it, would recommend it, and that record is in the rise. Simple survey stuff. Doesn't actually ever attempt to answer the question "why" people like it. Except at the very end, with the one question "top 3 reasons to recommend remote work"

spurdoman77 7y ago
Looks like an advertisement piece more than an actual research.

chadash 7y ago

> "91% of remote workers said working remotely is a good fit for them." Right, and 97% of current ferret owners say that ferrets make great pets [0]. I'd like the survey to include people who worked remotely in the past and no longer do. Count me in that group. I worked remotely for a six months at a remote-friendly but not remote-first company and here were my findings: * It was lonely being at home. And I wasn't as productive. After a month, I rented space at a WeWork, which helped with both problems. But it requires that you be outgoing to meet people who work in your space but aren't your coworkers. * I didn't like being physically separated from my colleagues. It meant that I wasn't privy to many of the important conversations in the company. * I was always afraid that come a round of layoffs that it's easier to fire the folks who work 1000 miles away. * In a company that isn't remote first, it limits your career growth (most of the time). * Maybe it's just me, but I find it much easier to explain difficult technical things in person. Yes, screenshares are very helpful, but sometimes a hard problem involves going back and forth between monitors, for example. I also like being able to use a whiteboard [1]. * As a software engineer, it's easy to get siloed into only communicating with people on your team and remote work only increases this tendency. If you work in an office, you meet people from other parts of the business in the cafeteria/break room/etc. and that allows you to have a more full understanding of the company. And it's my belief that if you don't understand the business, then you don't understand what your software should be doing. Overall, I didn't hate working remotely but it wasn't great either. I would do it again for a short period of time (e.g. a year while my wife is on sabbatical) without hesitation, but I personally didn't like it for the long term. That said, the ability to work remotely on occasion is something that's very important to me. I personally wouldn't apply to jobs at remote-only companies, but I definitely think this is the way to go if you want to make a career out of working remote as it solves a few of the problems above. [0] Not saying that they don't, for some people. Just saying that asking people who currently own ferrets means your sample is biased. [1] Sometimes old fashioned is best. One of my companies moved to a new office and was thinking of installing "smart boards" at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars, thinking that the engineers would love them. To their surprise, the engineers protested and asked for good quality "dumb" boards instead.

chapium 7y ago
Remote first is key. If your team isn't remote, there is assymmetry in communication. This will lead to problems long term.

ptero 7y ago

Remote work can be great, but it requires two key things. First is the ability to actually do useful work at home or other non-office location. This is not hard (I suspect some people working remotely do goof off, but I suspect those people are not super useful sitting in the office either). Second, much harder, is the employer support. Direct manager of remote workers should know how to manage them (which is a rare skill) and be interested in doing it. It means parceling work in a larger, independent chunks, planning integration and communication as needed and spotting and resolving problems early enough with no/rare face to face contact (and face to face does help for this). Fail either of those and working remotely is inviting failure. My 2c.

oneepic 7y ago
>First is the ability to actually do useful work at home or other non-office location. This is not hard (I suspect some people working remotely do goof off, but I suspect those people are not super useful sitting in the office either) You'd be wrong to suspect that. I am very productive at work but I just end up getting distracted at home. It is hard. It's a mentality thing. Additionally, when I'm at the office, I can talk to another person and just ask a question in 5 seconds that would take possibly hours to get a reply otherwise.
- ptero 7y ago
  Agreed, clarification needed. I meant "many/most", but made the sentence read as if I meant "everyone".
bluntfang 7y ago
>(I suspect some people working remotely do goof off, but I suspect those people are not super useful sitting in the office either). I've thought about this a lot, and for me, as a remote working, I believe I have about the same amount of productivity as in the office. But instead of water cooler talk and socialization, I find I'm able to take care of chores and keep my affairs in order so that my free time is more free. It makes me much happier to work remote, simply because when I socialize in the office and commute, I find I have no energy to keep my affairs in order.

thieving_magpie 7y ago

I don't believe people love remote work as much as the article suggests, but this does match my own experience. I absolutely love it. I used to work at a very chatty office before they let me work remotely. My productivity and ability to think deeply about problems has skyrocketed. Remote work isn't a catch all solution but it can be really effective if you match it to the right job.

Nursie 7y ago

I work remotely 2 days a week. I'd quite like to go to 3 and might soon. But without being in the office a couple of days a week for collaboration, a lot of stuff just wouldn't work. Conference calls, slack and email are no substitute for the face-to-face conversations that can resolve blocking issues in a few seconds versus a few hours. I'd definitely recommend partial remote working. Not sure I'd want it fully.

mcpeepants 7y ago
> Conference calls, slack and email are no substitute for the face-to-face conversations that can resolve blocking issues in a few seconds versus a few hours I don't doubt this is a real challenge for certain teams or types of work. However, in 5+ years of working remotely at fully-distributed orgs I have never experienced this. Not once have I encountered a scenario where being in a room together would have dramatically changed/improved/whatever the discussion. Perhaps it just comes down to having a team that can communicate effectively without being face-to-face, but this always interested me as a common criticism of remote work.
- Nursie 7y ago
  > Perhaps it just comes down to having a team that can communicate effectively Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if you are working in a more functional team than the one I'm consulting/contracting with right now. I'm not going to name the organisation when I'm bad-mouthing them so much, but there are systemic problems going right up to the top. If you asked me to name somewhere with smart, competent people throughout the org, working well within a lightweight but functional agile delivery process, I wouldn't name the folks I'm with right now. There are a handful of competent developers (all the devs really) and one or two decent ops guys, but everyone from the PO to the Security Architect, to the QA folks is a walking disaster zone, poor communication being a big part of the problem. I'm just glad delivery comes relatively soon and I'm not trying to build a career with them...
okmokmz 7y ago
>Conference calls, slack and email are no substitute for the face-to-face conversations that can resolve blocking issues in a few seconds versus a few hours. I haven't found this to be the case

g051051 7y ago

I was full-time WFH for 6 wonderful years. I was happy, my productivity was off the charts, I was saving tons of money because I didn't have to spend it on my car and clothes, I had extra time that I wasn't wasting on my commute, etc. Then, we had a big shake-up. A bunch of senior people left, and new "leadership" came in to "transform" our workplace. All WFH was cancelled in our division (in spite of still being officially encouraged by corporate policy). The big boss said "a 15 minute fact-to-face is better than a multi-day email chain". My response to that is "What about the other 99.9% of my work time, when I don't need to interact with anyone?" Sigh. Since I had left the office, they had redone everything to be open plan, low walls, brighter lights, white noise over the speakers, etc. Contractors are packed like sardines, the noise is insane. We're also "Agile" now, so we spend a ton of time in useless meetings. I'm not very happy anymore.

mpweiher 7y ago
> We're also "Agile" now, so we spend a ton of time in useless meetings. One of the crazier things that has happened. When the XP folk said "we do a standup", the idea was that meetings are useless and awful, you shouldn't have them, but if you're going to have them, then let's "encourage" brevity by having everyone stand. Add a few decades of agile certified consultants, sc(r)umification and now "agile" means "lots of meetings". Sigh.
- jbarberu 7y ago
  I'm so glad my team is distributed across different offices and we do our stand-ups at our desks. Having hypermobility in my knees, and most other joints, I get tired from standing still more than 2-3 minutes...
  - mpweiher 7y ago
    ...and only have those stand for whom it's not a burden. It seems nowadays the "standing" up has become some weird ritual that one must undergo, without questioning, as a sacrifice to the gods of "Agile". Bizarre. All the practices have a purpose. If they don't fit, don't do them. Figure out what works for you. Adjust, adapt. Think! No, the planes of productivity will not come to your fauxgile wooden landing strip.

ken 7y ago

Elephant in the room: how many of these people would prefer it to having a private office? Strangely, this article/survey/infographic never mentions that option. I'd prefer remote work, too, over sitting in an open floorplan office, but I'd much prefer an actual office to either one. The easy "why" is: despite all the drawbacks, a lot of us will do pretty much anything to get out of an open floorplan.

duiker101 7y ago
A private office is the worst of both worlds for me. I have to go to the office, be out of everything that is comfortable for me, to be closed in an office for most of my day? No thanks!
ReptileMan 7y ago
I don't know. For me commute is the most pointlessly wasted time a person could do. And I have played lineage. So as long as your commute is 10 seconds home office beats real any time. At least until we get the whole teleportation thing nailed down.
- jbarberu 7y ago
  Not to discredit your opinion, we're all different. For me the commute is worth the benefit of human interactions, seeing my coworkers for lunch and I also go to the gym next to my office. If I could only have my own private office it'd be great...
  - ReptileMan 7y ago
    What prevents you from going out on a lunch with someone or the gym while working remotely? You just have to live in a metro area, not suburbs. I generally have done that for the last 13 years.
    - jbarberu 7y ago
      Well, you answered the question for me "You just have to live in a metro area, not suburbs". I'm not saying I couldn't do both of those things when working from home, merely that as an added bonus of working out of an office I end up doing those things more often.

Frondo 7y ago

If companies paid for commute time I'd feel a lot less strongly about in-office requirements.

jbarberu 7y ago

For me it's: Office with my own office > Working from home > My own cube > the middle of a busy construction site > open office I'm currently in a cube, which is miles better than open office. I say I like working from home, only because I don't foresee getting my own office anytime soon.

wefarrell 7y ago
I actually feel strangely productive working in busy cafes. Even though there's a lot of noise and people moving around I'm able to tune everything out. However in an open office because I know the people moving around and the noise has the potential to involve me I have a very hard time concentrating.
- jbarberu 7y ago
  Couldn't agree more. For me the cafes aren't feasible due to confidentiality, but not knowing or caring about the people making the noise is a lot better.

throwaway242221 7y ago

I "love" it in the sense that I can get paid while watching Netflix, playing games and do whatever I want. I instantly start slacking off and all my working hours become a game to make it look like I'm working when I'm not. This doesn't happen when I'm in a office where I'm "forced" to work. Yeah, you can slack off at the office as well but why? I obviously can't do any meaningful leisure activities there. And yes, it's a tooling and management issue but I haven't come across a single organisation where it's not possible to game it unless your job output is extremely easy to measure. I believe this is way more common than people think.

cheez 7y ago
Found the manager.
- throwaway242221 7y ago
  So it's completely unbelievable that working from home makes some people (some, not all) slacking instead of working? I believe in remote work but it's not just for everyone like so many people seem to believe. I'm a living example of a dysfunctional remote worker.
  - tjr225 7y ago
    Working from home doesn't make you slack off. You make you slack off. Own up to your own decisions. While I don't want to flame you or attack you personally, I probably wouldn't want to work with someone with your attitude on either a distributed team or in an office.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
spurdoman77 7y ago
Once a remote worker frauded a company I was working for a large amount of money. I dont think it was a coincidence that it was a remote worker - I believe it is much easier mentally to behave unethically if you dont see the people f2f you are hurting with your actions.

dajohnson89 7y ago

Has there been a survey of employers/managers/owners, assessing how remote work compares to non-remote? In terms of meeting goals, productivity, team cohesion, etc? I'm all about a workers-first mentality, but workers and managers' perception of remote work could be vastly different.

protonimitate 7y ago

I like flexibility. I don't want to be forced into a open floor plan office. But I also don't want to be full time remote, or forced into a singular private office. I want to be able to go into an office when I feel like. Work out of a small office/conference room when it gets noisy. Sit in the open when it makes sense. Work from home when I need to be heads down. I wish management would stop looking for the "productivity magic bullet" and just start offering options based on their employees. There is no one-size fits all solution here.

wastedhours 7y ago
We do that, and to be fair, it's really positive. We have an open plan area, booths if you want quiet work, meeting rooms for, well, meetings - and then you can WFH whenever you want to. It's a great approach, and I've enjoyed it for a good 3 years or so. It has the effect of damaging collaboration though - which for some roles is perfect (where I am, some roles you can be ignored for a good few days), but for ones like mine, it actually makes it hard. It also scratches out pretty much all sense of camaraderie, so it depends whether you want to feel connected with colleagues or not. This kind of agile working is a double edged sword, the benefits give rise to different challenges, challenges I never thought I'd see as such previously. That being said, working from home from 7:30-9, then heading to a coffee shop for an hour, then coming into the office for a bit, and then going home is freedom it'd be hard to give up.
- Phillips126 7y ago
  Sounds like a dream. I went from private office to WFH (2 years), and now back on-site in a cube farm. My focus, productivity and happiness went from high to very high, then all time low. The cubes I sit in are a mixed environment with developers, reception, IT, etc. so the noise is almost unbearable. I tend to do my best work in complete silence (sometimes low music). Considering asking my boss for a private office and if not then seeking alternative employment.

udayrddy 7y ago

I expected there will be more counter arguments to this, surprised that the most of the people agreed. Now, am I weird ?!

kashyapc 7y ago

[Disregarding the click-bait title and & related bits in the article...] Given the Right Set of Parameters™ (omitting for brevity's sake; much has been written about them), Remote Work can be the "panacea", and a path towards a more serene approach to work and life. FWIW, I'm a long-time remote worker myself, and won't nonchalantly say "would recommend it to a friend" without having a serious understanding of the said friend's propensity for it—lest I would lead them down a steep slippery slope. The boring truth any reasonably experienced remote worker knows is that to be able to sustainably do it in the long run—which is the critical bit—requires a certain "psychological profile": ability to tolerate spells of solitude, having the discipline to do the Right Thing when no one is watching, and so on. So, saying "everyone loves it" is reckless. Not least because the article's sample size is a paltry 486 people.

ubermonkey 7y ago

My current job -- now 12 years -- has always been work from home, but I'm not sure if it's necessarily "remote work." I say this because this company has no office space anywhere. EVERYONE works from home. We're small (~10), but spread out over the whole US. I have coworkers I've never actually seen in the flesh, and I only see my boss a couple times a year. This works very well for us. I'd have a hard time going back to an office. But it's not "remote" in the sense that some folks are in an office and some folks aren't, which I think makes our WFH different from "remote work."

gexla 7y ago

This piece has the feeling of being written by "every Friday is Hawaiian T-shirt day" after his employer went all remote and he needed a new task. I have worked remotely more than not and it's not ideal. I suspect that if teleportation machines existed, then remote work wouldn't be a thing. Once you leave the office for the day (or leave the house to go to the office) then the logistical problems start (where do I find an affordable place to live.) Logistical problems for employees become logistical issues for employers. Working remotely is a trade-off and much of the time it works well enough. I'm guessing that most early remote workers get relatively cushy setups with allowances for equipment and good salaries. As remote becomes more common, then I bet that gets squeezed. Employers shouldn't expect that the average person can make it work. If you don't have a dedicated quiet office area then it gets real difficult. Pets are a distraction. Other people in the home are a distraction (and it's not their fault, they have the right to "be at home".) If you have a significant other living at home full time and that person is in a grumpy mood, then good luck. I feel that people who can make it work are those who either live in a cave with no other living creatures or they have the bread to get a big enough house and funds to create an operations center in a dedicated room. Everyone else should at least get a desk at a co-working space. There's also a lot which gets lost in the communication of remote working. The communication you do have is much more mercenary. A group of special operators can carry out a mission together and even do so with mostly radio silence. But these people lose out of a lot of the more interesting elements of civilian life. Alice is an avatar and emoji's who can get stuff done in remote space. But you don't get to see her world class key short-cut skills from which you could open up a whole new way of thinking about your own operations. You don't see the real pressure your boss or manager is under and you get far less information about how things work because they won't be casually confiding in you at the water cooler. You don't need a NORAD display to show major events and weather conditions around the world to see what challenges your collaborators will be up against in getting things done the coming day. Remote work kind of sucks. Where do I take the survey? ;)

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
I always find any work from home I do to be uncomfortable - my home isn't set up for work, and my house is full of distractions. And the boundaries disappear between the "home" and "work" - I can't just ignore emails if they pop up even if I'm done working, as there doesn't seem to be a discrete line anymore, I'm on call 24/7. I'm always worried about not answering the email, as I'm worried the boss will go "why isn't he working at 4 pm?".

JustSomeNobody 7y ago

I've been WFH for about 6 years. I enjoy the trust I am given to get work done that I promise to get done. I'm in a different TZ, so I enjoy the quiet time I get when the others on the team aren't working. However, as hard as we try, I still miss conversations that happen away from a computer or phone. Also, I do sometimes miss working in person with the people I work with. Finally, I do miss having a proper lab. I look around at the RF equipment laying around my home office and get a bit depressed. Remote work works. Anyone who says it doesn't has an agenda. Like non-remote work, you just have to hire the right people.

JackFr 7y ago

Honest headline "People who choose to work remotely love working remotely."

strenholme 7y ago

I actually prefer working at home in the morning and coming in to the office only in the afternoon. As a software developer, it allows me to focus on my software development and finish the tickets in my sprint without being stopped by support requests, wishlist feature requests, and other distractions from co-workers. When someone has to put a request in writing on Slack or with an email instead of just going to my cubicle and bugging me, it makes it less likely they will bother me with stuff that is not important. In terms of a daily standup, they work just as well using a video conference call, or, better yet, as a written report posted to Slack every day.

teddyuk 7y ago

Having millions of people regularly commuting into major cities is a disaster. You create all this traffic, congestion on trains, sometimes people packed liked sardines for what? To sit in an office and work less than you would in the peace and quiet at home. Much better if governments encouraged people to work from home, maybe have local hubs where people can go to if they can't work at home. Cut down on the traffic and let people enjoy more of their lives. When I don't WFH, I commute 4 hours a day, in and out of london - i'd rather spend that with my kids.

geddy 7y ago
Same numbers and thoughts here, except swap London with NYC. The government needs to incentivize behavior that's good for everyone. Offering some incentive to businesses who allow, for instance, 1-2 days a week from home would be huge. The amount of congestion that would cut down alone would be massive, in theory removing 20% of commuters every day.
hanley 7y ago
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker is pushing a tax credit for employers who allow employees to work remotely as a strategy for reducing transportation congestion. I'm not sure I agree with the technique but it is an interesting idea to create financial incentives that encourage remote work. https://www.wbur.org/bostonomix/2019/07/25/governor-baker-work-from-home-transportation-mbta https://www.wbur.org/bostonomix/2019/07/25/governor-baker-wo...
- nerdkid93 7y ago
  That seems like it just subsidizes the cost of suburbanizing a city, though.

k__ 7y ago

I think the main gain from remote work would be to pour tax money into the countryside.

patagonia 7y ago

To those complaining about the commute. You’re complaining about city and transportation architecture, not workplace design. We are social creatures. I don’t understand the complete lack of addressing the issue: 8 hours a day I’m cut off from people except virtually. Prisons that force virtual visitation are criticized for this exact issue.

cromka 7y ago
You don't have to work 8 hours non-stop. You can leave, meet friends (i.e. people you actually want to spend time with, not do because you have no one else) at lunch, talk to family, talk to neighbors, go to the gym, walk the dog, go for a swim (if you happen to live by the water) and still interact with people. But that implies you actually do have a social circle outside of your workplace or social abilities. If you don't have those, I doubt your workplace will provide any meaningful, organic interaction opportunities, either.
pojzon 7y ago
I would not agree. I simply loath the open space office.. We are cramped up like industry workers in 1880.. Yes we are social creatures and we need DIFFERENT levels of interaction with others. BUT we are not cattle to cramp us up desk to desk.
buboard 7y ago
> You’re complaining about city and transportation architecture, not workplace design. More like, complaining that the whole design of modern city life is around work. As more and more people work remotely, cities will change, habits will change. People who work at home have been largely neglected for decades; we feel out of sync with cities and other people, almost marginalized. This has to change.
okmokmz 7y ago
You're really comparing prisons that only allow virtual communication to working remotely? Lets brainstorm a list of ways that you can see people while working from home that you couldn't from prison. 1. If you have any family members that will be home throughout the day you can see them 2. You can step outside and talk to your neighbors 3. You can take a 10 minute break to walk to a local store/park 4. You can go out to lunch at restaurant 5. You can invite anyone to come over at any time 6. Before and after work, you can go anywhere you want, do anything you want, and see anyone you want as well as on weekends So it seems it's not quite like a prison... not to mention you can also call, text, video chat, IM, or communicate virtually at any time rather than only during certain periods of time with certain people as told by the prison. Also, if you're working in an office, how much time are you actually spending socializing and interacting with coworkers vs getting your work done? I understand that some people have a need to interact with people daily, but many of us prefer the quiet/isolation while we work, and comparing remote work to prison is ridiculous

nickjj 7y ago

I've been working remotely for my entire freelance career (~20 years). Very occasionally I'll go on site for certain local clients but that's not the norm. There's huge wins for working remotely that everyone has already stated but the isolation factor is real, especially if you're single. It might seem fun for a while (couple of months) to not wear pants at work and be able to put in 4 super productive hours of work before 10am if you wake up early and those are great things but I have to wonder if working remotely has long term mental health issues. To get human interaction I force myself to leave the house (I walk a few times a day for exercise), have some friends and hobbies, run errands etc. but it's not the same as being out of the house for 8-10+ hours a day. I'd like to see a test done on single people who have been working remotely for 5+ years and seeing if they have higher levels of general anxiety than anyone working a job where they need to commute full time. Even if you have a private office where you spend 95% of your time alone for ~8 hours, that's so much different (arguably better) than not leaving your house or apartment except for occasional short duration activities.

djhalon 7y ago
I worked remotely as a consultant for 12 years, before going back to full-time in an office job. The main driving factor for going back was the lack of consistent social interaction. I started my remote career in San Francisco, where I had non-work activities that were very active in the local community for nearly a decade. I was going out regularly and had many close friends. Being in a walkable area with decent public transportation was perfect for ease of social interactions. I later moved to a city in southern California, which was a more suburban environment. It wasn't walkable, you had to take a car everywhere and I didn't know anyone other than my partner when we first moved here. I now was in a situation where I had to re-establish my social connections without my previous activities (I had stopped being involved a few years before the move) and I also didn't have a work environment where I had also made many social connections over the years. For the first 5+ years, this was fine, I was able to make a handful of new friends but many of them started moving because of cost of living and starting new families. At this point, I feel like it really started to become determinantal to my mental health. Honestly, it took a long time for me to even notice and admit it was affecting me, but eventually, it was pretty debilitating. This wasn't the only source, but it was a major factor to be sure. That being said, after being back in the office for 2 years (they have pretty strong no work at home policy) I am ready to go back to remote work. I loved the benefits of remote work but I also now am much more aware of the importance of getting out and finding more social activities to balance this out. Also, I wouldn't go back as a consultant. Having a rotating cast of people you interact with made it much harder to form longer-term social bonds and also there was never dedicated time planned to meet in person at regular intervals, as a lot of remote-first companies do. I love and really miss the flexibility of my schedule and if I can find an environment that supports stable interactions with people and I continue to re-engage in more social activities outside of work, I would jump back into remote work in a heartbeat.

jdavis703 7y ago

What I hate is being lonely. They're shutting down our offices for cost savings. As such I've basically been straight work from home. Working from home reminds me of the isolation of being homeschooled. I love having the flexibility to work remote on certain days, for example when I need to bang out a bunch of code. But, having a place to interact with people is invaluable for me. I imagine countless others feel the same way, hence why companies still see offices as having value. So, for all the remote work evangelists on here: what do you do to counteract isolation?

anonymous_ch 7y ago
Couldn't agree more. Flexibility is amazing, but loneliness creeps in all too often.
Dibes 7y ago
As someone who has worked from home for over 2 years now, I have found the best way to counteract loneliness for me is to have weekly scheduled time with friends to play board games, hop on and play games at night with friends, and to sometimes go sit in a crowded coffee shop. I have also been remote calling some other friends at work to just shoot the shit, and work on our separate things while in a call. Between those things, it usually sates my need for social interactions. As a side thought, I have noticed that creating a dedicated work space as apposed to working from the sofa or any other place in the house has helped reduce the amount of loneliness or isolation I feel for some reason. That being said, sometimes I do still find myself feeling a tad lonely at times and is something I still am figuring out the best ways to manage. I still believe that the benefits of remote work still vastly outweigh a typical office job and it would be very hard for me to give up my current situation.
JSavageReal 7y ago
Try working outside of your home, perhaps in a co-working space or coffee shop.
- ginko 7y ago
  How anyone can do productive work developing software in a coffee shop, presumably on a laptop, is completely beyond me.

neeleshs 7y ago

At our company (I'm a cofounder), we encourage remote. Some people need f2f once in a while so there is a co-working space we have for that. I split my time 50-50 at office and home. Saved 1.5 hours a day in commute compared to my previous job. It is hard to scale well, unless we built a strong culture of communication and spell out a few things.

anentropic 7y ago

I don't

ken 7y ago

"63% of US companies now have remote workers, according to a 2018 Upwork Study." Hmm, I don't believe this number. According to the SBA [1], there are over 30 million small businesses in the USA (averaging just under 2 people each). These constitute the vast majority (99.9%) of US companies. You probably can't do "an online survey of 1,005 workforce hiring decision makers obtained through a third-party, independent online sample" and get useful information about 63% of all companies. This sounds like Sample Bias galore. There aren't even 19M (.63*30M) companies with offices in this country. [1]: https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/advocacy/2018-Small-Business-Profiles-US.pdf https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/advocacy/2018-Small-...

miguelmota 7y ago

Working remote for 4 out of 5 days is the sweet spot for me. It’s good to come into the office and do a brainstorming and sprint planning session over a physical whiteboard once a week, but also to just do relationship maintenance with colleagues and talk to other people since loneliness can be a real problem over time when working remote all the time.

vfc1 7y ago

If nothing else, remote work means much less sleep deprivation for a lot of people, because they can wake up a bit later. If you have kids to take to school it might not change that much, but if you can take them close to the start of classes it might mean an extra 30 minutes to one hour of sleep a day. No wonder people work and feel so much better, even if its due to that simple factor alone. But of course, there are other things that come to play like the ability to concentrate, limited interruptions, being able to eat proper food, etc.

alkonaut 7y ago

I have done full time WFH for several years. My takeaways are now. - It’s not all positive, but the upsides can be bigger than the downsides. - If you have kids age 1-9 say, that need to be dropped off at school/daycare then WFH is fantastic. The commute time I instead spend working means I can drop kids off at 8 and pick them up and have dinner on the table at 5. - I’d not want to do it full time if I did not have family. The isolation is real even though I do video calls a large part of the day. - If had a choice I’d do 1-2 days in an office, but unfortunately it’s too expensive to pay a full time desk in a co working space and use it just part time. If I didn’t need a big screen etc I’d probably go for a part time seat in a coworking space.

siruncledrew 7y ago

Summarized thread takeaways are: 1. Those that WFH mostly prefer to WFH. Not really a surprise. Akin to "Those that like cooking enjoy making food at home". 2. Plenty of personal reasons why WFH working habits should be generalized across everybody because someone prefers it for themselves. 3. WFH works out better when home is already a convenient place to work; not necessarily if someone lives in a 80 sq ft room or wants to meet people/do things in a certain place.

jefftk 7y ago

> Why Everyone Loves Remote Work ... 91% of remote workers said working remotely is a good fit for them. There's a large gap between "the small fraction of workers who are remote love working remotely" and "everyone loves working remotely". My wife works remotely, and likes it a lot. I've worked remotely, don't like it at all, and am back in an office. (For me, I'm just happiest if I'm in the same place as my coworkers. The place I worked at remotely seemed to do everything right, but I still felt disconnected and lonely.)

reggieband 7y ago

I am in the process of making a major life change to focus on remote first work. I've recently moved and I am currently looking to purchase a house in a small town from where I plan to work full-time. I think the caveats people bring up are serious and require careful consideration. They are part of why I am trying to find a company that is "remote-first" and I would prefer to avoid companies where I am one of a handful of remote employees while the rest of the team is co-located in one or more offices. My major fears are: * I suffer from isolation and loneliness and it impacts my mental well-being * I find my career progression stalled * I miss out on more lucrative compensation * I find my coworkers making decisions without consulting me * I experience an increase in general anxiety * I find my productivity and focus to be significantly less * I am unable to balance work/life when they are combined in the same place The worst case scenario is that a combination of my fears being realized forces me to recognize my unsuitability for remote work. I would then be stuck in a smaller city with less opportunity, potentially with a mortgage. I might be forced to sell my home for a loss, to move back into a bigger city and to attempt to find a normal job to rebuild my retirement savings. My plan to mitigate these is to be aware of my fears and to put into place strategies that can deal with each one. I believe that companies that plan to be remote-reliant in the future will need expertise at the management level to deal with those issues throughout their workforce. Where there is legitimate fear there is also opportunity. I believe that all of the problems associated with remote work can be handled if they are openly discussed.

igor_ch 7y ago

I don't think remote work is that good. It has its benefits like having more time, flexible schedule and work from where you want but this comes at a price: you work alone every day, your colleagues are in different timezones, you need to set hard rules on your work schedule and socializing is a must. Think of all the things you get for granted working from an office: colleagues, events, pair programming, face to face meetings, small talk breaks. Again I do agree the remote work has its benefits but everything comes at a cost.

geddy 7y ago

I work very far from my office, and on the 1-2 days a week I do go in, it's an hour and a half each way. For the wife, it's 2 full hours each way. Totally not worth it day to day, but it's a nice change of pace for the 1-2 days I go in. Keeps things fresh, and I take a bus the whole way there. That being said, if my job was, say, a 20 minute commute, I'd go in probably 3 or 4 days a week, assuming the office was nice. I prefer working in person at times, it really depends on what I'm doing, but the option is what makes it work for me. 100% remote would only make me happy for so long, I think. Also, rarely discussed in these types of posts is that your social abilities definitely diminish if you work from home a lot and rarely interact with people. I've noticed it in myself and made a conscious push to get into the office more often to offset that.

nemetroid 7y ago

Without making a statement for or against remote work, this: > People like to harp on the failings of remote work. Loneliness. Distractions. Not unplugging. Lack of collaboration. Dog hair. > But in reality, people love working remotely. And they’re willing to forgive its failings because it’s just that good. does not follow from a survey asking remote workers if they like working remotely.

zarkov99 7y ago

Yes, but do their employers? It is easy to come up with things that employees or employers will love, it is pleasing the two groups simultaneously that is hard.

donretag 7y ago

I have been working remotely for 3-4 years, and I am currently job hunting. I did not like working remotely honestly. As an extrovert, I did not like the isolation. However, the major drawback was not being able to steer any of the tech/political discussion because I was remote. I had poor managers/CTO that needed a good smack to the head because they were too scatterbrained, but I was not there to do it. Impossible over Slack. Now that I am job hunting again, I am wary of remote jobs. Of the three roles I am pursuing now, only one is remote. I have a good feeling about this one since there already is a sizable part of the office that is remote.

thrwaway4833 7y ago
The cost savings to employers is so extraordinary ($0 per square foot in office space, $0 on HVAC, electricity, $0 on corporate wifi and the building's ethernet, $0 on cleaning bills, $0 on toilet paper, ink, toner, desks, etc etc - the employer literally is happy to buy all of the above), and to employees a free 5-20% reduction of work hours due to the total loss of mandatory unpaid commute, plus all transportation costs, that I can't help but think something must be missing. Any employer that could leverage remote workers could have the equivalent of a $1 trillion headquarters employing 1 billion people, tomorrow: at a cost of exactly $0. So it stands to reason that there is SOMETHING keeping remote-only workplaces from eating their competitors for lunch. Something turns off that growth or ruins the economics. What is that something?
- eckza 7y ago
  Here's my hot take: In places that I've worked, WFH is usually reserved for divisions that are expected to be intrinsically-motivated high performers. Some companies can afford to be staffed with nothing but these types of people; other companies are not so lucky. WFH only works if the people that are W-ingFH are motivated enough by their work to do it without being supervised. And for some job roles in some organizations, the savings from not having to hold an office for a role, are more than offset by the lost productivity from having that role as a remote hire. I'm not trying to say that all HN-ers are magical special large-brained unicorn employees; but I've worked at several places where certain key roles are staffed by people that couldn't figure out how to effectively work remotely if their lives depended on it.

brailsafe 7y ago

I'm currently remote for a grant funded initiative at a University. The work is great, but I'm the sole developer. I move around a lot and don't keep a home office. I like it, it's technically satisfying most of the time, but there are only so many days I can spent just working through technical problems at a coffee shop. It's also really great if I want to go off on a road trip or something. I'd like a bit of diversity in the types of problems I'm working on, and miss building something up with people who have different skills or knowledge than me. So I'm looking for work that's at least partly onsite, but that lets me do whatever I want to isolate myself and work through a problem on my own if necessary (in Vancouver if anyone's looking). At a previous position, eyebrows were raised when I chose to take my laptop away from my desk to sit in the lobby and code so I could get away from Bill, the jackass who brought in a mechanical keyboard and screamed through sales calls on his bluetooth earpiece. Bill, of course wasn't a jackass. I eventually brought him aside and simply asked him to be a bit quieter.

antonioaguilar 7y ago

Many friends from Latin America work via Upwork, but they barely make enough for a living as they charge around 30% commission (end-to-end). I would rather look for companies that focus on remote work. For example, I have a Mexican friend working remotely from SF at www.lionmint.com/en. It's a german IT consultancy that focuses on digital platform development. He told me they pay great rates and have top-notch projects.

wrestlerman 7y ago

I've seen there are plenty of comments that disagree with that statement. I agree, though. I love working remotely. I've been working remotely for a bit less than a year now. I had some few months break at the beginning of this year where I was working on my own product, but I was still at home. Why do I love it? Well, my wife is staying at home with me and we get to spend so much more time together. I think over that period of time we've got closer together. We can chat during the day, eat meals together and stuff like that, it's super cool. More reasons? If I can work asynchronously (not being dependent on the rest of my team) I can schedule my day according to my needs. Need a one hour walk outside? Well, why not:) Even though it's not my company I'm working for I kind feel like I am the boss. I don't have people staring at my screen, I don't have people talking next to me, I can go to a shop and prepare a nice breakfast if I want to. It's really good. I do agree that it gets a bit boring without a chitchat with colleagues. But I try to compensate for it by meeting with my friends and family regularly.

bumbledraven 7y ago

Working part-time is also a game changer.

effnorwood 7y ago

Not really.

notus 7y ago

My main problem with remote work is there seems to be a lack of upward mobility. Most of the interactions I've had that have accelerated my career were face to face and wouldn't have happened over slack or email. Something to consider.

stewofkc 7y ago

I work almost exclusively remotely. It's been great for me. At first, it was hard to stay productive, but I got a dedicated home office and now I love working from home. People get so stressed out from commuting, even if they don't realize it.

ignore-this 7y ago

No. No they don't.

purplezooey 7y ago

That's because, guess what, sitting in an office all day sucks.

xtat 7y ago

Remote for 15 years, twice as a CTO/co-founder and there is no amount you could pay me to go back.

buboard 7y ago

Most comments here are "remote work is great, but"... That's ignoring the inevitability of technologies. This time it's different. Working from home was the norm for centuries, then the industrial revolution happened, and then the internet happened. Nowadays, way too many people don't work from home, for no good reason. As software keeps on eating everything, remote work will cause major disruptions in the way we live, the places we live and our lifestyles. For those of us that learned to work remotely, it is an irreversible change (and polls show that too). Lifestyle adapts to work, not the other way around. As such, we should be thinking about ways in which societies and lifestyles will switch from the 9-5/mon-fri, to something that is very asynchronous yet vibrant and fulfilling. Going back to the office just a dumb desperate solution, considering you are adding back commute time, office politics, useless distractions etc etc. Communication tools are already too good to be ignored. (Also, remote work is an onramp to freelancing/consulting/whatever. Because, if you can work remotely for one employer, why not work for another?) Most of the complaints such as isolation and disconnection are because society has not adapted to remote working rather than the merits of RW itself. Imagine a world where everyone whose job allows it works remotely. That 's basically the majority of workers[1]. Imagine the change in the pace of life and thousands of people feeling as lonely as you. The precipitous fall of real estate prices as commercial properties become vacant. The empty roads that don't need more than one lane. PEople reconnecting with their neighbors by spending a lot more time in physical proximity. Preschools and even schools becoming obsolete and replaced with home/small group schooling. Our current lifestyles are hostile to remote work. We don't want to return to the closed societies of small villages, but we also want to make working at home humane. We should be able to work on this problem and i look forward to the things that people will invent in the next few years. Changes like this have happened before 1. https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/4187653/7825806/IMG+graph+1+news+EMPL+A10.png/6c792596-03bb-430a-8807-99c15bf619d8?t=1508758339798 https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/4187653/7825806/IMG+...

lwh 7y ago

duh

lwh 7y ago

IRC for whoever is live + good email lists + discipline on wiki|docs + good PM/ticket communications is faster and more reliable than anything in person. Non-remote is a productivity disadvantage to people who need fast communication. A team of people online can say more with no interupt-crosstalk that cripples in-person "collaboration".

RickJWagner 7y ago

I've worked remotely for 9 years. It is the single biggest factor in what I love about my work. If I ever change jobs, the ability to work remote is going to be very high on my must-have list.

lukaszkups 7y ago

I love remote work, I really do, but it's definitely not for everyone or a golden grail of work structure - I've even put my thoughts about it on my website: https://lukaszkups.net/notes/truth-about-remote-work/ https://lukaszkups.net/notes/truth-about-remote-work/ (shameless share, but please let me know what do you think about it if you want ;) )