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I was part of a remote-work trial at my office (as a Software Developer). We were remote for about a year and honestly it was the best work experience I've eve

I was part of a remote-work trial at my office (as a Software Developer). We were remote for about a year and honestly it was the best work experience I've ever had. I felt so productive working in an environment perfectly tailored to me (my own home). It ultimately ended as several upper management thought we were too "disconnected" from the company although my e-mail was always open, phone forwarded to my cell and I was online in a company wide chat messenger during working hours. We even came on-site once a week for face-to-face meetings. But I guess some people picture remote workers negatively so we are now back on-site and all the things I took for granted during the trial year are making being on-site so much harder. I commute an hour by car so I gave up a pay raise ~$6,000/yr. on gas alone. I haven't (and don't want to) calculate vehicle wear, snow tires, etc. I'm constantly interrupted by people throughout the day laughing at the nearby reception desk, asking me about lunch or just coming to talk because they are bored. Even right now I have someone using a leaf blower directly outside my window so I can't focus on code (why I am on HN right now). The office temperature is an uncomfortable 66F because the corner office gets so hot with the many windows it has and I am part of their HVAC line. I am using an underpowered laptop instead of my home desktop (32GB RAM, high end CPU, etc) and I require our IT Department to install all software for me because "company policy"... Needless to say my productivity has dropped. Perhaps someday we'll be able to go remote again, or maybe it's just time to move on. I've been here now for more than 5 years and I enjoy the work I do and the people I work with but after having a taste of remote-work, it's hard going back.

Buttons840 7y ago
When was the last time you brushed up your resume and put it out there? When was the last time you looked for new job openings?
- Phillips126 7y ago
  To answer your question honestly, it has been a long time. At this company I transitioned from a Graphic Designer to a Software Developer. After my first year I took the role of a Web Developer and ended up building a custom internal application for the Art Department which opened a lot of eyes at the possibilities of what a Software Department could provide. I was employee #1 in this new role and have since made a lot of really awesome things such as a company directory (mobile app), dashboards for our fabrication department, license management software for our IT folks, visitor check-in/out kiosks, interactive surgical simulators for our R&D/Sales teams, to name a few. I hold a BS degree in Art. While in college, I took some web development courses and that is when I first started noticing my interest in programming. Despite having ~10 years of programming experience (~4 being as a professional software dev) I am not the most confident developer and the horror of software dev interviews scares me. Maybe it is time to go for it - worst they can say is no, right?
  - Buttons840 7y ago
    I don't think you need to "go for it" as much as just be aware of what else is out there. It's also empowering to have your resume up to date so that if your feeling down and hating work, there's one less barrier in the way of changing your situation.
    - Phillips126 7y ago
      I appreciate your kind words. I'll look around some job boards and see if anything looks interesting!
  - asdfman123 7y ago
    Just go for it. Interviewing is like any other scary thing in life: throw yourself into it enough times and it isn't. I used to be scared of jumping off a diving board, and scared of riding a bike until I did both of those things many times as well. There's a huge salary penalty if you're not constantly looking for the best offers out there (do some Googling to convince yourself this is true). Don't worry about your imposter syndrome -- let others determine if you can get the job or not. Elite software companies have ridiculous interviews, it's true, and you have to spend at least tens of hours practicing them. But everyone else is pretty reasonable, I've found. There are lots of enterprise shops that don't care about that nonsense.
    - Phillips126 7y ago
      The salary penalty is very true. I have noticed that Software Developers do tend to job-hop quite often taking better and better offers. Time to update my resume I believe!
maxaf 7y ago
My friend, you should have quit this company as soon as the remote work "trial" ended. The trial was great for you: you tried something new, learned new things about yourself (turns out, you prefer remote work - what a surprise!), and you discovered that your employer isn't the right one for you. The company is making you miserable; it really is time to move on. I hope you find a better place soon.
- std_throwaway 7y ago
  Quitting is the easy part if you don't have anything better lined up. Some people just go for it and always seem to fall on their feet. Others hesitate forever.
neogodless 7y ago
I'm not sure if it's clear from your comments above, but was the one year "trial" set up as an experiment, with controls and measurements? In other words, "in 2017, we were not remote, and we measured xx results. in 2018, we were fully remote and we measured yy results." Or literally, let's "pow wow" the upper management and ask them about their feelings? I think I know the answer. I know that this is the ongoing core problem - measuring "results" is really hard. Running a business means "experiments" are expensive, and really difficult to control in a way that you can get some kind of scientific learning out of them. I think about the Jim Collins books which were written based on decades-long studies. Certainly imperfect and vulnerable to survivorship-bias and various other issues, but still perhaps better information than any single company is able to come up with for themselves on what tactics would benefit their company more or less than others. (i.e. they may use successful tactics and profit, without knowing what the opportunity cost may be.)
- Phillips126 7y ago
  To be honest, no, it wasn't really made out to be a trial when this came to be. As a growing company of around 400 employees, we were really short on space and software is one of those fields that do quite well remotely. We were asked if we were interested and we officially went remote a week later. Since then, a new building was built solving our space issue so I think that had a lot to do with our return. The communication "disconnect" I think was just a way for management to justify the reversal of the decision. We used Pivotol Tracker[0] to track our performance so if anything we had proof of how well remote worked for us - but some people fail to see the positives of remote work even with the proof right in front of them. [0] - https://www.pivotaltracker.com/ https://www.pivotaltracker.com/
toomuchtodo 7y ago
The best time to start interviewing was when they forced you back on site. The second best time is today.
TheCapn 7y ago
I discussed the same points on Reddit recently and the one that I focused on as well was the aspect of just my physical health. When I'm at home I have a fully stocked kitchen, my fridge with all my ingredients and no competition for any of it. What it means is when I'm working from home, I eat healthier and lead a healthier lifestyle. I save money on food because the laziness to not pack a lunch doesn't exist. The commute in mornings is stressful (especially around this time of year where roads become treacherous with rain/snow with melt+freeze cycles). Without that commute I can wake up at 6:30, shower, eat and be "at my desk" by 7:00 while the on-site work has me waking up at 5:30. There's just so many benefits to remote work. I'm happier, and therefore more productive on that matter alone. I don't even need to get into all the reasons you covered why work at my office is far worse
- Phillips126 7y ago
  This is absolutely true. I live in rural New York and weather here this time of year is awful. I've watched cars in front of me during my commute slide off into the ditch wondering if I was going to be next. I am also a father of 3 so being remote gave me the ability to attend school activities, doctors appointments, and just being there for them more which I know means a lot to them - as it does to me. There is also the little things like a trip to the dentist which could take me ~30 minutes remote and I can do it on my lunch break. Now on-site I have the commute so I need to take a 1/2 day which in turn causes a loss of productivity for the company.
- shantly 7y ago
  Remote work saves me ~$300/month in extra child care, or else having to work so late that by the time I get home my kids are going to bed because the other option is not being able to reach an office until 9:30-9:45, by letting me get them where they need to be at the right time instead of early (which costs money—before-school programs, early care at daycare, that kind of thing). Plus savings in gas and wear & tear on my car. Hell when all my kids are in regular k-12 school and I can just toss them on the bus, we could drop to one car easily, too, saving even more money. So, remote work: worth probably $6000/yr to me now in sheer cash savings, call it $10k for time saved and lower stress. Worth maybe $15k in a couple years when all my kids can ride the bus. Not friggin' bad. Oh and despite the kids (disease carriers that they are) I'm still sick like 1/2 as often, so that's nice. Plus I can prep ingredients for dinner over lunch or while on a call that doesn't need 100% of my attention or whatever. Measure stuff, chop some veggies, set it aside, back to work. We've been eating so much better (and cheaper) since I went remote. Looking like that'll end soon which has me pretty bummed, though. Remote is just so much better. Any music I want (or none), get up and walk around, work from any room or out on the deck. No shared bathroom, hahaha. Offices are expensive time-wasting misery factories by comparison.
nilkn 7y ago
Is it possible that your personal productivity soared but the trial was still a net negative for the company?
- Phillips126 7y ago
  In my opinion, no. If anything we likely only benefited the company. Our department has very low costs and those costs would have occurred whether we were on site or not. When we were remote we used the communication tools that were already provided to the entire company. What we didn't use (benefiting the company) was electricity, water, space to occupy, network bandwidth, etc. The productivity increase of being remote resulted in apps/updates to occur much quicker. We were able to take advantage of many things we now had access to such as faster internet, IPv6, better network experiences (no more IP conflicts, blocked web sites/filtering, other IT nonsense), self managing our desktops, and so on.
  - nilkn 7y ago
    Right, you and other developers were more productive and were able to make quicker updates. But was the company as strategically aligned at a high level? Was the engineering team as a whole able to react quickly and efficiently to strategic shifts that are more a matter of communication than coding? Were different teams able to juggle competing priorities as effectively as before? These are all elements of running the company that could be negatively impacted by remote work, and they are also areas into which many developers will not have much visibility, if any at all. To be clear, I'm not actually trying to argue against remote work in general. I think it can be done very well if the company is built around it from the bottom to the top. My point is just that one has to examine the effect on the entire organization. It might be the case that some groups benefited but at a cost that wasn't worth it at a high level. For instance, it could be that the organization needs a much more rigorous planning process rolled out to every single team before remote work becomes a net positive.
    - Phillips126 7y ago
      Ah I see what you are asking. The company I work for designs, builds and sells medical devices. The software team's role is more focused on improving the workflow of other departments or building tools that help with more general company wide needs (interactive campus maps, kiosks, corporate directory applications). Example would be a tool I built for a team member that works with flex licenses (Autodesk, etc). He has a command line tool that lists how our licenses are used but it's a pretty verbose dump which isn't fun to read manually. I wrote a parser for this command and wrapped it up in a web app which provides a table of all users, charts on usage, data storing for historical metrics and so on. He is now able to better understand our usage and can more accurately guess as to when we need to purchase more licenses. He can also see what we are not using to reduce our company costs. The things we've built don't go through any "system" and are developed simply between the requester and the software team (nothing really public so far, all internal tools). As a result, our increased speed is only a positive. However, I can understand in other companies when increased code/updates would cause tons of stress on the teams so your point is valid.
ilaksh 7y ago
I recommend starting a search for a better job immediately. That way you can take your time. When you leave, be sure to tell them the reasons that you laid out here.
HammockWarrior 7y ago
Don't forget to include opportunity cost of time driving when calculating the cost of your commute. Your time is valuable. I think you'll find you spend way more than $6000/year on commuting. If you value your free time at $25/hour and commute 250 days per year, that's another $6250 per year in opportunity cost.

Buttons840 7y ago

When was the last time you brushed up your resume and put it out there? When was the last time you looked for new job openings?

Phillips126 7y ago
To answer your question honestly, it has been a long time. At this company I transitioned from a Graphic Designer to a Software Developer. After my first year I took the role of a Web Developer and ended up building a custom internal application for the Art Department which opened a lot of eyes at the possibilities of what a Software Department could provide. I was employee #1 in this new role and have since made a lot of really awesome things such as a company directory (mobile app), dashboards for our fabrication department, license management software for our IT folks, visitor check-in/out kiosks, interactive surgical simulators for our R&D/Sales teams, to name a few. I hold a BS degree in Art. While in college, I took some web development courses and that is when I first started noticing my interest in programming. Despite having ~10 years of programming experience (~4 being as a professional software dev) I am not the most confident developer and the horror of software dev interviews scares me. Maybe it is time to go for it - worst they can say is no, right?
- Buttons840 7y ago
  I don't think you need to "go for it" as much as just be aware of what else is out there. It's also empowering to have your resume up to date so that if your feeling down and hating work, there's one less barrier in the way of changing your situation.
  - Phillips126 7y ago
    I appreciate your kind words. I'll look around some job boards and see if anything looks interesting!
- asdfman123 7y ago
  Just go for it. Interviewing is like any other scary thing in life: throw yourself into it enough times and it isn't. I used to be scared of jumping off a diving board, and scared of riding a bike until I did both of those things many times as well. There's a huge salary penalty if you're not constantly looking for the best offers out there (do some Googling to convince yourself this is true). Don't worry about your imposter syndrome -- let others determine if you can get the job or not. Elite software companies have ridiculous interviews, it's true, and you have to spend at least tens of hours practicing them. But everyone else is pretty reasonable, I've found. There are lots of enterprise shops that don't care about that nonsense.
  - Phillips126 7y ago
    The salary penalty is very true. I have noticed that Software Developers do tend to job-hop quite often taking better and better offers. Time to update my resume I believe!

maxaf 7y ago

My friend, you should have quit this company as soon as the remote work "trial" ended. The trial was great for you: you tried something new, learned new things about yourself (turns out, you prefer remote work - what a surprise!), and you discovered that your employer isn't the right one for you. The company is making you miserable; it really is time to move on. I hope you find a better place soon.

std_throwaway 7y ago
Quitting is the easy part if you don't have anything better lined up. Some people just go for it and always seem to fall on their feet. Others hesitate forever.

neogodless 7y ago

I'm not sure if it's clear from your comments above, but was the one year "trial" set up as an experiment, with controls and measurements? In other words, "in 2017, we were not remote, and we measured xx results. in 2018, we were fully remote and we measured yy results." Or literally, let's "pow wow" the upper management and ask them about their feelings? I think I know the answer. I know that this is the ongoing core problem - measuring "results" is really hard. Running a business means "experiments" are expensive, and really difficult to control in a way that you can get some kind of scientific learning out of them. I think about the Jim Collins books which were written based on decades-long studies. Certainly imperfect and vulnerable to survivorship-bias and various other issues, but still perhaps better information than any single company is able to come up with for themselves on what tactics would benefit their company more or less than others. (i.e. they may use successful tactics and profit, without knowing what the opportunity cost may be.)

Phillips126 7y ago
To be honest, no, it wasn't really made out to be a trial when this came to be. As a growing company of around 400 employees, we were really short on space and software is one of those fields that do quite well remotely. We were asked if we were interested and we officially went remote a week later. Since then, a new building was built solving our space issue so I think that had a lot to do with our return. The communication "disconnect" I think was just a way for management to justify the reversal of the decision. We used Pivotol Tracker[0] to track our performance so if anything we had proof of how well remote worked for us - but some people fail to see the positives of remote work even with the proof right in front of them. [0] - https://www.pivotaltracker.com/ https://www.pivotaltracker.com/

toomuchtodo 7y ago

The best time to start interviewing was when they forced you back on site. The second best time is today.

TheCapn 7y ago

I discussed the same points on Reddit recently and the one that I focused on as well was the aspect of just my physical health. When I'm at home I have a fully stocked kitchen, my fridge with all my ingredients and no competition for any of it. What it means is when I'm working from home, I eat healthier and lead a healthier lifestyle. I save money on food because the laziness to not pack a lunch doesn't exist. The commute in mornings is stressful (especially around this time of year where roads become treacherous with rain/snow with melt+freeze cycles). Without that commute I can wake up at 6:30, shower, eat and be "at my desk" by 7:00 while the on-site work has me waking up at 5:30. There's just so many benefits to remote work. I'm happier, and therefore more productive on that matter alone. I don't even need to get into all the reasons you covered why work at my office is far worse

Phillips126 7y ago
This is absolutely true. I live in rural New York and weather here this time of year is awful. I've watched cars in front of me during my commute slide off into the ditch wondering if I was going to be next. I am also a father of 3 so being remote gave me the ability to attend school activities, doctors appointments, and just being there for them more which I know means a lot to them - as it does to me. There is also the little things like a trip to the dentist which could take me ~30 minutes remote and I can do it on my lunch break. Now on-site I have the commute so I need to take a 1/2 day which in turn causes a loss of productivity for the company.
shantly 7y ago
Remote work saves me ~$300/month in extra child care, or else having to work so late that by the time I get home my kids are going to bed because the other option is not being able to reach an office until 9:30-9:45, by letting me get them where they need to be at the right time instead of early (which costs money—before-school programs, early care at daycare, that kind of thing). Plus savings in gas and wear & tear on my car. Hell when all my kids are in regular k-12 school and I can just toss them on the bus, we could drop to one car easily, too, saving even more money. So, remote work: worth probably $6000/yr to me now in sheer cash savings, call it $10k for time saved and lower stress. Worth maybe $15k in a couple years when all my kids can ride the bus. Not friggin' bad. Oh and despite the kids (disease carriers that they are) I'm still sick like 1/2 as often, so that's nice. Plus I can prep ingredients for dinner over lunch or while on a call that doesn't need 100% of my attention or whatever. Measure stuff, chop some veggies, set it aside, back to work. We've been eating so much better (and cheaper) since I went remote. Looking like that'll end soon which has me pretty bummed, though. Remote is just so much better. Any music I want (or none), get up and walk around, work from any room or out on the deck. No shared bathroom, hahaha. Offices are expensive time-wasting misery factories by comparison.

nilkn 7y ago

Is it possible that your personal productivity soared but the trial was still a net negative for the company?

Phillips126 7y ago
In my opinion, no. If anything we likely only benefited the company. Our department has very low costs and those costs would have occurred whether we were on site or not. When we were remote we used the communication tools that were already provided to the entire company. What we didn't use (benefiting the company) was electricity, water, space to occupy, network bandwidth, etc. The productivity increase of being remote resulted in apps/updates to occur much quicker. We were able to take advantage of many things we now had access to such as faster internet, IPv6, better network experiences (no more IP conflicts, blocked web sites/filtering, other IT nonsense), self managing our desktops, and so on.
- nilkn 7y ago
  Right, you and other developers were more productive and were able to make quicker updates. But was the company as strategically aligned at a high level? Was the engineering team as a whole able to react quickly and efficiently to strategic shifts that are more a matter of communication than coding? Were different teams able to juggle competing priorities as effectively as before? These are all elements of running the company that could be negatively impacted by remote work, and they are also areas into which many developers will not have much visibility, if any at all. To be clear, I'm not actually trying to argue against remote work in general. I think it can be done very well if the company is built around it from the bottom to the top. My point is just that one has to examine the effect on the entire organization. It might be the case that some groups benefited but at a cost that wasn't worth it at a high level. For instance, it could be that the organization needs a much more rigorous planning process rolled out to every single team before remote work becomes a net positive.
  - Phillips126 7y ago
    Ah I see what you are asking. The company I work for designs, builds and sells medical devices. The software team's role is more focused on improving the workflow of other departments or building tools that help with more general company wide needs (interactive campus maps, kiosks, corporate directory applications). Example would be a tool I built for a team member that works with flex licenses (Autodesk, etc). He has a command line tool that lists how our licenses are used but it's a pretty verbose dump which isn't fun to read manually. I wrote a parser for this command and wrapped it up in a web app which provides a table of all users, charts on usage, data storing for historical metrics and so on. He is now able to better understand our usage and can more accurately guess as to when we need to purchase more licenses. He can also see what we are not using to reduce our company costs. The things we've built don't go through any "system" and are developed simply between the requester and the software team (nothing really public so far, all internal tools). As a result, our increased speed is only a positive. However, I can understand in other companies when increased code/updates would cause tons of stress on the teams so your point is valid.

ilaksh 7y ago

I recommend starting a search for a better job immediately. That way you can take your time. When you leave, be sure to tell them the reasons that you laid out here.

HammockWarrior 7y ago

Don't forget to include opportunity cost of time driving when calculating the cost of your commute. Your time is valuable. I think you'll find you spend way more than $6000/year on commuting. If you value your free time at $25/hour and commute 250 days per year, that's another $6250 per year in opportunity cost.