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I am someone who did not enjoy remote work, because I felt lonely. I’m lucky enough that now my commute is a 25-minute bike ride in Amsterdam, and I thoroughly

I am someone who did not enjoy remote work, because I felt lonely. I’m lucky enough that now my commute is a 25-minute bike ride in Amsterdam, and I thoroughly like being between people all day, having in-person interactions. It’s also nice to leave the office, knowing that most of my workday is done. It might be an old school way of thinking, but as long as I can have a short enough commute, an office where flexible work is the norm (eg WFH is fine on some days, there are no fixed hours etc); I would choose this over full remote, anytime. While my team is local and large, I do end up working across time zones, with other engineering teams. I get it that this is highly dependent on personality and situation: there are those that thrive on remote. It’s just not me. How do others feel about this - and what do you like/dislike about remote work?

Ocerge 7y ago
I spent 3 months fully remote, and by the end I was fully depressed. There’s something about looking at the same walls of my apartment for 14 hours a day that just did not work for me at all. I would occasionally go to coffee shops or whatever but it didn’t change the isolation. I had no idea how much I leaned on being in a shared physical location with my coworkers. It’s hard to know until you try it; I think you need to be in a very specific work situation and have a certain disposition for it to work well.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  “I think you need to be in a very specific work situation and have a certain disposition for it to work well.” I much prefer remote work but I agree that you have to be cut out for it. It’s not for everybody.
- chiefalchemist 7y ago
  Recently started a FT WFH job with a semi-flexible schedule. Prior I was self-employed (consultant / freelance) and made my own schedule, etc. The adjustment to the new schedule wasn't too bad per se. That said, at the first opportunity possible I'm going to ask for some budget to get a day (or two) per week at a co-working space. For me and how I'm wired that would make a massive difference.
jackcodes 7y ago
I’m remote right now, and the job was taken on initially out of the necessity of being in a different part of the world where the local salary wasn’t something I would commit to. For the most part when abroad, it worked well. I didn’t have too many connections anyway and I was able to get a workspace and do a 15 minute walk there and back in the warmth. I’m now back to my homeland and I’m crashing at my parents for a few weeks until after Christmas, and the remote side of it is affecting me quite badly. I can’t handle certain aspects of it at all. For starters, I’m working with an almost violent intensity and rate that I really struggle to turn down. In an office I’d not usually hit a level of flow state like I do at home and it’s almost like I don’t have enough forced distractions. The little coffee break, lunch with team mates, interruptions and meetings. Nothing can get in the way of me writing code, but it’s starting to come at my detriment. I have more optional distractions, sure, but I’m at work so I’m not gonna watch TV for 10 minutes. It breaks my focus too much and to a greater extent; what’s the point? I’ve lost a great deal of balance in my life. I don’t cook. I overtime a lot more. I have no reason to leave the house (even more so that it’s 0c here vs 32c where I’ve just arrived from). I stay in bed until the last minute. These are all my fault and my problem to fix, but it seems to incentivise unhealthy ways of living for me. I should have more time and freedom but everything has ended up being more intense and busy. There’s something to be said for that walk though the city or allowing yourself to work at the pace of your office neighbours. I miss that side of it.
- throwadhdhdis 7y ago
  I struggled with remote for the longest time until I got a dog. Those forced interrupts and little bit of extra responsibility are nothing short of a miricale. The forced walks help too but I actually walk much less/day now (keeps sniffing stuff)
  - tarsinge 7y ago
    Working remotely and dog owner too, I find walking the dog to be a great help for having a real (mindful?) break without thinking of work.
lojack 7y ago
Worth at least noting that this article is about distributed teams more broadly and not remote work specifically. You can be on a distributed team and not work remotely. You can even be on a distributed team and all share the same building. The advice in this article applies to all sufficiently large teams.
- chiefalchemist 7y ago
  Yes. But people make up teams :) And it's important to realize different people will react differently at different times. You can't optimize your team without first embracing a people-first mentality.
gregmac 7y ago
There's a lot of replies negative about remote work, so I'll weigh in the other way. Caveat, I'm not 100% remote. I live a 20 minute drive from the office, but most of my work tends to be with people at other locations (mostly working from their homes, scattered in timezones +4 to -6 hours from me). There have been days I've been in the office and pretty much spent half the day in video calls with people located elsewhere, and literally the only human-to-human interactions at the office are in passing while I get coffee or lunch or go to the bathroom. When I do talk to people in the office, it's often at least started over Slack (if not entirely conducted there) as we tend not to interrupt whatever people are up to. As a result, in the past few months I've spent more and more time working at home. I've found it's way more productive for me, including being easier to get into flow. It also saves me ~40 minutes of commute per day, and the time to pack or go buy lunch. Most people don't notice either way. I think the other thing that works for me is I have a wife and 5 yo at home. There's a lot of replies talking about getting depressed being by yourself in the same place for 100% of the day but I don't get that. At the least, I'm doing either drop-off or pick-up from school (often walking), though generally it takes me 2-3 days before I'm at the point where I really need to leave the house for sanity reasons. The biggest negative is that I tend to end earlier than I would at the office, and pick back up later in the evening, but this doesn't really bug me (and I don't do that every day). I try very hard not to work more than 40-ish hours in a week, as doing that just leads to burn-out (been there, done that).
neolefty 7y ago
I went from working remotely 3 time zones away on legacy code to working remotely within the same time zone on a new project, and I love it. Before that I was working in an open-plan office near my home, for a different company. I work at home but go into the main office once a week — it's an hour away. It's a small office — IT department is under 20 people, team is 6 — and I'm the only remote person. The bigger difference, though, is that I'm doing contract work instead of working as an employee — it was the only way to get around my current client's rules about remote work. And it turns out that hourly contracting is really good for my mental well-being and productivity. ADHD micro-deadlines FTW! Since I see people once a week in person, it's not entirely remote. But I don't do any real work there. Overall it's the most productive I've been. Partly because I can control my home office environment, and partly no commute, and partly the hourly thing (see above). We have screen-sharing 1:1 meetings multiple times a week to collaborate on technical things. It's not quite as good as walking over to someone, but it works fine. You mentioned loneliness. I have a family that prevents that, and I get out a lot.
georgecn 7y ago
Are you from Netherlands or did you migrate to Netherlands? I ask because I would like to know if it is common for Netherlands natives to have their office at such a convenient distance from home. In the UK, it usually takes a 1 to 2 hour train ride to reach work by train.
- gregdoesit 7y ago
  I moved to Amsterdam to have a better work-life balance, with a family. I lived in London before, having a 40-minute tube commute that was okay when I had no kids. London became harder to live in, once I had kids - central London is especially an unfriendly place for families IMO.
  - Huggernaut 7y ago
    I did exactly the same thing a few months ago (sans kids). Turned my 35-40 minute tube commute into a 10 minute leisurely cycle ride.
samvher 7y ago
I've been working fully remotely since 3 months or so and I love it. I have much more control over disturbances (i.e. people walking to my desk) and much more flexibility in how I structure my time. When I get in the flow of working I can focus fully, and when my focus is gone I can answer emails or take a shower, prepare lunch, that sort of thing. I don't have to adjust to other people's rhythms as much and it makes a big difference in how I feel about my work. It's nice to have people around in an office and I do miss out on some of the quick conversations. Overall our team is quite distributed though so it's not much of an issue. I live with my girlfriend and a bunch of other housemates so it doesn't get too lonely. I do make a point of going outside regularly and getting some exercise (biking or hiking) since when I'm working I'm mostly behind my desk.

Ocerge 7y ago

I spent 3 months fully remote, and by the end I was fully depressed. There’s something about looking at the same walls of my apartment for 14 hours a day that just did not work for me at all. I would occasionally go to coffee shops or whatever but it didn’t change the isolation. I had no idea how much I leaned on being in a shared physical location with my coworkers. It’s hard to know until you try it; I think you need to be in a very specific work situation and have a certain disposition for it to work well.

Ididntdothis 7y ago
“I think you need to be in a very specific work situation and have a certain disposition for it to work well.” I much prefer remote work but I agree that you have to be cut out for it. It’s not for everybody.
chiefalchemist 7y ago
Recently started a FT WFH job with a semi-flexible schedule. Prior I was self-employed (consultant / freelance) and made my own schedule, etc. The adjustment to the new schedule wasn't too bad per se. That said, at the first opportunity possible I'm going to ask for some budget to get a day (or two) per week at a co-working space. For me and how I'm wired that would make a massive difference.

jackcodes 7y ago

I’m remote right now, and the job was taken on initially out of the necessity of being in a different part of the world where the local salary wasn’t something I would commit to. For the most part when abroad, it worked well. I didn’t have too many connections anyway and I was able to get a workspace and do a 15 minute walk there and back in the warmth. I’m now back to my homeland and I’m crashing at my parents for a few weeks until after Christmas, and the remote side of it is affecting me quite badly. I can’t handle certain aspects of it at all. For starters, I’m working with an almost violent intensity and rate that I really struggle to turn down. In an office I’d not usually hit a level of flow state like I do at home and it’s almost like I don’t have enough forced distractions. The little coffee break, lunch with team mates, interruptions and meetings. Nothing can get in the way of me writing code, but it’s starting to come at my detriment. I have more optional distractions, sure, but I’m at work so I’m not gonna watch TV for 10 minutes. It breaks my focus too much and to a greater extent; what’s the point? I’ve lost a great deal of balance in my life. I don’t cook. I overtime a lot more. I have no reason to leave the house (even more so that it’s 0c here vs 32c where I’ve just arrived from). I stay in bed until the last minute. These are all my fault and my problem to fix, but it seems to incentivise unhealthy ways of living for me. I should have more time and freedom but everything has ended up being more intense and busy. There’s something to be said for that walk though the city or allowing yourself to work at the pace of your office neighbours. I miss that side of it.

throwadhdhdis 7y ago
I struggled with remote for the longest time until I got a dog. Those forced interrupts and little bit of extra responsibility are nothing short of a miricale. The forced walks help too but I actually walk much less/day now (keeps sniffing stuff)
- tarsinge 7y ago
  Working remotely and dog owner too, I find walking the dog to be a great help for having a real (mindful?) break without thinking of work.

lojack 7y ago

Worth at least noting that this article is about distributed teams more broadly and not remote work specifically. You can be on a distributed team and not work remotely. You can even be on a distributed team and all share the same building. The advice in this article applies to all sufficiently large teams.

chiefalchemist 7y ago
Yes. But people make up teams :) And it's important to realize different people will react differently at different times. You can't optimize your team without first embracing a people-first mentality.

gregmac 7y ago

There's a lot of replies negative about remote work, so I'll weigh in the other way. Caveat, I'm not 100% remote. I live a 20 minute drive from the office, but most of my work tends to be with people at other locations (mostly working from their homes, scattered in timezones +4 to -6 hours from me). There have been days I've been in the office and pretty much spent half the day in video calls with people located elsewhere, and literally the only human-to-human interactions at the office are in passing while I get coffee or lunch or go to the bathroom. When I do talk to people in the office, it's often at least started over Slack (if not entirely conducted there) as we tend not to interrupt whatever people are up to. As a result, in the past few months I've spent more and more time working at home. I've found it's way more productive for me, including being easier to get into flow. It also saves me ~40 minutes of commute per day, and the time to pack or go buy lunch. Most people don't notice either way. I think the other thing that works for me is I have a wife and 5 yo at home. There's a lot of replies talking about getting depressed being by yourself in the same place for 100% of the day but I don't get that. At the least, I'm doing either drop-off or pick-up from school (often walking), though generally it takes me 2-3 days before I'm at the point where I really need to leave the house for sanity reasons. The biggest negative is that I tend to end earlier than I would at the office, and pick back up later in the evening, but this doesn't really bug me (and I don't do that every day). I try very hard not to work more than 40-ish hours in a week, as doing that just leads to burn-out (been there, done that).

neolefty 7y ago

I went from working remotely 3 time zones away on legacy code to working remotely within the same time zone on a new project, and I love it. Before that I was working in an open-plan office near my home, for a different company. I work at home but go into the main office once a week — it's an hour away. It's a small office — IT department is under 20 people, team is 6 — and I'm the only remote person. The bigger difference, though, is that I'm doing contract work instead of working as an employee — it was the only way to get around my current client's rules about remote work. And it turns out that hourly contracting is really good for my mental well-being and productivity. ADHD micro-deadlines FTW! Since I see people once a week in person, it's not entirely remote. But I don't do any real work there. Overall it's the most productive I've been. Partly because I can control my home office environment, and partly no commute, and partly the hourly thing (see above). We have screen-sharing 1:1 meetings multiple times a week to collaborate on technical things. It's not quite as good as walking over to someone, but it works fine. You mentioned loneliness. I have a family that prevents that, and I get out a lot.

georgecn 7y ago

Are you from Netherlands or did you migrate to Netherlands? I ask because I would like to know if it is common for Netherlands natives to have their office at such a convenient distance from home. In the UK, it usually takes a 1 to 2 hour train ride to reach work by train.

gregdoesit 7y ago
I moved to Amsterdam to have a better work-life balance, with a family. I lived in London before, having a 40-minute tube commute that was okay when I had no kids. London became harder to live in, once I had kids - central London is especially an unfriendly place for families IMO.
- Huggernaut 7y ago
  I did exactly the same thing a few months ago (sans kids). Turned my 35-40 minute tube commute into a 10 minute leisurely cycle ride.

samvher 7y ago

I've been working fully remotely since 3 months or so and I love it. I have much more control over disturbances (i.e. people walking to my desk) and much more flexibility in how I structure my time. When I get in the flow of working I can focus fully, and when my focus is gone I can answer emails or take a shower, prepare lunch, that sort of thing. I don't have to adjust to other people's rhythms as much and it makes a big difference in how I feel about my work. It's nice to have people around in an office and I do miss out on some of the quick conversations. Overall our team is quite distributed though so it's not much of an issue. I live with my girlfriend and a bunch of other housemates so it doesn't get too lonely. I do make a point of going outside regularly and getting some exercise (biking or hiking) since when I'm working I'm mostly behind my desk.