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I just quit my last remote job of 6 years. The benefits: 1. Live anywhere as long as the timezones are reasonable. 2. No commute. 3. Optional meetings ac

I just quit my last remote job of 6 years. The benefits: 1. Live anywhere as long as the timezones are reasonable. 2. No commute. 3. Optional meetings actually stay optional. 4. If you are in a later timezone, you can work late relative to the home office hours; making you pretty valuable to clients for adhoc issues at the end of the day while your team is busy commuting home. The negatives: 1. Very lonely, I ended up spending a lot of money going to cafes to fill a social need. 2. Office meetings suck. If you are the only person dialing in to a meeting and the rest of the team is local there are tons of issues. Noise, missing out on sidebar conversations, etc. 3. You are obligated to overcommunicate to your coworkers or managers to compensate for your lack of presence, but often they leave you in the dark. 4. If your technology breaks down, you are your own support. 5. If skype is signed out without you realizing it, management gets paranoid. 6. You have to work very hard to keep from getting distracted. This gets harder if you aren't interested in your workload. 7. Lack of visibility means lack of opportunities at work. 8. Its very easy to get in a rut where the "remote guy" only works on certain specific things and can't grow their career. If I can help it, I will be 100% local from now on. In my mind, there are too many opportunities missed by not interacting with the rest of the office. I imagine this list would be different if the team was 100% remote.

neokantian 7y ago
> Very lonely, I ended up spending a lot of money going to cafe's to fill a social need. I usually work at the swimming pool of my condo here in SE Asia. I love taking swimming breaks. The other guys here at the pool do pretty much the same. These are the same people that I see at the gym when I work out. There are also a few retirees here who avoid cold winters in Canada. There's nothing lonely about my lifestyle. It is actually much better than working in an office.
- chapium 7y ago
  Remote work is great for a lot of people, but in my case it doesn't. :) I think leaving a job is often an intersection of many issues. Unfortunately, the remote aspect of the job can become one of them (as can a painful commute for local workers).
reallydontask 7y ago
> 2. Office meetings suck. If you are the only person dialling in to a meeting and the rest of the team is local there are tons of issues. Noise, missing out on sidebar conversations, etc. This always annoys me. Just make everybody dial in. The amount of wasted time with these kind of meetings just because people don't get it. If a side conversation starts, all bets are off for people dialled in, as the speakers will look at each other, which almost certainly means away from the spider phone/mic.
- gregmac 7y ago
  One of our big conference rooms has a couple remote mics on either end of the table, and I've been on the remote end when people have had a sidebar conversation hovered directly over one of them. Even though they were talking quietly, for everyone remote they were totally drowning out the main conversation.
commandlinefan 7y ago
> If you are the only person dialing in to a meeting Every job I’ve had for the past 20 years (always 100% on-site) has been geo-distributed, so I’ve had to dial into nearly every meeting, often being the only person dialed in.
- matwood 7y ago
  Same. One of my first jobs out of college in the 90s had me dialing into meetings with a geo-distributed team. The only thing that really changed for me as I transitioned fully remote was I didn't have to drive somewhere every day. I have had jobs later that were fully onsite, and I always end up hating the drive, the strict hours (perceived or otherwise), and the simple lack of freedom. I will do way more work if I can some basic say over my schedule.
- michaelt 7y ago
  Have you found any good way to use a whiteboard over videoconferencing? In my experience, pointing the camera at the whiteboard isn't enough.
stuff4ben 7y ago
As a manager whose direct reports were all located in a different site (California vs NC where I am), most of your negatives also applied to me. Except I was onsite (albeit much smaller than the HQ) and did have a community around me. However, my team was located with the rest of my management chain (directors, VPs, etc) while I was stuck out here "alone".
skrebbel 7y ago
> I imagine this list would be different if the team was 100% remote. IMO this is a key point. I wouldn't recommend working remotely unless the entire company (or at least the department) is organized online and people are generally remote. That said, I don't believe 100% is a necessity, as long as you act it. Eg some companies have a "one camera per face policy" for meetings. We recently adopted it, and it works super well. At my company though, sometimes a few people are colocated, and you get this weird dance of finding a spot sufficiently far away from each other to be able to stick with the policy and not also hear each other directly, with no latency. It's weird but it works super well. Everybody feels more connected. With a few rules like that you can be, say, 80% remote and not 100%, without the downsides. Really it's all about the mindset. Also, seriously folks, do retrospectives.
- Klathmon 7y ago
  >you get this weird dance of finding a spot sufficiently far away from each other to be able to stick with the policy and not also hear each other directly, with no latency. See if you can talk to your boss and get everyone over-ear headsets with a boom mic, and spend some time tuning them so the mics only pickup the person talking. That way you can have several people all in the same area all on the same or different calls, and for the most part it won't be an issue.
  - skrebbel 7y ago
    I am the boss, and that's a neat idea! The key problem isn't microphone pickup though, but just hearing each other twice. Noice cancelling headphones might fix that.
poulsbohemian 7y ago
> 2. Office meetings suck. If you are the only person dialing in to a meeting and the rest of the team is local there are tons of issues. Noise, missing out on sidebar conversations, etc. > 3. You are obligated to overcommunicate to your coworkers or managers to compensate for your lack of presence, but often they leave you in the dark. > 5. If skype is signed out without you realizing it, management gets paranoid. > 7. Lack of visibility means lack of opportunities at work. > 8. Its very easy to get in a rut where the "remote guy" only works on certain specific things and can't grow their career. Remote / mobile worker in various forms since 2006 here... I'd call your points above a management problem, not a remote problem explicitly. It has really struck me over the past ~year as remote work is becoming more normalized just how bad managers have their lack of confidence / awareness multiplied when they are trying to interact with remote workers and really don't have the personal tools to do it. Sounds like you've done a lot of reflection on your remote experience - and you are right, it isn't for everybody (and that's a-ok) - but I posit a lot of the breakdowns in remote work are because management hasn't evolved past the industrial age.
gregmac 7y ago
Some of the negatives you've listed come from a "non-remote" culture at the company (2, 3, 5, 7, 8), which can be fixed, with desire (by the company) and effort. For example, with meetings, you can have a rule like if anyone is attending remotely, everyone attends "remotely" (with a headset and webcam from their desk). If you do use a meeting room, good equipment is essential -- HD audio on a device with good microphones and echo-cancellation, and a camera mounted on the wall. I've come to the conclusion video is very important for most meetings, especially with more than a couple people, as everyone tends to stay muted to keep background noise down. You can see people nodding in agreement or looking confused, being totally disengaged, looking like they have something to say, smiling at jokes, etc. Without it, it discourages things that help build a healthy team like joking around -- if you crack a joke and it's followed by awkward silence, it's not a good feeling. My team (distributed across timezones, with over half remote from a home office) does a daily standup every day, using video, and it definitely helps to bring the team together. Team chat, used properly (hint: Skype is not the right tool, and chat is not a substitute for email or a bug tracker), can also help. Often when a bigger discussion breaks out and people are available (engaged in chat), we'll just start a video chat. It's a lot like the ad-hoc discussions that spring up in an office, but without the forced interruption that in-person presence has. Fixing all this though really starts with getting the manager(s) on board. If the manager is a "butt-in-seats" type person who can't measure output in anything but number of hours worked, it will probably be an uphill battle.

neokantian 7y ago

> Very lonely, I ended up spending a lot of money going to cafe's to fill a social need. I usually work at the swimming pool of my condo here in SE Asia. I love taking swimming breaks. The other guys here at the pool do pretty much the same. These are the same people that I see at the gym when I work out. There are also a few retirees here who avoid cold winters in Canada. There's nothing lonely about my lifestyle. It is actually much better than working in an office.

chapium 7y ago
Remote work is great for a lot of people, but in my case it doesn't. :) I think leaving a job is often an intersection of many issues. Unfortunately, the remote aspect of the job can become one of them (as can a painful commute for local workers).

reallydontask 7y ago

> 2. Office meetings suck. If you are the only person dialling in to a meeting and the rest of the team is local there are tons of issues. Noise, missing out on sidebar conversations, etc. This always annoys me. Just make everybody dial in. The amount of wasted time with these kind of meetings just because people don't get it. If a side conversation starts, all bets are off for people dialled in, as the speakers will look at each other, which almost certainly means away from the spider phone/mic.

gregmac 7y ago
One of our big conference rooms has a couple remote mics on either end of the table, and I've been on the remote end when people have had a sidebar conversation hovered directly over one of them. Even though they were talking quietly, for everyone remote they were totally drowning out the main conversation.

commandlinefan 7y ago

> If you are the only person dialing in to a meeting Every job I’ve had for the past 20 years (always 100% on-site) has been geo-distributed, so I’ve had to dial into nearly every meeting, often being the only person dialed in.

matwood 7y ago
Same. One of my first jobs out of college in the 90s had me dialing into meetings with a geo-distributed team. The only thing that really changed for me as I transitioned fully remote was I didn't have to drive somewhere every day. I have had jobs later that were fully onsite, and I always end up hating the drive, the strict hours (perceived or otherwise), and the simple lack of freedom. I will do way more work if I can some basic say over my schedule.
michaelt 7y ago
Have you found any good way to use a whiteboard over videoconferencing? In my experience, pointing the camera at the whiteboard isn't enough.

stuff4ben 7y ago

As a manager whose direct reports were all located in a different site (California vs NC where I am), most of your negatives also applied to me. Except I was onsite (albeit much smaller than the HQ) and did have a community around me. However, my team was located with the rest of my management chain (directors, VPs, etc) while I was stuck out here "alone".

skrebbel 7y ago

> I imagine this list would be different if the team was 100% remote. IMO this is a key point. I wouldn't recommend working remotely unless the entire company (or at least the department) is organized online and people are generally remote. That said, I don't believe 100% is a necessity, as long as you act it. Eg some companies have a "one camera per face policy" for meetings. We recently adopted it, and it works super well. At my company though, sometimes a few people are colocated, and you get this weird dance of finding a spot sufficiently far away from each other to be able to stick with the policy and not also hear each other directly, with no latency. It's weird but it works super well. Everybody feels more connected. With a few rules like that you can be, say, 80% remote and not 100%, without the downsides. Really it's all about the mindset. Also, seriously folks, do retrospectives.

Klathmon 7y ago
>you get this weird dance of finding a spot sufficiently far away from each other to be able to stick with the policy and not also hear each other directly, with no latency. See if you can talk to your boss and get everyone over-ear headsets with a boom mic, and spend some time tuning them so the mics only pickup the person talking. That way you can have several people all in the same area all on the same or different calls, and for the most part it won't be an issue.
- skrebbel 7y ago
  I am the boss, and that's a neat idea! The key problem isn't microphone pickup though, but just hearing each other twice. Noice cancelling headphones might fix that.

poulsbohemian 7y ago

> 2. Office meetings suck. If you are the only person dialing in to a meeting and the rest of the team is local there are tons of issues. Noise, missing out on sidebar conversations, etc. > 3. You are obligated to overcommunicate to your coworkers or managers to compensate for your lack of presence, but often they leave you in the dark. > 5. If skype is signed out without you realizing it, management gets paranoid. > 7. Lack of visibility means lack of opportunities at work. > 8. Its very easy to get in a rut where the "remote guy" only works on certain specific things and can't grow their career. Remote / mobile worker in various forms since 2006 here... I'd call your points above a management problem, not a remote problem explicitly. It has really struck me over the past ~year as remote work is becoming more normalized just how bad managers have their lack of confidence / awareness multiplied when they are trying to interact with remote workers and really don't have the personal tools to do it. Sounds like you've done a lot of reflection on your remote experience - and you are right, it isn't for everybody (and that's a-ok) - but I posit a lot of the breakdowns in remote work are because management hasn't evolved past the industrial age.

gregmac 7y ago

Some of the negatives you've listed come from a "non-remote" culture at the company (2, 3, 5, 7, 8), which can be fixed, with desire (by the company) and effort. For example, with meetings, you can have a rule like if anyone is attending remotely, everyone attends "remotely" (with a headset and webcam from their desk). If you do use a meeting room, good equipment is essential -- HD audio on a device with good microphones and echo-cancellation, and a camera mounted on the wall. I've come to the conclusion video is very important for most meetings, especially with more than a couple people, as everyone tends to stay muted to keep background noise down. You can see people nodding in agreement or looking confused, being totally disengaged, looking like they have something to say, smiling at jokes, etc. Without it, it discourages things that help build a healthy team like joking around -- if you crack a joke and it's followed by awkward silence, it's not a good feeling. My team (distributed across timezones, with over half remote from a home office) does a daily standup every day, using video, and it definitely helps to bring the team together. Team chat, used properly (hint: Skype is not the right tool, and chat is not a substitute for email or a bug tracker), can also help. Often when a bigger discussion breaks out and people are available (engaged in chat), we'll just start a video chat. It's a lot like the ad-hoc discussions that spring up in an office, but without the forced interruption that in-person presence has. Fixing all this though really starts with getting the manager(s) on board. If the manager is a "butt-in-seats" type person who can't measure output in anything but number of hours worked, it will probably be an uphill battle.