13 ms·

Remote Work Report

237 points by kaeruct 7y ago

teddyh 7y ago
Why was the title of this submission changed to the more uninteresting “Remote Work Report” from the original “The Remote Work Report by GitLab: The Future of Work is Remote”?
- jerzyt 7y ago
  Too preposterous, perhaps?
- ghaff 7y ago
  Someone probably thought the title was too provocative and therefore more likely to touch off the usual back and forth between -- those who feel they have to evangelize remote work so that there will be more/better paid remote positions for them and -- those who really hate the current situation (who doesn't) and are worried that not coming into the office will be normalized and many of their co-workers will stop coming in as a result
  - michaelcampbell 7y ago
    > those who really hate the current situation (who doesn't) <raises hand>, in the context of this report. 100% WFH fine with me. Not being able to go just buy local stuff when I want I'm not so keen on, but that's not what this is about.
    - ghaff 7y ago
      In my case, I'm almost fully remote but I also usually travel about a third of the time--so I'm a bit stir-crazy. I just meant that it's overall a stressful situation for a lot of people which makes remote tougher overall.
- new_here 7y ago
  Probably just took the name out as per HN guidelines: > If the title includes the name of the site, please take it out, because the site name will be displayed after the link.
- blackandblue 7y ago
  hey, check this out, it came up before: https://hackernewstitles.netlify.app https://hackernewstitles.netlify.app sometimes the reasons don't make sense to me even though people say they do.
jerzyt 7y ago
>>> The Future of Work Is Remote Yes, in the sub-segment of economy where Gitlab is applicable it's true. It's been true for a long time, even before the Covid-19 virus. But for a large segment of the economy it isn't. I need a hair cut, but all barber shops are closed. Can Gitlab help? I want to go out for a dinner, I'm tired of take-outs. Can Gitlab help? A telecommuting hostess, followed by a telecommuting waitress, followed by a ... I've been working remotely for the last several years, but it has it's place. It won't fundamentally change what was already happening, except perhaps accelerating the trend.
- jon-wood 7y ago
  This feels like a strawman argument. Of course Gitlab aren't suggesting that chefs, barbers, and car mechanics are going to start working entirely remotely and transmitting the product of their work via the internet. Its pretty clear from the article that they're talking in the context of knowledge work.
  - nogabebop23 7y ago
    The explicitly state "digital output" so it's even more refined.
  - nathanlied 7y ago
    Indeed. I'd further say that remote work can benefit those occupations that cannot work remotely! If we imagine that a large percentage of the population doing work that can be done from home is doing so, there will be less traffic on the roads, more time for people to go down to their local coffee shop or restaurant to grab a bite, more real estate for non-WFH companies to rent (possibly with lower costs), or even office buildings that could be converted into habitation (and thus allowing the people whose work has physical components to live closer and lessen their commutes). Not to mention pollution, quality of life, and a healthier society. Sure, it's not a monumental impact at a global level, but I'd count it as a positive change for the most part.
cbg0 7y ago
Even with reports like these, I think it will be tough to convince managers that are set in their ways to open up to allowing their employees to work remotely. While anecdotal, most companies seem to have approached the current state of affairs as a mild inconvenience that will be gone soon, and aren't looking to keep remote work an option going forward, even though it's working out well, which is a shame.
andygcook 7y ago
It’s interesting that 87% of people say they are satisfied with current tools and processes that enable remote team communication, yet 35% list collaborating with colleagues and clients as a top challenge. There seems to be a disconnect between those two sections of the report.
- ics 7y ago
  I would respond similarly for my own work situation. We're using Microsoft Teams which is fine and in many ways a big improvement over the hodgepodge of tools we used before remote work en masse was considered viable by my employer. Still, it has changed the dynamic and that is a challenge as it affects individuals differently. Some colleagues have become more communicative, others less so, some want to use the phone more now, others are happy to use channels to post a stream of what they're working on without addressing anyone in particular, etc.
- wadim 7y ago
  Are they mutually exclusive, though? You might think the tools are adequate - or even good -, but not be happy with how other people handle remote collaboration. My experience has been, that some people really like to call you directly and expect you to take their call, without creating a meeting or asking you if/when you have time. Others (still) have problems with muting/unmuting themselves or realizing that everybody can hear their environment. And I think when you're accustomed to never or very rarely working from home, there are a lot of things you have to do differently, so the learning or adaption curve is kinda steep at the beginning.
- jpm_sd 7y ago
  What that says to me is, the tools and processes are fine. Getting people to use them is the challenge.
  - alohaandmahalo 7y ago
    That's essentially how we interpreted it as well. Tools are still important, and useful in the right context, but we're in a period now where tools are not hindering remote proliferation.
Adiqq 7y ago
Working fully remotely? In IT it's no-brainer, why would I spend time on everyday commuting, spend time in office where I can't feel fully comfortable, especially when company come up with open space idea and waste my productivity? I want to get shit done, receive money and live my life. Reimbursements? Employer should just pay more in salary, what's the difference if I rent a office or convert part of my home into office?
- txcwpalpha 7y ago
  >Employer should just pay more in salary, what's the difference if I rent a office or convert part of my home into office? I wish. My experience is that companies advertise "Remote work possible" as some sort of job perk, and use it as justification to actually pay you a lower salary.
- Loulybob 7y ago
  People have different preferences. For example, I find it: - harder to focus working in my own home - harder to separate home life from work life - more isolating, as you miss natural office interactions and conversations Neither way is more superior than the other, and both should be accepted as just preferences and not forced one way or another.
Rochus 7y ago
Very interesting study, thank you Gitlab. It would be great if the results were true and the trend could prevail in the long term. I'm one of these 16% "working remotely all the time" since six years (working frequently remote for ten years before already). I have more than enough interesting work, but I regularly had to deal with companies that were not interested in cooperation because I was not willing to work at least 50% on site. I am curious to see if Corona will change this attitude. I live in german speaking Europe, and perhaps the culture here is simply not yet ready for it.
- dgellow 7y ago
  Just curious: the companies you work with, where are they located? And how did you get in contact with them? I’m also in Germany and working remote full time since ~1 year, I’m interested in your experience if you’re willing to share.
  - Rochus 7y ago
    I'm located in Switzerland, do my own acquisition and I have long-standing, stable cooperations with companies where I am known and trusted. I also regularly receive requests from recruiters where I am in the database; this usually happens the same way; their clients (in Switzerland and Germany) are very interested until the moment they realize that I am not interested in working physically on site with them (in addition I appear too expensive for most German clients). This is not a problem for me because I am established and can afford it. But for the younger ones, who have to build their business relationships first, the aforementioned mentality of the clients makes it very difficult to work in this way. The argument that you work three to ten times as efficiently as any local employee in an open-plan office and that this makes the project cheaper, even though the hourly rate is higher (just to name a few advantages), is something that hardly anyone who doesn't know you wants to hear.
ghaff 7y ago
"All-remote is the purest form of remote work, with each team member on a level playing field. 43% of remote workers feel that it is important to work for a company where all employees are remote." This is interesting as it runs counter to the opinion you hear a lot that is in the vein of live and let live/give people a choice/different people have different preferences. I do think there's some truth to it. While I don't really have trouble under normal circumstances as someone who is mostly remote with a bunch of people in a conference room on a call, it is a little nicer with everyone individually on the video call. [ADDED: But the company is about 50% remote so there are often people from a variety of locations on a call even if some are in a conference room.] I think it's certainly true, if only a few people are remote, that can be challenging.
- sz4kerto 7y ago
  I have worked remotely for a company that was otherwise very much a traditional non-remote environment; I have experience partly distributed teams and now managing a fully remote one. I think partly remote will always, without an exception, create a significant information asymmetry that will result in non-remote workers becoming the leaders in the company. (plug, sorry:) I have written a small post about migrating to remote: https://blog.patientsknowbest.com/2020/04/01/51-basic-rules-of-managing-distributed-teams https://blog.patientsknowbest.com/2020/04/01/51-basic-rules-... - even in _theory_ you could fully embrace remote workers if some others see each other in person regularly, the latter group won't, can't and likely, shouldn't stop exchanging information in ways that 1) are more efficient 2) excludes remote workers.
  - draven 7y ago
    +1 for the information asymmetry. I'm currently working remotely 4 days a week and there are 2 other devs working remotely between 80% and 100% of the time. One of the main issues is "oral tradition". Information is shared from dev to dev during coffee breaks, and everyone is supposed to somehow know it. The solution is to work as if everyone is working remotely, and in that case that means putting information into writing, either by communicating through archived and searchable channels (ie Slack) or writing docs.
Mayzie 7y ago
How do people handle async communications when in differing time zones? The team was forced to work remotely as opposed to an office as a result of SARS-CoV-2. I'm a core developer back in Sydney, with the rest of the company in San Francisco (I'm essentially -7 hours). A lot of team members don't like me not being able to reply when they send a message because they don't like having to context switch from tasks that they're blocked on, meanwhile I have no problems with this aspect as I tend to like to work on things simultaneously and can context switch quickly (could it be my ADHD being a super power here?). How do remote teams deal with this effectively? We currently have org/dev planning meetings every other day (Monday, Wednesday, Friday 10:30am PDT, which is 3:30am my time until sometimes 6am) which I'm up for, but I can't maintain that every day as it gets too much (I wake up around midday Sydney time).
- ryanianian 7y ago
  Honestly it sounds like the team is treating you like a "second-class citizen." It seems 100% unreasonable for you to have to attend 3:30am meetings ever let alone twice a month. You need to be able to have a somewhat normal sleep-schedule in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle and to continue to be a productive member of the team and of society. Personally I think you need to re-set some expectations - you're just as much a part of the team as everyone else. Sure you may need to work 1-3 hours outside of "9-5" time to meet in the middle, but so do they. (Unless of course you really like the swing-shift, in which case you need make those hours very consistent and very public.) My team had 2 remote people who were treated like that for a few months, but they quickly realized it wasn't fair or sustainable and pushed back. So our team-wide meetings got bumped to 9am, and we got good at making decisions that they cared about while they were online. Or we queued up things for them to respond to the following day. It's not as easy as being able to tap someone on the shoulder, but nothing is right now with everyone WFH. Everybody needs to grow up and treat each other with a bit more respect. (/rant but not really)
- ghaff 7y ago
  I'm US East Coast (effectively, though not formally, remote) and the company--while pretty distributed--tends to be centered on the East Coast timezone. We don't have a lot of people on the West Coast so we mostly schedule morning meetings when we need people in Europe to participate, where we do have a lot of people. APAC? it's tough. They're on a lot of late night calls though we make do as we have to. (And again, tend to have fairly early AM meetings ET (or late afternoon/evening) if Asia needs to participate.) I'm not in engineering but my guess is that there's a lot less real-time collaboration than with engineering offices/remotes in the US and Europe. One standing meeting I'm in, we alternative between late in the (business) day and early in the (business) day ET.
nemoniac 7y ago
The report appears to be limited to those residing in the USA, UK, Canada and Australia. This is stated nowhere in the survey methodology.
- alohaandmahalo 7y ago
  The 'Residence Country' is listed on Page 7. Fair point on reiterating in the 'Methodology' section on Page 3. Thanks!
10000100001010 7y ago
I've worked remotely for nearly 2 years now. The majority of that time I was the only remote engineer in a company of ~80 engineers. We went fully remote just over a month ago and it has been a huge quality of life boost for me. Before everyone went remote the communication was pretty lopsided where I had to make sure I was over communicating and inserting myself strategically. Now that everyone is remote it is a lot more natural with everyone on the same playing field
- dougmwne 7y ago
  Yeah, same experience. For the first time I'm on equal footing with the rest of the company. I knew what I was getting into from the start, and I can get along just fine being the only remote person, but I won't deny this has me thinking about going with a fully remote company when this is all over.
- alohaandmahalo 7y ago
  Awesome to hear this. The "same playing field" bit is significant.
code4tee 7y ago
I do enjoy being in the office sometimes but not every day. After this is all over I imagine many companies will go “remote work” for at least part of the time. There we’re many naysayer companies that were forced into doing it and now realize work still gets done. Longer term this whole experience will likely be a step-change in what “office work” looks like moving forward and that probably means a lot less commercial office space needed.
- monkeydust 7y ago
  Kinda agree. I could do 3 out of 5 days in the office without any negative impact, in fact it would be positive in terms of productivity and I would generally be happier (which would further up my productivity). I wouldn't want to work 100% from home either. Hardest part is client interaction, video conferencing not the same as face to face but its clear now that not all client meetings need to be face to face once people are proficient with the technology and the technology gets better which it will. Curious on what people think about home working and VR... Will the tech help? Anyone experimenting with VR in this context?
- ghaff 7y ago
  I hesitate to predict how this will play out long-term. I can imagine some companies, rather than expanding, shifting at least in part to partial WFH--even if not full remote--with an office that is oriented towards conference rooms and at least partly unassigned seating. Maybe co-located teams agree to come in on certain days.
- alohaandmahalo 7y ago
  Great points. Some interesting survey results from Gartner here that may be interesting to you: https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2020-04-03-gartner-cfo-surey-reveals-74-percent-of-organizations-to-shift-some-employees-to-remote-work-permanently2 https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2020-04-0...
laurieg 7y ago
It's difficult for me to give a true assessment of what remote work would be like in normal times. Since I live alone and social events are cancelled I feel like I'm craving social contact and definitely missing that aspect of work. I also don't have any space in my apartment to work from so I'm set up on the kitchen table. I do wonder if the exceptional circumstances of the current sudden shift to remote (lack of other human contact, unplanned setups at home) will cause a backlash against remote work.
- blktiger 7y ago
  I'm guessing there will be a mix of people who had a bad taste because their companies weren't really setup for remote work and they don't have the ability to get out of the house, and some people who find that they are more productive working from home, are able to use the extra hour or two in their day to get other things done, find that the documentation enforced by remote work provides a ton of benefits to their team, etc. To be fair, remote work isn't for everyone and for outgoing people in particular they need to learn how to get in an appropriate level of social interaction (bad right now of course); but as noted by this survey a large portion of remote workers won't even consider going back to work in a co-located office.
- shred45 7y ago
  There may be some backlash, given how painful the transition has been for a lot of people. I think a lot of people are conflating "remote work" with "social distancing". The later is the cause of a lot of your feelings of loneliness. The former can significantly increase your flexibility to maintain quality relationships. As someone who works 100% remotely, this has been an especially lonely period for me as well. Right now, many people are still getting used to working from home, and many I suspect consider this to be a temporary measure, which has prevented them from getting settled. In a real switch to remote work, you would be properly invested in setting up a long-term productive environment. The beauty of remote work is you would have the agency to experiment and find what habits and schedules makes you the most productive, without the added constraints of the office. This process would probably take several months, and for a while you would miss the structure of the office, but I think it has the possibility to increase your productivity and quality of life. For me, remote work does not mean that I work alone, it just means I work with a group of other remote workers that I consider to be close friends. I think it has the potential to increase quality social interactions while working, not decrease. In a society where more people are working remotely, I think the ability to forge relationships outside of work will only increase.
dudul 7y ago
I really don't know what to expect for remote work in the future. The current trap is to think that we are currently doing remove work. We are not, we're doing remote work in a very unusual setup. Kids and partners are at home with us, we can't really leave our house, etc. This is not real WFH. Additionally, a lot of companies were pushed into that almost over night without preparing for it. No experience with it, no tooling in place, no processes, etc. Maybe a lot of them experienced some loss in productivity due to that and will just conclude that remove work really isn't for them, it sucks. The 2 things I really hope for: * people experiencing a personal boost in productivity and better quality of life (mostly due to not having to commute) will be vocal about not going back to the "old ways" * companies claiming that "proper work/collaboration can only happen in the office" will finally change their tune and end the hypocrisy. When forced to do it, they somehow found a way. Maybe it's time to final end this charade. Especially in tech, the work that can only happen in an office is so marginal.
duxup 7y ago
Typically I work remote 3-5 days a week. There is a lot of talk about remote work and COVID-19 and for me remote work in the age of COVID-19 ... it has been terrible. Mostly because I have kids, and my wife and I are both trying to work remote, and attend to the kids schooling ... it's a terrible combination for getting anything done on a 'regular' schedule. I suspect people's remote work during COVID-19 experiences are pretty wide ranging.
- alohaandmahalo 7y ago
  You aren't alone. It's easy to conflate "remote" with what's happening right now, but it's not the same. Crisis-induced work-from-home while doubling as a homeschool teacher is not the same as properly organized remote work. Less to do with home and more to do with everything outside of work impacting work. More here: https://twitter.com/shanselman/status/1252040170783641600?s=12 https://twitter.com/shanselman/status/1252040170783641600?s=...
  - carleverett 7y ago
    Well said! Early into COVID I thought it'd bring a surge in remote work because we'd see how much work really can be done from anywhere. But COVID-remote work has been way different. I've been a full remote worker for 3 years usually working out of coffee shops, and I'm much less productive now because a) I have to work from home, and b) it's generally harder to stay focused during a global pandemic. And I'm not even a parent. I do hope those who are working remote for the first time don't associate remote work with a bad work life now.
aantix 7y ago
Be careful of the companies that advertise remote as a “benefit” of the job. They’re usually looking to discount your salary by 30-50% by some arbitrary cost of living factor. You bring the same value - whether that’s delivered from New York City or Des Moines Iowa.
- slackfan 7y ago
  Let's not beat around the bush, specifically, Gitlab does this, IIRC.
  - brantonb 7y ago
    Explained here: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensation/#paying-local-rates https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensation...
    - JoeCortopassi 7y ago
      Great explanation of a bad practice. A company should pay for the value they get, which is independent of the location. These calculations never seem to take into effect all the cost savings of having a remote person (office building/parking/food/working space/etc). Instead, they almost always mark the employee as a second tier of worker
      - slackfan 7y ago
        My company tends to do something similar for starting salaries, but that's because we're a consultancy, and our rates per-market are different. However: In the long term if employees stay with the company long term, salaries tend to get bumped up to approximately the same. So you might get started lower, but your yearly pay bump will be higher.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
    - bernawil 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
codegeek 7y ago
Remote work will never been an absolute thing. It depends on context, personal habits/preferences and most importantly: experience doing it over time. I personally cannot work from home. COVID has made it worse as kids are home BUT even if I had the whole house to myself, I just cannot work from home. I NEED a dedicated office outside my house (yes I already have an office room in my house). Reason is simple. I don't have the discipline to work from home. I get distracted too easily. So I m not a good candidate for WFH. Do I want the flexibility when needed ? Of course. But do I WANT to work from home all the time ? Hell no. I would say the future of work is not just remote. The future of work is "employers allowing more flexibility in work location" but as an employer myself, I am personally not in favor of 100% remote. That's me I know but sorry, not everyone is cut out for remote work.
- Icathian 7y ago
  Nobody minds if that's what works for you. We object when you force it on employees because it's what works for you, regardless of what works for them.
  - taborj 7y ago
    > We object when you force it on employees because it's what works for you, regardless of what works for them. I think I'm a bit old school. My outlook can be summed up like this: If you like your job, and you want to keep your job, you'll do what your boss asks unless it's illegal or immoral. So if my boss told me I had to work in an office, I'd weight that against the "if you want to keep your job" portion of the above, and decide if that's for me. If not, I quit and go find something where WFH is an option. If so, I go work in the office. Most likely I'd work in the office until I found something else or management realized that they were losing employees and changed the policy (I suppose in that way we can "force" the business to conform to our whims). Perhaps that's a privileged point of view, or makes me a drone. But my life isn't work; I work to live, not live to work, so minor inconveniences at work don't derail my life; it's just a job, something I do to afford more important things. For the record, I've worked from home for the last 9 years, and I have coworkers who had a really tough time adapting to WFH; they had to weigh if the trouble to change was worth it for them. Some felt it wasn't worth the trouble and left, many found it was and stayed.
baron_harkonnen 7y ago
I've made this point before but the future of remote work has and will continue to have no dependence on what workers like nor will it on how "productive" workers are. Office's have perpetually been getting worse for workers(offices -> cubicles -> open office). So it's very clear companies have never chosen one office solution to another because it is the preference of the worker. As for the argument of changes to "productivity". For starters very few of us work in roles where productivity is a directly measurable thing. Sure you can argue about commits, lines of code, ship times, but those are all nowhere near as measurable as "widgets-per-hour". On top of this we all know that a huge portion of roles out there are arguably not productive at all (and if they are it's very hard to measure). And again, when in the history of work has declining worker productivity been solved by improving conditions for the worker? If you company goes remote and you don't work as well that way, do you think your boss is going to go "oh! I'd better talk to leadership about getting those offices again!"? The entire reason offices still exist is because of culture. For years every SV startup I knew said they needed an office in SF because the "VCs like to see that". There has been a lot of inertia towards offices. Now that Covid19 has broken that assumption for a bit, I think we'll see a rapid shift to remote teams because it quickly becomes clear that offices are a liability. Anecdotally I already know one start up that can no longer afford their office and so are breaking their lease with no sense of what they'll do next (so remote is the default), and a well established, very traditional office culture firm that is already stating that everyone being in the office full time will not be the norm coming out of this.
- dna113 7y ago
  Also I think COVID has forced companies into trying it when there might have been fear or apprehension before. It takes time/resources/commitment to even try out a work from home policy - but now everyone has been forced into it.
  - draw_down 7y ago
    Well, that's exactly it- everyone has been forced into it, and being forced into something is not always a great way to appreciate it. My employer has been surveying employees since this all started, and the last survey showed 70% of them looking forward to returning to the office. Personally I've worked remote for almost 10 years; I might not ever take an in-person job again. But it seems most people don't feel that way.
sdan 7y ago
Remote work is great and all... because that's our only option. In the long term, I suspect there may be a greater inclination towards remote work, not as much as this report suggests, but overall work at office is here to stay. I need to go outside and have a physical seperation between work and home.
- wintermutestwin 7y ago
  Imagine if it were the norm though. You could move out of the Bay Area and afford a home with a dedicated office space. I worked remotely for 17 years and I found ways to create a separation. Sadly, I fear you are right though - there may be a slightly larger WFH push, but inertia of management by proximity will still be the norm.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    Or get an office in a co-working facility of some sort. Most of my remote colleagues do work out of their house but I've known people who wanted to create that separation and weren't near a company office so they rented a space. Sometimes companies will even pay for that. (Don't know our policy.)
  - 0xffff2 7y ago
    Well, not a GitLab you couldn't because they'll cut your salary tremendously (40% if I moved to my second home in Oregon). Oregon is a whole lot cheaper than the Bay area, but it's not 40% cheaper.
eugenekolo 7y ago
I'm pro remote work, but it's questionable as to why GitLab pushes their remote work ideas so much? Is it to become some sort of remote work consultant? Is it an angle of marketing?
- metadaemon 7y ago
  I kind of assumed they were trying to show that they are getting something right. I'm sure they have heard lots of criticism. They do mention it being a great leg up on hiring competition, so there's that too.
- ship_it 7y ago
  Because it cost them less, and they magically "present" that it's a good thing. They pay different (lower/higher) salaries depending where you are located.
- zip1234 7y ago
  It is the same as Basecamp. Marketing. Everyone hears about your company and knows you are all remote and so people want to work there. You can then pick and choose the best people from across the world.
jonrx 7y ago
This is a great read. I am especially happy that they are not asking for an email to download the report. I understand why some companies are doing this, but I went from web page to reading with no friction.
markosaric 7y ago
Great report! I've been working remotely for a few years now so a bit biased. But I would say that the COVID situation with regards to remote work has shown how many benefits there would be for the wider society if more people worked from home more often: * Less traffic * Less noise pollution * Less air pollution * Less stress * More energy for things outside of work All these would increase the quality of life for a large part of the population, decrease the number of avoidable lifestyle diseases and deaths, and would help cut the global carbon emissions too. COVID is not an ideal situation to start your work from home experience but I do hope that some people will find it valuable enough to make more lasting changes after the crisis is behind us.
tayistay 7y ago
Remote work should be an absolute thing, mandated by law, or at least strong incentives, to reduce our carbon footprint. Unless you truly need to go to a central location (laboratory, healthcare, etc.), you should work remotely. I saw a study that said 40% of SF Bay Area jobs could be remote. If all major metros went remote, this would put a dent in our CO2 output. Advantages of offices, face-to-face interaction, etc. just doesn't matter. Climate change is an existential threat according to the experts, so we should actually take it seriously and modify our society accordingly.
aivosha 7y ago
Labeling work remote or non-remote (on-site?) becomes increasingly irrelevant. Need for physical presence in a given geographical location is mitigated by good planing and quality of tools allowing to share information effectively. Why dont we stop calling things remote or not, but focus more on improving the tool sets needed to better plan and share thing between humans. All of these tools are needed wether the team is physically on the same geo location or spread out. What changed now is that its much harder to justify not having them anymore.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jpincheira 7y ago
As we've learned from building for remote teams [1], is that it's really about how you set a process for async communication, and not just about the tools. This is why we've been heads down since the outbreak helping work-from-home teams set the right processes of communication using us and other tools. It's really around building a healthy culture of working from home, and not encouraging multiple disruptions during the day, and actively doing so, thinking that it unites teams. We wrote a basic guideline [2]. [1] https://standups.io https://standups.io [2] https://standups.io/blog/a-basic-guideline-for-async-communication/ https://standups.io/blog/a-basic-guideline-for-async-communi...
pacomerh 7y ago
I'm totally for remote work when the context and company is adequate. I just wish salary wasn't as low, these days when a company says 'remote possible' it almost always means you're gonna get paid less. [edit spelling]
mr_tristan 7y ago
> 43% of remote workers feel it is important to work for a company where ALL employees are remote… As a full time remote worker, I've also felt that having everyone else is great. In every case I've work with a colocated team, they end up snubbing you in weird ways. This snubbing is just a cultural thing. There's no technical reason remote workers should feel left out if working with another team. I've found that most colocated team members rarely write well, and often do not track, or even follow up on complex team decisions. When everyone is remote, it often forces some better communication. Frequently, the teams have to "double up" on the media used to communicate, which almost always requires some written communication. Now that everyone's remote in quarantine, I've heard complaints from the colocators about "having to overcommunicate". But really, it's just learning to communicate well. This metric of "how many all-remote workers want everyone else to be remote", really seems like a great test for "how well does your company communicate?"
- hmmokidk 7y ago
  In my case it's the higher ups snubbing the remote workers and deliberately excluding them. I think they're trying to "encourage" non remote work but are actually being shitty.
personaenon 7y ago
Nah.....too many troglodyte managers must SEE butts in seats......

237 points by kaeruct 7y ago

Why was the title of this submission changed to the more uninteresting “Remote Work Report” from the original “The Remote Work Report by GitLab: The Future of Work is Remote”?

jerzyt 7y ago
Too preposterous, perhaps?
ghaff 7y ago
Someone probably thought the title was too provocative and therefore more likely to touch off the usual back and forth between -- those who feel they have to evangelize remote work so that there will be more/better paid remote positions for them and -- those who really hate the current situation (who doesn't) and are worried that not coming into the office will be normalized and many of their co-workers will stop coming in as a result
- michaelcampbell 7y ago
  > those who really hate the current situation (who doesn't) <raises hand>, in the context of this report. 100% WFH fine with me. Not being able to go just buy local stuff when I want I'm not so keen on, but that's not what this is about.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    In my case, I'm almost fully remote but I also usually travel about a third of the time--so I'm a bit stir-crazy. I just meant that it's overall a stressful situation for a lot of people which makes remote tougher overall.
new_here 7y ago
Probably just took the name out as per HN guidelines: > If the title includes the name of the site, please take it out, because the site name will be displayed after the link.
blackandblue 7y ago
hey, check this out, it came up before: https://hackernewstitles.netlify.app https://hackernewstitles.netlify.app sometimes the reasons don't make sense to me even though people say they do.

jerzyt 7y ago

>>> The Future of Work Is Remote Yes, in the sub-segment of economy where Gitlab is applicable it's true. It's been true for a long time, even before the Covid-19 virus. But for a large segment of the economy it isn't. I need a hair cut, but all barber shops are closed. Can Gitlab help? I want to go out for a dinner, I'm tired of take-outs. Can Gitlab help? A telecommuting hostess, followed by a telecommuting waitress, followed by a ... I've been working remotely for the last several years, but it has it's place. It won't fundamentally change what was already happening, except perhaps accelerating the trend.

jon-wood 7y ago
This feels like a strawman argument. Of course Gitlab aren't suggesting that chefs, barbers, and car mechanics are going to start working entirely remotely and transmitting the product of their work via the internet. Its pretty clear from the article that they're talking in the context of knowledge work.
- nogabebop23 7y ago
  The explicitly state "digital output" so it's even more refined.
- nathanlied 7y ago
  Indeed. I'd further say that remote work can benefit those occupations that cannot work remotely! If we imagine that a large percentage of the population doing work that can be done from home is doing so, there will be less traffic on the roads, more time for people to go down to their local coffee shop or restaurant to grab a bite, more real estate for non-WFH companies to rent (possibly with lower costs), or even office buildings that could be converted into habitation (and thus allowing the people whose work has physical components to live closer and lessen their commutes). Not to mention pollution, quality of life, and a healthier society. Sure, it's not a monumental impact at a global level, but I'd count it as a positive change for the most part.

cbg0 7y ago

Even with reports like these, I think it will be tough to convince managers that are set in their ways to open up to allowing their employees to work remotely. While anecdotal, most companies seem to have approached the current state of affairs as a mild inconvenience that will be gone soon, and aren't looking to keep remote work an option going forward, even though it's working out well, which is a shame.

andygcook 7y ago

It’s interesting that 87% of people say they are satisfied with current tools and processes that enable remote team communication, yet 35% list collaborating with colleagues and clients as a top challenge. There seems to be a disconnect between those two sections of the report.

ics 7y ago
I would respond similarly for my own work situation. We're using Microsoft Teams which is fine and in many ways a big improvement over the hodgepodge of tools we used before remote work en masse was considered viable by my employer. Still, it has changed the dynamic and that is a challenge as it affects individuals differently. Some colleagues have become more communicative, others less so, some want to use the phone more now, others are happy to use channels to post a stream of what they're working on without addressing anyone in particular, etc.
wadim 7y ago
Are they mutually exclusive, though? You might think the tools are adequate - or even good -, but not be happy with how other people handle remote collaboration. My experience has been, that some people really like to call you directly and expect you to take their call, without creating a meeting or asking you if/when you have time. Others (still) have problems with muting/unmuting themselves or realizing that everybody can hear their environment. And I think when you're accustomed to never or very rarely working from home, there are a lot of things you have to do differently, so the learning or adaption curve is kinda steep at the beginning.
jpm_sd 7y ago
What that says to me is, the tools and processes are fine. Getting people to use them is the challenge.
- alohaandmahalo 7y ago
  That's essentially how we interpreted it as well. Tools are still important, and useful in the right context, but we're in a period now where tools are not hindering remote proliferation.

Adiqq 7y ago

Working fully remotely? In IT it's no-brainer, why would I spend time on everyday commuting, spend time in office where I can't feel fully comfortable, especially when company come up with open space idea and waste my productivity? I want to get shit done, receive money and live my life. Reimbursements? Employer should just pay more in salary, what's the difference if I rent a office or convert part of my home into office?

txcwpalpha 7y ago
>Employer should just pay more in salary, what's the difference if I rent a office or convert part of my home into office? I wish. My experience is that companies advertise "Remote work possible" as some sort of job perk, and use it as justification to actually pay you a lower salary.
Loulybob 7y ago
People have different preferences. For example, I find it: - harder to focus working in my own home - harder to separate home life from work life - more isolating, as you miss natural office interactions and conversations Neither way is more superior than the other, and both should be accepted as just preferences and not forced one way or another.

Rochus 7y ago

Very interesting study, thank you Gitlab. It would be great if the results were true and the trend could prevail in the long term. I'm one of these 16% "working remotely all the time" since six years (working frequently remote for ten years before already). I have more than enough interesting work, but I regularly had to deal with companies that were not interested in cooperation because I was not willing to work at least 50% on site. I am curious to see if Corona will change this attitude. I live in german speaking Europe, and perhaps the culture here is simply not yet ready for it.

dgellow 7y ago
Just curious: the companies you work with, where are they located? And how did you get in contact with them? I’m also in Germany and working remote full time since ~1 year, I’m interested in your experience if you’re willing to share.
- Rochus 7y ago
  I'm located in Switzerland, do my own acquisition and I have long-standing, stable cooperations with companies where I am known and trusted. I also regularly receive requests from recruiters where I am in the database; this usually happens the same way; their clients (in Switzerland and Germany) are very interested until the moment they realize that I am not interested in working physically on site with them (in addition I appear too expensive for most German clients). This is not a problem for me because I am established and can afford it. But for the younger ones, who have to build their business relationships first, the aforementioned mentality of the clients makes it very difficult to work in this way. The argument that you work three to ten times as efficiently as any local employee in an open-plan office and that this makes the project cheaper, even though the hourly rate is higher (just to name a few advantages), is something that hardly anyone who doesn't know you wants to hear.

ghaff 7y ago

"All-remote is the purest form of remote work, with each team member on a level playing field. 43% of remote workers feel that it is important to work for a company where all employees are remote." This is interesting as it runs counter to the opinion you hear a lot that is in the vein of live and let live/give people a choice/different people have different preferences. I do think there's some truth to it. While I don't really have trouble under normal circumstances as someone who is mostly remote with a bunch of people in a conference room on a call, it is a little nicer with everyone individually on the video call. [ADDED: But the company is about 50% remote so there are often people from a variety of locations on a call even if some are in a conference room.] I think it's certainly true, if only a few people are remote, that can be challenging.

sz4kerto 7y ago
I have worked remotely for a company that was otherwise very much a traditional non-remote environment; I have experience partly distributed teams and now managing a fully remote one. I think partly remote will always, without an exception, create a significant information asymmetry that will result in non-remote workers becoming the leaders in the company. (plug, sorry:) I have written a small post about migrating to remote: https://blog.patientsknowbest.com/2020/04/01/51-basic-rules-of-managing-distributed-teams https://blog.patientsknowbest.com/2020/04/01/51-basic-rules-... - even in _theory_ you could fully embrace remote workers if some others see each other in person regularly, the latter group won't, can't and likely, shouldn't stop exchanging information in ways that 1) are more efficient 2) excludes remote workers.
- draven 7y ago
  +1 for the information asymmetry. I'm currently working remotely 4 days a week and there are 2 other devs working remotely between 80% and 100% of the time. One of the main issues is "oral tradition". Information is shared from dev to dev during coffee breaks, and everyone is supposed to somehow know it. The solution is to work as if everyone is working remotely, and in that case that means putting information into writing, either by communicating through archived and searchable channels (ie Slack) or writing docs.

Mayzie 7y ago

How do people handle async communications when in differing time zones? The team was forced to work remotely as opposed to an office as a result of SARS-CoV-2. I'm a core developer back in Sydney, with the rest of the company in San Francisco (I'm essentially -7 hours). A lot of team members don't like me not being able to reply when they send a message because they don't like having to context switch from tasks that they're blocked on, meanwhile I have no problems with this aspect as I tend to like to work on things simultaneously and can context switch quickly (could it be my ADHD being a super power here?). How do remote teams deal with this effectively? We currently have org/dev planning meetings every other day (Monday, Wednesday, Friday 10:30am PDT, which is 3:30am my time until sometimes 6am) which I'm up for, but I can't maintain that every day as it gets too much (I wake up around midday Sydney time).

ryanianian 7y ago
Honestly it sounds like the team is treating you like a "second-class citizen." It seems 100% unreasonable for you to have to attend 3:30am meetings ever let alone twice a month. You need to be able to have a somewhat normal sleep-schedule in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle and to continue to be a productive member of the team and of society. Personally I think you need to re-set some expectations - you're just as much a part of the team as everyone else. Sure you may need to work 1-3 hours outside of "9-5" time to meet in the middle, but so do they. (Unless of course you really like the swing-shift, in which case you need make those hours very consistent and very public.) My team had 2 remote people who were treated like that for a few months, but they quickly realized it wasn't fair or sustainable and pushed back. So our team-wide meetings got bumped to 9am, and we got good at making decisions that they cared about while they were online. Or we queued up things for them to respond to the following day. It's not as easy as being able to tap someone on the shoulder, but nothing is right now with everyone WFH. Everybody needs to grow up and treat each other with a bit more respect. (/rant but not really)
ghaff 7y ago
I'm US East Coast (effectively, though not formally, remote) and the company--while pretty distributed--tends to be centered on the East Coast timezone. We don't have a lot of people on the West Coast so we mostly schedule morning meetings when we need people in Europe to participate, where we do have a lot of people. APAC? it's tough. They're on a lot of late night calls though we make do as we have to. (And again, tend to have fairly early AM meetings ET (or late afternoon/evening) if Asia needs to participate.) I'm not in engineering but my guess is that there's a lot less real-time collaboration than with engineering offices/remotes in the US and Europe. One standing meeting I'm in, we alternative between late in the (business) day and early in the (business) day ET.

nemoniac 7y ago

The report appears to be limited to those residing in the USA, UK, Canada and Australia. This is stated nowhere in the survey methodology.

alohaandmahalo 7y ago
The 'Residence Country' is listed on Page 7. Fair point on reiterating in the 'Methodology' section on Page 3. Thanks!

10000100001010 7y ago

I've worked remotely for nearly 2 years now. The majority of that time I was the only remote engineer in a company of ~80 engineers. We went fully remote just over a month ago and it has been a huge quality of life boost for me. Before everyone went remote the communication was pretty lopsided where I had to make sure I was over communicating and inserting myself strategically. Now that everyone is remote it is a lot more natural with everyone on the same playing field

dougmwne 7y ago
Yeah, same experience. For the first time I'm on equal footing with the rest of the company. I knew what I was getting into from the start, and I can get along just fine being the only remote person, but I won't deny this has me thinking about going with a fully remote company when this is all over.
alohaandmahalo 7y ago
Awesome to hear this. The "same playing field" bit is significant.

code4tee 7y ago

I do enjoy being in the office sometimes but not every day. After this is all over I imagine many companies will go “remote work” for at least part of the time. There we’re many naysayer companies that were forced into doing it and now realize work still gets done. Longer term this whole experience will likely be a step-change in what “office work” looks like moving forward and that probably means a lot less commercial office space needed.

monkeydust 7y ago
Kinda agree. I could do 3 out of 5 days in the office without any negative impact, in fact it would be positive in terms of productivity and I would generally be happier (which would further up my productivity). I wouldn't want to work 100% from home either. Hardest part is client interaction, video conferencing not the same as face to face but its clear now that not all client meetings need to be face to face once people are proficient with the technology and the technology gets better which it will. Curious on what people think about home working and VR... Will the tech help? Anyone experimenting with VR in this context?
ghaff 7y ago
I hesitate to predict how this will play out long-term. I can imagine some companies, rather than expanding, shifting at least in part to partial WFH--even if not full remote--with an office that is oriented towards conference rooms and at least partly unassigned seating. Maybe co-located teams agree to come in on certain days.
alohaandmahalo 7y ago
Great points. Some interesting survey results from Gartner here that may be interesting to you: https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2020-04-03-gartner-cfo-surey-reveals-74-percent-of-organizations-to-shift-some-employees-to-remote-work-permanently2 https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2020-04-0...

laurieg 7y ago

It's difficult for me to give a true assessment of what remote work would be like in normal times. Since I live alone and social events are cancelled I feel like I'm craving social contact and definitely missing that aspect of work. I also don't have any space in my apartment to work from so I'm set up on the kitchen table. I do wonder if the exceptional circumstances of the current sudden shift to remote (lack of other human contact, unplanned setups at home) will cause a backlash against remote work.

blktiger 7y ago
I'm guessing there will be a mix of people who had a bad taste because their companies weren't really setup for remote work and they don't have the ability to get out of the house, and some people who find that they are more productive working from home, are able to use the extra hour or two in their day to get other things done, find that the documentation enforced by remote work provides a ton of benefits to their team, etc. To be fair, remote work isn't for everyone and for outgoing people in particular they need to learn how to get in an appropriate level of social interaction (bad right now of course); but as noted by this survey a large portion of remote workers won't even consider going back to work in a co-located office.
shred45 7y ago
There may be some backlash, given how painful the transition has been for a lot of people. I think a lot of people are conflating "remote work" with "social distancing". The later is the cause of a lot of your feelings of loneliness. The former can significantly increase your flexibility to maintain quality relationships. As someone who works 100% remotely, this has been an especially lonely period for me as well. Right now, many people are still getting used to working from home, and many I suspect consider this to be a temporary measure, which has prevented them from getting settled. In a real switch to remote work, you would be properly invested in setting up a long-term productive environment. The beauty of remote work is you would have the agency to experiment and find what habits and schedules makes you the most productive, without the added constraints of the office. This process would probably take several months, and for a while you would miss the structure of the office, but I think it has the possibility to increase your productivity and quality of life. For me, remote work does not mean that I work alone, it just means I work with a group of other remote workers that I consider to be close friends. I think it has the potential to increase quality social interactions while working, not decrease. In a society where more people are working remotely, I think the ability to forge relationships outside of work will only increase.

dudul 7y ago

I really don't know what to expect for remote work in the future. The current trap is to think that we are currently doing remove work. We are not, we're doing remote work in a very unusual setup. Kids and partners are at home with us, we can't really leave our house, etc. This is not real WFH. Additionally, a lot of companies were pushed into that almost over night without preparing for it. No experience with it, no tooling in place, no processes, etc. Maybe a lot of them experienced some loss in productivity due to that and will just conclude that remove work really isn't for them, it sucks. The 2 things I really hope for: * people experiencing a personal boost in productivity and better quality of life (mostly due to not having to commute) will be vocal about not going back to the "old ways" * companies claiming that "proper work/collaboration can only happen in the office" will finally change their tune and end the hypocrisy. When forced to do it, they somehow found a way. Maybe it's time to final end this charade. Especially in tech, the work that can only happen in an office is so marginal.

duxup 7y ago

Typically I work remote 3-5 days a week. There is a lot of talk about remote work and COVID-19 and for me remote work in the age of COVID-19 ... it has been terrible. Mostly because I have kids, and my wife and I are both trying to work remote, and attend to the kids schooling ... it's a terrible combination for getting anything done on a 'regular' schedule. I suspect people's remote work during COVID-19 experiences are pretty wide ranging.

alohaandmahalo 7y ago
You aren't alone. It's easy to conflate "remote" with what's happening right now, but it's not the same. Crisis-induced work-from-home while doubling as a homeschool teacher is not the same as properly organized remote work. Less to do with home and more to do with everything outside of work impacting work. More here: https://twitter.com/shanselman/status/1252040170783641600?s=12 https://twitter.com/shanselman/status/1252040170783641600?s=...
- carleverett 7y ago
  Well said! Early into COVID I thought it'd bring a surge in remote work because we'd see how much work really can be done from anywhere. But COVID-remote work has been way different. I've been a full remote worker for 3 years usually working out of coffee shops, and I'm much less productive now because a) I have to work from home, and b) it's generally harder to stay focused during a global pandemic. And I'm not even a parent. I do hope those who are working remote for the first time don't associate remote work with a bad work life now.

aantix 7y ago

Be careful of the companies that advertise remote as a “benefit” of the job. They’re usually looking to discount your salary by 30-50% by some arbitrary cost of living factor. You bring the same value - whether that’s delivered from New York City or Des Moines Iowa.

slackfan 7y ago
Let's not beat around the bush, specifically, Gitlab does this, IIRC.
- brantonb 7y ago
  Explained here: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensation/#paying-local-rates https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensation...
  - JoeCortopassi 7y ago
    Great explanation of a bad practice. A company should pay for the value they get, which is independent of the location. These calculations never seem to take into effect all the cost savings of having a remote person (office building/parking/food/working space/etc). Instead, they almost always mark the employee as a second tier of worker
    - slackfan 7y ago
      My company tends to do something similar for starting salaries, but that's because we're a consultancy, and our rates per-market are different. However: In the long term if employees stay with the company long term, salaries tend to get bumped up to approximately the same. So you might get started lower, but your yearly pay bump will be higher.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - bernawil 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

codegeek 7y ago

Remote work will never been an absolute thing. It depends on context, personal habits/preferences and most importantly: experience doing it over time. I personally cannot work from home. COVID has made it worse as kids are home BUT even if I had the whole house to myself, I just cannot work from home. I NEED a dedicated office outside my house (yes I already have an office room in my house). Reason is simple. I don't have the discipline to work from home. I get distracted too easily. So I m not a good candidate for WFH. Do I want the flexibility when needed ? Of course. But do I WANT to work from home all the time ? Hell no. I would say the future of work is not just remote. The future of work is "employers allowing more flexibility in work location" but as an employer myself, I am personally not in favor of 100% remote. That's me I know but sorry, not everyone is cut out for remote work.

Icathian 7y ago
Nobody minds if that's what works for you. We object when you force it on employees because it's what works for you, regardless of what works for them.
- taborj 7y ago
  > We object when you force it on employees because it's what works for you, regardless of what works for them. I think I'm a bit old school. My outlook can be summed up like this: If you like your job, and you want to keep your job, you'll do what your boss asks unless it's illegal or immoral. So if my boss told me I had to work in an office, I'd weight that against the "if you want to keep your job" portion of the above, and decide if that's for me. If not, I quit and go find something where WFH is an option. If so, I go work in the office. Most likely I'd work in the office until I found something else or management realized that they were losing employees and changed the policy (I suppose in that way we can "force" the business to conform to our whims). Perhaps that's a privileged point of view, or makes me a drone. But my life isn't work; I work to live, not live to work, so minor inconveniences at work don't derail my life; it's just a job, something I do to afford more important things. For the record, I've worked from home for the last 9 years, and I have coworkers who had a really tough time adapting to WFH; they had to weigh if the trouble to change was worth it for them. Some felt it wasn't worth the trouble and left, many found it was and stayed.

baron_harkonnen 7y ago

I've made this point before but the future of remote work has and will continue to have no dependence on what workers like nor will it on how "productive" workers are. Office's have perpetually been getting worse for workers(offices -> cubicles -> open office). So it's very clear companies have never chosen one office solution to another because it is the preference of the worker. As for the argument of changes to "productivity". For starters very few of us work in roles where productivity is a directly measurable thing. Sure you can argue about commits, lines of code, ship times, but those are all nowhere near as measurable as "widgets-per-hour". On top of this we all know that a huge portion of roles out there are arguably not productive at all (and if they are it's very hard to measure). And again, when in the history of work has declining worker productivity been solved by improving conditions for the worker? If you company goes remote and you don't work as well that way, do you think your boss is going to go "oh! I'd better talk to leadership about getting those offices again!"? The entire reason offices still exist is because of culture. For years every SV startup I knew said they needed an office in SF because the "VCs like to see that". There has been a lot of inertia towards offices. Now that Covid19 has broken that assumption for a bit, I think we'll see a rapid shift to remote teams because it quickly becomes clear that offices are a liability. Anecdotally I already know one start up that can no longer afford their office and so are breaking their lease with no sense of what they'll do next (so remote is the default), and a well established, very traditional office culture firm that is already stating that everyone being in the office full time will not be the norm coming out of this.

dna113 7y ago
Also I think COVID has forced companies into trying it when there might have been fear or apprehension before. It takes time/resources/commitment to even try out a work from home policy - but now everyone has been forced into it.
- draw_down 7y ago
  Well, that's exactly it- everyone has been forced into it, and being forced into something is not always a great way to appreciate it. My employer has been surveying employees since this all started, and the last survey showed 70% of them looking forward to returning to the office. Personally I've worked remote for almost 10 years; I might not ever take an in-person job again. But it seems most people don't feel that way.

sdan 7y ago

Remote work is great and all... because that's our only option. In the long term, I suspect there may be a greater inclination towards remote work, not as much as this report suggests, but overall work at office is here to stay. I need to go outside and have a physical seperation between work and home.

wintermutestwin 7y ago
Imagine if it were the norm though. You could move out of the Bay Area and afford a home with a dedicated office space. I worked remotely for 17 years and I found ways to create a separation. Sadly, I fear you are right though - there may be a slightly larger WFH push, but inertia of management by proximity will still be the norm.
- ghaff 7y ago
  Or get an office in a co-working facility of some sort. Most of my remote colleagues do work out of their house but I've known people who wanted to create that separation and weren't near a company office so they rented a space. Sometimes companies will even pay for that. (Don't know our policy.)
- 0xffff2 7y ago
  Well, not a GitLab you couldn't because they'll cut your salary tremendously (40% if I moved to my second home in Oregon). Oregon is a whole lot cheaper than the Bay area, but it's not 40% cheaper.

eugenekolo 7y ago

I'm pro remote work, but it's questionable as to why GitLab pushes their remote work ideas so much? Is it to become some sort of remote work consultant? Is it an angle of marketing?

metadaemon 7y ago
I kind of assumed they were trying to show that they are getting something right. I'm sure they have heard lots of criticism. They do mention it being a great leg up on hiring competition, so there's that too.
ship_it 7y ago
Because it cost them less, and they magically "present" that it's a good thing. They pay different (lower/higher) salaries depending where you are located.
zip1234 7y ago
It is the same as Basecamp. Marketing. Everyone hears about your company and knows you are all remote and so people want to work there. You can then pick and choose the best people from across the world.

jonrx 7y ago

This is a great read. I am especially happy that they are not asking for an email to download the report. I understand why some companies are doing this, but I went from web page to reading with no friction.

markosaric 7y ago

Great report! I've been working remotely for a few years now so a bit biased. But I would say that the COVID situation with regards to remote work has shown how many benefits there would be for the wider society if more people worked from home more often: * Less traffic * Less noise pollution * Less air pollution * Less stress * More energy for things outside of work All these would increase the quality of life for a large part of the population, decrease the number of avoidable lifestyle diseases and deaths, and would help cut the global carbon emissions too. COVID is not an ideal situation to start your work from home experience but I do hope that some people will find it valuable enough to make more lasting changes after the crisis is behind us.

tayistay 7y ago

Remote work should be an absolute thing, mandated by law, or at least strong incentives, to reduce our carbon footprint. Unless you truly need to go to a central location (laboratory, healthcare, etc.), you should work remotely. I saw a study that said 40% of SF Bay Area jobs could be remote. If all major metros went remote, this would put a dent in our CO2 output. Advantages of offices, face-to-face interaction, etc. just doesn't matter. Climate change is an existential threat according to the experts, so we should actually take it seriously and modify our society accordingly.

aivosha 7y ago

Labeling work remote or non-remote (on-site?) becomes increasingly irrelevant. Need for physical presence in a given geographical location is mitigated by good planing and quality of tools allowing to share information effectively. Why dont we stop calling things remote or not, but focus more on improving the tool sets needed to better plan and share thing between humans. All of these tools are needed wether the team is physically on the same geo location or spread out. What changed now is that its much harder to justify not having them anymore.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

jpincheira 7y ago

As we've learned from building for remote teams [1], is that it's really about how you set a process for async communication, and not just about the tools. This is why we've been heads down since the outbreak helping work-from-home teams set the right processes of communication using us and other tools. It's really around building a healthy culture of working from home, and not encouraging multiple disruptions during the day, and actively doing so, thinking that it unites teams. We wrote a basic guideline [2]. [1] https://standups.io https://standups.io [2] https://standups.io/blog/a-basic-guideline-for-async-communication/ https://standups.io/blog/a-basic-guideline-for-async-communi...

pacomerh 7y ago

I'm totally for remote work when the context and company is adequate. I just wish salary wasn't as low, these days when a company says 'remote possible' it almost always means you're gonna get paid less. [edit spelling]

mr_tristan 7y ago

> 43% of remote workers feel it is important to work for a company where ALL employees are remote… As a full time remote worker, I've also felt that having everyone else is great. In every case I've work with a colocated team, they end up snubbing you in weird ways. This snubbing is just a cultural thing. There's no technical reason remote workers should feel left out if working with another team. I've found that most colocated team members rarely write well, and often do not track, or even follow up on complex team decisions. When everyone is remote, it often forces some better communication. Frequently, the teams have to "double up" on the media used to communicate, which almost always requires some written communication. Now that everyone's remote in quarantine, I've heard complaints from the colocators about "having to overcommunicate". But really, it's just learning to communicate well. This metric of "how many all-remote workers want everyone else to be remote", really seems like a great test for "how well does your company communicate?"

hmmokidk 7y ago
In my case it's the higher ups snubbing the remote workers and deliberately excluding them. I think they're trying to "encourage" non remote work but are actually being shitty.

personaenon 7y ago

Nah.....too many troglodyte managers must SEE butts in seats......