26 ms·

Remote work has its perks, until you want a promotion

478 points by headalgorithm 6y ago

aSplash0fDerp 6y ago
Shopping your resume around will be the new promotion (similar to pre-covid career growth). If turnover rates start to match the fast food industry, only the best companies will thrive.
- brtkdotse 6y ago
  No kidding. Unless you’re in a “tech for tech’s sake” kind of job, you need to get up to speed on the problem domain and the business. That usually takes _at least_ 18 months and if people bounce just as they’re getting proficient you’re throwing money into a black hole.
  - vonmoltke 6y ago
    Alternately, the software industry could go the way of the electrical and mechanical engineering industries and just not hire people unless they already possess relevant domain knowledge. It was a bit of a shock to me when I transitioned from EE that I could get hired in this industry with little to no domain knowledge on what I was being hired to do.
    - __s 6y ago
      Learning is a prerequisite, jobs pivot, things change Maybe in another hundred years things'll settle down
    - exdsq 6y ago
      I do wonder if this will happen. I reckon there will be some sort of catastrophic programming error which brings in a level of certification akin to other engineering disciplines. I've seen jobs advertised nearby for a nuclear defence company that have the same requirements as a web dev agency.
      - heavenlyblue 6y ago
        The only question is whether you will be hired on those requirements alone.
      - tpmx 6y ago
        You mean like a company on this list? https://www.dontbankonthebomb.com/nuclear-weapon-producers/ https://www.dontbankonthebomb.com/nuclear-weapon-producers/ (It seems to be an activist site, but it's what shows up when you search for producers of of nuclear weapons.) Most of these companies are huge. They may be looking for someone to maintain their canteens' web site. Or something else not very exciting.
      - ununoctium87 6y ago
        So, kind of like a software bug that causes 1 or 2 planes to crash, killing all on-board?
        philjohn 6y ago
        Or killed a bunch of people undergoing radiotherapy, or exploded an Arianne rocket, or required years of remiedial work before 1st of Jan 2000 ... the list goes on and on.
        exdsq 6y ago
        I was thinking something more extreme, although I wonder if that software bug had caused a plane or two to crash into a US city would there have been more of a response.
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    > you need to get up to speed on the problem domain and the business. That usually takes _at least_ 18 months I have always wondered about this as businesses do not seem to care. Everyone knows devs are getting large raises to move but what business is working to counteract the problem? Not many. Domain knowledge seems to not have much value as far as the people signing your paychecks are concerned.
    - mns 6y ago
      This also depends on the company and in the same time it depends on the people applying for the job. I wouldn't feel any motivation if I would just go to company X because of their great technology, but the business is something that says nothing to me, and same goes the other way. That's until somebody pays you more than enough to drop the idealism. :)
- deleted 6y ago
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- ianleeclark 6y ago
  > Shopping your resume around will be the new promotion (similar to pre-covid career growth). I graduated in 2015 and at that point it was well established this is how you move up. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the overwhelming sentiment for most people in my generation.
  - peanut_is_yum 6y ago
    Agreed. Most people I know say that you're supposed to job hop frequently.
- karatestomp 6y ago
  Yep. Promotion? WTF. No, you weasel your way into duties "above" your pay grade then go get the job you've been doing, with accompanying title and pay, someplace else. Or you can wait around for an opening in your company and hope the right people know your name so you get it. If you prefer gambling. But jumping ship works better. [EDIT] OK in case anyone uses this as a playbook, be aware you may need an intermediate step at some company desperate for [your new role] with below-average pay so you can have The Actual Title for a while before moving to a place with normal pay, but the good news is below-average for your next step is probably at or above what you're already making anyway, so NBD. Just be sure their pay's below average because they're a funded-but-not-crazy-funded startup and not because they're terrible, though. For whatever reason low pay also seems to go with shitty working conditions and overwork. Go figure. And make sure they're likely to stay in business minimum a year, with two being better.
- triyambakam 6y ago
  As a small point of data against this, I've been promoted twice at my current company. Starting salary was 100k, promoted to level C engineer at 110k, now level B engineer at 125k.
- buzzkillington 6y ago
  I have never been promoted at a job and my longest tenure was 3 years right out of university. I've gotten a 10%-50% increase in every job I've taken when I've jumped ship. Staying in the same job for longer than it takes you to learn how to do it is career suicide.
lcam84 6y ago
You will start to see many articles degrading remote work. Remote work is too efficient to this economic system. We need to spend time on traffic and restaurants. As we saw Jorge W Bush at the moment of crisis asking citizens to consume, I would not be surprised to see politicians asking employees and companies to reduce remote work for the good of this economy which is based on exponential growth such as this virus
- ikeyany 6y ago
  If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Someone can strongly think "I don't want to interact with others via webcam and screens all day" without having ulterior motives.
  - lcam84 6y ago
    I agree with you, remote work has many problems and one of them is the possibility to become tiresome the interactions at a distance. It can however have several ecological advantages, and if well managed it can be a way to strengthen family and community ties. My point is that although it is more efficient, it is not as productive as putting everyone to work in big cities. It doesn't produce traffic, maybe people feel less need to buy cars, it doesn't generate so much real estate speculation, etc.
    - ikeyany 6y ago
      We should certainly scrutinize certain industries more than others, such as the auto industry or those who otherwise benefit from having the masses commutes.
  - toomuchtodo 6y ago
    Emails and conference calls work just fine, no videoconf required. Unless you absolutely need to be on video, don't, it's just unnecessary stress. If your org requires you be on video constantly for every call, leave for a better org when you can if they're unable to budge on unreasonable requirements.
Simulacra 6y ago
Remote work means that anyone can do your job. This is going to make the job market significantly more competitive.
- smt88 6y ago
  It also means you can do your job from anywhere. You could live somewhere less expensive. This is especially meaningful to people with kids. Two working parents have to pay for childcare. If they can move closer to parents, that cost may disappear.
- p2detar 6y ago
  Plenty of people that don’t and won’t agree to work remotely. Not to mention that working from home hardly appeals to extroverts.
  - beart 6y ago
    As an introvert working in an open office, I still miss my old schedule (3 days in the office, 2 at home).
    - glial 6y ago
      That's the dream...
      - asdf21 6y ago
        2 in office, 2 from home.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  80% of jobs are filled through networks anyway, so unless that changes, it doesn't really change a lot except for those just entering the workforce or those without a strong network.
  - notahacker 6y ago
prions 6y ago
Not everyone has: - long commutes - crappy coworkers or offices - a space large enough to comfortably work remotely (or the money to afford a bigger space) - a partner, kids, or both, which makes extended social isolation more livable - a rich network for career growth and opportunities God forbid some people want to live in big cities and don't make their choices solely based on reducing costs and bottom line expenses (ironic since every other day people here rail against big corporation bean counters). Example: Facebook's latest internal polling - the majority of people want to be in the office sometimes. People suddenly waking up and realizing the office is a huge scam is the current du jour opinion here. But time and time again the HN demographic only speaks to itself. And of course people will reply with that it expands choice, but that doesn't stop those from cheering that companies going full remote like its a universal good thing for everyone. And on top of that, my observations are anecdotal. No need to point that out. edit: Going full remote is a huge cost savings to companies. A cost that is now hoisted onto employees. So unless employees are receiving some equivalent compensation for blowing out my utility bills and refitting my office, be careful who you're cheering with.
- Axsuul 6y ago
  In LA, a lot of people depend on their workplace for A/C during the summer.
  - heavenlyblue 6y ago
    Or in London
  - mc32 6y ago
    Great opportunity to cut costs at the office and offload that to employees!
  - gnulinux 6y ago
    I live in Boston, which is relatively mild over the summer, but it still gets pretty hot, at least for me. The switch to running AC in my study room has been one of the biggest shifts for me. Since now I cannot use the AC in my bedroom. I moved it to livingroom so I can cool myself while working. But then I can't sleep well. Looks like I will have to get another AC and install it in my bedroom. WFH definitely had many unexpected short comings.
dhd415 6y ago
The headline doesn't distinguish between remote work at companies that are remote-first vs. companies where remote is simply an afterthought or tolerated option. Promotions, raises, influence, etc., are no issue for remote workers in the former kind of company but certainly can be in the latter. Even though the article mentions Gitlab, a remote-first company, it doesn't tease out the distinction. Given market pressures, I expect the best remote workers to gravitate to companies that are remote-first, not just remote-available.
- digitallogic 6y ago
  > Promotions, raises, influence, etc., are no issue for remote workers in the former kind of company but certainly can be in the latter. FWIW, remote first companies are not automatically immune to these dynamics. A few examples of how they can still emerge: * A group of folks that all live in the same city informally decided to start working from the same co-working space. A clique emerges. * The CTO frequently travels to SF to talk to customers, regularly has lunch with a local employee who later gets promoted over better performing peers. * Same but while the CEO goes to talk to investors. * Same but the whole leadership team meets in the same airline hub city twice a quarter because it's easiest for everyone to get to. Employees in said airline hub city have better outcomes. * You live on one coast, and your supervisor lives on another. People in the same timezone as your supervisor get more virtual face time. There are definitely more opportunities for this dynamic when some people are remote and some are in a shared office. But I'd be wary of any organization that tells you this can't happen to them just because they're remote-first. These dynamics can emerge in many ways, and if an organization doesn't realize/acknowledge this, there's a decent that they could fall prey to it, or may already be in progress. edit: formatting
MattGaiser 6y ago
The reality is that a lot of promotions and opportunities are simply based on getting attention and it is a lot easier to get attention in an office than remotely. An email is easy to ignore. The boss's boss will at least know my name if he sees me every so often.
PopeDotNinja 6y ago
It depends on how valuable you are. There's no substitute for being an amazing value proposition to your employer. Everyone onsite company wants onsite resources until they can't hire then locally. Be invaluable remotely, and if you don't get that promotion, find it elsewhere at another company. This is basically similar to the advice that the easiest way to make more money is to take a job at a different company.
ahh 6y ago
Humans don't have emotional object permanence. My ex-girlfriend described herself this way to me once and I thought it was funny, but it's in fact true of people in general: if you're not physically present near them, they will forget that you really exist as a human and a social peer. It's unfortunate but it's true: you are going to naturally think more about and have better feelings about the coworkers you see every day in person. No, VC doesn't count. I think this is pretty much a human universal; the only exceptions I know are quite far on the autism spectrum. (Even I notice myself doing this, and I'm definitely somewhere on that line.) Given that, I want to be in the room with my coworkers. I want them to unconsciously think of me as part of their tribe, and I want to feel the same way about them; that means we need to be able to perform regular in-person social petting. This is doubly true of my bosses. It sucks, but there's no way around it. (Also, while this is less universal, there are plenty of extroverts, even on HN. I'm one. It's ironic, in that I also suffer from pretty nasty social anxiety; large rooms of strangers scare me and choke me up. But lock me in a room by myself for a month and I go crazy. I am happier, by far, when I can be in the same room as people I like.)
- foolinaround 6y ago
  Consider the relationships we feel to folks we play games with in virtual forums over the years. Years pass without you never seeing them, yet a lot of time spent in virtual proximity makes kindred spirits.
- thrownaway954 6y ago
  this is true about anyone. given enough time and distance, your own mother will become "just another person you know". if you aren't physically interacting with people, you are soon forgotten.
  - runawaybottle 6y ago
    I used to believe in out of sight out of mind until I had my first break up. Out of sight out of mind is a function that takes a parameter that is not a Boolean. If the person was important enough to you they won’t leave your mind easily. If anything, the adage exposes the strength of your relationships. In the business case, it will expose the value of physical coordination vs virtual coordination. It’s not going to be clear cut. But you are probably right in a business context, where the number that’s going to get passed into the out of sight out of mind function will definitely be low enough to return true for just about all of us. It’s not exactly the world anyone wants to live in, but what are you gonna do.
deleted 6y ago
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Animats 6y ago
Page https://www.wired.com/story/remote-work-perks-until-want-promotion/ https://www.wired.com/story/remote-work-perks-until-want-pro... appears to be down. (Back up now.)
Antecedent 6y ago
I worked for a company that regularly does half in person and half remote employees. You could choose either or. The problem with being the remote worker on a partially in-person team is that you miss all the face-time and exposure to new opportunities simply because you are not a person but a task completing widget. You are never the presenter at company events. Nobody outside your team can recognize you. Nobody talks to you except to get something or clarify information. People can casually take credit for your work as you aren’t there to defend it. You lose out on all the background information like conference funding availability or the cool new job in Innovation. You miss all the little opportunities for going the extra mile as you never look over your colleagues shoulder to see how they do their job and nobody looks over yours. So much of success is being in the right place at the right time to meet the right person and that can’t happen as much remotely.
k__ 6y ago
Yes. I left my first remote job, because becoming a team lead would had me required to give up remote. Went freelancing afterwards, because there I can promote myself.
semerda 6y ago
Promotion or Responsibility? If a remote worker is trusted, gets things done and is an important cog in the wheel then limiting their growth would be an unwise decision and ultimately cost the company a great employee. So why would remote work be an issue with a promotion — maybe remote work is also a filter for below satisfactory people managers. Either way, HR will have a lot to rethink how they run.
- cmiles74 6y ago
  This implies a rationality that I have not often seen in my professional life. The places I have worked, HR has typically let the hiring manager decide if they want to promote an existing employee or start a new search. I don't expect remote work will change that much. Given that, it comes down to the hiring manager and I wouldn't feel comfortable that they are this level of rational either. They may have some pre-existing opinions about remote workers and those opinions may not all be reasonable. I think there's also reason for concern when a remote person has to "compete" with an in-office presence for the position. Qualifications and job performance aside, the person who is in the office every day, I suspect, has a real advantage here. I do think it is easier to form relationships in person, rather than over conference calls or Slack.
ryanmarsh 6y ago
Why all the anti-remote work stories as of late? Am I just imagining this or have the remote work articles (up until recently) been mostly positive?
- falcolas 6y ago
  I chalk it down to the pendulum swing. When it was mostly offices, some people wanted to work remotely. Now that it’s mostly remote, some people want to work in offices. Articles that are upvoted (which I largely associate with “people who identify with the sentiment of the article”) show up will reflect the current state of the pendulum.
- saalweachter 6y ago
  I suppose there could be some sort of astroturfing conspiracy associated with the "reopen" movements, but I suspect it is just that, when WFH-everywhere first started, it was of the biggest relief to the people who want to WFH, and now that it has been going on for many weeks, the people who don't are really getting fed up with the situation.
- closetohome 6y ago
  At the moment there's essentially zero debate that having as many people work from home as possible is beneficial to the people, the environment, and the economy. These articles are introducing FUD so that when companies start recalling employees, the opposition won't be as universal as it would be otherwise.
  - rodiger 6y ago
    Or maybe we can take a more nuanced stance and say that some people just prefer to work from an office with their colleagues.
    - s_y_n_t_a_x 6y ago
      If we did then there wouldn't be articles complaining about WFH. Just let people do what they want. If you like WFH then find a company that allows it, if you don't, do the inverse. I don't see why there is so much hate against WFH when it's a choice (not including the virus situation). I would NEVER go back to an office. I've been WFH for 5 years now. You can certainly put a price not having to live in a rent-trap city. I bought and paid off a 3bdr house in a year because of low cost of living. I no longer pay rent/mortgage or commute. I see how some people wouldn't like it, but there are plenty of jobs for those people. P.S: a 30 minute commute is 252 hours of your year gone ($25,200 @ $100/hr) and $3-6k in gas plus stress. Do yourself a favor and start working on your office setup, you'll want to work remotely when you get older at least.
BiteCode_dev 6y ago
If you want a promotion, move to another job. Most companies make it incredibly slow and painful to evolve in their own walls, while giving big rewards to new comers. Unless you happen to work at the legenday ones that do care about you, don't play according to their rules. Those are here for their benefit, not yours. Remote or not.
- person_of_color 6y ago
  This. You will get a 20-100% raise in a new job, and peanuts for staying with a company. RSU refreshers might change the equation.
- Plutonsvea 6y ago
  Highly recommend this. I'm a consultant, and I got offered a $12,000 raise after working with my company for two years and working for three seperate extremely high value clients. I put in my two weeks notice the day I received an offer from a competing company nearby that I'd applied to for a total renumeration package roughly equivalent to a $45,000 raise at my old job. Shop around. Always. If you don't, you'll never know. I like to think of it as someone losing out on free stuff. It costs nothing to write up an updated resumé and throw it into the abyss of companies that are hiring. Possible gain by doing this? A lot. Possible loss? Maybe an hour of your time that you spent applying to the job.
Taniwha 6y ago
I've worked remotely for almost 30 years now, my take on it has always been: "it's great you can avoid most office politics", followed by "you always lose at office politics" It's happened at every company I've worked at - in general you need to have a manager who will have your back and represent, and have to be able to not worry about the small stuff
xwdv 6y ago
Promotions are overrated in a remote work world IMO. Do you want more money? Get a better remote job anywhere else or do something else for money or keep good investments. Do you want more prestige? For what exactly? You're not seeing any co-workers regularly to pull rank on them and there is no corner office desk with a window to fight for. If you want to be respected in your industry commit to some charitable projects or give talks. Do you want different responsibilities? Ask, and if you don't get it go find a more suitable job.
falcolas 6y ago
Counter point: I’ve gotten three promotions (one of which included a significant change in my role) while only seeing my bosses in person about 2-3 times a year. I also, in contrast with other commenters, talk to my direct boss 2-3 times every week in a standup. We have weekly 1:1’s. My successes are recognized, my failures are managed. Getting (or not getting) promotions is a function of your communication, not proximity. Those two-three yearly returns to the office don’t include any more (or less) communication than I had previously.
Ididntdothis 6y ago
I am pretty senior and remote now. I would agree that the potential for promotion has gone down a little due to lack of visibility. My strategy is to carve out a niche for myself where I can produce high value stuff that usually doesn't get done in the rush of the office but can be done because I am out of sight. I think this works for me and fits my work style but I don't see myself moving up a lot.
seph-reed 6y ago
There's three posts about how bad remote work is today: https://www.wired.com/story/remote-work-perks-until-want-promotion/ https://www.wired.com/story/remote-work-perks-until-want-pro... https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/can-remote-work-be-fixed https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/can-remo... https://marker.medium.com/remote-workers-just-outsourced-themselves-3f771f9d1529 https://marker.medium.com/remote-workers-just-outsourced-the... Most plausibly just coincidence, but an interesting anomaly none-the-less.
z3t4 6y ago
You promote peoole that strive towards the common goal, that are decent and loyal. You dont promote someone just because they live next door. Computer technology is superior for communication. The problem is the organisation.
everdrive 6y ago
I've recently moved back into private sector, and it's been pretty surprising to me just how little of the business world has to do with actual business. There are the expected things, such as relationship building, empire building, fiefdom building, etc. But, it also seems that a lot of the actual effort people expend doesn't have very much to do with the business. For example, we had an executive whose passion in life was clearly just to speak in front of people. He never did real work, but made sure to take every opportunity to ensure he was speaking in front of people. It's clear that he should have been a public speaker. I don't mean to pick on this particular executive, but it seems like there's a lot of this here. A lot of people, engaged all day in things that don't produce work. They're more about building some special, separate social hierarchy: determining who is in charge, who has influence, who matters. That seems to take up a lot of time in the private sector. I'm sure it's not universally true, but this has been my ad-hoc experience. And, I get it: this is what people do, and what people value. We're social creatures, etc. But it sort implies that everyone's engaged in a joint lie. That lie being "we're here to work and we're all hard workers. We're primarily interested in advanced the business." It seems like a more literal truth might be: "We're here to take part in a social hierarchy, and forge friends and enemies, and do enough actual work that no one minds how inefficient our business is."
- LordFast 6y ago
  Good point, and I used to actually hold a stronger belief in things like that because to me they represent a larger-picture type of work that seemed more interesting. BUT, ever since I exited out of that game to start my own business, my beliefs have been shifting. Now I can see exactly how successful businesses come together and make enough money to fill payroll, and there's no getting around the fact that real, valuable work needs to get done. And that only once the real work has been done, do you then get to have the nice byproducts of success which is to do public speaking, culture building, and etc all those extra-curricular things. But the existence of these extra-curriculars are predicated on having a successful business in the first place. And no matter how cynical anyone gets, you won't have a successful business based on /JUST/ bullshit empire building alone- you gotta do real work and provide real value. I can also see more clearly now that if society doesn't have the right balance between doers and talkers, we're eventually gonna have nothing valuable to show for anymore, and the fallout from that won't be pretty. When /everyone/ DESIRES to be talkers, instead of just a small minority, it's a worrisome trend.
zapf 6y ago
I have been remoting for over ten years now. The only rule I have now is to work with remote first teams. If there's an office where a big clique meets, you'll eventually feel left out.
khazhoux 6y ago
At this point I've mostly given up on the concept of promotions anyway. The amount of downwards pressure against promoting people is unreal. I've seen managers stuck in their level for years and years. Then a new candidate comes in for a Manager role, asks for more money, and (boom!) they're hired as a Director. Fuck everyone else who was already running teams successfully and trying to grow. Same for individual contributors. Best route is the insta-promotion during hiring negotiation. You want a promotion but don't want to switch companies? Gee sorry your scope isn't wide enough yet. You're doing a fine job --a good job, even-- but you have to understand that this was already the expected job level... we need to "see more." Every performance-review meeting I've been in, when one manager brings up one of their people for promotion, immediately some other manager will jump in and say "No I don't know about that, someone on my team had a bad interaction with them once... nope not ready for promotion" and that's that. Only once in a blue moon does the room agree that someone should get the promotion. Hallelujah!
- lr4444lr 6y ago
  I understand your frustration, but also consider, being promoted over your colleagues poses its own risks to the social fabric of a company. Your last paragraph alludes to this kind of rancor. Bringing in people from the outside (or leaving to go somewhere else yourself when you're ready to make the jump,) has its benefits for what it avoids.
  - khazhoux 6y ago
    Internal discontentment follows from promotions being so difficult, and it's worsened by everyone seeing new people walking in at a higher level than seems justified. Then, having to deal with the new person once they land and it quickly becomes obvious (in 99% of cases) that they are not more accomplished and don't deliver more results than the internal people they leapfrogged. My first job two decades ago didn't have engineering levels (apart from Tech Lead designation, which wasn't a formal level). People still fought for raises and the salaries/bonuses were sometimes not perfect, but there was no "promotion" per se and in retrospect it was healthier for everyone.
methodin 6y ago
I've often wondered what would happen to the jobscape if employers spent more to keep people then they do to hire their replacement. If jumping ship was always a pay cut, what would that do to both the company and employees?
bluntfang 6y ago
If our bosses shove our faces into each others and shout "NOW KISS!" we may fall in love!!
angarg12 6y ago
My cynical self loves the headline of the article. Pity it is only mentioned once in passing. All my career I have been moving to increasingly more expensive places chasing after better jobs. So far I have very strong feelings about what I call 'the satellite office effect'. Anecdata shows that my colleagues at the head office get promoted at a ratio roughly 3:1 compare to my (remote, smaller) office. Amid this pandemic and many companies looking at full remote, I decided to move to the US to a yet more expensive city. I love the idea of living in a low CoL area and working remote, but for the sake of my career I feel the need to work at the main offices. Even if one day I decide to make the switch, I would never consider working for anything else than a full remote company.
mcph 6y ago
This article (similar to the several others that have been posted on remote work today) didn't touch at all on how working remotely may affect companies' ability to combat implicit bias vis a vis promotions. From conversations I've had with folks in tech, it seems that many managers believe remote work will improve the fairness of their promotion processes because it removes vectors for implicit bias like how social a person is, what a person looks like, etc. But it also removes what I've experienced to be a low-barrier opportunity for those who are quiet or unlikely to promote their work to do so—in person in a one-on-one setting. Without the opportunity to learn by example in-person, I worry that less experienced people (especially shy ones) in technical career tracks will not self-advocate. In turn, due to implicit bias that will inevitably shape manager-employee relationships, I fear they'll stall. It's really not a solution to say that managers should be offering the conversations, because of course, managers inevitably will fail to do so in many corporate culture. We are going remote-first from the jump, but as we scale I am pretty concerned about how to combat this phenomenon.
papito 6y ago
Out of sight, out of mind. That will never change.
donretag 6y ago
This sentiment is precisely why I have returned to an office job (now remote like everyone) after years for working remote as a full-time employee. I have specialized in a niche which made employers allow me to work remotely since they could not find local talent. Being the sole remote (tech) employee, or one of the few, means you will not get promoted. Remote-first is a different ballgame. I now turn down all "only you will be remote" positions that are sent my way. I no longer work in my niche since there is no demand locally, but I will not be the sole remote person again. PS: I am an extrovert
lucideer 6y ago
This is not just true of remote work, it's also true of "remote" offices. I work in Ireland for a US company. When I started in the company, I was constantly surprised with the competence of people I work with in my local office, in NY, in D.C. & in Asian offices, compared to those I work with in SF (our HQ). But after a while I realised it wasn't that people in SF were less competent or people in other offices were moreso. It was simply that the levels were different. PoCs for a project who were at a similar "level" to me were clearly less experienced in SF, due—seemingly—to the promotional ladder just being so much more accessible there. Because those responsible for promotions are present in person. I don't think this is an easily surmountable problem with humans, but I do hope that WFH becoming more common will make people generally more aware of the challenge.
- babesh 6y ago
  I’ve seen the opposite from a company overcompensating. There was a remote office and some complained about promotion opportunities. There were promotions alright and then there were several complaints about the competence of some people there. Nothing was done for a long time other than blaming the people who complained about not working with them better. They didn’t try to argue that the people were actually competent since there had been multiple complaints from multiple people. Furthermore, there were obvious issues. The remote office basically formed a remote clique. They eventually got reorg’d out of existence as an individual group due to incompetence. I think it just depends on the particular situation. It can swing either way.
Arubis 6y ago
TFA, being in Wired, appears to be focused primarily on the tech industry. At the risk of being pithy, the best way to get a promotion in tech has--for a _long_ time--been to get a new job. Even if you do score an in-house title bump, your pay raise is likely to be a single-digit percentage above inflation, when jumping ship can easily net you 20%. If more people going remote makes this more visible, fine by me.
diogenescynic 6y ago
For me, remote work is a promotion so long as my salary isn’t adjusted. If I can take my same salary and move somewhere (within reason) my salary goes further... that’s a pretty huge perk.
igeligel_dev 6y ago
The aspect of social interaction definitely has an impact on promotions, but what's more important, at least in my company are results. We act on leadership principles similar to what they have at Amazon and employees are getting rated against that. In my team, at the end of the day, everyone is sharing what they did throughout the day work-wise. You can still list things that are non-engineering related. What I also do is tracking these notes in an application and tag the notes later for a self review. In the end, sharing these notes gives the team some perspective of what the others are doing and because of the random stuff everyone is doing from time to time we had awesome conversations / ideas because of that.
soheil 6y ago
In case anyone wants to listen to this instead of reading it: https://playthis.link/https://www.wired.com/story/remote-work-perks-until-want-promotion/ https://playthis.link/https://www.wired.com/story/remote-wor...
drawkbox 6y ago
Lots of anti-remote work suddenly. Remote work means companies can get the best people for that company anywhere. Remote work means life changes can happen and you can retain the best people for that company. With jobs and life, changes happen, people move, have families, want to be close to family, want to change scenery, get a new significant other, go to school, buy a house, all of these things can mean you might have to quit if you have to physically always be in the office. Even when companies have remote/different city offices, virtual communication is very important anyways. Clients and customers are almost always remote with some sprinkled in meetings but mostly virtual communication and communication through the work. Companies would be wise to switch to remote first thinking and processes with a focus on virtual communication and a nice to have of physical meetups, integration sessions etc. Remote work helps companies focus on their external view not just their internal machinations. For truly unique talents and workers, location has never really mattered. The world is virtual and remote now, the companies that perform well in that and with their external view, not internal view, and do the best virtual communication will win, and not just in tech.
- softwaredoug 6y ago
  Remote means not building genuine relationships with any coworkers. Remote means not sharing a meal, getting coffee, building friendships, or growing past an automaton that gets work done.
  - drawkbox 6y ago
    Not really, most work is virtual even at an office, or with another office, or with a client, or with a partner company, or with a friend that you see on occasion but always in touch online. Remote work allows relationships/lunches with friends as well, maybe not work friends but friends, networking, local groups in the same focus/area, it isn't just automaton. We rely too much on work environment rather than our local environment. Remote work allows freedom to dictate your day more and allows for more opportunities to meet people if you want. Co-working spaces for remote workers are also nice. External product/brand view is the most important thing companies need to learn today. Even within the office when people go in, most communication there is email, communication/chat, video etc. Remote and virtual communication is now how most business is done, even at physical offices. Offices that have ability to do meetups or have integration sessions are nice to haves as well. Even when it comes to shared desktop pair programming, you can get to know people not having to stand next to them. The lunches and other things are nice though, but they have little to do with work and better external products though. The best products come from people that have time to do research and development and more open mode versus closed mode, that kind of work is really hard to do at a modern office. Some jobs cannot be remote, the ones that can are usually in fields where most work/communication is virtual even in the same office and maybe even the same room.
sngz 6y ago
i don't care about promotions as long as I get paid more. I've had to ask for raises every year cause they kind of just "Forget" and they realize how valuable I am when I lay out what I do for them and accept my number every time.
B4CKlash 6y ago
I’ve seen a number of these ‘for and against’ conversations. One aspect that I often see overlooked is the relationship between managers and direct reports. Managers use the ‘ass in chair’ as a proxy for work load. What time did you arrive, what time are you leaving, how often are you in and out of your chair? Rightly or wrongly, the 40 hour work week is only flexible in only one direction. If you improve your ability to complete your job duties, new job duties magically appear. To that end, it’s allowed the average manager to ‘outsource’ direct management. I’m curious how this relationship will change and I’m hoping the 40 hour work week will change with it. The crux of this question is, Why is the average employee not able to control the incremental value of their time? Is it possible to move to a task-based compensation system? and/or remote work have a positive or negative impact on the compensation structure – reducing work creep, Etc.
- kyuudou 6y ago
  Just load on more work until they burnout, then hire fresh new blood. Particularly desperate graduates. Burn them out, hire offshore. Rinse and repeat until the economy itself burns out and we're all delivering organic food to each other on bicycles until people get angry enough to start shooting.
ravenstine 6y ago
These articles are hilarious. Lots of people are working remotely, and it looks like the #RemoteBacklash has begun because... well, everyone is different. But I don't think I've met a single remote worker who thinks that literally everyone can and should work remotely. It's a totally made up argument. This article is made up, too. It's totally speculative, cites nameless studies about "trust"(however you're supposed to measure that), and seems to believe that the rest of tech operates like Twitter and Facebook.
fredsters_s 6y ago
HN used to rewrite clickbait headlines...
nniroclax 6y ago
My last role was remote. I was only promoted after a big onsite meeting that went really well. If that in-person meeting had never happened, it would have been really hard to get that promotion.
buboard 6y ago
People who write these articles assume that remote work will be "Secondary" to office work. Wake up, it's already primary work, and it s going to stay that way for about a year due to health concerns. Afterwards, when half the people return to the half-empty office, companies will prioritize remote first, office will become secondary, and soon after a liability. Until a month ago , remote workers were the rare exception, now everyone is already a remote veteran. Past remote work experience is a very bad predictor of a remote-first workplace.
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Havoc 6y ago
I personally prefer a choice. e.g. currently I've got a fixed desk at the office. But if I decide to work from home nobody is going to ask questions. Given 5 min commute I'll probably go in most of the time, but the ability to decide is almost more valuable than either on it's own
msoad 6y ago
at least in the software industry promotion is not easy. Your current employer is not too incentivized to give you a promotion. They are however incentivized to bring in that guy who did great in interviews so they might get an instant promotion to the next level while you're going to get your 3rd "maybe next cycle" response from the promotion committee. What I learned from working at large tech companies is that the only way up is out.
bane 6y ago
It's really important to work at a place that rewards based on meritocracy. I know that where I work, not all managers really pay as much attention to each employee as desired, but there is a culture of employees that will email managers with emails who's content is essentially "you should consider promoting xyz, they totally made my work easier because of abc...". This is incredibly important for managers of large teams and contributes to a really great culture of people who appreciate each other rather than people who are in competition with each other. I personally have received several of these emails since the lockdown. It's not enough to act on, but it's enough to ask peers some questions to help establish a 360 degree view of an employee's performance.
bhewes 6y ago
There was a term I would hear as a kid professional attainment management, it is what people sent to remote posts would talk about. The need to go to HQ either regularly and/or a few years every decade to be part of the culture.
xcavier 6y ago
This attitude really bugs me: > Zuckerberg said Facebook will reduce salaries for people who move to cheaper places > If company X moves manufacturing to a lower cost company, it doesn't suddenly discount its product. The CEO's mindset is: if I can provide the same value for a lower cost, I get to pocket the additional (saved) margin. But when an employee provides the same value but at a lower (personal) cost, the boss wants to clawback the savings.
- jdauriemma 6y ago
  This is a succinct way of pointing out the power discrepancy between capital and labor.
- mixmastamyk 6y ago
  Should be giving a raise due to reduction in office rent and increased productivity. Ha, back to reality.
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windex 6y ago
Promotions are the wrong goal. Organizations seem to want you to think it is and stay put no matter what. Don't. You should keep moving. I would argue that remote working makes it possible for the employee to not be emotionally over-invested in work/employer and to target for better economic outcomes for themselves. Offices are corrals in a way. Dont allow yourself to be herded.
shahbaby 6y ago
Do we have to generalize everything? Just because it was true for you doesn't mean it'll be true for all.
ryanSrich 6y ago
You have to be 100% remote. No functioning hybrids exist. Most tech companies should be 100% remote with no exceptions. That doesn’t mean small satellite offices or co-working space for a group of employees. It means literally everyone from the CEO to the lowest paid IC works remotely. This is the only way it can work. When you start mixing in-person and remote you create a political monster.
baby 6y ago
Always worked remotely, never had a problem with promotions, ymmv
kiviuq 6y ago
I can't recall to ever getting suggested for a promotion.
quantified 6y ago
I see a high likelihood that being assigned or allowed to work in the office becomes a status/power thing, similar to the old office vs cubicle divide. Who is worth letting into the sanctum? If proximity becomes a more limited commodity it will become more precious.

478 points by headalgorithm 6y ago

Shopping your resume around will be the new promotion (similar to pre-covid career growth). If turnover rates start to match the fast food industry, only the best companies will thrive.

brtkdotse 6y ago
No kidding. Unless you’re in a “tech for tech’s sake” kind of job, you need to get up to speed on the problem domain and the business. That usually takes _at least_ 18 months and if people bounce just as they’re getting proficient you’re throwing money into a black hole.
- vonmoltke 6y ago
  Alternately, the software industry could go the way of the electrical and mechanical engineering industries and just not hire people unless they already possess relevant domain knowledge. It was a bit of a shock to me when I transitioned from EE that I could get hired in this industry with little to no domain knowledge on what I was being hired to do.
  - __s 6y ago
    Learning is a prerequisite, jobs pivot, things change Maybe in another hundred years things'll settle down
  - exdsq 6y ago
    I do wonder if this will happen. I reckon there will be some sort of catastrophic programming error which brings in a level of certification akin to other engineering disciplines. I've seen jobs advertised nearby for a nuclear defence company that have the same requirements as a web dev agency.
    - heavenlyblue 6y ago
      The only question is whether you will be hired on those requirements alone.
    - tpmx 6y ago
      You mean like a company on this list? https://www.dontbankonthebomb.com/nuclear-weapon-producers/ https://www.dontbankonthebomb.com/nuclear-weapon-producers/ (It seems to be an activist site, but it's what shows up when you search for producers of of nuclear weapons.) Most of these companies are huge. They may be looking for someone to maintain their canteens' web site. Or something else not very exciting.
    - ununoctium87 6y ago
      So, kind of like a software bug that causes 1 or 2 planes to crash, killing all on-board?
      - philjohn 6y ago
        Or killed a bunch of people undergoing radiotherapy, or exploded an Arianne rocket, or required years of remiedial work before 1st of Jan 2000 ... the list goes on and on.
      - exdsq 6y ago
        I was thinking something more extreme, although I wonder if that software bug had caused a plane or two to crash into a US city would there have been more of a response.
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  > you need to get up to speed on the problem domain and the business. That usually takes _at least_ 18 months I have always wondered about this as businesses do not seem to care. Everyone knows devs are getting large raises to move but what business is working to counteract the problem? Not many. Domain knowledge seems to not have much value as far as the people signing your paychecks are concerned.
  - mns 6y ago
    This also depends on the company and in the same time it depends on the people applying for the job. I wouldn't feel any motivation if I would just go to company X because of their great technology, but the business is something that says nothing to me, and same goes the other way. That's until somebody pays you more than enough to drop the idealism. :)
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ianleeclark 6y ago
> Shopping your resume around will be the new promotion (similar to pre-covid career growth). I graduated in 2015 and at that point it was well established this is how you move up. I wouldn't be surprised if this was the overwhelming sentiment for most people in my generation.
- peanut_is_yum 6y ago
  Agreed. Most people I know say that you're supposed to job hop frequently.
karatestomp 6y ago
Yep. Promotion? WTF. No, you weasel your way into duties "above" your pay grade then go get the job you've been doing, with accompanying title and pay, someplace else. Or you can wait around for an opening in your company and hope the right people know your name so you get it. If you prefer gambling. But jumping ship works better. [EDIT] OK in case anyone uses this as a playbook, be aware you may need an intermediate step at some company desperate for [your new role] with below-average pay so you can have The Actual Title for a while before moving to a place with normal pay, but the good news is below-average for your next step is probably at or above what you're already making anyway, so NBD. Just be sure their pay's below average because they're a funded-but-not-crazy-funded startup and not because they're terrible, though. For whatever reason low pay also seems to go with shitty working conditions and overwork. Go figure. And make sure they're likely to stay in business minimum a year, with two being better.
triyambakam 6y ago
As a small point of data against this, I've been promoted twice at my current company. Starting salary was 100k, promoted to level C engineer at 110k, now level B engineer at 125k.
buzzkillington 6y ago
I have never been promoted at a job and my longest tenure was 3 years right out of university. I've gotten a 10%-50% increase in every job I've taken when I've jumped ship. Staying in the same job for longer than it takes you to learn how to do it is career suicide.

lcam84 6y ago

You will start to see many articles degrading remote work. Remote work is too efficient to this economic system. We need to spend time on traffic and restaurants. As we saw Jorge W Bush at the moment of crisis asking citizens to consume, I would not be surprised to see politicians asking employees and companies to reduce remote work for the good of this economy which is based on exponential growth such as this virus

ikeyany 6y ago
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Someone can strongly think "I don't want to interact with others via webcam and screens all day" without having ulterior motives.
- lcam84 6y ago
  I agree with you, remote work has many problems and one of them is the possibility to become tiresome the interactions at a distance. It can however have several ecological advantages, and if well managed it can be a way to strengthen family and community ties. My point is that although it is more efficient, it is not as productive as putting everyone to work in big cities. It doesn't produce traffic, maybe people feel less need to buy cars, it doesn't generate so much real estate speculation, etc.
  - ikeyany 6y ago
    We should certainly scrutinize certain industries more than others, such as the auto industry or those who otherwise benefit from having the masses commutes.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Emails and conference calls work just fine, no videoconf required. Unless you absolutely need to be on video, don't, it's just unnecessary stress. If your org requires you be on video constantly for every call, leave for a better org when you can if they're unable to budge on unreasonable requirements.

Simulacra 6y ago

Remote work means that anyone can do your job. This is going to make the job market significantly more competitive.

smt88 6y ago
It also means you can do your job from anywhere. You could live somewhere less expensive. This is especially meaningful to people with kids. Two working parents have to pay for childcare. If they can move closer to parents, that cost may disappear.
p2detar 6y ago
Plenty of people that don’t and won’t agree to work remotely. Not to mention that working from home hardly appeals to extroverts.
- beart 6y ago
  As an introvert working in an open office, I still miss my old schedule (3 days in the office, 2 at home).
  - glial 6y ago
    That's the dream...
    - asdf21 6y ago
      2 in office, 2 from home.
MattGaiser 6y ago
80% of jobs are filled through networks anyway, so unless that changes, it doesn't really change a lot except for those just entering the workforce or those without a strong network.
- notahacker 6y ago

prions 6y ago

Not everyone has: - long commutes - crappy coworkers or offices - a space large enough to comfortably work remotely (or the money to afford a bigger space) - a partner, kids, or both, which makes extended social isolation more livable - a rich network for career growth and opportunities God forbid some people want to live in big cities and don't make their choices solely based on reducing costs and bottom line expenses (ironic since every other day people here rail against big corporation bean counters). Example: Facebook's latest internal polling - the majority of people want to be in the office sometimes. People suddenly waking up and realizing the office is a huge scam is the current du jour opinion here. But time and time again the HN demographic only speaks to itself. And of course people will reply with that it expands choice, but that doesn't stop those from cheering that companies going full remote like its a universal good thing for everyone. And on top of that, my observations are anecdotal. No need to point that out. edit: Going full remote is a huge cost savings to companies. A cost that is now hoisted onto employees. So unless employees are receiving some equivalent compensation for blowing out my utility bills and refitting my office, be careful who you're cheering with.

Axsuul 6y ago
In LA, a lot of people depend on their workplace for A/C during the summer.
- heavenlyblue 6y ago
  Or in London
- mc32 6y ago
  Great opportunity to cut costs at the office and offload that to employees!
- gnulinux 6y ago
  I live in Boston, which is relatively mild over the summer, but it still gets pretty hot, at least for me. The switch to running AC in my study room has been one of the biggest shifts for me. Since now I cannot use the AC in my bedroom. I moved it to livingroom so I can cool myself while working. But then I can't sleep well. Looks like I will have to get another AC and install it in my bedroom. WFH definitely had many unexpected short comings.

dhd415 6y ago

The headline doesn't distinguish between remote work at companies that are remote-first vs. companies where remote is simply an afterthought or tolerated option. Promotions, raises, influence, etc., are no issue for remote workers in the former kind of company but certainly can be in the latter. Even though the article mentions Gitlab, a remote-first company, it doesn't tease out the distinction. Given market pressures, I expect the best remote workers to gravitate to companies that are remote-first, not just remote-available.

digitallogic 6y ago
> Promotions, raises, influence, etc., are no issue for remote workers in the former kind of company but certainly can be in the latter. FWIW, remote first companies are not automatically immune to these dynamics. A few examples of how they can still emerge: * A group of folks that all live in the same city informally decided to start working from the same co-working space. A clique emerges. * The CTO frequently travels to SF to talk to customers, regularly has lunch with a local employee who later gets promoted over better performing peers. * Same but while the CEO goes to talk to investors. * Same but the whole leadership team meets in the same airline hub city twice a quarter because it's easiest for everyone to get to. Employees in said airline hub city have better outcomes. * You live on one coast, and your supervisor lives on another. People in the same timezone as your supervisor get more virtual face time. There are definitely more opportunities for this dynamic when some people are remote and some are in a shared office. But I'd be wary of any organization that tells you this can't happen to them just because they're remote-first. These dynamics can emerge in many ways, and if an organization doesn't realize/acknowledge this, there's a decent that they could fall prey to it, or may already be in progress. edit: formatting

MattGaiser 6y ago

The reality is that a lot of promotions and opportunities are simply based on getting attention and it is a lot easier to get attention in an office than remotely. An email is easy to ignore. The boss's boss will at least know my name if he sees me every so often.

PopeDotNinja 6y ago

It depends on how valuable you are. There's no substitute for being an amazing value proposition to your employer. Everyone onsite company wants onsite resources until they can't hire then locally. Be invaluable remotely, and if you don't get that promotion, find it elsewhere at another company. This is basically similar to the advice that the easiest way to make more money is to take a job at a different company.

ahh 6y ago

Humans don't have emotional object permanence. My ex-girlfriend described herself this way to me once and I thought it was funny, but it's in fact true of people in general: if you're not physically present near them, they will forget that you really exist as a human and a social peer. It's unfortunate but it's true: you are going to naturally think more about and have better feelings about the coworkers you see every day in person. No, VC doesn't count. I think this is pretty much a human universal; the only exceptions I know are quite far on the autism spectrum. (Even I notice myself doing this, and I'm definitely somewhere on that line.) Given that, I want to be in the room with my coworkers. I want them to unconsciously think of me as part of their tribe, and I want to feel the same way about them; that means we need to be able to perform regular in-person social petting. This is doubly true of my bosses. It sucks, but there's no way around it. (Also, while this is less universal, there are plenty of extroverts, even on HN. I'm one. It's ironic, in that I also suffer from pretty nasty social anxiety; large rooms of strangers scare me and choke me up. But lock me in a room by myself for a month and I go crazy. I am happier, by far, when I can be in the same room as people I like.)

foolinaround 6y ago
Consider the relationships we feel to folks we play games with in virtual forums over the years. Years pass without you never seeing them, yet a lot of time spent in virtual proximity makes kindred spirits.
thrownaway954 6y ago
this is true about anyone. given enough time and distance, your own mother will become "just another person you know". if you aren't physically interacting with people, you are soon forgotten.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  I used to believe in out of sight out of mind until I had my first break up. Out of sight out of mind is a function that takes a parameter that is not a Boolean. If the person was important enough to you they won’t leave your mind easily. If anything, the adage exposes the strength of your relationships. In the business case, it will expose the value of physical coordination vs virtual coordination. It’s not going to be clear cut. But you are probably right in a business context, where the number that’s going to get passed into the out of sight out of mind function will definitely be low enough to return true for just about all of us. It’s not exactly the world anyone wants to live in, but what are you gonna do.

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Animats 6y ago

Page https://www.wired.com/story/remote-work-perks-until-want-promotion/ https://www.wired.com/story/remote-work-perks-until-want-pro... appears to be down. (Back up now.)

Antecedent 6y ago

I worked for a company that regularly does half in person and half remote employees. You could choose either or. The problem with being the remote worker on a partially in-person team is that you miss all the face-time and exposure to new opportunities simply because you are not a person but a task completing widget. You are never the presenter at company events. Nobody outside your team can recognize you. Nobody talks to you except to get something or clarify information. People can casually take credit for your work as you aren’t there to defend it. You lose out on all the background information like conference funding availability or the cool new job in Innovation. You miss all the little opportunities for going the extra mile as you never look over your colleagues shoulder to see how they do their job and nobody looks over yours. So much of success is being in the right place at the right time to meet the right person and that can’t happen as much remotely.

k__ 6y ago

Yes. I left my first remote job, because becoming a team lead would had me required to give up remote. Went freelancing afterwards, because there I can promote myself.

semerda 6y ago

Promotion or Responsibility? If a remote worker is trusted, gets things done and is an important cog in the wheel then limiting their growth would be an unwise decision and ultimately cost the company a great employee. So why would remote work be an issue with a promotion — maybe remote work is also a filter for below satisfactory people managers. Either way, HR will have a lot to rethink how they run.

cmiles74 6y ago
This implies a rationality that I have not often seen in my professional life. The places I have worked, HR has typically let the hiring manager decide if they want to promote an existing employee or start a new search. I don't expect remote work will change that much. Given that, it comes down to the hiring manager and I wouldn't feel comfortable that they are this level of rational either. They may have some pre-existing opinions about remote workers and those opinions may not all be reasonable. I think there's also reason for concern when a remote person has to "compete" with an in-office presence for the position. Qualifications and job performance aside, the person who is in the office every day, I suspect, has a real advantage here. I do think it is easier to form relationships in person, rather than over conference calls or Slack.

ryanmarsh 6y ago

Why all the anti-remote work stories as of late? Am I just imagining this or have the remote work articles (up until recently) been mostly positive?

falcolas 6y ago
I chalk it down to the pendulum swing. When it was mostly offices, some people wanted to work remotely. Now that it’s mostly remote, some people want to work in offices. Articles that are upvoted (which I largely associate with “people who identify with the sentiment of the article”) show up will reflect the current state of the pendulum.
saalweachter 6y ago
I suppose there could be some sort of astroturfing conspiracy associated with the "reopen" movements, but I suspect it is just that, when WFH-everywhere first started, it was of the biggest relief to the people who want to WFH, and now that it has been going on for many weeks, the people who don't are really getting fed up with the situation.
closetohome 6y ago
At the moment there's essentially zero debate that having as many people work from home as possible is beneficial to the people, the environment, and the economy. These articles are introducing FUD so that when companies start recalling employees, the opposition won't be as universal as it would be otherwise.
- rodiger 6y ago
  Or maybe we can take a more nuanced stance and say that some people just prefer to work from an office with their colleagues.
  - s_y_n_t_a_x 6y ago
    If we did then there wouldn't be articles complaining about WFH. Just let people do what they want. If you like WFH then find a company that allows it, if you don't, do the inverse. I don't see why there is so much hate against WFH when it's a choice (not including the virus situation). I would NEVER go back to an office. I've been WFH for 5 years now. You can certainly put a price not having to live in a rent-trap city. I bought and paid off a 3bdr house in a year because of low cost of living. I no longer pay rent/mortgage or commute. I see how some people wouldn't like it, but there are plenty of jobs for those people. P.S: a 30 minute commute is 252 hours of your year gone ($25,200 @ $100/hr) and $3-6k in gas plus stress. Do yourself a favor and start working on your office setup, you'll want to work remotely when you get older at least.

BiteCode_dev 6y ago

If you want a promotion, move to another job. Most companies make it incredibly slow and painful to evolve in their own walls, while giving big rewards to new comers. Unless you happen to work at the legenday ones that do care about you, don't play according to their rules. Those are here for their benefit, not yours. Remote or not.

person_of_color 6y ago
This. You will get a 20-100% raise in a new job, and peanuts for staying with a company. RSU refreshers might change the equation.
Plutonsvea 6y ago
Highly recommend this. I'm a consultant, and I got offered a $12,000 raise after working with my company for two years and working for three seperate extremely high value clients. I put in my two weeks notice the day I received an offer from a competing company nearby that I'd applied to for a total renumeration package roughly equivalent to a $45,000 raise at my old job. Shop around. Always. If you don't, you'll never know. I like to think of it as someone losing out on free stuff. It costs nothing to write up an updated resumé and throw it into the abyss of companies that are hiring. Possible gain by doing this? A lot. Possible loss? Maybe an hour of your time that you spent applying to the job.

Taniwha 6y ago

I've worked remotely for almost 30 years now, my take on it has always been: "it's great you can avoid most office politics", followed by "you always lose at office politics" It's happened at every company I've worked at - in general you need to have a manager who will have your back and represent, and have to be able to not worry about the small stuff

xwdv 6y ago

Promotions are overrated in a remote work world IMO. Do you want more money? Get a better remote job anywhere else or do something else for money or keep good investments. Do you want more prestige? For what exactly? You're not seeing any co-workers regularly to pull rank on them and there is no corner office desk with a window to fight for. If you want to be respected in your industry commit to some charitable projects or give talks. Do you want different responsibilities? Ask, and if you don't get it go find a more suitable job.

falcolas 6y ago

Counter point: I’ve gotten three promotions (one of which included a significant change in my role) while only seeing my bosses in person about 2-3 times a year. I also, in contrast with other commenters, talk to my direct boss 2-3 times every week in a standup. We have weekly 1:1’s. My successes are recognized, my failures are managed. Getting (or not getting) promotions is a function of your communication, not proximity. Those two-three yearly returns to the office don’t include any more (or less) communication than I had previously.

Ididntdothis 6y ago

I am pretty senior and remote now. I would agree that the potential for promotion has gone down a little due to lack of visibility. My strategy is to carve out a niche for myself where I can produce high value stuff that usually doesn't get done in the rush of the office but can be done because I am out of sight. I think this works for me and fits my work style but I don't see myself moving up a lot.

seph-reed 6y ago

There's three posts about how bad remote work is today: https://www.wired.com/story/remote-work-perks-until-want-promotion/ https://www.wired.com/story/remote-work-perks-until-want-pro... https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/can-remote-work-be-fixed https://www.newyorker.com/culture/annals-of-inquiry/can-remo... https://marker.medium.com/remote-workers-just-outsourced-themselves-3f771f9d1529 https://marker.medium.com/remote-workers-just-outsourced-the... Most plausibly just coincidence, but an interesting anomaly none-the-less.

z3t4 6y ago

You promote peoole that strive towards the common goal, that are decent and loyal. You dont promote someone just because they live next door. Computer technology is superior for communication. The problem is the organisation.

everdrive 6y ago

I've recently moved back into private sector, and it's been pretty surprising to me just how little of the business world has to do with actual business. There are the expected things, such as relationship building, empire building, fiefdom building, etc. But, it also seems that a lot of the actual effort people expend doesn't have very much to do with the business. For example, we had an executive whose passion in life was clearly just to speak in front of people. He never did real work, but made sure to take every opportunity to ensure he was speaking in front of people. It's clear that he should have been a public speaker. I don't mean to pick on this particular executive, but it seems like there's a lot of this here. A lot of people, engaged all day in things that don't produce work. They're more about building some special, separate social hierarchy: determining who is in charge, who has influence, who matters. That seems to take up a lot of time in the private sector. I'm sure it's not universally true, but this has been my ad-hoc experience. And, I get it: this is what people do, and what people value. We're social creatures, etc. But it sort implies that everyone's engaged in a joint lie. That lie being "we're here to work and we're all hard workers. We're primarily interested in advanced the business." It seems like a more literal truth might be: "We're here to take part in a social hierarchy, and forge friends and enemies, and do enough actual work that no one minds how inefficient our business is."

LordFast 6y ago
Good point, and I used to actually hold a stronger belief in things like that because to me they represent a larger-picture type of work that seemed more interesting. BUT, ever since I exited out of that game to start my own business, my beliefs have been shifting. Now I can see exactly how successful businesses come together and make enough money to fill payroll, and there's no getting around the fact that real, valuable work needs to get done. And that only once the real work has been done, do you then get to have the nice byproducts of success which is to do public speaking, culture building, and etc all those extra-curricular things. But the existence of these extra-curriculars are predicated on having a successful business in the first place. And no matter how cynical anyone gets, you won't have a successful business based on /JUST/ bullshit empire building alone- you gotta do real work and provide real value. I can also see more clearly now that if society doesn't have the right balance between doers and talkers, we're eventually gonna have nothing valuable to show for anymore, and the fallout from that won't be pretty. When /everyone/ DESIRES to be talkers, instead of just a small minority, it's a worrisome trend.

zapf 6y ago

I have been remoting for over ten years now. The only rule I have now is to work with remote first teams. If there's an office where a big clique meets, you'll eventually feel left out.

khazhoux 6y ago

At this point I've mostly given up on the concept of promotions anyway. The amount of downwards pressure against promoting people is unreal. I've seen managers stuck in their level for years and years. Then a new candidate comes in for a Manager role, asks for more money, and (boom!) they're hired as a Director. Fuck everyone else who was already running teams successfully and trying to grow. Same for individual contributors. Best route is the insta-promotion during hiring negotiation. You want a promotion but don't want to switch companies? Gee sorry your scope isn't wide enough yet. You're doing a fine job --a good job, even-- but you have to understand that this was already the expected job level... we need to "see more." Every performance-review meeting I've been in, when one manager brings up one of their people for promotion, immediately some other manager will jump in and say "No I don't know about that, someone on my team had a bad interaction with them once... nope not ready for promotion" and that's that. Only once in a blue moon does the room agree that someone should get the promotion. Hallelujah!

lr4444lr 6y ago
I understand your frustration, but also consider, being promoted over your colleagues poses its own risks to the social fabric of a company. Your last paragraph alludes to this kind of rancor. Bringing in people from the outside (or leaving to go somewhere else yourself when you're ready to make the jump,) has its benefits for what it avoids.
- khazhoux 6y ago
  Internal discontentment follows from promotions being so difficult, and it's worsened by everyone seeing new people walking in at a higher level than seems justified. Then, having to deal with the new person once they land and it quickly becomes obvious (in 99% of cases) that they are not more accomplished and don't deliver more results than the internal people they leapfrogged. My first job two decades ago didn't have engineering levels (apart from Tech Lead designation, which wasn't a formal level). People still fought for raises and the salaries/bonuses were sometimes not perfect, but there was no "promotion" per se and in retrospect it was healthier for everyone.

methodin 6y ago

I've often wondered what would happen to the jobscape if employers spent more to keep people then they do to hire their replacement. If jumping ship was always a pay cut, what would that do to both the company and employees?

bluntfang 6y ago

If our bosses shove our faces into each others and shout "NOW KISS!" we may fall in love!!

angarg12 6y ago

My cynical self loves the headline of the article. Pity it is only mentioned once in passing. All my career I have been moving to increasingly more expensive places chasing after better jobs. So far I have very strong feelings about what I call 'the satellite office effect'. Anecdata shows that my colleagues at the head office get promoted at a ratio roughly 3:1 compare to my (remote, smaller) office. Amid this pandemic and many companies looking at full remote, I decided to move to the US to a yet more expensive city. I love the idea of living in a low CoL area and working remote, but for the sake of my career I feel the need to work at the main offices. Even if one day I decide to make the switch, I would never consider working for anything else than a full remote company.

mcph 6y ago

This article (similar to the several others that have been posted on remote work today) didn't touch at all on how working remotely may affect companies' ability to combat implicit bias vis a vis promotions. From conversations I've had with folks in tech, it seems that many managers believe remote work will improve the fairness of their promotion processes because it removes vectors for implicit bias like how social a person is, what a person looks like, etc. But it also removes what I've experienced to be a low-barrier opportunity for those who are quiet or unlikely to promote their work to do so—in person in a one-on-one setting. Without the opportunity to learn by example in-person, I worry that less experienced people (especially shy ones) in technical career tracks will not self-advocate. In turn, due to implicit bias that will inevitably shape manager-employee relationships, I fear they'll stall. It's really not a solution to say that managers should be offering the conversations, because of course, managers inevitably will fail to do so in many corporate culture. We are going remote-first from the jump, but as we scale I am pretty concerned about how to combat this phenomenon.

papito 6y ago

Out of sight, out of mind. That will never change.

donretag 6y ago

This sentiment is precisely why I have returned to an office job (now remote like everyone) after years for working remote as a full-time employee. I have specialized in a niche which made employers allow me to work remotely since they could not find local talent. Being the sole remote (tech) employee, or one of the few, means you will not get promoted. Remote-first is a different ballgame. I now turn down all "only you will be remote" positions that are sent my way. I no longer work in my niche since there is no demand locally, but I will not be the sole remote person again. PS: I am an extrovert

lucideer 6y ago

This is not just true of remote work, it's also true of "remote" offices. I work in Ireland for a US company. When I started in the company, I was constantly surprised with the competence of people I work with in my local office, in NY, in D.C. & in Asian offices, compared to those I work with in SF (our HQ). But after a while I realised it wasn't that people in SF were less competent or people in other offices were moreso. It was simply that the levels were different. PoCs for a project who were at a similar "level" to me were clearly less experienced in SF, due—seemingly—to the promotional ladder just being so much more accessible there. Because those responsible for promotions are present in person. I don't think this is an easily surmountable problem with humans, but I do hope that WFH becoming more common will make people generally more aware of the challenge.

babesh 6y ago
I’ve seen the opposite from a company overcompensating. There was a remote office and some complained about promotion opportunities. There were promotions alright and then there were several complaints about the competence of some people there. Nothing was done for a long time other than blaming the people who complained about not working with them better. They didn’t try to argue that the people were actually competent since there had been multiple complaints from multiple people. Furthermore, there were obvious issues. The remote office basically formed a remote clique. They eventually got reorg’d out of existence as an individual group due to incompetence. I think it just depends on the particular situation. It can swing either way.

Arubis 6y ago

TFA, being in Wired, appears to be focused primarily on the tech industry. At the risk of being pithy, the best way to get a promotion in tech has--for a _long_ time--been to get a new job. Even if you do score an in-house title bump, your pay raise is likely to be a single-digit percentage above inflation, when jumping ship can easily net you 20%. If more people going remote makes this more visible, fine by me.

diogenescynic 6y ago

For me, remote work is a promotion so long as my salary isn’t adjusted. If I can take my same salary and move somewhere (within reason) my salary goes further... that’s a pretty huge perk.

igeligel_dev 6y ago

The aspect of social interaction definitely has an impact on promotions, but what's more important, at least in my company are results. We act on leadership principles similar to what they have at Amazon and employees are getting rated against that. In my team, at the end of the day, everyone is sharing what they did throughout the day work-wise. You can still list things that are non-engineering related. What I also do is tracking these notes in an application and tag the notes later for a self review. In the end, sharing these notes gives the team some perspective of what the others are doing and because of the random stuff everyone is doing from time to time we had awesome conversations / ideas because of that.

soheil 6y ago

In case anyone wants to listen to this instead of reading it: https://playthis.link/https://www.wired.com/story/remote-work-perks-until-want-promotion/ https://playthis.link/https://www.wired.com/story/remote-wor...

drawkbox 6y ago

Lots of anti-remote work suddenly. Remote work means companies can get the best people for that company anywhere. Remote work means life changes can happen and you can retain the best people for that company. With jobs and life, changes happen, people move, have families, want to be close to family, want to change scenery, get a new significant other, go to school, buy a house, all of these things can mean you might have to quit if you have to physically always be in the office. Even when companies have remote/different city offices, virtual communication is very important anyways. Clients and customers are almost always remote with some sprinkled in meetings but mostly virtual communication and communication through the work. Companies would be wise to switch to remote first thinking and processes with a focus on virtual communication and a nice to have of physical meetups, integration sessions etc. Remote work helps companies focus on their external view not just their internal machinations. For truly unique talents and workers, location has never really mattered. The world is virtual and remote now, the companies that perform well in that and with their external view, not internal view, and do the best virtual communication will win, and not just in tech.

softwaredoug 6y ago
Remote means not building genuine relationships with any coworkers. Remote means not sharing a meal, getting coffee, building friendships, or growing past an automaton that gets work done.
- drawkbox 6y ago
  Not really, most work is virtual even at an office, or with another office, or with a client, or with a partner company, or with a friend that you see on occasion but always in touch online. Remote work allows relationships/lunches with friends as well, maybe not work friends but friends, networking, local groups in the same focus/area, it isn't just automaton. We rely too much on work environment rather than our local environment. Remote work allows freedom to dictate your day more and allows for more opportunities to meet people if you want. Co-working spaces for remote workers are also nice. External product/brand view is the most important thing companies need to learn today. Even within the office when people go in, most communication there is email, communication/chat, video etc. Remote and virtual communication is now how most business is done, even at physical offices. Offices that have ability to do meetups or have integration sessions are nice to haves as well. Even when it comes to shared desktop pair programming, you can get to know people not having to stand next to them. The lunches and other things are nice though, but they have little to do with work and better external products though. The best products come from people that have time to do research and development and more open mode versus closed mode, that kind of work is really hard to do at a modern office. Some jobs cannot be remote, the ones that can are usually in fields where most work/communication is virtual even in the same office and maybe even the same room.

sngz 6y ago

i don't care about promotions as long as I get paid more. I've had to ask for raises every year cause they kind of just "Forget" and they realize how valuable I am when I lay out what I do for them and accept my number every time.

B4CKlash 6y ago

I’ve seen a number of these ‘for and against’ conversations. One aspect that I often see overlooked is the relationship between managers and direct reports. Managers use the ‘ass in chair’ as a proxy for work load. What time did you arrive, what time are you leaving, how often are you in and out of your chair? Rightly or wrongly, the 40 hour work week is only flexible in only one direction. If you improve your ability to complete your job duties, new job duties magically appear. To that end, it’s allowed the average manager to ‘outsource’ direct management. I’m curious how this relationship will change and I’m hoping the 40 hour work week will change with it. The crux of this question is, Why is the average employee not able to control the incremental value of their time? Is it possible to move to a task-based compensation system? and/or remote work have a positive or negative impact on the compensation structure – reducing work creep, Etc.

kyuudou 6y ago
Just load on more work until they burnout, then hire fresh new blood. Particularly desperate graduates. Burn them out, hire offshore. Rinse and repeat until the economy itself burns out and we're all delivering organic food to each other on bicycles until people get angry enough to start shooting.

ravenstine 6y ago

These articles are hilarious. Lots of people are working remotely, and it looks like the #RemoteBacklash has begun because... well, everyone is different. But I don't think I've met a single remote worker who thinks that literally everyone can and should work remotely. It's a totally made up argument. This article is made up, too. It's totally speculative, cites nameless studies about "trust"(however you're supposed to measure that), and seems to believe that the rest of tech operates like Twitter and Facebook.

fredsters_s 6y ago

HN used to rewrite clickbait headlines...

nniroclax 6y ago

My last role was remote. I was only promoted after a big onsite meeting that went really well. If that in-person meeting had never happened, it would have been really hard to get that promotion.

buboard 6y ago

People who write these articles assume that remote work will be "Secondary" to office work. Wake up, it's already primary work, and it s going to stay that way for about a year due to health concerns. Afterwards, when half the people return to the half-empty office, companies will prioritize remote first, office will become secondary, and soon after a liability. Until a month ago , remote workers were the rare exception, now everyone is already a remote veteran. Past remote work experience is a very bad predictor of a remote-first workplace.

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Havoc 6y ago

I personally prefer a choice. e.g. currently I've got a fixed desk at the office. But if I decide to work from home nobody is going to ask questions. Given 5 min commute I'll probably go in most of the time, but the ability to decide is almost more valuable than either on it's own

msoad 6y ago

at least in the software industry promotion is not easy. Your current employer is not too incentivized to give you a promotion. They are however incentivized to bring in that guy who did great in interviews so they might get an instant promotion to the next level while you're going to get your 3rd "maybe next cycle" response from the promotion committee. What I learned from working at large tech companies is that the only way up is out.

bane 6y ago

It's really important to work at a place that rewards based on meritocracy. I know that where I work, not all managers really pay as much attention to each employee as desired, but there is a culture of employees that will email managers with emails who's content is essentially "you should consider promoting xyz, they totally made my work easier because of abc...". This is incredibly important for managers of large teams and contributes to a really great culture of people who appreciate each other rather than people who are in competition with each other. I personally have received several of these emails since the lockdown. It's not enough to act on, but it's enough to ask peers some questions to help establish a 360 degree view of an employee's performance.

bhewes 6y ago

There was a term I would hear as a kid professional attainment management, it is what people sent to remote posts would talk about. The need to go to HQ either regularly and/or a few years every decade to be part of the culture.

xcavier 6y ago

This attitude really bugs me: > Zuckerberg said Facebook will reduce salaries for people who move to cheaper places > If company X moves manufacturing to a lower cost company, it doesn't suddenly discount its product. The CEO's mindset is: if I can provide the same value for a lower cost, I get to pocket the additional (saved) margin. But when an employee provides the same value but at a lower (personal) cost, the boss wants to clawback the savings.

jdauriemma 6y ago
This is a succinct way of pointing out the power discrepancy between capital and labor.
mixmastamyk 6y ago
Should be giving a raise due to reduction in office rent and increased productivity. Ha, back to reality.

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windex 6y ago

Promotions are the wrong goal. Organizations seem to want you to think it is and stay put no matter what. Don't. You should keep moving. I would argue that remote working makes it possible for the employee to not be emotionally over-invested in work/employer and to target for better economic outcomes for themselves. Offices are corrals in a way. Dont allow yourself to be herded.

shahbaby 6y ago

Do we have to generalize everything? Just because it was true for you doesn't mean it'll be true for all.

ryanSrich 6y ago

You have to be 100% remote. No functioning hybrids exist. Most tech companies should be 100% remote with no exceptions. That doesn’t mean small satellite offices or co-working space for a group of employees. It means literally everyone from the CEO to the lowest paid IC works remotely. This is the only way it can work. When you start mixing in-person and remote you create a political monster.

baby 6y ago

Always worked remotely, never had a problem with promotions, ymmv

kiviuq 6y ago

I can't recall to ever getting suggested for a promotion.

quantified 6y ago

I see a high likelihood that being assigned or allowed to work in the office becomes a status/power thing, similar to the old office vs cubicle divide. Who is worth letting into the sanctum? If proximity becomes a more limited commodity it will become more precious.