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There are so many different flavors of remote (and remote-ish) work. Lots of people (especially those who don't do remote work) think of remote work as "work w

There are so many different flavors of remote (and remote-ish) work. Lots of people (especially those who don't do remote work) think of remote work as "work wherever you want, whenever you want", but in reality there are often limitations. Employers generally care about what jurisdiction you live in so they can comply with tax law, etc. Some employers don't care where you're at as long as your long-term residence is in one of their approved jurisdictions. Some will keep tabs on your location and pay you differently depending on where you live. Some employers mandate a set of core hours, while others limit employee home locations by time zone, wanting workers to be approximately on the same schedule. I've heard of some US Government workers who are allowed to work from home, but only from home. Ostensibly for cybersecurity reasons, they aren't allowed to work from hotels, cafes, airports, WeWorks, etc. Then yeah, there's this sliding scale of hybrid remote/office work. "We're remote for now, but hope to get back to the office eventually". "We think 50/50 will be our new normal, but that's subject to change". "You can typically work from wherever you want, but we expect you to be available to come into the office for big meetings, etc".

aksss 5y ago
I've never heard of USG jobs where you had to work specifically from home, but I don't doubt they exist nor that the USG would be so asinine. I'd hate the condition of having to be specifically at home. Would probably set up a VPN to house or something just out of principle and then run away to hawaii for a week (assuming odds of being randomly called in were slim but you could always claim potential covid exposure, I guess).
schoen 5y ago
> I've heard of some US Government workers who are allowed to work from home, but only from home. Ostensibly for cybersecurity reasons, they aren't allowed to work from hotels, cafes, airports, WeWorks, etc. I first thought that this didn't make so much sense, because you could just use a VPN. But this might be only partly because of network insecurity. It could be more because you have so little control over your neighbors and physical environment in public and semipublic spaces, and people who know you're there can easily arrange to be nearby you in order to try shoulder-surfing or higher-tech attacks. For example, it might be challenging to get close enough to someone's home office to carry out an attack like this, but not so difficult in comparison in a café. https://www.tau.ac.il/~tromer/handsoff/ https://www.tau.ac.il/~tromer/handsoff/
- jodrellblank 5y ago
  I have wondered about the idea of shared rent-a-workspace, and what that does to security and regulatory compliance and how many CIOs have conniptions over it. Would you feel OK if you called up your bank to sort out a problem with your account, and they were opening all your account details on a laptop in a coffee shop or WeWork office shared with all sorts of people? If you were a normal employee raising an issue with HR and they were doing that? If you were Apple, or high up in a company behaving like them and trying to keep projects secret and your employees were doing that?

aksss 5y ago

I've never heard of USG jobs where you had to work specifically from home, but I don't doubt they exist nor that the USG would be so asinine. I'd hate the condition of having to be specifically at home. Would probably set up a VPN to house or something just out of principle and then run away to hawaii for a week (assuming odds of being randomly called in were slim but you could always claim potential covid exposure, I guess).

schoen 5y ago

> I've heard of some US Government workers who are allowed to work from home, but only from home. Ostensibly for cybersecurity reasons, they aren't allowed to work from hotels, cafes, airports, WeWorks, etc. I first thought that this didn't make so much sense, because you could just use a VPN. But this might be only partly because of network insecurity. It could be more because you have so little control over your neighbors and physical environment in public and semipublic spaces, and people who know you're there can easily arrange to be nearby you in order to try shoulder-surfing or higher-tech attacks. For example, it might be challenging to get close enough to someone's home office to carry out an attack like this, but not so difficult in comparison in a café. https://www.tau.ac.il/~tromer/handsoff/ https://www.tau.ac.il/~tromer/handsoff/

jodrellblank 5y ago
I have wondered about the idea of shared rent-a-workspace, and what that does to security and regulatory compliance and how many CIOs have conniptions over it. Would you feel OK if you called up your bank to sort out a problem with your account, and they were opening all your account details on a laptop in a coffee shop or WeWork office shared with all sorts of people? If you were a normal employee raising an issue with HR and they were doing that? If you were Apple, or high up in a company behaving like them and trying to keep projects secret and your employees were doing that?