from Hacker News

Remote working – Bringing sanity to mind and lessons worth learning

by danielkempe on 6/3/19, 11:58 AM with 192 comments

• by burlesona on 6/3/19, 2:28 PM

  Both Remote work and office work can be really great for certain people at certain times.

  When I was younger I was full-time remote for more than five years, and at the time I enjoyed it. There was some difficulty separating work from life when it all happened in one apartment, but overall it was a good fit.

  Then I had kids, and that distinction became much harder. Little children have a really hard time understanding that mom or dad is right there in the other room but can’t play now. At that point moving to an office job became a really nice change.

  As a hiring manager, what I’ve found is that there aren’t so many people who truly want to work from home all the time. Rather, what most people want is flexibility and compromise. For example:

  - “I want to work from home on Tuesdays and Thursdays so I can easily pick my kids up from pre-school over my lunch break.”

  - “I want to live in (insert almost any city here) where I grew up and have roots, but there aren’t many good jobs.” Or the similar variation, “I want to live in (place that is very cheap or pretty or both)...”

  - “My wife and I want to be able to visit both sides of our family that live far away, and the logistics would be a lot easier if I could work remotely for a week here and there to make that work, rather than need 3 extra weeks of vacation.”

  The best thing about remote is that all that flexibility and freedom is just built into the job, and in my experience it’s easier to find a full-remote job than an office job with comparable flexibility. The downside is you don’t get the fun and energizing environment of working with neat, smart people in person, nor the work/life separation that many people find very helpful.

  I think most people’s stated preference just reflects which one of those is more important to them in their present circumstances.

• by breatheoften on 6/3/19, 2:06 PM

  I just started a new remote position. I worked remotely in previous job as well and discovered then that working from home is not actually a good thing for me. I eventually worked exclusively from coffee shops but this isn’t exactly the best way to work everyday — expensive, drink LOTS of coffee, and coffee shops generally make it harder to find flow state, not impossible but just harder.

  That previous job was contract work for an enterprise — not super inspiring, lots of structural annoyances in the team that created barriers to getting things done, and team a setup that didn’t quite put remote workers on the same level as the inhouse team members. Even with all the annoyances I found when working from home I had a lot of trouble “stopping” — it felt like I was always at work.

  Switching to the coffee shops was definitely better, but with my role on new team (startup and fully remote team — it’s aweskme!) I decided to try out a coworking space. Got a reserved desk at a WeWork walking distance from home and really like the experience so far! Short walk to work, sort of a community feeling at the office (well haven’t made any friends Yet but it at least seems possible to), master of my own space, and whenever I want I can choose to work from a coffee shop or wherever seems convenient ...

  Best of all worlds so far!

• by PopeDotNinja on 6/3/19, 1:41 PM

  The problem with remote work is working for a team that hasn't committed to making remote work tenable. It's too easy to miss out on whiteboard sessions & hallway conversations, and resentment by people who don't like making special accommodations for remote workers definitely happens.

• by kaiju0 on 6/3/19, 2:12 PM

  The number one request by a huge margin was put forward. Then the first thing mentioned is the dangers of remote work. Seems an odd tack to take.

  That being said I really like remote work. But you have to be proactive in your role to be successful. I've found the main danger to be manager changes.

  The previous manager accepted and worked with remote personnel. The new one does not like it so they create a situation. Then solve it by canceling the remote program. I'm pretty sure this is where most of the negativity comes from.

• by ChuckNorris89 on 6/3/19, 1:40 PM

  Please tell that to the European employers.

  Most, especially in the German speaking part of Europe, are still run like factories, barely have flexible working hours and don't even want to hear about remote work as managers prefer having a close eye on employees at all time.

• by mattferderer on 6/3/19, 2:33 PM

  Working remote is great but still requires a quality company for it to be enjoyable.

  Meetings should be treated like everyone is remote. If people attend from their desk, these tend to work out better & you avoid unintentional things that make it difficult for remote employees to attend.

  Having the majority of conversations done via e-mail or a chat tool & properly documented in something like OneNote or Evernote or a project management tool goes a long way in keeping everyone on the same page as well. This is good for non-remote teams as well.

  Allowing flexibility in time & location goes a long way in making happy employees in my experience. It shows you trust them to get the work done. Sure, some people will abuse it but those aren't people you want on your team anyways.

  As stated by others, being a remote worker doesn't mean you need to be a hermit either. There are tons of ways to still go out & socialize with people. Even on remote teams, I still find a good chunk of my day is socializing via video chat meetings where someone is bound to go off topic. People also login early & chat about life.

• by eequah9L on 6/3/19, 1:53 PM

  I suspect that asking about "experiencing negative aftereffects of remote work" just means that people who think that their work life sucks and happen to be remotees are going to say "yes". I want to see the numbers for "negative aftereffects of on-site work".

• by marktangotango on 6/3/19, 1:31 PM

  I personally haven’t experienced any of these issues with remote work, but then I had many years of experience before my first remote position, as senior and often lead. I was the type to seldom seek help, but was often the one sought out for help. My theory is the more one is accostomed to working on their own, even in an office, the easier it is to work fully remote successfully. Has anyone else experienced this?

• by jmkni on 6/3/19, 2:23 PM

  I have learned the hard way that I am not good at remote work.

  I recognize that I'm in the minority here, but I actually need to get up, have a shower, leave my flat and go into an office with people for my mental health.

  I have zero issue with other people working remotely, in fact I envy them.

• by gedy on 6/3/19, 2:23 PM

  A lot of the comments seem to be about remote work as some preference or something; the biggest driver I’ve seen though, however, is that housing is unaffordable near the office. Remote work makes housing more affordable for many folks. It also seems like it skews towards older folks, likely due to having families and children needing more room and better schools.

• by ken on 6/3/19, 3:35 PM

  With virtually no tech companies offering private offices any more, this isn't surprising. Companies won't give employees what they need, so employees are hacking the system to find a way to get it anyway.

  One of the first steps given here for remote work is to "set-up or find a space that lets you stay productive", which will enable you to "Stay focused on tasks and be able to fully disconnect whenever required". Sound familiar?

  That's what private office advocates have been saying for years. The only difference is that companies refuse to allow this within the walls of the company. I'm surprised the companies aren't also pushing to have these people reclassified as independent contractors and not employees.

• by cracauer on 6/3/19, 2:45 PM

  I wonder how much of this doesn't actually have to do with the home, but rather office conditions:

  - open seating and/or highly sound-reflective surfaces

  - unfixable A/C and/or drafts and/or allergens

  - all methods of transportation to the place where the office is are unsupported (e.g. Cambridge, MA)

  - jerks cruising the office

  - unwanted attention not or only pretentiously connected to work

• by badatshipping on 6/3/19, 2:50 PM

  The biggest benefit of remote work is that it directly rewards productivity. At an office if you finish your work early you can’t just go home; you’re expected to do more work. With remote work, if you finish in 2 hours what takes other people your rank 8, you can stockpile commits and just take the day off.

• by ilaksh on 6/3/19, 3:17 PM

  I think it's worth mentioning how remote work makes society more sustainable.

  The energy usage and CO2 output for commuting versus using the internet is dramatically in favor of remote work.

  In fact, if we are concerned with those things, I believe that commuting every day for jobs that can be done online should be illegal.

• by blueyes on 6/3/19, 3:56 PM

  I have worked remotely and also managed a remote team. There are causes of remote work that I consider positive, and causes I consider negative. The positive causes are that companies have access to a much wider pool of talent all over the world, and remote workers have more jobs to choose from. The negative causes are: 1) many cities are failing to provide affordable housing, so it doesn't make financial sense for people on the same team to work in physical proximity to each other. 2) there has been a wave of xenophobia in the Western liberal economies that has made it more difficult for talent outside those economies to migrate.

• by asdfman123 on 6/3/19, 2:07 PM

  > We tend to think of mental health disorders as something that happens to others

  Oh, that's hilarious. I certainly don't.

• by xfitm3 on 6/3/19, 2:02 PM

  Your manager makes all the difference. Having a remote manager is the key.

• by fendy3002 on 6/3/19, 1:28 PM

  Is remote overtime that bad? I guess I'll consent to put work at 10 hours a day (1 hour break included), in exchange of 1 hour commute time.

  I wanna try remote working, wonder how it'll goes through.

• by Rapidfir3 on 6/3/19, 3:41 PM

  One small thing I want to add is that as someone with many hobbies and goals not related to my job I love the idea of getting X amount of work done and then being done as early as 2 or 3.

  Those extra hours to make more progress on whatever personal project(s) I'm working on at that time keep me motivated and, more importantly, happy. Which means I'll enjoy doing my actual work more (or just tolerate it better) and you'll probably get better results from me.

• by drngdds on 6/3/19, 2:45 PM

  I wouldn't want to work 100% remotely, mostly because of the loneliness they talk about. But I would probably take it over my current situation of working in an open office 100% of the time, because open offices are a special level of hell for anyone with attention issues or sensory sensitivities.

  Also, do people actually think "infinite vacation" is a perk? I like having a fixed number of vacation days that I can take without question or explanation.

• by semanticjudo on 6/3/19, 2:50 PM

  It appears to me that work environment is a personal preference based on an array of personality traits and motivations mostly opaque to most people until they've had a chance to try a few out. Further, it seems that the preferences fall into a few categories that are broadly represented in the population. Each has objective pros and cons but for any individual, the cons are easily outweighed by our preferences and motivations.

  Once you realize this, articles regarding "X environment has Y good and Z bad" stop providing any value. What I want to read about is how to effectively manage a company to allow my employees to 1) discover the environment they prefer 2) be in that environment and 3) maintain a high performing team across those environments. Given considerations around maintaining culture, communication challenges and "informal, de-facto decision makers" forming up where people to choose to work closely together, #3 is a challenge I haven't seen a good answer to. (e.g. office or co-working employees naturally have a networking advantage and can quickly form an "in group" that makes decisions while, at best, unconsciously leaving remote workers out)

• by dekhn on 6/3/19, 2:34 PM

  I would love to work remotely- I am already productive when working from home on a big monitor in a quiet room- but I always worry that eventually I'd become decoupled from my coworkers and isolated.

  Also there are many things at my startup where we really all need to be in the same place to make a decision- I don't think slack or other chat apps can really replace the high bandwidth in person discussions for important decision making.

• by rdtsc on 6/3/19, 3:21 PM

  Been working remotely for 4 years and so far it worked really well. One of the key factors is that most of the team is remote. So remote is a default here. In the previous position, we had some people working remotely, and it was tough for them. They'd miss a lot of context for why some decisions were made and it was very frustrating. So I'd put that at the very top of the list of things to have for remote work risks.

  > Intentionally carve a space and routine and set up a separate remote working space

  Yes. It's very important to have a separate "office" space. Then get dressed in the morning, get ready as if you're heading out of the door to an actual office. In the evening at 5pm close the laptop, walk out of the office and closer the door behind you. And you're done for the day.

• by erdo on 6/3/19, 2:47 PM

  Is it that people love remote working, or that they hate commuting?

  I would prefer a 20 min commute on a clean train, to a nice office than remote working (and I did have that on an Amsterdam based contract).

  But an hour plus drive to an industrial estate in the middle of nowhere - I'd maybe push for a remote option.

• by dpods on 6/3/19, 6:28 PM

  We're big proponents of location flexibility in the workplace at Out Of Office. Work doesn't have to be so black and white with 100% in the office or 100% remote work. We think a combination of both working in the office and offering employees one or two flexible days to work from home or a coffee shop leads to higher employee retention.

  I'm 100% remote but have never experienced some of the downsides mentioned in the article, but I know others who have. I'd like to see companies transition from their rigid policies to more flexibility that gives their employees greater control over their schedule.

• by vpmpaul on 6/3/19, 2:32 PM

  I think there is a sort of subconscious push for this that not everyone attributes. In tech work if you are at an office you tend to get "dump trucked" work even if it is not your domain or responsibility. "I gave it to you its yours now figure it out"

  The reality is bad management is the rule rather than the exception in most of the world. If you are home you are "out of sight out of mind" for MBWA(management by walking around)managers. At the very least it requires a manager to stop think before just running over and screaming we need this done today type stuff.

• by siffland on 6/3/19, 2:45 PM

  Last contract i was on everyone was remote. I ended up driving in everyday to work on the systems because i was one of 3 people who lived in the same city as the systems.

  I could hardly ever get ahold of anyone. They would just not be there. Come to find out most would only work the 4 core hours (10-2 CST) we were required, then "work" after hours when no one was online. We lost the contract.

  Remote CAN work and work well, you just need management in place to keep the ducks in line.

• by DanielleMolloy on 6/3/19, 2:28 PM

  The optimal situation for me is having the freedom to decide whether it makes sense to be at the office for meetings, technical discussions, ideas; or whether I need full uninterrupted focus which is easier to achieve at home (without building closing times, commuting, and with the choice to work late into the night). I think purely remote work would make me feel very self-centered and disconnected (even though I'm leaning towards the introvert spectrum).

• by dmode on 6/3/19, 3:49 PM

  I wonder if the author misread the poll referenced in this article. When people choose remote work, often they are referring to the ability to work 1 or 2 days remotely in a week. Most companies in the Bay Area allow that and are quite flexible on where you work from if you are traveling. I don't think that can extrapolated to being fully remote

• by icxa on 6/3/19, 1:40 PM

  The poll asks what is most important to you, and they failed to leave out salary and other more obvious ones as one of the options.

  It would be a much more sound poll if it was framed as "Among these options, which one is the most important when looking for a new job"

• by rconti on 6/3/19, 3:13 PM

  One enormous ad that won't go away and can't be closed. Sweet.

• by stuff4ben on 6/3/19, 3:13 PM

  I've always hated working from home. Too much distraction, not enough verbal interaction with my team, and not enough face-time with my boss and his boss. Now that I'm a manager and manage a team that is remote to me (but colocated for everyone else including my boss) it's just terrible. I'm now a remote worker, while the rest of my team is mostly in-office. And yes that means that my boss goes directly to my team to get stuff done completely bypassing me. Sometimes he'll let me know, sometimes I find out after the fact. It's basically the worst of both worlds and I would never do this again.

• by jackcosgrove on 6/3/19, 3:03 PM

  I know everyone is different, and noisy offices can be disruptive to some, but I can't help think that an ulterior motive with working from home is working less.

  Maybe work from home will be how we reduce the workweek to account for the diminishing need for work.