As someone who has been the manager in those discussions I see four things to help your manager be supportive:
1. The company policy: of the company has a no-remote policy this will be very difficult. If the company has a limited-remote policy, it’s already much easier, it means asking for additional remote days on top of existing policy and provides you an opportunity to show that you are productive working remote
2. Your productivity and mutual trust: on the individual level I like to believe everybody can be productive remote. On the aggregate it didn’t work that way though. Some people would use the remote time for personal matters and chalk up a day with limited output to ‘I was doing research’, others would have twice the output they had at the office. It’s difficult to know up front where someone will fall on that scale. If you can show with 1-2 days remote that you can be productive, it’s a huge help in this decision
3. Spill-over effects. If others in your team are (possibly) not productive remote it might be difficult to give you a full remote opportunity. Others will expect the same privileges and it might be easier to limit it for everybody rather than explaining individuals that I dont trust them remote yet.
4. Interactions: if the office has a weekly townhall, or if we have a quarterly long-term planning session, can you join these, or do we need to setup video and mics for that? It helps if you can be in person on these moments (even if you’re not convinced they’re always useful)
> Some people would use the remote time for personal matters and chalk up a day with limited output to ‘I was doing research’
Be careful with this, because it can be a form of selection bias. I've run plenty of errands and had plenty of non-productive days from the office too. This stuff is unavoidable. If you're going to put WFH under intense scrutiny, make sure to put office work under the same level of scrutiny otherwise it might just be that you notice unproductive days more because you're looking harder.
At a previous company, the WFH policy included a question "How will your performance be measured when working from home?" to which I answered "The same as when at the office", but the question implies a level of suspicion that sets the tone for the whole thing. If you want to allow WFH but are concerned about productivity, do it in good faith and allow enough time to get a statistically significant sample size, and actually compare it with office work rather than just looking at the raw numbers in isolation.
Edit to add: You might also find that people will choose to WFH on days they were planning to run errands, but they likely would have anyway had they worked from the office, so you need to account for this too.
The "Spill-over" effects are a great observation. In previous teams I had at least 1 or 2 guys I would really not trust remotely. They just needed fairly constant motivation and for lack of a better word "baby sitting". Their work and output was good, they were just not as disciplined or self motivating.
Remote has to be baked into the company culture, otherwise you'll forever be the outsider, and be the first to be let go when the company hits tough times.
Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. Find a company that hires only remote and you're golden. Plenty of them out there. In my experience they're a good mixture of casual and results-oriented.
You can't really fake anything with a remote company. You don't get any points for showing up. At the same time, the amount of time-wasting activities created by people who are searching for 'participation rewards' is small or none.
Or, put another way, if you wanted to be treated like an adult, find a company that hires adults.
Agreed. I’ve worked remote for over 10 years but mostly all 100% remote companies.
My recent experience with a company that allowed remote work but was 95% in-office was absolutely miserable. They won’t accomodate any change in communication style, tools, and they’ll regularly have important discussions in the office without you. And you’ll never change their culture. Plus as others have said, those kind of places will never give senior positions to remote workers.
This has been my experience. I managed to switch to working remotely 100% by saying "I need to move to another town, either I start working remotely or I'll need to switch jobs". My boss wanted me to say, but not enough was done (by anyone, me included) to really make it work. I wasn't let go, they were still happy with me, but I decided to leave after about half a year, even though there were definitely aspects of working remotely that I loved.
^ this is the answer. I'm currently working my first remote job, and we have a robust remote culture.
Remote work is hard to do well. We're constantly iterating on it and trying to improve it. It's not always intuitive. If your company isn't focused on it, it will not work.
Not necessarily. Pretty much any company that is spread out should have no problem dealing with remote workers. Once you have people reporting to people who are not local it doesn't really matter who's where because you're either in the same building or you're not. Once you're not in the same building doesn't really matter if people are working in a house in Ohio or from an office in Bangalore.
People routinely work from all sorts of places do so in a manner that causes problems for others it doesn't really matter. Most managers don't care so long as they know what timezone you are in and when you can be expected to be available on chat/phone/whatever.
This has been my experience thus far as well. It hasn't really mattered how well I could frame productivity or measurable improvements in my quality of life to an immediate manager or team - ultimately if the senior leadership dislikes the idea of remote work, each level beneath them will hesitate to fully embrace it.
I've found that companies that promote work-life balance as one of their strengths are the best places to ask or test the waters.
I can second this. Working remotely is a skill that needs to be learned. I worked for a fully remote team. After that, I'm much more confident in convincing others I can be productive remotely.
As someone else commented in this thread, visibility into what you're doing is very important. Especially in the beginning, don't push your manager to just trust you. Show what you're doing.
Firstly, ensure that you are always seen to be productive and delivering even when you're not being watched. The most important thing to build trust is for people to see that you can be trusted to do your work to a high standard without supervision.
Once this has been achieved, move to the next stage of your plan:
"I'm not coming in on Wednesday, I have an appointment I need to attend to a 11:45am and 4 hours of commute is unproductive so I'm going to get my work done from home."
Ensure that your deliverables are visible when you work from home - go the extra mile to ensure that your efforts are seen. Visibility is highly important here.
Do this periodically for a few months and eventually tell them that you will be working from home on Wednesdays from this point forward. This is much easier to do when you've got a reputation for delivering the goods. Continue to ensure that the work you deliver from home is visible.
After a little while of this, up it to two days a week and perhaps this will be okay. I find that 2-3 days a week from home is plenty for my sanity. I need to be in the office for the social aspect and to feel like I'm part of the team.
Completely cutting myself off from the camaraderie of the office doesn't do anything for my sense of wellbeing. So I usually try to be in the office a couple of days a week, just for my own sanity.
I worked over the summer for a company based out of Vancouver and never got to meet the team because it was work from home for 5 days a week. This was hard. I actually went so far as to get farm hands for my farm, as much so that I didn't feel alone as for farm labour. At the end of the summer, I negotiated a part time contract with them for another 6 months so I could take on a local client so I'd have a social outlet.
As an introvert, visibility has always been an issue for me. Last week I had a big task for which I put in well over 10 hours a day. When people see it's done sooner than expected they just assume that is was easier. Meanwhile, other people get a lot of credits for some things because they are apt at subtly (or not so subtly) mentioning it. Maybe it's something I still have to learn.
I just told my boss I was moving, and let them offer.
Working for HP in Atlanta, I'd already proved myself during the '96 Olympics, when even the 12 miles to work was impossible. In 2000, our rent went out of sight; we owned 7 rural acres -- about 800 miles away -- so we just decided to move. I figured my boss would let me telecommute, but I didn't ask for it: I just told him, very honestly, that I was moving, and why. He said, "That's fair. I support you in this move, if you understand that you won't have the same advancement opportunities as someone who's in the office." I agreed, and that was that. I worked another 15 years that way, until HP fell apart and I wanted to change jobs.
Same. I came back from a long work trip (3 mo in a foreign country) and said "I'm moving. I'm either moving and I'm going to keep working with you it I'm moving and I'm not. I'd like to keep working eih you." The reply was something like "Let us know when you get there." We a had no remote culture for a while but eventually started a couple small (3 people) remote offices. That opened the door and I've been working remote ever since.
I'm with a different company now. The original company didn't actually handle full remote well. Poor communication made everything difficult. The new job has a pretty strong remote culture. MKe sure you out in the effort of no one else does or you'll be unhappy.
same. i worked on-site for 1 year. then told them i was moving, from a 30 min commute to 1.30 hr commute (imagine DC beltway work-hour traffic), and that I'm not willing to do that every day. that's it, didn't say i'm gonna quit, or that i want to work remote etc.
they said 'would you like to try working remote for a few months, see if it works out for both of us ?'. I agreed and few months became 4 years. I'd visit the office once a month for department-wide meetings, so they wouldn't forget my ugly mug.
of course, database stuff is very well suited for remote work, so I might have lucked out there.. then again, when it came time for a promotion after 5 years, they gave me a decent raise, but on the condition 'you have to come in once a week'. i took the raise but left soon after.
My company moved from Chicago suburbs to Tampa FL and I didn't want to relocate to Tampa.
I was already working 2 days per week from home, so I simply told them I wasn't relocating with the company and I would work remotely. It hardly matters at all since my manager and 2/3 of my direct reports are located in Germany so I would have effectively been remote anyway.
Seems to be quite a common pattern here. So, trying to convince your boss is probably very difficult and maybe even waste of time. Instead just quit and try to find a remote job instead (which might be your current job - just tell your employer that you are quitting because you want a remote job, and they might offer a remote position).
What's your industry? Can you give any other details about the company? I've always been interested in these "lifestyle" companies but I'm not sure where to begin.
I've been remote for 4 years and it all started at a company who didn't have a remote culture, but my boss wasn't too worried about me going remote.
I was on a software team for 2 months before finding out I needed to move. I told my boss I had to move in 4 months, but I really wanted to keep my position and wanted to switch to working remotely. More than half of the engineering team at the time was offshore; however, they were all in an office with close communication with the higher-ups there. My boss basically said to me that he'd been working with remote folks for his entire career and if the other engineers had no problem with it, he didn't see an issue either.
4 years later I'm still remote and I couldn't be happier. Not at that same company, but at a new remote position.
The offshore team, previous bias to remote employees, and potentially the need to keep me onboard to get shit done for cheap helped me here. There were other employees who inquired about going remote, but they were turned down - one even needed to move for their SO (same as my case), so they ended up leaving the company when they moved.
It's really hit or miss unless you find a remote position where the company expects you to be remote right off the bat or you just get lucky and your boss trusts you to switch. Just remember that trust goes both ways - if your company doesn't trust you, maybe don't trust that you'll retire there. Going remote is a great way to test both sides of trust.
We've been transitioning to be more supportive of remote work. We're a small company (~30), and have never had much an official policy. Generally, it's - you're adults, get your work done. But the culture was such that it was basically expected you'd be in the office most of the time, and whenever someone worked remotely they seemed to feel a need to explain why.
There were even times in the past where my boss talked to me about wanting me to be physically in the office more. These days I often only go in twice a week for less than half a day for meetings. Recently our boss worked remotely for a month from the other side of the globe. Our head of sales is considering moving 1000 miles away while staying on remotely.
We're tight knit and small enough that it hasn't been difficult to accommodate more remote work.
> There were other employees who inquired about going remote, but they were turned down - one even needed to move for their SO (same as my case), so they ended up leaving the company when they moved.
Short answer: A week or two after I started working remote, my boss realized that I could do it very effectively.
Long answer: I married a medical student, and due the matching process, had very little control over where I would end up moving to. I told my boss, boss's boss, head of the company, ect, that there was a chance that I'd have to move in about a year. Throughout the year, I periodically reminded everyone that I might move.
Once matching happened, I declared where I was moving. Our parent company happened to be local, and we worked closely with a team that was a 60 minute commute to where I was going. We arranged for me to have an office with the team that we worked with; but we all knew that I would primarily telecommute.
Except for a 1-month period of very bad weather, I commuted to my new office 1-2 times a week. It worked very well until our parent company announced they were closing my new office and moving everyone to what would be a 90 minute commute, in rush hour, for me.
I then asked to be a full-time telecommuter, and the answer was, "you work very well remote." A day or two after I packed my office up, our parent company sold us. I never went to the new office, although I honestly thought I was going to go there 1-2 times a month. It was a very nice location, and I was really looking forward to spending the day there when I needed to interact with our team there.
As a manager of software engineering teams I can tell you that: there are two options to be as productive remotely as within office hours.
1) Either the whole team communicates in a remote manner, e.g. holding meetings via videoconferencing only and writing down follow-ups, meticulously logging progress via special tools, putting a lot of effort into documenting everything, so any member of the team can quickly find literally any piece of information and manage most of the tasks without asking peers for help.
2) Or you should ask for a position as mechanical and routine and async and redundant as possible, like I don't know, fully scripted first line of customer support, or data markup, or monkey testing, or something like that.
This is because most of the teamwork is actually about information flow, and the bigger the team - the larger the stream. In case of partial remote working, when some team members are indulged with home office days or even full remote, other members, and especially leads and managers, are just paying these outstanding info bills, just to keep remoters in the loop with the team and company as a whole.
So in my opinion the only way to work remote in a close-quarters team is to either be extremely special and indispensable just to strong-arm your privilege, or be largerly underpaid to justify communication tax you will lay on your teammates and direct supervisor.
1) most mechanical and routine jobs will be automated first. So in XXI it is not a wise choice.
2) Any team manager's duty is to reduce bus factor [1], so strong-arming remote job from competent supervisor should entail dissolving or breaking apart a unique employee's position.
I did it by violating company rules, proving that I was more effective at home, and then forcing them to either fire me or let me work remote. I had worked there for several years, and the rules were really stupid (nobody leaves until everyone is done with their work, and I had been there for 10 hours or so and had family obligations), so I wasn't really worried about explaining that to a future employer.
I don't recommend going that route, but I _really_ wanted to work from home and was ready to quit if I didn't get it. I had requested a trial period of working from home two days a week and didn't even get one day. I brought it up every few months, but no progress was made, so I stopped caring about their stupid rules and did what I had to in order to focus on my work (I even moved my computer to an abandoned room at the opposite side of the room to prove I was more productive away from distractions).
My boss has a weird phobia of people working remote despite everyone who does work remote getting more done than those who work in the office. It's weird, and your boss is probably not as bad as mine in this regard.
Honestly, I recommend asking your boss to give you a trial of working from home for 2 days/week and prove that you're able to get more done. Once that's done, push for more days until you're only coming in for meetings, and then start pushing for whatever other pieces you'll need to go fully remote (virtual meetings, move conversations to a digital format, etc). Even if they say no, they'll recognize your initiative if you keep the dialogue about you giving more value to the company.
I'm a bit (maybe more than a bit..) of a limit pusher too, and over the course of a half dozen years or so I've helped push our small company from saying they're ok with remote work - but yet I'd occasionally get talked to by the boss about coming into the office more - to personally coming in often less than half a day in a week (I work remote the most by a good margin), our sales lead considering moving across the country with full leadership support, and our boss recently working remotely for a month from across the globe.
Our boss is great, and does support remote work, it just seemed like there was this mental hurdle - inertia from social norms - that took a while to get past. He said he was ok with working remotely, but would still be bothered by simply not seeing a person for days at a time. There wasn't an issue staying in communication, and no issue with work getting done, so eventually he had to reconcile his position.
Should you expect a pay cut if you transition from on-site to remote?
Someone proposed something like that to me recently, arguing that if the cost of living in my home city is less than in the office city then I shouldn't be paid as much. I'm thinking pay should be based on productivity and value to the company instead of value to me.
"I'm thinking pay should be based on productivity and value to the company instead of value to me."
Value produced is the upper cap of the pay, the lower cap is dictated by how much competition there is on the market. The employer can look at it like buying any other kind of service. If you work remotely, you compete with all the freelancers/contractors around the world. If the company values local employees, and you can work locally at the office, there is much less competition for that kind of position.
Cost of living adjusted pay is a fact of life and you will struggle to find a firm that does not do it. GitLab the company has a cool salary calculator so you can at least see exactly how they do it. No one wants to be paid less for the same work, but if you take a small pay cut and are putting more money in the bank every month, is it a pay cut? :)
I’ve been remote for 7 years. A lot of people seem to reference company culture as the seed for wether or not being remote will be successful. I disagree.
The company doesn’t care about you. And the company culture certainly doesn’t care about where you are. Success in being remote depends solely on your managers preference for keeping watch – and wether or not the majority of your teams talents and productivity takes place remote as well.
If your manager doesn’t like work happening outside of arms reach, you won’t be successful. If 60-70% of progress happens within reach of your managers arms, you won’t be successful.
The only other major impediment is top level company policy. Read: Yahoo and IBM.
While it's a gamble, one way that worked for me 2 years ago: Work extremely hard and dazzle them for 6 months. Make sure that you are extremely critical to the project you are on. Give notice and let them offer. I didn't plan it out when I joined but I needed to move out of the area because of elder care issues. I was hoping they would offer but wasn't counting on it. It worked out well for me and the company.
Our family was moving in two months due to my wife's job. I told my boss we were moving out of state and asked if I could work remote. Since I'm a developer, he said yes, even though we are a no remote worker company. I had been working at the company for about 2 years and I believe he said yes due to my punctuality, work ethic, and projects I was already lead on.
There were/are so drawbacks that I should mention.
-I didn't get a raise that year because he wanted to make sure this remote thing was going to work.
-Everyone in the office gets free lunch every Friday but me since I am remote.
-I miss out on every company team building event
-I miss out on the company big Christmas party
I could go to the company events, but I would have to pay for my own flight and hotel. So I don't see myself going.
-I often feel disconnected with the company and only know a handful of remaining employees that still work there when I was in the office
So there are downsides to bring the only remote employee. But I have an amazing schedule and don't have to travel. This works out perfectly with dealing with 2 kids and daycare.
Btw, the raises come almost every year now and are decent. I am very content in my current situation.
So my advice is to keep your head down, come to work early, stay late and get some good experience at your current job. My boss is a big time micro manager that said yes.
I worked at a small startup as the only senior back end engineer.
I bought my plane tickets to Asia for a 6 week trip and I told my boss 2 weeks before my trip that I wasn't happy living in the bay area. I loved my job, but I wanted to live anywhere else.
Rather than fire me / have me quit, he let me start working remotely keeping California time.
This is probably the easiest one, although it only works for small companies: if you're both indispensable and likeable, you can get a lot simply by asking nicely with the very distant implication that you might leave if you don't get what you want.
(Of course, someone will cite "The graveyards are full of indispensable men"..)
This was essentially my route as well. My wife got a two year postdoc position in Germany. I actually gave them over a month of notice, since I had a rather unique position and I knew they had trouble hiring me. After a few weeks my boss confessed they weren’t sure what they were going to do, and I actually hadn’t put any thought into finding a new job, so we agreed on me doing remote.
I accomplished it by showing first, although that's probably not very helpful for your particular situation. But for anyone else:
I started as an employee of a contracting firm whose offices are all in different parts of the country from my now-employer. As a contractor, companies can be much more willing to not have you on site, especially if you aren't independent. Demonstrate enough value, and you may get a full-time offer, in which case it's a lot easier to leverage the fact that you've already proved your ability to work remote effectively.
The biggest benefit in this case was that I was able to negotiate salary as if I lived where the company is headquartered, resulting in an almost 2x increase over what I could negotiate where I am physically located.
I'm the only remote engineer at my company, which has over 100 engineers. I'm also one of the more senior engineers. I told the company that I was moving closer to family (for medical reasons) and asked if I could continue working remotely. So far its been great. I've been more productive then ever. I did go back to individual contributor from team lead for a few months but now I'm back to leading a very small team.
So the steps for me were.
1) Establish myself as a valuable asset over several years at the company
2) Move closer to family and ask if I could work remotely
3) Work really hard to establish communication lines and insert myself into the same conversations that I would have been included in at the office.
I've pretty much gotten remote from my last two jobs. I was a full time employee for at least one year before i negotiated remote. I worked my ass off for the first year and proved that i was a valuable employee, negotiating for remote was made easy by that. I just asked my manager both times during our one on one meeting. No company likes letting valuable employees go, if you can prove that you can be just as productive as a remote worker, maybe by having a "trial" period, then i think your manager will be ok with it.
Also I think it gos quite case by case. Some employees can be seen as more trustworthy than others, and with others remote work can work better than with others for other reasons.
I am moving to Spain in April and will be working remotely for the company I started contracting with back in August 2018. I did a ton of research and prepared a pitch deck and presented to my manager, who then advocated for me and moved it up the line to get approval from the department.
Some key points:
1. The company already allows a very flexible work from home schedule.
2. Although primarily focused around my region, there are a couple team members spread across the world. So it's not unprecedented.
3. The person whose role I took over (contract as well) moved to another country but then quit when they had trouble adapting to the culture (there was an eight hour time difference). So I had some possible baggage to work around.
4. I tested my ability to work off-hours and remotely with a two-week long trip to another city living with a friend and performed swimmingly.
5. You must convince them that, other than your physical presence, they will not notice any difference in quality of work, availability, or communication. Being that Spain has long working days anyway, the transition from my time (-7 GMT) to Spain (+1 GMT) will actually work out quite well from a working hours perspective.
If the company has multiple offices.. Work for a while from the second one and then rotate between them. Schedule meetings at each of the offices so you can justify this.
Also I find partial days remote works if your commute isn't so large. Work mornings from home and then afternoons in the office. Justify the work at home by early morning calls/meetings.
Have clear project plans with deliverables. Provide a weekly written update to your boss and other stake holders with the weekly progress.
[+] [-] hectormalot|7 years ago|reply
1. The company policy: of the company has a no-remote policy this will be very difficult. If the company has a limited-remote policy, it’s already much easier, it means asking for additional remote days on top of existing policy and provides you an opportunity to show that you are productive working remote
2. Your productivity and mutual trust: on the individual level I like to believe everybody can be productive remote. On the aggregate it didn’t work that way though. Some people would use the remote time for personal matters and chalk up a day with limited output to ‘I was doing research’, others would have twice the output they had at the office. It’s difficult to know up front where someone will fall on that scale. If you can show with 1-2 days remote that you can be productive, it’s a huge help in this decision
3. Spill-over effects. If others in your team are (possibly) not productive remote it might be difficult to give you a full remote opportunity. Others will expect the same privileges and it might be easier to limit it for everybody rather than explaining individuals that I dont trust them remote yet.
4. Interactions: if the office has a weekly townhall, or if we have a quarterly long-term planning session, can you join these, or do we need to setup video and mics for that? It helps if you can be in person on these moments (even if you’re not convinced they’re always useful)
[+] [-] clusmore|7 years ago|reply
Be careful with this, because it can be a form of selection bias. I've run plenty of errands and had plenty of non-productive days from the office too. This stuff is unavoidable. If you're going to put WFH under intense scrutiny, make sure to put office work under the same level of scrutiny otherwise it might just be that you notice unproductive days more because you're looking harder.
At a previous company, the WFH policy included a question "How will your performance be measured when working from home?" to which I answered "The same as when at the office", but the question implies a level of suspicion that sets the tone for the whole thing. If you want to allow WFH but are concerned about productivity, do it in good faith and allow enough time to get a statistically significant sample size, and actually compare it with office work rather than just looking at the raw numbers in isolation.
Edit to add: You might also find that people will choose to WFH on days they were planning to run errands, but they likely would have anyway had they worked from the office, so you need to account for this too.
[+] [-] tnolet|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kstenerud|7 years ago|reply
Find a job that already offers remote.
[+] [-] yawn_010101|7 years ago|reply
You can't really fake anything with a remote company. You don't get any points for showing up. At the same time, the amount of time-wasting activities created by people who are searching for 'participation rewards' is small or none.
Or, put another way, if you wanted to be treated like an adult, find a company that hires adults.
[+] [-] eeeeeeeeeeeee|7 years ago|reply
My recent experience with a company that allowed remote work but was 95% in-office was absolutely miserable. They won’t accomodate any change in communication style, tools, and they’ll regularly have important discussions in the office without you. And you’ll never change their culture. Plus as others have said, those kind of places will never give senior positions to remote workers.
[+] [-] marxama|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tenaciousDaniel|7 years ago|reply
Remote work is hard to do well. We're constantly iterating on it and trying to improve it. It's not always intuitive. If your company isn't focused on it, it will not work.
[+] [-] dsfyu404ed|7 years ago|reply
People routinely work from all sorts of places do so in a manner that causes problems for others it doesn't really matter. Most managers don't care so long as they know what timezone you are in and when you can be expected to be available on chat/phone/whatever.
[+] [-] ddelt|7 years ago|reply
I've found that companies that promote work-life balance as one of their strengths are the best places to ask or test the waters.
[+] [-] krab|7 years ago|reply
As someone else commented in this thread, visibility into what you're doing is very important. Especially in the beginning, don't push your manager to just trust you. Show what you're doing.
[+] [-] balabaster|7 years ago|reply
Firstly, ensure that you are always seen to be productive and delivering even when you're not being watched. The most important thing to build trust is for people to see that you can be trusted to do your work to a high standard without supervision.
Once this has been achieved, move to the next stage of your plan:
"I'm not coming in on Wednesday, I have an appointment I need to attend to a 11:45am and 4 hours of commute is unproductive so I'm going to get my work done from home."
Ensure that your deliverables are visible when you work from home - go the extra mile to ensure that your efforts are seen. Visibility is highly important here.
Do this periodically for a few months and eventually tell them that you will be working from home on Wednesdays from this point forward. This is much easier to do when you've got a reputation for delivering the goods. Continue to ensure that the work you deliver from home is visible.
After a little while of this, up it to two days a week and perhaps this will be okay. I find that 2-3 days a week from home is plenty for my sanity. I need to be in the office for the social aspect and to feel like I'm part of the team.
Completely cutting myself off from the camaraderie of the office doesn't do anything for my sense of wellbeing. So I usually try to be in the office a couple of days a week, just for my own sanity.
I worked over the summer for a company based out of Vancouver and never got to meet the team because it was work from home for 5 days a week. This was hard. I actually went so far as to get farm hands for my farm, as much so that I didn't feel alone as for farm labour. At the end of the summer, I negotiated a part time contract with them for another 6 months so I could take on a local client so I'd have a social outlet.
[+] [-] meuk|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] billwear|7 years ago|reply
Working for HP in Atlanta, I'd already proved myself during the '96 Olympics, when even the 12 miles to work was impossible. In 2000, our rent went out of sight; we owned 7 rural acres -- about 800 miles away -- so we just decided to move. I figured my boss would let me telecommute, but I didn't ask for it: I just told him, very honestly, that I was moving, and why. He said, "That's fair. I support you in this move, if you understand that you won't have the same advancement opportunities as someone who's in the office." I agreed, and that was that. I worked another 15 years that way, until HP fell apart and I wanted to change jobs.
[+] [-] igetspam|7 years ago|reply
I'm with a different company now. The original company didn't actually handle full remote well. Poor communication made everything difficult. The new job has a pretty strong remote culture. MKe sure you out in the effort of no one else does or you'll be unhappy.
[+] [-] cmonnow|7 years ago|reply
they said 'would you like to try working remote for a few months, see if it works out for both of us ?'. I agreed and few months became 4 years. I'd visit the office once a month for department-wide meetings, so they wouldn't forget my ugly mug.
of course, database stuff is very well suited for remote work, so I might have lucked out there.. then again, when it came time for a promotion after 5 years, they gave me a decent raise, but on the condition 'you have to come in once a week'. i took the raise but left soon after.
[+] [-] vidanay|7 years ago|reply
My company moved from Chicago suburbs to Tampa FL and I didn't want to relocate to Tampa.
I was already working 2 days per week from home, so I simply told them I wasn't relocating with the company and I would work remotely. It hardly matters at all since my manager and 2/3 of my direct reports are located in Germany so I would have effectively been remote anyway.
[+] [-] ahje|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jerguismi|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cpr|7 years ago|reply
(29 years ago. I guess Em Software is a "lifestyle" company (just 4 of us working out of our homes, so you can discount the anecdata...).)
[+] [-] TravelAndFood|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robodale|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwaway8728|7 years ago|reply
I was on a software team for 2 months before finding out I needed to move. I told my boss I had to move in 4 months, but I really wanted to keep my position and wanted to switch to working remotely. More than half of the engineering team at the time was offshore; however, they were all in an office with close communication with the higher-ups there. My boss basically said to me that he'd been working with remote folks for his entire career and if the other engineers had no problem with it, he didn't see an issue either.
4 years later I'm still remote and I couldn't be happier. Not at that same company, but at a new remote position.
The offshore team, previous bias to remote employees, and potentially the need to keep me onboard to get shit done for cheap helped me here. There were other employees who inquired about going remote, but they were turned down - one even needed to move for their SO (same as my case), so they ended up leaving the company when they moved.
It's really hit or miss unless you find a remote position where the company expects you to be remote right off the bat or you just get lucky and your boss trusts you to switch. Just remember that trust goes both ways - if your company doesn't trust you, maybe don't trust that you'll retire there. Going remote is a great way to test both sides of trust.
[+] [-] qes|7 years ago|reply
There were even times in the past where my boss talked to me about wanting me to be physically in the office more. These days I often only go in twice a week for less than half a day for meetings. Recently our boss worked remotely for a month from the other side of the globe. Our head of sales is considering moving 1000 miles away while staying on remotely.
We're tight knit and small enough that it hasn't been difficult to accommodate more remote work.
[+] [-] chosenbreed37|7 years ago|reply
Do you know why they were turned down?
[+] [-] gwbas1c|7 years ago|reply
Long answer: I married a medical student, and due the matching process, had very little control over where I would end up moving to. I told my boss, boss's boss, head of the company, ect, that there was a chance that I'd have to move in about a year. Throughout the year, I periodically reminded everyone that I might move.
Once matching happened, I declared where I was moving. Our parent company happened to be local, and we worked closely with a team that was a 60 minute commute to where I was going. We arranged for me to have an office with the team that we worked with; but we all knew that I would primarily telecommute.
Except for a 1-month period of very bad weather, I commuted to my new office 1-2 times a week. It worked very well until our parent company announced they were closing my new office and moving everyone to what would be a 90 minute commute, in rush hour, for me.
I then asked to be a full-time telecommuter, and the answer was, "you work very well remote." A day or two after I packed my office up, our parent company sold us. I never went to the new office, although I honestly thought I was going to go there 1-2 times a month. It was a very nice location, and I was really looking forward to spending the day there when I needed to interact with our team there.
[+] [-] SergeAx|7 years ago|reply
1) Either the whole team communicates in a remote manner, e.g. holding meetings via videoconferencing only and writing down follow-ups, meticulously logging progress via special tools, putting a lot of effort into documenting everything, so any member of the team can quickly find literally any piece of information and manage most of the tasks without asking peers for help.
2) Or you should ask for a position as mechanical and routine and async and redundant as possible, like I don't know, fully scripted first line of customer support, or data markup, or monkey testing, or something like that.
This is because most of the teamwork is actually about information flow, and the bigger the team - the larger the stream. In case of partial remote working, when some team members are indulged with home office days or even full remote, other members, and especially leads and managers, are just paying these outstanding info bills, just to keep remoters in the loop with the team and company as a whole.
So in my opinion the only way to work remote in a close-quarters team is to either be extremely special and indispensable just to strong-arm your privilege, or be largerly underpaid to justify communication tax you will lay on your teammates and direct supervisor.
[+] [-] SergeAx|7 years ago|reply
1) most mechanical and routine jobs will be automated first. So in XXI it is not a wise choice.
2) Any team manager's duty is to reduce bus factor [1], so strong-arming remote job from competent supervisor should entail dissolving or breaking apart a unique employee's position.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor
[+] [-] beatgammit|7 years ago|reply
I don't recommend going that route, but I _really_ wanted to work from home and was ready to quit if I didn't get it. I had requested a trial period of working from home two days a week and didn't even get one day. I brought it up every few months, but no progress was made, so I stopped caring about their stupid rules and did what I had to in order to focus on my work (I even moved my computer to an abandoned room at the opposite side of the room to prove I was more productive away from distractions).
My boss has a weird phobia of people working remote despite everyone who does work remote getting more done than those who work in the office. It's weird, and your boss is probably not as bad as mine in this regard.
Honestly, I recommend asking your boss to give you a trial of working from home for 2 days/week and prove that you're able to get more done. Once that's done, push for more days until you're only coming in for meetings, and then start pushing for whatever other pieces you'll need to go fully remote (virtual meetings, move conversations to a digital format, etc). Even if they say no, they'll recognize your initiative if you keep the dialogue about you giving more value to the company.
[+] [-] qes|7 years ago|reply
Our boss is great, and does support remote work, it just seemed like there was this mental hurdle - inertia from social norms - that took a while to get past. He said he was ok with working remotely, but would still be bothered by simply not seeing a person for days at a time. There wasn't an issue staying in communication, and no issue with work getting done, so eventually he had to reconcile his position.
[+] [-] ratsbane|7 years ago|reply
Someone proposed something like that to me recently, arguing that if the cost of living in my home city is less than in the office city then I shouldn't be paid as much. I'm thinking pay should be based on productivity and value to the company instead of value to me.
[+] [-] jerguismi|7 years ago|reply
Value produced is the upper cap of the pay, the lower cap is dictated by how much competition there is on the market. The employer can look at it like buying any other kind of service. If you work remotely, you compete with all the freelancers/contractors around the world. If the company values local employees, and you can work locally at the office, there is much less competition for that kind of position.
[+] [-] bitexploder|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gwbas1c|7 years ago|reply
No, but you need to realize that you're being paid based on your value to the company.
[+] [-] jiggliemon|7 years ago|reply
The company doesn’t care about you. And the company culture certainly doesn’t care about where you are. Success in being remote depends solely on your managers preference for keeping watch – and wether or not the majority of your teams talents and productivity takes place remote as well.
If your manager doesn’t like work happening outside of arms reach, you won’t be successful. If 60-70% of progress happens within reach of your managers arms, you won’t be successful.
The only other major impediment is top level company policy. Read: Yahoo and IBM.
[+] [-] miesman|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LandShark83|7 years ago|reply
There were/are so drawbacks that I should mention.
-I didn't get a raise that year because he wanted to make sure this remote thing was going to work.
-Everyone in the office gets free lunch every Friday but me since I am remote.
-I miss out on every company team building event
-I miss out on the company big Christmas party
I could go to the company events, but I would have to pay for my own flight and hotel. So I don't see myself going.
-I often feel disconnected with the company and only know a handful of remaining employees that still work there when I was in the office
So there are downsides to bring the only remote employee. But I have an amazing schedule and don't have to travel. This works out perfectly with dealing with 2 kids and daycare.
Btw, the raises come almost every year now and are decent. I am very content in my current situation.
So my advice is to keep your head down, come to work early, stay late and get some good experience at your current job. My boss is a big time micro manager that said yes.
[+] [-] itake|7 years ago|reply
I bought my plane tickets to Asia for a 6 week trip and I told my boss 2 weeks before my trip that I wasn't happy living in the bay area. I loved my job, but I wanted to live anywhere else.
Rather than fire me / have me quit, he let me start working remotely keeping California time.
[+] [-] chrisan|7 years ago|reply
I was in a small place, we both liked each other, and I simply explained my situation. Been remote every since
[+] [-] pjc50|7 years ago|reply
(Of course, someone will cite "The graveyards are full of indispensable men"..)
[+] [-] pthreadses|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] foobarchu|7 years ago|reply
I started as an employee of a contracting firm whose offices are all in different parts of the country from my now-employer. As a contractor, companies can be much more willing to not have you on site, especially if you aren't independent. Demonstrate enough value, and you may get a full-time offer, in which case it's a lot easier to leverage the fact that you've already proved your ability to work remote effectively.
The biggest benefit in this case was that I was able to negotiate salary as if I lived where the company is headquartered, resulting in an almost 2x increase over what I could negotiate where I am physically located.
[+] [-] 10000100001010|7 years ago|reply
So the steps for me were. 1) Establish myself as a valuable asset over several years at the company 2) Move closer to family and ask if I could work remotely 3) Work really hard to establish communication lines and insert myself into the same conversations that I would have been included in at the office.
[+] [-] sleepysysadmin|7 years ago|reply
No convincing needed.
[+] [-] strikelaserclaw|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jerguismi|7 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thisiswilson|7 years ago|reply
I am moving to Spain in April and will be working remotely for the company I started contracting with back in August 2018. I did a ton of research and prepared a pitch deck and presented to my manager, who then advocated for me and moved it up the line to get approval from the department.
Some key points:
1. The company already allows a very flexible work from home schedule.
2. Although primarily focused around my region, there are a couple team members spread across the world. So it's not unprecedented.
3. The person whose role I took over (contract as well) moved to another country but then quit when they had trouble adapting to the culture (there was an eight hour time difference). So I had some possible baggage to work around.
4. I tested my ability to work off-hours and remotely with a two-week long trip to another city living with a friend and performed swimmingly.
5. You must convince them that, other than your physical presence, they will not notice any difference in quality of work, availability, or communication. Being that Spain has long working days anyway, the transition from my time (-7 GMT) to Spain (+1 GMT) will actually work out quite well from a working hours perspective.
Best of luck!
[+] [-] anthony_barker|7 years ago|reply
Also I find partial days remote works if your commute isn't so large. Work mornings from home and then afternoons in the office. Justify the work at home by early morning calls/meetings.
Have clear project plans with deliverables. Provide a weekly written update to your boss and other stake holders with the weekly progress.