Remote work will never been an absolute thing. It depends on context, personal habits/preferences and most importantly: experience doing it over time.
I personally cannot work from home. COVID has made it worse as kids are home BUT even if I had the whole house to myself, I just cannot work from home. I NEED a dedicated office outside my house (yes I already have an office room in my house). Reason is simple. I don't have the discipline to work from home. I get distracted too easily. So I m not a good candidate for WFH. Do I want the flexibility when needed ? Of course. But do I WANT to work from home all the time ? Hell no.
I would say the future of work is not just remote. The future of work is "employers allowing more flexibility in work location" but as an employer myself, I am personally not in favor of 100% remote. That's me I know but sorry, not everyone is cut out for remote work.
Could this office be remote? If so, you've missed the difference between remote work and working from home. I work remote and have an office 5 minutes away in town. I share it with others, but before that I had a personal office in town. Both versions are better for focus than being at home.
This is a challenge at the moment, as those who do work outside of their homes have been forced back into them due to travel restrictions (which is what most of the suddenly-remote workforce is also managing).
Oh jeez, it's sanity-inducing to hear someone say all this. 100% agree. I'm jealous of all these people who rave about remote work. But every time I've tried working away from my coworkers, I've felt like a massive failure.
I'm mostly going to write this next bit in case it resonates with someone else, because reading your message made me feel validated, and I'd love to pay it forward :)
Back when I used to work in an office, even one day WFH would make me start to feel unhinged from my normal office reality. I'd come in, expecting people to be mad at me or disappointed in me for some minor thing -- or having something I'd felt frustrated with that I now needed to resolve -- all things that never happened when I'd work in-person. But when I'd come in on the day after, no one would ever be mad or disappointed with me as I'd thought they were, and if I asked, they'd say there was absolutely nothing to worry about.
It's something about my propensity for cycling on async communication when I can't get realtime feedback -- I'm so proud of my soft skills in-person, and I'm very tuned and empathic, but working remote... I freeze up, or misread signals or just feel apprehensive and make myself frustrated in seeking clarity, to the point of being a pain for myself or others.
Also, I'm much more accountable to myself when people are walking around me, and interrupting my distractions. Every mild "disruption" (even just a person passing through the room behind me) actually gives me a chance to recalibrate and refocus on my desired task.
Just wanted to chime in and say never is a big word in tech, VR/AR might be good enough in 1-2 decades to provide 99% of the benefit of a shared office environment.
That said, I can really relate to the challenge of keeping personal and professional separate when working from home... I keep thinking of setting up a separate room or taking a laptop outside but it is painful giving up comfortable the multi-monitor setup on my main workstation.
That can be solved, by renting a desk or dedicated office in a co-working space. I work remotely FT, and if my company paid for it, I would get a spot in a coworking space. I have a dedicated office at home, but I work from coffee shops, breweries wherever I feel like.
Nobody minds if that's what works for you. We object when you force it on employees because it's what works for you, regardless of what works for them.
I understand that, but for too long the narrative has been exclusively controlled by people like you, even though your views are in the minority, apparently. Remote should be the default, with occasional office presence so people can get to know each other. Please stop trying to enforce your views on people. Of course there will always be some amount of person to person contact, but that should not be the mandated "normal". In fact, if everyone who couldn't stomach working remotely were fired, the increase in productivity and the unmatched health benefits to everyone else would probably more than make up for it. I do not wish to live my life as a serf, I want to be a free man. If that sounds so horrible to you, maybe you're the problem.
I've worked remotely for nearly 2 years now. The majority of that time I was the only remote engineer in a company of ~80 engineers. We went fully remote just over a month ago and it has been a huge quality of life boost for me. Before everyone went remote the communication was pretty lopsided where I had to make sure I was over communicating and inserting myself strategically. Now that everyone is remote it is a lot more natural with everyone on the same playing field
Yeah, same experience. For the first time I'm on equal footing with the rest of the company. I knew what I was getting into from the start, and I can get along just fine being the only remote person, but I won't deny this has me thinking about going with a fully remote company when this is all over.
I worked remotely 17 years for a large SV tech corp doing work that was global in nature. 5 years in, they instituted a policy of having salary modifiers based on where you lived for both remote and onsite employees. Your salary wouldn't immediately change, but when it came time for increases, your compensation rate was considered. I had no problem with this policy because I lived on the side of a mountain and my house cost 1/5th a Bay Area home. Instead of a 1.5hour commute home, I would have a 1.5hr mountain bike ride out my back door. Now, the salary difference wasn't 50%, it was more like 25%, but I would have taken 50% to not have to live in the Bay Area.
The real downside was that I had minimal mobility because most of the tech world is still in the dark ages of management by proximity. Doing a job search in the startup world in the age of Covid, I assumed that there would be an explosion of WFH jobs, but most are not.
In my experience, less than 1/4 of the organisations and projects I help go remote / distributed do it for cost reasons. Most do it for brain power and efficiency. It's easier to recruit globally, especially when you're looking for very good people. We have strong data that asynchronous transparent communication increases efficiency, agency, autonomy, and decreases both the rate and cost of mistakes. It also drastically reduces the necessity of coordination management.
Let's examine this from the other side for a bit: why would a company want to pay for one developer's value in Des Moines an amount of money that could get them two or even three developers of value in Des Moines? What does the company gain by paying for one developer instead of multiple?
The value you bring may be the same, but if you commoditize yourself it's possible your employer will agree. Then react accordingly. Remember, nobody wants a shovel. They want a hole.
If equal-value employees are happy to work for 30% less in NYC than those in Des Moines, why wouldn't an employer prefer that?
You go ahead and keep holding out for your extra 30-50%. I'm very happy to fill that spot. It's not like they pay Des Moines employees $3/hour. Six figures goes a long way out here on the lake.
If the company is itself not based in NY or SF, it makes little sense and often isn't possible to offer NY and SF salaries. If remote work became the new standard, it doesn't mean that everyone is suddenly paid SF wages, instead wages will probably start to average out over a long period of time.
> They’re usually looking to discount your salary by 30-50% by some arbitrary cost of living factor.
Discount off of what? The local max in SF?
Google Does this now. Are you angry that Google isn't paying employees the same in SF and India?
Remote IS a benefit. Lack of commute. Full control over workspace. In true remote "full control" over your schedule (lunch with friends. Time shifting work at a whim. More integrated lifestyle.)
Like I said 6 months ago, please attack "physical" company comp with the same vigor as remote company comp.
(I work at GitLab, these views are my own, etc etc etc and I'm still tired of this naive hot take.)
For those working for a company that does cost of living adjustments, look into getting a virtual mailbox from https://www.anytimemailbox.com/ and "move" to your new address in Seattle, Washington. Its a great tier-1 city which will raise your income by 30%. Washington also has no state income tax. The only downside is the weather, but since you don't actually live there you can avoid that and just get yourself a nice zoom backdrop of a rainy city.
This could actually be a great startup idea - virtual "hacker houses" located in expensive cities that people can use as virtual home bases. We will take 5% of your tier-1 income to handle all your paperwork so you can be free to live where ever you want.
Very interesting study, thank you Gitlab. It would be great if the results were true and the trend could prevail in the long term. I'm one of these 16% "working remotely all the time" since six years (working frequently remote for ten years before already). I have more than enough interesting work, but I regularly had to deal with companies that were not interested in cooperation because I was not willing to work at least 50% on site. I am curious to see if Corona will change this attitude. I live in german speaking Europe, and perhaps the culture here is simply not yet ready for it.
I've made this point before but the future of remote work has and will continue to have no dependence on what workers like nor will it on how "productive" workers are. Office's have perpetually been getting worse for workers(offices -> cubicles -> open office). So it's very clear companies have never chosen one office solution to another because it is the preference of the worker.
As for the argument of changes to "productivity". For starters very few of us work in roles where productivity is a directly measurable thing. Sure you can argue about commits, lines of code, ship times, but those are all nowhere near as measurable as "widgets-per-hour". On top of this we all know that a huge portion of roles out there are arguably not productive at all (and if they are it's very hard to measure). And again, when in the history of work has declining worker productivity been solved by improving conditions for the worker? If you company goes remote and you don't work as well that way, do you think your boss is going to go "oh! I'd better talk to leadership about getting those offices again!"?
The entire reason offices still exist is because of culture. For years every SV startup I knew said they needed an office in SF because the "VCs like to see that". There has been a lot of inertia towards offices.
Now that Covid19 has broken that assumption for a bit, I think we'll see a rapid shift to remote teams because it quickly becomes clear that offices are a liability. Anecdotally I already know one start up that can no longer afford their office and so are breaking their lease with no sense of what they'll do next (so remote is the default), and a well established, very traditional office culture firm that is already stating that everyone being in the office full time will not be the norm coming out of this.
Also I think COVID has forced companies into trying it when there might have been fear or apprehension before. It takes time/resources/commitment to even try out a work from home policy - but now everyone has been forced into it.
Working fully remotely? In IT it's no-brainer, why would I spend time on everyday commuting, spend time in office where I can't feel fully comfortable, especially when company come up with open space idea and waste my productivity?
I want to get shit done, receive money and live my life.
Reimbursements? Employer should just pay more in salary, what's the difference if I rent a office or convert part of my home into office?
There is a lot of talk about remote work and COVID-19 and for me remote work in the age of COVID-19 ... it has been terrible. Mostly because I have kids, and my wife and I are both trying to work remote, and attend to the kids schooling ... it's a terrible combination for getting anything done on a 'regular' schedule.
I suspect people's remote work during COVID-19 experiences are pretty wide ranging.
"All-remote is the purest form of remote work, with each team member on a level playing field. 43% of remote workers feel that it is important to work for a company where all employees are remote."
This is interesting as it runs counter to the opinion you hear a lot that is in the vein of live and let live/give people a choice/different people have different preferences. I do think there's some truth to it. While I don't really have trouble under normal circumstances as someone who is mostly remote with a bunch of people in a conference room on a call, it is a little nicer with everyone individually on the video call. [ADDED: But the company is about 50% remote so there are often people from a variety of locations on a call even if some are in a conference room.]
I think it's certainly true, if only a few people are remote, that can be challenging.
I have worked remotely for a company that was otherwise very much a traditional non-remote environment; I have experience partly distributed teams and now managing a fully remote one.
I think partly remote will always, without an exception, create a significant information asymmetry that will result in non-remote workers becoming the leaders in the company. (plug, sorry:) I have written a small post about migrating to remote: https://blog.patientsknowbest.com/2020/04/01/51-basic-rules-... - even in _theory_ you could fully embrace remote workers if some others see each other in person regularly, the latter group won't, can't and likely, shouldn't stop exchanging information in ways that 1) are more efficient 2) excludes remote workers.
I really don't know what to expect for remote work in the future. The current trap is to think that we are currently doing remove work. We are not, we're doing remote work in a very unusual setup. Kids and partners are at home with us, we can't really leave our house, etc. This is not real WFH.
Additionally, a lot of companies were pushed into that almost over night without preparing for it. No experience with it, no tooling in place, no processes, etc. Maybe a lot of them experienced some loss in productivity due to that and will just conclude that remove work really isn't for them, it sucks.
The 2 things I really hope for:
* people experiencing a personal boost in productivity and better quality of life (mostly due to not having to commute) will be vocal about not going back to the "old ways"
* companies claiming that "proper work/collaboration can only happen in the office" will finally change their tune and end the hypocrisy. When forced to do it, they somehow found a way. Maybe it's time to final end this charade. Especially in tech, the work that can only happen in an office is so marginal.
> 43% of remote workers feel it is important
to work for a company where ALL
employees are remote…
As a full time remote worker, I've also felt that having everyone else is great. In every case I've work with a colocated team, they end up snubbing you in weird ways.
This snubbing is just a cultural thing. There's no technical reason remote workers should feel left out if working with another team.
I've found that most colocated team members rarely write well, and often do not track, or even follow up on complex team decisions. When everyone is remote, it often forces some better communication. Frequently, the teams have to "double up" on the media used to communicate, which almost always requires some written communication.
Now that everyone's remote in quarantine, I've heard complaints from the colocators about "having to overcommunicate". But really, it's just learning to communicate well.
This metric of "how many all-remote workers want everyone else to be remote", really seems like a great test for "how well does your company communicate?"
It's difficult for me to give a true assessment of what remote work would be like in normal times. Since I live alone and social events are cancelled I feel like I'm craving social contact and definitely missing that aspect of work. I also don't have any space in my apartment to work from so I'm set up on the kitchen table.
I do wonder if the exceptional circumstances of the current sudden shift to remote (lack of other human contact, unplanned setups at home) will cause a backlash against remote work.
Why was the title of this submission changed to the more uninteresting “Remote Work Report” from the original “The Remote Work Report by GitLab: The Future of Work is Remote”?
I'm totally for remote work when the context and company is adequate. I just wish salary wasn't as low, these days when a company says 'remote possible' it almost always means you're gonna get paid less.
Remote work should be an absolute thing, mandated by law, or at least strong incentives, to reduce our carbon footprint. Unless you truly need to go to a central location (laboratory, healthcare, etc.), you should work remotely.
I saw a study that said 40% of SF Bay Area jobs could be remote. If all major metros went remote, this would put a dent in our CO2 output.
Advantages of offices, face-to-face interaction, etc. just doesn't matter. Climate change is an existential threat according to the experts, so we should actually take it seriously and modify our society accordingly.
I'm pro remote work, but it's questionable as to why GitLab pushes their remote work ideas so much? Is it to become some sort of remote work consultant? Is it an angle of marketing?
Even with reports like these, I think it will be tough to convince managers that are set in their ways to open up to allowing their employees to work remotely.
While anecdotal, most companies seem to have approached the current state of affairs as a mild inconvenience that will be gone soon, and aren't looking to keep remote work an option going forward, even though it's working out well, which is a shame.
How do people handle async communications when in differing time zones? The team was forced to work remotely as opposed to an office as a result of SARS-CoV-2. I'm a core developer back in Sydney, with the rest of the company in San Francisco (I'm essentially -7 hours). A lot of team members don't like me not being able to reply when they send a message because they don't like having to context switch from tasks that they're blocked on, meanwhile I have no problems with this aspect as I tend to like to work on things simultaneously and can context switch quickly (could it be my ADHD being a super power here?). How do remote teams deal with this effectively?
We currently have org/dev planning meetings every other day (Monday, Wednesday, Friday 10:30am PDT, which is 3:30am my time until sometimes 6am) which I'm up for, but I can't maintain that every day as it gets too much (I wake up around midday Sydney time).
You have three meetings a week that can sometimes last two and a half hours in the middle of the night and no one on your team sees that as an issue?!
The key to making big timezone differences work is to make communication as asynchronous as possible and where that can't be done make it as humane as possible. Clearly these meetings can be scheduled in times where both sides should naturally be awake. I work from Iceland with people on the East and West Coast so about the same time difference and I'm mostly in meetings in the early evening although nothing so epicly long. Your colleagues could be doing the same. We also alternate so some are early morning for them and afternoon for me.
For people getting blocked it really depends on what it is but for the most part I do as you do and park what I'm working on and get on with something else. If it's something simple that can be fixed with a bit of back and forth I'd try pre-empting these issues (e.g. are you just being used as a really expensive form of live documentation).
Honestly it sounds like the team is treating you like a "second-class citizen." It seems 100% unreasonable for you to have to attend 3:30am meetings ever let alone twice a month. You need to be able to have a somewhat normal sleep-schedule in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle and to continue to be a productive member of the team and of society. Personally I think you need to re-set some expectations - you're just as much a part of the team as everyone else. Sure you may need to work 1-3 hours outside of "9-5" time to meet in the middle, but so do they. (Unless of course you really like the swing-shift, in which case you need make those hours very consistent and very public.)
My team had 2 remote people who were treated like that for a few months, but they quickly realized it wasn't fair or sustainable and pushed back. So our team-wide meetings got bumped to 9am, and we got good at making decisions that they cared about while they were online. Or we queued up things for them to respond to the following day. It's not as easy as being able to tap someone on the shoulder, but nothing is right now with everyone WFH. Everybody needs to grow up and treat each other with a bit more respect. (/rant but not really)
It sounds like you were in San Francisco prior to the remote work change and went back to Sydney once that happened? If not how did it work when everyone was in the office?
If only one member of a team is in a vastly different time zone I haven't seen it work myself unfortunately. Not that it's absolutely impossible just that you're always going to be the guy out of sync with the team due to the small amount of overlap to work with anyone else. No amount of async communication will ever fix that the majority of the time anyone wants to ask you a simple question they'll have to wait until tomorrow (which for simple questions means they'll just spend time to try to figure it out themselves instead of ask you) and vice versa. Where I've seen vastly different time zones be successful is when the group is more evenly distributed and it turns into rolling pockets of collaboration rather than a stark handoff at the fray of the working day for each party. It doesn't so much matter if a particular time zone has most of the people just that for most of your work day it's possible for you to interact live with a few others the team and vice versa.
If the above doesn't seem possible you'll either have to find the unicorn answer which is going to be very specific to what your team does (e.g. maybe is there a role which takes almost exactly 1 FTE that doesn't actually need to be in the team as much as produce deliverables for them or maybe by sheer rare chance your group is willing and actually functions well with a majority of communication being async), find a way to come to terms with a 3rd shift job, or find a new position that matches your needs better.
I'm US East Coast (effectively, though not formally, remote) and the company--while pretty distributed--tends to be centered on the East Coast timezone. We don't have a lot of people on the West Coast so we mostly schedule morning meetings when we need people in Europe to participate, where we do have a lot of people.
APAC? it's tough. They're on a lot of late night calls though we make do as we have to. (And again, tend to have fairly early AM meetings ET (or late afternoon/evening) if Asia needs to participate.) I'm not in engineering but my guess is that there's a lot less real-time collaboration than with engineering offices/remotes in the US and Europe. One standing meeting I'm in, we alternative between late in the (business) day and early in the (business) day ET.
It's a challenge for suddenly-remote companies which aren't used to working this way, especially if all work communication isn't funneled through a tool that is designed for async workflows. The benefit of a remote organization which was designed as remote is people opt-in to those workflows.
Much has been said about transitioning from colocated to remote, but remote teams would struggle as well if suddenly forced into the office. It's worth recognizing that part of the challenge is the sudden shift in environment, regardless of origin and destination.
The super power you mention has elements of truth to it. Some people naturally prefer to work this way, while others prefer sync. It is tougher on those who prefer sync to suddenly need to work async.
I worked in a team where the maximum time difference between members varied from 12h (when everyone was near their primary residence) to 20h (when some people traveled). We were 100% remote and mostly async, but we had daily meetings and others like grooming, planning etc. I was lucky to be in the middle (Central Europe) so the daily was ~2PM for me, for some it was 9PM, for others 9AM. If you were in a time zone that made it inconvenient (like 3AM in Hawaii) you were not expected to join, just post your daily updates on team's Slack channel. Similar with other meetings, most went fine missing a member or two. Nobody expected you to reply outside of your core working hours and it was cool to create a PR at the end of the work day and wake up to see it reviewed first thing in the morning.
I can see your pain being alone in a distant time zone and honestly the only advice I could give would be to try and agree on time slots that work for both parties.
As we've learned from building for remote teams [1], is that it's really about how you set a process for async communication, and not just about the tools. This is why we've been heads down since the outbreak helping work-from-home teams set the right processes of communication using us and other tools.
It's really around building a healthy culture of working from home, and not encouraging multiple disruptions during the day, and actively doing so, thinking that it unites teams. We wrote a basic guideline [2].
It’s interesting that 87% of people say they are satisfied with current tools and processes that enable remote team communication, yet 35% list collaborating with colleagues and clients as a top challenge. There seems to be a disconnect between those two sections of the report.
Remote work is great and all... because that's our only option.
In the long term, I suspect there may be a greater inclination towards remote work, not as much as this report suggests, but overall work at office is here to stay.
I need to go outside and have a physical seperation between work and home.
[+] [-] codegeek|5 years ago|reply
I personally cannot work from home. COVID has made it worse as kids are home BUT even if I had the whole house to myself, I just cannot work from home. I NEED a dedicated office outside my house (yes I already have an office room in my house). Reason is simple. I don't have the discipline to work from home. I get distracted too easily. So I m not a good candidate for WFH. Do I want the flexibility when needed ? Of course. But do I WANT to work from home all the time ? Hell no.
I would say the future of work is not just remote. The future of work is "employers allowing more flexibility in work location" but as an employer myself, I am personally not in favor of 100% remote. That's me I know but sorry, not everyone is cut out for remote work.
[+] [-] jmilloy|5 years ago|reply
Could this office be remote? If so, you've missed the difference between remote work and working from home. I work remote and have an office 5 minutes away in town. I share it with others, but before that I had a personal office in town. Both versions are better for focus than being at home.
[+] [-] alohaandmahalo|5 years ago|reply
This is a challenge at the moment, as those who do work outside of their homes have been forced back into them due to travel restrictions (which is what most of the suddenly-remote workforce is also managing).
[+] [-] patcon|5 years ago|reply
I'm mostly going to write this next bit in case it resonates with someone else, because reading your message made me feel validated, and I'd love to pay it forward :)
Back when I used to work in an office, even one day WFH would make me start to feel unhinged from my normal office reality. I'd come in, expecting people to be mad at me or disappointed in me for some minor thing -- or having something I'd felt frustrated with that I now needed to resolve -- all things that never happened when I'd work in-person. But when I'd come in on the day after, no one would ever be mad or disappointed with me as I'd thought they were, and if I asked, they'd say there was absolutely nothing to worry about.
It's something about my propensity for cycling on async communication when I can't get realtime feedback -- I'm so proud of my soft skills in-person, and I'm very tuned and empathic, but working remote... I freeze up, or misread signals or just feel apprehensive and make myself frustrated in seeking clarity, to the point of being a pain for myself or others.
Also, I'm much more accountable to myself when people are walking around me, and interrupting my distractions. Every mild "disruption" (even just a person passing through the room behind me) actually gives me a chance to recalibrate and refocus on my desired task.
[+] [-] psandersen|5 years ago|reply
That said, I can really relate to the challenge of keeping personal and professional separate when working from home... I keep thinking of setting up a separate room or taking a laptop outside but it is painful giving up comfortable the multi-monitor setup on my main workstation.
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] RandallBrown|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sharadov|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ship_it|5 years ago|reply
Well, not for you, of course. I'm quite happy working remotely and being productive in that favour.
[+] [-] C1sc0cat|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Icathian|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Asooka|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 10000100001010|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dougmwne|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] alohaandmahalo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aantix|5 years ago|reply
They’re usually looking to discount your salary by 30-50% by some arbitrary cost of living factor.
You bring the same value - whether that’s delivered from New York City or Des Moines Iowa.
[+] [-] wintermutestwin|5 years ago|reply
The real downside was that I had minimal mobility because most of the tech world is still in the dark ages of management by proximity. Doing a job search in the startup world in the age of Covid, I assumed that there would be an explosion of WFH jobs, but most are not.
[+] [-] netjiro|5 years ago|reply
In my experience, less than 1/4 of the organisations and projects I help go remote / distributed do it for cost reasons. Most do it for brain power and efficiency. It's easier to recruit globally, especially when you're looking for very good people. We have strong data that asynchronous transparent communication increases efficiency, agency, autonomy, and decreases both the rate and cost of mistakes. It also drastically reduces the necessity of coordination management.
[+] [-] slackfan|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Kalium|5 years ago|reply
The value you bring may be the same, but if you commoditize yourself it's possible your employer will agree. Then react accordingly. Remember, nobody wants a shovel. They want a hole.
[+] [-] freeopinion|5 years ago|reply
You go ahead and keep holding out for your extra 30-50%. I'm very happy to fill that spot. It's not like they pay Des Moines employees $3/hour. Six figures goes a long way out here on the lake.
[+] [-] Saaster|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lbotos|5 years ago|reply
> They’re usually looking to discount your salary by 30-50% by some arbitrary cost of living factor.
Discount off of what? The local max in SF?
Google Does this now. Are you angry that Google isn't paying employees the same in SF and India?
Remote IS a benefit. Lack of commute. Full control over workspace. In true remote "full control" over your schedule (lunch with friends. Time shifting work at a whim. More integrated lifestyle.)
Like I said 6 months ago, please attack "physical" company comp with the same vigor as remote company comp.
(I work at GitLab, these views are my own, etc etc etc and I'm still tired of this naive hot take.)
[+] [-] gregkerzhner|5 years ago|reply
This could actually be a great startup idea - virtual "hacker houses" located in expensive cities that people can use as virtual home bases. We will take 5% of your tier-1 income to handle all your paperwork so you can be free to live where ever you want.
[+] [-] Rochus|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dgellow|5 years ago|reply
I’m also in Germany and working remote full time since ~1 year, I’m interested in your experience if you’re willing to share.
[+] [-] baron_harkonnen|5 years ago|reply
As for the argument of changes to "productivity". For starters very few of us work in roles where productivity is a directly measurable thing. Sure you can argue about commits, lines of code, ship times, but those are all nowhere near as measurable as "widgets-per-hour". On top of this we all know that a huge portion of roles out there are arguably not productive at all (and if they are it's very hard to measure). And again, when in the history of work has declining worker productivity been solved by improving conditions for the worker? If you company goes remote and you don't work as well that way, do you think your boss is going to go "oh! I'd better talk to leadership about getting those offices again!"?
The entire reason offices still exist is because of culture. For years every SV startup I knew said they needed an office in SF because the "VCs like to see that". There has been a lot of inertia towards offices.
Now that Covid19 has broken that assumption for a bit, I think we'll see a rapid shift to remote teams because it quickly becomes clear that offices are a liability. Anecdotally I already know one start up that can no longer afford their office and so are breaking their lease with no sense of what they'll do next (so remote is the default), and a well established, very traditional office culture firm that is already stating that everyone being in the office full time will not be the norm coming out of this.
[+] [-] dna113|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Adiqq|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duxup|5 years ago|reply
There is a lot of talk about remote work and COVID-19 and for me remote work in the age of COVID-19 ... it has been terrible. Mostly because I have kids, and my wife and I are both trying to work remote, and attend to the kids schooling ... it's a terrible combination for getting anything done on a 'regular' schedule.
I suspect people's remote work during COVID-19 experiences are pretty wide ranging.
[+] [-] ghaff|5 years ago|reply
This is interesting as it runs counter to the opinion you hear a lot that is in the vein of live and let live/give people a choice/different people have different preferences. I do think there's some truth to it. While I don't really have trouble under normal circumstances as someone who is mostly remote with a bunch of people in a conference room on a call, it is a little nicer with everyone individually on the video call. [ADDED: But the company is about 50% remote so there are often people from a variety of locations on a call even if some are in a conference room.]
I think it's certainly true, if only a few people are remote, that can be challenging.
[+] [-] sz4kerto|5 years ago|reply
I think partly remote will always, without an exception, create a significant information asymmetry that will result in non-remote workers becoming the leaders in the company. (plug, sorry:) I have written a small post about migrating to remote: https://blog.patientsknowbest.com/2020/04/01/51-basic-rules-... - even in _theory_ you could fully embrace remote workers if some others see each other in person regularly, the latter group won't, can't and likely, shouldn't stop exchanging information in ways that 1) are more efficient 2) excludes remote workers.
[+] [-] dudul|5 years ago|reply
Additionally, a lot of companies were pushed into that almost over night without preparing for it. No experience with it, no tooling in place, no processes, etc. Maybe a lot of them experienced some loss in productivity due to that and will just conclude that remove work really isn't for them, it sucks.
The 2 things I really hope for: * people experiencing a personal boost in productivity and better quality of life (mostly due to not having to commute) will be vocal about not going back to the "old ways" * companies claiming that "proper work/collaboration can only happen in the office" will finally change their tune and end the hypocrisy. When forced to do it, they somehow found a way. Maybe it's time to final end this charade. Especially in tech, the work that can only happen in an office is so marginal.
[+] [-] mr_tristan|5 years ago|reply
As a full time remote worker, I've also felt that having everyone else is great. In every case I've work with a colocated team, they end up snubbing you in weird ways.
This snubbing is just a cultural thing. There's no technical reason remote workers should feel left out if working with another team.
I've found that most colocated team members rarely write well, and often do not track, or even follow up on complex team decisions. When everyone is remote, it often forces some better communication. Frequently, the teams have to "double up" on the media used to communicate, which almost always requires some written communication.
Now that everyone's remote in quarantine, I've heard complaints from the colocators about "having to overcommunicate". But really, it's just learning to communicate well.
This metric of "how many all-remote workers want everyone else to be remote", really seems like a great test for "how well does your company communicate?"
[+] [-] laurieg|5 years ago|reply
I do wonder if the exceptional circumstances of the current sudden shift to remote (lack of other human contact, unplanned setups at home) will cause a backlash against remote work.
[+] [-] teddyh|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pacomerh|5 years ago|reply
[edit spelling]
[+] [-] tayistay|5 years ago|reply
I saw a study that said 40% of SF Bay Area jobs could be remote. If all major metros went remote, this would put a dent in our CO2 output.
Advantages of offices, face-to-face interaction, etc. just doesn't matter. Climate change is an existential threat according to the experts, so we should actually take it seriously and modify our society accordingly.
[+] [-] eugenekolo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cbg0|5 years ago|reply
While anecdotal, most companies seem to have approached the current state of affairs as a mild inconvenience that will be gone soon, and aren't looking to keep remote work an option going forward, even though it's working out well, which is a shame.
[+] [-] Mayzie|5 years ago|reply
We currently have org/dev planning meetings every other day (Monday, Wednesday, Friday 10:30am PDT, which is 3:30am my time until sometimes 6am) which I'm up for, but I can't maintain that every day as it gets too much (I wake up around midday Sydney time).
[+] [-] meheleventyone|5 years ago|reply
The key to making big timezone differences work is to make communication as asynchronous as possible and where that can't be done make it as humane as possible. Clearly these meetings can be scheduled in times where both sides should naturally be awake. I work from Iceland with people on the East and West Coast so about the same time difference and I'm mostly in meetings in the early evening although nothing so epicly long. Your colleagues could be doing the same. We also alternate so some are early morning for them and afternoon for me.
For people getting blocked it really depends on what it is but for the most part I do as you do and park what I'm working on and get on with something else. If it's something simple that can be fixed with a bit of back and forth I'd try pre-empting these issues (e.g. are you just being used as a really expensive form of live documentation).
[+] [-] ryanianian|5 years ago|reply
My team had 2 remote people who were treated like that for a few months, but they quickly realized it wasn't fair or sustainable and pushed back. So our team-wide meetings got bumped to 9am, and we got good at making decisions that they cared about while they were online. Or we queued up things for them to respond to the following day. It's not as easy as being able to tap someone on the shoulder, but nothing is right now with everyone WFH. Everybody needs to grow up and treat each other with a bit more respect. (/rant but not really)
[+] [-] zamadatix|5 years ago|reply
If only one member of a team is in a vastly different time zone I haven't seen it work myself unfortunately. Not that it's absolutely impossible just that you're always going to be the guy out of sync with the team due to the small amount of overlap to work with anyone else. No amount of async communication will ever fix that the majority of the time anyone wants to ask you a simple question they'll have to wait until tomorrow (which for simple questions means they'll just spend time to try to figure it out themselves instead of ask you) and vice versa. Where I've seen vastly different time zones be successful is when the group is more evenly distributed and it turns into rolling pockets of collaboration rather than a stark handoff at the fray of the working day for each party. It doesn't so much matter if a particular time zone has most of the people just that for most of your work day it's possible for you to interact live with a few others the team and vice versa.
If the above doesn't seem possible you'll either have to find the unicorn answer which is going to be very specific to what your team does (e.g. maybe is there a role which takes almost exactly 1 FTE that doesn't actually need to be in the team as much as produce deliverables for them or maybe by sheer rare chance your group is willing and actually functions well with a majority of communication being async), find a way to come to terms with a 3rd shift job, or find a new position that matches your needs better.
[+] [-] ghaff|5 years ago|reply
APAC? it's tough. They're on a lot of late night calls though we make do as we have to. (And again, tend to have fairly early AM meetings ET (or late afternoon/evening) if Asia needs to participate.) I'm not in engineering but my guess is that there's a lot less real-time collaboration than with engineering offices/remotes in the US and Europe. One standing meeting I'm in, we alternative between late in the (business) day and early in the (business) day ET.
[+] [-] alohaandmahalo|5 years ago|reply
It's a challenge for suddenly-remote companies which aren't used to working this way, especially if all work communication isn't funneled through a tool that is designed for async workflows. The benefit of a remote organization which was designed as remote is people opt-in to those workflows.
Much has been said about transitioning from colocated to remote, but remote teams would struggle as well if suddenly forced into the office. It's worth recognizing that part of the challenge is the sudden shift in environment, regardless of origin and destination.
The super power you mention has elements of truth to it. Some people naturally prefer to work this way, while others prefer sync. It is tougher on those who prefer sync to suddenly need to work async.
[+] [-] pawelk|5 years ago|reply
I can see your pain being alone in a distant time zone and honestly the only advice I could give would be to try and agree on time slots that work for both parties.
[+] [-] jpincheira|5 years ago|reply
It's really around building a healthy culture of working from home, and not encouraging multiple disruptions during the day, and actively doing so, thinking that it unites teams. We wrote a basic guideline [2].
[1] https://standups.io
[2] https://standups.io/blog/a-basic-guideline-for-async-communi...
[+] [-] andygcook|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sdan|5 years ago|reply
In the long term, I suspect there may be a greater inclination towards remote work, not as much as this report suggests, but overall work at office is here to stay.
I need to go outside and have a physical seperation between work and home.