
Ask HN: What type of remote work do you find optimal and why? - calchris42
What situation has worked for you, or you have wished you could have?<p>Fully remote and geographically distributed? Co-located but flexible work from home days? Remote, but close enough for weekly in person? Remote work is the root of all evil?
======
calchris42
OP here. I’m curious on this question for a few reasons. \-- I have worked
primarily from home the last ~6 years and I’m curious of others’ opinions. \--
I’ve been working on a new conferencing app (Locus,
[https://inthelocus.com](https://inthelocus.com)) and am wondering both how to
structure our team if we don’t end up in the startup graveyard, and how others
like to work and might use similar products.

My perceived optimal: A geographically close team, with flexibility to work
remotely whenever beneficial.

Why?: Remote work has a lot of well known benefits that speak to me: no
commute, potentially less distractions when you really need to just work,
potentially more flexibility on hours when you need to work around
appointments or childcare, etc. BUT, there is a certain energy level when a
team is really together that seems very hard to replicate remotely. How much
time together is enough to replicate this? Would even a weekly beer night be
enough?

My experience: For 8.5 yrs I worked at a semiconductor lithography tool
manufacturer. 3 years in person, 4 years remotely but a ~3 hr drive from the
office for important meetings, etc, and 1.5 yrs a plane ride away. The fact we
were building hardware likely makes this fairly different from a SW only
business. Having worked in person before going remote seemed really critical
for work relationships. Coming in every few weeks seemed like barely enough to
keep up with the energy level and the relationships. And an unexpected benefit
was that traveling to the office frequently ended up as an excuse for the team
to go out for drinks, or for me to spend much more time with visitors from our
international headquarters than I might have if I was going home. The later
time being a plane ride away felt like too infrequent of interactions and I
slowly drifted away from the energy.

Now I’ve been working on a pure software project with 1 co-founder. We
primarily work from home, but live close enough to meet whenever it seems
helpful. And we already have a long history with each other. This works out
well for 2 of us, but I’m not sure it can scale.

~~~
zamfi
I had two co-workers like this -- "remote a plane-ride away" \-- and it only
worked because they were extremely productive and quite senior, didn't need
really any hand-holding, and could express themselves extremely productively
in emails and other textual media.

Their visits were always great fun, but I think both of them felt they were
missing some part of the office culture.

I think it really depends on management too: do you have to be in the room to
be part of any new initiatives, any fun projects? Or does management consider
remote team members as first-class as the local ones?

~~~
calchris42
Yeah, at the lithography company, only senior "can't lose them" people were
even given this option. And not like it was offered, just that the option
could be taken by not giving much of a choice. That probably bothered some
team members.

------
zamfi
My most positive experiences have been office-based but with flexibility to
work from home when needed.

I found it was needed pretty often: most offices are not well set up for
productive software development work, and I was much more often productive
from home.

I've also worked for a remote team at a large company (twice!) -- meaning a
small group geographically separate from HQ or the main team on the project --
and found it was a nice excuse to travel, but ultimately I suspect the team
would've been better all in one place. (That company eventually agreed and
dramatically reduced team geographical splits.)

