
Ask HN: What is your strongest argument against remote work? - minasss
please, I need to know!
======
deanebarker
I absolutely think you lose something from lack of face-to-face contact. Some
of the most productive leadership and decison-making sessions I've had came
from sitting around a table or sharing a meal or a drink with a team, and
going back and forth about something.

Additionally, casual contact helps too. I put a couch in my office, and people
would come just sit down and talk. The setting set the vibe. I had some great
conversations with people just kicking back that I would have never otherwise
had.

I absolutely realize people will disagree, but this is my experience.

~~~
riffraff
as someone who's been remote for 10+ years: both (the value of casual
conversation and higher face-to-face productivity) ring true to me.

If you want to have a remote team I advice having a space for casual
conversation and non-work video calls, it improves things a bit for the first.

For the latter, IRL gatherings/meetups are valuable but obviously not
something you can do all the time.

~~~
topkai22
Absolutely - we have a dedicated "water cooler" channel, and as a lead I try
to ensure people feel comfortable going "off topic" during small group
meetings.

------
JackFr
It fails with respect to growing junior team members. It’s impossible for
junior team members to observe the day-to-day patterns, habits and general
implicit knowledge of senior team members that they would pick up (mostly not
consciously) in an office simply through observation.

~~~
topkai22
Like most things related to remote work, you just have to be more formal in
the the approach. Our team has successfully developed several cohorts of
college hires remotely. You have to give them consistent (daily, for hours)
access to mentoring/senior resources via scheduled time, keep design or other
higher level meetings public and make sure the juniors know they are invited
to attend, and make clear to the junior devs that they are a priority so they
can feel free to ping anyone on the team whenever they need help, plus make
clear to the rest of the team that helping the junior devs is a priority.

Keeping an eye in the jrs work item completion rate and eliciting if there is
a problem when it slows down also helps

~~~
polishdude20
Where do you work and are you hiring?

~~~
topkai22
Microsoft, in consulting services, yes.

[https://careers.microsoft.com/students/us/en/microsoft-
aspir...](https://careers.microsoft.com/students/us/en/microsoft-aspire-
experience)

[https://careers.microsoft.com/students/us/en/job/795772/Full...](https://careers.microsoft.com/students/us/en/job/795772/Full-
Time-Opportunities-for-Students-or-Recent-Graduates-Technical-Consulting-
Client-Success-2021-Start-Dates)

Unfortunately it looks like we are back to requiring college hires to colocate
for a year, even if their day to day teams are remote/distribute. Industry
hires can live anywhere. Travel can be up to 100% depending on the project
(although not right now.)

Microsoft is a huge company and not all (or even most) teams are as good at
remote work as my team is, but the company as a whole is serious about the
inclusive behaviors the underly my teams culture

~~~
polishdude20
What about jobs for non students who are self taught and working in another
industry but have experience with JavaScript?

~~~
topkai22
There are large number of self taught people in my area of the company
(services). Experience in another industry is plus- we are the people who
directly help customers build on top of Microsoft’s products.

The biggest thing we (my division) look for in industry hires is an ability to
interact with customers and master new skills quickly. On the technical angle,
we do want to see knowledge beyond just on area of development (full-stack to
cloud, o365 integration, sys admin experience, analytics work, etc...). Direct
knowledge of the MS stack helps, but we hire plenty of people who know AWS and
them teach them Azure (for example).

In terms of setting yourself up to get hired, I recommend trying to start a
product/business. I’ve done three side companies/projects over the years, all
done on nights and weekends, all of which never really did anything. I wasn’t
very committed to them, they didn’t take up THAT much time, never really cost
money (never had payroll, biggest expenses was a small factory order of light
up dog collars at one), and I expected them to fail, but I learned a ton of
new stuff to make the MVP and business systems happen.

------
nugget
In my experience with very early stage teams, a lot of creativity and
innovation occurs as a byproduct of spending a large amount of time together
in close quarters discussing a range of topics (work related and not.) I’ve
managed remote teams as well and while there are ways to replicate certain
aspects of this dynamic, overall it’s much more difficult.

~~~
ska
Remote is so much easier to make work well with an established team and an
ongoing project. When either of them is new, it makes things harder and
slower.

~~~
weej
This. IMO it's very difficult to establish trust in new relationships
especially when remote.

------
one2know
Wow, so many people here want to date their coworkers. There are other places
to meet women than the office. In fact it is probably better that you meet
someone not in your office.

Managers are going to be PRO office work because without a venue for all
manner of office politics, their effectiveness is diminished, particularly in
age-identity politics. They will say something like "we are unable to foster a
community of communal idea sharing and mentorship of younger employees." What
they want is to use their new hires who are going to be college age to
ostracize and push out more experienced workers they want to replace. The
whole kumbaya campfire thing does not work if no one can see what the other
looks like or if they are in their peer group or not.

------
sethammons
Assuming the work _can_ be done remotely:

\- Connections with people are easier in person.

\- Getting unblocked by talking to someone is easier in person.

\- Collaborating with materials is easier in person (shared whiteboard, post
it notes, no delay in comms)

\- Meetings are easier in person as video conferences can have audio delays,
people talking over each other, etc. No worries about people leaving their mic
on while blending a smoothy or other tech issues.

\- In a meeting, it is easier to keep distractions low when on site (everyone
close your laptops and leave your phones in your pocket is easier at a
location).

\- Work socializing is waaaay harder when working remotely.

I say all these as a full time remote person before this whole COVID thing.
That said, each of the arguments above are able to be mitigated and can we can
learn cope with them.

------
notacoward
I've been full time remote for several years. What I've found is that it can
_ever so slightly_ erode some people's ability to communicate clearly with
each other, or be sure that they have. This leads to meetings that go on
longer as people feel a need to restate and reconfirm, code reviews that go on
a bit longer, some duplicated effort as people look over each others' shoulder
to make sure they "got the message", and so on. Nothing major, but it kind of
builds up. A little small talk can go a long way toward rebuilding that
confidence, and it's harder to do when latency and VC annoyances are in the
way. I've seen this play out many times even on long-term fully-remote teams
BTW. Getting together at conferences or "summits" is often the glue holding
them together.

I know that's still not a strong argument against remote work. It's pretty
weak, but it's the best I can do. Overall, I think remote work is at least as
good as in-person work for many people.

~~~
fitzn
I've experienced very similar things. Thanks for stating this so well.

------
remmargorp64
The most annoying thing I've run into while working remote is that whenever I
have an unproductive day due to random interruptions or little things that
aren't tracked in JIRA, to my boss it just looks like I haven't been working
all day.

But when I was at the office, sitting in my chair, he could see that I was
working hard even if the stories weren't getting completed.

I haven't figured out how to solve this, other than by spending a lot more
time and effort documenting the numerous little things that cause distractions
and exposing that in my daily status updates. I can tell that it's still not
as convincing to him though.

So I often end up finding myself working late in the evenings just to finish
the actual work that was scheduled to be done that day, even though I've
already spent 8 hours dealing with random issues and helping other team mates
with things.

I need to find a solution soon before I completely burn out.

~~~
Fire-Dragon-DoL
I write a worklog. Every day has an entry with what i've done on the day,
including learning/decisions.

What is not captured on a ticket it's still going to appear in there.

Could this be helpful?

~~~
remmargorp64
That's essentially what I've been doing, and I've been posting it in our daily
status slack channel. I need to do a better job of adding more details, but
it's a balancing act between spending time on logging work vs doing work, plus
if I'm the only person on the team doing it, it looks weird.

~~~
Fire-Dragon-DoL
I have a public (within the company) github repo called "worklog" where
everyone can put theirs (it's by name), one file per year.

I usually have 4-5 lines per day, where some days have 15 (rare, but there are
those big days).

I don't give the report in slack, since github has track of when stuff was
committed (I commit at the end of the day), if people need it, it's on github.

It's great for standups, because I usually forget what I did yesterday. It's
also great for some company tax reductions, so it's appreciated!

Last but not least, I capture breakthrougs and decisions in there, as well as
learning, so I can refer to it various months later and tell people exactly
what I was doing a certain date.

At some point people asked "why this wasn't already done, what were you doing
in August last year"... And I was able to clearly explain what I was doing in
August and why things were not prioritized.

Overall, great win!

Just to clarify, I didn't come up with this idea myself, it was suggested to
me on the Eventide Slack [https://eventide-project.org/#community-
section](https://eventide-project.org/#community-section) Apparently it's a
common practice in engineering (should be in software engineering too!), I
currently follow this log structure: [https://github.com/eventide-
project/project-status/blob/mast...](https://github.com/eventide-
project/project-status/blob/master/work-log/README.md)

~~~
johntash
> It's also great for some company tax reductions, so it's appreciated!

Can you explain what you mean by company tax reductions? I'm confused how that
relates with keeping a worklog.

~~~
Fire-Dragon-DoL
Specific to Canada, there is a tax reduction thing for the company of this
size (the one I work at), that has some specific requirements related to
experimenting and tracking time spent on various activities. It can be
summarized per day though, this means that I just have to turn in my work-log
for this purpose, with no additional effort

------
twunde
The strongest argument against remote work (generally speaking, not specific
to the current coronavirus) is that a company is not disciplined enough to
communicate well, especially across teams. This may be the case if a
significant number of business decisions are done in side conversations. You
probably need some tooling such as a chat app, video conferencing software etc
and a process where important business decisions are written down and
communicated.

There's also a case where some jobs need to be done in-person. A good example
is a restocker for a grocery store. You can't move boxes remotely. Similarly a
surgeon can't do a surgery remotely.

~~~
minasss
> a company is not disciplined enough to communicate well, especially across
> teams. This may be the case if a significant number of business decisions
> are done in side conversations

this is a very very good point! but I don't think that being remote or not
make this communication problem worse or not.

~~~
twunde
It typically does. Most people are used to communicating in-person, often by
chatting in casual interactions. Once you go remote, especially on a
distributed team, individuals who are used to chatting in-person often don't
have the discipline to send messages out to every member of a team. They
typically also don't do multiple notifications (for example my company cross-
posts announcements in both Slack and via email).

~~~
Natsu
I solve this by keeping a running log of the important things I worked on that
day and any questions I'm researching and sending it to my whole team.

A lot of people like it, learn from it, and also provide me with advice when
they happen to know something I do not.

------
rbritton
Hiring is more difficult. It's not that you can't find applicants, but the
people capable of performing without direct supervision is (mostly) a subset
of those capable of performing in an office. It can be difficult to identify
those who will actually perform well in that environment. It takes some degree
of maturity and responsibility to provide value as a remote worker because
there's always that temptation to do something else.

That said, I wouldn't trade this lifestyle for anything. The only complaint
I've ever had is that coworkers not capable of performing in a remote
environment sometimes last too long at the company.

~~~
youeseh
The other side of this is that managers need to be more mature too. There's a
fairly significant difference between communicating asynchronously. If you can
figure it out, it'll actually increase the company's overall productivity
because it'll reduce interruptions.

A great way to approach this is to build trust incrementally. Small projects
where responsibility is given to individuals to own work end to end with
reviews and feedback. After a few iterations, everyone will get used to it.

~~~
minasss
> A great way to approach this is to build trust incrementally. Small projects
> where responsibility is given to individuals to own work end to end with
> reviews and feedback. After a few iterations, everyone will get used to it.

Thank you very much for providing a useful practical advice!

------
smkellat
Rural Broadband.

I will be taking part in a county task force meeting on Tuesday where we'll be
looking at applying for grant money as well as looking at doing more problem
solving. This still holds us back in 2020 and really shouldn't.

------
johndavid9991
Remote work could be perfect for individual contributors, but it's still full
of challenges for people who work on teams.

There's been a lot of buzz lately about remote work. I have been working
remotely since 2012; the challenges of remote work are not new to me. I work
with 30+ people, and our clients are in different timezones. Our team includes
full-stack developers, designers, product leads, and other support staff.

First Challenge: Schedule of work hours or team availability. Back in 2012,
each member of our team started working from our respective homes. We started
with seven team members; it's a small team. Initially, people are productive
while we work as individual contributors. However, efficiency and productivity
dropped very low when we started to work on the same project because everyone
has the flexibility to choose when they want to work as long as they complete
the required hours per week. We partially solved this by setting standard work
hours that everyone in the team will follow.

Second Challenge: Quality of work is affected by many factors. Working alone
remotely is initially fun, but eventually, employees feel lonely. Keeping
focus at work is also hard due to distractions, like games, social media,
house-related errands, etc. Monitoring employees' honesty on work hours and
work done is also a challenge. Since our team mostly live in the same town, we
decided to work in the same place. We converted my whole dorm into an office,
removed the walls, joint the rooms, and made it look like a real office.
Centralizing our distributed team to work in the same place doubled or tripled
our team's efficiency and productivity. You can imagine how it made it easier
to do daily standups, do design planning, pair programming, code reviews, etc.
Employees became happier, and the bond between got stronger; we also eat meals
together, we go on retreats, we play games together, our employee retention
rate is 90% since we started. Over the years of working remotely, we have also
built a tool that we use internally to manage and monitor employees and
projects.

Now with the Corona Virus, our team is back temporarily in working from home,
and most of us can't wait to start working together in the office again.

~~~
balfirevic
I did not expect this post to end with ditching remote work.

~~~
johndavid9991
As we work with our clients from the US, we also work closely with their
employees - that part still gives the feeling of remote work for us. Most of
our team members or employees live 10 to 40 minutes' drive away from each
other, so it makes sense to make the change and work in the same place. We
have three people who live far away, so they still work remotely with us, but
we mostly put them on projects that do not require much team collaboration.

------
chrisco255
I've been working remote for better part of a year. It works well as long as
your team has good systems in place. However, you do miss out on deeper
relationships with your coworkers if you start remote. People try to counter
this with on-sites, but still, it's not quite the same. Water cooler
conversations don't happen as often and though you would think that doesn't
matter, it does. There's less serendipity. I have less random interactions
with people who are not on my precise team.

All that being said, I think remote is here to stay.

------
grensley
Just like a traditional office setting, remote work isn't for everyone. At our
company I've seen that it is particularly difficult for:

\- extroverts

\- some of our more junior engineers

\- workers with families

I think having a good mix of traditional, partially-remote, and fully-remote
businesses is the place to be.

------
room271
I suspect loneliness/isolation is the biggest issue for most.

At the moment it's great because I'm at home with three housemates/friends.
But I think I'd get lonely pretty quickly if it was just me. Co-working spaces
might solve this a bit (never worked in one so don't know how much people
socialise).

~~~
xchip
That is what I thought a the beginning, I am very social and I will
talk/listen to anyone on the street, but yet it works very well for me and I
don't really feel lonely. Sometimes I even have to close slack because it is
too distracting :) Also we are all a better version of ourselves when we do
email, that is because we can put more brain time in what we are going to say.
Working remotely gets two big thumbs up for me!

------
sudosteph
After years of working remotely, my only argument against remote work is that
it requires that your direct team members also be working in the same manner
to be most effective. It's all or nothing if you want it to work long-term.

Whenever you have a case where some team members work in an office together,
and others work remotely - it creates undue stress on personal relationships.
Even if your team makes a great effort to be inclusive, there will always be
times (lunches especially) where important conversations will happen in-
person, and the remote person will be left out. In the worst case scenario, it
can lead to being intentionally left out of even important technical
conversations (Example: I had a remote coworker on a sibling team who
scheduled a meeting about a technical architecture issue he wanted to have
input on. The in-person team didn't show up to the call, but then had the
meeting in person without him and told him the outcome of the decision.) The
remote workers will end up feeling hobbled from a relationship building
standpoint - and their growth opportunities will feel limited.

Those issues can be easily avoided by keeping teams either all-remote, or all-
in-person. When you are in an all-remote team, everyone is on the same level
communication-wise. So you'll see real effort go into using slack and other
tools to build up comaraderie. With a mixed setup, that effort is usually
asymmetric - causing the remote workers to bond and develop trust with other
remote workers, but not with the in-person teams.

------
j-rom
Pros

\- Depending on at-home situation, you may be able to focus on work more

\- Time flexibility. You have the luxury of doing errands / tasks at home

Cons

\- Difficult to build deeper connections with co-workers. Unless there are
other processes in place, I've noticed that communication becomes increasingly
work-related and less about just catching up

\- Accessibility to distractions. It's easier to get distracted when you have
access to TV, books, video games, etc...

\- Separation of work and leisure time. Physically leaving the office used to
be a forcing function to stop working. Now, it can be easy to just keep
working.

\- Collaboration becomes more difficult. Your coworker may have stepped away
from their desk and you're kind of left hanging until they get back.

------
cdiamand
I work from home and am a big advocate of doing so.

One thing I find difficult in remote teams is the ability to ask a coworker a
question quickly. There can be a fair amount of lag time over messenger and
this occasionally blocks the completion of work.

~~~
minasss
> One thing I find difficult in remote teams is the ability to ask a coworker
> a question quickly.

Why is it so important that your colleague HAVE to respond quickly? Have you
ever considered that your colleague may need some time alone to finish her own
task before she can answer your super important question? (sorry for the mood
of my answer but it is so bad on purpose :) )

~~~
sloaken
If I am stuck on something, and that something is in your realm, either for
understanding or providing, then I might be stuck and unproductive until you
answer.

e.g. I send you a message - I am trying to use 'xyzzy' which you provide. When
I send it 'plover' I do not get back the response I need. Am I doing something
wrong? <crickets for 3 days> WTF why can he not respond in a reasonable time
frame? 1) on vacation, 2) sick in bed 3) over worked 4) a jerk 5) missed my
email. In an office I can walk over and say WTF? Where I will easily find the
new person who took his place, since he moved on to another job.

------
deanebarker
This article is entitled "There's No Such Thing as Quality Time."

It's oriented towards families, but it makes the case that there's no levels
of time, just...time, we spend together. Things happen in the cracks between
scheduled events that matter.

[https://ryanholiday.net/quality-time/](https://ryanholiday.net/quality-time/)

When you work remote, everything is scheduled, almost by definition. No
conversations happen that are not task-directed. You lose something there.

~~~
derision
> When you work remote, everything is scheduled, almost by definition

This assumption is not true in my experience. When shifting our company to
full time remote we did have an uptick in scheduled events but we still have
plenty of things that are unscheduled, unless you consider "hey can I call you
right now?" A scheduled event

------
vlozko
I know it can potentially be controversial but a lot of outside of work
relationships start at the office. Some can be romantic and may even lead to
marriage. Others can be friendships that last job changes. It can even be as
simple as having a great group of people to chill at a bar with. While I love
my wife and kids, I think most others are like me and want to periodically get
out and meet new people. Work is often the best place for that.

~~~
minasss
"The office" can be the building where you may have your desk, does it mean
that the desk must be owned by the company you work for? or that everyone in
the room must work for the same company to build a relation ship? :)

------
3minus1
There was a really interesting freaknomics podcast discussing remote work.
There was some study on a large sales company in China that experimented with
half of employees working remotely and half not. At the end they found that
remote workers were more productive in terms of sales numbers (less time on
commute, office socializing) but they got promoted at lower rates (less
facetime with superiors, not on peoples' radars)

~~~
weej
A bit of the out of sight out of mind at play? Curious too as to how much
visibility into efforts of remote employees (wins) were shared, celebrated and
known across the company vs. folks in person that have a better platform to
promote themselves.

------
l3db3tt3r
It seems to me that there is a use case, or model, for remote work, and is
situational in nature. It mostly comes down to a pro/con list, and for me it
really boils down to some 'risk assessment' and 'mitigation strategy' in
dealing with various levels of Aptitude, Communication, Organization Culture,
etc.

As with all jobs, it tends to come down to the individual, are they the
correct fit for remote work. Do they have 'non-in-person' communication
skills? Do they have the aptitude for self direction? Can they work
independently, from their remote environment? Can they contribute/collaborate
with a team, from their remote environment? Does the organizations culture
accept, and work with remote workflow?

The strongest argument against remote work is: Are you trying to fit a square
peg in a round hole?

------
malcolmgreaves
Inability to form genuine social bonds with colleagues, thus artificially
limiting trust.

~~~
minasss
I can assure you that it is possible to not trust people you see every day, 8
hours a day, 5 days a week.

------
c_t_montgomery
Hey there, I worked remotely for 4 of ~7.5 years at a medium-to-large tech
company (I left in February). I'm very thankful I had the opportunity, since
99% of the engineering team was either onsite or in satellite offices.

In my experience, it was far easier for me to get burned out when working
remotely versus in an office with other people. And when I did get burned out,
I found it harder to get back on the other side of the hill when I didn't have
a community around me.

Also, if I look at the ~7.5 year tenure at the company — my most productive
and happiest times were when I was located onsite at their HQ.

Just my $0.02; happy to talk more in detail over email (in profile).

------
fcord
Lack of engagement is the strongest argument I can think of.

Immersion in problems is a really cheap way for product managers, engineering
leads, and data scientists to engage with problems. When you're in office it's
easier to get that engagement, thereby getting business-relevant exposure and
feedback on your work.

Remote work can also confound lack of skill for communication difficulties
(another form of lack of engagement). One of the weakest leads I've ever
worked with was remote. He was ineffectual and effectively invisible to execs,
except when they wondered why his team wasn't delivering more value.

------
hprotagonist
Fully remote work does not permit the community that research requires to
progress. So fully remote isn’t an option for me. Flexible time, of course,
is.

 _Now Alan Chynoweth mentioned that I used to eat at the physics table. I had
been eating with the mathematicians and I found out that I already knew a fair
amount of mathematics; in fact, I wasn 't learning much. The physics table
was, as he said, an exciting place, but I think he exaggerated on how much I
contributed. It was very interesting to listen to Shockley, Brattain, Bardeen,
J. B. Johnson, Ken McKay and other people, and I was learning a lot. But
unfortunately a Nobel Prize came, and a promotion came, and what was left was
the dregs. Nobody wanted what was left. Well, there was no use eating with
them!

Over on the other side of the dining hall was a chemistry table. I had worked
with one of the fellows, Dave McCall; furthermore he was courting our
secretary at the time. I went over and said, "Do you mind if I join you?" They
can't say no, so I started eating with them for a while. And I started asking,
"What are the important problems of your field?" And after a week or so, "What
important problems are you working on?" And after some more time I came in one
day and said, "If what you are doing is not important, and if you don't think
it is going to lead to something important, why are you at Bell Labs working
on it?" I wasn't welcomed after that; I had to find somebody else to eat with!
That was in the spring.

In the fall, Dave McCall stopped me in the hall and said, "Hamming, that
remark of yours got underneath my skin. I thought about it all summer, i.e.
what were the important problems in my field. I haven't changed my research,"
he says, "but I think it was well worthwhile." And I said, "Thank you Dave,"
and went on. I noticed a couple of months later he was made the head of the
department. I noticed the other day he was a Member of the National Academy of
Engineering. I noticed he has succeeded. I have never heard the names of any
of the other fellows at that table mentioned in science and scientific
circles. They were unable to ask themselves, "What are the important problems
in my field?"_

Hamming, “You and your Research”

------
xupybd
I need human contact. I'm fuelled off of the energy of others. What I love
about my current job is my bosses drive, vision and enthusiasm. Don't get me
wrong the hours are terrible. The work is closer to IT grunt work than the
programming I love. But I get to solve real problems and be a key part of
driving a business forward under a highly motivated boss. It's great. I don't
know if that would be possible with only remote interaction.

------
dionidium
Some people are just as productive at home as in the office. I'm a remote
worker and I'd put myself in this camp. But some people self-report a decrease
in productivity and I'm inclined to take them seriously. There are workers who
aren't shy about saying, "I get less done at home" (e.g. [0]).

I recommend believing them.

[0]
[https://twitter.com/MarketUrbanism/status/125374860767884492...](https://twitter.com/MarketUrbanism/status/1253748607678844928)

------
noleksum
Isolation both physically and mentally.

As a serial entrepayneur in Saas and a degreed software architect I find
little disruption and absolute silence a great benefit to be able to create in
the confines and silence of my home. I have been working remote partially
since dialup and full remote in the last 10 years. One must self motivate and
while I can say that easily since my efforts result in my own success working
for someone else is likely more difficult if you need constant feedback and
oversight.

Stay Healthy!

------
DrNuke
Alignment and coordination suffer, in my experience; on the other hand, the
productivity at large is increased. It could be that remote work is more
suited to some stages of the product / service life, notably the early stage
(brainstorming, early design, early tests) and the sales / post-sales stage
(business development, due diligence, customer care)?

------
codingdave
Hiring - People who are great remote workers are a small percentage of the
available talent, so you often end up either with talented people who don't do
well remotely, or less talented people who are great at working remote. There
certainly are people out there with both traits, but it takes a ton of effort
to find them and build a team of them.

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A4ET8a8uTh0
So. Hear me out. I had my eyes opened a little bit last weekend. I was going
through leadership substitutes theories and spatial distance from leader ( or
manager ) is listed as one of the neutralizers. Naturally, it is not an
argument management would openly make, but all of a sudden I understood why
they were so unwilling to make remote happen. It undermines them.

edit: added openly

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simmanian
Online meetings seriously suck still. It's harder to form real relationships
with coworkers (some would see this as a plus, but I think it depends on the
company/team culture). But the biggest change is forming trust. How do we come
to trust in each other and in the mission if we never interact physically? It
certainly takes a different kind of leadership.

~~~
minasss
I can say by experience that being in the same building does not imply that
you are building a relationship. Meetings are meetings, you still have to
prepare, you still have to communicate well, you will have your turn to speak,
if it does not work it is not because you are behind a webcam

~~~
simmanian
I agree with you. I just think there are more reasons why a meeting would not
be productive over zoom, especially if you're working with older, non-tech
people!

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rishirishi
Audio/video chat is atrocious for relationship building.

\- There's the speed of sound/light delay. \- You lose all the physiological
feedback: Body language, tone, facial expression. \- The barrier to start a
conversation is way higher too. Some would argue that is good. \- You cannot
go for a walk with a peer.

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meheleventyone
I think for established companies it's that there is a big risk and time
commitment to realign company process and organisation to support remote work.

Definitely less of an argument for starting something new but if you've not
done it before then it also carries some risk you might not be willing to
shoulder.

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antisthenes
I'm stuck at home with a dog/puppy and no way to escape without having to tend
to it every 2 hours. Personally I don't mind it, because I enjoy spending time
with my dog, but the business might.

It breaks concentration and deep work.

By my own estimates, I'm about 40-50% as productive as I was in the office.

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pjettter
You generally miss the out of band communication, i.e. the conversations
between other colleagues that you overhear, as well as the 'waterfountain'
chat. Sure, these spaces can be created online, but in my experience the
threshold is too high for such spontaneous things to happen.

~~~
octorian
> i.e. the conversations between other colleagues that you overhear, as well
> as the 'waterfountain' chat.

Never underestimate the value of these conversations. Often, this simple
ability to "overhear" others is EXACTLY how you avoid being left out of the
loop and have some clue as to what's going on.

~~~
minasss
this is a real issue even with in office presence; not everyone is in the loop
and the solution, in my opinion, is not to keep everyone in the same room but
to spread information in the company

~~~
octorian
But the people in charge are often oblivious to this situation, because it
feels to them like everyone is in the loop. Mostly because "the loop" has been
happening for a long time as a side-effect of people overhearing
conversations.

Of course this problem also manifests when a company grows to the point where
no one sits within earshot anymore.

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Ididntdothis
Number one is: You need to be cut out for it. You need to be self sufficient
and be OK with working alone. Not many people can handle that and will want to
go back to the office.

I love remote work and get really stressed in an office (especially open and
cubes) but I feel people like me are a minority.

~~~
minasss
Thank you for your points!

> You need to be cut out for it. You need to be self sufficient

Instead of saying "People are not cut to it" why cannot we say "People have
not enough experience with it"?

Even working in a classic office space requires some experience, trial and
error.

> and be OK with working alone.

well, there are co-working spaces, working hubs etc

~~~
LyndsySimon
> Instead of saying "People are not cut to it" why cannot we say "People have
> not enough experience with it"?

I've been working exclusively remotely for around five years now.

Certainly there are skills that can be acquired and improved that will help
you succeed, but I believe that there is also a significant element of
"natural aptitude". Some people need the personal interaction of an office
environment more than others to feel fulfilled. If they need that and don't
get it, no amount of training or experience is going to change that.

------
axegon_
I used to be strongly against it. I felt like I would never be able to be
productive or efficient from home with a pile of books sitting on one side, a
tv on the other and so on. Boy, was I wrong... As a matter of fact things have
never been easier. While on-site you constantly have people around you, and
countless distractions and annoyances, this is not the case at home.

This isn't the case for everyone of course - if you have kids, families, pets
and whatnot, I'm sure that changes.

In addition, since I am a really die-hard linux user and I know my way around
a system and networks, it's safe to say I do most of the work locally on my
computer. rsync, mounting small partitions over sshfs with just the files I
need, tunneling and so on, I honestly can't tell the difference after spending
two hours writing a few shell scripts for common stuff. Generally I am a
command line guy, I rarely bother with fancy IDE's and vim is often my first
weapon of choice. With a couple of macros I've been able to simplify just
about all common tasks to a few keystrokes. And being really familiar with the
code that already exists, I rarely need reference. As long as I have SSH and
the most basic of tools like vim, grep, git, find and whatnot, I feel right at
home, no pun intended.

But for people who are used to more modern, fancy stuff(coming from a 30 year
old...), this might sound like a nightmare. Also if your work involves a lot
of graphics, it's probably a nightmare. Looking at people using rdp... Them
poor poor souls...

The only drawback I initially saw was the absence of physical movement for me.
This worried me a lot because until several years ago I was a bit overweight
to put it mildly(185cm, 110+ kg). Before the lockdown I used to walk to and
back from work, exercise and all of a sudden all of that went away. But there
was another strange side effect of the lockdown - I started exercising on
daily basis(having weights, pull up bar, yoga mats and whatnot and 5 minutes
every couple of hours). To my greatest surprise, in the last month and a half
I've gotten in a better shape then ever. In terms of body fat I'm certainly in
the single digits without loosing muscle mass.

So in the case of people who have the chance to work in solitude, have a good
working ethic, can handle their work efficiently over the internet, don't
require social interactions and can take care of their physical and mental
health(highly specific demographic, I know), at this point I have 0 arguments
against remote work. If anything, I absolutely love it.

------
volodymyrs
Is this about remote or all-remote?

Does anyone else do this thing when they work 90% of the time remotely and
sometimes travel for a day meeting? This addresses some of the issues
discussed.

This can also work for informal communication, to a degree.

------
musicale
My strongest argument _for_ remote work is that I find typical offices almost
completely useless for getting work done, because of interruptions,
distractions, noise, required in-person activities, shared physical space, and
general lack of privacy, so I end up doing most work at home anyway.

Many physical offices seem to be designed largely to enforce social pecking
orders (sustaining and visibly rewarding high status while punishing low
status) and/or to cram more people into fewer square feet, rather than to
facilitate sustainable productivity along with physical and mental health.

Private, walled offices with closed doors can help somewhat, but most
workplaces I'm familiar with seem to have switched to productivity-destroying
open plan offices to save on facilities costs.

------
strategarius
A lot of things have been said, how communication is easier in person. I would
simply add I miss socialization, chatting to colleagues during coffee break,
extremely productive brainstorming during lunch and so on

------
thrownot234
People managers are the gatekeepers. As a developer its much easier to account
the time. But its hard for people managers to account for time. That is only
reason, nothing else ?

------
diehunde
Personal growth, learning group dynamics, interactions, etc. Same reason I
would rather my kids to go to regular school and college instead of remote
ones.

------
musicale
Remote work doesn't work well for certain jobs that require dealing with
physical objects.

This may change with advances in robotics and remote control.

------
bjourne
On average, people are bad at it. Even if you are convinced that _you_ are
much more productive when WFH than in the office, most people aren't.

~~~
minasss
On average, people are bad at office work too

------
adv0r
Solitude in the long term will make you miserable

------
nathan_long
It's impossible to have a company potluck.

~~~
dgrin91
Typically remote work companies still have occasional (say quarterly) in
person, all-hands gatherings.

~~~
nathan_long
Yep. But I'm not lugging a crock pot on a plane. :)

------
PopeDotNinja
It's hard to train people remotely. At least it is in my experience anyway.

~~~
minasss
it will require a bit more effort for sure, but teaching (not training, we are
not puppies) is hard anyway, even if you are an awesome teacher

------
random_upvoter
I don't like my private sphere getting invaded by a public sphere.

~~~
minasss
so you are saying that you need someone else to decide what is private or not
in your life?

------
qppo
The crushing loneliness

~~~
minasss
remote work does not mean you have to stay alone, there are co-working spaces
all over the world

------
buboard
it doesnt foster competition between each other ?

------
anpago
Gossip and social interaction.

It can seem pointless but when you find out that the random co worker shares
an interest/friendship with a senior figure in the company, as you witness a
brief exchange. A major mistake many make is not realising who "knows of"
others in the workplace, they may normally never even greet one another.

The mail/parcel facilities guy mentions he is helping set up that new set of
desks or has to come in early for a major delivery. Small things but can be
very insightful.

On nodding terms with the help desk person who then happier to help you when
you need urgent help.

Making polite small talk waiting for a meeting or con call to start. About
some minor incident, feature or event in the office you both use. Even just
waffling on about the carparking situation or the local supermarket or
sandwich shop you all end up at when visiting the Office.

When you send that email to the team and whoever else. But you get that brief
bit of feedback (it might just be a glance and a grin) across the desk that
you just won't get via remote messaging services.

Overhearing or partaking in random conversations in the office which a snippet
of become useful sometimes months or years later.

Having impromptu training sessions as either as teacher or pupil because well
we are all there and now is as good a time as ever.

Opportunities as the person speaking to the person who is first asked.

I got offered an internal extra role which involves little but ensures I get
an additional payment monthly on top of my wages and useful on the CV. All
because stood by my then managers desk . I have changed my main role several
times in the 9 years or so since but still have this little extra role and the
payment.

Hosting and receiving guests on behalf of others or the department as in the
Office. Over the years I have made a lot of contacts this way and got involved
in a number of projects and ongoing operations simply from being the stand in
host or dragged along by a manager/director as their person who understands
technology or simply for a second opinion..

Plenty of times sat in the office and become the resolver (even if asking
those working remotely) in the eyes of those that need help. Even though
credit given to others the person helped remembers your face and name.

Getting offered the extra tickets for a event the company sponsor as others
pull out and well your there.

As I look back over decades of work it's nearly always meeting people in
person even in passing where things happen. A quick interaction which I have
forgotten may be remembered by someone who comes back into your working life
decades later. Much less likely your recall those you once called or emailed
in passing years later.

I work at home regularly but would be extremely concerned if unable to
regularly visit my employers offices.

Never be in the office to often but been there regularly enough.

------
lidHanteyk
There isn't one, for our industry. You are right now _remotely_ asking for
help with how to manage a business. We can do everything remotely, and many
businesses in our industry have done so. The fact is that, if you don't have
co-located capital (a data center), then you don't need co-located labor
(employees to maintain the data center).

