
A Decade of Remote Work - mvip
https://blog.viktorpetersson.com/2019/05/18/a-decade-of-remote.html
======
letstrynvm
I've worked for over 30 years only remote on one thing or another... most of
this guy's points are on the money.

Unless it's enforced to share information properly, if some people are in an
office and others are not, there are two classes of political animal created
immediately and that will affect everything.

Unless I missed it, he didn't get into how variable work really is... this 10h
thing is kind of a crock for the kind of work I do anyway... sometimes you are
blocked on the one thing you have to be doing and it's difficult to focus on
things that are of secondary importance just because you should be working.
Other times you're being paid, but there's nothing to do for one reason or
another. You can usually find useful things to do but at these times, they
already know the situation. They want you to just note it, keep your head down
and do something you can do yourself that should be somewhat helpful, and pick
up immediately the thing is unblocked.

It's just not always possible to move things forward for 10h each day... be
transparent about it. Sometimes if it's an architectural or philosphical
issue, you need to study it and then do something else while your brain thinks
about it. Some days nothing is going to move forward no matter what you do
because of your personal state... you learn to recognize it and let it go...
tomorrow or the day after you'll be back in triple force and more than make it
up. The people who are paying you usually care about results not hour by hour
but week by week. So long as it's all happening on that scale everyone's
happy.

~~~
cm2012
This is true in offices too. Anyone in knowledge work claiming to consistently
work 10 hours a day either does way too much busywork or is lying.

~~~
Aeolun
Enterprise is 80% busywork. It’s really easy to hit 10 hours a day.

~~~
toper-centage
That relevant "Compiling" xkcd comes to mind :)

------
knappe
So one thing that isn't mentioned in this article that I think is incredibly
important is making sure you maintain a social life outside of work.

When working at an office you tend to spend time with your coworkers outside
of work and that is something you don't really get an opportunity to take
advantage of when you're remote. Be sure to make some effort to get out of the
house and be social in some form. Otherwise it becomes too easy to become
isolated and you can suffer because of it. It also helps with counteracting
the problem of overworking, since you have other obligations in you day that
push you towards wrapping up work for the day.

~~~
Kiro
> When working at an office you tend to spend time with your coworkers outside
> of work

Never experienced this. Is it really that common? I love my coworkers but they
are colleagues, not friends.

~~~
cosmodisk
Depends on a country. In the UK, you are very likely to get a lot of social
interactions after work aka the pub. In some, like France,I was told it's not
really the case.

~~~
flurdy
Second this. Over the 15 years that I have worked in the UK, most of my best
friends are ex-colleagues. I moved back for a while to my native Norway and
worked 6 years there but there were nearly no social interactions with
colleagues. Perhaps once a quarter you would go for a beer or pizza but very
rarely. (Though some of the work organised sports events, lunchtime football,
floorball, etc, was good.)

I was relieved when we decided to move back to the UK and I could have a quick
pint after work once or twice a week again. Some quick banter and gossip
improve camaraderie and spirits a lot. Though as a parent it has to be a quick
drink but still enough to bond.

But also in the UK, it has been very different depending on if the office is
located in the city centre or an office park. One of the many reasons why I
try to avoid companies in an anonymous office park...

Though now I am working mostly remotely in a tiny town where I know no one so
I make an effort to occasionally jump on a train into London just to meet ex-
colleagues for a drink for my social interactions (and possible contract
networking...)

~~~
isostatic
The pint after work thing is a culture thing. In London and maybe. If cities
where everyone gets the train in it isn’t unknown. For most in the country
people drive to work, it seems rare to have after work pints.

------
BlackRing
Remote work taught me that working in batches can really drive up my
efficiency. 2.5 hours at the start of the day, a half hour break, then another
period of work about the same length, and then finally one more. I find this
breaks up things and allows the 'down time' to settle in my head so I can come
back and prep to get "in the zone" for another two hour purely focused work
period. All that ties in wonderfully to his routine keeping, which is a great
template to work with.

It helps to shut off all notifications on your phone or computer as well,
including email.

~~~
mvip
Author here. Yep, "batching" is great advice. I am a big fan of Pomodoros.
Also, I usually only check my email twice per day: once time in late morning
and once in the late afternoon. Each time I spend roughly one Pomodoro just
one email. After implementing this routine, I've found myself far more on top
of my mailbox despite spending less time. Kudos to Cal Newport for
recommending this in his book Deep Work, which is where I got it from.

~~~
wjossey
I love this too. I actually wrote a simple web-app that I use to "pause" my
emails throughout the day for this very purpose. Starting at 8AM, my emails
batch until 11AM, then again until 4PM. I found the notifications hitting my
phone were a big distraction, so pausing them helped me to ignore them during
working hours.

~~~
mixmastamyk
I don’t use the email app on my phone, problem solved, haha.

~~~
icebraining
+1. I have the account configured, but disabled auto-refreshing. It only
fetches emails when I manually "pull" them.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Me too, on the desktop.

------
oil25
This was very well written and helpful to me as a newly remote employee. The
tone in this article is very pleasant and uplifting. I especially like your
point about having mental triggers to establish routines. When I worked in an
office, I struggled most with others triggering me into unpleasant behaviors.
Now that I'm remote, I feel a great burden has been lifted and I'm free to set
my own habits in time. Thanks for sharing this!

~~~
CameronBanga
I'm about to add our first remote hire to our team, where 4 will be based out
of office and one will be remote. Would love to hear your thoughts on this and
get some feedback as to how I should best plan for this on our side, if you're
willing to share? My contact info is in my profile.

------
notacoward
As someone who has worked remotely for not quite a decade myself, there are a
few other points I'd consider essential. The big one is remote workers being
left out of meetings. "Oh, you can't make it then? We'll just make you
optional and fill you in later." Except it doesn't work.

If someone's not there, they get no _input_. They don't get to correct any
facts that are incorrect or out of date. They don't get to bring up a point or
principle that's important _in the moment_ , before people start taking sides
on what might be a moot point. The quality of the _output_ is usually awful
too. The "catch up" often doesn't happen at all. If it does, it's usually just
a few action items and open issues. It doesn't capture the ebb and flow of the
conversation - what people spent the most energy on, what the points of
contention were, pros and cons that flew by so fast nobody wrote them down
(but could later turn out to be crucial). That stuff matters as much as the
bullet points, not just for the topic under discussion but to understand how
people go about their business and thus how to work effectively with them.
Maybe even to coach them on how to present their ideas more effectively. As a
senior engineer that's something I'm supposed to do, I enjoy doing it, I can
if I'm there, but if I'm "optional" that door closes.

There's an art to making meetings effective for people who are remote. If
you're remote yourself, expect to spend a certain amount of time coaching and
coaxing your team mates on this stuff. They'll usually welcome such advice
IMX. People mean well, they just don't have the right knowledge or habits yet.
It's worth it to become an advocate and mentor for effective remote or cross-
site meetings. Everyone will benefit, but especially you.

There are other fine points to do with time zones, the effect that an 80ms
delay has on our unconscious "who speaks next" protocol, and more, but I feel
I've gone on long enough.

------
blazespin
The most important thing for remote workers is to tell them they have to give
up subtext/implied context because it gets lost over remote channels very
quickly. This is probably the hardest I've found. I've asked people who are
not skilled in being explicit to throttle their attempts to initiate comms and
watch how people are skilled in initiating and to try to learn from them.

For example, don't start a conversation off with "Hi", or "Can I get your help
with that problem yesterday?" Or even "We're having difficulty resolving
JIRA-2341" Rather, immediately narrow in on the specific, crisp question you
need answered. Subtext and context can only be used when you expect someone to
supply it. Senior people on my teams know to call this out, even if they know
what the other person is talking about.

Also, everyone has to have ipads with pen or some type of drawing tablet for
white boarding sessions. A camera pointed down at a whiteboard works well too.

Remote is very doable, but everyone has to be all in, and those who do not
communicate properly can destroy the effectiveness of remote culture very
quickly. And if they are the senior technical talent on your team, they can do
it all the faster. Especially if they are co-located in an office as they'll
communicate via non remote channels and vital discussions will get lost /
unrecorded.

The other problem is there is pretty senior talent that doesn't look for
remote work because they've learned to use charisma to short-cut and speed up
getting things done rather than making complex arguments about things they
already know to be true. This is in my opinion is the greatest blockage to
making remote more effective than people wasting time and risking their lives
by driving every day into an office.

~~~
xemdetia
I find your last point to be the thing that sticks out to me the most. I feel
like the whole charisma to grease the wheels allows you to guide a company
easier as a SME/senior technical when vision and leadership are failing. When
I go down the complex argument route I can only convince some people but lose
others from the differences in expertise and audience (or the people who
somehow feel they can say any complete technical idea in 10 words or less and
reject reading). When I am in the room you are just better enabled to deal
when you start losing some of the people on the fringe.

In fact it feels like most times I try the complex argument route I end up in
a charisma meeting anyway so who knows.

~~~
theshrike79
It's hard to read the room when trying to convince people if all you get from
them is their voice.

------
hevi_jos
Remote work needs development.

We have a long history of work in the Office, a History over 100 years long,
with a significant fraction of the population working there. Lots of companies
have experimented and risked with different approaches of management and few
remain.

That is not the case with remote work. We don't really understand it yet.

Writing down "remote is not for everyone" implies that we know everything
about remote working and our particular model or management style is THE only
one, which is not.

It implies that the worker is not prepared for remote when probably it is the
company who is not.

In fact, with remote work you can measure the output of each worker way better
than in traditional working conditions. Instead of measuring a worker punching
in and out and then buying at Amazon or doing facebook at work, you can
measure actual work.

In the future, there will be companies that will specialize at remote work,
for example they will come at your house and prepare a room for working
remotely without distractions, and they will do it, not you, because they know
what they do, just like your dentist, and your company will pay the bill.

Lots of things will change, but we are yet in the mindset of Office work, and
can not see it.

~~~
detaro
> _In fact, with remote work you can measure the output of each worker way
> better than in traditional working conditions. Instead of measuring a worker
> punching in and out and then buying at Amazon or doing facebook at work, you
> can measure actual work._

Why can't you apply whatever "better" measure you propose for remote workers
not to workers sitting in an office?

------
chapium
> Usually, people who fail at remote work tend to either lack the self-
> discipline it requires, or they are simply socially oriented and thrive
> being around other people. In the latter case, working from a shared office
> can help, but even then, if you lack the self-discipline and habits
> required, you are likely not going to thrive. While there are plenty of
> exceptions to this rule, young people (early 20s) tend to struggle more with
> this than people who have reach their late 20s and early 30s.

These are probably valid points, but it pigeon holes the employee. There are
lots of reasons remote work may not work out for someone. The organization
matters as much as the individual. One terrible boss can be hell for a remote
worker who does not have presence in the company.

------
majorbugger
Good advice, except, do not work 10 hours like that person, aim for 8 hours.

~~~
mvip
Author here. I don't factor in lunch (so take away 30-60 min). Also, the 19:30
stop is there as a hard stop. Sometimes I feel drained at 17:30 or 18:00 after
a very productive day. In that case, I'm happy to wrap up the day.

------
kzisme
I've been working fully remote for a little over a year now. I enjoy the
freedom it grants me to live where I want, but the main issue I have is
feeling like I'm not meeting enough co-workers and having some sort of network
while I'm still new in the industry (and fear of not learning enough).

It's also quite annoying to have a laptop that doesn't even have an SSD in it,
and having to email IT or someone from a different group and never hear back
without sending 3+ follow up emails. It would be easier to walk and go see
them if I were just working there.

One thing I learned from my first remote job was to examine how your direct
manager treats remote work, and that will quickly tell you how your experience
might turn out. My boss communicated with me hardly ever (even to relay
requirements for new projects), and frequently stayed up all night to finish
stuff.

~~~
icebraining
Rather than sending that third email, why not call them? Even in my company,
where I don't know any remote workers, people webcall each other all the time,
since we're often on different buildings.

~~~
kzisme
Calling doesn't show or track attempts to get a hold of these individuals.
CC'ing managers on emails being sent to other groups/IT is what I've been told
to do now since I'm not the only one having issues with this.

Also I would be lucky for them to pick up the phone.

~~~
rob_b
This is where the follow up email to your attempt comes in handy. You try to
speed things up by the phone call, but if you don’t get an answer, then you
send an email and mention that you called as well. In the cases where you do
speak with someone, then you can adjust the content to reflect your
appreciation for them speaking with you and then outline the issue(s) still
remaining, assuming they weren’t resolved. There are obviously various
iterations and combinations but the gist is to be persistent and try to take
more control of the situation by incorporating a follow up into the mix.

~~~
pfranz
Yes! This is something that took me longer to learn than it should have. Even
if the call went well, send a followup email briefly summarizing the
discussion and end with actionable things.

I find phone or in person much better to gauge tone and emails can more easily
be dismissed.

------
abhiyerra
This is great advice. Being a remote worker the advice on having time in the
morning to yourself before starting and a shutdown is super important. Another
aspect I found is to get dressed up even if it is just wearing jeans as it
mentally shifts you from leisure to work.

The Deep Work in the morning to really dive into a single thing is important
even just for self-discipline. But it does take a while to really hone this
and as he said remote work isn’t for everyone. It feels like it’s better
suited for introverts than extroverts.

~~~
mvip
Spot on regarding getting dressed! After my morning excercise, I get dressed
just as I were to go into the office.

Regarding intra vs extraverts - I think you're right, it probably somewhat
favors intraverts. However, I've worked with a number of extraverts over the
years too that worked well remotely.

------
oldman123456789
I can't work remotely. Wife and kid constantly sneak in and before you know it
she is sitting on the floor and my daughter is jumping on my lap. It's useless
to fight it... better go to the office. Can other family men in here get this
done? I am curious

~~~
grzm
Remote doesn’t have to mean work from home.

~~~
pacomerh
Exactly, I was gonna write this. In fact I feel that working remotely is more
difficult from home. Go to a co-working space or rent a shared office space,
it's a win win you get other people around you

------
ubermonkey
Most of this seems obvious to me.

I've been working mostly or completely remotely since October of 2001. For a
brief period in there, at one startup, I had an office in an incubator a few
blocks from my house, but after 6 months or so we decided it wasn't a good use
of money, and everyone went remote.

The only other "exception" is my current job, which I've had for almost 12
years. We've never had office space anywhere, so it's been 100% remote EXCEPT
that early on, we did a lot of travel to client sites.

We haven't really done that much AT ALL since about 2010/2011, owing to the
greater acceptance of remote presence/screensharing tools, and that's been
awesome. I haven't seen my boss in a year. I have coworkers I talk to
(skype/voice/email) daily that I have never met in the flesh, because they're
in other cities.

For us, this has worked VERY WELL. We all mostly work a normal day for our
timezone, though obviously sometimes there are extended hours.

The only downside for us that I can really see is that we can't really hire
fresh or inexperienced devs. There's no water cooler. You can't go sit with
$senior_dev_guy for a day to get a feel for things, or learn the stack, or
whatever, so we tend to only hire midcareer or later folks. OTOH, we also have
absurdly low turnover, which means hiring doesn't come up THAT much anyway.

~~~
scapegoat444
what sort of stuff are you working on? And, are you hiring?

~~~
ubermonkey
We're a software company, and unfortunately no, not right now.

------
frindo
>Either you’re remote-only or you don’t do remote at all. Lots of companies
brag about giving their staff the freedom to work remotely.

I've worked on three different "remote" teams now and I think the author's
point is spot on.

The first time we did it everyone was remote, scattered across different
states in America. It was a great experience. Everyone had a ton of freedom
and flexibility and there was a lot of trust across the team.

The next two teams I worked in had each "division" headquartered in different
regions. Design was based in one area, Engineering in another, product in
another. It was so much worse. The people I worked were wonderful but we just
couldn't develop the trust needed to build at the pace the market demanded.

How I describe the issue now is that we thought we were a "remote team" but we
were actually just a handful of employees working remote from HQ. The HQ was
wherever the core work was being done at the moment (usually with engineering)
and the rest of us were just remote employees.

~~~
CameronBanga
I'm about to add our first remote hire to our team, where 4 will be based out
of office and one will be remote. Would love to hear your thoughts on this and
get some feedback as to how I should best plan for this on our side, if you're
willing to share? My contact info is in my profile.

------
lukasm
The article has some good advice. I've been working remotely for 2 years and
here are my observations:

\- When you work from a coworking space with others, it's easier to meet
people and make friends. They are not your colleagues which removes certain
"fakeness" from the relationship (you are not force d to spend time with
someone, no office politics, no boss-employee dynamic, no zero-sum games like
promotions). \- It could be a good idea to spend a few months working together
and then transition to remote work. \- Use Block Site and block youtube.com
etc. on your work machine \- Don't stay at home 100% of the time. Work from a
cafe from time to time.

------
return1
> remote is not for everyone

I view this as a problem. Everyone should be able to work remotely in tech,
especially in 2019. Office and commutes should be legacy concepts. What do we
need to do to enable better and more remote cultures? Society has currently
adapted to Office norms, with regards to working hours, interpersonal
interactions etc. With the rise of remote work and indie work we 'll need to
develop new ways to live.

~~~
mattnewport
Office work is not for everyone. It's nice that remote is an option in tech
now but lots of people do jobs that aren't really office based and often they
say that it's at least in part because office work is not for them. Really
it's office work that's a 19th and 20th century aberration.

------
angarg12
My biggest fear regarding remote work is career progression. It seems that the
author is a founder, so this isn't an issue for him, but my anecdotal evidence
tells me that remote workers are left behind in terms of promotions and
professional growth.

This might be less relevant for remote only companies, but I would need to see
it first hand before I become less sceptic.

~~~
ivarojha
For devs, there are usually two path choices. Engineering Management or
Individual Contributors. As a remote engineer, you will tend towards being IC
than being EM and this is because most engineers, as the post mentions, are
self-motivated and self-disciplined. And being an IC, it's not as hard to
climb up the ladder, although, the problem is, most remote companies don't
have a defined ladder. I think with companies like Gitlab, setting an example
of a fully-remote company of a considerate size, the view will change and more
companies will take this path in future. If you notice, most remote companies
are really in their early stage and there's no need to define career
progression path yet, given the things they have to prioritize at that stage.

------
rdiddly
The information flow, specifically the lack thereof, and even more
specifically the lazy/disorganized/maybe-even-passive-aggressive way it was
(not) handled, ended up being the primary disadvantage of the remote
arrangement for me. If you get a chance to work remotely, make sure management
is fully committed to the idea, and to all that it entails. If they subscribe
to the "blurt things out and wander off" management style, and people just
kind of yell out whatever's bothering them in the office, that's already a
pretty bad sign, but see if they're willing to promise to document everything
in writing. If they're not willing, or they have any misgivings at all, you're
probably better off staying in the office.

------
cosmodisk
Pretty strong article. As someone who has to manage onsite/offsite people( non
IT thought), the flow of information is essential and it's very hard to
balance it.The people in the office will always have more access to additional
info unless there are some processes in place to balance it.

Also,what the author of the article doesn't mention is client ability to work
remotely. I'm currently dealing with one: cc'ing everyone on everything ( <20
people company,all sit in the same room). Emails are often without much sense
and you have to reiterate again and again.

There's a category of people who can't write and express themselves well,which
makes them impossible for remote jobs.

~~~
rob_b
Communication is definitely huge with remote work. I think it’s the crux for a
lot of newly remote workers. You have to adjust your communication style when
working remotely, which some people just can’t handle. This goes for all sides
as well though. I’ve been in a situation where onsite employees refused to
participate with remote employees, which obviously didn’t end well.

------
ljiljana
I recently started remote work for a company I've been working for ~3 years
and it's been great so far, I'm more productive and I feel I just have more
energy overall. But the reason I think it's been great is that I already know
people I work with quite well, I have a lot of slack conversations with my
teammates so I don't feel left out or lonely at all (well, so far at least, it
may be too early to say). I do wonder if the experience is different when you
start remote for a new company from the beginning?

------
bernardlunn
From 20 years experience, mostly nodding along except that engineers are
easier to manage remotely than sales. Depends on who is doing the managing,
not inherent in the job

------
ivarojha
I've been working remotely and concur with the author's thoughts. Freedom can
also be a curse in disguise. Cannot emphasize more on self-discipline and
getting a separate room as the office in the home.

Also, socializing! I was pretty introvert as a person. Would hardly initiate
conversations with strangers. Now I get cravings to just go outside and meet
friends. I cope up with this by attending meetups and catching up with friends
in the evenings.

------
cfarm
In the "remote only or not at all" argument, I think it's really up to the
leadership to set the example. You can have an office, but if the leaders of
the company stress how important it is to work remotely, this will be ok. The
employees just need to understand how all remote workers feel; when they have
to go through the same patterns as remote workers do, then these habits get
adopted well into the culture.

~~~
rickyc091
I believe the whole remote only or not is really about the process as you
mentioned. I've worked in a company where we had physical offices, but folks
would work remotely several days a week. When we did standups, everyone would
hop onto Zoom on their computers. Everyone would also be very punctual to
meetings and respect the time setting agendas and providing notes for those
who couldn't make it.

Now in a company that operates as an in-office, but supports remote work, it
functions very differently. Everyone in the office huddles around the scrum
master's computer and the remote folks are dialed in. Often times the audio is
incomprehensible since people are too far from the one laptop. Meetings are
randomly canceled or moved without knowledge. There were a number of times I
would sit in a meeting for 10 - 15 minutes waiting for people and posting on
the Slack channel if the meeting was still happening. Dead silence. Any larger
team meetings, forget about it; I'll have to catch up from the slides later or
ask my colleagues what I missed.

~~~
cfarm
I think we're saying the same thing. My added point is just that leadership
needs to set this example.

------
tom_hirst
Thanks for this post, Viktor. A lot of this hits home.

You inspired me to write up my own experiences of 10 years in remote work
[https://theremotedev.com/10-years-remote/](https://theremotedev.com/10-years-
remote/)

------
davman
From a UK perspective, my question is how do you find roles that allow remote
work? It always seems to be a blocker and I end up having to take non-remote
roles to pay the bills.

------
arduinomancer
How does it work with time zones in a remote company? Is everyone allowed to
live anywhere they want? Do they usually restrict the time zone the employees
live in?

~~~
JimDabell
It depends on the company. Some companies have core hours where everybody is
supposed to be working. Others work asynchronously, so that people work
whenever they want. It seems to me that the organisations that embrace remote
work fully tend to go async. and the ones that are new to it or don't fully
buy into it have core hours.

------
brightball
Going on 8 years remote and I 100% agree with the authors.

------
_nalply
I wonder if remote work is a good thing for a Deaf developer. Do people who
work remote sometimes need to make important phone calls, for example?

~~~
throwaway9298
Deafness is a spectrum. If you've got sufficient hearing - and pick the right
phone - it can work out. I usually have a second party on the call who can
explain anything I mishear via instant messaging.

I've experimented with a wide variety of techincal solutions over the years,
and I've learnt that the often-compressed bandwidth of cell phones is bad -- I
avoid calls using cell phones like the plague these days.

Since I work remotely, in a private office, I can get away with using a really
high quality speaker phone. With hearing aids as they are today, including
digital processing and noise discrimination, it works OK.

P.

~~~
_nalply
I don't hear anything.

------
mrosett
Thanks for the article. When you read in the morning, does that include things
like Hacker News or do you earmark it for books?

~~~
mvip
Author here. Rarely digital. Mostly good old fashioned books. When I read on a
tablet or similar I find it too easy to get side tracked and look up other
things, and before you know it you've used up all your morning "quota" raeding
about other things (that may or may not be related).

That said, once in a while, I use this time to make a dent in my Pocket
backlog.

------
pinkano
Brilliant post, thanks for sharing! Starting my 4th year of working fully
remote and love it.

------
wolco
I hate the idea of the yearly summit. People working remotely may have health
or social issues on a greater average. There is a benefit to face to face but
requiring the team to fly to remote locations yearly makes a local company
with a normal christmas party seem more attractive.

~~~
jdewald
> People working remotely may have health or social issues on a greater
> average.

I don't know any reason that working remotely would correlate to health/social
issues. Is this a known statistic from somewhere? The social thing perhaps
correlates to working (remotely or not) in a software field, but I'm not sure
why remote workers would be statistically any different than non-remote
workers. (I happen to be a remote worker)

~~~
wolco
I would think someone disabled or with mobility issues would seek out those
opportunities over local employment at a higher rate. People with
visa/passport/country of origin issues would have issues traveling would be
another group.

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carimura
Go Broncos!

