
Ask HN: Anyone gone from in-office to remote for the same company? - jsroger
Looking for some advice on going remote as a developer for a company I have already spent 2 years at as an in-house developer.<p>As we have grown we have started taking on remote developers and it is something I have been thinking about for a long time as I want to get out of the hustle and bustle of London where I&#x27;m currently located, to halfway across the country (UK).<p>Is this a thing that companies are normally ok with? (I haven&#x27;t proposed it yet)
Any advice on making the actual transition would also be much appreciated.<p>I&#x27;m sure there must be many of you that have done similar out there..!
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mod
I did.

I was working for a very small company (5, including 2 co-founders).

I simply asked for a trial run of a couple days per week at home, and made it
clear that I hoped if it went well, we could expand that. It did, and
eventually I moved out of country for a time. I was never in-office again,
actually. I was pretty close & friendly with the co-founders, and they trusted
me.

Might go differently at a bigger company, who knows.

Also, I'm a (web) developer, so all of my work is "online" anyway. The few
meetings I had at that company were just moved to google hangouts.

I moved on, eventually, and my current gig has been remote from the start.

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dalerus
I did at a large firm. They even had a no-remote policy at the time.

I asked my boss to do a one month test, one day a week working remotely. I
documented my production levels for those remote days to prove that my
productivity could increase by working at home.

After the month test, I proposed one-week a month and then increased to full-
time remote after about three months.

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acrooks
For the last six months I have been working remotely from Europe for a North
American company I have been at for about three years with an otherwise in-
office presence.

I worked at a company for just over two years based in the office and then
moved to live in Europe for six months, just returning recently to Canada.

The total company size was around 20 staff & execs at the time. My CEO was ok
with it, as I had demonstrated over the past couple years that I was able to
work independently and responsibly.

The company itself did not need to make several changes as we already had
remote employees, so most of the meetings already had somebody dialling in. We
use Slack as well which contains a lot of information. I joined a lot more
channels when leaving to try best to keep up with all of the information.

My biggest struggle was feeling disconnected from the company and from my
coworkers. I missed out on a lot of information that was informally discussed
in the office and felt a lot of anxiety related to my performance, even though
I was still producing work at a consistent rate. This started to solve itself
partially after getting over some of the general growing pains being in the
new environment, and I started having regular fifteen minute Skype chats with
a handful of different members of the company so we could better keep in
contact.

Another struggle was working from home. I found it easy to get distracted and
found myself adopting weird work hours. It was especially difficult having
most of the meetings happening in North America and needing to make them from
a European timezone. I solved this mostly with co-working spaces and other
places outside of home to get work done. I got pretty good at working out of
coffee shops but it's not easy. An added bonus of the co-working spaces that
discovered was making friends and having some sort of social contact during
the workdays.

If you have any other questions feel free to email anytime at the address in
my profile.

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kspaans
My company, also based in London, has a mix of remote and local workers. One
thing that everyone gets, though, is 1 day a week of work-from-home time. This
could be a way for you to get started with remote working, without requiring a
full commitment from your employer.

We use Google Hangouts for video & voice during most meetings, Slack for most
chats, and something close to "black-hole" email addresses for most mail.
(Basically: there is only one real 'developers@company.co.uk' team list, but
each project has its own virtual address so it's easy to filter your mail in
order to ignore/highlight project-specific mail.) To keep people in the loop
we try to have on-topic things discussed by email, even if it's between two
people physically in the office.

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peterwwillis
Start by talking about the life changes you'd like to make that remote work
would make easier, and how it would be more convenient for you (and
potentially lead to "doing even more work from home"). Suggest that you try
working one day per week from home for a trial period (1-3 months), and
propose that if it looks like it works out they let you go full-on remote
then.

Just keep in mind that companies sometimes have "remote work agreements"
separate from regular office workers, and if you don't have that agreement,
they may treat you differently when it comes to expensing certain things. Can
work out better, but make sure you actually get one signed if it's available.

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humbleMouse
If I were you I would ask for a week at a time to be remote to start gaining
trust. If you are gone for a week and all your deliverables still come in they
will start trusting you!

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jason_slack
I did about a year ago.

Some adjustments I made were making sure I don't do house work, during
"working hours" and also making sure I have "personal time" each day as it is
easy to work a lot when working from home. For me, it is e-mail. "Let em just
answer this one e-mail from my phone since I am just sitting here watching tv"
which turns into me grabning my laptop and working...

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FlopV
If the company seems to be OK with remote employees, I'd assume you'd be fine
to ask, no harm in finding out regardless. Some managers might not like it,
which is why I left my first company, as I was told by my manager we can talk
about being remote in a year.... No thanks :P If they won't grant it
immediately, which is understandable, don't settle for "we can talk about it
later", have some type of measurement and plan to get to full remote. I had
this occur with 2 separate companies...

The 2nd company I joined had an hour and a half commute. I would go in once or
twice a week when I first started which is what part of the deal was when I
joined. Most of my co-workers were in that office, but my primary
partner/senior was 2 hours from the office himself, so he also went in once or
twice a week. I basically started to only come in when I had an important
meeting, and would go weeks without being in the office. I'd recommend having
a conversation around it prior to you doing that, as I was in a very flexible
position. I eventually asked to be full remote, and got the green light. At
that position it didn't make much of a difference as I didn't even have a cube
near my team and many of the resources I worked with were spread around
different offices globally. The only downside was that I didn't seem to get
any of the "unofficial" communications in the team, which made it harder to
stay in the loop.

The first company I worked for a couple years, left, and came back as a full
remote employee from the get go. I had worked in the same department but a
different role prior to my departure so I had a good reputation. It helps to
know people prior to going full remote, as you know who to get a hold of for
what you need done, as sometimes an IM or email to the right person can save
weeks. You kind of miss that at a big company when remote, or at least develop
those contacts slower.

I'd start by bringing it up and working from home a couple days a week to get
a feel for it and your team use to it. Personally I'm way more distracted in
the office but it's more than just you, it's your co-workers as well that need
to be able to handle it.

One aspect I noticed is when I'm remote, I'm usually west coast. Most days for
me I'm logged in by 6 or 7 AM, for others they might not like that, but I like
being behind, as nothing really picks up at the office til 9 anyway, and I'm
able to have more daylight to do stuff after work. That won't apply to your
case, but that's another thing for others to consider.

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davelnewton
Title should be prefixed with "Ask HN".

Advice regarding what?

~~~
jsroger
Mainly - on how the transition went, how to go about asking for the switch to
remote work.

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davelnewton
"Can I work remotely?"

Although when I've asked I generally start with asking for n days a week
remote. If they're already familiar/comfortable with remote workers, though,
that's not nearly as important.

Always went fine for me, but in general the remotes I've had already had
communications in place and were fully set up for remote work.

