
Remote First at Quora - tosh
https://greylock.com/quora-remote-first/
======
iagooar
Working remotely has a very high cost, but it only gets visible in the long
term.

Working from home isolates you. There is no way around this. You lose the one
huge opportunity in adult life for making new relationships - and that's at
work, in the office.

For the company, people that work remote start drifting away from the company
vision and spirit - you get an army of people working individually most of the
time, not socializing, not establishing strong bonds. If personal contact
wasn't important, we could raise our kids remotely.

I have some friend who have been working at a company who went remote-first
and after 5 years they do not feel identified with the company anymore. It's
just a job. You could work for someone else and you wouldn't even notice.

Also, working from home is only as convenient as your life situation allows
it. Have kids? Bad luck. Live in the city because you enjoy city life? Sorry
you have to convert you bedroom into your office during the day because you
can't afford to have an additional room. You are a people's person and feel
more energetic and productive when working with others face to face? Well,
sorry, your team is mostly remote.

Please, let us just top playing down the importance of the office. It is
important and it has tons of benefits for the _team_ , as opposed to the
benefits for the individuals.

~~~
silveroriole
> I have some friend who have been working at a company who went remote-first
> and after 5 years they do not feel identified with the company anymore. It's
> just a job. You could work for someone else and you wouldn't even notice.

I think feeling “identified with your company” is kind of pathological. If
remote work gets more people to realise it’s just a job, it’s not their
company, and they shouldn’t work themselves to death over it, good.

~~~
ipnon
This is a feature of remote work, not a bug. I cringe to put on the company
themed shirt I am required to wear at the office on special occasions. The
esprit de corps at my company is used to justify unpaid overtime and working
on weekends. I would rather first identify with something else, like my family
or local community.

~~~
Cookingboy
It just sounds like you have a bad job, and yes, in that case it is a feature,
not a bug. Because any system that lets you stay far away from a bad job is
good.

But there plenty of people who actually love the place they work and the
people they work with _and_ do it with healthy work/life balance without the
stupid company shirts. Hard to imagine for you, just like it's hard to me to
imagine caring about my local community.

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mac01021
> Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Quora had a strong office culture and
> discouraged employees from working remotely most of the time. But once the
> company had no choice, Quora CEO and co-founder Adam D’Angelo says they
> discovered the benefits of working from anywhere far outweigh the drawbacks.

I'm surprise that so many people couldn't figure this out without being forced
to try it against their will.

I also wonder how Quora's transition will turn out. Every remote-first
organization I've seen started out as a remote-first org.

~~~
a_imho
I would hesitate to take anything from the article at face value, they just
align with whatever is trending, there is nothing more to it really. Do you
expect them to say _I would force every single one of my peons back into the
salt mines if I could, but alas I can 't for the time being_?

~~~
black_puppydog
Which, depending on how you see it, is okay. I personally don't expect
corporations to really have a consciousness. I expect them to react to outside
stimulus, that's all. So if "we" make in unacceptable to say "come to the
office or get lost" then they will accept that, no more, no less. That's okay
with me.

~~~
a_imho
Corporate hypocrisy is really not that serious issue in the grand scheme of
things, but the asking for it justification is just victim blaming.

~~~
black_puppydog
sorry if that came across as blaming you... what I mean is that it's actually
a pretty good thing in a way that corporations operate that way. If a sizeable
proportion of workers/customers make it clear they will not accept something,
it will be gone in a heartbeat.

Of course, there are (huge) exceptions for monopoly situations where there's
simply nowhere else to take your work/money.

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aminozuur
I love working from home. I work for a big tech company, and my specific
department has had the option to WFH for about 10 years. They have all the
correct measuring tools to make sure we do good work, without being intrusive
(no bossware!).

I don't feel isolated, to the contrary; i have more time for loved ones. I can
wake up later. No fighting traffic, or cycling through rainy cold weather to
be on time at the train station.

I never wanna visit an office again.

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yakshaving_jgt
It's amazing to me how many people and companies who have been forced to work
remotely for the first time in their lives are suddenly the experts on it.

~~~
codetrotter
If you have some valuable knowledge about remote work, please post it. But I
don’t see any reason to demand that everyone should be an expert on remote
work before we allow them to share their experiences and thoughts about this
thing that we’ve been going through.

~~~
yakshaving_jgt
I've been working remotely full-time since 2014, and now I run a company and
employ people (mostly programmers) around the world. We've been remote since
day zero.

Any valuable knowledge I have about remote work would be eclipsed by the
Remote book written by the Basecamp guys, so that's what I'd recommend people
read. What I'm reacting to here is the hubris of some people (especially on my
LinkedIn feed) to not just share experience but actually _give advice_ on a
topic they're completely new to.

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axegon_
I expected to hate WFH with a passion before the pandemic. The reality turned
out to be very different from my expectations. I expected to be constantly
distracted by the bookshelves, large living room and gym equipment but to my
surprise my personal productivity went through the roof and I've never felt
better, both physically and mentally. I genuinely fear the day I have to go
back to the office(won't be this year by the looks of it).

Of course that isn't the case for everybody: people with families and
especially little children seem to be struggling massively.

But there is a noticeable shift it appears. Recruiters seem to be changing
their model considering how many companies are becoming remote first. My mail
is over-flooded with job offers from every corner of the earth, all of which
contain the word "remote" in them. And I get round 20 of them each day. I
would have never thought that such a day would come. The black swan strikes
again.

~~~
otoburb
Agree with almost all of your points as someone working remotely for 14 years.
I would note the following:

>> _Of course that isn 't the case for everybody: people with families and
especially little children seem to be struggling massively._

Some families with little children might be struggling massively not because
of WFH, but because many schools mandated remote learning which is difficult
for young children to sit through without peer and teacher interaction. The
more cynical amongst us would posit that elementary school mostly serves a
dual "daycare" purpose alongside the educational mission.

If anything, WFH might be a struggle but would be triply so if parents hadn't
been given the option at all. Let's not conflate the WFH privilege (which
implicitly assumes such people still have jobs) with the difficulties of
providing a workable remote learning solution for young children.

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ceilingcorner
_Remote_ is the new cool word for _off-shoring._ Companies don’t decide to
radically change their work structure just because it seems like a nice idea.
If you expect tech companies to keep paying SV salaries after they shift to
remote-first, you’re in for a rude surprise.

~~~
rpastuszak
> If you expect tech companies to keep paying SV salaries after they shift to
> remote-first, you’re in for a rude surprise.

This isn’t a bad thing though. The world is bigger than SV or London.

~~~
ceilingcorner
No, of course not, but I’m suggesting that “our company is going remote” will
be used to functionally offshore jobs. _Offshoring to X_ is socially
unpopular, while _We have an international remote team_ is cool and hip.

~~~
rpastuszak
Yeah, it's the same as the switch from offices with actual rooms to cool and
hip (in the early 2000s) open offices:

1\. Cram xx% more people in the same place under the pretext of creating a
collaborative environment == save xx% on rent. 2\. Invest a small percentage
of that sum on noise cancelling headphones, because (shocker) people need to
be alone from time to time.

No one is arguing that the same won't happen with remote becoming more
mainstream. There's value in remote, especially from a utilitarian/equality
pov, so we need to be mindful and try not to fall in the same traps (i.e.
don't drink the kool-aid).

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TYPE_FASTER
WFH with kids is great during normal non-pandemic times. Having the
flexibility to spend a couple minutes at the bus stop makes my day less
fragmented on the days when my wife is working.

On one hand, I think it's great that employers and employees are both seeing
the benefits of being remote. Less time spent commuting, etc.

On the other hand, it's too bad it's happening to parents at the same time
they are having to figure out how to both WFH and parent.

It's not always this crazy, trust me.

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mikl
I wonder what Quora’s staff spend their time on. The site is a simple Q&A app,
and appears essentially unchanged the last many years and the content is all
user generated. Not a huge productivity loss to go all-remote if you’re not
productive in the first place ;)

~~~
axegon_
> the content is all user generated

The answers - totally. The questions on the other hand, I'm not entirely
convinced. The thought that Q&A has become the de-facto new generation of spam
has crossed my mind many times while browsing the web.

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thecupisblue
>I'm surprise that so many people couldn't figure this out without being
forced to try it against their will.

Oh they could, but they knew they'd lose the political games that come with
offices and which are a favourite of middle management.

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627467
I was (and still am) averse to long term WFH but, my child was born in
December so, as you expect, WFH has been a temporary godsend for me.

I guess it's also forcing me to learn how to WFH by minimizing the costs many
here have pointed out.

Ps. although all other restrictions and societal impacts of strict lockdown is
making this a bittersweet moment.

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chippy
Let's predict two things: Firstly, how long until they silently announce
unemployment of a large proportion of their employees, and secondly what
proportion of the staff will they lay off?

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fogetti
> _People are very productive and a lot of them actually prefer working from
> home._

But later:

> _So as we are doing this, we’ve run a series of surveys of employees asking
> things like, ‘How productive do you feel like you’ve been?’ ‘What can we do
> to make you more productive?’_

So you concluded that your workers are productive, but you want to run a
survey to find out how productive are they??? WTF?

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remotelyyours
I am a bit weirded out by how convincingly the argument is being made in favor
of remote work. It's a tough road ahead. A lot of things need to be figured
out before we're able to crack the code of it.

At my startup vlokit [0], we are helping customers with async video
communication. Problem is people don't want to go out of their comfort zones.
They want to continue 'replicating' office environment at home. It kind of
falls apart pretty soon.

Companies need to realize remote work is a significant investment in getting
your culture right. You need to invest a lot in changing the ways of how you
communicate.

And even then you're not guaranteed that it would be success. Because we're
still unaware of what we're up against.

[0] [https://vlokit.com](https://vlokit.com)

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TYPE_FASTER
> “What’s been challenging in adapting to the new environment is trying to
> replicate some of the informal communication that happened around the
> office. It’s an area I’m particularly interested in right now.”

We've been using Discord to simulate an office environment, both from the
perspectives of talking to people without scheduling a meeting, and from
gathering as a group for discussions as needed. Hanging out in Discord is
entirely optional. We use Slack to notify people if we need to talk to them,
kind of like a shoulder tap in real life if you need to ask somebody a
question at their desk.

This has been working pretty well for us. I especially like Discord's Push to
Talk feature using a keyboard shortcut.

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BryantD
Zillow just hopped on a similar train: [https://www.geekwire.com/2020/zillow-
allow-90-employees-work...](https://www.geekwire.com/2020/zillow-
allow-90-employees-work-home-indefinitely-pandemic-debunks-old-ways/)

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dzonga
how does on the worst pseudo-knowledge spam marketing websites on the internet
make money. I avoid qoura heavily, and I feel other people do too ? or maybe
quoura is a rich man's hobby ?

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jordiburgos
There is only one remote job offer on their page.

~~~
sadmann1
It's the first remote job thus remote first

~~~
DJBunnies
:D

