
The Stress of Remote Working - madewulf
https://medium.com/@madewulf/the-stress-of-remote-working-38be5bdcf4da
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hashberry
There are two important aspects for successful remote working:

\- Your company culture

\- Your personality

For example, there is no way I'd participate in "very, very chatty" non-work
meme sharing. First, people in my company don't expect this from anyone.
Second, for me, it's easy to ignore these types of chats or just let them die
off.

I just read the author's bio... he describes himself as as a "talkative full-
stack coder." So for me, a quiet introvert, remote working is the opposite of
stressful. No small talk, no pressure to participate in "office spirit," no
"degradation of social skills" when my social skills are already at a set
baseline, no desire to leave the house everyday for external stimuli, and no
loneliness because all I need is my dog and close friends.

~~~
iamcasen
Yeah I fit into the same mold as you do in that respect. How do you feel about
the career development aspect? To me it seems difficult to grow my career
further than the nebulous "senior engineer" title -- especially while working
remote.

Building great code doesn't seem to matter much from what I've experienced in
the last 8 years. That being said, I've always worked at startups and small
companies.

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dajt
I've been working remotely for 12 years and I agree with the OP.

While I like not having to go to the office everyday and the more flexible
arrangement there are a lot of challenges:

1\. You miss out on a lot of socializing. 2\. You lose visibility within the
organisation. 3\. Things that would be solved in 10 mins if you could ask for
help face to face take hours. 4\. Timezones can be a problem for some, but
luckily not for me. 5\. Other family members don't understand you still work
and just think you're available whenever for whatever. 6\. I knew I'd have to
give up my team leader role when I went remote - it made no sense for a remote
worker to do that.

I started going to a coffee shop every morning years ago just to have people
to talk to.

It's a hard way to work, but it has its advantages as long as you're not
trying for a promotion.

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shams93
Compared to the stress I had before with a 6 hour a day commute in brutal LA
and Ventura county traffics for an under-market startup gig working remote for
a bigger, stable company is a dream come true. I do have to be up pretty early
to connect out of state with the rest of the team, and I'm at an expert level
in my field so those help. We're also slack-centric, which helps as well. It
can be isolating and stressful but compared to the stress of commuting and
trying to then concentrate in an open office this is like paradise.

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iamcasen
Everything has it's pros and cons. I've been working remote for about 2 years
now. Really, what it comes down to is the company culture around remote
workers, and your personality. Luckily, the company I work for is very clued
in to remote/async communication styles necessary to collaborate with remote
employees.

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of getting caught up in the social stuff that
comes with working in the office. At times, I feel left out because the team
in HQ goes out to lunch often, or they have special dinners and other events I
obviously cannot attend, but overall I'm happier with my own personal life
outside of work.

The only downside I can see is that career advancement seems more difficult.
It's easy to become that remote developer black box depicted in the article,
where your team views you as a means to an end. Almost like you're a genie in
their computer. It becomes difficult to lead initiatives, and ultimately
position yourself for advancement. I think that's why a lot of remote
developers choose contract work.

I've considered contract work in the past, but I was never able to find a
steady stream of work that paid well. It was always people trying to get work
done as cheaply and quickly as possible.

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dajt
One of the really important things I miss is being able to get a measure of
how you're performing. When you're in the office you can pretty constantly see
how you're going compared to your team mates and whether you're 'doing
enough'. Working from home you don't get any of that and it's quite stressful
wondering if you're doing enough or falling behind or what people think.

I've had to ask my boss a couple of time whether he's satisfied with my
performance, output, etc.

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Top19
Man, remember when in the 90’s real estate values were soon to collapse
because everyone would be working remote, and Class A office space was going
to be useless?

Funnily enough, they are saying the same thing now about AR/VR. We will see.

