
Remote Work Is the Future - BerislavLopac
https://angel.co/blog/why-naval-ravikant-thinks-remote-work-is-the-future
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kbsletten
I have a dream that rural work will become more popular. I live in a city
where all the local kids go to the oil fields or get out of Dodge, but I've
heard a lot of comments from families that they'd do just about anything not
to work out of town. With remote work, you could have more families and offset
the retiree population, making this a more vibrant community. Does anybody
have experience with starting a coders group in a low-density area like this?

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ellius
Anecdotal, but I'd take lower pay to go remote and move back to my hometown
(not a small town, but a small city with a weaker tech market than where I
currently live). Being able to live near your friends and family that you grew
up with is a massive benefit.

~~~
BerislavLopac
> Being able to live near your friends and family that you grew up with is a
> massive benefit.

On the other hand, some of us are trying to get as far away from those as
possible.

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motohagiography
If a role doesn't add value by remote, what is the real value of the role?

Remote work is not difficult to implement, remote management on the other
hand, is disruptive. It is so new we haven't aggregated the best practices
into some basic theory to train managers with, so it's going to be patchy.
Arguably, most managers are not educated to manage in the first place, and an
increasing majority seem to just sense the wind direction and muddle through.

A significant percentage of remote employees might be a signal that they are
creating so much value that it offsets the managerial risks associated with
it. A butts-in-seats grind culture could suggest the marginal value employees
create is so small it needs to be ground out of them.

I don't think current companies will switch to remote, but I do think new ones
will start with the question of whether a role justifies the overheads of an
on-prem requirement.

~~~
bencollier49
Conversely, if the only value you add can be codified and delivered as work
packages without physical contact with your peers, what makes you think that
you have more value than someone offshore / a robot?

If you're doing real, creative, problem solving work, then daily physical
contact with your colleagues is essential. The bandwidth of knowledge transfer
is vastly in excess of anything that can be done remotely, and quickly
bouncing ideas off other people will get you through problems and blockers far
more effectively than anything else. We still don't have any collaboration
software which can replicate this experience.

~~~
shxdow
"If you're doing real, creative, problem solving work, then daily physical
contact with your colleagues is essential. The bandwidth of knowledge transfer
is vastly in excess of anything that can be done remotely, and quickly
bouncing ideas off other people will get you through problems and blockers far
more effectively than anything else. We still don't have any collaboration
software which can replicate this experience."

This looks alot like the argument that was initially used to push open
offices, which turned out to be not so right.

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aerialcombat
It’s easier to fake it when you’re working onsite. How do you tell if someone
is really working? Just by seeing them at their desk? It’s is absurd to think
that someone is working hard because they sit long hours at their desk. Get
some tools.

~~~
hnuser355
So true. My impression of one guy at my current organization is that he had
some skills and productivity years in the past, but now he’s just given up and
fiddles around on his phone while doing occasional low-effort tasks and trying
to bully newcomers into doing things he can take credit for. Why he’s still
there is beyond me. Very unlikely (in my opinion) that he could get away with
this remotely.

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hashberry
I'm not so sure about this. Remote is great for task-based work. But certain
companies like Amazon seem to have a "cult"-like culture that keeps everyone
focused and on the same page. And Google provides on-site services to increase
productivity and time spent on campus. Being a remote worker, I feel more
detached from the company "vision" and more like a mercenary who likes to get
things done and then go about my life.

~~~
heliodor
Don't delude yourself and don't let others delude you. Work is an exchange
measured in cold hard numbers.

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todd3834
Writing software remotely works out great with things like version control,
ticket managing systems, chat and screen sharing/video conferencing. I wonder
what industries struggle to be efficient remote. I know the designers at my
current company have said they have a hard time collaborating remote compared
to in person. I wonder if it’s a culture issue or a lack of tooling. There
might be some money making ideas there.

~~~
humblebee
I work remotely, as does pretty much my entire company. Some of the biggest
issues we have due to remote work is communication tools. I haven't found a
tool that can replace the ease of communicating with a large number of people
in the same room when having a collaborative discussion. I think the issue is
largely due to latency. It's take a lot of practice to understand how to
communicate effectively using video conferencing software.

Another issue is team building / comradery. I don't know my current coworkers
nearly as well as I've been able to know coworkers from previous companies
I've worked with. When remote you don't get to go to lunch, grab coffee or a
beer with your coworkers. We do travel a lot to meet up, but I still only see
people I work with closely when doing so. As the company grows it's much more
difficult to even begin to meet everyone in the company which is much easier
when in and office because everyday you can bump into someone different.

We've tried to solve this to some extent through randomly pairing two people
every two weeks to schedule a short 15 minute meeting. However the scheduling
itself is not automated and it's not always easy to schedule time due to lack
of proper calendaring software and distributed share calendars. This is
definitely something that could be solved but it's just another challenge of
working remotely.

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mgh2
If google sees it, then it is a pretty good indicator based on data
[https://www.hrdive.com/news/google-for-jobs-to-begin-
labelin...](https://www.hrdive.com/news/google-for-jobs-to-begin-labeling-
remote-job-postings/548209/)

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purplezooey
The article doesn't address the fact that people have been saying this for
years. What's changed?

