
Ask HN: How Would You or Did Convince Your Boss That You Can Work Remote? - johngorse
.. and be as productive as if you are in the office or even more productive.
======
hectormalot
As someone who has been the manager in those discussions I see four things to
help your manager be supportive:

1\. The company policy: of the company has a no-remote policy this will be
very difficult. If the company has a limited-remote policy, it’s already much
easier, it means asking for additional remote days on top of existing policy
and provides you an opportunity to show that you are productive working remote

2\. Your productivity and mutual trust: on the individual level I like to
believe everybody can be productive remote. On the aggregate it didn’t work
that way though. Some people would use the remote time for personal matters
and chalk up a day with limited output to ‘I was doing research’, others would
have twice the output they had at the office. It’s difficult to know up front
where someone will fall on that scale. If you can show with 1-2 days remote
that you can be productive, it’s a huge help in this decision

3\. Spill-over effects. If others in your team are (possibly) not productive
remote it might be difficult to give you a full remote opportunity. Others
will expect the same privileges and it might be easier to limit it for
everybody rather than explaining individuals that I dont trust them remote
yet.

4\. Interactions: if the office has a weekly townhall, or if we have a
quarterly long-term planning session, can you join these, or do we need to
setup video and mics for that? It helps if you can be in person on these
moments (even if you’re not convinced they’re always useful)

~~~
clusmore
> Some people would use the remote time for personal matters and chalk up a
> day with limited output to ‘I was doing research’

Be careful with this, because it can be a form of selection bias. I've run
plenty of errands and had plenty of non-productive days from the office too.
This stuff is unavoidable. If you're going to put WFH under intense scrutiny,
make sure to put office work under the same level of scrutiny otherwise it
might just be that you notice unproductive days more because you're looking
harder.

At a previous company, the WFH policy included a question "How will your
performance be measured when working from home?" to which I answered "The same
as when at the office", but the question implies a level of suspicion that
sets the tone for the whole thing. If you want to allow WFH but are concerned
about productivity, do it in good faith and allow enough time to get a
statistically significant sample size, and actually compare it with office
work rather than just looking at the raw numbers in isolation.

Edit to add: You might also find that people will choose to WFH on days they
were planning to run errands, but they likely would have anyway had they
worked from the office, so you need to account for this too.

------
kstenerud
Remote has to be baked into the company culture, otherwise you'll forever be
the outsider, and be the first to be let go when the company hits tough times.

Find a job that already offers remote.

~~~
ddelt
This has been my experience thus far as well. It hasn't really mattered how
well I could frame productivity or measurable improvements in my quality of
life to an immediate manager or team - ultimately if the senior leadership
dislikes the idea of remote work, each level beneath them will hesitate to
fully embrace it.

I've found that companies that promote work-life balance as one of their
strengths are the best places to ask or test the waters.

~~~
souprock
Remote work goes against having the best work-life balance.

When you walk out the door of the office, work should be over and done with
until you return. Taking work home should be impossible.

Paid overtime helps greatly. It discourages the employer from trying to get
free work out of you.

Having a non-zero commute doesn't have to mean commuting for 2 hours in urban
traffic. You can pick a location where a tiny commute is possible.

~~~
eeeeeeeeeeeee
Huh? I work 40 hours a week remote in my office. After 5pm I close my office
door and I’m done.

------
balabaster
This was the tactic I used successfully...

Firstly, ensure that you are always seen to be productive and delivering even
when you're not being watched. The most important thing to build trust is for
people to see that you can be trusted to do your work to a high standard
without supervision.

Once this has been achieved, move to the next stage of your plan:

"I'm not coming in on Wednesday, I have an appointment I need to attend to a
11:45am and 4 hours of commute is unproductive so I'm going to get my work
done from home."

Ensure that your deliverables are visible when you work from home - go the
extra mile to ensure that your efforts are seen. Visibility is highly
important here.

Do this periodically for a few months and eventually tell them that you will
be working from home on Wednesdays from this point forward. This is much
easier to do when you've got a reputation for delivering the goods. Continue
to ensure that the work you deliver from home is visible.

After a little while of this, up it to two days a week and perhaps this will
be okay. I find that 2-3 days a week from home is plenty for my sanity. I need
to be in the office for the social aspect and to feel like I'm part of the
team.

Completely cutting myself off from the camaraderie of the office doesn't do
anything for my sense of wellbeing. So I usually try to be in the office a
couple of days a week, just for my own sanity.

I worked over the summer for a company based out of Vancouver and never got to
meet the team because it was work from home for 5 days a week. This was hard.
I actually went so far as to get farm hands for my farm, as much so that I
didn't feel alone as for farm labour. At the end of the summer, I negotiated a
part time contract with them for another 6 months so I could take on a local
client so I'd have a social outlet.

~~~
meuk
As an introvert, visibility has always been an issue for me. Last week I had a
big task for which I put in well over 10 hours a day. When people see it's
done sooner than expected they just assume that is was easier. Meanwhile,
other people get a lot of credits for some things because they are apt at
subtly (or not so subtly) mentioning it. Maybe it's something I still have to
learn.

~~~
existencebox
I'm going to probably be unwisely candid in this answer.

It's a game, and a game that often in large corps involves deception, but I
don't think has to. (Or perhaps I'm just making myself feel better by calling
it "Crafting perceptions.")

There was a post a while back about a topic, "status fungibility." In a
perfect world, you'd be in a team where everyone knows how hard that task is
and you wouldn't have to say a thing. I've been on teams like that. They're
fantastic. But in most worlds, you have a team where, if you're lucky, a
handful of the people know _deeply_ what you're doing and the rest have a
general idea. They probably aren't _trying_ too look down on you for being
silent, but next to the guy who gives status updates translating what might be
a simple task into something they perceive as a journey and time consuming,
the human mind tends to use flawed heuristics that benefit certain types of
overcommunication.

I've wrapped this in a lot of flowery and clinical language to try and not get
incendiary about of it, but the crux is that you sometimes have to help your
team see the value you bring, (The positive side) while recognizing (the
negative side) that this enables an ecosystem where this opaqueness can allow
others to use this intangibility to try and boost their standing vs. yours, so
there's a degree of "protect yourself."

Sorry if this is a ramble. It's a topic I took a while to build mental models
for (similarly introverted) and something that I've had frustrations with
which is why I now try to look at it very impassively. I hope these thoughts
offer at least a useful point of view.

------
billwear
I just told my boss I was moving, and let them offer.

Working for HP in Atlanta, I'd already proved myself during the '96 Olympics,
when even the 12 miles to work was impossible. In 2000, our rent went out of
sight; we owned 7 rural acres -- about 800 miles away -- so we just decided to
move. I figured my boss would let me telecommute, but I didn't ask for it: I
just told him, very honestly, that I was moving, and why. He said, "That's
fair. I support you in this move, if you understand that you won't have the
same advancement opportunities as someone who's in the office." I agreed, and
that was that. I worked another 15 years that way, until HP fell apart and I
wanted to change jobs.

~~~
igetspam
Same. I came back from a long work trip (3 mo in a foreign country) and said
"I'm moving. I'm either moving and I'm going to keep working with you it I'm
moving and I'm not. I'd like to keep working eih you." The reply was something
like "Let us know when you get there." We a had no remote culture for a while
but eventually started a couple small (3 people) remote offices. That opened
the door and I've been working remote ever since.

I'm with a different company now. The original company didn't actually handle
full remote well. Poor communication made everything difficult. The new job
has a pretty strong remote culture. MKe sure you out in the effort of no one
else does or you'll be unhappy.

------
cpr
Start my own company and become the boss. ;-)

(29 years ago. I guess Em Software is a "lifestyle" company (just 4 of us
working out of our homes, so you can discount the anecdata...).)

~~~
robodale
Everyone pay attention to this comment. All of us here have this option.

~~~
PascLeRasc
Not if you have pre-existing medical conditions that marketplace medical
insurance won't cover, like dwarfism or albinism - there are others but those
are the ones I know of. You need big-company insurance benefits for these.

------
throwaway8728
I've been remote for 4 years and it all started at a company who didn't have a
remote culture, but my boss wasn't too worried about me going remote.

I was on a software team for 2 months before finding out I needed to move. I
told my boss I had to move in 4 months, but I really wanted to keep my
position and wanted to switch to working remotely. More than half of the
engineering team at the time was offshore; however, they were all in an office
with close communication with the higher-ups there. My boss basically said to
me that he'd been working with remote folks for his entire career and if the
other engineers had no problem with it, he didn't see an issue either.

4 years later I'm still remote and I couldn't be happier. Not at that same
company, but at a new remote position.

The offshore team, previous bias to remote employees, and potentially the need
to keep me onboard to get shit done for cheap helped me here. There were other
employees who inquired about going remote, but they were turned down - one
even needed to move for their SO (same as my case), so they ended up leaving
the company when they moved.

It's really hit or miss unless you find a remote position where the company
expects you to be remote right off the bat or you just get lucky and your boss
trusts you to switch. Just remember that trust goes both ways - if your
company doesn't trust you, maybe don't trust that you'll retire there. Going
remote is a great way to test both sides of trust.

~~~
qes
We've been transitioning to be more supportive of remote work. We're a small
company (~30), and have never had much an official policy. Generally, it's -
you're adults, get your work done. But the culture was such that it was
basically expected you'd be in the office most of the time, and whenever
someone worked remotely they seemed to feel a need to explain why.

There were even times in the past where my boss talked to me about wanting me
to be physically in the office more. These days I often only go in twice a
week for less than half a day for meetings. Recently our boss worked remotely
for a month from the other side of the globe. Our head of sales is considering
moving 1000 miles away while staying on remotely.

We're tight knit and small enough that it hasn't been difficult to accommodate
more remote work.

------
gwbas1c
Short answer: A week or two after I started working remote, my boss realized
that I could do it very effectively.

Long answer: I married a medical student, and due the matching process, had
very little control over where I would end up moving to. I told my boss,
boss's boss, head of the company, ect, that there was a chance that I'd have
to move in about a year. Throughout the year, I periodically reminded everyone
that I might move.

Once matching happened, I declared where I was moving. Our parent company
happened to be local, and we worked closely with a team that was a 60 minute
commute to where I was going. We arranged for me to have an office with the
team that we worked with; but we all knew that I would primarily telecommute.

Except for a 1-month period of very bad weather, I commuted to my new office
1-2 times a week. It worked very well until our parent company announced they
were closing my new office and moving everyone to what would be a 90 minute
commute, in rush hour, for me.

I then asked to be a full-time telecommuter, and the answer was, "you work
very well remote." A day or two after I packed my office up, our parent
company sold us. I never went to the new office, although I honestly thought I
was going to go there 1-2 times a month. It was a very nice location, and I
was really looking forward to spending the day there when I needed to interact
with our team there.

------
SergeAx
As a manager of software engineering teams I can tell you that: there are two
options to be as productive remotely as within office hours.

1) Either the whole team communicates in a remote manner, e.g. holding
meetings via videoconferencing only and writing down follow-ups, meticulously
logging progress via special tools, putting a lot of effort into documenting
everything, so any member of the team can quickly find literally any piece of
information and manage most of the tasks without asking peers for help.

2) Or you should ask for a position as mechanical and routine and async and
redundant as possible, like I don't know, fully scripted first line of
customer support, or data markup, or monkey testing, or something like that.

This is because most of the teamwork is actually about information flow, and
the bigger the team - the larger the stream. In case of partial remote
working, when some team members are indulged with home office days or even
full remote, other members, and especially leads and managers, are just paying
these outstanding info bills, just to keep remoters in the loop with the team
and company as a whole.

So in my opinion the only way to work remote in a close-quarters team is to
either be extremely special and indispensable just to strong-arm your
privilege, or be largerly underpaid to justify communication tax you will lay
on your teammates and direct supervisor.

~~~
SergeAx
Now you should consider those effects.

1) most mechanical and routine jobs will be automated first. So in XXI it is
not a wise choice.

2) Any team manager's duty is to reduce bus factor [1], so strong-arming
remote job from competent supervisor should entail dissolving or breaking
apart a unique employee's position.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor)

------
beatgammit
I did it by violating company rules, proving that I was more effective at
home, and then forcing them to either fire me or let me work remote. I had
worked there for several years, and the rules were really stupid (nobody
leaves until everyone is done with their work, and I had been there for 10
hours or so and had family obligations), so I wasn't really worried about
explaining that to a future employer.

I don't recommend going that route, but I _really_ wanted to work from home
and was ready to quit if I didn't get it. I had requested a trial period of
working from home two days a week and didn't even get one day. I brought it up
every few months, but no progress was made, so I stopped caring about their
stupid rules and did what I had to in order to focus on my work (I even moved
my computer to an abandoned room at the opposite side of the room to prove I
was more productive away from distractions).

My boss has a weird phobia of people working remote _despite_ everyone who
_does_ work remote getting more done than those who work in the office. It's
weird, and your boss is probably not as bad as mine in this regard.

Honestly, I recommend asking your boss to give you a trial of working from
home for 2 days/week and prove that you're able to get more done. Once that's
done, push for more days until you're only coming in for meetings, and then
start pushing for whatever other pieces you'll need to go fully remote
(virtual meetings, move conversations to a digital format, etc). Even if they
say no, they'll recognize your initiative if you keep the dialogue about you
giving more value to the company.

~~~
qes
I'm a bit (maybe more than a bit..) of a limit pusher too, and over the course
of a half dozen years or so I've helped push our small company from saying
they're ok with remote work - but yet I'd occasionally get talked to by the
boss about coming into the office more - to personally coming in often less
than half a day in a week (I work remote the most by a good margin), our sales
lead considering moving across the country with full leadership support, and
our boss recently working remotely for a month from across the globe.

Our boss is great, and does support remote work, it just seemed like there was
this mental hurdle - inertia from social norms - that took a while to get
past. He said he was ok with working remotely, but would still be bothered by
simply not seeing a person for days at a time. There wasn't an issue staying
in communication, and no issue with work getting done, so eventually he had to
reconcile his position.

------
ratsbane
Should you expect a pay cut if you transition from on-site to remote?

Someone proposed something like that to me recently, arguing that if the cost
of living in my home city is less than in the office city then I shouldn't be
paid as much. I'm thinking pay should be based on productivity and value to
the company instead of value to me.

~~~
bitexploder
Cost of living adjusted pay is a fact of life and you will struggle to find a
firm that does not do it. GitLab the company has a cool salary calculator so
you can at least see exactly how they do it. No one wants to be paid less for
the same work, but if you take a small pay cut and are putting more money in
the bank every month, is it a pay cut? :)

~~~
emilecantin
I've been on the receiving end of Gitlab's calculator. The pay cut isn't small
at all; I was offered less than half the equivalent SF salary. And I live in
North America, just not in SF.

~~~
bitexploder
Their calculator can be a little harsh for sure, I just appreciate how up
front it is. Still, rent in SF is crazy if you compare it to anywhere that
isn’t near a coast. I wonder do you think the pay cut was unfair based on
other offers? I am biased because we only do genuinely minor comp adjustments
for location.

~~~
emilecantin
Yeah, I appreciated the transparency of it too. The offer I got was okay
compared to market rates here, so I do think it's pretty fair.

I guess I just find it a bit weird that your value to the company is so
dependent on location that it can vary from 100% down to ~20% of the base SF
salary. People living in SF _chose_ to live there despite the absurd rents,
and it's not like that changes anything for a remote company.

~~~
yblu
Yes, but if they don't pay enough, they won't be able to hire those people to
start with. On the flip side, considering if they starting hiring people from
other countries and reducing your salary because you choose to live in a high
cost country.

------
jiggliemon
I’ve been remote for 7 years. A lot of people seem to reference company
culture as the seed for wether or not being remote will be successful. I
disagree.

The company doesn’t care about you. And the company culture certainly doesn’t
care about where you are. Success in being remote depends solely on your
managers preference for keeping watch – and wether or not the majority of your
teams talents and productivity takes place remote as well.

If your manager doesn’t like work happening outside of arms reach, you won’t
be successful. If 60-70% of progress happens within reach of your managers
arms, you won’t be successful.

The only other major impediment is top level company policy. Read: Yahoo and
IBM.

------
miesman
While it's a gamble, one way that worked for me 2 years ago: Work extremely
hard and dazzle them for 6 months. Make sure that you are extremely critical
to the project you are on. Give notice and let them offer. I didn't plan it
out when I joined but I needed to move out of the area because of elder care
issues. I was hoping they would offer but wasn't counting on it. It worked out
well for me and the company.

------
LandShark83
Our family was moving in two months due to my wife's job. I told my boss we
were moving out of state and asked if I could work remote. Since I'm a
developer, he said yes, even though we are a no remote worker company. I had
been working at the company for about 2 years and I believe he said yes due to
my punctuality, work ethic, and projects I was already lead on.

There were/are so drawbacks that I should mention.

-I didn't get a raise that year because he wanted to make sure this remote thing was going to work.

-Everyone in the office gets free lunch every Friday but me since I am remote.

-I miss out on every company team building event

-I miss out on the company big Christmas party

I could go to the company events, but I would have to pay for my own flight
and hotel. So I don't see myself going.

-I often feel disconnected with the company and only know a handful of remaining employees that still work there when I was in the office

So there are downsides to bring the only remote employee. But I have an
amazing schedule and don't have to travel. This works out perfectly with
dealing with 2 kids and daycare.

Btw, the raises come almost every year now and are decent. I am very content
in my current situation.

So my advice is to keep your head down, come to work early, stay late and get
some good experience at your current job. My boss is a big time micro manager
that said yes.

------
itake
I worked at a small startup as the only senior back end engineer.

I bought my plane tickets to Asia for a 6 week trip and I told my boss 2 weeks
before my trip that I wasn't happy living in the bay area. I loved my job, but
I wanted to live anywhere else.

Rather than fire me / have me quit, he let me start working remotely keeping
California time.

~~~
chrisan
Similar story for me, only my wife accepted a new job outside California back
in 2008.

I was in a small place, we both liked each other, and I simply explained my
situation. Been remote every since

------
foobarchu
I accomplished it by showing first, although that's probably not very helpful
for your particular situation. But for anyone else:

I started as an employee of a contracting firm whose offices are all in
different parts of the country from my now-employer. As a contractor,
companies can be much more willing to not have you on site, especially if you
aren't independent. Demonstrate enough value, and you may get a full-time
offer, in which case it's a lot easier to leverage the fact that you've
already proved your ability to work remote effectively.

The biggest benefit in this case was that I was able to negotiate salary as if
I lived where the company is headquartered, resulting in an almost 2x increase
over what I could negotiate where I am physically located.

------
10000100001010
I'm the only remote engineer at my company, which has over 100 engineers. I'm
also one of the more senior engineers. I told the company that I was moving
closer to family (for medical reasons) and asked if I could continue working
remotely. So far its been great. I've been more productive then ever. I did go
back to individual contributor from team lead for a few months but now I'm
back to leading a very small team.

So the steps for me were. 1) Establish myself as a valuable asset over several
years at the company 2) Move closer to family and ask if I could work remotely
3) Work really hard to establish communication lines and insert myself into
the same conversations that I would have been included in at the office.

------
sleepysysadmin
Why convince your boss? Ask if it would be alright to work remotely sometimes.
If they say no, you look for a new job that does allow it.

No convincing needed.

------
strikelaserclaw
I've pretty much gotten remote from my last two jobs. I was a full time
employee for at least one year before i negotiated remote. I worked my ass off
for the first year and proved that i was a valuable employee, negotiating for
remote was made easy by that. I just asked my manager both times during our
one on one meeting. No company likes letting valuable employees go, if you can
prove that you can be just as productive as a remote worker, maybe by having a
"trial" period, then i think your manager will be ok with it.

~~~
jerguismi
Also I think it gos quite case by case. Some employees can be seen as more
trustworthy than others, and with others remote work can work better than with
others for other reasons.

~~~
strikelaserclaw
i agree but the competition for true remote only jobs is really crazy. I've
had much better luck getting an onsite job and transitioning into remote.

------
thisiswilson
Finally a topic I can contribute to!

I am moving to Spain in April and will be working remotely for the company I
started contracting with back in August 2018. I did a ton of research and
prepared a pitch deck and presented to my manager, who then advocated for me
and moved it up the line to get approval from the department.

Some key points:

1\. The company already allows a very flexible work from home schedule.

2\. Although primarily focused around my region, there are a couple team
members spread across the world. So it's not unprecedented.

3\. The person whose role I took over (contract as well) moved to another
country but then quit when they had trouble adapting to the culture (there was
an eight hour time difference). So I had some possible baggage to work around.

4\. I tested my ability to work off-hours and remotely with a two-week long
trip to another city living with a friend and performed swimmingly.

5\. You must convince them that, other than your physical presence, they will
not notice any difference in quality of work, availability, or communication.
Being that Spain has long working days anyway, the transition from my time (-7
GMT) to Spain (+1 GMT) will actually work out quite well from a working hours
perspective.

Best of luck!

------
anthony_barker
If the company has multiple offices.. Work for a while from the second one and
then rotate between them. Schedule meetings at each of the offices so you can
justify this.

Also I find partial days remote works if your commute isn't so large. Work
mornings from home and then afternoons in the office. Justify the work at home
by early morning calls/meetings.

Have clear project plans with deliverables. Provide a weekly written update to
your boss and other stake holders with the weekly progress.

------
shados
As the manager of a half remote team at a company that supports it, but isn't
100% remote...

To me, it comes down to a couple of things.

\- Have you proven you are a good remote communicator (eg: if you're always
doing private messages in Slack or don't communicate much at all, so
everything that you do is only in your head, you might not be a good fit)

\- Do you have plans to have a proper work area once you're remote. If you're
going to be working from the middle of the living room with your significant
other interrupting you to do the dishes or the kids screaming during video
conference....NOPE. You need a plan.

\- Your reasons for going remote won't interfere with productivity. It's
totally ok if you're doing it for work life balance and take better care of
your family. However if you're going to do strictly 9-5 (which is ok!) and be
out half of the day on top of it (no longer ok) to take care of the kids and
be constantly cancelling meetings and other obligation, then you just won't be
meeting expectations anymore.

If you meet those criterias, it's a no brainer for me. I personally much
prefer face to face interaction, but Ill fully support anyone who's serious
about working remotely in my team. But they have to be serious about it.

------
xtiansimon
I lucked out to be employed at a company with a culture permitting remote
work. I don't have the 'answer', but I can describe some factors which make it
a no-brainer.

Our company is located in NYC a few blocks away from PENN Station, where Long
Island commuters arrive in Manhattan. Several top peeps in the company live on
LI, and commute to work. Sometimes the commute is terrible, and they work
remotely. And, there are peeps in the company who have family obligations
which necessitate a flexible schedule. The schedule gaps in their office
attendance is filled by remote work.

It all just works. I believe my colleagues recognize this situation is not
common, and therefore the flexibility engenders loyalty to the company.

Also, senior colleagues are not micro-managers, and my fellow colleagues don't
need constant supervision and instruction.

Finally, there's one argument which comes up in this cultue that might be
helpful. Some senior colleagues say they can't get a lot done at work with
interruptions from junior colleagues and phone calls. If you're in this
position, then remote work could increase your productivity and help you meet
deadlines.

Good luck.

------
warrentr
I was fairly senior when I made the transition (~10 exp) and I knew my bosses
very well by that point. I decided to roll the dice when another employee
moved to work remotely and that seemed to be going well. I didn't ask my
bosses, I told them I was moving for family reasons but I would still love to
work with them.

Having a remote job when moving to a new town is ideal as it allows you to
quickly secure housing with your latest paycheck. In my experience neither
landlords nor mortgage companies care that your office/employer is out of
state.

I would advise against this approach if you are more on the junior side as you
might not learn as much as you would in the office (of course you might not
learn anything from coworkers regardless in some cases). I would also advise
against trying to work remote from the same city as your employer without a
really good reason. This usually just makes you look like a jerk.

As for productivity, this can be a major challenge. When I first moved I lived
in a very small apartment and was distracted by a good many things. I usually
felt like I had to work into the night to make up for distracted time during
the day.

Going to libraries and coworking spaces a couple days a week helps me. It
helps with the cabin fever and it helps staying on task. Communication with
your team and manager will likely also be a huge challenge and all I can say
is be nice to everyone, be willing to help out in anyway you can, and initiate
conversation with your manager often. I check in with my manager several times
a week outside of standup to make sure critical items aren't getting missed.
Our team will also screen share with each other often which can be
uncomfortable at first but is vital. Our team is a mix of remote and in-
office, but as more people became remote things improved. Reminding your
manager and team dispassionately about any remote work challenges your are
facing can help.

Best of luck.

------
sexyflanders
By showing them an offer to go work remotely somewhere else. But it backfired
because being the only remote engineer while the rest of the team is
collaborating in person is hard. The company needs to support remotees. So I
again found a new job with a boss who was remote friendly, and a company with
remote-first culture.

------
jerguismi
The easiest way I think is to quit and work as a contractor/freelancer. You
can offer your services to your ex-employer and if you actually deliver value
there shouldn't be problems to have remote work as a term in the contract.
Otherwise you can look out for other customers who accept remote work.

~~~
nfriedly
This is what I did. Next employer was a freelance client first. They make me a
pretty good offer to become an employee that included continuing to work
remotely.

Since then, I've done more freelance and employed work, but I've only accepted
remote roles.

------
ed_balls
I've been working there for over a year and the company was already
distributed - this was critical.

I've used [https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-
job](https://github.com/lukasz-madon/awesome-remote-job) to find a new job

------
m2thex
About one and a half years ago, I decided to move to another city, but very
much wanted to continue working for my company, so I proposed to my boss that
I would go remote at that point. Our company had two other engineers working
remotely before me, so that definitely helped. As far as I was considered, it
was mostly about making sure that my boss viewed me as someone who knows how
to help myself or proactively seek help when I get stuck and make sure I am
able to find new tasks to work on on my own. There was also a need for more
proactive communication and more status updates. While it is pretty easy to
know or find out what a coworkers status is in an office situation, it is far
less obvious in a remote situation.

------
bb-85
I interviewed for a position that supported/requested relocation but had other
remote team members and an HQ that wasn’t in the same office in which I
interviewed. We agreed in the interview/negotiation process that I could work
from home since the travel would be to the HQ anyway (meaning even if I moved
to work in their office, I’d still be mainly working with people in the HQ
anyway). I go once a month on average to get in some face time meetings but
otherwise get to stay home. It’s great!

------
INTPenis
I realized I was indispensable and just went home, never looked back. Not a
single complaint was heard and this is a work place that does not officially
condone remote work.

But I'm not alone in doing this, I might be relatively unique in doing it
every single day though.

------
davewasthere
I needed to go to the other side of the world for three events spaced over a
couple of months. My company wasn't a remote working company though. I
suggested my three options were:

* travel to each event separately (my least preferred)

* have a couple of months off without pay

* work remotely for the couple of months while I was away

I'd earned a good rep at my company by smashing out the previous project on
time/budget, so the working remotely was approved and all went well.

I liked it so much (escaping the northern hemisphere Winter), that I started
my own consultancy and did the annual migration for the next 8 years. Most of
that work was remote, so as long as I managed timezones, all was good.

------
swsieber
I worked for my company for 1.5 years and then said I was moving in 6 months.
So, with plenty of warning, my boss said he wanted to keep me... so here I am
wor king remote.

I did have several things going for me:

1) We had a wfh day once a week

2) We had a few other employees (but not other devs) already working remotely

3) I already had a lot of freedom that came from tackling not fun (to some)
issues, like build tolling, infrastructure interactions, etc. So I was already
trusted to be proactive in what I was doing

4) I'd say perhaps the biggest thing that lead to it was having split
management - a people top level manager over development and a tech top level
manager of development. Both are great and work well together.

------
majewsky
My boss is in a different office in a different city anyway, so it doesn't
matter much to him whether I'm in the local office or at home or wherever, as
long as work gets done.

It helps that my company, SAP, has a strong home-office culture: A lot of
employees are consultants, who spend most of Friday doing time-recording and
other administrative activities, so Friday is traditionally home-office day
(for those who want it). Last year, a new company policy was adopted that
requires managers to provide an objective reason for why mobile work (such as
home office) should not be allowed for their team members.

~~~
yaseer
I spent 3 months in Germany regularly interacting with SAP.

I was impressed at just how well they treat their employees. Kinda reminded me
of the Simpson's episode where the Germans take over the power plant.

~~~
majewsky
It's not just an SAP thing, it's got to do with German culture and German law.
For example, the US concept of "sick days" looks really bizarre to Germans.
When someone is sick, they get a doctor's note and stay at home until fully
recovered. When someone goes into work sick, their colleagues and managers
tell them to go see a doctor. There is a shared understanding that sick
employees working regardless are a liability to everyone involved.

That said, it helps that IT is a white-collar industry. I have a few friends
in blue-collar jobs, and working conditions sound worse over there, esp. for
temp jobs where workers are considered fungible.

------
meuk
I sometimes work remotely, but most days I wasn't very productive. This is
partially my own fault for not having a dedicated room to work in (so I sit in
the living room, which is full of distractions). But it's also an
infrastructure problem (my remote connection has stopped for multiple times,
which means that I can't reach infrasupport anymore), and a culture problem
(there is literally no documentation for the project I work on, the best
strategy so far is to ask around if something isn't clear to you).

------
foreigner
I had been with the company for 5 years and was the most senior employee. I
simply said "I'm moving but would like to continue working with you remotely."
They didn't like it but weren't willing to lose me either.

I worked remotely for them for two years before they laid off the entire
engineering team, me included. My next and current job was remote from the
beginning. It was easy to get because by then I had proven that I could be
effective remotely.

------
unrealchild
In my experience if you need to convince them its not a good fit. An employer
needs to embrace remote work as part of the culture for it to work well...in
my opinion.

------
leanthonyrn
Does someone have best practices for remote work from the workers perspective?
Example end of day email for work complete. Weekly check in for priority
projects.

~~~
nfriedly
Communicating is probably the most important thing. I talk to my team on slack
daily and on video chat about every other day.

A private office with a door you can shut is also up there. I actually lease a
small office about 1.5 miles from my home. Normally a spare bedroom is
sufficient, but we ran out of those in my home.

Keep a normal schedule. It doesn't have to be 9-5, but it needs to have a good
amount of overlap with your team.

Have a backup computer and internet connection. (Cellphone tethering qualifies
here.)

All that said, there's really no substitute for occasional face time. My
company has a lot of remote staff, so we do quarterly gatherings where
everyone comes to the same city to work together for a week.

------
emilecantin
For me, I've simply started freelancing. I love working remote so much that it
became non-negotiable for me. I've then worked at one startup, where my hiring
basically pushed the whole team to become remote (they were kind of on the
fence before I joined, and the boss realized that not having an office was
much cheaper).

I believe that the key to make it work is to have a remote-first culture, at
least in the team you're on.

------
DoofusOfDeath
You should first ask yourself if it's really true.

Being one of a company's only remote workers can be a terrible experience.
What you gain in focus may easily be lost in terms of missed communications,
being left out of spontaneous meetings, etc.

Also, depending on how far you live, missing out on company events. That can
negatively impact your level of engagement with the company, which could also
hurt your productivity.

------
yakk0
My wife got a job a couple states away and while I loved my job, I was moving
with her. My responsibilities had been moving into more server-admin stuff for
a while, so my boss was able to get approval to let me work remotely. It's
been 3 and a half years now and still working well. I miss the ability to drop
in on people and bounce ideas off them, but we talk a lot through IMs and
calls.

------
speedplane
If you can show evidence that you are at least as effective remotely than in
the office, that will go a long way towards convincing a manger. Start working
from home on off hours. Come in late. Show them timestamps from all of your
commits, that you're most effective during non-work hours. Give them hard
evidence, and most reasonable people will do the reasonable thing.

------
jmpman
I used to manage a team with employees over 120 miles away. My VP was against
remote employees, but I convinced him to allow my distant employees to work
remote 4 days out of the week, and come to the office just on Thursday. The
team remained productive and we slowly got approval to avoid even that one day
in the office. It was a matter of trust, which was built over time.

------
Existenceblinks
3 years of remote work experience here:

1) Report frequently

2) Ask for paring if boss likes or whenever you need non-trivial discussion
(it's better than chat obviously)

3) Tell boss what you will do today, your expectation on results

4) When problems occurs, let him know immediately or within 4 hours

I did all of these just for less than a year. After that he doesn't give a
shit what I do anymore. It's kind of lonely now lol

------
duiker101
"I really want to work with you, but I need to put myself first so I will be
leaving that country. If you want we can find a way to make it work, otherwise
I have already written up the resignation letter." That, with being a good
employee granted me 2 years of amazing remote work.

------
jgaa
Whenever I was asked to do something hard, I answered that I needed to work
from home in order to avoid distractions and focus on the problem.

For I couple of years I did all the actual coding from home, and then I spent
a few weeks in the office, relaxing, being social and drinking free coffee :)

------
maxxxxx
If your company doesn’t have a remote culture I have seen people go remote
mainly by moving away for family reasons or similar. Then the company has to
make a choice.

I don’t think you will have much of a chance of convincing them with arguments
about productivity. Otherwise we wouldn’t have loud open offices everywhere.

------
davidscolgan
There is an extended discussion about this in Cal Newport's excellent book So
Good They Can't Ignore You.

In short, build up "career capital" by making yourself valuable to the
company, which you can later use as leverage. Or as others have said, just get
a different job that's already remote.

------
piotr-yuxuan
Less context switching, less disruption, home as a quieter environment. When
remote I feel I have to prove I've worked and tend to work more because of
that. I've personally experienced a x2 gap in remote, compared to a noisy
office. It's a bit like a code retreat.

------
CloudNetworking
\- Hey $BOSS, I need tomorrow afternoon off as I need to go to the airport

\+ Sure, picking up someone?

\- No, flying.

\+ Ah! Where are you going?

\- Home.

\+ Home? Where are you?

\- I've been in $REMOTE_COUNTRY for the last 3 months, I told you...

\+ Right, I thought you stayed for a week or two only

(laughs on both sides of the call)

It helps when your boss is 10000KM from you :)

------
johndcook
I said "We're out of office space. If you want to keep hiring, we have to let
people work from home." He accepted that immediately, and we moved on to
logistics.

------
Ensorceled
For me, the number one indicator is what did you do on the last snow day. If
you put in an incredibly productive day and wrapped up a bunch of bugs and
stories, let’s talk.

~~~
BerislavLopac
Not very useful metric for people living in, say, the Mediterranean.

~~~
Ensorceled
Substitute last time you “worked from home”

------
cweagans
Don't try to change the company. Leave and find a company that already offers
what you want. That way is way easier IMO.

------
freeformz
[https://weworkremotely.com/](https://weworkremotely.com/)

------
m04rn01s3
I never really talked about it with my boss...I just stopped going in one day
but kept hitting my deadlines and attending video meetings. We had a few
offices in other timezones. Nobody said shit.

Finally, like a year later, my boss asked about it (in our first 1:1 meeting
ever lol)... Apparently, a bunch of other devs did the same thing after me and
now the office was becoming a ghost town. Leadership was super confused about
it and tried forcing people back into the office.

Eventually, a re-org had the office "flourishing" again, with a new exciting
"bro" culture and lots of mandatory after-work events (in the office...) \- I
left soon after and have been fully remote ever since.

Remote work isn't for everyone, and it becomes apparent pretty quickly if you
aren't cut out for it... we're all professionals here and should be allowed to
choose our optimal environment for getting things done.

TLDR; Be ready to walk, there are a ton of remote companies out there.
Employment is a 2-way street, make it work for you!

------
effnorwood
I quit.

------
70122-_6
reason with him about income-protection (about 75 USD a month)?

------
bra-ket
i just stopped coming to work one day

