
Why aren’t more companies remote-first? - ekhornung
https://upside.fm/the-future-of-work-is-here-so-why-arent-more-companies-remote-first/
======
Sahhaese
Am I the exception? I think Remote work sucks.

I'd rather have proximity to co-workers so we can easily share ideas in
informal ways.

Sometimes you don't want to formally disperse some information but are happy
to let people overhear what you think.

An environment where people can find meeting rooms when they need them, can
find peace and quiet when they need them but also generally have co-location
means good team cohesion.

If developers are remote, you will find that your code-base becomes the same.
That critical FooBarAdapter becomes something that only Naimh can work on
because without co-location if another developer is stuck on it, rather than
grabbing her for a "Can you look at this?" over the shoulder, it gets slung
over the fence in an issue or pull request.

Yes, when working face to face too many (formal) meetings can be a problem,
but don't abolish co-location just abolish the meetings.

And don't be a cubicle farm. Yes, if you think the alternative to remote work
is an anonymous grey cubicle on the 5th floor of an anonymous office block (or
just as bad, the 'trendy' exposed ducts open plan office), then remote work
will look like nirvana.

Of course I'd also recommend being somewhere with good public transport and
have flexible working hours so people aren't forced into long commutes in
poluting personal transport. Also offer and allow occassional remote work to
further ease that demand without losing the benefits of co-location.

But whole-team remote work? No thanks!

~~~
skizm
I got to say, I disagree with nearly every point here. Taps on the shoulder
are the worst, anonymous cubical farms would be way better than the current
situation (all open offices), skype/zoom/etc. are all immediately available
for impromptu meetings, I'm not sure why working on code independently would
lead to more silos? Does everyone always pair program in offices? Do you
theorize less design meetings or something?

Plus remote you can not play the butts-in-seats game, get non-work related
life things done at your leisure, wear whatever clothes you like, shit in your
own bathroom, don't have to worry about anyone tapping you on the shoulder,
eat what you want when you want, the list goes on. Theses are just the
immediate things that come to mind.

~~~
dasil003
I’ve done multi-year stints of both, and it’s highly contextual. For ICs I get
the quiet and focus is a net win (assuming proper self-motivation and no
social isolation issues). However for high-level or cross-functional
collaboration there is no online tool that approaches the bandwidth of two
people in a room with a whiteboard. The energy in person, serendipity and the
ideas that come from prolonged close collaboration (especially in a startup)
is hard to quantify but it’s real. It’s not optimal for everyone all the time,
but then neither is full remote.

~~~
thebigspacefuck
It seems like there isn't a great digital replacement for a whiteboard yet.
Maybe a tablet and stylus, but I haven't used a digital whiteboard enough to
justify buying or setting one up. Incorporating the stylus/tablet into laptops
isn't a new idea, but I've never owned a work laptop with that feature.

~~~
nvrspyx
There are, but they’re expensive. There’s Google’s Jamboard and Microsoft’s
Studio Hub as a couple of examples. You could also go the iPad and Apple
Pencil route and just use similar apps, or the apps for those products (i.e.
Microsoft Whiteboard app), but that’s still fairly expensive if that’s all
they’re used for.

------
BrentOzar
As a small business owner who’s had remote employees across the US, there are
two big problems. (These are specifically about remote _employees_ , not
remote contractors.)

First, to pay payroll taxes to employees who live in different states, you
have to jump through a bunch of hoops with each state’s government. For
example, when we had an employee living in Colorado, we had to set up a
business relationship with the state of Colorado - using a fax machine. They
literally wouldn’t accept paperwork any other way - it had to be via fax.
Later, when that employee moved to another state, we had to tear down our
relationship with Colorado (or else keep paying business fees to Colorado),
plus set up tax paperwork with the employee’s new state. All of this cost us
time & money.

Second, health insurance was a lot more complex. We wanted to offer the best
possible health insurance to all of our employees, but health insurance
companies make that massively complicated, with various rules about where the
majority of staff lived, where each person lived, which plans were available
in which states, etc. If I could do it all over again, I probably would have
just given each employee an allowance to use on their local state’s open
health insurance market, but that’s a hot mess too.

~~~
feld
Compensate your employees well, have them be independent contractors. That's
what my employer does.

~~~
graton
That is likely not legal in the US. An independent contractor needs to be
"independent" for the most part. If they work 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a
year, for the same company they are considered an employee and can't be given
a 1099. They should be a W-2 type employee. Now if the company wants to hire
another company to be the legal employer of the employee they can do that. But
still need to be a W-2 employee.

Not to say that people/companies don't do it, but the companies that do are
leaving themselves open to legal issues.

~~~
mbesto
> If they work 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, for the same company they are
> considered an employee and can't be given a 1099

IANAL but this is not the legal framework for determining whether someone is a
1099 resource. There are plenty of people who work 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a
year for the same company and are still legally considered IC's.

See here for clarification: [https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-
self-employe...](https://www.irs.gov/businesses/small-businesses-self-
employed/independent-contractor-self-employed-or-employee)

Behavioral: Does the company control or have the right to control what the
worker does and how the worker does his or her job?

Financial: Are the business aspects of the worker’s job controlled by the
payer? (these include things like how worker is paid, whether expenses are
reimbursed, who provides tools/supplies, etc.)

Type of Relationship: Are there written contracts or employee type benefits
(i.e. pension plan, insurance, vacation pay, etc.)? Will the relationship
continue and is the work performed a key aspect of the business?

------
sytse
I'll try to answer the question from my perspective as the CEO of GitLab with
650 people in 50 countries and shared offices.

First of all as an industry we haven't agreed on a term. Remote first or
remote friendly are used by companies that do have a headquarter but are open
to remote work like Stripe. Since remote can have a negative connotation some
companies like Wordpress like distributed but that is also used by companies
that have offices in multiple locations. At GitLab we prefer to use all remote
[https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-
remote/](https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/)

The three biggest companies as far as I know are Wordpress, InVision, and
GitLab. Wordpress and InVision both have around 1000 people while we're 45%
smaller. I've heard that InVision has people work east coast hours but that
doesn't show in their job listings.

I think remote will become much more popular. It saves people commuting time
and gives them more flexibility to care for family, go to the gym at a
convenient time, travel more, and deal with sick children. For the company you
are able to hire outside of competitive metro areas and you save money by that
[https://about.gitlab.com/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-
rates/](https://about.gitlab.com/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-rates/) and on
office costs.

It is early days for remote and it is still viewed as a risk by potential
investors. But with tools like Zoom and better tools for asynchronous
collaboration like InVision and GitLab I think it will become popular rapidly.
Because you have to adjust you communication
[https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/communication/](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/communication/)
I think new startups will be all remote while existing companies will find it
much harder to change.

~~~
Raphmedia
> For the company you are able to hire outside of competitive metro areas and
> you save money by that [https://about.gitlab.com/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-
> local-rates/](https://about.gitlab.com/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-rates/)
> and on office costs.

So, someone can change their mailing address to that of a friend living in a
high income area and have a better pay? What about when moving, are employees'
pays docked too?

For example, I come from a low-income area and most of my family is poor. By
working in tech., I'm able to provide a safety net for parents and close
friends. My home address is in my hometown but I would spend time at my
significant other's apartment during the week to be close to work.

Why should my pay be less than that of a coworker that does the same exact
same job as me simply because this is a remote company? What about someone
that does a worst job or is less experienced? Unless that means that the only
employees hired in high-pays area are senior and other employees are all
junior or mid level and seen as cheaper labor, I don't see the reason...
except as sour way to save company's operating cost.

Does that also mean that you believe someone in this situation should never
have the resources to move to a high income area? Someone from a high-income
area could live in a shared rental, save a big cushion of money and then move
to a lower income area for less stress while knowing they will be able to
retire. Someone from a low paying area wouldn't be able to do that.

Compensation should be based on output performance and the difficulties and
complexity of the work being done.

~~~
sytse
1\. "change their mailing address to that of a friend living in a high income
area and have a better pay" => that would be fraudulent

2\. "What about when moving, are employees' pays docked too?" => Please see
[https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-
operations/global-c...](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-
operations/global-compensation/#relocating)

3\. "Compensation should be based on output performance and the difficulties
and complexity of the work being done." => Opinions differ about this across
companies and some of them like Basecamp use your method. For our take Please
see the section "Standard pay eats away at production and personnel" in
[https://about.gitlab.com/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-
rates/](https://about.gitlab.com/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-rates/)

~~~
coryfklein
Re: relocation

The justification in the link essentially sounds to me like, "If you worked in
the office at another company and moved to a lower cost of living city you'd
also get your pay docked. We do the same because we're following the precedent
and because you don't have other options."

This fails to mention the flip side - we developers _do_ have other options.
There are certainly SF companies I'm aware of that will be happy to outbid
Gitlab's desire to pay a software engineer $75k because they moved to rural
Nebraska.

~~~
sytse
I agree that more and more companies will start hiring remotely and the market
will get more competitive. As I said in the blog post: "I hope the distance
between those stances becomes smaller as more companies offer remote work
opportunities."

~~~
Raphmedia
I understand the reason and how it is a necessary evil. But it's still an
evil. Simply put, it is discrimination.

Paying the poor less and the wealthy more.

It makes no sense that two employees with the same workload and same
credentials would get a different pay based on their primary address'
geolocation.

Just off the top of my head :

\- Employee resides at their rich parent's home and get a higher pay vs.
employee move near their mother's elderly care center in a ghetto and dock
their pay.

\- Employee lives alone with no dependents in a high pay area vs. employee
being a single-parent in a low pay area.

\- Employee lives on a native reservation and get less pay.

\- Employee lives in a co-location in a high pay area vs. employee lives alone
in a low pay area.

\- Employee has impressive credentials in a low pay area vs. employee with no
credential living in a high pay area.

\- etc.

This is nothing more than a loophole that allows you to give a bonus to
employees living in high pay areas while keeping a clear conscience.

If anything, kudos for being open about the whole situation.

~~~
scarface74
Compensation is never about "fairness". It's about what you can negotiate.

------
patagonia
Our team has slowly, by accident shifted to remote first during summers, when
our deadlines are the furthest out. First one person moved, and we let them
stay on and work remotely. Then another. Then two of three of the remaining
individual contributors switched to core hours, but are otherwise gone. Now my
boss has been remote for two weeks.

It’s interesting in that it happened without discussion and without
proactively addressing the new cultural issues that arose.

Communication has dropped unless you’re on a call, and you never know who is
on what call so it’s difficult to gauge the tempo of work any given day.
Communication has become a “procedure” that must be intentionally addressed,
which leads to awkward conversations about the weather in our daily standup
that has morphed into a call to keep in touch for the people that are off site
and don’t want to be politically left out. It wastes my time. A lot is lost in
translation. Productive spontaneous conversation between more than two people
is basically gone. A lot of work has disappeared into Slack DMs instof
channels, visibility lost there.

I understand a lot of this could be fixed with cultural and procedural
changes. But I find it weird that you have to implement procedures and
controls to replace something you get for free when you are all physically in
the same place. And from my experience at least, getting it wrong has
absolutely been bad for our team’s work product. Based on this experience I’ll
never be working on a remote team again

~~~
matwood
> A lot of work has disappeared into Slack DMs instof channels, visibility
> lost there.

We announce DM stats in our monthly company meeting. Our goal is everything in
a public channel unless it absolutely is a private matter.

> something you get for free when you are all physically in the same place.

But did you really? Were all those conversations documented? What I realized
is that many conversations end up being around what was talked about and what
was the decision made X months ago. Many other conversations were around
communicating said decision to someone else or someone new. All these
telephone game style conversations go away if you can forward someone an email
chain.

~~~
moorhosj
I’ve never run into a colleague from another department on an email chain. It
happens frequently in our office kitchen. I don’t that that, or the ability to
simply walk over to someone’s desk should be discounted.

~~~
wolco
Working in a bigger place you may not have the same physical access. The
smaller the place the more opportunity for cross department chatter remote or
in person.

------
konschubert
Because it's much harder to keep people motivated and it's harder to create an
environment with efficient communication.

\--------------------------------------------

EDIT: I actually love the idea of remote work and I would love it to succeed.
I believe that if a company is 100% remote and adopts it processes
accordingly, it might work.

I still think that for a traditional onsite business, it's very, very hard to
include remote people into the process in a way that keeps them happy and
included.

PS: You also have to distinguish between "remote" and "async", which do not
necessarily need to go hand in hand.

~~~
stakhanov
Having clocked several years with remote-only companies and several years with
traditional onsite jobs, I would say that, ironically, remote companies have
better communication. On any given 8-hour workday, I would probably clock
several hours' worth of communication in various shapes and forms at remote
companies. For onsite, many of my days might be spent sitting next to a bunch
of people in an open plan office not ever exchanging a word.

~~~
konschubert
Various hours spent per day on communication sounds rather inefficient though.

~~~
stakhanov
Not at all: In my experience communication is 50% of the job as a software
engineer. It's 100% of the job as a software engineering manager of sorts.

And remote communication is way more efficient. Things like text chat,
comments in ticket systems or project management systems like asana etc are
"soft interrupts" that I find surprisingly frictionless. I can stay in
concentration until I've reached a natural interrupt of sorts, then answer
chat messages or read up on tickets, ask clarifying questions or loop in more
people (sending out a soft interrupt, but not waiting for replies), get back
into concentration, and restart the loop at the next interrupt.

The alternative: It is now 9:35am. You know you have to leave at 9:55 to get
to your 10:00 meeting in the meeting room that's 5 minutes away. But 20
minutes is not enough to get into concentration, so you spend that time
procrastinating. At 10:00 you're there. At 10:10, the asshole who is always
late shows up. The meeting takes 50 minutes, because the only reason to EVER
end a meeting is getting kicked out of the meeting room. In this case it was
booked for the 10:00-11:00 slot. You spend 5 more minutes walking back to your
desk. Within the 50mins of meeting time, you were talking for 5 minutes. 10
minutes of the other speakers' time contained information you actually needed.
You arrive at your desk at 11:05. That's 90 minutes flushed down the tube that
could have been 15 minutes' worth of text chat, and the timing basically
prevents deep work for maybe that first half of that workday.

------
lundbc
I'm a VP of an established remote-first company, 50+ developers, all US-based.
For the most part, remote-first has been a great benefit for us, but there are
no silver bullets.

Other than the issues mentioned elsewhere re: HR/Payroll complications, our
biggest issue is finding junior talent and facilitating individual growth. For
the most part we skew towards people who have some amount of remote work
experience, which means skewing towards more experienced team members. That
can have some knock-on effects that need to be managed: more experienced
typically means greater salary, fewer juniors means less visible
organizational structure around things like "I manage and mentor a team of 5"
which can be disorienting for new hires, and can limit mentorship growth for
senior team members.

For many senior developers, those knock-on effects could be viewed as
positives, but we need to be sensitive to the overall composition of the team.

I haven't seen any greater motivational issues at remote-first vs a
traditional management position. Like most any job, your motivation is largely
a factor of your engagement. It's just as easy to drift on-site, with smoke
breaks, lunch breaks, ping pong matches, chatting with your officemates about
last night's NBA finals, etc etc.

~~~
freddie_mercury
This is something I rarely see talked about. How do you hire a grad or junior
dev who is remote? How do you mentor them and (over years) help them grow into
a senior dev?

From where I sit, "remote first" is all too often a code word for "only senior
devs need apply".

~~~
leesec
>This is something I rarely see talked about. How do you hire a grad or junior
dev who is remote?

You give them an offer.

>How do you mentor them and (over years) help them grow into a senior dev?

Same way you do in an office but over video chat.

~~~
jenkinstrigger
Yep, I've mentored junior developers over video chat and Slack. If they have
good communication skills (which is much needed for remote!) then they can
write questions or ask to be shown something remotely just as well as in
person.

------
edw519
Remote worker off and on for 30 years from both sides: alone at home and in
the office supervising others working remotely.

There are obviously many pros and cons, but in my experience, there is one
huge overriding factor most likely to determine remote success: workers'
ability and willingness to _read_ and _write_.

In my most successful remote relationships, almost everything was written
down, written well, and read well. I'm talking about all the usual suspects:
business requirements, functional specifications, technical specifications,
project plans, stories, post-mortems, meeting agendas, code reviews, and of
course, test plans.

But then again, this has little to do with working remote. You MUST write all
of these things down anyway: I have witnessed over and over again a high
correlation between writing and reading well and project success, remote or
not.

If has never really mattered what methodologies or tools were used (yes, email
is fine, so are waterfall and agile). You HAVE to write things down in the
software building world.

Using this line of thinking, remote can actually make your team _more_
effective. You have to get good and reading and writing to succeed. You have
much less option of meeting, or huddling, or whatever they call those crutches
these days. Write it down and all that fluffy overhead goes away.

Wanna go "remote-first"? Learn how to "read-and-write-first". The rest is
gravy.

~~~
lostmymind66
I've had exactly this issue. I was working remotely a couple of years ago and
the project manager couldn't effectively communicate (we were all remote in
different parts of the US).

The result was a disaster and the project manager playing the blame game. I
eventually left.

------
nostalgk
I think that being flexible is much more important than having specifically
remote employees. I personally would love if I could work even 2 days a week
from home, giving me a lot more flexibility to clear up life admin (when's the
last time anyone had time to go to the bank when it's open? not taking PTO for
that...).

~~~
loco5niner
Can't you just go on your lunch? Or even just put an 'out-of-office' hour on
your calendar?

~~~
nostalgk
I work in a rural area, not in a city. No banks within lunch commute at all.
All we really have is a Subway.

~~~
loco5niner
That's a reasonable reason. I would love more flexibility at my butts-in-seats
company too, btw.

------
icxa
All of these can be viewed as fallacies to another who has experienced long
stretches of remote-only work. It is simply one person's take.

Why aren't more companies remote-first? It isn't as popular as it sounds like
it is in tech circles, it isn't a silver bullet to the "problem" of work, and
it comes with its own set of unique challenges and problems.

------
kypro
In my experience it can work well for tech-centric companies where everyone,
or almost everyone is working behind a computer all day. But in most companies
where you might have factory workers, call centres, retail outlets, etc, it
begins to make less sense. If you have the office space you may as well use
it, and often developers will be required to work closely with other
departments in the business - this can get difficult when they're all working
remotely.

I've worked fully remote and part-remote for almost 10 years and really all I
want is flexibility. Can I start a little later when I need to so long as I
make back the time? Can I work remotely for a week or two if I need to visit
family? These things alone are probably worth $5,000 - $10,000 per year to me.

We should also consider working remote full0time can be extremely isolating,
and prolonged periods with little to no human contact in my experience was bad
for my mental health. I worked in one place for over 5 years and felt like I
never really got to know anyone. I made no real friends. And at times I felt
like I was little more than a code monkey writing the next piece of code with
no sense of a shared goal or purpose - which you often get when working
closely with a team.

It can also be difficult to separate work and home life for some people,
especially if you have a family and kids. I don't, but at times my partner
might invite her friends or family around - some of whom do have children.
Whenever this happened it was extremely difficult for me to get anything done.
A few times I even had family come into my office while I was in a meeting
with my boss which is far from ideal.

These things are all manageable of course, and I'm sure working fully remote
works for some people, but for me I'm much happier working remotely a couple
of times a week with some flexibility in my work times.

~~~
raleigh_user
went through a lot of the same stuff. Its tough to be isolated and mental
health is a large driver of why I didn't want to continue working alone on a
(small) SaaS app.

------
aphextron
We just need to lose the idea of an 8 hour work day. It's an anachronism from
the industrial revolution. Make me come in at 10AM, have standup, maybe a
meeting or two, have lunch with colleagues, then everyone leaves by 2PM to
work on their respective tasks. The problem with full work from home is that
some people take advantage of it more than others, and you lose out on a lot
of the "firm effect" that comes with face to face communication. The problem
with 9-5 is rush hour, burn out, and inefficiency. Force everyone to show up 5
days a week for 4 hours and you get all the benefits of both.

~~~
asark
Well, not all. No broadened talent pool, and you still have commutes. IIRC
that's something like 25min each way on average, so ( _math math math_ )
you're saving people on the order of 200 hours a year by eliminating them,
plus gas, car maintenance, maybe making dropping a car possible for two-car
households, and we're talking probably 400+ person-hours a year saved, in
actual commute time and in hours worked just to pay for commuting.

~~~
KevinS626
I wish this was addressed more as a massive cost that only the employee must
take on in order to even have a job.

People have to risk their lives using a machine that they have to source
themselves to come into an office everyday while not being compensated for
that time, danger, and financial investment.

------
bevacqua
Elastic is like this, except 1500 folks instead of 80.

We are in over 50 countries, we are 1,500 folks, and we are all distributed,
people don't really use offices (esp. not those of us in R&D roles) and almost
everyone works from their homes.

You get a generous stipend if you want to rent an office like WeWork, etc.

We generally gather twice a year in person, but we're not bound by offices so
we can gather anywhere there's a large enough hotel or two.

I've been with Elastic for 3+ years and after doing remote consulting for ~7
years I can say this company is one of the best, if not the best, at getting
distributed work right

------
notacoward
BrentOzar gives a great answer about financial/legal issues, and sytse gives
another great answer about investor risk. I'll add some thoughts from a more
"down in the trenches" (and ten-year remote developer) perspective.

First, remote work just isn't for everyone or for every situation. Some people
thrive on frequent interaction with others, and just don't have the same
energy when they have less. Some get outright depressed. Teaching/mentoring
also requires frequent interaction, which is an issue for a team with a lot of
new people. Sometimes online interaction is an adequate substitute. Sometimes
it's not. Also, some people simply don't focus as well and let themselves get
distracted too much when they can't literally see and hear others working
around them.

Second, dealing with remote workers requires a change of habits that many find
unwelcome. You have to write more and speak less. When you do speak via phone
or VC, you have to learn new conversational protocols. Our subconscious
protocols for when it's OK to start speaking and when to listen tend to break
down a bit especially with high delay or poor connection quality, so people
have to _work_ a bit to make sure everyone gets their say.

Anyone who works remotely also has to be hyper-aware of time zones. If folks
on the US west coast never want to meet before lunch, it's going to cause
friction with people on the east coast who would rather not have meetings
after 5pm almost every day. Similarly, if those west-coasters like to do solo
work at the beginning of the day and collaborative work at the end (a common
pattern for reasons I don't fully understand) they're going to hit that full-
day round trip latency for questions and code reviews more often. And that's
all with only a three-hour difference. In general, it gets even worse when
larger differences are involved.

I've been working remotely for a decade. It works _for me_ largely because of
how I am and because I very actively try to teach my colleagues about how to
make it work. Sometimes it barely works, and I wouldn't count on it working
for a different person or a different team/project.

------
dep_b
As long as startups insist on noisy, open environments I'll work remote. Just
like some people can have a conversation while the TV is on some people can
work in that environment. And everybody seems to have to adapt to those people
nowadays.

Currently I'm one of the most productive developers in the company and some
people really think I make a ton of hours to get to that level, but the only
thing I have are the mornings that are wife and child free and then the
afternoons with meetings and other distractions.

It really takes four hours of clean concentrated remote work to get there. You
can only imagine what would happen if I had four hours more of that in a day.

------
ashelmire
The people at the top like to be seen and heard, feel their own impact, and
they don't trust their employees to work if they can't see them.

Obviously that's a broad generalization and untrue of places that do allow
remote work. And often middle management is happy with remote work, but execs
limit it.

I see responses like "I'd rather have proximity to co-workers so we can easily
share ideas in informal ways." I think that's the exception amongst
developers. Informal ideas are just as easily shared on slack, or by email, or
on Jira. In fact, I find that getting someone to write something down means
you have get better ideas coming your way (and less noise).

> "but don't abolish co-location just abolish the meetings."

The issue isn't always formal meetings. It's Bob, John, and Shirley coming by
your desk. It's Joe and Jane having a conversation 5 feet away from you. It's
the weird guy growing strange creatures in the refrigerator with 20 pairs of
shoes piled under his desk that comes to bother you every time he's stuck on
something instead of working through it himself.

And the time savings! An extra hour of life per day if I don't have to commute
- and I take a train a very short distance or bike it (ok, I like the biking).
For some of my coworkers, they may gain two hours per day. How much happier
and more productive would they be? So much more.

------
ShakataGaNai
Why aren't more companies remote-first? Because a lot of the people starting
companies or in management positions tend to be older and are more accustomed
to "The old ways".

Humans are creatures of habit. We like the status quo to stay the same if at
all possible. If you've spent 30 years in an office with no remote work, you
probably want to keep doing that (you're used to it afterall). You also
probably want your subordinates to do the same. After all you've been used to
having your boss "right there", your coworkers "right there", your
subordinates "right there"... for years

Beyond that, which I honestly think is a large portion of "why". There is also
logistical complexity on numerous levels, for numerous types of companies.
Such as:

* Laws & Regulations - Especially in heavily regulated spaces like finance & health

* Enterprise Customers - They often are old school and want to see your offices and hordes of people working to justify their multi-million dollar purchases.

* All the pay/insurance/tax/reimbursement stuff mentioned a dozen times in this thread.

* Employees - As noted here in this comment thread, some people LIKE working in an office

* VC/Funding - It's more common now, but supposedly it's still harder to get VC money or funding from banks if the workforce is remote/distributed/virtual (take your pick of terms)

------
eledumb
I've been full time remote since 2010 in senior management positions. Meaning
that I have direct reports, that have direct reports, who have direct reports,
and all are remote. Prior to 2010 I spent 20 years working in traditional
office settings.

So I've dealt with just about every possible issue that can be encountered in
both "normal" and remote environments and I can say that in every case remote
is better. One of my employers had mandatory management training quarterly and
I worked there for 9 years, so maybe I'm better prepared to manage employees
and remote staff than most managers. I find remote staff much easier to
manage, because none of the interpersonal issues need to be dealt with, he's
parking in my space, someone is stealing my lunch, they don't bathe, they wear
too much cologne/perfume, they are always bugging me, it's too loud, it's too
quite, so and so is always late, and on and on and on.

I also find the productivity to be much higher mostly because people can get
work done on their schedule and not be stuck in 9-5. If something is due
Tuesday I don't care if it's done by at 11:30 Monday night, just so long as
it's done and done correctly.

I have a separate dedicated office, I have a couch 4 monitors and a TV for
monitoring the world, mostly on Bloomberg TV.

The only knock I have on working from home is that that I'm tired of my office
and my house. I hate that my lunch room is my kitchen.

------
angstrom
After 60 years of advancements in networked computing we should see not just
the performance benefits, but also the lifestyle benefits. I don't see the
point of sitting in an open plan office especially when you have cliches of
people that choose to speak in native languages about technical subject
matter. I'm not benefitting from the distraction, nor is anyone else.

------
rmah
It's nice that remote-only works well for SureSwift, but they're a early stage
finance company. As such, they don't really need a ton of collaboration
between internal employees. Many firms with similar internal dynamics (some
types of consultants, call centers, etc) can, I suspect, be mostly remote. But
not every company operates like they that. Many companies even have, _gasp_ ,
locations that must be staffed! Factories, warehouses, retail outlets,
distribution nodes, etc.

I wish pieces like the posted article talked less about the "advantages" of
remote work (which seem to be fairly obvious to everyone, no?), and more about
the challenges they faced in successfully creating a remote-work culture. And
how they overcame those challenges (and what didn't work too). I have found
that the effectiveness remote teams is highly dependent on the little details
of how they are managed, how communications works, etc. More color on those
details might actually be helpful.

------
dsfyu404ed
I work for a company that has a global presence. Teams are often distributed
across a couple locations. We also have some remote workers. We have people in
one office who's entire team is in another office. We have people who are the
sole person on their team in a given location. There really is no practical
difference between working remote or working in a different office at that
point.

Yes, face to face interaction has a lot of benefits that are noted throughout
these comments but once you've incurred the overhead that comes from having
more than a couple locations letting people work remote doesn't have any
negative impact.

I can see why some 20-person trendy startup that hasn't had time to figure out
how to effectively coordinate across multiple locations doesn't want to hire
remote. They don't want to incur that overhead yet. For bigger established
companies there's no good reason not to hire remote or at least allow the
flexibility to work remote as needed.

------
ChefboyOG
I've worked in full-time remote, full-time onsite, and hybrid roles. While
there are tradeoffs to each and circumstances generally dictate how successful
the setup is, there is one big tradeoff that I don't see discussed as much:
Mentoring juniors.

In my experience, it's really, really difficult to train up a junior (doesn't
have to be engineering even) in a remote team. Because the feedback loops are
more rigid—the passive communication styles of Slack/other remote tools ensure
this—it can make teaching a junior, who is going to naturally have 1,000
questions and need high frequency feedback, extremely inefficient and
uncomfortable.

------
zerogvt
Doing partial remoting atm (50% of the time on site) and having spent a year
looking for a full remote job I have a few things to testify from the employee
side:

1\. Partial remote (sometimes) sucks. Ppl in office either feel they getting
less or are bored to go the extra mile to accommodate you (remoting is based
on better and more communication) or just ignore you cause it's easier to just
ask the next desk. And anyhow you are out of any networking/office politics
(not necessarily a bad thing though).

2\. Fully remote companies are generally of 3 kinds: a. companies you've heard
of and they're serious but since they're looking to hire from a global pool
they are extremely picky (Maybe it's easier to get into google than getting
into Wordpress). b. companies that are OK(ish) but are in the remoting thing
just to cut costs, i.e. they pay peanuts c. companies that are outright dodgy
and are looking for suckers or vanish in a puff without a sign. Obviously
you'd only care for type (a) but so do thousand others out there.

3\. If you happen to be tax-resident on a state where they tax-slaughter
contractors (e.g. certain EU states with ~ 70% tax) remoting is devolving to a
hobby rather than a job that may sustain you and your family. "Moving" to a
tax haven comes with high risks and in the end you end up playing accountancy
games rather than focusing on your job.

4\. You essentially are a contractor. Few if any or remote companies hire you
as an employee (but you are paid as an employee). You can be terminated with a
minimal notice and no severance. In case of a mixed mode company non-remoters
will probably get precedence over you.

5\. Remoting is not for everyone. I personally am fine working like that but I
totally understand that a lot of people need the motivation, vibrancy,
socializing of the office.

6\. Remoting is a very good way to balance work/family (but you might end up
doing a half-assed job in both all the time).

7\. Remoting it the _only_ way to fight off overheated to the point of surreal
rental/housing markets like SF, London, Dublin, Munich.

8\. Ecologically speaking the gains are just immense. Dunno if there are any
statistics but I wouldn't be surprised if commuting to work is one of the
biggest polluting activities overall.

9\. Remoting is the only way to do _deep_ work. Focus, get in the zone,
minimize disruptions and solve hard problems. Office is better for trivial,
communication-heavy tasks.

Just my 2 cents from my experience so far.

~~~
clarry
> 2\. Fully remote companies are generally of 3 kinds: a. companies you've
> heard of and they're serious but since they're looking to hire from a global
> pool they are extremely picky

There are many serious remote companies that will only hire in their country
(or worse).

> 4\. You essentially are a contractor. Few if any or remote companies hire
> you as an employee (but you are paid as an employee).

This doesn't make sense. I am paid as an employee, I _am_ an employee.

I agree with most of the rest though.

~~~
zerogvt
On 4, I mean that your legal status is usually a contractor one (i.e. you're
not protected by the laws covering workers/employees). Yet you are not paid by
the hour or by deliverables as usual contractors are.

------
BjoernKW
In order to try and provide answers to that question:

Because of work organisation and a cargo cult work culture that’s still stuck
in late 19th / early 20th century scientific management (a theory conceived
for assembly line rather than knowledge work, no less).

Because - while it’s a business’ goal to make profit - the individual agents
in an organisation often have different motives: They need to accumulate
reputation within the company and that reputation frequently isn’t directly
related to attributes such as productivity but rather appearances such as how
many people you “manage” or how long you’re sitting in a chair each day.

------
matejtrajkovski
I believe you are one of the few that have made remote-first work for them.

I've done most of my work for clients remotely. It takes a very specific kind
of person to work like that, and sadly it's not sustainable in the long run.
Being alone for that many hours a day starts to get old.

Not to mention the communication barriers. You really have to pick the best
people to have a workflow similar to an office full of people speaking the
same language in the same time and place.

Good for you though. I see great potential for remote-first teams as well,
it's just that the talent pool is tricky.

------
jakobegger
I can imagine that working remotely is really nice if you have only senior
developer with a lot of experience who are great communicators.

But how do remote companies deal with junior developers? Do remote companies
offer internships, and how do remote companies mentor people fresh out of
college?

I've had a couple of interns, and mentored junior developers, and sitting
right next to them makes all the difference in the world -- in my experience.
I just can't imagine how that should work over Email or Skype. Or is remote
just something for people who are more independent?

------
siliconc0w
Effective remote (at least for tech) requires a different culture and often
different tool use which make it difficult to be 'hybrid' (i.e some workers
are remote and some not). This limits the ability to incrementally adopt
remote work and so typically companies have to start with the gene.

Stuff like tapping a co-worker on the shoulder for an ad-hoc question is
generally an anti-pattern. It likely knocks them out of flow and means your
documentation and internal tools don't allow engineers to answer their own
questions. But it's so baked into how companies work that you have to start a
new company and train engineers to approach knowledge sharing differently.

Similarly ad-hoc 'fortuitous' discussions around the automated coffee maker to
hatch potential new projects/designs/products or whatever company executives
think are happening aren't really the best forum for that - they by chance,
they aren't necessarily going to be inclusive, and the premise there is that
you're essentially expecting work when the goal is to take a break. The
expectation seems to be that I may see Bob from $other_team and query him on
his current projects while the automated coffee maker takes a few minutes to
cough out a latte-like substance but, again, there should be better ways to
let me know about potentially useful team intersections rather than bugging
bob while he is trying to get a break.

------
_mcdougle
A lot of it really is about what kind of personality you are. I think there
are too many people who need external motivation to get in the zone to get
things done.

I'm not that person. I would love to work 100% remote, where I can work in my
own space without distractions. I'm actually way more productive when I get to
work from home (at least with the more low-level tasks like actually coding)
-- and from a more selfish perspective, I can slice up my day more efficiently
and get my work done WHILE ALSO getting my own things done (exercising during
lunch hour and using my own shower!)

But TBH I think the most effective option would be to provide an office and
sort of let people come and go as they please, maybe with some incentive to
get them into the office on average 2 days a week -- for all of the things
others have mentioned here, like collaboration, small talk around the office,
"hey can you look at this?", etc. etc. Those things are important, and even
though I hate coming into the office, I've noticed lately that there have been
a number of days when I was working from home and my team had a lot of pings
going back and forth trying to figure things out, and I thought it would've
been a lot easier to just pop into the office until the issues were resolved.

------
duxup
Humans are fairly good at face to face communication and bonding.

I think there is a natural inclination to in person teamwork and bonding works
better and faster in person.

That doesn't mean it can't be done remotely, it sure can, but I think there
are real complications and it is highly dependent on the use case where remote
work could be as simple as "yeah do that" and everything is good, or a
situation where it takes a great deal more thought and coordination.

Personally I like a mix of both.

------
pritianka
I've been on both sides of the spectrum. At first, I couldn't ever imagine
working remote. I was an office rat, spent a lot of time at my desk and then
socializing with coworkers at happy hours and such. It was a super fun life.
When I got the job offer at GitLab, I was super excited about the opportunity
and took it _in spite_ of it being remote.

Fast forward to a year later, my perspective has changed. It took me about 3-4
months to adjust but slowly I hit my stride. Today, I can confidently say that
I am a lot more productive working all-remote. I don't have to travel or
change rooms for meetings, I am fully connected to folks via Slack and Zoom
and GitLab issues, and I am working in the comfiest clothes :p. So 8 hours of
work in all-remote is equivalent to probably 10 hours in an office.

Socially, I do co-working calls with people, hang out in the slack channels
(#dad_jokes and #dog being two favorites), and Zoom as I need to. I never feel
left out. I have to say though, I would probably not enjoy being remote when
others are in an office because then there is a clear hierarchy of social
interactions then.

------
dpods
We’re a remote first company at Out Of Office, though we’re still small (less
than 10 employees). It’s the first remote job I’ve had as a software engineer
and I find that I’m more productive than I’ve ever been. I have my days where
I can’t concentrate but for the most part I’m able to get more done.

We err on the side of too many meetings because we don’t have the luxury of in
person conversations, but we encourage people to speak up when the meetings
aren’t productive. We also encourage having meetings just to socialize to
avoid feeling lonely or get to know each other better. We hold standups on
Monday/Wednesday/Friday so Tuesday/Thursday we’re just heads down getting
stuff done unless there’s a meeting.

We’re building a product for people we want (or already have) location
flexibility so we’re practicing what we preach in a sense. We believe the
future of work may not be 100% remote but companies will become location
flexible, meaning they still encourage employees to work in office but give
them one or two flex days to work from home, a coffee shop, or shared
workspace.

The benefits to the employee are quite obvious—greater flexibility in the
schedule and they’re able to take care of life events like kids, doctor
appointments, running errands, etc.

The benefits to the employer have been shown that it increases employee
retention. 84% of workers want location flexibility[1] and companies that
support remote workers have 25% lower turnover[2].

1\. [https://werk.co/research](https://werk.co/research)

2\. [https://www.owllabs.com/state-of-remote-
work-2017](https://www.owllabs.com/state-of-remote-work-2017)

------
mrhappyunhappy
I’ve had positive and negative experiences on both side of the fence. There
was one company where I had to commute 2 hours to and from which was absolute
hell for me. At that place I worked out of a cubicle which I preferred to an
open office. But people also tended to just stop behind me and have a full
conversation without so much giving any thought to how they may be disrupting
my concentration.

Another job I worked remotely without a single problem. The whole time I only
met one person from the team but I never felt isolated. It may have helped
that it was a young company with young employees.

Another job I worked was a failing business that was eventually swallowed up
by a larger corporation. That job was fully remote too and without issues
until the merger. I was laid off in preference of a team member who I think
was chosen simply due to face time in the corporate office. This was
reinforced by other remote workers being laid off as well. It probably didn’t
help that this was a more traditional company where very few if any people
worked remotely.

------
raleigh_user
I've only ever worked in an early stage startup I founded. We initially were
in same office and transitioned to remote over a 3 year period. (only 5 of
us).

Early in your career (I wrote all of our product and am 25) working in an
office is probably helpful. I am actively job searching now and the top thing
I care about is a mentor/peer group.

I want to have people to interact with during work. I spent 3 years mainly
writing code secluded from the real world (yes, I was going to things like
dinners but that isn't the same in my experience).

I worked in finance before and use to complain about being at the office.
Looking back, I had a quiet cubicle where I was mostly left alone to do my
work but would take a break every hour and play some put putt golf around the
office with the other interns.

I made friends, had a break and did a lot of really great work that summer.

Remote work once you're older and have kids + family + roots might make more
sense, and I look forward to that! Especially if it allows flexible time so I
could drive kids to school.

But, while young, I prefer office first w flexibility if needed.

------
cletus
Personally I think many in the pro-remote crowd have a limited view of what a
software engineering job is.

If you have a job where your entire job is to crank out some website in Rails
or to be the only person building some billing system then sure, remote can
make sense. These jobs tend to be on smaller teams with limited scope.

But projects can easily get to a size where you need to:

\- Collaborate with other engineering teams

\- Work with people on the business side

\- Work with product managers, data scientists, comms people, etc

\- Gather requirements because what you have is fairly vague

\- Determine if what you're doing is having the intended impact and adjusting
as necessary

While remote can still work in these cases it's much, much harder. It's even
harder when you have two teams in different sites even if you're in the same
time zone.l

Some pro-remote people also say "I don't need the social interaction", which I
think misses the point. You might not but what about your teammates? Doing
things like having lunch with your team, going on an offsite, etc actually
matters. It helps build a better working relationship.

This is I think particularly the case for more junior engineers. If one is two
desks over from you and swearing at their computer then you can see that and
intervene. If all the senior people are remote, who is going to do that?

So if you really want to live in [small town X] here and work at home to drop
your kids off at school or whatever, that's fine but there's no getting passed
the fact that you'll always have less opportunities and only a subset (a small
one IMHO) of jobs will be suitable for that. And you just have to accept that.

~~~
cs02rm0
Fully disagree and your opening line is a little bit patronising. Let me try
the same!

Presumably the pro-remote crowd are working for tiny little companies where
their engineering teams, product managers, data scientists, comms people, etc
all fit in the same diddy little office.

But projects can easily get to a size where you need to:

\- Collaborate with various government departments

\- Work with people in other suppliers

\- Work with people across an international supply chain

\- Gather requirements because what you have is fairly vague (isn't this every
project ever?)

While local work can still work in these cases, it's much, much harder. It's
even harder when you have to fly people across time zones.

\---

Look, this is all silly IMHO - it doesn't have to be this way.

The company I work with is setup for remote first, employees get a rundown of
how we use tooling to solve all the communication issues that could arise. You
can even sit in voice conference with other devs so you can actually hear each
other swearing at code - _if you choose to_. But if people want to colocate
the company will pay for them to have office space in a WeWork or similar.

FWIW, I make 4x working remote what I ever did for a local company. And the
work is more interesting. Accept that!

------
shados
Remote isn't flawless. A/V systems are still plagued with issues, tons of
people don't have the discipline required, even more people don't live in an
environment that allows it (eg: having proper office space), lots of people
have family a t home that will not respect their work time, etc.

It has plenty of benefits of course, and I can absolutely see how someone can
make the argument that the above is a small price to pay for the benefits.
They may not be wrong, either. But you have a way of working that has been the
norm since the dawn of time, and you have a new way that is still debatable if
it's worth it, and the obvious reaction for many is to keep the statue quo.

And then there's just preferences. My current company is making a big shift to
allow more remote work. Many people, myself included, don't work well in that
environment. We're adapting, but if a situation happened and I ended up
leaving my current job, I'd actively seek another office-first company.

------
vinay_ys
To work remotely and collaborate well, it takes some extra effort and care.
When you are present in the office, you can forego that care and still get the
job done (albeit poorly). People generally don't have the skill or discipline
for remote work/collaboration. With a little bit of coaching, it can be learnt
easily but that itself requires effort from both parties. And of course, how
teams function, how you get visibility and recognition for your work, and how
you are rewarded - all these will be affected by switching to remote – without
solid/convincing answers for these - people will be hesitant to go for it.
These are the barriers, IMO. Personally, my commute is super long and I get
most of my intense deep work done at home (or during commute itself). I
wouldn't mind a world where I had to go meet my colleagues for a couple of
weeks at a quarterly offsite and work from home rest of the time. That would
be perfect balance for me.

------
Analemma_
I think a big issue is that the costs and benefits are unevenly distributed:
the benefits fall mainly on the employee, while the costs are
disproportionately on their boss (since managing remote workers can be
considerably harder). Since the boss is the one making the hiring decision,
this asymmetry means remote hires are a tough sell.

------
tr-gitlab
I'm still new to the all remote lifestyle, but so far I have really been
loving it. I work for GitLab, which is entirely all remote and has no central
office space. I suspect that may be different from a hybrid approach.

Aside from the benefits of being able to be around more with my family and to
better handle life events, I've found that I enjoying working this way much
more.

Working asynchronously forces people to really think about how and what they
communicate. I've found that people, including myself, are much more prepared
and thoughtful in their work.

I also find that there are way less distractions and that meetings with my
coworkers are much more enjoyable. I thought I would have a hard time with the
random 'coffee chat' but have come to really value them. It's a great way to
be social and meet people, without the pressure of having to do it every day.

------
preordained
Discipline. For every one for whom (they believe) remote work unburdens them
of social interaction and unwanted stimuli ergo unleashing a Jedi flow state
of crazy creativity and productivity...there are others for whom this idea
doesn't hold up...like at all. They are more distracted, aloof, and frankly
they try to do just enough to somewhat register as a viable employee. They
don't engage unless engaged, and they tell a lot of stories when pressed as to
why assignment X is still incomplete. Were they working furiously but blocked
by A,B,C? Maybe...who knows...all I can say is the lack of proximity _does_
embolden those who are inclined to be lazy and full of excuses. Some at least
marginally productive employees do go full on dead weight under these
circumstances, IMO.

Anecdotal...but that's par for the course in this thread.

------
robbrit
I think the article might be looking at this from the wrong direction. It's
making a straw-man argument by taking a bunch of the advantages of remote work
and saying that everyone should do it. It's ignoring the downsides of remote
work (i.e. social isolation, communication hurdles).

It's possible there is a Darwinian effect going on. If remote-first companies
are at such a competitive advantage, why aren't there more of them? I don't
have a reason, but the lack of remote-first companies suggests that they are
at a competitive disadvantage that is preventing them from proliferating or
scaling. It's possible that due to underlying psychological factors, most
humans are more productive when working face-to-face with other people in an
office.

------
hartator
At SerpApi ([https://serpapi.com](https://serpapi.com)), we are a remote first
company.

I agree with the points the article touched. Convenience, environmental
conscious, and the variety of location choices are awesome.

It’s also awesome from a management perspective. Everything being async and
online makes sense for a tech business. Plus creativity wise it allows us a
lot more time for deep thinking.

There is regulations though we can improve. For example, for w2 you need to
register your LLC in some of the states where you have employees working from.
It makes w2 a big burden specially when you have people are moving around. Or
smaller things. Like having to have a poster about labor laws in your office
in Texas. It really doesn’t make when everyone is remote.

------
kemiller
I’d love for the world to reframe the remote-vs-commute thing. It’s really
network-first or not. If you are network first (some kind of tool is your
primary and best-organized repository of information) then people can make the
trade offs that work best for them.

------
twa927
Quite nice presentation about remote work from PyCon 2019:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTWgKyLk6mo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTWgKyLk6mo)

This is generally pro-remote but it includes research results.

------
burfog
What about security?

The remote worker is going to need a development workstation that can't be
accessed by a non-employee. It'll have to be in a room with a lock and an
alarm. Houses shared with family members make this difficult.

The remote worker is going to need access to the internal network. This means
they need a business-class router that can do an encrypted VPN. Trusting the
workstation to do this is unsafe.

Voice and video also needs to go through that encrypted VPN. Possibly the
workstation can provide for this. Whatever the choice of solution, it might
need to be always running to accept incoming calls.

------
the_watcher
I'm about to leave a big tech company to join a remote startup. I'm pretty
excited about all of the work environment benefits. That said, I'm a little
worried that I'll just get lonely. I'm pretty introverted and get a lot of the
social interactions I need at work, and often enjoy coming home and simply
_not_ working. My tentative plan is to push myself to get involved in
something that requires regular attendance, right now I'm thinking
Toastmasters (public speaking isn't something I fear, but I've got a lot of
room to improve) or improv. I'd really appreciate any advice from remote
veterans.

------
jl-gitlab
Here at GitLab we're an all-remote company, and it's been that way since the
beginning as I understand it. I've been here about a year now and I've heard
so many great stories from people who had remote working change their life for
the better. A while back I made a space to collect these, if you're interested
in this topic you might find some of these inspring:
[https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-
remote/stories/](https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/stories/)

------
Circuits
In my office there are 6 employees. We have group meetings twice a week but
otherwise we almost never communicate face to face despite only being 15 feet
away from one another. I do enjoy having the option of walking into one of
their offices to get a face to face meeting if I need one but I don't see why
a call over Skype wouldn't be just as useful.

Currently, I can't afford to live in this town which is insane because there
are only 50k people living here. I would love to be able to move to some small
town where a house of the same quality and size would only cost me 100k or
less rather than 300k or more.

------
k__
I don't know why big corps don't do it more, because they are so big that most
of the employees are de facto doing remote work already.

Most small companies are probably just too bad to do it. I mean they do it
with contractors other companies, so it IS possible.

Why?

Most <30 people companies simply don't have any management skills yet. They
have to get them when they get a critical mass of employees, but before that,
they simply meander around with informal processes. Something doesn't work?
Let's go to Joe in the next room and ask him!

------
crsv
I've seen absolutely magical things happen with smart people sharing a
proximal space.

I fully acknowledge the merits, tradeoffs, and viability of a remote workforce
and have been remote, worked with others who were remote, seeing success and
failure in both.

That being said, I've never seen truly magical things happen the way they
happen when people are together. For the work, the team, and the way I want
the experience for work to feel, nothing beats having folks together in the
same space. Of course, YMMV.

------
lukethomas
The reason why more companies are remote-first is that the manager's schedule
is easier to do in the office. Put simply, the people running the
teams/companies prefer many of the advantages that being in-person provides.

I wrote more about this here: [https://www.fridayfeedback.com/p/how-to-make-
remote-work-mor...](https://www.fridayfeedback.com/p/how-to-make-remote-work-
more-common)

------
colinrand
I'm building out a remote team now - nearly 15 developers - as a division in a
regular 'on premise' tech company. And all is going well. However, there is
one huge problem I haven't heard any good ideas around - how do I onboard
young talent? I can't hire an intern or new college grad into an office by
them selves and thinking they can work from their parents basement isn't so
hot either.

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GrayTextIsTruth
I work at a 100% remote company, but i think there should be a concept of
"company hubs". If you don't live 3 hours from one of the few hubs (or maybe
there is a single hub), you're out of the area. Require the employees to come
in a couple of times per month/quarter for collaboration and a meal.

When its TOO distributed there are a lot of inefficiencies playing against you
(timezones, national holidays).

------
traviswingo
> ...so they could be in the same location as their co-workers (who they’ll
> wind up emailing anyways).

This was the sentence that most resonated with me.

I think about this almost every time I sit in bullshit traffic when I’m just
trying to run to the grocery store.

I’m lucky in that the company I work for doesn’t care if I’m in office or
remote, but I really wish more companies respected that mentality.

------
conductr
Why do office workers still have dress codes? Point being that norms take a
long time to change. The hippy generation mostly traded in a neck tie for some
khakis, with maybe the bonus of casual Friday. The tech industry’s growing
domination is just making a dent in allowing blue jeans daily. Still not super
common nationwide

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flexer2
I've been fully remote for the past two years at a company that is mostly
distributed (we have to have physical operations in markets we operate in, but
the tech team is fully remote).

Overall, I love it, and it would be a challenge to go back to the
office/commuting lifestyle. However, I still recognize that it is a nascent
thing and I'm incredibly fortunate to work where I do. If the business goes
under, will I be able to find comparable remote work with good pay?

To hedge that bet, I still live in one of the larger tech hub cities (born and
raised here, so I also don't want to leave it). The thought has crossed my
mind many times to move to cheaper locales and take advantage of the potential
wage arbitrage that would come with it, but in the end, I like my expensive
coastal city, and think it's worth the price. And if push comes to shove, I
can commute into an office and make a living.

We have periodic offsites where everyone travels to a single place for a week,
and those are great to get to know the people behind the webcam. With Slack,
Zoom, Google Docs, Github, etc., it really doesn't feel that much different
than working in an office after awhile. The hardest part is learning that with
remote work, you have to intentionally overcommunicate. When you're in an
office you can get a sense of the vibe, which basically goes away when you're
remote. It's really important for a company to focus on maintaining culture
when you don't see each other in person every day.

If I were to found a company, odds are, I'd try to establish it as a remote-
first culture (assuming the business could support it, which not all companies
will ever be able to do). It just makes sense for a good number of tech
startups.

The lifestyle isn't for everyone -- some people really thrive in the office
environment, and that's great, but the flexibility of remote work is something
I wouldn't trade for the world. I'm sure I'm leaving a little money on the
table by not working for a local tech company and commuting, but the 10 hours
a week I don't spend commuting are time I can spend with my kids, and I'm
saving money in other areas like no gas or bus fare or eating out for lunch
every day.

I think remote work is "a" future (not "the" future) and could be a great fit
for many companies, especially businesses that do most of their work online.
However, offices will never go away completely, and that's fine, too.

------
crankylinuxuser
They are.

The problem is the companies that are remote first aren't hanging their
shingle here in the states. They're hanging them in India, China, South
Pacific, and other areas that have developer expectations 1/10-1/5 the price
they would pay here.

We aren't in competition for "remote first".

------
ficklepickle
In my limited experience, it is because nontechnical managers are incapable of
evaluating our work.

Since they can also not ever admit to not knowing anything, they rely on a
crude metric like physical presence or time served.

Then, they can pretend to be managing you by suggesting buzzwords they saw on
linkedin.

------
fxleach
Remote-first is a relatively new idea, that's why. Sure, there are a lot of
companies that offer remote days on the schedule, and some international
companies that hire certain branches of the business as remote, but the
concept of a remote-first company is new and will take time to adopt.

------
_pmf_
With presence, a manager's minimum qualification is being capable of comparing
"number of hours in attendance required" vs. "number of hours present". Remote
work raises the required minimum competency of managers, which most companies
will avoid at all costs.

------
quirkot
> That’s a lot of money to leave on the table. Are those in-person
> brainstorming sessions really worth $15,000 per year, per person?

Depends on your revenue/employee, but if you're at or targeting something over
$300k/employee than $15k would only need a 5% over remote

------
gesman
I'd say "Environment" is on of the biggest reasons.

Traffic, pollution, living costs could all be improved by government mandating
and stimulating remote-first policies.

Without government taking a stance - corporate bureaucrats will insist on
usual 9-5 "come to work" nonsense.

------
schmudde
In my experience, remote work takes quite a bit of organization which often
defaults to hierarchy. Leaner organizations with less management struggle with
this. It partially depends on where you want to put your money as an
organization.

------
astura
Its the "nobody ever got fired for choosing IBM" issue.

In-person employment has "worked" forever, for some definition of "worked."
Its difficult to trade something that we all know to something that is new and
has a lot of unknowns.

------
teamski
Hijacking the thread:

What would motivate you to go every day rather to an office instead of working
remotely?

Give me your top 3 wishes, eg. the new Mac Pro with 2x Apple 6k displays as
your personal workstation.

~~~
diweirich
That would be a tough sell for me personally, but it wouldn't have anything to
do with the workstation.

1) Flexible hours. I just can't stand the thought of knowing that between the
hours of 9 and 6 I know I'm going to be sitting at a desk for the foreseeable
future. I need to be able to mix things up.

2) Easy commute and parking.

3) Genuinely good co-workers and environment that I like being around.

------
stunt
The flexible environment is what we need to aim for.

------
armatav
Remote is absolute trash for culture and cadence.

------
vikramkr
Because it's hard. Managing remote work is it's own skill that not everyone
has.

------
dfilppi
Bad habits die hard

------
bshoemaker
I've never worked on a team that actually works well together, that worked
from home more than 1 day a week. It's much, much more difficult to stay on
the same page and in sync.

------
loose11
I cant find anything about mental health, right?

------
Kiro
> And before I knew it, the clock said 10:30 and I hadn’t accomplished a
> single thing on my to-do list.

Add 6 hours to that and that pretty much sums up how productive most people
would be with the freedom of working from home without being monitored.

~~~
CuriouslyC
If you have a to-do list that is public, and nothing gets done, that is your
accountability right there.

~~~
Kiro
To-do lists are too easy to game. Just add a bunch of nonsense and exaggerate
the complexity of your tasks.

~~~
CuriouslyC
And that is different from how people game any other metric how? You realize
that boss buttons and quick alt tabs are a thing with butts-in-seats, so
that's not game-proof either.

For all the rhetoric about enhancing communication, I'm pretty sure open
offices are mostly about getting people to police their coworkers.

