
Why Remote Work Should Change Startup Culture - margotcodes
https://medium.com/@margotcodes/going-remote-why-remote-work-should-change-the-future-of-startup-culture-4803bc5a6bef#.jjzwqyuvs
======
doozy
I've made a career out of remote work (10+ years working remotely), and I have
to say this is a pretty poor article.

No, remote work is not for everyone, you need to know what you are doing at
both ends or it'll not match your expectations.

No, it does not (necessarily) bring the best global talent, specially not if
your motivation for remote is bringing down costs.

And no, you don't need to use any of the tools listed. Remote work has been
done, and well, with nothing more than a VCS and email (both conspicuously
absent from her list) for decades. Add to it any kind of real-time
communication client and you're in business.

It seems to me "remote" or "remote first" have become buzzwords, yet another
way for companies to appear fashionable. Witness the numerous companies that
advertise non-existent remote positions, or that "will consider remote for the
right person" (i.e. for no one).

Remote is not the latest fad, it's something we've been doing in this industry
for at least two decades. Your company is not young and hip for doing it.

~~~
drvdevd
I agree. And I work remotely now. It seems the #1 requirement for remote work
to work is ... mutual understanding. Otherwise you end up with communication
gaps.

The case for VCS is interesting to me because I believe we could replace a
number of complex tools in the stack with proper use and style on top of that.

Literally, we could do 90% of it all with just a VCS and _people paying
attention to it_. You know: commit early, commit often, read commit messages,
understand the code, run the tests. And so on and so forth...

~~~
sitkack
Do either you @doozy know of a shared/multiparty merge tool? One thing I like
to do is merge into a new clean branch rather than rebase, then merge that
into trunk with zero changes.

------
jbuss
I joined my startup 2 years ago on-site. After my wife and I had a baby it
became very difficult to live in the bay area. Housing is obviously ridiculous
there and I had to live an hour away from the office. I told my manager that
we would be moving and I was interviewing for remote jobs. They ended up
allowing me to work remotely, and I have been for almost two months now.

The whole transition has been much smoother than I could have ever imagined.
My team relies on slack so I definitely feel just as connected to everyone. We
do regular video calls on Google Hangouts, and even have a robot[1] that makes
daily standup fun and convenient for everyone.

I feel like I am able to focus for longer periods of time being away from the
office. There are no distractions to play ping pong and interruptions are
fewer and farther between. I also have much more time since I'm not commuting
~2 hours a day. I have time to spend with my wife and 1-year-old and I have
time to go to the gym. I feel much more well-rounded as a result and I feel
like I'm a better father and husband, and a much better employee. Overall, I
think my output has gone up and my productivity has increased, though I have
no data to support it.

[1] [http://www.doublerobotics.com/](http://www.doublerobotics.com/)

~~~
aantix
Have you tried Slack's Screenhero integration? Being able to type

/hero @username

and start pair programming in seconds (with audio!) is a huge productivity
increase.

~~~
stuaxo
Does this work in Linux ?

~~~
aantix
You still need to download the Screenhero client to work in conjunction with
the Slack client. I don't think there's a Screenhero Linux client.

------
nfriedly
I currently work remote for IBM Watson and I love it - I'm more productive,
have more time to spend with my family, etc. My team and my direct manager are
fantastic. I've worked remote before, and led remote teams with good results,
but this has been my best experience yet.

However, my position is in peril due to management changes a few rungs up the
ladder. While the previous guy in charge of Watson wanted the best people, the
new one wants everyone on-site in about 10 cities. (Previously, folks were
spread out across ~50 offices + remote workers like myself.)

I received a "temporary exception", and I don't honestly think they'll
actually go through with it when that's up. But it's still a frustrating
position to be in, and has caused me to start looking elsewhere. So far, I
can't seem to find a combination of:

* Remote

* Comparable pay

* As much fun as my current job

I'm seriously contemplating just starting my own company again.

~~~
alexbeloi
If you don't mind me asking, what is it like (going back to?) working for a
large company after working for yourself.

~~~
nfriedly
There was a little bit of culture-shock, but honestly, it wasn't too bad. I
had a few years at a startup in-between being self-employed, so it wasn't an
instant switch, and my role at IBM provides a fair level of autonomy.

This is my first time at a big company (e.g. > 50 employees). IBM in
particular is huge, almost inconceivably big.

It still surprises me how frequently I'm be asked for help/advice/whatever
from people within IBM who I've never met before and who aren't on my team, or
even in the Watson division. (This may be in part due to the fact that I have
a more visible role than most.)

On the flip side of that, I frequently have no idea who to ask about a given
issue. (Although this doesn't happen as often now as it used to.)

Nice points are that I don't have to worry about keeping up a pipeline of
clients or having to be mindful of what's billable and what isn't.

It may be partially due to having more experience, but I find it a lot easier
now to walk out of my office at the end of the day actually be done working. I
might think about work a bit, but I rarely feel compelled to actually go and
do work when I'm spending time with my family. When I was self-employed, there
was always a nagging feeling that I should be working whenever I was doing
anything else.

As an extension of the last point, paid vacation is awesome.

I also get to publish a lot more open source work now then I ever did before,
although that obviously depends on your role.

On the down side, I'm supposed to get written permission from my manager for
each open source project I want to contribute to. She always replies "yes" and
usually quickly, but it still wastes time and feels silly. (I generally send
the email, begin working on my change, and then wait for the "yes" before
publishing it and sending a PR. That _usually_ works out well.)

Spending company money is also tricky. Placing an order from Adafruit is a
convoluted process that can take several weeks. (To be fair, there is an
internal shopping site that makes ordering more common things like a monitor
less painful.)

Overall, though, I'm glad I did it. My time at IBM has been good and, assuming
they'll keep me, I think I'll probably stick around for a while longer.

------
jcadam
Several months ago I interviewed for a remote position with a startup based in
NYC. The technical screening consisted of a project and of course a couple of
phone interviews.

After I did well on all of that, I was flown up to NYC for a 'culture-fit'
interview. Which I failed, apparently. As a mid-30s guy who was raised in the
mid-west, I felt like I had very little in common with the 20-something
urbanites with whom I was interviewing.

They didn't seem like bad people at all, and I didn't foresee any issues
working with them (esp. remotely), but apparently I gave off a strong enough
'not-like-us' vibe to cause them to pass on a demonstrated technically-solid
candidate (because if there truly is a shortage of good developers, this would
be an incredibly silly thing to do).

~~~
mccolin
This is definitely something that happens. It's valid, I believe, for the
company to vet candidates for culture fit, but the go should not be hiring a
team of "sames."

In a recent batch of interviews (four opportunities local, three remote), I
was put through a specific culture fit step of the interview process at all
but one company, and it was part of all remote hiring processes.

~~~
ryanmarsh
> It's valid, I believe, for the company to vet candidates for culture fit

I'm not sure what culture fit means. I have been passed over for culture fit
and seen others passed over for culture fit and I have never seen it be
because someone couldn't be productive with their peers. It seems,
anecdotally, to just be based upon affinity, which seems stupid to me unless
you're a lifestyle brand, like FitStar.

In the Army I learned culture can be taught. All of these groups who hire for
culture fit seem like they want to hang out with other people like them.
People who are nothing like me have been my best hires. I've indoctrinated
them into our values, and only on rare occasions has that not worked out.

If culture fit isn't a "bro test" then why test at all? Why not just teach
people your culture? Do companies expect people to come in off the street
serendipitously sharing the same values? That smells to me like a leadership
vacuum.

~~~
seangrogg
Navy (reserve) vet here - I definitely agree that culture can be taught but
unfortunately you have to find someone willing to learn. And unfortunately,
most software developers aren't of the military "situationally adaptive"
mindset but rather the "I'm a hot commodity where the hell is the ping pong
table" mindset.

It's far easier for most young companies with ping pong tables to hire
developers that like ping pong than actually endeavor to build a company
culture and attempt to instill those values into their hires.

~~~
ryanmarsh
We are remarkably malleable. Being "situationally adaptive" is universally
human.

~~~
seangrogg
You're correct and I was mistaken to give the impression that it is a
"military-only" sort of thing - far from it. That being said, the human
tendency to optimize for laziness often overrides our adaptive capabilities
and instead pushes for maximizing comfort. The military does tend to train
against this mindset (to varying degrees of success) - yet they are far from
the only (or even most successful) of that ilk.

------
Fifer82
I spent the last 7 years working remotely. Never been a problem. The way I see
it personally, is that I would pay to work at home. The money I save on
transport, the time, the dinners, clothes, forced social activities. Not
having to stand in the rain for half a year, late trains, queues, peoples
annoying faces..... The list of positives = endless

~~~
Klathmon
As someone that also works remote, it's not all roses and daisies.
Communication can be very hard at times without someone there to manage it,
keep everyone in the loop, and make sure nobody is left out.

We go into the office once a week, and i've found that on those days, just
being in the office lets me overhear conversations about things that I can
offer a solution to, or having a few people in the same area shooting shit
often leads to a conversation about work and about a problem someone is trying
to solve and often a solution is offered.

The biggest concept is that it's hard to "split" conversations while working
remote. Either everyone is involved in the conversation (via phone or video
meeting), or it's one-on-one. Getting the organic "handful of people in a
group, and one conversation kind of breaks off to talk about something, then
re-joins the group where someone else needed to leave for a call" kind of
thing just doesn't happen. And that's where I find the most benefit from being
in an office.

~~~
67726e
> As someone that also works remote, it's not all roses and daisies.

I spent the past two years working remote, and at this point I don't think I
would ever want to do it again. Something I don't think I've ever really seen
mentioned about working from home is that it can be incredibly isolating and
overall mentally unhealthy. The isolation, lack of separation of work and home
environment (in the physical sense), and even weird hours caused me to become
very depressed and unstable.

In my case, my company was still located in-town and I even had weekly
lunch/beer meetings. I pushed myself to get out and socialize with my friends,
co-workers, and girlfriend several times a week. I still don't quite know what
it is about working in an office with other people does that wasn't being
replicated, but there's something there for me.

As far as the physical environment goes, I spent enough time reading different
folks strategies. I tried many different strategies as well. I tried having
normal office hours and a normal (home) office. I tried just floating about
the house, working wherever I felt like. I tried working from coffee shops,
bars, parks, and so forth. I tried working in blocks of time, all at once,
having an inverted sleep schedule. As mentioned, I even had an actual company
office I could work from. Still, I came to have a certain feeling of disdain,
of wanting to escape the office at the end of a day of work. The only problem
was my office was my home. You can't run from that.

I will say the convenience of having a flexible schedule is amazing. Being
able to run errands as needed, or just go to the beach for a couple hours on a
Tuesday because "why not" is great. However I always felt a bit weird about
things, because "normal" people are in an office that I'm somehow doing
something weird or wrong by being out and about during non-traditional hours.
And of course among your friends and family there's always a little gentle
chiding about how "You don't really work/have a real job", in a semi-jealous
but not actually hostile way.

Working from home can be great, and I would enjoy the flexibility to do it a
day here and there as needed. What I cannot do is work from home permanently.

~~~
Klathmon
The isolation never bothered me. I have a few close friends, and a wonderful
wife, and i tend to be "introverted" in the sense that it's really draining
for me to be in a social setting for too long, so working from home has been
perfect for all these years.

That being said, the "you work from home so you should be able to handle X"
really gets to me. I actually have less flexibility than it sounds like you
do, it was never explicitly said, but most of us work 9-ish to 5-ish monday-
ish through friday-ish.

It was something that my wife and I needed to work out on our own, because she
would expect me to be able to run out and pick up prescriptions during the
week, or would ask me frequently to go to the store to grab something for
dinner. And I'd feel like an ass for saying no, because on some level she is
right, I do have the ability, and it is easier for me, but it still impacts my
day a lot to interrupt my work to run to the store.

We have found a good medium now, but it was a common argument for a while.

~~~
Joof
Haven't worked remote, but I homeschooled myself through highschool; the
easiest way to deal is that work time is for work and make sure everyone knows
this.

Doctor appointments and such may be worth breaking this rule, but picking up
prescriptions or even your kids from school (assuming they have a way home)
are unnecessary interruptions.

------
rubicon33
I've worked remotely for 3 years, for 2 different companies, and as with most
things in life, there are positives and there are negatives.

One of the biggest negatives for a remote employee, can occur if the entire
company isn't remote: You're left out.

Regardless of how much code you produce, how well you communicate on slack,
how attentive you are to emails, or how perfect you are at attending all the
meetings... Bonds form in the office. If you're interested in forming
relationships, making connections, and nurturing the social side of your
career, be cautious of remote positions.

Either work for a company that is 100% remote, or, be aware that you may face
a situation in which you don't feel entirely connected with the rest of your
coworkers.

~~~
cjp222
I've worked remotely for nearly 20 years in various configurations (all team
remote, team collocated and I was the lead and remote, some local and some
remote, as lead and as a team member) and this is spot on. My current
situation is one where it's actually harder to be remote than it was when we
all worked for a giant company that was openly hostile to teleworkers (If
you're not in the office everyday, you're part of the problem). Even though
I'm in a smaller company and an environment that brags about its startup
culture and flexibility.

In my current iteration, information does not flow naturally, but rather 1:1
and in-person along restricted paths, making it much harder to work remotely.
So to build up a picture of what's going on, I connect with several other
teleworkers and we try to compare notes on "what have you heard about X" and
"who's working on y."

If the whole team is remote or acts like it (open communications, info flowing
visibly, etc.) then remote working, remote bonding, remote team-building is
natural and easy. I know; I've done it for years, building high-performance
teams that see each other once or twice a year.

If you're the outlier and most everyone else is local, it takes a lot more
effort, and even then can be very, very hard.

Some places are just easier to work for than others.

------
vonmoltke
One frustrating thing I have found about companies willing to hire remotely is
that many refuse to be your _first_ remote gig; i.e. they only hire people who
already have years of experience working remote. I understand the hesitation,
but if good people really are so hard to find it should be a hesitation that
can't stand up in the face of being unable to get things done.

Then again, neither should resistance to remote developers in general or the
myriad of other, more bullshit things that go on in sourcing talent. Makes me
wonder how self-imposed the "talent shortage" is.

~~~
mccolin
Hiring teams that are just "getting their feet wet" with remote workers are
going to be more hesitant. When there is an in-company precedent for what
remote work is like, I find them to be more open.

For me, making the transition from on-site to remote work was difficult. Like
any job skill, it's something I had to be able to demonstrate proficiency
and/or history with before I could land full-time, remote employment exactly
where I wanted.

~~~
vonmoltke
That creates a chicken-and-egg situation, though, since it is not a skill you
can develop on your own. There are a set of skills (remote work, TDD, pair
programming, Agile, etc.) that, almost by definition, you need to do
professionally to become proficient at. If all the professional gigs expect
you to _already_ be proficient, you never get there.

~~~
8draco8
I never worked remotely but I don't think it's hard and I want to do it in
near future. The way to do that is to find a company that is open for new
ideas. Start working on full time office job and after month or two if your
job position allows for that, ask for day or two in a week of remote work.
This will allow you and the company to test that solution and check it it's
working for both of you.

------
soulnothing
I've worked partially remote for the past two years. I had one horrid stint
fully remote where they thought remote == 24 hour work days.

There are pros and cons to remote. It depends on your team and their culture.
Some teams need a whiteboard and planning sessions. Others can just do a
screen share and work on a flow chart together. If your team and culture is
capable of remote it's a really nice perk for employees.

The other thing I hear about is lack of social contact working remote. This
was an issue for me before I developed some outside hobbies. But the remote
work spawned the hobbies, because I had more time. Where as working on site I
don't have any time for hobbies due to travel and preparation for the day. I
really haven't maintained ties with my prior co workers. The one I still do
meet frequently we worked together on a primarily remote job, 3 days a week.
So you can still maintain good social contact over the days.

The only real reason I see for not remote is management and culture issues. If
your superiors can derive your progress from a dash board, commits, tickets,
etc. Then it's feasible. Where as if the only way to determine progress is one
one one meetings with a white board, then remote won't work. This also speaks
to the trust of the employees.

I also find I get so much more done at home. This goes back to the culture. In
person offices are from what I've seen largely instant gratification. I.E.
coming over knocking on your desk asking a question, or pulling you in for a
meeting. This provides so many distractions pulling you away from work. Remote
would be an email or chat message. If it was extremely urgent a phone call. It
was almost asynchronous. As we were planning out software we would just amend
design notes and update the flow diagram in jira.

Lastly is the peace of mind of comfort. One of the common things I did when
working remote was sitting in a gazebo at my nearby park. I tethered off my
phone for the day, and just listened to nature. Being camped up in an office
staring at walls all day is not ideal. Getting out being able to walk around
and clear your head can make the day so much easier.

I really want to get back to fully remote.

~~~
in_me_i_trust
"I.E. coming over knocking on your desk asking a question, or pulling you in
for a meeting."

I'm curious whether you find hipchat / slack to actually be less intrusive. In
my experience, working from home can result in protracted text conversations
causing me to stay less focused for longer periods of time. In the office, I
can usually stop, take off the headphones, resolve their problem, refill my
coffee and then get back to work in less time.

~~~
eropple
I "solved" this by running Slack on a second computer (even being on the same
one with the same notification feed was no good). I occasionally look at it,
but try to avoid doing so unless I'm at the start of a pomodoro period
(because Slack is work, it gets a work period).

------
mark_l_watson
I have been mostly working remote since 1998 because I live in the mountains
in Central Arizona - 2.25 hours from the Phoenix Airport. I find this article
wildly optimistic.

I literally give a 50% discount when I work remotely because I believe that in
general I am about twice as valuable to my customers when I work on site.

I enjoy remote work, but I am honest with myself that physical presence when
working with a team is more productive. That said, I save a lot of money
working from home so my smaller consulting rate for remote work is viable.

Anyway, I enjoy my consulting business and don't plan on making any changes.

~~~
Graphon1
Regarding that 50% discount, do you also charge for travel expenses, in
addition to the normal labor rate? If you had to fly to Los Angeles and stay
for a week - who pays the travel and lodging?

~~~
mark_l_watson
Customer pays for airfare and lodging. I pick up incidental expenses like food
and Uber rides.

------
qxf2
I'm an employer that allows near 100% remote work. Remote work comes with its
own set of trade-offs that need to be managed. These are the trade-offs I see
with my 10-employee company in India:

Pros:

a) I can hire experienced people from anywhere in India

b) My employees do not waste time in traffic.

c) I have fewer personality conflicts to deal with ... but this could just be
a side effect of being really small (~10 employees)

d) Being in the services business with all my clients abroad, my employees
develop better remote working skills

e) I save on office rent

Cons:

a) It is hard to hire junior people to fit into a remote-only team in India.
The 0-3 year experience crowd in India prefer being part a group and have a
collegiate culture. I do not blame them - I've seen the 'in office/onsite'
culture work well for them. But it hurts me as a services business because I
get better margins on more junior folk.

b) Many senior people do not want to join my company - it doesn't 'feel' busy,
they would like to have better visibility into their direct reports, etc. This
wasted so much time during the phone screens that I have had to list 'we are a
distributed team' as a con on our careers page.

c) The lack of office space is a major downer for a lot of people who would
like to bring their relatives and show off a fancy office with dressed up
colleagues.

d) I have heard these genuine complaints often - "we do not really know our
colleagues", "we do not get together often enough", etc. I sometimes worry
that we may not end up being very cohesive.

e) Remote work in India is interpreted by some candidates as 'easy work'. And
it is interpreted by many people in their social circle to mean 'no work'.
E.g.: "I have this errand in the middle of a weekday. Come with me. You work
from home anyway."

------
was_boring
I've been working remote for a number of years (both as an engineer and a
manager) and it can be a challenge for everyone involved because the lack of
norms around remote work.

We are taught early in our careers to show up early, leave late and look as if
you are working hard. However, when it comes to remote work the look of
working hard cannot be achieved so easily -- so instead of appearances you
must focus on results above all else.

This mental shift takes time to achieve and is more easily said than done.

------
maqr
If more startups allowed remote workers, would the salaries of developers fall
in the bay area?

~~~
sidlls
Possibly, if it were large enough scale to truly impact the supply of labor at
a sufficiently lower price point to matter.

There are a variety of remote work arrangements: 1) local employees who have
employers with liberal work-from-home policies (they're "remote" when they
don't commute in), 2) employees who are always remote, but still in-state
(located in the same state as the employer), 3) employees who are always
remote but still domestic (located in the US), 4) employees who are always
remote and located internationally.

The first two kinds of remote employee don't incur (much) additional cost to
the employer. The third kind can incur non-trivial additional costs in the
management of payroll (state income taxes, labor/unemployment fund
requirements, etc.), especially if done at any scale. Larger companies can do
this because they are already established in multiple states, but smaller ones
tend to impose restrictions on where remote workers can live and even whether
they're permitted to move to a new state and still remain employed. The last
kind is a whole other ball of wax--it has the same tax and payroll management
problems of the third kind, but additional complexity I'm sure.

Then there is the additional overhead of managing remote teams. Having
experienced being an "individual contributor" and coordinating with project
management to manage remote teams I can assure you this is not a trivial thing
and involves its own costs.

So all these factors influence how much lower the salaries have to dip before
they are worth it. Personally, I doubt remote work will impact salaries in
this area much anytime soon.

~~~
jon-wood
The last two in my experience are handled by treating the remote employees as
effectively contractors. They'll incorporate as an independent company, and
then bill themselves out for whatever salary they're on, taking on
responsibility for their own taxes and other requirements.

~~~
sidlls
For US workers that may very well run afoul of labor and tax laws (and in fact
almost certainly does). For foreign ones it depends on their laws.

~~~
jon-wood
Is that actually the case? As far as I'm aware in the UK at least its not that
you're outright forbidden to work as a contractor under conditions that would
otherwise be considered employment, you just have to pay tax on that basis
rather than pretending you're really an independent company.

------
tinbad
Working remotely to me is not as much as work in office vs. work at home but
being more accountable for you work and, as a result, being more productive.

The notion of working remotely forces us to rethink how we measure
productivity and I feel the most push back comes from people who just realized
they have little or nothing to contribute in this new environment and become
fearful for their position.

To me, it's completely in line with the new economy where just having one
skill is not enough anymore. If you want to be good at something, you need to
constantly be entering new areas in order to bring enough value for companies
to provide you a paycheck. For a very long time, just showing up to your job
was good enough and I think it's a great thing this mentality has started to
shift.

------
vladimirralev
With startups it's quite difficult - remote law, pay and equity. Law for
contracts and equity in different countries vary. Buying power is
inconsistent. Stock options in particular are strongly biased against holders
with lower pay, since they will have to take greater risk to buy their stake
at cost of many more years worth of salary. You got to make sure so many
things add up in multiple places, otherwise it's just a matter of common sense
for remote workers to eventually see themselves at disadvantage and act on it.

~~~
mcjiggerlog
This may be the case, but I'd guess the vast majority of software work is
salary only. Having remote workers working as self-employed contractors should
actually make the paperwork a lot easier for the company.

~~~
dboreham
Unfortunately in some legal jurisdictions (e.g. the USA) this would not be
allowed. You can't simply declare an employee to be self-employed and
compensate them by means of invoices/1099 filings. This arrangement is only
allowed if, among other things, the employee performs work for a number
(greater than 1) of clients.

~~~
vonmoltke
> This arrangement is only allowed if, among other things, the employee
> performs work for a number (greater than 1) of clients.

It's actually about capability, not actual number if clients; a contractor
does not suddenly become an employee just because it doesn't have a second
client at the moment. That said, you are right that legally hiring contractors
is not nearly as easy as some people think it is.

~~~
dboreham
You are correct, and I did not state that a contractor needs to perform work
for several clients at the same time.

Conversely however, a contractor that has for some significant time, since
leaving their previous employment only had one client (which is the parent
scenario) is unlikely to be viewed by US labor law as not an employee.

There are other conditions besides this one: for example the contractor gets
to set their own schedule and does not take detailed instructions on their
tasks from the client. Again, hard to square this with the idea that you can
just wave a wand and make what would have been an employee a contractor.

------
rgrieselhuber
We hire mostly remote workers at both of my companies. There are some
challenges but if you build to make it work, it also provides a lot of
advantages.

------
allsystemsgo
As an iOS engineer looking for a remote role, I can tell you it's extremely
competitive to land one.

------
mbesto
I've worked with several companies that have either tried remote or actively
pursuing remote working and my general conclusion is that it's not for
everyone. Managers who don't understand the nuances of remote work will
struggle hard.

------
ben_jones
The most important part of an early stage company is figuring out what the
product is. This should usually be a deeply collaborative process that (IMO)
doesn't lend well to being 100 percent remote.

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amyjess
It's becoming more and more likely that my next job will be remote.

First, let me qualify: I love my current job, and I don't want to leave it. I
have no immediate plans to send my resume around to companies looking for
remote employees. And when I do decide to go remote, I'll attempt to convince
my boss to let me be a remote employee of this company before I start looking
elsewhere (this is feasible: we have other remote employees, including
technical ones, I have VPN access, and I do 99% of my work over ssh to servers
located in a datacenter somewhere).

As for why this is coming up, the short version is that I'm transgender, I'm a
Texan, and the Texas state legislature has been promising up and down that
next spring they're going to ram through a transphobic bathroom bill. If they
make good on that promise, I will have no choice but to either leave the state
or kill myself, and I want to live. So I'll likely end up having to find work
elsewhere next spring, unless I can convince my employer to let me go remote
here.

I've lived in my hometown my entire life. I'm not sure where I want to move
yet, and I'm not looking forward to travelling for interviews. In order to
interview for a non-remote job in another state, I'll have to burn every ounce
of PTO I have, plus I'd have to fly in order to interview, which is something
I'd rather avoid because the TSA is notoriously hostile to trans people
(they've been known to detain, abuse, and otherwise treat as criminals
passengers who have both breasts and a penis, as their scanners flag us). I'd
also be in a position of not really be able to choose where I move to. I have
limited PTO and I'd have a pressing need to get out of the state ASAP. I can't
afford to travel somewhere for an interview and then turn down an offer if I
get one. So my only option will be to apply at as many companies in as many
cities as I can (limited to cities in blue states, because burn me once...)
and then take the first offer I get regardless of where it is.

But all that changes if I seek remote work instead. First off, interviewing
will be less painful: I might be able to do phone interviews at lunch to avoid
burning PTO, and even if I did have to take some time off, it might just be an
hour or two in the morning instead of having to burn an entire day. Second, if
I seek remote work, I can secure a job that won't require I stay in Texas
_first_ and _then_ figure out where I want to move to. Hell, if my remote job
pays enough to afford large amounts of travel and lodging costs, I could even
try out different cities. I could take my laptop, spend a week in one city,
and work out of my hotel room. A week or two later, I could repeat the process
with a different city, and so on until I make a decision. Hell, aside from
trying out different candidate cities, I could also use it as an excuse to
visit my relatives who are scattered all over the country.

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tbarbugli
Remote work is plan B. I don't do it unless I really have to. The reason is
pretty simple, it sucks most of the times and is sub-optimal for most of the
other case.

~~~
stockkid
Could you share some experiences for the reasons you feel remote work is sub-
optimal?

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andrewfromx
and everyone set your timezone on your computer and phone to UTC 24. You now
have a standard 0-23 based incrementing integer to know what hour of the day
it is globally. Force everyone to do this and get rid of the notion of my time
or your time and when an integer means daylight or nighttime. It's abritrary
that 23 means 11pm and nighttime. It doesn't. It just means 23.

~~~
st3v3r
Ok, now it's 23. It's 23 everywhere. You still have to know in what part of
the world 23 means nighttime and what part means dinner time and what part
means mid morning.

