
Remote Work Report - kaeruct
https://about.gitlab.com/remote-work-report/
======
codegeek
Remote work will never been an absolute thing. It depends on context, personal
habits/preferences and most importantly: experience doing it over time.

I personally cannot work from home. COVID has made it worse as kids are home
BUT even if I had the whole house to myself, I just cannot work from home. I
NEED a dedicated office outside my house (yes I already have an office room in
my house). Reason is simple. I don't have the discipline to work from home. I
get distracted too easily. So I m not a good candidate for WFH. Do I want the
flexibility when needed ? Of course. But do I WANT to work from home all the
time ? Hell no.

I would say the future of work is not just remote. The future of work is
"employers allowing more flexibility in work location" but as an employer
myself, I am personally not in favor of 100% remote. That's me I know but
sorry, not everyone is cut out for remote work.

~~~
Icathian
Nobody minds if that's what works for you. We object when you force it on
employees because it's what works for you, regardless of what works for them.

~~~
txcwpalpha
I imagine the GP also objects when remote work die-hards force remote work on
people like them. According to the article, almost half of remote workers want
to work for a company where _all_ workers are remote, leaving people like GP
commenter out in the cold.

It seems large groups from both sides are unwilling to meet in the middle.

And that's for good reason, really. The reality is that in-office workers have
an inherent advantage when it comes to activities that require interaction
between people, such as promotions or work assignments. People who want to
work remotely are going to want _everyone_ to work remote so that they aren't
disadvantaged when it comes to those things, but then we are left with the
problem of one group forcing their way of working on the other group.

~~~
gregmac
> The reality is that in-office workers have an inherent advantage when it
> comes to activities that require interaction between people, such as
> promotions or work assignments.

I don't think those two things are an _inherent_ advantage, rather, it's the
reality of managers that don't understand how to remote work.

If "work assignments" require in-person communication, it seems like something
is severely broken with your work assignment system and/or process. For
software development, to me, that is basically tickets, kanban/scrum/whatever,
and the regular communication that takes place to discuss. This communication
doesn't need to be "in-person" to work, which brings me to the next point:
meetings.

Having remote people exposes many problems with meetings. One is having too
many meetings, ad-hoc meetings, or agenda-less meetings. These are problems
in-person too, but they're not as directly noticeable.

The other meeting problem comes more from how the meetings take place. The
most remote-friendly orgs have a rule like "one person remote, everyone
remote" which basically means everyone does the meeting with a webcam and
headset, even if they're in the office. At a minimum, meeting rooms need good
audio/video (as in: no PSTN speakerphones, and no laptop mics or webcams
allowed), and all meeting invites are always sent with an online meeting URL,
at a minimum the day before.

There _can_ be inherit advantage in being in-person both for ad-hoc technical
discussions and building personal relationships, but if those are job
_advantages_ I think it's also a management failure. Ad-hoc technical
discussions should quickly be moved online and inclusive of remote people, and
that's something a manager should be constantly encouraging/enforcing. It
should also without saying that a manager that favors employees for promotions
with whom they have better personal relationships isn't doing their job
properly (and note this isn't directly a "remote worker" problem).

------
10000100001010
I've worked remotely for nearly 2 years now. The majority of that time I was
the only remote engineer in a company of ~80 engineers. We went fully remote
just over a month ago and it has been a huge quality of life boost for me.
Before everyone went remote the communication was pretty lopsided where I had
to make sure I was over communicating and inserting myself strategically. Now
that everyone is remote it is a lot more natural with everyone on the same
playing field

~~~
dougmwne
Yeah, same experience. For the first time I'm on equal footing with the rest
of the company. I knew what I was getting into from the start, and I can get
along just fine being the only remote person, but I won't deny this has me
thinking about going with a fully remote company when this is all over.

------
aantix
Be careful of the companies that advertise remote as a “benefit” of the job.

They’re usually looking to discount your salary by 30-50% by some arbitrary
cost of living factor.

You bring the same value - whether that’s delivered from New York City or Des
Moines Iowa.

~~~
slackfan
Let's not beat around the bush, specifically, Gitlab does this, IIRC.

~~~
brantonb
Explained here: [https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-
rewards/compensation...](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-
rewards/compensation/#paying-local-rates)

~~~
JoeCortopassi
Great explanation of a bad practice. A company should pay for the value they
get, which is independent of the location. These calculations never seem to
take into effect all the cost savings of having a remote person (office
building/parking/food/working space/etc). Instead, they almost always mark the
employee as a second tier of worker

~~~
slackfan
My company tends to do something similar for starting salaries, but that's
because we're a consultancy, and our rates per-market are different.

However: In the long term if employees stay with the company long term,
salaries tend to get bumped up to approximately the same. So you might get
started lower, but your yearly pay bump will be higher.

------
Rochus
Very interesting study, thank you Gitlab. It would be great if the results
were true and the trend could prevail in the long term. I'm one of these 16%
"working remotely all the time" since six years (working frequently remote for
ten years before already). I have more than enough interesting work, but I
regularly had to deal with companies that were not interested in cooperation
because I was not willing to work at least 50% on site. I am curious to see if
Corona will change this attitude. I live in german speaking Europe, and
perhaps the culture here is simply not yet ready for it.

~~~
dgellow
Just curious: the companies you work with, where are they located? And how did
you get in contact with them?

I’m also in Germany and working remote full time since ~1 year, I’m interested
in your experience if you’re willing to share.

~~~
Rochus
I'm located in Switzerland, do my own acquisition and I have long-standing,
stable cooperations with companies where I am known and trusted. I also
regularly receive requests from recruiters where I am in the database; this
usually happens the same way; their clients (in Switzerland and Germany) are
very interested until the moment they realize that I am not interested in
working physically on site with them (in addition I appear too expensive for
most German clients). This is not a problem for me because I am established
and can afford it. But for the younger ones, who have to build their business
relationships first, the aforementioned mentality of the clients makes it very
difficult to work in this way. The argument that you work three to ten times
as efficiently as any local employee in an open-plan office and that this
makes the project cheaper, even though the hourly rate is higher (just to name
a few advantages), is something that hardly anyone who doesn't know you wants
to hear.

------
baron_harkonnen
I've made this point before but the future of remote work has and will
continue to have no dependence on what workers like nor will it on how
"productive" workers are. Office's have perpetually been getting worse for
workers(offices -> cubicles -> open office). So it's very clear companies have
never chosen one office solution to another because it is the preference of
the worker.

As for the argument of changes to "productivity". For starters very few of us
work in roles where productivity is a directly measurable thing. Sure you can
argue about commits, lines of code, ship times, but those are all nowhere near
as measurable as "widgets-per-hour". On top of this we all know that a huge
portion of roles out there are arguably not productive at all (and if they are
it's very hard to measure). And again, when in the history of work has
declining worker productivity been solved by improving conditions for the
worker? If you company goes remote and you don't work as well that way, do you
think your boss is going to go "oh! I'd better talk to leadership about
getting those offices again!"?

The entire reason offices still exist is because of culture. For years every
SV startup I knew said they needed an office in SF because the "VCs like to
see that". There has been a lot of inertia towards offices.

Now that Covid19 has broken that assumption for a bit, I think we'll see a
rapid shift to remote teams because it quickly becomes clear that offices are
a liability. Anecdotally I already know one start up that can no longer afford
their office and so are breaking their lease with no sense of what they'll do
next (so remote is the default), and a well established, very traditional
office culture firm that is already stating that everyone being in the office
full time will not be the norm coming out of this.

~~~
dna113
Also I think COVID has forced companies into trying it when there might have
been fear or apprehension before. It takes time/resources/commitment to even
try out a work from home policy - but now everyone has been forced into it.

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
Unfortunately, this means that their first experience with "all remote" will
come from a rushed implementation instead of a well-planned one. I fear some
managers will draw the wrong conclusion about remote work in general.

~~~
netjiro
> will draw the wrong conclusion

A risk. But it doesn't take much to get people on the right path.

1) trust your staff, give them autonomy and agency.

2) asynchronous transparent communication for discussions and decisions.

3) remove friction: few small tools for communication and collaboration, good
audio, forum, wiki, git, etc. Services: shopping, childcare, etc.

And a bunch of smaller tricks. But trust, transparency, asynchronous
coordination are the major points.

I've helped "rush" groups to full remote with less than 10h "training" during
the last few months now that it suddenly became important to a lot of people.
More time would have been great, but even a small bit can help a lot.

If you have experience of remote / distributed work, help out and teach others
now that they really need it.

~~~
cvlasdkv
#1 is a non-starter for many managers in companies of all sizes. Unfortunately
the personality-type that lends itself to accumulating power is not one that
thrives off trust.

------
Adiqq
Working fully remotely? In IT it's no-brainer, why would I spend time on
everyday commuting, spend time in office where I can't feel fully comfortable,
especially when company come up with open space idea and waste my
productivity? I want to get shit done, receive money and live my life.
Reimbursements? Employer should just pay more in salary, what's the difference
if I rent a office or convert part of my home into office?

~~~
txcwpalpha
>Employer should just pay more in salary, what's the difference if I rent a
office or convert part of my home into office?

I wish. My experience is that companies advertise "Remote work possible" as
some sort of job perk, and use it as justification to actually pay you a
_lower_ salary.

------
duxup
Typically I work remote 3-5 days a week.

There is a lot of talk about remote work and COVID-19 and for me remote work
in the age of COVID-19 ... it has been terrible. Mostly because I have kids,
and my wife and I are both trying to work remote, and attend to the kids
schooling ... it's a terrible combination for getting anything done on a
'regular' schedule.

I suspect people's remote work during COVID-19 experiences are pretty wide
ranging.

~~~
alohaandmahalo
You aren't alone. It's easy to conflate "remote" with what's happening right
now, but it's not the same. Crisis-induced work-from-home while doubling as a
homeschool teacher is not the same as properly organized remote work.

Less to do with home and more to do with everything outside of work impacting
work.

More here:
[https://twitter.com/shanselman/status/1252040170783641600?s=...](https://twitter.com/shanselman/status/1252040170783641600?s=12)

~~~
carleverett
Well said! Early into COVID I thought it'd bring a surge in remote work
because we'd see how much work really can be done from anywhere.

But COVID-remote work has been way different. I've been a full remote worker
for 3 years usually working out of coffee shops, and I'm much less productive
now because a) I have to work from home, and b) it's generally harder to stay
focused during a global pandemic. And I'm not even a parent.

I do hope those who are working remote for the first time don't associate
remote work with a bad work life now.

------
ghaff
"All-remote is the purest form of remote work, with each team member on a
level playing field. 43% of remote workers feel that it is important to work
for a company where all employees are remote."

This is interesting as it runs counter to the opinion you hear a lot that is
in the vein of live and let live/give people a choice/different people have
different preferences. I do think there's some truth to it. While I don't
really have trouble under normal circumstances as someone who is mostly remote
with a bunch of people in a conference room on a call, it is a little nicer
with everyone individually on the video call. [ADDED: But the company is about
50% remote so there are often people from a variety of locations on a call
even if some are in a conference room.]

I think it's certainly true, if only a few people are remote, that can be
challenging.

~~~
sz4kerto
I have worked remotely for a company that was otherwise very much a
traditional non-remote environment; I have experience partly distributed teams
and now managing a fully remote one.

I think partly remote will always, without an exception, create a significant
information asymmetry that will result in non-remote workers becoming the
leaders in the company. (plug, sorry:) I have written a small post about
migrating to remote: [https://blog.patientsknowbest.com/2020/04/01/51-basic-
rules-...](https://blog.patientsknowbest.com/2020/04/01/51-basic-rules-of-
managing-distributed-teams) \- even in _theory_ you could fully embrace remote
workers if some others see each other in person regularly, the latter group
won't, can't and likely, shouldn't stop exchanging information in ways that 1)
are more efficient 2) excludes remote workers.

~~~
draven
+1 for the information asymmetry. I'm currently working remotely 4 days a week
and there are 2 other devs working remotely between 80% and 100% of the time.

One of the main issues is "oral tradition". Information is shared from dev to
dev during coffee breaks, and everyone is supposed to somehow know it. The
solution is to work as if everyone is working remotely, and in that case that
means putting information into writing, either by communicating through
archived and searchable channels (ie Slack) or writing docs.

------
dudul
I really don't know what to expect for remote work in the future. The current
trap is to think that we are currently doing remove work. We are not, we're
doing remote work in a very unusual setup. Kids and partners are at home with
us, we can't really leave our house, etc. This is _not_ real WFH.

Additionally, a lot of companies were pushed into that almost over night
without preparing for it. No experience with it, no tooling in place, no
processes, etc. Maybe a lot of them experienced some loss in productivity due
to that and will just conclude that remove work really isn't for them, it
sucks.

The 2 things I really hope for: * people experiencing a personal boost in
productivity and better quality of life (mostly due to not having to commute)
will be vocal about not going back to the "old ways" * companies claiming that
"proper work/collaboration can only happen in the office" will finally change
their tune and end the hypocrisy. When forced to do it, they somehow found a
way. Maybe it's time to final end this charade. Especially in tech, the work
that can only happen in an office is so marginal.

------
mr_tristan
> 43% of remote workers feel it is important to work for a company where ALL
> employees are remote…

As a full time remote worker, I've also felt that having everyone else is
great. In every case I've work with a colocated team, they end up snubbing you
in weird ways.

This snubbing is just a cultural thing. There's no technical reason remote
workers should feel left out if working with another team.

I've found that most colocated team members rarely write well, and often do
not track, or even follow up on complex team decisions. When everyone is
remote, it often forces some better communication. Frequently, the teams have
to "double up" on the media used to communicate, which almost always requires
some written communication.

Now that everyone's remote in quarantine, I've heard complaints from the
colocators about "having to overcommunicate". But really, it's just learning
to communicate well.

This metric of "how many all-remote workers want everyone else to be remote",
really seems like a great test for "how well does your company communicate?"

~~~
hmmokidk
In my case it's the higher ups snubbing the remote workers and deliberately
excluding them. I think they're trying to "encourage" non remote work but are
actually being shitty.

------
laurieg
It's difficult for me to give a true assessment of what remote work would be
like in normal times. Since I live alone and social events are cancelled I
feel like I'm craving social contact and definitely missing that aspect of
work. I also don't have any space in my apartment to work from so I'm set up
on the kitchen table.

I do wonder if the exceptional circumstances of the current sudden shift to
remote (lack of other human contact, unplanned setups at home) will cause a
backlash __against __remote work.

~~~
shred45
There may be some backlash, given how painful the transition has been for a
lot of people. I think a lot of people are conflating "remote work" with
"social distancing". The later is the cause of a lot of your feelings of
loneliness. The former can significantly increase your flexibility to maintain
quality relationships. As someone who works 100% remotely, this has been an
especially lonely period for me as well.

Right now, many people are still getting used to working from home, and many I
suspect consider this to be a temporary measure, which has prevented them from
getting settled. In a real switch to remote work, you would be properly
invested in setting up a long-term productive environment. The beauty of
remote work is you would have the agency to experiment and find what habits
and schedules makes you the most productive, without the added constraints of
the office. This process would probably take several months, and for a while
you would miss the structure of the office, but I think it has the possibility
to increase your productivity and quality of life.

For me, remote work does not mean that I work alone, it just means I work with
a group of other remote workers that I consider to be close friends. I think
it has the potential to _increase_ quality social interactions while working,
not decrease. In a society where more people are working remotely, I think the
ability to forge relationships outside of work will only increase.

------
teddyh
Why was the title of this submission changed to the more uninteresting “Remote
Work Report” from the original “The Remote Work Report by GitLab: The Future
of Work is Remote”?

~~~
ghaff
Someone probably thought the title was too provocative and therefore more
likely to touch off the usual back and forth between

\-- those who feel they have to evangelize remote work so that there will be
more/better paid remote positions for them and

\-- those who really hate the current situation (who doesn't) and are worried
that not coming into the office will be normalized and many of their co-
workers will stop coming in as a result

~~~
michaelcampbell
> those who really hate the current situation (who doesn't)

<raises hand>, in the context of this report. 100% WFH fine with me. Not being
able to go just buy local stuff when I want I'm not so keen on, but that's not
what this is about.

~~~
ghaff
In my case, I'm almost fully remote but I also usually travel about a third of
the time--so I'm a bit stir-crazy. I just meant that it's overall a stressful
situation for a lot of people which makes remote tougher overall.

------
pacomerh
I'm totally for remote work when the context and company is adequate. I just
wish salary wasn't as low, these days when a company says 'remote possible' it
almost always means you're gonna get paid less.

[edit spelling]

------
tayistay
Remote work should be an absolute thing, mandated by law, or at least strong
incentives, to reduce our carbon footprint. Unless you truly need to go to a
central location (laboratory, healthcare, etc.), you should work remotely.

I saw a study that said 40% of SF Bay Area jobs could be remote. If all major
metros went remote, this would put a dent in our CO2 output.

Advantages of offices, face-to-face interaction, etc. just doesn't matter.
Climate change is an _existential threat_ according to the experts, so we
should actually take it seriously and modify our society accordingly.

------
eugenekolo
I'm pro remote work, but it's questionable as to why GitLab pushes their
remote work ideas so much? Is it to become some sort of remote work
consultant? Is it an angle of marketing?

~~~
ship_it
Because it cost them less, and they magically "present" that it's a good
thing. They pay different (lower/higher) salaries depending where you are
located.

------
cbg0
Even with reports like these, I think it will be tough to convince managers
that are set in their ways to open up to allowing their employees to work
remotely.

While anecdotal, most companies seem to have approached the current state of
affairs as a mild inconvenience that will be gone soon, and aren't looking to
keep remote work an option going forward, even though it's working out well,
which is a shame.

------
Mayzie
How do people handle async communications when in differing time zones? The
team was forced to work remotely as opposed to an office as a result of SARS-
CoV-2. I'm a core developer back in Sydney, with the rest of the company in
San Francisco (I'm essentially -7 hours). A lot of team members don't like me
not being able to reply when they send a message because they don't like
having to context switch from tasks that they're blocked on, meanwhile I have
no problems with this aspect as I tend to like to work on things
simultaneously and can context switch quickly (could it be my ADHD being a
super power here?). How do remote teams deal with this effectively?

We currently have org/dev planning meetings every other day (Monday,
Wednesday, Friday 10:30am PDT, which is 3:30am my time until sometimes 6am)
which I'm up for, but I can't maintain that every day as it gets too much (I
wake up around midday Sydney time).

~~~
meheleventyone
You have three meetings a week that can sometimes last two and a half hours in
the middle of the night and no one on your team sees that as an issue?!

The key to making big timezone differences work is to make communication as
asynchronous as possible and where that can't be done make it as humane as
possible. Clearly these meetings can be scheduled in times where both sides
should naturally be awake. I work from Iceland with people on the East and
West Coast so about the same time difference and I'm mostly in meetings in the
early evening although nothing so epicly long. Your colleagues could be doing
the same. We also alternate so some are early morning for them and afternoon
for me.

For people getting blocked it really depends on what it is but for the most
part I do as you do and park what I'm working on and get on with something
else. If it's something simple that can be fixed with a bit of back and forth
I'd try pre-empting these issues (e.g. are you just being used as a really
expensive form of live documentation).

------
jpincheira
As we've learned from building for remote teams [1], is that it's really about
_how_ you set a process for async communication, and not just about the tools.
This is why we've been heads down since the outbreak helping work-from-home
teams set the right processes of communication using us and other tools.

It's really around building a healthy culture of working from home, and not
encouraging multiple disruptions during the day, and actively doing so,
thinking that it unites teams. We wrote a basic guideline [2].

[1] [https://standups.io](https://standups.io)

[2] [https://standups.io/blog/a-basic-guideline-for-async-
communi...](https://standups.io/blog/a-basic-guideline-for-async-
communication/)

------
andygcook
It’s interesting that 87% of people say they are satisfied with current tools
and processes that enable remote team communication, yet 35% list
collaborating with colleagues and clients as a top challenge. There seems to
be a disconnect between those two sections of the report.

~~~
jpm_sd
What that says to me is, the tools and processes are fine. Getting people to
use them is the challenge.

~~~
alohaandmahalo
That's essentially how we interpreted it as well. Tools are still important,
and useful in the right context, but we're in a period now where tools are not
hindering remote proliferation.

------
sdan
Remote work is great and all... because that's our only option.

In the long term, I suspect there may be a greater inclination towards remote
work, not as much as this report suggests, but overall work at office is here
to stay.

I need to go outside and have a physical seperation between work and home.

~~~
wintermutestwin
Imagine if it were the norm though. You could move out of the Bay Area and
afford a home with a dedicated office space. I worked remotely for 17 years
and I found ways to create a separation. Sadly, I fear you are right though -
there may be a slightly larger WFH push, but inertia of management by
proximity will still be the norm.

~~~
0xffff2
Well, not a GitLab you couldn't because they'll cut your salary tremendously
(40% if I moved to my second home in Oregon). Oregon is a whole lot cheaper
than the Bay area, but it's not 40% cheaper.

------
markosaric
Great report!

I've been working remotely for a few years now so a bit biased. But I would
say that the COVID situation with regards to remote work has shown how many
benefits there would be for the wider society if more people worked from home
more often:

* Less traffic

* Less noise pollution

* Less air pollution

* Less stress

* More energy for things outside of work

All these would increase the quality of life for a large part of the
population, decrease the number of avoidable lifestyle diseases and deaths,
and would help cut the global carbon emissions too.

COVID is not an ideal situation to start your work from home experience but I
do hope that some people will find it valuable enough to make more lasting
changes after the crisis is behind us.

------
aivosha
Labeling work remote or non-remote (on-site?) becomes increasingly irrelevant.
Need for physical presence in a given geographical location is mitigated by
good planing and quality of tools allowing to share information effectively.
Why dont we stop calling things remote or not, but focus more on improving the
tool sets needed to better plan and share thing between humans.

All of these tools are needed wether the team is physically on the same geo
location or spread out. What changed now is that its much harder to justify
not having them anymore.

------
code4tee
I do enjoy being in the office sometimes but not every day. After this is all
over I imagine many companies will go “remote work” for at least part of the
time. There we’re many naysayer companies that were forced into doing it and
now realize work still gets done.

Longer term this whole experience will likely be a step-change in what “office
work” looks like moving forward and that probably means a lot less commercial
office space needed.

~~~
monkeydust
Kinda agree. I could do 3 out of 5 days in the office without any negative
impact, in fact it would be positive in terms of productivity and I would
generally be happier (which would further up my productivity).

I wouldn't want to work 100% from home either.

Hardest part is client interaction, video conferencing not the same as face to
face but its clear now that not all client meetings need to be face to face
once people are proficient with the technology and the technology gets better
which it will.

Curious on what people think about home working and VR... Will the tech help?
Anyone experimenting with VR in this context?

------
nemoniac
The report appears to be limited to those residing in the USA, UK, Canada and
Australia. This is stated nowhere in the survey methodology.

~~~
alohaandmahalo
The 'Residence Country' is listed on Page 7. Fair point on reiterating in the
'Methodology' section on Page 3. Thanks!

------
jonrx
This is a great read. I am especially happy that they are not asking for an
email to download the report. I understand why some companies are doing this,
but I went from web page to reading with no friction.

------
jerzyt
>>> The Future of Work Is Remote Yes, in the sub-segment of economy where
Gitlab is applicable it's true. It's been true for a long time, even before
the Covid-19 virus. But for a large segment of the economy it isn't. I need a
hair cut, but all barber shops are closed. Can Gitlab help? I want to go out
for a dinner, I'm tired of take-outs. Can Gitlab help? A telecommuting
hostess, followed by a telecommuting waitress, followed by a ... I've been
working remotely for the last several years, but it has it's place. It won't
fundamentally change what was already happening, except perhaps accelerating
the trend.

~~~
jon-wood
This feels like a strawman argument. Of course Gitlab aren't suggesting that
chefs, barbers, and car mechanics are going to start working entirely remotely
and transmitting the product of their work via the internet. Its pretty clear
from the article that they're talking in the context of knowledge work.

~~~
nathanlied
Indeed. I'd further say that remote work can benefit those occupations that
cannot work remotely!

If we imagine that a large percentage of the population doing work that can be
done from home is doing so, there will be less traffic on the roads, more time
for people to go down to their local coffee shop or restaurant to grab a bite,
more real estate for non-WFH companies to rent (possibly with lower costs), or
even office buildings that could be converted into habitation (and thus
allowing the people whose work has physical components to live closer and
lessen their commutes).

Not to mention pollution, quality of life, and a healthier society. Sure, it's
not a monumental impact at a global level, but I'd count it as a positive
change for the most part.

