
My Experience as a Remote Worker - joshwcomeau
https://www.joshwcomeau.com/posts/remote-work/
======
aantix
Any company that openly advertises remote work as a benefit is going to
discount your salary.

Imagine delivering a million dollar feature, working nights and weekends, but
somehow it's discounted because of where you live?

Across the river from where I live the cost of living is 5% lower - if I
happen to work from there, are the features I'm delivering magically worth 5%
less?

According to companies like Buffer, Gitlab, Stichfix, the answer is yes.

Push back on these salary discounts and double down on the value you provide.

P.S. The are more remote opportunities out there than you realize. If there's
a job that's a good fit for you, regardless of city, find the CTO or VP of
Engineering on Linkedin, find their email on Hunter.io and directly ask if
remote is a possibility. Sometimes they will say YES even though it wasn't
openly advertised.

~~~
lukifer
It's basic supply and demand: if hiring remote, you're drawing from a larger
talent pool, and therefore increasing supply.

In theory, this works the other direction (remote workers have access to more
employers), but the reality is that the supply/demand ratio for devs is
radically distorted in the Bay Area (and other tech hubs relative to the rest
of the US, and the US relative to worldwide), so it isn't symmetric.

To flip it around: if I'm purchasing labor, why should I pay a 200% premium
because the employee is located in SF rather than Nebraska?

If you're trying to hire top talent, one has to consider SF salaries (offset
by high cost of living) as BATNA. But if you find someone willing to do the
job at lower cost (factoring in lower cost of living, and location/schedule
flexibility as a form of compensation), what's the problem?

~~~
mantas
Coming from a relatively cheap country... It does work the other direction.
That's why dev salaries across the world are much more similar than in other
sectors.

~~~
aantix
Doesn’t your country experience the same lack of quality engineering talent?

Even in SV, we could interview 100 candidates but maybe one or two really knew
the stack and one of those was a great coder.

That scarcity and high standards pushes the qualified candidate in to a pretty
small pool, hence the high salaries.

~~~
mantas
Scarcity (and resulting wages increase) wouldn't be as big if there were no
foreign companies coming in. Either hiring fully remotely or opening up dev
offices.

Purely local scarcity would have had similar effect but I believe it'd be much
much much slower and with lower ceiling. Local companies paying 2x average
wage seemed fine. You're making good money compared to your neighbours and
feels sort of wrong to ask for more than your boss makes. Then foreign money
come in and pay 4x average wage light it was nothing. Suddenly all the social
stigma is removed.

That's literally what happened when a major bank's back-office was opened.
They were willing to pay 1.5x-2x local market salaries and hire lots of people
(compared to market size). Pretty much everybody in the industry had to
follow, raising salaries effectively overnight.

------
ex_ex_nihilo
I would never go back to commuting to the same place every day. It's cool that
he does the coworking thing, but I've been working remotely for 6+ years
fulltime (and I have other periods of 2-3 years at a time working remotely
interspersed through my 20+ year career in software), and I would not give it
up for anything less than a C-level role at this point. Most of the benefit to
me is the lack of routine. Routine stifles my creativity. I don't want to go
to the same place or do the same thing every day.

~~~
myalphabet
>Most of the benefit to me is the lack of routine.

Wow, this is literally the exact reason I _loathe_ remote working! I've been
working remotely for almost 5 years now and I'm about to jump ship at my
current job specifically so I can find a job that has a physical office to go
to. I find that the lack of a routine causes a significant increase in stress
in my life. It's an actual dream of mine to go back to a 'normal' job where I
go into an office and sit at a normal desk with a normal work schedule, and
then can just go home or to the gym at 6pm and enjoy my non-work life.

~~~
barkerja
Personally, I find having a space dedicated to work helps tremendously with
this. When I am in my "office" at home, I am working. When I leave the office,
I am not working.

Having that separation helps me "leave work" when it is technically at the
same location. It does also require a good bit of discipline because it is
easy to slip back into work at any point in the day.

Many argue that you should "work when you feel like it" but I personally find
that leads to burn out. If I can keep a regiment that I don't deviate much/at
all from, I am mentally healthier.

~~~
Tade0
My experience is that a _work laptop_ is enough.

All the work code, emails, tickets etc. are on it and once it's closed for the
day I it needs to fired up again to do any additional work, which surprisingly
serves enough as a barrier.

~~~
StavrosK
I have a third option, work time. I have specific, inviolable times when I get
on and off work. Past 8, I am off work and all work-related notifications shut
off automatically. I've found this helps perfectly isolate work from life.

Working whenever you feel like it is hell, I agree.

------
roland35
This post has some great points about remote work that make sense based on
what I've learned from speaking with remote workers . I would love to find a
remote engineering job but I have run into 2 obstacles:

First, I believe some remote companies like to see some remote experience to
know that you can be successful on a distributed team. This is a tough
catch-22! I have asked my manager at my normal office job for opportunities to
work remotely 1/5 days but I am not sure if this is adequate experience.

Second, it is much harder to find remote work for embedded/hardware
engineering (my background). Obviously it is different when actual hardware is
involved as it is more convenient to be in the same physical location, but the
advantages of a remote hardware team should be the same as a remote software
team!

If anyone knows of remote friendly hardware companies I would love to know!

~~~
Ididntdothis
Hardware is tricky. I work in medical devices and just went remote due to my
partner's new job and move. There are a lot of things I can't do anymore. I
used to be able to walk over to another desk and borrow $20000 test equipment
for a day. Not anymore. I am sure you can do hardware dev remotely to some
degree but there is a limit if you need expensive equipment. You can't just
build a $500000 lab for every dev.

Software is much easier that way. I am lucky that most of my work always has
been pure software so I will probably try to minimize tasks that need special
hardware.

~~~
roland35
Thanks for sharing your experience! Obviously with specialized hardware remote
work isn't feasible, but I think with a lot of things (like smart home, iot,
etc) the focus is on the firmware and not so much the hardware.

I do think it may be necessary to switch over to software development but that
would be a tough transition!

~~~
coldpie
It's not hardware, but if operating systems-level programming is an
interesting compromise, we're hiring remote workers for the Wine project :-)
It occasionally dives down to stuff like HID, USB, Linux kernel, and
X11/Wayland programming.

~~~
Ididntdothis
This sounds like an interesting area to work ok. I think I would enjoy it more
than the medical stuff.

------
slavapestov
The important thing about working from home for me is that I get to spend more
time with my 2 year old. Both from not having to commute and also by getting
to see him every time I get up to take a break. If I worked 9-6 at an office
with an hour commute each way I’d only see him for an hour every day.

~~~
take_a_breath
Not to diminish your experience, but a lot of your "calculation" seems to
exists because of assumptions you have made. Isn't 9-5 the typical working
day? Why does your commute need to be 1 hour each way?

I work a 9-5 with a 40 minute commute each way. That 40 minutes includes 20
minutes of walking which lessens my need for other exercise. I get plenty of
time with my 17-month old. 6-8 in the morning and 5:30-7:30 at night.

On the flip side, my wife works from home and loves her breaks when she can
spend time with our child. She is also often lamenting a lack of time for
exercise and social activities.

~~~
odysseus
Not the original poster, but it's easy for a commute to be 1 hour each way
even if you live very close to work. I'm about 18 minutes away from the office
by car, but by bus, it takes about 1 hour or more, and monthly parking costs
are insane. (several hundreds of dollars per month)

As for your wife, I may be misunderstanding if she works from home as a Mom or
remotely, but my wife works from home as a stay-at-home-mom and exercises
almost every day with two young ones. She takes long walks with the children,
one in a stroller and the other in a front pack.

The other thing she does is a variety of workout videos. Our oldest actually
does some of the workout with her and encourages her with the same phrases the
people on the workout video use. (ex. "train your body!") It's cute.

------
Random_Person
I work from home one day a week, and honestly, I'm not sure I'd want to do
more than a day or two each week. It's my most productive day by far, but the
isolation feels unsustainable for me.

~~~
sailfast
Working from home one day a week likely means that your company / colleagues
are not set up to actually behave and interact with you normally during that
day.

Alternatively, if you're set up to work remotely every day, you come to work
the same way you would in an office and you don't "wait until so-and-so is
back in person" to get stuff done. One day a week might be a good experiment,
but it's definitely not an indication of the way you would be working if it
were full time and it's definitely not the same thing as remote work in my
experience.

Until everyone you work with works remotely (or "like they are remote") it is
difficult to simulate what that work can look like when it gets going well.

------
curioussavage
I've been remote for only 3 months but I'm totally sure it's for me. In my
case the alternative was two hours a day on BART. Now I get to see my kids way
more.

I guess I kind of understand single people who like being at the office all
day but at the same time many of them seem to act like work is most of their
social life. That seems bad to me, So your whole social life is at the mercy
of your employer? What happens when you get laid off?

In any case just like that guy I have options if I want to be more social. I
got a house a short bike ride away from some co working spaces so it's an
option.

Totally agree about it being about choice which is a breath of fresh air.
Companies in big cities like SF seem like they are run with single college
grads in mind.

~~~
chakerb
Office gives you an environment where you can meet people that you can be
friends with. Something a bar/coffee shop..etc, cannot provide easily. My
dearest friends are my coworkers. I have been working remotely for two months
now and even though it's a great experience, I miss the occasional chit-chat
or coffee. I still do that after work, it's just harder.

~~~
Dumblydorr
Why can't you make friends at a bar or coffee shop? If you're working 40 hours
in the same place as people, I doubt it matters if it's an office or a cafe,
you're bound to get to know people unless you're very shy.

------
d883kd8
One thing I rarely see in these discussions is how I feel: I don't WANT to be
friends with my co-workers. I don't want my social circle to consist of people
with whom I'm interdependent for my livelihood and who share a very similar
educational and professional background. I LIKE keeping the "professional"
folks at arms reach, neatly contained by a screen in one room of my house.

~~~
clarry
I wouldn't mind having co-workers as friends, but truth to be told, I've never
been able to form meaningful relationships with them. They're just people I
get along with and that's all. Past work hours, I've never really interacted
with colleagues. And whatever limited interaction I had always ended when I
changed jobs, so yeah...

I need to find my friends elsewhere. Simply working at a place where I'm
surrounded by people is no solution to loneliness.

------
mihaaly
Interestingly I feel a weird insistence towards location based software
development in Europe, at least in the area I am active in (engineering design
software for desktop). In the past 6 months while looking for a new place -
partly because of the obsession of our COO on lengthy and tedious daily
commuting regardless of actual needs, just for the sake of it, but for other
reasons too - whenever I found a position in an other city/country that was
matching my capabilities, experience and interest very well after the first
very enthusiastic round from the recruiter when the request of remote (or even
remote dominant) work emerged they took a U turn saying on site presence is
paramount so I will not fit. Reasons span legal through organizational to
company tradition.

I do not get it.

Is the geographic location of making a software sooo much important? It is
that very allocated desk and chair that will ensure a good product delivery so
relocation of family, searching for accommodation and accepting a specific
allocated city to live in and daily commuting in the overcrowded
transportation systems must be mandated for a new workforce?

I am ok that managers have own style and some can only function face to face
but to find zero number of those willing to accept remote workers because they
are agile or what not is very strange to me.

Oh, btw, I worked remotely for many years earlier in total, successfully, was
that just a one of experience then?

------
znpy
Imho the most important line in the article is:

"If you're providing Bay Area value, you deserve Bay Area dollars!"

Every other kind of corporate propaganda (cost of living adjustment or
whatever) is BS.

~~~
llampx
I'd like to see if the companies accept less money for their products or
services from people based in lower-earning parts of the world. Or less VC
capital.

~~~
mihaaly
Actually it is quite common practice having diversified cost model for the
different geographic regions, which is a controversial practice on its own.
Just like several other aspects of commerce.

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therealmarv
Niiice CSS styling for a personal blog! Really a pleasure to look at.

Mind if I ask: Is it completely homebrewed or based on some theme out there?

~~~
joshwcomeau
Afraid it's built from scratch, no theme available =(

It's open-source if you're curious about anything! Though it's quite messy.
[https://github.com/joshwcomeau/blog](https://github.com/joshwcomeau/blog)

~~~
odysseus
Why the web font though? I would have liked to read your article in a standard
font already built into my system. Something that I'm used to reading in, ex.
Helvetica, Arial, Georgia, etc. Instead, I get this slightly-off font that
isn't that widely used, and have to switch to Reader mode to get a nicer
built-in font.

------
lovetocode
I have worked remotely everyday for the past three years. It has been a
horrible experience for me. I am horribly depressed and feel stuck in my
current position. I moved to a town with no tech work but I cannot leave
because of my spouse's job and I don't want to move my kids yet again. I miss
my 45 minute commute and my cubicle.

~~~
huherto
Could you walk/run/bike around the neighborhood before going to work to
simulate your commute ? Can you create an good work space in your house or
nearby ?

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JoeAltmaier
I work remotely as a contractor. Its both similar and very different from the
OPs observations. For one, we're all senior so mentors and contacts with other
groups are far less important. Communication remains key however.

~~~
ghaff
Often if you're senior, contacts with other people can actually be more
important. But, in that case, with a large organization they're often going to
be pretty spread out physically. That's sort of my situation. I do a lot of
individual contributor work that's both solo and working with others. But
those others are largely either in other offices or working remotely.

------
tiagopc
Interesting article. I will start working full remote starting next year and I
had some of the misconceptions mentioned. Can't wait for the next article!

------
hoerzu
Just started working remote in Tel Aviv and I must say it's a life
challenging. Without a boss so to say everything comes down to your decision.

------
kyberias
People really talk about careers after three years in a field?

~~~
blisterpeanuts
If I recall correctly, he said 3 years on site, then 3 years remote, so six
years total. But I do admit I was taken aback that he would call himself a
"senior dev" after only six years out of school. Admittedly, however, after
six years at one company, he's probably considered a senior contributor.

~~~
bnchrch
I think it's worth mentioning that not all years and all people are equal.

For example this is the author speaking at ReactEurope over a year ago.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2d9rw9RwyE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2d9rw9RwyE)

I would argue he's probably more "senior" then a lot of people with twice the
"years" he has.

------
luord
The first paragraph is my experience pretty much exactly. I haven't rented an
office yet, but it's only a matter of time, I feel.

------
brookhaven_dude
Any pointers on how to go about looking for a remote job?

~~~
clarry
You could look for any job. If you have a skillset some employer really wants,
they will think about it if you let them know that you'd be interested in
working for them, remote. Of course you risk running into a company that isn't
very remote friendly (and the experience can be painful e.g. due to poor
communication), but it's surprising how many companies that don't really
advertise themselves as remote companies have or have had remote employees.

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jhc_za
Nice yoyos!

~~~
joshwcomeau
Thanks! :D

Unsolicited collection shot:
[https://i.imgur.com/H1x5k9Y.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/H1x5k9Y.jpg)

~~~
edanm
Oh nice! Never got too far into Yoyo-ing but always wanted to! Are some of
those from One Drop?

~~~
joshwcomeau
It's a fun hobby =) works great as a software dev as well, to keep your hands
busy while your brain works through a problem.

A few of them are OneDrop, including a Kuntosh near the front, and a Summit a
bit further back :D

~~~
edanm
Yeah, I tried to get in it for a bit, but ultimately started getting more
serious about Speedcubing (Rubik's cubes). Even easier (or at least lazier)
way to keep your hands busy :)

I do have a couple of "serious" Yoyos, including a OneDrop, that I pick up
once in a while, maybe one day I'll get back into it for real.

~~~
jblakey
Kuhn or bust!:)

