
People don’t want to commute; they just don’t want to miss out - dmonn
https://nohq.co/blog/sid-sijbrandij-people-dont-want-to-commute-they-ju/
======
CSMastermind
I don't like commuting but I do prefer being in the office. It helps me
maintain as much of a work-life separation as I can, gives the company a
chance to provide me with a specialized environment to do my work (that I
would otherwise have to provide myself), and greatly reducing the friction in
having conversations with my direct team because I just need to turn around
instead of chatting or emailing them.

~~~
boring_twenties
I've worked in offices for about 15 years and I've never had a specialized
environment even close to as good as the one I have at home.

Most companies flat out made us use Windows workstations, even though 100% of
our work was developing for Unix/Linux and not for Windows.

Another company allowed Linux workstations but only CentOS, and we were stuck
with 6 until years after 7 was released.

Finally there was the company that let me use whatever software I wanted, but
had fixed-height desks that were simply too low to fit my knees underneath.
Aside from that, it was the best place I've ever worked, but I had to quit
after less than a year because my posture was getting noticeably worse just
from having to use that desk.

Now I work at home and everything is set up _perfectly._ I'll never go back to
an office, even though I have to give up more than half of my potential income
to work at home, it's just not worth it.

~~~
souprock
The quick fix for desk height is 4 or 8 concrete blocks. You can get half-
thickness concrete blocks to make the height 0.5 or 1.5 blocks. For most
people, 2 blocks lying flat with the holes horizontal is enough for standing
at the desk.

~~~
skookum
At Amazon, for their legendary door desks, the solution was almost this. You'd
open a facilities ticket and eventually a guy with a glue gun and slices of
4x4s in various heights would show up. He'd pick the slice height necessary to
get your desk to the right height, place a drop of glue on each slice, crawl
under your desk and raise it with his shoulders while sliding the slices into
place under the legs.

------
exDM69
I don't prefer being at the office. After 5+ years of predominantly remote
work, I'm not going back to regular office hours. It's not even the commute,
it's being at the office in an environment that does not promote getting work
done.

I work for a 10k+ employee company with locations worldwide, so online
communication is a must in the first place. In most projects I work, my
closest collaborators aren't necessarily even in the same timezone as I am.

My work/life separation is simple: I have a separate laptop for work, and when
it's closed I'm not at work any more. My remote work arrangements have
tremendously increased my quality of life.

The difficult part is that many employers don't offer the possibility of
mostly remote work. I tried looking for jobs elsewhere for unrelated reasons,
but I ended up turning down the offers I got because it was 5 days a week on-
site.

~~~
Tade0
I have had a work laptop since mid 2017 - always issued by the company.

This is enough to separate work from life. No need for extra office space in
your house etc. - simply add decent noise cancelling headphones to that and
you're good to go.

~~~
walshemj
Err not really at work I have space for a triple monitor set up at home I just
have the laptop screen.

~~~
Tade0
No reason why you shouldn't have the same setup at home.

Or, IMHO, at all.

~~~
ghaff
I'm lucky enough personally to have a custom-constructed dedicated office at
home. Though, truth be told, I do a lot of my day to day work just on my
laptop. The desktop is mostly for both work and personal AV/photo editing.

However, for a lot of people, their workspace at home is a table in a corner
someplace and they don't really have room to setup a keyboard tray, multiple
big monitors, etc.

~~~
Tade0
I don't envy them, especially that I've been through such an arrangement and
the second order effects got me in trouble at work more than once.

------
thih9
I like how Gitlab promotes remote work, but I don't like that their salaries
are based on employee's costs of living.

To me these seem contradictory. If remote work is so transparent, location
shouldn't matter.

It feels like they're praising remote work only when it's profitable for them.

~~~
lbotos
I work at GitLab. I work in NYC so my salary is "NYC based". If I moved to a
lower cost region my salary would drop. So would a lot of my expenses. I'm
okay with this. Do I move? No, because I like being in NYC.

I have coworkers in Nebraska. They make a different amount than I. They also
have and own a house on that salary. Do they move? No, they like it in
Nebraska.

It is not GitLab's job as a large remote company to "fix" global economics.

GitLab is a "small multinational". If you look at other multinationals (or
even large nationals) like Google Microsoft, GE, Comcast, etc, I'm 100%
positive you'll find that they don't pay the same in different cities.

It's no different. One step at a time. GitLab is offering remote. In 10 years,
if local economies level out more due to globalization, this can be less of an
issue.

Until then, I'll just keep reading this argument on HN...

~~~
pingyong
The calculator is fun to play with, but as someone from Europe, goddamn what's
going on in San Fransisco? You get almost double the salaries compared to
Germany/Sweden etc., and significantly more than in NYC - rent must be insane!

~~~
lunchables
Yes - it is absolutely insane:

[https://www.rentcafe.com/average-rent-market-
trends/us/ca/sa...](https://www.rentcafe.com/average-rent-market-
trends/us/ca/san-francisco/)

(Note that is ~700 sq feet, not meters)

But, you also make literally twice as much money, so it easily offsets the
extra rent.

~~~
souprock
This is the case for people with little need for space. If you are happy to
rent a room and you don't need a parking spot, you get a great deal.
Investments and mail-order items aren't any more expensive in San Francisco.
Local expenses like food are break-even with a 2x price increase.

For people who need space, just forget it. House prices are roughly 10x higher
than in the ordinary small cities, ignoring the difference in land area.
Families need the space.

I know a former San Francisco resident, now in Florida, with enough space to
raise sheep and shoot an AR-15 in his yard. He's not rich. He earns a salary
as a good software developer, and he decided to buy that kind of space. It's
11 acres if I remember right. He couldn't have that in San Francisco, even
earning literally twice as much money.

------
Legogris
Single data-point here:

As someone who's worked mostly full-remote for 5+ years and has been in an
office for the past 2 years: I absolutely prefer being in an office with my
coworkers.

Everyone has different priorities of course, but commuting and location-lock-
in aside the office wins in all categories for me. I could technically be
working from home whenever I want but unless I have practical reasons to work
from home I always come in.

Interesting conversation, though. And I think that in order to make it work
properly, you kind of need to be "remote-first" as a team (most communication
digital) or you will be hit with chaos.

And I think it's really great that GitLab is going all-in on this. There are
also many teams in the cryptocurrency/blockchain space that are fully remote,
where the team members meet physically a couple of times a year for
conferences or team retreats.

~~~
codingdave
I hear a variation on this comment every time remote work comes up. I
completely respect your preference, but I suspect the people who feel this way
are a vocal minority. I've worked remotely for 7 years now, and find that the
majority love it and would not want to return to an office.

Yet, it isn't for everyone. I think it is great to know which camp you fall
in, and seek out work that lets you succeed in whichever environment works
best for you.

~~~
vinceguidry
I don't think the "remote vs. local workplace" dichotomy is going to last for
long. Eventually we're going to figure out how to integrate both approaches
into the same companies. At my job, we have one remote employee and it's
incredibly painful. Removing even the tiniest bit of friction there would be
greatly appreciated.

I think the steps outlined in this interview, oriented around taking small,
iterative steps fast, is going to soon become the new norm for work, but that
will require advancements in the state of technical architecture.

Microservices needs a new, language-agnostic framework. I'm excited for
GraalVM, might be the only thing Oracle ever gets right.

~~~
fernandotakai
>At my job, we have one remote employee and it's incredibly painful. Removing
even the tiniest bit of friction there would be greatly appreciated.

my rule for remote work, is that remote should be first. even if you only have
one remote employee.

i also realized that this is actually a good thing -- because if someone get
sick, has an emergency and has to work from home for sometime, it doesn't
break the team's flow.

~~~
vinceguidry
What do you mean by "first?"

~~~
fernandotakai
i follow stackoverflow's definition
[https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/02/08/means-remote-first-
com...](https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/02/08/means-remote-first-company/)

but i recently read circleci's blogpost on remote first, and it's really good
too [https://circleci.com/blog/what-almost-failing-the-gre-
taught...](https://circleci.com/blog/what-almost-failing-the-gre-taught-me-
about-barriers-to-entry/)

------
robrtsql
One thing that I don't hear mentioned much when it comes to remote work is
that it's the easiest way to get your own office and bathroom. My office's
bathrooms are full of motion sensors that don't work reliably (ideally, a
toilet should not flush when I am sitting on it, and SHOULD flush when one of
my co-workers walks away after leaving waste in it.. neither of these are
usually accomplished). I am a lot more productive when I don't have to walk
far to find an available and clean restroom.

~~~
nickthemagicman
Extremely underrated perk. Bathrooms are more than just a place to poop,
they're a serene place of contemplation.

------
duxup
I work from home 2 to 3 days a week.

At big companies, it was pretty easy to do. Everything is electronic and
formal. Still days I wanted to be in the office but remote was fine.

Small company where everything is in flux based on customer needs, it's more
of a mix where we're making real decisions every day and really need those
face to face meetings / I want to be there. Sometimes just to get that face to
face time with someone new or such.

Really though it is not about size, it is about the job / how the company
works, and that's OK. Different jobs, phases of a company's life, DIFFERENT
PEOPLE and etc all lend themselves more to remote work, or way way less.
There's no right or wrong more than there is inherently right or wrong code as
much as you consider the existing system and make decisions about what works
best given that system.

------
theshrike79
Quoting myself from before
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19788802](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19788802))

Communication between team members is a huge issue in remote work.

It works if everyone is on site. It also works if everyone is remote.

But when some are at the office and some aren't, communication and information
sharing becomes a lot harder. Mostly it's a process and tool issue, but still
humans will rather just turn around and ask the team than spend a minute
describing their issue on Slack/whatever.

~~~
heavenlyblue
>> Mostly it's a process and tool issue, but still humans will rather just
turn around and ask the team than spend a minute describing their issue on
Slack/whatever.

I actually find it harder to understand people who prefer to call/talk rather
than describe the issue in text.

First, when you have an e-mail/wiki/Slack - you've got a proper paper trail on
who's responsible for what. Second, you've got a conversation you can always
return to - so that you wouldn't need to ask about the details again and
again. And third - you can send this conversation to someone else and they can
understand what's happening.

Basically - my point is that for the issues that are worthy of a long
conversation, screen is always better. Especially if you can add things like
diagrams (e.g. graphviz) into the equation.

I am mostly not happy about people who are currently older at the offices
(40+) and who think that chats are made as a replacement for the phone (e.g.
you are supposed to say "hello", wait, then "hello" again, then to communicate
in real-time).

One of the best collaborations I had was with I was 15 ~15 years ago. We had
an IRC chat with a wiki. The team was all over the globe - and we made things
happen without speaking to each other in real-time. We used wiki for
documentation and chat for most of the communication that didn't need history.

~~~
theshrike79
It's easier to whip up the problem layout on paper or a whiteboard and explain
the problem, than start preparing a graphviz presentation.

Some things are just easier in person.

Again, this can be solved with tools (some tool that allows a shared drawing
surface with video/audio for example), but very few people bother. I've seen
$$$$ put into expensive 80" Surface screens and they're still used like a
cheap whiteboard.

~~~
bart_spoon
My coworkers and I made great use of a stylus, 2 in 1 laptops, and Microsoft
Whiteboard for this purpose. It makes whiteboarding while remote very simple.
In fact, it’s better than in-person whiteboarding because it allows for
multiple people to write at the same time, and instead of everyone taking
pictures with their phone when we finished, we could simply send out the
screen to as an image afterwards, or pick up a session again later. Once we
had this workflow setup, we found that no one used the giant, expensive
Surface Hubs anymore, even in person.

------
mlthoughts2018
> “I'm scouting for companies who are all remote because they have a much
> easier time attracting and retaining talent”

Is there any data to support this, especially considering that compensation is
usually the number one way to attract and retain talent, and remote workers
are often not paid well (even after adjusting for cost of living) compared to
on-site teammates doing the same job but physically present in an office
location?

There are rare and uninformative exceptions sure, but largely remote work pay
sucks for doing the same job. The company is treating you like basic needs
(quiet & private workspace, avoidance of crushing commute) are perks that
should be offset with lowered salary, even though the salary is for _the job
you’re doing_.

Edit: Gitlab apparently even publishes their own policies about this:

\- [https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-
operations/global-c...](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-
operations/global-compensation/#paying-local-rates)

It actually smells like outrageous bullshit pay policy to me. That’s actually
kind of sad given they are held up as an example of more healthful & open-
minded work policies.

I can say for sure I’d rather deal with the downsides of an office commute &
environment than to be paid less than a teammate doing the exact same job
potentially solely because they are choosing to live in a higher cost region.
That’s a pretty clear signal the company is looking for fungible, cheap talent
and views remote as a cost-cutting tactic, not some corporate ideal.

> “If we start paying everyone the highest wage our compensation costs would
> increase greatly, we can hire fewer people, and we would get less results.”

Wow, what complete horse shit. So what about companies located in expensive
urban centers that don’t offer remote positions? _All_ their hires are at the
highest local rate, yet companies like these are thriving, hiring plenty of
talent, growing, etc.

I see the “location factor” between San Francisco and NYC is 0.85. I would be
laughing my way right off of that negotiation video call...

I am frankly stunned to learning it’s such a sham with Gitlab!

~~~
vonmoltke
> see the “location factor” between San Francisco and NYC is 0.85. I would be
> laughing my way right off of that negotiation video call...

Dallas is a 0.800. I'd be all over Gitlab if I still lived there.

Meanwhile, New Jersey and Virginia have the same factor as Alabama and
Mississippi (0.633).

I don't oppose the idea, but I want to know whose ass they pulled this table
of adjustment factors out of.

~~~
mpeg
London, UK is a 0.628 which is laughable.

~~~
fernandotakai
absolutely bonkers. london was one of the most expensive cities i've ever
visited -- can easily compare to NYC.

~~~
perl4ever
Isn't this a product of the different exchange rates people use?

From what I've seen, if you want to buy something large like a car in the UK,
you can approximate the cost by taking the American price and converting it
using the official exchange rate, which is...1.23 at the moment but often
higher.

But the salaries I see advertised are generally as if the exchange rate were
1:1.

So I think wherever this factor comes from, it's not new or obscure, and at
about 20%, it pretty much explains the discrepancy here.

------
nicoburns
I hate commuting. I like being in the office around people once I get there
though.

~~~
Stubb
I sort of agree with that, but currently work 100% remote and hang out with
neighborhood pals after work.

------
mr_tristan
Even as a full remote employee for the last 3 years, I still find GitLab to be
head and shoulders above others in their approach.

The emphasis on _async_ communication stands out. So many places basically
think "we have video chat and slack! done!". But then you realize that the
east coasters all got together at 5am west coast time. If everyone is used to
at least recording, then just notifying the channel "hey we chatted about X",
it helps a lot.

At the same time, I still feel if offices were just nicer spaces, people
wouldn't be as pro-remote. Every office I've been subjected to (over 15-18
years, it's been several) are rather ugly, distraction-laden environments. I'd
be ok to go work in an office, but, almost every tech office I've been in is
both depressing and full of stupid interruptions.

~~~
UserIsUnused
Doist exist. Their new tool (product of dogfooding) reflects the ASYNC
communication requires much more than any other communication tool.

------
thrower123
I hate commuting, and I definitely don't feel like I'm gaining anything in
particular having to be in the office. It's just the inertia of expectations
that keeps it up.

The best schedule, in my opinion, is one day in the office, to deal with
meetings and planning and such that actually benefits from face-to-face, to
four days remote, for actually doing work.

This is 2019; you can always jump on a video call. And even though I do have a
private office (with a door!) at work, my office ar home is less prone to
incidental interruptions, and the network connection is more stable.

------
SuoDuanDao
A while back I was on vacation while also doing contract work. I remember
exploring Montreal, banging out designs on hostel or cafe wifi, exploring the
city and meeting people while also being productive when i felt like being
alone. It's probably the happiest memory I have of that year.

Would have loved to pivot to that full time if the guy I worked for hadn't
turned out to be unreliable. It's still a fond fantasy to find an arrangement
like that again somehow.

~~~
swozey
I've done a few stints where I traveled and worked full-time. I'd use the
weekends once a month to move between airbnbs in different State/Cities and it
didn't affect my work at all, 9-6+ m-f I was available and online. It's
actually my favorite way to work. I can show up in offices when necessary,
specifically target staying in cities where there might be a satellite office
if I need to, etc, then move on once I feel the urge.

I'm not sure Gitlabs COL rule caters to this sort of situation at all. I'd
prefer an employer to have no concern whatsoever as to where my "permanent"
residence is, albeit that of course complicates HR/legal things.

------
darklajid
Just changed jobs from a job that was 10 minutes away from home, in a quiet
cubicle, to a job 70 minutes away in an "open concept" office - and it's
painful.

Before that I worked completely remotely for years and I miss it so much.
Unfortunately this isn't really a thing so far in Singapore as far as I can
tell (The previous job was being proud about an initiative that introduced one
day of remote work for select people. One day per month).

------
alt_f4
As long as GitLab continues to pay location-adjusted salaries for remote
employees, talented employees don't want to work at GitLab either.

~~~
nickthemagicman
How do they ensure that their employees actually live at that location and
dont just have a po-box or a buddy there to score an extra 20k a year? When
you work remotely home is subjective.

This is sort of a case of malicious compliance.

~~~
jcadam
What if you start at a low salary because you live in Mississippi, and later
decide you want to move to NYC. Do they automatically give you a raise?

~~~
ghaff
According to their policies, if you want to relocate, you have to tell the
company which will choose to extend you a new contract or not.

(Presumably this partially relates to salary but they also make the point
they're really not indifferent to location. They take things like timezones,
proximity to customers, etc. into account.)

~~~
alt_f4
So, essentially, even though you're "remote", you are tied to your current
location and you're their bitch. Reject companies like GitLab, don't work
there, don't support that.

~~~
ghaff
Some companies are more flexible than others, but it's pretty common that
"remote" employees can't just pickup and move anywhere in the world they feel
like it. Honestly, if one really wants to have that kind of flexibility they
should probably consider consulting.

~~~
alt_f4
GitLab hires all "employees" in non-mainstream locations as contractors
anyways. So, legally, it is consulting. But they treat you like an employee
anyway. Legal grey area?

~~~
ghaff
I don't really care about the legal status. I was suggesting that, as a truly
independent contractor, you can set your own rates and if you're fulfilling
your contract remotely you can certainly choose to charge the same whether
you're in SF or a beach in Thailand.

~~~
alt_f4
I stopped reading when you claimed you don't care if it is legal or not to
treat someone as an employee, but hire him as a contractor instead.

~~~
ghaff
I care if it's legal or not. But hiring people as full employees requires
certain legal structures/organizations to be in place in a location. There are
costs associated with setting up those structures. This often doesn't make
sense if there's only one person in a country or other such political entity.

Small companies do indeed not expand geographically for this reason--or hire
through a partner or other entity that is already established there.

------
baal80spam
Is it only me or the article font is really hard on the eyes? Why the web
designers (looking at Microsoft as well) insist on using such thin fonts?

~~~
dmonn
I switched to Open Sans for now. It looked okay on my machine (also not really
a web designer, forgive me!). I hope it's more readable now.

~~~
chrismorgan
Looks like you only changed the font that will be loaded from Google Fonts;
styles.css is still using Lato:

    
    
      * {
        font-family: 'Lato', sans-serif;
      }
    

For clarity, the complaint is primarily about weight 300, not about the font
family. Open Sans is a _little_ better than Lato at weight 300, but it’ll
still look quite poor on many devices.

------
peterwwillis
I've noticed a link in my work between accountability, comfort, distraction,
and productivity. If I'm too comfortable, I let myself get distracted. If I'm
in an office, I can get distracted by others. If I'm not next to someone
working, I may not hold myself accountable and slack off.

But if I'm not too comfortable, and not too distracted, I can be more
productive. To do this, I have to turn off slack and e-mail, and go to a room
which isn't very comfortable and has no distractions. Ideally there would also
be other people in there for the same purpose, for accountability.

At work we have these "focus zones" where a conference room is booked for 2-5
hours a day. You can go there and just work in silence with others. If I turn
off slack and e-mail, it works well. The only problem is the chairs are almost
too comfortable, and conference tables aren't ideal for working on laptops.

------
JohnFen
I don't want to commute, but I do want to work in the same physical place as
my coworkers.

"Missing out" is one reason, but not the biggest one. The biggest one is that
I prefer to have a clear physical/psychological separation between being "at
work" and "at home".

------
donretag
What I would have wanted to hear from the interview is if they have junior
developers and how are they handled. If “Remote People are a Manager of One”,
how can we expect junior developers to manage themselves. Hire the best and
they probably could, but they need to be mentored.

------
fsiefken
I don't want to miss out on the commute as it takes me out of my home
environment out into the world, it provides exercise and I can see, hear and
feel my colleagues and the inner workings of the company in high resolution
stereoscopic 3D. It's not an either/or thing, I am happy to choose a day in
the week to work from home. I'm impressed though by how GitLab took the
virtual or remote corporation idea to a very practical implementation you can
branch everywhere although I'm skeptical about the climate tax caused by the
yearly flying of the employees. How is that offset?

In either case, with VR and AR maturing GitLab's groundwork will be gratefuly
re-used with in the future.

------
markus92
Interesting article, especially when it's readable using Firefox reader mode.

The comment by Sid about investors seeing remote-only as an additional risk
something that never really crossed my mind. Gitlab truly are pioneers in
going remote-only at this scale.

------
dvfjsdhgfv
@dmonn, as I see no any contact info on the NoHQ page, only to the Twitter
account where you encourage people to upvote your submission: could you do us
a favor and remove the meta refresh from the noscript tag on your pages?
Thanks.

~~~
dmonn
Done!

------
keiferski
Personally I like a very short commute, ideally a 5-10 minute walk through a
park. After having worked remotely for 5+ years, I absolutely need a
separation between 'personal space' and 'work space.'

------
cryptozeus
I still haven’t found alternate of discussing an issue with colleagues in
person on the whiteboard and finalizing solution. It’s just faster and better
than any remote collaboration tools.

------
baybal2
Well, why does this guy bring investors into the story? :)

------
chrismorgan

      <noscript>
        <style>body {
          display: none;
        }</style>
        <meta http-equiv="refresh" content="0; url=https://www.nohq.co"/>
      </noscript>
    

Why on _earth_ is this there? It’s on both the blog post and the front page of
the website, so it throws you into a redirect loop.

I’m baffled and curious as to why that got there in the first place.

~~~
dmonn
Holy crap. This must've come with a starter template. Gone now. Sorry!

~~~
chrismorgan
Thanks for the rapid fix!

