
People love working remotely - galfarragem
https://usefyi.com/remote-work-report/
======
g051051
I was full-time WFH for 6 wonderful years. I was happy, my productivity was
off the charts, I was saving tons of money because I didn't have to spend it
on my car and clothes, I had extra time that I wasn't wasting on my commute,
etc.

Then, we had a big shake-up. A bunch of senior people left, and new
"leadership" came in to "transform" our workplace. All WFH was cancelled in
our division (in spite of still being officially encouraged by corporate
policy). The big boss said "a 15 minute fact-to-face is better than a multi-
day email chain". My response to that is "What about the other 99.9% of my
work time, when I don't need to interact with anyone?" Sigh.

Since I had left the office, they had redone everything to be open plan, low
walls, brighter lights, white noise over the speakers, etc. Contractors are
packed like sardines, the noise is insane. We're also "Agile" now, so we spend
a ton of time in useless meetings.

I'm not very happy anymore.

~~~
LanceH
25 years of this and not once has someone responsible for implementing the
open plan included themselves in that plan. Sales and marketing somehow
require offices as well. I've heard of the mythical "president in a cubicle"
but never seen it.

I would really have more respect if they just came out and said, "we're going
cheap."

~~~
thecatspaw
Our sales and marketing is in an open floor plan actually. HR, however, is
not.

~~~
testvox
Same, HR and c level are the only ones left with real offices.

------
ken
Elephant in the room: how many of these people would prefer it to having a
_private office_? Strangely, this article/survey/infographic never mentions
that option.

I'd prefer remote work, too, over sitting in an open floorplan office, but I'd
much prefer an actual office to either one. The easy "why" is: despite all the
drawbacks, a lot of us will do pretty much anything to get out of an open
floorplan.

~~~
ReptileMan
I don't know. For me commute is the most pointlessly wasted time a person
could do. And I have played lineage.

So as long as your commute is 10 seconds home office beats real any time. At
least until we get the whole teleportation thing nailed down.

~~~
jriot
A benefit no one has mentioned, afternoon delights with the wife.

~~~
volkk
assuming your wife is also WFH or not working

~~~
robohoe
Mine comes home for lunch. Quick break brightens everyone’s day.

------
jefftk
_> Why Everyone Loves Remote Work ... 91% of remote workers said working
remotely is a good fit for them._

There's a large gap between "the small fraction of workers who are remote love
working remotely" and "everyone loves working remotely". My wife works
remotely, and likes it a lot. I've worked remotely, don't like it at all, and
am back in an office.

(For me, I'm just happiest if I'm in the same place as my coworkers. The place
I worked at remotely seemed to do everything right, but I still felt
disconnected and lonely.)

------
duiker101
I love remote work too. But I strongly believe it's not for everyone. Not even
50% of the population. It would be a mistake to assume that it's easy for
everyone. For me, going in the office means putting my headset on and doing my
work till I need to leave, while having as few interactions as possible; so
there are pretty much only perks on working from home. Most people crave
engagement without even realizing it.

It also really depends on the job and the company. If remote working means
never going off, I think it's a company culture problem rather than a problem
of remote working itself. It might be true that since remote work is
relatively new the boundaries and the culture might not be fully formed yet
for many companies but I think everyone that works remotely should realize
this and set expectations and boundaries accordingly.

~~~
Ididntdothis
Totally agree. I love remote work but you have to be cut out for it. A lot of
people aren’t.

I also may enjoy going to an office more if I actually had an office with a
window where i could feel comfortable instead of staring at a gray cube wall
and listening to my loud neighbors the whole day.

~~~
voxl
These strange claims with no evidence. Working from home has to fight existing
inertia, you couldn't WFH prior to the internet age, so no one did. Now it's
possible and suddenly not everyone is cut out for it.

Not everyone is cut out for a 9 to 5, not everyone is a morning person, not
everyone likes sitting in a chair all day. But they deal with it, because it's
their job. The same will be 100% true for WFH, cut out for it or not, they'll
adapt and make it work.

------
nickjj
I've been working remotely for my entire freelance career (~20 years). Very
occasionally I'll go on site for certain local clients but that's not the
norm.

There's huge wins for working remotely that everyone has already stated but
the isolation factor is real, especially if you're single.

It might seem fun for a while (couple of months) to not wear pants at work and
be able to put in 4 super productive hours of work before 10am if you wake up
early and those are great things but I have to wonder if working remotely has
long term mental health issues.

To get human interaction I force myself to leave the house (I walk a few times
a day for exercise), have some friends and hobbies, run errands etc. but it's
not the same as being out of the house for 8-10+ hours a day. I'd like to see
a test done on single people who have been working remotely for 5+ years and
seeing if they have higher levels of general anxiety than anyone working a job
where they need to commute full time.

Even if you have a private office where you spend 95% of your time alone for
~8 hours, that's so much different (arguably better) than not leaving your
house or apartment except for occasional short duration activities.

~~~
djhalon
I worked remotely as a consultant for 12 years, before going back to full-time
in an office job. The main driving factor for going back was the lack of
consistent social interaction. I started my remote career in San Francisco,
where I had non-work activities that were very active in the local community
for nearly a decade. I was going out regularly and had many close friends.
Being in a walkable area with decent public transportation was perfect for
ease of social interactions.

I later moved to a city in southern California, which was a more suburban
environment. It wasn't walkable, you had to take a car everywhere and I didn't
know anyone other than my partner when we first moved here. I now was in a
situation where I had to re-establish my social connections without my
previous activities (I had stopped being involved a few years before the move)
and I also didn't have a work environment where I had also made many social
connections over the years.

For the first 5+ years, this was fine, I was able to make a handful of new
friends but many of them started moving because of cost of living and starting
new families. At this point, I feel like it really started to become
determinantal to my mental health. Honestly, it took a long time for me to
even notice and admit it was affecting me, but eventually, it was pretty
debilitating. This wasn't the only source, but it was a major factor to be
sure.

That being said, after being back in the office for 2 years (they have pretty
strong no work at home policy) I am ready to go back to remote work. I loved
the benefits of remote work but I also now am much more aware of the
importance of getting out and finding more social activities to balance this
out. Also, I wouldn't go back as a consultant. Having a rotating cast of
people you interact with made it much harder to form longer-term social bonds
and also there was never dedicated time planned to meet in person at regular
intervals, as a lot of remote-first companies do.

I love and really miss the flexibility of my schedule and if I can find an
environment that supports stable interactions with people and I continue to
re-engage in more social activities outside of work, I would jump back into
remote work in a heartbeat.

------
ptero
Remote work can be great, but it requires two key things. First is the ability
to actually do useful work at home or other non-office location. This is not
hard (I suspect some people working remotely do goof off, but I suspect those
people are not super useful sitting in the office either).

Second, much harder, is the employer support. Direct manager of remote workers
should know how to manage them (which is a rare skill) and be interested in
doing it. It means parceling work in a larger, independent chunks, planning
integration and communication as needed and spotting and resolving problems
early enough with no/rare face to face contact (and face to face _does_ help
for this).

Fail either of those and working remotely is inviting failure. My 2c.

~~~
oneepic
>First is the ability to actually do useful work at home or other non-office
location. This is not hard (I suspect some people working remotely do goof
off, but I suspect those people are not super useful sitting in the office
either)

You'd be wrong to suspect that. I am very productive at work but I just end up
getting distracted at home. It _is_ hard. It's a mentality thing.
Additionally, when I'm at the office, I can talk to another person and just
ask a question in 5 seconds that would take possibly hours to get a reply
otherwise.

~~~
ptero
Agreed, clarification needed. I meant "many/most", but made the sentence read
as if I meant "everyone".

------
protonimitate
I like flexibility.

I don't want to be forced into a open floor plan office. But I also don't want
to be full time remote, or forced into a singular private office.

I want to be able to go into an office when I feel like. Work out of a small
office/conference room when it gets noisy. Sit in the open when it makes
sense. Work from home when I need to be heads down.

I wish management would stop looking for the "productivity magic bullet" and
just start offering options based on their employees. There is no one-size
fits all solution here.

~~~
wastedhours
We do that, and to be fair, it's really positive. We have an open plan area,
booths if you want quiet work, meeting rooms for, well, meetings - and then
you can WFH whenever you want to.

It's a great approach, and I've enjoyed it for a good 3 years or so. It has
the effect of damaging collaboration though - which for some roles is perfect
(where I am, some roles you can be ignored for a good few days), but for ones
like mine, it actually makes it hard. It also scratches out pretty much all
sense of camaraderie, so it depends whether you want to feel connected with
colleagues or not.

This kind of agile working is a double edged sword, the benefits give rise to
different challenges, challenges I never thought I'd see as such previously.

That being said, working from home from 7:30-9, then heading to a coffee shop
for an hour, then coming into the office for a bit, and then going home is
freedom it'd be hard to give up.

~~~
Phillips126
Sounds like a dream. I went from private office to WFH (2 years), and now back
on-site in a cube farm. My focus, productivity and happiness went from high to
very high, then all time low. The cubes I sit in are a mixed environment with
developers, reception, IT, etc. so the noise is almost unbearable. I tend to
do my best work in complete silence (sometimes low music). Considering asking
my boss for a private office and if not then seeking alternative employment.

------
donretag
I have been working remotely for 3-4 years, and I am currently job hunting.

I did not like working remotely honestly. As an extrovert, I did not like the
isolation. However, the major drawback was not being able to steer any of the
tech/political discussion because I was remote. I had poor managers/CTO that
needed a good smack to the head because they were too scatterbrained, but I
was not there to do it. Impossible over Slack.

Now that I am job hunting again, I am wary of remote jobs. Of the three roles
I am pursuing now, only one is remote. I have a good feeling about this one
since there already is a sizable part of the office that is remote.

~~~
thrwaway4833
The cost savings to employers is so extraordinary ($0 per square foot in
office space, $0 on HVAC, electricity, $0 on corporate wifi and the building's
ethernet, $0 on cleaning bills, $0 on toilet paper, ink, toner, desks, etc etc
- the employer literally is happy to buy all of the above), and to employees a
free 5-20% reduction of work hours due to the total loss of mandatory unpaid
commute, plus all transportation costs, that I can't help but think something
must be missing.

Any employer that could leverage remote workers could have the equivalent of a
$1 trillion headquarters employing 1 billion people, tomorrow: at a cost of
exactly $0.

So it stands to reason that there is SOMETHING keeping remote-only workplaces
from eating their competitors for lunch. Something turns off that growth or
ruins the economics.

What is that something?

~~~
eckza
Here's my hot take:

In places that I've worked, WFH is usually reserved for divisions that are
expected to be intrinsically-motivated high performers. Some companies can
afford to be staffed with nothing but these types of people; other companies
are not so lucky.

WFH only works if the people that are W-ingFH are motivated enough by their
work to do it without being supervised.

And for some job roles in some organizations, the savings from not having to
hold an office for a role, are more than offset by the lost productivity from
having that role as a remote hire.

I'm not trying to say that all HN-ers are magical special large-brained
unicorn employees; but I've worked at several places where certain key roles
are staffed by people that couldn't figure out how to effectively work
remotely if their lives depended on it.

~~~
donretag
> I've worked at several places where certain key roles are staffed by people
> that couldn't figure out how to effectively work remotely if their lives
> depended on it.

For me it was the opposite: I was highly productive, but the onsite managers
did not know how to work effectively (if at all honestly)

------
teddyuk
Having millions of people regularly commuting into major cities is a disaster.

You create all this traffic, congestion on trains, sometimes people packed
liked sardines for what? To sit in an office and work less than you would in
the peace and quiet at home.

Much better if governments encouraged people to work from home, maybe have
local hubs where people can go to if they can't work at home.

Cut down on the traffic and let people enjoy more of their lives.

When I don't WFH, I commute 4 hours a day, in and out of london - i'd rather
spend that with my kids.

~~~
hanley
Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker is pushing a tax credit for employers who
allow employees to work remotely as a strategy for reducing transportation
congestion. I'm not sure I agree with the technique but it is an interesting
idea to create financial incentives that encourage remote work.

[https://www.wbur.org/bostonomix/2019/07/25/governor-baker-
wo...](https://www.wbur.org/bostonomix/2019/07/25/governor-baker-work-from-
home-transportation-mbta)

~~~
nerdkid93
That seems like it just subsidizes the cost of suburbanizing a city, though.

------
gexla
This piece has the feeling of being written by "every Friday is Hawaiian
T-shirt day" after his employer went all remote and he needed a new task.

I have worked remotely more than not and it's not ideal. I suspect that if
teleportation machines existed, then remote work wouldn't be a thing. Once you
leave the office for the day (or leave the house to go to the office) then the
logistical problems start (where do I find an affordable place to live.)
Logistical problems for employees become logistical issues for employers.
Working remotely is a trade-off and much of the time it works well enough.

I'm guessing that most early remote workers get relatively cushy setups with
allowances for equipment and good salaries. As remote becomes more common,
then I bet that gets squeezed. Employers shouldn't expect that the average
person can make it work. If you don't have a dedicated quiet office area then
it gets real difficult. Pets are a distraction. Other people in the home are a
distraction (and it's not their fault, they have the right to "be at home".)
If you have a significant other living at home full time and that person is in
a grumpy mood, then good luck.

I feel that people who can make it work are those who either live in a cave
with no other living creatures or they have the bread to get a big enough
house and funds to create an operations center in a dedicated room. Everyone
else should at least get a desk at a co-working space.

There's also a lot which gets lost in the communication of remote working. The
communication you do have is much more mercenary. A group of special operators
can carry out a mission together and even do so with mostly radio silence. But
these people lose out of a lot of the more interesting elements of civilian
life. Alice is an avatar and emoji's who can get stuff done in remote space.
But you don't get to see her world class key short-cut skills from which you
could open up a whole new way of thinking about your own operations. You don't
see the real pressure your boss or manager is under and you get far less
information about how things work because they won't be casually confiding in
you at the water cooler. You don't need a NORAD display to show major events
and weather conditions around the world to see what challenges your
collaborators will be up against in getting things done the coming day.

Remote work kind of sucks. Where do I take the survey? ;)

~~~
okmokmz
Wow, there are a ton of assumptions in this argument, and you seem to be
projecting a lot of your personal beliefs and feeling as well. I don't have
children, but my girlfriend and pets have never bothered me or been a
distraction nearly to the extent of distractions that occur in an office. I
definitely don't have a big house and lots of money to build an "operations
center." I have a little room that I use as my office, homelab, and to home a
few other hobbies. I would absolutely hate working in a co-working space, and
my productivity would certainly go down. Of your examples of "lost
communication," none of those are things I feel I would be missing out on and
I've never had issues communicating with my coworkers remotely.

~~~
gexla
There's a difference between being distracted at home and being distracted at
the office. If you're getting distracted at the office, you're still doing
your job. It might even specifically be your job description to be distracted.
If you get distracted all day at work and get nothing scheduled done, then you
still did your job. If you get distracted half the day at home (still less
than a full day of distractions at the office,) then you have a major problem
which is entirely your fault.

> I have a little room that I use as my office, homelab, and to home a few
> other hobbies.

That you have a spare room is entirely my point. That's a luxury that not
everyone has. If you don't have this, then you are at a disadvantage for being
successful with remote work. A workplace is a sort of equalizer, though
certainly not perfect. Rich or poor, all you have to do to work at McDonald's
is show up. The workplace provides everything else. Sure, your employer may
provide allowances for your home setup, but not all will do that and they
certainly can't create a spare room in your house. The closest they can get is
to pay for a co-working space.

> Of your examples of "lost communication," none of those are things I feel I
> would be missing out on and I've never had issues communicating with my
> coworkers remotely.

It's undisputable that you lose information with remote communication vs face
to face communication. We communicate with body language and emotion which
doesn't carry over well even in a video feed. People are more willing to share
certain things in different modes of communication. Some people don't like to
use messaging at all. Remote work is still "good enough" but you do lose
information. Losing information doesn't necessarily create "issues
communicating with my coworkers remotely" but it does have an adverse effect.

------
pikzel
I think it's especially popular in the US where they've always had long
commutes. I work remotely from time to time, and it works fine when I have a
specific task to focus on, but I've never managed to replace the spontaneous
talks or meetings by a whiteboard with any meeting tool (be it Slack,
Hangouts, Skype, Webex, you name it).

~~~
dx87
I definitely agree with the part about long commutes. Between the drive to
work and having to put on work clothes, brush my hair, etc, it's about 1.5-2
hours out of my day that is completely wasted when I can't work from home. I'm
more productive at home as well, since I can take breaks as needed instead of
having to look busy for 8 hours and getting bored after 4 hours at the office.

------
jdavis703
What I hate is being lonely. They're shutting down our offices for cost
savings. As such I've basically been straight work from home.

Working from home reminds me of the isolation of being homeschooled. I love
having the flexibility to work remote on certain days, for example when I need
to bang out a bunch of code. But, having a place to interact with people is
invaluable for me.

I imagine countless others feel the same way, hence why companies still see
offices as having value. So, for all the remote work evangelists on here: what
do you do to counteract isolation?

~~~
JSavageReal
Try working outside of your home, perhaps in a co-working space or coffee
shop.

~~~
ginko
How anyone can do productive work developing software in a coffee shop,
presumably on a laptop, is completely beyond me.

~~~
jdavis703
I have ADHD. I used to be the same as you. Now that it's treated I can write
code in a busy cafe. I too didn't understand how people could be productive in
a cafe. But apparently all our minds work differently (that's totally non-
sarcastic, I'm always amazed at how hard empathy is)!

------
wrestlerman
I've seen there are plenty of comments that disagree with that statement. I
agree, though.

I love working remotely. I've been working remotely for a bit less than a year
now. I had some few months break at the beginning of this year where I was
working on my own product, but I was still at home.

Why do I love it? Well, my wife is staying at home with me and we get to spend
so much more time together. I think over that period of time we've got closer
together. We can chat during the day, eat meals together and stuff like that,
it's super cool.

More reasons? If I can work asynchronously (not being dependent on the rest of
my team) I can schedule my day according to my needs. Need a one hour walk
outside? Well, why not:) Even though it's not my company I'm working for I
kind feel like I am the boss. I don't have people staring at my screen, I
don't have people talking next to me, I can go to a shop and prepare a nice
breakfast if I want to. It's really good.

I do agree that it gets a bit boring without a chitchat with colleagues. But I
try to compensate for it by meeting with my friends and family regularly.

------
kashyapc
[Disregarding the click-bait title and & related bits in the article...]

Given the Right Set of Parameters™ (omitting for brevity's sake; much has been
written about them), Remote Work can be the "panacea", and a path towards a
more serene approach to work and life. FWIW, I'm a long-time remote worker
myself, and won't nonchalantly say "would recommend it to a friend" without
having a serious understanding of the said friend's propensity for it—lest I
would lead them down a steep slippery slope.

The boring truth any reasonably experienced remote worker knows is that to be
able to sustainably do it in the _long run_ —which is the critical
bit—requires a certain "psychological profile": ability to tolerate spells of
solitude, having the discipline to do the Right Thing when no one is watching,
and so on.

So, saying "everyone loves it" is reckless. Not least because the article's
sample size is a paltry 486 people.

------
igor_ch
I don't think remote work is that good. It has its benefits like having more
time, flexible schedule and work from where you want but this comes at a
price: you work alone every day, your colleagues are in different timezones,
you need to set hard rules on your work schedule and socializing is a must.
Think of all the things you get for granted working from an office:
colleagues, events, pair programming, face to face meetings, small talk
breaks. Again I do agree the remote work has its benefits but everything comes
at a cost.

------
jbarberu
For me it's: Office with my own office > Working from home > My own cube > the
middle of a busy construction site > open office

I'm currently in a cube, which is miles better than open office. I say I like
working from home, only because I don't foresee getting my own office anytime
soon.

~~~
wefarrell
I actually feel strangely productive working in busy cafes. Even though
there's a lot of noise and people moving around I'm able to tune everything
out. However in an open office because I know the people moving around and the
noise has the potential to involve me I have a very hard time concentrating.

~~~
jbarberu
Couldn't agree more. For me the cafes aren't feasible due to confidentiality,
but not knowing or caring about the people making the noise is a lot better.

------
taneq
I am astounded that the only mention of pants is a tweet regarding "working in
lululemon pants" as being a perk. I thought one of the chief benefits of
remote work was that pants were entirely optional!

~~~
maxaf
For me the main perk of remote work is that the status of pants is by design
entirely unknowable.

In practice, this also covers data points such as status or style of shirt,
whether I’ve showered that day, where on the planet I happen to be, whether
I’m actually in a pool, how far from civilization I am, or whether I’ve
injured my leg and didn’t tell anyone because it’s not a big deal and I don’t
mind typing while my leg hurts, or whether I have loud death metal playing at
top volume.

I’m content with all of those things remaining a mystery for my coworkers
because none are correlated with quality and timeliness of my work.

------
miguelmota
Working remote for 4 out of 5 days is the sweet spot for me. It’s good to come
into the office and do a brainstorming and sprint planning session over a
physical whiteboard once a week, but also to just do relationship maintenance
with colleagues and talk to other people since loneliness can be a real
problem over time when working remote all the time.

------
patagonia
To those complaining about the commute. You’re complaining about city and
transportation architecture, not workplace design.

We are social creatures. I don’t understand the complete lack of addressing
the issue: 8 hours a day I’m cut off from people except virtually. Prisons
that force virtual visitation are criticized for this exact issue.

~~~
okmokmz
You're really comparing prisons that only allow virtual communication to
working remotely? Lets brainstorm a list of ways that you can see people while
working from home that you couldn't from prison.

1\. If you have any family members that will be home throughout the day you
can see them

2\. You can step outside and talk to your neighbors

3\. You can take a 10 minute break to walk to a local store/park

4\. You can go out to lunch at restaurant

5\. You can invite anyone to come over at any time

6\. Before and after work, you can go anywhere you want, do anything you want,
and see anyone you want as well as on weekends

So it seems it's not quite like a prison... not to mention you can also call,
text, video chat, IM, or communicate virtually at any time rather than only
during certain periods of time with certain people as told by the prison.

Also, if you're working in an office, how much time are you actually spending
socializing and interacting with coworkers vs getting your work done?

I understand that some people have a need to interact with people daily, but
many of us prefer the quiet/isolation while we work, and comparing remote work
to prison is ridiculous

~~~
bradlys
Many people need more than just their immediate family. Neighbors are a
terrible source of social interaction. Where I am, our neighbors refuse to
interact with us except to complain about something like noise or street
parking.

Been to a park during the day? It's nanny's and mom's. How many are going to
be like, "yeah, random dude approaching me and trying to chat me up. Great!"
Most are sketched out unless you got a kid with you. I've been in this
situation and they look at you very weirdly. (How desperate must you be to go
to a park to chat with moms?)

Lunch requires friends who also can do such a thing. I go out to lunch with
coworkers very often.

You can invite anyone who isn't working or can work remotely with you. Sure, I
did do this for a bit. I'd drive 30 minutes away to see my friend and we'd
work remotely together about once a week. But then I was actually going
further than my commute to work! Hah!

And so can anyone with a non remote job.

You can have the quiet and isolation while not working remotely. It's just
that it's not valued in many workplaces anymore.

BTW, I don't get how people think that working remotely means isolation and
quiet?? When I worked remotely, there were plenty of days where I had to take
tons of long Skype calls, had to chat endlessly with people over IM, and then
send more emails on top of it. I barely got any "work" done and didn't get to
focus because everything required my attention.

Isolation and quiet is more than an environment. It includes details around a
culture around workplace communication styles and how much you prioritize
immediate responses.

~~~
okmokmz
Those were obviously just examples demonstrating that his comparison was
absurd. Do you really agree with him that remote work is as bad as prisons
that only allow virtual visitation?

------
chadash
> _" 91% of remote workers said working remotely is a good fit for them."_

Right, and 97% of current ferret owners say that ferrets make great pets [0].
I'd like the survey to include people who worked remotely in the past and no
longer do. Count me in that group. I worked remotely for a six months at a
remote-friendly but not remote-first company and here were my findings:

* It was lonely being at home. And I wasn't as productive. After a month, I rented space at a WeWork, which helped with both problems. But it requires that you be outgoing to meet people who work in your space but aren't your coworkers.

* I didn't like being physically separated from my colleagues. It meant that I wasn't privy to many of the important conversations in the company.

* I was always afraid that come a round of layoffs that it's easier to fire the folks who work 1000 miles away.

* In a company that isn't remote first, it limits your career growth (most of the time).

* Maybe it's just me, but I find it much easier to explain difficult technical things in person. Yes, screenshares are very helpful, but sometimes a hard problem involves going back and forth between monitors, for example. I also like being able to use a whiteboard [1].

* As a software engineer, it's easy to get siloed into only communicating with people on your team and remote work only increases this tendency. If you work in an office, you meet people from other parts of the business in the cafeteria/break room/etc. and that allows you to have a more full understanding of the company. And it's my belief that if you don't understand the business, then you don't understand what your software should be doing.

Overall, I didn't hate working remotely but it wasn't great either. I would do
it again for a short period of time (e.g. a year while my wife is on
sabbatical) without hesitation, but I personally didn't like it for the long
term. That said, the ability to work remotely _on occasion_ is something
that's very important to me.

I personally wouldn't apply to jobs at remote-only companies, but I definitely
think this is the way to go if you want to make a career out of working remote
as it solves a few of the problems above.

[0] Not saying that they don't, for some people. Just saying that asking
people who currently own ferrets means your sample is biased.

[1] Sometimes old fashioned is best. One of my companies moved to a new office
and was thinking of installing "smart boards" at a cost of tens of thousands
of dollars, thinking that the engineers would love them. To their surprise,
the engineers protested and asked for good quality "dumb" boards instead.

~~~
alkonaut
I have worked from home for many years now and identify with ALL those
drawbacks, but I still wouldn't want to change to a full time in-office
position. The drawbacks of that (mostly an hour wasted commuting both in the
evening and in the afternoon) is just too big.

Being able to work remotely on occasion, or perhaps the ability to _not_ work
remotely on occasion (e.g. work remotely from a coworking space 2 days a week
and from home 3 days a week, or work in the real office 1 day per week) would
be ideal.

~~~
chadash
> "Being able to work remotely on occasion, or perhaps the ability to not work
> remotely on occasion (e.g. work remotely from a coworking space 2 days a
> week and from home 3 days a week, or work in the real office 1 day per week)
> would be ideal."

Being able to work in an office one day a week makes a big difference. Some
things are easier in person, but they can be delayed until that day you are in
the office. I had a boss at a previous company who did two days at home and
three in the office and it was an ideal mix. He could get the benefits of
being able to do things face to face and the benefits of being able to do deep
work at home (personally, I do deep work better in the office, but I
understand why many people do better at home).

------
Nursie
I work remotely 2 days a week. I'd quite like to go to 3 and might soon.

But without being in the office a couple of days a week for collaboration, a
lot of stuff just wouldn't work. Conference calls, slack and email are no
substitute for the face-to-face conversations that can resolve blocking issues
in a few seconds versus a few hours.

I'd definitely recommend partial remote working. Not sure I'd want it fully.

~~~
mcpeepants
> Conference calls, slack and email are no substitute for the face-to-face
> conversations that can resolve blocking issues in a few seconds versus a few
> hours

I don't doubt this is a real challenge for certain teams or types of work.
However, in 5+ years of working remotely at fully-distributed orgs I have
never experienced this. Not once have I encountered a scenario where being in
a room together would have dramatically changed/improved/whatever the
discussion. Perhaps it just comes down to having a team that can communicate
effectively without being face-to-face, but this always interested me as a
common criticism of remote work.

~~~
Nursie
> Perhaps it just comes down to having a team that can communicate effectively

Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if you are working in a more functional team
than the one I'm consulting/contracting with right now. I'm not going to name
the organisation when I'm bad-mouthing them so much, but there are systemic
problems going right up to the top.

If you asked me to name somewhere with smart, competent people throughout the
org, working well within a lightweight but functional agile delivery process,
I wouldn't name the folks I'm with right now. There are a handful of competent
developers (all the devs really) and one or two decent ops guys, but everyone
from the PO to the Security Architect, to the QA folks is a walking disaster
zone, poor communication being a big part of the problem.

I'm just glad delivery comes relatively soon and I'm not trying to build a
career with them...

------
thieving_magpie
I don't believe people love remote work as much as the article suggests, but
this does match my own experience.

I absolutely love it. I used to work at a very chatty office before they let
me work remotely. My productivity and ability to think deeply about problems
has skyrocketed.

Remote work isn't a catch all solution but it can be really effective if you
match it to the right job.

------
ken
"63% of US companies now have remote workers, according to a 2018 Upwork
Study."

Hmm, I don't believe this number. According to the SBA [1], there are over 30
million small businesses in the USA (averaging just under 2 people each).
These constitute the vast majority (99.9%) of US companies.

You probably can't do "an online survey of 1,005 workforce hiring decision
makers obtained through a third-party, independent online sample" and get
useful information about 63% of _all_ companies. This sounds like Sample Bias
galore. There aren't even 19M (.63*30M) companies with offices in this
country.

[1]:
[https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/advocacy/2018-Small-...](https://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/advocacy/2018-Small-
Business-Profiles-US.pdf)

------
Frondo
If companies paid for commute time I'd feel a lot less strongly about in-
office requirements.

------
strenholme
I actually prefer working at home in the morning and coming in to the office
only in the afternoon. As a software developer, it allows me to focus on my
software development and finish the tickets in my sprint without being stopped
by support requests, wishlist feature requests, and other distractions from
co-workers.

When someone has to put a request in writing on Slack or with an email instead
of just going to my cubicle and bugging me, it makes it less likely they will
bother me with stuff that is not important.

In terms of a daily standup, they work just as well using a video conference
call, or, better yet, as a written report posted to Slack every day.

------
ubermonkey
My current job -- now 12 years -- has always been work from home, but I'm not
sure if it's necessarily "remote work."

I say this because this company has no office space anywhere. EVERYONE works
from home. We're small (~10), but spread out over the whole US. I have
coworkers I've never actually seen in the flesh, and I only see my boss a
couple times a year.

This works very well for us. I'd have a hard time going back to an office. But
it's not "remote" in the sense that some folks are in an office and some folks
aren't, which I think makes our WFH different from "remote work."

------
JustSomeNobody
I've been WFH for about 6 years.

I enjoy the trust I am given to get work done that I promise to get done. I'm
in a different TZ, so I enjoy the quiet time I get when the others on the team
aren't working. However, as hard as we try, I still miss conversations that
happen away from a computer or phone. Also, I do sometimes miss working in
person with the people I work with. Finally, I do miss having a proper lab. I
look around at the RF equipment laying around my home office and get a bit
depressed.

Remote work works. Anyone who says it doesn't has an agenda. Like non-remote
work, you just have to hire the right people.

------
brailsafe
I'm currently remote for a grant funded initiative at a University. The work
is great, but I'm the sole developer. I move around a lot and don't keep a
home office. I like it, it's technically satisfying most of the time, but
there are only so many days I can spent _just_ working through technical
problems at a coffee shop. It's also really great if I want to go off on a
road trip or something. I'd like a bit of diversity in the types of problems
I'm working on, and miss building something up with people who have different
skills or knowledge than me. So I'm looking for work that's at least partly
onsite, but that lets me do whatever I want to isolate myself and work through
a problem on my own if necessary (in Vancouver if anyone's looking). At a
previous position, eyebrows were raised when I chose to take my laptop away
from my desk to sit in the lobby and code so I could get away from Bill, the
jackass who brought in a mechanical keyboard and screamed through sales calls
on his bluetooth earpiece. Bill, of course wasn't a jackass. I eventually
brought him aside and simply asked him to be a bit quieter.

------
reggieband
I am in the process of making a major life change to focus on remote first
work. I've recently moved and I am currently looking to purchase a house in a
small town from where I plan to work full-time.

I think the caveats people bring up are serious and require careful
consideration. They are part of why I am trying to find a company that is
"remote-first" and I would prefer to avoid companies where I am one of a
handful of remote employees while the rest of the team is co-located in one or
more offices.

My major fears are:

* I suffer from isolation and loneliness and it impacts my mental well-being

* I find my career progression stalled

* I miss out on more lucrative compensation

* I find my coworkers making decisions without consulting me

* I experience an increase in general anxiety

* I find my productivity and focus to be significantly less

* I am unable to balance work/life when they are combined in the same place

The worst case scenario is that a combination of my fears being realized
forces me to recognize my unsuitability for remote work. I would then be stuck
in a smaller city with less opportunity, potentially with a mortgage. I might
be forced to sell my home for a loss, to move back into a bigger city and to
attempt to find a normal job to rebuild my retirement savings.

My plan to mitigate these is to be aware of my fears and to put into place
strategies that can deal with each one. I believe that companies that plan to
be remote-reliant in the future will need expertise at the management level to
deal with those issues throughout their workforce. Where there is legitimate
fear there is also opportunity. I believe that all of the problems associated
with remote work can be handled if they are openly discussed.

------
lwh
IRC for whoever is live + good email lists + discipline on wiki|docs + good
PM/ticket communications is faster and more reliable than anything in person.
Non-remote is a productivity disadvantage to people who need fast
communication. A team of people online can say more with no interupt-crosstalk
that cripples in-person "collaboration".

------
nhumrich
This article doesn't answer the headline statement. It just says people like
it, would recommend it, and that record is in the rise. Simple survey stuff.
Doesn't actually ever attempt to answer the question "why" people like it.
Except at the very end, with the one question "top 3 reasons to recommend
remote work"

~~~
spurdoman77
Looks like an advertisement piece more than an actual research.

------
geddy
I work very far from my office, and on the 1-2 days a week I do go in, it's an
hour and a half each way. For the wife, it's 2 full hours each way. Totally
not worth it day to day, but it's a nice change of pace for the 1-2 days I go
in. Keeps things fresh, and I take a bus the whole way there.

That being said, if my job was, say, a 20 minute commute, I'd go in probably 3
or 4 days a week, assuming the office was nice. I prefer working in person at
times, it really depends on what I'm doing, but the option is what makes it
work for me. 100% remote would only make me happy for so long, I think.

Also, rarely discussed in these types of posts is that your social abilities
definitely diminish if you work from home a lot and rarely interact with
people. I've noticed it in myself and made a conscious push to get into the
office more often to offset that.

------
alkonaut
I have done full time WFH for several years. My takeaways are now.

\- It’s not all positive, but the upsides _can_ be bigger than the downsides.

\- If you have kids age 1-9 say, that need to be dropped off at school/daycare
then WFH is fantastic. The commute time I instead spend working means I can
drop kids off at 8 and pick them up and have dinner on the table at 5.

\- I’d not want to do it full time if I did _not_ have family. The isolation
is real even though I do video calls a large part of the day.

\- If had a choice I’d do 1-2 days in an office, but unfortunately it’s too
expensive to pay a full time desk in a co working space and use it just part
time. If I didn’t need a big screen etc I’d probably go for a part time seat
in a coworking space.

------
vfc1
If nothing else, remote work means much less sleep deprivation for a lot of
people, because they can wake up a bit later.

If you have kids to take to school it might not change that much, but if you
can take them close to the start of classes it might mean an extra 30 minutes
to one hour of sleep a day.

No wonder people work and feel so much better, even if its due to that simple
factor alone.

But of course, there are other things that come to play like the ability to
concentrate, limited interruptions, being able to eat proper food, etc.

------
siruncledrew
Summarized thread takeaways are:

1\. Those that WFH mostly prefer to WFH. Not really a surprise. Akin to "Those
that like cooking enjoy making food at home".

2\. Plenty of personal reasons why WFH working habits should be generalized
across everybody because someone prefers it for themselves.

3\. WFH works out better when home is already a convenient place to work; not
necessarily if someone lives in a 80 sq ft room or wants to meet people/do
things in a certain place.

------
buboard
Most comments here are "remote work is great, but"... That's ignoring the
inevitability of technologies. This time it's different. Working from home was
the norm for centuries, then the industrial revolution happened, and then the
internet happened. Nowadays, way too many people don't work from home, _for no
good reason_. As software keeps on eating everything, remote work will cause
major disruptions in the way we live, the places we live and our lifestyles.
For those of us that learned to work remotely, it is an irreversible change
(and polls show that too). Lifestyle adapts to work, not the other way around.
As such, we should be thinking about ways in which societies and lifestyles
will switch from the 9-5/mon-fri, to something that is very asynchronous yet
vibrant and fulfilling. Going back to the office just a dumb desperate
solution, considering you are adding back commute time, office politics,
useless distractions etc etc. Communication tools are already too good to be
ignored. (Also, remote work is an onramp to freelancing/consulting/whatever.
Because, if you can work remotely for one employer, why not work for another?)

Most of the complaints such as isolation and disconnection are because
_society has not adapted to remote working_ rather than the merits of RW
itself. Imagine a world where everyone whose job allows it works remotely.
That 's basically the majority of workers[1]. Imagine the change in the pace
of life and thousands of people feeling as lonely as you. The precipitous fall
of real estate prices as commercial properties become vacant. The empty roads
that don't need more than one lane. PEople reconnecting with their neighbors
by spending a lot more time in physical proximity. Preschools and even schools
becoming obsolete and replaced with home/small group schooling. Our current
lifestyles are hostile to remote work. We don't want to return to the closed
societies of small villages, but we also want to make working at home humane.
We should be able to work on this problem and i look forward to the things
that people will invent in the next few years. Changes like this have happened
before

1\.
[https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/4187653/7825806/IMG+...](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/4187653/7825806/IMG+graph+1+news+EMPL+A10.png/6c792596-03bb-430a-8807-99c15bf619d8?t=1508758339798)

------
lukaszkups
I love remote work, I really do, but it's definitely not for everyone or a
golden grail of work structure - I've even put my thoughts about it on my
website: [https://lukaszkups.net/notes/truth-about-remote-
work/](https://lukaszkups.net/notes/truth-about-remote-work/)

(shameless share, but please let me know what do you think about it if you
want ;) )

------
neeleshs
At our company (I'm a cofounder), we encourage remote. Some people need f2f
once in a while so there is a co-working space we have for that. I split my
time 50-50 at office and home. Saved 1.5 hours a day in commute compared to my
previous job. It is hard to scale well, unless we built a strong culture of
communication and spell out a few things.

------
nemetroid
Without making a statement for or against remote work, this:

> People like to harp on the failings of remote work. Loneliness.
> Distractions. Not unplugging. Lack of collaboration. Dog hair.

> But in reality, people love working remotely. And they’re willing to forgive
> its failings because it’s just that good.

does _not_ follow from a survey asking remote workers if they like working
remotely.

------
dajohnson89
Has there been a survey of employers/managers/owners, assessing how remote
work compares to non-remote? In terms of meeting goals, productivity, team
cohesion, etc?

I'm all about a workers-first mentality, but workers and managers' perception
of remote work could be vastly different.

------
notus
My main problem with remote work is there seems to be a lack of upward
mobility. Most of the interactions I've had that have accelerated my career
were face to face and wouldn't have happened over slack or email. Something to
consider.

------
RickJWagner
I've worked remotely for 9 years. It is the single biggest factor in what I
love about my work.

If I ever change jobs, the ability to work remote is going to be very high on
my must-have list.

------
zarkov99
Yes, but do their employers? It is easy to come up with things that employees
or employers will love, it is pleasing the two groups simultaneously that is
hard.

------
udayrddy
I expected there will be more counter arguments to this, surprised that the
most of the people agreed. Now, am I weird ?!

------
xtat
Remote for 15 years, twice as a CTO/co-founder and there is no amount you
could pay me to go back.

------
k__
I think the main gain from remote work would be to pour tax money into the
countryside.

------
JackFr
Honest headline "People who choose to work remotely love working remotely."

------
purplezooey
That's because, guess what, sitting in an office all day sucks.

------
bumbledraven
Working part-time is also a game changer.

------
anentropic
I don't

------
antonioaguilar
Many friends from Latin America work via Upwork, but they barely make enough
for a living as they charge around 30% commission (end-to-end). I would rather
look for companies that focus on remote work. For example, I have a Mexican
friend working remotely from SF at www.lionmint.com/en. It's a german IT
consultancy that focuses on digital platform development. He told me they pay
great rates and have top-notch projects.

------
throwaway242221
I "love" it in the sense that I can get paid while watching Netflix, playing
games and do whatever I want. I instantly start slacking off and all my
working hours become a game to make it look like I'm working when I'm not.
This doesn't happen when I'm in a office where I'm "forced" to work.

Yeah, you can slack off at the office as well but why? I obviously can't do
any meaningful leisure activities there. And yes, it's a tooling and
management issue but I haven't come across a single organisation where it's
not possible to game it unless your job output is extremely easy to measure.

I believe this is way more common than people think.

~~~
cheez
Found the manager.

~~~
throwaway242221
So it's completely unbelievable that working from home makes some people
(some, not all) slacking instead of working? I believe in remote work but it's
not just for everyone like so many people seem to believe. I'm a living
example of a dysfunctional remote worker.

~~~
tjr225
Working from home doesn't make you slack off. You make you slack off. Own up
to your own decisions.

While I don't want to flame you or attack you personally, I probably wouldn't
want to work with someone with your attitude on either a distributed team or
in an office.

