

Remote Working – 3 Year Retrospective - duggan
http://blog.jonliv.es/remote-working-3-year-retrospective/

======
jasonkester
Nice writeup. I've noticed that a lot of the negatives (which the author
nails, by the way) go away if you move the _entire company_ remote.

I've been working for the last 4 years with a 150 person software company that
has no office whatsoever. Everybody is remote. As such, we get to remove the
biggest land mine, which is being the "remote guy" on an otherwise onsite
team, missing out on communication and finding yourself sidelined. Instead,
everybody is forced through all the bullet points on the author's
"communication" section, and the playing field is leveled.

It also kills off the "Sub Standard Treatment" and "Stopping Work" issues,
since everybody is going through the same thing. I'm also 6+ hours ahead of
most of my team, and there are only a handful of times a year when somebody
forgets that and pings me at 10pm. And in those cases, since my work machine
is out above the garage, I only find out about it the next morning.

The upsides the author touches on are just plain amazing. I'll often "commute"
to work via an hour or so of mountain biking and bouldering. In the winter,
I'll often simply up sticks and take the family to go live on a beach in the
Caribbean because hey, they have internet there and it's actually a better
time zone for the team. (That's where I am now, and will be through March).

In short, remote is the way forward. And Software is just ridiculously
compatible with it. I'm amazed that there are any product companies left that
force their employees to drive an hour each way to sit in a felt cube.

It's the future. If you're not remote, find a way to fix that.

~~~
eertami
>It's the future. If you're not remote, find a way to fix that.

Would you suggest this even for new grads looking for a first job?

I just know that commuting every day is going to be incredibly depressing but
I haven't seen much in the way of remote opportunities for fresh grads.

~~~
wiremine
> Would you suggest this even for new grads looking for a first job?

Nope.

I've been a full-time remote worker for 6.5 years, and 1/2 time (2 days a
week) for 4 years before that. During that time I've managed and hired remote
workers.

The reality is remote work is not for everyone, and I think that is even more
so for new grads. There is a lot of mentoring that happens early in someone's
career, and that is difficult to pick up in a remote environment. I think over
time the need for having that on-site mentoring decreases, but it's critical
in the first 12 to 24 months.

~~~
odonnellryan
I think developers forget sometimes - and I really don't mean this in a
negative way - that they are people too, not machines.

People generally need some level of human contact, in person, to grow and form
strong bonds with each other.

I think remote works great, but it only works if you get to see some people
you work with sometimes.

The money the company saves can be put into a fund to bring the team together
a few times a year for team building/vacation.

The details (optional? mandatory? where? who?) are per company, but I think
companies should start thinking differently.

Remote all the time, in person when needed. Not in person all the time, and
remote during extremes (car breaks, weather, etc.)

~~~
normloman
My problem with a company vacation:

The people I work with are not my friends. I despise most of them. This is
true for every place I've worked. It's probably true for most people here. You
don't chose your co-workers. And now you're forcing me to take my vacation
with these people, who I put up with every day at work.

You may be puzzled reading this. "But my company is like a family." Some
companies are really like this; everyone's your friend. But if every company
was like this, we wouldn't have shows like "The Office."

It's also hard to expect everyone to go on a vacation. What if your kid has to
go to school? What if your spouse has a job, and has to stay home. Can you ask
people to leave their family behind for a week so they can bond with their co-
workers?

Then you might say "fine, just make the vacation optional." You won't be fired
for not going, but when it's time for performance reviews, who's gonna have
"not a team player" on their report? The one person who didn't attend.

But you make a point. We're people. We need contact. My solution? Work at a
co-working space a few times a week. Work out of a library or cafe every so
often. And get everyone on your team to use video conferencing.

And if your team lives in a close vicinity, it's totally reasonable to
schedule some day trips.

~~~
morgante
> You don't chose your co-workers.

This is where you're going wrong. Personally, who I will be working with is
one of the biggest factors in deciding where to work. A great team can make a
tough job fun and a terrible team can make a great job unbearable.

> Can you ask people to leave their family behind for a week so they can bond
> with their co-workers?

Honestly, I think if you're a 100% remote company that's a totally reasonable
demand. Even just counting commute time of 1 hour a day, that's already 250
hours of additional family time that's been returned to you—more than enough
to make up for a single week of "working" non-stop.

~~~
normloman
You assume isolated hours are equivalent to long stretches of time. If I told
my wife she wouldn't see me for an hour a day, she wouldn't bat an eye. But if
I told her I had to leave her for a week, she'd miss the hell out of me. An
hour isn't long enough to miss anyone.

Furthermore, you have less choice over your co-workers than you think. One
interview is not enough time to know whether you can be friends with someone.
Especially at a huge corporation, where hundreds of people may work, and
constantly move departments. And unless you're the hiring manager, you have no
control who will be hired after you.

~~~
morgante
> If I told my wife she wouldn't see me for an hour a day, she wouldn't bat an
> eye. But if I told her I had to leave her for a week, she'd miss the hell
> out of me.

I suppose as an unmarried young man I don't really understand that. It does
seem like not being able to be apart for a week is a bit of a dependency
issue.

Funnily enough, I'm also a hiring manager at a small startup—so I guess I do
have more control over my coworkers than most people.

~~~
normloman
It's not that we can't be apart for a week. If I had to leave for my job, she
would understand. But it would be difficult. When you live with someone, and
see them every day, you notice their absence more.

Did you go to college? Or did you ever go away to camp? Didn't your parents
miss you the first week you were away? Maybe you can relate to that better.

Also, If you're a hiring manager, you shouldn't be hiring people you'd like to
work with. You should be hiring the best person for the job. Do you ever think
you're passing on great talent because they aren't the sort of person you'd
have a beer with?

~~~
morgante
> Did you go to college? Or did you ever go away to camp? Didn't your parents
> miss you the first week you were away? Maybe you can relate to that better.

Probably, but it was never a significant enough thing that it ever factored
into our decisions. Then again, I'm someone who chose to attend boarding
school and university halfway across the world.

> Also, If you're a hiring manager, you shouldn't be hiring people you'd like
> to work with. You should be hiring the best person for the job

Considering that I like to work with intelligent, kind, and motivated people I
consider those mostly synonymous.

> Do you ever think you're passing on great talent because they aren't the
> sort of person you'd have a beer with?

Nope. Whether I'd have a beer with them isn't my test. Plenty of my favorite
colleagues definitely aren't my drinking buddies. Rather, I ask myself if I'd
like working with them on a daily basis and whether their presence would
positively contribute to the office environment. If I suspect they'd be a
negative influence, I don't see any reason to hire them—even i they're a
brilliant coder.

Fortunately, that's rarely a choice. Most of the great developers I know are
also fundamentally kind and humble people.

~~~
normloman
I think we can all agree that hiring intelligent, kind people, and motivated
people is the right thing to do. I'm asking a different question. Would you
pass on a great developer because they don't have anything in common with you?
Would you pass on someone because they had an annoying quirk that bothered
you? Would you pass on someone because they seemed boring, despite being a
great developer? Being a good hiring manager, you probably don't. But it also
makes for the kind of team that you wouldn't want to hang out with after work.

You say that plenty of your favorite colleagues definitely are not your
drinking buddies. Can I presume that you also wouldn't want to go on long
trips with them?

------
karlb
He mentions improved video conferencing. I recently discovered that a $90
Logitech webcam [1] hugely outperforms the one built into my Retina MacBook
Pro. It has a wider angle, higher resolution, and—most importantly—makes the
room look bright in a way that I never managed to achieve using lighting.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Webcam-Widescreen-Calling-
Rec...](http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Webcam-Widescreen-Calling-
Recording/dp/B006JH8T3S/ref=sr_1_1)

------
quaffapint
I've been working remotely for a big bank for the past 7 years. I don't go
into an office and haven't seen my team in the past 4 years.

The last time people got together for a project kickoff a few years back they
just sat around a conference table all on webex. I stayed home.

Unfortunately new management is taking away the remote option for new hires
for the most part. Also some people based on where they live had to go back
into the office.

For myself, I never felt a difference in work, other than I didn't have to
have headphones on all the time to try and get any work done in a cube and no
tie. I did find that it can lead you to feel 'alone' during the day when wife
is at work and kids at school I guess. Though after getting a dog who wants to
play and go out it's not as bad :-).

When I move on from this job, it will be VERY hard to not work at least some
days remotely. There aren't a lot of jobs around here that offer that. That is
a downside of doing this so long, it just becomes how you work and how your
day is supposed to be. I've tuned my life around it.

~~~
stripe
Do you know the reasons why management is moving away from working remotely?

In an effort to attract and keep more talent the company for which I work
allows working remotely more and more. Without that option the turn over rate
for engineers would have doubled in the last year.

~~~
quaffapint
The reason they went remote was to save money on real estate. They could sell
buildings and get rid of leases.

The specific reasons they no longer want to go remote has not been shared with
us other than the usual 'we want more teamwork'.

It's a shame. I tried to apply to other internal jobs, but they won't allow me
to work remotely because of the new policy. So now they've severely limited
their candidate pool and may have to look outside the bank and incur the costs
that brings.

------
zedpm
Excellent analysis of remote working. I worked for nine years remotely (full-
time for the last three years) with an entirely remote team, and most of this
article rings true. Flying team members in every so often for in-person
meetings is hugely valuable.

This subject is near and dear to me, as I live in a rural area and I'd like to
find another full-time remote position. I'm frustrated by the opposition to
remote devs from so many tech companies, who ought to be the last ones to
resist this obvious solution. Many of the reasons ring hollow when the same
companies lament the lack of qualified candidates to fill their positions --
they're essentially saying that they'd rather do without than deal with the
potential downsides of remote workers.

~~~
jmccree
This subject is interesting to me. I've worked remote my entire career, and
mostly positive experiences. One negative experience was at a place struggling
to fill positions and opened up to remote team members, but they did not
change the company culture to support the remote members, and as a result all
of the remote members were gone within a year or two and the experiment deemed
"a failure".

So I understand why some companies are reluctant to bring on remote members.
It requires your entire company culture to change if you want a remote team
member and not just someone used as basically contract labor. For a team used
to making decisions and having conversations in person, it's a big change to
have to move everything online to include the remote person/s. It can breed
resentment on both sides. In my negative experience I would find out decisions
had been made days ago while the on-site team was out to lunch together, and
no one had informed those of us working remotely.

Change is not easy. Companies that started with a remote workflow or commit
fully to embracing a remote workflow can make teams located anywhere work.
Adding on remote team members without a culture change to support it is a
recipe for disaster.

------
virmundi
On the "Substandard Treatment", my personal experience is the loss of power. I
was the team lead for a government project. My wife took a job she always
wanted; we move 900 miles away to Florida. Pretty much after that, while still
team lead, the team lost cohesion. It was harder to drive changes and tasks at
a distance than if I was in someone's cube.

~~~
yankeehue
I'm in a similar boat: remote team lead on a government project living in FL
:)

Was the rest of the team local to each other? That can be difficult because
the team may be accustom to conducting all communication verbally, where you
need it to be electronic. I was a new-comer to the team when I became the
remote lead, and one of the things I did was focus on getting folks to
communicate electronically. Luckily for me, they were in individual offices
spread around the building and two were in other buildings, so they were
already using IM, chat, and email. I just needed to reinforce it.

Also from the beginning, I've focused on team cohesion and team communication.
The team was in a bad state when I joined, so again lucky for me, it was
something I knew needed extra attention. As a team lead, it's an important
factor that you need to pay attention to, but perhaps don't have to spend a
lot of time on when everyone is local. As a remote team lead, you need to
spend a non-trivial amount of time on it.

And face time is still important. I travel twice a month for a day or two and
try to meet with everyone during that time. I also conduct a daily standup
where the rest of the team is in the room and I'm on the phone. It can be
difficult to follow the conversations in the room from the phone, but really
the goal is to make sure the team is talking to each other, and isn't about my
control of the conversation or of the team.

Where in FL are you?

~~~
jmccree
Have you tried doing a daily standup where everyone calls in individually from
their office? In my experience things work the best when everyone is operating
remotely with the same "communication handicap".

~~~
yankeehue
Yes I've tried both. It seems like a trade-off to me. Everyone now is
completely into using electronic, asynchronous communication, following up
verbal discussions with a quick email or IM listing highlights/decisions, etc.
Imposing that handicap can help, but don't need to work on it so much anymore.
Whereas getting everybody in the room for a quick status, a few jokes and good
laughs, and some ranting about the customer seems to keep morale high. That
non-trivial amount of time includes continuously assessing what is and isn't
working.

------
jumby
I lead a 100% distributed team for a subsidiary of NYSE:KAR [US-based] and
have worked remotely for 5 years. I think this post is very accurate -
although we don't have a fancy video-conferencing system, good communication
and skype are paramount to remote success (along with VOIP phones, wikis,
github enterprise, email and rest of the usual suspects).

Additionally, it takes the right personality -- a self-starter who can work a
dedicated day with minimal oversight. That means: not playing xbox in the
middle of the day or running around taking your kids to soccer practice
(though, a little of that is understood, just not blowing off 5 hours a day).

For me personally, no commute (did the bay area thing for years) and raising
my kids where I want to is ultra important. Hope that more companies will
realize the benefits of remote engineers. I agree with a comment made here re:
lamenting the lack of skilled engineers, but not hiring remote. Rings hollow
to me too.

(oh, and I'm hiring!)

~~~
aantix
Email address?

~~~
jumby
edited my profile :)

~~~
sergiotapia
Sent! :)

------
famousactress
OP (or other Etsy-ers) - is Etsy remote friendly as a rule? They've always
been around the top of my employment-crush list but I'm pretty committed to
staying remote after over four years working that way (and NYC is a visit-not-
live location for me!). I thought when I'd looked in the past Etsy wasn't
obviously remote friendly.

~~~
ryanSrich
Looking at their site it seems that they are not remote friendly. My guess
would be that OPs specific team and or specific office location is remote
friendly. But Etsy as a whole does not promote remote work anywhere on their
site.

------
wnm
i love going to the office. i really do. it gets me out of the house, it gives
my day structure, it clearly separates work and play.

but i do like that more and more companies allow working remotely. I'm from a
smallish city in Germany with not many jobs available. Having the opportunity
to find interesting work in the US without moving there is awesome. Last month
alone, I collected 700 job listings from various job boards for my remote work
newsletter.
([http://remoteworknewsletter.com](http://remoteworknewsletter.com))

------
serve_yay
Good writeup, I experienced all of this working from home for about 4 years. I
was living on the US west coast working for a company on the east coast, so I
worked a pretty early schedule, but there's really nothing like being done
with your day at 1:30-2:30pm.

A few months back I got a new job where I work in the office, and the commute
is hands-down the worst part. Second worst is the loss of privacy - I mean
just think how much nicer it is to use your own bathroom than a public one.
All in all, however, I think remote and in the office is a mixed bag, I don't
think one is clearly better than the other. There is something to be said for
being in a physical place with smart people, interacting in meatspace, having
lunch together, etc.

One thing rarely noted when discussing this issue: when you work in the
office, your employer pays for the office space. When you work from home, you
pay for it. You will probably want a bigger or more nicely-appointed place
since you're going to be there basically all the time. You will pay for that.
Another thing, if you're at a place where very few people are remote, you will
be seen as having "lucked out" or having it easier than others. That
perception can bite you.

------
bajsejohannes
I worked remotely for around two years, and the most helpful tool was
[https://www.sqwiggle.com/](https://www.sqwiggle.com/) . You colleagues feel
just a little closer that way. It even makes it easy to listen in to a
conversation that happens in an office with multiple people.

That said, quite a few people found it creepy, and we allowed anyone to opt
out.

------
espinchi
Since we're talking about remote work.

How is this handled at the administrative/legal level?

Does the company (US based, in this case) have to create subsidiaries in all
the countries where the employees are? Or do they have to register themselves
as freelancers and have a contractor contract?

I know, I know we're not lawyers here. But anyone has some pointers?

~~~
tomislav
I have my own LLC where I'm employed and just send an invoice every month. I
found its the easiest way to handle taxes, health insurance and business
expenses.

------
Someone1234
I'm not one of these "I hate daylight savings time" people. But I will say it
is a massive pain in the arse that DST starts and stops at different times in
different places.

So instead of you being for example 8 hours difference you might be 9, or 7,
and so on. It is really super annoying and avoidable with a little
cooperation.

------
scalesolved
How does Esty pay you? Do they have a financial presence in the UK? Nice write
up too!

~~~
k__
Good question.

I want to work remote too, but I'm from Germany and don't know anything about
the financial implications.

------
gii
You've pretty much outlined all the pros and cons of working remotely. However
working remotely is not so common in Europe than it is in US. Probably Europe
is lacking behind with 5+ years, because most of the companies here are still
on the "top-notch MBA consulting" staff. I still meet people who make their
living from 2 excel files they copied from their Big4 internship :)

You said you are the only guy outside US. Have you tries looking for something
"nearby"?

~~~
whichdan
I think you're hugely overestimating how many US companies support remote
working.

------
percept
I wouldn't recommend making office visits a requirement, however, as some
companies appear to do. Like all things corporate-mandated, this can seem
heavy-handed and present logistical challenges for remote workers.

I believe I've seen some companies requiring quarterly travel, and this places
a burden on devs with families, pets, etc.

Even then, would those who opt-out be treated differently? ("Well Jon has no
problem traveling to the office, why do you?")

~~~
jonlives
Excellent point - it should be made easy, but not mandatory :)

------
trustfundbaby
I think the takeaway from this is that remote is harder than folks make it
sound. Not just anybody can do it. Running a company that is fully remote is
even more difficult especially when you're trying to establish things like a
coherent company culture. Big remote-work fan but it should be clear to
everyone that Colocating everyone to a physical space definitely has its
benefits, especially when you're starting out.

------
mmattax
Great Pros/Cons on remote working. I've definitely felt cabin fever. I find a
balance by going to a co-working spot once or twice a week.

Timezones can also be hard. We've struggled with getting our team together for
daily standup meetings in the AM, which led us to build our own tool
([http://heyflock.com](http://heyflock.com)).

------
TarpitCarnivore
The part about "Substandard Treatment" hits home for me. When I first went
remote the hardest that was the hardest thing for me to adjust too. Lunches
and/or dinners being bought for them, weekend team trips, etc. It's a trivial
thing in the grand scheme of things, but it can affect morale.

~~~
VLM
"weekend team trips"

Also jealousy issues... Realize that most people can't stand those things and
it tends to turn into a test of personality, who will kiss up no matter how
awful the experience, or who has the guts to admit the emperor has no
clothes... In my wife's work at home experience there was some jealousy that
she got to avoid teambuilding by default, while the office people were
punished by having to attend. How come I have to go to the Christmas party on
my day off and (VLM's wife) doesn't have to?

Oh and another jealousy issue... in this day and age not so many people smoke,
but the smokers did not like that my wife could theoretically smoke at her
desk but they can not (thankfully she doesn't smoke)

And discipline issues... "(VLM's wife) gets to pick up a sick kid at school
without being formally written up for leaving work early because nobody
notices, so why am I being written up?" and so forth. A lot of workplace BS
exists so bosses can manufacture the reason to fire folks they can't just fire
for no cause, and its going to collide with the obvious work at home
differences.

At medium size corporations you can also run into Dilbertian requirement
problems. Small corporations ignore "corporatism" and big corporations already
have remote training, but it can be a mystery how to check the checkbox for
annual diversity training, or annual PCI/DSS compliance training, or however
else HR tortures the employees. She usually combined this kind of stuff with
the rare facility visit, so we'll all go to diversity class as a team in the
morning and then hang out and talk about work (aka goof off) in the afternoon.

~~~
k__
> Realize that most people can't stand those things

THIS.

I hated it...

