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Ask HN: How Would You or Did Convince Your Boss That You Can Work Remote?

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Re: Ask HN: How Would You or Did Convince Your Boss That You Can Work Remote?

#111

Post by yblu »

emilecantin wrote: post #62
bitexploder wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their calculator can be a little harsh for sure, I just appreciate how up front it is. Still, rent in SF is crazy if you compare it to anywhere that isn’t near a coast. I wonder do you think the pay cut was unfair based on other offers? I am biased because we only do genuinely minor comp adjustments for location.

Yeah, I appreciated the transparency of it too. The offer I got was okay compared to market rates here, so I do think it's pretty fair. I guess I just find it a bit weird that your value to the company is so dependent on location that it can vary from 100% down to ~20% of the base SF salary. People living in SF _chose_ to live there despite the absurd rents, and it's not like that changes anything for a remote compan…

Yes, but if they don't pay enough, they won't be able to hire those people to start with. On the flip side, considering if they starting hiring people from other countries and reducing your salary because you choose to live in a high cost country.

Re: Ask HN: How Would You or Did Convince Your Boss That You Can Work Remote?

#113

Post by jgaa »

Whenever I was asked to do something hard, I answered that I needed to work from home in order to avoid distractions and focus on the problem.

For I couple of years I did all the actual coding from home, and then I spent a few weeks in the office, relaxing, being social and drinking free coffee :)

Re: Ask HN: How Would You or Did Convince Your Boss That You Can Work Remote?

#114

Post by CloudNetworking »

- Hey $BOSS, I need tomorrow afternoon off as I need to go to the airport

+ Sure, picking up someone?

- No, flying.

+ Ah! Where are you going?

- Home.

+ Home? Where are you?

- I've been in $REMOTE_COUNTRY for the last 3 months, I told you...

+ Right, I thought you stayed for a week or two only

(laughs on both sides of the call)

It helps when your boss is 10000KM from you :)

Re: Ask HN: How Would You or Did Convince Your Boss That You Can Work Remote?

#115

Post by ddelt »

magicnmonkey wrote: post #92
ddelt wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't necessarily disagree with the first point that you raised, but I would posit that if my quality of life sucks as an engineer, eventually that will become the employers problem when I update my cv and find work with a better quality of life, potentially too soon or at the wrong time. Moreover, an employer is 'selling' their reputation to potential talent as well as selling their product.

When it becomes problem they fire you, they don't give you some special cash suitcase and tell you, go improve your life first.

Where in my comment did I suggest that the employee be given a handout?

Perhaps I'm not working for companies who are as ruthless as you and the other commenter, but as my previous comments alluded to, I actually have updated my CV, and left jobs for other, better jobs, mostly because there was a work-life balance improvement to be gained from the move. And yes, the work-life balance improvement in all situations was a more accepting and flexible remote-work policy. And that was after using available avenues (asking manager(s), 1-1s, etc) to see if a WFH arrangement was viable.

In all cases, I did so with tact and professionalism.

That might be getting lost in translation, because your comment seems to indicate that I just walked into my bosses office and complained that my life sucks and I need to work from home, or else. And that I should be given a handout.

In my opinion, you use what avenues are available to you to see if WFH is possible. If it's important to you, and you aren't getting met half-way, then it's time to start looking elsewhere.

Re: Ask HN: How Would You or Did Convince Your Boss That You Can Work Remote?

#116

Post by tnolet »

hectormalot wrote: post #79

As someone who has been the manager in those discussions I see four things to help your manager be supportive: 1. The company policy: of the company has a no-remote policy this will be very difficult. If the company has a limited-remote policy, it’s already much easier, it means asking for additional remote days on top of existing policy and provides you an opportunity to show that you are productive working remote 2…

The "Spill-over" effects are a great observation. In previous teams I had at least 1 or 2 guys I would really not trust remotely. They just needed fairly constant motivation and for lack of a better word "baby sitting". Their work and output was good, they were just not as disciplined or self motivating.

Re: Ask HN: How Would You or Did Convince Your Boss That You Can Work Remote?

#119

Post by thisiswilson »

Finally a topic I can contribute to!

I am moving to Spain in April and will be working remotely for the company I started contracting with back in August 2018. I did a ton of research and prepared a pitch deck and presented to my manager, who then advocated for me and moved it up the line to get approval from the department.

Some key points:

1. The company already allows a very flexible work from home schedule.

2. Although primarily focused around my region, there are a couple team members spread across the world. So it's not unprecedented.

3. The person whose role I took over (contract as well) moved to another country but then quit when they had trouble adapting to the culture (there was an eight hour time difference). So I had some possible baggage to work around.

4. I tested my ability to work off-hours and remotely with a two-week long trip to another city living with a friend and performed swimmingly.

5. You must convince them that, other than your physical presence, they will not notice any difference in quality of work, availability, or communication. Being that Spain has long working days anyway, the transition from my time (-7 GMT) to Spain (+1 GMT) will actually work out quite well from a working hours perspective.

Best of luck!

Re: Ask HN: How Would You or Did Convince Your Boss That You Can Work Remote?

#120

Post by clusmore »

hectormalot wrote: post #79

As someone who has been the manager in those discussions I see four things to help your manager be supportive: 1. The company policy: of the company has a no-remote policy this will be very difficult. If the company has a limited-remote policy, it’s already much easier, it means asking for additional remote days on top of existing policy and provides you an opportunity to show that you are productive working remote 2…

> Some people would use the remote time for personal matters and chalk up a day with limited output to ‘I was doing research’

Be careful with this, because it can be a form of selection bias. I've run plenty of errands and had plenty of non-productive days from the office too. This stuff is unavoidable. If you're going to put WFH under intense scrutiny, make sure to put office work under the same level of scrutiny otherwise it might just be that you notice unproductive days more because you're looking harder.

At a previous company, the WFH policy included a question "How will your performance be measured when working from home?" to which I answered "The same as when at the office", but the question implies a level of suspicion that sets the tone for the whole thing. If you want to allow WFH but are concerned about productivity, do it in good faith and allow enough time to get a statistically significant sample size, and actually compare it with office work rather than just looking at the raw numbers in isolation.

Edit to add: You might also find that people will choose to WFH on days they were planning to run errands, but they likely would have anyway had they worked from the office, so you need to account for this too.

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