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

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

#21

Post by dsfyu404ed » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 1:49 PM UTC

kstenerud wrote: post #2

Remote has to be baked into the company culture, otherwise you'll forever be the outsider, and be the first to be let go when the company hits tough times. Find a job that already offers remote.

Not necessarily. Pretty much any company that is spread out should have no problem dealing with remote workers. Once you have people reporting to people who are not local it doesn't really matter who's where because you're either in the same building or you're not. Once you're not in the same building doesn't really matter if people are working in a house in Ohio or from an office in Bangalore.

People routinely work from all sorts of places do so in a manner that causes problems for others it doesn't really matter. Most managers don't care so long as they know what timezone you are in and when you can be expected to be available on chat/phone/whatever.

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

#22

Post by sexyflanders » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 1:53 PM UTC

By showing them an offer to go work remotely somewhere else. But it backfired because being the only remote engineer while the rest of the team is collaborating in person is hard. The company needs to support remotees. So I again found a new job with a boss who was remote friendly, and a company with remote-first culture.

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

#23

Post by ratsbane » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 1:53 PM UTC

bitexploder wrote: post #15

ratsbane wrote: post #7

Should you expect a pay cut if you transition from on-site to remote? Someone proposed something like that to me recently, arguing that if the cost of living in my home city is less than in the office city then I shouldn't be paid as much. I'm thinking pay should be based on productivity and value to the company instead of value to me.

Cost of living adjusted pay is a fact of life and you will struggle to find a firm that does not do it. GitLab the company has a cool salary calculator so you can at least see exactly how they do it. No one wants to be paid less for the same work, but if you take a small pay cut and are putting more money in the bank every month, is it a pay cut? :)

That's a good point, but looking at the other way, if a remote worker employed by a company in San Francisco moves from, say, Pecos, Texas to Manhattan, should he or she expect a significant salary increase?

(edit: moving for reasons unrelated to employment with the San Francisco company)

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

#24

Post by sexyflanders » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 1:54 PM UTC

Ensorceled wrote: post #20

For me, the number one indicator is what did you do on the last snow day. If you put in an incredibly productive day and wrapped up a bunch of bugs and stories, let’s talk.

Some people have kids

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

#25

Post by emilecantin » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 1:56 PM UTC

For me, I've simply started freelancing. I love working remote so much that it became non-negotiable for me. I've then worked at one startup, where my hiring basically pushed the whole team to become remote (they were kind of on the fence before I joined, and the boss realized that not having an office was much cheaper).

I believe that the key to make it work is to have a remote-first culture, at least in the team you're on.

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

#26

Post by shados » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 1:57 PM UTC

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #21

kstenerud wrote: post #2

Remote has to be baked into the company culture, otherwise you'll forever be the outsider, and be the first to be let go when the company hits tough times. Find a job that already offers remote.

Not necessarily. Pretty much any company that is spread out should have no problem dealing with remote workers. Once you have people reporting to people who are not local it doesn't really matter who's where because you're either in the same building or you're not. Once you're not in the same building doesn't really matter if people are working in a house in Ohio or from an office in Bangalore. People routinely work…

It still really does: the remote offices might have self contained teams, managers, etc. So only cross team collaboration has to handle remote boundaries. With remote workers, it's all interactions.

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

#27

Post by emilecantin » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 1:59 PM UTC

bitexploder wrote: post #15

ratsbane wrote: post #7

Should you expect a pay cut if you transition from on-site to remote? Someone proposed something like that to me recently, arguing that if the cost of living in my home city is less than in the office city then I shouldn't be paid as much. I'm thinking pay should be based on productivity and value to the company instead of value to me.

Cost of living adjusted pay is a fact of life and you will struggle to find a firm that does not do it. GitLab the company has a cool salary calculator so you can at least see exactly how they do it. No one wants to be paid less for the same work, but if you take a small pay cut and are putting more money in the bank every month, is it a pay cut? :)

I've been on the receiving end of Gitlab's calculator. The pay cut isn't small at all; I was offered less than half the equivalent SF salary. And I live in North America, just not in SF.

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

#28

Post by yakk0 » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 2:01 PM UTC

My wife got a job a couple states away and while I loved my job, I was moving with her. My responsibilities had been moving into more server-admin stuff for a while, so my boss was able to get approval to let me work remotely. It's been 3 and a half years now and still working well. I miss the ability to drop in on people and bounce ideas off them, but we talk a lot through IMs and calls.

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

#29

Post by swsieber » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 2:01 PM UTC

I worked for my company for 1.5 years and then said I was moving in 6 months. So, with plenty of warning, my boss said he wanted to keep me... so here I am wor king remote.

I did have several things going for me:

1) We had a wfh day once a week

2) We had a few other employees (but not other devs) already working remotely

3) I already had a lot of freedom that came from tackling not fun (to some) issues, like build tolling, infrastructure interactions, etc. So I was already trusted to be proactive in what I was doing

4) I'd say perhaps the biggest thing that lead to it was having split management - a people top level manager over development and a tech top level manager of development. Both are great and work well together.

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

#30

Post by davidscolgan » Fri, Feb 22, 2019, 2:02 PM UTC

There is an extended discussion about this in Cal Newport's excellent book So Good They Can't Ignore You.

In short, build up "career capital" by making yourself valuable to the company, which you can later use as leverage. Or as others have said, just get a different job that's already remote.