Why I Only Work Remotely

I rarely work remote even when I have the opportunity to do it; I'll explain.

The author seems to have a single-mindedness about optimizing their own performance. If performance in terms of your value to the business was about sitting down at a computer and coding, getting in a "flow" state, etc, I would agree. Problem is, personal efficiency doesn't necessarily align with value generated. I've seen engineers spend months regularly obtaining "flow" with few interruptions or meetings, only to have the projects scrapped because they weren't what the business needed. The fact that the code was immaculate didn't end up mattering at all.

Informal, personal communication can make a big difference. Yes, getting up and talking to someone is more efficient than starting an email thread or slack conversation in many cases. Many of those conversations are engineer to engineer and involve important technical decisions.

And, an aside: remote meetings are simply worse than in-person meetings. Having worked on several teams where some members were in completely different locations (and time zones), I never want to experience that again. Give me every person relevant to my work in the same physical space; I don't want to get blocked from doing my work because you've gone dark on slack.

I promise, I get it. If I had my way, I'd work on whatever I wanted to work on, with no meetings or interruptions. I'd just be a lone wolf cranking out awesome features and feeling great about it. That's just not what any business needs, and it's certainly not what they pay me for.

Your point about being exhausted is true. I used to work remotely. During that time I did a lot of extracurricular stuff and was very active. Now I commute 80 minutes a day and have to sit in a huge cube farm. When I come home I am totally exhausted and can't do anything else. In addition the quality of work suffers. I simply can't focus with people talking around me the whole day.

We (Cloudstitch, YC S15) are building remote work into our company DNA right from the start. It's been an educational journey, and we're stronger team because of it.

One thing we've learned is that "diversity" is so much more than just race/gender/ethnicity. Geographic location, even within the US, can be a profound contributor to the diversity of ideas, experiences, and opportunities. Makes you realize a non-remote team is living in a [geographic] bubble by definition.

If you're interested in building a better web stack / CMS that integrates with your office suite, give us a holler at hello@cloudstitch.com :-)

PS: Re open office plans in early-stage startups, I suspect cost savings are a driving factor.

> I love the flexibility but my wife has trouble distinguishing between work-from-home and stay-at-home-dad and that is constant struggle.

Sooo hard to do. I worked remote over the summer and tried convincing my wife that yes, I am working, even though I am home and sitting down staring into a screen. Not sure she ever got it but I'm working in office now so not an issue anymore. If I were to do it again I would definitely get a small office to go to or go to a co-working space. Good luck!

I actually think this illustrates the main problem with all these opinion pieces: They depend heavily on the authors experience.

I only work in startups where I feel people expect me to know the business needs, I wouldn't want to work at a place where somebody 'breaks down' the business needs in small packages which need no knowledge about the business needs to implement. I think 'the good' startups realize that this old pattern doesn't work if you try to be innovative and agile.