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Ask HN: Has working remotely harmed your career growth?

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Re: Ask HN: Has working remotely harmed your career growth?

#111

Post by blisterpeanuts »

Work-from-home varies from company to company. Corporations that have a strong WFH culture seem to handle it better than places where a remote worker is "the exception" and "the faceless voice on the phone" at every meeting.

Speaking personally, it's been great these past 5 years. The advantages of remote employment are substantial. To me, it's worth about $20K a year.

I haven't experienced the harm to my career that some have mentioned, but maybe I'm just lucky. My group is a tiny "intrapreneurial" startup within a large corp. and we are judged more on results than on just showing up.

Advantages of working from home:

- 10-15 hours a week of extra time to use as I wish.

- saves thousands of dollars a year in commute expenses, wear & tear on the car, etc.

- extra security and convenience of someone being at home all day

- more flexibility when raising children

- exercise at noon, then shower (no more "Do I skip the morning shower and hope I'm not too smelly at the office before I head to the gym?")

- set up your workspace exactly as you like it.

- you can shake things up once in a while, and go work in a café

- you can travel more frequently and work from whatever location, to save your vacation hours or avoid having to ask permission.

- the coffee is exactly the way YOU want it

Disadvantages:

- off-site workers are less visible, hence require strong management support to avoid problems others have detailed here

- too easy to gain weight

- spouse or children are distracting

- "work day never ends" syndrome.

- you miss out on "five minutes in the hallway" quick check-ins and over-the-shoulder teamwork

Re: Ask HN: Has working remotely harmed your career growth?

#112

Post by godot »

remote_gal wrote: post #20
remote_gal wrote: post #19

Working remotely pretty much destroyed my career for two reasons: (1) my networking opportunities plummeted to zero and (2) I was fired for reasons I believe could have been avoided if I had worked in an office and had stronger relationships with more co-workers. My remote job was at a fully distributed company with good compensation. I worked there for about five years, receiving only positive reviews. Groups in the…

The last thing I'll add since edits don't seem to be working ... My advice to you is that unless you are at the end of your career, or value working from home over your career prospects for family or health reasons, avoid working 100% remotely, even in fully distributed companies. The ideal is a situation where you work in an office, but have a flexible schedule where you can work from home 1-2 days a week, or 1-2 mo…

I agree with your first post 100% -- as much as we'd like to think working remote is the future and all the video conferencing startups and Slack make remote work as seamless as the office -- there's lots of little things about working in an office that's somewhat irreplaceable. Water cooler talks really are more important than you'd think.

I'm actually in an arrangement of WFH 1 day a week right now. It helps a lot with my grueling commute, and gives me a day of mostly code work which is nice; but if there happens to be a need to schedule a meeting on that day, I feel that I concretely get less out of the meeting than I would if I was there personally with the team. Perhaps the team gets enough out of me from the meeting from what I have to say, so maybe it's fine, but I feel like if that happens a lot more often, I'd feel more and more out of touch with my team.

If one has to be in a certain geographical region for family reasons, it may be worth it to simply get a job locally, even if that pays less than what you would get at that remote job for some X tech company based in San Francisco but allows remote.

Re: Ask HN: Has working remotely harmed your career growth?

#113

Post by woolvalley »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #70
user5994461 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No job and no project is forever. 5 years is a lot, many times the average. If it can make you feel better, an in office situation would probably have gone the same. Companies and team changes slowly over time, people move on.

> 5 years is a lot, many times the average. This is incorrect as a general statement . I have reviewed several hundred resumes over the last 2 years on which software developers stayed at a company between 4 and 6 years as the median. In the Bay area 4 years is often the vesting schedule for people's first stock option (and it can be the biggest one people get) and I think that contributes. When I see a resume with a…

Usually its longer if your at big co, shorter if your at startup co.

Re: Ask HN: Has working remotely harmed your career growth?

#114

Post by bproven »

remote_gal wrote: post #20
remote_gal wrote: post #19

Working remotely pretty much destroyed my career for two reasons: (1) my networking opportunities plummeted to zero and (2) I was fired for reasons I believe could have been avoided if I had worked in an office and had stronger relationships with more co-workers. My remote job was at a fully distributed company with good compensation. I worked there for about five years, receiving only positive reviews. Groups in the…

The last thing I'll add since edits don't seem to be working ... My advice to you is that unless you are at the end of your career, or value working from home over your career prospects for family or health reasons, avoid working 100% remotely, even in fully distributed companies. The ideal is a situation where you work in an office, but have a flexible schedule where you can work from home 1-2 days a week, or 1-2 mo…

In regards to your 1st post - what happened to you is really unfortunate. I do hope things are better for you now.

However, I have worked remote for over 10 years in a 100% remote workforce and the company did not abandon me. BUT I did experience part of what you described: "(1) my networking opportunities plummeted to zero and...". This is the biggest potential downside IMO

>The ideal is a situation where you work in an office, but have a flexible >schedule where you can work from home 1-2 days a week, or 1-2 months a year.

This really should be the norm and encouraged practice at companies. I've posted this in other comments on this post, but if this became the norm I believe it would lead to less stress, better employee health, solve a lot of traffic problems - especially in IT where there is often no reason not to. You still get your face time for collab. Society would be better off. I really wish companies were incentivized to do this - especially in the bay area.

The real trick is to stay active in the industry; keep making contacts; attending meetups/conferences etc ; prioritize networking... Its too easy to be forgotten if you don't make those efforts.

I think we tend to make things black or white - remote is not the death of your career or something that cannot work. It just requires you to stay visible in the company and put a little more effort than usual toward networking and connections. Again, I think the ideal is remote/office split time. Spend a few days in the office and a few days WFH every week. I think this gives the best of both worlds (and something that I wish companies would embrace) and avoids a lot of the pitfalls of what you described.

Re: Ask HN: Has working remotely harmed your career growth?

#115

Post by sodosopa »

escanda wrote: post #53
user5994461 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No job and no project is forever. 5 years is a lot, many times the average. If it can make you feel better, an in office situation would probably have gone the same. Companies and team changes slowly over time, people move on.

> 5 years is a lot There must be something wrong in this industry if 5 years is a lot. 5 years per company over a 40 years time spam yields 8 different companies. That seems a lot to me.

I did some research with an old boss of mine and we found 2.5 years was the average based on the resumes we received. It's different now and specifically different than what it was in the 80's and 90's. I'm fortunate, I've been at my company for 13 years.

Re: Ask HN: Has working remotely harmed your career growth?

#116

Post by gulperxcx »

phil21 wrote: post #12

I've worked remote ranging from 100% to 30% most of my career. I've also built a business with 100% remote workers, and currently work for a "some people remote" business. My advice to anyone considering this is if you are currently in a company that is designed and built around face to face office communication - run, don't walk. You will almost always be a second class citizen that is slowly forgotten about. It's s…

What happened to your remote company?

Re: Ask HN: Has working remotely harmed your career growth?

#117

Post by djb_hackernews »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #70
user5994461 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No job and no project is forever. 5 years is a lot, many times the average. If it can make you feel better, an in office situation would probably have gone the same. Companies and team changes slowly over time, people move on.

> 5 years is a lot, many times the average. This is incorrect as a general statement . I have reviewed several hundred resumes over the last 2 years on which software developers stayed at a company between 4 and 6 years as the median. In the Bay area 4 years is often the vesting schedule for people's first stock option (and it can be the biggest one people get) and I think that contributes. When I see a resume with a…

As in you investigate why their employers couldn't retain their talent?

The way employers view "job hoppers" says a lot about the work place culture, speaking from experience on both sides and both philosophies. (One philosophy solely faulting the employee, the other philosophy recognizing the current state of the industry)

Re: Ask HN: Has working remotely harmed your career growth?

#118

Post by ChemicalWarfare »

depends on your definition of "career". there's nothing preventing you from getting to a senior architect/staff engineer/senior consultant etc type level working from home.

if your goal is to be an actual manager (not to be confused with a PM) then yea wfh can impact that prospect. most companies I've dealt with (not all though) explicitly required anyone who had direct reports under them to either be in the office every day or at least be located within a reasonable distance from the office and come in couple of days a week.

Re: Ask HN: Has working remotely harmed your career growth?

#119

Post by spraak »

alkonaut wrote: post #30
dclaw wrote: post #27

I'm 10.5 years in, and I think what really killed my career growth opportunities is the cost/benefit analysis of going back into an office. Far too many jobs still require you to be present to warm a seat. And depending on location, my estimates are $10-15k+ in costs alone for transportation and food (lunch), and that doesn't even take into account potential childcare and other costs. The first credible job offer I'v…

Exactly the same for me. I’m a bit stagnated but well compensated - the problem is that the step from working at home and averaging maybe 7h/day with no commute to being “the new guy” who is expected to be at the office 8h plus commuting 1-2h... It’s both a blessing and a curse. I want to switch jobs but can’t imagine actually being away from home 10h per day again. I’m going to look for something semi-remote, but it…

Why not just find another remote job...?

Re: Ask HN: Has working remotely harmed your career growth?

#120

Post by agibsonccc »

apohn wrote: post #3

I've had both positive and negative experiences at different companies. ProTip: It really helps when your manger is remote as well. It's harder to bias themselves to preferring local employees that way. Positive: I worked for a software company that had a solid mix of remote and co-located (in the office 3-4 days a week) employees. People and offices were located around the country. Since there were a solid number of…

We're distributed in 8 timezones and 10 countries. My cofounder and I started in SF, but I moved to Japan partially for this reason. I force remote first (and we've been like that since the start) the horror stories in this thread all sound like horrible mismanagement from companies trying to "add it on" rather than have it be a first class policy.

We spread our decision makers across 4 countries and ensure that there are multiple points of contact, otherwise you end up with exactly what you're describing. It's a real shame when this happens. Remote is harder and you definitely need to account for it.

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