Remote First at Quora

"It depends" isn't a cop-out when it's true. Some situations benefit a lot from remote work. There's a reason why a lot of startups were going remote work first before COVID was even a thing.

The issue is that IT is one of the few fields where a large portion of the work can be remotely created and evaluated, and a large percentage of the people on HN/Twitter/Tech Blogs happen to work in or around this industry. Programming, at least, is like writing with much better pay.

You can't remote work restaurants. Or any job where you have be somewhere to do something, or where interpersonal relationships are a key success factor. Remote work is even a challenge in IT, where it's theoretically easier to evaluate and promote talent and where there are proven ways to properly implement telecommuting.

As often happens with this topic, this comment tries to portray an individual's opinion as a universal truth

> You lose the one huge opportunity in adult life for making new relationships - and that's at work, in the office.

Whose adult life? Because in mine, I have a very active social life outside of work, so the office comprises a tiny minority of the people I meet as an adult. On top of that, if you work at at a small company like I have, then there are no opportunities to make new relationships. Who are you thinking of meeting in an office where it's you and 3-4 other people, day in and day out, for years?

The office is not the only way to meet people, and for people who can't or don't need to rely on the office for their social lives, nothing is lost on that point by going remote

> For the company, people that work remote start drifting away from the company vision and spirit - you get an army of people working individually most of the time, not socializing, not establishing strong bonds.

That sounds like a company problem, not a remote problem. I love my employer and my team, and get along fine with video calls etc. I'm not at work to hang out and have fun, I'm here to do my job and get paid, then go live my personal life.

> It's just a job. You could work for someone else and you wouldn't even notice.

That's specifically what some people, like myself, want to feel

> You are a people's person and feel more energetic and productive when working with others face to face? Well, sorry, your team is mostly remote.

Here you conveniently disregard everybody who doesn't support your argument. Let's describe the office for people like me, who have absolutely 0 (zero) interest or need for an office: "You don't like to be around people, and you feel more energetic and productive when you can choose your working environment, don't have to commute, and can sleep until 8:59AM if you want to? Well, sorry, your team isn't remote"

> Please, let us just top playing down the importance of the office. It is important and it has tons of benefits for the team, as opposed to the benefits for the individuals.

I think a fairer thing to ask is: please, stop treating all people and companies as having the same qualities and preferences. If you want to work in an office and it makes your life better, that's great. But what you may consider great conditions might literally be the worst part of life for others. There is no single solution.

There were a lot of companies that were remote work first before COVID. The issue is that this is only possible for companies in certain fields (tech being one of them) that have the right tools and management structures in place, and where explicit knowledge is more important than tacit knowledge.

I'm not familiar with Evergreen communication (the closest I could find was a consulting-ish company online), but I'm sure that small companies in a larger number of fields could, theoretically, go remote work first.

I spend a large portion of my week on video calls with colleagues, whether it's discussing requirements, pairing, bouncing ideas off someone or just shooting the shit before standup. I don't feel that my contact time has changed significantly at all. I actually think working from home facilitates face to face communication over an open plan office because everyone has total control over the sound in their office. If you're on a call you can be as loud as you like without disturbing and other calls you just don't hear at all. For me it's a huge win.

Then there's all the extra time and energy you have from no commute. I socialise far more frequently since working from home then when I was commuting into London for instance.

I wonder what Quora’s staff spend their time on. The site is a simple Q&A app, and appears essentially unchanged the last many years and the content is all user generated. Not a huge productivity loss to go all-remote if you’re not productive in the first place ;)