Remote First at Quora

> Working from home isolates you. There is no way around this. You lose the one huge opportunity in adult life for making new relationships - and that's at work, in the office.

It may be that way for some people, but it doesn't have to be that way. I've been working remotely full time for a bit over 10 years and I have not felt this at all. For people who don't have a healthy community around them, what you say would be true. But the solution is not to force people to go to on-site work, it's to have healthy communities. Work should be a way for people to make a living, and sure, can provide social opportunities, but it should never be your main source of relationships. Most people already depend on their employer for income, making them depend on it for friends too seems terrible to me.

> 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. If personal contact wasn't important, we could raise our kids remotely.

Not true at all in my experience, and I'm on my third full time remote work. I've always had great team bonding, even with people I have never met in person. I maintain a very good relationship (i.e., I speak very often) with former colleagues. I don't think the comparison with raising kids is valid. You can't compare successfully collaborating with other adults to achieve a common goal with raising your children.

> I have some friend who have been working at a company who went remote-first and after 5 years they do not feel identified with the company anymore. It's just a job. You could work for someone else and you wouldn't even notice.

I'm not sure why this is a problem though? It is just a job. If you identify yourself with the company and think it's more than just a job, you'll be in for a nasty surprise. I get money in exchange for my dedication, to the best of my abilities, to do some tasks. I'm not the company, and the company isn't me. As I said before, I do have great relationships with my colleagues. This is independent. In fact, both having a great relationship with colleagues and knowing that "it's just a job" is what has helped me extend my support network in a way that I always have a few doors to knock on should I need a hand, and I have my door always available and have given a hand to others when needed.

> Also, working from home is only as convenient as your life situation allows it. Have kids? Bad luck. Live in the city because you enjoy city life? Sorry you have to convert you bedroom into your office during the day because you can't afford to have an additional room. 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.

Your first sentence is exactly as it is. The rest of the paragraph directly contradicts it though. Have kids? It's great! I have 2, and I would not trade being around them as they grow up for any amount of money in the world. My oldest is 14 and as I said, I've been working remotely full time for a bit over 10, so I know what I'm talking about. In my specific case, working from home has been a blessing that has let me be there for them every single time except the very few moments in which I had face to face meetings in some other country.

I also live in the city, and I've never had to convert my bedroom into an office. After moving from a house (where I had a dedicated office) to an apartment, my office is now in the living room, but that doesn't bother me at all.

The last sentence is strictly true too actually, if you're a people's person, you surely won't enjoy working remotely. Let me tell you something though: if you're an introvert who plays very nice in teams but would rather not be around people (except for family or close friends) all day, working in an office has a very high host that gets visible in the medium term.

So please, let us just stop assuming we're all the same. Some people love working in an office surrounded by other people, others don't. If anything, I hope COVID perhaps is showing the extroverts and super social how bad it can feel to be forced to work in an environment that doesn't suite you, so that, once people can go back to "normal", they try to make arrangements that take every individual into consideration.

Not for me, I was very lucky to make the jump a long time ago, but for anybody else who may be like me (and I know I'm not alone) and must surely be enjoying this period of not having to go to an office.

Seriously, I've been working with the US west coast for most t of the last decade (i'm in Europe) and its reall realluy hard because of timezones.

How long are we talking? Modulo a short stint, I've been remote for over a decade now and don't see any of these problems.

The mistake a lot of "anti-remote" folks are making right now is to mistake good, well-planned remote work with whatever their employer managed to put in place over a couple of days back in March. They are not the same.

We've been using Discord to simulate an office environment, both from the perspectives of talking to people without scheduling a meeting, and from gathering as a group for discussions as needed. Hanging out in Discord is entirely optional. We use Slack to notify people if we need to talk to them, kind of like a shoulder tap in real life if you need to ask somebody a question at their desk.

This has been working pretty well for us. I especially like Discord's Push to Talk feature using a keyboard shortcut.

On one hand, I think it's great that employers and employees are both seeing the benefits of being remote. Less time spent commuting, etc.

On the other hand, it's too bad it's happening to parents at the same time they are having to figure out how to both WFH and parent.

It's not always this crazy, trust me.