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.

Completely false. I now have people in New York, Michigan, and Pennsylvania that I've built good friendships with in my all-remote company. It's actually opened up routes to friendships I didn't think were possible. I would also argue that it's actually better when I'm not just locked into making friends at work, there's more incentive to make friends outside of work too now which is great for pushing me out of my comfort zone.

> 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.

Same as above. We have "happy hour" sessions at my current job where we all socialize and bring a beer to chat over Zoom. Outside of that, we bs and socialize daily in various meetings or across Slack. Again this all depends on you and your team members. If you want it to happen, make it happen.

> 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 don't know about you, but for me an office job also ends up being "just a job". Personally I couldn't care less about "feeling identified with the company". I have zero loyalty to my employers and my friendships are not restricted to arbitrary boundaries defined by where I work.

> 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.

Haha this is rich. I've had to deal with the opposite problem for years where the vast majority of employers are office-only and my family needs require a remote setup. I had to make arrangements with my boss to work remotely and constantly live in anxiety fearing anytime the company had a re-org and I got a new boss, the arrangement would end and fuck up my life (and it did). Over the years I've had to limit my search to remote only employers to avoid that scenario. You can do the same and seek out office-only employers.

> It is important and it has tons of benefits for the team, as opposed to the benefits for the individuals.

Yeah that's great except the benefits for the team have slanted in favor of the team for many years, neglecting benefits for the individuals. There's nothing wrong with balancing out the best of both worlds. Going back to all the points I touched on, you and your team make what you want of it.

In fact its more the problem in forming a team than the company

More likely your having to work by converting a kitchen table (wrong height) or your bed room if say you live in a 1 bed flat.

Its even worse if your in a couple or a flat share where several people are competing for space and wifi

why can't you rely on the existing org chart?

You have a 5-10 person team, and their manager just has to keep that team accountable. The fact that the company has 1000 more teams does not substantially change the nature of checking that every person in the team delivers.

In fact, this is not even different in office work! Either you rely on a punch-in the-employee-is-time model or you will still have to evaluate a person's commitment and competency based on their output.

I mean, sure, maybe employee X has hired a sub-contractor which works in their place while they go to the beach, but as long as work gets done, does it matter?