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Remote Only

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231–240 of 374 posts

Re: Remote Only

#231

Post by AYBABTME »

nvarsj wrote: post #207

My somewhat reductive conclusion about remote work is that it boils down to the ability to be an effective writer. If you're not good at written communication, or you work with people who are not good at it, remote work will be miserable. People who are not highly fluent in the company's written language or those with some level of dyslexia will struggle. Also some people get frustrated with the more analytic approac…

People say that, yet in my experience it's not actually true. We just need to communicate enough to coordinate. I'm not a great communicator, I don't think most people at my work are great communicators, yet we work just fine as a remote company. I feel people exaggerate this belief.

Regular chatter in public chat channels seems sufficient. What really seems to matter is work ethics.

Re: Remote Only

#233

Post by ScarZy »

nvarsj wrote: post #207

My somewhat reductive conclusion about remote work is that it boils down to the ability to be an effective writer. If you're not good at written communication, or you work with people who are not good at it, remote work will be miserable. People who are not highly fluent in the company's written language or those with some level of dyslexia will struggle. Also some people get frustrated with the more analytic approac…

This is the main reason I want to try and learn Emacs, OrgMode, and Babel. The stuff that Howard Abrahams discusses on the below video is something I think would be highly successful in a remote environment. Documenting your workflow as you go, including commands and output, then emailing it to your team that day or uploading it to a document store/gitbook:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dljNabciEGg

Re: Remote Only

#234

Post by mathgeek »

jv22222 wrote: post #134
hartator wrote: post #6

> Disadvantages > Scares investors - Scares some partners - Scares some customers - Scares some potential employees, mostly senior non-technical hires - Onboarding is harder, first month feels lonely We do a full remote policy at SerpApi.com, however I found this disadvantages list a bit dishonest, they are more way numerous and important, the most obvious are missing real human contacts (and it doesn't get easier wi…

> missing real human contacts For me, personally, working from home has amplified the good parts of working with people and human contact and removed the bad parts. When we do meet in person (4-5 times a year) we have a blast. When we communicate via video the communication is a lot of fun and very purposeful at the same time. Sometimes it feels like I speak to remote co-workers by video more than family and people i…

I agree here. The extra time I get to spend with my young kids, my wife, and my friends instead of commuting is the polar opposite of a drawback with regards to human contact.

Re: Remote Only

#235

Post by devit »

SigmundA wrote: post #216

Doesn't seem to be much discussion about the environmental impact of remote work. Lately I have been feeling how ridiculous it is for me to drive everyday to a office and sit at a computer then drive home. So inefficient from an energy usage perspective. I see so many jobs that could easily be remote if people could deal with the issues outlined here. Imagine the difference in traffic and office space if every job th…

Cities are essential for social life since an abundance of social events, potential friends and sexual partners means that you'll be able to choose ones that you like more (or even have some as opposed to none).

The effect of remote work is instead that it no longer matters as much in which city you live, as long as it is large enough.

Re: Remote Only

#236

Post by lagadu »

maccard wrote: post #172
nemothekid wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't mean to be dismissive, but "that seems like a personal problem." This is incredibly dismissive. Almost all the "advantages for employees" are personal. How is "No commuting time or stress" not a personal benefit? The advantages for remote work are almost entirely being sold that they are better for people . If someone has a personal problem with an aspect of it, then it should be taken seriously. Imagine if…

> How is "No commuting time or stress" not a personal benefit? My commute is a 20 minute walk through a very nice park, and my partner walks the same route in the morning. It’s one of my favourite parts of the day, and it would be a hard push to get me to give that up right now.

If you two didn't have that commute you'd be free to do it whenever you felt like, not forced to twice a day at mostly-fixed times.

Re: Remote Only

#237

Post by ptero »

IMO first and foremost remote teams require good management (it helps all teams, but in remote teams it is critical): someone who will enable remote work, weed out people who spend most of their time non-productively and translate his management demands into requests that fit the workflow and schedule of his remote team.

This is a rare (and often underappreciated) skill. But until more people have it, remote work will be limited (statistically) to non-critical components and small parts of teams. My 2c.

Re: Remote Only

#238

Post by jgh »

SigmundA wrote: post #216

Doesn't seem to be much discussion about the environmental impact of remote work. Lately I have been feeling how ridiculous it is for me to drive everyday to a office and sit at a computer then drive home. So inefficient from an energy usage perspective. I see so many jobs that could easily be remote if people could deal with the issues outlined here. Imagine the difference in traffic and office space if every job th…

I did some reading on the impact of remote work on the environment last year, unfortunately it seems I may have been too aggressive with my bookmark pruning and can no longer find the material I managed to dig up. Between just the pure numbers of cars being removed from the road and the improved efficiency of those that remain (less stop & go traffic, etc), the impact seems to be fairly substantial.

Plus then companies can have smaller offices, saving money and energy. People save themselves an hour or two every day by avoiding the commute. You have to wonder how much the butts-in-seats philosophy is actually costing the world.

Re: Remote Only

#239

Post by lagadu »

danpalmer wrote: post #180
jimejim wrote: post #123

I've worked mostly remote for over 20 years, both as an engineer and a business owner. I wouldn't give it up for the world. However, simple fact: not all people are cut out for it. Some perfectly fine engineers are better in an office environment with other people. Sometimes an office environment is LESS distracting for those people, not more. It also depends on where they are in life: A person with toddlers is going…

I completely agree with this. Probably due to being much earlier in my career, I haven't yet learnt how to separate my personal life from my work life well. I use the office and my commute to form a boundary, which works very well so I have a good work life balance, but as soon as I work from home I either get much less done, or I get much more done and have no free time. I hope to improve at this, in 10 years time (…

I've been working remotely for the past half year (same job and same place, I just started doing it remotely) and I was a little afraid of that: mixing my personal and professional time.

For me at least it turns out that the fear was completely unfounded, before I always got in at roughly the same time and always left at the same time, leaving the laptop and phone on the office. Now while technically the laptop and phone are always accessible I've found that I've no problem in keeping my working time within a very strict schedule, normally I start at ~8.00 and usually at 16.00 almost exactly I'm logging out, plus the phone goes automatically into do not disturb mode until the following morning, effectively recreating my office working routine. Your mileage may vary of course but I was surprised at how easy it was to completely separate my activities and preventing them blending together.

Re: Remote Only

#240

Post by pmlnr »

SigmundA wrote: post #216

Doesn't seem to be much discussion about the environmental impact of remote work. Lately I have been feeling how ridiculous it is for me to drive everyday to a office and sit at a computer then drive home. So inefficient from an energy usage perspective. I see so many jobs that could easily be remote if people could deal with the issues outlined here. Imagine the difference in traffic and office space if every job th…

I've been saying this for a decade. Not many things have changed since :(
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