Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Remote Only

remoteonly.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 374 posts

Re: Remote Only

#71

Post by [deleted] »

eckza wrote: post #69
ocdtrekkie wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The corollary here is that if nobody knows when you're working, people will always expect you to work. That whole work/life balance thing depends on having clearly denoted "working time" and "not working time".

Full-time remote worker. We solve work-life and burnout problems at my organization by having set hours and hard stops at the end of the day. What you lose in having a fairly rigid schedule, you more than gain back by not having to carry around that “always on” feeling.

[deleted]

Re: Remote Only

#72

Post by eckza »

Barbie_GitLab wrote: post #58

When joining any company, I recommend understanding the values, culture, and work environment. It is not one size fits all. You should ensure that you would enjoy working with the people, values, and environment you are joining. Remote work may not be for everyone, and doesn't need to be, however it can be wonderful! It has been life-changing for me and my family. My son's math scores have gone up 30% since joining G…

I just started working remotely, after a year plus of a three-hour commute.

My quality-of-life improvements have been very similar to yours. I cannot believe how much happier I am now, on a daily basis.

I have written some of the best code of my life while sitting on a picnic table in a park. I see my friends more. I see my family more. I have more energy to put into my work, which results in better work satisfaction.

I pinch myself every day.

Re: Remote Only

#73

Post by shkkmo »

rwbcxrz wrote: post #66

> Fast internet everywhere - 100Mb/s+ cable, 5GHz Wifi, 4G cellular I used to say that. Now I live in a rural area, and the fastest speed that's even available is 5Mbps (and the uptime isn't great). My house also has zero cell service from any provider. It's also a bit presumptive that everyone can afford a 100Mbps connection. The last place I lived, it was like $120/month for 100Mbps. Not everybody can afford that.…

It may not fit your use case, but I found Speedify to be a great boon when dealing with working remotely over crappy wifi with 3g cellular. It's a VPN type app than can split your packets between two connections (e.g WiFi and my phone tethered via Bluetooth) for increased bandwidth or can send all packets over both connections to assist with lost packets or inconsistent latency.

Re: Remote Only

#74

Post by aspaceman »

dopamean wrote: post #51

This "manifesto" really clarified for me something that I've often noticed about people who strongly believe in remote working but had trouble putting to words. For a lot of people remote work is less about the actual remote aspect of it and more about the kind of relationship the employee has with their employer. It is a relationship where I think the employee is more empowered and freer to find a work life balance…

Precisely. And I think this is why many employers are also highly hesitant about remote work (at times). They don't necessarily want to give their employees that much power, but they lack the courage to say that directly. And instead you hear the criticism that it's less productive.

Re: Remote Only

#75

Post by relaunched »

The details notwithstanding; I work for a F50 and my wife works for Gitlab. I was a tad bit skeptical at first (and I'm the one that encouraged her to apply). But watching her go through it, remote only is quickly becoming much more appealing - at least the way Gitlab does it.

Re: Remote Only

#76

Post by binora »

what do you look for in a candidate when hiring for a remote position ? I am 3 years experienced dev and cant even get my resume filtered for first round. I do have 3 months of remote Gsoc experience if that counts. But i am curious, is there some particular factor that gives an edge over other candidates ?

Re: Remote Only

#77

Post by alter_eco123 »

allday wrote: post #18

> Save on compensation due to hiring in lower cost regions Pay people what they're worth regardless of where they live. If you have a developer in Nigeria or Ukraine or Vietnam that is as equally capable as a developer in the Bay Area, they should be paid the same. Doing otherwise, at best, perpetuates Western hegemony, and at worst is simply racism.

> Pay people what they're worth regardless of where they live.

Note that people are fine with getting a lower salary in exchange for being able to work remotely.

You could turn it around and say remote employees are "paying their employer what working remotely is worth".

Re: Remote Only

#78

Post by BallinBige »

buvanshak wrote: post #60
bradford wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not the parent poster, but I think the document glossed over the biggest perceived disadvantage: Despite technological advances, I still believe that face-to-face communication is the most efficient way to transfer information and come to conclusions on difficult decisions. It's also the least susceptible to misinterpretation.

> I still believe that face-to-face communication is the most efficient way to transfer information ... Why do people think this. For one thing, and I think it is most important, face to face communication does not give either parties time to think. It ends up with awkward, unproductive pauses. Face to face communication is great for small talk, chit chat and rumors. Not for communication backed by actual thought...

"Face to face communication is great for small talk, chit chat and rumors. Not for communication backed by actual thought..."

wat.

Re: Remote Only

#80

Post by Azeralthefallen »

cgb223 wrote: post #8
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…

Can you expand on the disadvantages then? If you were to write that list, what would it look like?

I worked for a company that was mostly a remote workplace for almost a year, and there were a lot of problems i found while trying to manage a team.

Time zones, were a huge issue and pain point when trying to get a large number of people on the same page. I found my self often having to give the same meeting twice, which put more pressure on me. Even worse was when i would have to go over points only for someone who wasn't available for the first meeting, to raise issues that we didn't notice, and so on.

After 6 months the team basically felt like it dissolved into the European team, and the North American Team. With me trying to ferry information from one team to another.

So many times regardless of how amazing the latest tools we tried were, it still pales in comparison to a whiteboard. The company bought me a high end digital whiteboard, that allowed me to pass control to other people, it was a buggy POS. On top of that since i was the only one unfortunately with the white board, it meant i was the one who was always doing the drawing and trying to extrapolate a diagram from what someone says.

Sometimes some team members would spend hours drawing up a digital mock up of what they were going to push for only for it to become completely useless within a very short time.

I also found some people no matter how hard i tried, some people seemed to interpret working remote meant, they got to work in their own silo, and would ignore 99% of everything going on around them. This lead to numerous conflicts, and other issues.

Also one other thing i found, was that 1 on 1's became super impersonal, and frankly felt extremely uncomfortable.

Post reply on HN