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Ask HN: What is your strongest argument against remote work?

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Re: Ask HN: What is your strongest argument against remote work?

#71

Post by minasss »

twunde wrote: post #2

The strongest argument against remote work (generally speaking, not specific to the current coronavirus) is that a company is not disciplined enough to communicate well, especially across teams. This may be the case if a significant number of business decisions are done in side conversations. You probably need some tooling such as a chat app, video conferencing software etc and a process where important business deci…

> a company is not disciplined enough to communicate well, especially across teams. This may be the case if a significant number of business decisions are done in side conversations

this is a very very good point! but I don't think that being remote or not make this communication problem worse or not.

Re: Ask HN: What is your strongest argument against remote work?

#72

Post by minasss »

youeseh wrote: post #37
rbritton wrote: post #24

Hiring is more difficult. It's not that you can't find applicants, but the people capable of performing without direct supervision is (mostly) a subset of those capable of performing in an office. It can be difficult to identify those who will actually perform well in that environment. It takes some degree of maturity and responsibility to provide value as a remote worker because there's always that temptation to do…

The other side of this is that managers need to be more mature too. There's a fairly significant difference between communicating asynchronously. If you can figure it out, it'll actually increase the company's overall productivity because it'll reduce interruptions. A great way to approach this is to build trust incrementally. Small projects where responsibility is given to individuals to own work end to end with rev…

> A great way to approach this is to build trust incrementally. Small projects where responsibility is given to individuals to own work end to end with reviews and feedback. After a few iterations, everyone will get used to it.

Thank you very much for providing a useful practical advice!

Re: Ask HN: What is your strongest argument against remote work?

#73

Post by Ididntdothis »

minasss wrote: post #70
Ididntdothis wrote: post #48

Number one is: You need to be cut out for it. You need to be self sufficient and be OK with working alone. Not many people can handle that and will want to go back to the office. I love remote work and get really stressed in an office (especially open and cubes) but I feel people like me are a minority.

Thank you for your points! > You need to be cut out for it. You need to be self sufficient Instead of saying "People are not cut to it" why cannot we say "People have not enough experience with it"? Even working in a classic office space requires some experience, trial and error. > and be OK with working alone. well, there are co-working spaces, working hubs etc

There certainly is a level of experience needed but some people are just more social than others. I know several people who started working remotely and hated it after a while. I believe there are a lot of people who would do themselves a disfavor if they started working remotely because it goes against their own needs. For others it's perfect. It's good to know where you fall on the spectrum.

Re: Ask HN: What is your strongest argument against remote work?

#74

Post by Ididntdothis »

minasss wrote: post #65
cdiamand wrote: post #3

I work from home and am a big advocate of doing so. One thing I find difficult in remote teams is the ability to ask a coworker a question quickly. There can be a fair amount of lag time over messenger and this occasionally blocks the completion of work.

> One thing I find difficult in remote teams is the ability to ask a coworker a question quickly. Why is it so important that your colleague HAVE to respond quickly? Have you ever considered that your colleague may need some time alone to finish her own task before she can answer your super important question? (sorry for the mood of my answer but it is so bad on purpose :) )

I am just reading your other comments and I am getting the impression that you don't want honest feedback but just confirmation that remote work is good.

Re: Ask HN: What is your strongest argument against remote work?

#75

Post by LyndsySimon »

Natsu wrote: post #40
twunde wrote: post #2

The strongest argument against remote work (generally speaking, not specific to the current coronavirus) is that a company is not disciplined enough to communicate well, especially across teams. This may be the case if a significant number of business decisions are done in side conversations. You probably need some tooling such as a chat app, video conferencing software etc and a process where important business deci…

> You can't move boxes remotely. You just made me envision a robot warehouse where humans drive the forklifts remotely to move items around.

... while simultaneously building a training dataset for the AI that will replace them.

Re: Ask HN: What is your strongest argument against remote work?

#76

Post by LyndsySimon »

minasss wrote: post #70
Ididntdothis wrote: post #48

Number one is: You need to be cut out for it. You need to be self sufficient and be OK with working alone. Not many people can handle that and will want to go back to the office. I love remote work and get really stressed in an office (especially open and cubes) but I feel people like me are a minority.

Thank you for your points! > You need to be cut out for it. You need to be self sufficient Instead of saying "People are not cut to it" why cannot we say "People have not enough experience with it"? Even working in a classic office space requires some experience, trial and error. > and be OK with working alone. well, there are co-working spaces, working hubs etc

> Instead of saying "People are not cut to it" why cannot we say "People have not enough experience with it"?

I've been working exclusively remotely for around five years now.

Certainly there are skills that can be acquired and improved that will help you succeed, but I believe that there is also a significant element of "natural aptitude". Some people need the personal interaction of an office environment more than others to feel fulfilled. If they need that and don't get it, no amount of training or experience is going to change that.

Re: Ask HN: What is your strongest argument against remote work?

#77

Post by notacoward »

I've been full time remote for several years. What I've found is that it can ever so slightly erode some people's ability to communicate clearly with each other, or be sure that they have. This leads to meetings that go on longer as people feel a need to restate and reconfirm, code reviews that go on a bit longer, some duplicated effort as people look over each others' shoulder to make sure they "got the message", and so on. Nothing major, but it kind of builds up. A little small talk can go a long way toward rebuilding that confidence, and it's harder to do when latency and VC annoyances are in the way. I've seen this play out many times even on long-term fully-remote teams BTW. Getting together at conferences or "summits" is often the glue holding them together.

I know that's still not a strong argument against remote work. It's pretty weak, but it's the best I can do. Overall, I think remote work is at least as good as in-person work for many people.

Re: Ask HN: What is your strongest argument against remote work?

#78

Post by twunde »

minasss wrote: post #71
twunde wrote: post #2

The strongest argument against remote work (generally speaking, not specific to the current coronavirus) is that a company is not disciplined enough to communicate well, especially across teams. This may be the case if a significant number of business decisions are done in side conversations. You probably need some tooling such as a chat app, video conferencing software etc and a process where important business deci…

> a company is not disciplined enough to communicate well, especially across teams. This may be the case if a significant number of business decisions are done in side conversations this is a very very good point! but I don't think that being remote or not make this communication problem worse or not.

It typically does. Most people are used to communicating in-person, often by chatting in casual interactions. Once you go remote, especially on a distributed team, individuals who are used to chatting in-person often don't have the discipline to send messages out to every member of a team. They typically also don't do multiple notifications (for example my company cross-posts announcements in both Slack and via email).

Re: Ask HN: What is your strongest argument against remote work?

#79

Post by octorian »

minasss wrote: post #63
octorian wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> i.e. the conversations between other colleagues that you overhear, as well as the 'waterfountain' chat. Never underestimate the value of these conversations. Often, this simple ability to "overhear" others is EXACTLY how you avoid being left out of the loop and have some clue as to what's going on.

this is a real issue even with in office presence; not everyone is in the loop and the solution, in my opinion, is not to keep everyone in the same room but to spread information in the company

But the people in charge are often oblivious to this situation, because it feels to them like everyone is in the loop. Mostly because "the loop" has been happening for a long time as a side-effect of people overhearing conversations.

Of course this problem also manifests when a company grows to the point where no one sits within earshot anymore.

Re: Ask HN: What is your strongest argument against remote work?

#80

Post by dionidium »

Some people are just as productive at home as in the office. I'm a remote worker and I'd put myself in this camp. But some people self-report a decrease in productivity and I'm inclined to take them seriously. There are workers who aren't shy about saying, "I get less done at home" (e.g. [0]).

I recommend believing them.

[0] https://twitter.com/MarketUrbanism/status/125374860767884492...

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