Why Remote Work Should Change Startup Culture
medium.com
medium.com
No, remote work is not for everyone, you need to know what you are doing at both ends or it'll not match your expectations.
No, it does not (necessarily) bring the best global talent, specially not if your motivation for remote is bringing down costs.
And no, you don't need to use any of the tools listed. Remote work has been done, and well, with nothing more than a VCS and email (both conspicuously absent from her list) for decades. Add to it any kind of real-time communication client and you're in business.
It seems to me "remote" or "remote first" have become buzzwords, yet another way for companies to appear fashionable. Witness the numerous companies that advertise non-existent remote positions, or that "will consider remote for the right person" (i.e. for no one).
Remote is not the latest fad, it's something we've been doing in this industry for at least two decades. Your company is not young and hip for doing it.
The case for VCS is interesting to me because I believe we could replace a number of complex tools in the stack with proper use and style on top of that.
Literally, we could do 90% of it all with just a VCS and people paying attention to it. You know: commit early, commit often, read commit messages, understand the code, run the tests. And so on and so forth...
I've done all mixes of full-time in office, full-time in satellite office, part-time remote, full-time remote, full-time remote from up to 8 hours time zone difference for my previous company, and I have to say that even within the same company and the same employee there is a wide difference in the result of remote work. Being in the central office gave me more energy and motivation around the mission and camraderie with the team. Being remote allows more focused time and greater single-contributor output, but close collaboration is not as good (Screenhero is ultimately not the same as sitting next to someone no matter how much we wish it were).
> No, remote work is not for everyone, you need to know what you are doing at both ends or it'll not match your expectations
The article is clearly indicating what they mean is that it is not just for software engineers. There's no need to take the "for everyone" literally twisting their meaning.
> No, it does not (necessarily) bring the best global talent, specially not if your motivation for remote is bringing down costs
At least you added "necessarily" this time, but again, you're taking things literally rather than in context. The article clearly indicates this means that by allowing remote workers you open yourself to a much larger pool of talent. In my experience this is quite true and one of the fundamental reasons I've managed to convince my managers of of allowing me to hire remote people in very disparate time zones/regions. We're in Canada, and have hired engineers in Philippines, South America and Africa (even at Canadian market rates, so is not a cost cutting measure). For someone considering allowing remote work, this is an important point to make and the article articulates it well. I think it's implied you can't guarantee just with one measure to get the top talent, all they are saying is that you increase your odds significantly by allowing remote workers.
> And no, you don't need to use any of the tools listed. Remote work has been done, and well, with nothing more than a VCS and email (both conspicuously absent from her list) for decades. Add to it any kind of real-time communication client and you're in business.
Same thing again. You take a suggestion like if it were a must. Nothing in the article is a must, but sure helps a lot to onboard more people in remote work to have different tools and create a culture where using those tools is part of the work flow so people that is remote is not left out, and that's a good thing IMO.
I believe a DCVS and email are implicit and why they are maybe not on her list. She never claimed it was an exhaustive list. Also Slack is a real time communication client and its on her list.
No remote and remote first haven't become buzzwords they have become viable consideration for companies to fill roles that they aren't able fill using a local-only talent pool. This is why you are hearing more about it.
Sure there have been people that have telecommuted since dial modems that doesn't mean it was common or widely embraced or that there multiple opportunities.
You yourself have bee doing it for 10 years and obviously believe in its viability so why are so upset that another company is embracing it? Why does someone writing a post about their companies culture constitute a fad?
The whole transition has been much smoother than I could have ever imagined. My team relies on slack so I definitely feel just as connected to everyone. We do regular video calls on Google Hangouts, and even have a robot[1] that makes daily standup fun and convenient for everyone.
I feel like I am able to focus for longer periods of time being away from the office. There are no distractions to play ping pong and interruptions are fewer and farther between. I also have much more time since I'm not commuting ~2 hours a day. I have time to spend with my wife and 1-year-old and I have time to go to the gym. I feel much more well-rounded as a result and I feel like I'm a better father and husband, and a much better employee. Overall, I think my output has gone up and my productivity has increased, though I have no data to support it.
/hero @username
and start pair programming in seconds (with audio!) is a huge productivity increase.
However, my position is in peril due to management changes a few rungs up the ladder. While the previous guy in charge of Watson wanted the best people, the new one wants everyone on-site in about 10 cities. (Previously, folks were spread out across ~50 offices + remote workers like myself.)
I received a "temporary exception", and I don't honestly think they'll actually go through with it when that's up. But it's still a frustrating position to be in, and has caused me to start looking elsewhere. So far, I can't seem to find a combination of:
* Remote
* Comparable pay
* As much fun as my current job
I'm seriously contemplating just starting my own company again.
This is my first time at a big company (e.g. > 50 employees). IBM in particular is huge, almost inconceivably big.
It still surprises me how frequently I'm be asked for help/advice/whatever from people within IBM who I've never met before and who aren't on my team, or even in the Watson division. (This may be in part due to the fact that I have a more visible role than most.)
On the flip side of that, I frequently have no idea who to ask about a given issue. (Although this doesn't happen as often now as it used to.)
Nice points are that I don't have to worry about keeping up a pipeline of clients or having to be mindful of what's billable and what isn't.
It may be partially due to having more experience, but I find it a lot easier now to walk out of my office at the end of the day actually be done working. I might think about work a bit, but I rarely feel compelled to actually go and do work when I'm spending time with my family. When I was self-employed, there was always a nagging feeling that I should be working whenever I was doing anything else.
As an extension of the last point, paid vacation is awesome.
I also get to publish a lot more open source work now then I ever did before, although that obviously depends on your role.
On the down side, I'm supposed to get written permission from my manager for each open source project I want to contribute to. She always replies "yes" and usually quickly, but it still wastes time and feels silly. (I generally send the email, begin working on my change, and then wait for the "yes" before publishing it and sending a PR. That usually works out well.)
Spending company money is also tricky. Placing an order from Adafruit is a convoluted process that can take several weeks. (To be fair, there is an internal shopping site that makes ordering more common things like a monitor less painful.)
Overall, though, I'm glad I did it. My time at IBM has been good and, assuming they'll keep me, I think I'll probably stick around for a while longer.
If that sounds like your cup of tea, feel free to send me an email: nathan@nfriedly.com and maybe we can work together.
But, bear in mind that I'm still more likely to stick with IBM than start my own thing at this point. And even if I did leave, it would be at least a few months before I'd be ready to take anyone on full-time.
After I did well on all of that, I was flown up to NYC for a 'culture-fit' interview. Which I failed, apparently. As a mid-30s guy who was raised in the mid-west, I felt like I had very little in common with the 20-something urbanites with whom I was interviewing.
They didn't seem like bad people at all, and I didn't foresee any issues working with them (esp. remotely), but apparently I gave off a strong enough 'not-like-us' vibe to cause them to pass on a demonstrated technically-solid candidate (because if there truly is a shortage of good developers, this would be an incredibly silly thing to do).
In a recent batch of interviews (four opportunities local, three remote), I was put through a specific culture fit step of the interview process at all but one company, and it was part of all remote hiring processes.
Of course, lunch with the team was part of the process as well (Eating while being evaluated is never fun, and I find I don't eat much).
I don't really agree. I come from a traditional engineering background and consider myself a professional. As such, I expect to be judged on issues of professional decorum (i.e. what I would term an "asshole test"). That is part of culture, I suppose, but beyond that there should be no "fit" determination. This is especially true since this industry assumes people are going to be changing jobs every 2 - 3 years.
I'm a professional; I adapt to my environment. Sure, I like and work in some better than others, but I can be effective and productive in almost any. Trying to optimize your hires for this while simultaneously complaining about talent shortages is counterproductive, and on some level dishonest.
Yeah, if you can do your work with minimal supervision that's gravy and stuff... but if I don't enjoy talking to you that's a huge communication red flag for me. And perhaps that's a communication flaw with me not being able to flawlessly interface with all human beings - but I'd much rather be working with the people I can level with regardless of the topic.
Fortunately, most of my roles are of the "engineer" and individual contributor variety so my opinions on potential hires are often supplemental anecdotes rather than actual decisions.
And it's foolish besides. You would "enjoy" talking to me, so long as I cared to play the game you want to play. There's no reason for that to continue once I've got the job (though at this point in my career I don't need to play your as monkey).
The third rail in these discussions is that, in tech, it is very likely that I also look like you and it is very likely that I speak similarly enough to you. I get a free pass for a lot of things from that. My lack of "culture fit" is by choice, because I think tech culture is a tire fire of gross mentalities and I don't mind criticizing it. Others have an uphill slog that is not of their choice.
As a brown liberal-republican with a military background and an education in psychology I am definitely just like every other techie in the Bay Area, of course, and I should stop leveraging my background because I'm obviously part of your unethical and immoral bell curve. I guess.
I fail to see how it's my fault if you play mind games to get into my good graces. Most people adapt their persona to their situation in the first place - it's common to be a "different person" when you're with your family, your friends, and your coworkers. And given most of these positions are contractual... I guess it depends on how long you're looking for a job.
I tend to be pretty ability-driven in my decision making process and rarely dismiss a person entirely because I don't "want to have drinks". But if they're not a personable individual maybe it's not me who has to do the growing for them, eh?
Someone's ability to adapt shows tactical proficiency. Particularly in an engineering environment I would put a high premium on tactical proficiency because the objectives are typically explicit and linear.
Culture fit speaks to traits like open-mindedness, inclusion and confidence in leadership. These are less linear, but no less important.
I would like to hear more from jcadam about the culture fit judgment he experienced. Was it really that you were not like them, or was it that you are from, and fit better with a different culture?
Culture fit isn't about listening to the same music, or what you do on a Friday night. It's a less tangible, but collective agreement about purpose and objective. I am from the Midwest (Ohio), and I have worked in Manhattan and Los Angeles over a couple of decades at a couple of different companies. I am aware of a distinct difference between East and West coast culture and thinking, and likewise, Ohio culture and thinking.
None of this is meant to judge superiority of any culture over another. Simply, if you are seeking to optimize an entire organization for the best possible results in working towards your objectives, culture fit is relevant.
My opinion, hinted at in another post in this discussion, is that this optimization is a fool's errand, particularly for a larger team. If the decision is between a New York startup hiring a technically-competent Midwesterner or waiting six months to find that optimal East Coast fit, it makes no sense to choose the latter.
"'> It's valid, I believe, for the company to vet candidates for culture fit' I don't really agree..."
You go on to say it is "counterproductive" and "dishonest."
Maybe if you reduce it to a specific, binary instance ("hiring a technically-competent Midwesterner or waiting six months") you can shoehorn your point in to the conversation, but that fails to refute the validity or relevance of cultural fit.
I'm very good at passing such tests because I know how the kinds of people who think this is a good idea operate and what to feed them--by avoiding discomfort and self-introspection I think it's a lot easier to end up in a mental cul-de-sac that leads to being easily played. But knowing the game makes playing it even more gross, so I don't. (Things are better here on the East Coast than the Bay Area, but they're not good.)
Good leadership earns, deserves and requires confidence from the community that makes up the organization. I would go a step further to say great leadership earns, deserves and requires faith (to be crystal clear, non-religious faith).
The cynicism and reductive reasoning you are expressing is a good counterpoint.
Leaders have numerous tools and opportunities to shape culture positively or negatively. Thanks for showing a counterpoint to my view. Whichever perspective you choose it speaks to the relevance of culture fit.
So let's not let you dodge. How about the structural and institutionalized sexism and racism involved in "culture fit" as is actually practiced, not how you'd like to redefine it? "Culture fit is about open-mindedness and inclusion" except when somebody has some melanin to them or an accent or a couple of X chromosomes. We just going to pretend that's not a thing, now?
You seem to be taking issue with the the fact that organizations use culture fit to veil their racism, sexism, etc. I am not denying that happens and I believe that is wrong.
As I said in my previous post, my point is that, "It's a less tangible, but collective agreement about purpose and objective." It has validity, value and relevance.
Maybe it's the term or your experiences that prompted your response, but that's really not the conversation I'm having. If you want to post something about calling it something else, or have a conversation about, "when culture fit goes wrong..." I'd probably participate in that too.
"It seems to me..." does not count as evidence.
Nor do demographic reports on the composition of companies that use "culture fit," since correlation does not imply causation.
There are lots of different components to culture. There is no rigor behind it, which is in contrast to the self-described emphasis on extreme logical rigor that the industry is allegedly built on. Why is there such an emphasis on "culture fit" in the software industry?
I'm not sure what culture fit means. I have been passed over for culture fit and seen others passed over for culture fit and I have never seen it be because someone couldn't be productive with their peers. It seems, anecdotally, to just be based upon affinity, which seems stupid to me unless you're a lifestyle brand, like FitStar.
In the Army I learned culture can be taught. All of these groups who hire for culture fit seem like they want to hang out with other people like them. People who are nothing like me have been my best hires. I've indoctrinated them into our values, and only on rare occasions has that not worked out.
If culture fit isn't a "bro test" then why test at all? Why not just teach people your culture? Do companies expect people to come in off the street serendipitously sharing the same values? That smells to me like a leadership vacuum.
This requires effort. The obsession with "leanness" translates into skimping on many things; instilling a rigorous culture is one of them. It takes too long and costs too much and it's easier to just emoji-shrug.
> That smells to me like a leadership vacuum.
Oh, you noticed.
It's far easier for most young companies with ping pong tables to hire developers that like ping pong than actually endeavor to build a company culture and attempt to instill those values into their hires.
What do you mean by "indoctrinated"?
All groups of people selected for some characteristic - whether it's "works for this company" or "wants hillary elected to office" or "was persecuted historically by X" have their own reflexes that exclude "outsiders" or "anyone who is associated with X".
Often at contradictory directions to their stated intent. For example, gay people supporting a candidate who has spent their entire career opposing gay marriage, over candidates and a party that has supported gay marriage for their entire career (and back to the founding of the party.)
Culture fit (or, more like "working-style-fit") is even more important for a remote position, because the bandwidth for subtle feedback is so narrow.
But of course, I know neither you nor the startup in questions, so purely speculation -- but there are reasonable explanations that isn't that you didn't fit into a small, narrow-minded box (which, of course, is definitely also a plausible explanation).
Sure, anything done badly enough can be worse than not doing it, but that is a completely obvious and irrelevant assertion. It's still important to filter for culture fit.
And once again, most places are using "culture fit" as a way to say, "Not like me", and using it to enable discriminatory hiring practices.
Okay, would it feel more comfortable if we interviewed for "professionalism" instead of "culture fit"? Fully realizing that standards of professionalism are different for each company and team within a company, i.e. that professional standards are part of a team's culture?
> And once again, most places are using "culture fit" as a way to say, "Not like me", and using it to enable discriminatory hiring practices.
That is true sometimes, but not always.
More to the point, tightening the politically correctness standards of language around the problem does absolutely nothing to prevent discrimination--it just makes discrimination harder to identify. And in the process you're throwing out the idea that sometimes people aren't likely to get along--which is not a function of race/gender/class/etc. If you think someone is using "cultural fit" as an excuse for discrimination, the solution is to call them out for that, not to pretend that "cultural fit" doesn't describe a real phenomenon. What makes you think that a bigot can't say that someone isn't technically qualified in order to exclude them?
A perfect example of this: I said someone wasn't a cultural fit a year ago, but I was outvoted because of his technical abilities. Four months later he was fired for groping the administrative assistant, and afterward, more incidents came to light. Do you think that my workplace was more or less discriminatory because we hired someone without regard to his cultural fit?
There are many brilliant technical people who are jerks—we don't want to work with them. (And not to say that there's not a place for super-smart people who are assholes, but we try not to hire them.)
Anyone who believes that should be immediately fired. Those things come out in a few months at earliest, as does lack of professionalism or competence. Even a good judge of character needs a sample in non-contrived circumstances, which a hiring interview is not.
I'd actually like to see hard research data on this... What I have is soft data on how people are in general horrible judges of character. In that plain old days mining is often more accurate.
"You do not truly know someone until you fight (with) them."
We go into the office once a week, and i've found that on those days, just being in the office lets me overhear conversations about things that I can offer a solution to, or having a few people in the same area shooting shit often leads to a conversation about work and about a problem someone is trying to solve and often a solution is offered.
The biggest concept is that it's hard to "split" conversations while working remote. Either everyone is involved in the conversation (via phone or video meeting), or it's one-on-one. Getting the organic "handful of people in a group, and one conversation kind of breaks off to talk about something, then re-joins the group where someone else needed to leave for a call" kind of thing just doesn't happen. And that's where I find the most benefit from being in an office.
I was recently in the office for a week. I heard so many personal discussions about things, I was able to weigh in on.
I walked away realizing I really am not contributing as much as I could, not being there in person.
What works for us is "status meetings" where we all go over a bit about what we are working on for the next few days. They seem pretty useless on paper, but it allows people to chime in with "wait, will you be touching system X", or "hey i worked with that before give me a call", and it gets i'd say 70% of the benefits of hallway conversations, but it's still not perfect.
I feel like a "sidebar" system of "not quite isolated, but not conversation-dominating like talking to the whole group" kind of in-between mode in group video chat software would be a godsend, but the UX of getting it right would be really hard.
Also, for something more programmer related, having peer code-review is really helpful as well. We don't do it as much as we should, but having a few people look over your commits, and you over theirs is a great way to get some of the benefits from that "hallway conversation" while also solving some other problems.
I spent the past two years working remote, and at this point I don't think I would ever want to do it again. Something I don't think I've ever really seen mentioned about working from home is that it can be incredibly isolating and overall mentally unhealthy. The isolation, lack of separation of work and home environment (in the physical sense), and even weird hours caused me to become very depressed and unstable.
In my case, my company was still located in-town and I even had weekly lunch/beer meetings. I pushed myself to get out and socialize with my friends, co-workers, and girlfriend several times a week. I still don't quite know what it is about working in an office with other people does that wasn't being replicated, but there's something there for me.
As far as the physical environment goes, I spent enough time reading different folks strategies. I tried many different strategies as well. I tried having normal office hours and a normal (home) office. I tried just floating about the house, working wherever I felt like. I tried working from coffee shops, bars, parks, and so forth. I tried working in blocks of time, all at once, having an inverted sleep schedule. As mentioned, I even had an actual company office I could work from. Still, I came to have a certain feeling of disdain, of wanting to escape the office at the end of a day of work. The only problem was my office was my home. You can't run from that.
I will say the convenience of having a flexible schedule is amazing. Being able to run errands as needed, or just go to the beach for a couple hours on a Tuesday because "why not" is great. However I always felt a bit weird about things, because "normal" people are in an office that I'm somehow doing something weird or wrong by being out and about during non-traditional hours. And of course among your friends and family there's always a little gentle chiding about how "You don't really work/have a real job", in a semi-jealous but not actually hostile way.
Working from home can be great, and I would enjoy the flexibility to do it a day here and there as needed. What I cannot do is work from home permanently.
That being said, the "you work from home so you should be able to handle X" really gets to me. I actually have less flexibility than it sounds like you do, it was never explicitly said, but most of us work 9-ish to 5-ish monday-ish through friday-ish.
It was something that my wife and I needed to work out on our own, because she would expect me to be able to run out and pick up prescriptions during the week, or would ask me frequently to go to the store to grab something for dinner. And I'd feel like an ass for saying no, because on some level she is right, I do have the ability, and it is easier for me, but it still impacts my day a lot to interrupt my work to run to the store.
We have found a good medium now, but it was a common argument for a while.
Doctor appointments and such may be worth breaking this rule, but picking up prescriptions or even your kids from school (assuming they have a way home) are unnecessary interruptions.
It has mostly been the same for me. I've worked 3 years remote currently.. and i loathe to give it up for my next job (which i'm hoping to land in the next week or so), i firmly believe it will be good for me.
Really, the only reasons i want to work remote currently is the checklist of savings. Saving time, gas, etcetc. Mentally, i all but feel it's worse off for me. I have a harder time focusing (i don't have a dedicated, isolated office at home), i feel disconnected, the days blur together, etcetc.
The place i'm hoping to land next is going to be half(ish) remote, which seems like a nice middleground at least. I can avoid traffic on some days, but hopefully feel less isolated.
One of the biggest negatives for a remote employee, can occur if the entire company isn't remote: You're left out.
Regardless of how much code you produce, how well you communicate on slack, how attentive you are to emails, or how perfect you are at attending all the meetings... Bonds form in the office. If you're interested in forming relationships, making connections, and nurturing the social side of your career, be cautious of remote positions.
Either work for a company that is 100% remote, or, be aware that you may face a situation in which you don't feel entirely connected with the rest of your coworkers.
In my current iteration, information does not flow naturally, but rather 1:1 and in-person along restricted paths, making it much harder to work remotely. So to build up a picture of what's going on, I connect with several other teleworkers and we try to compare notes on "what have you heard about X" and "who's working on y."
If the whole team is remote or acts like it (open communications, info flowing visibly, etc.) then remote working, remote bonding, remote team-building is natural and easy. I know; I've done it for years, building high-performance teams that see each other once or twice a year.
If you're the outlier and most everyone else is local, it takes a lot more effort, and even then can be very, very hard.
Some places are just easier to work for than others.
Then again, neither should resistance to remote developers in general or the myriad of other, more bullshit things that go on in sourcing talent. Makes me wonder how self-imposed the "talent shortage" is.
We had a team of three co-located with the customer and then we arranged for everyone to work remotely one day a week, barring Monday or Friday (for appearances). Tuesday was my day. After a few successful months of that, we expanded it out to 2 days each. We would have gone to three but the contract wrapped.
But it gave us a small space to experiment and see what would work and slowly convince the customer that it would be okay.
For me, making the transition from on-site to remote work was difficult. Like any job skill, it's something I had to be able to demonstrate proficiency and/or history with before I could land full-time, remote employment exactly where I wanted.
There are pros and cons to remote. It depends on your team and their culture. Some teams need a whiteboard and planning sessions. Others can just do a screen share and work on a flow chart together. If your team and culture is capable of remote it's a really nice perk for employees.
The other thing I hear about is lack of social contact working remote. This was an issue for me before I developed some outside hobbies. But the remote work spawned the hobbies, because I had more time. Where as working on site I don't have any time for hobbies due to travel and preparation for the day. I really haven't maintained ties with my prior co workers. The one I still do meet frequently we worked together on a primarily remote job, 3 days a week. So you can still maintain good social contact over the days.
The only real reason I see for not remote is management and culture issues. If your superiors can derive your progress from a dash board, commits, tickets, etc. Then it's feasible. Where as if the only way to determine progress is one one one meetings with a white board, then remote won't work. This also speaks to the trust of the employees.
I also find I get so much more done at home. This goes back to the culture. In person offices are from what I've seen largely instant gratification. I.E. coming over knocking on your desk asking a question, or pulling you in for a meeting. This provides so many distractions pulling you away from work. Remote would be an email or chat message. If it was extremely urgent a phone call. It was almost asynchronous. As we were planning out software we would just amend design notes and update the flow diagram in jira.
Lastly is the peace of mind of comfort. One of the common things I did when working remote was sitting in a gazebo at my nearby park. I tethered off my phone for the day, and just listened to nature. Being camped up in an office staring at walls all day is not ideal. Getting out being able to walk around and clear your head can make the day so much easier.
I really want to get back to fully remote.
I'm curious whether you find hipchat / slack to actually be less intrusive. In my experience, working from home can result in protracted text conversations causing me to stay less focused for longer periods of time. In the office, I can usually stop, take off the headphones, resolve their problem, refill my coffee and then get back to work in less time.
On a prior role when we had discussions exceed the HipChat/Slack medium we did a quick google hangout/skype session. Doing face to face, and with a screen share. I can't really think of a time where we didn't get something resolved in under an hour, more likely I would say under 30 minutes.
Face to face can resolve slightly quicker, but with the amount of interruptions it provides. I'll take the bit of extra time resolving something via HipChat/Slack -> Video conference for more uninterrupted work time.
I literally give a 50% discount when I work remotely because I believe that in general I am about twice as valuable to my customers when I work on site.
I enjoy remote work, but I am honest with myself that physical presence when working with a team is more productive. That said, I save a lot of money working from home so my smaller consulting rate for remote work is viable.
Anyway, I enjoy my consulting business and don't plan on making any changes.
Pros:
a) I can hire experienced people from anywhere in India
b) My employees do not waste time in traffic.
c) I have fewer personality conflicts to deal with ... but this could just be a side effect of being really small (~10 employees)
d) Being in the services business with all my clients abroad, my employees develop better remote working skills
e) I save on office rent
Cons:
a) It is hard to hire junior people to fit into a remote-only team in India. The 0-3 year experience crowd in India prefer being part a group and have a collegiate culture. I do not blame them - I've seen the 'in office/onsite' culture work well for them. But it hurts me as a services business because I get better margins on more junior folk.
b) Many senior people do not want to join my company - it doesn't 'feel' busy, they would like to have better visibility into their direct reports, etc. This wasted so much time during the phone screens that I have had to list 'we are a distributed team' as a con on our careers page.
c) The lack of office space is a major downer for a lot of people who would like to bring their relatives and show off a fancy office with dressed up colleagues.
d) I have heard these genuine complaints often - "we do not really know our colleagues", "we do not get together often enough", etc. I sometimes worry that we may not end up being very cohesive.
e) Remote work in India is interpreted by some candidates as 'easy work'. And it is interpreted by many people in their social circle to mean 'no work'. E.g.: "I have this errand in the middle of a weekday. Come with me. You work from home anyway."
We are taught early in our careers to show up early, leave late and look as if you are working hard. However, when it comes to remote work the look of working hard cannot be achieved so easily -- so instead of appearances you must focus on results above all else.
This mental shift takes time to achieve and is more easily said than done.
There are a variety of remote work arrangements: 1) local employees who have employers with liberal work-from-home policies (they're "remote" when they don't commute in), 2) employees who are always remote, but still in-state (located in the same state as the employer), 3) employees who are always remote but still domestic (located in the US), 4) employees who are always remote and located internationally.
The first two kinds of remote employee don't incur (much) additional cost to the employer. The third kind can incur non-trivial additional costs in the management of payroll (state income taxes, labor/unemployment fund requirements, etc.), especially if done at any scale. Larger companies can do this because they are already established in multiple states, but smaller ones tend to impose restrictions on where remote workers can live and even whether they're permitted to move to a new state and still remain employed. The last kind is a whole other ball of wax--it has the same tax and payroll management problems of the third kind, but additional complexity I'm sure.
Then there is the additional overhead of managing remote teams. Having experienced being an "individual contributor" and coordinating with project management to manage remote teams I can assure you this is not a trivial thing and involves its own costs.
So all these factors influence how much lower the salaries have to dip before they are worth it. Personally, I doubt remote work will impact salaries in this area much anytime soon.
The notion of working remotely forces us to rethink how we measure productivity and I feel the most push back comes from people who just realized they have little or nothing to contribute in this new environment and become fearful for their position.
To me, it's completely in line with the new economy where just having one skill is not enough anymore. If you want to be good at something, you need to constantly be entering new areas in order to bring enough value for companies to provide you a paycheck. For a very long time, just showing up to your job was good enough and I think it's a great thing this mentality has started to shift.
It's actually about capability, not actual number if clients; a contractor does not suddenly become an employee just because it doesn't have a second client at the moment. That said, you are right that legally hiring contractors is not nearly as easy as some people think it is.
Conversely however, a contractor that has for some significant time, since leaving their previous employment only had one client (which is the parent scenario) is unlikely to be viewed by US labor law as not an employee.
There are other conditions besides this one: for example the contractor gets to set their own schedule and does not take detailed instructions on their tasks from the client. Again, hard to square this with the idea that you can just wave a wand and make what would have been an employee a contractor.
First, let me qualify: I love my current job, and I don't want to leave it. I have no immediate plans to send my resume around to companies looking for remote employees. And when I do decide to go remote, I'll attempt to convince my boss to let me be a remote employee of this company before I start looking elsewhere (this is feasible: we have other remote employees, including technical ones, I have VPN access, and I do 99% of my work over ssh to servers located in a datacenter somewhere).
As for why this is coming up, the short version is that I'm transgender, I'm a Texan, and the Texas state legislature has been promising up and down that next spring they're going to ram through a transphobic bathroom bill. If they make good on that promise, I will have no choice but to either leave the state or kill myself, and I want to live. So I'll likely end up having to find work elsewhere next spring, unless I can convince my employer to let me go remote here.
I've lived in my hometown my entire life. I'm not sure where I want to move yet, and I'm not looking forward to travelling for interviews. In order to interview for a non-remote job in another state, I'll have to burn every ounce of PTO I have, plus I'd have to fly in order to interview, which is something I'd rather avoid because the TSA is notoriously hostile to trans people (they've been known to detain, abuse, and otherwise treat as criminals passengers who have both breasts and a penis, as their scanners flag us). I'd also be in a position of not really be able to choose where I move to. I have limited PTO and I'd have a pressing need to get out of the state ASAP. I can't afford to travel somewhere for an interview and then turn down an offer if I get one. So my only option will be to apply at as many companies in as many cities as I can (limited to cities in blue states, because burn me once...) and then take the first offer I get regardless of where it is.
But all that changes if I seek remote work instead. First off, interviewing will be less painful: I might be able to do phone interviews at lunch to avoid burning PTO, and even if I did have to take some time off, it might just be an hour or two in the morning instead of having to burn an entire day. Second, if I seek remote work, I can secure a job that won't require I stay in Texas first and then figure out where I want to move to. Hell, if my remote job pays enough to afford large amounts of travel and lodging costs, I could even try out different cities. I could take my laptop, spend a week in one city, and work out of my hotel room. A week or two later, I could repeat the process with a different city, and so on until I make a decision. Hell, aside from trying out different candidate cities, I could also use it as an excuse to visit my relatives who are scattered all over the country.