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Comment by swerner | Hacker News Reader

I have worked remotely for the better part of the last 15 years. I am now looking for a new job and am applying almost exclusively to positions that are several 100km away, if not on a different continent. The reason: the potential employer already understands that this will be a remote position. Any employer closer than 150km is just too likely to ask for "can't you just come in", and anyone 10 minutes from here will most likely not agree to remote work at all.

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Allowing remote work is a good signal for process quality too. Distributed teams don't share code on thumb drives or assign undocumented tasks at the water cooler.

Or have singular people in the company with undocumented, critical knowledge.

PS. "Distributed teams" isn't the same as "working remotely", although many things that make the latter work apply to the former too.

Not always true, my last job had one director who worked 100% remote. She had multiple years of process knowledge she chose to share only when specifically needed to answer a question in a meeting or email. Much of this was critical information like "last year we published this report this way, but we promised to change the format this year." Even better, "we agreed not to change for 3 years but we're doing a ground-up rebuild in 2018."

A significant subset of my job for a year and a half was figuring out how to maximize the number of answers I could get from her, and recording them in the team wiki.

Not 100% true

I don't understand what part you're disagreeing with. If anything, you're very strongly reinforcing my point.

Sorry, apparently I didn't include the critical fact that she worked 100% remote.

Updated my original comment.

> I am now looking for a new job and am applying almost exclusively to positions that are several 100km away, if not on a different continent. The reason: the potential employer already understands that this will be a remote position.

It can also mean that the potential empolyer will expect you to relocate.

And that is a sure 'no' from my side. I have moved for a job once, I will not make that mistake again.

What was your experience?

It is a sad life when you end up in a town where the only social connection you have is your work. When all your friends and family are hours away, odds are you'll end up spending your evenings and weekends on the couch, either working too much or watching movies.

To offer an alternative viewpoint, I moved away to a place where I knew nobody and had no existing connections. There's nothing wrong with having social connections with your work colleagues (you spent all day with people in school/university only to want to spend more time with the outside those situations, why is the workplace any different?), and there's plenty of other ways to meet people. meetup.com, sports clubs, pub quizzes, coffee shops, gym. Sure, it's not as simple as just picking up where you left off with friends before you moved, but it's possible, and can be rewarding!

That kind of dropping into a new environment was fun in my 20s when I went to university. Now I'm entering my 40s, and with a wife and family it's a very different situation.

> with a wife and family it's a very different situation.

Absolutely, and you're right. It's one thing to make the break for yourself, but a totally different thing to enforce that on someone else.

I have minimized my number of connections wheee I live now for this reason. I've always wanted out.

that's a good idea.

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