Remote has to be baked into the company culture, otherwise you'll forever be the outsider, and be the first to be let go when the company hits tough times.
Find a job that already offers remote.
Find a job that already offers remote.
You can't really fake anything with a remote company. You don't get any points for showing up. At the same time, the amount of time-wasting activities created by people who are searching for 'participation rewards' is small or none.
Or, put another way, if you wanted to be treated like an adult, find a company that hires adults.
My recent experience with a company that allowed remote work but was 95% in-office was absolutely miserable. They won’t accomodate any change in communication style, tools, and they’ll regularly have important discussions in the office without you. And you’ll never change their culture. Plus as others have said, those kind of places will never give senior positions to remote workers.
Remote work is hard to do well. We're constantly iterating on it and trying to improve it. It's not always intuitive. If your company isn't focused on it, it will not work.
People routinely work from all sorts of places do so in a manner that causes problems for others it doesn't really matter. Most managers don't care so long as they know what timezone you are in and when you can be expected to be available on chat/phone/whatever.
I've found that companies that promote work-life balance as one of their strengths are the best places to ask or test the waters.
First, your quality of life isn't really a selling point from employers point of view. To raise your odds at negotiations you should focus solely on the employers problems. The same applies when selling something - you should not focus on the benefits that you as a seller get (like money), but on the problems that get solved from the employer.
Secondly, focusing on raw productivity on alone seems to be quite a common thing on these discussions. I think it is quite limited viewpoint, since a ton of other things matter as well in addition to productivity. Communication with others, spreading your knowledge, trust issues, where to focus, etc.
Moreover, an employer is 'selling' their reputation to potential talent as well as selling their product.
Perhaps I'm not working for companies who are as ruthless as you and the other commenter, but as my previous comments alluded to, I actually have updated my CV, and left jobs for other, better jobs, mostly because there was a work-life balance improvement to be gained from the move. And yes, the work-life balance improvement in all situations was a more accepting and flexible remote-work policy. And that was after using available avenues (asking manager(s), 1-1s, etc) to see if a WFH arrangement was viable.
In all cases, I did so with tact and professionalism.
That might be getting lost in translation, because your comment seems to indicate that I just walked into my bosses office and complained that my life sucks and I need to work from home, or else. And that I should be given a handout.
In my opinion, you use what avenues are available to you to see if WFH is possible. If it's important to you, and you aren't getting met half-way, then it's time to start looking elsewhere.
When you walk out the door of the office, work should be over and done with until you return. Taking work home should be impossible.
Paid overtime helps greatly. It discourages the employer from trying to get free work out of you.
Having a non-zero commute doesn't have to mean commuting for 2 hours in urban traffic. You can pick a location where a tiny commute is possible.
As someone else commented in this thread, visibility into what you're doing is very important. Especially in the beginning, don't push your manager to just trust you. Show what you're doing.