Hacker News Reader

I think the main issue is that if the company is not 100% committed to remote work, the extra effort it takes to have everything documented and written will probably not happen, and the remote part will not be successful. So it seems like it's just easier to make remote successful if everyone is remote. Kind of like quitting smoking cold turkey vs saying "I'll start by smoking less".

I've been remote on a non-remote team, and I definitely felt all the cons of remote much more than on a full remote team, because well, that's when you actually end up isolated. Everybody is having face to face communication, building stronger relationship, meanwhile you kind of get forgotten because you are not present.

If everyone is remote, then everyone is in the same situation and there is a better balance.

Exactly, from what I have seen gitlab seems to have this figured out very well. From what I remember they have slack groups and video calls where employees can have casual talk about non work things so they can get to know each other better. I can't see this happening at my company if one person went remote. The most I can see happening is someone doing remote once a week so they catch up on the rest of the days and spend one day focused alone.

At my previous job, I worked 3 days in, 2 days out, as the only remote person on the floor. I didn't have any project-related problems because of that, and while we already used in-room group chat for some percentage of conversations (both work and non-work), this was never 100%, so I felt incredibly out-of-the-loop on office banter. Not the worst thing in life, but it made me feel a bit like an outsider. Now I'm contracting and collaborating with other remote people, so things are much better.

That's right. GitLab has Group Conversations [1] every day at the time when West Coast and Europe overlap. The most-wanted hours in the company to organize meetings are dedicated to talking about different areas of the company and learning how they're performing. We also do a Company Call [2] every day, which comprises about five minutes of announcements and 25 minutes of people chatting.

Our Coffee Break Calls encourage team members to spend several hours a week socializing and building a relationship that's separate from work. Since working remotely can also lead to team members never meeting in person, we have a visiting grant [3] to cover transportation costs, and every nine months, the entire team gets together for the GitLab Contribute (ex Summit) [4]. The next Contribute happens in less than a 10 days and I can't wait for it!

[1] - https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/group-co...

[2] - https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/communication/#company-cal...

[3] - https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/incentives/#visiting-grant

[4] - https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/contribute/

I am sorry for the long list of links, just wanted to share as much as possible so people are aware of what the regular week at GitLab looks like :)

(I am working for GitLab btw)

+1 to this.

I've been working as a remote contractor while whole team was on site (to make things more difficult, on different continent and different timezone - Europe vs US). I think I'll never do it again (working remotely while the rest of the team is onsite).

Now I work with a fully remote team, and it's great ;)

Glad to hear this! I've been in the same boat and will never again join a local team as a remote member. I love to work from home and be alone, but that was too much, really.

Now, I do really like remote work because of the freedom it offers and always thought if I ever get another job, it should be remote. Glad to hear you say that fully remote works well while you had the same troubles as me on a non-fully remote team!

The company I work for just updated their policy to allow each team to pick their own schedules. I'm currently working 3 days in the office and 2 at home. It's been great so far and allows for the best of both worlds. I get the distracted office banter and face-to-face relationships as well as focused productivity at home. I'm really into it.

On the contrary. I do not want human interaction, and working remote is the only way I can stay sane. If I was not in tech I would be in a vocational job where I work alone.

The article addresses this: "The only way to not have people in a satellite office is not to have a main office." You need to have no main office to have a remote-friendly culture. Otherwise you have second-class citizens who aren't privy to in-person conversations: even if you have good electronic communications system, people are going to just say stuff in person because it's easier. So if someone's looking for someone from a team to do something, they'll be more likely to pick someone in the office. Otherwise you'll have less attention to whether meeting rooms have working AV. Otherwise you'll keep an expectation of people working synchronously during working hours, and the remote benefit of "if you need to take care of your kids/run errands/etc. and work a little later, that's fine" doesn't materialize: it might be acceptable but it's not normal.

I think if I were applying to your company and I knew that you and your buddies were working together in person and that I was living in a different city, I would be so concerned about being out of the loop on conversations and whether that would limit my career growth that I wouldn't want to work there unless I could move to your headquarters.

(I'm not sure I buy the "room by themselves" argument; I'm quite happy working in coffee shops or libraries. And the article points this out, too. Certainly one thing a company could do with its unspent office budget is reimburse the cost of coworking spaces. But also, the traditional office arrangement before the open-floor-plan fad was that you're working by yourself in an office with a closable door or at least in a cubicle with limited sight / sound. And that seemed to work fine.)

My employer explicitly doesn't care where I work from or when or how.

So some days I'm focused at home or at my desk, some days it's (endless) meetings and usually I go in, some days (especially when in a design phase) I walk, think, and work in various parks and cafes... and some days I go to the office and sit in the common areas with a big PLEASE DISTURB sign around my neck. I'd rather not have to give up any of these.

> but I try my best to have people in office as well and ensure that we are not going crazy sitting in some room/hotel/beach/co-working space by ourselves without any interaction with other team members in person.

Funny, because I feel like I'm going crazy sitting in this loud open office (because my employer does not offer flexibility).

I agree and would LOVE to have the flexibility to work remotely sometimes.

The biggest challenge is implementation of Remote at scale. It is fine if you're running a remote company of 10, but with a remote company of 50 it becomes a very detailed and documented process. You're pretty much spending "overhead" on supporting the remote working norms, documentation and principles, and all of that is a similar effort to running an office, but with completely different skills and people required.

So maintaining both an office and proper remote working norms is expensive.

I think this is the biggest challenge, which companies have uncovered after trying to accommodate remote working employees in regular centralised or distributed companies, and seeing whether it is efficient or not.

I don't buy this argument. The things you have to do to support remote workers are the things you should be doing anyway. I am currently in an office gig after 10 years remote and I explicitly tell people to pretend I'm not in the office so they will have to document their conversations with me, and I won't have a conversation where decisions are made outside of the confluence wiki where we keep our project requirements and technical documentation. It works wonders (but I am sometimes viewed as a bit of a monster).