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Comment by marktangotango | Hacker News Reader

I personally haven’t experienced any of these issues with remote work, but then I had many years of experience before my first remote position, as senior and often lead. I was the type to seldom seek help, but was often the one sought out for help. My theory is the more one is accostomed to working on their own, even in an office, the easier it is to work fully remote successfully. Has anyone else experienced this?

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I agree that remote work needs a certain personality type. You need to be self sufficient but also be willing to reach out proactively when you have problems and not keep struggling in silence as I have seen before. This is a difficult balance for some people.

As far as depression and anxiety goes I get that from my current job sitting in a cube with constant noise and interruption. I feel it’s starting to really impact my mental health negatively.

In the end i don’t think remote work is for everybody. Some people will thrive with it and some people will thrive in an office. It’s good to know which you are.

> You need to be self sufficient but also be willing to reach out proactively when you have problems

It's not that different from sitting in a cube, at least for software development. It's just threshold when something becomes a problem to reach out for help is higher for remote work, since it takes a bit more effort to communicate. You do a bit more so you have something to show and to discuss, not try to reach out for every little thing.

When I worked remotely there were people that were incredibly needy and every 10 minutes asked me about stuff they could easily have gotten from a web search and others got bogged down for weeks with issues that could be resolved in five minutes.

I always felt that good remote workers are very mature, communicate well and are respectful of others . I guess that applies to office work too but remote amplifies this.

I believe remote work amplifies everything. Inefficiencies, poor organization, bad documentation, poor communication, poor work ethic. Any stresses start to form cracks when taken out of the office environment. The upside is all of the things that a successful remote team requires are the things that you should be doing anyway.

You raise a really crucial point about personality type. We were recently discussing the Myers-Briggs system at Quuu, and it turns out most of us are introverts.

I would also struggle with an office environment, so I feel for you! I hope you manage to find a solution to it. I think a lot of offices would do well to adopt some of the principles behind remote work. If employees are sacrificing something to come into an office each day, they should have more say in what that workspace is like when they're there. For example, being able to work in a quieter part of the building if noisy environments are draining for you.

I am grateful that I did not work remote at the start of my career (it was not an option offered to me), because it would have been hard to find the self-drive & hand-holding I needed at the beginning of my career all by myself. But I agree with you; remote work is better suited for people who are accustomed to working by themselves. It might not be for everyone. And I certainly do not recommend it at the onset of one's career.

The difficulty is if all the junior are working on site for mentorship and the development of good habits, if the seniors are away, who'll teach them that?

I’m the same. I much prefer working from home and don’t suffer from the issues in this post. I think aside from having a personality well suited to remote work, my experience being an entrepreneur helps a lot. Nothing is more isolating than being a sole founder in my opinion. Working remote with a team is more than enough interaction for me. When I’m working in an office a lot of my time gets eaten in meetings that more often than not didn’t need to happen. Remote work forces the whole team to be more disciplined in how the work/time is structured.

I will say this advice seems highly tuned to a different generation than mine. I really don’t want my company talking to me about “self care” or playing weird slack games (slack itself is great for remote though).

I agree, I personally have no issue with working from home but both like my own company and am used to self motivating. I can imagine if you'd worked from an office for years then moved to remote work, you'd find it hard.

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