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Comment by brogrammernot | Hacker News Reader

This times a hundred thousand percent. I’m battling this hard right now at my workplace, some of my developers live a good 45 min drive from work and that’s just insane to ask them to be in their car for 7.5 hours/week.

So what did I do? I went “against” the company policy and had each of my team members work at least 1 day a week from home, now they’re up to 2-3 days depending on the week (humorous part is during the summer they’re in the office more cause it’s more quiet than home cause their kids are out for the summer lol)

So we’re still a “work from office” company but I run our team how I want and surprise - zero attrition in 3 years on my team, we meet most of our commitments, developer happiness/engagement is up on my team, our time to first response for production issues is great and all because of a mutual understanding that regardless of the “rules” I’ll take care of my guys/gals.

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The down side is that this can have bad effects on company wide morale. My wife's company has a strict no remote work policy. But one or two managers go against the company policy like you have, and let their dept. work remote from time to time.

It's great for them, but it kills morale in the rest of the company as people in my wife's department kill themselves to come in day after day (despite good/bad weather, missing personal commitments, etc), while they notice empty desks in the dept. down the hall. Makes for some miserable workers.

Has the company looked at which departments need to be on-premise and then let the other ones have flexibility? If the departments who work remotely now and then are meeting the company's goals, it seems like a model to follow.

No they have not. And yes, it would seem to be a good model to follow. But they are not interested in looking into it. I guess eventually they will be forced to look into a remote policy due to attrition, but sadly, they will probably be able to hold out for a few years more before doing so.

IMO that’s a solvable problem by just having sane remote policies.

The last company I worked for was basically “remote only if there was no other way” but the office policy was “if you need to be out for family events, doctors appointments, kids things at school, etc it’s totally fine”

And it was great.

Yes, I have seen that in one of my past job. Most of the political attrition came from managers of other divisions that required face time and perception of dedication.

OTOH, I also worked for an investment bank and there it was made clear, in my first day, that different people work different schedules so don’t assume productivity is sitting in your chair 9-5. I think it all comes from communication and clear expectations.

Yes, this has been the hardest challenge of it all.

When I took the role (I’m on the product side, my counterpart is the Engineering lead but we run it together) I made it clear that I’m only taking this role if they let me run the teams the way I want to run them, within reason.

My view on what you’ve described is that my directives are to improve sales, stability and the trajectory of the company.

It is not my job to worry about what other teams or tracks or departments think of how I run my teams. For the first few months, it was very rough because I did get a lot of that passive aggressive bullshit from people.

I told them the exact conversations I had with the respective leadership individual and encouraged them to go have a conversation if they were willing to put themselves in the same situation as me.

None of them did and over time I grew thicker skin, plus stopped caring about what they thought as it was working fine.

There’s about five more teams in the product/analytics/engineering realm that operate the same way I do now and it has been a culture change.

I’d imagine in the next 9-12 months we’ll revisit the policy company wide.

But I’ll say this, I’m not sure it was the right call from the overall morale of the company but it turned our team from the butt of jokes into the leading example so it was the right call for our team.

Interested to hear how HR and OH&S are able to reconcile the situation so that everything is legal.

We had a tough situation my workplace to get this going. Once a framework is available and all the legals are checked, it went smoothly.

I'm curious what the legal issues would be; could you expand on your concerns?

Data protection and worker's comp in my experience.

Insurance when the employee is not here I guess

I assume one potential issue is the question of where people are actually working from. Although in my experience, most people have an official location even if they’re rarely there. It may differ with consultants etc. who may be working from a customer site for months.

We were told that for tax purposes, employees are only allowed to work in states/countries that already have an established office. My company has offices all over the place so it's not particularly restrictive but still a strict limit from working _anywhere_.

I've definitely encountered cases where a company didn't have an office in states where employees were located. In some of these cases, employees may have been de facto remote but still technically had an office at the company's location. Others though an employee was clearly remote in a different state.

What I can't speak to is what sort of legal presence the company set up in the remote employee state of residence. (An office may not be needed but some sort of legal paperwork may be.)

The legal issues are obviously regional based, but most of them would be universal.

Off the top of my head.

* Ensure that your workplace is a physically safe place. ie enough lighting, correct furnishing etc.

* The data you are working with is protected adequately. ie A separate room with lockable door and window.

* The infrastructure is adequate. ie internet, electricity, water and toileting.

* Insurable if something goes wrong.

* How your work time is measured. This is particular important if your industry is covered by union rules.

In the USA the Department of OHSA specifically says that it (and the employer) don't bear responsibility for a home based work site. They won't do site inspections and the best they can do is give tips to the worker and have the worker complete a self-assessment. Overseas this is viewed very differently. e.g. in Australia and UK the employer is responsible for worker safety even if they are working from home.

https://www.osha.gov/enforcement/directives/cpl-02-00-125

"OSHA will not conduct inspections of employees' home offices.

OSHA will not hold employers liable for employees' home offices, and does not expect employers to inspect the home offices of their employees.

If OSHA receives a complaint about a home office, the complainant will be advised of OSHA's policy. If an employee makes a specific request, OSHA may informally let employers know of complaints about home office conditions, but will not follow-up with the employer or employee."

First off, holy shit. I come back from travel and arguably the least interesting comment I’ve made on a thread in years is the highest upvote one I’ve had lol

Now on to your question - We haven’t had any issues here with the HR policies and OH&S so far.

Each of the team members is in the same state as the office so no additional burden there for taxes.

You sound just like my new employer, great job on managing the low attrition rates and keeping the workplace a comfortable environment for everyone!

I'm in my first remote position now, and my current opinion is that it would be extremely difficult to be remote unless it was actively baked into the company culture.

Has that been your experience? I love working remote but even at a remote-focused company, I feel there are things I miss out on since I'm not onsite in one of the offices.

Totally. It's not easy to mix on-site and remote, and most places that do mix have some pain points like you describe.

When I worked remote it was at all-remote jobs. My office jobs have typically had a pretty "standard" policy around how much remote / work from home people can do, and that makes it viable. You definitely do miss out on some things on the days you work from home, though, so it's one of those things you kind of have to decide how much you can afford to take.

Do you have employees that live in SF by any chance? We're big proponents of location flexibility at Out Of Office and we want to encourage more companies to give their employees greater control over their schedules, even if it's just one day a week.

Shoot me an email (address is in my profile) if you'd like to chat more.

lol@45 min commute being excessively long In the Bay Area many people have 1+ hour commutes. Even 2 hours is not uncommon.

Not to be flippant but the larger suffering of others does not negate or even justify suffering.

That sounds like a choice. 25 minutes is the national average.

Well, the choice is living in the Bay Area. I don't think many would find it surprising that an area with among the worst traffic and highest housing prices might have longer commutes than the national average.

25 minutes is achievable in the Bay Area within SF (transit/biking), or within the suburb where you work (driving), it is just not feasible when living in the suburbs and working in the city, or vice versa.

The East Bay commuters in my office make as much as I do and could live in SF if they wanted. They made a choice to be homeowners, have more space, get access to better schools, etc. but it is still a choice.

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