We surveyed 331 remote workers and here's what they say

Would it be correct to assume that the majority of your time socializing is at work?

I'm at a remote-only company now, and have been so for seven years. I've found the key is that I have certain unconditional social activities I do after work. Without them I tend to go a bit squirrely and cranky. At work we also make a point to spend the first 5-10 minutes of longer meetings just hanging out, and get together in person at least twice a year.

You're not wrong though. I'm currently battling a cold/flu and I cannot fathom how I got it. I've left the house once this week and it was to drive to the mail. (I've been outside but notbofd the property.) If there was a coworking space anywhere near me, I'd spend a day or two a week there. I'd never lock back in to office live though. I never felt less productive than when I permanently shared a space with people. It was always too fun and I never got enough actual work done. Plus, I've been here to experience every life stage of my kid and every new achievement and that's preety fantastic.

Yes, that's why you should have a life outside of work. Depending on work being all of your social interaction is the issue here, not the fact that you were remote.

You currently have a community at your office that you don't realize. You will need to be intentional about building that community in other ways now.

I get lunch with friends more. Visit my Grandma out of state. Played a ton of Magic the Gathering.

It waxes and wanes, but it's my job to build and not just accept the "corp culture" as community.

Nevertheless, remote work has been great. I feel like I've had enough time to experiment with what works and what doesn't work that I'm now very comfortable working remotely and hope to do so for the rest of my career, if possible.

Granted, some of the things that make remote work tolerable or intolerable are under the control of your employer and some are under your own control, so both you and your employer need to be committed to making it work.

Being one of the only remote members of your team can stink, because you know that the other team members are mostly having their water cooler chats by the water cooler. But when you're on a team that's majority or fully remote, a lot of that happens via chat (text or video) and you don't feel like you're not being included.

Having a remote-friendly culture is important. For instance: People remember to add a video chat link to every meeting invite. Your employer invests in quality teleconferencing equipment to make meetings run smoothly. When company swag is given out, remote employees are included as well.

I've found that I get stir-crazy after sitting in my home office for more than a day at a time. So I like to go out to a library, a coffee shop, or a park (when it's nice out) for an hour or two. Even if I'm not directly interacting with other people, it helps.

I'm at a stage in my life where office friendships aren't my main source of friendships, and so while I enjoy forming friendships with my coworkers, I don't feel like I need to be going out to every office happy hour or rec league softball game. And that allows me to make time to cultivate and maintain other friendships.

I'm also at a stage in my life where having kids in the house helps a lot. My wife homeschools, so our family is able to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner together most days, and throughout the day there's a sense of liveliness in the house. Again, that can make a big difference, even if you're heads-down and not directly interacting with them during work hours.

P.S. One life hack I've discovered is that if you can find a remote position that's within about a 90-minute commute radius, and you can commit to driving in occasionally, you can still (mostly) get the benefits of face time, and you can make the case that you deserve the same market-rate salary as the in-office people, as opposed to the "adjusted cost of living" rate that is sometimes offered to fully remote employees. That opens up a lot of possibilities, in terms of where you can live. I live about 75 minutes from my company's headquarters, but in a state with a lower cost of living.

As to the second point, using myself as an example, not everybody feels that "we aren't meant to live that way". Some of the happiest times in my life were when I didn't need to go to an office for one reason or another. I went weeks without speaking or even seeing another human in person, or not even stepping out of my home, and I thrived on it. Excellent sleep schedule, daily exercise, time and energy to commit myself to my passions. Perhaps you aren't meant to live that way, but it's important to recognize that no one lifestyle works for everybody. Without having to go to an office, I can be a hermit or spend time with friends as I see fit, whereas being forced to be in an office is a constant and active drain for me.

The social aspect of work always boils down to the same obvious thing: social people need socialization, and if they don't have a strong enough social life, they'll need to compensate with work socialization. People who have a strong social life or don't feel much need to be around other humans, don't need to socialize during work

I agree we are not meant to be hermits, but having work be your only social interaction is also not a way to live. I would argue that having work be strictly professional is both more healthy and better for dealing with people at work.

I don't go to work to find my SO or my best friend, I get to do that in my own time.

In addition, bonding a close, personal relationship with your co-workers lead into problems, office drama is not pleasant and can have severe consequences.

I think it would be healthy to simply maintain a professional relationship which ends at 5pm.

Different personalities I suppose..

I usually work at the swimming pool of my condo here in SE Asia. I love taking swimming breaks. The other guys here at the pool do pretty much the same. These are the same people that I see at the gym when I work out. There are also a few retirees here who avoid cold winters in Canada. There's nothing lonely about my lifestyle. It is actually much better than working in an office.

This always annoys me. Just make everybody dial in. The amount of wasted time with these kind of meetings just because people don't get it. If a side conversation starts, all bets are off for people dialled in, as the speakers will look at each other, which almost certainly means away from the spider phone/mic.

Every job I’ve had for the past 20 years (always 100% on-site) has been geo-distributed, so I’ve had to dial into nearly every meeting, often being the only person dialed in.

IMO this is a key point. I wouldn't recommend working remotely unless the entire company (or at least the department) is organized online and people are generally remote.

That said, I don't believe 100% is a necessity, as long as you act it. Eg some companies have a "one camera per face policy" for meetings. We recently adopted it, and it works super well. At my company though, sometimes a few people are colocated, and you get this weird dance of finding a spot sufficiently far away from each other to be able to stick with the policy and not also hear each other directly, with no latency. It's weird but it works super well. Everybody feels more connected.

With a few rules like that you can be, say, 80% remote and not 100%, without the downsides. Really it's all about the mindset.

Also, seriously folks, do retrospectives.

> 3. You are obligated to overcommunicate to your coworkers or managers to compensate for your lack of presence, but often they leave you in the dark.

> 5. If skype is signed out without you realizing it, management gets paranoid.

> 7. Lack of visibility means lack of opportunities at work.

> 8. Its very easy to get in a rut where the "remote guy" only works on certain specific things and can't grow their career.

Remote / mobile worker in various forms since 2006 here... I'd call your points above a management problem, not a remote problem explicitly. It has really struck me over the past ~year as remote work is becoming more normalized just how bad managers have their lack of confidence / awareness multiplied when they are trying to interact with remote workers and really don't have the personal tools to do it. Sounds like you've done a lot of reflection on your remote experience - and you are right, it isn't for everybody (and that's a-ok) - but I posit a lot of the breakdowns in remote work are because management hasn't evolved past the industrial age.

For example, with meetings, you can have a rule like if anyone is attending remotely, everyone attends "remotely" (with a headset and webcam from their desk). If you do use a meeting room, good equipment is essential -- HD audio on a device with good microphones and echo-cancellation, and a camera mounted on the wall.

I've come to the conclusion video is very important for most meetings, especially with more than a couple people, as everyone tends to stay muted to keep background noise down. You can see people nodding in agreement or looking confused, being totally disengaged, looking like they have something to say, smiling at jokes, etc. Without it, it discourages things that help build a healthy team like joking around -- if you crack a joke and it's followed by awkward silence, it's not a good feeling.

My team (distributed across timezones, with over half remote from a home office) does a daily standup every day, using video, and it definitely helps to bring the team together.

Team chat, used properly (hint: Skype is not the right tool, and chat is not a substitute for email or a bug tracker), can also help. Often when a bigger discussion breaks out and people are available (engaged in chat), we'll just start a video chat. It's a lot like the ad-hoc discussions that spring up in an office, but without the forced interruption that in-person presence has.

Fixing all this though really starts with getting the manager(s) on board. If the manager is a "butt-in-seats" type person who can't measure output in anything but number of hours worked, it will probably be an uphill battle.