What HN readers think of remote work | Hacker News Reader

What HN readers think of remote work

3 pointscodydillabough1 comment

Hi HN,

So last week I launched www.letsgoremote.ca on hackernews and was fortunate enough to draw enough interest to receive thousands of responses to my remote work quiz & recommendation system.

Since then I have updated the quiz and recommendation functionality substantially and built a feature that now allows you to see how you "stack up" relative to your peers. Once again any feedback/comments would be absolutely amazing.

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I HAVE ATTACHED THE FINDINGS IN A COMMENT BELOW AS IT WAS TOO LONG FOR THE ORIGINAL POST

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Thank you for all who filled out the quiz on the first go around, I spent another weekend on this project to update it considerably based on feedback and would once again love any suggestions/feedback, apologies if it is still a little rough around the edges.

I genuinely hope that this could help steer at least one company towards a more positive remote work experience.

So if anyone wants to chat in further or has questions about how to improve their own business experience, they can also send me an email at hi@letsgoremote.ca and I would be happy to hop on a quick video call and offer any assistance I can.

Cody

Results from https://www.letsgoremote.ca

INDIVIDUALS

- An overwhelming 79.8% of the individuals enjoy WFH

- Just under half of the individuals claim to have "expert" level of experience working from home, 84% of these individuals enjoy WFH, but you have to assume that there is some degree of self-selection going on here

- Of the individuals who like WFH, 82% had a good "home office" setup

- The largest problems tended to be: focusing, missing the office, and feeling isolated in that order

- The largest problem that people wrote in was that there isn't a clear separation between work and home life and they are working more hours from home

- For people who missed their office, the main reasons were: saying hi to coworkers (73%) and getting out of the home (70%). These were considerably higher than too many distractions at home (19%) and too much noise at home (5%)

- If an individual complained about being bored, they are only 66% likely to enjoy WFH

If an individual says they don't have a routine, they are only 58% likely to enjoy WFH

- Pretty much the only subgroup of people who disliked WFH more than enjoyed it were people who complained about missing dressing up for the office

- People expressed an interest in wanting to learn an additional language, code, personal finance and then cook in descending order.

EMPLOYERS

- The top problems for employers were 1) maintaining a sense of community: 57%, 2) maintaining employee morale: 50% and 3) keeping employees accountable: 43%. Problems with morale were amplified in "expert" remote companies

- Chat was by the most common source of communication (75%)

- Spanning multiple timezones made no significant impact on whether or not the company had problems with maintaining a community and/or employee morale

- Just under half the companies typically communicate with whiteboards

- The main employee count range tended to be from 10-80

- The most common project management style was a good ol' fashioned checklist.

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