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Comment by arkitaip | Hacker News Reader

I remember when everyone said remote work as the default was impossible but then it happened and now it's as if it was the same and rational option all the time...

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Ah well remote work where everyone is co-located is very different to remote work where the people are 8 timezones away. Synchronous communication will always be hard between teams so far apart.

I'm assuming you don't work with physical devices? My company averages about 1/4 of the people in the office because it's just impossible to work on certain aspects of physical bringup entirely remote for a variety of reasons (space, tool access, multiple people working on one prototype, etc etc).

Not everyone gets to work with purely digital products.

Not sure we can make that claim yet, it's only been a few months. We still have that residual in office-culture, things might be different when the majority of the office has turned over since remote work became a thing.

My assumption is that many remote workers will still live within driving radius of an office and will get together semi-regularly. And that those who do not will still fly for on site meetings of some sort on a regular basis.

Kinda defeats the point of working remotely, imo. Sounds more like a WFH option twice a week type of workplace. Which isn’t really remote, IMO.

It depends. I could live anywhere I want in the US now. As it happens, I do live fairly near a couple of our offices and could (normally) go in regularly--and used to go in more. But I'm perfectly happy where I live.

But, yes, if you live in SV only because some large tech company pays you a bunch of money to live there and they want you to stay in a radius that lets you come in once or twice a week, you don't have the option of moving anywhere you want. (Though you may have the option of moving somewhere that's OK for a once-a-week drive but not daily.)

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