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Comment by maxclark | Hacker News Reader

“Together, these effects may make it harder for employees to acquire and share new information across the network.”

Remote is hard and not every company is going to adapt to this long term.

I’m happy that remote is now an accepted structure but I worry that full time remote employees will miss out simply because they aren’t present.

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I've been remote a loooong time and that's always been the case. I miss out on so many 'oh, because Timmy in the SOC told me so' type things, spontaneous whiteboards, and much information. It certainly makes things a bit more complicated. Further, I found it harder to get promotions in general.

All in all, I still prefer it despite its drawbacks. But it's certainly not for everyone, especially people who get or had little social interaction outside of work, and those who are chasing ladder climbing.

How does it make it harder to get promoted?

Networking? Interactions person to person can achieve you promotions if you know how to move.

From my experience, often being the only remote on the team...frankly, because you're generally forgotten about quite often. You aren't as chummy with your direct, you don't do lunch together, small gifts/favors, etc.

I don't mean that as a suckup or anything, just things people generally do with one another. If you have two equal performers, and one came to your wedding, gave you a jump, etc....and the other you often forget exists, the choice is quite natural. And I don't find any fault in that or hold any bitterness, it's human nature.

Also, you see your direct's boss in the cafeteria, or hallway, get to chatting, etc. I'd never just ping him or her on Slack to chat, for example.

Then again, I'm only speaking from experience at where I've been. I'm sure others are more strict about meritocracy, perhaps.

This is why I like fully-remote workplaces. That said, I've only seen remote work well in fully remote workplaces. Once there are some remote some not, things break down a bit.

Fully-remote workplaces are very rare, so it's a lot more likely that remote workers will lose out.

E.g. there is a task that requires the help of person A or B, where person B is working remote.

I'd argue that person A will be chosen 9 times out of 10 simply due to convenience.

To counter that, workers are required to spend 2 or 3 days in the office.

Slowly but surely some will go to the office one additional day, causing the remote workers to be left out of some tasks, while on-site workers form stronger bonds.

So i don't see a very bright for WFH, but it's all very new so time will tell.

maybe that's the price they're willing to pay for whatever benefits they get from remote work, and maybe they're missing out on what they consider bad things more than good, everyone is different.

An issue is remote people may be at a disadvantage because they are remote and therefore may suffer consequences of not being in the office (visibility, chit chat, camaraderie, etc.) but they (we, or some portion) may feel they are unfairly suffering from unequal opportunity. On the other hand, they/we specifically have made the choice to be remote despite the inherent disadvantages (and also advantages though in another dimension).

Agreed, as I said, some people will not consider things like visibility, chit chat, camaraderie valuable. I don't really want to be friends with people I work with, or generally spend time with my coworkers when I'm in the office since I already spend 8+ hours daily looking at them. Even when remote, people I work with are not my friends, those are a separate bunch of people, I'm there to do my job, solve problems and I don't need camaraderie, chit chat or visibility for that. On the other hand, relying too much on office chit chat tends to make knowledge more word-of-mouth than written down if there are no documentation practices in place, while its practically a necessity to write things down when you're working remotely and that's a huge gain in my book. I think it's really really hard to to decisively say that one model is better than the other, but it does smell like distrust and micromanagement from the higher-ups to me when office work is considered mandatory.

I always have heard it said “if you have one remote employee on your team, everyone is a remote employee”, because if you don’t interact as if you are all remote, then the remote employee is going to miss so much.

There aren’t absolutes. But yes if end up hybrid expect to do video meetings and write everything down—the latter of which is a pretty good idea anyway.

It works best, when the entire company is remote.

People will revert to the mean.

Notably, it's always been emotionally easier to lay off someone who is remote or less like you than it is to lay off people who are in your immediate social group. Expect the amount of remote-only work to tank in the next economic downturn.

And I think the number of new employees not making it past probation will increase.

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