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Comment by Angostura | Hacker News Reader

One problem with working from home - being forgotten about.

I worked as a technology analyst for many years and when my kids were born opted to go part time, working from home. While the routine work came through, those 'interesting little projects' that makes work so interesting dried up, partly because I lost sight of the interesting little problems that cropped up that would make interesting little projects.

After about 4 years, I was in the situation where I was being paid really quite a lot of money for not doing an awful lot. The CEO was was very nice and we would meet up sometimes and he would say "I promise there will be something very engaging to work on soon, we value your experience"

But in the end, I ended up resigning, despite the fact that they wanted me to stay on and pay me lots - I just couldn't keep taking their money in good conscience. Shame - it was a great firm.

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You were living George Costanza's dream.

You needed a globe.

https://sites.google.com/site/forgottenemployee/

I think being forgotten while working remote can be a concern, but it can be mitigated by the type of company you're working for.

If you're one of a couple people working remote and the rest of the team is at the office, you'll likely have a more difficult time being promoted and feeling included. If your company culture depends on remote workers it's not as big of a deal.

We have group chats, and video conferences that make it feel much more social and connected and being part of the team. Some roles require being in the office, but most developers and engineers can be successful remote with all of the modern tools we have for communication.

Sounds like you needed to use something like Slack for office communication. It's very important that everyone adjusts their habits to integrate remote working rather than just the ones who are remote. When the communication stays within 4 walls but some of the team is not within those walls then problems such as yours arise.

It's impossible to get people to really do this if you have 98 of them in an office and 2 of them remote. You can try to mandate it, but people are going to revert to human-talk. If you're serious about a mixed environment of remote and in-person workers, you must develop systems that account for the resolution the remote workers will inevitably lose.

Not really - everyone was always on IM and I'd be phoning up and talking with people daily. But really I needed physical presence to really pick up on the subvocal stuff, and the people who would pop by and mention things off hand.

Is it a top down vs bottom up idea flow type of company issue?

I can see a rigid top down company not being much fun to remote at, if all ideas must come from above, therefore onsite, and you're not onsite. At a bottom up company it wouldn't be an issue because it would be your idea you're working on.

I've worked both kinds of jobs onsite, but only significant amounts of at home at a bottom up company, and I don't think it would have been as much fun at a top down company. Top down companies generally are not pleasant working environments nor very successful anyway, so its hard to discern if remote is unpleasant due to generalized failure, or if specifically even at a top down that somehow "works" remote would remain unpleasant.

Really should go back and offer to be a contract/consultant at ridiculous rates (which you can justify by showing how few hours you work).

If the departure was amicable on the employers side you still might be able to do this.

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