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Comment by qwer | Hacker News Reader

> good communication out of the office is equally as much of a challenge as good communication inside the office

Working from home may have a bunch of advantages, but it's pretty tough to believe that it's anywhere near equal in your ability to communicate. Even if you had a permanent skype/hangouts connection, you still have a much lower fidelity communication medium than face-to-face.

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It depends on the company. As a remote worker at a 90% remote tech company of ~1000 employees, I have experienced much better communication here than at any other 90% in-office tech company of similar size.

The key here is "good" communication. A 90% in-office company will have lots more communication than a 90% remote company. But hardly any of that communication is getting written down, recorded, or shared among potential stakeholders (on a an internal mailing list, IRC channel, or video meeting for example). A 90% remote company communicates in ways that are more inclusive, robust, and efficient.

A thousand workers, 90% remote - wow! Can you tell us more? Does the company have any official comment on this (presumably it's a fairly fundamental tenet for the owners?)

Have there been any studies that have looked into this? I've been a remote worker for the past two years, and honestly haven't felt communication to be a problem. It definitely needs the company to have a culture that supports remote workers though.

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