| I was surprised at the quality of this article given the clickbait title. As an anecdotal case, I recently started working remote most days of the week at my job, and it's been dramatically successful compared to the occasional days I'd do it at my last job. So far as I can tell, the reasons are subtle: * Hipchat/slack integration: My current job does exactly what is listed in the article: even when sitting next to someone, we rely on the IM client for most conversation. Meanwhile, at my previous job, Such tools were rarely used: IM or email, you'd expect a 24 hour response time, so most questions were handled in person. * Hours. My current job has remote offices, but only spanning a 3 hour time difference. My past job had offices in Seattle, Detroit, and two areas of India (Pune and Bangalore), so a 12 hour time shift was normal. This made ANY remote action difficult, so teams got more insular, so coordination took more time. * Lots of Remote-ness. My current team is spread across 4 cities. My previous job had everyone local, except for several people in Pune, India. Thus, the difference to my team in having me work from home rather than office is very little: only one person would actually be in the same office as me anyway. * VPN. My current job has VPN feel exactly like being there. My previous job had VPN be extremely slow, and some crippling dependencies. We had some workarounds, but basically working remote felt like something you suffered through, not something sustainable. * Monitors/Home Office. My wife recently redid my office, and as such I have a private space to work from at home, and can plug my laptop into a preferred mouse/keyboard/monitor. This makes me much more productive than I'd be before. |
Thanks!
Great reply btw. I think there really is something to remote work once everything starts working together. But it's definitely a more than one ingredient cake.