[lj3]

> As an american who works just as he does, and have for roughly 10 years, this is simply not true.

For you. I worked remotely for an American consulting company a while back and you were expected to be reachable during the business hours and respond in less than 30 minutes. If you missed that window more than once, that number shrank to 10 minutes. The turnover rate was high.

I agree with everything you're saying, but not all remote employers agree with us.

[BuckRogers]

Odd. I work from home and have for 3 years now. I'm reachable in a second. Because I have my ass at my desk working except when I'm at lunch. 30 minutes is a deplorable standard, 10 minutes is simply unacceptable. No standard should be necessary. If I were managing those groups and I needed a standard: I'd find new employees.

While on one hand I am strongly against employee-abuse and working over an 8-hour day: I guarantee my employer that I'm available near-instantly for 8 hours straight (barring lunch) and I have my head down working during that time. Then I disconnect, and go love my family.

As such, my employer trusts me and if I ever did happen to disappear off on a bike into the forest they have no concerns I wouldn't handle my work. I call it an "honest 8", so they are guaranteed to get what they pay for with no concerns of me screwing off, and everyone is always on the same page.

All that said, I do not work well with mediocre people who don't try hard in everything they do, and put pride into their work. So I might be an oddball in the US, and fit in better with a less abusive, but more orderly, stringent society like Germany. Where coincidentally, most of my family came from to begin with so it may just be a difference in cultural norms passed down.

[justindocanto]

> "Once in a while I would take the phone out of my pocket and give quick answers on Slack, but most of my time I enjoyed what is the beginning of autumn."

As long as you reply in your 30 minute deadline, i dont see how you still can't do what he's doing. I have my phone on me all the time and if there's an emergency or some sort of window where i must reply, i hop on the phone or go back to the desk and get it done.

That said, my reply wasn't intended to be a blanket statement of all remote workers.

One example of where it doesn't work is at U-Haul. A lot of uhaul customer service is people sitting at home glued to their computers, waiting for calls. There is no 30 minute window there.

My point was that it's not as impossible as the comment author made it seem. A balance between "riding in the park" and "answering my client within 30 minutes" is possible here.

[cookiecaper]

It depends on the expectations of the employer. This stuff is usually stated on remote job listings (though admittedly jobs that start as "choose your own hours" somehow transition to "work between 9 and 5 Pacific time" too frequently). There are remote employers that expect you to be continually available for instant comms all day, part of the day, or none of the day (i.e., unscheduled instant comms are non-mandatory). The latter is obviously ideal but also the most rare.