| With respect to the OP, I think remote work is the wave of the future. We've been doing it in my large company (financial software co) in a large US city for over a decade. As communication technology has improved (video chat, SaaS apps like Slack, Github) distance has become no barrier... with some caveats. We've found it works best when: Near timezone- Remote people are in the same or near timezone as the home office. This makes it easy to align the work day, schedule meetings, etc. Remote shared location- making sure a group of people who work remotely have access to a shared location where they can work together has worked far better than people working from home, coffee shop, etc. Culture- as I write this I'm in a large open floor plan style office. All of the lead devs are chatting away with their team members located in Canada and S.America. We love the ability to pull people in easily and work as though we are all here. Frankly, we talk to the "remote" people in video chats more often than many of the people in other departments. When the day's over we head home to families, sports, etc. It doesn't work if.. -Your culture stresses in-person interactions during and after work. -You don't have a culture of trust. -Your company won't pay for great communication apps & technology including lots of monitors. -Your team works at home and is distracted by kids, spouses, etc, etc. Frankly as tech gets better I think that one day the idea of moving to a large city like SF, Austin, NYC, etc for work purposes will be seen as ridiculous, outdated and needlessly costly. Likely there will be shared office hubs in small-to-medium sized cities around the world where people can work with other people in similar remote hubs. |