Remote has to be baked into the company culture, otherwise you'll forever be the outsider, and be the first to be let go when the company hits tough times.
Yeah, I was going to say the same thing. Find a company that hires only remote and you're golden. Plenty of them out there. In my experience they're a good mixture of casual and results-oriented.
You can't really fake anything with a remote company. You don't get any points for showing up. At the same time, the amount of time-wasting activities created by people who are searching for 'participation rewards' is small or none.
Or, put another way, if you wanted to be treated like an adult, find a company that hires adults.
Agreed. I’ve worked remote for over 10 years but mostly all 100% remote companies.
My recent experience with a company that allowed remote work but was 95% in-office was absolutely miserable. They won’t accomodate any change in communication style, tools, and they’ll regularly have important discussions in the office without you. And you’ll never change their culture. Plus as others have said, those kind of places will never give senior positions to remote workers.
This has been my experience. I managed to switch to working remotely 100% by saying "I need to move to another town, either I start working remotely or I'll need to switch jobs". My boss wanted me to say, but not enough was done (by anyone, me included) to really make it work. I wasn't let go, they were still happy with me, but I decided to leave after about half a year, even though there were definitely aspects of working remotely that I loved.
^ this is the answer. I'm currently working my first remote job, and we have a robust remote culture.
Remote work is hard to do well. We're constantly iterating on it and trying to improve it. It's not always intuitive. If your company isn't focused on it, it will not work.
Not necessarily. Pretty much any company that is spread out should have no problem dealing with remote workers. Once you have people reporting to people who are not local it doesn't really matter who's where because you're either in the same building or you're not. Once you're not in the same building doesn't really matter if people are working in a house in Ohio or from an office in Bangalore.
People routinely work from all sorts of places do so in a manner that causes problems for others it doesn't really matter. Most managers don't care so long as they know what timezone you are in and when you can be expected to be available on chat/phone/whatever.
It still really does: the remote offices might have self contained teams, managers, etc. So only cross team collaboration has to handle remote boundaries. With remote workers, it's all interactions.
This has been my experience thus far as well. It hasn't really mattered how well I could frame productivity or measurable improvements in my quality of life to an immediate manager or team - ultimately if the senior leadership dislikes the idea of remote work, each level beneath them will hesitate to fully embrace it.
I've found that companies that promote work-life balance as one of their strengths are the best places to ask or test the waters.
"It hasn't really mattered how well I could frame productivity or measurable improvements in my quality of life"
First, your quality of life isn't really a selling point from employers point of view. To raise your odds at negotiations you should focus solely on the employers problems. The same applies when selling something - you should not focus on the benefits that you as a seller get (like money), but on the problems that get solved from the employer.
Secondly, focusing on raw productivity on alone seems to be quite a common thing on these discussions. I think it is quite limited viewpoint, since a ton of other things matter as well in addition to productivity. Communication with others, spreading your knowledge, trust issues, where to focus, etc.
I don't necessarily disagree with the first point that you raised, but I would posit that if my quality of life sucks as an engineer, eventually that will become the employers problem when I update my cv and find work with a better quality of life, potentially too soon or at the wrong time.
Moreover, an employer is 'selling' their reputation to potential talent as well as selling their product.
Where in my comment did I suggest that the employee be given a handout?
Perhaps I'm not working for companies who are as ruthless as you and the other commenter, but as my previous comments alluded to, I actually have updated my CV, and left jobs for other, better jobs, mostly because there was a work-life balance improvement to be gained from the move. And yes, the work-life balance improvement in all situations was a more accepting and flexible remote-work policy. And that was after using available avenues (asking manager(s), 1-1s, etc) to see if a WFH arrangement was viable.
In all cases, I did so with tact and professionalism.
That might be getting lost in translation, because your comment seems to indicate that I just walked into my bosses office and complained that my life sucks and I need to work from home, or else. And that I should be given a handout.
In my opinion, you use what avenues are available to you to see if WFH is possible. If it's important to you, and you aren't getting met half-way, then it's time to start looking elsewhere.
In an office, many engineers surely _actually_ work well under 40 hrs most weeks. If you're remote, that time is yours to spend time with pets and family, do chores, run errands, relax, exercise, etc.
Ten minutes in the car on a 240-day work year is one work week. While commuting has some benefits, like decompression time and work life separation, even a short commute has an impact on your free time. Remoting has hazards that one ought not downplay, but the lack of commute is a bigger deal than we might realize.
I can second this. Working remotely is a skill that needs to be learned. I worked for a fully remote team. After that, I'm much more confident in convincing others I can be productive remotely.
As someone else commented in this thread, visibility into what you're doing is very important. Especially in the beginning, don't push your manager to just trust you. Show what you're doing.
You can't really fake anything with a remote company. You don't get any points for showing up. At the same time, the amount of time-wasting activities created by people who are searching for 'participation rewards' is small or none.
Or, put another way, if you wanted to be treated like an adult, find a company that hires adults.