[learc83]

Perhaps we need to rethink work life balance if we need work to fulfill our social needs.

During the lockdown, I couldn't wait to get the hell out of my house, but it was because I wanted go hiking, out to eat, to a ballgame, or just to visit friends and family.

[troughway]

I agree, but eating, sleeping, working, these kinds of things don't happen every other sunday. It's every single day. Any "work life balance" you bring to this, assuming you're in the 40+ hour/week rat race, will have to revolve around those three things, and not the other way around.

The mistake people make is thinking they can make their work life revolve around their life life. As George Carlin quipped "The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it."

So you're there, working remotely by yourself, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. It takes a special kind of left-field to equate this to being in an environment where you're surrounded by people of "your tribe", as the OP put it.

[learc83]

>8 hours a day, 5 days a week

That's the thing, I'm not. Almost no one who is doing knowledge work is getting 8 hours a day of work done. Instead of driving to the office to get 4-5 hours of work in and goof off the rest of the time with a forced group of people, I get 4-5 hours of work done at home and goof off with whomever I choose.

I work a few hours in the morning. Leave in the middle of the day to walk the dog to the park, have a long lunch with my fiancee, or run errands. Come home do a few more hours of work. Or I work early and take the afternoon off to go hiking etc...

>by people of "your tribe", as the OP put it.

I don't won't my workmates to be the people of my tribe. I work to live, I don't live to work. Our economic system isn't set up to allow everyone to do this, but most of us on HN could if we wanted to.

I've done this for about 5 years now btw. I don't make quite as much as I could if I worked for a FAANG, but I live in a low cost of living area in a medium sized city near plenty of mountains. I highly recommend it over the rat race.

[troughway]

I agree with you again, and yet your statements are bringing up even more uncomfortable questions.

Ever since the "lockdown" started, a lot of people have found they have ample time, and so the thing that has been done en masse is to double down on work. This is mentally and physically (sitting on your ass the whole day) draining, and will lead to a huge burn out in a relatively short amount of time.

Your work schedule is atypical, and in most work environments would lead to eyebrows being raised from management down to your peers.

There is an unwritten rule that you are allowed to work some N number of hours every day that is less than the number of hours you're paid for. But you are there, within the ear shot of most people who depend on you, and if you step out for something they know you will be back relatively quickly in case the world around them starts to burn down.

With this kind of a "I set my own schedule" approach, people would have a hard time trusting you and depending on you. And if you think it's a good career move to let them know that hey I'll be taking a long lunch (every day), well, I've already addressed that.

As MattGaiser put it, it's as if he's a microservice outputting work. That's pretty much what remote contractors are. Nobody _really_ gives a shit about them. It's a hard truth to take in.

I get that there's a huge swath of people who mindlessly browse facebook or twitter or reddit or their favorite ethnic news site at the office, completely not caring about the work because they're mentally drained and it's not 5 o'clock yet, but they are there all the same.

>I've done this for about 5 years now btw. I don't make quite as much as I could if I worked for a FAANG, but I live in a low cost of living area in a medium sized city near plenty of mountains. I highly recommend it over the rat race.

Same, although don't think that it's somehow normal or that because everyone is forcibly remote-working, that it will become the new normal.

[learc83]

>Your work schedule is atypical, and in most work environments would lead to eyebrows being raised from management down to your peers.

At every company I've worked for no one has ever cared. At all. I'm around to answer questions and attend meetings.

>in case the world around them starts to burn down.

I could be back home in 30 minutes if things really got that bad. But since I'm the principal engineer, it's really my job to make sure things don't ever get that bad, and it's pretty rare that they do. I also make sure that I'm not irreplaceable, so that if things go wrong I'm not the only one who can fix them.

>With this kind of a "I set my own schedule" approach, people would have a hard time trusting you and depending on you

Why? I can answer questions from my phone. What's the practical difference between our CEO regularly being out of communication because he's in a meeting that can't be interrupted and me being a 20 minute drive from my computer?

>And if you think it's a good career move to let them know that hey I'll be taking a long lunch (every day), well, I've already addressed that.

Again I'm not optimizing my life for work. It may not be the absolute optimum career strategy but after 5 years it feels like the optimum life strategy. I make plenty of money--several multiples of the median income. Could I be making another $50k a year if I worked 2x as much in an office? Probably, but that's not my goal.

>As MattGaiser put it, it's as if he's a microservice outputting work. That's pretty much what remote contractors are. Nobody _really_ gives a shit about them. It's a hard truth to take in.

I'm not a remote contractor, I manage the technology for the entire company, mentor developers, develop and design projects on my own, meet with leadership about product direction etc... If MattGaiser were working at my company, he'd be talking to me regularly. It sounds like he just has a shitty boss.

But since you bring up remote contracting, I did that for a while and I had even more freedom. I never worked for fewer than 3 companies at a time, so I never had one boss that was absolutely critical that I keep happy. It was great.

[troughway]

Good answer.

1) Is this an off-shore set up where you don't really have an in-house team so you're the principal engineer of a development team that is located another country?

2) What was your setup like at first, ie. before the last 5 years or however long you've been doing this for?

The reason why I ask is because Principal-esque positions often come with perks not available to prole Developers.

>What's the practical difference between our CEO regularly being out of communication because he's in a meeting that can't be interrupted and me being a 20 minute drive from my computer?

Not to sound snide, but the practical difference is - you're not the CEO.

>I'm not a remote contractor, I manage the technology for the entire company, mentor developers, develop and design projects on my own, meet with leadership about product direction etc... If MattGaiser were working at my company, he'd be talking to me regularly. It sounds like he just has a shitty boss.

It would not surprise me that some of these habits, fe. mentoring devs, meeting with leadership, etc, are best cultivated in a physical space before being done online. That's just me though.

Nothing to do with shitty bosses, but not everyone is exactly born with the qualities to check up on people regularly, ready to go out of the gate. Especially in a professional environment. A lot of people are very quiet, reserved, and are waiting to be spoken to, and it takes effort and practice to be a bit more vocal and proactive.

I'd honestly ascribe it to being the exception rather than the norm.

[learc83]

1. Nope, but the dev team is located on the other side of the country from the rest of the company (and I'm in between).

2. This company started as just a client and then they made me an offer that was too good to refuse.

>The reason why I ask is because Principal-esque positions often come with perks not available to prole Developers.

I definitely have a lot of perks. But I had even more freedom when I was a contractor, and I made plenty of money. If someone is a decent developer with good communication and business skills, a similar path is very achievable.

>Not to sound snide, but the practical difference is - you're not the CEO.

When I said practical I specifically meant other than the fact that he's the CEO. My point is that a well run company won't fall apart if the CEO is unavailable for a few hours per day, and a well run team won't fall apart b/c one developer (or their boss) is similarly unavailable.

>It would not surprise me that some of these habits, fe. mentoring devs, meeting with leadership, etc, are best cultivated in a physical space before being done online. That's just me though.

That's entirely possible. But my guess is that if there is an effect it's small compared to all the other variables.

>Nothing to do with shitty bosses, but not everyone is exactly born with the qualities to check up on people regularly, ready to go out of the gate. Especially in a professional environment.

I agree with you there, but I also think those people probably shouldn't be managers until they have developed those qualities, and I don't think this is a remote problem.

Years ago I didn't have those qualities. I was a retail supervisor and I used to sit in the front office and mostly ignore the cashiers until there was a problem despite the fact that I was only 20 feet away from them.

Remote work does require different skills, and managing a remote team probably takes more skill in general, but honestly I wouldn't want to work in house for a manager that didn't have those skills anyway.