[red-iron-pine]

> I feel like employee happiness and job satisfaction is harder to manage remotely. Or it just might be that this employee wouldn't have worked out anyway. Who knows.

It is, but there are mitigations. The big one is that you have to ask. You can't bump into an employee and have a chat on the way to lunch or in an elevator and get a candid take on X or Y. You gotta ask directly, and often take the temperature a few times.

Experienced employees will vent or direct complaints -- squeaky wheels, grease, etc. -- but the noobs may not know how to complain, or if they should feel invalidated, dumb, etc. Hard to know what condition your condition is in.