I've been a remote worker for almost a decade now, and I've been through three different companies. My effectiveness always depends on how supportive the company is. As a remote worker I have to spend more time communicating; overcommunicating usually. It takes time to learn but the end result is worth it. I feel I have been more effective than I was in person and my quality of life has greatly improved. (Not to mention being able to afford a house).
I started as an engineer but moved into developer evangelism. I was on the Swing team at Sun which gave me experience speaking at JavaOne. I first went remote because I got married to a woman in Oregon and Sun was okay with remote working (depending on the team). After Oracle took over I want to Palm and then Nokia. I am limited in the companies who will hire me (ex: Google and Amazon don't allow remote working) but the benefits have been worth it.
This looks like a good way to break down some of the barriers to remote work. There are several good strategies, and several problems with good solutions. Hopefully this will give more managers and business leaders the confidence to consider remote work as a viable labor solution.
I like how this is organized both by-question and by-company, so you can get one question answered from different groups, or you can see each group's perspective by going down their responses on their page.
I feel as though the concept of remote work has moved on past the bleeding edge and early adopters, and now we're about to see many late adopters (especially the more nimble BigCos and governmental departments) start to consider remote work seriously. Within 10-20 years, we might see the "office culture" become as rare as remote work is today.
Edit: And the site looks to be rather burdened. I'm now getting a database error instead of a helpful FAQ.
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HN is rate-limiting me, so I cannot post more comments.
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jbob2000 had an interesting comment that is dead for some reason:
Most of these companies started remote. I'm really curious about how to transition from non-remote to remote. What does a company do with all the hardware and furniture? What about the administrative staff who would serve no purpose in an office-less company? How did employees deal with going from buying a lunch everyday to making one or getting one delivered? etc. etc.
Some groups might let workers transport office equipment home, to be used when working remotely - if Asim is going to be working from home, let him take his work chair and work monitors to his home, so he can use them for work from home.
For some companies, they might consider moving into a smaller office at some point. Something to consider for an office culture is that a usually-empty office can be demoralizing when people are used to being infected with their coworkers' enthusiasm. And it's easier to fill up a small office with a few people, than to make a large office space feel full with only a few people.
Another large part of an office culture is the lunch routine. This is not just a common biological need, but it's also a social time for coworkers to both discuss non-work activities and workplace issues, while networking. Do remote workers miss out on this? Is this a cause of the rise in popularity of coworking spaces?
Has anyone noticed the salaries for some of these companies is a bit low and it seems some of them are doing it as labor market arbitrage? [e.g. A European company hiring a Brazilian developer for ~10k Euros less than they would hire a European ]
I see alot of them offering $40k-$50k salaries for positions than [in any metro area in the US or Europe] would be $70-80k for similar qualifications/experience.
I'm not saying its wrong, I'm just saying Toggl would be a 40% paycut at the top end and I don't live in Silicon Valley or NYC.
FWIW, I work for Canonical, which is also all remote work, and I got a reasonably big pay bump compared to my last job at an office. Yes, of course someone in Argentina is going to get paid differently than someone in New York City. I don't know how it works at other companies, but at Canonical, you're paid a competitive salary for companies in your area. So, for me, that means companies in the Boston area. I certainly didn't take a pay cut to work remotely. Obviously, what you get paid is different from company to company, but I doubt many companies would be successful in hiring quality engineers if they didn't pay as well as office jobs. Remote work is definitely a big plus, but at the end of the day, it doesn't pay the bills (it does save some money though - I don't need to get a $250 monthly train pass or pay gas/parking etc).
Buffer, Canonical, and probably about half pay competitive rates for most of the US/Europe. The other half want to pay below $50k USD for engineers and that just isn't worth doing for anyone with 5+ years of experience and/or college degree.
I have noticed an apparent chicken-and-egg problem in this space of the industry. Increasing numbers of companies want to embrace distributed teams, but they strongly prefer or only consider people who have worked remotely before. That makes it hard both to start out in remote work and to find people to fill your positions.
We've hired both "experienced" remote workers and "inexperienced" remote workers. I noticed that those with little to no experience working remotely are so excited (liberated?) working that way that it almost seem as if they are extra productive.
Most of these companies started remote. I'm really curious about how to transition from non-remote to remote. What does a company do with all the hardware and furniture? What about the administrative staff who would serve no purpose in an office-less company? How did employees deal with going from buying a lunch everyday to making one or getting one delivered? etc. etc.