As someone who did 7 years remote-only, I have gathered some insights.
1: Synchronisation of effort for a team is absolutely crucial.
2: The top priority is for the teams to communicate amongst themselves fluently, and feel comfortable to communicate with practically anyone at the company at large.
3: If you don't live in a tech hub or a large city (which, to be honest, are mostly the same things), the life as a remote-only can get really lonely.
4: In a profession with a pretty big fraction of existentialists, learning to keep office hours and being able to turn off from work mode is essential for long-term stability.
5: You need a separate workspace for an office. I learned this the hard way. The ability to walk away from work after the day is important. And you really should have a separate computer for work, so you don't even accidentally look up the work stuff outside of office hours.
6: Everyone needs hobbies. If a person lives their life through their screen, it is very unlikely that they are suitable for long-term remote-only work. If you're a manager at an office, you usually want to know what makes your team members tick. If you're a non-junior at a remote-only company, it is absolutely essential that you learn what makes your team mates tick.
7: Teams need to meet up in person frequently. A day or two every 3-4 weeks is good. Several days at least twice a year is essential. Because there are no watercooler or office corridor moments, the company needs to provide an environment where something like this can take root spontaneously.
8: Meta-review for code review can be surprisingly helpful, even after the onboarding.
The truth is, not everyone is cut out for remote work. Because long-term mental health depends on being able to turn off and walk away, you are automatically selecting for wealthier individuals. I know this sounds really harsh, but it's true. A person who can afford the space for a dedicated office for their working hours is several times more likely to stay around and grow into a bigger role in the company. A person whose hobbies involve physical activity and getting out of their house is far more likely to be a good remote-only employee than someone who at the end of the day switches from emails and code to computer games and Netflix.
Loneliness and detachment are the biggest problems, at least in my experience.
Hm, some of those points I've experienced, too, or make sense to me.
3: You mean “professionally lonely” as not physically meeting enough other, say, devs? Why can't you get your tech interactions online and satisfy your need to meet people with non-tech people? That would remove the requirement for a tech hub.
8: That isn't specific to remote?
I very much agree that remote work isn't for everyone. But then, nothing is. Not even mango float, and that's a _fantastic_ dessert.
I don't agree with your reasoning, though. Many people are in horrible office-type jobs and their sanity would depend on them walking away. They don't, often for the same reason. Wealth helps because it gives freedom, but this isn't specific to remote.
Also, depending on what you define as remote work. In a not-so-rich country, remote work helps people in more remote and hence usually poorer regions get jobs. Yes, those aren't always great jobs—but they're in line with qualifications, and they do enable people to live better lives.
For number 3, I mean lonely in general. I've experienced it myself and witnessed a number of good people get burned.
As engineers, makers, tinkerers and creators, we tend to find our social networks among like-minded folk. When I was remote, I was living in a smaller town, where not much happened. There were a number of IT employers, but nothing particularly interesting. So I didn't have much "professionally aligned" groups to hang out with.
Working from home also allowed to skip trivial outdoorsy stuff, and the weather being inhospitable for >6 months a year didn't help. At the office we meet like-minded people all the time. Those at the company who lived in large cities (3 in the entire country that qualify) could meet in person outside of company activities, and they had groups of other makers to socialise with. Where you have a tech scene, you tend to have lots of nicely aligned activities. Living in a more distant location, you're alone.
As for number 8, you're of course right. It's not specific to remote, but I've found that at an office environment talking about some tricky problem that has surfaced during code review happens automatically, and discussing wider aspects of the code review in general tends to be part of workflow/tooling.
Yes, I do review code review at the office but it's not essential. (Important, sure.) But when your communication channels are not in-person, going over code review as matter of course becomes critical. Not being able to walk over and chat about engineering practices is something you will only miss once you've seen both sides for long enough.
The selection for wealth? Here I'm talking about jobs that require deep concentration. Tech is notorious for our constant search for the flow state. Interruptions and bad ergonomics can be devastating. But more than that, in order to remain mentally stable at a remote-only job for a long time, you need to be able to respect office hours and have a clear way to cut yourself off of the work environment.
If your work machine is the same as your personal use machine, those lines can get awfully hazy. Not good for mental wellbeing in the long run.
> If your work machine is the same as your personal use machine, those lines can get awfully hazy. Not good for mental wellbeing in the long run.
I find this to be true even with my phone! I have decided to get a cheap used Motorola smartphone to put slack + email + PagerDuty on and leave it in the desk unless I am oncall.
