Is remote working is underrated?

#discuss

Top comments (2)

YuanHao Chiang • Mar 6 '20 • Edited

I actually think it's overrated -- it's really not for everyone. For the following reasons:

1) If you aren't into researching hard-core, in the beginning it can (will) be very stressful.

My first weeks at my current company were very stressful as I couldn't go ask anyone to help me out personally (we have a fairly large code base). This feeling was shared by most of the remote devs when they just got hired.

To put it in perspective: hurray! You got hired. On your first day, you get excited to run git pull origin on the Front-End side, only to realize that the application is a grand total of 500,000 lines of code.
Alright, so let's try fixing something in the Back-End! Just getting it up and running takes everyone at least 30 or 40 hours to install as it is a complex stack of Ruby, Rails, Thrift, Go, Redis, the list goes on. As for their on-site staff, an experienced person can get it up and running in an afternoon.

Simple bugs are most likely already fixed, and the other ones can be daunting. There are hundreds of tests and with 100 million users, things can go very wrong very quickly.

2) People don't respect or appreciate you that much.

When I go to their physical offices, people very quickly ask me questions and value my opinion. It is also harder to voice yourself.

3) Work-life balance

I have a small child, and honestly when I was going to the office for a few weeks, it was quite a blessing to not have to think about stuff at home (my wife stays with her family those weeks, so we get a lot of support). I usually give my son and wife a lot of quality time every day.

Now, if remote is really for you, you will shine. You will become the best. However, out of our 10 remote devs, I would say half really do better being remote than being at the office.

The other half benefits from pair-programming, asking questions to more experienced team members, etc., even when they were hired on the basis of being good at working remotely and they have had more than 5 years to become good at being remote.