Comment by Tommy Hodgins on "Remote work?"

If you're not working remotely already, maybe it's time to ask yourself why that is. Do you truly need to be meeting in person each day? If not, why not make the team remote and gather whenever you need a planning meeting?

If you do truly need to be there, then nobody can work remote because you do truly need to be there.

For some jobs, like being a retail salesperson, or a doctor - you have to be where the people are. You serve clients directly and you can't do that if you're not present…but for a lot of jobs, including a lot of web-related jobs, it really doesn't make a significant difference whether they worked at home, from an office somewhere, from your office, or from a café. If that's the case I'm sure it will become the new norm that once businesses realize they simply don't need to pay for real estate to house their employees - they won't.

I expect most employers in the future to offload the cost of the workspace onto the workers. Is is time to make the switch?

The biggest problem I've experienced is that the project is either not managed properly or the remote employee is spending too much personal time doing what they want, and not what they need to, during a full work day.

I've seen really good people, with powerful skill sets, get very little of what they need to move forward, remote, in projects because of horrible "team" leads.

I've also seen a lot - and, I mean a whole lot - of irresponsible and unqualified folks, get hired and depended on, then throwing half-ass attempts at getting things done remotely and not handling their role properly.

And, let's not forget about the pyramid of "developers" that are salespeople, and literally get hired to do a job - then outsourcing it via Upwork, Guru, etc.

I intend to do some remote work, soon - but would always prefer it to be local. I'm a hands-on person, and it just seems way too "hands-off", imo. However, this can also be true with any company that is not properly structured or honest.

I do feel that a person needs to be present and accounted for, face-to-face, so a team can really understand each other properly and lies can't go over as easily. At the very least, for enough time to get acclimated to each other and understand the type of workflow that needs to get accustomed to and the results that should be provided at the end of a work week or sprint.

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