Great review/post.<p>Remote work is the way of the future. A recent study from of IBM employees showed that if employees have a modest commute then they only need to work 38 hours/week before they start to have work/life balance issues.<p>If employees work for a company that allows them to telecommute, they can work almost 60 hours per week before running in to work/life balance issues. That's a big deal.<p>(That's not to say you should put in 60 hour weeks if you can help it, but it highlights the negative effects a commute has on people and their happiness in life.)
5 years ago I had an opportunity to work from home for 6 months and it drove me nuts! I guess I'm built in a way that I thrive on human-to-human interaction. Limiting myself to just digital communication actually made me sad.<p>Company should optimize for happiness. So for people like me, have an office. For people who thrive on working remotely, it should do everything it can to make them comfortable. I don't think there's a right or wrong approach. Just optimize for your workforce.
I don't really relate to the "soul sucking" idea of a commute.<p>I work about a little over an hour away from my office and work from home several days a week. It's a nice trade-off between being in the office, where interaction happens, and being remote, where remote interaction happens, but also where I can hit substantially higher levels of productivity.<p>While I could do without my evening commute, I generally ENJOY the morning commute. I have Spotify to dig into albums and discover new music, audiobooks, a lot of podcasts I like, organize my day and think through problems at work. Even on the return home when I want to decompress and NOT think about work, I still have stuff I can listen to and enjoy.<p>I don't think commuting is any sort of great way to spend time, but "soul-sucking", even in horrible traffic when you're having a bad day and just want to be at home, is a bit dramatic. Inconvenience != soul sucking and such statements remind me of the Louis C.K. bits on American whining.
I've started working remotely and I've never achieved so much work as in the past two months. Being ahead of schedule also opened up some hours to work on personal projects, which is great.<p>Previously, I would endure on a 4-hour daily commute by bus/metro, work on a noisy office, and for a lower pay to boot. No way I go back to that life.
Question about incomes and San Francisco start ups that offer full-time remote work:<p>If X programmer would make 100k/yr working at your location in San Francisco, does X programmer make 100k/yr if they are full-time remote in another city?
nice post. Having worked remotely, I definitely prefer that to office even if there is a short commute but this took some time. When I initially started working remotely, I was hard to stay on track. But having a separate "work" place did wonders.