People don’t want to commute; they just don’t want to miss out

I don't like commuting but I do prefer being in the office. It helps me maintain as much of a work-life separation as I can, gives the company a chance to provide me with a specialized environment to do my work (that I would otherwise have to provide myself), and greatly reducing the friction in having conversations with my direct team because I just need to turn around instead of chatting or emailing them.

I don&#x27;t prefer being at the office. After 5+ years of predominantly remote work, I&#x27;m not going back to regular office hours. It&#x27;s not even the commute, it&#x27;s being at the office in an environment that does not promote getting work done.<p>I work for a 10k+ employee company with locations worldwide, so online communication is a must in the first place. In most projects I work, my closest collaborators aren&#x27;t necessarily even in the same timezone as I am.<p>My work&#x2F;life separation is simple: I have a separate laptop for work, and when it&#x27;s closed I&#x27;m not at work any more. My remote work arrangements have tremendously increased my quality of life.<p>The difficult part is that many employers don&#x27;t offer the possibility of mostly remote work. I tried looking for jobs elsewhere for unrelated reasons, but I ended up turning down the offers I got because it was 5 days a week on-site.

I like how Gitlab promotes remote work, but I don&#x27;t like that their salaries are based on employee&#x27;s costs of living.<p>To me these seem contradictory. If remote work is so transparent, location shouldn&#x27;t matter.<p>It feels like they&#x27;re praising remote work only when it&#x27;s profitable for them.

Single data-point here:<p>As someone who&#x27;s worked mostly full-remote for 5+ years and has been in an office for the past 2 years: I absolutely prefer being in an office with my coworkers.<p>Everyone has different priorities of course, but commuting and location-lock-in aside the office wins in all categories for me. I could technically be working from home whenever I want but unless I have practical reasons to work from home I always come in.<p>Interesting conversation, though. And I think that in order to make it work properly, you kind of need to be &quot;remote-first&quot; as a team (most communication digital) or you will be hit with chaos.<p>And I think it&#x27;s really great that GitLab is going all-in on this. There are also many teams in the cryptocurrency&#x2F;blockchain space that are fully remote, where the team members meet physically a couple of times a year for conferences or team retreats.

One thing that I don&#x27;t hear mentioned much when it comes to remote work is that it&#x27;s the easiest way to get your own office and bathroom. My office&#x27;s bathrooms are full of motion sensors that don&#x27;t work reliably (ideally, a toilet should not flush when I am sitting on it, and SHOULD flush when one of my co-workers walks away after leaving waste in it.. neither of these are usually accomplished). I am a lot more productive when I don&#x27;t have to walk far to find an available and clean restroom.

I work from home 2 to 3 days a week.<p>At big companies, it was pretty easy to do. Everything is electronic and formal. Still days I wanted to be in the office but remote was fine.<p>Small company where everything is in flux based on customer needs, it&#x27;s more of a mix where we&#x27;re making real decisions every day and really need those face to face meetings &#x2F; I want to be there. Sometimes just to get that face to face time with someone new or such.<p>Really though it is not about size, it is about the job &#x2F; how the company works, and that&#x27;s OK. Different jobs, phases of a company&#x27;s life, DIFFERENT PEOPLE and etc all lend themselves more to remote work, or way way less. There&#x27;s no right or wrong more than there is inherently right or wrong code as much as you consider the existing system and make decisions about what works best given that system.

Quoting myself from before (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=19788802" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=19788802</a>)<p>Communication between team members is a huge issue in remote work.<p>It works if everyone is on site. It also works if everyone is remote.<p>But when some are at the office and some aren&#x27;t, communication and information sharing becomes a lot harder. Mostly it&#x27;s a process and tool issue, but still humans will rather just turn around and ask the team than spend a minute describing their issue on Slack&#x2F;whatever.

&gt; “I&#x27;m scouting for companies who are all remote because they have a much easier time attracting and retaining talent”<p>Is there any data to support this, especially considering that compensation is usually the number one way to attract and retain talent, and remote workers are often not paid well (even after adjusting for cost of living) compared to on-site teammates doing the same job but physically present in an office location?<p>There are rare and uninformative exceptions sure, but largely remote work pay sucks for doing the same job. The company is treating you like basic needs (quiet &amp; private workspace, avoidance of crushing commute) are perks that should be offset with lowered salary, even though the salary is for <i>the job you’re doing</i>.<p>Edit: Gitlab apparently even publishes their own policies about this:<p>- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;about.gitlab.com&#x2F;handbook&#x2F;people-operations&#x2F;global-compensation&#x2F;#paying-local-rates" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;about.gitlab.com&#x2F;handbook&#x2F;people-operations&#x2F;global-c...</a><p>It actually smells like outrageous bullshit pay policy to me. That’s actually kind of sad given they are held up as an example of more healthful &amp; open-minded work policies.<p>I can say for sure I’d rather deal with the downsides of an office commute &amp; environment than to be paid less than a teammate doing the exact same job potentially solely because they are choosing to live in a higher cost region. That’s a pretty clear signal the company is looking for fungible, cheap talent and views remote as a cost-cutting tactic, not some corporate ideal.<p>&gt; “If we start paying everyone the highest wage our compensation costs would increase greatly, we can hire fewer people, and we would get less results.”<p>Wow, what complete horse shit. So what about companies located in expensive urban centers that don’t offer remote positions? <i>All</i> their hires are at the highest local rate, yet companies like these are thriving, hiring plenty of talent, growing, etc.<p>I see the “location factor” between San Francisco and NYC is 0.85. I would be laughing my way right off of that negotiation video call...<p>I am frankly stunned to learning it’s such a sham with Gitlab!

I hate commuting. I like being in the office around people once I get there though.

Even as a full remote employee for the last 3 years, I still find GitLab to be head and shoulders above others in their approach.<p>The emphasis on _async_ communication stands out. So many places basically think &quot;we have video chat and slack! done!&quot;. But then you realize that the east coasters all got together at 5am west coast time. If everyone is used to at least recording, then just notifying the channel &quot;hey we chatted about X&quot;, it helps a lot.<p>At the same time, I still feel if offices were just nicer spaces, people wouldn&#x27;t be as pro-remote. Every office I&#x27;ve been subjected to (over 15-18 years, it&#x27;s been several) are rather ugly, distraction-laden environments. I&#x27;d be ok to go work in an office, but, almost every tech office I&#x27;ve been in is both depressing and full of stupid interruptions.

I hate commuting, and I definitely don&#x27;t feel like I&#x27;m gaining anything in particular having to be in the office. It&#x27;s just the inertia of expectations that keeps it up.<p>The best schedule, in my opinion, is one day in the office, to deal with meetings and planning and such that actually benefits from face-to-face, to four days remote, for actually doing work.<p>This is 2019; you can always jump on a video call. And even though I do have a private office (with a door!) at work, my office ar home is less prone to incidental interruptions, and the network connection is more stable.

A while back I was on vacation while also doing contract work. I remember exploring Montreal, banging out designs on hostel or cafe wifi, exploring the city and meeting people while also being productive when i felt like being alone. It&#x27;s probably the happiest memory I have of that year.<p>Would have loved to pivot to that full time if the guy I worked for hadn&#x27;t turned out to be unreliable. It&#x27;s still a fond fantasy to find an arrangement like that again somehow.

Just changed jobs from a job that was 10 minutes away from home, in a quiet cubicle, to a job 70 minutes away in an &quot;open concept&quot; office - and it&#x27;s painful.<p>Before that I worked completely remotely for years and I miss it so much. Unfortunately this isn&#x27;t really a thing so far in Singapore as far as I can tell (The previous job was being proud about an initiative that introduced one day of remote work for select people. One day per month).

As long as GitLab continues to pay location-adjusted salaries for remote employees, talented employees don&#x27;t want to work at GitLab either.

Is it only me or the article font is really hard on the eyes? Why the web designers (looking at Microsoft as well) insist on using such thin fonts?

I&#x27;ve noticed a link in my work between accountability, comfort, distraction, and productivity. If I&#x27;m too comfortable, I let myself get distracted. If I&#x27;m in an office, I can get distracted by others. If I&#x27;m not next to someone working, I may not hold myself accountable and slack off.<p>But if I&#x27;m not too comfortable, and not too distracted, I can be more productive. To do this, I have to turn off slack and e-mail, and go to a room which isn&#x27;t very comfortable and has no distractions. Ideally there would also be other people in there for the same purpose, for accountability.<p>At work we have these &quot;focus zones&quot; where a conference room is booked for 2-5 hours a day. You can go there and just work in silence with others. If I turn off slack and e-mail, it works well. The only problem is the chairs are almost too comfortable, and conference tables aren&#x27;t ideal for working on laptops.

I don&#x27;t want to commute, but I do want to work in the same physical place as my coworkers.<p>&quot;Missing out&quot; is one reason, but not the biggest one. The biggest one is that I prefer to have a clear physical&#x2F;psychological separation between being &quot;at work&quot; and &quot;at home&quot;.

What I would have wanted to hear from the interview is if they have junior developers and how are they handled. If “Remote People are a Manager of One”, how can we expect junior developers to manage themselves. Hire the best and they probably could, but they need to be mentored.

I don&#x27;t want to miss out on the commute as it takes me out of my home environment out into the world, it provides exercise and I can see, hear and feel my colleagues and the inner workings of the company in high resolution stereoscopic 3D. It&#x27;s not an either&#x2F;or thing, I am happy to choose a day in the week to work from home. I&#x27;m impressed though by how GitLab took the virtual or remote corporation idea to a very practical implementation you can branch everywhere although I&#x27;m skeptical about the climate tax caused by the yearly flying of the employees. How is that offset?<p>In either case, with VR and AR maturing GitLab&#x27;s groundwork will be gratefuly re-used with in the future.

Interesting article, especially when it&#x27;s readable using Firefox reader mode.<p>The comment by Sid about investors seeing remote-only as an additional risk something that never really crossed my mind. Gitlab truly are pioneers in going remote-only at this scale.

@dmonn, as I see no any contact info on the NoHQ page, only to the Twitter account where you encourage people to upvote your submission: could you do us a favor and remove the meta refresh from the noscript tag on your pages? Thanks.

Personally I like a very short commute, ideally a 5-10 minute walk through a park. After having worked remotely for 5+ years, I absolutely need a separation between &#x27;personal space&#x27; and &#x27;work space.&#x27;

I still haven’t found alternate of discussing an issue with colleagues in person on the whiteboard and finalizing solution. It’s just faster and better than any remote collaboration tools.

Well, why does this guy bring investors into the story? :)

<p><pre><code> &lt;noscript&gt; &lt;style&gt;body { display: none; }&lt;&#x2F;style&gt; &lt;meta http-equiv=&quot;refresh&quot; content=&quot;0; url=https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nohq.co&quot;&#x2F;&gt; &lt;&#x2F;noscript&gt; </code></pre> Why on <i>earth</i> is this there? It’s on both the blog post and the front page of the website, so it throws you into a redirect loop.<p>I’m baffled and curious as to why that got there in the first place.