The 2020 State of Remote Work

One of the main benefits for me (I would consider it in the &quot;Ability to work from home&quot; category mentioned in the article) is how much better is the environment at home: I don&#x27;t need to use headphones to avoid getting distracted and distracting other people with remote calls, I can stream some relaxing music from my computer, my chair is great, I have a huge L-shaped table, I have ilumination the way I like it, temperature.<p>I agree also with most of the other points in the article, both positive and negatives. Right now I work from home about 50% of the time, which I think is great. Most of the team also works remote part time, and anyway we are split between two cities (Madrid and Barcelona) so we must coordinate remotely even if we are at the office.

I was really skeptical of remote work before I took my first and current remote job, which surprisingly paid better than my former non-remote job. Conceptually, It was totally outside my Overton window. But having experienced it, my perspective completely changed. I don&#x27;t mind doing a good job, but I underestimated how valuable the autonomy of my time would be, it&#x27;s such a blessing. An occasional hour or two mid-day break really suits me. Those days, I am stretching my work day, but more relaxed and less stressed. My output is higher than working in an office.

Glad to see this data coming out. My company builds tools for remote workers so naturally, I speak with a lot of people who work remotely. I&#x27;d say most of the pain points I hear from remote workers line up fairly well with the data in this survey (and also my own pain points since I&#x27;ve worked remote for over a year now).<p>I&#x27;m not surprised to see that 97% of people would recommend working remote to others. Almost everyone I speak with says they would never go back to working in an office. While I can see myself going back to an office at some point in my career, right now the flexibility in my day far outweighs working in an office.<p>I hear a lot of similar downsides as well. I&#x27;m a bit surprised that only 20% of people responded that they struggled with loneliness while working remote. In my experience this number seems to be higher. My coworkers and I work out of coffee shops quite a bit and almost everyone who goes to work in a coffee shop is doing so in order to break out of the loneliness of their home and be around other people (next time you&#x27;re in a coffee shop, take note of how many people have laptops out). The problem though is that no one really interacts with people at coffee shops because everyone is at their own table on their laptops.<p>We heard this feedback so much that we started holding Work Clubs[0] at coffee shops where people can sit down with us at the same table and work together for a few hours. It&#x27;s not networking but it&#x27;s a way to meet other people during the workday while getting your work done. We&#x27;ve had people from many different industries, ages, and walks of life working together and forming business connections. It&#x27;s beneficial to the coffee shops too because when we all sit at the same table, order food and drinks, and it frees up other tables for more customers.<p>Our communities are growing in Portland, San Diego, and the SF Bay Area right now, so come work with us if you&#x27;re ever feeling lonely and need some IRL human interaction in your day! Mental health is an important factor for remote workers, and we&#x27;re hoping to alleviate some of those struggles for the remote community.<p>[0]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;outofoffice.app&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;outofoffice.app&#x2F;</a>

The parts that stood out to me:<p>(my team and I are currently seeing each other in person two full days every two weeks and the rest is remote)<p>&gt; 3. Not having to commute is a top benefit to remote workers<p>Makes sense. Financial, health, and psychological benefits.<p>&gt; 4. Communication, collaboration, and loneliness continue to be top challenges for remote workers and remote organizations<p>100% agree. I typically have automatic transcriptions enabled (Google Meet) + a full resolution version of whatever document the person is talking presenting is editing.<p>As for the loneliness aspect, while I don’t feel like I socialize that much during work, I have enough energy to go out and socialize after. This is a byproduct of a lot of things and not purely remote&#x2F;not remote.<p>&gt; 5. The majority of organizations with remote workers don’t pay for monthly expenses associated with remote work<p>Not sure about this one. I think part of the incentive for a company to go remote is savings. On the other hand, a standing desk and a good chair do wonders. Perhaps the savings from rent are enough to cover all of this- I’m not sure. Travel and expenses should be 100% reimbursed, no question.

Meetings are MORE seamless when done fully remotely, because everyone is responsible for their own setup. In my experience, the biggest friction is always getting a &quot;room&quot; in the office for people to sit, which often has issues.

Tokyo salaryman reporting in.<p>This is definitely the next career move for me if I stay corporate. I waste about 3 hours of potentially productive time each day -- not to mention the wind-up time necessary when sitting down to work.<p>1 hour morning prep to go out, 1 hour commute each way on central Toyko trains, and 30 odd minutes settling in at the office. Only to do exactly what I could be doing at home...At this point, I think telling developers the benefits of remote work is preaching to the choir.

Not commuting is huge. That adds about 3 hours a day to my availability, when you consider the prep time and various other incidentals.<p>One way to pitch it to the boss: savings on relo and the ability to tap into a much broader hiring pool. I&#x27;m seeing this now with a private equity group, where they&#x27;ve decided it is cheaper to hire operating talent nationally in major metro areas and let them commute &#x2F; remote work vs. relocating everyone for a two or three year gig. (After which point, you&#x27;re laid off in a small town where you&#x27;re brand new... not a good thing; absolutely no way I would relo for this gig)

The place I worked at before my current employer had a bizarre attitude to remote work. Our manager was strongly skeptical of work from home, but half of our team was distributed in branch offices which were effectively remote work! I worked in one of these satellite offices, so I had all of the collaboration difficulties and none of the upsides (still had to come in. To an open plan office.)<p>After a bunch of people left I got promoted to lead developer, but I was the only one left in the branch office. The rest of my team was concentrated in HQ a couple hours&#x27; drive away. The manager and software architect (his right-hand man) still micromanaged technical decisions. <i>I</i> couldn&#x27;t get ahold of them for weeks at a time as they were so overbooked, but my team members could occasionally corner them for hallway conversations. So I&#x27;d get asked something, have to make a best guess judgement since I couldn&#x27;t ask them, someone else would corner them and they&#x27;d tell them the opposite of what I decided. But I wouldn&#x27;t find out about this until we went to integrate something and found the two halves had been implemented to different directions.

I&#x27;ve been working remote 10 years now. I love it.<p>I am surprised, though. One major downfall wasn&#x27;t listed-- the remote worker is not &#x27;completely plugged in&#x27; with the rest of the team (if they are co-located). That little bit of drag brings some inefficiencies. But for me, remote work is now a &#x27;must have&#x27;.

In my previous job in Germany I could work remotely as much as I wanted. I would usually work from Spain, since is where I come from.<p>It was close to ideal: having lunch in 30min and spending the other 30min at the pool or going for a short break to the beach (just 5min away).<p>However I discovered that when I spent more than 1 or 2 weeks working remotely in a row I would start feeling detached from my job. It became increasingly difficult to be motivated and concentrated in certain tasks.<p>In my current job employees can work remotely 1 day a week by default with possibility to extend it occasionally. I find this to work better for me personally. It allows me to be flexible and productive while working remotely and at the same time it keeps me engaged and connected with the challenges and goals at work.

I think that to some point larger companies who do not have a good time management are the most scared by remote work.<p>The idea of someone slacking off freely at home is probably less bearable than slacking off at the office.

&gt; Communication, collaboration, and loneliness continue to be top challenges for remote workers and remote organizations<p>While probably years off and slightly dystopian, I&#x27;m interested to see how VR may change the remote communication and collaboration aspect. Stuff like ImmersedVR for the Quest (no affiliation) that allows you to be in the same virtual room as someone else, being able to glance over at their (virtual) screens by turning your head and having access to a digital whiteboard seems pretty scifi but are novel solutions to these problems.

Interesting results. I am also a remote worker and glad to see this trend is picking up. Everything has upsides and downsides but upsides of working remotely outweigh downsides buy quite a margin. Not only working remotely gives peace of mind (little flexibility on working hours.); working in a familiar&#x2F;comfortable environment increases productivity, especially for people like me who are a little uncomfortable when surrounded by other people. (bonus you can sit awkwardly in you PJs)

I&#x27;ve shared this a lot recently, sorry for doing it again, but usually the feedback we get is extremely positive:<p>We&#x27;ve turned our internal wiki with processes and experiences from running a fully remote company for over 8 years in a nice digestible PDF: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobilejazz.com&#x2F;company-handbook-pdf&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;mobilejazz.com&#x2F;company-handbook-pdf&#x2F;</a>

I have worked 100% remote at two different jobs for the past 8 years.<p>I gave upon remote work this week.<p>I slowly entered a phase of resenting work and resenting my family and home life. They each slowly encroached on each other until I was not sleeping, not being productive at work, not engaged with my kids and generally hating life. I felt like I was a husk of a person, a cipher or automaton.<p>Fortunately my company has an office 40 minutes away so I have the option to commute without changing jobs.<p>Admittedly, I have some unique circumstances that probably put me in a tiny minority. I still think remote work is a great idea, it&#x27;s just not for me anymore and I wish I had realized that 3 years ago.

Glad this covers the good <i>and</i> bad aspects of remote work. One thing is missing though: the cost of an extra bedroom to use as an office.<p>In many real estate markets, going from N to N+1 bedrooms is a considerable price increase.

Is the average remote job paid significantly less than the average local job? Is the HN trope that every developer should be making $150k+ simply wrong? Curious how to reconcile this data with the giganto salaries everyone here is always talking about getting. I like the remote lifestyle OK, but am I shooting myself in the (salary) foot by working remotely?<p>&gt; Below is the breakdown of salary ranges for respondents in USD.<p>&gt; 18.6% $50,001 to $75,000<p>&gt; 16.8% $75,001 to $100,000<p>&gt; 14.2% $25,001 to $50,000<p>&gt; 12.1% up to $25,000<p>&gt; 12% $100,000 to $125,000<p>&gt; 10.8% $125,001 to $150,000<p>&gt; 9.7% $150,001 to $200,000<p>&gt; 5.9% Over $200,000

I have worked remotely for 5 years, and for 3 years previously. Let&#x27;s say I have been working for 25 years. That means 32% of my career has been spent working remotely. And it&#x27;s been the most productive and personally satisfying part of my career.<p>But, note when I say remote it&#x27;s &quot;work from home most of the time&quot; remote. Not work in some other country on the other side of the world remote. I do in person meetings with clients and partners a couple times a month.

I&#x27;m currently working as a Senior Software Developer at a startup. I have been wanting to work remotely from my next job change.<p>I&#x27;m from India where engineers generally get paid less compared to engineers in the United States and many European Countries. Although I&#x27;m not looking for the same salary as that of an US engineer, I&#x27;m looking for a pay something close to that amount. Is this the reality today? How many companies pay remote workers regardless of their location?

This data is interesting but I&#x27;d love to see a similar survey done from the perspective of companies that employ remote workers.

Interesting results and well written casual but sensical analysis.<p>One thing that bothered me a bit though was the “product placements”. Were there any (financial or otherwise) incentives to publish those? If so, and even more so if there <i>weren’t</i>, I feel like this should have been more explicitly disclosed. Apologies if I skipped any disclosure inadvertently.

I&#x27;d love to work remotely. To date, though, there seems to be a very strong bias from employers in not doing so. Simply being in the office looks &quot;busy&quot;, while not being in the office looks like slacking, regardless of what&#x27;s actually getting done.<p>Quoting Allen, 80% of life really is just showing up. For better or worse.