Having worked remotely for the past few years, my experience has been that working remotely depends on the team itself as much as it depends on the individual's ability to work from home/remote.
The #1 factor that made the difference for me is how many others in the same team are remote. For Clarity (a team I lead), we decided early on to have a completely remote team. Few members of the team do work in HQ but most of them are remote. We wrote something about it here: https://medium.com/claritydesignsystem/working-remote-how-we...
Not to repeat the same post again but having the whole team remote with the option to gather every few months made a huge difference for us.
I've also worked remotely previously with a team that was mostly centered in one location, that wasn't a pleasant experience. Most of the decisions were still discussed outside of scheduled meetings and I constantly felt like an inconvenience to the team especially when having to setup communication and video conferencing tools at the beginning of each meeting just for me.
> working remotely depends on the team itself as much as it depends on the individual
Very true both in my experience and according to everything I've read. Being the only remote member of a team, and especially a team that has never had a remote member before, can really suck. Gotta break 'em in a bit. ;) Even with the best of intentions on all sides, it can be tough. Add in the possibility that people in another timezone are deliberately deciding stuff in hallway conversations or merging controversial patches while you're asleep, and it can be much worse. My last team was (and is) terrible this way. If you find this happening to you, your best bet is probably to get out like I did. My new team's much better, despite less experience and a company generally less friendly to remote work.
Another thing I rarely see mentioned is that you really need to stay on top of your internet connection and videoconferencing setup. Everything can seem fine during regular work, but it can rapidly become frustrating if your VC sessions are awkward or lossy. Get a good camera and microphone (headset if you prefer). Ensure good lighting and position the camera so people don't have to see up your nostrils. Consider upgrading to a faster internet connection. If you have other family members, also consider getting a router with good QoS capabilities in case they're binging on YouTube or Netflix while you're trying to talk to your colleagues.
Both of these bring up my real point: little bits of friction add up. Pay attention to every little thing that annoys you or might annoy your coworkers about the arrangement, and make a positive effort to improve it. Remote work can be awesome, but it's rarely that way by itself.
How would you migrate a team from local-only, to many remote team members? I've every intention to get there, but could use some advice. Steps I'm doing to test/prepare/do the cultural shift:
* Hiring friends: Makes it easier for the first one, since they have someone here they can talk about problems with (I imagine all problems that are particular to remote working come down to misunderstandings or missing communication)
* Encourage team members to work&travel—if someone goes somewhere for a weekend, let them stay there for a week instead and work from there
* Go work&travel myself to get into remote shoes with my current team and see how that feel/what processes are broken
* Get feedback from and experiment with Sales team, which is partly remote
This is definitely the most unwritten about part of working remotely. I'd said below that most of these articles are the same points over and over, but not many/any talk about the importance of the team and company you're working with. Anyways, thanks for highlighting it and sharing your team's experience!
We at http://fairpixels.pro also work 100% remotely. Personally, I found that, just like with office workers, there are particular types of people that naturally work better in a remote environment. There are people that HAVE to be in an office. Don't hire those. The folks that can only function remotely, will have less problems with the cons of the article. I read the similar cons pretty much on every remote working article, but really it's about hiring the right people.
Can we stop putting huge pointless pictures at the top of blog posts? I had to scroll with my finger 6 times before I even got to any content. If you're going to inconvenience me that much it might as well be with ads.
The #1 factor that made the difference for me is how many others in the same team are remote. For Clarity (a team I lead), we decided early on to have a completely remote team. Few members of the team do work in HQ but most of them are remote. We wrote something about it here: https://medium.com/claritydesignsystem/working-remote-how-we...
Not to repeat the same post again but having the whole team remote with the option to gather every few months made a huge difference for us.
I've also worked remotely previously with a team that was mostly centered in one location, that wasn't a pleasant experience. Most of the decisions were still discussed outside of scheduled meetings and I constantly felt like an inconvenience to the team especially when having to setup communication and video conferencing tools at the beginning of each meeting just for me.