Have you considered that your company is self-selecting for those who flourish in remote, but that those whose personalities differ are self-selecting for working in an office environment?

It's OK for there to not be a one size fits all solution.

Or worse, open floor plans.

Also I would bet that the amount of people who prefer remote has gone up drastically since 2019, both due to exposure to it, and due to covid isolation shifting people's personalities.

All remote work did was showcase people can in fact rebel against the status quo when the inertia associated is entirely self-inflicted.

I think that's an overstatement. I've been more remote than not for close to 20 years and 90%+ remote for close to 10.

That said, there is some point in time before which companies would have had to largely shrug and tell people that they had to stay in the office pandemic or not. (Which of course many jobs and professions basically had to anyway.)

That said, I've been a professional programmer for all that time, which in my mind is practically made for working remotely. It's definitely taken longer for some other industries to be as amenable, which I believe has been due to the people in charge, not the profession.

I agree that general inertia has something to do with it, but that's a terrible reason to accept the way things are.

Most people didn't know remote was possible until 2019

That's what your personal life is for.

Related: https://archive.ph/Ji4nM (WSJ - Americans Are Breaking Up With Their Work Friends)

I started a job a few years ago and spent the first 4 weeks in the office in SF, then moved back to Australia. The relationships I established in that first month were invaluable for the first 6 months or so of my work there - lots of things were easier for me as a result because I knew who to message or connect on slack to get things done.

After about 6 months those relationships faded to the point that I couldn't rely on those social connections any more. It was difficult knowing who to message when I needed something done outside my team; and they had no idea who I was any more.

I don't think you need to be in the office every day, but I miss going to an office at all. Those casual social connections are crazy valuable. Zoom and slack don't give you the experience of sitting at a table with people over lunch and chatting. We dismiss those relationships at our peril.

[And no, I don't want to go back to 1950 at all, don't get me wrong.]

Market has already listened and are going to favor the latter group and the remote environment is going to be here with us indefinitely. If for whatever reason you feel like going against this new market trend/correction, you stand to lose out.

Companies who are demanding hybrid or return to office are unironically putting themselves in walls that will limit their competitiveness in the long run. Again this is what the market tells us, many companies are realizing they can save on expensive commercial rent/logistic overhead and hire more remote workers.

During my somewhat passive job search, I've only been considering companies that have an office local to me (i.e. Central London). I've been working remotely since the start of the pandemic, and I simply don't like it. Sure, I don't miss having to commute or offices with bad noise pollution controls, but I miss everything else.

Most of all, I miss being in town at the end of the day and being able to pop to the pub with colleagues if one of us needs to vent, or go to a salsa party nearby. I basically don't go out anymore; yes, this is a me thing, but it's also always been a me thing. I've always found it easier to have a social life on weeknights rather than weekends because I struggle to overcome the inertia of being at home.

This preference means some very exciting companies are effectively off-limits to me, and that's hugely frustrating; but I also know what I need.

I feel like picking jobs off of a desire to live a social life and feel like part of a community is extremely normal and valid. Remote work is essentially accepting that the primary way you'll engage with your colleagues and labor is through a screen, and that is an uncomfortable feeling (to some people at least)

My coworkers are my colleagues. I don’t mind sharing a beer with them once in a while, but apart from “work” we have different interests, values, and experiences. That doesn’t lead to community, it leads to having acquaintances. And if you doubt that, ask yourself how many of your “work friends” from a job you’ve had more than a year ago do you still interact with?

The pandemic has been a joy for me because it’s let me separate my parasocial interactions from my true friends.

I still interact a lot with people I was on a team with >1 yr ago – the ones I met before we went remote. Can't say the same about the ones I was never in the office with, even though they seem like equally good people.

> but apart from “work” we have different interests, values, and experiences. That doesn’t lead to community, it leads to having acquaintances.

It has not been my experience that "community" arises particularly from this kind of homogeneity.

I'm also kind of curious what you mean by "parasocial" outside of the context of media.

I actually went back and forth on using it - even considering a hedge with a "quasi-" prefix. But it felt apt: plenty of my past "work friends" exist as little beyond a persona that I interact with via LinkedIn. I give a thumbs-up for their job change, we exchange polite offers to get a coffee that we both know neither will accept, and we go on.

I would say that the majority of my friends and close Social Circle are people who I met and worked with an office at one point. Sure it started with cooler chat and beers after work, but it evolve to going to weddings, backpacking trips, and our partners becoming close with friendships of their own.

I do like workplace community, even if I'm only close with a subset of my colleagues. I find it vastly more fulfilling to work with friends that I enjoy. I don't like turning off my personality and become a faceless COG working with other cogs for 8 hours a day and find it depressing

Been on my own and remote since 2000. I am remote with my clients save for occasional face to face meeting when possible and I am remote with my subcontractors. It feels "extremely normal" to me and the last thing I've ever want is my friends and people I hang out with being supplied by my workplace. Does not mean that I've never made friends when I did "normal work" long time ago but it was just extra.

I do think that this discussion is often people who disagree not bothering to disagree, which probably explains why I read your comment wrong.

It makes sense—wherever you spend the most time around others is where you’re most likely to make friends and feel a sense of belonging.

Remote work upends that. It’s great if you already have an established social circle, but bad for people who want to develop one.

There’s no reason why work has to be the main thing that satisfies these needs, but it’s fulfilled that role for so long that it has sucked up most of the oxygen from alternatives.

I hope that as remote work continues to take off, we’ll see a new wave of third places that can take over this function. There’s a huge opportunity here for anyone who can help socially struggling remote workers feel more connected.

The argument would be a lot stronger if most office work wasn't perpetually online to begin with.

2. Sign-up to a local coworking space in Central London and make a habit to go there every day. Try to make friends with people there and go out with them every now and then. Many coworking spaces even try to facilitate community building by organising events, etc.

3. Profit.

Socializing doesn't need to happen at work.

Also, keep in mind not all coworkings are made equal. It might take trying a few before you find one that suits you well.

In my experience small, local coworkings are best for building relationships. Big, chain coworkings like WeWork are the worst. Everyone just minds their own business there.

I prefer this to spending £40 for the train to then drink £8 pints in overfilled London pubs while standing outside and shouting over each other. I actually don't want to spend more time with my colleagues after spending all day with them, I prefer to have a second friend circle which is more diverse than <group of people who happen to work in the same company as me>.

Also, note that neither of these activities involve colleagues, who I'd usually only socialise with post-work once a week (typically Fridays).

My friends don't share my work context, nor do I want to have them hear about it endlessly. Getting a drink with friendly coworkers is a good way to have a conversation with that shared context.

This works great for you but for many it doesn't. Both are valid perspectives.

For every bold company that leans into remote, the majority rest check the public temperature and do what seems in line pending open revolt form their employees or competitors offering remote.

So much of the public temperature around remote work is oriented around heavy support from public figures for return to office. By some employees supporting it as well, everyone risks getting swept back into office whether they like it or not and don’t have a job with enough power (like a talented dev) to go against the grain and protest.

If you’re not in those jobs with leverage and at a company considering RTO or not, Employees supporting remote work are espousing very safe career views, and the employees who disagree risk going against the grain with mgmt who want the office back so stay silent.

So this is what I mean by OP’s opinions mean everyone else gets swept in it as well.

The Mayor of NYC and state governor are directly petitioning companies to “fill our downtown!” For Pete’s sake.

So, with that in mind, I’m advocating for employees who want to go back to consider how their vocal opinions affect other employees who don’t want it, which based on the ghost-town hybrid office attempts and midtown NYC being at like 40% capacity are a critical mass of workers, to understand how their vocal-ness gets co-opted by entities that care a lot less about that worker’s having a friend group and more about commercial real estate, getting commuters back and generally abstract “well this is how it’s always done” logic, and to understand that they as employees add the final piece to making RTO happen in a way that harms all employees who aren’t in nimble jobs like SWE but should still be able to see their families grow up even if they don’t know how to code.

On the remote work side, you have largely tech companies which are down for it no issue but aren’t most companies, and then you have employees who just want to see their families and soccer games and get to know their spouses before age 60.

This population gets ignored by the somewhat very powerful stakeholders for RTO by wrapping up the argument in abstract “national /personal meaning” arguments as if the office is the only way to get those, and then the addition is that the stay-at-home employees are pajama-wearing slackers who don’t understand this greater good.

But, as long as employees don’t budge by and large and hop companies for remote, this is in balance for both the employees that want to be remote and the ones that want an office.

But when employees who want to RTO and start advocating for it, it’s changed. They add the final piece for employers and stakeholders who ultimately just want commercial rent paid and downtown lunch traffic to say “see, employees want RTO too!” This is all over LinkedIn and op-eds consistently.

The sweeps start happening, and everyone comes in, all because Bob wanted easy access to after-work pub experiences. At the cost of other employees’ family lives and literal hours of their day on a commute.

I’m not advocating for censorship, I’m advocating for candor in evaluating what’s going on.

I will continue to argue against any government regulations forcing the issue one way or another. But if companies start demanding workers return and the pool of jobs available to you shrinks, that's not my problem.

To be clear, I oppose Mayor Adams's (and anyone else's) inept efforts to distort the labor market in favor of in-person working, even if it's towards something I personally prefer. Government should play no role in remote vs in-person.

The market might solve it via PwC tanking over 10 yrs due to talent, but in the meantime that’s 10 yrs of people who deserve to see their families more too and can’t.

You could argue they should just be good enough at their jobs and/or choose the right career as to get remote options. Fair enough and this is what I’ve done.

But the implied primitive that the market decides who gets more family time, especially when it’s almost as simple as internet at the office or internet at home, seems very socially wrong to me.

Candidly, I believe that employees who advocate for RTO are playing into the hands of stakeholders who don’t care much at all about those employees interests and reasons for going in, and by extension it damages fellow employees who want to stay remote.

The issue is, and by extension my primitives:

- remote employees can stay remote without damaging RTO employees’ social connections as there are a mountain or ways to get those social connections outside of easy-mode work.

- if RTO employees start going back, remote employees get damaged. There is the binary in office/not in office option. demonstrated outcomes are RTO pressure from some leads to RTO pressure for all.

- so, remote employees aren’t infringing on RTO, but RTO infringes on remote. There is more than enough evidence of this. One is allowing whoever to do whatever, the other is infringing on one population to support the social needs of another. That doesn’t seem right for Pete’s sake.

Ultimately, between a person’s ability to get easy access to a pub in light of the above, vs the resulting damage on employees who just want to work via the internet connection in their homes vs the one in the office and as a result see their kids grow up and get to know their spouses outside of pre-8am and post-7pm… that seems like a clear greater good to orient around and to be aware of one’s views’ impacts. It’s more than just pub nights involved.

No, I'm looking for companies that fit my preferences. Which is making my job search much harder, but I know what I need.

If your experiences are different, I'm sorry for that, the last thing I want portray remote as an invalid preference. But when the topic comes up, I'm not going to sit on mute if it feels like my preference isn't getting any airtime.

What I’m referring to is this. I’ve worked at a few places that maintain an in-person office option for employees like you to support hybrid offices. These offices are frequently libraries though. Nobody is there. So the following happens.

If it’s a disciplined, remote-first place, this is accepted and ok. The subset of companies that can support this is small IMO.

For most others, they look at the empty office, hear preferences like yours that want in-personal back via appeals for community, at the extensive and the loud culture of OpEds in the Wall Street Journal/NYT by Peggy Noonan or Malcolm Gladwell about how remote work is critical for national and personal meaning, and then the return to office discussions start b/c employees support it as do thought leaders, the media, and politicians, and the nearly-empty office is expensive.

To be sure, there might be work places that stay totally in-person and you’re free to work there.

But the other issue is a lot of people don’t want work friends as their friends. This is loose scientific evidence, but Office Space is a very popular movie in the US and the Office in UK/US for this reason, for example.

So calls for return to office means, imo, a lot of people who would also love to be remote but can’t bc they’re not software engineers or wherever get swept back in. So your personal needs harm that greater good as I see it.

I feel like people get this or not. The relationships at work are more for career advancement than friendship (or I’m a sociopath). This has been a thing forever, Office Space was a hit for a reason.

Good times.

The polarisation of this debate is quite weird to watch. I get why people who prefer remote feel they have to fight for it now that it has become a common thing, but it's weird to deny that other people might have other preferences and there is room for both.

Funny, because before COVID, like 90% of the IT companies out there were using a "one-size fits all" solution (i.e., 100% office-based work).

It did involve flights and hotels for the around 10 weeks a year I was working in more of a lab situation, which I can see not wanting to do for 300 people instead of a few dozen.

Remote doesn't specify where you work, though. In my 20 years of working remotely, I've worked from home, from cars, hotels, cafes, offices, out in the middle of a field, you name it I've probably done it. 100% remote working conditions can mean working in an office environment every single day, if that's your preference. Remote is a euphemism for "work wherever you please".

The actual differentiation here is whether or not an employer dictates a working location. Are you, perhaps, suggesting that there is strong overlap between those who prefer working in offices (which does no preclude 100% remote) and having a controlling power dictate how they live?

There is an implication as well, though, that there is an additional self-selection towards having dictation on how to live your life from a greater power among those who prefer working in offices, seeing those people self-select businesses that have mandated location requirements. That is what we are exploring here.

This, right here, explains the pushback against those who favor in-office work; it's not that they simply want to be in the office, but they want their colleagues to make the commute to join them in the office and chat with them.

Conversely, remote workers do not place any such requirements on where their colleagues work. They aren't requiring that anyone else be in a specific location at a specific time, hence why it is better and more accommodating to others.

No thanks. I get paid the same if it takes me 4 hours or 8 hours to complete my work. I'll take 4 hours and spend the rest of the day doing what I want.

“People that like social interaction are average performers” is such a wild take to me. I’ve worked with incredibly talented people in the past, where we’d go for lunch beers, travel together, come back to the office, finish up pretty complicated features. I don’t consider myself a “top performer”, but those people certainly were, and downplaying their talent and abilities just because they enjoy the company of other people is just… not nice.

This whole debate of “remote only” vs “fully back to office” is extremely subjective. Some people love one, some people enjoy the other. I’ll be happy as long as both of the options stay competitive enough where people get a choice.

People can be productive or slackers. And they can be social or antisocial. You personally noticed the social slackers. But I doubt you noticed the antisocial ones, because they're not visibly doing nothing; they're distracting themselves in quieter ways.

I know plenty of people who are both productive and social. Indeed, given that both software and business are mostly team sports, some of the most productive people I know are very social.

As one advisor put it: researchers who prefer to keep their door closed often publish more papers over the course of a year, but researchers who keep their door open often publish more impactful research over the course of their lifetime.

I've been working remotely for years with in-person visits on a monthly to quarterly basis. Brain-storming and planning in person definitely create value, but getting the work done is a different story. 10% inspiration (in person, maybe) and 90% perspiration (where they don't have to watch you sweat).

I've also worked with engineers who completely discounted the importance of the social aspect of their work. Frequently even their strongest work had minimal impact on the organization.

(My prior job was the first time I've worked in an open plan office so one of my hard requirements in my prior job search was no open plan offices.)

This. working remotely you have the HUGE advantage of being able to work enough and spend the rest of your working time as you prefer, rather than waste it. Even if you deeply love your teammates, having more time for yourself is priceless, especially in a society where you're supposed to spend the most and the best of your life working.

Not all job roles are the same and communication can be required for many. Building good rapport can help reduce tensions as well and being in person can help that.

Edit: Find more work or help the rest of the team out.

Make performance scale better and the problem stops. There aren't enough jobs willing to do so.

That’s the nonsensical aspect of all this. Everyone mentioning that the office was a key community or some higher ideal to spend time on for meaning forget that you can have that socialization and significantly more intrinsically valuable meaning-making with (a) family, (b) friends outside of work, (c) community involvement. All of which don’t require commutes, work lunches, losing family time for something that doesn’t matter in the long run. Instead, let’s hang out and support the extroverts who somehow don’t know how to make friends outside of those they helped launch a product with? Totally nonsensical.

Edit: I’m at a negative downvote and dropping fast, so fwiw one day everyone gets families of some kind and also stops working, even if that’s not understood now. what connections are left over after work stops are what will power you, and most people understand that eventually.

As an introvert, I welcome the reversal. Deal with it.

Yes and no.

There's the people personalities that affect the end result, but sometimes the company is the one setting hurdles that make everything hard.

"There's no free interaction, like at the coffee machine." but don't offer spaces (or time) for people to relax online and/or connect.

"You don't have the immediate help of others that are around you." others that can distract you sometimes, and meanwhile you want to even deduct the bathroom break's time from remote workers.

"I need some socialization." do your time, then find another outlet of socialization.

Some companies are not embracing remote working. Some might have valid reasons (most of the staff is local and we want the ones that could remote to have heavy interaction) or non-valid ones (I'm the boss and I want to see everyone at the office). Of course, for these companies, remote will be hard. They are making it so.

I see older people in management who can't deal with remote and younger people who are eager to work from wherever.

To be more open-minded: If you work in a place where (old/er) management is intolerant of diverse working styles... well, f-ck them! Please kindly find a better place to work! :-)

What? Nuanced thinking? No, we need a million click bait articles and BS business books about how going remote will help you win at everything no matter who you are or what your business is. Then when problems arise we can get another million click bait articles and BS business books about how remote is terrible and doesn't work... again no matter who you are or what you're doing.

How else will a generation of consultants make a living helping guide "remote transformations" and then another generation of consultants make a living doing the opposite?

The very best teams have highly levels of adapability -- whatever comes we can adapt, but continue to be high functioning!

Personally, I really like WFO. Why? I like the pressure to wake up early, dress well (suit and tie!), ride the metro/subway, and perform at the office. However, I never pressure my teammates to do the same. I tell all new joiners: You can wear hoodie and jeans everyday, but please don't take away my necktie! Yes, I know that I am the cultural equivalent of an office / cultural dinosaur in 2022!

In my team, people that WFH more often have measurably lower rates of collaboration versus those who work-from-office (WFO). To be clear, the most advanced sales teams literally measure everything regarding collaberation or client contact. (I have seen custom built software at multiple companies that try to exactly measure this!) It does not mean that WFH is less productive or less collaborative. Instead, it means that each team is different.

A "WFH zealot" on my team was adamant that their previous boss who commuted by high speed rail twice per week more than 500km away was a "good situation". There is no limit for the zealots (on both sides: office vs home). It could be working from the moon (WFH -- new SpaceX colony!) or everyone sleeps in the office 7 days a week (ramen profitable / office uber-zealot). Both sides are simultaneously correct (with perfect fit team) or wrong (with terrible fit team).

This whole silly "argument" feels like the anti-vaxxer equivalent of WFH vs WFO. I am tired of it.

What is a good reply to this post? Talk about when/where you were wrong / learned something new (!). "Oh, I was WFH zealot, but then I was forced to WFO and was suddenly much higher collab and connected with my teammates." (Or the exact opposite -- "I am tired of annoying sales people asking me to fix their broken mouse!".) Please don't reply to this post if you are the anti-vaxxer equiv of WFH/WFO. You add nothing new to the debate.

Last: This whole debate feels eerily simliar to the mid-2000s argument about (only) "hire old/experienced" vs "hire young/inexperienced". Both sides were correct and wrong at the same time. The same old anti-vaxxer crowd argument again! The ultimate team had energetic people of all ages / genders / experience / ethnicity / religion. Hey... Looks the same in 2022!

The best team I ever worked on had wild variety in experience. All the way from "I-Am-Old-Get-Off-My-Lawn" to "17-year-old-summer-intern". Amazingly, people were open-minded and tolerant. As a result, we worked at a furious pace and team meetings were amazing.

We haven't tried hybrid but I don't really see the benefits of it. One big advantage of remote is being able to hire people in other locations. The only way I could see hybrid being useful would be to provide a work space for people who want to work away from home (i.e., for variety or because their house isn't conducive to it), and let those who prefer to work from home (i.e., parents with young kids who need a more flex schedule) do so without set office day requirements (or very few).

I had such a hard time focusing in the office that whenever I'd finally achieve momentum, somebody stopping by to chat was bittersweet--it might be another several hours before I manage to reacquire that state. Usually I'd just waste time until everybody went home and then do my actual job in an empty office. I grew to resent them a teensy bit because their social habits had me "working" 12 hour days.

Being remote, we use a slack app called donut (no affiliation, I just like it). It prompts me every week:

> You've been randomly paired with so-and-so, here are several times that you're both available

We pick one and have a 30 minute chat. Explicitly making time for social stuff really changes the equation. I'm working only 8 hrs a day for the first time since I started working a salaried job.

100% remote doesn't dictate how (or with who) you eat lunch.

I don't like the office and work 100% remote but I remember collaboration scenarios that were easier and more natural in the office. Example...

- coworker and I discuss something at the cubicle or meeting room. Maybe use the whiteboard. It's now about noon so we agree to grab lunch at the cafeteria.

- continue discussion while walking toward the cafeteria

- continue at lunch table and/or walk back to desks

No coordination or invites on Zoom. Continued discussion in-real-life just flows while we're multitasking (i.e. getting some food) -- because we're both physically present.

So two remote workers getting in the car to meet for lunch isn't the same.

But at the moment, I'm not working on anything that requires that intense level of in-person collaboration described above -- so I'd rather remain working 100% at home.

Also I have a coworker in my team that is in the same city, but the opposite part, around 2 hour drive from me to his place. If we want to have lunch, we waste a lot of time (1 hour per direction for each of us); if we are in the office in the same day, there is zero cost.

I found small chat over lunch or a coffee break to be very effective in building relations with people you don't directly work with. This helped me many times in the past when I had to talk to someone and it was not a cold approach, so they made time to talk to me and help.

The fact that I don't even live in the same state or country as them anymore? When you hire people locally, you can exist in the same physical space as them. When you hire people remotely, and work for a remote startup, this isn't possible. I don't understand your question.

For example, in the funnel of a customer visiting amazon to finally buying a product, amazon loses millions of dollars when initial page load times are 300ms slower within that funnel.

Any added friction between stages in a funnel will reduce the result at the end of the funnel. You add scheduling complexity, physical driving, distributed workforces, etc, and the number of shared lunches are going to drop super fast. Hell, you put 2 onsite employees in 2 different buildings on campus and their chance at a lunch together will drop.

If you or your company cares about in-person collaboration or socializing, you had better foster that behavior and not count on raw willpower to break out of the mold.

The only thing besides work that could be comparable is a family. That's it's own challenge, though: easy to get cabin fever locked in with the same small group of people all the time.

Nearly all of the meaningful interactions I have with friends require collocation.

How do you handle taxes ?

For example in Europe a German company can't hire a French dev if the german company doesn't have a legal entity in France, it quickly gets out of control both in term of paperwork and cost. The dev can't be a freelancer because a freelancer with a full time, fixed hours, single customer is illegal in many places

Also let's say you have an American company with 200 german employees but no office on german soil, does that mean they don't pay any local tax because technically they don't operate their business in the country ?

I feel like a lot of loopholes which were seldom used will promptly be closed once they become widely used

In many countries where that's the case, it's fine if the company you're freelancing for is foreign (IANAL). Because as you say, there's no other simple way to do it. Though you can also use services like remote.com.

In both situations, the setup is a local company (possibly self-owned) that bills the actual company. So you're not UsCorp's employee, you're an YourOwnCorp employee, and UsCorp is YourOwnCorp's client.

This way, all taxes and related issues are handled locally. Sure, there's overhead, but from what I've seen it's worth it.

It's my understanding that, basically, if you're an "outsourced employee", you have to pay the same things as if you were an actual employee: so salary, income tax, whatever else HMRC requires, rather than milking the dividends... It doesn't seem to me that the actual setup is illegal.

[0] https://www.gov.uk/guidance/understanding-off-payroll-workin...

---

edit: In France, I'm not aware of a similar law in regard to taxation. However, there's a "worker protection" law that says that if you're only working for a client, you are subordinate to them, and basically the only difference between an actual employee and you is that you're outsourced, you can then sue the company to be "promoted" to an internal employee, and you're basically guaranteed to win.

Sounds like a massive headache

Sure, there is some paperwork to set everything up. But once that's done (and you can pay someone to do it for you), it's pretty much smooth sailing.

The biggest "hassle" is closing the accounts for the year and sending them to the Administration, and those have to be signed off by an actual accountant. But this takes like 1 hour per year, it's not that bad.

Regarding health insurance, etc you can either get your own, private one or have it bought by the company. It's the same thing if you're a full-on employee: if you're not happy with the coverage the employer has, you can get your own on top of it. When you're your own boss, you can choose what you want straight away. All this may vary depending on the type of company you set up (there's no such thing as "freelance" as far as the law is concerned). This will also have an effect on pension – if you only pay yourself in dividends, there's no pension.

Sure, there are a few things to be taken care of, but if you invest a few days and do your research, it's a good tradeoff.

The other approach, as siblings said, is to use some kind of "shell company" that does this for you. But from what I've seen, their cut is ridiculous, so it's absolutely not worth it.

NB: this comes from France, but I expect the situation to be roughly similar in other countries.

Then the company you own pays all these things. Not the company that hired my own company. It's more a B2B relationship than employee mentality.

I hired another startup to do all my accounting since it's really simple.

I keep some cash inside my company to pay taxes and so on. In my jurisdiction it's even cheaper the tax you pay as company than as an individual.

I have some sort of salary because my local legislation demands, but most is taken as dividends.

The spare money due to reduced costs I can also afford extra private "unemployment" insurance. One that covers two months, not even counting my personal emergency reserve.

So yes, you need to stop living by paycheck even if it means buying less stuff on Amazon.com.

You have to ensure the rate includes a premium to pay all those costs. Otherwise it isnt worth doing.

Essentially they have companies in most countries and you pay them (deel) directly and then they payout to your staff. This also simplifies benefits for healthcare, taxes, retirement.

If you find it helpful, heres my referral code https://deel.com/referrals/Michael-n53jPEZJ

The thing is that you're supposed to be tax where you live to finance the public infrastructure you use, pension schemes of locals, &c.

I know a few of wantrepreneurs who live abroad, bill under an Estonian "e company" , don't pay taxes locally and on top of that illegally get unemployment benefits from their home country

This trend has to cease and with the new "remote first" mentality I can imagine it won't stop anytime soon

I think the idea would be something along the lines of creating virtual citizens that live in the locality and meet all of the obligations of the locality, and the company just handles swapping the association of these citizens to real people when the time comes.

So then when you show up with your passport from Roamatopia all of the paperwork has been done to make sure you are pulling your weight.

Obviously this can be gamed as well but I like the idea.

States are starting to crack down on income taxes for non-residents working there. Obviously in many cases they have no way of tracking but if you're there on business (and have expenses), Concur for one offers companies an audit service. The rules vary by state but if you spend enough time in a state and pass some threshold you can be on the hook to file income taxes. (A lot of the original impetus for these sorts of laws was to tax entertainers and pro athletes.)

In my case it was a privately funded trip, nobody at my company had any clue where I was beyond the ones I told.

Where is your citizenship?

If you had young children who attended local schools (even for one month), do you think that is fair? (Assume pay low/zero tax.)

My point though is that this kind of things happens all of the time because there isn't a clean process to handle these situations. The concept of a virtual country could actually help fix this by establishing channels to compensate communities for services used by roaming visitors.

The problem exists only because the cost for most of these services is socialized via general taxes. One possible solution is to pay a flat tax for local services in the place you live for as long as you are there. The pension scheme solution is to select a pension scheme and pay there, no matter where you are located. The problem with these solutions is you cannot have a Bismark pension scheme, lime most of Europe, and the local administrations need to deal with deductions for people with low income, but it is nothing that cannot be solved.

When I've raised this previously, the point has been dismissed as "45% of lots is still lots", but if you're doing an expected returns calculation and considering other jobs (like a large well-paying org with RSUs) it becomes quite meaningful.

Unemployment benefits are paid by the state, through the taxes that are levied on those who are employed.

They can - they just have him as a contractor, not a permanent employee. Source: I'm a Polish contractor contracting for a German startup.

I'm not sure how much variability there is with this kind of setup within EU member countries.

Also let's say you have an American company with 200 german employees but no office on german soil, does that mean they don't pay any local tax because technically they don't operate their business in the country ?

The American perspective on this is that the employer pays employment taxes for their employees (but not contractors), and the employees/contractors are responsible for their own income taxes, wherever they work (US or abroad). Surely the German employees would report and pay their income tax?

Taxes are not a tithe to the Church. They are not a moral obligation. They are a payment for past, present and future government services. If you (or your family) are not receiving services from that government, then you shouldn't be obligated to pay them. Pay for the services from your own government.

It is good to question how much of the tax burden should be paid by employers vs. employees, but the idea that some tax burden is split by different parties in different nations is not a new one. For example, international trade has been occurring for as long as nations have existed. There is no shortage of precedent to draw from.

The dev can't be a freelancer because a freelancer with a full time, fixed hours, single customer is illegal in many places

This might actually be what may changes rather than the 'closing of loopholes'. From what I have understood after talking with German in-laws, these laws are nominally to prevent the abuse of workers who are denied the rights and benefits of full employment. From a workers' rights perspective, this makes sense for 20th C. laborers, but not really for 21st century knowledge workers who could be getting paid >2x working from Germany for an American company compared to what they would be able to get working domestically. So in practice, this type of law can keep wages lower and give more control to German companies at the expense of the workers, so you know who will fight the changes to the laws to preserve the status quo. But if tech/knowledge workers who wish to have better remote employment opportunities can band together to pressure their elected officials, then this could change.

I disagree. Why do you think the Italian pension system needs to adapt to you / your situtation?

When working from home you can decide to meet up, which does happen, but since it involves getting your calendars together, it hardly ever happens.

I know lots of people want to keep business and personal split in their lives, and I respect that. For me though; I decided that since I spend 40 hours a week working, I better do this with people I like and enjoy spending time with.

I have to clock over 3 miles in total going to my train and then the office, so I feel wired and alive when I come home.

Working from home ALL the time requires a jedi level of discipline to not eat like a pig and work out.

I enjoy remote, but cannot agree with your comment. Socializing simply doesn't occur in Slack, for me. Communication, as you put it, does - but not the genuine socialization that I've come to miss.

If you'd like to understand, just go back and reread what you wrote. You described a lot of novel, innovative practices that require people to learn new habits and examine why their mostly subconscious, lifelong social habits aren't working for them anymore. That's hard! Hard enough that I'd guess you're in the top 1% of remote workplaces as far as collaboration goes.

That you've managed to succeed at a small, all-remote place is impressive. But imagine trying to go back to your bigco and switch everybody over. That sounds extremely hard to me.

I couldn't handle that level of distraction, but some of them clearly enjoyed it.

i've been at companies with 10 people and 10s of thousands and in between and obviously this stops holding true at a fairly small number of employees. but there are plenty of companies of the size that this works for fine.

For some people, face-to-face makes it easier for them to get to know co-workers and develop a solid working relationship with them. Also, those face-to-face interactions often result in benefits for the company, as you often do still end up talking about things related to work, and valuable ideas can be exchanged that would not otherwise have been. Even if you don't talk about work things, knowing your co-workers well can be a benefit to the company. Obviously there are cases where you don't want to know an abrasive person well, so it varies.

Your post sounds like you are saying in-office work is obsolete due to it being an "old-fashioned idea" (unless I am reading you wrong). If that is the case, I would caution against the possibility thinking newer is always better, because it clearly isn't always. Again, as I said, I prefer remote work, but I also understand why others don't. The same work model is not best for everyone in the world.

All the trustworthy people i know from work were people i socialized with in person, at the office, around coffe-breaks, post-work drinks, etc. I don't see something similar happening over Zoom meetings and my guess is that 95% of people are like me in that regards.

Now, this may not be a big deal over the short-term but I believe that an actual company culture need actual tangible human bonds over the long-term.

I started a new job recently and results are mixed. One person I now chat with daily including weekends; some I only interact with the day I spend in office and that is ok too.

We are not all the same. We should not have pretend we are.

Not the OP, but I certainly have. It takes some effort, but it's not particularly difficult if you know and understand how to communicate effectively over a remote medium. It requires an understanding of how communications attenuate over a screen--you need to project!, in-person-normal levels of reservation tends to seem unfriendly. It requires not just strong writing and reading comprehension skills, but reflexively strong capabilities in both of those areas; it needs to be inherent enough that you aren't "turning it on", you're just doing it. And I'm sure some people can't do that. But I've been making friends on the Internet, as well as in person, for about thirty years now, and I've now started two separate jobs since March 2020 and I've met people I'd consider good friends at both of them.

So I've got zero doubt you _can_ do that, I did over lockdown. But if we make socialising systemically harder across the board, we're basically setting ourselves up to be a lonelier, more isolated society.

This probably suggests that we should be working less, generally speaking, and doing more in our communities. I'm not religious, but I do wonder how much of this "be in the office so I can get social interaction" is because the office has replaced the church and the community center. That, to me, is the engine of loneliness; even if you make good friends at work you do lose significant shared context with them when you or they move on.

Now, I rather go see my friends in person than setup a Zoom meeting and be all virtually together. I rather go see my father and talk to him over WhatsApp. I rather go to Paris than watching a video of paris from my room. I no doubt doubt that socializing is much, much better in person.

  - Chat workspaces like Slack requires very different etiquette
  - Zoom and video meetings requries a different etiquette. You can't use body language to signal when you want to speak. On the other hand, the chat backchannel enables interactions you can't do with in-person meetings.
  - Writing and speaking engages different areas of the brain. Someone who is good at speaking is not necessarily be as good as writing, and vice versa
  - In-person work favors good speakers, and remote work favors good writers
  - The intuitions for how much to communicate is different between in-person and on remote. If you are used to in-person work, remote work requires a communication style that will feel like overcommunication, but it is not.
  - Socialization on remote, distributed teams are less spontaneous and requires more concious effort
  - When there's an in-person gathering with some remote people, remote-people tend to get forgotten. Decisions and ideas favor the people in-person. 
  - When I joined my first distributed team (that's not as a solo contractor), the engineering manager made sure the team still got together periodically, because there are some things you can do in-person that is not so easy with remote. This can include going to conferences. It is far easier to get to know someone as a person (and not as their role) in-person than it is by remote
  - Some line of work favors remote than in-person, and vice versa. Software engineering can favor remote ... but not as much for creatives (like game studios) or sales.

The company I work for now organically grew into a distributed company. It did not start out that way, and the fully remote guy who came in before me pioneered the practices, equipment, to make that happen. (E.g. company all hand meetings were remote Zoom even though most of the people worked in the same office). The engineering team embraced remote-first, starting with the remote, morning standup. Some of the sales team in the field would remote in from time to time. When the lockdown came, the sales team got hit the hardest. They made it work, pioneered things like social time, and ended up embracing it when they hired remote from all around the country. Remote became part of the company culture.

I can't help but think the reason companies like Apple want employees to return to office is so that managers can "be more on top of them" (aka track their producitivty).

It's interesting to see that at some companies, water cooler talk is encouraged. I used to work for a small mom + pop business where the owner saw every second we weren't working 8 hours a day as a wasted opportunity productivity wise for his wage dollar he was paying us.

That's an extreme example but, where does the answer typically all? How much water cooler talk is encouraged, allowed, monitored, tracked? It's not hard to spend a few hours a day shooting the sh*t on Slack (or get together and go to a 1-2 hour lunch with everybody in office who can't really concentrate/is looking to do anything to pass time)... I don't know if management would like that?

Absolutely agree with productivity, partially agree with socializing. Socializing is still possible, but you lose out on things like impromptu conversations at the coffee maker and such. Also, if there's a big meeting, there can be one speaker at a time. In person, 60 people can be having 30 conversations in smaller groups. It's hard to pull off virtually.

The latter point is something the company I work for has been experimenting with lately (not development wise, just how we can emulate that within). Tandem offers an "overhear" option in their Tables feature, which is alright. More distracting for some reason than in real life though. Break out rooms are okay, but have more of a barrier than turning to your left.

Overall though, remote work rules and I don't think I'll ever go back.

For me, there is something about the physical presence of other people that slows me down (in a good way). With online interaction, I too find myself impatient, and eager to bring whatever I'm doing to a conclusion.

For example, around 20 years, I played a lot of go (the board game), both in-person and online. Online, I found myself playing impatiently and recklessly, especially if I was in the lead. Whereas in person it felt natural to take a long time, and I played better games and enjoyed myself much more in person.

If productivity and socializing works for you remotely, wonderful! Far be it from me to piss on your parade. But I for one found the obstacles to be quite serious.

This doesn't mean automatically that I wouldn't run a company completely remote. Just wanted to chime in why socializing might be difficult for some in a remote environment.

I've been remote for 14 years and I would never go back to the office. I have plenty of calls, direct messages and group messages for communicating with my colleagues, former colleagues, friends, family, etc. I'm happy that it is a good replacement for you, but I need some real face to face people time and I find it challenging to get enough of that when I'm remote.

That said, that's part of why productivity can be higher in remote jobs, so it's a compromise that needs to be metered appropriately to maintain mental health and good relationships.

Yep. Outsourcing work to other countries might be cheaper but from what I have seen there is no the same level of involvement of all parties. Much of the time both contractor and company are expendables. And yes, if you are lucky, you get to form a team and let them work for 6 months tops before client's dissolution.

Perhaps in US market startups are an attractive thing but most senior (over 30+ years) talent will prefer a solid company at least here in Europe. YMMYV

It. Just. Didn't. Work. It's far too different and people just didn't want to go to remote socializing events. Sure, there were pockets of people that played online games together or other niche activities, but these are not inclusive.

Speaking of people from all over the world, at scale timezone differences also become a huge problem. No, not everyone wants to attend work meetings or social events either after local work hours or extremely early in the morning.

Asking because in all settings I was in, when someone came online with their camera off, others soon followed suit. At least to me, there is a huge difference between a videoconference and a voice chat... Seeing other people makes remote meetings much more pleasant. Or is it just me?

What rules do those who work remotely have for video?

In a remote-first company, everything (tools, workflows, etc.) will be organized around that remoteness, which yields much better results (and doesn't make remote workers feel like second-class citizens).

What I don't like is how dismissive everyone is of anyone who disagrees with them on WFH. Everybody is different.

I don't feel like I particularly thrive in a remote environment, and you're right, I didn't really have to put thought into work social events(which I enjoyed), it was kind of an added perk. But I also recognize the benefits of it, and am certainly not complaining!

What about work hours. Do you guys just never meet? How do you handle having to meet someone from Zurich and someone from Tokyo on the same day? If the answer is async communication, doesn't that lead to a long turnaround in certain cases that need high levels of collaboration?

Collaboration was through the roof. Maybe it's how our previous virtual meetings were run, but it felt like items like planning, architecture discussions and reviewing strategy documents was 5x more productive in person than virtual.

At this point Slack should be running with full "voice to text capability... Even TikTok can transcribe audio. Too many things are just tedious and time consuming to do within modern companies. The pandemic gave so many a break to realize that for many roles, remote works better, yet productivity tools haven't innovated much to ease the transition.

Companies will save tons of money on real estate and office equipment alone on a move to remote work, and the ability to hire independent of physical location is a big benefit of normalizing remote work. My biggest concerns in the evolution of remote work are usually security and authenticity, which always prove to be quickly evolving threats.

What does 1/3/1 refer to?

Tue-Thur work in office.

Friday work from home.

I think you should elaborate on why the hybrid model is a struggle, I personally don't see it as one.

In office work benefits are often said to include the socialization, and in particular "water-cooler talk" that is supposedly better for collaboration. When everyone is going to the office, the company can also invest into more extensive facitilites, including amenities that make being at the office more pleasant (a gym, catering, etc).

With hybrid, you are simultaneously eliminating the ability for employees to live somewhere where they don't need to commute to the office regularly. You also make it so that investing in remote-friendly tools, and office amenities, are both required and less beneficial than if you just picked one. And if "water-cooler talk" and in person collaboration really is that much more effective, then you are still reducing the capacity for that happening by 40+% or more by letting employees work from home 2 or more days a week.

I personally vastly prefer 100% remote, but I don't really see the point of hybrid if the company is going to insist on people coming back to the office. And in my case, it would literally be impossible since I (and many others who have been hired since the pandemic started) are hundreds of miles away from the office.

Weird, you talked about the benefits of either side (remote or office) and then just completely dispelled one side of it (in office) as if. If each side has benefits, isn't it the "best of both worlds"?

> You also make it so that investing in remote-friendly tools, and office amenities, are both required and less beneficial than if you just picked one.

So this is the downside? The tooling investments you made are less beneficial?

> And in my case, it would literally be impossible since I (and many others who have been hired since the pandemic started) are hundreds of miles away from the office.

I think this is the crux. Companies that went fully remote during COVID and are now forcing any office time without considering the changes in people's personal living situations (e.g. "I moved to San Antonio and can't possibly commute to Dallas 3x a week"). I think that is a different, but related, issue entirely.

You’ve described an entirely different dynamic and that’s fine, but it’s not the dynamic I’m interested in having.

I already stare at a screen for programming I don’t want to stare at one for collaborating with people.

For me it isn’t around the effort or lack thereof put into remote.

It’s just not the same