Me and one of my employees are going through almost identical and seriously difficult personal times. Our company and the people within it have really rallied around us, providing personal and professional support in ways I could never have imagined.

I have said that while other companies I have worked within would be sympathetic, they definitely would not have been empathetic; however, at my current company, EVERYONE from the CEO to interns have been so very empathetic, helpful, and thoughtful.

We are all remote and have been since the pandemic. These are people who are reaching out regularly, coming to visit, offering support in whatever way possible, and being genuinely good human beings. It's simply a work culture when you don't have this, but you CAN find it.

Don't lose hope. Good companies and great people within them are there, remote or not.

Unicorns exist but in the job search it’s a crap shoot to find one. Nearly impossible to identify in an interview setting and likely only through world of mouth.

Impossible to diagnose during an interview… because it depends on you as well. Caring is a transient thing, I’ve had crap employees, and now we have an awesome “soldered” team, which every previous employee could have created… but didn’t.

I’m not saying you have total control over it… but it depends on how people interact.

I've said it many times both here and in "real life" - teams filled with any sizable proportion of consults (15-20% and up I would say) are one of the clearest, brightest red flags you could see.

I've seen first-hand organizations shift from 100% employed teams to being majority consultants, and the majority of those consultants on 1-2 year contracts then leaving. Code quality goes to absolute shit. The name of the game is spending the first half of your contract not getting fired and the second half looking for the next contract. Zero documentation. Refusing to do turnover meetings. Not showing up for the last day/week of the contract because their next contract wanted them to start earlier so they didn't care if they got paid for this one or not. Most egregiously someone just brought in their next contract's laptop into our office with over a month left on their contract.

None of this happens with employees. Sure you'll occasionally have someone quit with minimal or no notice but that's the exception. We had to basically assume that any time we got in the last month of the contract was a bonus. Consultants work for their recruiting firm, not for your org, and they behave accordingly.

Very much agree. I am working with probably 40 consultants on a team of 80. The absolute lack of pride in their work is pushing me to my breaking point.

I will know if I am going to leave in a couple weeks, 2 things need to happen for me to stay; I get promoted this month and half the consultants leave. If both don't happen I think I am gone.

I think change in the remote work world is that we can no longer take these casual relationships for granted, or assume that they will just come into being. In this new world, we have to be intentional about building them.

Whereas in an office environment, we'd naturally run into folks at the proverbial water cooler, and slowly develop more of a relationship with some folks — and similarly for camaraderie with the folks sitting around you — that just doesn't exist in remote.

In my experience, it is still possible to build these kinds of relationships, though. But it requires actively building them. It requires intentional effort, which doesn't come naturally to many of us, and especially so since many of us have not been used to having to do that, having come from office settings pretty recently. I was able to build meaningful friendships with remote colleagues, some of which have lasted beyond my time at the company, by intentionally making the time to ask and care about their lives outside of work, by setting up recurring 1:1s to just chat, etc. This can sometimes feel like it's "wasted time" that's taken away from your work, but I believe it's really important in order to feel better about where you're working and who you're working with, feel less like a cog in a machine, and as a result (at least for me) end up doing better work.

I wonder if, as the tech world becomes more accustomed to remote work, we'll eventually get better at this as an industry. My hope is that it'll get easier, or at least more natural as a result.

This has long been true to some degree when you work with people scattered around the world. But it's a legit concern that, overall, we're probably developing much shallower relationships with the people we work with compared to when we were together in-person more of the time. Doubtless there are people who prefer just tuning out co-workers as much as possible. But it's reasonable to ask how it will affect many companies in the longer run when many co-worker relationships are very surface compared to pre-COVID.

That sounds fine to me. I always found working with people much more fun than pretending to be friends with them.

I get this, but I will admit to missing the camaraderie I got from working in person with people. I miss grabbing lunch with someone or a drink after work. But thats in the past now, and a job is just a place I exchange life hours for dollars now.

> Its hard to be friends with little black boxes and white text on a screen.

I think after a point, it is up to us to create the culture we want to see in a team. Someone has to start sharing more things, start talking about more things so others will feel like the same. Have a pizza session after every few successful sprints. Share puzzles and other things regularly so people have more things to talk about. It is easy to feel detached when everyone only uses a group channel, but a lot of meaningful connections happen when you do talk 1-1 in private.

I mean I have worked at places where no one even exchanged email ids when they are about to leave the company, and lurked in online places where people whom I have never even met employed me immediately when i mentioned that my day job company was going bankrupt.