The norms surrounding how and where people work have undergone some major changes lately, and I’ve been fortunate enough to experience two exciting models: telework and remote work. Throughout my career, I’ve navigated each with its own nuances and challenges.
Rather than rehashing definitions you can easily find online, I thought I’d share a personal account of how these experiences were and how they shaped my day to day work-life.
Telework
In the early days I was commuting about 30 miles each day for work. When factoring in typical Portland Oregon traffic, I spent an average 70 minutes each day commuting: 25 minutes to work, 45 minutes to home, and with variability due to trains (I was occasionally that person giving their daily update on speaker phone from their car).
But about a year into this job I found myself no longer working with anyone at my local branch. Which was peculiar to me since the Company was adamantly against remote work. Out of the dozens of engineers at my local branch, I was the only software engineer at the Oregon branch working with the engineers at our Texas branch on a particular product. My responsibilities to the local branch were finished when I sat at my cubicle, and then came my responsibilities to my team over 2000 miles way. And due to the timezone difference, I was one of the first employees to arrive in the office each morning just to teleconference with my team. I’d walk over to my desk and the overhead lights would turn on for the first time that day. And I would eagerly await for when the artificial lights would turn off 15 minutes later once the motion sensor went inactive.
Back then I thought I was effectively working remotely, just without the the usual benefits, like:
- having no (physical) commute,
- primarily working in your own timezone,
- primarily using asynchronous communication,
- having your own workspace that increases your well-being, health, and productivity,
- fewer workplace distractions,
- and so on.
Overall, I felt this experience was less optimal than if I had just been working with a team local to my branch.
Some might say this experience was indeed working remotely. Others might say this is not remote work or telework, that I was just working a typical office job with earlier hours due to some circumstance. But my perspective is it was actually a form of telework. Using Indeed’s definition here:
Telecommuting, or telework, refers to an employee carrying out their duties from an off-site location, which can include another branch of the main office, a shared co-working space, a public place, a retail establishment or their home.
Remote work
Eventually, the world would experience a global pandemic, which was a catalyst for more flexible working conditions everywhere. All of a sudden “remote work” seemed to be widely accepted. I went on to leave my old job after 3.5 years for a new one, one where I would finally get to experience what it was like to be a true remote worker.
In this new position I got to work with a variety of people from all over the United States, including people in other countries. Calling in to give a daily update in early morning to my team was a thing of the past, instead relying on email or group chats. I was provided equipment – even got to pick the operating system of my choice, and I enthusiastically invested in my own home office. I bought a motorized sit/stand desk, a plant, a decent AudioEngine sound-system, a headset that didn’t hurt my ears and head, and so on. It was a shift in how and where my work got done.
Since employees are working from different timezones, meeting organizers thought carefully to include only the relevant people for that meeting, especially when the meeting occurs outside of an attendees’s normal work hours. And only on occasion would I need to attend a meeting outside of my normal working hours (9AM-5PM UTC-7). My working hours were (mostly) respected in this remote work environment.
Colleagues knew not to start a chat only “Hello” (see: nohello.com), as optimizing asynchronous communication was important in true remote fashion.
I met my team in-person only once.
And while all of this took a great deal of realignment to transition since it was different than anything I’ve previously experienced (in tech or otherwise), the model for the most part worked well for me. One year into this position I experienced burn-out for the first time. Remote work can really blur the lines between work and life and if you are not careful: “you will fall out of balance split your differential and tip the fuck over”.
Remote work (with set hours)
My next remote position had similar benefits to the last, but it came with some caveats like working “set hours”.
Take note of this if you are interviewing for remote jobs: clarify expectations of your working hours, especially if you are in a different time zone than your manager or team. You should also clarify remote working conditions and expectation in general as each company handles remote workers differently. It’s important to get these answers in writing, otherwise you might find yourself giving your “daily standup” updates at 6:45AM like I was.
If the prospective company appears inflexible on the conditions of remote work, this might mean they don’t really have a forward-thinking mindset around this model, and can lead to issues because they simply aren’t doing it right or might backpedal on the policy entirely.
RTO from remote work (bait-and-switch)
I’m sure you’ve seen it in the news at least once where some newly hired employee moved across the country to a lower cost-of-living area to work remotely, only for the Company to reverse their policy on remote work and demand employees return to office (RTO). These situations do damage to the receiving end in more ways than one, like: social, financial, personal, career.
I was excited when my fiancé got her first hybrid job. Since we were both soon to be working from home, we decided we should finally each have our own offices in this new stage of our careers. We picked a suitable apartment and worked on getting her office in functional order. In any metro area it can get very expensive renting, especially when it’s a 3-bedroom apartment for his and her office space. We ended up paying more for rent than parents and friends pay for their mortgages, justifying it only because it’s literally for our jobs. And while her hybrid arrangement was only 1 day per week working from home, she was still excited for the arrangement.
But less than two months in to her new “hybrid” position, the Company reversed its policy.
Closing thoughts
Overall, navigating telework and remote work requires adaptability, clear communication, and a mutual understanding of expectations for it to work for everyone. As with anything, what works for one person may not work for you, and each experience may be wildly different than your expectations.