alt Hacker News…of a single company
> Researchers analyzed survey data from 7,704 employees at a large healthcare organization.
I’ve been remote and worked for remote companies for a long time. In my observation, the well-being is bimodal. The people who adapt well to remote thrive. There are a lot of people who think they’re going to love remote who ultimately flame out from the loneliness, isolation, lack of visual boundaries between work and home life, and lack of externally enforced routine.
It’s really sad when the latter happens because it’s almost always someone who was hired for their great work and abilities. Then over time they get drained and you can see that the remote work wasn’t what they expected.
It’s basically impossible to predict who will fall into each category at the interview stage, or at least I can’t do it. Prior remote work success (not just experience) is the best indicator but it’s hard to evaluate, too. Some of the most difficult remote hires I’ve worked with had past remote work experience, but it’s only after being hired that you learn they struggled at those companies too.
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It’s also circumstantial.
Working remote during COVID sucked and felt unmoored.
Once I had a robust IRL social life and could go see some live music again, it was great.
It also depends if you live in tiny apartment or if you have a house with a dedicated space.
The same person can take to it depending on the circumstances.
How do you know they're flaming out/struggling/etc because of remote work issues rather than other issues like company culture etc?
Exactly the same thing happens with in-office work. I've certainly had that experience! But it's hard to talk about because in-person work is the "default", and it feels like if you have problems with that it's a sign of problems with you.
(Not to mention that, in both contexts, it's very hard to pull apart being remote vs in-office from other aspects of the work and culture.)
I absolutely detest this framing of remote vs onsite. What it really is is accommodated vs not-accommodated.
Accommodated employees perform better. Non-accommodated employees perform worse.
For some people, an office is an accommodation - they need that not-home space with other people in it. For others, a home office is an accommodation - a very convenient/local space with very few distractions.
It should come as absolutely no surprise that putting someone somewhere they do not feel accommodated is going to reduce performance.
I also really reject this boomer-esque idea that in-office helps underperformers underperform less. Instead I find it helps under-performers _appear_ to underperform less because they can chat up the boss and more visibly do performative stuff like showing up early or leaving late.
I am doing well with remote because I'm pathologically introverted and find that being around people is exhausting. I can imagine things being the other way around for extroverts and that is saddening.
Some struggle regardless of remote or onsite because office job culture has become fucking stupid FOMO fueled social animal farm, not a meaningful economic contributor in real terms.
That never comes up though as the dogma must survive.
>There are a lot of people who think they’re going to love remote who ultimately flame out from the loneliness, isolation, lack of visual boundaries between work and home life
This used to be me but pair programming / in-call collaborative working solved 100% of all of those problems.
Even the work/life boundary was solved because as soon as I dropped off the call at the end of the day my brain immediately switched off work mode.
These days the first thing I do in a new team is try to suss out who else is a bit like this and try to work out a collaborative working pattern that works for all of us.
It's not just more fun it's almost unreasonably effective. People who work non collaboratively tend to make more mistakes, bugs and worse decisions.
I used to have a hybrid job. The company culture was oriented for 100% remote, because it was 100% remote until RTO happened. The office space felt like a coworking space where everybody was a remote worker who just happened to work on the same project in the same company. Nobody ever approached anybody, everything was over Slack. We did have meeting rooms but everybody preferred calling in from their desks. Even for the daily standup! Most miserable workplace experience of my life.
I interpret the study findings not as remote workers being happier, but on-site workers being less happy in remote-oriented companies than on-site workers in on-site-oriented companies.