A Year of Working Remotely » Mike Industries

The way to look at remote work is that it’s a series of tradeoffs. You enjoy benefits in exchange for disadvantages. The uptake of remote work over the next decade will depend most on the minimization of those disadvantages rather than the maximization of the benefits. Reason being, the benefits are already substantial while many of the disadvantag... See more

I’m able to cope with having predominantly digital relationships during the day because I have a healthy social life outside of work, but if I didn’t, it might be rough. A lot of people look to office life for a good percentage of their real human interaction every day, and if you’re one of those people, I could see remote life being not fun at all... See more

I think another important factor in determining happiness is how hard of a line you want between work and home life. One benefit of traditional office environments is that when you physically leave the office, it’s not too hard to flip the switch and go into “home mode”. Sure you may have to deal with the odd email every now and then, but it’s rela... See more

One other thing about meetings in remote companies: working remotely has made me realize how unimportant and ritualized so many meetings are. Often times, I will get 90% of the way through scheduling a meeting in Google Calendar only to ask myself “can’t we just update each other on this project throughout the week via Slack?” Even staff meetings s... See more