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Disadvantages of working remote

Just ranting it out loud, I am working remote for the past two years for a startup and there are many advantages of working remote but there are many disadvantages also.

  • Its hard to chase people over phone. As people wont pick up the call or they wont reply to Instant Messages. So you are stuck in your chain of thoughts cursing the monitor.
  • You miss the coffee talk.
  • You miss what's going on in the office and really dont know whats going in the company.
  • In meetings you could be writing code and its easy to get distracted over phone.
  • Some people prefer to chat over talk and thats a pain because you already miss the social connection and typing is always a pain.
  • You miss all company dinners and lunches.
  • Because you save time on travel you tend to overwork.
  • Worse if you are working in a different timezone then people would disturb you off hours.
  • Lots of time is spent in trying to screen share or do go to meeting.
  • People will prefer to talk to person in house and unless you are a rockstar and only you can deliver the feature mostly people will prefer in house person.
  • Lots of things will get discussed in adhoc passageway meeting and you would miss all of that.
  • Dealing with HR is a pain. As you are remote you dont have the luxary of walking into their cube and getting your work done. I am literally screwed on every work that needs to flow through HR. Communicating with them on email leads to frustration and all you can do is curse your monitor.
Also check my post on Advantages of working remote

Comments

  1. UnknownNovember 19, 2011 at 10:46 PM

    Kalpesh, I understand that VERY good, I've been working in such mode for 3.5 years with timezone offset 9-10 hours.

    Last half of year of my working remotely I ended up almost completely shifted to the timezone most of the people work, which meant for me - working from 1-2pm till over-midnight pretty much all the time.

    I think I worked remotely more than enough in my life so far :) Now I'm enjoying coming to the office and talking to people.

    ReplyDelete

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