<story><title>Ask HN: Has working remotely harmed your career growth?</title><text>There’s a lot of talk about remote work nowadays. But has the lack of being able to be with co-workers harmed your career over the long run? Especially if the team is a mixture of remote and co-located people? How have you tried to mitigate that?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>remote_gal</author><text>Working remotely pretty much destroyed my career for two reasons: (1) my networking opportunities plummeted to zero and (2) I was fired for reasons I believe could have been avoided if I had worked in an office and had stronger relationships with more co-workers.&lt;p&gt;My remote job was at a fully distributed company with good compensation.&lt;p&gt;I worked there for about five years, receiving only positive reviews.&lt;p&gt;Groups in the company worked in a very silo-ed manner — there was not a lot of work overlap or cross-team communication. But I loved my team and work so it was fine with me.&lt;p&gt;Once the company started struggling, they re-organized our group several times, and eventually a non-technical manager with more seniority than me was brought in.&lt;p&gt;Although I was highly effective, well-reviewed, and never had issues with other managers, the non-technical manager and I dealt with all of the classic issues that come up in this scenario: unrealistic deadlines and expectations, scope creep, etc. I tried to deal with this in an ego-less, professional manner, but he took our issues personally and lobbied HR to have me fired.&lt;p&gt;At that point, after all of the re-organizations, I was the only dev left on my team, and my other managers who I had good relationships with had moved on. I had no one to vouch for me. I believe that if I had worked in an office, in a less silo-ed manner, I would have had more opportunities to network with other developers within the company and my accomplishments would have been more visible, which would have at least allowed me to switch teams.&lt;p&gt;Instead, I was quietly led out the back door and disappeared.&lt;p&gt;In a remote company it&amp;#x27;s a lot easier to be fired. It&amp;#x27;s a lot more difficult to resolve interpersonal issues over IRC than face-to-face. There is a huge amount of value to passing people randomly in the hallway, by &amp;quot;the watercooler,&amp;quot; or at a social event. These kinds of relationships are critical and are just not replicable via remote work.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>remote_gal</author><text>The last thing I&amp;#x27;ll add since edits don&amp;#x27;t seem to be working ...&lt;p&gt;My advice to you is that unless you are at the end of your career, or value working from home over your career prospects for family or health reasons, avoid working 100% remotely, even in fully distributed companies. The ideal is a situation where you work in an office, but have a flexible schedule where you can work from home 1-2 days a week, or 1-2 months a year.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Has working remotely harmed your career growth?</title><text>There’s a lot of talk about remote work nowadays. But has the lack of being able to be with co-workers harmed your career over the long run? Especially if the team is a mixture of remote and co-located people? How have you tried to mitigate that?</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>remote_gal</author><text>Working remotely pretty much destroyed my career for two reasons: (1) my networking opportunities plummeted to zero and (2) I was fired for reasons I believe could have been avoided if I had worked in an office and had stronger relationships with more co-workers.&lt;p&gt;My remote job was at a fully distributed company with good compensation.&lt;p&gt;I worked there for about five years, receiving only positive reviews.&lt;p&gt;Groups in the company worked in a very silo-ed manner — there was not a lot of work overlap or cross-team communication. But I loved my team and work so it was fine with me.&lt;p&gt;Once the company started struggling, they re-organized our group several times, and eventually a non-technical manager with more seniority than me was brought in.&lt;p&gt;Although I was highly effective, well-reviewed, and never had issues with other managers, the non-technical manager and I dealt with all of the classic issues that come up in this scenario: unrealistic deadlines and expectations, scope creep, etc. I tried to deal with this in an ego-less, professional manner, but he took our issues personally and lobbied HR to have me fired.&lt;p&gt;At that point, after all of the re-organizations, I was the only dev left on my team, and my other managers who I had good relationships with had moved on. I had no one to vouch for me. I believe that if I had worked in an office, in a less silo-ed manner, I would have had more opportunities to network with other developers within the company and my accomplishments would have been more visible, which would have at least allowed me to switch teams.&lt;p&gt;Instead, I was quietly led out the back door and disappeared.&lt;p&gt;In a remote company it&amp;#x27;s a lot easier to be fired. It&amp;#x27;s a lot more difficult to resolve interpersonal issues over IRC than face-to-face. There is a huge amount of value to passing people randomly in the hallway, by &amp;quot;the watercooler,&amp;quot; or at a social event. These kinds of relationships are critical and are just not replicable via remote work.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ravenstine</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s both fortunate and unfortunate that forming relationships with people has more impact on job security than actual performance.  That&amp;#x27;s been my experience, anyway.  It works on at least two tiers; people in charge of companies are inclined to hire people they like(we&amp;#x27;re all tribalistic human apes), and even if they end up not liking you they will hesitate to fire you if that choice will be unpopular with the rest of your team.&lt;p&gt;I know that analysis seems Machiavellian to some extent, but it&amp;#x27;s the honest truth.  Society is never going to be a true meritocracy unless it&amp;#x27;s run by robots(and even then probably not), but I wouldn&amp;#x27;t want it to be like that anyway.  As humans, we should be allowed to have other redeeming qualities work for us as long as we are forced to work for a living.</text></comment>