To all the remote devs out there, I pose some questions.

Do you prefer working remote?

And what are your personal pros and cons for remote dev positions.

The commute time to my job would be something like ~45 min each way ... so yeah I don't want to do that.

Advantage is time, I can get my work in AND get to family stuff quickly.

If it was a big company I might miss face to face meetings, but it is a small shop so communication is a bit more clear / there's less need for that kinda relationship building.

Pros:
- No commute
- Depending on company, complete control of your time
- Again depending on company, less meetings. Everyone works in their own schedules, so quick meetings become quick messages.
- Comfy AF
- I can work AND help my kid with his homework at the same time

Cons:
- Can get boring. Seriously.
- Kids can be a huge distraction.
- Neighbor's fucking dogs can be a distraction.
- Anything can be a distraction.
- Sometimes I miss just sitting in my office and feeling smug about myself.

Seriously though, if you're going this route, set up an office space and make sure that's where you spend most of your work time otherwise you'll fuck up your habits (ie. can't sleep in the bedroom or keep sleeping while supposed to be working).

A spare room that you can soundproof would be the perfect scenario.

Depends on the company.

Shit company: remote.
Great company: office.

@N00bPancakes @Root I know this can still be dépendant on the people working there but would a larger or smaller company be better/comfier or is it up to Personal preference/experience

@Bubbles

It depends on how that company operates IMO.

If it is a company where everyone is a jerk who is a hassle to deal with ... size might not matter and being at home might be easier no matter what ;)

There's no hard and fast rule if you don't have some really strong personal preferences.

The only thing I would say is in person it is easier to build relationships with lots of folks faster, how needed that is ... depends too.

@Bubbles I’ve had small companies that were hell (I literally refer to it as Hell), and small companies that were bloody amazing.

I’ve also worked for semi-large companies that were kinda crap but not awful, and I’m currently working for a semi-large company that’s purgatory / arguably decent.

———————

Onto guessing and overgeneralizing!

I’d say as a whole, the smaller the company the better it can be. Large companies can be anywhere from decent to hell; small companies can be anywhere from heaven to hell. However, larger company size seems to have a dampener on both extremes, so on average they’ll fall into the middling-to-poor category.

@Angry distractions is something I’m a little worried about, but I’ve found my own little ways around it that hopefully might keep working

Yes. My home office is better than any other office

@N00bPancakes @Root I wish there was a way to tell before hand 😅 but I’ll take note of all this 😄

@Bubbles There's really no way to know, it can even depend on just the attitude of one member of a team ;)

Nobody really knows ahead of time about such things.

@N00bPancakes yeah hopefully wherever I go I am on a good team

Pros:
- I wake up an hour later because no commute
- My home PC is better than my office PC
- Access to the fridge all day

Cons:
- Work never ends
- I spend all my time on Slack and video calls
- It's significantly harder to manage a team when everyone is remote
- Encouraging people to communicate with each other was hard enough when we were all sat a few feet apart...now, nobody talks to each other

I think the ideal scenario would be if everyone came and worked at my house tbh 😂

* for reference I work for an agency that has ~10 active clients at a time, with ~15 devs (some of which are contractors), plus all the usual non-dev people

I like it a lot more than office work. That being said, I live alone and haven't had a conversation with another human being that wasn't myself for around 3 weeks currently. It gets lonely if you live alone.

@Ezard are the slack & video communications better or worse than in person

@Bubbles worse - it takes longer to get everyone onto a call, and multiple people still haven't invested in a headset, have bad internet, etc

@Ezard ah I didn’t think of it like that, I empathize with you that sucks lmfao