Well, I just got laid off from a company that decided to experiment with remote workers, then pulled the plug after six months.
They never really made an effort to incorporate remote workers into their culture. The development team is about 20 people, 4 of whom were remote. It was a trial and an effort to get work out of them; there were days I wouldn't have much to do. Managers would book meeting times and then miss them; you'd spend an hour waiting for a ping on Google Hangout or Skype, then go back to doing something else. Group meetings required dialing in because they felt having a spare laptop in the room for a Hangout camera was more effort than the voice-only conferencing system "we've always used."
Last week I was notified that the remote workers were being given an ultimatum: move to Silicon Valley or accept a layoff. I have a family, a mortgage, and roots where I live. I accepted the layoff.
I've worked remotely for three companies. At two it worked: the teams were small, and coordinated, and serious effort was made by management to involve themselves in the day-to-day worklives of their developers. Developers weren't left to wonder for weeks on end what their role, assignment, deadlines and deliverables looked like. The third left me exactly wondering that, and wondering why they threw their money away idling us. I guess they just couldn't hack it.
They never really made an effort to incorporate remote workers into their culture. The development team is about 20 people, 4 of whom were remote. It was a trial and an effort to get work out of them; there were days I wouldn't have much to do. Managers would book meeting times and then miss them; you'd spend an hour waiting for a ping on Google Hangout or Skype, then go back to doing something else. Group meetings required dialing in because they felt having a spare laptop in the room for a Hangout camera was more effort than the voice-only conferencing system "we've always used."
Last week I was notified that the remote workers were being given an ultimatum: move to Silicon Valley or accept a layoff. I have a family, a mortgage, and roots where I live. I accepted the layoff.
I've worked remotely for three companies. At two it worked: the teams were small, and coordinated, and serious effort was made by management to involve themselves in the day-to-day worklives of their developers. Developers weren't left to wonder for weeks on end what their role, assignment, deadlines and deliverables looked like. The third left me exactly wondering that, and wondering why they threw their money away idling us. I guess they just couldn't hack it.