I am a big proponent of remote work but I think it's harder to manage a remote company. Automattic and Basecamp have excellent people in leadership who have a clear understanding of their company.
A lot of mediocre middleman managers in the typical company aren't capable of setting expectations and evaluating work results.
You need very good workers and leaders in a remote company.
> You need very good workers and leaders in a remote company.
I think that's a point that some people miss. To have remote workers, you need people who can effectively work remotely. It's a learned skill, like any other, and not everyone will be good at it.
Saying "we're only local" or "we're only remote" is a bad idea, you can have both and call it a win on both ends.
The fact is WFH does not need to be a full time thing for most companies. Just offer it as a benefit-if you want, you can work from home 2 days a week, or WFH if you need to be home to pick up a package or have a doctors appointment.
That alone will make your company much more attractive.
> A lot of mediocre middleman managers in the typical company aren't capable of setting expectations and evaluating work results.
This is one of the key problems. It's not that remote work doesn't work, it's that a bunch of mediocre middle managers only have the "butts in seats" metric to fall back on to answer whether work is getting done.
If a manager is properly tracking progress and managing the pipeline, people working remotely shouldn't be a problem.
So we're gonna cull the "manager" fakers who probably contribute $10,000 to their company's bottom line over a career of 30 years? Sounds like a double win for WFH to me.
A lot of mediocre middleman managers in the typical company aren't capable of setting expectations and evaluating work results.
You need very good workers and leaders in a remote company.