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Open Offices Are a Capitalist Dead End
What was We thinking? Thatâs the only question worth asking now about the clowncar start-up known as The We Company, the money-burning, co-working behemoth whose best-known brand is WeWork. Whatâs a WeWork? What WeWork works on is work. The We Company takes out long-term leases...
The Most Important Question in a Job Interview, and How to Answer It
Youâve done everything you can to nail this interview. You trawled obscure parts of the companyâs website and absorbed its social media feeds. You arrived 15 minutes early for the interview (the perfect amount of time, according to experts). In answer to the dreaded question...
Why you should have a side project
I often advocate people surrounding me to build their own side projects. I believe they can fulfill you in so many ways: for your career, your relationships, or your independence. Buffer, the company I currently work for, was itself a side project. Iâve built myself multiple side...
Three Hard Realities of Remote Working & Freelancing
I believed in the stories. You know what Iâm talking about, and if youâre a freelancer, remote worker, or digital nomad, then you believed in it too. You too probably heard about the crazy lifestyle that seemed unbelievable. The life of working from home in your pajamas,...
How To Scale A Remote Team Without Losing Your Grip On The Reins
The remote work trend is growing by the day. In a recent survey from Buffer, 99% of respondents said they want to work remotely at some point in their careers, and 95% would recommend it to others. Whatâs more, 91% of businesses reported that they intend to support it, an...
How to design a productive routine when you work remotely
The biggest difference between remote work and co-located offices is where work happens. According to our State of Remote Work survey for 2019, 84% of remote workers work from their home. That means that most of us work and live in the same place. This results in the biggest...
Ask HN: Cons of Being on a Remote/Distributed Team?
I know there are plenty of benefits of working remote such as flexibility. I would love to know about some of the issues you face and how you/your company works to address them.
Company Socializing Has Become Work
In the era of the virtual office, when even workers who are physically present often wall off their senses with oversized headphones and rely on Slack to chat with colleagues sitting in desks next to them, forced fun at the corporate level may represent the last, best hope for...
Young People Are Going to Save Us All From Office Life
When Ariel Coleman, 28, quit her last job, as a project manager in the corporate office of a bank, it wasnât because her new employer offered her a raise, a different role or more seniority. âThe work-life balance is just much better,â she said. At her new company, Omfgco, a...
Why I quit my day job researching happiness and started cycling to Bhutan
Iâd had enough. It was October 2017, and Iâd been wondering what the point of my job was for far too long, and while Iâm sure there was something meaningful somewhere and to someone in what I was doing day-to-day, it had certainly lost meaning for me. For all the good that...
To Do Better Work, Change Your Environment
On the first day of his new job at Pittsburgh Municipal Hospital, Jonas Salk was introduced to his office: a basement laboratory, 40 by 40 feet, next to a morgue. According to reports, the researcher would put in 16-hour days â even on weekends â to work on a polio vaccine. But...
Underpopulated Italian region offers visitors âŹ25,000 to move in
An underpopulated region in southern Italy is offering newcomers âŹ700 per month for three years to live in one of its villages. There are a few catches, however: the village must have fewer than 2,000 residents, and the newcomer must pledge to open a business.
A Day in the Life of a Mom in Tech
Here at Infinite Red, we are very vocal about the many perks of remote work. One of the biggest for many of us is extra time with our loved ones since we can work at home. After I had my daughter, this manifested as an extra three months after my three-month official maternity...
The Draw of the Faroes
The grey flannel fog sat on its little cat feet and hid the tops of the hills from the sky and the rest of the island, isolating valleys from their neighbours. Even though it was cold and wet, drizzle hung in the air, suffocating us as it blew in from the tunnel and out again...
Why Finland leads the world in flexible work
The Nordic nation has embraced agile hours for decades. Itâs a style of work well suited to the countryâs deep-rooted culture of trust, equality and pragmatism.
An Owl Labs Engineerâs Remote Work Manifesto
You already know we at Stack Overflow are big fans of remote work. Today weâre featuring a post by a friend at Owl Labs; itâs a great argument in support of remote work, and Owl Labs, whose mission is to improve collaborative meetings for remote employees everywhere, is holding a...
10 Things No One Tells You About Working from Home, Straight From People Who Do It
There are plenty of reasons to work remotely. Working from home means increased productivity, flexibility, and control over your life. It also means you can prioritize your health (hello, naps!), better manage being a working parent, and finally ditch your time-sucking commute.
The Danger of Comparing Yourself to Others
The most important things in life are internal not external. âThe big question about how people behave,â says Warren Buffett, âis whether theyâve got an inner scorecard or an outer scorecard. It helps if you can be satisfied with an inner scorecard.â To make his point, Buffett...
The Art of Waking Up Earlier Than Everyone Else
A few weekends ago, I drove to Vermont with my best friends from college. We studied at a small college in the Green Mountains, and adore the landscape and community. We planned to swim, hike, drink good beer, and eat lots of maple creemees. Weâd only be there for one full day,...
How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation
I couldnât figure out why small, straightforward tasks on my to-do list felt so impossible. The answer is both more complex and far simpler than I expected. âI tried to register for the 2016 election, but it was beyond the deadline by the time I tried to do it,â a man named Tim,...
9 Ways to Be a Better Remote Designer
As many companies start to come around to the benefits of a distributed workforce, remote design opportunities are popping up right and left. Itâs an amazing time to be a designer because itâs possible to freelance and be a digital nomad or work for your dream companyâwhose...
Being Happy Is Hard Work
Like many people, I struggle semiregularly with depression â or, as David Foster Wallace so fittingly called it, The Bad Thing. It doesnât define me, but it does flare up from time to time, a swamp creature rearing out of my mindâs chemical pulp. Recently, amid a surge of badness...
The Ultimate Guide to Crafting Remote Work, Flexible Schedule, and Working from Home Policies
Creating airtight policies for remote work, flexible schedules, and working from home is essential for both you and your employees. Although the word "policy" sounds serious and complex, writing a remote work policy doesn't have to be overwhelming. We've created a guide along...
Trees May Boost Our Mental Health More Than Grass
New research finds that, when a neighborhoodâs green space leads to better health outcomes, tree canopy provides most of the benefits. In recent years, study after study has found that living in neighborhoods with abundant green space is linked to positive health outcomes. These...
How to Ask for a Flexible Schedule
Itâs never been easier to get things done outside the confines of a 9-to-5 workday. Video conferencing, Slack, and a slew of productivity and project-management tools help blur the lines between time in the office and time outside of it. This ability to work wherever, whenever,...
âItâs a superpowerâ: how walking makes us healthier, happier and brainier
Neuroscientist Shane OâMara believes that plenty of regular walking unlocks the cognitive powers of the brain like nothing else. He explains why you should exchange your gym kit for a pair of comfy shoes and get strolling
Be an effective leader in a remote team #1
In my first series I wanted to talk about what it means to be a leader in a distributed team. Leadership is not something only used by managers. At Buffer everyone should have a certain kind of Leadership skill. I really loved how Katie (VP of Engineering at Buffer) put it: âI...
Designing Remotely - The best decision Iâve made in my life
Hiya, Iâm Charles â Iâm a product designer, I work remotely for InVision and I absolutely love it. I received a crazy amount of response from a Tweet I posted a while back so I thought why not do a little write up of why remote work matters and all other things remote work, with...
My Secret "Digital Nomad Rule" to Optimizing Fulfillment
In the past couple months I've implemented a new rule into my life which has REALLY increased my fulfillment in this digital nomad journey. For reference I'm over 2 years in, 15 countries. I spent the majority of my time in Bulgaria or Thailand. Before I explain the rule, let me...
Improve Your Team Leadership By Working From Home For A Week
Remote work policies are more common than ever before. According to our companyâs 2018 âGlobal State of Remote Workâ report, which surveyed 3,028 employees, 52% of employees work from home once a week, and 16% work for fully remote companies around the world.
Why I Wonât Freelance
After one long and miserable year of employment, I decided that the answer to all my problems was self employment. Specifically, I was looking to make a career out of my writing. I started with a blog then dipped my toes into the world of freelance writing. I signed up for...
He Built A $1 Billion Business Where All 700 Employees Work Remotely
Sid Sijbrandij knows a thing or two about building, scaling and even walking away from companies. His current venture, GitLab, is doing over $100 million in revenue and is valued at over $1 billion. Originally from the Netherlands, Sid Sijbrandij is now the founder of one of...
Why âFind Your Passionâ Is Such Terrible Advice
Are you passionate about your work? Fulfilled in every aspect of your career? If yes, congratulations! Youâve done what we all strive for but rarely achieve. As for the rest of us, thereâs hope: Part of why we havenât found our passion yet is that we tend to give up quickly on...
Why We're Betting Against Real-Time Team Messaging Apps Like Slack
Three years ago our remote company joined Slack. Until then, we had relied on a mix of email and an internal tool called Wedoist for all of our communication. But our steadily growing team based across several time zones made it hard to stay on the same page and even harder to...
How We Use Video to Build Remote Culture
When your team is spread out all over the world, traditional team building activities like celebrating milestones in the office or grabbing drinks after work arenât on the table. But that shouldnât stop you from creating virtual opportunities for employees to get to know each...
Why I work remotely (hint: it has nothing to do with productivity). - Signal v. Noise
These are some of the things I can do because Iâm fortunate to work for a company that lets me work from anywhere: Hug my kids and feed them breakfast before they leave for school in the morning. Greet and make a snack for them when they get home; hear all about their day.
How to Run a Workplace with Office and Remote Workers: An Interview with the CEO of RemoteYear
When we give remote work advice, we tend to give it from our own perspective, which is that of a fully, 100-percent remote team. However, this way of working isnât the norm â or even the standard. In our inaugural State of Remote Work study, we learned that most of the companies...
Itâs Never Going to Be Perfect, So Just Get It Done
So hereâs a grand, wonderful irony: I started writing this newsletter in early June. Iâd come back to my meager Google Doc every few days, reworking the same few sentences, each time thinking I was finally ready to finish. But I never really made any progress â I wanted it to be...
The firm with 900 staff and no office
There's a growing trend for firms to ditch their offices entirely, but is that good or bad for workers? "Talent is evenly distributed but opportunity is often not," says Cate Huston. "Working this way means you can access that talent and also give opportunity."
7 tips on how to manage freelance workers remotely
Managing remote freelance workers is an increasing challenge for small business owners. Andrew Wray shares 7 tips to get the best out of freelance contractors. The explosion in flexible and remote working is one of the biggest changes weâve seen to our working lives in the past...
Do you find being a digital nomad more appealing than being a remote worker?
I make about $130k a year as a junior developer. I work for a big corporation but they have a flexible remote policy. So I sublet my apt, travel half the year to places like SE Asia and live like a KING with my US salary. Most DNs I see on here travel while picking up freelance...
Where to Go When You Just Want to Be Alone
Thoreau headed for the woods. Bowles fled to the desert. The Indigo Girls went to the mountains. We humans disappear into wild and secluded places when we need to reset: to lap up the landscape, shape our thoughts, and feel the perspective-giving stab of strangeness, even menace,...
More people are working remotely, and itâs transforming office design
Working remotely is the new normalâand the increasing numbers of employees who work from home are, paradoxically, changing the nature of office design. As more and more companies recognize the value of allowing employees to work from home (the world becomes your talent pool,...
Your Morning Routine Doesnât Matter That Much
There are few things in this world more depressing than reading about the morning routines of highly successful people, a uniquely terrible genre of lifestyle journalism. You too, they imply, can be high-powered, slender, and creative â if you just get up before the sun, run a...