Why People Love and Hate Remote Work (A Twitter Survey)

Chris Herd of FirstBase (a tool to onboard remote workers) posted a semi-viral tweet asking for people’s thoughts on remote work.

The tweet received 153 responses (so far) and below is a summary of why people said they love or hate remote work!

Also, if you’re looking for a remote job, here’s a great guide to getting a remote job!

Remote work is a reaction against:

🌉expensive cities
🏢time in office as KPI
🤡bad middle management
🚘wasting our lives commuting
❤️having no time for friends/family
🧘letting our health/wellbeing suffer
👔lower quality of life than we deserve

Why do you want remote work?

— Chris Herd (@chris_herd) February 16, 2020

Why People Love Remote Work

1. Deeper work without any distractions – since no office or physical coworkers (15 responses)
   1. I don’t like office politics or coworkers (shrug emoji)
2. Love not having to commute to work (12 responses)
   1. Save time by not commuting (x4)
   2. Environmental impact of not commuting
   3. Save money on gas
   4. Too stressful getting calls while driving because I could only solve problems at a computer
   5. I get angry at other cars when there’s traffic
   6. Costs me $22/day to commute
3. Get to spend more time with kids/family (9 responses)
   1. Child care costs are insane where I live
   2. I get to drop off and pick up my daughter from the bus every day
   3. When my dad got sick, I could take care of him
4. I love being able to work on my schedule and on my terms (8 responses)
   1. I like doing mini-sprints throughout the day with breaks
   2. I like working late night
   3. I can get online earlier (at 7/730 am)
   4. Being in my own environment helps me to get into a flow state
   5. I’m able to schedule my work around when I’m most productive
5. I love having the freedom to travel (3 responses)
6. Other
   1. Spouses can keep the same job when partner gets transferred (military or corporate) (2 responses)
   2. Love getting to wear sweatpants (or no pants) while I work 🙂 (2 responses)
   3. I have better monitors and tech at home (2 responses)
   4. It’s better for hiring – more diverse & larger hiring pool (2 responses)
   5. Better global job opportunities (2 responses)
   6. I eat healthier because I can make my own meals (2 responses)
   7. A physical or immune system disability makes it easier for me to work from home (2 responses)
   8. Remote meetings are on-time, shorter, more efficient & more productive (usually)
   9. Health & wellness perks
   10. Recovering from surgery and can return to work sooner since I don’t drive or carry bags
   11. Freedom: money is best spent to buy time, not things (now able to convert skill into leverage and leverage into freedom)
   12. More time for creative/side projects
   13. Home internet is faster and more stable

Why People Hate Remote Work

Interestingly, this is the one and only consistent complaint that came up in this thread.

1. Remote work can be isolating and makes it difficult to connect with others (6 responses)
   1. Switched to office
   2. Switched to partially remote
   3. I can’t imagine wanting to work in isolation for a lengthy part of my life
   4. I love the social aspect of working with great co-workers

If you’re looking for a remote job, here’s a great guide to getting a remote job!