Remote Work Isn’t Feasible For Everyone

From

editione1.0.3

Updated March 23, 2023

You’re reading an excerpt of The Holloway Guide to Remote Work, a book by Katie Wilde, Juan Pablo Buriticá, and over 50 other contributors. It is the most comprehensive resource on building, managing, and adapting to working with distributed teams. Purchase the book to support the author and the ad-free Holloway reading experience. You get instant digital access, 800 links and references, a library of tools for remote-friendly work, commentary and future updates, and a high-quality PDF download.

importantNot every job can be done remotely. Outside of physical jobs like healthcare work, construction, and service industries, every company may have a range of what’s feasible and some specific constraints. A hardware startup might have a mix of roles that can be done remotely, but the core product has to be built and tested in a physical space. Some industries (financial services, healthcare tech) have such significant security and compliance constraints that a remote workforce might be too much effort or risk to maintain.

Laurel Farrer, CEO of Distribute Consulting, assesses whether a job can be done remotely based on the following set of criteria:*

  1. The person uses a computer as their primary tool for at least 80% of the time.
  2. The role is not dependent on permanent, unmovable, or rare resources, such as regional natural resources, heavy/expensive equipment, et cetera.
  3. The role is knowledge-based, not service-based.

Even within knowledge work, some roles may have heavier in-person needs at various times, such as sales, where closing a deal (especially a big one) likely means getting on a plane and meeting face-to-face. More junior roles that require much higher levels of mentoring and hands-on learning can also be challenging in a remote environment.

Finally, remote work can prove challenging for anyone who thrives on the built-in social and collaborative aspects of working in an office with other people. While many of the necessary skills for remote workers—increased autonomy, adjusted communication practices, managing potential feelings of isolation and loneliness—can be acquired and improved by individuals, and enabled by companies and managers, remote work is not for everyone.

Remote Work Is Intentional

Successful remote work requires intentionally examining how and why people communicate, make decisions, collaborate, and learn to trust each other. Being together in the same space makes up for a lot of messy, inefficient human tendencies, all of which are critical to examine and account for when you won’t be together. It has little to do with which new whiteboarding SaaS app your company tries out or how many channels you have in Slack.

···

Even in fervently titled posts like “Why Naval Ravikant Thinks Remote Work Is The Future,” Naval Ravikant acknowledges that remote work isn’t a magic solution. “It’s going to be done through lengthy trials. It’s going to be done through new forms of evaluating whether someone can work remotely effectively,” Ravikant says.

If you found this post worthwhile, please share!