How common is remote working here?

Elessar

In the dev space in Ireland how common is remote working? I ask out of curiosity as I keep seeing a shift for a lot of developers towards wanting to be able to work remotely either partly or entirely, but I'm not sure how common it is here.

For example a friend of mine is an experienced web dev who lives in the Dublin suburbs and commutes into the city to work. He loves his job but is looking around for somewhere that will allow him to largely work from home, as he is sick of the long commute and getting home late in the evenings. From what I understand his company won't allow it which will ultimately be their loss.

My girlfriend works for a tech multinational where working from home is common, and she uses it a lot - its a perk of the job and she said her friends and her would not want to work anywhere that didn't have the same flexibility; but their policy is fairly generous, and probably not indicative of the industry as a whole.

Where I work there is no specific work from home policy and remote working is generally a no-no, but we have a day-rate contractor working full time from Prague now. He was with us for a few years originally in office and has a very specific skillset, so when he announced he was leaving but was open to working from home the company had no choice really as he is hard to replace. So now he's living like a king with Dublin day-rate earnings in one of the cheapest countries in Europe.

As I think about my own career this is something I would be interested in, at least partly at some point down the line.

Senna

My employer up in Donegal allows it, it's handy in Donegal, it would be almost essential in a city with crazy commutes.
I work a couple of days every week from home, but I could apply for teleworking and that mean I don't have a desk anymore. I think you do have to come atleast once a month, maybe more, not sure.
I work mostly with Americans and it seems to be very common over there, regularly on a meeting you'd here a kid in the background shouting to its mum or dad, doesn't seem to ever been an issue but it's usually directors and senior staff so no ones saying anything, I still find it very strange.

Berserker

I've been able to work remotely in two of my last three jobs. I moved from the private sector to the public sector 18 months ago and lost that privilege, among many other negatives that have surfaced as a result of that move. Most of my friends who work in the private sector, as developers or architects, have the option to work from home.

The only negative with working from home, from my experience, was that you were seen to be available for work 24/7. I used to get asked to sit in on conference calls in the USA late at night or earlier on weekend mornings, every week.

counterpointaud

Current project (based in Brussels) is fully remote, been on it about a year now. Before that was on another project based in Hamburg, was required to be on site there for about 4 days every couple of months.

I like it a lot TBH, wouldn't like to go back to full-time in office, or commuting.

14ned

It's definitely not as common here as in the UK or especially the east and west coasts of the US. I agree with the other poster that as a remote worker you are expected to attend meetings at non-social hours, but I would say that you can simply say "no, I'm putting my children to bed then" or if they're pushy about it then I say "if you don't mind my children participating in the call" and I've not found a problem yet.

Well, actually, on one occasion they insisted I attend, so there I was with a two year old running around the room making faces at people on the TV screen and a two month old on the knee yelling and fairly amazingly, they actually tried to proceed with the meeting for twenty minutes before realising that I had really been saying, "this time slot is not doable". But I guess maybe it only dawns on people who have had children. Still, I understand why people on the West coast US think that 12pm is a perfectly fine time for a meeting, and for them packing all meetings into 8am - 10am sucks, they have to sit in hours of traffic to reach the office for 8am. Coming in for 11am enormously easier for them (though seeing as it's a remote workers meeting, hint hint as to the solution to that problem!).

Remote working is growing though. I had a recent full time employment approach from Siemens. Everybody not just in the team but the entire division is 100% remote working and literally distributed from New Zealand to California. That's a sea change from where we were even five years ago. They only hire people who have successfully remote worked before. For me though, my issue was the pay on offer, it seems 100% remote workers take a hefty cut in pay unless they're on contract.

Niall

moycullen14

It's certainly becoming more prevalent. 5-10 years ago, it was rare, usually special cases only.

Last two places I have worked seem to whole heartedly embrace it. From a companies point of view, it is another way to tie in employees/contractors. I think it makes people more likely to stay with an employer. It doesn't cost employers anything, so why not?

It's great to be able to avoid the pain of commuting and it saves money too. It really widens your options. If you only had to be on-site 3-4 days a month, it should be possible to work anywhere in Europe from an Irish base.

No such thing as a free lunch, though. It does impose a fair amount of overhead just co-ordinating the activities of people. It may not be suitable for small teams. It makes communication more difficult.

I get the feeling that it's more prevalent in companies that have to do it - usually to retain/attract staff or to save money. As far as I know, A listers in the industry - e.g. the FAANGS - are against it and that might be telling.

I do worry that a remote worker is easier to outsource and that may end up being the biggest disadvantage of all.

counterpointaud

moycullen14 wrote: »

A listers in the industry - e.g. the FAANGS - are against it and that might be telling.

Oracle, Yahoo and now IBM too apparently

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/08/ibm_teleworking_is_great_for_everyone_but_us/

14ned

moycullen14 wrote: »

I get the feeling that it's more prevalent in companies that have to do it - usually to retain/attract staff or to save money. As far as I know, A listers in the industry - e.g. the FAANGS - are against it and that might be telling.

It's what they bleat very loudly in public about. Yet I can think immediately of five people working at Microsoft who are 100% remote. I can think of two at Apple, and I know of another four at Google.

So they do in fact make "very rare" "exceptions" to the no remote workers rule. It depends on the worker mainly, if they're superstar or hard to replace talent they get to work anywhere they like. If they are worker bee talent then yes they must be onsite and turn up 9 to 5.

Some of that is of course because the superstar talent tends to not require much managing, and tends to be working on harder blue sky type of work involving little close teamwork. They also tend to have had long track records in open source where asymmetric communication is the norm. So they get pointed at a problem, and left at it, they turn up a few months later with success or failure.

I think ultimately it's partially pay related. Engineers on a third of a million salary plus get lots of latitude about where and when and how they work. Engineers on 150k or less get cubicles. For employers, it's all just part of the perceived cost benefit tradeoff.

Niall

Graham

Such modesty

Joking aside, I think 14ned is on the right tracks. It does generally tend to be the more experienced/specialist roles where companies are open to remote working.

14ned

Graham wrote: »

Such modesty

Joking aside, I think 14ned is on the right tracks. It does generally tend to be the more experienced/specialist roles where companies are open to remote working.

I alas am not in that category. I'd happily take a US$330k base salary permanent job working 100% remote on blue sky hard problems over remaining a remote working contractor! Remote working contractors necessarily end up doing a ton of drudge work to fix whatever serious problem caused them to be hired in the first place. It's high paid monkey work much of the time, very boring and unstimulating, and it's annoying constantly cleaning up other people's messes. But it pays the bills, and better than living in or near Dublin.

Niall

Mezcita

Remote working is very popular with developers in terms of their "wish list" but a lot of companies are still pretty slow to implement it.

https://www.stackoverflowbusiness.com/hubfs/content/2017_Global_Developer_Hiring_Landscape.pdf?utm_campaign=Content%20Offers&utm_source=direct-share

P.23. 15% work remote globally. Only 12% in the UK so I presume Ireland would be similar.

Mr. CooL ICE

I currently have the option to work remotely 5 days a week, but choose to go to the office twice a week. I did 5 days a week remotely for a while but I didn't like it. Change of scenery is important for me.

My company doesn't actively encourage it, aside from certain scenarios. Main office is currently short of space so employing remote workers is cheaper than moving offices at the moment.

neilk32

I've been working fully remote for two years now, couldn't see myself ever going back to an office. There's lots of places dedicated to remote jobs and you don't need to limit yourself to searching in Ireland. My last two jobs have been North American based, which usually means higher base pay also.

https://stackoverflow.com/jobs?sort=i&r=true
https://remoteok.io/

pauliebdub

It's discouraged in most places I've worked in. Unless you are a well established employee in an important role who would leave if they didn't get two days a week of working from home to alleviate a tough commute, the answer was no.

moycullen14

Isn't it a bit difficult (unfair even) to allow remote working for some and not for others when they are doing the same sort of work?

14ned

moycullen14 wrote: »

Isn't it a bit difficult (unfair even) to allow remote working for some and not for others when they are doing the same sort of work?

I've found a majority of devs prefer to work onsite. They find working remotely psychologically difficult for a wide variety of reasons, the two biggest are loneliness and family and friends not understanding that you can't just drop in unannounced because you're "available".

Niall

The J Stands for Jay

Senna wrote: »

My employer up in Donegal allows it, it's handy in Donegal, it would be almost essential in a city with crazy commutes.
I work a couple of days every week from home, but I could apply for teleworking and that mean I don't have a desk anymore. I think you do have to come atleast once a month, maybe more, not sure.
I work mostly with Americans and it seems to be very common over there, regularly on a meeting you'd here a kid in the background shouting to its mum or dad, doesn't seem to ever been an issue but it's usually directors and senior staff so no ones saying anything, I still find it very strange.

I think I know the company. I get a call at least once a year from recruitment agencies asking if I want to work there. They tell me that after so long (6 weeks or 6 months?) I could work from home in Dublin. I always tell them I couldn't be listening to my mother is I got a job in Donegal but still didn't move back...

Senna

McGaggs wrote: »

I think I know the company. I get a call at least once a year from recruitment agencies asking if I want to work there. They tell me that after so long (6 weeks or 6 months?) I could work from home in Dublin. I always tell them I couldn't be listening to my mother is I got a job in Donegal but still didn't move back...

Donegal wages and living in Dublin, would that make sense?
Wages are OK for people with good experience, but I would have thought the same skills in Dublin would pay higher.

The J Stands for Jay

Senna wrote: »

Donegal wages and living in Dublin, would that make sense?
Wages are OK for people with good experience, but I would have thought the same skills in Dublin would pay higher.

I never let them get as far as wages. Can't imagine it'd be great for living in Dublin.

Yourself isit

14ned wrote: »

It's what they bleat very loudly in public about. Yet I can think immediately of five people working at Microsoft who are 100% remote. I can think of two at Apple, and I know of another four at Google.

So they do in fact make "very rare" "exceptions" to the no remote workers rule. It depends on the worker mainly, if they're superstar or hard to replace talent they get to work anywhere they like. If they are worker bee talent then yes they must be onsite and turn up 9 to 5.

Some of that is of course because the superstar talent tends to not require much managing, and tends to be working on harder blue sky type of work involving little close teamwork. They also tend to have had long track records in open source where asymmetric communication is the norm. So they get pointed at a problem, and left at it, they turn up a few months later with success or failure.

I think ultimately it's partially pay related. Engineers on a third of a million salary plus get lots of latitude about where and when and how they work. Engineers on 150k or less get cubicles. For employers, it's all just part of the perceived cost benefit tradeoff.

Niall

Steve jobs was famously hostile to off site work, for privacy reasons. There were always some exceptions.

14ned

Yourself isit wrote: »

Steve jobs was famously hostile to off site work, for privacy reasons. There were always some exceptions.

Apple audio division in particular has a long history of remote working. They were a separate company Apple bought a long time ago, and despite Jobs' best efforts he wasn't able to get them to come onsite.

It's a very different culture in that division. They're allowed to present at conferences without their material being vetted first. They are allowed talk publicly about what they do at work. They're also not worked to death with impossible deadlines, nor micromanaged.

But then retaining quality audio engineers is very hard. Finance wants them for their low latency experience. So Apple has to be nice to them.

Niall

beauf

Elessar wrote: »

I...but I'm not sure how common it is here. ....

Never done it full time. But I've only worked remotely part time, the rest of the time in the office.

BrokenArrows

Im allowed to work from home as much as i like but i go into the office most of the time (Unless i need to be at home for deliveries or trades people needing to work on the house etc)

I find working from home draining and find it very hard to focus.

I spend a week working from home not so long ago and after a few days i realised i hadnt actually left the house.
Got up in the morning, shower, breakfast, work, lunch, work, finish, do odd jobs around the house, couch, tv, sleep, repeat.

I guess you really need to force yourself out of the house in the morning, at lunch and after work.

AndreWebDev

Remote working is more prominent with multinational companies, but even as a student I have noticed it growing.

My neighbor works with Oracle and he opt's to work from home 1 day a week. He has the option for more, but he enjoys the office. Fellow classmates of mine secured an internship with a start up company, and work from home 50% of the time.

It's defiantly increasing in popularity, and I reckon it will increase as companies look to offer more perks to attract the best developers.