Are there some disadvantages to working remote?
TL;DR: there are disadvantages, technically, but they&#x27;re irrelevant compared to the advantages.  It&#x27;s true that human contact is a physical need [and that is physically perceptible, if you&#x27;re the perceptive kind], but work, unfortunately, is definitely not the kind of place for physical contact.  Instead of socializing at work, now I see my family on a daily basis by having more time to go out and visit them daily.  (Being a grad student, I also enjoy a little physical contact with people at the university on a weekly basis.)<p>I&#x27;ve been working remote 100% of my time for about 3 years, spanning two different companies.  The first year was with a company in my city, people I never knew before.  I was hired by them to do some easy work and they proposed me some harder work one week after watching me solving the initial problems.  I solved that too and little by little impressed them with competence.  So, professionally, things were in perfect shape, but, on a personal level, things were going from bad to worse.  So after delivering one last promise, I told them I was starting my own company and I could continue delivering them more services --- for instance, in my own office.<p>So I got to work remote.  Initially I saw them once a week, then a few months later, once every two weeks and then once a month.  After they got one hard project completely done, they didn&#x27;t have anything they didn&#x27;t know how to do, so they didn&#x27;t ask me for anything else and I had to find a new deal.<p>Despite my very polite and elegant way of dealing with them (as I do with everyone), despite getting lots of compliments from these people due to the quality of work and so on, no one would ever convince me these people were not crazy to see me away.  They only tolerated me while they had to.<p>So I called a company I worked with for many years.  I closed a deal on that very call because I made them an irresistible proposal.  I&#x27;m very far away from them, so the work must be 100% remote.  So it&#x27;s been like this for 2 years now.<p>Despite being remote, we meet through cameras every day.  (They do all the SCRUM nonsense, JIRA and so on, though I&#x27;m the only programmer they have.  What they see in these tools is a fancy post-it that gives them a feel they&#x27;re doing some management.  So, yes, I&#x27;ve no respect for these tools.  I&#x27;m definitely the more organized person in the team and all I use is GNU EMACS and org-mode.  I&#x27;m definitely not suggesting they should use such tools.  They&#x27;re not programmers.  I&#x27;m just explaining what is the environment of such offices that I&#x27;d have to deal with if I were there in person.)<p>I clearly respect their ways of working and fully collaborate.  I&#x27;m probably the easiest person.  Everything they ask me, no matter how nonsensical it is, I always agree and proceed to get it done.  This is very easy for me to do precisely because I&#x27;m remote.  All the lies and superficiality that goes in an office is dealt with even with humor if you&#x27;re remote.  When I see someone acting totally out of harmony, I can even joke around aloud so as to not feel too downhearted about it.  Nonsense on the screen is much less frustrating than when you&#x27;re on the spot.  You can watch a bad film on TV and turn it off.  The same happens working remotely.  The nonsense goes on, you respect people&#x27;s ways and as soon as it&#x27;s over, you close the camera and back to your coding, to your work, which you do with excellence, not because of talent, but because you carefully check your calculations, you know how to add two and two and you&#x27;re never a fool to think you don&#x27;t have to check the basics.  <i>That</i> is admirable, <i>that</i> makes the day worth it.  So, working remote you live in your environment which is made up of the things you do.  The inner is the outer: when you&#x27;re alone, the things you have inner are the things that fill up the outer.<p>If by being alone you get down, don&#x27;t eat well, don&#x27;t catch sun, then that is the fact, that is your life and you should not panic, but carefully watch the problem and let it tell its story to you --- which is the story of your life.  I do not think intellectuality is what is needed to live a good life, but there is not much difference between learning to live well and learning technical things.  Watch it, watch the problem, let it tell its story, be humble, check the basics, learn with those which factually know more than you.<p>I&#x27;ve known people who had remote jobs and due to the difficulties of being alone decided to go back to punching cards in standard offices.  That is fixing a bug by causing another.  Do not do that.  Look in the eye of the storm.  Do not pretend to solve problems.  I wouldn&#x27;t mind spending my whole life trying to only understand the Pythagorean theorem: it is not higher mathematics that matters; it is the learning.<p>Work is central to life.  You should own your work.  After you&#x27;ve invested decades in a company, that company is yours, and as such it should be impossible for people to take you away from your work, which is absolutely one of the major parts of your life.  So work should be the place where you feel great, where you can be so free and be able to watch your development as a complete person, not as a machine with a function and a schedule.<p>You might think this might all apply to me because I&#x27;m a highly unusual person.  But that would be a total miscalculation.  I&#x27;m convinced everything I say applies to everyone else.  I consider the most typical person there is out there and how they could never work alone in their own workplace because they&#x27;d get down, be lonely, nervous and so on.  So such person feels working in an office or in a factory is a marvelous thing for them.  But the fact is that they only think that because they&#x27;re deeply afraid of facing their real problems, which is buried in themselves.  Nowadays every one is working on a computer terminal, so there is little reason to cruise the city to punch cards in an office.<p>Get to the heart of things.