I have been remote working for the past ~5 years or so. I had to RTO briefly for 3-4 weeks, which was about as long as it took me to find a position with a new org. I love the benefits at this stage in my life (young children, etc.) but I'm not sure the networking relationships I developed early on in my career "in the trenches" would be nearly as strong or beneficial as they have been had I started remote. I'm curious to see how that plays out over the long-term for folks that may start remote and attempt to stay that way throughout their entire careers.

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TheCycoONE 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

So I was part of a very small company (<15 people) that was bought by a mid-sized company that otherwise had no presence in our country.

Leadership left and there was a few years where no one else in the office was in the same teams or reporting chains. The majority of people were in a single office in another company. I found it very difficult to participate and was left out of most decisions. Then covid hit and everything changed. With everyone working from home remote networking opportunities were built, I was an equal part of every discussion. Now I am in a large fortune 500 organization with a mix of working arrangements and I don't have any issues networking. I like to think we do a pretty good job with junior participation as well. The main thing I'm missing is the rumour mill and the pulse on what unrelated roles like sales/finance are saying on the ground.

	▲	scrapcode 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		That's great to hear. I guess what was in the forefront of my mind were how those relationships carry over after your time with that organization is through. There are a group of us that "started together" ~15 years ago that have had each others backs throughout the years in regard to opportunities and plenty of other life events outside of our starting organization. I was also in the military as well and it seems like those early relationships where we were peons (basic training, A-school, first deployment) are the ones that really stick. Maybe there's no correlation and that's just how it worked out for me. I have only worked for 2 organizations completely remotely. The first myself and my group worked very well together and got along great. After leaving, however, the only time I hear from them is when I reach out to see how everyone is doing.

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sublinear 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Some people have been working remote for much longer than the past few years. They are doing fine.

Maybe it depends on the nature of your work, but I think remote working revealed to everyone how much office "networking" was always kinda delusional.

For sure, networking is important, but I have never found opportunities talking to the same people in my fishbowl. It was almost impossible to talk to the right people within the organization in person, and cornering them is not a great first impression. Reaching out to them on Teams is a whole different ball game, and one that I think more people are good at. Getting the right attention from the right people is also easier in large group chats.

Apart from that, working remote is not strictly at home. There's a whole wide world out there to meet people and find opportunity.