The true price of working remotely

In today’s issue, I’ll share what I see as the true price of working remotely. I’m writing this newsletter from a co-working space in Berlin (I live in Mexico normally), and I could be writing it from anywhere, thanks to my remote work setup.

This is one of the many benefits of working remotely. You get to choose how you organize your time, where you work from, and you have more control over your workday.

But all this freedom comes at a price. And you need to know about it if you want to keep living the dream life.

Let’s dive in:

Why working remotely is so interesting

Working remotely sounds like the perfect setup. You avoid rush hours, you save on gas, restaurants, and you can organize your work as you wish. Some companies even reimburse remote office setups. It’s a fantastic work situation if you’re already experienced, and you want to organize your work around life, not the way around.

It’s also liberating to avoid forced social interactions with your colleagues. If you’re an introvert, it drains less of your energy, and it’s a great way to stay focused on the task at hand. There are mostly benefits to working remotely if it’s something you choose (vs being forced to work remotely when you need an office environment to stay focused).

But working remotely comes with a set of problems that you can’t ignore:

Problem 1: You’re giving up job security

Working remotely means working from home for most people. You’re not allowed to work from abroad (or for a very limited time), and your employer is constantly tracking when you log in, and trying to control your work environment.

Real remote work implies working from where you want, when you want. In a lot of cases, this type of setup means you have to give up your employee status (and all the benefits that come with it) to become a contractor. Concretely, you’re giving up job security and you’re employer becomes a customer.

To me, this is the definition of freedom, but it’s a stressful situation to be in for most people.

Problem 2: You’re on your own

Working remotely means being physically alone. No water cooler discussion, no office gossip, no lunch with your colleagues. If you ask me, that’s paradise. But it’s hell for a lot of people. Humans need social interactions, and Slack messages or Zoom meetings don’t replace the physical need we have to be around other people.

Career progression also suffers when working remotely. Being in an office with your colleagues helps create political soft power. You get to spend time with people who can impact your career, and a lot of this soft power is built unconsciously, through daily interactions with your colleagues.

Problem 3: You can never really go back to working in office

The last big problem I see with working remotely is that you can’t really go back into working in an office every day if you’ve been used to a remote role. I’ve met a lot of salespeople who worked fully remotely for years, before being laid-off and having to accept roles that were a 100% in office.

All of them are miserable. They had built a life in their own terms, but were forced back into a way of working that completely clashed with their view of life.

All of them are in existential crisis.

They need the job because they have to pay the bills, but they hate their lives. A lot of my friends live in Germany, and they work for a year, reload their unemployment benefits, and stop working for a year, before starting the cycle again.

And they are DEPRESSED.

That’s why I came up with an idea. I’m planning a retreat in Mexico for remote salespeople who are in an existential crisis. If that’s you, please join the waitlist and reply to the follow-up email, I want to talk to you.

And this is the true price of working remotely. You get to live the dream life, but it can get taken away at any time, and you have no control over it. One day you’re making 6-figures working from wherever you want, the day after you get laid off, with two weeks severance.

There has to be a better way.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Thibaut Souyris