Work from anywhere (not hybrid working)

Having been a part-time freelancer for years, this kind of thing was a huge contributor to my finally quitting my final part-time job a little over a year ago. I felt for a long that my part-time job was a sort of safety net — at least some guaranteed income each month, paying taxes, and all that. But it was also holding me back from fully embracing my freelance life and the other kinda of freedoms that it contains.

For some of my freelance work I obviously need to be somewhere at certain times (ie. putting on a festival; can do the planning from elsewhere but have to be there in person for the festival), but that’s also so much easier to accommodate when I don’t have a work shift somewhere else I meed to deal with.

So it’s because of my decision to drop any place-specific work on the day to day that I’ve been able to go live in the countryside for 6 months, or take on projects in other parts of the country, etc. Wouldn’t want it any other way now (and coincidentally have more work + income now than I did before, but there are many reasons for that).

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When we’ve recruited recently for certain posts, working completely remotely is now an option for candidates. I think the organisation has decided that this would be helpful in opening up roles to a wider pool of people than those who live within commuting distance of the office.

I manage some of these people, and generally it seems to be working ok, but I think a few weeks not working remotely at the outset would have been beneficial for more informal learning from colleagues.

I started a new role around a month ago that is kind of work from anywhere, but also not really.

The department I’m leading is global and every single one of my line reports is based in a different country depending on which ‘region’ they’re responsible for. Their teams are then based in different countries across the regions, so 99% of our - and their - work as a team is done via video-calls. Some of them do go into their local offices, but many of them are fully remote.

There’ll be points when I’ll be going out to visit them and working from within those countries/regions but they’ll be prearranged, and officially I have to be based in the UK because that’s where our HQ and global leadership are based. What it means is that I have to be officially attached to one of our UK offices, but most of my time is spent WFH.

I’ve been going in a couple of times a week whilst I’m new, but I think once I’m fully settled it’ll be a case of only needing to go into the office once every few weeks for specific meetings with my boss/peers. Provided things work out well in the first year and I pass my probation, we might well move away from London (maybe to Scotland as there’s an office in Edinburgh), as my wife is pretty much in the same position, though for a different organisation.

There were lots of reasons for leaving my last job, but the flexibility this one offers was a major reason in going for it. The work I do isn’t site-specific, so I honestly couldn’t see myself ever applying for a role that didn’t give me this kind of freedom to choose where I work from again.

I’ve really liked not going to an office the last two years, and I’ve just accepted a job for a fully remote company. Quite excited to see the difference in working for a company that’s been remote since it was founded vs a business reluctantly going remote to try and stay productive during a pandemic… if nothing else there’ll hopefully be fewer meetings since everyone’s in different time-zones.

Think I might have to get a desk in a coworking space or something to make sure I keep going outside during the week though. :sweat_smile:

I haven’t had an office I had to be in since 2017 when I moved to Australia. I got my contract transferred to our Australian Office (a benefit of working for a huge vague IT company) but my actually work is still going to the UK, via a cross-billing situation. I believe if we don’t have a cost-centre in a place we no longer allow people to work from there as it’s just a nightmare for payroll, but I believe the situation is such that if you still effectively were listed as working from the UK, i.e. you still did your taxes and the government thought of you as there, you could do it…

Anyway, prior to that for me, and Covid for everyone else, we were ‘hybrid’ but not in any structured way. We had people who never came into the office if they could help it. But there still could be that requirement due to a client meeting or IT or whatever. So the ‘no office’ expectation wasn’t quite there and the company held effectively over you the fact they could ask you to return to the office immediately.

But during Covid they shut up the offices as much as possible. They had already been making sure there were so few desks that you couldn’t come in 5 days a week if you’d wanted to, but now everyone on my level is a home worker with no office. Like even if I have no internet I don’t have an emergency option.

It’s fine. We all use Teams and stuff. For people who need an outside line they setup a special line that you can ring like a normal phone externally but for that worker just comes in like a Teams call.

Overall it’s fine. But when I moved here I was allowed, pre-Covid to visit the office in Melbourne’s centre sometimes, which was useful. Say if I needed to do some shopping or just use the aircon or get out of the house. It’s hard to know I have absolutely nowhere to go. If we move house, or my internet craps out completely for some reason outside my control, then I’m going to have to use my phone as a hotspot until I get internet running, I guess? It’s a bit fucked on that level.

I’ll caveat this by saying that I haven’t given it a great deal of thought, but part of me wonders whether a general move to working from anywhere/remote-first working across the sectors where it’s possible could be the key to rebalancing power and investment, particularly in places like the UK where London benefits from so much more investment in infrastructure etc than other places.

If more people are able and choose to work from different places around the country and head office buildings naturally scale down and spread out, then more investment in infrastructure etc should follow. Certainly seems more viable than the current “levelling up” talk.

This being said, it probably won’t happen that way and I expect there’s a million reasons why, mostly to do with capitalism.

No, I think that is definitely the most likely outcome for this kind of thing. Which is why the Tories are desperately trying to convince everyone they have to work in an office and working from home is bad because no doubt they’ve sensed that there is a lot monetary power in the city that is being drained away from their backers.

Hard to know whether it will end up that way purely because ‘working from home’ is really only viable for people who have the ability to make an office space at home long term, which, even if people are being allowed to take their London wage to another part of the country, might not be fully viable.

So I guess capitalism may well have the last laugh there.

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Am I right in thinking that if you are fully remote as opposed to hybrid your employer should pay your travel expenses when visiting the office? Or at least you can reclaim your expenses through your tax return?

It all depends on where your contacted location is. If your contract is as a home worker then yes.

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freelance, completely online english teacher, so can (in theory) work from anywhere in the world if I wanted to. can’t afford that obviously. Its nice that I can go away for a bit and still be able to do classes on my laptop though, and I really like not having to go into an office.

Absolutely. One of the many things that annoys me about the Tories claiming WFH is bad for the economies of city centres is the fact that there is also an upside for other places. For example, our local village cafe is doing great because workers can grab a coffee after dropping their kids off at school before heading home to work. Or people actually have time to go to the local gym because they’re not spending an hour commuting. Or the need to see humans mean I spend more time in the village pub. All of these are positive economic benefits that Rees-Mogg doesn’t talk about, probably because he doesn’t own equity in village facilities.

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Exactly, our local sandwich shop does free delivery and we used it loads when wfh full time, using the money we saved from commuting/ getting a coffee in the city centre. Also got loads of takeaways. Our local high street is doing really well in general and there always seems to be a new bar or restaurant on the way (very excited about a new Greek place).

I’m a bit sceptical about the idea that this will lead to increased infrastructure projects. As you say the principal concern of those in power is the alarmingly vulnerable commercial property in the centre of London which now seems abit redundant. also feel obliged to point out that the reason London has a lot of infrastructure is because one sixth of the uk population live there, and in terms of transport it receives less public funding than pretty much any comparable conurbation in the western world. But that’s just me being parochial and nerdy :wink:

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The irony being that if you do buy from small local independents, you’re far more likely to see trickle down economics happening than if you spend money at a big chain who offshore their head office for tax reasons

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