Read on Twitter
Below is a thread about the 10 stages of remote work. Working remotely is not a binary yes/no decision but something that you can measure on a gradation scale all the way from no remote to strictly remote.
1. No remote is the default for some industries that have to be on site. For example medical care, manufacturing, construction, and many services industries.
2. Remote time may be referenced as remote tolerated. This stage of remote allows all approved employees in a company to work some (but not all) days from home, or a place of their choosing.
3. Remote exceptions is a stage where some employees may work remotely indefinitely due to their role, while others are required to work from a company office. This is frequently seen in companies which mandate that executive leadership work out of the office by default.
4. Remote allowed is a stage where remote work is allowed for anyone at the company (with very few edge cases, such as those who are employed to physically service a building or must work with equipment that cannot be transported to one's home).
5. Hybrid-remote is a tempting compromise that masks many downsides. In a hybrid-remote organization, leaders are forced to manage two fundamentally distinct ways of working. Read more about the problems that this brings in https://twitter.com/sytses/status/1264341436138270720
6. Remote days is an effort to ensure that there is only ever one playing field to manage, some companies may allow remote days where the entire company (executives included) work remotely at the same time.
7. Remote-first organizations optimize their company for remote. They create documentation, policies, and workflows that work when assuming that 100% of the organization is remote, even if some continue to occasionally visit a company-owned office.
8. Remote only companies allow employees to work remotely, but maintain "core team hours." InVision Studio, for example, has members spread across multiple countries and time zones, but aims to achieve "at least a 4-hour overlap with InVision’s core team hours, 10am–6pm EST"
9. All-remote means you work mostly asynchronous to allow you to work across time zones. In such companies you need to embrace asynchronous communication https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/asynchronous/ GitLab strives to work like this.
10. Strictly remote is remote work taken to its extreme, a strictly remote company would never meet in person and never permit synchronous meetings. This seems impractical, and we are not yet aware of a substantial company that adheres to this.
There is a lot of detail about each stage on https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/stages/ and if you want to get better about working remote consider downloading the remote playbook full of practical tips https://about.gitlab.com/resources/ebook-remote-playbook/