Is anyone in this sub or instance a remote worker? I have been one first partially and then completely for a few years now and I began to think as a kinda of solarpunk way of live that has the potential to propel humanity to a more decentralized and sustainable way of life, specially since I plan to move to a smaller town because of it. What do guys feel about it? Do you do it? Don’t do it but would like to? Do it it but miss interaction?
Full time remote since March 2020. I have even moved cities since then, away from the office completely, and the company has hired on and off site over the last three years, mostly going by candidates, not geographical location. That’s the way to do it if you can (IT etc).
I’m pretty happy with it. Work wise, people are used to it by now, and as long as we deliver results, we are trusted to work how we see fit. Management is fully on board with it. The social aspects don’t bother me much, but the company does hold off site events twice a year, which helps with social ties.
The main downsides for me are a) that I’m missing my bike commute in the summer (free exercise!), and b) that I actually tend to work longer hours since I don’t have the commute time anymore.
But not needing a car is great, lots of carbon impact and financial savings there.
Why do think you tend to work longer hours? I never had that that issue but I feel is very related to the work itself.
Part of it is that some colleagues are on the East Coast, and others are on the West Coast. I’m in the middle, so I start early to align with the East Coast, and then often get involved in things with the West Coast in their afternoon.
So you’re right, definitely connected to the work.
Another part is that I’m just bad at not checking messages/dialing notifications… But that’s a me problem.
Don’t blame yourself. I know a lot of people in situations similar and they also blame themselves. Maybe you can improve on disconnecting from work, try to pause notifications after you are out, or turn off your phone. At least for me it works pretty well.
Yes. My company decided to shut down the local office to save money (kept by the bosses rather than being distributed to us, of course). So some of us became remote indefinitely.
Generally, I love it. I can “commute” in my PJs, and avoid spewing a lot of carbon into the climate just to ship around my sack of flesh. I can take breaks throughout the day to tend my garden, and play music to help myself think. I don’t have to worry about packing a lunch, or wasting time and money and social energy eating out in the middle of the day. Hell, I can go take a nap when I don’t have any meetings scheduled and feel the need.
However, it does take its toll. Not having a direct, face-to-face, human connection with folks throughout the day harms the associations that build solidarity. And finding ways to do one-on-ones and continue organizing the workplace is proving next to impossible. So I’m honestly not sure it is worth it at this stage of labor struggle. In a more ideal world—once we’ve won a few crucial victories over capital (and perhaps state)—I see no reason why many of us couldn’t work from home, and even move those jobs that require more direct, physical labor closer to those homes.
I agree with the aspect of losing human connection which I think is the greatest downside. Did you ever considered sharing your space with a friend or someone you know that’s also a remote worker to provide at least a source of companionship? I’m not saying daily but weekly or biweekly. I do that with my brother and sometimes friends and it helps a lot. And it creates a kinda of community even though we work for different companies.
Hmm. Yeah, that’s a possibility. I do other stuff that’s similar, like working on community gardens and helping comrades who are interested in learning technical skills I’m practiced in. But collective remote work situations…that’s an interesting think to ponder!
I’ve worked remotely since the first COVID shutdowns and eventually got the option to go full-time remote in mid-2021. Absolutely loving it.
No traffic, no parking, save lots of money on daily fast food, a tank of gas lasts me months, and generally have fewer distractions than at the office.
Most of my interactions with coworkers was through group chat, so nothing really changed much there. The only thing I’m really missing is the fitness center at the office and taking long walks on my breaks. I can do the latter at home, but I find myself just doing housework instead xD
I usually do housework during “toilet” breaks.
Now I’m curious to know how long are your breaks? XD
I’ve been working and managing remotely for 10 years. In fact, I wrote a book about it. Working remotely is not for everyone, but the pandemic showed that many more people in the world can work remotely than currently do, preferably as a part of self-sufficient communities.
I dream that the future of government is to help individuals transition to small, sustainable communities. It’s difficult for people to purposefully say goodbye to some luxuries that exist, but it’s the only way we can survive on this planet.
When I moved to Europe, I left all my friends behind. It was incredibly difficult to make new friends. Now, I’ve got a weekly boardgame night where folks drop in. It’s the most important part of my week.
So do your best to find like minded individuals (in real life!) and do it together. Together we go far.
What’s your book name? And where can I get it? Where did you move to?
Yes and no - I’m remote and I’m happy with it, it’s fairly recent but I’m planning on finding a nice coworking space to keep social links and community, which is foundational to making a better world. I’m a bit afraid that being remote will damage my ability to organize with other workers and to build a strong foundation for my life on the local scale.
I don’t think remote work is solarpunk in itself, if only because most of our jobs that can do remotely are not very useful to the world. I just try to see it as freeing the commute time so we can spend it building community and building alternatives for the future; it’s not an end in itself.
I agree that remote work isn’t the end and that it helps to allow time and energy to be used for community-driven interaction. We won’t truly be at “an end” for solarpunk since we always want to keep making life better for everyone, so any opportunity we have to reduce our impact on the climate and work with the people around us is cause to celebrate if only a little.
I currently work at a place where I could do 90% of my job remotely, but because one department has to be in the building our director requires everyone to work on-site. I lose a lot of time that could be used for self improvement or forging social bonds just sitting at a desk waiting for a phone call. If I could work remotely, I feel like I’d have the time and energy to bike to a community garden and help grow food for people at the very least.
There is a solarpunk festival happening soon near me and there will be some job fair stuff as well. I’ll go and see if there’s something I can do that helps our planet as well as myself if I can. Any improvement is nice.
I did try the cowork thing. I did it in Porto, Portugal but I think that because real estate here is fundamentally broken there is no way that it works. I did found some places but the good ones were expensive and the bad ones were also expensive just not that much. And only the really good ones were better than working at a library or a coffee shop.
I don’t think the remote work itself is solarpunk but I think it gives a slight opening to create solarpunk communities. Less time commuting, more time spent with people you want to spend time with and less with coworkers, community and political envolvment, sports, etc… Besides, I agree that a good deal of remote jobs are not inherently useful to the world but just the fact that it opens a way for a lot of people to move from big urban centers to smaller urban centers, reduces centralization and with it can move the workers that can’t do their work remotely also to the decentralized communities.
I’ve been working remotely for 10 years, and I love it. Online interaction with my co-workers is good enough for me.
Me too. Currently I do find that I have a minimal relationship with my current team which isn’t the end of the world but at one point I had a team that I never met in person that was the best team I ever had and I was only there 6 months. I think like with in person relationships the person’s involved matter a lot. Also the will that most of team has to make an effort to know each other.
Been 10yrs remote on a homestead. I know some people don’t like it, but it’s prefect for me. Not sure if the work I do could be considered useful, but homesteading doesn’t pay the taxes.
Not sure if the work I do could be considered useful
I feel this in my bones.
That’s my dream. Do you grow anything?
Yep! This year we’re growing sheep, goats, chickens, tomato, potato, corn, beans, chickpea, snap peas, apples, peaches, mushrooms, and probably 20 more things I can’t remember.
We’re on 50 acres, half wooded, so lots of foraging too… dandelion, lamb’s quarter, thistle, ladies thumb, lots of berries, apples, mushrooms, walnuts, dock.
Usually some volunteer kale and squash, but not so much this year. We stopped growing greens since there’s so much edible green stuff that just pops up around the yard and beds for free.
That’s amazing, what huge chunk of land! You are practically self sufficient in terms of food, congratulations! Do you do all the work alone?
We tried to see how close to food self-sufficiency we could get last year. We hovered about 90% from May - Jan 1, that was all just myself and my partner. Mostly what we bought was sugar, flour, coffee, oat milk, and spices.
This year we’re taking it a little easier, and have had 4 different helpers come through for 1-4 weeks at a time. They’ve been a huge help, and report that what they learn and get from the experience feels just as valuable to them. We also got our maple sap boiling system set up, so next year we can probably get off of sugar as well.
Self-sufficiency isn’t really the goal, though. We just want the skills so we can help teach folks when community sufficiency becomes necessary. It’s impossible to do everything yourself, but together we can go a long ways.
Very cool! Thank you for sharing!
I’d argue that it’s much the opposite actually.
Remote working enables people to live far (even very far) from where they’re working, from their colleagues, and potentially any community at all. You can spend your whole day, entire weeks even, never leaving the house, never interacting with a person, and this model can actually support car culture, since there’s nothing driving you to live near work or other people at all.
I switched to remote work when the pandemic started and I hate it. I live in Cambridge UK, and my office is in London. By many standards, this is barely remote work at all, since I do regularly see my colleagues in London about twice a month, and yet I find it hopelessly isolating.
If solarpunk is about community, about the abandonment of car culture in favour of sustainable models, then I’d say that in most cases, (fully) remote work contradicts that model. I’m not saying that it’s bad and we shouldn’t have it (there are many reasons why certain people can’t/won’t ever be comfortable working in direct contact with others) but I don’t think we should embrace it as the way things should be done.
I’ll counter that with the community being the people you want it to be and not the forced work place culture. You can have the same community for years while changing jobs in the meantime. I don’t understand your argument regarding cars. Fully remote allows one to orchestrate his own live to never have to drive. If you have no commute and you have access to things near you, why would you drive? I understand that it depends on the person and live conditions. But from strictly flexibility perspective you are more able to decide how you live than the alternative.
I think much of it comes from the fact that many assume that “commute == driving”. I gave up my car 20 years ago and quite happily commuted to an office for most of that time either by transit or by bike. This is something you can do in places that are close together like cities. Remote work on the other hand allows people to live further away from each other, which tends to work against efforts around transit and cycling. In the end, you may not drive to work anymore, but you typically still need a car to do anything else. This to me is a bad model to reach for.
I think that’s a bit of leap to say that because people can live further away from everyone else they will. And will go to places where everything must be done by car. I think most will just stay away from the bigger city centers, which tend to be the only places where transit has enough coverage. At least as far as I’m used to, don’t know about the UK, maybe you have great transit systems. I can say something about everybody I know who works remotely (partially and completely), at the end of the day most are much more likely to want to be with friends and family and exercise, mostly because they don’t feel so drained by travel and work culture.
Remote, fairly happy, and yeah it does feel Solarpunk. Unfortunately I end up with too many meetings at odd times of day, which means I don’t have as much hourly flexibility as I would like. It would be nice if, during the day in winter, or in the mornings and evenings in summer, I could do some yard work and get the veggie patch up and running.
Meeting hell, I know the feeling… I’ll be rooting for your veggie patch!
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I love it and I don’t miss a thing from working at the office. I will eventually move to downsize and leave the suburbs, without having to change jobs
Why do you plan to leave? I’m not from the USA so I’m not familiar with that reality. Is it isolation from services? Or do you miss the city? Myself, I prefer the mountains and smaller towns (like 50k-70k population)
The suburbs are hell, I miss living in the city, and living in a big house is too much work
I’ve been working remotely for just about two years now. I went through a slump around the 1.5 year mark and was ready to quit and felt really isolated(I’m the only employee in my timezone, and about 7 hours ahead of the rest of my team), but now that I made it passed that, I’m back to enjoying the freedom it allows.
Not exactly what you mean, but I’m a traveling wind tech. It’s pretty remote most of the time. I live in a camper, which I haul with a 20 year old diesel truck, so it ain’t ideal. But between my job and no kids, I suspect my carbon footprint is negative. I hope to buy land and build a small solarpunk earthship community in the deserts of New Mexico near a wind farm where I can work. Maybe an RV park too.
Very cool
