Remote work is bad for you. When you’re a beginner it can totally wreck your career or postpone your true growth by years. And I’m saying that from a position of someone who is 100% working remotely.

Look at my hypocrisy! Here’s me drinking a fresh coconut and writing a script for a lecture while sitting at a beach in Zanzibar, Tanzania.

He’s living that awesome, remote life and doesn’t want others to have a taste!

Remote vs onsite

I’ll start by showing you how I got to know both sides of work and then we’ll get into the reasons for not starting remote.

My very first paid design gig happened in 1998. Then I worked in a couple of companies for many years, until in 2011 I started my own business, which started remote, transitioned to an office-based enterprise, and went back to remote.

Here’s a visual for context.

First: define your goal

My goal formed around 2002. Initially, when I started doing design, I did it simply because it was something I learned and I wasn’t 100% sure if that is going to be my career.

In 2002, a year after I started regular, office work I realized two things:

1. I want to be a designer

2. I want to run my own company

Back in 2002, I was just 20 years old and definitely not ready for the hassle of officially starting a business, doing taxes, and all that.

I kept learning. My employer didn’t have any senior designers — we were all at the same level and just learned through each other and through experimentation.

Diverse learning experiences

The company I worked at operated in one, specific industry. In 2005 I realised that I’m not going to grow just doing tourism-related websites.

I got invited to an interview at a pretty well-known digital marketing agency and got the job. It was due to the fact that besides just design I also learned to code the websites and animate in Flash.

I stayed there for another 4 years and there I was able to learn a lot about design but also other things that were essential.

These two fully on-site jobs are important for me to better explain my reasons why you shouldn’t go remote. I will reference them further in the story.

Why you shouldn’t start remote

I came up with four and a half main reasons for not starting off as a remote employee so let’s go through them one by one. I will try to be brief and illustrate each with a personal story from my remote/on-site work.

Empathy doesn’t translate through pixels

Working in a team is not the same as “collaborating” on MS Teams. You simply learn a lot more from people around you if they’re… you know… around.

There’s more to doing great work than just getting a task and checking it off some hours later.

All the digital whiteboarding tools and video meetings are a less human way to do a very human thing — connect on ideas.

Empathy doesn’t translate through pixels

Of course, it CAN be done. Once you’re experienced it’s likely the better choice too. But initially, you’re like a sponge. You don’t know much so you absorb everything you can to get better.

And there’s simply a lot less to absorb without being at the center of the action.

You’re not just learning a single skill

My primary skill was web design. Then it went into more general design and design strategy. But you’re not going to an office to just learn design!

You’re going there to also learn how the business works — on multiple levels.

Being a part of an office, especially in smaller-sized companies, means you’re constantly in the middle of all the business proceedings.

You hear the boss talk about setting deadlines for a client. You hear an account manager addressing the client when they’re sending a project preview.

You sometimes hear arguments, ideas, future plans for the whole company, and more.

All of that becomes a mashup in your mind that you can later use to do things of your own.

I learned a lot about these things, especially from my second employer. In that case, they also realized I’m good at talking about design impact and started bringing me to client meetings.

Actually being in the room with people from a big client just hits different.

That was my first time talking directly to a room full of people from a Fortune 100 brand and it taught me a lot. And trust me — it’s not the same as a Zoom call.

Many similar presentations like that followed. This directly influenced the way I did business in my own company later. It also helped me a lot during my public speaking at conferences.

If you can win over people who naturally don’t trust you and are paying you money, you’ll win over regular viewers for sure.

Invaluable.

Onsite is discipline

People tend to be more productive when there’s a possibility someone may directly oversee their work.

As this Forbes article states:

A recent study from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) found that remote working might not be as productive as once thought. Workers who were randomly assigned to work from home full time were 18% less productive than in-office employees, either taking longer to complete tasks or getting less done.

Of course, it’s personal and differs from person to person and from company to company. But the overall trends are in and businesses are starting to retract from fully-remote employees. A hybrid role is now becoming more common, with some brands pushing all their employees to work onsite again or quit.

There’s a certain level of discipline required for office work. First of all — you can’t really be too visibly lazy as others will notice it and that doesn’t sit well with the higher-ups.

But the dreaded commute, waking up early, and dressing up into more than just a shirt and pajama pants are all parts of being disciplined. Daily.

Doing that forever is a nightmare — for sure. But doing that in the few early years can help boost your discipline later when you won’t have to be at the office at all.

My first ever job at one point started to use software to track what we were doing on our computers. Creepy, I know! One day my boss invited me to his office and said that he knew, that I spent 10% of company time just watching some unrelated websites. He said that they’ll be cutting my salary by 10% because of that unless I apologize to the rest of the team.

I took the salary cut and started looking for my next job.

Discipline should never be forced.

Office work is stressful

Well, guess what? Life is also stressful. Avoiding all forms of stress may seem like a good idea, but it seriously blocks your growth. That only happens in moments where you overcome stress and come out victorious on the other side.

Sure — some are unfit to fight these battles. I get that. Office work may not be for you and by all means go fully remote. But avoiding stress to feel better daily — while noble and great — will still lead to you growing slower.

For some, that’s just fine.

I had my share of heated meetings, people shouting angrily and even after launching my own brand, we had two cases where we had really bad arguments with clients that almost ended up violent.

Stress is a natural part of life and you just need to learn to deal with it. Otherwise, every little thing will hurt and annoy you for the rest of your life.

But there are no local companies that do X…

I wanted to leave this common excuse for last. Many people say that they would go to an office, but there are no “ideal” employers locally and they really want to work in a super-professional environment.

In my case — in the design industry — it’s mostly about companies not being “UX mature” enough. There is a certain myth propagated online that some UX mature brands have these exciting, complex processes that also look great in case studies and analyses.

Going to a company that lacks that and just “does website, poster, and flyer design” feels like a downgrade even for your very first job.

It shouldn’t be!

These local, non-exciting companies are the best way to get your hands dirty in the real world. Most work out there, in any industry is being done by these companies, not some outlier giants.

They also push a lot more responsibility onto you early on so you simply have to learn faster. Being in on the action as your first job and working in those hectic “build stuff fast” environments makes you a veteran of real, field work that’s brutal, and less refined but honest.

Most of the world doesn’t work the way you see in those shiny social media case studies

It’s like jumping into the deep end of the pool to learn to swim. After a year or two of this, you can switch to a remote job in your ideal, mature company.

But by that time you’ll have some experience already which will help you get hired. And you’ll also quickly realize how much more handholding and extra time you get in those mature brands.

You’ll be able to excel at that too.

All in due time

People are different. Of course, this guide isn’t for everyone. Some have such high levels of anxiety that dealing with people is definitely not a solution for them. They will likely grow slower, but you can’t go around bigger issues like that.

For everyone else, however, it’s good to start at an office. All the extra skills you learn are going to be the driving force of your future success.

While running my own company for 13 years now, I grew into my own processes based on the foundations I got from those 8 years of on-site jobs.

Without that, I’d be clueless and my growth would be much, much slower.

Think about it!

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