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Antiwork

Advice on negotiating further remote work?

I’d like to preface this by saying I’m not exactly “anti-work,” I’ve just seen this sub pop up and thought I’d bounce some ideas. I’m a year out of my architecture degree, and work for a niche design firm (> 10 employees) designing night clubs and festival stages. My boss is super cool, my co-workers aren’t really my speed, but I enjoy the work nonetheless and I think it’s great experience for where I want to take my life. I’ve been in the role just over 6 months, and essentially what happened is I interviewed for an assistant level job, got a role as project manager as the company was losing theirs, and have been functionally running half the business since February. I’m supposed to have an assistant, but according to the recent PM I replaced my company “has trouble finding the right people” so I’ve taken on a lot…


I’d like to preface this by saying I’m not exactly “anti-work,” I’ve just seen this sub pop up and thought I’d bounce some ideas.

I’m a year out of my architecture degree, and work for a niche design firm (> 10 employees) designing night clubs and festival stages. My boss is super cool, my co-workers aren’t really my speed, but I enjoy the work nonetheless and I think it’s great experience for where I want to take my life. I’ve been in the role just over 6 months, and essentially what happened is I interviewed for an assistant level job, got a role as project manager as the company was losing theirs, and have been functionally running half the business since February. I’m supposed to have an assistant, but according to the recent PM I replaced my company “has trouble finding the right people” so I’ve taken on a lot of responsibility and excelled in exponential ways. My boss is really happy with my performance and as far as overall work goes, things are great.

Here’s the kicker. I’ve been doing all of this while remote, but my boss desperately wants me to move to the city he operates in (I’m refraining from detail for ambiguity’s sake) so I can be in the office everyday to “multiply output.” I have no desire to sit in traffic for hours per day just to sit in an office, given my boss is in the office less than 50% of the time anyway. I sacrificed years of my life in architecture school and want to take some agency in how my life turns out.

I feel like I’m in a position to argue my case and why I should be able to work remote; I’m the right person for the job, I have desire to stay with the company and it’s not as if people are lining up to fill my role. It’s highly specialized and we design all over the world anyway, why would I uproot my life to move to a city I don’t want to live in to do a job I can do from anywhere?

What do you think?

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