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A Short Rant About Working Remotely

• BudVVeezer 14y ago
  I agree entirely -- I've been telecommuting for ten years now, and this is easily the #1 reason the recruitment process fails with me (with small companies as well as large).
  • nkg 14y ago
    @BudVVeezer you mean, you are trying to get into a physical office and the recruiters won't consider your 10y of telecommuting as real experience ?
    • BudVVeezer 14y ago
      Nope, I mean recruiters contact me about positions but then find out that I cannot relocate and that ends the discussion because the company they are recruiting for disallows telecommuting for one reason or another.
  • ditojim 14y ago
    we love the fact that we can recruit folks from anywhere in the world and not disrupt their lives, since we are completely remote. it opens up a much wider talent pool and allows you to benefit from local economies as well, without actually being there.
    • BudVVeezer 14y ago
      Companies seem to forget (or not put much emphasis on) another aspect of having telecommuters: you don't get tunnel vision due to locality. I've worked for offices around the globe, and one thing that's always struck me about remote vs local is that remote can bring in a new way of thinking that you don't always get locally due to local cultural thought processes.
• spartango 14y ago
  I think it really depends on what you are doing and how your company culture has adapted to that. For example, my company's work in the biomedical space often necessitates us being in partner and customer labs to best understand workflows. While it's possible for us to have some elements of our development be remote, we strongly prefer keeping things local; we believe it's important for everyone on the team to have exposure to the domain we work in. This is a cultural choice we've made, but it does make remote work tricky.
• babuskov 14y ago
  It's all about trust. Can the employer trust the employee to work honestly and be dedicated to the company without having another job or occasional project on the side. When startup is small, every minute of focus counts. Easiest way to make this work is to give developers enough equity, so they are motivated for startup to succeed more or equally as getting the paycheck. Eric's POV stands, but he's a co-founder, he has a significant stake in the success of the company.
  • speric 14y ago
    Your point is taken, but it seems to me that if my employer can't trust me to work remotely, then they shouldn't hire me at all. How can you employ (or work for) someone you can't trust?
    • babuskov 14y ago
      I'm speaking from my own bad experience with some remote employees. Accidentally learning from another founder that this guy ALSO works for them, was a really bad experience with remote workers for both of us. He was covering up his lack of productivity for some months with "personal problems" on both sides, while not being focused in either company. If you have many employees, such behavior can go unnoticed for a long time. OTOH, after this event, I tried giving significant equity to some other guys on the team, and their productivity went up. I guess some of them had side projects as well before that. Maybe one can work around this by requiring full-time Skype camera access during work hours, or similar, but I hate to be "the police". I feel much better giving away some equity in exchange for loyalty.
  • drawkbox 14y ago
    True but many engineers and game devs I know spend lots of time on personal projects while at the office. So side projects are really just what engineers do whether they are at the office or at home. Also if the engineer is getting the other deliverables, does it matter they have an occasional side project? If it starts to distract from work produced it is much easier to see remotely but probably matters less remotely.
  • 14y ago
• ZiadHilal 14y ago
  I've been working remotely for 1 year and 3 months. The company I'm working for checks in once a week for about 20 minutes, other than that all communication is done through basecamp. I have to admit it's really hard for me and I just handed in my two weeks notice. I feel so isolated working from home and not being around other co-workers. I miss seing and interacting with other people. I'll be looking for a new job in New York next month and I'm really excited. Why do you guys want to work from home? Isn't the isolation during the working hours hard on you?
  • davidw 14y ago
    > Why do you guys want to work from home? Isn't the isolation during the working hours hard on you? I think the ideal thing would be an office about a block away from where I live. I am pretty happy being back in an office myself, but hate the commute.
    • ZiadHilal 14y ago
      In my case, the company I work for is based in California (I started out from there) but I now live in Connecticut. It's been over a year since I last saw them.
  • militiaman21 14y ago
    Some people feel the opposite in regards to isolation. Introverts gather energy from spending time alone, and are actually drained by interactions with other people.
  • emp_ 14y ago
    In my case, getting paid $110k/year in a country that pays $40k/year as the cap (and the currency is 2:1). I'm at it for six months and I have a huge family around me -- helps with the isolation. I will jump on a plane friday and work 3 weeks from the beach, and once I feel this remote thing has stabilized I will move to the countryside to about half the cost of living, so in one year going from the local national market cap to almost 6 times that, working much less (more focus without the office interruptions and away from the 8 hours sitting=8 hours of work) will be attractive to some people like it is to me, I guess.
• SoftwareMaven 14y ago
  An interesting thing is when your company truly is special, remote may be a much better option. I work for Ksplice (which is now part of Oracle). Ksplice needed people with Linux kernel knowledge, and there is no central tech pool for that. The company had to build itself in a way that supported remote workers. I think many people use a crutch that it will be too hard to build a company that way, but that is because they think in terms of "average" developers. With average developers, it will be hard, but once you realize your talent pool becomes much richer and will often include people who are already familiar with working remotely, it becomes much, much easier.
• Nursie 14y ago
  It works for some people and not for others. Some people have experience with folks 'working from home' that are not 100% positive. Some folks (like me) have experiences working remotely that are not 100% positive. And yes, casual, face to face communication is an important dynamic, even for tech workers.
  • paganel 14y ago
    > And yes, casual, face to face communication is an important dynamic, even for tech workers. I guess this is even more important for small companies of up to 20 people where there is no exact "you have to do exactly this and this and this and then you're clear"-thingie. I gained lots of insights regarding customers or how we should better build things in our tech dept. just by having daily casual water-cooler chit-chats with the couple of people we employ in the sales department. It's very, very difficult to emulate using modern technology.
• deleted 14y ago
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• dsr_ 14y ago
  It depends. There are workflows that don't need you to be in the office. There are workflows that need you to be in the office almost every day. And there are workflows in between. Some people can't effectively work from home. After a while, they stop doing what they're supposed to be doing. Some people have no problems with that. Every job is different, every person is different, every company is different. No one answer will fit every situation.
• npsimons 14y ago
  100% agree. I'm in a similar position. I will not move from where I live; I like the friends and hobbies I have here way too much. There is absolutely no reason in this day and age why the type of work we do has to be done onsite. The hundreds (probably more) companies working this way are a testament to this fact, and there would probably be even more companies doing it this way if it wasn't for inertia, tradition or just plain old CYA ("but if we do something different and fail, the shareholders will hold me accountable!"). To add insult to injury, I am easily measurably more productive when telecommuting, and I'm sure I'm not alone. Conjure up any wishy-washy "reasons" or anecdotes why you have to be onsite, but I've yet to see any facts to back up the position that onsite all the time is better.
  • drawkbox 14y ago
    That is the best part of a remote team, your deliverables are the main way you are reviewed. Superficial things are less emphasized such as if you went to lunch with the right group, were in 8-6 on the dot or work on the right team, have the right office for visibility etc etc. So many levels of extra unneeded layers of fluff in an office when it should be on product development. I do think it is good to work on site periodically and sometimes at least a day or two per week if you can, not because it is needed to produce good work and products, but because it helps kick off, complete + integration days and earns some office points in the not so fun office game. Many places that have offices and require 8-6, their engineers end up getting interrupted all day and then do all their work at night. So in that case telecommuting would be a huge benefit to the individual but maybe not as much the company since they get so much extra time out. Maybe it is more a salary thing, getting lots of work out of you. I'd argue it looks like more work is being done at an office but remote teams HAVE to get actual work done, there is no other metric to be measured on.
• jstalin 14y ago
  My IT shop tried working from home for a couple of years and the team fragmented, we lost a sense of teamwork, and we started wondering what each other are doing. A new CIO mandated working from the office and it has made for a much better culture and collaboration environment. There's definitely something you lose when you don't work in the office with your fellow team members.
  • cracell 14y ago
    I think that depends on your process and team culture. My current team is remote and we aren't fragmented. For most remote teams all it seems to take is a daily status meeting and a chat room.
    • lifeisstillgood 14y ago
      I am beginning to feel even a daily status meeting is too much - I would much prefer to take on tasks of around a couple of days, and when done, demo. Otherwise just skype and chat keeps one in touch (I would be tempted to mandate a person to person chat for each team member to each)
      • Scottopherson 14y ago
        I am beginning to feel even a daily status meeting is too much - I would much prefer to take on tasks of around a couple of days, and when done, demo. I feel the same way. Often times I really have nothing meaningful or relevant to share with the team on a daily basis. "So yeah, that feature we all agreed would take about 3 days to complete? Welp, it's day 2 and I'm still working on it. Progress is good." Any other details further than that are not of any significant interest to anyone else in the meeting because they all have their own tasks that they're focused on that week. People argue that these daily status meetings help identify problems early on but whenever I run into an issue, big or small, I don't wait for tomorrow's status meeting to rectify it I just immediately start a discussion in the chat room. Obviously this requires trusting your co-workers to not hide potential issues/blockers but if you're not trusting your team than there's bigger issues to deal with that daily status meetings aren't going to help you with. That said, the benefits of a daily status meeting is all very dependent on the type of project and the amount of collaboration the tasks require.
• ditojim 14y ago
  we're 30 strong and 100% remote at dito. we don't have an office. it's pretty great. we live on google apps and other collaborative tools that make this an advantage, rather than a sacrifice. our employees are dedicated, work hard, and for the most part, love their jobs. we enjoy seeing each other in person at customer sites and during company events, but for the most part, we use things like uber conference and google hangouts to meet and keep in sync. not to mention google chat.
  • hnwh 14y ago
    you hiring?
    • ditojim 14y ago
      yup
• adamesque 14y ago
  I think a big part of this boils down to communication style, and how comfortable people are communicating via the written word. I've worked places where remote working was discouraged, and the reason given was along the usual lines of "well, it just works better to have everyone in the same room". But these were also places where I noticed an aversion to and an avoidance of writing in general.
  • bzudo 14y ago
    Totally agree. Where I work, the loudest person wins and gets promoted. It's hard to be loud in email, not to mention, talk over a quiet persons ideas.
• justjimmy 14y ago
  When I get contacted for freelance/contract work, directly from the company/startup, they're always open for remote work when I inquire about it (and we communicate through mainly Basecamp) I've had 0 remote work opportunities via recruiters.
• famousactress 14y ago
  The irony I keep seeing is that at a small startup, everyone's output is severely visible.. regardless of where you're at. I was the first technical hire at the startup I'm with now (details in profile), working remotely from San Diego while the cofounders were based in SF. There's definitely never been any question about what's getting done and by whom. In a lot of ways I understand the challenge that being a larger shop who's grown locally and is considering adding remote working might face much more than the "We're so small we have to be in the same room" argument. The benefits of hiring remote workers early on are numerous. The fact that it leads to working more asynchronously, and makes you available to talent anywhere are worth the price of admission alone, IMHO. [EDIT: oh also: we're hiring]
  • rrhyne 14y ago
    Would you consider moving when the team gets larger? If you don't do you think you'll get 'left behind' as the local culture develops? We're also in SD, but trying to build a team here and not finding as many local applicants as we'd like.
    • famousactress 14y ago
      We've considered moving, sure. For us though the cost of moving houses in this market, and my wife's local reputation-based business (wedding photographer) would make it an extremely expensive proposition in the short term. I think getting left behind is definitely a risk. So far I'm the only employee outside of the bay, but the culture has remained pretty asynchronous and conducive. If we continue to find talent local to SF I imagine there's a solid chance that'll change, if we happen upon more awesome remote talent it might not. I think it'll just depend on who we end up hiring over time. Early on though, getting big enough to have that issue sounded like a very high class problem so we decided not to care much where people were and focus on getting things built. [Aside: That's awesome that you're in SD! Drop me a line and I'd be happy to pass your details along to some of my SD developer friends]
    • deleted 14y ago
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• zenocon 14y ago
  Another "me too". The past 8 years, about 80% of the projects I have done have been remote. I get contacted often from recruiters, as well as HR in big name companies, and they nearly always indicate that telecommute is a deal-breaker, so that ends the discussion right there. I live where I live, and I'm not moving. Even if a client/company is local, a balance of local/remote is the right way to go. Dealing with traffic / commute, ergonomics, distraction-free are all important. This is really pretty simple. If the local talent pool is exhausted, and you want good people, the smart move is to hire good, remote people. Bring them in periodically as needed.
  • lifeisstillgood 14y ago
    The really smart move is to have smart guys on retainer, ensuring they keep up to date on your code base and deployment practises. Then they can be pulled in periodically. The really really smart move is to let them bid on some of the tasks - a sort of granular level development contracting.
• gesman 14y ago
  It all boils down to preferences of management who are calling the shots. Many of them are addicted to worthless, frequent meetings. Others just don't trust people. Third are control freaks. I personally find a 50/50 balance between working on- and offsite. With 2 dogs and 2 kids and stay-at-home wife - working from home for me is a challenge. But working on-site 15 minutes away from home is a perfect arrangement.
  • alexkus 14y ago
    > I personally find a 50/50 balance between working on- and offsite. With 2 dogs and 2 kids and stay-at-home wife - working from home for me is a challenge. But working on-site 15 minutes away from home is a perfect arrangement. That's my plan. 3 days working from home as daughter is at nursery and wife at work. 1 day working at the house of one of the other founders 20 minutes away, wife and daughter. 1 day looking after daughter whilst wife at work. Weekend a mixture of family time and work (required since some events relating to startup occur at the weekend.)
• maerek 14y ago
  I started to telecommute three days each week (office is ~ 2hrs from where I live) right after Thanksgiving in 2012 and am still adjusting to the lifestyle. The biggest takeaway - so far - is that successful telecommuting is determined just as much by the given task as the person. I serve as a mixture of business analyst/developer/test coordinator/project lead/cat herder for my project team. Some tasks are easy to coordinate via e-mail/IM, screen sharing and conference calls (like scheduling, status updates, walkthroughs of protoypes). Being able to power through functional and technical specifications is a tremendous bonus of working from home. When it comes to gathering requirements, acquiring feedback and dealing with politics, however, it's really much better (for me) to be in the office.
  • Nowyouknow 14y ago
    I meet a lot of people that work in "tech" that describe their jobs similarly to the way you just did. Just as an aside, I think it's a disturbing trend. It's very easy to reach the point where you're being underpaid and stretched to your limits simultaneously.
• lifeisstillgood 14y ago
  Almost always this is an inability to measure and monitor output. Continuous Integration / Delivery is going to simply change all of that. If you cannot measure a writers output by reading their writing daily, you cant run the team anyhow
• deleted 14y ago
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• kldavis4 14y ago
  I've been working remotely as a developer for a NYC startup for about 2.5 years now. There are a couple of other remote workers, with the rest of the team working in the office. My team has weekly meetings using webex, skype, etc and we mostly use IM and email for other communication. I make periodic visits to the NY office (I live in NC). I find that working remotely really agrees with my personality and work style. I am better able to focus for long periods and I don't really suffer from the social need for regular face to face contact with my co-workers. :) I also avoid a commute and I can spend time with my kids by just walking downstairs.
• Irregardless 14y ago
  Who are you to say they don't understand their own business process and culture well enough to determine that remote employees aren't a fit for them? I've worked with several remote team members, and it's always been frustrating. Why aren't you answering your phone? Why haven't you responded to that email I sent you 5 minutes ago? Are you even at your computer right now? Hello??? Communication is extremely important when working in teams, and you'd have to be pretty ignorant to claim remote workers are able to communicate as well as on-site workers. If I need to ask a teammate a question, I turn my head slightly to the left and ask them. They respond immediately. Sure, you can set up some sort of always-on video or teleconferencing, but do all new, growing companies have the know-how and resources to implement that for multiple remote workers? Or are you just so special that you deserve all that extra effort? Small, early stage companies also seem to be focusing a lot on developing a company culture these days. Remote workers don't fit into that strategy very well, if at all. I'd welcome a remote employee under one condition: They're required to be on a constant video call so their on-site team members can see and talk to them at any time.
  • hkarthik 14y ago
    > If I need to ask a teammate a question, I turn my head slightly to the left and ask them. They respond immediately. And then they stand the chance of losing anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour of productivity thanks to your interruption. Part of the reason remote work appeals to so many of us is because we don't deal well with the constant stream of interruptions that occur in many office environments. I don't believe this is the case for everyone. There are some individuals capable of working productively in a noisy environment all day while sleeping only 3-4 hours per day. But I think such individuals are rare, and you're doing yourself and your organization a disservice if you think all developers can work this way effectively.
    • mlwarren 14y ago
      My main drivers for working remotely are what you just described and eliminating commuting time. I find I'm much more productive and happy without those inconveniences in my life.
• kenkam 14y ago
  It's a simple case of the OP having an opinion -- remote working isn't necessarily the be all/end all solution neither is working on site. I see why the OP would want to complain about how most companies out there don't encourage remoting but then again they are paying you to work.
• dewitt 14y ago
  Having worked in both environments before, one thing that I observed is that working remotely can indeed be highly productive, but it's very difficult, perhaps even impossible, to do it successfully if only a few employees are working remotely. Otherwise what happens is that the people who can see each other face to face and in the hallway will of course do it, leaving the odd remote person out of many conversations. So either the remote person won't be as in the loop as the others (bad for them, and bad for the overall team dynamic because someone needs to be treated specially), or else everyone on the team needs change their otherwise perfectly normal and perfectly productive patterns of communication (leading to frustration with the artificial constraint). So there's nothing inherently wrong with remote workers, but it's probably better to go "all in" like some companies are starting to do, or try to avoid it at all, except in very special circumstances. I bet many of the "99%" of companies the author was referring to that said "no" to his working remotely simply fell into the category where the majority of existing employees weren't remote, so they they chose not to introduce the new and arguably difficult to manage dynamic.
  • marknutter 14y ago
    In my experience, "hallway discussions" can be equally as unproductive as they are productive. The benefit is cancelled out by the detriment.
  • randomdata 14y ago
    Perhaps a better way to put it is that it is difficult to retrofit an office to allow a few telecommuters. In my experience, I was working remotely in the company's early days. The in-office employes really started to grow after me. While I remain the only one that really works outside of the office, the culture of remote workers was instilled from nearly the beginning and don't really find any of the problems you suggest to be true in my case.
  • deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  • miloshadzic 14y ago
    This parent post is what I came in to say. I'm a sole remote employee at my current company and I think I miss out on like 75% of discussions that go on.
• agotterer 14y ago
  I'm personally not a big fan of remote workers. Not because I don't think the tools are adequate or that I trust they are actually working. I think there's something special that can't be reproduced when a small team that's just starting out is physically together. I've been at a few startups and I can't count how many times a good idea or breakthrough came while we were out getting lunch, a beer or playing pool in the office. Sure, your remote workers are a phone call away, but it's just not the same as being able to turn to the guy next to you and start talking or white boarding. It's definitely possible to make remote teams work and the tools have come a long way. By there's something special about working together in person.
  • pault 14y ago
    Is it really that difficult to type your question into skype or campfire group chat? We're all remote and we have daily 20 minute video conferences, and everyone is always logged into campfire. It's the most productive team I've ever worked with, and if someone isn't pulling their weight, you can tell from their git commits. Every argument I've heard against remote working boils down to that "something special" you mention, which is pretty darn vague. We have had a few new hires lose it and go AWOL, but those people wouldn't have been a good fit in a co-located team either.
    • agotterer 14y ago
      It's not the day to day interactions. Hell, most of the companies I work with that aren't remote chat over IM and group chat while we sit next to each other. As I said, I don't think it's a breakdown of the tools. It's not that people aren't productive either. It's the "other" stuff that doesn't fit into those categories. There's no technology to replace sitting around with a group of guys having a beer. While its vague, it's just a different experience that Skype or group chat. It's a different setting and a different mindset. The things that are special are the things that don't fit into the normal daily workflow. For many companies remote teams might make sense and even strive, this is just my personal opinion of what I think is missing. So much of it depends on the company, the culture and the people.
• MattRogish 14y ago
  In general, I totally agree. Being able to hire the best person, anywhere, and allow them to work super-effectively is a strong moat. I share this opinion and hire accordingly. I think the "these companies are wrong" posts, though, are not attempting to see it from the other side. Try to put yourself in the shoes of these startups. In super-super early startups (e.g. pre-profitability or definitely pre-revenue) one of the goals (aside from staying afloat) is to build a sustainable culture (company etc.). It's very difficult to build a company culture AND product AND hit profitability AND 1,000 other things from scratch before going out of business. When most are co-located and a few are distributed it just adds one more thing to the pile. I've done it before, so I know how hard it is, even when we were all 'on board' with it. It's just harder; you need to start from scratch with the assumption that any one can be remote at any time, and so you build your tools/processes accordingly (if you have a physical kanban board then it'll be a real hard thing to support remote devs). For just one non-top 1% of all software-developer persons? The overhead is probably not worth it if you have a ready talent pool in your city (especially if you now have nexus in another state, which is a very real risk as states are looking to increase their revenue. ugh). For Joe Average, or Jane Above Average, these companies would prefer to hire a local person than remote. That makes sense to me. As a big part of getting from 'startup' to 'sustainable business' involves managing risk. So, understand where most of these businesses are coming from. Having one or two remote people in a company full of on-site people is a risk (not from a technical perspective, but from a culture and focus one), and not one they're willing to take. It's a trade-off, and one that can make sense if viewed in context and done for the right reasons (note: "We can't control them/see their work/trust them/need to see their faces/need them from 9-5/etc." are WRONG REASONS). Ranting about a system problem isn't very useful; I'd like to see more posts about how to convert a primarily on-site team to support 'work anywhere'. What processes and tools need to change to do this?
  • speric 14y ago
    FWIW, I also agree with a lot of your points, Matt.
  • lifeisstillgood 14y ago
    I have done and tried to do that very thing. 1. Continuous Integration (and or delivery) This is the sine qua non. Everyone should be able to check out and build a complete working eco system and run all tests on their local laptop or Rackspace cluster you rent just for them 2. Really, get the continuous integration working. Stop now and do nothing else till you have. Tell the dev's remote working is only possible after one month of a CI process that is never broken itself (although build can break). Spurred on, everyone will suddenly get that CI build working. 3. The CEO must build a complete off site copy of the entire company on his remote laptop. Is it getting boring yet. 4. Agree on one place to store all documents, all meeting notes, everything. Do not split comms over IRC and Skype and gmail and ... It will mean no one can reliably contact anyone else because "oh I left you a message on Skype", "but I live on IRC" 5. Get different people to work together on different areas. Pair programming is not ideal IMO, but having Fred write the code for task A and Bob principlaly write the first tests, means they have to talk and decide a solution, and Bob keeps a friendly competitive eye on progess. Move these pairs around a bit. 6. Stop trying to get updates for management - its either working code or not. 7. talk to people a lot. Watch thier checkin velocity - it will speak volumes. Talk if it changes. 8. Assume, perhaps commit visibly, to people as being safe in their jobs for a long time (2 years minimum). This to me seems the biggest - people need to feel safe. Maybve thats just me
• artyom 14y ago
  Well, I mostly agree, but... Remote working is ofter perceived as a dream job, which, in fact, isn't so much. Besides performing your regular tasks, you have to deal with all the self-support stuff yourself, including avoiding your work stepping over your personal life, which is even worse if you work at home. It takes some practice to do that properly, to say the least. I think that's where most people trying to work remotely utterly fail. They think they should be able to work anytime, when others will likely want to talk to them in normal hours. They think they don't need an schedule, when the only thing that would allow them to do their work is at least a self-imposed one. You won't be able to cook your meal and do your work at the same time, trust me. Lastly, if you lack self-discipline, remote working isn't for you. The other side of the coin is even sadder: it's not that companies are not "open" to remote work, is that they just don't know how to manage it. They usually play their silly manager techniques by the book, which are for on-site teams (and often don't work, anyway). They just can't handle remote work. A clever manager capable of that is more scarce and expensive, also. Hiring/Recruiters have the worst of both worlds, plus one thing that drives me nuts: regular hiring doesn't work for science and technology. If your task is looking for a "Python developer" and you think that it involves training some snakes, you're out of your element. If you're not capable to understand at least the basics of what you're looking for, you won't find it, and even worse, you won't understand what "training snakes remotely" means. In the end, combination of all those things hurt remote working for everyone: people who doesn't (and doesn't want to) know how to do it, companies that doesn't know how to handle it (and they try with their archaic means, failing completely), and the guys in the middle that just want to score another commission for a hire of dubious quality. Sorry, it ended up being longer that the rant itself. (Disclosure: I've been working remotely for a few years, and I wouldn't change that for anything else. I agree completely about the current status of "remote working", hiring and reasons for meetups. But please, if anyone thinks remote working is a dream job, go get a regular one and stop making things more difficult for the ones that actually want and know how to make it work)
• adrianhoward 14y ago
  (lightly edited copy of my usual plea for evidence on this topic ;-) Pretty much all the evidence (rather than anecdote) I can find shows that co-located teams in a single team room environment are the most productive - all other things being equal. (And I'm saying this as somebody who spends a lot of their time working from home, and talking to other folk over Skype, etc. There are reasons for telecommuting - personal preference, getting access to people who cannot co-locate, etc. But for business productivity I'm not seeing much, if any, evidence). I am not saying: * That working alone in an office is bad / will cause projects to fail * Telecommuting is bad (I do it - I like it) * Telecommuting projects will fail (D'oh - of course not) * You shouldn't telecommute (of course you should if you want to - but bear in mind that the business may have good reasons to disagree with that decision) * That telecommuting makes you individually less productive (I'm personally unsure about this. I feel more productive when working by myself, but I know that personal perceptions of productivity can be false. Measuring personal vs team/company productivity becomes hard in anything less than the short term) * That co-location is always the best solution (it isn't - other factors like team location and skills come into play) What I am saying is that there is a lot of research showing that co-located teams in team-room like settings are much more productive. This runs counter to many developers preferences (mine too ;-) so it tends to get ignored. So much more productive that solutions like 'Let's fly everybody to the same place and pay their room and board for a month' can be cost effective. Here are some references to the research (If anybody has any research that contradicts this I'd love to hear about it. Especially if it talks about actual measured metrics of productivity - rather that self-reported 'I felt just as productive at home' ones.) ---- "It doesn't take much distance before a team feels the negative effects of distribution - the effectiveness of collaboration degrades rapidly with physical distance. People located closer in a building are more likely to collaborate (Kraut, Egido & Galegher 1990). Even at short distances, 3 feet vs. 20 feet, there is an effect (Sensenig & Reed 1972). A distance of 100 feet may be no better than several miles (Allen 1977). A field study of radically collocated software development teams,[...], showed significantly higher productivity and satisfaction than industry benchmarks and past projects within the firm (Teasley et al., 2002). Another field study compared interruptions in paired, radically-collocated and traditional, cube-dwelling software development teams, and found that in the former interruptions were greater in number but shorter in duration and more on-task (Chong and Siino 2006). Close proximity improves productivity in all cases." -- http://conway.isri.cmu.edu/~jdh/VRC-2008 http://conway.isri.cmu.edu/~jdh/VRC-2008 "Based on the empirical evidence, we have constructed a model of how remote communication and knowledge management, cultural diversity and time differences negatively impact requirements gathering, negotiations and specifications. Findings reveal that aspects such as a lack of a common understanding of requirements, together with a reduced awareness of a working local context, a trust level and an ability to share work artefacts significantly challenge the effective collaboration of remote stakeholders in negotiating a set of requirements that satisfies geographically distributed customers" -- http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00766-003-0173-1 http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00766-003-0173-1 "Our results show that, compared to same-site work, cross-site work takes much longer and requires more people for work of equal size and complexity. We also report a strong relationship between delay in cross-site work and the degree to which remote colleagues are perceived to help out when workloads are heavy" -- http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?reload=true&tp=&arnumber=919083&isnumber=19875 http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?reload=true&#... "Our findings reveal that: software developers have different types of coordination needs; coordination across sites is more challenging than within a site; team knowledge helps members coordinate, but more so when they are separated by geographic distance; and the effect of different types of team knowledge on coordination effectiveness differs between co-located and geographically dispersed collaborators." -- http://kraut.hciresearch.org/sites/kraut.hciresearch.org/files/articles/Espinosa07-CoordinationInGlobalSWDevelopment.pdf http://kraut.hciresearch.org/sites/kraut.hciresearch.org/fil... "One key finding is that distributed work items appear to take about two and one-half times as long to complete as similar items where all the work is colocated" -- http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi?doc=doi/10.1109/TSE.2003.1205177 http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi?doc=doi/10.1109/... "Our study of six teams that experienced radical collocation showed that in this setting they produced remarkable productivity improvements. Although the teammates were not looking forward to working in close quarters, over time they realized the benefits of having people at hand, both for coordination, problem solving and learning.Teams in these warrooms showed a doubling of productivity" -- http://possibility.com/Misc/p339-teasley.pdf http://possibility.com/Misc/p339-teasley.pdf "Despite the positive impact of emerging communication technologies on scientific research, our results provide striking evidence for the role of physical proximity as a predictor of the impact of collaborations." -- http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0014279 http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna... "Groups with high common ground and loosely coupled work, with readiness both for collaboration and collaboration technology, have a chance at succeeding with remote work. Deviations from each of these create strain on the relationships among teammates and require changes in the work or processes of collaboration to succeed. Often they do not succeed because distance still matters" -- http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1463019 http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1463019
• halfdeadcat 14y ago
  I work 90% remotely. When I started this job, I came into the office everyday, a 40 minute commute. After about a month, my boss came up to me and said "Are you meeting someone here today? If not, what are you doing here?" I actually like to go into the office from time to time, but there isn't any point when no one is there. I spend a lot of time at various clients' offices, and I notice a correlation: the more opposed to remote work a company is, the more meeting-driven it is. It is as if management feels like it needs to do something with all these bodies taking up space in the office. I see small to mid-size companies sucking up productivity with endless meetings. That said, I think my company has lost a little bit of interactivity with the remote work force. I'm putting together a Google+ Hangout I call "Engineers' Office Hours". The idea is that if you aren't doing something billable, you hop in and offer help to someone stuck on a problem.
  • Buzaga 14y ago
    That must be an awesome boss! On the Google Hangout thing, I sometimes find myself thinking(for the day I get a remote job again), why couldn't people be on a Hangout the whole day(In my case almost all of the dev team were full-remote)? When I did there was a techies chat always open on Skype and we used to chit-chat just like we would IRL, commenting on the Hacker-News-like-stuff, talk about semi-work-related stuff like the our most productive setup, crack jokes at each other and etc and there was definitely a "camaraderie vibe" even though we never met... Now take a virtual environment like this, add more virtual face-to-face, Planetside 2 afterhours gaming sessions.. I don't see it lacking much, if anything, compared to a in-place tight-knit startup team
• asmosoinio 14y ago
  I think it's "No One Ever Got Fired for Recruiting On-site Employees". And I think this is changing. I work in a startup spread to three continents. Works very well when everyone knows their role and makes sure information is spread properly.
  • drawkbox 14y ago
    At a certain point, getting access to enough good team members requires remote. I.e. a game company starting in Idaho might find it hard to hire local game developers but they could be a force to be reckoned with with a few remote employees and a standard engine like Unity. Remote work and offices create opportunity. They also focus on product, look at 37signals and how they remote. Would that company even exist as they do without remote work? Remote working is freeing and opens up all sorts of competitive advantages.
• msluyter 14y ago
  "Think of how many times companies miss out on really good developers just because they're not open to remote workers." Assuming that this is a real problem and not a pseudoproblem[1], then one would think that market forces would eventually resolve it. (Companies full of remote working superstars should outperform the rest.) But if the equilibrium is one in which remote workers are in low demand, well, that's how markets work. [1] By which I mean, the evidence here seems mostly anecdotal. It's easy to claim that you're more productive when working remotely, but on average, how productive are remote workers, when considering all relevant factors. I would like to see some hard evidence on this point.
• bjhoops1 14y ago
  You actually bother to ask whether they support remote work? You are more patient than I. And no, I'm not interested in a position in Albuquerque.
• blowski 14y ago
  "I'm a developer. I like working from home. Therefore all companies should allow all developers to work from home." He who pays the piper, calls the tune. If you're right, and developers want and should be able to work from home, then economics suggests market rates for office-bound employees will go up, and profitability at those companies will go down. And there are wider issues here. So you allow the developers want to work from home. What about your project managers? Your admin temps? What about that lazy developer who you can't fire, but you know does nothing at home? Also, how do you still have those serendipitous chats around the kettle, in which you, the business development manager and the designer realise a huge sales opportunity? Having remote-working will make perfect for some businesses (be they startups, agencies, or huge corporates), but it never comes without cost. In some cases, those costs will make it worthwhile paying to have developers working inside the office.
• andyjohnson0 14y ago
  I've been working at home (developer) two days a week for the past eight years. This has helped keep me sane, as the round-trip commute time (foot and train) is three hours. It does require commitment and effort, especially if most employees are office-based. I find I have to make more effort to make sure what I'm doing is visible to the rest of the team, and to communicate. Its easy to think you're communicating enough when others don't see it that way. When I'm in the office I schedule tasks that need face-to-face time, and when I'm at home my only interruption all day is usually the morning standup. I consider myself really lucky to be able to work like this. The practicalities are simple and inexpensive too. From home I can vpn onto our office network via a cheap soho router and bundled vpn software. I can use the office phone system with a cheap headset and sip application. Google apps is £2/person/month. Google talk, G+ hangouts and trello are free.
• pinoceros 14y ago
  If a developer is need on-site because of "crunch time", the timelines were clearly unrealistic. "Crunch time" is code for poor project management.
• scottshea 14y ago
  As someone with Aspergers remote work has been a godsend. I am not nearly as agitated as before. My quirks do not annoy people. I am more productive and my wife says I am happier. When I worked in an office I used head phones (not buds... big ol' ear covering things) to help and was criticized for wearing them (it made me seem unapproachable). In reality it was to help keep me calm and focused. At home I face neither the noise issue nor the unapproachable issue. Remote work may not be for every team but in-office work is not for every person either
• dschiptsov 14y ago
  Take a manager's perspective - what is the value of him when everyone is doing everything remotely, implying that each manager thinks of himself as a much more valuable than any coder (if not, he probably will realize his helper function, like being a secretary for a programmer) and demands much bigger compensation and bonuses. Without daily performing his show in an office it will probably much more difficult for him to convince those who distribute money that he is that valuable.)
• d0m 14y ago
  I don't agree. Programming remotely is obviously possible. If your day to day job is receiving programming tasks and hack them as quickly as possible, sure, remote is a perfect alternative. However, in early stage startups, first employees usually have a much wider role. Like founders, they have a bigger say in where the company should move forward, priorize what should be built, hell, even clean the office and make coffee. Also, never underestimate a good discussion over a coffee, beer or lunch to talk about problems. There's a reason why most of the best ideas are written on a napkin! Lastly, I might add that when working on a very early stage startup, founders and employees build such a strong relationship and it's hard to achieve that level over remote working. Again, I'm not saying it's impossible. For instance, founders who already know each others before starting the company may feel comfortable working hard remotely together. And I'm sure there are other cases when it totally makes sense.
• _k 14y ago
  It's not always about being productive. If problems start to surface and you're not there talking to those you need to talk to or you're not there to see it for yourself and you do half of all your work by email, then chances are high you're putting everyone's job at risk.
• bluesmoon 14y ago
  When we started LogNormal, my partner and I lived in the same geographic region. We both worked out of our own apartments, and met at Red Rock or a Thai/Vietnamese restaurant once a week or so. Then I moved to Cambridge, and we continued working remotely as if nothing had changed. We'd still meet up once a month to go over pen and paper stuff, but we still did all our work remotely from our own apartments. In all, I think it worked out well. We build a useful product and pulled in several customers. Since we covered the East and West coasts of the US, we were closer (geographically as well as time-zone wise) to many of our customers than we would have been if we were both in the same office. I don't think there was ever a time when we thought we'd be better off sitting in the same room.
• hartzler 14y ago
  In my experience, a group chat like XMPP MUC or IRC is essential for a team especially with remote developers to stay in the loop, feel connected, keep moral up, and get most of the benefits of the war room while still remaining async so you don't stress out your introverted developers.
• Zarathust 14y ago
  I really liked to work remotely at my previous job because I could stretch the flexible hours even a little more, working from 10 to 7 for example, which was frowned upon when walking in the office. My boss eventually asked me to stop working from home, because for everyone else, "working from home" was a metaphor for slacking off. That was the company culture that was so damaging to this whole concept. They didn't care if I was on reddit for 8 hours, just that I was doing it in my office. In my new job, we make heavy use of teleconferencing, instant messaging and email. Even if we are in the same office, the fact that we are a few minutes of walking distance from each another totally masks the fact that we "work in the same location".
• aclimatt 14y ago
  The ability to effectively work remotely is entirely determined on a person-by-person basis. And it's clear, especially from the mixed feelings in these comments. People come in all breeds, and I know that some people absolutely cannot get work done unless they are around others working, whereas others need quiet and the comfort of their own home to be the most productive. What it comes down to is if you want to hire remote, you need to make sure that your talent is self-motivated enough to do their best work at home (or wherever). If you require an office, make sure the culture fits, otherwise you'll have employees constantly distracted and grudgingly coming into the office every day. You can have mixed teams, and it doesn't even matter the ratio. I've been on extremely successful teams where only two of the 30+ engineers were remote, and they did their best work remotely. For others, separating work from home greatly improved their productivity. Don't forget -- your empty house can be the most distracting environment you have access to. It's all about personal culture and fit.
• etherael 14y ago
  If you're doing software development without an asynchronous work pipeline in 2013 then you have a problem. Regardless of remote or local work, long periods of uninterrupted concentration is exactly when the vast majority of productive work is performed in any given software project. That being the case it makes perfect sense to optimise the pipeline around this very basic fact. Once that is out of the way, whether you're local or remote is basically irrelevant. All the disadvantages to remote work have always centered around an insufficiently asynchronous work pipeline. I say this as someone who presently travels the world and works on a large array of projects and would never even consider a role that attempts to change that part of my life, simultaneously in the past having worked extensively in async and non async environments both local only and remote.
  • crazygringo 14y ago
    > long periods of uninterrupted concentration is exactly when the vast majority of productive work is performed in any given software project. That's only true in some projects, and perhaps not even the majority. It seems like a very developer-centric perspective. But there are a lot of projects where the real value comes not from the actual programming, but in how everything is tied together, in the prioritizing, in consistency, in common understanding, with continuous improvements that deliver what's actually needed. The programming may be relatively trivial, but good management and teamwork is highly complex, and you need smart employees who are all able to see the big picture and keep on top of it. This is a very common scenario (more common, in my experience), and whether you're local or remote makes a huge difference.
• suyogmody 14y ago
  i think most people dont do it not because they dont like it, but because they dont trust others to be productively working at home.
• deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
• rwhitman 14y ago
  A few notes from someone who's worked remotely roughly 60% of the last 10 years - 1) Most investors know that startups are generally at a disadvantage with a remote team and give founders shit for hiring remote people. I've found thats one of the reasons early stage folks don't hire more remote people. And there is some truth to being more creative with a team around you... if the team is awesome. Also communication is infinitely easier when you can walk over to someone and ask them a question rather than wait for them to respond to an email 2) Working remotely when you are self-directed and not under tons of pressure, really does lead to awful productivity. At home there are just so many ways to procrastinate 3) However, you can be more productive from home when on a tight deadline. No coworkers bugging you and the music cranked however loud you want, working whatever hours you want means laser-focus for some people. 4) A good checkin routine is key. I've been most productive and been in productive remote teams when there is a routine like a morning "standup" call, and maybe an afternoon call. A good ticket tracker is crucial. Working for folks who use the phone a lot tends to have the most productive outcome 5) There are a lot more small companies who use all remote workers than you think. But they hide in the shadows, and typically are very unsexy cashflow oriented businesses, not venture backed startups. If you're willing to work for consulting businesses that do boring backend for big corps you can find good remote work. But if sexy startups are your thing, expect to get a lot of hesitation until you really prove yourself... 6) Change environments. Sometimes the house can stagnate - spend part of your day in a coffee shop, lease a desk in a cowork space etc and change up workspace once in a while. It helps me at least
  • speric 14y ago
    Have any good contacts at these "boring consulting businesses"? I am not averse to an unsexy (remote) job.
    • rwhitman 14y ago
      Saw that you connected on Linkedin if I hear of anything I'll let you know
  • chalst 14y ago
    2) Working remotely when you are self-directed and not under tons of pressure, really does lead to awful productivity. At home there are just so many ways to procrastinate This is not true for everyone. There is a huge variance in how vulnerable people are to procrastination.
• ivankirigin 14y ago
  I have a new startup, two cofounders and a remote full time engineer. Things are working splendidly, but the reason is in large part because of how well we communicate. Yes, of course chat, video conferences, and email are important. But I think our wiki pages and pull requests are what make it work. We also have been making information dense screencasts for each other. I'm going to be so bold as to say a remote engineer has forced us to work in a way every engineering team should. I'll have more to say about this soon enough :)
  • hnwh 14y ago
    Definitely want to know about your toolset.. would like to structure my new startup this way. What are you using for making and hosting screencasts?
    • ivankirigin 14y ago
      http://www.telestream.net/screenflow/overview.htm http://www.telestream.net/screenflow/overview.htm
• gavingmiller 14y ago
  Let me flip this over. If 99% of companies say they don't do remote, maybe the issue is you and not them... Bear with me, because this isn't an attack on you. :D Take someone that's been married and divorced 4 times. Who would you say the problem lies with, the divorcer or the divorcees? If you want to work remotely you're fighting an uphill battle. Most managers/employers know how to manage face-to-face. Remote management is a skill that many haven't learned yet. It is possible as you mention, however both of those work places are VERY progressive. If you want to work remotely, sell the benefits of remote working to your employer. Make them confident that you're able and capable of doing remote work. Sell it! I contracted a best friend this summer to work remotely. I had confidence in the outcome because I trusted him. If you can sell that to an employer - how much more likely are you to get what you want?
  • marknutter 14y ago
    In this market, companies are the ones that have to make concessions. There simply aren't enough good developers to go around.
• moconnor 14y ago
  I developed in a small team in a shared office for 6 years and have spent the last 6 working remotely. Half the team at Allinea are remote now - we find it easier to hire and retain great talent. I haven't seen any evidence in our commit or bug history to suggest we were more or less productive when all of our developers were in the same room.
• meangeme 14y ago
  A lot of this conversation seems to be focussed on an individual's productivity - you might think you are more productive remotely or actually may be more productive remotely, but what about the rest of the team? Looking at the bigger picture - you're getting tons of work done, but are you communicating well with your team/ is your team productive overall? And if you are more concerned with your individual well-being than you are with your team's well-being, it's worth noting that psychologically, one of the main factors of simply liking someone is proximity. Obviously you shouldn't be promoted because your boss likes you more, and obviously if you're the most value adding team member remotely you should get credit for that, but it's impossible to eliminate personal biases that stem from bonds created at the office. There are obviously arguments for both sides but I know (from working with a remote supervisor for 6 months) that communicating in person is easier than communicating remotely.
• pknerd 14y ago
  I have got chance to work both in 9-5 environment as well as working in isolation. Working for home was my own choice so that I can give time to my infant kid which is most important for me. Working from home gave me relaxation. I could work on my chair or on my bed, nobody was going to ask me how I sit. Second most important thing which helped me a lot was to have a feeling of helplessness. When you work in an office, you often ask some of your peer to write a part of your code or look into it. When you work alone you have to do everything on your own, finding solution and implement it in your own code. In the era of Stackoverflow finding a solution of your problem is not difficult at all. It's been a year I am working individually and I am enjoying it. Instead of wasting time in gossips about Boss or management, I prefer to play with my kid, his smile gives me enough oxygen to keep me motivated for rest of the day.
  • unreal37 14y ago
    This is why most people don't get to work from home. Spending time with your kid and being constantly relaxed, working from bed, is counter to the serious business culture of most companies. Don't take this the wrong way, and it's not a dig, but from the way that you wrote that, it sounds like you only work a few hours a day casually. I can see why Big Bank X would not allow their employees to do that.
    • jackalope 14y ago
      On the other hand, hourly-paid remote workers can be a tremendous value, since their pay is limited to the time they actually work and they usually don't receive many benefits.
• releod 14y ago
  I get your rant, I've done remote and on-site work. I personally prefer a healthy mix of both (http://bigbangtechnology.com/post/an_async_experiment/ http://bigbangtechnology.com/post/an_async_experiment/). I think having everyone in office in a small company is often more about building a great office culture, and less about it being the only way to build a company. Small teams tend to do more than just work together, they integrate their socials lives. When that is the type of company you are trying to build, remote workers don't fit into that picture right away. Also you cannot forget the difference between good distractions and bad distractions. Overhearing a conversation (between other developers), is less of a distraction than overhearing a couple of suits on sales calls or talking about the game last night. You can still be in the zone, have good distractions, be an introvert, noise cancelling headphones, etc. A small team on-site is going to rapidly move through ideas, faster than chat rooms or even facetime/skype can truly allow, as natural as it appears it is nothing compared to in person conversations. That moment when your team discovers their Epiphany, in my opinion, is much more likely to happen in person.
• NateDad 14y ago
  We switched from almost always in the office to a ROWE (Results Only Work Evironment) and now 90%+ of the time we all work from home. According to a company survey of the people in the ROWE, devs feel more productive, and managers feel there has been no change in productivity. I think this is because we are measuring productivity in different ways. Managers measure productivity over a week or month, which has stayed static, whereas devs measure productivity in amount of time they have to spend to get stuff done. When you don't have to spend 1-2 hours commuting, you spend less time "at work" and get the same amount done. Personally, I like it, but we also already had a culture of doing a lot of talking via IM. In this day and age, there's no excuse for not being able to get ahold of people. But by the same token, you can't always assume someone is going to respond in 30 seconds. I hope no one is so dependent on other people that someone taking 20 minutes to respond is a complete blocker. We use Google hangouts extensively for meetings and often open them up just to chat and connect with fellow devs. We have lost a little bit of a sense of belonging to the team. I think extensive use of google hangouts helps a lot with this. With most laptops having a camera, there's little excuse not to fire one up whenever anyone wants to talk.
  • darkarmani 14y ago
    > We switched from almost always in the office to a ROWE (Results Only Work Evironment) That's awesome terminology. I work from home now, but I had a test run in my previous job that was almost always in the office. I ruptured my Achilles and was unable to move about. I felt more pressure (in a good way) to get stuff done, because I felt that i could delay my return to the office longer if it was crystal clear that I was being productive. I found the same odd productivity boost working a week out of 2 week vacation on the beach in NC. Surprisingly, I was able to focus a lot better since i wanted to have lunch with the family and go for a swim and also because I knew I wanted to stop at 5PM for some beach time. I should clarify that I wanted to stop and feel good about myself that I accomplished a day of work.
• wglb 14y ago
  In my career, I have seen and participated in both kinds of offices. Strong factors for success in a distributed office are: + Fit with the company culture. High-ceremony or even medium-ceremony development patterns work less well or not at all with remotes. + Fit with the personalities and work habits of the staff. Not everyone is capable of working remotely. + Industry requirements. Some high-security situations require that work be done on premises. I once ran a very successful remote project where everyone worked at home. All had a separate office in the home that they could close the door.
• seddona 14y ago
  We founded and developed https://circuithub.com/ https://circuithub.com/ largely as a distributed team (all members in different locations). This is a complex topic that i intend to discuss more in long form, but in short, with contemporary communication and collaboration infrastructure the productivity of small highly skilled dev teams is unaffected by location. I can prove this for our case at least (5 team members). I am writing this from a coffee shop in Mexico, we currently have people in South Africa and San Jose, if this lifestyle appeals, please do get in touch!
• j45 14y ago
  First, there is no one magical formula of totally being ok with remote working vs not. The world isn't that binary. One main issue is that these decisions need to be made based on the discipline of the developer to work well in their own time. It's not an issue with self-directed and self-teaching developers, but the simply, just, aren't. I've worked remotely for a good 5-6 years now. You really have to still be reasonably available by phone, IM, and for meetings as reasonably needed. You have to provide benefits only available by distance. One that I share a lot is remote screen sharing. You have to cram in beside each other on a computer, so pair programming actually works not bad if you need to help someone, or do something together. Sometimes I have to give up an afternoon to do a larger "state of the project" meeting once a month, which is fine. Ultimately it's about a balance that all projects need. You do get some benefits from being in the same room with the right people that you won't distantly. With those right people, though, you could probably be away. The problem comes in when you're dealing with a productivity level that is average because of the people involved.
• metatation 14y ago
  I've experienced both styles for extended periods. I've worked with some really hard core engineering teams during my many colocation years and remotely for the past 2.5 years. Over the years of working with many great people, I had built a habit of potentially over-collaborating with my peers. It was hard not to, considering how much smarter two people are than one. And with the right mixture of personalities and solving hard problems, it's almost always more enjoyable (even delightful) to work things through together. You get the stronger sense that together you are delivering a greatness that would be hard to achieve on your own. I've really missed that part since I've been remote for the past few years. However I have had to learn to be way more self sufficient and resourceful. I think initially the transition hurt my productivity somewhat, but it also ended up making me much stronger and decisive because I couldn't fallback to the whiteboard anymore. I think I still prefer the colocation style to some degree because working closely with great people is just so rewarding. Thankfully even while I'm currently in my fortress of solitude, I still have great peers to work and connect with through Skype. We have a team chat going all the time that is similar to the war room arrangement where we can socialize and discuss random (sometimes even relevant) topics. All in all, working with great people is the key either colocated or remote. EDIT: I should also mention that your ability to focus on your own dev work is great for personal productivity, but often your full value to the team is only realized when you shift your focus to helping the team. I've had many situations where I could have used one of those ticket dispensers because the line at my desk was out of control. I found that working from home for 1 or 2 days a week was a good balance in that situation. Time for some self focus and time for giving to the team.
• OldSchool 14y ago
  Perhaps only the companies that aren't willing to hire remote developers need to use recruiters...
• DanielBMarkham 14y ago
  "...But I don't see a reason why, in 2013, given the tools we have, a developer has to be on-site at a desk every day, as the normal operating procedure..." I am struggling with this same question, but from the other side. I help teams become more Agile, and I'm a startup junkie, so all I care about is performance here. I want to know what works best in terms of product quality and pivot ability. And guess what? So far it's co-located teams that kick ass over distributed teams. I wish it wasn't so, and I'd love to hang back in my home office and work, but that's not the way the numbers are looking. To be more precise, yes, you can become a "commodity" programmer, that is, somebody that people slide a list under the door to and who delivers code on a regular basis. In this case you are competing with commodity programmers around the world who are willing to work for peanuts. If that's your thing, hop on over to one of the programming job sites and have fun with it. Now I can already hear the objections. With all these tools, why can't I be just as plugged in as if I were in the office? Aren't you making a false dichotomy, asking us to either be on-site or completely on our own? Yes, I am generalizing. Look, I don't know why the tools don't work to do the things they are supposed to do. Certainly we have chat, VOIP, and all kinds of awesome communication tools. You'd think that would be enough. But it's not. Instead of powerfully performing teams we get mediocrity. I suspect that software development has a powerful social and human aspect that is not replaced by tools. Working in a team isn't just trading streams of data across a wire. It's going out to lunch, having a beer while talking about work, or making an oddball suggestion one Wednesday afternoon that turns out to change how everybody thinks of the problem they're working on. So sign me up for remote work too. Just show me how it's going to be as effective as co-located teams. I see a lot of fluff from places like 37Signals who make a marketing strategy out of being so aweseome, but I'm not seeing results in the real world. I hope to learn more -- and I hope this problem gets solved.
  • numbsafari 14y ago
    An important factor is team cohesion and trust. In a fully distributed team, trust is immensely important because you can't just look out at the warroom and see who is "crushing it". You have to have a team that can come together in ways other than having a beer every Friday. Sometimes this is accomplished by having a once per quarter, or twice per year, or even once per year gathering. Those are generally good times for team building activities, not just commits. Having non-work interactions with your other co-workers can also be helpful. Something as silly as firing up a Quake server or playing Halo together can make a difference. Also, you cannot expect to apply standard management approaches in a distributed team environment. It can be a struggle because you have to find a new way to evaluate the contributions of your various team members. I think that this is actually where most distributed teams fall apart. Managers simply aren't trained for this environment.
• noonespecial 14y ago
  I generally approve of remote work hardily. But this rant called out early stage startups in particular. In early stage startups you're building your culture along with your product. You have a super limited amount of salary to pay to do both. I can definitely see why you'd want to get double returns with a local hire.
• bonchibuji 14y ago
  I have a question here - 'Does biggies which acquire startups care whether the employees of the startup work remotely or from a central (base) location?;
  • artyom 14y ago
    From my experience, they absolutely do care. "Biggies" with a tight corporate mindset would consider remote work as a deal-breaker. Others may be able to work something out, like insane compensation for relocation, and such.
• 31reasons 14y ago
  I think there is a primitive brain thinking going on here,something like "I pay you to work, I want to SEE you working"
• smurph 14y ago
  I find that the people who supposedly want everyone to work on site will always make exceptions if it means getting an employee they really want. You know that if <Insert your favorite programming blogger here> offered to work for you, but only if they could work from home, you'd probably make an exception. If the person who's been your rock star coder for the past couple years needed to move away for family reasons, but would be willing to stay on if they could work remotely, you would make an exception. The side effect is that you are now telling all the regular people who show up to the office every day that they are not as valuable as Mr. Works Remotely. How do you justify having potential new hires relocate to work for you when they find out some special people don't have to go through that?
• mcantelon 14y ago
  What we do at our company is we work together at the office a few days a week and spend a couple days working remotely. We keep up communication and get to have our meetings on office days and can tackle problems requiring undisturbed concentration on our remote days.
• baalexander 14y ago
  I work in our office in Palo Alto and we have a small, 4 person office in Argentina. While I've worked with remote persons and teams in the past, a few changes to our office and their office has helped the working experience for both sides. 1) Both offices have a TV in the main office area with a web cam. We can see what they're up to, if someone is at their desk, etc. and they can do the same. This has been great for quick questions that are harder to explain over IRC and even for a simple waving good morning when I walk in. 2) We have a handful of "remote presence devices" in our office. This allows them or anyone else working remotely to attend meetings without having to ask someone to Skype in or conference call. Once again, it's the simple things like being able to wave or gesture to someone as they're rolling by. (Full disclosure, I work for a sister company of Suitable Technologies, who make the Beam). 3) Like others have mentioned, centralized, collaborative document control (Google Docs that are actually kept up and maintained), source control (GitHub with pull requests), and chat (IRC) help a lot. 4) A trip every 3 - 6 months from some of the Argentina team to the Palo Alto office. While technology has helped, there's still something to be said about being physically present.
• eurodance 14y ago
  I get more work done at home. For me, when I am at work, I don't feel guilty to take a break and read a personal website, since I am "working" 100% of the time. However, when I am at home, I feel guilty when I go off-topic, because I know that I'm taking advantage of the situation. Note: This may only be limited to "strict" corporate environments, like my current one.
• bdunbar 14y ago
  "...But I don't see a reason why, in 2013, given the tools we have, a developer has to be on-site at a desk every day, as the normal operating procedure..." Tools change. People don't.
• hosh 14y ago
  I have on my LinkedIn profile, "100% Remote Required. Recruiters: do not contact unless your job opportunity is 100% Remote." I still get recruiters who contact me. It isn't as much as it used to, but it is a fairly good way to screen whether a recruiter actually read my profile or not. If there is a vocal and loud number of engineers who demand 100% remote work, then (eventually) it will get through to recruiters.
• 7402 14y ago
  Maybe the problem is that the VERY FIRST question you ask is, "Are you open to remote workers?" I've always found that to be kind of a turn-off when I've interviewed people for software engineering positions. It's NOT that it's not an important question - it's that it shows a bit of social cluelessness. It's the same if the first question someone asks me is "How much vacation time do I get?" or "How much money do you pay?" Of course those questions should be discussed eventually! But I'd like to get to know the other person a little, first. Ya, I know. It's a seller's market, you're busy, you don't want to waste your time with unproductive job possibilities, etc. BUT EVEN IF non-telecommuting is a deal-breaker, maybe you should start off asking about the project, the company, the other people you'd be working with. If the work looks promising at first glance, start off by selling yourself first, rather than immediately focussing on the "OK, tell me what's in this for me, before I waste any more time on you and your company" side of things. Simply as a matter of strategy, you might do better to postpone that question after a round or two. If they like you, then even if they don't have universal telecommuting, they may want you enough to be happy to have you as a telecommuter.
• kjhughes 14y ago
  I agree with the OP and would go so far as to propose a generalization of Joy's law ("No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joys_Law_(management) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joys_Law_(management)): "No matter where you are, most of the smartest people are somewhere else." An employer or business partner insisting on full-time face-time will be at a disadvantage compared with competitors who are more geographically flexible.
• dobbsbob 14y ago
  Don't understand why startups would want to blow a bunch of money on infrastructure when they can just tangle together a remote operation. We have this thing called IRC, Jabber, Skype, VoIP, shared buffers and git. Lot's of open source is designed over skype or even jabber using a common pad to doodle on
• destraynor 14y ago
  Jared Spool did a good study on how remote vs colocated affects design. His conclustion is simple enough The best set up, in order, for design work * Best: Everyone in the same room * Good: Everyone remote but in the same time zone * Bad: Some people together, some people apart, in the same time zone * Worst: Some people together, some people apart, all in different time zones. Now the one thing that his work, and indeed most discussion misses is they "Why" of remote workers. No one has tested "Given the available talent in our city, should we hire the best people around we can so that we're all together, or should we set a higher bar for talent and deal with the whole remote issue". It all comes down to whether or not you can get the best people. Lots of talent tends to flock to big cities (SF, NYC, etc), but that creates its own problem, in that a start-up is now competing with the big spenders offering impressive packages/options/etc. In short, I guess, It depends... (Edit, forgot the url: http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/01/06/design-teams-co-location-trumps-remote/ http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/01/06/design-teams-co-lo... )
  • adrianhoward 14y ago
    ++ for linking to some actual research ;-)
• paulhauggis 14y ago
  I've been working remotely for the past 3 years. I find that the same type of discipline it takes to work remotely is the same as what it takes to run your own company.
• mark_l_watson 14y ago
  I have been working mostly remotely for about 14 years. In my experience, I am less productive working remotely than when I am working on site. I give a 40% discount when I am working remotely for this decrease in efficiency. Other people's experiences are likely much different - I am just relating my own experience. Do I like working remotely? Yes! I also really like being able to mostly work the hours I like, when it is most convenient for me.
• ajsharp 14y ago
  Having a team of remote people require a company to have it's shit together, mostly with respect to communication, and to a much less extent, "process". Most companies (read: executives and founders) are not good at communication, and are generally not interested in changing. Instead, especially with startups, people fall back on "everything happens in front of the whiteboard".
• Claudus 14y ago
  I work remotely as a programmer / designer, it's the best job I've had, and I'm far more productive than I've ever been, with a lost less time spent. I'm sure collaborating in person is necessary for some people, but if you're working with people who can visualize what you're talking about with words it seems pretty great to me. Not everyone is suited for working remotely, but for those who are, I think it suits us very well.
• samspot 14y ago
  I think part of the problem is that many companies are already incapable of managing on-site employees effectively (we've all experienced this!). If you can't effectively manage the people you see face to face, I imagine remote workers would be a disaster.
• fleas 14y ago
  Right on ! I've often wondered the same. It's very annoying too. I can't stand working in offices but if you employee me as a remote employee you get a distraction free, self-motivated, 10+ years experience dedicated worker.. if you want me to come to your office so you can see me do exactly what I can do without coming to the office only with traveling and other distractions... I'll just say, "no thanks!" and find a company that gets it . (P.S. been telecommuting for 8 years and wouldn't have it any other way).
• rowantrollope 14y ago
  Hi definition video conferencing provides the bridge for most of the challenges employers and employees face with remote working. Being the leader of Cisco's Telepresence and collaboration technology stack, I can say that remote working is entirely feasible and in fact sometimes even better than being there.
• rdouble 14y ago
  The last project I worked on, the company insisted I be on site. When I got there, nobody talked to me in real life for six months. If everyone is on IRC and using a ticket tracker, bug tracker, github, status blogs, email, Skype, iChat etc, I'm not sure what the point of being on-site is, other than organizational inertia.
• dannylandau 14y ago
  Couldn't agree more. Companies of all scale need to be receptive to remote work, otherwise they will never be able to fill in any of their job roles.
• account_taken 14y ago
  We ask telecommuters to work out of the office for the first two tweeks. Trying to explain the code base and the many utilities we've built is too time consuming and not easily explained over the phone or remote desktop. It's much easier to look over someone's shoulder and have discussions as needed. Moreover, we get a chance to see their personality, enthusiasm and such.
• metalsahu 14y ago
  I have worked both on a hybrid team (colo + remote) & a completely remote team (no office) and I can emphatically say that the hybrid team is one of the worst experiences in my career. Decisions were made in some other parts of the world, really really early morning calls and a general sense of frustration for all. In a completely remote team, you are forced to optimize for coordination and communication. Obviously you suffer the downsides because there is no water cooler, no joint information dissemination sessions, no war room accountability though you can achieve some kind of co-creation using skype, join.me, git and trello. However you gain some big advantages in terms of finding the right resource at the best cost, undivided focus if remote team members are given work packages and ability to exploit the timezone difference for a 24hour work cycle. Not to mention the humongous personal flexibility which it affords at an individual level. A point to note is that this remote vs. colo experience really can come down to the individual members and their personalities. There is no one size fits all. TL;DR Go completely colo or completely remote, half-colo + half-remote = half-ass. Team personality is a very strong variable in this equation.
• deevus 14y ago
  I moved city a few months ago while still working for the same company. Prior to moving I was a remote worker doing software development and client support from my apartment. It was a great set up for me - if I wasn't feeling productive at 9am I could defer until later when I was in the zone. I tended to work at night when my brain was buzzing, and got much more work done compared to now. Post move, I am now required to work 9-5 at a desk in the company office. I honestly feel like my productivity has plummeted. Work loves having me there because I can play a more senior role to the more junior/less skilled developers, but my pay hasn't changed and I don't really feel like I benefit from it. Perhaps I was just blessed for too long, and need to get used to what working as a developer in this day and age is actually like for the majority.
• MFaramawi 14y ago
  Sadly but true
• lborsato 14y ago
  I've worked remotely for about 7 years now, with startups and more established companies. These companies have typically been distributed themselves, realizing that it is easier to work with smart people where they are than to try to get everyone to move to a specific place. We are constantly connected with IM, IRC, phones, Skype, etc. And we can handle development and problem solving around the clock easily. I have no commute, nor does anyone else. And yet we have all seemed to function efficiently, with now problem that I've seen. And we are as effective as any team I have ever worked with, with none of the water cooler chat that goes on in the office. In fact, any team situation I've worked in has easily seen 50% of the day consumed by non-work-related conversation and meetings with no agenda and no responsibilities given. I'll stick with remote work thanks.
• morgo 14y ago
  I've worked from home for maybe 5 of the past 8 years. I personally hate it, but these were the better opportunities than what I could obtain locally. I think what the original author has to see is that it's not about his strengths/weaknesses, he might be a very good remote employee. What also factors is the organizations 'warts' and whether or not they are able to make use of the employee effectively. I know at my last workplace so many decisions were made verbally on the spot in unscheduled meetings. It drives me crazy, but this is how many businesses operate.
• KenE 14y ago
  100 employees and contractants, 60 full-time, we've all been working remotely since we were only 3 people. It's hard to understand the debate... Some like it, some don't. This SEEMS to be about which is better, but it's actually about trying to win a debate that can't be won (no one's going to change their minds). At the end of the day, the founders/money men get final say. But so what? The beauty of today's world is that you don't have to change anybody's mind, just choose a place that fits with how YOU want to work.
• ilaksh 14y ago
  A lot of people don't know how to work remotely and there is a wide variance in how that is set up. I was just talking to a surgeon about a procedure and mentioned how I had seen a study saying that a similar procedure had slightly more side effects or complications. He pointed out that there is a big difference between the way that different surgeons execute the procedure. So I think that it is harder to make remote work effective for people who are used to traditional work and don't study up on the best ways to create a good remote working environment. I personally believe the most effective tool for remote working is just a shared chat room with a history like Campfire and then putting most of the relevant conversations in there. Ideally I think that everyone should be in that room including customer stakeholders if possible, (although I haven't seen anyone really include the customers in that chat room very much). The second most effective tool would be things like screen sharing and phone or VOIP, which can help a lot, but you have to be careful not to do that too much when it might be better to document things in a common chat room. I may just be slow or lazy or something but as a more general comment on software project management I feel like the issue/task tracker or Pivotal or whatever is an extra distraction from the chat room or more direct communications because I can only really focus on a few important things in a day, I would like to deliver them immediately, and if I have a problem to respond to or something to communicate I want to do it directly rather than hoping or assuming that someone is going to see a notification email or whatever.
• azjeepxtreme 14y ago
  Good for you. I need assistance with web dev at times. I am the owner of a tech co and just recently went to a site where I was the "cult phenom" as I had not been onsite in a year and me actually walking in the door had people swooning. I look forward to hiring some people that know their sh*t in the remote assist web dev arena and are grown up enough to work for me remotely. Well spoken Mr. Farkas.
• chrisennis 14y ago
  Of my five startups, two have been virtual. I am gearing up to start a virtual team with my new startup. What I like about my virtual teams is that it makes the best use of each employee's time, it forces employees to communicate in ways they may not if they are in an office together everyday, and each employee feels like they have some control, which leads to a less bureaucratic environment. All that said, you have to have an absolute level of trust in each employee, because not having the team within arms reach can leave you feeling a bit uneasy at times.
• VonGuard 14y ago
  You know, one more thing I've been thinking on this all day. A thought I had years ago. I work from home. Whenever someone says to me "coworking space" I just marvel. Boggle, really. Why? I cannot imagine ever wanting to be in a room full of other people in order to motivate me to get work done. I call that the tyranny of a room full of people. If I am done for the day, I'm done. If I want to crank through then night, I crank. If you cannot motivate yourself to work hard when away from a crowd of people, I just feel like yer some sort of pack animal. I agree, being near a boss makes you work more, but mostly, it just makes you look busy. You spend more time trying to find something stupid and mindless to do, during those down hours when yer brain is dead, than you do doing actual work. Whereas, when I'm home, I just hammer through everything I have to do immediately. If my inbox is full, I don't leave the computer. But when it's empty, fuck ya'll, I'm going to the park. I'd much rather clean the house and cook a steak when I am log jammed than feel like I have to sit quietly at my desk, looking busy. I think our education system trains people to be too dependent on others for work ethic.