Ask HN: If you don't permit telecommuting, why?

As someone who is remote about 90%, I contend the watercooler chat magic is overrated and a waste of time. I was previously in office full time. I was one of the first tech hires. I am mostly a programmer, with a good deal of overlapping ops and analysis thrown in. I'm part of a very small engineering staff (under 10) in an overall small company (under 30 people). My work output in our open office drops to around 10% of the output when I work from my house. This is code, documentation, and meetings attended. People spend more time at the office because they are constantly interrupted (both by off-topic conversations as well as for work-related things) and need to stay late (past 40 hours) to finish their tasks. From informal notes, conversations that occur via Skype or In Person are poorly documented and tend to be rehashed more often than written communications via Github or Slack. IMO, if the entire team was remote and utilized more written communications, we'd be spend less time rehashing old topics and more time delivering value. As to the spontaneity and ideation of face to face, I've observed this happening over video chat and slack just as often as in the office. If people are excited about their work, they will talk about it, in person or not.

hilariously, some companies with remote workers have "activity monitors" installed that tell coworkers you aren't doing anything if your mouse/keyboard goes inactive for a few minutes.

Our management wants onsite for better control. I think it's all feelings based. We want to hire in Seattle. We had some remote not work out, therefore all remote is "bad".

I think BS. We just got a new remote QA team and they are doing great.

We have two remote devs also who are doing good work.

I interpret the evidence to show that remote does work.

I still get push back on it but the rationale is based on words like "better" and "easier" without quantifiers.

My feelings are that some managers like to interrupt frequently for "urgent fires" and that is easier when someone is a few metres away.

I am a remote worker and if I ever ran a company I wouldn't allow telecommuting. Here is why:

When I was at the office for a decade, 90% of the insight and productivity came from informal conversations in the hallway, lunches and things I overheard in passing. As a remote worker, nearly all communication is very deliberate so I am not exposed to those ad-hoc conversations. Everything is very deliberate: I receive an email, a text or a meeting. The net result is my personal career becomes very confined and stunted... I become that guy who does that one thing rather than a team-member who has an awareness of everything and the ability to jump in as needed.

Being remote also limits my upward mobility. Most of my promotions and moves were because I would walk back from a meeting with an executive and talk about what was discussed and express interest in taking ownership. These walk-and-talks are the only availability in an execs schedule. I tried to get time with an exec remotely and it was a full two months before I could get any time-- and since it was scheduled it wasn't ad-hoc and overly formal ("What would you like to discuss?").

So, in my judgement, remote workers are fine for very defined single tasks. For dynamic workers that move about the company and immerse themselves in lots of projects and want upward mobility, I can't recommend it.

I feel like my experience of being in office and remote at the same company gives me some unique perspective versus the people who join a company remotely and never fully appreciate what they are missing.

I have worked on remote-only teams which were great because everything was set up for that workflow. In companies where you have a lot of on-site people the remote guys add a lot of overhead because now you need processes for on-site and offsite people.

I am fine if a guy shows up two times a week or so but I am wary of full-time remote workers unless I know I can trust them to not waste time on irrelevant tangents. There needs to be some level of maturity.

Time zones are also an issue.I would not work with somebody 12 hours away.