Why I Only Work Remotely • Hacker News Board

Re: Why I Only Work Remotely

#51

Post by hkarthik » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 6:24 PM UTC

Remote work optimizes for the individual employee, and often the short term gain of finding early talent before you have an established brand and network effects where talent starts gravitating towards you.

However, at the later stages of a company when you want 100+ engineers or more, it can be a major damper to organizational growth. Front line management becomes a necessity to keep teams healthy and get a consistent culture across the company. Career paths also require curation that is hard to do with people spread across offices and timezones.

So essentially what we end up with is remote work being optimized for small startups and slow growth companies. Large companies that will always waver back and forth on it, without actually figuring out how to make it work at scale. From a career stability standpoint, it's kind of a beating. Every job will seem awesome for a short period and then devolve into a shit show.

Those of you who are betting the farm on remote work should keep all this in mind. The smartest remote folks I know have realized this and just do consulting/contracting and making lifestyle choices to support this way of life.

I say this as someone who worked remote for 3 years from Texas and moved out to SF to work in a big office for a major tech company. There's huge benefits to remote work, but it's not a panacea.

Re: Why I Only Work Remotely

#52

Post by d357r0y3r » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 6:30 PM UTC

NumberSix wrote: post #47

d357r0y3r wrote: post #31

I rarely work remote even when I have the opportunity to do it; I'll explain. The author seems to have a single-mindedness about optimizing their own performance. If performance in terms of your value to the business was about sitting down at a computer and coding, getting in a "flow" state, etc, I would agree. Problem is, personal efficiency doesn't necessarily align with value generated. I've seen engineers spend m…

There are the notions of: o clear written requirements expressing the business and high level technical needs. o well defined acceptance test procedures to ensure that the delivered software (or hardware or whatever) meets those requirements o thoughtful partitioning of the work between team members to minimize the needed communication and enable the team members to focus and work on their part without having a commi…

These are good ideals and they're hard to get right in practice. There's always a certain amount of ambiguity that arises when pen meets paper and it's ambiguity that puts any given task at risk of being done incorrectly or not at all.

A positive trait in an engineer is the ability to resolve ambiguity. That isn't to say that all ambiguity can be solved by a single engineer working in isolation, though. What you don't want is people going with their best guess in an isolated, unilateral fashion, so you need good ways of handling uncertainty when it inevitably comes up. My contention is that, according to my experience, remote work results in a "dead in the water" status more often than office work.

Re: Why I Only Work Remotely

#53

Post by Raphmedia » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 6:34 PM UTC

criddell wrote: post #49

Raphmedia wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My home office has a $3000 computer, $600 chair, high end keyboard and mouse, a huge 4k screen. My office temperature is at the optimal for my body and my setup is positioned according to the sun coming in the window. At work it usually* is a $600 computer, a $60 chair, low end dirty keyboard and mouse, small low quality screen. The office is cold, I have glare in my screens... and I share a room with 60 persons. It'…

Have you ever thought about buying your own keyboard, mouse, monitor, and chair?

I'm not going to invest money into my employer's company unless I get a return on that investment.

Edit: That's a slippery slope. What next? Buying a new microwave, new window blinds, a modern thermostat, softer toilet paper ...

Re: Why I Only Work Remotely

#54

Post by ceejay » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 6:35 PM UTC

IMO humans are just bad at communicating in a precise / efficient way. Most people I meet / work with who are not in a technical field are usually very bad at explaining their business needs in face-to-face let alone by email or over the phone, etc... And ironically isn't it usually the case that these are the people who are (a) the stakeholders, or (b) the ones writing the paychecks.

Until technical folks start taking over the world (maybe we're in the infancy stages of that?) I think most people who want to work remotely will need to expect to be in the office regularly if not every work day.

Re: Why I Only Work Remotely

#55

Post by dan_m2k » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 6:42 PM UTC

The author sounds super fucking bitchy.

Shared workspaces are crap for getting work done - proper focussed work that you go home and puts a skip in your step. But this isn't the reality of delivery - you should be able to adapt to your client and delivering the best value can be more than cutting code.

Alas, Working as a remote dev can frustrate and stifle creativity and problem solving - having my expert set at the other end of a phone, Skype, IM or slack when I need that dev to step up and become architect, because, it's a start up, and I've seen some excellent products come from pivots that happened because the Devs could weigh in, apply technical reality and end up with a viable product.

As that dev, I came in to a project that was on its ass, they took a glass door off its hinges, set that up as my desk and we knocked it out of the park. I was spent afterwards but the reward of a great delivery and a happy client was worth it.

Re: Why I Only Work Remotely

#56

Post by petters » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 6:45 PM UTC

babyrainbow wrote: post #34

d357r0y3r wrote: post #31

I rarely work remote even when I have the opportunity to do it; I'll explain. The author seems to have a single-mindedness about optimizing their own performance. If performance in terms of your value to the business was about sitting down at a computer and coding, getting in a "flow" state, etc, I would agree. Problem is, personal efficiency doesn't necessarily align with value generated. I've seen engineers spend m…

I don't get you. What does a developer has to do with deciding what the business needs? If your job is that, ie, figuring out what a business needs, then by all means work closely with people..But I am not sure that is the type of work being discussed in this context.

This is very incorrect in my opinion. It is every engineer's responsibility to figure out what the business needs. Perhaps an intern does not need to worry about that, but that's about it.

Re: Why I Only Work Remotely

#57

Post by AnimalMuppet » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 6:50 PM UTC

babyrainbow wrote: post #34

d357r0y3r wrote: post #31

I rarely work remote even when I have the opportunity to do it; I'll explain. The author seems to have a single-mindedness about optimizing their own performance. If performance in terms of your value to the business was about sitting down at a computer and coding, getting in a "flow" state, etc, I would agree. Problem is, personal efficiency doesn't necessarily align with value generated. I've seen engineers spend m…

I don't get you. What does a developer has to do with deciding what the business needs? If your job is that, ie, figuring out what a business needs, then by all means work closely with people..But I am not sure that is the type of work being discussed in this context.

Nothing, if you're in a perfect waterfall environment. But requirements are never perfectly frozen, or even perfectly clear. You always run into things where you have to go back and find out what they really wanted. And the requirements always change to some degree.

And being able to resolve issues faster, and respond faster to changes, is valuable to the business.

Re: Why I Only Work Remotely

#58

Post by bdavisx » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 6:51 PM UTC

pbhowmic wrote: post #40

pzh wrote: post #7

I completely agree with the author's points, except for one small caveat--the overall quality of projects that one can find in remote work (at least based on my personal experience and search) is usually abysmal. At first glance, a good indicator would be the salaries that remote companies pay, and most remote companies tend to pay peanuts, using 'remote' as an excuse to underpay, and thus also signaling that they do…

Wouldn't generalize as much but point taken. Frankly,my project pays well enough and it is remote too but what really makes the pay great in my case is a no income tax state for me. Otherwise the pay would be meh if I had to shell that out.

I don't think most state income taxes are that burdensome. My state's is 3%, so on a $100,000 salary not considering any deductions, the difference would only be $3,000 between my state and a non-income tax state. If you were making $200,000, it would still only be $6,000. Neither amount is peanuts, I realize, but it's not the difference between good and meh either.

Re: Why I Only Work Remotely

#59

Post by ClayFerguson » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 6:52 PM UTC

I agree with every word of this article and after 25yrs experience as a developer I have all similar experiences. Being a computer programmer is about the same as being a 'writer' (book author), and no one expects an author to sit with other authors in a special building to be able to write. With modern technology, and the wastefulness of time and energy spent commuting, there is just no longer any reason for a programmer to not be able to work remote. I mean even if all you are considering is gasoline use and pollution savings, even that alone is enough of a reason for society to say let developers work at home. There's just no downside to it.

I have been working at home for the past year, and I don't think there's any way i'd ever accept another non-remote job again. In any large city you're gonna be sitting in traffic a total of 10hrs a week. That's insanity. That's well over one full work day. With a web-cam you can still have face to face meetings. The only thing that I find missing occasionally is the use of a whiteboard, but that is a very minor thing. Having a whiteboard is not a good trade-off for 10hrs spent in traffic. Not even close. Of course in 10yrs VR will totally make it irrelevant where someone's physical location is, but i think even the basic webcams we have today already does as well.

Re: Why I Only Work Remotely

#60

Post by pc86 » Wed, Dec 21, 2016, 6:58 PM UTC

SamBam wrote: post #42

babyrainbow wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't get you. What does a developer has to do with deciding what the business needs? If your job is that, ie, figuring out what a business needs, then by all means work closely with people..But I am not sure that is the type of work being discussed in this context.

If your job is doing exactly what you're told to do, and nothing else, then you'll find that you are very replaceable.

And yet the same people who say that developers are not interchangeable cogs in a larger machine will fight tooth and nail requirements that they attend meetings, interact with business analysts or users, or generally do anything other than programming.