121–130 of 191 posts
I can say that I like to see people in person and interact with them, but all the problems, not only with startups, but with office environment in general were spot on.
I feel that gigantic metropolises are not optimal environments for software engineering. NYC, and it's helter skelter of noise and traffic and garbage and tiny living spaces, in my humble experience and opinion is not conducive to hard engineering problems. I am probably completely wrong here and just a hopeless introvert with an axe to grind, but from my experience, working in home offices in towns like Boulder, Col…
> I think the future of work will be semi-distributed, and this mad consolidation into a few coastal cities will be seen in the future as a gross inefficiency. I disagree with this prediction. 1) If given the choice, most people would prefer to walk to their day-to-day destinations rather than drive. 2) In order to create an area in which most destinations are within walking distance of the residents, a certain level…
And that is what I think we should be developing for, bikeable densities. And the bike of tomorrow is really a light weight electric vehicle, perhaps a foldable scooter with a small Lithium ion battery pack that is charged with a solar panel.
Bicycles increase human range without excessive negative externalities.
The result is a town that has culture, and restaurants and bars and a very usable public transportation system, along with scenic beauty and ample space so that one need not live packed into a tuna can.
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…
Additionally there's an element of negotiation or dialogue around requirements which can often lead to cheaper/quicker to market/better solutions with input from engineering.
Both of these are much easier to do in person.
A question to all of you who only work remotely, and I'm sure it's been covered by HN so forgive me, but where do you find reliable work that's remote? I can see getting lucky maybe and scoring one maybe two gigs that allow remote but a caterer doing it? When my wife's gig is up she would love to work from home. She already works from home two days a week. But she has no idea how to make a career out that reliably. S…
1. Remote job boards https://remoteok.io/ https://www.wfh.io/ https://weworkremotely.com/
2. Stack Overflow https://stackoverflow.com/jobs?allowsremote=true
3. Who Is Hiring? thread posted on Hacker News the first weekday of every month. https://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=whoishiring
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we'll have to agree to disagree here. If you're heads-down on a project and it's not contributing to the value of the product, there are other issues with your business than remote-v-office culture. If pivoting your engineering goals requires hallway conversations, there's something wrong. To be sure, not everyone is cut out for remote work, the same way not everyone is cut out for office work. For my part, I…
> If pivoting your engineering goals requires hallway conversations, there's something wrong. I agree but isn't there always something wrong? I'm in that spot, I worked mostly remote for the past 4 years and at every company it would have helped a lot to have a casual hallway conversation from time to time. It shouldn't be necessary but in reality it often is. It seem to me like you need well thought out, light weigh…
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…
I have been working remotely for nearly 3 years now. It is a necessity for me, my kids are very young and some some medical issues, so there is a lot of therapy and special schools involved with 1 pm dismissal times. I love the flexibility but my wife has trouble distinguishing between work-from-home and stay-at-home-dad and that is constant struggle.
I've heard people with families kids can struggle with this. The people I know who've been successful at it seem to always have some kind of office work space where they can close the door and get a bit of isolation, or, they invest in an offsite office of some kind.
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…
Voice + screen sharing is about as efficient as a face-to-face conversation.
And if you need to sync your working time with other team members - how is that a problem in remote environment?
Other reasons to allow or even encourage remote work: In the US, there's a growing polarization between the coasts and middle America ("flyover country"). I, for one, don't want all the good programming jobs to be on the west coast. Remote work, where the workers bring their own equipment and office setup, is probably better for people with disabilities. For example, an employer doesn't have to care or possibly even…
That reminds me communist utopia: lets make all people equal ... by making everyone poor.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If pivoting your engineering goals requires hallway conversations, there's something wrong. I agree but isn't there always something wrong? I'm in that spot, I worked mostly remote for the past 4 years and at every company it would have helped a lot to have a casual hallway conversation from time to time. It shouldn't be necessary but in reality it often is. It seem to me like you need well thought out, light weigh…
How does text chat or video conference not fix that issue? Look at all these open source projects that manage to flourish across languages, time zones, etc.
Text chat is a poor replacement to in-person conversation as it is occasionally async and a lot of meaning is lost. Video conference is better, but is less spontaneous and makes it harder to pull someone else into the conversation. Above all, text and video eliminate serendipity - I won't overhear the the conversation my colleagues are having about a pain-point I solved 2 days ago. I don't think channels on slack can ever replace this for me - following a text discussion takes my full attention, unlike people talking within earshot.