Working alone sucks • Hacker News Board

Re: Working alone sucks

#91

Post by B-Con » Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 10:23 PM UTC

codinghorror wrote: post #77

jasonkester wrote: post #49

I met a girl at a party once, and she said something really interesting when I mentioned that I wrote software for a living. "I could never do that", she said. "I could never sit alone all day, staring at a computer and never getting the chance to talk to anybody. It'd be my worst nightmare." I hadn't ever thought about it like that. Naturally, as a developer, I think I have the greatest job there is. Where else coul…

Wait what? Who in the world is using a computer today that isn't constantly interacting with people on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, uh.. Hacker News, even.. I mean, you're doing it right now . Today's web is an insanely social place. Compare with computers in 1985, yeah, you might have a point about social isolation. But today? Absolutely not, no way.

I have to disagree.

Although those are labeled as social community and many of us take part in them, they're nowhere close to the same as being social. They take place on our time schedule (we visit when we want to), they take place with people whom we more or less choose, and most importantly a lot of it isn't personal. Friends on Facebook may have some personal interaction, but for the large part HN, reddit, etc, are just impersonal blobs of text. I feel no personal connection to what I read here, and I don't consider it to be social interaction. The part of my social networking that will actually be social will take place later when I check updates on friends on Facebook later and say something that references some real-life connection I have with that friend.

Community-provided content isn't the same thing as social. Interacting with people itself isn't necessarily social. I consider reading HN to be about as social as calling customer support.

Re: Working alone sucks

#92

Post by pathy » Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 10:33 PM UTC

I am currently writing a paper relating to this topic. (Nothing special, just part of a university course)

We are studying Seats2meet.com, a company providing co-working spaces in The Netherlands, or rather one of their co-working spaces, BounceSpace, where its free to work but you have to "pay" with your social capital.

What we have found so far is that it is mostly (early start-up phase) entrepreneurs and freelancers who attend the location we have studied. They say that they cannot focus well at home and having the possibility to interact with is great beneficial to them. The fact that the location is free is of course important, especially for start-ups on a tight budget.

The idea behind the concept is knowledge sharing but while there is certain amounts of knowledge sharing going on it appears that most are looking for human contact, and sometimes the human contact can help them out - good.

The academic literature suggest that teleworkers, and it appears entrepreneurs though the literature is quite weak on that subject, are often feeling isolated due to lack of face-to-face interactions such as informal meetings, lunches and "water-cooler conversations" with colleagues.

Our focus is mostly on knowledge sharing and social capital but I think many entrepreneurs could benefit from more interactions with others, rather than just hacking away at home.

P.S. Check out Seats2Meet/BounceSpace if you are in Amsterdam and looking for a co-working space, they got some collaboration with Appsterdam and such. Not to mention good coffee!

Re: Working alone sucks

#93

Post by paulsutter » Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 10:34 PM UTC

gsharma wrote: post #79

paulsutter wrote: post #42

This is a pretty clear take on the cofounder debate. Key quote: "I don’t have a CFO, COO or other peers with the same overall picture of the company and incentive structure that I have" In the early days of Quantcast, Konrad (the other cofounder) and I wondered why the employees didn't generally have the same sense of urgency that we did. My friend Bryan asked "so, what do you do when you read an article about a comp…

I am curious to know how you cultivated sense of urgency among employees after this conversation? Did you start sharing more about competition and/or other information? Did you share it directly or massaged the message so the employees don't get discouraged? Or was "we don't want to be discouraging" an assumption?

The single best thing we did in this regard was to have a weekly communication meeting, like Google's Friday all hands. Our CFO came from Google and clued us in.

It's an open meeting where successes and challenges are openly described and anyone can ask any question. Someone from Google could probably give a much better description.

Re: Working alone sucks

#94

Post by cafard » Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 10:39 PM UTC

jasonkester wrote: post #49

I met a girl at a party once, and she said something really interesting when I mentioned that I wrote software for a living. "I could never do that", she said. "I could never sit alone all day, staring at a computer and never getting the chance to talk to anybody. It'd be my worst nightmare." I hadn't ever thought about it like that. Naturally, as a developer, I think I have the greatest job there is. Where else coul…

A long ago girlfriend said much the same thing about copy editing when I did that. She was anything but a fool.

Re: Working alone sucks

#95

Post by marknutter » Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 10:50 PM UTC

kayoone wrote: post #82

marknutter wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pair program with a couple other devs on a Google Hangout all the time and it literally is no different than being in the same room together. In fact, it's often much better because we can easily switch between presenters.

does pair programming with google hangout really work? i cant find a way to make the video stream fullscreen which isnt ideal for viewing code imo.

Yeah, it works quiet well actually. You just make the window size bigger and the video scales to fit it. I never have any buffering issues and it's always clear enough to read the other dev's code without them having to increase their font size. The best part, as I said above, is being able to easily switch between presenters.

Re: Working alone sucks

#96

Post by B-Con » Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 11:14 PM UTC

jasonkester wrote: post #49

I met a girl at a party once, and she said something really interesting when I mentioned that I wrote software for a living. "I could never do that", she said. "I could never sit alone all day, staring at a computer and never getting the chance to talk to anybody. It'd be my worst nightmare." I hadn't ever thought about it like that. Naturally, as a developer, I think I have the greatest job there is. Where else coul…

I agree.

Occasionally people will say something about "having to sit at a desk" in relation to their job or mine.

"Have?" I get to sit at a desk with a portal to logic, problem solving, and all the information I could want right in front of me. If I were sitting at home, family-less and jobless, I would probably be doing a very similar thing about the same portion of the day.

Re: Working alone sucks

#97

Post by dhughes » Fri, Dec 14, 2012, 11:54 PM UTC

codinghorror wrote: post #77

jasonkester wrote: post #49

I met a girl at a party once, and she said something really interesting when I mentioned that I wrote software for a living. "I could never do that", she said. "I could never sit alone all day, staring at a computer and never getting the chance to talk to anybody. It'd be my worst nightmare." I hadn't ever thought about it like that. Naturally, as a developer, I think I have the greatest job there is. Where else coul…

Wait what? Who in the world is using a computer today that isn't constantly interacting with people on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, uh.. Hacker News, even.. I mean, you're doing it right now . Today's web is an insanely social place. Compare with computers in 1985, yeah, you might have a point about social isolation. But today? Absolutely not, no way.

I'm not a programmer but interacting on the Internet is not the same type of social interaction as in real life.

I've been pretty quite all my life and when I first got on the Internet in the early to mid 90s it was amazing for a shy person to interact in real-time with other real people. I'm not talking about a person thousands of kilometers away I mean 'a person'.

But still my job as a vending machine repair man was a solitary job I had done it since my teens. The Internet was amazing but it was no substitute for real face-to-face socializing that still terrified me, still does.

When I got a job at a casino I was forced to interact since I was in a contained busy noisy very social environment no longer driving the highways. I changed a lot but I'm still not much for social activities, I call work "acting" because if I am off work and go back I feel very exposed socially.

I think I'm like children who are locked up and lose the chance to develop verbal skills, I missed my social training and that part of my brain is dead.

Anyway, it's different.

Re: Working alone sucks

#98

Post by groundBerryDown » Sat, Dec 15, 2012, 12:48 AM UTC

rickmode wrote: post #47

marknutter wrote: post #3

Title should be "Working alone sucks for some people ". I've been working from home for years and love it, for instance.

This fits with a life lesson I've been internalizing for the last couple years: For many problems there are many right answers. More specifically for opinion/work situation articles like this, the argument applies to a particular personality type and/or particular personal situation. If you're extroverted, then working alone may leave you bored and unfulfilled. If you in the middle between introverted and extroverted…

>If you in the middle between introverted and extroverted, working alone may work if other parts of your life have personal interaction.

I think this is a good point, and for me one of the scarier aspects of this type of work. Working alone is fine until it isn't. I think your work quality / satisfaction are always going to be relient on your out of work happiness to a large extent, but when you're working alone there's that much less of a buffer. Work is such a large part of our lives, doing it alone is a pretty large commitment to aloneness.

Re: Working alone sucks

#99

Post by chad_oliver » Sat, Dec 15, 2012, 12:49 AM UTC

codinghorror wrote: post #80

kayoone wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That still doesnt change "I could never sit alone all day, staring at a computer and never getting the chance to talk to anybody." Even by using social media, you are still alone in front of your computer.

That's meaningless. "never getting the chance to talk to anybody"? I'm talking to you, and everyone else who reads this web page, right now . Just look around you. Look at all the people who are in real world physical social situations and still spend most of their time staring at their smartphone and the stream of social updates from Twitter, from Facebook, from Email... Staring at those screens is compelling becaus…

No, I don't think that's the same thing. In my experience, real-life conversations have a much higher quantity of ... something. Affection? When I talk offline, most conversations have a subtext of 'You're a valuable human being; I like hanging out with you.' However, when I talk on Facebook or Hacker News or email, I'm much more likely to just deal with the direct topic of conversation. Talking online is about ideas; talking offline is about people. Of course this is a massive generalization, but it seems to fit my own experiences.

An interesting question, then, is why, when talking online, do I focus on ideas rather than people? I think a major factor is simply that plaintext is a far less expressive medium, so it takes extra effort to convey complicated subtexts. When we talk offline we can show interest in people without having to consciously think about it; our expressions of caring are primarily subconscious and therefore don't transfer well to plaintext.

Re: Working alone sucks

#100

Post by accoinstereo » Sat, Dec 15, 2012, 12:49 AM UTC

codinghorror wrote: post #77

jasonkester wrote: post #49

I met a girl at a party once, and she said something really interesting when I mentioned that I wrote software for a living. "I could never do that", she said. "I could never sit alone all day, staring at a computer and never getting the chance to talk to anybody. It'd be my worst nightmare." I hadn't ever thought about it like that. Naturally, as a developer, I think I have the greatest job there is. Where else coul…

Wait what? Who in the world is using a computer today that isn't constantly interacting with people on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, uh.. Hacker News, even.. I mean, you're doing it right now . Today's web is an insanely social place. Compare with computers in 1985, yeah, you might have a point about social isolation. But today? Absolutely not, no way.

The screens might be social. But they're able to only fill a limited facet of human social need.

The value that I derive from an email with an old friend is different than a phone call which is different still from a lunch.

Our social needs are deeply intertwined with our DNA. And the emotional value we can derive from interacting digitally does not meet the full extent that we derive from physical interaction.

Hence, I would argue that someone that lives on the web all day with thousands of people in mostly physical isolation will find less social fulfillment than someone that lives amongst a handful of humans with little connection to the outside world.