Seems pretty micromanagey and harsh. Why so many rules? I work with tons of remote people and appreciate the headset and bandwidth requirements, but it could certainly be phrased better. How about like this: "All new hires are given a nice headset, please use it, no one likes static or echo."
Fog Creek’s Remote Work Policy
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Re: Fog Creek’s Remote Work Policy
#12Seem like too many rules for you?
Use this as a reminder about why it's important to ask probing questions whenever you interview for a job. Find out what the culture is like and if it is a good fit for you. I know several developers who thrive with the environmental conditions listed here and would love having the company have rules to enforce these conditions. I also know several developers who would burn out.
It's vitally important to find something that's a good fit for you. No need to hate on their rules if it works for their team.
Edit: Also, if you don't like this list, what would rules does your team have in place to ensure an effective, productive remote work policy? Does it scale up with the team?
Re: Fog Creek’s Remote Work Policy
#13This seems like a lot of rules... and kind of unfriendly. Especially for just a short stint working remotely. Whats the worst that could happen if one of the workers has a less than ideal setup while temporarily working remotely for a few days? Would it really affect company outcomes? If not, I think developer happiness would be improved by having a more laissez-faire attitude from management.
Yeah, it's an insane number of rules. (is video chat required? why video chat?)
Down the page they mention The burden is on you to show that you’re being productive. -- that just sounds outright authoritarian and demeaning. Strict policies calling people out as "do this ... or else" don't exactly engender trust.
I think they cover most of our complaints in the poorly worded Known availability and overlap with your team section.
Most places have three levels of "work from home." There's full speed "work from home" where you're getting more done because you're not distracted by office shenanigans. There's half speed "work from home" where you're not plowing through, but you're keeping up with all communications/chats and fully available if anybody needs you. Then there's fill-in-the-gap "work from home" where you're checking into work systems in the morning, getting some things done, going to an intermediate step in the middle [an appointment at the house, going to a doctor on the way to work at 11am, going to the DMV at 10:30am], then going into the office for the rest of the day.
I think they're saying all of the above is okay, just communicate what your availability will be up front (which seems to go against their other policies of "work in a nuclear fallout shelter away from all distractions and you better have no other responsibilities at the same time either — we own you").
Re: Fog Creek’s Remote Work Policy
#14i work from home and all the advice here is sensible, and describes how i work (except that you don't need that much upstream bandwidth for google meetup).
yet, as others have said, there's a bad vibe to this article. i do these things because they make sense for me. maybe they make sense for many others too. but what i expect from an employer is the trust that i will know what works for myself.
working from home depends completely on trust. if you need rules like these it sounds like you're either making bad hires, or you have control issues.
couldn't you replace them with: "you can work remotely, but it's your responsibility to make it work"? and if you really must, add "here are some things you should probably consider: good bandwidth; remote desktop access; time zones; ..."
Re: Fog Creek’s Remote Work Policy
#15Being able to participate in a video conference usually means at least 5 mbps up
Bollocks. Just bollocks.
Re: Fog Creek’s Remote Work Policy
#16I am just curious what is the impetus to all these rules. To me it seems the system has been abused until the management decided to define boundaries.
In fact, these rules make sense, to the point if one could be hired by FC, they have no reason not to know these. If rules need to be explicitly spelled out, I am worried the issue would be far more subtle than written rules can address. (hint: cancelling WFH by Yahoo)
Re: Fog Creek’s Remote Work Policy
#17It's not just cheap internet access that has slow upstream. I have the second from the top tier of service from the fastest ISP in my area (a major and very affluent suburb of an extremely large US city) and my upstream is only 2mbps. Moving to the top tier, which costs over $100/mo, would only get me 4mbps. It's annoying for sure. But, that said, I do video conferences on a regular basis from my home office and it works perfectly fine. I feel like that guideline is both unrealistic in the US market, and also unnecessary.
Re: Fog Creek’s Remote Work Policy
#18This seems like a lot of rules... and kind of unfriendly. Especially for just a short stint working remotely. Whats the worst that could happen if one of the workers has a less than ideal setup while temporarily working remotely for a few days? Would it really affect company outcomes? If not, I think developer happiness would be improved by having a more laissez-faire attitude from management.
To me this isn't about seeming friendly or unfriendly, it's about defining boundaries of what is vacation time and what isn't. It's about saying "No, what you're doing isn't working from home, it's vacation. Don't feel guilty about not getting anything done, just go and have a break." Compare that to being fuzzy about it - you're not really having a decent break (because you're trying to get work done) and you're not…
That's why a good manager should define goals of things that need to get done. As long as the goals are being met, management should allow their developers the freedom to choose their own work environment and hours, within reasonable bounds. Demanding that your employees have headsets at home is called micromanaging.
Re: Fog Creek’s Remote Work Policy
#19I worked from home exclusively for about 6 years (this year is the first time I've been back working at an office), and admittedly, my work almost never involved other people (except for clients, who are remote even if I was in an office, as the majority of the application testing I've done was remote testing), so I'm certainly outside of their demographic.
But the one thing which just seemed weird to read was that it gives the impression of everyone being constantly chatting and doing video calls at a moment's notice, which seems to run counter to the "give every developer their own office" and create a distraction-free environment for programmers. I think I would feel constantly interrupted working in that environment, which seems counter to Fogcreek's whole persona as a place that's "developer-oriented".
Re: Fog Creek’s Remote Work Policy
#20"You still have stuff like chat, commit messages, code reviews, cases, Trello boards, etc. Be a little paranoid for this time about showing your work. It will help you feel good about your time, and us feel good about granting it."
Run through a de-weaselizer, this reads:
"Be a good little pet, and do an extra set of tricks when we take you out to the park, so you feel good about running around in the park and we feel good about granting you the privilege to go out once a week."
Yeah, bullshit. Place where I work operates on a culture of complete trust, period. Example: Once, a guy on my team had to go to his parents' house out in the country and was stuck with a slow internet connection. No problem, he did some stuff, stuck it out for as much as he could and then shelved it. I bet he enjoyed his time there much more than he would have sitting in a bunch of chatrooms anyway, and he did it on company time. He was much happier when he came back, and probably did twice the usual amount of work when he did on average.
As his co-worker who was working when this guy was at his parents' house, did I feel slighted or angry at him? No, for heaven's sake -- he was seeing his family, and enjoying a few choice, uninterrupted hours with them. Webapps can fucking wait. I was perfectly happy doing his share of the work.
The culture in the American software industry glorifies ass-in-seat hours (directly or indirectly -- this notion of "exhibiting your productivity" is just another version of ass-in-seat hours) at a cost to actual productivity, happiness, and general well-being by waving the distant promise of some sort of vague payout in front of you, and getting you to constantly compete with your co-workers at "putting in more time". Reject this sort of rubbish unconditionally if you have even the slightest choice.