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Great manifesto.
> Save on compensation due to hiring in lower cost regions Pay people what they're worth regardless of where they live. If you have a developer in Nigeria or Ukraine or Vietnam that is as equally capable as a developer in the Bay Area, they should be paid the same. Doing otherwise, at best, perpetuates Western hegemony, and at worst is simply racism.
Yo, you gotta tell me when you’re working. You must. You’re on a team that is depending on you and somebody has to know where the fuck your are and when you’re going to fix whatever is broken today. “Where’s will?” “I don’t know, our manifesto says nobody gets to know when he’s working.” “Well he broke the site.” “That’s his right as a sovereign citizen.” The end.
"Oh, but if you ask in a public Slack channel, someone else will answer!", is the inevitable response from someone here on HN. Unfortunately, that is not always the case for a multitude of reasons.
Whenever I've worked remotely, I've always clocked in and out on slack, either through posting in a channel or sending a DM, or by using statuses. That way people can know that I've gone for lunch and will be incommunicado for the next hour.
It's the same as working in a physical office, if you're out of office, your colleagues should know how long for.
I'd be interested to know some long term remote workers experiences with regards to interruptions. It's one of the things that I believe would be better. In many places I've worked I tend to become a "go to" person which results in many many interruptions, it doesn't make too much difference how much you write down, it's usually always quicker to just ask someone who you know knows the answer to whatever question you…
I've long been that "go-to" guy. I'm friendly, I like to help, and I'm a bit of a jack-of-all-trades. That's fine, it's my natural fit and I enjoy it.
I've been working remotely (from home) for about 2 months now and my productivity is through the roof. It's astonishing. When I work 8 hours, I get ~6.5 hours productive work done. That feels like a theoretical maximum. In the office, 8 hours "at work" – read "in the building" – often felt like 2 or 3 hours of actual work, on a good day.
You spend so much time in the office chatting to people, getting coffee, overhearing interesting conversations, waiting in a meeting room for people to turn up, waiting at the door for people to come to lunch, getting there in the first place, setting up, packing up. It's madness, really. (I'm in Melbourne, Australia. I think our work ethic is different to you Americans.)
I'm lucky, my partner is also a freelancer. We wake up – often at 5am – and make a cup of tea and a slice of toast. "First breakfast." Half an hour later we're awake and we wander upstairs to the office. We put some ambient music on, or not. We knuckle down and work. Two hours later, sun's up, we make a coffee and have "second breakfast". :-)
It's transformed how I live and work. I'm lucky in that my boss is an old friend and he trusts me absolutely. The work I'm doing is exclusively for him, so it's not a problem that I'm not around colleagues. We just use the phone or iMessage to communicate.
We set a weekly rhythm so I don't have to tell him when I'm working; but, because he's a friend, if he calls and I'm not at my desk that's cool.
I am in love with this situation. I can never go back.
Seems like there's a lot of talent being left on the floor by only looking for senior developers. There's a lot of goodwill that can be earned by trusting in potential and helping candidates grow into a position. Even an experienced developer in one set of languages and frameworks is junior to others -- and they can't get the foot in the door anywhere remotely.
The "years of experience" drought is real, but I feel like it's an eternal desert for remote work.
> Save on compensation due to hiring in lower cost regions Pay people what they're worth regardless of where they live. If you have a developer in Nigeria or Ukraine or Vietnam that is as equally capable as a developer in the Bay Area, they should be paid the same. Doing otherwise, at best, perpetuates Western hegemony, and at worst is simply racism.
Gitlab does this when calculating salary [1] for their employees. It seems only fair to me.
[1] https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-c...
> People don't have to say when they are working.
That just seems a bit at odds with the rest of the post and I don't really agree with it.
Sometimes there are questions that only one person (let's say Nick) can answer or situations where Nick is more valuable than other employees. Let's say I've got a moderately time sensitive issue and I'm pretty sure Kevin knows the answer as he's an expert in the subject, alternatively, I could pull aside Bob, Joe, and Linda and we could probably figure it out after a little while.
Knowing when Nick will be back online plays a big factor in what I chose to do next. If Nick is offline for lunch and will be back in an hour, I'll wait for Nick. If Nick started work early and is now offline for a long weekend, well then I need to pull Bob, Joe, and Linda away from their work to help me.
Having at least a general idea of when people will be available seems like it'd be even more important in a situation where I can't ask the people around me, "Has anyone seen Nick today?"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a bit ridiculous. It's not hegemony or racism. It's how markets work. People in those markets have fewer opportunities for highly paid employment. As a result, employers have more leverage in negotiations. It's as simple as that.
His is a moralistic argument. I expect he understands the mechanism at play here.
Simplified, the counter argument appears to be:
"If a company has the leverage in any capacity to exercise its dominance over a potential employee—to extract as much value from them at the lowest possible financial liability—it should in any case attempt to do so. It would be absurd to do otherwise."
Personally, I can't abide by that—especially when the only basis is locale—and no matter if they bring the same value to the company as a local six-figure-salary employee.
Honestly, I find it a bit weird so much of this blog post focus on making all information visible and documenting everything (which I agree with) and then there is: > People don't have to say when they are working. That just seems a bit at odds with the rest of the post and I don't really agree with it. Sometimes there are questions that only one person (let's say Nick) can answer or situations where Nick is more val…
I still generally agree that knowing when folks are online can be helpful and don’t see a big issue with that as long as you don’t have a culture that starts measuring people by how many hours they put in. Rather than an upfront “I will be working today from X to Y” something passive like a Slack recent activity indicator could be enough.