101–110 of 206 posts
If my business pays for a great programmer, I want that programmer's knowledge, experience and attitude to diffuse to the rest of my team (... not that I have a business, just sayin' :-). Much harder to do this if that great programmer isn't in the office.
In my eight years' remote working experience, your statement is false.
Are you saying that remote work is as good if not better than being physically-located?
I still don't feel there's any reason you need to physically exist in the Bay area though. Open an office somewhere that's both attractive and affordable for people to live and you enable the best of both worlds.
The common theme of all that is: timezones matter a lot. It's hard to collaborate with someone really far away because they'll tend to be asleep when you're awake. Programmers like async communication for a lot of reasons, but real-time is important too.
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"A lot of startups have ambitious goals and very hard technical challenges" And those companies aren't billion dollar companies either. "All those teleconferencing/videoconferencing/virtualwhiteboards/etc are not as effective as everyone sharing the same physical workspace" But they're more effective than those people not working together at all. "Remote workers even with today's fanciest collaboration technology is…
Videoconferencing sucks -- it's not as effective as having your coworker come over to your screen for pair programming, or talking face-to-face with your UXer. Anyone who has done any amount of remote work will realize that the OP is dramatically overstating the value of teleconferencing solutions compared to working in house.
I think you're underestimating the degree to which day to day office crap weighs on people and makes them far less effective than they might otherwise be, even if they get to have someone come over and "pair" with them.
Remote working is an approach that really needs to be embraced by the entire company, and refined over time to match the needs and skills of the team as they change. Some people need more one on one time, some need more group time, maybe you do some face to face meetings quarterly instead of annually. It's not a one-size fits all, but nothing (including f2f office work) is.
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Automattic "employees" outside of the US and Canada are contractors. (I used to work at Automattic)
This is no longer accurate. Some remain "contractors" still officially due to regulatory issues, but we now have employees in multiple locations outside North America. And that list of locations is growing. (I work at Automattic)
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Harder problems than the Linux kernel? I've been remote for eight years now and I work on a codebase so huge that no one person understands it all beneath the 10,000 foot level. Nearly all of us are remote (only the managers are "local" to San Jose). Once a quarter we get together and meet up, coming from Vancouver, Toronto, Bangalore, Colorado and northern California.
> the Linux kernel? Although it's insanely technically challenging, many computer science projects are more difficult than the Linux kernel to do remotely. For example, watching users interact with the software, anything that involves expensive test equipment, anything that runs on embedded/custom hardware.
Programmers, if they have a choice, like remote or at least some remote. Managers + VCs, if they have a choice, prefer all in the office so they can keep power but this actually makes them less competitive and more susceptible to physical disruptions: moving an office, an employee moving, time, office politics, commute, distractions, over meeting and more. The PG essay on this was glaringly overlooking that you can b…
there's a pretty big difference between "remote" and "some remote".
...then again, that's probably why remote workers say they're more productive.