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A Short Rant About Working Remotely

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Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#111

Post by marknutter »

dewitt wrote: post #36

Having worked in both environments before, one thing that I observed is that working remotely can indeed be highly productive, but it's very difficult, perhaps even impossible, to do it successfully if only a few employees are working remotely. Otherwise what happens is that the people who can see each other face to face and in the hallway will of course do it, leaving the odd remote person out of many conversations.…

In my experience, "hallway discussions" can be equally as unproductive as they are productive. The benefit is cancelled out by the detriment.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#112

Post by moconnor »

I developed in a small team in a shared office for 6 years and have spent the last 6 working remotely. Half the team at Allinea are remote now - we find it easier to hire and retain great talent.

I haven't seen any evidence in our commit or bug history to suggest we were more or less productive when all of our developers were in the same room.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#113

Post by pc86 »

jaggederest wrote: post #101
pc86 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most importantly, not every project (nor startup, nor business) needs "the very best" engineers. Not every startup is changing the world, and even among the ones that are I'm sure you can pick out a few that aren't solving massively complex technical challenges that will be discussed in lecture halls for decades. The majority of good startups are just making money (sometimes not even that) until they get acquired. Se…

> Secondly, you're assuming that the best developers are going to be more introverted than the developer culture/profession as a whole, which I don't think is accurate. I don't think that's the assumption at all. My personal experience is, unless you happen to be located where one of the "best" developers is, they simply won't move. So you have your choice of them working remotely, being lucky, or not hiring them.

> Whenever I've seen this done, the very best employees leave.

I took this to mean (a) be relative to the office specifically, not the industry generally, and (b) that those very best will get sick of the required face time, quit, and get a better job (the insinuation being that that better job will likely be majority or entirely telecommuting. I may have misunderstood the intent as I commented pretty much immediately after reading it.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#114

Post by pknerd »

yock wrote: post #39
ZiadHilal wrote: post #5

I've been working remotely for 1 year and 3 months. The company I'm working for checks in once a week for about 20 minutes, other than that all communication is done through basecamp. I have to admit it's really hard for me and I just handed in my two weeks notice. I feel so isolated working from home and not being around other co-workers. I miss seing and interacting with other people. I'll be looking for a new job…

Why do you guys want to work from home? Isn't the isolation during the working hours hard on you? I work from home to help keep my family life a priority. That extra 2 hours not lost to a commute (and sometimes another hour for lunch) that is spent with my family has immeasurable value.

I endorse you too!

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#115

Post by jaggederest »

pc86 wrote: post #113
jaggederest wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Secondly, you're assuming that the best developers are going to be more introverted than the developer culture/profession as a whole, which I don't think is accurate. I don't think that's the assumption at all. My personal experience is, unless you happen to be located where one of the "best" developers is, they simply won't move. So you have your choice of them working remotely, being lucky, or not hiring them.

> Whenever I've seen this done, the very best employees leave. I took this to mean (a) be relative to the office specifically, not the industry generally, and (b) that those very best will get sick of the required face time, quit, and get a better job (the insinuation being that that better job will likely be majority or entirely telecommuting. I may have misunderstood the intent as I commented pretty much immediatel…

I believe the point was that people detest that working environment, and those with a choice will pull the ripcord, whereas people who can't get another job will stay. I've seen that happen.

I just generalized it to my experience, which is less about introvert/extravert and more about "bad conditions force good people out/prevent good people from being hired"

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#116

Post by meangeme »

A lot of this conversation seems to be focussed on an individual's productivity - you might think you are more productive remotely or actually may be more productive remotely, but what about the rest of the team? Looking at the bigger picture - you're getting tons of work done, but are you communicating well with your team/ is your team productive overall? And if you are more concerned with your individual well-being than you are with your team's well-being, it's worth noting that psychologically, one of the main factors of simply liking someone is proximity. Obviously you shouldn't be promoted because your boss likes you more, and obviously if you're the most value adding team member remotely you should get credit for that, but it's impossible to eliminate personal biases that stem from bonds created at the office.

There are obviously arguments for both sides but I know (from working with a remote supervisor for 6 months) that communicating in person is easier than communicating remotely.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#117

Post by stephencanon »

moneypenny wrote: post #96
varjag wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't deal with interruptions, maybe teamwork is not for you. I agree that it's distracting and irritating at times, but that's the nature of working with other people.

Absolutely agree - anyone wandering into one of these opinion articles/discussions would think that developers are a self-centred bunch of arseholes whose productivity is the most important thing in the entire universe, and isolation/concentration is critical. Even brain surgeons need to collaborate and operate - literally - in conjunction with other people.

I'm a software engineer married to brain surgeon. She will be the first to tell you that the actual procedures, while technical, are essentially arts and crafts; they require care, but not extreme mental focus.

However, when she's reviewing patient charts and imaging to prepare for a procedure, that requires absolute focus, and she will isolate herself completely for hours and not talk to anyone no matter what. So, there is a time for collaboration, but there is also a time for focusing on one task to the exclusion of everything else.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#118

Post by darkarmani »

moneypenny wrote: post #96
varjag wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't deal with interruptions, maybe teamwork is not for you. I agree that it's distracting and irritating at times, but that's the nature of working with other people.

Absolutely agree - anyone wandering into one of these opinion articles/discussions would think that developers are a self-centred bunch of arseholes whose productivity is the most important thing in the entire universe, and isolation/concentration is critical. Even brain surgeons need to collaborate and operate - literally - in conjunction with other people.

So when brain surgeons are operating, do their bosses pop in and ask them inane questions they could get answers to via email?

Developers don't need to continuously collaborate. Even brain surgeons spend a lot of time reading up on papers and research and interruptions do not help them.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#119

Post by pault »

agotterer wrote: post #37

I'm personally not a big fan of remote workers. Not because I don't think the tools are adequate or that I trust they are actually working. I think there's something special that can't be reproduced when a small team that's just starting out is physically together. I've been at a few startups and I can't count how many times a good idea or breakthrough came while we were out getting lunch, a beer or playing pool in t…

Is it really that difficult to type your question into skype or campfire group chat? We're all remote and we have daily 20 minute video conferences, and everyone is always logged into campfire. It's the most productive team I've ever worked with, and if someone isn't pulling their weight, you can tell from their git commits. Every argument I've heard against remote working boils down to that "something special" you mention, which is pretty darn vague. We have had a few new hires lose it and go AWOL, but those people wouldn't have been a good fit in a co-located team either.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#120

Post by Buzaga »

halfdeadcat wrote: post #46

I work 90% remotely. When I started this job, I came into the office everyday, a 40 minute commute. After about a month, my boss came up to me and said "Are you meeting someone here today? If not, what are you doing here?" I actually like to go into the office from time to time, but there isn't any point when no one is there. I spend a lot of time at various clients' offices, and I notice a correlation: the more oppo…

That must be an awesome boss!

On the Google Hangout thing, I sometimes find myself thinking(for the day I get a remote job again), why couldn't people be on a Hangout the whole day(In my case almost all of the dev team were full-remote)? When I did there was a techies chat always open on Skype and we used to chit-chat just like we would IRL, commenting on the Hacker-News-like-stuff, talk about semi-work-related stuff like the our most productive setup, crack jokes at each other and etc and there was definitely a "camaraderie vibe" even though we never met...

Now take a virtual environment like this, add more virtual face-to-face, Planetside 2 afterhours gaming sessions.. I don't see it lacking much, if anything, compared to a in-place tight-knit startup team

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