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Programmers are most likely to work from home

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Re: Programmers are most likely to work from home

#151

Post by kasey_junk »

eddieh wrote: post #12

I like working from my office. I don't understand people that like working from home. Possible confounding variable: I live exactly two blocks from my office and don't have to commute. Perhaps, in actuality, people don't like to commute?

Ding ding ding. Got it in 1. My commute is actually pleasant (nice days I bike 50 minutes each way, bad days I train 35 minutes each way) but I'll still trade that time for other things a lot of the time.

If I had to drive to work I'd be even more into WFH.

Re: Programmers are most likely to work from home

#152

Post by return0 »

NumberSix wrote: post #112

The article does not discuss the impact of the open office movement. I've worked from home, in actual offices, in cubicles both cramped and spacious, and open offices. It can be quite difficult to focus at home due to various distractions, especially if you do not have a separate room or area for work. It is difficult to separate work and non-work with a home office. There are a variety of communications issues with…

I think working from home is superior (for tech/programming work). In terms of work, it's the best way to not only avoid distractions, but also lay out your time in a way that is conducive to completing a project in the way you intended, and to let your ideas be fully implemented. This means projects finish sooner, much sooner than in a 9-5 environment. I believe that, when you know that you cannot escape the office until 5, that introduces some intellectual laziness and willingness to just kill or dilate time. The office does offer some perks, but they are not related to work itself, they are all about socializing / banter / feeling of being part of a team. Working from home does mean that home becomes workplace , and vice versa, but that is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as work gets done faster. People used to work mostly from home until the industrial era.

Personally, I have gotten a second job in an office for the 'office experience', yet i often do even this work at home, because i work faster there.

I think some "work from home" problems are problems of perception. It's not very well accepted to say that you work from home yet[1], making you feel like the job is somehow inferior. Also, the location of your home matters, if you live in a mixed commercial/residential place, it doesn't feel wrong to be at home and work all morning.

Discipline can be an issue until you establish a work routine. Much like driving to the office primes you to get into work mode, a morning walk to the local bakery can prime you to begin working at home.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW3lhfVpLL4

Re: Programmers are most likely to work from home

#153

Post by SomeStupidPoint »

qandb wrote: post #84
SomeStupidPoint wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Peer mentoring is part of your job in any field. It's not a secret that your better people are supposed to help train other employees. Senior people train junior people, people with expertise in a domain share it, etc. Some fields even make this formal at the early levels, with apprenticeships, but I've worked in a number of fields and never had this not be the expectation. It's part of why you (should) get paid more…

> Peer mentoring is part of your job in any field. All morality in a corporate setting is fake by design. Everybody simply maximizes their own bottom line, and if you don't too, you are an idiot. Training your own competition is simply not a way to maximize your revenue.

I disagree on three levels:

1) I don't think the premise is true, that everyone maximizes their bottom line figure.

2) Prisoner dilemma logic is suboptimal in the iterated prisoner's dilemma. Alliances are a thing in ongoing relationships.

3) Even if I were trying to maximize my individual value, training would still benefit me. Programmers with strong mentoring and management skills are more valuable to the corporations than programmers with just technical skills. Mentoring increases my value as a force multiplier faster than it increases any individual mentee's value.

Re: Programmers are most likely to work from home

#154

Post by apathy »

eweise wrote: post #136
NumberSix wrote: post #112

The article does not discuss the impact of the open office movement. I've worked from home, in actual offices, in cubicles both cramped and spacious, and open offices. It can be quite difficult to focus at home due to various distractions, especially if you do not have a separate room or area for work. It is difficult to separate work and non-work with a home office. There are a variety of communications issues with…

Unfortunately, having your own office is costly plus it doesn't satisfy the boss's need to see a large group of people actively doing his/her bidding.

perhaps you're working for the wrong boss. Every effective boss I've ever worked for wanted to see two things:

1) revenue 2) results

Those who got distracted by other crap tended not to be as successful by objective metrics. Just my experience though

Re: Programmers are most likely to work from home

#155

Post by return0 »

humbleMouse wrote: post #15

There is a dirty secret that nobody talks about and the real reason that companies want programmers in the office. Companies want their top performers in the office so they can serve as trainers/mentors/teachers to the new college kids and the incompetent older people they hire. I think this is the real reason companies crack down on working from home. It's infuriating as a top performer - I just want to get my assig…

Some people like to learn by themselves, some others are careful to only ask the necessary questions, and some others think it's part of your job to teach them. That's a common situation in an office, though i m not sure its the real reason why someone would not offer you work-from-home arrangement. I do understand how annoying it must be for a contractor though.

Re: Programmers are most likely to work from home

#156

Post by watwut »

freehunter wrote: post #100
grardb wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment doesn't read like it was written by a "humbleMouse" :) I don't think this is a healthy attitude to have towards less experienced developers. Literally every experienced developer was once inexperienced, and I think for the vast majority of people, it's hard to become a senior or even intermediate developer without some mentorship along the way. I believe this is especially true for aspects outside of wri…

I completely understand where he's coming from in writing that. Sometimes it feels like my entire day is spent training new hires, repeating the same things over and over again. In jobs where being an expert is a requirement, it's very frustrating to see the company hire employees fresh out of college and expect the senior employees to feed them 10 years of experience in a matter of weeks. And then either they take t…

The root problem here seems to be organization and task assignment. Unless the project is exceptionally complicated or badly designed, it should be easy or at least possible to separate easy tasks for less experienced people.

Re: Programmers are most likely to work from home

#157

Post by return0 »

skizm wrote: post #124
eddieh wrote: post #12

I like working from my office. I don't understand people that like working from home. Possible confounding variable: I live exactly two blocks from my office and don't have to commute. Perhaps, in actuality, people don't like to commute?

I will name some the reasons I like to work from home and none involve a commute: - I'm in an open office situation. - Standing desk is awkward when everyone else is sitting. - If I make a loud noise eating or sneezing or something like 5 people stare at me trying to figure out what is going on. - I can't have twitch or a baseball game on in the background because nosey co-workers will walk by, see my screen, and com…

> not having me in person forces people to think about and write down exactly what they want to say or ask

This alone is a major productivity booster

Re: Programmers are most likely to work from home

#158

Post by apathy »

grardb wrote: post #139
droopyEyelids wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Healthy for who? The way you're using it, healthy is a weasel word. If someone is paid to literally write code, it's perfectly healthy for them to want to only write code and not provide free labor in a different domain. I'd go so far as to say we currently have an unhealthy culture if we're expected to provide free training to everyone. Job training used to be, and still should, be an explicit responsibility of the…

>Healthy for who? The way you're using it, healthy is a weasel word. "Healthy" is not a weasel word, but one half of a common term that people use[0]. >If someone is paid to literally write code, it's perfectly healthy for them to want to only write code and not provide free labor in a different domain. It doesn't sound like humbleMouse is getting paid to literally write code. It sounds like they're getting paid to w…

> It doesn't sound like humbleMouse is getting paid to literally write code. It sounds like they're getting paid to write code and mentor junior developers.

As a contractor? I have to say I find this doubtful. Without seeing the contract, neither of us can say for sure, but I'd be surprised if it specified mentoring.

Re: Programmers are most likely to work from home

#159

Post by shrimp_emoji »

onion2k wrote: post #67
humbleMouse wrote: post #15

There is a dirty secret that nobody talks about and the real reason that companies want programmers in the office. Companies want their top performers in the office so they can serve as trainers/mentors/teachers to the new college kids and the incompetent older people they hire. I think this is the real reason companies crack down on working from home. It's infuriating as a top performer - I just want to get my assig…

I don't want to teach all your shitty college grads how to actually code. Only a very inexperienced developer would actually want to work with people who aren't as good as they are. I genuinely want to be the worst person on my team. I'm pretty good, so that would mean we could do some amazing stuff.

>Only a very inexperienced developer would actually want to work with people who aren't as good as they are.

Not true.

>I genuinely want to be the worst person on my team.

I feel the same way, but only because I've adjusted to the role and enjoy relentlessly leeching knowledge from the top performers.

Re: Programmers are most likely to work from home

#160

Post by ergothus »

NumberSix wrote: post #112

The article does not discuss the impact of the open office movement. I've worked from home, in actual offices, in cubicles both cramped and spacious, and open offices. It can be quite difficult to focus at home due to various distractions, especially if you do not have a separate room or area for work. It is difficult to separate work and non-work with a home office. There are a variety of communications issues with…

I think what people miss most often is that this is NOT a "one solution fits all" kind of thing. For some office cultures one is better, and for some people one is better.

I myself am very easily distracted, and I'm far more productive at home, where I have a private office set to my preferences, including sound (this sounds ridiculous, but my ear cartilage is sensitive, so I can't wear earbuds and over-the-ear headphones are only comfortable for an hour or two), light (most offices I've been in have had times of day when the sun causes painful glare), and lack of people moving around distracting me. And that doesn't even cover whether I have to listen to the conversations of dozens of people around me.

I don't like being loud and distracting to other people, so WHEN I talk to co-workers in the office, it's either in a meeting room, or in clipped, hushed questions. I have one teammate that has a rather booming voice and no apparent concern for who hears him - I just decide not to ask him questions.

Meanwhile, my current office has people in 3 states (2 neighboring time zones), so we have a culture of lots of business being conducted over slack or google hangouts. One of my coworkers and I have conducted a lot of business over slack...while sitting next to each other.

In talking with others, I've discovered that some of us (including me) PREFER to conduct business over written media -it gives us something to consult later, and requires that people learn to not play the pronoun game. Others, perhaps because they either haven't figured out the pronoun game, or they really hate it, prefer face-to-face, which I've always found to have a poor signal-to-noise ratio. (They'd almost certainly disagree - you yourself said that "communication is faster and easier, less prone to misunderstandings, and I believe that's true for you despite each point being invalid in my experience).

Every time I or others complain about open floor plans, someone (and it's usually just one or two) will talk about how nice it is to have face-to-face collaboration...and frankly, I just don't see that happening! In my last office, which was open floor plan but had no culture of resolving things online and our other locations were 12 hours offset, there was definitely more face-to-face collaboration - but we also had a lot more meetings (ugh), and IMNSHO very little got done, so I remain unconvinced that it actually is more efficient, I think it may just be more comfortable.

From all of these anecdotes I have assembled my vision that for some office cultures, meetings are better, and for some people, meetings are better, but theses are hardly absolutes, and my personal bias is that it's a war between comfort level and actual efficiency.

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