171–180 of 399 posts
What is a strong sign of conviction? Putting your money behind it. Which is exactly what is not happening here - not only keeping, but being open to increasing the remote working force. So is Sam Altman telling us that... OpenAI is not doing innovative work anymore? Or not valuing collaboration highly?
I read it as this guy failed to build a distributed team that would meet his expectations and now extrapolates it to the entire industry. I have heard similar conclusions from a founder who invested a lot of money in a big fancy office in a great location only to discover that half of the team prefers full remote. The team was ready to work this way, the founder was not.
Broadly speaking, this is the entire RTO vs. RW debate. Over-extrapolation mixed with religious zeal. That there are multiple optima is anathema in this context.
- RTO Bosses telling others it’s time to return to the office or news articles about their opinion.
- RW Individuals in the comments saying that they are remote and it’s actually working great, these bosses can go to hell
I work on a team that’s split, with some people choosing to go to the office once or twice a week. For our team it seems to be working very well, but as a fully remote worker, I’m firmly in category 2.
Open source development has been running on remote work forever and it’s doing great.
The recent article about OpenAI and Google having their lunch eaten by a bunch of remote hobbyist show how this thinking is flawed.
Meet/Zoom/Mmhmm whatever; they aren't good enough for random collections of people to just like, collaborate or whatever, as if they were in the same room.
However, these tools are way beyond good enough for some collections of people to perform at a far higher level then they could if they had to waste the time required to colocate.
I think that if your team can't work effectively from different locations and across different time zones, then... you might still be able to do some shit and ship some product and make some money! And that's awesome!
But, for most forms of software engineering, that's probably an indicator that you aren't a top tier/world class/very good team. Because the best teams can do that, even at industry-leading companies like Apple where they try to pretend that they don't let people do that.
And the evidence is most of the great software that shipped 2020-2022.
[1]: I mean, he says a lot of other really weird shit, like https://twitter.com/Grady_Booch/status/1654351664319709185?s...
I came to this thread ready to say that this guy is a moron (and I'm still withholding judgement on that[1]) but there is a fundamental truth here: you have to be good at the tooling. Meet/Zoom/Mmhmm whatever; they aren't good enough for random collections of people to just like, collaborate or whatever, as if they were in the same room. However, these tools are way beyond good enough for some collections of people t…
I assume he’s got either direct or indirect links to commercial realestate; as an owner or investor or something else. It makes literally 0 business sense to be forking out anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand per employee per month to give them a space to work, when that can just be avoided. The amount of cost and overheads involved; from insurance to upkeep to rent to OHS - a work space is probably the nex…
I agree, but shouldn't we expect to see some 100% remote businesses eat the lunch of the old dinosaurs in their highrises? I would think that would be the best proof.
Almost everybody went remote 3 years ago (though some were already), and now the dinosaurs (but maybe also lots of imitate-the-big-guys companies, too?) are walking it back.
So I think it will take more time to be able to differentiate those results.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point of the article is that for team work with unclearity you are more creative by working in a physical space together. If your work can be done in isolation and doesn't require a team to deal with any uncertainty, then by all means work fully remote. However, if your work is about innovation and collaboration, then it's going to be more effective to spend time together. I think it's telling that you talk about…
> However, if your work is about innovation and collaboration, Please, I've worked on plenty of successful new projects with a distributed team. This in-person bias is largely for people who don't know how to communicate effectively.
I came to this thread ready to say that this guy is a moron (and I'm still withholding judgement on that[1]) but there is a fundamental truth here: you have to be good at the tooling. Meet/Zoom/Mmhmm whatever; they aren't good enough for random collections of people to just like, collaborate or whatever, as if they were in the same room. However, these tools are way beyond good enough for some collections of people t…
[1] is quoting a Twitter account that is quoting a parody Twitter account. I don't believe that is a thing he actually tweeted or said.
Sam Altman's real twitter is: @sama
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or… Just have optional office hours, Slack huddles and mob sessions every few days. Some of my engineers… - have a open huddle for a few hours a day where anyone can drop into their project while they work - others make use of our scheduled themed mob sessions (ie. Maintenance Mondays, deployment Thursdays). have a problem, idea or just want to hangout then come by? - ICs & seniors are required to host at least a wee…
> - ICs & seniors are required to host at least a weekly office hour to assist juniors or teach something of their choice. When I was a junior engineer working in-person, I was learning from senior engineers multiple times a day, not just once a week.
I don’t get that stance of creative work needing to happen in person. Seems like a CEO having a bias for a specific type of work style. Open source development has been running on remote work forever and it’s doing great. The recent article about OpenAI and Google having their lunch eaten by a bunch of remote hobbyist show how this thinking is flawed.
One bias is that most open source projects are people solving their own problems. They have a deep understanding of the issues at hand and the developers working on a product are also the one using it. This is also why the open source community produces a lot of developers oriented tools. It is also why a lot of remote companies are working themselves in for the tech sector.
Compare that with a company that produces software for other industries. The developers working on a product are not the one ultimately using it. One of their main challenges is to ensure that the problems/goals faced by the users are ultimately properly understood by the product teams and developers. This is far more complex and requires far more communication the further away the dev is from being an expert in the target field.