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A Short Rant About Working Remotely

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Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#181

Post by caseysoftware »

adrianhoward wrote: post #43

(lightly edited copy of my usual plea for evidence on this topic ;-) Pretty much all the evidence (rather than anecdote) I can find shows that co-located teams in a single team room environment are the most productive - all other things being equal. (And I'm saying this as somebody who spends a lot of their time working from home, and talking to other folk over Skype, etc. There are reasons for telecommuting - person…

If the alternative is not having a person at all isn't a competent remote person preferable?

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#182

Post by eddieroger »

uniclaude wrote: post #148
adrianhoward wrote: post #43

(lightly edited copy of my usual plea for evidence on this topic ;-) Pretty much all the evidence (rather than anecdote) I can find shows that co-located teams in a single team room environment are the most productive - all other things being equal. (And I'm saying this as somebody who spends a lot of their time working from home, and talking to other folk over Skype, etc. There are reasons for telecommuting - person…

Not saying that you are wrong, but none of the studies you quote was done in the last five years, and most of them are actually more than a decade old. The technologies we use to communicate evolve fast, and I would bet money on the fact that (probably because of mindset evolution and tooling) developers are now more efficient when working remotely than they were ten years ago. Moreover, as we are on HN, we are not n…

It's not every day you get to use the phrase "technologies we use to communicate evolve fast" and IRC in the same paragraph.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#183

Post by Irregardless »

jaggederest wrote: post #105
Irregardless wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From the employee point of view: Is your business so special I should sell my house, pull my kids out of school, and move so I can work for it? Do you really want to pay me the 50% pay differential I'd need in order to live in your higher-cost-of-living and lower-quality-of-life area? Is your (presumably internet-focused) company so incompetent it can't manage to use the same systems that we use in our day to day w…

> People make those choices knowing it limits their career options. Since when are companies expected to accomodate every lifestyle and location employees might desire? That's pretty self-centered. Companies make the choice not to hire remote workers knowing it limits their hiring options. Since when are workers expected to accomodate every workplace and management decision an employer might desire? That's pretty myo…

It has nothing to do with measuring productivity or making sure they're at their desk instead of watching TV. It's about creating a virtual presence in the office to reduce communication barriers. I don't see anything ridiculous about that -- several people on HN have mentioned that their company does it.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#184

Post by yb66 »

adrianhoward wrote: post #166
uniclaude wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not saying that you are wrong, but none of the studies you quote was done in the last five years, and most of them are actually more than a decade old. The technologies we use to communicate evolve fast, and I would bet money on the fact that (probably because of mindset evolution and tooling) developers are now more efficient when working remotely than they were ten years ago. Moreover, as we are on HN, we are not n…

Not saying that you are wrong, but none of the studies you quote was done in the last five years, and most of them are actually more than a decade old. Actually - several of them are. For example: "Another field study compared interruptions in paired, radically-collocated and traditional, cube-dwelling software development teams, and found that in the former interruptions were greater in number but shorter in duratio…

2006 is 7 seven years ago. 7 is 5 + 2 ;P

More seriously, I'd contend that 7 years is still far too long ago for research like this considering the tech we have available now.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#185

Post by adrianhoward »

caseysoftware wrote: post #180
adrianhoward wrote: post #43

(lightly edited copy of my usual plea for evidence on this topic ;-) Pretty much all the evidence (rather than anecdote) I can find shows that co-located teams in a single team room environment are the most productive - all other things being equal. (And I'm saying this as somebody who spends a lot of their time working from home, and talking to other folk over Skype, etc. There are reasons for telecommuting - person…

If the alternative is not having a person at all isn't a competent remote person preferable?

Yes it is.

I tried quite hard in my post to say that I thought there were valid reasons for doing remote work. Just that the balance of evidence that I can find is saying that co-located teams are more productive.

I'd appreciate it if you could let me know if I've expressed myself badly - and any suggestions on expressing myself better are would genuinely be appreciated.

As I said in my post - I telecommute a great deal myself. For pretty much exactly that reason you outline. I am really not trying to say that telecommuting is bad ;-)

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#186

Post by erichocean »

byoung2 wrote: post #91
emp_ wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my case, getting paid $110k/year in a country that pays $40k/year as the cap (and the currency is 2:1). I'm at it for six months and I have a huge family around me -- helps with the isolation. I will jump on a plane friday and work 3 weeks from the beach, and once I feel this remote thing has stabilized I will move to the countryside to about half the cost of living, so in one year going from the local national ma…

That is what appeals to me...the freedom to work from anywhere in the world, especially places with a lower cost of living. But even if I stayed local, it would be nice to just be free from a daily commute and regular hours. Most of the time I'm very productive at 5am-7am and 10pm-2am. My 3 month old daughter is most active between 9am and 5pm, so it would be nice to spend this part of the day with her. I'm still loo…

I've been doing remote work since college, and I travel all the time while working. That may be the best part of remote work. I even worked for a few weeks on a cruise ship. As long as there's an Internet connection, I can do my job.

As for the isolation thing, my family is usually at home, and I also go out a lot during the day.

I can imagine, if I were simply home alone for most of the day, that it'd get lonely and being able to go to the "office" to be around people would seem like a good trade.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#187

Post by adrianhoward »

pc86 wrote: post #67
adrianhoward wrote: post #43

(lightly edited copy of my usual plea for evidence on this topic ;-) Pretty much all the evidence (rather than anecdote) I can find shows that co-located teams in a single team room environment are the most productive - all other things being equal. (And I'm saying this as somebody who spends a lot of their time working from home, and talking to other folk over Skype, etc. There are reasons for telecommuting - person…

While I agree that it's not as cut-and-dry "driving to an office in an anachronism!" as most on HN would like it to be, you're not going to win any converts by quoting studies from 1972 and 1977.

The fact that there are studies ranging from the 1970s to the 2000s is actually one of the reasons I find this so interesting.

Communications technology keeps getting better - yet co-location still seems to carry a major advantage. That is interesting to me.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#188

Post by nvarsj »

adrianhoward wrote: post #43

(lightly edited copy of my usual plea for evidence on this topic ;-) Pretty much all the evidence (rather than anecdote) I can find shows that co-located teams in a single team room environment are the most productive - all other things being equal. (And I'm saying this as somebody who spends a lot of their time working from home, and talking to other folk over Skype, etc. There are reasons for telecommuting - person…

It's my experience that most people are simply terrible at communicating remotely. So this is what gets reflected in studies done on co-location.

After all, traditional interviews bias for those who are good at face-to-face communication. There is basically no filter for those who suck at remote communication.

It's exacerbated by the fact that it takes more than one to communicate. If you work remotely, it's not sufficient that you are capable of writing an intelligible email. Everyone you interact with also needs this ability, which tends to be rare in companies that are not purely remote workers.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#189

Post by adrianhoward »

hashtree wrote: post #71
adrianhoward wrote: post #43

(lightly edited copy of my usual plea for evidence on this topic ;-) Pretty much all the evidence (rather than anecdote) I can find shows that co-located teams in a single team room environment are the most productive - all other things being equal. (And I'm saying this as somebody who spends a lot of their time working from home, and talking to other folk over Skype, etc. There are reasons for telecommuting - person…

One thing this does not account for is that your potential developer pool increases by orders of magnitude with remoting. So, while a team might be more productive co-located, your ability to get much higher quality individuals working for you increases dramatically with remoting.

Agreed completely. I'm sorry - I thought I had expressed this in the original post when i said

"Pretty much all the evidence (rather than anecdote) I can find shows that co-located teams in a single team room environment are the most productive - all other things being equal."

If you can think of a way I can express that opinion better I'd appreciate it (This isn't sarcasm - it's a genuine request. Judging by many of the replies here I'm expressing myself badly ;-)

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#190

Post by marknutter »

Irregardless wrote: post #173
marknutter wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you even read the study, or are you just quoting it blindly? Your link provides a very brief summary but mentions no details about what tools and workflows remote workers were using. It also doesn't mention anything about the type of project that was being delivered and the various constraints that it had. Maybe you're just taking this stuff on faith.

The referenced study answers all of that: http://pages.cpsc.ucalgary.ca/~sillito/cpsc-601.23/readings/...

So reading through that study it appears as though that the remote test group ("Team Solo"):

- was actually working in cubicles in the same room and could overhear each others conversations.

- used email and a very basic text-based chatroom built in 2002 as their primary means of communication, as well as the telephone. Doesn't sound like a sophisticated setup to me.

- did not use any screen sharing software or VOIP software like google hangouts or skype and no mention was made about version control software, wikis, project management software ala Asana or Basecamp, or any other of the modern tools we developers use today.

They mention that "Team Pair" benefited greatly from pair programming, which any remote worker (including myself) can tell you is more than just possible using the tools of today, but perhaps even better than hovering over someone's shoulder in the instances where the software allows you to take control of the other person's screen.

From the study:

"On Team Solo, by contrast, intrusions were both functional and social in nature. Intrusions were longer and generally involved movement – team members physically visited another team member’s cubicle."

Again, their "remote" team is actually just a team in the same room but separated by cubicles. They state that the reason the interruptions were lengthier for Team Solo was because of the physical distance between the team members. In my experience, when team members are truly remote, the interruptions drop significantly in both length and frequency.

You have linked to a very old study that determined that working in an open-plan office is better than working in a cubicle-based office. You either didn't read the study, or are not understanding how this clearly does not apply to truly remote workers and the topic at hand.

The tools people have today to collaborate remotely are much better than they were in 2002, and getting better every year. Unless you can point to a recent study that actually compares truly remote workers using modern tools to co-located employees I'm going to go ahead and say that the evidence is weak at best.

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