A Short Rant About Working Remotely • Hacker News Board

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#191

Post by zwass » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 5:56 PM UTC

erichocean wrote: post #178

crazygringo wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends entirely on the kind of work being done. If you've got a super-top engineer who can solve the hard problems, then they're probably working on something of their own, and can be off in their own room / at home / whatever. But in my experience, that kind of "hard", mentally intense, non-collaborative work makes up only a tiny, tiny fraction of commercial software development (although it contributes a great…

When they suddenly need a top-level engineer to solve a hard problem, they hire one who consults for three months, works remotely, and visits once or twice. You've essentially described every job I've had since college. That's exactly my experience of how companies actually work in practice.

How does one acquire the connections to be called in as this type of engineer?

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#192

Post by baalexander » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 6:00 PM UTC

I work in our office in Palo Alto and we have a small, 4 person office in Argentina. While I've worked with remote persons and teams in the past, a few changes to our office and their office has helped the working experience for both sides.

1) Both offices have a TV in the main office area with a web cam. We can see what they're up to, if someone is at their desk, etc. and they can do the same. This has been great for quick questions that are harder to explain over IRC and even for a simple waving good morning when I walk in.

2) We have a handful of "remote presence devices" in our office. This allows them or anyone else working remotely to attend meetings without having to ask someone to Skype in or conference call. Once again, it's the simple things like being able to wave or gesture to someone as they're rolling by. (Full disclosure, I work for a sister company of Suitable Technologies, who make the Beam).

3) Like others have mentioned, centralized, collaborative document control (Google Docs that are actually kept up and maintained), source control (GitHub with pull requests), and chat (IRC) help a lot.

4) A trip every 3 - 6 months from some of the Argentina team to the Palo Alto office. While technology has helped, there's still something to be said about being physically present.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#193

Post by eurodance » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 6:01 PM UTC

I get more work done at home. For me, when I am at work, I don't feel guilty to take a break and read a personal website, since I am "working" 100% of the time. However, when I am at home, I feel guilty when I go off-topic, because I know that I'm taking advantage of the situation.

Note: This may only be limited to "strict" corporate environments, like my current one.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#194

Post by el_cuadrado » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 6:03 PM UTC

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 happened 7 years ago. Time flies.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#195

Post by bdunbar » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 6:04 PM UTC

"...But I don't see a reason why, in 2013, given the tools we have, a developer has to be on-site at a desk every day, as the normal operating procedure..."

Tools change.

People don't.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#196

Post by krob » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 6:04 PM UTC

adrianhoward wrote: post #176

lifeguard wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the "war room" solution is often a symptom of generalized poor management. And bad project management drives away experienced staff. The open office plan is a nightmare for tech work IMO.

Then how do you explain the many happy teams I see working in exactly that environment, and how do you explain the research? (Part of the confusion may be that "war room" and "open plan" are not synonyms. The former only includes people actively working on the project. This is not the environment where you have the sales guy yapping on the phone.)

I've worked in the "war-room" style environment, it's okay as long as it's only for work, and not play, because when you have the "game-room" the "work-env" in the same place, productivity goes way way down. It's hard to work when you see your co-workers playing table tennis or foosball, especially at how loud foosball is or tennis is when they laugh etc. I'm not against these things, I just think that companies might consider spending a little more money on an office or atleast put their game-rooms in separate areas, and require a library policy in open-warroom offices.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#197

Post by hosh » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 6:08 PM UTC

I have on my LinkedIn profile, "100% Remote Required. Recruiters: do not contact unless your job opportunity is 100% Remote."

I still get recruiters who contact me. It isn't as much as it used to, but it is a fairly good way to screen whether a recruiter actually read my profile or not.

If there is a vocal and loud number of engineers who demand 100% remote work, then (eventually) it will get through to recruiters.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#198

Post by chaz » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 6:11 PM UTC

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.…

This is a huge factor. When most people are in the office, the means of communication becomes different, in tons of little ways.

For example, brainstorming sessions end with scribbles on whiteboards, and a fleet of Post-Its that say "Do Not Erase!" It's perfectly adequate documentation because the same team comes in the following afternoon and keeps going. But the one or two people that work remotely are never going to see it. And no matter how much Skype you do, it's just not the same as being in the room as it happens.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#199

Post by mcantelon » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 6:12 PM UTC

What we do at our company is we work together at the office a few days a week and spend a couple days working remotely. We keep up communication and get to have our meetings on office days and can tackle problems requiring undisturbed concentration on our remote days.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#200

Post by adrianhoward » Thu, Jan 31, 2013, 6:12 PM UTC

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #80

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…

Is it churlish to suggest that the most clear counter-example to "all in same room" is http://git.kernel.org/ However with a cursory glance over the references, they seem heavily biased towards a "crunch time, in a war-room" scenario. This can lead to large productivity gains for reasons unconnected with physical location (Clear short term goals, only the best get invited into the war-room, daily distractions and res…

"Is it churlish to suggest that the most clear counter-example to "all in same room" is http://git.kernel.org/ "

Not churlish - maybe misguided ;-) I'm really not trying to suggest that distributed work is bad / evil / fails. Just that - all things being equal - colocated teams win. That there is a substantial body of evidence that not being colocated carries a substantial productivity hit.

My "gut feeling" is that regular funded sprint meetings plus remote working is an area of research that may well yield best long term trends. But wheres the proof :-)

Indeed! It's the complete absence of "distributed teams do X and Y better" research that I find fascinating. Unless it's hiding in a corner that I've not been able to find.