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A Short Rant About Working Remotely

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Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#291

Post by hendershot »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #63
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…

co-located teams in team-room like settings are much more productive Whenever I've seen this done, the very best employees leave. I am a firm believer that you can train yourself to hop in and out of a reasonable facsimile to the "zone" in much less than 20-30 minutes (I do it all the time)[1]; but the level of distraction of the warroom type environment massively favors your more extroverted engineers. My experience…

Sometimes solving the hard problem means jumping into a teamroom in front of a whiteboard and doing some serious brainstorming / design. That is the one thing that is very hard to do effectively over say skype. Often with remote developers this type of problem is solved by a single person without the input of others. Resulting in a less then optimal solution that only one person is knowledgeable in.

As far as really getting into the "zone". What I do is put my headphones on, pipe some white-noise in and in a minute or two it's no different then working by myself in my home office.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#292

Post by pault »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #145

"...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..." I am struggling with this same question, but from the other side. I help teams become more Agile, and I'm a startup junkie, so all I care about is performance here. I want to know what works best in terms of product quality and pivot ability. And guess what? So f…

> And guess what? So far it's co-located teams that kick ass over distributed teams.

Can you elaborate on this? Do you have any specific data points you can share?

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#293

Post by morgo »

I've worked from home for maybe 5 of the past 8 years. I personally hate it, but these were the better opportunities than what I could obtain locally.

I think what the original author has to see is that it's not about his strengths/weaknesses, he might be a very good remote employee. What also factors is the organizations 'warts' and whether or not they are able to make use of the employee effectively. I know at my last workplace so many decisions were made verbally on the spot in unscheduled meetings. It drives me crazy, but this is how many businesses operate.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#294

Post by KenE »

100 employees and contractants, 60 full-time, we've all been working remotely since we were only 3 people. It's hard to understand the debate... Some like it, some don't.

This SEEMS to be about which is better, but it's actually about trying to win a debate that can't be won (no one's going to change their minds).

At the end of the day, the founders/money men get final say. But so what?

The beauty of today's world is that you don't have to change anybody's mind, just choose a place that fits with how YOU want to work.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#295

Post by caseysoftware »

adrianhoward wrote: post #185
caseysoftware wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 d…

I telecommute full time and have for upwards of 8 years, so I'm wildly in favor of it.

My comment was not a poke at you, just the absurdity of not allowing it at all.. if the alternative is worse.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#296

Post by mbell »

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.

I've been in more or less the same situation, but for longer periods of time.

I'm curious given your experience. My biggest issue is that I don't know what a 'hard problem' is, I know what comes naturally to me, and what takes me some time to grok, but my experience is that those problems that come natural to me seem to be extremely obtuse to others.

So what types of problems do you solve that allow you to market yourself in such a manor?

I assume you have NDA type structures in place so I expect very general responses.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#297

Post by sneak »

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.…

> else everyone on the team needs change their otherwise perfectly normal and perfectly productive patterns of communication (leading to frustration with the artificial constraint).

I have yet to work in any place, remote or local, that doesn't have a large portion of the executive team (which is always a double-digit percentage of the total headcount of the company) on the road for various reasons a substantial chunk of the time.

I think companies that rely on this face-to-face dynamic (of which there are many) are doomed because the normal operation of their company will necessarily disconnect people on a regular basis. If you're not putting all the critical information somewhere reachable by everyone, all the time, you're shooting yourself in the foot, even if (in the usual case) everyone shows up to the same room every day.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#298

Post by nahname »

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…

This has been very true in my experience. Even having the team in the same room and the same space, but with individual cubicles can be insufficient. It is really hard for people, especially developers, to let go of their personal space. I know it was for me during the transition.

Working on many different teams in numerous cities over the last few years, the bullpen and shared space is one of the best ways to remove silos and promote organic conversation (kill meetings). Pairing instead of code reviews (or gated checkins), talking instead of team meetings, one on ones instead of political games and going out for coffee to think through a hard problem. With the right team, you show up at 9am and leave work at 10am (really it is 5pm, but it feels like 10am).

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#299

Post by ditojim »

hnwh wrote: post #216
ditojim wrote: post #14

we're 30 strong and 100% remote at dito. we don't have an office. it's pretty great. we live on google apps and other collaborative tools that make this an advantage, rather than a sacrifice. our employees are dedicated, work hard, and for the most part, love their jobs. we enjoy seeing each other in person at customer sites and during company events, but for the most part, we use things like uber conference and goog…

you hiring?

yup

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#300

Post by nahname »

SoftwareMaven wrote: post #63
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…

co-located teams in team-room like settings are much more productive Whenever I've seen this done, the very best employees leave. I am a firm believer that you can train yourself to hop in and out of a reasonable facsimile to the "zone" in much less than 20-30 minutes (I do it all the time)[1]; but the level of distraction of the warroom type environment massively favors your more extroverted engineers. My experience…

I've seen the opposite. When the team is that close it is difficult to hide your ineptitude. Team members that don't contribute get outed pretty quickly and tend to leave. This is generally viewed positively by those that are core contributors.
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