Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Programmers are most likely to work from home

qz.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 377 posts

Re: Programmers are most likely to work from home

#61

Post by arethuza »

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've recently swapped a short commute (15 min walk) 5 days a week for working from home 2 or 3 days a week with a 1 hour commute (5 min drive, 10 mins at station, 30 mins on train, 15 min walk).

At the moment after a couple of months I still rather enjoy the commute - helps that it is scenic (along coast and then across Forth Bridge into Edinburgh) and I can always get a seat.

Edit: Getting a house in the country, even relatively close to Edinburgh, that has decent Internet access speed was very difficult and quite stressful as you can't really know what speed you are going to get until after you move in.

Re: Programmers are most likely to work from home

#62

Post by gdulli »

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…

Maybe companies want their top performers in the office in order to force them to develop their social skills.

Re: Programmers are most likely to work from home

#63

Post by la6470 »

treehau5 wrote: post #56
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?

Perhaps is it because you actually have an office, with a door? I hate driving in sometimes because I know I am being forced to waste an hour of my life in traffic to sit in an open floor plan to be distracted for 8 hours and produce minimally quality work, only for me to have to go home and work some more to actually get the job done. "Well sounds like you should get a new job" people always retort -- nope sorry, th…

So true ... the new generation has thrown away the hard earned cube spaces in favor of open office spaces which are a big distraction.

Re: Programmers are most likely to work from home

#64

Post by rguzman »

humbleMouse wrote: post #34
School-Cotton wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you really are a top performer, a big part of the justification for your high pay is because you multiply your impact by mentoring more junior employees.

I respectfully disagree. The justification for my high pay is because I integrate complex systems with shitty vendor web service api's and automate the transmission of sensitive data. The work I am doing has a huge impact on profitability of my company - much more than the joke of a 6 figure rate they are paying to keep me around. I avoid being a fulltime employee because I don't want to have some unwritten commitmen…

> The justification for my high pay is because I integrate complex systems with shitty vendor web service api's and automate the transmission of sensitive data. The work I am doing has a huge impact on profitability of my company - much more than the joke of a 6 figure rate they are paying to keep me around.

be that as it may, mentoring, helping others, and setting examples are high-leverage. you may become 10x more valuable if you do your job while being effective at those.

these things are only at odds with your engineering work in that they take time, but a highly skilled professional knows how to manage their time to maximize impact.

they are also not at odds with working outside of the office -- there are many ways to communicate, you can be at the office only some times, etc.

Re: Programmers are most likely to work from home

#65

Post by jt2190 »

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…

In "The Mythical Man-Month", Fred Brooks writes about two concepts that I think are important considerations when deciding whether to leave the experienced programmer alone or train up the team:

* The communication overhead that adding more programmers adds. Training time can be thought of as a manifestation of this tradeoff. * The conceptual cohesiveness that comes from having one developer or a small team design a system, as opposed to a free-for-all design that can arise when a large team is unleashed on a program.

Whether or not to train teammates is (ideally) a development strategy, given the needs of the business.

Re: Programmers are most likely to work from home

#67

Post by onion2k »

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.

Re: Programmers are most likely to work from home

#68

Post by qandb »

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…

> 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.

It is not hard to avoid training your own competition. Three people have left in despair over the last two years trying to get me to train them. I just happen to be not particularly talkative when it is about the details of my work.

Re: Programmers are most likely to work from home

#69

Post by douche »

ensiferum wrote: post #39

I think I'd be utterly depressed if I worked from home. Every day without any human interaction. Plus I really love the clear boundary between work and home. Wouldn't want to pollute my home with work.

> Every day without any human interaction

It's the best, I love it. Any human interaction you get is chosen, rather than imposed.

Re: Programmers are most likely to work from home

#70

Post by eddieh »

treehau5 wrote: post #56
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?

Perhaps is it because you actually have an office, with a door? I hate driving in sometimes because I know I am being forced to waste an hour of my life in traffic to sit in an open floor plan to be distracted for 8 hours and produce minimally quality work, only for me to have to go home and work some more to actually get the job done. "Well sounds like you should get a new job" people always retort -- nope sorry, th…

Nope semi-open floor plan office. A totally open floor plan would be annoying, but even when I worked in that kind of office, I still preferred to be at the office for work.
Post reply on HN