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A Short Rant About Working Remotely

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Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#71

Post by hashtree »

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.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#72

Post by mlwarren »

hkarthik wrote: post #47
Irregardless wrote: post #33

Who are you to say they don't understand their own business process and culture well enough to determine that remote employees aren't a fit for them? I've worked with several remote team members, and it's always been frustrating. Why aren't you answering your phone? Why haven't you responded to that email I sent you 5 minutes ago? Are you even at your computer right now? Hello??? Communication is extremely important…

> If I need to ask a teammate a question, I turn my head slightly to the left and ask them. They respond immediately. And then they stand the chance of losing anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour of productivity thanks to your interruption. Part of the reason remote work appeals to so many of us is because we don't deal well with the constant stream of interruptions that occur in many office environments. I don't beli…

My main drivers for working remotely are what you just described and eliminating commuting time. I find I'm much more productive and happy without those inconveniences in my life.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#73

Post by pc86 »

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…

Most importantly, not every project (nor startup, nor business) needs "the very best" engineers. Not every startup is changing the world, and even among the ones that are I'm sure you can pick out a few that aren't solving massively complex technical challenges that will be discussed in lecture halls for decades. The majority of good startups are just making money (sometimes not even that) until they get acquired.

Secondly, you're assuming that the best developers are going to be more introverted than the developer culture/profession as a whole, which I don't think is accurate.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#74

Post by lifeisstillgood »

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.

I think its a measure of the paucity of Software Engineering as a discipline that a intelligent and motivated person as the parent, is unable to find any research later than the 1970's

(It seems to me that most software research stopped as the PC revolution took off)

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#75

Post by rrhyne »

famousactress wrote: post #19

The irony I keep seeing is that at a small startup, everyone's output is severely visible.. regardless of where you're at. I was the first technical hire at the startup I'm with now (details in profile), working remotely from San Diego while the cofounders were based in SF. There's definitely never been any question about what's getting done and by whom. In a lot of ways I understand the challenge that being a larger…

Would you consider moving when the team gets larger? If you don't do you think you'll get 'left behind' as the local culture develops?

We're also in SD, but trying to build a team here and not finding as many local applicants as we'd like.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#76

Post by wogg »

Irregardless wrote: post #33

Who are you to say they don't understand their own business process and culture well enough to determine that remote employees aren't a fit for them? I've worked with several remote team members, and it's always been frustrating. Why aren't you answering your phone? Why haven't you responded to that email I sent you 5 minutes ago? Are you even at your computer right now? Hello??? Communication is extremely important…

That's exactly the kind of interruptive behavior that worsens productive. Communication should be batch, considered, and efficient.

The "Hello???" kind of attitude toward peer engineer communication is akin to a mobile phone notification or a blinking chat icon, all enemies of organized thought that leeds to maximum quality output in minimum time.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#77

Post by bluesmoon »

When we started LogNormal, my partner and I lived in the same geographic region. We both worked out of our own apartments, and met at Red Rock or a Thai/Vietnamese restaurant once a week or so. Then I moved to Cambridge, and we continued working remotely as if nothing had changed. We'd still meet up once a month to go over pen and paper stuff, but we still did all our work remotely from our own apartments.

In all, I think it worked out well. We build a useful product and pulled in several customers. Since we covered the East and West coasts of the US, we were closer (geographically as well as time-zone wise) to many of our customers than we would have been if we were both in the same office.

I don't think there was ever a time when we thought we'd be better off sitting in the same room.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#78

Post by hartzler »

In my experience, a group chat like XMPP MUC or IRC is essential for a team especially with remote developers to stay in the loop, feel connected, keep moral up, and get most of the benefits of the war room while still remaining async so you don't stress out your introverted developers.

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#79

Post by jaggederest »

Irregardless wrote: post #33

Who are you to say they don't understand their own business process and culture well enough to determine that remote employees aren't a fit for them? I've worked with several remote team members, and it's always been frustrating. Why aren't you answering your phone? Why haven't you responded to that email I sent you 5 minutes ago? Are you even at your computer right now? Hello??? Communication is extremely important…

> Why aren't you answering your phone? Why haven't you responded to that email I sent you 5 minutes ago? Are you even at your computer right now? Hello???

You're confusing people who are bad at communication with working remotely being bad.

Maybe you've never worked in an office environment with someone who has the same issues, but they're by no means alleviated merely by having their ass in a particular chair.

> Or are you just so special that you deserve all that extra effort?

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 work and life to communicate?

> I'd welcome a remote employee under one condition: They're required to be on a constant video call so their on-site team members can see and talk to them at any time.

Completely laughable. Do you have closed circuit TV recordings of everywhere in the office?

Re: A Short Rant About Working Remotely

#80

Post by lifeisstillgood »

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 resposibilites are lifted, a fostering of elitism compared to the outsiders)

However I cannot see a long term study on this (I may be wrong).

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 :-)

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