A Short Rant About Working Remotely

http://ericfarkas.com/posts/a-short-rant-about-working-remotely/

by speric • 13 years ago

528 326 13 years ago

BudVVeezer3• 13 years ago

I agree entirely -- I've been telecommuting for ten years now, and this is easily the #1 reason the recruitment process fails with me (with small companies as well as large).

nkg• 13 years ago

@BudVVeezer you mean, you are trying to get into a physical office and the recruiters won't consider your 10y of telecommuting as real experience ?

BudVVeezer3• 13 years ago

Nope, I mean recruiters contact me about positions but then find out that I cannot relocate and that ends the discussion because the company they are recruiting for disallows telecommuting for one reason or another.

ditojim3• 13 years ago

we love the fact that we can recruit folks from anywhere in the world and not disrupt their lives, since we are completely remote. it opens up a much wider talent pool and allows you to benefit from local economies as well, without actually being there.

BudVVeezer3• 13 years ago

Companies seem to forget (or not put much emphasis on) another aspect of having telecommuters: you don't get tunnel vision due to locality. I've worked for offices around the globe, and one thing that's always struck me about remote vs local is that remote can bring in a new way of thinking that you don't always get locally due to local cultural thought processes.

spartango• 13 years ago

I think it really depends on what you are doing and how your company culture has adapted to that.

For example, my company's work in the biomedical space often necessitates us being in partner and customer labs to best understand workflows. While it's possible for us to have some elements of our development be remote, we strongly prefer keeping things local; we believe it's important for everyone on the team to have exposure to the domain we work in. This is a cultural choice we've made, but it does make remote work tricky.

babuskov2• 13 years ago

It's all about trust. Can the employer trust the employee to work honestly and be dedicated to the company without having another job or occasional project on the side. When startup is small, every minute of focus counts.

Easiest way to make this work is to give developers enough equity, so they are motivated for startup to succeed more or equally as getting the paycheck. Eric's POV stands, but he's a co-founder, he has a significant stake in the success of the company.

speric4• 13 years ago

Your point is taken, but it seems to me that if my employer can't trust me to work remotely, then they shouldn't hire me at all. How can you employ (or work for) someone you can't trust?

babuskov2• 13 years ago

I'm speaking from my own bad experience with some remote employees. Accidentally learning from another founder that this guy ALSO works for them, was a really bad experience with remote workers for both of us.

He was covering up his lack of productivity for some months with "personal problems" on both sides, while not being focused in either company. If you have many employees, such behavior can go unnoticed for a long time.

OTOH, after this event, I tried giving significant equity to some other guys on the team, and their productivity went up. I guess some of them had side projects as well before that.

Maybe one can work around this by requiring full-time Skype camera access during work hours, or similar, but I hate to be "the police". I feel much better giving away some equity in exchange for loyalty.

drawkbox3• 13 years ago

True but many engineers and game devs I know spend lots of time on personal projects while at the office. So side projects are really just what engineers do whether they are at the office or at home. Also if the engineer is getting the other deliverables, does it matter they have an occasional side project? If it starts to distract from work produced it is much easier to see remotely but probably matters less remotely.

jes51992• 13 years ago

well, for me, right now, not only do I demand that I work from home, I require the latitude to have side projects. I tried committing 100% of my time to a company, and it sucked, and my productivity fell below 50%. So if I work on your project, you'll get up to 75% of my work-time. Or 100% for short bursts.

ZiadHilal2• 13 years ago

I've been working remotely for 1 year and 3 months. The company I'm working for checks in once a week for about 20 minutes, other than that all communication is done through basecamp. I have to admit it's really hard for me and I just handed in my two weeks notice. I feel so isolated working from home and not being around other co-workers. I miss seing and interacting with other people. I'll be looking for a new job in New York next month and I'm really excited.

Why do you guys want to work from home? Isn't the isolation during the working hours hard on you?

davidw• 13 years ago

> Why do you guys want to work from home? Isn't the isolation during the working hours hard on you?

I think the ideal thing would be an office about a block away from where I live. I am pretty happy being back in an office myself, but hate the commute.

ZiadHilal2• 13 years ago

In my case, the company I work for is based in California (I started out from there) but I now live in Connecticut. It's been over a year since I last saw them.

militiaman21• 13 years ago

Some people feel the opposite in regards to isolation. Introverts gather energy from spending time alone, and are actually drained by interactions with other people.

emp_• 13 years ago

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 market cap to almost 6 times that, working much less (more focus without the office interruptions and away from the 8 hours sitting=8 hours of work) will be attractive to some people like it is to me, I guess.

byoung2• 13 years ago

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 looking for a company that is open to remote work.

darkarmani6• 13 years ago

Where is this? Can i join you?

sopooneo• 13 years ago

I had a very similar experience. I know and respect people for whom remote work is a good fit. I'm glad they are able to take advantage of it, and support that option for them. But for me, after about a year of it, I was starting to have real emotional problems, which I've never really had before in my life. The isolation just took a tole on me. Perhaps I wasn't doing it right. Regardless, my new job, a twenty minute bike ride from my house, is, even two years in, still fantastic.

kurtfunai• 13 years ago

The isolation can definitely get to you. I've been working remotely for just over a year and a month now. I found it was becoming really difficult around the 6 month mark.

I was rarely leaving my apartment and working long hours because it was really difficult to "turn off", especially when I never really left the office. I fixed this by getting a dog, and honestly it was one of the best choices I've made. Working remotely, you're in a unique position to provide a great lifestyle for a pet. My dog gets a couple walks a day, and is rarely home alone.

Getting out of the house for one or two hours a day to get some sunshine and take a break is extremely healthy. Plus, there is a local dog park near by that is always filled with people.

Dog aside, it seems that you had much less conversation with other employees than I've got at my job. There is an unwritten rule to leave Skype on, just to hear about updates with the company. Just being able to easily reach out and send someone a message (not through email, basecamp, etc) is important to me.

yock• 13 years ago

Why do you guys want to work from home? Isn't the isolation during the working hours hard on you?

I work from home to help keep my family life a priority. That extra 2 hours not lost to a commute (and sometimes another hour for lunch) that is spent with my family has immeasurable value.

speric4• 13 years ago

I feel the same way. Well stated.

pknerd2• 13 years ago

I endorse you too!

andrewcooke• 13 years ago

i think it depends on personal taste. i'm lucky - i love working from home and, since i live in s america, that lets me telecommute (which means better pay). but i have always been a "loner". i don't mean i'm a socipath(!), i can get on just fine with people (and enjoy their company), but am happiest by myself. i also find it hugely more productive (although you do have to worry more about compensating for low bandwidth communication - but that gets easier with practice, and easier still when you're working with the same people for a while).

although once a week for 20m sounds a bit low. we do also have a daily email (progress/plans) and i will typically chat or email with co-workers or clients (as necessary) most days.

i'm sorry it didn't work for you - hope you find a more communal job! :)

gnaritas• 13 years ago

Isn't having to deal with coworkers and people and commuting and workings fixed times hard on you? You say isolation as if that's a bad thing, I say solitude because it's not.

nmcfarl• 13 years ago

I work remotely not by choice but rather because the people I wanted to start this company with don't live in Seattle, and I love Seattle. So remote it is - and for the last 7 years it's been worth it.

However the issolation is an issue - chat rooms, and Skype/Hangouts have always been a big part of how we hold the company together, and how we solve this issue. But for me coffee shops, are a big deal. I'm in one every day for an hour or 2, and that's where I get all my "water cooler talk" and random socalizing. Which on the whole works out quite well for me.

stephencanon4• 13 years ago

Because the location of my wife's job is completely non-negotiable (she's a surgical resident), whereas there are no actual impediments to me doing my job from anywhere with an internet connection.

As for the isolation during working hours, it makes me fantastically productive -- no junior coworkers sticking their head into my office to ask questions they could answer themselves if they thought about it for a couple minutes. If they can't figure it out after a couple minutes, they can email me or we chat and I'll help them sort it out. When it comes to feeling isolated, I start work early and take a long lunch break. I go over to the college and have lunch with faculty and grad students whose work I find interesting. I give a seminar talk every now and then. I don't really feel isolated at all.

jlongster• 13 years ago

Working from home is awesome if you're the type of person where lots of noise/movement disrupts your work (which is most programmers). It's very hard to continually be in focus in an office, while at home it's much easier to be in the flow. Not only is it more productive, but I've noticed over time that I've been able to flesh out ambitious ideas much more often and have personally grown because of it.

Think of all the office drama, personal conflicts from trivial things, etc. A lot of it is gone. There is still conflict, of course, but it's real conflict, not petty about desk space or something.

As other's say, you also waste no time on commuting.

You lose constant communication though, yes, so you have to balance this with tools. We use IRC and are constantly chatting, joking around, sending funny pictures, etc. so I don't feel isolated at all. We also meet up 3 or 4 times a year, and it's fun to travel.

It's not for everybody, but it's optimal for some.

randomdata2• 13 years ago

I've been working remotely for more than a decade now, and other than the occasional day or two now and again, I don't think I've been completely alone that entire time. Either someone is in and out of my place, or I go to somewhere where others are. I imagine that helps a lot with any feelings of isolation.

artyom3• 13 years ago

> Why do you guys want to work from home? Isn't the isolation during the working hours hard on you?

That depends on the person.

As you grow up, you may prefer to stay close to the ones you love, rather than to the ones you work with. Or you work better alone, with less noise and distractions. Or you realize that wasting 2 hours or more a day commuting for warming up a chair and using an Internet connection doesn't cut it. Or you may just like isolation.

Whatever reason, it's up to the person, and there are quite valid ones. You're doing no harm in leaving if remote working is not for you. In fact, you're doing the right thing.

jes51992• 13 years ago

> Isn't the isolation during the working hours hard on you?

I worked in an office for the last several years, and finally just being around people all day every day just got unbearable.

I've been working from home for the last few months, and having 8 hours completely alone every weekday is wonderful.

And my coworkers skype and chat so I get low-grade social interaction.

So I guess that's the answer: for some people being around others is more stressful than being alone.

emperorcezar2• 13 years ago

I've been talking to possible employers recently and I have a whole list of reasons not withstanding some family circumstances. Note that I'm talking about partial remote work, not full telecommute.

1. My commute is a drain, doing it five days a week drives me to be less motivated and productive 2. Working remotely has less distractions. 3. I know I work better when I'm not in the same place all the time, I have to mix it up or I end up staring at the wall. 4. A company that can't handle remote work has some major process issues, this is a red flag for me. 5. I have a kid, if I'm at the library or the coffee shop near home, I can come home to him at lunch. If you want to make me hate my job, ask me to spend all my time working in an office without seeing him. 6. If I can work remotely, I'm going to do more work. I'm going to keep working past 5 because I'm on a roll. If not, soon as five comes around, I'm gone.

An office is good, and having the option to come in is great. Forcing me to come in all five days a week says something bad about your culture and process. At least to me.

Nursie• 13 years ago

It works for some people and not for others.

Some people have experience with folks 'working from home' that are not 100% positive. Some folks (like me) have experiences working remotely that are not 100% positive.

And yes, casual, face to face communication is an important dynamic, even for tech workers.

paganel• 13 years ago

> And yes, casual, face to face communication is an important dynamic, even for tech workers.

I guess this is even more important for small companies of up to 20 people where there is no exact "you have to do exactly this and this and this and then you're clear"-thingie. I gained lots of insights regarding customers or how we should better build things in our tech dept. just by having daily casual water-cooler chit-chats with the couple of people we employ in the sales department. It's very, very difficult to emulate using modern technology.

dsr_• 13 years ago

It depends.

There are workflows that don't need you to be in the office. There are workflows that need you to be in the office almost every day. And there are workflows in between.

Some people can't effectively work from home. After a while, they stop doing what they're supposed to be doing. Some people have no problems with that.

Every job is different, every person is different, every company is different. No one answer will fit every situation.

npsimons• 13 years ago

100% agree. I'm in a similar position. I will not move from where I live; I like the friends and hobbies I have here way too much. There is absolutely no reason in this day and age why the type of work we do has to be done onsite. The hundreds (probably more) companies working this way are a testament to this fact, and there would probably be even more companies doing it this way if it wasn't for inertia, tradition or just plain old CYA ("but if we do something different and fail, the shareholders will hold me accountable!"). To add insult to injury, I am easily measurably more productive when telecommuting, and I'm sure I'm not alone.

Conjure up any wishy-washy "reasons" or anecdotes why you have to be onsite, but I've yet to see any facts to back up the position that onsite all the time is better.

drawkbox3• 13 years ago

That is the best part of a remote team, your deliverables are the main way you are reviewed. Superficial things are less emphasized such as if you went to lunch with the right group, were in 8-6 on the dot or work on the right team, have the right office for visibility etc etc. So many levels of extra unneeded layers of fluff in an office when it should be on product development.

I do think it is good to work on site periodically and sometimes at least a day or two per week if you can, not because it is needed to produce good work and products, but because it helps kick off, complete + integration days and earns some office points in the not so fun office game.

Many places that have offices and require 8-6, their engineers end up getting interrupted all day and then do all their work at night. So in that case telecommuting would be a huge benefit to the individual but maybe not as much the company since they get so much extra time out. Maybe it is more a salary thing, getting lots of work out of you. I'd argue it looks like more work is being done at an office but remote teams HAVE to get actual work done, there is no other metric to be measured on.

jstalin• 13 years ago

My IT shop tried working from home for a couple of years and the team fragmented, we lost a sense of teamwork, and we started wondering what each other are doing. A new CIO mandated working from the office and it has made for a much better culture and collaboration environment. There's definitely something you lose when you don't work in the office with your fellow team members.

cracell• 13 years ago

I think that depends on your process and team culture. My current team is remote and we aren't fragmented. For most remote teams all it seems to take is a daily status meeting and a chat room.

lifeisstillgood11• 13 years ago

I am beginning to feel even a daily status meeting is too much - I would much prefer to take on tasks of around a couple of days, and when done, demo.

Otherwise just skype and chat keeps one in touch

(I would be tempted to mandate a person to person chat for each team member to each)

obviouslygreen• 13 years ago

Agreed. I can definitely see how a team that's used to working in physical proximity would need time and good direction to get used to such a drastic change in methods and environment, but that's simply a matter of acclimation, not an indictment of remote engagement.

ditojim3• 13 years ago

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 google hangouts to meet and keep in sync. not to mention google chat.

hnwh2• 13 years ago

you hiring?

ditojim3• 13 years ago

yup

adamesque• 13 years ago

I think a big part of this boils down to communication style, and how comfortable people are communicating via the written word.

I've worked places where remote working was discouraged, and the reason given was along the usual lines of "well, it just works better to have everyone in the same room". But these were also places where I noticed an aversion to and an avoidance of writing in general.

bzudo• 13 years ago

Totally agree. Where I work, the loudest person wins and gets promoted. It's hard to be loud in email, not to mention, talk over a quiet persons ideas.

justjimmy• 13 years ago

When I get contacted for freelance/contract work, directly from the company/startup, they're always open for remote work when I inquire about it (and we communicate through mainly Basecamp)

I've had 0 remote work opportunities via recruiters.

famousactress2• 13 years ago

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 shop who's grown locally and is considering adding remote working might face much more than the "We're so small we have to be in the same room" argument.

The benefits of hiring remote workers early on are numerous. The fact that it leads to working more asynchronously, and makes you available to talent anywhere are worth the price of admission alone, IMHO.

[EDIT: oh also: we're hiring]

rrhyne• 13 years ago

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.

famousactress2• 13 years ago

We've considered moving, sure. For us though the cost of moving houses in this market, and my wife's local reputation-based business (wedding photographer) would make it an extremely expensive proposition in the short term. I think getting left behind is definitely a risk. So far I'm the only employee outside of the bay, but the culture has remained pretty asynchronous and conducive. If we continue to find talent local to SF I imagine there's a solid chance that'll change, if we happen upon more awesome remote talent it might not. I think it'll just depend on who we end up hiring over time.

Early on though, getting big enough to have that issue sounded like a very high class problem so we decided not to care much where people were and focus on getting things built.

[Aside: That's awesome that you're in SD! Drop me a line and I'd be happy to pass your details along to some of my SD developer friends]

zenocon• 13 years ago

Another "me too". The past 8 years, about 80% of the projects I have done have been remote. I get contacted often from recruiters, as well as HR in big name companies, and they nearly always indicate that telecommute is a deal-breaker, so that ends the discussion right there. I live where I live, and I'm not moving. Even if a client/company is local, a balance of local/remote is the right way to go. Dealing with traffic / commute, ergonomics, distraction-free are all important.

This is really pretty simple. If the local talent pool is exhausted, and you want good people, the smart move is to hire good, remote people. Bring them in periodically as needed.

lifeisstillgood11• 13 years ago

The really smart move is to have smart guys on retainer, ensuring they keep up to date on your code base and deployment practises. Then they can be pulled in periodically.

The really really smart move is to let them bid on some of the tasks - a sort of granular level development contracting.

gesman• 13 years ago

It all boils down to preferences of management who are calling the shots. Many of them are addicted to worthless, frequent meetings. Others just don't trust people. Third are control freaks.

I personally find a 50/50 balance between working on- and offsite. With 2 dogs and 2 kids and stay-at-home wife - working from home for me is a challenge.

But working on-site 15 minutes away from home is a perfect arrangement.

alexkus• 13 years ago

> I personally find a 50/50 balance between working on- and offsite. With 2 dogs and 2 kids and stay-at-home wife - working from home for me is a challenge. But working on-site 15 minutes away from home is a perfect arrangement.

That's my plan.

3 days working from home as daughter is at nursery and wife at work.

1 day working at the house of one of the other founders 20 minutes away, wife and daughter.

1 day looking after daughter whilst wife at work.

Weekend a mixture of family time and work (required since some events relating to startup occur at the weekend.)

maerek• 13 years ago

I started to telecommute three days each week (office is ~ 2hrs from where I live) right after Thanksgiving in 2012 and am still adjusting to the lifestyle.

The biggest takeaway - so far - is that successful telecommuting is determined just as much by the given task as the person. I serve as a mixture of business analyst/developer/test coordinator/project lead/cat herder for my project team. Some tasks are easy to coordinate via e-mail/IM, screen sharing and conference calls (like scheduling, status updates, walkthroughs of protoypes). Being able to power through functional and technical specifications is a tremendous bonus of working from home. When it comes to gathering requirements, acquiring feedback and dealing with politics, however, it's really much better (for me) to be in the office.

Nowyouknow• 13 years ago

I meet a lot of people that work in "tech" that describe their jobs similarly to the way you just did. Just as an aside, I think it's a disturbing trend. It's very easy to reach the point where you're being underpaid and stretched to your limits simultaneously.

lifeisstillgood11• 13 years ago

Almost always this is an inability to measure and monitor output.

Continuous Integration / Delivery is going to simply change all of that. If you cannot measure a writers output by reading their writing daily, you cant run the team anyhow

kldavis4• 13 years ago

I've been working remotely as a developer for a NYC startup for about 2.5 years now. There are a couple of other remote workers, with the rest of the team working in the office. My team has weekly meetings using webex, skype, etc and we mostly use IM and email for other communication. I make periodic visits to the NY office (I live in NC). I find that working remotely really agrees with my personality and work style. I am better able to focus for long periods and I don't really suffer from the social need for regular face to face contact with my co-workers. :) I also avoid a commute and I can spend time with my kids by just walking downstairs.

Irregardless9• 13 years ago

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 when working in teams, and you'd have to be pretty ignorant to claim remote workers are able to communicate as well as on-site workers. If I need to ask a teammate a question, I turn my head slightly to the left and ask them. They respond immediately. Sure, you can set up some sort of always-on video or teleconferencing, but do all new, growing companies have the know-how and resources to implement that for multiple remote workers? Or are you just so special that you deserve all that extra effort?

Small, early stage companies also seem to be focusing a lot on developing a company culture these days. Remote workers don't fit into that strategy very well, if at all.

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.

hkarthik• 13 years ago

> 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 believe this is the case for everyone. There are some individuals capable of working productively in a noisy environment all day while sleeping only 3-4 hours per day. But I think such individuals are rare, and you're doing yourself and your organization a disservice if you think all developers can work this way effectively.

mlwarren2• 13 years ago

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.

varjag2• 13 years ago

If you can't deal with interruptions, maybe teamwork is not for you.

I agree that it's distracting and irritating at times, but that's the nature of working with other people.

Irregardless9• 13 years ago

Oh, really? Because researchers disagree with you:

> 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 duration and more on-task (Chong and Siino 2006). Close proximity improves productivity in all cases." -- http://conway.isri.cmu.edu/~jdh/VRC-2008

From adrianhoward's post above.

stephencanon4• 13 years ago

Do you require that local employees be physically visible at all times? What if they need to take a walk to clear their head and focus on the problem at hand? What if they need to go to the bathroom?

Do you require that local employees drop the task they're working on to respond immediately to any question from anyone and completely lose focus on real work just to save you from a minute of reading some documentation?

Either this is an absurd double standard, or your office is a terrible environment for doing any sort of independent focused work (which may well be just fine, if your office doesn't do that sort of thing, but that's what most people who work remotely are going to be doing).

Irregardless9• 13 years ago

> Do you require that local employees be physically visible at all times? What if they need to take a walk to clear their head and focus on the problem at hand? What if they need to go to the bathroom?

Yes, remote and physical team members must have a mobile webcam that they bring with them on all breaks. The webcam must have RFID tags built into it, and their homes and frequent break locations must be equipped with RFID scanners to verify the location of the camera and prevent any funny business. No exceptions, ever.

Also, when people ask questions they never EVER preface them with "Let me know when you have a second".

Seriously, are you in third grade? Can you read something and not interpret it literally? The Greek knew reduction to absurdity was a shitty argument more than 2,000 years ago... how come you still haven't figured it out?

From adrianhoward above:

wogg• 13 years ago

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.

jaggederest4• 13 years ago

> 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?

Irregardless9• 13 years ago

> 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?

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.

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

Why would you need closed circuit TV for team members who are all sitting in an office together? Is there something difficult to understand about tying to create an on-site presence for a remote employee? There are companies that already do it.

markshead4• 13 years ago

>> 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?

I'm actually working with a distributed team that does this. Everyone is on a shared video conference eight hours a day. If you want to talk to someone you look at your video conference team to see if they are at their desk, on the phone, or talking to someone else. If two people need to talk without disturbing others, they mute their video conference mic and jump on Skype. You can still see them, get their attention, etc. but you don't have everyone talking over each other on the main video conference channel.

It actually works a lot better than I expected.

seany2• 13 years ago

> If I need to ask a teammate a question, I turn my head slightly to the left and ask them.

Avoiding this is the primary reason I like working at home. Getting distracted by things like that are a productivity killer for me.

Irregardless9• 13 years ago

Because team work is all about you, right? Quite a myopic view. How dare anyone try to increase the productivity of the team by stealing precious seconds from you!

Teams are more productive when they're in the same location. That is a fact. Your individual productivity may suffer at times, but the team will do better overall if you all work together in one location.

jdrenterprises• 13 years ago

Sorry, but I disagree with this:

"you'd have to be pretty ignorant to claim remote workers are able to communicate as well as on-site workers. If I need to ask a teammate a question, I turn my head slightly to the left and ask them. They respond immediately."

And here's why, Skype overcomes this problem... I've worked remotely in plenty of team situations where I've sent a chat message, and got instant response, consistently.

When I get a Skype message in these situations, the only reason I wouldn't respond is if I wasn't at my desk for the same reasons someone wouldn't be at their desk in a face-to-face office situation.

I think, as a business community, we just need to get more and more comfortable with remote working arrangements, and implement policies that could cover the various productivity issues (if you don't respond to a message within 'X'... this happens etc...).

I also think we have to remember there are productivity issues in the face-to-face office scenario as well, when people get together they tend to "talk around the water cooler," they tend to "go out for drinks, then call in sick the next day" etc... and other social-oriented productivity issues.

Not all productivity issues are bad either, if someone working remotely doesn't answer a chat message in 7 seconds, they might be improving themselves in some manner. ;)

darkarmani6• 13 years ago

> Why haven't you responded to that email I sent you 5 minutes ago?

WTF? What kind of person checks their email every 5 minutes and gets any work done?

> If I need to ask a teammate a question, I turn my head slightly to the left and ask them.

How is that a sign of productiveness? If anything this is an argument for working remotely. Read PG's essay on Maker's Schedule: http://www.paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

vsync• 13 years ago

> 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???

That sounds like an incredibly frustrating work environment.

I mean for them, not for you.

kenkam• 13 years ago

It's a simple case of the OP having an opinion -- remote working isn't necessarily the be all/end all solution neither is working on site.

I see why the OP would want to complain about how most companies out there don't encourage remoting but then again they are paying you to work.

dewitt• 13 years ago

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. So either the remote person won't be as in the loop as the others (bad for them, and bad for the overall team dynamic because someone needs to be treated specially), or else everyone on the team needs change their otherwise perfectly normal and perfectly productive patterns of communication (leading to frustration with the artificial constraint).

So there's nothing inherently wrong with remote workers, but it's probably better to go "all in" like some companies are starting to do, or try to avoid it at all, except in very special circumstances.

I bet many of the "99%" of companies the author was referring to that said "no" to his working remotely simply fell into the category where the majority of existing employees weren't remote, so they they chose not to introduce the new and arguably difficult to manage dynamic.

marknutter4• 13 years ago

In my experience, "hallway discussions" can be equally as unproductive as they are productive. The benefit is cancelled out by the detriment.

randomdata2• 13 years ago

Perhaps a better way to put it is that it is difficult to retrofit an office to allow a few telecommuters.

In my experience, I was working remotely in the company's early days. The in-office employes really started to grow after me. While I remain the only one that really works outside of the office, the culture of remote workers was instilled from nearly the beginning and don't really find any of the problems you suggest to be true in my case.

miloshadzic• 13 years ago

This parent post is what I came in to say. I'm a sole remote employee at my current company and I think I miss out on like 75% of discussions that go on.

codinghorror• 13 years ago

Great point, and I suspect you are right. Either remote is a deep part of your startup culture from day one, or don't even try.

chaz• 13 years ago

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.

dirkk02• 13 years ago

You are absolutely right IMHO.

Same problem (seems off-topic but i am not so sure it is) is for someone who doesn't smoke. I don't and I thought about starting (or at least getting myself chocolate cigarettes) to join the colleagues outside during the break to stay in the information loop.

sneak• 13 years ago

> 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.

agotterer2• 13 years ago

I'm personally not a big fan of remote workers. Not because I don't think the tools are adequate or that I trust they are actually working. I think there's something special that can't be reproduced when a small team that's just starting out is physically together. I've been at a few startups and I can't count how many times a good idea or breakthrough came while we were out getting lunch, a beer or playing pool in the office. Sure, your remote workers are a phone call away, but it's just not the same as being able to turn to the guy next to you and start talking or white boarding. It's definitely possible to make remote teams work and the tools have come a long way. By there's something special about working together in person.

pault3• 13 years ago

Is it really that difficult to type your question into skype or campfire group chat? We're all remote and we have daily 20 minute video conferences, and everyone is always logged into campfire. It's the most productive team I've ever worked with, and if someone isn't pulling their weight, you can tell from their git commits. Every argument I've heard against remote working boils down to that "something special" you mention, which is pretty darn vague. We have had a few new hires lose it and go AWOL, but those people wouldn't have been a good fit in a co-located team either.

agotterer2• 13 years ago

It's not the day to day interactions. Hell, most of the companies I work with that aren't remote chat over IM and group chat while we sit next to each other. As I said, I don't think it's a breakdown of the tools. It's not that people aren't productive either. It's the "other" stuff that doesn't fit into those categories. There's no technology to replace sitting around with a group of guys having a beer. While its vague, it's just a different experience that Skype or group chat. It's a different setting and a different mindset. The things that are special are the things that don't fit into the normal daily workflow. For many companies remote teams might make sense and even strive, this is just my personal opinion of what I think is missing. So much of it depends on the company, the culture and the people.

reefoctopus• 13 years ago

I currently work remotely, and I agree with you that there is something special about working physically together. There isn't a good remote substitute for standing in front of a white board with another coder. We tended to get excited when we thought of a cool new feature or solved a problem. I fed off of their excitement and they fed off mine.

MattRogish• 13 years ago

In general, I totally agree. Being able to hire the best person, anywhere, and allow them to work super-effectively is a strong moat. I share this opinion and hire accordingly.

I think the "these companies are wrong" posts, though, are not attempting to see it from the other side.

Try to put yourself in the shoes of these startups. In super-super early startups (e.g. pre-profitability or definitely pre-revenue) one of the goals (aside from staying afloat) is to build a sustainable culture (company etc.). It's very difficult to build a company culture AND product AND hit profitability AND 1,000 other things from scratch before going out of business.

When most are co-located and a few are distributed it just adds one more thing to the pile. I've done it before, so I know how hard it is, even when we were all 'on board' with it.

It's just harder; you need to start from scratch with the assumption that any one can be remote at any time, and so you build your tools/processes accordingly (if you have a physical kanban board then it'll be a real hard thing to support remote devs).

For just one non-top 1% of all software-developer persons? The overhead is probably not worth it if you have a ready talent pool in your city (especially if you now have nexus in another state, which is a very real risk as states are looking to increase their revenue. ugh).

For Joe Average, or Jane Above Average, these companies would prefer to hire a local person than remote. That makes sense to me.

As a big part of getting from 'startup' to 'sustainable business' involves managing risk. So, understand where most of these businesses are coming from. Having one or two remote people in a company full of on-site people is a risk (not from a technical perspective, but from a culture and focus one), and not one they're willing to take.

It's a trade-off, and one that can make sense if viewed in context and done for the right reasons (note: "We can't control them/see their work/trust them/need to see their faces/need them from 9-5/etc." are WRONG REASONS).

Ranting about a system problem isn't very useful; I'd like to see more posts about how to convert a primarily on-site team to support 'work anywhere'. What processes and tools need to change to do this?

speric4• 13 years ago

FWIW, I also agree with a lot of your points, Matt.

lifeisstillgood11• 13 years ago

I have done and tried to do that very thing.

1. Continuous Integration (and or delivery) This is the sine qua non. Everyone should be able to check out and build a complete working eco system and run all tests on their local laptop or Rackspace cluster you rent just for them

2. Really, get the continuous integration working. Stop now and do nothing else till you have. Tell the dev's remote working is only possible after one month of a CI process that is never broken itself (although build can break). Spurred on, everyone will suddenly get that CI build working.

3. The CEO must build a complete off site copy of the entire company on his remote laptop. Is it getting boring yet.

4. Agree on one place to store all documents, all meeting notes, everything. Do not split comms over IRC and Skype and gmail and ... It will mean no one can reliably contact anyone else because "oh I left you a message on Skype", "but I live on IRC"

5. Get different people to work together on different areas. Pair programming is not ideal IMO, but having Fred write the code for task A and Bob principlaly write the first tests, means they have to talk and decide a solution, and Bob keeps a friendly competitive eye on progess. Move these pairs around a bit.

6. Stop trying to get updates for management - its either working code or not.

7. talk to people a lot. Watch thier checkin velocity - it will speak volumes. Talk if it changes.

8. Assume, perhaps commit visibly, to people as being safe in their jobs for a long time (2 years minimum). This to me seems the biggest - people need to feel safe. Maybve thats just me

fudged71• 13 years ago

"4. Agree on one place to store all documents, all meeting notes, everything."

This can't be understated. When I ask the founder where the company logo is and they say "it's on one of the external harddrives sitting around the office somewhere", it's incredibly frustrating. The most well-oiled startup I worked for had a perfectly organized central-storage of digital resources, which greatly contributed to the smooth workings of the company.

artyom3• 13 years ago

Well, I mostly agree, but...

Remote working is ofter perceived as a dream job, which, in fact, isn't so much. Besides performing your regular tasks, you have to deal with all the self-support stuff yourself, including avoiding your work stepping over your personal life, which is even worse if you work at home. It takes some practice to do that properly, to say the least.

I think that's where most people trying to work remotely utterly fail. They think they should be able to work anytime, when others will likely want to talk to them in normal hours. They think they don't need an schedule, when the only thing that would allow them to do their work is at least a self-imposed one. You won't be able to cook your meal and do your work at the same time, trust me. Lastly, if you lack self-discipline, remote working isn't for you.

The other side of the coin is even sadder: it's not that companies are not "open" to remote work, is that they just don't know how to manage it. They usually play their silly manager techniques by the book, which are for on-site teams (and often don't work, anyway). They just can't handle remote work. A clever manager capable of that is more scarce and expensive, also.

Hiring/Recruiters have the worst of both worlds, plus one thing that drives me nuts: regular hiring doesn't work for science and technology. If your task is looking for a "Python developer" and you think that it involves training some snakes, you're out of your element. If you're not capable to understand at least the basics of what you're looking for, you won't find it, and even worse, you won't understand what "training snakes remotely" means.

In the end, combination of all those things hurt remote working for everyone: people who doesn't (and doesn't want to) know how to do it, companies that doesn't know how to handle it (and they try with their archaic means, failing completely), and the guys in the middle that just want to score another commission for a hire of dubious quality.

Sorry, it ended up being longer that the rant itself.

(Disclosure: I've been working remotely for a few years, and I wouldn't change that for anything else. I agree completely about the current status of "remote working", hiring and reasons for meetups. But please, if anyone thinks remote working is a dream job, go get a regular one and stop making things more difficult for the ones that actually want and know how to make it work)

adrianhoward24• 13 years ago

(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 - personal preference, getting access to people who cannot co-locate, etc. But for business productivity I'm not seeing much, if any, evidence).

I am not saying:

* That working alone in an office is bad / will cause projects to fail

* Telecommuting is bad (I do it - I like it)

* Telecommuting projects will fail (D'oh - of course not)

* You shouldn't telecommute (of course you should if you want to - but bear in mind that the business may have good reasons to disagree with that decision)

* That telecommuting makes you individually less productive (I'm personally unsure about this. I feel more productive when working by myself, but I know that personal perceptions of productivity can be false. Measuring personal vs team/company productivity becomes hard in anything less than the short term)

* That co-location is always the best solution (it isn't - other factors like team location and skills come into play)

What I am saying is that there is a lot of research showing that co-located teams in team-room like settings are much more productive. This runs counter to many developers preferences (mine too ;-) so it tends to get ignored.

So much more productive that solutions like 'Let's fly everybody to the same place and pay their room and board for a month' can be cost effective.

Here are some references to the research (If anybody has any research that contradicts this I'd love to hear about it. Especially if it talks about actual measured metrics of productivity - rather that self-reported 'I felt just as productive at home' ones.)

----

"It doesn't take much distance before a team feels the negative effects of distribution - the effectiveness of collaboration degrades rapidly with physical distance. People located closer in a building are more likely to collaborate (Kraut, Egido & Galegher 1990). Even at short distances, 3 feet vs. 20 feet, there is an effect (Sensenig & Reed 1972). A distance of 100 feet may be no better than several miles (Allen 1977). A field study of radically collocated software development teams,[...], showed significantly higher productivity and satisfaction than industry benchmarks and past projects within the firm (Teasley et al., 2002). 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 duration and more on-task (Chong and Siino 2006). Close proximity improves productivity in all cases." -- http://conway.isri.cmu.edu/~jdh/VRC-2008

"Based on the empirical evidence, we have constructed a model of how remote communication and knowledge management, cultural diversity and time differences negatively impact requirements gathering, negotiations and specifications. Findings reveal that aspects such as a lack of a common understanding of requirements, together with a reduced awareness of a working local context, a trust level and an ability to share work artefacts significantly challenge the effective collaboration of remote stakeholders in negotiating a set of requirements that satisfies geographically distributed customers" -- http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00766-003-0173-1

"Our results show that, compared to same-site work, cross-site work takes much longer and requires more people for work of equal size and complexity. We also report a strong relationship between delay in cross-site work and the degree to which remote colleagues are perceived to help out when workloads are heavy" -- http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?reload=true&#...

"Our findings reveal that: software developers have different types of coordination needs; coordination across sites is more challenging than within a site; team knowledge helps members coordinate, but more so when they are separated by geographic distance; and the effect of different types of team knowledge on coordination effectiveness differs between co-located and geographically dispersed collaborators." -- http://kraut.hciresearch.org/sites/kraut.hciresearch.org/fil...

"One key finding is that distributed work items appear to take about two and one-half times as long to complete as similar items where all the work is colocated" -- http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi?doc=doi/10.1109/...

"Our study of six teams that experienced radical collocation showed that in this setting they produced remarkable productivity improvements. Although the teammates were not looking forward to working in close quarters, over time they realized the benefits of having people at hand, both for coordination, problem solving and learning.Teams in these warrooms showed a doubling of productivity" -- http://possibility.com/Misc/p339-teasley.pdf

"Despite the positive impact of emerging communication technologies on scientific research, our results provide striking evidence for the role of physical proximity as a predictor of the impact of collaborations." -- http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...

"Groups with high common ground and loosely coupled work, with readiness both for collaboration and collaboration technology, have a chance at succeeding with remote work. Deviations from each of these create strain on the relationships among teammates and require changes in the work or processes of collaboration to succeed. Often they do not succeed because distance still matters" -- http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1463019

SoftwareMaven2• 13 years ago

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 has been the engineers I really want to keep, the ones who solve the really hard problems, are much less likely to be in that group.

In short, you may double your productivity for building that CRUD application, but when you have to solve that really hard problem, you may find you don't even have an engineer who is capable.

1. There is a level of concentration, the "real zone" below it that most development doesn't require. However, when it does, the interruptions become catastrophic.

pc863• 13 years ago

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.

ignostic2• 13 years ago

When it comes down to research vs. your subjective experience influenced by your personal preference and opinion, why would I put more stock in the later?

crazygringo4• 13 years ago

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 deal to the value). So it's not something to base general development practices around; it's the exception.

As you say -- "double your productivity for building that CRUD application" -- that's exactly the point, that's what most companies need, and why most companies aren't interest in remote working.

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.

adrianhoward24• 13 years ago

Whenever I've seen this done, the very best employees leave

I've seen that happen (which brings up the separate question of does it matter if the team is N x more productive because of co-location)

I've also seen them stay.

I've also seen them start out very sceptical and then grow to like it (I was in this category - assuming I'm vaguely competent of course ;-)

I've also seen folk I hugely respect advocate and instigate this sort of environment.

.... so which anecdotes win... dunno... hence call for any folks who have found research on the topic.

lifeguard3• 13 years ago

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.

snowwrestler• 13 years ago

I think the hardest part of product development is deciding which hard problem to solve. A team can often be better than a single very smart person at doing that, by virtue of bringing different perspectives to the conversation.

IMO the best working environment places the team in conversational proximity, but provides an option for individuals to find isolation (either in a dedicated room or at home) when it is necessary to solve a hard "real zone" type problem.

wpietri• 13 years ago

I think it depends on how you run the war room. The way I prefer it is no off-topic conversation, no distractions, inside voices, and a lot of respect for your co-workers. Also, you need to provide convenient nearby meeting and lounge spaces so that people who want to do those things can easily do it elsewhere. I think that's a great environment for focus.

It takes some commitment to make it happen. Without everybody committing to a low-distraction workplace, volume is definitely the default. But I think the benefits of a team environment make it worth the effort.

pasbesoin2• 13 years ago

The most productive team I worked with, and one of the most senior teams within an organization of several tens of thousands with a very significant development staff, was approximately 50% remote, depending upon how one measured and when one included some remote developers and operations people (also very senior) who were intermittently present depending upon project needs. (Some of the operations people were often on site but located far enough away that much communication was as if they were remote.)

And its trend was increasingly remote. Members sought this once and as they could, because it increased their effectiveness so much. (And lowered costs and total time demands -- e.g. commuting -- in positions that were already delivering far more than 40 hours / week.)

This team outperformed the other teams by a fair margin. And some of the truly remote members were among the most efficient and effective I've seen.

Throughout my career, I've seen very little evidence that physical presence -- colocation -- makes a significant positive contribution in software development. I am biased, I will say, in that I both prefer and need a quiet work environment. I feel validated or "justified" in this need, for me at least, in that I've consistently been one of the most effective employees in the organizations within which I've worked. (And I've had numerous people in all sorts of roles tell me this.)

I don't mind colocation, if quiet offices are provided. However, cubes or worse are largely de rigueur, these days, and even in such open space environments, I've witnessed not just the destructive nature of noise and interruptions, but depending upon the staff member enormous amounts of time wasted on "socializing" of various (very off-topic and sometimes inane) sorts. Doubly bad in that context, in that it invariably distracts surrounding employees who are trying to work. And it builds a conflict between not betraying teammates and one's own need to have them quiet down or take it elsewhere.

As for who tends to "thrive" in such environments? Those who "multi-task", juggling lots of things shallowly to the point of making many mistakes and oversights. Those who are constantly "interacting", meaning most often that they are interrupting someone else to solicit knowledge that they should have or be able to look up themselves. Those who use the concept of "team" to disperse and deflect individual responsibility.

Granted, I and the people I've described may be a minority. But in my observation and perhaps in staid corporate environments, those who benefit from colocation tend to be those who need to be herded and hand-held. Those who want and are really able to get shit down, don't mind face to face but are greatly frustrated with pointless and distracting face to face.

(As an example of this latter, we got many of our meetings down to 15 to 30 minutes, when they were necessary. People knew and held themselves responsible for knowing what was up, and the meeting could quickly focus on problem solving and setting a specific course.)

jamieb• 13 years ago

Introvert programmer here. I find the opposite to be true. In an office situation, I'm much less likely to intrude on someone I need to communicate with, and they are much less likely to intrude on me. In an open environment, I get to overhear conversations that then demand my input. Yes, on occasion, I have been interrupted while attempting to formulate a very complex solution in my head, and yes this was frustrating. However, the benefit of all those overheard misconceptions and subsequent explanations vastly outweighed them.

That is why I firmly believe that given any team, it is best to have them collocated in a large but private room.

However, we are not talking here about the optimal location for any given group of programmers. We are talking about finding an optimal group of programmers without having to exclude those outside a 20 mile radius of your geographical location.

mwetzler• 13 years ago

Your use of "the really hard problems" is revealing. Those of us who went to engineering school know exactly what you mean by that, because it's the way we describe the most challenging exam questions, projects, or open questions in the field. We can usually figure out those really hard problems if we put our minds to it.

But for most tech startups, I'm not sure "the really hard problems" are the technical ones, because we are good at technical problems. Perhaps the really hard problems are how to get early traction, how to build something people love, and how to make the business profitable. Some of those hard problems might be easier to solve as a face-to-face team.

hendershot• 13 years ago

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.

nahname3• 13 years ago

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.

pc863• 13 years ago

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.

lifeisstillgood11• 13 years ago

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)

adrianhoward24• 13 years ago

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.

hashtree2• 13 years ago

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.

JumpCrisscross• 13 years ago

It appears that the gains from team dynamics (packs) outweigh the average individual quality (lone wolves) for most tasks. The optimal solution in finance, at least, is having the bulk of work done with co-located teams with telecommuting being an option when recruiting niche geniuses for specific tasks.

adrianhoward24• 13 years ago

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 ;-)

zecho• 13 years ago

You potentially drive prices down, too, by exploiting cost of living outside your location.

There are plenty of good programmers living in relatively cheap places (Like the Midwest, for example). Pay someone in Minneapolis $10-15k less per year than what that same person would make in Palo Alto and that person could still end up above market for Minneapolis.

lifeisstillgood11• 13 years ago

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 :-)

adrianhoward24• 13 years ago

"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.

tedunangst• 13 years ago

Very few pieces of the kernel were actually developed by teams. One guy writes this subsystem, another writes a driver. The interactions between components are well established. Approximately 0% of the linux kernel consists of interdependent components simultaneously developed by different people.

grishas• 13 years ago

A lot has changed in the last few years-- with modern tools (Skype, Google Hangouts, IRC, GotoMeeting), it is possible to not only almost entirely replicate being co-located, but to even enhance productivity by spinning out ad-hoc co-located teams to solve individual problems.

Need to have a concentrated task force from 5 various departments? No problem, it's a click away-- no need to book a meeting room, take all your gear (disrupting your workspace) and try to collaborate away from your desk in a mutual location.

Currently I sit beside people working that I previously worked on the same project with, but have now slightly diverged from. Trying to come up with a perfectly co-located office plan wouldn't work, because some number of people couldn't help but be misplaced. Not to mention we'd have to do it every few days!

NateDad2• 13 years ago

This. There's free technology to solve most of the remote workers' problems.

corresation• 13 years ago

This really is the most important facet to this discussion. Virtually all arguments against remote work seem as if they come from the archaic past. If people being physically separated actually hurts communications, you are doing communications wrong.

Not to mention that most productivity studies are bunk.

The real reason many so many managers resist remote work is because, effectively, they want a fiefdom, and the exercise is often about empire building. An empire of a bunch of Google Talk connections isn't as impressive as a bunch of huddled seat warmers.

adrianhoward24• 13 years ago

The evidence from folk who study this seems to differ from this.

The world is full of anecdotes about how much better things are with the newer technologies - yet I can very little evidence that this is true. I know I'm really good at fooling myself about my own productivity. I don't imagine I'm unique there ;-)

And my personal anecdotal experiences over the years (including recent ones ;-) is that you can really ramp up productivity by getting everybody on a distributed team in one place. Even when everybody is normally skyping / IMing / whatever.

uniclaude2• 13 years ago

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 necessarily talking about average developers, but more about the ones that are used to Git, IRC, Trello, and other tools which make remote work more doable.

Startup environments are not average, and this must be why companies like Github and 37signals can be successful while having remote workers.

adrianhoward24• 13 years ago

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 duration and more on-task (Chong and Siino 2006)"

This is one of the things I find fascinating. You see the same kind of thing over thirty years as technology changes radically. This makes me think that there's something quite interesting happening in meat-space.

Startup environments are not average, and this must be why companies like Github and 37signals can be successful while having remote workers.

Just to repeat. I am not saying that you cannot be successful being distributed. There are lots of good and sane reasons to be distributed.

I'm saying that there is a bunch of evidence that being co-located is more effective.

eddieroger• 13 years ago

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

romaniv2• 13 years ago

1. How do you define group productivity? 2. I'm willing to bet that most of those studies looked at what happens when you take some "on-site" positions and simply hand them to remote team members. Why? Because that's what usually happens. Companies do not want to alter any processes, team structures or responsibilities to explicitly deal with remoteness. Naturally, if you pretend that someone from another state is sitting in the next cubicle, bad things will happen. Companies that embrace remoteness from the start (like GitHub) seem to be doing fine, precisely because they treat remoteness as an asses, not a minor concession someone had to make to workers.

adrianhoward24• 13 years ago

* I'm willing to bet that most of those studies looked at what happens when you take some "on-site" positions and simply hand them to remote team members.*

You'd lose that bet. There are a variety of different methodologies and areas studied.

Companies that embrace remoteness from the start (like GitHub) seem to be doing fine, precisely because they treat remoteness as an asses, not a minor concession someone had to make to workers.

Again - not trying to argue at all that people cannot be fantastically successful as a distributed team.

What I am saying is that every single piece of research I can find says that colocated teams are more effective. This is... interesting... to me.

caseysoftware2• 13 years ago

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

adrianhoward24• 13 years ago

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 ;-)

nvarsj• 13 years ago

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.

numbsafari5• 13 years ago

I've worked on two fully distributed teams, and I can assure that it is was a part of the interview process to determine how well the individual could communicate remotely.

If scheduling our call was difficult, or if you were hard to understand on the phone, or if there was excessive background noise, I'd hold that against a candidate. If your emails were not clear and intelligible, that counted as well.

People who communicate well remotely stick out like a sore thumb when you are interviewing for those types of roles and if you value it. If you are just looking for warm bodies, I can definitely see how it would be problematic.

adrianhoward24• 13 years ago

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.

That's a really nice point that I'd not considered before.

The problem is that, from what I've read, the productivity advantage that folk get isn't through the sort of good communication you get from writing effective emails. It's the more ambient communication you get from noticing your coworker has been staring at the screen without typing for a few minutes, or from hearing and correcting a mistake automatically.

hosh3• 13 years ago

Whether or not there are some measurable benefits to the company for telecommuting does not matter.

What matters is this:

(1) The software company needs your software skills more than you need the company.

(2) You decided and plan your life around telecommuting.

(3) So telecommuting is non-negotiable.

Non-telecommuters tend to be wary of remote workers, not because they are any more or less productive. There's an underlying fear and a need to control risk. A manager who is not used to this want to reassure himself that things are going smoothly. You address that, then things fall into place.

In other words, the managers, speaking for the company say they want more "productivity". What they really need is more control and reduction of risk. They feel a certain level of assurance when they can see people walking into the office on time, every day. It assures themselves of their own continued employment. Give the manager what he needs (the assurance), and this conflict goes away.

As for recruiters, at the end of the day, they are salespeople trying to close a commission. There are only a few exceptions where a recruiter acts more like an agent, rather than trading you like a commodity. Obviously, such people are worth keeping contact with.

adrianhoward24• 13 years ago

Whether or not there are some measurable benefits to the company for telecommuting does not matter.

I don't think that it's always this clear cut.

In other words, the managers, speaking for the company say they want more "productivity". What they really need is more control and reduction of risk. They feel a certain level of assurance when they can see people walking into the office on time, every day. It assures themselves of their own continued employment. Give the manager what he needs (the assurance), and this conflict goes away.

This isn't always true - or necessarily often true. Most managers I've deal with over the years are much more focussed on productivity than control. Some maybe think that control is the best route to productivity - but that's a different problem to solve.

For a start - everybody here who's building a startup. As soon as you get employee #1 - congratulations. You're a manager. Are you suddenly unconcerned about productivity ;-)

As somebody who is considering non-founder hires in the next year I'm thinking about ways that I can have them be local and co-located. Despite the fact that this may involve getting an office for the first time, possibly moving locations, hiring newbies and training up rather than hiring for skills, etc. Because, in my experience, the productivity gains could well be worth it. I'm going to experiment at the very least.

VonGuard2• 13 years ago

Yeah the biggest difference here is that this is about software development. A room full of people is great when you all need to talk a lot and discuss things and plans and exchange info really quickly and casually.

But for programming, I find the best environment is an empty room, no distractions, headphones on, and NO ONE bothering you. That's not gonna happen at an office. Programming requires intense concentration, hard to get in a room full of people.

adrianhoward24• 13 years ago

That's not gonna happen at an office. Programming requires intense concentration, hard to get in a room full of people

I'm willing to believe that, for some people, this is true. That they cannot work outside of environments like this.

There are also people who believe that they cannot work well outside of environments like this - but are incorrect (I used to be one of these).

There are also people and organisations who are very successful great developers who love and promote team room environments.

a) I'm not sure of the relative numbers of those groups

b) If the team room environments are a lot more productive then developers of the first sort are going to have long term problems getting work on projects that involve teams of developers

eaurouge• 13 years ago

Here's a study that showed an increase in productivity with telecommuting employees: http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/freakonomics-radi...

A reduction in health risks and distractions are two of the noted benefits. If productivity depends highly on teamwork, telecommuting may not be ideal, but it should improve individual productivity for the right employees.

adrianhoward24• 13 years ago

Thank you. Not come across that one before. Anybody got any references to the original paper?

I'd be interested on whether the comparison is to general open plan offices vs team rooms.

A reduction in health risks and distractions are two of the noted benefits

Health risks? I wonder why. Most accidents happen in the home and all that ;-)

AlexandrB• 13 years ago

What about this case study on the development of Windows Vista? -- http://macbeth.cs.ucdavis.edu/distributed.pdf

Granted, it doesn't study efficiency but defect rates, but having development distributed geographically was shown to have little negative effect.

adrianhoward24• 13 years ago

Thank you! Somebody had pointed me to that before but it hadn't made it into my reading pile yet. Added to the list.

falcolas• 13 years ago

"interruptions were greater in number but shorter in duration and more on-task"

Given recent studies on multitasking, and the time it takes to get back on task, this does not sound like a positive thing.

"an ability to share work artefacts significantly challenge the effective collaboration of remote stakeholders"

Most "work artefacts' in software development are digital (and easily shared with the modern internet), and thus distance doesn't matter. This is obviously different from when this study was published in 2002.

The delay mentioned in the 2001 ieee article is virtually non-existant in modern work-from-home settings, where people are constantly connected by DVCS, screen sharing, skype, google hangouts, etc.

Yes, I'm cherry-picking problem quotes from your cherry-picked quotes, and don't have any studies to back up my beliefs (other than my own experience, which is frankly enough for me). That said, most of your citations are old, don't take into account research into human multi-tasking on complex projects, and don't take into account the tremendous advancements in remote communication that didn't exist as little as 5 years ago (github, google+, skype group calls, Trello, Bitbucket, Facetime, etc.)

Yet another anecdote: the last open office I applied to was definitely a war room... Warmachines, that is. I can't imagine getting anything of value done in that kind of environment.

adrianhoward24• 13 years ago

Given recent studies on multitasking, and the time it takes to get back on task, this does not sound like a positive thing.

The question is when does an on-task interruption stop being something that switches modes. Also while the cost of task switching for an individuals productivity may be bad - it may be a net good for the team as a whole.

(BTW which recent studies? Interested in this since most of the multitasking research I'm aware of is pretty old and has the same general message of "it sucks". Would be interested in newer angles on this. Been away from academic cog-pych libraries for a while ;-)

Yes, I'm cherry-picking problem quotes from your cherry-picked quotes, and don't have any studies to back up my beliefs (other than my own experience, which is frankly enough for me).

My experiences have been mixed, but much more positive for co-located team rooms as I've seen folk try different alternatives.

Personally I'd say that the most productive teams I've seen have been co-located - and I've seen several teams who have deliberately moved (temporarily in some instances) to co-locate because they find it works better for them.

That said, most of your citations are old, don't take into account research into human multi-tasking on complex projects, and don't take into account the tremendous advancements in remote communication that didn't exist as little as 5 years ago (github, google+, skype group calls, Trello, Bitbucket, Facetime, etc.)

Most are old - but not all. I also think we tend to overestimate how much things have changed technology wise. I was using video chats, distributed source control, etc. five years ago. What we have now seems to be incremental improvements not game changers.

When I first started looking at this sort of thing six or seven years ago people applied the same arguments about email / internet / web....

Yet another anecdote: the last open office I applied to was definitely a war room... Warmachines, that is. I can't imagine getting anything of value done in that kind of environment.

My experiences have been different. An anecdote battle would probably be pointless - but some other folk in the thread seem to have had similar experiences.

I find it interesting that there's been no newer work showing clear benefits - which is why I'm looking.

nahname3• 13 years ago

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).

nahname3• 13 years ago

Very relevant video from Gabe Newell about this topic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8QEOBgLBQU&t=22m30s

adrianhoward24• 13 years ago

Thanks for that. The experiences he talks about of people naturally seeking co-working spaces is something I've seen too.

dirkk02• 13 years ago

Indeed - thanks.

fijal• 13 years ago

I really like the "all things equal" part. Usually all other things are far from equal. You have companies having the entire culture of remote work, availability of skills that's not willing/able to relocate to wherever your company is located etc. etc.

halfdeadcat• 13 years ago

I work 90% remotely. When I started this job, I came into the office everyday, a 40 minute commute. After about a month, my boss came up to me and said "Are you meeting someone here today? If not, what are you doing here?"

I actually like to go into the office from time to time, but there isn't any point when no one is there. I spend a lot of time at various clients' offices, and I notice a correlation: the more opposed to remote work a company is, the more meeting-driven it is. It is as if management feels like it needs to do something with all these bodies taking up space in the office. I see small to mid-size companies sucking up productivity with endless meetings.

That said, I think my company has lost a little bit of interactivity with the remote work force. I'm putting together a Google+ Hangout I call "Engineers' Office Hours". The idea is that if you aren't doing something billable, you hop in and offer help to someone stuck on a problem.

Buzaga• 13 years ago

That must be an awesome boss!

On the Google Hangout thing, I sometimes find myself thinking(for the day I get a remote job again), why couldn't people be on a Hangout the whole day(In my case almost all of the dev team were full-remote)? When I did there was a techies chat always open on Skype and we used to chit-chat just like we would IRL, commenting on the Hacker-News-like-stuff, talk about semi-work-related stuff like the our most productive setup, crack jokes at each other and etc and there was definitely a "camaraderie vibe" even though we never met...

Now take a virtual environment like this, add more virtual face-to-face, Planetside 2 afterhours gaming sessions.. I don't see it lacking much, if anything, compared to a in-place tight-knit startup team

asmosoinio• 13 years ago

I think it's "No One Ever Got Fired for Recruiting On-site Employees". And I think this is changing.

I work in a startup spread to three continents. Works very well when everyone knows their role and makes sure information is spread properly.

drawkbox3• 13 years ago

At a certain point, getting access to enough good team members requires remote. I.e. a game company starting in Idaho might find it hard to hire local game developers but they could be a force to be reckoned with with a few remote employees and a standard engine like Unity.

Remote work and offices create opportunity. They also focus on product, look at 37signals and how they remote. Would that company even exist as they do without remote work? Remote working is freeing and opens up all sorts of competitive advantages.

msluyter• 13 years ago

"Think of how many times companies miss out on really good developers just because they're not open to remote workers."

Assuming that this is a real problem and not a pseudoproblem[1], then one would think that market forces would eventually resolve it. (Companies full of remote working superstars should outperform the rest.) But if the equilibrium is one in which remote workers are in low demand, well, that's how markets work.

[1] By which I mean, the evidence here seems mostly anecdotal. It's easy to claim that you're more productive when working remotely, but on average, how productive are remote workers, when considering all relevant factors. I would like to see some hard evidence on this point.

bjhoops1• 13 years ago

You actually bother to ask whether they support remote work? You are more patient than I.

And no, I'm not interested in a position in Albuquerque.

SoftwareMaven2• 13 years ago

An interesting thing is when your company truly is special, remote may be a much better option. I work for Ksplice (which is now part of Oracle). Ksplice needed people with Linux kernel knowledge, and there is no central tech pool for that. The company had to build itself in a way that supported remote workers.

I think many people use a crutch that it will be too hard to build a company that way, but that is because they think in terms of "average" developers. With average developers, it will be hard, but once you realize your talent pool becomes much richer and will often include people who are already familiar with working remotely, it becomes much, much easier.

blowski• 13 years ago

"I'm a developer. I like working from home. Therefore all companies should allow all developers to work from home."

He who pays the piper, calls the tune.

If you're right, and developers want and should be able to work from home, then economics suggests market rates for office-bound employees will go up, and profitability at those companies will go down.

And there are wider issues here. So you allow the developers want to work from home. What about your project managers? Your admin temps? What about that lazy developer who you can't fire, but you know does nothing at home?

Also, how do you still have those serendipitous chats around the kettle, in which you, the business development manager and the designer realise a huge sales opportunity?

Having remote-working will make perfect for some businesses (be they startups, agencies, or huge corporates), but it never comes without cost. In some cases, those costs will make it worthwhile paying to have developers working inside the office.

andyjohnson0• 13 years ago

I've been working at home (developer) two days a week for the past eight years. This has helped keep me sane, as the round-trip commute time (foot and train) is three hours.

It does require commitment and effort, especially if most employees are office-based. I find I have to make more effort to make sure what I'm doing is visible to the rest of the team, and to communicate. Its easy to think you're communicating enough when others don't see it that way.

When I'm in the office I schedule tasks that need face-to-face time, and when I'm at home my only interruption all day is usually the morning standup. I consider myself really lucky to be able to work like this.

The practicalities are simple and inexpensive too. From home I can vpn onto our office network via a cheap soho router and bundled vpn software. I can use the office phone system with a cheap headset and sip application. Google apps is £2/person/month. Google talk, G+ hangouts and trello are free.

pinoceros• 13 years ago

If a developer is need on-site because of "crunch time", the timelines were clearly unrealistic. "Crunch time" is code for poor project management.

scottshea• 13 years ago

As someone with Aspergers remote work has been a godsend. I am not nearly as agitated as before. My quirks do not annoy people. I am more productive and my wife says I am happier.

When I worked in an office I used head phones (not buds... big ol' ear covering things) to help and was criticized for wearing them (it made me seem unapproachable). In reality it was to help keep me calm and focused.

At home I face neither the noise issue nor the unapproachable issue.

Remote work may not be for every team but in-office work is not for every person either

dschiptsov• 13 years ago

Take a manager's perspective - what is the value of him when everyone is doing everything remotely, implying that each manager thinks of himself as a much more valuable than any coder (if not, he probably will realize his helper function, like being a secretary for a programmer) and demands much bigger compensation and bonuses.

Without daily performing his show in an office it will probably much more difficult for him to convince those who distribute money that he is that valuable.)

d0m• 13 years ago

I don't agree. Programming remotely is obviously possible. If your day to day job is receiving programming tasks and hack them as quickly as possible, sure, remote is a perfect alternative.

However, in early stage startups, first employees usually have a much wider role. Like founders, they have a bigger say in where the company should move forward, priorize what should be built, hell, even clean the office and make coffee.

Also, never underestimate a good discussion over a coffee, beer or lunch to talk about problems. There's a reason why most of the best ideas are written on a napkin!

Lastly, I might add that when working on a very early stage startup, founders and employees build such a strong relationship and it's hard to achieve that level over remote working.

Again, I'm not saying it's impossible. For instance, founders who already know each others before starting the company may feel comfortable working hard remotely together. And I'm sure there are other cases when it totally makes sense.

_k• 13 years ago

It's not always about being productive. If problems start to surface and you're not there talking to those you need to talk to or you're not there to see it for yourself and you do half of all your work by email, then chances are high you're putting everyone's job at risk.

bluesmoon• 13 years ago

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.

hartzler• 13 years ago

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.

Zarathust• 13 years ago

I really liked to work remotely at my previous job because I could stretch the flexible hours even a little more, working from 10 to 7 for example, which was frowned upon when walking in the office.

My boss eventually asked me to stop working from home, because for everyone else, "working from home" was a metaphor for slacking off. That was the company culture that was so damaging to this whole concept. They didn't care if I was on reddit for 8 hours, just that I was doing it in my office.

In my new job, we make heavy use of teleconferencing, instant messaging and email. Even if we are in the same office, the fact that we are a few minutes of walking distance from each another totally masks the fact that we "work in the same location".

aclimatt• 13 years ago

The ability to effectively work remotely is entirely determined on a person-by-person basis. And it's clear, especially from the mixed feelings in these comments.

People come in all breeds, and I know that some people absolutely cannot get work done unless they are around others working, whereas others need quiet and the comfort of their own home to be the most productive.

What it comes down to is if you want to hire remote, you need to make sure that your talent is self-motivated enough to do their best work at home (or wherever). If you require an office, make sure the culture fits, otherwise you'll have employees constantly distracted and grudgingly coming into the office every day.

You can have mixed teams, and it doesn't even matter the ratio. I've been on extremely successful teams where only two of the 30+ engineers were remote, and they did their best work remotely. For others, separating work from home greatly improved their productivity.

Don't forget -- your empty house can be the most distracting environment you have access to. It's all about personal culture and fit.

etherael• 13 years ago

If you're doing software development without an asynchronous work pipeline in 2013 then you have a problem. Regardless of remote or local work, long periods of uninterrupted concentration is exactly when the vast majority of productive work is performed in any given software project. That being the case it makes perfect sense to optimise the pipeline around this very basic fact.

Once that is out of the way, whether you're local or remote is basically irrelevant. All the disadvantages to remote work have always centered around an insufficiently asynchronous work pipeline. I say this as someone who presently travels the world and works on a large array of projects and would never even consider a role that attempts to change that part of my life, simultaneously in the past having worked extensively in async and non async environments both local only and remote.

crazygringo4• 13 years ago

> long periods of uninterrupted concentration is exactly when the vast majority of productive work is performed in any given software project.

That's only true in some projects, and perhaps not even the majority.

It seems like a very developer-centric perspective. But there are a lot of projects where the real value comes not from the actual programming, but in how everything is tied together, in the prioritizing, in consistency, in common understanding, with continuous improvements that deliver what's actually needed. The programming may be relatively trivial, but good management and teamwork is highly complex, and you need smart employees who are all able to see the big picture and keep on top of it.

This is a very common scenario (more common, in my experience), and whether you're local or remote makes a huge difference.

suyogmody• 13 years ago

i think most people dont do it not because they dont like it, but because they dont trust others to be productively working at home.

rwhitman2• 13 years ago

A few notes from someone who's worked remotely roughly 60% of the last 10 years -

1) Most investors know that startups are generally at a disadvantage with a remote team and give founders shit for hiring remote people. I've found thats one of the reasons early stage folks don't hire more remote people. And there is some truth to being more creative with a team around you... if the team is awesome. Also communication is infinitely easier when you can walk over to someone and ask them a question rather than wait for them to respond to an email

2) Working remotely when you are self-directed and not under tons of pressure, really does lead to awful productivity. At home there are just so many ways to procrastinate

3) However, you can be more productive from home when on a tight deadline. No coworkers bugging you and the music cranked however loud you want, working whatever hours you want means laser-focus for some people.

4) A good checkin routine is key. I've been most productive and been in productive remote teams when there is a routine like a morning "standup" call, and maybe an afternoon call. A good ticket tracker is crucial. Working for folks who use the phone a lot tends to have the most productive outcome

5) There are a lot more small companies who use all remote workers than you think. But they hide in the shadows, and typically are very unsexy cashflow oriented businesses, not venture backed startups. If you're willing to work for consulting businesses that do boring backend for big corps you can find good remote work. But if sexy startups are your thing, expect to get a lot of hesitation until you really prove yourself...

6) Change environments. Sometimes the house can stagnate - spend part of your day in a coffee shop, lease a desk in a cowork space etc and change up workspace once in a while. It helps me at least

speric4• 13 years ago

Have any good contacts at these "boring consulting businesses"? I am not averse to an unsexy (remote) job.

rwhitman2• 13 years ago

Saw that you connected on Linkedin if I hear of anything I'll let you know

chalst• 13 years ago

2) Working remotely when you are self-directed and not under tons of pressure, really does lead to awful productivity. At home there are just so many ways to procrastinate

This is not true for everyone. There is a huge variance in how vulnerable people are to procrastination.

ivankirigin2• 13 years ago

I have a new startup, two cofounders and a remote full time engineer. Things are working splendidly, but the reason is in large part because of how well we communicate. Yes, of course chat, video conferences, and email are important.

But I think our wiki pages and pull requests are what make it work. We also have been making information dense screencasts for each other. I'm going to be so bold as to say a remote engineer has forced us to work in a way every engineering team should.

I'll have more to say about this soon enough :)

hnwh2• 13 years ago

Definitely want to know about your toolset.. would like to structure my new startup this way. What are you using for making and hosting screencasts?

ivankirigin2• 13 years ago

http://www.telestream.net/screenflow/overview.htm

gavingmiller• 13 years ago

Let me flip this over. If 99% of companies say they don't do remote, maybe the issue is you and not them... Bear with me, because this isn't an attack on you. :D Take someone that's been married and divorced 4 times. Who would you say the problem lies with, the divorcer or the divorcees?

If you want to work remotely you're fighting an uphill battle. Most managers/employers know how to manage face-to-face. Remote management is a skill that many haven't learned yet. It is possible as you mention, however both of those work places are VERY progressive.

If you want to work remotely, sell the benefits of remote working to your employer. Make them confident that you're able and capable of doing remote work. Sell it! I contracted a best friend this summer to work remotely. I had confidence in the outcome because I trusted him. If you can sell that to an employer - how much more likely are you to get what you want?

marknutter4• 13 years ago

In this market, companies are the ones that have to make concessions. There simply aren't enough good developers to go around.

moconnor• 13 years ago

I developed in a small team in a shared office for 6 years and have spent the last 6 working remotely. Half the team at Allinea are remote now - we find it easier to hire and retain great talent.

I haven't seen any evidence in our commit or bug history to suggest we were more or less productive when all of our developers were in the same room.

meangeme• 13 years ago

A lot of this conversation seems to be focussed on an individual's productivity - you might think you are more productive remotely or actually may be more productive remotely, but what about the rest of the team? Looking at the bigger picture - you're getting tons of work done, but are you communicating well with your team/ is your team productive overall? And if you are more concerned with your individual well-being than you are with your team's well-being, it's worth noting that psychologically, one of the main factors of simply liking someone is proximity. Obviously you shouldn't be promoted because your boss likes you more, and obviously if you're the most value adding team member remotely you should get credit for that, but it's impossible to eliminate personal biases that stem from bonds created at the office.

There are obviously arguments for both sides but I know (from working with a remote supervisor for 6 months) that communicating in person is easier than communicating remotely.

pknerd2• 13 years ago

I have got chance to work both in 9-5 environment as well as working in isolation.

Working for home was my own choice so that I can give time to my infant kid which is most important for me. Working from home gave me relaxation. I could work on my chair or on my bed, nobody was going to ask me how I sit. Second most important thing which helped me a lot was to have a feeling of helplessness. When you work in an office, you often ask some of your peer to write a part of your code or look into it. When you work alone you have to do everything on your own, finding solution and implement it in your own code. In the era of Stackoverflow finding a solution of your problem is not difficult at all.

It's been a year I am working individually and I am enjoying it. Instead of wasting time in gossips about Boss or management, I prefer to play with my kid, his smile gives me enough oxygen to keep me motivated for rest of the day.

unreal37• 13 years ago

This is why most people don't get to work from home. Spending time with your kid and being constantly relaxed, working from bed, is counter to the serious business culture of most companies. Don't take this the wrong way, and it's not a dig, but from the way that you wrote that, it sounds like you only work a few hours a day casually.

I can see why Big Bank X would not allow their employees to do that.

jackalope• 13 years ago

On the other hand, hourly-paid remote workers can be a tremendous value, since their pay is limited to the time they actually work and they usually don't receive many benefits.

releod• 13 years ago

I get your rant, I've done remote and on-site work. I personally prefer a healthy mix of both (http://bigbangtechnology.com/post/an_async_experiment/).

I think having everyone in office in a small company is often more about building a great office culture, and less about it being the only way to build a company. Small teams tend to do more than just work together, they integrate their socials lives. When that is the type of company you are trying to build, remote workers don't fit into that picture right away.

Also you cannot forget the difference between good distractions and bad distractions. Overhearing a conversation (between other developers), is less of a distraction than overhearing a couple of suits on sales calls or talking about the game last night. You can still be in the zone, have good distractions, be an introvert, noise cancelling headphones, etc.

A small team on-site is going to rapidly move through ideas, faster than chat rooms or even facetime/skype can truly allow, as natural as it appears it is nothing compared to in person conversations. That moment when your team discovers their Epiphany, in my opinion, is much more likely to happen in person.

NateDad2• 13 years ago

We switched from almost always in the office to a ROWE (Results Only Work Evironment) and now 90%+ of the time we all work from home. According to a company survey of the people in the ROWE, devs feel more productive, and managers feel there has been no change in productivity. I think this is because we are measuring productivity in different ways. Managers measure productivity over a week or month, which has stayed static, whereas devs measure productivity in amount of time they have to spend to get stuff done. When you don't have to spend 1-2 hours commuting, you spend less time "at work" and get the same amount done.

Personally, I like it, but we also already had a culture of doing a lot of talking via IM. In this day and age, there's no excuse for not being able to get ahold of people. But by the same token, you can't always assume someone is going to respond in 30 seconds. I hope no one is so dependent on other people that someone taking 20 minutes to respond is a complete blocker.

We use Google hangouts extensively for meetings and often open them up just to chat and connect with fellow devs.

We have lost a little bit of a sense of belonging to the team. I think extensive use of google hangouts helps a lot with this. With most laptops having a camera, there's little excuse not to fire one up whenever anyone wants to talk.

darkarmani6• 13 years ago

> We switched from almost always in the office to a ROWE (Results Only Work Evironment)

That's awesome terminology. I work from home now, but I had a test run in my previous job that was almost always in the office. I ruptured my Achilles and was unable to move about. I felt more pressure (in a good way) to get stuff done, because I felt that i could delay my return to the office longer if it was crystal clear that I was being productive.

I found the same odd productivity boost working a week out of 2 week vacation on the beach in NC. Surprisingly, I was able to focus a lot better since i wanted to have lunch with the family and go for a swim and also because I knew I wanted to stop at 5PM for some beach time. I should clarify that I wanted to stop and feel good about myself that I accomplished a day of work.

wglb• 13 years ago

In my career, I have seen and participated in both kinds of offices.

Strong factors for success in a distributed office are:

  + Fit with the company culture. High-ceremony or even medium-ceremony development patterns work less well or not at all with remotes.
  + Fit with the personalities and work habits of the staff. Not everyone is capable of working remotely.
  + Industry requirements. Some high-security situations require that work be done on premises.

I once ran a very successful remote project where everyone worked at home. All had a separate office in the home that they could close the door.

seddona• 13 years ago

We founded and developed https://circuithub.com/ largely as a distributed team (all members in different locations).

This is a complex topic that i intend to discuss more in long form, but in short, with contemporary communication and collaboration infrastructure the productivity of small highly skilled dev teams is unaffected by location.

I can prove this for our case at least (5 team members).

I am writing this from a coffee shop in Mexico, we currently have people in South Africa and San Jose, if this lifestyle appeals, please do get in touch!

j45• 13 years ago

First, there is no one magical formula of totally being ok with remote working vs not.

The world isn't that binary.

One main issue is that these decisions need to be made based on the discipline of the developer to work well in their own time. It's not an issue with self-directed and self-teaching developers, but the simply, just, aren't.

I've worked remotely for a good 5-6 years now. You really have to still be reasonably available by phone, IM, and for meetings as reasonably needed. You have to provide benefits only available by distance.

One that I share a lot is remote screen sharing. You have to cram in beside each other on a computer, so pair programming actually works not bad if you need to help someone, or do something together.

Sometimes I have to give up an afternoon to do a larger "state of the project" meeting once a month, which is fine. Ultimately it's about a balance that all projects need. You do get some benefits from being in the same room with the right people that you won't distantly. With those right people, though, you could probably be away. The problem comes in when you're dealing with a productivity level that is average because of the people involved.

metatation• 13 years ago

I've experienced both styles for extended periods. I've worked with some really hard core engineering teams during my many colocation years and remotely for the past 2.5 years.

Over the years of working with many great people, I had built a habit of potentially over-collaborating with my peers. It was hard not to, considering how much smarter two people are than one. And with the right mixture of personalities and solving hard problems, it's almost always more enjoyable (even delightful) to work things through together. You get the stronger sense that together you are delivering a greatness that would be hard to achieve on your own.

I've really missed that part since I've been remote for the past few years. However I have had to learn to be way more self sufficient and resourceful. I think initially the transition hurt my productivity somewhat, but it also ended up making me much stronger and decisive because I couldn't fallback to the whiteboard anymore.

I think I still prefer the colocation style to some degree because working closely with great people is just so rewarding. Thankfully even while I'm currently in my fortress of solitude, I still have great peers to work and connect with through Skype. We have a team chat going all the time that is similar to the war room arrangement where we can socialize and discuss random (sometimes even relevant) topics.

All in all, working with great people is the key either colocated or remote.

EDIT: I should also mention that your ability to focus on your own dev work is great for personal productivity, but often your full value to the team is only realized when you shift your focus to helping the team. I've had many situations where I could have used one of those ticket dispensers because the line at my desk was out of control. I found that working from home for 1 or 2 days a week was a good balance in that situation. Time for some self focus and time for giving to the team.

OldSchool• 13 years ago

Perhaps only the companies that aren't willing to hire remote developers need to use recruiters...

DanielBMarkham• 13 years ago

"...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 far it's co-located teams that kick ass over distributed teams. I wish it wasn't so, and I'd love to hang back in my home office and work, but that's not the way the numbers are looking.

To be more precise, yes, you can become a "commodity" programmer, that is, somebody that people slide a list under the door to and who delivers code on a regular basis. In this case you are competing with commodity programmers around the world who are willing to work for peanuts. If that's your thing, hop on over to one of the programming job sites and have fun with it.

Now I can already hear the objections. With all these tools, why can't I be just as plugged in as if I were in the office? Aren't you making a false dichotomy, asking us to either be on-site or completely on our own?

Yes, I am generalizing. Look, I don't know why the tools don't work to do the things they are supposed to do. Certainly we have chat, VOIP, and all kinds of awesome communication tools. You'd think that would be enough. But it's not. Instead of powerfully performing teams we get mediocrity.

I suspect that software development has a powerful social and human aspect that is not replaced by tools. Working in a team isn't just trading streams of data across a wire. It's going out to lunch, having a beer while talking about work, or making an oddball suggestion one Wednesday afternoon that turns out to change how everybody thinks of the problem they're working on.

So sign me up for remote work too. Just show me how it's going to be as effective as co-located teams. I see a lot of fluff from places like 37Signals who make a marketing strategy out of being so aweseome, but I'm not seeing results in the real world. I hope to learn more -- and I hope this problem gets solved.

numbsafari5• 13 years ago

An important factor is team cohesion and trust. In a fully distributed team, trust is immensely important because you can't just look out at the warroom and see who is "crushing it".

You have to have a team that can come together in ways other than having a beer every Friday. Sometimes this is accomplished by having a once per quarter, or twice per year, or even once per year gathering. Those are generally good times for team building activities, not just commits.

Having non-work interactions with your other co-workers can also be helpful. Something as silly as firing up a Quake server or playing Halo together can make a difference.

Also, you cannot expect to apply standard management approaches in a distributed team environment. It can be a struggle because you have to find a new way to evaluate the contributions of your various team members. I think that this is actually where most distributed teams fall apart. Managers simply aren't trained for this environment.

aantix• 13 years ago

I'd contend that the tools just aren't there.

When I want to chat with someone, I want to do it instantly, like walking up to someone in the office. The Skype concept of "dialing" someone is old, antiquated and feels... laggy.

There was a video chat client promoted on Hacker News a while back that allowed for instantly initiating a video chat session with a colleague.

Sococo, a distributed agile client (with video support) also claims to do the same thing, allows for you to instantly create a video session with anyone in your virtual office.

IM works because it's immediate. Video chatting must be the same in order for a distributed team to work.

The tools aren't there yet.

markshead4• 13 years ago

Just leave the video conference software on. I'm working on an agile project with a distributed team and it works well once people realize that working in front of a live camera isn't any big deal.

jstelly2• 13 years ago

I'm generally not interested in hiring remote workers at our company. While it can work in rare cases (where the need for collaboration is low) it is much more the exception than the rule for us. Our company culture and structure is based around trust and collaboration. We allow VPN/remote work, but as a tradeoff. For the most part, our employees are local and have a desk in the office that they spend most of their time in. I agree that in some cases working from home offers a greater opportunity for focus and freedom from distraction. But for that case we have VPN. The rest of the time everyone benefits from closer collaboration.

For what it's worth we have done several experiments. We even tried having a remote worker on a constant skype connection, with a monitor/camera in a shared office with other workers (over a period of several months). Based on our data I would say that there is a measurable decline in value when a person shifts to >50% remote work in our environment. That may not be true for other environments of course.

jonathanleane• 13 years ago

> For what it's worth we have done several experiments. We even tried having a remote worker on a constant skype connection, with a monitor/camera in a shared office with other workers (over a period of several months).

Did this help things at all?

pault3• 13 years ago

> 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?

noonespecial• 13 years ago

I generally approve of remote work hardily. But this rant called out early stage startups in particular. In early stage startups you're building your culture along with your product. You have a super limited amount of salary to pay to do both. I can definitely see why you'd want to get double returns with a local hire.

bonchibuji• 13 years ago

I have a question here -

'Does biggies which acquire startups care whether the employees of the startup work remotely or from a central (base) location?;

artyom3• 13 years ago

From my experience, they absolutely do care. "Biggies" with a tight corporate mindset would consider remote work as a deal-breaker. Others may be able to work something out, like insane compensation for relocation, and such.

31reasons• 13 years ago

I think there is a primitive brain thinking going on here,something like "I pay you to work, I want to SEE you working"

smurph• 13 years ago

I find that the people who supposedly want everyone to work on site will always make exceptions if it means getting an employee they really want. You know that if <Insert your favorite programming blogger here> offered to work for you, but only if they could work from home, you'd probably make an exception. If the person who's been your rock star coder for the past couple years needed to move away for family reasons, but would be willing to stay on if they could work remotely, you would make an exception. The side effect is that you are now telling all the regular people who show up to the office every day that they are not as valuable as Mr. Works Remotely. How do you justify having potential new hires relocate to work for you when they find out some special people don't have to go through that?

baalexander• 13 years ago

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.

eurodance• 13 years ago

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.

bdunbar• 13 years ago

"...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.

hosh3• 13 years ago

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.

mcantelon• 13 years ago

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.

7402• 13 years ago

Maybe the problem is that the VERY FIRST question you ask is, "Are you open to remote workers?"

I've always found that to be kind of a turn-off when I've interviewed people for software engineering positions. It's NOT that it's not an important question - it's that it shows a bit of social cluelessness. It's the same if the first question someone asks me is "How much vacation time do I get?" or "How much money do you pay?" Of course those questions should be discussed eventually! But I'd like to get to know the other person a little, first.

Ya, I know. It's a seller's market, you're busy, you don't want to waste your time with unproductive job possibilities, etc.

BUT EVEN IF non-telecommuting is a deal-breaker, maybe you should start off asking about the project, the company, the other people you'd be working with. If the work looks promising at first glance, start off by selling yourself first, rather than immediately focussing on the "OK, tell me what's in this for me, before I waste any more time on you and your company" side of things.

Simply as a matter of strategy, you might do better to postpone that question after a round or two. If they like you, then even if they don't have universal telecommuting, they may want you enough to be happy to have you as a telecommuter.

kjhughes• 13 years ago

I agree with the OP and would go so far as to propose a generalization of Joy's law ("No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joys_Law_(management)):

  "No matter where you are, most of the smartest people are somewhere else."

An employer or business partner insisting on full-time face-time will be at a disadvantage compared with competitors who are more geographically flexible.

dobbsbob• 13 years ago

Don't understand why startups would want to blow a bunch of money on infrastructure when they can just tangle together a remote operation. We have this thing called IRC, Jabber, Skype, VoIP, shared buffers and git.

Lot's of open source is designed over skype or even jabber using a common pad to doodle on

destraynor• 13 years ago

Jared Spool did a good study on how remote vs colocated affects design. His conclustion is simple enough

The best set up, in order, for design work

* Best: Everyone in the same room * Good: Everyone remote but in the same time zone * Bad: Some people together, some people apart, in the same time zone * Worst: Some people together, some people apart, all in different time zones.

Now the one thing that his work, and indeed most discussion misses is they "Why" of remote workers. No one has tested "Given the available talent in our city, should we hire the best people around we can so that we're all together, or should we set a higher bar for talent and deal with the whole remote issue".

It all comes down to whether or not you can get the best people. Lots of talent tends to flock to big cities (SF, NYC, etc), but that creates its own problem, in that a start-up is now competing with the big spenders offering impressive packages/options/etc.

In short, I guess, It depends...

(Edit, forgot the url: http://www.uie.com/brainsparks/2012/01/06/design-teams-co-lo... )

adrianhoward24• 13 years ago

++ for linking to some actual research ;-)

paulhauggis• 13 years ago

I've been working remotely for the past 3 years. I find that the same type of discipline it takes to work remotely is the same as what it takes to run your own company.

mark_l_watson• 13 years ago

I have been working mostly remotely for about 14 years. In my experience, I am less productive working remotely than when I am working on site. I give a 40% discount when I am working remotely for this decrease in efficiency.

Other people's experiences are likely much different - I am just relating my own experience.

Do I like working remotely? Yes! I also really like being able to mostly work the hours I like, when it is most convenient for me.

ajsharp• 13 years ago

Having a team of remote people require a company to have it's shit together, mostly with respect to communication, and to a much less extent, "process". Most companies (read: executives and founders) are not good at communication, and are generally not interested in changing. Instead, especially with startups, people fall back on "everything happens in front of the whiteboard".

Claudus• 13 years ago

I work remotely as a programmer / designer, it's the best job I've had, and I'm far more productive than I've ever been, with a lost less time spent.

I'm sure collaborating in person is necessary for some people, but if you're working with people who can visualize what you're talking about with words it seems pretty great to me.

Not everyone is suited for working remotely, but for those who are, I think it suits us very well.

samspot• 13 years ago

I think part of the problem is that many companies are already incapable of managing on-site employees effectively (we've all experienced this!). If you can't effectively manage the people you see face to face, I imagine remote workers would be a disaster.

fleas• 13 years ago

Right on ! I've often wondered the same. It's very annoying too. I can't stand working in offices but if you employee me as a remote employee you get a distraction free, self-motivated, 10+ years experience dedicated worker.. if you want me to come to your office so you can see me do exactly what I can do without coming to the office only with traveling and other distractions... I'll just say, "no thanks!" and find a company that gets it . (P.S. been telecommuting for 8 years and wouldn't have it any other way).

rowantrollope• 13 years ago

Hi definition video conferencing provides the bridge for most of the challenges employers and employees face with remote working. Being the leader of Cisco's Telepresence and collaboration technology stack, I can say that remote working is entirely feasible and in fact sometimes even better than being there.

rdouble• 13 years ago

The last project I worked on, the company insisted I be on site. When I got there, nobody talked to me in real life for six months. If everyone is on IRC and using a ticket tracker, bug tracker, github, status blogs, email, Skype, iChat etc, I'm not sure what the point of being on-site is, other than organizational inertia.

dannylandau• 13 years ago

Couldn't agree more. Companies of all scale need to be receptive to remote work, otherwise they will never be able to fill in any of their job roles.

account_taken• 13 years ago

We ask telecommuters to work out of the office for the first two tweeks. Trying to explain the code base and the many utilities we've built is too time consuming and not easily explained over the phone or remote desktop. It's much easier to look over someone's shoulder and have discussions as needed. Moreover, we get a chance to see their personality, enthusiasm and such.

metalsahu• 13 years ago

I have worked both on a hybrid team (colo + remote) & a completely remote team (no office) and I can emphatically say that the hybrid team is one of the worst experiences in my career. Decisions were made in some other parts of the world, really really early morning calls and a general sense of frustration for all.

In a completely remote team, you are forced to optimize for coordination and communication. Obviously you suffer the downsides because there is no water cooler, no joint information dissemination sessions, no war room accountability though you can achieve some kind of co-creation using skype, join.me, git and trello. However you gain some big advantages in terms of finding the right resource at the best cost, undivided focus if remote team members are given work packages and ability to exploit the timezone difference for a 24hour work cycle. Not to mention the humongous personal flexibility which it affords at an individual level.

A point to note is that this remote vs. colo experience really can come down to the individual members and their personalities. There is no one size fits all.

TL;DR Go completely colo or completely remote, half-colo + half-remote = half-ass. Team personality is a very strong variable in this equation.

deevus• 13 years ago

I moved city a few months ago while still working for the same company. Prior to moving I was a remote worker doing software development and client support from my apartment.

It was a great set up for me - if I wasn't feeling productive at 9am I could defer until later when I was in the zone. I tended to work at night when my brain was buzzing, and got much more work done compared to now.

Post move, I am now required to work 9-5 at a desk in the company office. I honestly feel like my productivity has plummeted. Work loves having me there because I can play a more senior role to the more junior/less skilled developers, but my pay hasn't changed and I don't really feel like I benefit from it.

Perhaps I was just blessed for too long, and need to get used to what working as a developer in this day and age is actually like for the majority.

MFaramawi• 13 years ago

Sadly but true

lborsato• 13 years ago

I've worked remotely for about 7 years now, with startups and more established companies. These companies have typically been distributed themselves, realizing that it is easier to work with smart people where they are than to try to get everyone to move to a specific place. We are constantly connected with IM, IRC, phones, Skype, etc. And we can handle development and problem solving around the clock easily.

I have no commute, nor does anyone else. And yet we have all seemed to function efficiently, with now problem that I've seen. And we are as effective as any team I have ever worked with, with none of the water cooler chat that goes on in the office. In fact, any team situation I've worked in has easily seen 50% of the day consumed by non-work-related conversation and meetings with no agenda and no responsibilities given.

I'll stick with remote work thanks.

morgo• 13 years ago

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.

KenE• 13 years ago

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.

ilaksh• 13 years ago

A lot of people don't know how to work remotely and there is a wide variance in how that is set up.

I was just talking to a surgeon about a procedure and mentioned how I had seen a study saying that a similar procedure had slightly more side effects or complications. He pointed out that there is a big difference between the way that different surgeons execute the procedure.

So I think that it is harder to make remote work effective for people who are used to traditional work and don't study up on the best ways to create a good remote working environment.

I personally believe the most effective tool for remote working is just a shared chat room with a history like Campfire and then putting most of the relevant conversations in there. Ideally I think that everyone should be in that room including customer stakeholders if possible, (although I haven't seen anyone really include the customers in that chat room very much).

The second most effective tool would be things like screen sharing and phone or VOIP, which can help a lot, but you have to be careful not to do that too much when it might be better to document things in a common chat room.

I may just be slow or lazy or something but as a more general comment on software project management I feel like the issue/task tracker or Pivotal or whatever is an extra distraction from the chat room or more direct communications because I can only really focus on a few important things in a day, I would like to deliver them immediately, and if I have a problem to respond to or something to communicate I want to do it directly rather than hoping or assuming that someone is going to see a notification email or whatever.

azjeepxtreme• 13 years ago

Good for you. I need assistance with web dev at times. I am the owner of a tech co and just recently went to a site where I was the "cult phenom" as I had not been onsite in a year and me actually walking in the door had people swooning. I look forward to hiring some people that know their sh*t in the remote assist web dev arena and are grown up enough to work for me remotely. Well spoken Mr. Farkas.

chrisennis• 13 years ago

Of my five startups, two have been virtual. I am gearing up to start a virtual team with my new startup. What I like about my virtual teams is that it makes the best use of each employee's time, it forces employees to communicate in ways they may not if they are in an office together everyday, and each employee feels like they have some control, which leads to a less bureaucratic environment.

All that said, you have to have an absolute level of trust in each employee, because not having the team within arms reach can leave you feeling a bit uneasy at times.

VonGuard2• 13 years ago

You know, one more thing I've been thinking on this all day. A thought I had years ago. I work from home.

Whenever someone says to me "coworking space" I just marvel. Boggle, really. Why? I cannot imagine ever wanting to be in a room full of other people in order to motivate me to get work done. I call that the tyranny of a room full of people.

If I am done for the day, I'm done. If I want to crank through then night, I crank. If you cannot motivate yourself to work hard when away from a crowd of people, I just feel like yer some sort of pack animal. I agree, being near a boss makes you work more, but mostly, it just makes you look busy. You spend more time trying to find something stupid and mindless to do, during those down hours when yer brain is dead, than you do doing actual work. Whereas, when I'm home, I just hammer through everything I have to do immediately.

If my inbox is full, I don't leave the computer. But when it's empty, fuck ya'll, I'm going to the park.

I'd much rather clean the house and cook a steak when I am log jammed than feel like I have to sit quietly at my desk, looking busy. I think our education system trains people to be too dependent on others for work ethic.

A Short Rant About Working Remotely

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