Working at the office isn't about floor plan or seat time.
Working at the office is about "staying in touch". When you are in the office you see new directions the company is interested in long before you get an assignment.
It doesn't matter if you are in an office with the door closed, or working from home: either way you miss things that you should have been told directly but nobody thought to tell you. So you end up doing otherwise great work that it leading the project in the wrong direction.
That is when you are in the office someone from marketing can see you in the hallway and ask about the hot new feature of today without invoking all the formal channels to take to the guy remotely. Thus when you are working from home you lose a lot of opportunities to do what is needed as opposed to what you are told. People who can figure out the right thing and do that are more valuable than people who only do what they are told.
Note that the title is correct: all employees should be trusted to work remotely from time to time. However that does not mean you should work from home all the time. You should be a regular at the office so that you don't lose touch. At the first sign of illness (you or your kids), bad weather, or a hard no interruptions problem: you should be out of the office and working from home. However you should also be a regular at the office for the benefits of being at the office.
Of course this depends on your job. If you are a contractor you might be in a situation where you do the letter of the contract and are gone - the only time you might want to do something else is if you are trying to turn the contract into a full term position. Even then though, some contracts are get release N out the door, with a possibility of renewal for release N+1 - in that case you may have the option to change what is in release N.
> without invoking all the formal channels to take to the guy remotely
In the remote shops I worked people discuss everything (and anything) on IRC, slack, hipchat etc. Even their pie in the sky ideas. Never had the problem you described. If anything, people are more open and engaged: they would even sign in after (or before) work to bounce ideas. Sometimes even from their vacations. Never seen that in "onsite-only" shops, BTW (open-space or not).
I visited Fog Creek in NYC once and as you know Joel Spolsky is a very big advocate on giving devs a good work environment. However he is also a big advocate of hiring good people no matter where they live. They had a policy that they had to discuss everything in chat or teleconference from what I saw. They said that despite being a door or 2 down from someone they wanted to talk to the forum of discussion had to be online for the sake of the remotes too.
If it isn't like this (and most places aren't like that) you are going to miss out on things when not in the office.
As someone who has worked remotely a great deal, this claim is generally true. A team is either remote-first, or full-time remote employees won't work well.
Notice that I said team. You can still have a remote team inside of a mostly office-going company and it ends up being similar to a satellite office for a regular company.
Eg Google has many satellite offices, so they could arguably have "remote" be one of those "offices". I don't see this ever actually happening, but they could do it if they make sure that team is remote-first.
THANK YOU for the idea of remote first. It seems like mobile first in that you take what used to be the second priority and make it a first priority and in the process get most if not all of the first priority.
That is a very important distinction, between "remote" and "distributed" a.k.a. "remote-first", "remote-only" and "all-hands-remote-even-if-not-really"
That's one of the big benefits of slack, but many organizations don't use it - you have to think to reach out to the person by calling or emailing, or you are scheduling a virtual meeting with something like webex.
Sure, without tools like that being the rule, there's no way to make it work.
I sometimes wonder if many of the "on-site only" employers even realize how much they are missing out on. For example, when I'm in the office, I work from 9 to 6, period. When I work for a remote gig, I can be working 12 hours a day without realizing it - my job literally becomes my life. I understand that it may not be very healthy for me, but isn't that every manager's dream? Yes, you have to make sure people like what they are doing, but that's a different problem and relevant even for onsite gigs.
Depends... are you working on the most important stuff first?
I'd rather have a strict 9-5'er that's always working in priority order than a 12-2am'er that's scattered and not delivering important work.
IMO the most important thing for success in remote work is having a prioritized backlog and defined iteration. It's way too easy to lose hours and days down an unimportant rabbit hole without these things.
I'd say many places don't have enough PM rigor to make remote work sensible.
i don't think that's a fair comparison given the likely hood of the reverse also being true. Personally I like to work at home when I have a huge complex task so that I can focus and spend all my time on it. I can easily when WFH start work at 8am and work til 2am because I can't sleep until big problems are solved. I also feel more inclined to hang back take my time to do needed research, where in the office I may not do that so It doesn't appear that I am just browsing the web. Overall, I can have complex tasks completed in a couple days WFH where if I came in to the office it could take weeks.
I've seen what OP mentioned in startups that are "remote", where remote means a hybrid of on-site / remote, but mostly on-site (i.e., not "remote-first"). In any case where the majority is not remote, I think it applies.
I had a manager for a while who would make a point of catching me up on watercooler talk once a week or whenever we met about something else. Somebody quit in a dramatic way a few days ago? New project everyone's talking about that has nothing to do with me? Only took about 3 minutes, but really helped me feel connected, be more aware of the big picture, what else was going on that might indirectly impact my projects. I understood when a team I communicated with might be stressed or distracted. I understood when resources were going to be harder to get. Really good practice.
Sounds like there should be specialist training for people who manage remote teams. I wonder what GitHub does in comparison to Google (which seems to be sort of anti-remote).
Great idea. I think it's the same with many management scenarios. You could put someone in charge of a group of employees from a very different culture, and without any training or other investment into learning about how to make it work, they're likely to end up thinking, "I just can't get the team to perform - let's not hire people like that."
Not sure what you mean - I meant to say this is what my manager did for me as a remote employee. I've worked remotely for about 4 years, and this manager really made it work better than anyone else because of little things like this.
I've done this as a weekly team conference call + hipchat for ad-hoc announcements (where announcements = anything from we're doing a new project to cat pics). It can still work pretty well.
This is what I like to call "ambient communication". It's like water of the company life - too much of it and you drown, too little and you get ill and disoriented.
I have the opposite experience. We have many more informal channels and opportunities to check in and learn what other teams are doing by being remote and having our conversations openly in our group chat.
IMO, good communication, collaboration and transparency is not about remote vs. office. I'm sure we can find plenty of bad experiences for both.
This is only one of a possible spectrum of outcomes. Presenting it as the only one is disingenuous. It describes a company almost at war with itself due to abysmally poor internal communications.
I'm sure we all recognise it, because it's the shitty baseline, but we can do and do better than this.
I've worked both situations. The "saying in touch" thing you mentioned is a myth as far as I'm concerned. Even in an office things are worked out behind closed doors.
Groups with good communication skills will succeed at communicating no matter what. Groups with bad communication skills will fail at communicating no matter what.
Technology can't fix political problems. However technology can enable additional solutions to political problems.
It's still politics (and policy and actual leadership effort) that must happen to apply the fix, but technology offers tools and tools can be the basis for enabling options that were previously impractical, infeasible, or impossible.
This day and age keeping remote employees in the loop is trivially simple (as long as the company is willing to make the small effort) - slack, hangouts for standup meetings etc etc.
Sure, you might miss out on some irrelevant water cooler conversation and get less face time with the management, on the flip side though - you have less political crap to deal with.
Could you elaborate on the etc etc.? I work at a company that has a handful of full time remote people. They're mostly senior engineers who had to move for personal reasons but were too valuable to part with. We have Slack, we have networked conference rooms, we have email. We fly them in a few times a quarter.
Those employees do a good job on their work, but they're still compartmentalized. They don't participate in company-funded culture/morale boosting activities. They can't really break a problem down at a whiteboard with a group of engineers who are in the office. They can't participate in much of the interviewing process that brings new people into the company. They can't get coffee with that random junior person in sales who has some great ideas about the product but is hesitant to schedule a formal meeting with a senior engineer who's surely busy with far more important things. You get the picture...
I believe that a "remote-first" organization can work with the right people, but how does a primarily on-site org accommodate remote workers?
By "etc etc" I mean all of the technology available for conferencing, messaging, screen sharing etc. Yes, it's a bit of a hassle but not a major effort by any stretch of imagination. Whiteboarding - I actually find that diagrams drawn in a screen sharing meeting using any of the bazillion options available (giphy, visio, ms paint even) are way easier to comprehend than a picture of a whiteboard drawing.
Juinor ppl getting face time with architects/engineers - this is more of a company culture thing I think.
Everything you mentioned can be accomplished in text chat and I would say those kind of interactions are more likely to happen on something like Slack.
Text chat allows people to "overhear" conversations in an unobtrusive way to both the person doing the eavesdropping and the person(s) talking.
In-person requires more active engagement to do the same thing -- you have to go and interrupt that conversation, or awkwardly put yourself into the conversation and "listen." If your entire company is in the #general channel, you will naturally discover things passively eavesdropping that you wouldn't see or hear otherwise in a physical office.
I've never inadvertently run into the head of marketing in Slack. I have in an elevator on the way back from lunch.
I don't randomly run into colleagues while eating lunch on Slack. I do in the cafeteria.
If I need to casually run something by someone else without raising hackles, I can arrange to bump into them in person. I can't do that in email/Slack.
Text chat is a useful tool, but is not a full replacement for the human experience of walking around other people in 4D.
No it's not, but the point is, if the team is remote-first, you don't need to make that replacement. And you get all the benefits of not having to drag people to the office against their will (which are huge).
In your example, if your company were remote-first, the head of marketing would always be on slack and you wouldn't have to wait for the opportunity of inadvertently running into her just to have a conversation. And so would be your colleagues with whom you (apparently) can only interact when you happen to have lunch together. And so on.
You never "raise hackles" by asking something in Slack, because chat is unintrusive by definition (as opposed to walking up to a person uninvited).
> That is when you are in the office someone from marketing can see you in the hallway and ask about the hot new feature of today without invoking all the formal channels to take to the guy remotely.
By that logic anyone who doesn't want to partake alcohol-infused after works the company arranges needs not to bother. Or anyone who brings their own lunch while the rest of the department goes out for lunch. Or anyone who doesn't like small talk. Anyone with those preferences would not be "staying in touch" in exactly the same way as the remote worker.
At a previous company, my 100% remote co-worker spent all day in a Google Hangout and his team had a monitor in their area with the Hangout running. If anyone had a question, they could simply turn their heads or walk over to the monitor and have a regular conversation.
If all we need is to spend more time and work at communicate and staying in touch with each other, then that seems a very acceptable trade. Not only do we get more time by not commuting to work, but we also cut out the environmental effect of driving a car which in those days seems a rather major bonus. Just last year saw quite a few political drives to get people to change their diet in order to get a much smaller benefit than eliminating commuting would have.
I am sorry, but your comment sounds to me exactly as one that someone mistrusting RW could give (I actually heard that argumentation from such people).
-- do you realize that, one does not become effective in RW overnight? We get the habit of effective office work after several years of practice, RW should probably take only slightly less. Spreading this time one day every couple of month indeed turns RW days into days off IMO.
-- who can bring in figures of how much a random general company benefits from rank-and-file employees "knowing what needs to be done" rather than simply following orders? From my personal (very long and diversified) experience, deficient communication is rather a norm in a company, and ... everybody seems to survive?
I like to counter this argument (about the value of informal communication), by the example of the military (where by definition you are not expected to have all information), at which point people usually take offense ;-). Stil, the army to me is the example of the efficient human organization usually attaining the goal?
I agree. I've been working and managing a small group for several years working remotely. It takes about 6-12 months before someone fully adjusts to working remotely. Communication between each other isn't a challenge as we meet every morning.
PMs will sometimes come and complain that a team member has gone dark. I just tell them, have daily meetings if you're worried about keeping up productivity of the team.
Have worked remotely 18 out of the last 20 years. The interruptions +remote, but the structure of being in an office +onsite. I'm not sure people can make blanket statements which is more productive I feel it varies by person.
>Working at the office is about "staying in touch". When you are in the office you see new directions the company is interested in long before you get an assignment.
If the company is not competent enough to convey them in mail, Slack, Skype, and 200 other ways, then I'm not sure it matters...
Given all other constraints being equal, a co-located team will be more effective and will ship a correct thing (note: this is not "shipping a thing correctly"!) sooner. Because we are primates.
I appreciate a lot of the sentiment of this article, but not the self-congratulatory, sanctimonious tone.
It refuses to acknowledge that there are people out there who are less productive when working remotely (for example, me, which I discovered after recording personal data on it), and those who are substantially less happy when working remotely. In addition, those of us who prefer an office environment sometimes find it more difficult to work with remote coworkers: something that is more or less important depending on what your day to day tasks include.
If I were running a company I would always permit employees to work remotely, or work from home when they want, but I think it's counterproductive to pretend that everyone wants that and would benefit from it.
I also think it absurd to presume that there's zero benefit to having folks face-to-face from time-to-time.
Wanna work from home 4 days out of 5? I say go nuts.
But I would want some amount of face-to-face time, not to see asses in seats (which seems to be what every work-from-advocate assumes... as though there's no other concerns beyond accountability, a strawman if I've every seen one), but because it helps build team camaraderie.
I've seen this first hand. I'm the Product Owner for geographically distributed team. Skype is used heavily as a mechanism for the team to communicate, but we also include quarterly face-to-face get-togethers where the team can sit in a room and whiteboard problems, pair program, or really whatever they want to do that feels useful.
The first time we did this everyone, every single person, raved about how valuable the activity was. Not because they were inherently more productive, and certainly not because they were being held accountable. Rather, the simple act of people in a room together further cemented their bonds as a team.
Humans are social animals. We're used to physical proximity as a component of communication. Hell, the NYT had an article about why it's hard to make friends after 30:
The two times I did this with two separate teams I hated it.
I'm a very social guy, so it isn't an introvert thing, but I work 100% remote, I don't want to meet and be confined to 'activities' or environments where I can't be productive. If I wanted to be in an office, I have plenty of job offers to do so. If I wanted to meet my co-workers on 'activities' (like the once a year retreats with parties and trust falls and what-not) I would join the local kumbaya group.
Just thinking I have to travel for a week, away from my friends, my family my routines for someone to have face-to-face time with me that could have been done on skype/hangouts is ridiculous, and whenever I hear about yearly retreats/trips I pass on the job.
like the once a year retreats with parties and trust falls and what-not
Nice strawman!
We got the team together, shared meals and drinks in the evening, and basically did engineering work during the day.
The team took the opportunity to do some broader architectural work that needed doing, and to do some knowledge sharing across silos that had developed. Basically stuff that's more amenable to a room and a whiteboard.
ie, they got some sh*t done while getting to know each other better.
But hey, if you can't be bothered to spend face time with your team mates on occasion, I'm sure you can find organizations that will cater to your particular whims. Ours would not be one of them, that's all.
And that is great, my organization actually respects this and doesn't force me to go to any annual things. To each their own, but shared meals and drinks in the evening is for me too much. I work 8 hours for you, after I want to see my family or friends, not my co-workers. Or do sports, or whatever else. The problem with these retreats is 8+hours work and then off time with co-workers. I don't care about that. AT ALL.
I'm not very social at all. But I do like traveling, so my ideal job is one where I work remotely (from home) 3 weeks a month, and then about 1 week a month I have to travel to a customer site and work there on-site. It gets me out of the house, lets me see a new place and meet some new people so I get my fill of socialization, but it's temporary and I don't have to hang around these same people 5x a week for the next several years.
I hate travelling. I probably have more miles in the air than most from my previous life. I hate it. I will go to any length if it avoids me being in a plane or car.
Maybe I'm getting old, but break up my routine for a 'retreat' thing and I will get pissed as hell and will fight as much as possible to do it.
If I do, I will do for my family/friends, not my employer. I work my 40 hours a week, so why should I break my routine for a pseudo-gathering where I have little to no connection with people??
Exactly. I work for a 100% remote company and have never been happier. I probably have been more productive in other places, but that's a factor of the tech stack C# vs Ruby. I'm focused, productive, and happy. I know and like my coworkers. We meet 1-2x per year for a company retreat, and we meet online weekly. Everything else is ad-hoc and works just fine.
> but we also include quarterly face-to-face get-togethers where the team can sit in a room and whiteboard problems, pair program, or really whatever they want to do that feels useful.
To me, that sounds utterly horrifying. I'm unable to fly because of the TSA (I cannot tolerate being touched, and even the slightest risk of a pat-down is unacceptable). Any job where I'd be expected to fly cross-country is a job that I simply won't be able to do.
I want my next job to be a remote job because I'm probably going to be moving soon, and I'd like to completely decouple "where I work" from "where I live". Even if I could fly, the idea of working a remote job where I'd have to travel defeats the whole purpose of working remote.
>In the case of working from home/remote work, some employees do not do their best work from home, or simply don’t like it. That is fine—but you should trust your employees and treat them like adults.
Although this doesn't address your point about your difficulty working with remote employees, when you're in an office.
> In the case of working from home/remote work, some employees do not do their best work from home, or simply don’t like it. That is fine—but you should trust your employees and treat them like adults. Let them make the call for themselves.
it directly addresses performance and that employees should be enabled to make the choice.
Exactly. Not everyone can do it. Also, at larger companies, you don't always have the luxury of holding out for those unicorn employees. Often times you just need bodies now, so mediocre devs will do.
Most articles on remote work don't acknowledge that there are some software jobs that, at least sometimes, require proximity to some physical system.
As one example, part of my job involves writing interactive software for physically gigantic computer systems with a room-sized spatial tracking system.
We can hack away on these programs remotely on our laptops, but to be confident in the program's correctness and performance you really have to test your code in "the room".
Many games have these issues. Dev equipment for unreleased devices the need to stay locked away, for large games multiple terabytes of data updated daily.
"I am a night owl. You can tell me I have to have my butt in a chair within your line of sight at 8 or 9am, but that is very wasteful. You are wasting my time and yours. I am not a morning person. I will start being very effective around 11am and I really get going in the afternoon/evening. If you force your preferred hours onto me, both employer and employee lose. "
THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS!
Believe me I understand that it's a difficult problem to solve - everyone seems to have different "optimal" work hours. But right now, the standard work day is HEAVILY favoring the morning person's mind.
Furthermore, If your effective times starts at 11, consider yourself lucky. 11 is at the earlier end of my natural waking time. I start getting effective 2 hours afterwards.
I'm in the same boat. In fact, I don't REALLY come online until after lunch, sometime around 1 or 2. And if allowed to revert to my natural sleep cycle, my most creative and productive time is between 2pm - 3am.
Good luck finding an employer who is cool with that. Not to mention, a spouse.
My best hours are similar. I think the best option is a remote team distributed across time zones or one in a time zone that aligns with your ideal hours. Admittedly, much easier said than done.
"If allowed to revert to my natural sleep cycle..."
I very much understand this. I don't think people realize that for me, I have to watch my sleep every day - including weekends - to be able to be at work at 8am during the week. Sleeping in on the weekends means that sudddenly, I'm awake at 1am monday morning.
The spouse bit hasn't been an issue: He has a similar body clock luckily. Jobs are more difficult.
There's a great deal of cultural and technical enablement that needs to happen to allow remote work to be effective. A great employee won't be as productive if your environment isn't set up for them to succeed in a remote capacity.
I absolutely applaud companies who have this figured out, or who enable very flexible arrangements. But if you as an individual (like the author) "need" a different work environment, go seek it out, don't lambast the company as "non-trustworthy".
>There's a great deal of cultural and technical enablement that needs to happen to allow remote work to be effective. A great employee won't be as productive if your environment isn't set up for them to succeed in a remote capacity.
A good example of this:
At my company we used to have problems with people working from home accidentally being excluded from meetings because the meeting leaders would forget to set up a video conference room, or would forget to join the video conference room that had been created ahead of time. To fix this, we decided that every meeting would have a video conference room set up for it, and that the meeting leader would always join the video conference room, regardless of whether anybody in the meeting was expected to be working remotely. In other words, we always run our meetings as if there are remote workers involved. This eliminated the issue entirely.
Another benefit was that we no longer wasted time determining if we needed a video conference set up for a meeting. We just set it up in all cases. For recurring meetings, we have persistent video conference rooms.
> There's a great deal of cultural and technical enablement that needs to happen to allow remote work to be effective.
Technical-enablement part is already well known and is quite simple: easy access to all needed information: primarily, source code, schematics, datasheets, VHDL/Verilog, servers, specifications and product roadmaps. People working on FOSS projects successfully do that every day, and proven tools and the methodologies do exist. Anything more than that will be needed just as well for non-remote work to be effective.
Culturally though, it is indeed a very different story, and there the mistrust plays its big role, the OP nailed it. Not only from direct team managers, but on all levels, from team members to (cross-team) project people.
Another big component of cultural misfit is when the efficient remote communication is simply impossible, not because it is remote but because remote working brings together people who cannot communicate efficiently, even put together in the same room. For various reasons: different timezones, different native tongues, cultures that require active face-to-face confrontation... Interestingly enough, this could actually be the predictable outcome of a company's assumed behaviour -- imagine, for example, a big company frequently acquiring small ones everywhere around the world.
I get the most work done when I am the only one in the office, So I tend to take my lunch at a different schedule than my co workers, come in early, stay late, and take work home because during "normal" business hours is a constant stream of "collaboration" that interrupts me doing any actual work.
I love flu season, because I normally do not get sick, and everyone else is out of the office sick... sooo peaceful.
I would love to work remotely, only interacting with people remotely.
I can relate to this. Just curious if you've found any hacks for when the office is full of people? My best so far is noise isolating or noise canceling earbuds + a brown noise generator.
Working hours being at 9am-5pm is not optimal for plenty of people. Working remotely has never worked for me, but a flexible work schedule time and the option to work from home occasionally is a really good strategy for companies. I always stay up late and there are many brain studies showing that people very often fall into two categories, early risers and late risers. Accommodating both is a good idea to get the most from your workforce.
9-5 isn't optimal for many people, but as someone who does prefer a 9-5 (ideally a 10-6), it can be frustrating when you roll into the office, see an email sent from a colleague at 3am, and have to wait until 1pm or 2pm to ask any clarifying questions. Or on the flip side, when 6pm comes around and you're ready to leave, that same colleague is just settling into the most productive part of the day and wants to debug something with you. Worse still are the times when it's 10pm and you're getting ready for bed, only to find that your colleague has a few 'quick questions' over email.
In my experience flexible work hours are okay when your work is silo-ed off from the rest of the team, or if you are diligent about making sure other people can pick up the ball once you're done. When either of those things are not true it just becomes a headache for everyone.
Yea I've worked for a long time with people in asia (I'm in US), and basically I send emails to them around 4pm my time so that they get the email when they get in in the morning, then I expect to need to answer them up until around 9pm. So for me a 10:30am to 7pm schedule works pretty well. So yea, I think being part of a team means you need to figure out how to optimize your schedule for the team to be most successful, and for your life. I've worked with people who are kind of ridiculous.. they do "4-10s", and get into work at like 4am.. basically they work 4 days per week and are there essentially overlapping with people for like 2 hours. So its one of those kind of things where I'm like, who approved that arrangement??? so I guess flexible I mean as like, "you can get into work anytime between 7am and 10am, but expect to be here 9 hours and take a 1 hour lunch break..".. I feel like that is a pretty flexible for many people, and you could say "if you need to leave early to go get your kids on some random day or do something, just do it, but figure out how to make sure you are being productive.." so there is basically a rule that people need to follow, but also some level of flexibility.
I'm a night owl. I've forced myself into becoming an early riser just to mitigate the 45-1hr of traffic and get to the gym. I don't feel like it's helped my productivity whatsoever, though. It's like no matter what, I get a complete boost in productivity as soon as the sun goes down.
I have switched to waking up 4 or 5 almost every day. I have stuck to that habit for the last about 20 months.
It seems I get a boost from a) being alone and knowing I won't be interrupted for hours and b) just start the day by doing something that other people find crazy.
Interestingly it seems that if I sleep past 5 it becomes harder to wake up. That might just be me giving up once I realize won't get ut of the house in time though.
Oh, and for the record: I use an alarm clock that forces me to go out of bed to scan a code. I have also set it up to turn on the philips hue spot that points at my face gradually starting 30 minutes or so before alarm time.
I get up as soon as I have to use the bathroom in the morning. I just don't go back to bed, whether it's 3am or 6am. I noticed a year ago that I'd be able to power through the day if I did that, but if I went back to bed for the 1-3 hours left over before work I'd wake up feeling worse.
Aside from all of this, though, my point was more that I don't feel more productive. Probably less. I still feel like the night time when things are quiet and peaceful is when my brain can actually function at it's best.
Maybe I am wrong but I really don't like the forced to wake up idea. I spent most of my pre-adult life very tired and it may have been partly due to interrupted REM cycles in the morning.
For the past few years I've been starting earlier, from 6:30-8:00am. Once I'm awake I'm excited to get out of bed and work. I get to check up on what was completed or happened while I was asleep.
Jump back to 5 or even 10 years ago and I would sleep late, anywhere from 10am to 1pm. Getting up wasn't exciting or motivating.
A whole lot went in to this (light control at night being probably the biggest factor), but an alarm clock never played a role.
This article presumes that trust is the only reason that employers don't allow or support remote work. It's also assumes that the individual's peak productivity is the most important thing.
However, neither are necessarily true - I actually really enjoy a team dynamic. A team working well together can lead to amazing leaps in productively. And it's very hard to replicate that remotely.
Building remote teams is extremely hard and takes a lot of investment. If you look at the companies that do it well, it's almost a cultural obsession.
If you've ever agitated for working remotely, you'll discover that trust is probably two of the top three reasons managers don't want to let anybody do it.
Which is funny, because remote workers almost to a fault work TOO MUCH. It becomes a lot easier to blend work and life. For some people that's okay (if not an ideal situation), for others it's not, and they either figure out how to segregate the two and work a normal amount or it becomes a one-way ticket to burn-out.
This is one of the biggest points Jason Fried & DHH made in REMOTE (https://37signals.com/remote). The other one was about a human being's natural need for socialization... "cabin fever".
In my experience, trust is the #1 reason. The #2 reason is still related to trust, when you dig deeper, and has to do with a perception in loss of "culture" or productivity due to decreased collaboration. My evidence is anecdotal, but it has been a consistent experience for me talking to several dozens of non-remote vs remote workplaces in the Durham, NC and Charleston, SC areas.
The answer to the expense of office space varies widely based on arrangements and location. Outside of the coasts, there are definitely areas where commercial space that startups use is cheaper per sq ft than residential. A couple of years ago, I was talking with a VC from New York about his (non-fancy) Manhattan office space being $80+ per sq ft while there were good spaces in my city for $1 per sq ft without tenants.
Well it does, but when most of your org wants / needs to work in person, you need to pay that. The cost of an office is probably less than the value added by the employees who would leave if you went remote-only, at least in many firms.
I always feel very conflicted about remote work. It doesn't work for me personally, I never work remotely unless special circumstances force me to for a day or two. But I realize that is a personal preference and many people have the exact opposite preference and I want to respect that.
But I have a couple of teammates that moved to different cities and are now 100% remote, and I find it very frustrating that I can essentially never talk to them in person. They fly in once or twice a year but that doesn't help the situation the entire rest of the year. They report that in their view video calls are working as an adequate replacement for face to face conversations but I completely disagree. I don't know the solution though. They are valuable team members and I'm glad they didn't have to leave the company when they moved, but at the same time I really don't want the trend to expand or for us to hire new people knowing they will be 100% remote.
Maybe you need to work on your communication skills? I realize that's a snarky sounding answer, so let me expand on that. Face to face communication is nice and has benefits. But there are tradeoffs. It's clear that your company has decided that when making a decision between having certain team members be remotely part of the team or not at all, the choice is clear. So maybe the appropriate course of action is to accept the benefit of continuing to have access to those individuals and work on adjusting your communication style to support distributed teams. Protip: a remote first workflow also improves documentation and communication if you have more than one office.
Personally, I welcome the chance to work with a group of minds that isn't restricted by the filter of "lives within x hours of office". The world is full of amazing projects created by people around the world working together.
I think your observation is valid, but in my experience the drawbacks of remote working are dwarfed by the benefits.
In the end, not everything that works for one will work for another. The previous commenter may need to work on their communication skills but so may the people who are now remote. I think the one problem is these discussions (this is the third in as many weeks) is that people tend to take a stance of "My perfect work environment is ______. Everyone should adapt to me".
I think we need to approach this differently. Have the team self organize around rules for availability, communication techniques, etc. Come up with plans for white-boarding and brainstorming when everyone is remote to each other. Or, come up with a plan to allow people in an open space to have some quiet and privacy to get work done. I find it rather silly that a single situation is what any employee needs 100% of the time and that if they think that, they aren't considering the needs of the rest of their team. Mostly everyone just needs a little perspective I think.
But the summary is that it that the communications we have are not really a problem. I think I came off as stronger than I meant. It's more the conversations that don't happen at all because they are too inconsequential individually that I miss.
None of it is horrible. I was wrong to say I thought it is completely inadequate. But it is less than ideal for me.
I think my feeling is that it's of course fine for a team/company to be primarily or significantly remote because that works for a lot of people. Personally I couldn't be as productive as I like in that environment so I wouldn't work there but that is okay.
I think it should also be fine for other teams or companies to insist on being primarily non-remote though because that also works for a lot of people.
> But I have a couple of teammates that moved to different cities and are now 100% remote, and I find it very frustrating that I can essentially never talk to them in person.
Why is it frustrating? What have you done to replace the in person? These are honest questions, and I'm not trying to be a PITA.
The reason I ask, is that I have been working with remote coworkers since the late 90s (keep in mind that you can go to an office every day and still have many of your coworkers be in different offices). Video chat did not work very well then, and we basically did entire projects over the phone and email. Video chat, group chat, project management tools, etc... have made it so much easier to work with people who do not share the same space. Even in the same office, I prefer emails to random chats.
Basically there are lots of times where I want to have a very brief informal conversation but chat isn't high enough bandwidth(I have to spend 3 minutes writing a paragraph that won't communicate what I'm trying to say as clearly as I'd be able to in 10 seconds talking) and jumping on a video call feels too formal.
It's hard to give specific examples of this but it happens all the time.
Maybe I don't even know what I want to say or ask exactly but I just want to throw a stream of consciousness at them. Sometimes that goes somewhere and there is a longer conversation but sometimes you just say some stuff and realize it didn't go anywhere and you say "nevermind let me think about it more". In person that's easy and not awkward because we do it all the time. It feels weird though to ask someone to jump on a video call, start talking at them for 30 seconds and then go "nevermind" and end it.
Honestly, you're going to have to get past feeling weird. Company culture needs to make all forms of communication expected and normal.
Other than my first job programming at a tiny company while still in college, I have never worked in the same location as my entire team. Daily stand ups are where we caught up each morning with follow up phone calls where needed. Now chat is so pervasive that I tend to use that where a phone call may have been done in the past because it is less intrusive to the other person, can be shared with a group, and is self documenting.
As far as reaching the 'never mind let me think about it more' moment, writing an email does the exact same thing, but often without interrupting the other person. This is why I prefer to send and receive emails when I have ideas or someone wants to share them (I also insist on written agendas for meetings). The act of writing tends to force a deeper level of thought up front.
The point I'm trying to get across is that I don't think you are wrong but I do think we are different.
I agree that chat and calls and email all are beneficial. I use them all every day and they work very well. I agree that writing can help focus thoughts and it also forms documentation that will persist long after a conversation is forgotten.
I can even see where all of those things are enough to make up for a lack of face-to-face conversations for many people.
But it isn't entirely enough for me and I prefer not to have it implied that that means there is something wrong with me. I don't think that is your intention but it can come off that way. (Actually sorry reading through replies it isn't you doing this primarily but others)
Some people work better remotely, some people work better primarily in person. Yes I can deal with having remote colleagues, but that isn't the way I work best. Just like you could work non-remotely and instead physically go to work every day, but that isn't the way you work best. I don't think either of us is wrong, just different.
I've been on the opposite side of this. My own experience was that the person suffered from a mix of being a slow typer, and also didn't assemble ideas well before communicating them.
For me at least, this was bad enough that I had to write as the person talked and rephrase their words back to them to make sure I had turned it into what they meant.
A DM in a chat is precisely the place for those kind of convos (especially the "Well what about X, Y Z.. wait, nevermind, I figured it out" kind of comments which I'm especially guilty of). Just spend some time getting your thoughts distilled down before you start typing.
I can assemble ideas and communicate them just fine, but yes I also often brainstorm half-formed ideas with teammates. This is intentional, not a accident or because I can't think for myself.
It's a process that I (and others) find leads to better ideas quicker. Why waste time fully fleshing out an idea alone and only afterwards present it to others who might instantly see some flaw you overlooked that they could have pointed out at the beginning? It's perfectly fine if I throw something at you and you have no idea what I mean, and even better if you rephrase it to clarify what I meant because you probably just clarified it for me as well.
I have a feeling your response might be that I'm wasting people's time like that but I disagree. In person I can see what another person is doing before I engage them, so I obviously am not going to bother them if they are busy or focused on something else. I can always bring it up later at lunch or just whenever I notice they have a second.
Maybe that makes it more clear why this does not translate well remotely. It's tough to translate half an idea into text, and while that forces me to make it into a full idea first it's also slower. Remotely it's also impossible for me to know what they are doing before I engage them, so I would start breaking their concentration and wasting their time.
For me that extremely lightweight and casual brainstorming is one of the most important parts of having a team to work with.
I work on a team of 11 engineers. Two of us are remote - myself included. We use Slack for IM, Hangouts for group meetings and face-to-face chats, and Screenhero for screen sharing and pairing. I highly recommend the latter for interactions conversations that are analogous to the "pair programming / informal show-and-tell" conversations. Thanks to those tools, I feel very connected to my team and am able to have high quality and high fidelity interactions with my colleagues.
IMO, what you describe is what I like in forcing remote communication: you are forced to take the time to lay down on paper^Wtext what your problem is; that forces you to decompose it methodically so that you will be understood. That process, by itself, often brings the light and makes the communication unnecessary: you solved the problem by concentrating properly on it in order to explain it.
Also (warning, this will sound snarky), what I liked in remote work is not being interrupted by people who do what you like to do: thinking out loud and using me either as an answering juke-box (I should stop what I am doing, switch to concentrate on your problem, while you obviously haven't given it as much time as you expect me to give it, since you are building it as you speak) or just as a mirror.
a paragraph that won't communicate what I'm trying to say as clearly as I'd be able to in 10 seconds talking
On the other hand, I personally appreciate when someone sends me some written conversation rather than verbal as it allows me to take time to digest and respond (theres only so many times I can ask someone to repeat what they said) and it provides a written record that I can come back to later. The latter point is important because my memory isnt that great and I find it difficult to take notes and pay attention at the same time. Text is also searchable and shareable, should I need either.
It's a good reminder that email and video just don't have the bandwidth of a few million years of evolutionary-designed face-to-face social communication.
Wow, don't know where to begin...
1. this article seems to be aimed at startups, but the author then goes on to complain about having to work 8-5 ( good hours for a startup).
2. "Let the bad actors fail" I've met very few people who are actually trying to game the system, the vast majority of people perceived as "Bad actors" need managements help to align their goals and values with that of the business.
3. The title implies this is an issue of trust, where as it seems that it's more about preference and fit. Some software engineering problems lend themselves more to an in-person environment than not. For instance, when I was working on an oil sensing project, All I did was write software but I had to have the hardware close for testing my software. They sure aren't going to let me drag 20k worth of equipment home in my honda.
4. ROWE, how do you measure the output of knowledge workers especially programmers? If anyone figures it out write a book you will make a bajillion dollars.
Experienced developers can work as well as, or better at home. Even in a startup; especially in a startup where time is important and commute can be expensive that way.
I work on embedded frequently; I have way more than $20K of equipment on my desk right now. Not to mention old projects in boxes and on shelves. That's absolutely not an issue. If I need it and need exclusive access to it, in the office or on my desk is all the same.
And measuring output? Why, by performance of course. And by the value of the work done. So I can earn well on embedded work whenever that comes my way, because its not a common skill and I can do it quickly. The market sets the value; there's no mystery to this.
Hey Joe, I also work from home full time but as a backend systems developer. I was not trying to highlight that it would be impossible for someone with hardware to work from home, simply that in some cases it's not feasible or doesn't make sense ofr the business.
So, when a team of 12 delivers a product that makes X amount of money, we say to ourselves, "Each individual on this team has an output of X/12 ? That's silly.
Also, your comment, "Why, by performance of course." What does that even mean?
Would love to hear more detail about how you would measure productivity and output of a programmer. Because there are millions of managers around the world who have yet to figure it out.
> If you don’t trust your employees to work remotely you shouldn’t have hired them
What an absurdly simplistic view of the world you have there, Yan. The real world is more complex, and people are not static things - they change. Your article applies excellently to you as an individual, but you seem to think you are right to generalise things to other people.
I wonder how the author feels about the #NoEstimates movement. Both ROWE and #NoEstimates are very popular trends these days, but they are mutually incompatible. A results-only-work-environment works only if the results (ie quality + time-taken) are clearly defined, and all employees are held accountable for those results. This is fundamentally incompatible with the #NoEstimates movement which says that it's impossible to figure out how much time a task is supposed to take.
Retrospective estimates could work better, but I imagine it lends itself to a lot of credibility problems. If you're popular and well-liked, you'll get retrospective estimates that exceed how much time you actually took. If you're unpopular, your manager/teammates can screw you over by giving estimates that are lower than how much time you took. Not to mention the fact that things always seem so much simpler in hindsight, especially when someone does a really good job with design.
Butt-in-seats management, despite being much maligned, is much more consistent with the NoEstimates movement. Instead of trying to estimate how much time something is supposed to take, just mandate that they spend X hours working everyday.
The reason why open floor plans are so popular is likely due to cost. Think about how much more space / structure complexity you need to implement a non-open floor plan. Decision makers likely look at the options and think 'hey, not only will everyone be forced to communicate and collaborate, we will also be much closer to fitting the office project into our budget and cost projections. '
Face to face interactions are often orders of magnitude more efficient than textual interactions, which is particularly important during highly collaborative activities. Really, even face-to-face is the wrong description, since it implies something like video conferencing can be used as a substitute: human-to-human interaction might be better. Body language, the ability to recognize when a conversation is not making progress or a point is generally accepted and can be set aside, trust building, humanization of The Other, etc.
I say this as someone who works remotely, but who recognizes the shortcomings of it.
I find it telling that you were downvoted for this comment.
Anyone who would claim this isn't the case is deluding themselves.
It's starting to feel a lot like the open-office trend in business: it's turned into a religious discussion, and folks who are proponents willfully ignore reasonable arguments to the contrary, as though a plea for moderation is somehow anathema.
Sometimes face ti face can be good, but I often prefer email, for the reason that everything gets documented.
A previous line manager of mine would never document anything, and his standard response was "I thought we talked about that". Sure we did, but you changed your mind then changed it again, then again after that. I can't remember what the final outcome was.
1. Start by setting the agenda, and critically, the desired outcome. "At the end of this meeting I want to have a decision on X, or a date for when we can make that decision."
2. Have your meeting. Minimize attendance. 3 is perfect. 5 is okay. 7 is pushing it. Have a very clear moderator/leader for the discussion.
2b. Moderator/leaders should be hard-asses about forcing tangential discussions offline/into a parking lot. This is probably their most important function.
3. At the end of the meeting, the leader summarizes the outcome to all participants. This is a critical step. "So, Joe, you will come back to me on Friday with a decision on X. Phil, you'll be working with Joe to pull that answer together."
4. Write the meeting notes down in a permanent place. Email is too ephemeral. A document management system of some kind with an email notification is ideal. Record actions for those who have them, with associated dates.
Stakeholders should also follow-up on actions with due dates to make sure they're closed out. This can feel like nagging/cat herding, but it's vital.
The reality is, many decisions/discussions are too complex to do over email, particularly if the number of stakeholders grows beyond 3. There's far too much room for confusion/ambiguity and a lack of ownership on follow-up actions. Mix in the ease with which emotional components can be lost or mis-interpreted over email, and my tendency is to push for a voice or in-person discussion the minute an email thread goes on for more than a day.
You need a dedicated person to take meeting minutes, ideally someone who isn't otherwise part of the meeting because humans are bad at multitasking. I especially find it hard to take notes and focus on the meeting (nevermind actually contributing).
I'm really not sure why you're being downvoted here. This is absolutely spot-on and part of the reason why the whole 'teleconferencing will wipe out business travel' movement never really took off the way it was intended. There is absolutely value in meeting together in person, if nothing else other than to deepen a relationship. This is especially true in non-US cultures where a deep emphasis is placed on building trust in person before ever getting to business related matters.
As a side note, I've used pretty much all of the major video conference vendors and find it extremely annoying that, even in 2017, some rather large percentage of calls will have some kind of issue during a call, if it can connect at all.
Getting shit done - the actual, hands in the works, not managing or brainstorming - however, is not a collaborative activity. At some point you have to sit down and focus, and other people are a menace then.
on topic of efficiency, how efficient is it to have 20+ people all get up early, get dressed, and drive or commute on a train anywhere from 20m to 90m each way ? (time which of course is unremunerated).
Humans transfer knowledge most effectively when they are communicating in person. Of course this does not mean you will achieve the highest productivity in an office by putting 20 people in the same room, but it still says a lot about in office vs complete remote work.
A lot of companies create the type of culture where it's not pleasant to work in the office. However, having half you team work remotely on random days of the week isn't the right solution to this, and I don't think it could be justified by saying "I trust my employees". Just create the right team and the right environment. People will want to spend time together when there is inspiration and motivation involved.
There is a lot more to the implications of strong tacit information transfer that extends to how innovation ecosystems work. For anyone curious I would suggest finding the research around the subject.
ROWE - Results Oriented Work Environment. If only the world were so simple that everyone's contribution can be put into a nice neat box. When work can be so well defined, it doesn't get outsourced to a 1 bedroom in San Francisco, it gets outsourced to the cheapest spot on the planet.
Creative work (R&D included) can be hard to define. It depends on random interactions between people. It requires both collaboration and periods of quiet. And the outputs can be very hard for a CEO to define in advance.
Remote-only can work ok for "Designed for remote-only" companies, but they are the exception not the rule.
100% remote can also work for employees who spent a lot of time in the office building their networks, reputations and relationships.
It's ok for people to say "I'll only ever work remote" but you can quickly find yourself in a very tight box.
Management/Educators/Government will always cater to the lowest common denominator(LCD). It only takes one person to screw it up for everyone. This is the real upside to working for a small company. The larger the company, the lower the LCD is likely to be.
I admire large companies that have the balls to delineate between groups. Most don't. If you work as an IT professional for a company that has a large call center, God help you. Call center work is some of the highest turnover work out there. Managers of call centers resort to treating they're employees like children.
It is frustrating when you find yourself as a college educated, fully formed adult, being lumped in with cretins.
IMO, this is largely why work from home is squashed. Because if we let you do it, everyone will want to do it, and we can't have that.
I don't think it is black and white. Also trust is not black and white, and trusted persons can turn bad and unrealiable persons can develop to be reliable and trustworthy.
If you are sure that you bring the best value by working remotely, then just do it and explain the situation to potential employers. Some might be happy with that, some not. However to me it looks like the remote job market is about 100x more competitive than on-site. Employers seem to value being able to talk face-to-face etc, and in principle I don't think there is a lot wrong with that. If you don't like it, start a competing company which hires remote people - it is a free market. If remote working is truly more effective, remote work should get more common.
If you don’t trust your employees to work remotely you should tell them that work is expected onsite. If it is important to them to work remotely, they shouldn’t have let you hire or have paid them
also, people who obsess over issues tend to have issues with the issues they obsess over. Con-men, for instance, obsess over matters of trust, as do people who have been conned. Don't work for or hire people who obsess over trust. People with trusting and trustworthy personalities and a good sense of boundaries expect it and don't obsess over it because it's built into their (metaphoric? literal?) DNA.
Yes and no, I suppose. I consider myself to be a pretty good employee, but I know that I would struggle a lot working remotely. Someone who's used to working remotely probably has that discipline, but for now, I know I lack it.
"no evidence that an open office supports collaboration" -- sure, but the choices aren't just open office or working remotely. Face to face interaction is valuable for collaboration, regardless of the office layout.
- for people to stop "collaborating" in the office I sit in; even over-the-ear headphones and loud music aren't enough to cancel that out
- for people to stop standing behind me and having (work-related) conversations
- for the guy working next to me to actually sit on his damn ass and not move around the office every 10 minutes
In general, I absolutely hate feeling presence and attention of other people when I'm trying to focus. With each new day I spend in a modern workplace, I more and more understand why cubicles are a fucking awesome idea.
One day I swear I'll build myself one out of pizza boxes.
If I were you I'd push hard for an office to work in at your job. Like, go out and get some job offers and tell them you'll take one of these jobs if you don't get your way.
Work environment is everything and once I started taking it seriously, my life enjoyment improved immensely.
I'm not pushing too hard, because beside the points I raised, I'm generally happy about my job. A nice and fair company, with good atmosphere and friendly people. I guess today was one of those days when my inner introvert reared his ugly head.
Either way, right now I'm considering moving out of town, so I'm trying to push them into letting me work remotely part of the week ;).
Question for remote workers here:
I'm forced to work remotely during the next 3 months (thanks to the US Visa system) and with my coworkers, we're struggling to find a good communication software for our daily huddle.
What we use right now is Hangout for the video and a VOIP solution for the sound. The video quality is not so bad but the sound sucks.
We tried Skype, Slack video and couple of other software but I'm not really satisfied by any of them. Discord has a perfect sound but I'd like to know if there's a software out there more "professional"?
Yeah, Teamspeak uses the same sound codec (Opus I think) as Discord. I use that to talk with my friends and famility that are 6k miles away and the sound is almost perfect.
If I’m hiring for a candidate that has expressed a need to work remotely, I interview them very differently. First, I give extra importance to the communication with the candidate over email/LinkedIn to set up the phone screen, and also the phone screen itself. I know that I will be interacting with the person primarily this way. It’s extremely helpful to obtain referrals from people who have worked with the person remotely before, so they can provide feedback about how frequently and engaged that person has been with the on-site team in the past. I also look for and ask questions probing the persons communication skills more than my usually technically-focused interviews.
The reason for this is that I’ve experienced different results working with the same people from remote than when they are on-site. For that reason I don’t think it’s enough to assume that because a developer is a good remote worker they will work well in an office setting or that if they are a productive office worker they will function highly from remote.
Basically, people are hired into specific roles. If you’ve hired someone for an open space agile environment and the role/work dramatically changes (going remote, acquired by “waterfall method inc”, etc) the hiring decision very well may no longer be informative.
At work, we just figured out a weird problem and resolved it quickly, because five of us are sitting side by side and we could quickly discuss it. Meanwhile, the two remote people are still somewhat confused, and I'm trying to explain it in chat - and likely by the time I'm done explaining the problem, a commit will be added to a pull request to fix it.
Granted, I'm probably not the best communicator, but being on location can speed things up a lot.
So, uh, we usually just hop on video chat for this. They should have been on video chat when you were talking about the problem. The issue with your company is not that remote working is less collaborative, it's that you're not doing the basic, minimum effort required to make remote working even possible.
We usually do - we're in a remote office, so we have 4 people in Austin, TX, 6 in New York, one remote in San Diego, and one of the Austin folks was working from home. So for standups, etc., we do a video call.
But this time, it would have literally taken more time to dial up the two remote-and-interested parties than it did to solve the problem.
If we were all remote, we would probably have done that, since it would be almost a necessity. But five heads is enough to solve the problem, and we have five heads here...
This is a great example of how not to work with remote workers. You chose to organize your team as if everyone is local, so your remote people are left out of the loop. You should have discussed via IM or in a hangout.
You can't have your cake and eat it to. You are either are remote team or a local team, there is no in-between. You have remote people, so you are a remote team and you need ALL team interaction to be online. So absolutely no in-person meetings unless you fly your remote people in.
But the point is that the problem was diagnosed and solved in a few minutes. Literally, not more than three. Just making sure that everyone @here was paying attention would have taken two minutes.
Author of this needs to run a company for a while. If you really are the 110% employee you say you are, you are an edge case. The reality is, most people need to be told to go here, sit there, do this, for X hours, and I need these results. Otherwise, nothing gets done. And as far as work environment is concerned, literally everyone is different. I need a TV on playing reruns of The Office to be productive. We are all strange creatures.
Does it really need to be sit there and do this for X hours and I need these results? Would "I need these results (in X timeframe)" not also work?
I'm not saying there aren't benefits to working in an office with fixed hours (e.g. despite the advent of email and IM communication is often better in person).
But:
1. At jobs with fixed hours I often spend a couple of them a day effectively doing nothing because I'm burnt out that day. And conversely I will go home at home time even if I'm being given really productive at that time.
2. I often work more effectively at home due to lack of distractions and precisely because I'm not expected to be looking like I'm doing some all of the time. For example, sometimes it can really help to get out of the house, go for a walk, and think for a bit. Doing this for 20 minutes can be more productive than 6 hours of sitting at a desk trying to work on the same problem while looking at the a computer screen. But you can't really do that in an office.
Why not be a contractor then? You get to do whatever you want whenever you want and get paid when the job is done, and done correctly (granted you've setup your contracts this way).
Sure, as a rule of thumb. But what about young people, still learning how to be a professional? Structure, consistency, being surrounded by people smarter and more accomplished than you... these are the best ways to learn. Of course, there are plenty of self-motivated kids out there who don't need college to learn and prep for life, but for the majority, immersion in an environment raises the bar.
I am easily distracted and also like the team environment because you can tighten the feedback loop and communicate efficiently. I am the same way as the author-- night owl, ect. Going to an office is a solution for me and an option I wish I had, and enjoyed in the past. I would ammend the authors point:
You should trust employees who have a good track record to work remotely if they want and are sufficiently operating independently.
JR employees should be allowed to work part time remotely after some time in office.
There isnt a good way to inprint culture remotely, and there is a learning curve for jr devs who need senior devs for support/the internal support structure. So most Incs would be in bad shape if all there strong engineering talent worked from 6pm to 9am (as I would left to my own devices) because their jr devs wouldnt grow and other devs with supporting software on dif schedules have to wait.
Tldr not all offices are open plan, growing a team (culturally & skill-wise) is easier in the office, part-time remote work and coordination is a good tradeoff/reward for employees of all skillsets and functions.
I don't disagree with the the underlying points, but I do think it's hard to take a full stock of something like this. Workplaces as places where people work is a fairly big piece of culture to just change.
It's clearly true that work can be done elsewhere, but that doesn't mean workplaces are something we can just abandon and leave everything else the same. Imagine if a parliament decided they didn't need to see each-other in person. The whole system would be different.
This doesn't mean you shouldn't get a remote job. Maybe whole companies should be built this way from the ground up. Companies are cultures of a sort, with their fair share of cultural pathologies. Being in physical proximity is one of the ways companies function culturally, at present. All these things will need to be resolved some other (probably cultural) way for companies to function remotely.
I've worked with several devs who are trustworthy in general, but the days they work from home they are curiously unproductive. Or you try to get in contact with them on an issue of theirs and they never seem to be around. Yet in the office they're perfectly functional and available.
Not to mention that tech staff are a seller's market at the moment - trust or not, most companies don't get a lot of choice with the staff they get to have. The article's author is supremely selfish in assuming all staff are like them.
Has anyone found a truly workable remote alternative to everyone standing around a whiteboard for shared, interactive sketching?
Let me stipulate that I'd pay a sizable sum ($5K per location wouldn't be out of the question at all) if I could find something that gave me very similar dynamics to 5 people standing around a whiteboard and taking turns drawing, talking, correcting, improving a shared diagram. (So, this doesn't have to be "cheap", but does have to be "awesome".)
I've used a couple generations of them and have an older one in my basement. IMO, they're better than nothing but still a very great gap between these and a shared single-location whiteboard.
It's hard to capture the dynamics between people. (Reading the room for understanding, quickly collaborating on a drawing, etc.) Smartboards always felt like taking turns playing some laggy VR game.
To play devils advocate: How can you have a ROWE, if you can't really measure engineer productivity? This just seems to lead back to the most lines of code added = most work done attitude.
This is a problem with traditional butts-in-seats as well of course, but (one could argue) less so, as your employees at least have to spent X hours trying to solve the problem. And if you already going to spent so much time, why not do it right.
When I worked at a startup, we had a local office and an office on the other coast. To keep communications open we had an iPad facetime 100% of the time with the other office.
I feel like this is what remote working is missing, you may not have legs and be able to strut into the lunch room to talk about non-business but at the very least you can some presences improv the "brain-storming" sessions
This means also trusting their home (cheap door, no alarm, landlord, kids, wife...) and malware-infested computer with business data. It kind of implies that company data is on computers with internet connections, which is a no-no if you care about security.
There is a note at the bottom of the post that it originally ran on Medium (which freely licenses its content in this way in the absence of explicit revocation of consent from the author). The piece also explicitly acknowledges that working remote doesn't work for everyone, and states "That is fine."
the biggest mistake people do is assuming one size fits all. working for home is not for everyone, some people are more productive in a group settings when they other people around are working, and they get more incentive to work harder.
Personally, I prefer giving the choice to allow people to work from home if they are productive; but we need to remember it's not for everyone
What a pile of straw man BS. Most objections to working remotely have nothing to do with trust (at least for decent developer or designer jobs) but instead are about quality of collaboration and company culture.
People who write cocky condescending articles like this are almost always just stumping for doing what they want which is to work at home themselves.
> Most objections to working remotely have nothing to do with trust
For business types, it absolutely does. I've had to answer the question before "if people are working at home, how will we know they are working?" My response is "how do you know they are working at work? The same way."
The disconnect here is about the definition of "working". For many managers, that means "attending my meetings" and "easy to ask for status reports" more so than it means "producing good software". The former are what's easier to know in the office versus remote.
I can't imagine facebook or amazon being built using remote workers. grinding is hard, painful and demoralizing. but a close team of uber-focused engineers led by example, frequently beat the asses of the 'work-from-home-is-so-comfy' guys.
about why I hire these people: they are gems, who need a coach to make them achieve greatness as a team. this is moneyball.
Working from home was removed from our office because of "abuse".
Who was "abusing" it?
We have 7 Indian (not American) females working in our office in various functions. All (100%) of them were found to have been "working" from home on multiple occasions where they were inaccessible (not logged in, not responding to emails). Their reasons for working from home ranged from children to car troubles. By all measurable attributes, their work output was less than their peers.
Now before you knee jerk, please understand that I'm simply pointing out the measurable facts of the situation. I'm not making any claims regarding cultural background. I am, however, questioning whether or not there exists a cultural component here that leads to a different understanding of the "work from home policy". To that degree, the statement, "If you don't trust your employees to work remotely you shouldn't have hired them" can perhaps come across as a bit racist.
> All (100%) of them were found to have been "working" from home
Were there other employees who were abusing the system? What was the consequence of this abuse? Missed tickets? Pagers unattended? Meetings missed? How large was your organization? Is seven a small or a huge number relative to the number of employees in your org?
> To that degree, the statement, "If you don't trust your employees to work remotely you shouldn't have hired them" can perhaps come across as a bit racist.
Explain. In a statement that says nothing about race, just an employee-employer relationship, how would you perceive that as racist?
Wtf is "culture exists"? Like "culture of Indians"? You're digging yourself deeper in a hole. My comment about feathers and dots was ironic to highlight your dog-whistle. India is a country of 1.2 billion people with "many cultures". In any case, tarring people of certain ethnicities or race with "cultures" IS the problem with racism.
I do treat my employees like adults, but I expect them to act like adults. Like making a decision to join the rest of the team in the office for an agreed set amount of time.
Our official policy is it's up to the Manager. I prefer a team, and not just someone who produces code. So I prefer people to be in the office.
Children expect the world to revolve around them. Adults do not.
> Children expect the world to revolve around them. Adults do not.
It seems like the sentiment is "you have to come to where _I_ am to do work, just like _I_ do", which smacks of wanting the world to revolve around you. Who has childish expectations in this scenario?
I support my folks needing to work remote, or weird hours to handle their stuff, because life doesn't stop between 9-5.
For me to do my job effectively, I want to get to know people as more than just their output. That happens by having lunch as a team, playing foosball, happy hours, going to movies, and so forth.
That's a cult relationship, not an employee employer relationship.
I'm not talking about value judgments in that I admit there are probably more toxic employee/employer relationships than toxic cult relationships. Toxic cult realtionships are more famous, brogrammers, literally drinking the kool aide, etc.
Just saying the number of people wanting a professional relationship is going to be a lot higher than people wanting a cult relationship, so you're going to have trouble building the best team when you're limiting the hiring pool to, well, basically friends.
> That's a cult relationship, not an employee employer relationship.
Some tech companies have abused this mentality to make this feel like a cult relationship, but I see this as just like any non-tech company that has company sponsored soft-ball teams, bowling leagues, picnics, holiday parties etc.
I think I understand your sentiment, but I do believe if you were to speak to the people who work for me, they don't feel that it's a cult.
Google's research into management had a pretty strong point that managers who took interest in someone as more than an employee were more effective.
The constant whipping at my office generally just keeps me from working on potential backlog items. I have been told too many times to not do extra work beyond the minimum required effort, to do anything other than finish my explicitly assigned tasks and then goof off.
I think the danger is that if I get deep into refactoring the nightmare module that no one wants to touch, I might be tempted to waste time getting to a sane stopping point before switching to whatever "change the font of this GUI label to be Comic Sans, bold" task I might be assigned next.
If I could work remotely, and weren't specifically barred from having other employers by company policy, I could probably work 2 other full time jobs just like this one, and still have time for HN.
Happy to absorb a little rep loss here. People are taking the words "threat" and "stick" a little too literally and that's partly my fault for using them. I stand by my point though, however obscured.
When working remotely it is very easy to not communicate. It's very easy to lose track of what's important. It's harder for a team hierarchy to quickly throw things around. It's easy for people who need motivation to become distracted.
That's really what I mean. Just a visual reminder that "you're at work" makes the difference to some people. It probably works in the opposite direction for some others but in almost 20 years of doing remote work, that's never been my experience. Maybe it's because it's technical web stuff. Maybe we have a demographic of easily-distracted layabouts.
You can be technically excellent, and perfect for an on-site role, and still be rubbish at self-motivation. You shouldn't avoid hiring somebody for an on-site role based on their off-site performance. Or get better at managing that sort of person.
I guess what I'm really saying is the article is still wrong: you should never have to trust you employees. You should have enough contact with them to know what they're doing, how they're doing and what their goals are. That doesn't mean pinning them to the ground with a chair and torturing them, just some effective communication.
> The threat of your manager sticking their head round the corner is a stick that keeps on-site employees grinding along.
I had a boss once who tried to do that with his team. He presented his presence as a threat, and I would physically flinch every time he asked "how's it going?". This same guy had never been in a management position before, was in his mid-to-late 20s with very little professional experience, couldn't handle stress, and whenever he got stressed he would take it out on his employees by either screaming at us or talking down to us like we were children.
I am so glad I quit that job. That company was abusive in so many ways, but his attitude was the last straw. A couple of days after I put in my notice, I overheard him shouting at a couple of my co-workers in the most condescending tone, and I just felt sorry for them (and one of them was a friend of his from college, too).
Every other boss I've had, at every other company I've worked at, was an actual leader who I've felt honored to work with.
Agreed. Many very, very talented people don't love what they're talented at. As a result they do as little as they can to get paid well and support their families/interests.
Working from home removes a lot of the accountability of their time management and also removes a lot of the 'you don't look busy, got time for something else?' that can happen with working at the office.
I got a job that requires me to be in the office at 08:30 and I do it. I have no difficulty going to bed at 11:30 and being asleep by 12:30. I have no difficulty getting up at 06:40 and starting my day.
I can do all of these things because I am a responsible adult.
But I don't feel right. I'm not a morning person. I am most productive in the afternoon. Telecommuting from 10:00 to 18:00 would make the most sense for me but I understand that most employers simply do not have the flexibility to come up with custom solutions for everyone.
> I can do all of these things because I am a responsible adult.
You are saying that if anyone is not willing to do these things, they cannot be responsible adults. How rude and arrogant of you, if you really mean what you say.
There are people who have circadian rhythm issues and are able but not willing to pay the price paid in health for adhering to a given sleeping cycle. You say these cannot be responsible adults. That's what appalls me.
I don't function very well in the morning, regardless of how much sleep I get. I've experimented with all kinds of sleep schedules and durations. I've tried taking vitamins, melatonin, exercising before bed. I've tried using flux and not drinking coffee the day before or at all.
Non of this worked to make me funciton more in the morning. However, I can usually function very well at night, even if I'm tired. Even if I got little sleep.
The problem is, if I get up early and try to function, then I won't be able to funciton later either.
I do get up early and work a "morning persion" schedule, but its important to note that my employers rarely get my best work with this schedule.
You should ask someone who actually knows about that topic, e.g. any doctor that works with people with sleep problems, what they think of your statement.
I understand you are angry because of how I reacted.
See, you are talking bad about other people, people you don't know, whose stories you might not even have ever imagined. And denying someone to possibly be a responsible adult is very bad in my book. Look how society treats people who are not adult or considered irresponsible.
Having that in mind, I reacted rather direct and rude, but hopefully understandibly so.
Is there any science that suggests that people are hard-wired to be "early" or "late" people, and that there's just nothing one can do to change it? Legitimately curious. To me "I'm just not a morning person" seems like a pretty weak excuse for not being able to function as a professional because it's a little early in the morning, but maybe it's been shown that this is some intrinsic genetic trait that you can't control...?
It would be extremely unusual if all people had exactly the same circadian rhythm; some variation in sleep-wake cycles between individuals would be expected in the same way as a variation in height would be expected.
Wikipedia [1] says: "Normal variation in chronotype encompasses sleep–wake cycles that are from about two hours earlier to about two hours later than average." (Unfortunately the citation link is broken.)
I much prefer starting earlier and getting done earlier. A lot of this has to do with my schedule vs the babysitter's (my parents) schedule, but getting done at 3pm is a great feeling. Getting up at 4am (and starting work at 6am) isn't always fun, but I'm a bit of an early bird anyway.
Funnily enough I'm a musician too. But that isn't really relevant to the article. Of course you're a night owl if that's when the majority of your work takes place.
But the article was talking about working for a startup. If they want you to work 9-5 so that you can communicate with the team, then get an early night.
A closer analogy might be you telling a bandleader to shift the gig forward a couple of hours because you don't like going to bed too late.
It is not always about "not liking going to bed" at a certain time. Sleep is not something everybody can easily control. Not giving the body sleep when it asks for it can easily become a health risk.
Sure, if you continue going to bed at 2am and having to work at 9, then I can see how it can become a health risk. But if your body doesn't adjust after a week of going to bed at 11pm, then you probably should see your doctor.
> But if your body doesn't adjust after a week of going to bed at 11pm
That's not the problem. The problem is getting to sleep before 2am after having gone to bed at 11pm. My general answer has been 6+ alarms in the morning, lots of morning caffeine in the form of sugary energy drinks, and small-to-medium amounts of sleep deprivation to "fix" that issue (accepting a certain baseline level of exhaustion to enable me to fall asleep at 11pm.) It works, but it's far from optimal. I'm not going to whine about it on a day-to-day basis - that would be petulant - but I am going to feign mock horror and incredulity about the existence of morning people, if only for my own amusement. I'm not going to pretend it's not a thing.
Recently, I cut back to near-zero caffeine - as I've done many times before - and found myself naturally adjusting to a morning-biased, 24 hour schedule - for the first time in decades. This was such a startling change that I'm only half joking when I say I thought about seeing a doctor. But I imagine this is merely what life has been like for, say, the likes of you - all along. Perfectly natural. Nothing to panic about.
> found myself naturally adjusting to a morning-biased, 24 hour schedule
So have you stuck with this? Or do you prefer the excitement of not knowing?
I think I may - possibly through my own hyperbole - given the impression that I'm some sort of narcoleptic unicorn that can sleep on command, but really that's not the case at all. I've experienced plenty of trouble sleeping at various points in my life, but very rarely was it because I was 'a night owl' or 'a morning person', but more that I was stressed, or drinking too much coffee, or too much alcohol, etc., etc.
But, like you, I've got it under control mainly through common sense. At no point did I ever feel like it was my employer that had the problem because they expected me there at 9am.
For the past 2 weeks, at least. It is very strange.
> I think I may - possibly through my own hyperbole - given the impression that I'm some sort of narcoleptic unicorn that can sleep on command
No, but you've given the impression that you at least have it more under control than I've had it. I mentioned 6+ alarms earlier - this is not hyperbole, there have been times when it's been a regular thing, and on more than one occasion I have slept through them all. Rather embarrassing.
> But, like you, I've got it under control mainly through common sense.
I'm not sure what I've done qualifies as common sense. The amount of sugary energy drinks I've consumed (hating coffee) cannot in any way be considered healthy - I'm lucky my family isn't prone to diabetes, and that the headaches only last a couple days when going cold turkey. While my constitution can bare it, what I've done would probably kill others. The sleep deprivation is not healthy either. I've controlled it, yes - but at what cost?
> At no point did I ever feel like it was my employer that had the problem because they expected me there at 9am.
I don't see it as a blame thing. But I've had employers offer "core hours" that didn't start until 11am, and taken advantage of that as a nice common sense perk that balances the need for collaboration and people's different schedules in what's hopefully a win for both myself (better health and happiness) and the company (better productivity).
All other things equal between two job offers, and I will absolutely take the one with more flexible hours. And I will continue to do so even if I somehow end up permanently transforming into not-a-night-owl - because there will be times I get stressed, drink too many energy drinks, etc. etc. - and I would argue that this is the common sense choice for both me and for my employer.
And then doctor will say: it's normal, don't worry, just shift your working hours to match your cycle. ;-)
Typical programmer is introvert phlegmatic or melancholic.
Quote:
Respecting the Daily Cycle
The daily circadian cycle is divided into four six hour periods, with each one having a different nature and temperament. The temperaments of these different periods need to be respected.
The six hour period surrounding noon is the period of maximum light, heat and activity; its temperament is Choleric. Accordingly, one should remain active at midday, from 9 AM to 3 PM, and not sleep or nap during this period.
Conversely, the opposing six hour period surrounding midnight, from 9 PM to 3 AM, is Phlegmatic, being the coldest, darkest and most passive/quiet period of the day. Accordingly, one should be either sleeping or winding down the day's activities to a close during this period. For the sake of one's health, one should start winding down at 9 PM and try to get to bed by 10 PM or not long thereafter. Going to bed later than this aggravates nervous tension and fatigue.
The other two six hour periods between these two polarities are transitional periods, and surround sunrise and sunset, which are the transitions between daytime and nighttime. The Sanguine period, surrounding sunrise, is the period of awakening. The Melancholic period, surrounding sunset, is a period of a gradual tapering off of the day's activities and the shift to a more quiet, contemplative evening mode.
I don't think that the particular time is the issue here. It's that there is a specific time at all. On top of that, the thoughtless commitment to a particular amount of time being in that chair is just insulting.
I agree with the title - if you don't trust me, then you shouldn't have hired me.
Depends on the role and the schedule of the rest of the team. It's absolutely reasonable to expect someone in the office by 9am, in the same way that it's absolutely reasonable to work out an "alternate work schedule". And if you're the kind of person with a "non-traditional" sleep schedule, the onus is on you to ensure the environment you're joining will support that.
The "I'll show up when I want" reeks of entitlement.
"I'll show up when I want" is totally reasonable so long as that's what the employer and employee agreed upon (eg, flex hours).
As a person with a "non-traditional sleep schedule", and an employment agreement that allows me to work when I want, I do not apologize or even remotely feel bad for coming in after 9am, just as I don't look down on anyone that leaves at or before 5pm.
I completely agree that this is an agreement between employee and employer. If the employer wants to pay more for the privilege on or or lose out on good employees for pure office working thats up to them.
However the converse of "I'll show up when I want", in this case "I expect you turn up exactly when i say", is entitlement from the employer. It's just an established one.
I'd say that this is more important than your comment suggests.
Across society at large, it's generally incredibly valuable that workers tend to work at the same time and be available to work together at the same time. This not only enhances productivity at work, but also enhances social lives since as a corollary it means that many workers tend to be off work at the same time too.
If anybody you work with directly needs to work during the day, then in most cases you will need to work during the day as well -- otherwise you'd be hindering the ability of that person to communicate with you when they need to. For instance, maybe your boss has to work during normal business hours because he/she is in frequent communication with other business contacts. But your boss also needs to be able to get into contact with you on the spot, often to facilitate said communication with other contacts. So you pretty much need to work during normal hours now too.
It's easy to see how the network effect of this can be very powerful, and I think this explains why there's an established asymmetry here between employer and employee.
It certainly is entitlement if the grandparent thinks it's righteous to lose all sympathy only because they are not willing to trade control over the sleep cycle for money. Don't assume everbody has yours, and don't judge them if they don't.
If I'm paying you, there's probably a lot of things I would like to decide.
This isn't an argument against remote work, but I've had all sorts of sleep patterns during different jobs. I just go to bed at a time when I can get an appropriate enough amount of sleep before I show up for work.
There are very few jobs on the planet--including many where you own your own business--that do not involve some degree of being in some place or doing some task at particular times. Some are indeed more flexible than others, including remote programming with minimal team or client interaction.
So, yeah, I like others am pretty non-sympathetic to anyone who expects to be paid money for 100% schedule flexibility.
Well I'm not an employer, but I would probably hire the person that can fit to the schedule that I prefer. Different companies have different needs - some prefer a team that spans an entire day, some prefer everyone to be online at the same time. That really is up to the employer.
My argument was totally not against remote work, and I agree with all the points against open-plan offices. However, changing the time you go to bed and wake up is so trivially simple that it just made the author seem obstructive.
For me the context is important here : we're talking about "people who can competently cut code". These people are so rare within the general population that I'm willing to accept all sorts of hygiene factors such as working strange hours, having poor communication skills, being obsessed with specific programming languages or operating systems, and on and on.
If I had 10 solid candidates show up for every job opening, I'd probably pick one that was willing to keep regular office hours. But that's not the situation, typically. Ability to write decent code trumps the other factors.
> Between 10% and 30% of adults have insomnia at any given point in time and up to half of people have insomnia in a given year.[3][5][11] About 6% of people have insomnia that is not due to another problem and lasts for more than a month.[3] People over the age of 65 are affected more often than younger people.[7] Females are more often affected than males.[5] Descriptions of insomnia occur at least as far back as ancient Greece.[12]
Just medicate the problem, right?
> While sleeping pills may help, they are associated with injuries, dementia, and addiction.[8][9] Medications are not recommended for more than four or five weeks.[9] The effectiveness and safety of alternative medicine is unclear.[8][9]
Well I'm glad that I'm not wrong "in general" then.
I would never dispute that insomnia is a real problem for people. But "I simply can't come in at 9am, I'm a night owl!" is the attitude I took exception to.
I'm resisting the urge to put all the disagreement with my point down to crabbiness from lack of sleep.
>>"I simply can't come in at 9am, I'm a night owl!"
Do you take exception to that statement if it came from someone with Delayed sleep phase disorder? [1]
" According Cary Cooper, a psychologist and professor at Lancaster University Management School, when people who have DSPS wake up early for work, they become sleep deprived which causes them to be less efficient, innovative, and creative at the office. People with DSPS have trouble finding positions that allow them to work hours that let them get enough sleep. This also results in more stress, and can cause workplace accidents. " [2]
> changing the time you go to bed and wake up is so trivially simple
Jesus, man, how many times will people have to explain to you that in many cases it does not work like that before you understand or at least acknowledge it?
Working at the office is about "staying in touch". When you are in the office you see new directions the company is interested in long before you get an assignment.
It doesn't matter if you are in an office with the door closed, or working from home: either way you miss things that you should have been told directly but nobody thought to tell you. So you end up doing otherwise great work that it leading the project in the wrong direction.
That is when you are in the office someone from marketing can see you in the hallway and ask about the hot new feature of today without invoking all the formal channels to take to the guy remotely. Thus when you are working from home you lose a lot of opportunities to do what is needed as opposed to what you are told. People who can figure out the right thing and do that are more valuable than people who only do what they are told.
Note that the title is correct: all employees should be trusted to work remotely from time to time. However that does not mean you should work from home all the time. You should be a regular at the office so that you don't lose touch. At the first sign of illness (you or your kids), bad weather, or a hard no interruptions problem: you should be out of the office and working from home. However you should also be a regular at the office for the benefits of being at the office.
Of course this depends on your job. If you are a contractor you might be in a situation where you do the letter of the contract and are gone - the only time you might want to do something else is if you are trying to turn the contract into a full term position. Even then though, some contracts are get release N out the door, with a possibility of renewal for release N+1 - in that case you may have the option to change what is in release N.