

Remote - rg81
http://robertgreiner.com/2013/11/remote-office-not-required-review/

======
trustfundbaby
The biggest challenge for me is that I'm starting to realize that people don't
really get asynchronous communication as much as I thought they would.

Putting on your headphones at the office and trying to get work done is seen
as antisocial and hostile (especially daring to direct people to try to get
you on im or email), and you find yourself shut out of critical decision
points meetings because people will say "we didn't want to bother you" (what
they're really saying is "fuck you, thats what you get for isolating
yourself").

People want to be able to get immediate responses and interrupt each other
whenever they like, and its easy to be pegged as an "asshole" if you don't
play along. If you extrapolate from there, it starts to make sense why remote
work is still such a hard sell in a lot of places (last stat I saw is that
only about 4% of American workers work from home, thats up from 2% last year,
but still)

"Hell is other People" \--- Jean Paul Sartre

~~~
scott_s
_(what they 're really saying is "fuck you, thats what you get for isolating
yourself")_

I think that's not a charitable interpretation. Two alternative explanations,
which are not mutually exclusive:

1\. Most people don't like confrontation or rejection; they find it awkward
and uncomfortable, even if it's done politely. After interrupting you a few
times, they find that they are generally rebuffed, so they stop interrupting
you. But that hesitancy will continue even in cases where they think maybe you
would say yes.

2\. They may not really understand _why_ you're redirecting them to
asynchronous communication; they don't have a good mental model of how you
will respond. Without that, they're not able to assess what you will think is
important enough to warrant an interruption. So they err on the side of not
interrupting.

~~~
001sky
Theres a term for that! I think its called _passive agression_. Passive
agression and active accomodation (ie, being nice) shouldn't be confused
though. The purpose of course, for the adversary, is to disguise the former as
the latter to gain a tactical advantage. While the laguage used by the parent
was (somewhat) blunt, I don't think the pheonomenan he is describing is an
empirical anomaly.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive-
aggressive_behavior](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive-
aggressive_behavior)

~~~
scott_s
No, that is not what I am trying to describe. Passive aggressive behavior is
still acting with malice. I am talking about people who want to do the right
thing by someone, but can't figure out what that is.

------
blisterpeanuts
My full time job in technology morphed into work-from-home after about
eighteen months. It happened for two reasons: #1, they knew me and trusted me
to get the work done, and #2, I was literally the last person on my team still
on site. My team's spread all over the world at this point.

I kept going to the office for a while, then realized that, aside from having
three monitors on my desk, there was no advantage for me going there, and
there are disadvantages. After two years, this is what I've learned.

 _Advantages of remote work:_

\- Time: I save 2-3 hours daily from getting dressed up, making lunch, and
commuting.

\- Efficiency: it's quiet in my home office (the family knows to leave me
alone while the door's closed). I've got 16 gigs of RAM on my home computer,
plenty of disk space, and it's actually faster and better than my work
computer. The work computer required so much bureaucratic rigmarole to get it
updated that I gave up.

\- Comfort: my chair is always where I left it, unlike at the office :(. My
coffee is made the way I like it, unlike the crappy K-Cup thing at the office
which never has decaf (I can't drink full caffeine). Lunch consists of pulling
a piece of cold chicken out of the fridge 10 feet away. I can walk outside
into the conservation land across the street while thinking about a problem.

\- Quiet: I don't have to listen to nonstop irrelevant conversation, computer
noises, phones ringing.

\- Financial: We took a trip to Nova Scotia and I managed to work every day
from my laptop in wifi hotspots, avoiding using any vacation hours. Of course,
it was not a vacation for me during the working day, but the family got to
enjoy a nice trip. I do the same when visiting the parents at Thanksgiving--we
land Monday or Tuesday evening and I work before the holiday begins. My
vacation time has accordingly piled up and I'm going to cash some of it in.

\- Family-friendly: I can pick up and drop off my kid to school, and be at
home for her while my wife's at work. No need to pay for after-school or a
nanny.

\- Healthy: no stress from commuting. I can go jogging at lunchtime, grab a
shower later on in the day. It's just an hour out of my day, whereas there's
not even a shower at the office, let alone a gym.

 _Disadvantages:_

\- The fridge, as noted above, is only 10 feet away. Even worse is the bowl of
surplus Halloween candy sitting on the counter nearby.

\- Always available means never offline. My manager knows I'm probably at my
computer at 9pm or 10pm, so he'll text me with questions. (I always answer. To
me, this is the price of WFH: out of fear that some small minded executive
will some day say, "You should be in the office from now on so we can better
track you", I make sure that they never have reason to doubt my productivity
and availability. I'm overcompensating of course, but then I enjoy my work and
I am grateful for the flexibility so I return the favor. We're kind of a
start-up within a big corporation anyway, so long hours are the norm.)

\- The family sees me sitting there and talks to me. I have to fend them off.

\- Very tempting to spend time on Facebook and other sites such as Hacker News
:) I rationalize it as blowing off steam, but jogging's better, really.

~~~
nthj
A bit of a tangent, but am I the only one who finds texts unacceptable in
professional situations? I never reply to a text from a client; if it's
important, I'll reply to the text FROM an email, but never as a text. If it
happens more than once or twice I explain that I don't receive text message
notifications on my phone (which is true; I can see them passively but they do
not "ping" me), and that to ensure a timely response they should always email
or call me.

This means (a) all expectations of me are in one place (my inbox) and (b) I
don't have to filter work from my free time. And in the age of smartphones,
there's really no reason not to just use email.

~~~
nl
_This means (a) all expectations of me are in one place (my inbox) and (b) I
don 't have to filter work from my free time._

Isn't this a tools problem (ie, at your end)?

I certainly separate my work phone number from my personal one (but that's
pretty easy to do these days).

I've never found the SMS vs Email location thing to bother me, but if it does
think there are plenty of phone apps that combine them. From memory HTC has
one that isn't terrible, and Dias.im[1] looks nice.

What do you do about other message sources though? IM, etc?

I've always considered keeping my work organised something I'm responsible
for, and I'd never try to make other work one way or another to fit my tools.

(Disclaimer: I work remotely)

[1] [http://www.cultofandroid.com/42101/disa-im-unified-
messaging...](http://www.cultofandroid.com/42101/disa-im-unified-messaging-
app-for-android-beautiful-ui/)

------
scott_s
Funny, I _just_ got off the phone with someone I work remotely with. We
communicate asynchronously regularly. And that's great. But sometimes there's
no substitute for a 10 minute phone call to discuss a technical topic.

The amount of time it takes for two parties to draft and write responses to
technical points can be quite high, and the back-and-forth required to correct
misunderstandings can take several round-trips. Talking out loud,
simultaneously, can allow for much higher bandwidth.

It also engenders basic empathy, which is a big deal in teams.

Our protocol is usually to ping the other person with a message to see if they
can chat.

~~~
baddox
Funny, the last time I suggested that in-person (or at least low-friction
real-time audio and/or video) communication is extremely beneficial if not
crucial to software teams, especially smaller startups iterating quickly, I
was lambasted. One great comment I remember distinctly was that if my job
required me to regularly ask another programmer something about a system they
had worked on, that means the system wasn't sufficiently documented.

~~~
scott_s
That certainly wasn't by me. HN is legion, for it is many.

------
rwhitman
I'm in this bummer of a situation where I can work remote from pretty much
anywhere I like, but my wife is bound to her 9 to 5 that won't allow her to
work remotely for more than a few days at a stretch. She does knowledge work
as well, and if she had been with the company for a long time and was super
essential to the business they might let her work remotely for the long term,
but because she's somewhat replaceable if she goes anywhere too long, she
loses the job.

Its a real problem because we need to be back on the other side of the country
for family at the moment and she's trapped here by the company HR policy.

Really hoping that this stuff starts to break into mainstream corporate
acceptance soon. These older companies are pretty sluggish to adopt remote
worker policies, especially for jobs that they can just as easily fill with
people on-site.

~~~
rg81
Bummer. Hopefully your wife's remote working situation will improve over the
next couple of years. Your gig sounds pretty great though, congrats.

------
aferreira
I can personally attest that it is incredibly hard to land a solid remote
based job, even if you're very good at it. I have worked remotely most of my
career (with frequent visits to the office) but I still see a constant stream
of people who prefer to have someone much less skilled and/or capable on site
rather than take the chance and hire remotely.

Time zones, contractual arrangements and/or agreements, distance and track
record mean nothing if employers are simply not willing to give you the
chance. Worse, some do and require you to keep track of every small thing you
do (TPS reports, etc), destroying the employer/employee trust and leaving us
with painful processes that no one likes to go through.

The other side of the coin is that remote workers often request US-like
salaries to companies in much different economies, which leads to an even
smaller rate of success ...

Finally, from my own experience, I would never hire someone who would tell me
that they would never be able to come to the office at least a few times per
year (3-4, a week at a time). Just one week of in-person collaboration can
bring drastic improvements and/or discoveries that lead to better products
overall.

~~~
auxbuss
I try to insist on a week in the office at the start of a gig -- I only take
remote gigs, unless very short. That's never been a problem. (International
gigs are an exception, naturally, but I let the client make the call.)

That week in the office is enough to get to know everybody and vice versa. You
do need to actively seek out and talk to everyone, though.

------
flippyhead
I should probably read this book but also, I wonder if I could have written
it. We've fully embraced remote working and it's fantastic. It has allowed us
to hire above our weight class as a small startup, finding and keeping some
truly fantastic developers.

I agree completely that communication is key. You really have to over
communicate, to the point almost of being annoying to avoid very simple but
costly mistakes. I also find that teams can suffer from the low fidelity of
text communication with regard to sentiment and emotional content. It's just
too easy to assume someone has a voice they do not and to harbor resentment or
whatever silently -- especially among introverted developers.

We host occasional Skype lunches with no agenda except to catch up and chat on
peoples lives.

~~~
rg81
That's really great. I'm glad to hear of another company that has benefited
from an all-in approach to remote workers. I think reading the book would be
time well spent. You can knock it out in a single day.

~~~
flippyhead
And I should say I doubt I'd write it well ;)

------
abraxasz
One thing I've found is that the effectiveness of remote work depends somehow
on the type of work being done. I'm a currently a grad student, and my advisor
is not in town very often. We have frequent skype meetings, but I don't get as
much out of it as I do from real meetings. On the other end, I also work on
startup projects on the week-ends, with people in different countries and I
don't feel the same miscommunication problems in this context.

It is possible that remote working in an academic context is indeed possible,
but that the highly technical type of communication required to make it work
effectively is beyond my current skill. But my point remains that some types
of work are harder to carry out remotely.

------
quaffapint
I work for a major F500 company and while they are currently not allowing any
new remote employees, there are still thousands of us. My team is all over the
country and I don't have an office to go into.

Honestly when I first started working from home for them years ago, I figured
more and more companies would embrace it and it would become much more
commonplace. They did it to save money having to house employees somewhere,
but I guess other companies don't see it that way. It works wonderfully for
getting work done during your own schedule and still be there with your
family. Though I still find it amusing when I walk the dog and it's just me
and the retirees.

------
theman11
While writing my master thesis in electrical engineering (pure matlab based),
I found the best way was to go about 2-3 days a week to the shared computer
room from the department where other students where working. Most of those
days I didn't get as much work done in terms of writing compared to when I was
at home, but many days I got new ideas, algorithms or a new perspective by
hearing other students talk about a different but related topic or discussing
a problem with a college. So for me it was the best way to have both worlds,
long phases of time at home for writing and implement stuff and quick
interrupted time at the university for some quick code trying new stuff,
discussing etc. It was commonly accepted that you are no as productive in the
computer room and no one would blame you if you just picked up your notebook
and went to a room next door for an hour or so to get stuff done.

------
anupshinde
I've been working remotely since approx 3 years as an individual contributor
(programmer). Here's my take from an individual's perspective-

There have been rare times, when I have "felt" the need to work from office to
be able to collaborate better. Faster and better collaboration: I think that
is the only advantage work-from-office has to offer.

BUT, the office distractions in the name of collaboration, far outweigh the
advantages of being in office.

Low-latency high bandwidth networks at remote work place tend to remove the
pains in online collaboration. It feels just like being there.

"In person meetups" \- I am not too sure if short meetups really help team
cohesion. I believe it takes at least 2 work-weeks in office to improve team
cohesion that way. I've also found online meets towards common goals (like new
product idea brainstorming) - pretty effective in improving team cohesion (or
sometimes leads to groupism).

Personally, I find switching work space for a week or couple of days, from my
regular (remote) work space - makes me feel better.

------
NDizzle
"Overwork, overweight, and an overgrown beard"

HEY! Them's fightin' words.

~~~
blisterpeanuts
especially if you're a girl :)

------
tomtheengineer
At vLine ([https://vline.com](https://vline.com)) we often work remotely (or
from home) and use that as a way to dogfood our service. We just set up a
"vLine link" to a TV in our office and people can jump in and out throughout
the day when they want to talk. Some people stay connected all day (or just
keep the audio on and enable video when they need it).

~~~
scuba7183
What do you mean by 'dogfood our service'?

~~~
adambard
I was going to explain it myself, but the wikipedia article really covers it
well:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eating_your_own_dog_food)

------
Keats
The main problem is finding companies allowing remote (and by remote I mean
"outside of the US" type of remote, there are not THAT many.

~~~
kabouseng
I would suspect no remote work hire is a cold hire. Most of the times it is
someone which has previously worked on-site and shown to be trustworthy enough
to manage themselves when working remotely.

So yes, getting companies who don't know you, and will hire you for remote
work based on an interview only is rare.

~~~
davedx
As someone who's worked about 50% remote in the past year, this is not true.
I've worked for companies in the US, Mexico, the UK, while based in the
Netherlands. One common factor though is they were mostly people already in my
network, so there is definitely a trust element - but not a "face to face"
trust element necessarily.

------
fatihacet
Great article and nice points. Yet another great article from Koding's CEO
Devrim Yasar - [http://blog.koding.com/2012/08/freelance-developers-you-
are-...](http://blog.koding.com/2012/08/freelance-developers-you-are-the-
future-dont-mess-it-up/)

------
dkroy
What blogging platform is he using?

~~~
rg81
I'm using Github Pages. [http://erjjones.github.io/blog/How-I-built-my-blog-
in-one-da...](http://erjjones.github.io/blog/How-I-built-my-blog-in-one-day/)

------
matiasb
Nice article

