

Home working: Why can't everyone telework? - upthedale
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-11879241

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simonsarris
I see a lot of comments on HN about people wishing they could work from home
and barely any wishing what I prefer instead: A workplace worth being at.

I work from home on occasion, but I also consider my workplace to be a society
that I enjoy being a part of.

I like talking to the people in my office throughout the day. I like going to
lunch with them sometimes. I like that I am in a building of experts and
collaborators.

I suppose I am more fortunate than most in that I can walk to work and that my
work is on Main Street, surrounded by many wonderful cafes and restaurants.
But that many people do not share such suitable conditions I think is an
argument against their conditions (poor commute, poor workplace location), and
I don't think their conditions _necessarily_ point to teleworking as the best
solution, while it is certainly a better alternative than a miserable commute,
I don't see it as an ideal.

So I must Ask HN: If your work was closer to you and in a pleasant location,
would you still want to work from home primarily?

~~~
peng
This the difference between introversion and extroversion. While you enjoy the
company of your teammates, others may prefer to work independently.

The freedom to work from home doesn't mean you have to be cooped up inside
your house. You can work from cafes, parks, anywhere and everywhere with wi-
fi. Sick of the same restaurants and bars? Take a weekend flight to Europe and
work from there. It's the sort of romantic nonsense that some of us find
appealing.

~~~
spokey
I'm high on the introversion scale (and work from home, the cafe, etc. with
some regularity) but I agree with the grandparent post. I like having a space
dedicated to work and the ability to collaborate with my coworkers in person.

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carsongross
The hardest part of development, and any human endeavor, is typically
communication. Working in an isolated environment can be extremely productive
for _some_ people _some_ of the time (e.g. A dev knows exactly what to do and
needs to just crank) but even that is oversold: having someone to bounce ideas
off and to talk us off the ledge can prevent a lot of malinvestment in code.

Email, text chat, even video chat just ain't the same as having a guy next to
you that you can interrupt at a whim to discuss things with. In particular the
ability to recognize that someone gets what you are saying is severely
hampered with remote technologies, making technical communication much less
efficient. Then you have the informal and overheard communication that takes
place in a (sanely laid out) office. Then you have lunches. It all just piles
up.

I work remotely and I hate the inefficiencies it introduces.

~~~
marknutter
In my experience, email, text chat, and video chat/screen sharing _is_ pretty
much the same as having the guy next to me.

~~~
AndrewDucker
I can pick up a piece of paper, scribble on it, ask if people prefer X or Y,
draw on a whiteboard, wave my hands descriptively, and generally get much
better communication with people who are right in front of me.

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dkarl
I hate working remotely. I hate working with people who work remotely. One-on-
one communication is inferior but acceptable over phone or chat, but trying to
have a group technical discussion with one or more people working remotely is
glacial. The tools just aren't good enough yet and may not be good enough in
my lifetime.

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gte910h
As a person who's worked at home for years: You have to communicate
intentionally. I've done this for years with many clients I've never met face
to face (some I haven't even seen their faces).

Also: I'm not introvert. That makes me assuredly talk to people perhaps more
than many introverts would at home. I know some of the people I work with kids
names, and we still ask how weekends, etc went.

Skype works fine for communication (along with emails). Screensharing is much
more useful than video chat in my experience. I also have various other tools
like that queued up for when they're better (Copilot for instance).

Also: you really have to develop your phone skills. I think lots of people
have underdeveloped phone skills these days, so _aren't_ good at working at a
distance. They don't know how to do a phone call well, wether it be pacing,
tough issues, agendas or any of that. They especially don't deal well with
understaters or the like. Lastly, for many important calls, you MUST follow it
up with a summary by email. You also need to learn basic drawing, as a quickly
sketched diagram saves the bacon in the middle of some calls (which you then
throw in your feed scanner that automatically turns it into a pdf).

I think a lot of people who work in offices lack the ability to express
themselves well in these situations, and that's why they feel ineffective
(they are a bit, but could get better with practice).

You also need to live in a reasonable place. You have to have a fast internet
connection. If this means you have to live at the exurbs instead of a rural
farm, well too bad. I personally have 2 different ISPs and a router which
combines the connections for failover purposes. (I also live in the middle of
a relatively large city, Midtown Atlanta).

~~~
mgkimsal
_I think lots of people have underdeveloped phone skills these days, so aren't
good at working at a distance. They don't know how to do a phone call well,
wether it be pacing, tough issues, agendas or any of that. They especially
don't deal well with understaters or the like._

I don't think most people handle those issues well face to face either. Most
f2f meetings I've been in have been abysmal wastes of everyone's time.

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stuff4ben
As a coder who often has to upload multi-MB files to the office dev and stage
servers, my home upload speed of ~300Kbps doesn't cut it. Sure I have 10Mbit
down, but it's kind of useless for me.

~~~
petervandijck
You have to actually FTP files? I ask because if you have your code in, say,
github, and you deploy from that, you shouldn't have this problem. Unless
there's something specific about your code that means you have to send really
large files?

~~~
andrewvc
Try working in any media centric industry. Soon you'll be uploading gigs of
files on a daily basis.

~~~
gaius
I'm old enough to remember Syquest disks and motorcycle couriers as being the
way you uploaded :-)

------
JonathanFields
I work from home and have a great setup. I'm also a moderate introvert, but I
end up going to work at cafes and outdoor space because I also love to be
around the intangible energy of other people, even if I'm not saying a word to
any of them. Plus, I sense the ability to add novelty to my environment helps
trigger a certain bump in creativity.

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flarg
I have worked from home for two years and it is definitely a life-ruining
experience with some upsides; I work longer hours, take calls in the evening,
feel guilty every time I take a toilet break, never have 'cooler-chats' and
miss the daily interaction with colleagues where I get to remind them who's
boss; also I have to buy my own stationery. Upsides? Working in the nude,
answering the front-door to survey people and inviting them in for a long
chats about nothing, getting to slope off and write reams of useless code for
no good reason. OK, so there's the whole 4 Hour Work Week idea of starting a
business but I feel too guilty to do that.

Of course most companies are global and so my development team are in Poland
and my home office is in England or Switzerland, so I would never get to
interact with them in any 'high-performing-team' kind of way; but that's what
big companies like to do anyway - split up their workforce, divide and
conquer, choose mediocrity over performance.

So, if you work for a big dumb organisation, work from home. If you work for a
small agile organisation, work from the office. If you work for yourself, give
up.

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AndrewDucker
Working next to the people I'm talking to, where I can just turn my monitor,
ask "A or B?" and get an instant answer is a fantastic experience.

Even being 30 seconds away across the office is inferior. Working from home is
appalling by comparison.

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marknutter
I work from home and love it. I'm not an introvert either, I just prefer the
freedom. It's never gotten in the way of me advancing professionally.

