
What's Lost When Most People Work from Home - bootload
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/whats-lost-in-the-office-when-most-people-work-from-home/409666/?single_page=true
======
Nicholas_C
I will probably get downvoted for stating an opinion contrary to the HN
groupthink but I would not work from home for a few reasons:

1\. Facetime/Relationship building - If you're seen more and have better
relationships, on average, you will get tapped for better jobs/projects more
often than people who are in another state/country. If you are the only remote
worker on your team then you are at a serious disadvantage relative to your
non-remote team members who see your boss every day.

2\. Ease of communication - Working from home, for me, is frustrating because
when I want to walk over to someone and ask them a question or set up a
physical meeting ASAP I can't. Phone calls and e-mails are great but there
really is nothing like a physical meeting when it comes to hashing out
problems on a white board or building a working relationship. This is also a
negative because it can be very distracting to have people able to contact you
any time you're at the office, but for me it is a net gain.

3\. I love people. I love working with them and getting to know them and
having conversations with my coworkers. This is very easy to do when you are
collocated. For me, working at home is lonely.

4\. Knowledge synergies - This almost falls under number 2. It is really nice
to bounce ideas off people without having to stare at a chat screen waiting
for a response. I really enjoy when my coworkers ask me a question and a
discussion ensues between all of us about the best way to do things. This is
easier than waiting for someone to type a response or getting everyone on the
phone.

Many of these things are possible to do over slack or meeting up once a week
but it really does not beat being in the office every day. Perhaps I am very
career oriented but just #1 is enough for me to not want to work from home.

~~~
RussianCow
> Working from home, for me, is frustrating because when I want to walk over
> to someone and ask them a question or set up a physical meeting ASAP I
> can't.

As someone who gets interrupted several times a day by this at the office, I
don't miss it one bit when I work remotely. Being able to defer responding to
a question by a minute or two so that I can finish my train of thought is one
of my favorite things about working remotely. At the office, the cost of me
trying to recover my thoughts afterwards is much greater than those two
minutes my colleague would have waited for a response.

> If you are the only remote worker on your team then you are at a serious
> disadvantage relative to your non-remote team members who see your boss
> every day.

That seems like a problem with company culture much more than with working
remotely.

~~~
ambicapter
> At the office, the cost of me trying to recover my thoughts afterwards is
> much greater than those two minutes my colleague would have waited for a
> response.

To you. Your colleagues train of thought will be disrupted. I guess you
deserve to keep your train of thought because you're smart enough to not have
to ask questions.

~~~
RussianCow
When you get used to working remotely (or with people who are remote), I've
found you learn to try to avoid being bottlenecked by questions. It doesn't
always work, of course, but I think it's an important skill to have either
way. And for questions that are urgent enough, a phone/video call is about the
equivalent of walking up to someone and asking, and doesn't take any more
time.

Edit: typo.

------
bunderbunder
Over the past 5 or 6 years I've gone from working from home a couple days a
week to working from home 100% of the time to working remotely on a
distributed team and, most recently, to working from an open plan office every
day.

And I have to grudgingly admit something: The people who are trying to dial
back on the working from home have a point. I maintain that I absolutely work
harder and am less distracted when I'm working from home, and by a pretty darn
appreciable margin at that. If we're only considering me in isolation then my
opinion on the subject has not wavered. But over the past few years I've come
to see the forest for the trees a bit more, and I'm realizing that while all
the individual components of a distributed team might be higher-performing,
the _overall_ system wasn't running very efficiently. A lot of time was lost
to redundant efforts, efforts at cross purposes with each other, stuff like
that.

I'm not prepared to throw the baby out with the bathwater - I still think
there is a place for working from home and working remotely. But I'm also
prepared to concede that it's not all kittens and lollipops, and that there
are valid reasons why a company might decide that co-location better suits its
needs.

Full disclosure: I still ended up leaving my job over it. Among other reasons
(none of which were really about the office itself), that daily commute would
have eventually ground my sanity into nothingness.

~~~
Mithaldu
I've observed the same issue of remote teams being not very efficient at
times. However this is almost always the result of sub-optimal team
management, for example things like using only a bug tracker, or using a bug
tracker software for both that purpose AND for task planning. In other words:
Yes, it may become an issue, but is easily solved by using the right tools and
policies.

~~~
unabst
Any tools you can recommend?

~~~
Mithaldu
Depends entirely on what you're doing. However the most important part is
this. Depending on your company needs you need at least one or more of these,
and they should not be coopted to serve in place of any of their others:

\- customer support solution (to talk to people external to the company)

\- task tracker (plans the future of when which tasks will be started/done)

\- bug tracker (keeps history of problems and their solutions)

\- group chat (to address the whole company, or task groups in it at once (IRC
+ friends), as well as brainstorm on things)

Which exact softwares are best for these depends on your needs and budget.
Important is that you deliberate well, choose on quality and don't mix things.
Important is also that you make clear that using those is mandatory. People
side-stepping the task/bug tracker and resorting to emails/phone calls is
toxic. People not having the group chat installed as well.

------
rdl
So much horrible stuff is lost, too. Commute, distraction, ambient paranoia
and discomfort, resentment, etc. The bullshit where someone comes in with the
flu and everyone else gets sick, progressively, over the next month.

And the huge things: inclusive workforce (people with kids/sick relatives,
mobility or other disabilities, etc. -- this will predominantly hurt women).
Visa problems largely eliminated. Global talent pool.

You could make up for the positives by having scheduled in-person sessions
with your team (if you live genuinely remotely, do it for a week or two at a
time, or longer; if you live in the same metro, do "in-person Wednesdays".

A pathologically bad environment is an open plan with a bunch of disparate
teams in the same space. Coworking spaces across several (potentially
competing!) companies are the worst, but in a larger company, having
relatively separate teams in the same space is almost as bad.

Open plan is pretty much a personal instapass. If it's not worth spending
+$1k/mo per employee on office space (even in the worst markets, it's
+100sf/mo, which is about $500-700/mo), the employees are probably not
contributing much value. Being in an environment where people are making
$3-5mm in value is key. Don't be a junior callcenter employee (even those are
moving remote, for cost saving reasons). Exceptions for temporary onsite
engagements with clients, or something crazy like "we're on a warship" or
"enroute to Mars", or <10 people in a single office during early days of a
startup, but volitional shitty open plan is just insane. (Unfortunately this
basically rules out the majority of Silicon Valley companies these days.)

I _do_ agree that corner offices as status for useless mid-level managers are
ALSO bad, but the correct solution is offices for all, or at least anyone who
wants them, some kind of dynamic environment, etc. It's entirely reasonable to
have ICs in offices and managers in open areas.

Anytime someone complains about recruiting/hiring/retention in a company with
work-in-office, open plan, one or two high cost locations, it's hard to not
bring this up. A few companies at a time can get away with it, but not
everyone. It would be an easy way for companies to differentiate themselves in
hiring; if even 25% of workers would rather have a private office, you would
get first pick of those employees.

~~~
pw
So you're saying working in-person leads to "ambient paranoia and discomfort"
and "resentment"?

------
tpiha
I strongly disagree with this article and these are my arguments:

\- it's not true that people are isolated when working remotely, you're more
then well connected over the Internet

\- it shouldn't all be about the high productivity at all places all the time,
sometimes life and work should be about people and family and friends too

\- once again extroverts are trying to enforce their point of view on
introverts, why not let people choose if statistics are showing that the
productivity still stays the same or even gets better?

------
huckyaus
The study in question is here, if anyone is interested:

[http://amd.aom.org/content/early/2015/10/07/amd.2014.0016.fu...](http://amd.aom.org/content/early/2015/10/07/amd.2014.0016.full.pdf)

 _In a qualitative study of a Fortune 100 company on the forefront of allowing
offsite work, we examine how the prevalence of offsite working arrangements
influences perceptions of the onsite office as well as decisions regarding
where one works._

------
chmaynard
One way to address the crisis of climate change is to wean ourselves off of
non-essential commuting as soon as possible. Obviously, many jobs require
workers to be present at a job site. For so-called knowledge workers, however,
online collaboration tools are making remote work very practical. There is no
reason why a software developer can't work from home and still participate on
a project team. It just requires a little imagination.

------
joesmo
I still don't see what exactly is lost. Something concrete and detectable.
Yes, people who go into the office don't have others to hang out with. That's
not a loss. The article's really stretching the idea of loss.

------
bonestamp2
Since 2007, I've worked at home most of the time... only commuting across the
country to go into the office about 8 days/year. I've gone through a lot of
personal changes through that time as it relates to working remotely. The
company and my colleagues have too.

At first, we felt disconnected. But now, I think we actually talk more. The
hallway chat has shifted to skype calls, usually talking about random things
before or after discussions about something else.

In fact, I think the hallway chat is even more honest and productive now
because we don't have to worry about who else is listening.

Almost everybody is more productive, happier and less stressed.

------
Mithaldu
What's lost? The completely pointless, wasteful and inhumane ritual commonly
called "commute".

Yes, the company suffers a little. The humans who make up the company however
gain considerably.

A person who puts the well-being of a company above that of the humans
comprising it is one who has lost some of their own humanity.

~~~
hugh4
Personally I'd find it incredibly lonely to work from home. Of course I have a
five minute commute. If your commute is terrible, arrange your life better.

~~~
ryandrake
I feel the same way. I'd go crazy if I worked from home. The distractions are
much worse at home (wife, baby, dog), and I'd basically have to force myself
to go out and get non-family human contact. Plus, most of my job involves
meeting with people, and that tends to be more effective and efficient face-
to-face. My productivity would probably be close to zero at home.

And my commute is 2+ hours each way. I would not trade it for working from
home.

~~~
Mithaldu
Sorry to say, but you're part off-topic and part naive. If your work
explicitly involves meeting with people, then of course you can't easily
remote that. That's the off-topic bit.

On the other hand, it is quite naive to claim that establishing an office in
your living space, where you may only be disturbed for important things (hey
how does not getting disturbed actually work out in your office?), is somehow
a worse deal than throwing away an 8th of your week on commute. ( (2.1 _2_ 5)
/ (24*7) )

~~~
ryandrake
The article is about what people lose when they work from home, and I was
pointing out a few critical things I would lose if I worked from home. Feel
free to disagree with me, but my response was not even close to being off-
topic. Anecdotal, sure.

~~~
Mithaldu
> Plus, most of my job involves meeting with people, and that tends to be more
> effective and efficient face-to-face.

That is only barely remotable, if at all. Bringing that up in a conversation
about fulltime remote working is off-topic. It's as if you'd written "i work
on a construction site, and let me tell you, moving those metal beams is hard
via my ipad".

------
paul9290
I love working from home because....

1\. In an office full of fellow developers who I become friendly with I start
to recruit them for my startup. Mostly my bosses(lol) which that never works
out very well and I end up having to find another gig.

2\. No traffic!!!

3\. Work and get stuff done anytime of the day or night.

4\. Work from anywhere there's an Internet connection.

5\. No high school. ..bs office politics. Judged by your work only!

6\. Wake up, roll over and start working...did I mention not having to deal
with traffic?

------
newman314
I work from home most of the time now or travel for client work.

What I miss the most is the efficiency to be gained from having everyone
focused on a certain set of problems while in the same room. I find that even
a day or two of such time makes a huge difference compared to the meet once a
week which greatly extends the turnaround time of issue resolution.

I think having some of each with the flexibility to choose would most likely
be ideal.

------
tchock23
This is based off of a study of one company. I don't see how that was even
published initially as a viable study, never mind making it to an article in
The Atlantic. Does anyone have real research on this?

------
chasing
Is there a link to the actual study this article is referring to?

Because this write up is almost pointlessly vague. The author seems more
interested in repeating the coffee shop joke than getting into the meat of the
study.

------
JBReefer
100% virtual companies, especially 100% virtual consulting companies, can end
up with incompetent people who "hide" successfully for years, and make the
culture worse. They also miss out on that subtle competition that makes you
better: "Oh yeah, well I do this which lets me build with one button" etc.

The small stuff really matters, it's why I left my last job.

~~~
RussianCow
> 100% virtual companies, especially 100% virtual consulting companies, can
> end up with incompetent people who "hide" successfully for years, and make
> the culture worse.

How is that any different than non-remote companies?

~~~
JBReefer
Because they stay out of the limelight, and quite literally, no one sees how
incompetent they are. I know its possible to do the same at colocated
organizations, but I've only seen it at very, very large companies where no
one gives a shit anyway.

~~~
RussianCow
That seems like a problem with management more than with remote work. If
expectations are set and managed correctly, of course people will notice if
you're not actually doing your part. I don't see how that has anything to do
with where someone works.

------
pixelmonkey
“If the office is going to become a collection of employees not working
together, it essentially becomes no different than a coffee shop.”

The horror! You mean the office might degenerate into a quiet work environment
where people focus on getting things done? How will these companies possibly
recover? Especially while all the employees of their competitors are escaping
their noisy, interruptive offices to get work done... at a nearby coffee shop!

What might happen if these offices started offering perks of the best coffee
shops, like actually good coffee, fast wifi, and comfy chairs? How could they
possibly survive the revolts from their staff, not to mention the decline in
productivity?!

