
Fog Creek’s Remote Work Policy - MattRogish
http://blog.fogcreek.com/fog-creeks-remote-work-policy/
======
parennoob
"You still have stuff like chat, commit messages, code reviews, cases, Trello
boards, etc. Be a little paranoid for this time about showing your work. It
will help you feel good about your time, and us feel good about granting it."

Run through a de-weaselizer, this reads:

"Be a good little pet, and do an extra set of tricks when we take you out to
the park, so you feel good about running around in the park and we feel good
about granting you the privilege to go out once a week."

Yeah, bullshit. Place where I work operates on a culture of complete trust,
period. Example: Once, a guy on my team had to go to his parents' house out in
the country and was stuck with a slow internet connection. No problem, he did
some stuff, stuck it out for as much as he could and then shelved it. I bet he
enjoyed his time there much more than he would have sitting in a bunch of
chatrooms anyway, and he did it on company time. He was much happier when he
came back, and probably did twice the usual amount of work when he did on
average.

As his co-worker who was working when this guy was at his parents' house, did
I feel slighted or angry at him? No, for heaven's sake -- he was seeing his
family, and enjoying a few choice, uninterrupted hours with them. Webapps can
fucking wait. I was perfectly happy doing his share of the work.

The culture in the American software industry glorifies ass-in-seat hours
(directly or indirectly -- this notion of "exhibiting your productivity" is
just another version of ass-in-seat hours) at a cost to actual productivity,
happiness, and general well-being by waving the distant promise of some sort
of vague payout in front of you, and getting you to constantly compete with
your co-workers at "putting in more time". Reject this sort of rubbish
unconditionally if you have even the slightest choice.

~~~
tghw
As Fog Creek's first full time remote employee[0], I fully disagree with your
assumption. Coming from Fog Creek, that statement has no weasel words in it,
it's a genuine sentiment.

Back when I was working for the company on site, my father had his leg broken
by an out of control snow boarder right before Thanksgiving. When I was home
for the holiday, I realized he needed help around the house, so I asked to
work remotely for a week to help him out. Joel and Michael gave me the time
and told me to do whatever work I could, but not to worry if it was less than
usual. I fully expected to sacrifice a vacation day or two, but they made it
clear that wasn't necessary, even though I spent half of my time helping my
father.

And what did I do while I was working? I wrote longer commit messages, checked
in on chat, and updated my Fog Bugz cases because I didn't want to feel like I
was taking advantage of my company's generosity.

It's also important to remember, in most industries, trust like this is
totally unheard of. We are very fortunate to work in an industry where it is a
more common practice.

[0] I left the company about 18 months ago to pursue my own startup.

~~~
vacri
_It 's also important to remember, in most industries, trust like this is
totally unheard of. We are very fortunate to work in an industry where it is a
more common practice._

You should probably work in more industries. There are plenty of industries
where workers _have_ to roam (like high end sales or service) and have to be
able to manage their own time effectively.

~~~
nilkn
Roaming, if I understand what you mean by that correctly, is not necessarily
the same as working from home. My dad works in sales and travels a lot. He's
got to get from point A to point B, and they might be separated by over a
hundred miles. And he might have to do that a few times a day and definitely a
few times a week. So his time management, although technically under his
authority, is really dictated almost completely by where he has to be.

------
utnick
This seems like a lot of rules... and kind of unfriendly. Especially for just
a short stint working remotely.

Whats the worst that could happen if one of the workers has a less than ideal
setup while temporarily working remotely for a few days? Would it really
affect company outcomes? If not, I think developer happiness would be improved
by having a more laissez-faire attitude from management.

~~~
misterjangles
If you ever own a company and you find yourself writing a salary check to
somebody who you suspect did jack-shit all week - it's kinda amazing how
difficult it is to not go into Ebeneezer Scrooge mode. Even if you know that
people are not "on" 24/7\. It can be tough to walk by somebody's desk and see
them screwing around on Facebook instead of working - when you are the guy
writing the checks. It takes a lot of faith. This is the same whether they are
working on site or remote. It's easy to talk a big talk about what a generous
boss you would be - but it is very different when you are responsible for
meeting payroll week after week. I would challenge anybody to try it.

Joel's rules strike me as a little more specific than necessary, but I can
very much relate to his feelings. I have experienced devs "working from home"
who disappear all day and hold up the whole team because we can't find them to
ask a quick question. The point is that when you say you are on the clock -
then you should be working. I personally wouldn't care so much about the exact
specifics of your internet connection or whatever. But, if you tell me that
you're working then I expect that you're actually at your computer working and
not laying by the pool or playing video games.

It's equally easy to say that you'd just fire somebody who you did not trust
to work at home with no rules. But, as with many things, it's easy to take
this hard line approach with your imaginary company and theoretical employees
- quite another thing in reality though. Some people are very productive but
maybe not so disciplined. A few sensible rules and expectations can prevent
problems.

~~~
redidas
Somebody not actually working at work could be due to many different factors.
Yes one could be that they are lazy and half-assing their job, but it also
could be that they just aren't motivated. Maybe they don't feel connected with
their job. Ideally, an employee is motivated to to a good job for reasons
other than its a daily grind and its what they have to do.

The HR industry terms this "Employee Engagement." If I had to guess, Fog Creek
has quite a few "disengaged" employees.

~~~
misterjangles
Absolutely a great manager will inspire and motivate the team,. But, it is
called "work" for a reason. Its a two way street. The employee has to put
forth some effort as well. Your manager is not there to entertain you. At the
end of the day you are there to work.

------
kevinconroy
Seem like too many rules for you?

Use this as a reminder about why it's important to ask probing questions
whenever you interview for a job. Find out what the culture is like and if it
is a good fit for you. I know several developers who thrive with the
environmental conditions listed here and would love having the company have
rules to enforce these conditions. I also know several developers who would
burn out.

It's vitally important to find something that's a good fit for you. No need to
hate on their rules if it works for their team.

Edit: Also, if you don't like this list, what would rules does your team have
in place to ensure an effective, productive remote work policy? Does it scale
up with the team?

~~~
seiji
After looking at it again, it isn't a crazy number of rules (some are overly
demanding, like video chat), but the rules seem to exist because they are
trying to codify behavior of people not completely gelled into their teams.

When I've worked with teams where everybody gets along, there's always updates
or chats flying around with everybody telling everybody else when and where
they'll be doing what for how long without any guidelines, prompting, or
pompousness.

~~~
tghw
Video chat seems trivial, but we found out the hard way it's pretty important
for team communication.[0] Think of all the impromptu meetings you have on
site, just popping into someone's office to ask them about something, pulling
someone else in, and ending up having an important design discussion. It's
much harder to do in a chat room.

[0] As mentioned elsewhere, I was Fog Creek's first full-time remote dev.

~~~
seivan
Yay for context switches. Because we all know how much developers love being
interrupted for something that is probably documented - if it isn't probably
should be.

------
LordHumungous
>at Fog Creek, it’s sort of assumed that everyone’s working steadily and
diligently. In the absence of new information, the assumption is that you’re
producing.

Well that's a dumb assumption. The managers at Fog Creek don't do code
reviews, don't look at commit logs, don't look at the features that developers
have built? They just assume that everyone is being productive because they
are in the office.

>When you step outside the HQ work environment, you should flip that burden of
proof. The burden is on you to show that you’re being productive.

At my job productivity is shown by the code I commit and the features I build,
not the time that I visibly appear to be typing away at my keyboard.
Apparently Fog Creek does it a little differently. I'm glad I don't work
there.

~~~
thezilch
No. RTFM

 _It’s because a few normal ways of staying involved (face time, informal
chats, lunch) have been removed._

From experiences of my own and from stories of my co-workers', this is the
most brutal part of WFH. It takes a lot more of yourself to work diligently
when you're alone and don't get the same face time, and this is about,
frankly, stating how to achieve the same advantages in the next best way. Your
co-workers may not know how to get that face-time back from you either; you
need to initiate.

------
OldSchool
After decades of successful remote work on both sides of the paycheck, I find
this recent trend pushing against it with formality and micromanagement pretty
revolting. There are jobs that require specifically to-the-second availability
called "customer service agent" or "receptionist," and timeliness is their
whole point of existing and they pay a _lot_ less which tells me that just
being there isn't worth all that much.

Otherwise, wherever and whenever you're working, you should be judged on the
outcome of those projects for which you're responsible, nothing else. If
collaboration is required, your smart people (you hire people that are smarter
than you in their field right?) will know they need to deliver their best in
order to keep their jobs so they will work it out themselves. How that's going
to happen, whether if it means getting together in an office, temporary
conference room, Skype, or google hangout they probably know more options than
you do. If you want to reasonably keep status on them, hold a standup once a
day. Anything regularly beyond that specifically for no other purpose than
management is telling them that you don't trust them and therefore they
shouldn't trust you.

------
sigre
This reads like yet another autocratic, micro-managing HR document. "Have a
room with a door that shuts." Seriously?

How about this: hire smart people you trust, give them whatever tools and
support they need to do their jobs most productively, then get out of the way.

~~~
ISL
One co-founder of Fog Creek has this to say, as a goal for the company [1]:

"* great work environment, with the goal of every engineer having an office
with a door that closes"

And, in an oft-cited "Joel Test" [2]:

"8\. Do programmers have quiet working conditions?"

Furthermore, the company itself says [3]:

"The average Fog Creek developer has 694 square inches of screen real-estate,
2 desktop computers, and an Aeron chair. Most have private offices with
windows and doors."

Googling for "Joel on software door that shuts" will turn up similar results.

A shutting door is clearly important to the management, remote or no.

[1]
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000038.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000038.html)

[2]
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000043.html)

[3] [http://fogcreek.com/about/](http://fogcreek.com/about/)

~~~
mistermann
From reading the comments in this thread, I don't think very many people in
this thread know who Joel Spolsky is.

~~~
lacksconfidence
Or the alternate explanation, most of the people in this thread disagree with
Joel Spolsky. Given occam's razor and his fairly high profile, which is more
likely?

~~~
mistermann
> Given occam's razor and his fairly high profile, which is more likely?

I'll hazard a guess that you're "older", like me. I don't think Joel Spolsky
has a high profile at all with forum active programmers, I mean, when did he
drop out of public writing, it was many years ago.

At least to me, most of the criticism here is generally of the nature "you're
_wrong_ "....not subtle, considering the variety of things involved, just that
programmers are, without exception, incredibly productive, and all work should
be able to be performed asynchronously (or _you 're doing it wrong_).

I just don't find the comments in this thread very reasonable, it seems like a
bunch of young and very smart/competent kids assuming everyone is as smart and
competent as them.

Do you get a sense of humility from very many of the comments here?

~~~
lacksconfidence
Fair enough, i certainly fit in the "older" category. I find it less than
intuitive that those active here don't know the co-founder(and current CEO?)
of Stack Exchange, or the team behind Trello. But i also accept I am not the
target audience of HN and times perhaps have changed.

I also spent three years recently working for a company with < 10 employee's
and no office, we all worked online from around the world. I don't think we
followed any of the listed requirements. No video chat, no headsets(just text
communication, same as how we developed open source software). Team members
took care of their children whenever necessary and we did not have specific
start/end times to our day. Some days i would take off for a 3 hour "lunch"
(really an energizing ride through the mountains) and no-one ever asked about
it. I believe they never asked because I was judged by my deliverables, little
else mattered. We also didn't have any specific "work hours". Having team
members from both coasts of America, Brazil, Bulgaria, Zimbabwe and the
Philippines meant time of day meant rather little. Not having a specific
start/end of my day often meant i worked much more than a 40 hour week, but it
was a labor of love anyways.

Is he wrong? Hard to say, many different things work for different people. Is
it right for me? Certainly not. Do the other people in this thread saying he's
wrong believe they work better in alternate conditions to the ones proposed?
Probably.

------
mberning
This is true old school thinking at its worst. If my employer is going to put
up all these rules and barriers maybe I should put up a few of my own. I bet
the managers or whatever they fancy themselves to be at Fog Creek have very
little appreciation for all of the small yet tangible things that employees go
out of their way to do for them. Things like answering important emails in the
evening, especially when it is for a high profile client or partner. Staying
late when critical bugs come up. Etc. I bet all that kind of stuff is just
expected of the employees.

~~~
mistermann
I'm just picking your comment at random out of this thread...do you know Joel
Spolsky who runs Fog Creek? I'm reading all these critical comments in this
thread and reconciling it in my head with what I know of him (from his
extensive blogging and podcasting) and I'm thinking, have so many years passed
that no one knows who this person is they're criticizing?

For example:

> I bet the managers or whatever they fancy themselves to be at Fog Creek have
> very little appreciation for all of the small yet tangible things that
> employees go out of their way to do for them.

I simply can't imagine any reasonable person who is familiar with Joel writing
such a thing.

~~~
RogerL
This blog post was not written by Joel, nor does not sound like Joel. I think
the comments are justified; the blog post feels quite abrasive to me. It's a
little hard to put my finger on it, but the repeated distinction between work
and vacation is a bit grating. Contrast this with a company like Netflix that
don't count vacation days, and that assume that it _their_ job to ascertain
the productivity of their employees. I don't know, the whole post just doesn't
sit 'right' with me. It's sort of "I bust my gut for you, I even try to work
while I'm visiting with family, and you put me down for not having a room with
a door that shuts and tell me I'm on vacation?!? (expletive deleted)" That's
probably not at all how it is as Fog Creek, but that's the feeling I get from
this blog post. Probably just unfortunate wording.

~~~
slantyyz
>> Probably just unfortunate wording.

Yes. People sometimes spend too much time parsing tone of written text (hmm, I
wonder why the OP talks about using video for face-to-face communication?).

I can't tell you how many times I've told people working for me to stop
spending time parsing the tone of an email from a coworker or client and just
pick up the phone and call them. Most of the time, any concerns with a poorly
worded (or angry-sounding) e-mail are cleared up with a 2 minute conversation.

------
m0nastic
I worked from home exclusively for about 6 years (this year is the first time
I've been back working at an office), and admittedly, my work almost never
involved other people (except for clients, who are remote even if I was in an
office, as the majority of the application testing I've done was remote
testing), so I'm certainly outside of their demographic.

But the one thing which just seemed weird to read was that it gives the
impression of everyone being constantly chatting and doing video calls at a
moment's notice, which seems to run counter to the "give every developer their
own office" and create a distraction-free environment for programmers. I think
I would feel constantly interrupted working in that environment, which seems
counter to Fogcreek's whole persona as a place that's "developer-oriented".

------
kamaal
One of the biggest hypocrisy that exists here in India at least with regards
to 'Remote Work' or 'Work From Home' policy is how late night and after
office-hour work hours are handled.

While companies come up with all sorts of reasons to deny work-from-home
during the day, they some how assume all those reasons(which they them self
give) will magically vanish while employees reach home in the evening and now
employees should be able to work late nights from home.

How does this work out? During the day you don't want employees to work from
home, telling them they won't be productive and after office hours you expect
them to be most productive while working from home?

------
vinceguidry
I don't think I would enjoy the work environment here, and it's not because of
the rules or whatever. Good development seems to me to be a very solitary
activity. The more people you involve, the more friction you create, the more
time and energy you burn in meetings, the more you end up arguing about things
you really shouldn't be arguing about.

I'm the sole back-end Rails developer at my company and I like it that way. At
my last job there was one other guy I could have been working with, but it was
much faster just doing everything myself. (we weren't just coders) When I
freelanced, I ended up having to run a front-end guy off a project because his
work wasn't good enough and it was holding everything up. Once I redid his
work the rest of the job went swimmingly.

I'm the kind of dev you can hand a vague idea to and leave me for three weeks
and I'll come back with a finished project that's exactly what you were
looking for and more. It just seems like that's the right way to make stuff,
and I don't think I could work any other way anymore. I couldn't work at Fog
Creek because I can just tell I wouldn't be half as productive there.

~~~
bloodorange
However, if you really "click" with another developer, you can achieve more
than double one person's output by pair-programming (if you also take quality
into account). This can't work by pairing any two developers arbitrarily.

------
mrgreenfur
Seems pretty micromanagey and harsh. Why so many rules? I work with tons of
remote people and appreciate the headset and bandwidth requirements, but it
could certainly be phrased better. How about like this: "All new hires are
given a nice headset, please use it, no one likes static or echo."

------
bliti
I think these are reasonable expectations. Working remotely does not imply
that you get to set the boundaries and rules of employment. It merely allows
you to work from another place. I have been working remotely for the past 4+
years, and actually do so in the way they describe. I have an office with a
door, do not babysit or have people around during work hours, let people know
(family included) that I am _at_ work, and make sure to communicate a lot with
the team.

You can't take your child to a non-remote job, you can't have your friends or
parents dropping by, and and can't isolate yourself from others. It is strange
that working remotely would allow for those things. Not really. Less so when
the work is programming. Which requires a good amount of concentration and
quietness.

~~~
LordHumungous
Their ideas are actually good but I think phrasing it in a tone of "do this or
we will think you are a slacker" is counter productive. A better approach
would be to say "if you are working from home, here are some ideas that we
highly encourage to make your work environment better."

~~~
bliti
Good point. I did not think the tone would create that impression in others.
One point in your feedback I might be confusing is the following. Seems that
some people might believe that working remotely allows them other freedoms. Am
I interpreting this incorrectly? If not, may you ( or another member)
elaborate more?

~~~
LordHumungous
Yes, working remotely allows many more freedoms. For example, you can work in
your underwear if you want. You can play your music as loud as you like. Most
rules a company may set for your home work environment can't really be
enforced, so I think that by allowing an employee to work remotely you are
automatically trusting them to get work done without supervision. If you feel
you can't give them that trust, then don't let them work remotely.

------
andrewcooke
i work from home and all the advice here is sensible, and describes how i work
(except that you don't need that much upstream bandwidth for google meetup).

yet, as others have said, there's a bad vibe to this article. i do these
things because they make sense for me. maybe they make sense for many others
too. but what i expect from an employer is the trust that i will know what
works for myself.

working from home depends completely on trust. if you need rules like these it
sounds like you're either making bad hires, or you have control issues.

couldn't you replace them with: "you can work remotely, but it's your
responsibility to make it work"? and if you really must, add "here are some
things you should probably consider: good bandwidth; remote desktop access;
time zones; ..."

------
jaggederest
As someone who works remotely, I think the really key things are
institutional, rather than individual. They discuss moving everything to
online, and that's essentially the biggest part of what you need. When
"showing up to work" no longer includes going out to coffee in the mornings,
but instead means logging onto the chat room and wishing everyone good
morning, you've achieved a measurable step.

Isolated office space, all those things are _nice_ to have, but without having
everything available via TCP/IP, it's a nonstarter.

I've worked from many an airport that essentially fits none of these criteria
without too many problems aside from reliable power supply - the nice thing
about working remotely is that you can tune your environment to your own
tastes.

~~~
daigoba66
I concur. I think another useful strategy is to treat all employees as remote
workers even when at then office. This way there isn't as big a context switch
and you can more effectively work from anywhere.

------
nilkn
I actually don't think these rules are unreasonable at all for permanent
remote work (though they seem a tad stringent for ad hoc temporary remote
stints). I mean, is it seriously asking that much for you to get a good
headset and have a room for working? Working from home at all is a tremendous
privilege, and these strike me as relatively minor requests over the long run.
If it was requested that you dress up, then yes, that would be ridiculous.

However, the tone of this post honestly sounds a little frustrated with remote
work rather than supportive of it, and I think that is what is leading to the
comments here. After reading this, my impression is the author doesn't trust
remote developers (despite a claim to the contrary) and that he generally
looks down on remote developers. I would worry that remote developers are not
seen as first-class citizens of the developer ecosystem at the company.

In short, even though I agree with these rules for the most part, remote
development is something that needs to either be rejected or embraced, not
regulated. There's not much middle-ground, because that's going to lead to
micro-management.

------
trustfundbaby
I was excited about reading this, but came away very very disappointed. I
guess I was expecting Fog Creek to be a lot more gung-ho about working
remotely and they weren't, but it wasn't just that, but the fact that they
sounded the way the large companies I have worked with sound about remote
arrangements ... like they're doing you a favor, instead of giving you a way
to be awesome.

To be fair,I have never run a company of any appreciable size, so I really
can't argue with the way Fog Creek chooses to run things (they know what works
best for them) ... but it just left me a little dismayed because either all
the aspirational ideas I have about work will eventually be dashed when I do
get to a position to run a company of my own, and I'll have to write things
like "The burden is on you to show that you’re being productive" in the
company handbook or Fog Creek just stopped being a company I looked up to in
terms of company culture, neither of which is good.

~~~
tghw
Fog Creek had a long standing no-remote policy. The first experiments to
change that started about two years ago, when I moved away from New York and
started working remote. They are still getting the hang of it, these policies
seem to be another step in that process.

------
wallywax
It's not just cheap internet access that has slow upstream. I have the second
from the top tier of service from the fastest ISP in my area (a major and very
affluent suburb of an extremely large US city) and my upstream is only 2mbps.
Moving to the top tier, which costs over $100/mo, would only get me 4mbps.
It's annoying for sure. But, that said, I do video conferences on a regular
basis from my home office and it works perfectly fine. I feel like that
guideline is both unrealistic in the US market, and also unnecessary.

------
happywolf
I am just curious what is the impetus to all these rules. To me it seems the
system has been abused until the management decided to define boundaries.

In fact, these rules make sense, to the point if one could be hired by FC,
they have no reason not to know these. If rules need to be explicitly spelled
out, I am worried the issue would be far more subtle than written rules can
address. (hint: cancelling WFH by Yahoo)

~~~
tghw
I am. At least partly. I was the first remote dev at Fog Creek, and I can see
very much where some of these rules came from.

There are essentially two main themes here. The first is communication. When I
started work, we hadn't been doing video chats, since everyone was on site. A
lot of communication happened in HipChat and everything else was either at the
weekly stand-up or impromptu meetings between two devs. However, once someone
is offsite, all of the in-person communication is cut off. This removes
context from the chat rooms, and filling in that context over chat is often
more difficult than just explaining it. In our case, this was compounded by us
being forced to abandon our chat software to find a new system and going
through two inferior systems, which cut me off even more from the teams. If
regular video calls had been policy, it would have been much easier to work
out the chat situation.

The second is distraction-free work environments. Early in my remote work, I
went to visit my significant other in another country for several weeks,
working remotely while she was at work. Unfortunately, there was a problem
getting her internet installed before I got there, so I spent the first week
working from a McDonald's (it had the most reliable wifi). I know my
productivity suffered for it during that week. Fortunately, we got internet
working and I had a better environment to work from after that.

I left the company about 18 months ago, but from what I understand, none of
these policies are due to any intentional abuse of the system, but more from
experience with the difficulties of remote work in a company that is used to
having everyone on site.

------
rrrhys
As an IT worker with no possibility for remote work currently I would happily
agree to this policy which other posters (who presumably do some remote work)
seem so unhappy about.

------
Mc_Big_G
No thanks. This is all completely the opposite of how I want to work and I
would never ask my dev resources to work like this. I wouldn't employ anyone
that thought this was all a good idea and can't think of a single high quality
dev that would accept it.

------
sergiotapia
I work remotely exclusive and the list present here doesn't seem that bad to
me. I do feel it's a slight bugger to have to constantly ping someone that
'I'm here!'. The submitted commits and code reviews should be plenty for that.

The place I work has similar guidelines and we communicate via Skype instead
of Google Hangouts - and it works very well. There has to be _some_
interaction between team members, otherwise you're just a code-spitting robot,
no? I enjoy the daily meetings as it lets me see what everyone is up to and
let's me share what I've been doing as well.

I guess I like working in a team that talks.

~~~
tghw
They pretty explicitly call out "chat, commit messages, code reviews, cases,
Trello boards" as ways of pinging the rest of the team.

------
ryankshaw
often, even though I normally work in my office, I will take a few hours to go
work under a tree in a park. I used to worry a lot about my wifi hotspot
situation but I've found that sometimes, not having the internet at all is
good to get you ultra-focused on the task you are working on, especially when
you've got your entire dev environment on your laptop. no coworker
interruptions, no HN, no Twitter, not even if you wanted them. Also, being in
real sunlight (although in the shade) & outside is great for the mind.

------
georgebonnr
I think the only thing that would dissuade me from working at this company is
the poor communication of these rules.

There is an easy way to communicate clear goals and principles without
sounding passive aggressive and authoritarian. This writer obviously wasn't
aware of it didn't care. I can handle high expectations. But I would be
miserable somewhere where poor communication was the norm.

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bowlofpetunias
Seems ridiculously anal to me. Our only policy is:

a) Make sure your team knows where you're at.

b) Get the job done.

No approval, know anal micromanagement about how you do your job. If you can
deliver whilst sitting in the garden watching the kids, kudos to you.

Not coincidentally, the same policy applies to working in the office...

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venomsnake
I have been working remotely for 7 years now.

What made it possible:

1\. Strict work hours - I must be online at 0900 and respond on IMs and such
until 1800. You can work outside of that time if feeling like it and the
occasional long lunch break is not a problem as long as you have a phone with
you.

2\. Fast broadband.

3\. Dedicated room.

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clarky07
This sounds awful to me. I get that you're writing a paycheck and you want
people to work, but that's got to get done on the hiring and firing end of
things. Hire good workers. Fire people that don't work out.

>Be a little paranoid for this time about showing your work. It will help you
feel good about your time, and us feel good about granting it.

The last section is just ridiculous imo. If someone is doing their job, you
should know it. If they aren't doing their job, you should know that as well.
Being paranoid about my job is not going to help me feel good about my time.
Promise. It might make me start looking for a new place to work though.

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bithive123
Can someone explain to me why this page starts with a picture captioned "know
thyself" of a cow reading a placard about cows? Just when I think it makes
sense...no, I'm confused.

~~~
RoyceFullerton
Because Reddit front page

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tghw
I was Fog Creek's first full time remote dev. I left the company about 18
months ago to pursue my own company.

There seems to be some confusion and questions in this thread, so let's do
this:

AMA (Ask Me Anything)

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dangero
I'm kind of surprised that remote working issues haven't been completely
solved at this point and it seems like there's still a big opportunity there
to start a business in that space. There are a lot of cultural barriers there
I think that still need to be overcome.

What if your company gave you 2 options: 1. Work in the office. 2. Work
wherever you like, but let us install software on your computer that will
monitor what you are doing at all times.

Would you be offended? Would you consider the work from home option?

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vacri
_Being able to participate in a video conference usually means at least 5 mbps
up_

Bollocks. Just bollocks.

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ibstudios
All of these things make sense to me.

BTW are you guys using reportsfortrello.com yet? I think it would help with
your "Team Awareness" rule since it allows you see all of the recent
activities of other board members.

full disclosure: I created reportsfortrello.com.

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lawnchair_larry
Can anyone recommend a good wireless headset for this?

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rickjames28
I found that a previous job where I could work remotely here and there, I was
extremely productive. So much time is wasted on the getting ready to go out
(more than just grabbing a shower and throwing on some jeans/shorts and a
t-shirt), doing the half hour or more commute, "settling into the office"
(chitchatting with your co-workers). And then I was ready to blow that taco
stand by the end of day. While at home I tended to work longer hours and
sometimes twice as productive.

But remote desktop just sucks no matter how fast your connection is.

