
Technology was meant to herald a new way of working, but that’s not the case - pogbywg8
http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20160816-theres-no-such-thing-as-flexible-work
======
ACow_Adonis
Orwell made some interesting observations in one of his essays in how the
increase of technology doesn't lead to greater freedom, but greater scale,
bureaucracy, and increased governance at a distance: with the invention of the
telegraph, decisions were now made by ministers in whitehall vs english army
officers reliant upon a shared belief/culture system and taking the initiative
in the field.

That being said, while there is an interesting and at least plausible reason
to believe there is some connection between such phenomenon and technology, i
think the article is a bit too quick to proclaim that its things like
"technology", "emailing" and things that have lead to a lack of empathy in the
modern workplace.

On the contrary, i think organisational size and governance lines (which is in
some ways connected to technology, admittedly), globalisation, outsourcing,
and just the general economic and social realities of the modern workforce
lead to a necessary degeneration of trust and respect between workmates and
the organisation.

My company, for all its "values", will throw me under the bus to save itself,
or for a quick buck. I cannot rely on it to support me into the future: even
if it wanted to put money into a pension, i can't rely on that actually
remaining solvent. I don't even know if my field/expertise is going to be
around for the next 5 years. It is always looking to screw me over, outsource
my labour, etc, etc. Its not "too much emails" that does it: its that I know
I'm essentially working for a short-term psychopath that couldn't keep its
promises to me even if it wanted to (and it doesn't want to).

If you raise people in harsh cutthroat conditions, don't be surprised if
empathy falls by the wayside, or expect the lamb to lie down with the lion.

~~~
PakG1
_My company, for all its "values", will throw me under the bus to save itself,
or for a quick buck. I cannot rely on it to support me into the future: even
if it wanted to put money into a pension, i can't rely on that actually
remaining solvent. I don't even know if my field/expertise is going to be
around for the next 5 years. It is always looking to screw me over, outsource
my labour, etc, etc. Its not "too much emails" that does it: its that I know
I'm essentially working for a short-term psychopath that couldn't keep its
promises to me even if it wanted to (and it doesn't want to)._

Reid Hoffman makes a great point about how companies truly aren't like
families. [https://hbr.org/2014/06/your-company-is-not-a-
family](https://hbr.org/2014/06/your-company-is-not-a-family) quote:

 _In a real family, parents can’t fire their children. Try to imagine
disowning your child for poor performance: “We’re sorry Susie, but your mom
and I have decided you’re just not a good fit. Your table-setting effort has
been deteriorating for the past 6 months, and your obsession with ponies just
isn’t adding any value. We’re going to have to let you go. But don’t take it
the wrong way; it’s just family.”_

I'll take it to another extreme. Loving families (I won't say real families,
because there are clearly examples of families that don't do this) will stick
with you through thick and thin during your substance abuse, put you through
rehab, and still do their best to help you when you fall off the wagon again
and again.

~~~
sytse
I agree that companies are not like families. In GitLab we try to never refer
to it as family because families don't have performance improvement plans,
underperformers, and offboarding processes. I just made this official in
[https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-
com/commit/95964433...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-
com/commit/9596443387a6fb7897bd0b188cde5abfd3e7cb59)

I do this that technology will give more flexible work hours. I think it is
just that changing a social process is hard and is unlikely to happen in an
existing structure.

At GitLab we've embraced remote work and work hours are truly flexible. The
only exceptions I can think of is that our team call (attendence optional) is
at a fixed time. And that we expect service engineers to work 5 days a week on
normal weeks to make sure we meet our next business day SLA without bouncing a
ticket between many people.

I think remote only [http://www.remoteonly.org/](http://www.remoteonly.org/)
will become more popular but it will take new companies to get there.

~~~
auxbuss
s/close nit group/close-knit group/

~~~
sytse
Thanks! I changed it in [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-
com/commit/877ecee5...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-
com/commit/877ecee50264c357288daf03ae3f03c1a3440b00)

------
apatters
I have managed remote employees for years and while I still think it's a good
tool in the box for providing a healthy and happy workplace, as well as
recruiting/retaining talent in situations where you couldn't otherwise, I've
grown increasingly jaded about the idea of functional, fully-remote
organizations.

The trust issue referenced in this article is one element but there are many
others:

\- Many people don't handle the level of autonomy well, or don't stay
motivated in isolation \- Harder to engage a remote employee in company
culture and values \- There is a big difference between remote in the same
time zone/country and remote on the other side of the world \- Management
invariably has less control over a remote employee and less ability to command
their immediate attention

I think comparing "remote work" with "not remote work" is a massive
oversimplification of the issue that does everyone a disservice. There is the
group of remote contractors you've never met, there's the team of fulltime
employees that live within a few hours' flight of each other and meet several
times a year, there's the guy who works in the office 3 days a week and at
home from 2. So what are we really talking about? Generalities are not
productive.

The dark spectres hovering over the head of remote work are that remote
employees often end up being less productive and less available when you
really need them.

For certain types of work and certain types of people these issues are more or
less pronounced... this is not a black and white thing. But I am pretty sure
we will never see a future where everyone is a fully remote worker.

~~~
cmdrfred
Have you given any thought to a "results only" workplace? I have never worked
in one but I think I'd thrive in such an environment. Would that solve your
concerns about remote work?

~~~
vog
I believe this has already been done extensively. It is called "outsourcing".
For many companies this didn't end well. One of the reasons may be the
following:

It is more expensive to control the results than to control the process.

Especially in software development, you need quality assurance throughout the
whole process, because checking the results or result modules in a blackbox-
fashion may lead to catastrophic results.

I know some programmers who were always able to produce code that fulfils the
spec, after a few corrections. But any small change in the spec, and the whole
thing falls apart. Show them their own code a few weeks later, and they won't
be able to maintain it. Leave them alone a few months with their code, and
they will refuse to work on it anymore, because they literally can't make any
sense of it anymore.

~~~
Roboprog
Amen. E.g. - I had to pick up a project after these 2 guys in the place I was
at in the late 90s that solely survived on the skills of the (rather good) QA
in the project.

Alas, it was a C program, and any significant change in the (batch) input data
would cause the thing to dump core. I'm not blaming the QA for failing to
provide all possible variations of the client data (spec???), just the chumps
who couldn't do "defensive programming" (e.g. - I/O error or null pointer
checks)

Leaving these guys unattended for any length of time would be a disaster.

------
GedByrne
Am I alone here in actually wanting a place of work with a desk and co-
workers.

I worked from home for a year and found it very stressful. There was a lack of
human interaction and no clear line between home and work.

My current employer gives me a good balance. I usually spend 3 days in the
office and 2 days at home. This is mostly because of the 2 hour commute into
London. I'd love to work close to home and visit the office every day.

Looking at some of the comments here (for example:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12311632](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12311632))
it seems that the new work culture is being based around the approach adopted
by a proportion of the population whose need's are different. These people
thrive in this environment.

There is an assumption that the way that this group works is the future, and
that it is just a matter of time before everybody else follows (See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12311689](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12311689)).

There are others, like myself, who find this way of working to be unpleasant.
We would like to continue working the old way, but that doesn't seem to be an
option anymore.

I used to enjoy having my own desk. I had a shelf of reference books and my
personal belongings were locked away in the draw.

This is no longer allowed. Every job I've had for the last decade has been
'hot desking' and I have to carry everything with me every day.

Is a desk of my own where I can do a little nesting really too much to ask
for?

~~~
6stringmerc
Please allow me to affirm you're not alone in craving structure and a sense of
professionalism in the modern workplace. Personally I genuinely dislike the
"casual-ification" of work, if that made-up phrase makes any sense. At a prior
job, I genuinely enjoyed wearing nice slacks, a nice button down, and a nice
tie...which was the standard for back-office employees. Reason being if a
client ever came in, they should see consistency and the effort (very
relationship oriented firm).

I have poor personal discipline at times so working from home is distasteful
to me. My wants and desires for fun / chores / etc don't mesh well with "being
by computer or phone waiting for contact" \- I get edgy. Then how can I
unwind, I'm already home?!

I'm aiming to one day be self-employed, preferably in screenwriting. Should
the financial compensation reach the point of the luxury of quitting my full-
time employment with benefits, my first order of business will be to sign a
lease at some type of office. I want to work 8-12 and then, as my brain shuts
off, go home and spend time on personal things, chores, amusements, cooking,
etc. I crave structure and therefore feel empowered by recognizing this
characteristic in myself.

~~~
mark_edward
Casualization or proletarianization are the word you're looking for, when
formerly/currently professional jobs are turned more and more and more into
the precarious and interchangeable position of, say, a day laborer at the
factories of yore. Adjuncts at universities are a good example. It's a natural
part of the development of market economies. This is how you notice when your
being prepared for automation. See Taylorism, scientific management, etc.

~~~
6stringmerc
Interesting! Thanks for the context. I agree with the Adjuncts example very
much.

------
Noseshine

        > And, truth be told, you probably don’t trust most of your colleagues
        > or your boss, either.
    

From all the places I worked at as an employee or a freelancer in the last
twenty years, in the US or in Germany, that was _not_ true for about 2/3rd of
them. And the remaining 1/3rd wasn't so much that I didn't trust my
colleagues, the whole place was "lost". For example my 2nd job, in a startup
with waaayyyyyy too much money and attention for its own good.

Even if I include the time of my apprenticeship in an East German (GDR)
chemical factory of several thousand employees, even there the majority of
people did a _good_ job at work and were competent.

Even when I extend that to numerous summer jobs in a brewery, sausage factory,
chocolate factory and a dozen others (non-food), I rarely had the impression
that the sentence I quoted demonstrates.

That a job may be useless - okay, that happens a lot, but I can rarely
attribute it to complete incompetence, most of it is much larger forces at
work than an individual - even a CEO - can fight. And yes, sometimes people
are in over their head, but that happens, so what. In the day to day
operations I must have been incredibly lucky that my experiences are overall
very positive? Hard to believe.

Since "trust" is the centerpiece of that article I question whether their
entire premise is even true.

~~~
blowski
From reading your comment and the article, I think you're talking about
different types of trust.

I trust my colleagues at all levels, say, not to steal £10 I leave in my desk.
But the article is talking about the kind of trust to be working hard the
whole time, competently, totally for the best interests of the company.

Given how common it is for us to moan about our useless and lazy bosses (and
fellow programmers), I have to agree that trust of that nature isn't very
common. I can't say whether it has got more or less common prevalent over
time, though.

~~~
Noseshine
No, you got that wrong. I mean _exactly_ that kind of trust in their abilities
as coworkers. The thought of interpreting that in a "criminal" sense never
even occurred to me. You may (re)interpret that as you will.

I can see now how a possible interpretation that surely _somebody_ will come
up with - whether they post it or not - is that _I am_ clueless myself and
that that's the reason I had such positive experiences. May be, I would be the
last one to know, right? On the other hand, work as a well-paid freelancer who
likes to not just not get fired but also to get the contract renewed would be
hard if that was so, I think?

That previous paragraph shows I actually _do_ have a trust issue: (now
speaking generally, not in response to the comment) _online_ I've come to
expect bad things happening. You post something you think is positive and
interesting and out of nowhere comes an interpretation that is dark and turns
it all on its head.

Even in the GDR chemical factory, where it would have been _extremely easy_
and would have had few repercussions, most people (actually everybody I ever
worked with there, and I saw many different departments) voluntarily decided
to do what it takes to keep things running as well as they could. When they
didn't work it was because there really wasn't anything to do. I never saw
anyone neglecting their duty. My apprenticeship was for a very technical job
"BMSR Techniker" \- measurement, control and regulation technology, so I never
was an office worker but in the production line or in construction (electrical
infrastructure).

I _do_ remember that a (random) manager in the chocolate factory I worked for
three weeks during winter break at university didn't trust me:

I had just fed a machine - more thoroughly than necessary - and had nothing to
do until it would be finished 10 minutes later, so I sat down and read in my
French lesson book - always with an ear for the machine next to me. I could
not have done any other work even if I wanted, there was only that machine in
that room.

In comes a manager (that I didn't know) - immediately assuming I'm a lazy SOB.
It was the complete _opposite_ \- I LIKE to work, and I had until then -
without any supervision or pressure - done much more than asked. That changed
somewhat after that !$%"§$ manager treated me like dirt.

Okay, so there is _this_ guy that I didn't trust, but he wasn't even my
manager, he just happened to walk by, never met him again but he ruined the
entire three weeks of work experience. I never bought anything that I knew was
made in that factory again.

------
jfoutz
Work is a spectrum between specific repetitive tasks and the need for deep
creative solutions to problems. On one hand we have the need to pull this
lever every 36 seconds. on the other, is The Problem. We've all faced The
Problem, but perhaps not for work. It's the thing that's at the top of the
stack for days, weeks, or months on end. Perhaps solving a Rubik's cube.
Perhaps understanding recursion. We've all gone through that phase of not
understanding something and thinking about it constantly.

IMHO, the 9-5 is is useful because, in the pull the lever case, the lever gets
pulled. More importantly, a substantial fraction of time exposed to The
Problem. You have nine hours to kill, odds are good people will spend those
hours possibly getting hooked on solving The Problem. There's little chance
they'll solve the problem in those hours, but they'll get hooked on The
Problem and think about it while washing dishes, in the shower, and sleeping.
Once you're hooked, it's tough to get away from it without solving it.

Ultimately, i think anything repetitive will be automated away. But we still
need some way to hook people on The Problem. Hours and hours of exposure is
probably inefficient, but it's effective.

~~~
iopq
It's not effective because I value my time so I don't work a full time job.
You'd get me interested if your work day was 4 hours a day.

~~~
taneq
If you're not interested in your work enough to spend 8 hours a day on it,
you're doing the wrong work. (Or the sucky part of the right work... we've all
been there.) I don't think it's possible to do your best work on something
non-trivial without fully immersing yourself in it.

~~~
treehau5_
This is simply not true, the 8 hour workday is a complete arbitrary concept.
There is a wealth of research to show our creative thinking is best done in
short spurts. Time off in between actually helps your subconscious continue to
work on the solution, something known as "diffuse mode" when I am attempting
to solve a problem. There is a reason why so many of former geniuses, great
authors, mathematicians said their best solutions came after a walk through
nature.

~~~
taneq
Maybe I should have phrased it as "to spend 8 hours a day thinking about it."
And I'm not suggesting you need to be spending every waking moment on it,
either. But you have to be focused on something for some minimum percentage of
your time (which does vary for each person) before your subconscious really
starts digging into it.

------
restalis
I've tried the flexible job thing. For the office "butt in the seat" part, I
have to concede that it works better for me as it prevents me drifting towards
more and more comfort (which at some point translates to less and less
productivity). It forces some standards and work ethics giving me that feeling
that I am at work. For the flexible hours I think it's best to let everybody
to choose their own program, but it should be around six to eight hours
because that is the productive interval for the most people (except maybe the
low-energy or burnout individuals). It's OK if you want to work less hours to
foot the bills and pour the rest of your energy into other (side work)
projects, but it would be a waste to get yourself some time out of this
creative period to only allow it to be poached in some others' service
disguised as social play. This "work" tag on your time is a good thing, for
many reasons. Don't hate it.

------
cpprototypes
The word "remote" is so general it's basically useless. We need new common
terms to describe the different types, such as:

\- Long remote: When someone is offshore or many time zones away (such as
India or Eastern Europe).

\- TZ remote: Same timezone, but requires airplane flight to meet.

\- Local remote: Within driving distance.

Local remote is the best of both worlds and all companies should be doing
this. It can be a 3-2 balance (3 days remote, 2 days in office) or 4-1,
whatever makes sense for the team and company. Employees get the benefit of
remote (flexibility, no commute) and in person meetings (such as designing a
new system on a whiteboard). It's sad that so many tech companies (such as
Google and FB) don't do this. Considering that it's tech that allows this
(with video conferencing, git, slack, etc.), it's ironic that tech companies
are so resistant to doing local remote.

TZ remote can work, but it should be only for employees who are already
established at the company (spent many years doing local remote). The
connections developed during the local remote years will help make TZ remote
work. And they can fly to the office a few times during the year to refresh
those connections.

Long remote has a lot of issues. The big time zone difference, lack of any
history of in-person meetings, and culture differences make it very difficult
for this to work.

------
wpietri
Nope! This is not a problem brought on by the digital age. It has just become
more obvious.

The problem is that popular theories of management are about control. The CEO
controls everything. His immediate in-group controls slices. Their in-groups
control smaller slices still. If you control nobody, then you are lowest in
the primate status structure.

Remote working undermines that, because it removes you from direct control.
Managers and execs are in large part unable to usefully evaluate the work of
the people under them. (The whole theory of the MBA is that it's a universal
management degree, that understanding of a domain is irrelevant.) Which is why
we have to spend so much time on control-oriented systems like plans and
trackers and reporting. Managers, unable to actually judge the work, fall back
on the obvious: physical presence and conformance to ritual.

To fix this, we need an entirely different theory of management, a shift from
controlling to supportive. There are plenty of options here (Lean
Manufacturing, Servant Leadership, "Teal" organizations, what the Zingerman's
businesses are doing, even our pre-MBA business past), but approximately
nobody is adopting them because the people with control like having control.
And because we have these cultural assumptions that somebody is _supposed_ to
be in control.

~~~
MollyR
I agree for the most part, but I also think we want somebody not only to
control, but to blame for failure.

~~~
wpietri
Definitely. Controlling and blaming behaviors go hand in hand.

------
pathy
I have a question regarding the 9-5 working day. Do Americans really work 9-5
and regard this as an 8 hour working day? Or is this a legacy of the old days
with paid lunch or such?

I officially work 8.25 hours per day or 8-17 with 45 minutes of lunch, this is
roughly the standard working day in Sweden.

~~~
Symbiote
9–5 is the standard British working day, which includes an hour for lunch.

As an example, my contract when I worked for the British government said, "You
will normally be required to work a five-day week of 41 hours gross, Monday to
Friday, including meal breaks".

The time allowed for lunch breaks was one hour per day, which led to a working
time of 7h12m, and a total weekly working time of 36 hours.

I only notice now that this doesn't quite add up to 9–17h. That's probably
because most people took about ¾ hour for lunch rather than the full hour, and
left at 17:00 rather than 17:12.

(Or maybe I was doing it wrong.)

~~~
IshKebab
It may have been the standard once, but these days the standard seems to be 8
hours of work, plus 30 or 60 minutes for lunch.

I don't know anyone that works 9-5 with an hour for lunch.

~~~
72deluxe
That'll be me! I am in the Midlands.

....although I must admit this is rare. The last place was 9-5 with half an
hour for lunch, which was widely abused by others (eg. 2 hour pub lunch every
Friday, clear off early, roll in late).

A previous place wanted 40 hours a week when I inquired about returning. A
reevaluation of priorities led me to turn that offer down.

------
Illniyar
This is not the "work world of the future".

What we were promised is 30 maybe even 20 hours of work a week, the location
hardly matters.

Instead we get to work even longer hours.

~~~
Cthulhu_
Only because employees allow it. Work 20 hours and you'll get paid for 20
hours, but life hasn't gotten cheaper and wages haven't gone up as much, so
you'll have to make some concessions.

~~~
robhack
The question is then, why is it that with all the technology/automation we got
hasn't life gotten cheaper?

~~~
PeterisP
Many parts of life have gone cheaper - while feeding and clothing your family
used to take a full time job, now you can buy (that level+amount) of food and
clothing for just a few hours of work at minimuma wage.

However, major parts of our current expense, like housing at desirable areas,
are "competitive" in that if everybody earns ten times as much then the good
would also cost ten times as much.

"Housing" in the sense as shelter somewhere is very cheap to make, only
"housing" in an area where you (and everyone else) would want to work and
raise your kids is expensive.

"Education" in the sense of simply obtaining knowledge and information is very
cheap now, only "education" in the meaning of degree=certification that you're
"better than average" is expensive.

I once calculated that I literally could live in semi-abandoned areas with the
1916 level of goods&services (+ a PC and internet) for 5-10 hours of work/week
even if that was at minimum wage, and remote contracting often does much
better. Including paying for the home - they're dirt cheap in places that
people are leaving for the expensive places. However, the trouble is that I
don't really want to and can afford to "do better" \- and everyone else does
as well.

~~~
vibrato
Yes, it seems that life has generally gotten cheaper if you don't require
health care, childcare, or education. The one thing that hasn't gone down in
price that everyone needs is food.

[http://theblinker.com/mainpage/wp-
content/uploads/2014/10/co...](http://theblinker.com/mainpage/wp-
content/uploads/2014/10/cost-for-americans.png)

~~~
PeterisP
When we consider that "life has gotten cheaper" then looking at 2005-2014 is
rather counterproductive, since the big changes there were before 2000; at
least I was talking more on the scale of 100 years than 10 years which has
rather different trends.

Also, the healthcare price increase is mostly by changing the "basket" of what
we mean by "healthcare" \- if we compare current healthcare with e.g. 1916 or
1966, then it's much more expensive but mostly because healthcare now includes
expensive procedures for ailments that simply would not be treated back then
other than painkillers to ease the death.

------
jt2190
(Edit: The original title is "There's no such thing as flexible work". The
title posted here is causing commenters to rail against management.)

The relevant paragraphs:

 _In other words, the propensity for email, texting and quick-type apps has
led us to forget some of our people skills, including distinguishing the
nuances of language and meaning, fostering of a feeling of belonging among
groups of people, and knowing our bosses and colleagues well enough to have
confidence that others will pull their weight. That, in turn, has diminished
implicit and earned trust among the people we work with._

 _Technology has disrupted the workplace – and not always for the better. That
lack of trust brings about fear, which goes a long way to explaining why we
put in face time, even when we probably don’t need to in order to do our work
well. It also can explains why we feel we’ve got to have our “butt in the
seat” even if our work could truly be done from the corner café or the back
garden._

------
InclinedPlane
A big problem, bigger than this even, is that we don't know what a post-
industrial economy looks like yet. We don't have all the norms ironed out, and
we haven't come to grips with the fact that it'll look different (in basically
every way) than an industrial economy. So many of our assumptions are rooted
in 19th and 20th century ideas of what day to day work should look like, most
of which is based of factory work and routine work. And that's where the 40
hour work week comes from, as well as the 9-5 schedule. Factories have shifts,
9-5 is just the most normal one, 40 hours a week is 1/3 of all weekday hours,
it's fairly simple. These norms were designed to fit humans into the system of
machinery, to figure out a way they could service the machines 24/7\. They've
been brought down to reasonable(ish) terms based on decades of work to improve
working conditions, but they're still fundamentally norms based on factory
work.

Creative work, knowledge work, development, etc, are very much different kinds
of work, and they tend to be done in a different way. They don't have the same
requirements of factory work (no need for shifts to man machines 24/7 except
in a few cases). And they don't take a personal toll the same way. Lots of
people fall into the trap of thinking that sitting in an air conditioned
office necessarily makes a job easy, even "cushy", compared to physical labor,
but that's an archaic notion. The impositions of cognitive labor can be just
as severe as physical labor. Stress and bad working conditions in cognitive
work can lead to health problems, emotional problems, and shorter lifespans
just as easily as physical work can. Stress, psychological abuse, oppression,
emotional crisis, all of these things are potentially as life threatening and
traumatic as black lung or broken limbs. But whereas we've spent decades and
trillions of dollars setting standards for the physical well being of workers
in manual labor conditions we have only scratched the surface, with mixed
results, when it comes to cognitive well-being.

On the one hand, hours are somewhat tangential to those factors, but on the
other hand, when there are conditions which are detrimental to cognitive well-
being being the number of hours that must be spent at work often significantly
increases the problem. There are many jobs that are tolerable even when they
are at 60+ hours a week, and there are other jobs that are intolerable even at
20 hours a week.

------
cmdrfred
I think firms that offer work from home and flexible hours will be able to
attract better talent in the coming years, then slowly more will offer it.
Eventually people will get smart and start to ask for more money from
companies that dont offer these things ("You want me to drive an hour to sit
in a box so you can watch me? Sure, that's going to be an extra 20%") once
that tipping point is reached things will change.

~~~
thoughtsimple
That 20% sounds about right to me. I'm much more efficient when I work from
home. My commute is walking across my kitchen to my office. Lunch break is
getting up to get a salad or sandwich from said kitchen. I can work an 8 hour
day in 8-9 hours total including breaks for lunch etc.

There is no way to do that in the Boston area where I live if I have to drive
to a office. Commutes here are usually about an hour per 20 miles driven
during rush hour. That makes an 8 hour work day more like 10-11 hours. So
somewhere between 20% and 25% makes up the difference.

------
nxzero
>> "Our ability to trust each other has not advanced in parallel with the
technology we have created"

This is completely false given most employers have way more trust based on
using tech to know what they're doing, where they are, etc.

Largest reason that "butts in seats" will go away is in fact due to tech via
increasingly "smarter" tech.

My experience is that onsite work is largely driven by more trival concerns
such as ego, socializing, etc.

Office space is a huge waste of resources for the major majority of
businesses.

------
snarfy
Not trusting your employees is simply poor management. There really is no
excuse in this day and age to deny remote work to tech workers, other than
management is incapable of managing them. When job hunting, I see lack of full
time remote positions as a red flag.

~~~
hughperkins
Not really. No more than Counter Strike let people decide for themselves how
many points they deserve... In our freetime, we play games in systems that
decide our worth for us. I see no reason why work should be any different. In
a management role, I get far happier, more productive people, when I reach out
and find out what they're doing. People like it when people take an interest
in them, and what they are doing.

~~~
snarfy
That sounds like you are a good manager. This is more about the remote aspect
though. With email, text, phone, and video chat it is easy to find out what
somebody is doing and take an interest without physically being there. When
management can't do that but instead rely on butts in seats and office rituals
is when I worry.

------
davidgerard
This blames digital culture. But the collapse of institutional trust came with
the rise of neoliberalism, and convincing people there was no longer any such
thing as a job for life. So this set in well before the Internet. It may have
furthered it, of course.

~~~
atemerev
What's good in having a job for life, without any further opportunities? Looks
boring as hell.

~~~
douche
Stability, and freedom to focus on other things in life is not a bad goal.
It's the "Work to live" vs "Live to work" mindset.

~~~
atemerev
Hardly possible to focus on other things if you spend most of your time at the
office.

------
nathan_f77
I'm currently working 4 hours a day, usually from 10pm until 2am. I'm living
in Thailand, so these hours overlap with clients in the US.

I'm still productive, but I'm the only developer working on this project, so I
don't think it's ideal. I think I could be about 3x more productive if I was
in "startup mode" with a lot of equity. But I don't want to do that for this
project, and 4 hours per day suits me very well.

It can be hard to keep saying no, and hold onto my 20 hour weeks. The client
keeps talking about bringing me on full-time, and I keep politely declining.
But then I've been thinking about saving up to buy an apartment, or a new car,
or a vacation to Europe... I might go full-time for a little while to save up
for that vacation. But apart from that, I really value my free time.

I spend a lot of my free time working on side projects. But I also really
enjoy the freedom to read, or work on filmmaking, music, or other hobbies. Or
to go for a walk, sit by a lake, watch TV, or just do nothing at all. I'm also
working during the night, so it feels like I have the whole day to do whatever
I want.

It's sad that this article only talked about "flexibility", and didn't mention
anything about shorter work weeks.

~~~
radarsat1
Curious, did you already have US clients and then decided to go overseas, or
did you organize all that completely remotely?

~~~
nathan_f77
I organized it all completely remotely. I found a few clients from posts on
various job boards, including Hacker News threads. I've recently just been
working with Toptal, which is a lot easier, although I've had to lower my rate
quite a bit.

I've applied to [http://10xmanagement.com/](http://10xmanagement.com/), but
haven't heard anything yet. They have a huge number of applications.

~~~
radarsat1
Very interesting, thanks for responding!

------
Shivetya
For the most part its pretty much the luck of the draw and I have been pull
Aces for many years. Gaining trust is communicating it and backing it up with
proof through good work, initiative, and intuitiveness. If those traits are
not earning the trust you need then you are likely in a place where it won't
matter what you do.

I had a long story written but figured it might reveal too much and give away
where I am. I work in a corporate hq, multiple subsidiaries in the same site.
The difference in how they are managed is striking, I am in one I describe
above. I work more at home than work and most of my on site time is more for
me to maintain friendships than anything else.

The difficult part is that by looking at the people in upper management
someone coming off the street would mix the two groups up if you told them the
stark differences. So its something you either are going to find out from
friends who are there or have friends at a location or be willing to spend the
time to find out yourself. Just saying, some of the more progressive appearing
teams were the most repressive I have ever been around and the so called old
school worked up from the field groups were more you earn it you have earned
it.

------
Randgalt
It worked for me. I'm a true digital nomad. I moved out of the US and work
whatever hours I want totally remotely. I firmly believe this is the future.
Maybe it's taking longer than anticipated but it _is_ happening more and more.
Just search "digital nomad" for a taste.

~~~
rogerdpack
Who do you work for that allows such flexibility, or is it more just contract
gigs?

~~~
Randgalt
Elasticsearch - it's a fully distributed company. Almost all engineers work
remotely from around the world.
[https://www.elastic.co/about/careers](https://www.elastic.co/about/careers)

------
bogomipz
The entire premise of the article seems to be based on the following paragraph
and I simply did not understand it:

"In other words, the propensity for email, texting and quick-type apps has led
us to forget some of our people skills, including distinguishing the nuances
of language and meaning, fostering of a feeling of belonging among groups of
people, and knowing our bosses and colleagues well enough to have confidence
that others will pull their weight. That, in turn, has diminished implicit and
earned trust among the people we work with."

How has has the use of quick-type apps eroded trust exactly? I don't follow
this. Can anyone clarify?

~~~
cmdrfred
At times I've been called autistic so I've often observed this in many realms
of human endeavor. Many people don't trust or distrust others biased on a
concrete factual reason like I do("Bob is a soup kitchen volunteer and a
Catholic big brother he must be a nice guy"), it is often that they appear to
have a "feeling" about a person. The positivity of this feeling is dependent
on how much time they have spent in close vicinity to said person recently. It
is a odd, probably measurable effect and one I've used myself to advance my
career.

~~~
bogomipz
Thanks for giving some context. This makes sense. I think this might explain
the phenomenon you see at many tech companies where you often see entire
departments go out to lunch together every day, something I think is odd.

------
gerbilly
Employment isn't just about work output, it's also about availability.

To me this means 'butts in seats' will never disappear, because when you agree
to an standard employment contract, you are generally agreeing to be available
at the employer's location.

There's a reason it's called human resources. The human is a bit like a tool
lying in a toolbox. Even if if the tool is not being used all the time, there
is an advantage in keeping it available for when it is needed.

------
s_q_b
I prefer flexible arrangements to full remote work. Some days one needs face
time or in-person collaboration. Some days one needs silence and long
stretches of uninterrupted thought for coding.

------
cvs268
As technology invades work and automates/assists in most menial tasks, the
focus of a job becomes more about improving communication (from increasing
productivity earlier).

[https://2600hertz.wordpress.com/2016/08/15/the-secret-
reason...](https://2600hertz.wordpress.com/2016/08/15/the-secret-reason-for-
jobs-and-employment/)

------
Qantourisc
I suspect more mentality change is going to be required in the following
areas: trust, economic efficiency, value of money, materialism, stigma's, what
makes people happy. Or another economic revolution.

------
snowfield
I'm absolutely useless if given excessive amounts of freedom. So there's that.

