
If you don’t trust your employees to work remotely you shouldn’t have hired them - artsandsci
https://qz.com/891537/if-you-dont-trust-your-employees-to-work-remotely-you-shouldnt-have-hired-them-in-the-first-place/
======
bluGill
Working at the office isn't about floor plan or seat time.

Working at the office is about "staying in touch". When you are in the office
you see new directions the company is interested in long before you get an
assignment.

It doesn't matter if you are in an office with the door closed, or working
from home: either way you miss things that you should have been told directly
but nobody thought to tell you. So you end up doing otherwise great work that
it leading the project in the wrong direction.

That is when you are in the office someone from marketing can see you in the
hallway and ask about the hot new feature of today without invoking all the
formal channels to take to the guy remotely. Thus when you are working from
home you lose a lot of opportunities to do what is needed as opposed to what
you are told. People who can figure out the right thing and do that are more
valuable than people who only do what they are told.

Note that the title is correct: all employees should be trusted to work
remotely from time to time. However that does not mean you should work from
home all the time. You should be a regular at the office so that you don't
lose touch. At the first sign of illness (you or your kids), bad weather, or a
hard no interruptions problem: you should be out of the office and working
from home. However you should also be a regular at the office for the benefits
of being at the office.

Of course this depends on your job. If you are a contractor you might be in a
situation where you do the letter of the contract and are gone - the only time
you might want to do something else is if you are trying to turn the contract
into a full term position. Even then though, some contracts are get release N
out the door, with a possibility of renewal for release N+1 - in that case you
may have the option to change what is in release N.

~~~
TallGuyShort
I had a manager for a while who would make a point of catching me up on
watercooler talk once a week or whenever we met about something else. Somebody
quit in a dramatic way a few days ago? New project everyone's talking about
that has nothing to do with me? Only took about 3 minutes, but really helped
me feel connected, be more aware of the big picture, what else was going on
that might indirectly impact my projects. I understood when a team I
communicated with might be stressed or distracted. I understood when resources
were going to be harder to get. Really good practice.

~~~
voltagex_
Sounds like there should be specialist training for people who manage remote
teams. I wonder what GitHub does in comparison to Google (which seems to be
sort of anti-remote).

~~~
TallGuyShort
Great idea. I think it's the same with many management scenarios. You could
put someone in charge of a group of employees from a very different culture,
and without any training or other investment into learning about how to make
it work, they're likely to end up thinking, "I just can't get the team to
perform - let's not hire people like that."

------
tomtheelder
I appreciate a lot of the sentiment of this article, but not the self-
congratulatory, sanctimonious tone.

It refuses to acknowledge that there are people out there who are less
productive when working remotely (for example, me, which I discovered after
recording personal data on it), and those who are substantially less happy
when working remotely. In addition, those of us who prefer an office
environment sometimes find it more difficult to work with remote coworkers:
something that is more or less important depending on what your day to day
tasks include.

If I were running a company I would always permit employees to work remotely,
or work from home when they want, but I think it's counterproductive to
pretend that everyone wants that and would benefit from it.

~~~
zzalpha
I also think it absurd to presume that there's zero benefit to having folks
face-to-face from time-to-time.

Wanna work from home 4 days out of 5? I say go nuts.

But I would want some amount of face-to-face time, not to see asses in seats
(which seems to be what every work-from-advocate assumes... as though there's
no other concerns beyond accountability, a strawman if I've every seen one),
but because it helps build team camaraderie.

I've seen this first hand. I'm the Product Owner for geographically
distributed team. Skype is used heavily as a mechanism for the team to
communicate, but we also include quarterly face-to-face get-togethers where
the team can sit in a room and whiteboard problems, pair program, or really
whatever they want to do that feels useful.

The first time we did this _everyone_ , every single person, raved about how
valuable the activity was. Not because they were inherently more productive,
and certainly not because they were being held accountable. Rather, the simple
act of people in a room together further cemented their bonds as a team.

Humans are social animals. We're used to physical proximity as a component of
communication. Hell, the NYT had an article about why it's hard to make
friends after 30:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/fashion/the-challenge-
of-m...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/fashion/the-challenge-of-making-
friends-as-an-adult.html)

Two of the three are proximity, and repeated, unplanned interactions.

That's just not possibility in a 100% remote working environment.

~~~
arghIdontwantto
The two times I did this with two separate teams I hated it.

I'm a very social guy, so it isn't an introvert thing, but I work 100% remote,
I don't want to meet and be confined to 'activities' or environments where I
can't be productive. If I wanted to be in an office, I have plenty of job
offers to do so. If I wanted to meet my co-workers on 'activities' (like the
once a year retreats with parties and trust falls and what-not) I would join
the local kumbaya group.

Just thinking I have to travel for a week, away from my friends, my family my
routines for someone to have face-to-face time with me that could have been
done on skype/hangouts is ridiculous, and whenever I hear about yearly
retreats/trips I pass on the job.

~~~
zzalpha
_like the once a year retreats with parties and trust falls and what-not_

Nice strawman!

We got the team together, shared meals and drinks in the evening, and
basically did engineering work during the day.

The team took the opportunity to do some broader architectural work that
needed doing, and to do some knowledge sharing across silos that had
developed. Basically stuff that's more amenable to a room and a whiteboard.

ie, they got some sh*t done while getting to know each other better.

But hey, if you can't be bothered to spend face time with your team mates on
occasion, I'm sure you can find organizations that will cater to your
particular whims. Ours would not be one of them, that's all.

~~~
arghIdontwantto
And that is great, my organization actually respects this and doesn't force me
to go to any annual things. To each their own, but shared meals and drinks in
the evening is for me too much. I work 8 hours for you, after I want to see my
family or friends, not my co-workers. Or do sports, or whatever else. The
problem with these retreats is 8+hours work and then off time with co-workers.
I don't care about that. AT ALL.

------
rubicon33
"I am a night owl. You can tell me I have to have my butt in a chair within
your line of sight at 8 or 9am, but that is very wasteful. You are wasting my
time and yours. I am not a morning person. I will start being very effective
around 11am and I really get going in the afternoon/evening. If you force your
preferred hours onto me, both employer and employee lose. "

THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS!

Believe me I understand that it's a difficult problem to solve - everyone
seems to have different "optimal" work hours. But right now, the standard work
day is HEAVILY favoring the morning person's mind.

~~~
Broken_Hippo
I second this enough to comment!

Furthermore, If your effective times starts at 11, consider yourself lucky. 11
is at the earlier end of my natural waking time. I start getting effective 2
hours afterwards.

~~~
rubicon33
I'm in the same boat. In fact, I don't REALLY come online until after lunch,
sometime around 1 or 2. And if allowed to revert to my natural sleep cycle, my
most creative and productive time is between 2pm - 3am.

Good luck finding an employer who is cool with that. Not to mention, a spouse.

~~~
tedmiston
My best hours are similar. I think the best option is a remote team
distributed across time zones or one in a time zone that aligns with your
ideal hours. Admittedly, much easier said than done.

------
basseq
There's a great deal of cultural and technical enablement that needs to happen
to _allow_ remote work to be effective. A great employee won't be as
productive if your environment isn't set up for them to succeed in a remote
capacity.

I absolutely applaud companies who have this figured out, or who enable very
flexible arrangements. But if you as an individual (like the author) "need" a
different work environment, _go seek it out_ , don't lambast the company as
"non-trustworthy".

~~~
oftenwrong
>There's a great deal of cultural and technical enablement that needs to
happen to allow remote work to be effective. A great employee won't be as
productive if your environment isn't set up for them to succeed in a remote
capacity.

A good example of this:

At my company we used to have problems with people working from home
accidentally being excluded from meetings because the meeting leaders would
forget to set up a video conference room, or would forget to join the video
conference room that had been created ahead of time. To fix this, we decided
that every meeting would have a video conference room set up for it, and that
the meeting leader would always join the video conference room, regardless of
whether anybody in the meeting was expected to be working remotely. In other
words, we always run our meetings as if there are remote workers involved.
This eliminated the issue entirely.

Another benefit was that we no longer wasted time determining if we needed a
video conference set up for a meeting. We just set it up in all cases. For
recurring meetings, we have persistent video conference rooms.

------
syshum
I get the most work done when I am the only one in the office, So I tend to
take my lunch at a different schedule than my co workers, come in early, stay
late, and take work home because during "normal" business hours is a constant
stream of "collaboration" that interrupts me doing any actual work.

I love flu season, because I normally do not get sick, and everyone else is
out of the office sick... sooo peaceful.

I would love to work remotely, only interacting with people remotely.

~~~
tedmiston
I can relate to this. Just curious if you've found any hacks for when the
office is full of people? My best so far is noise isolating or noise canceling
earbuds + a brown noise generator.

------
xt00
Working hours being at 9am-5pm is not optimal for plenty of people. Working
remotely has never worked for me, but a flexible work schedule time and the
option to work from home occasionally is a really good strategy for companies.
I always stay up late and there are many brain studies showing that people
very often fall into two categories, early risers and late risers.
Accommodating both is a good idea to get the most from your workforce.

~~~
in_cahoots
9-5 isn't optimal for many people, but as someone who does prefer a 9-5
(ideally a 10-6), it can be frustrating when you roll into the office, see an
email sent from a colleague at 3am, and have to wait until 1pm or 2pm to ask
any clarifying questions. Or on the flip side, when 6pm comes around and
you're ready to leave, that same colleague is just settling into the most
productive part of the day and wants to debug something with you. Worse still
are the times when it's 10pm and you're getting ready for bed, only to find
that your colleague has a few 'quick questions' over email.

In my experience flexible work hours are okay when your work is silo-ed off
from the rest of the team, or if you are diligent about making sure other
people can pick up the ball once you're done. When either of those things are
not true it just becomes a headache for everyone.

~~~
grillvogel
why would you check work email when you're about to go to bed?

~~~
xt00
Yea I've stopped doing that more recently.. Good point.. ;)

------
jwilliams
This article presumes that trust is the only reason that employers don't allow
or support remote work. It's also assumes that the individual's peak
productivity is the most important thing.

However, neither are necessarily true - I actually really enjoy a team
dynamic. A team working well together can lead to amazing leaps in
productively. And it's very hard to replicate that remotely.

Building remote teams is extremely hard and takes a lot of investment. If you
look at the companies that do it well, it's almost a cultural obsession.

~~~
jdauriemma
> Building remote teams is extremely hard and takes a lot of investment.

But finding, leasing, and maintaining an office is not hard and does not
require a lot of investment?

~~~
tedmiston
The answer to the expense of office space varies widely based on arrangements
and location. Outside of the coasts, there are definitely areas where
commercial space that startups use is cheaper per sq ft than residential. A
couple of years ago, I was talking with a VC from New York about his (non-
fancy) Manhattan office space being $80+ per sq ft while there were good
spaces in my city for $1 per sq ft without tenants.

------
afastow
I always feel very conflicted about remote work. It doesn't work for me
personally, I never work remotely unless special circumstances force me to for
a day or two. But I realize that is a personal preference and many people have
the exact opposite preference and I want to respect that.

But I have a couple of teammates that moved to different cities and are now
100% remote, and I find it very frustrating that I can essentially never talk
to them in person. They fly in once or twice a year but that doesn't help the
situation the entire rest of the year. They report that in their view video
calls are working as an adequate replacement for face to face conversations
but I completely disagree. I don't know the solution though. They are valuable
team members and I'm glad they didn't have to leave the company when they
moved, but at the same time I really don't want the trend to expand or for us
to hire new people knowing they will be 100% remote.

~~~
shanemhansen
Maybe you need to work on your communication skills? I realize that's a snarky
sounding answer, so let me expand on that. Face to face communication is nice
and has benefits. But there are tradeoffs. It's clear that your company has
decided that when making a decision between having certain team members be
remotely part of the team or not at all, the choice is clear. So maybe the
appropriate course of action is to accept the benefit of continuing to have
access to those individuals and work on adjusting your communication style to
support distributed teams. Protip: a remote first workflow also improves
documentation and communication if you have more than one office.

Personally, I welcome the chance to work with a group of minds that isn't
restricted by the filter of "lives within x hours of office". The world is
full of amazing projects created by people around the world working together.

I think your observation is valid, but in my experience the drawbacks of
remote working are dwarfed by the benefits.

~~~
snarf21
In the end, not everything that works for one will work for another. The
previous commenter may need to work on their communication skills but so may
the people who are now remote. I think the one problem is these discussions
(this is the third in as many weeks) is that people tend to take a stance of
"My perfect work environment is ______. Everyone should adapt to me".

I think we need to approach this differently. Have the team self organize
around rules for availability, communication techniques, etc. Come up with
plans for white-boarding and brainstorming when everyone is remote to each
other. Or, come up with a plan to allow people in an open space to have some
quiet and privacy to get work done. I find it rather silly that a single
situation is what any employee needs 100% of the time and that if they think
that, they aren't considering the needs of the rest of their team. Mostly
everyone just needs a little perspective I think.

------
tenpoundhammer
Wow, don't know where to begin... 1\. this article seems to be aimed at
startups, but the author then goes on to complain about having to work 8-5 (
good hours for a startup). 2\. "Let the bad actors fail" I've met very few
people who are actually trying to game the system, the vast majority of people
perceived as "Bad actors" need managements help to align their goals and
values with that of the business. 3\. The title implies this is an issue of
trust, where as it seems that it's more about preference and fit. Some
software engineering problems lend themselves more to an in-person environment
than not. For instance, when I was working on an oil sensing project, All I
did was write software but I had to have the hardware close for testing my
software. They sure aren't going to let me drag 20k worth of equipment home in
my honda. 4\. ROWE, how do you measure the output of knowledge workers
especially programmers? If anyone figures it out write a book you will make a
bajillion dollars.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Experienced developers can work as well as, or better at home. Even in a
startup; especially in a startup where time is important and commute can be
expensive that way.

I work on embedded frequently; I have way more than $20K of equipment on my
desk right now. Not to mention old projects in boxes and on shelves. That's
absolutely not an issue. If I need it and need exclusive access to it, in the
office or on my desk is all the same.

And measuring output? Why, by performance of course. And by the value of the
work done. So I can earn well on embedded work whenever that comes my way,
because its not a common skill and I can do it quickly. The market sets the
value; there's no mystery to this.

~~~
tenpoundhammer
Hey Joe, I also work from home full time but as a backend systems developer. I
was not trying to highlight that it would be impossible for someone with
hardware to work from home, simply that in some cases it's not feasible or
doesn't make sense ofr the business.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Agreed. As usual, the article tries to overgeneralize. Reality is so much more
complicated that blog entries or memes.

------
gusfoo
> If you don’t trust your employees to work remotely you shouldn’t have hired
> them

What an absurdly simplistic view of the world you have there, Yan. The real
world is more complex, and people are not static things - they change. Your
article applies excellently to you as an individual, but you seem to think you
are right to generalise things to other people.

------
whack
I wonder how the author feels about the #NoEstimates movement. Both ROWE and
#NoEstimates are very popular trends these days, but they are mutually
incompatible. A results-only-work-environment works only if the results (ie
quality + time-taken) are clearly defined, and all employees are held
accountable for those results. This is fundamentally incompatible with the
#NoEstimates movement which says that it's impossible to figure out how much
time a task is _supposed_ to take.

~~~
marcosdumay
Are after the fact, retrospective estimates viable? It looks more possible to
me than the before the fact variant.

Anyway, I don't think butts in the seats management deals any better with the
lack of correct estimates.

~~~
whack
Retrospective estimates could work better, but I imagine it lends itself to a
lot of credibility problems. If you're popular and well-liked, you'll get
retrospective estimates that exceed how much time you actually took. If you're
unpopular, your manager/teammates can screw you over by giving estimates that
are lower than how much time you took. Not to mention the fact that things
always seem so much simpler in hindsight, especially when someone does a
really good job with design.

Butt-in-seats management, despite being much maligned, is much more consistent
with the NoEstimates movement. Instead of trying to estimate how much time
something is supposed to take, just mandate that they spend X hours working
everyday.

------
dsugarman
The reason why open floor plans are so popular is likely due to cost. Think
about how much more space / structure complexity you need to implement a non-
open floor plan. Decision makers likely look at the options and think 'hey,
not only will everyone be forced to communicate and collaborate, we will also
be much closer to fitting the office project into our budget and cost
projections. '

------
carsongross
Face to face interactions are often orders of magnitude more efficient than
textual interactions, which is particularly important during highly
collaborative activities. Really, even face-to-face is the wrong description,
since it implies something like video conferencing can be used as a
substitute: human-to-human interaction might be better. Body language, the
ability to recognize when a conversation is not making progress or a point is
generally accepted and can be set aside, trust building, humanization of The
Other, etc.

I say this as someone who works remotely, but who recognizes the shortcomings
of it.

~~~
collyw
Sometimes face ti face can be good, but I often prefer email, for the reason
that everything gets documented.

A previous line manager of mine would never document anything, and his
standard response was "I thought we talked about that". Sure we did, but you
changed your mind then changed it again, then again after that. I can't
remember what the final outcome was.

~~~
zzalpha
Meeting notes are a thing for a reason.

Here's a recipe for a successful meeting:

1\. Start by setting the agenda, and critically, the desired outcome. "At the
end of this meeting I want to have a decision on X, or a date for when we can
make that decision."

2\. Have your meeting. Minimize attendance. 3 is perfect. 5 is okay. 7 is
pushing it. Have a very clear moderator/leader for the discussion.

2b. Moderator/leaders should be hard-asses about forcing tangential
discussions offline/into a parking lot. This is probably their most important
function.

3\. At the end of the meeting, the leader summarizes the outcome to all
participants. This is a _critical_ step. "So, Joe, you will come back to me on
Friday with a decision on X. Phil, you'll be working with Joe to pull that
answer together."

4\. Write the meeting notes down in a permanent place. Email is too ephemeral.
A document management system of some kind with an email notification is ideal.
Record actions for those who have them, with associated dates.

Stakeholders should also follow-up on actions with due dates to make sure
they're closed out. This can feel like nagging/cat herding, but it's vital.

The reality is, many decisions/discussions are too complex to do over email,
particularly if the number of stakeholders grows beyond 3. There's far too
much room for confusion/ambiguity and a lack of ownership on follow-up
actions. Mix in the ease with which emotional components can be lost or mis-
interpreted over email, and my tendency is to push for a voice or in-person
discussion the minute an email thread goes on for more than a day.

~~~
dkersten
You need a dedicated person to take meeting minutes, ideally someone who isn't
otherwise part of the meeting because humans are bad at multitasking. I
especially find it hard to take notes and focus on the meeting (nevermind
actually contributing).

~~~
zzalpha
I agree. In a meeting with 3 or more people, designating a scribe is a great
idea!

------
emrekzd
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tacit_knowledge)

Humans transfer knowledge most effectively when they are communicating in
person. Of course this does not mean you will achieve the highest productivity
in an office by putting 20 people in the same room, but it still says a lot
about in office vs complete remote work.

A lot of companies create the type of culture where it's not pleasant to work
in the office. However, having half you team work remotely on random days of
the week isn't the right solution to this, and I don't think it could be
justified by saying "I trust my employees". Just create the right team and the
right environment. People will want to spend time together when there is
inspiration and motivation involved.

There is a lot more to the implications of strong tacit information transfer
that extends to how innovation ecosystems work. For anyone curious I would
suggest finding the research around the subject.

------
mathattack
ROWE - Results Oriented Work Environment. If only the world were so simple
that everyone's contribution can be put into a nice neat box. When work can be
so well defined, it doesn't get outsourced to a 1 bedroom in San Francisco, it
gets outsourced to the cheapest spot on the planet.

Creative work (R&D included) can be hard to define. It depends on random
interactions between people. It requires both collaboration and periods of
quiet. And the outputs can be very hard for a CEO to define in advance.

Remote-only can work ok for "Designed for remote-only" companies, but they are
the exception not the rule.

100% remote can also work for employees who spent a lot of time in the office
building their networks, reputations and relationships.

It's ok for people to say "I'll only ever work remote" but you can quickly
find yourself in a very tight box.

------
OpenDrapery
Management/Educators/Government will always cater to the lowest common
denominator(LCD). It only takes one person to screw it up for everyone. This
is the real upside to working for a small company. The larger the company, the
lower the LCD is likely to be.

I admire large companies that have the balls to delineate between groups. Most
don't. If you work as an IT professional for a company that has a large call
center, God help you. Call center work is some of the highest turnover work
out there. Managers of call centers resort to treating they're employees like
children.

It is frustrating when you find yourself as a college educated, fully formed
adult, being lumped in with cretins.

IMO, this is largely why work from home is squashed. Because if we let you do
it, everyone will want to do it, and we can't have that.

------
repomies691
I don't think it is black and white. Also trust is not black and white, and
trusted persons can turn bad and unrealiable persons can develop to be
reliable and trustworthy.

If you are sure that you bring the best value by working remotely, then just
do it and explain the situation to potential employers. Some might be happy
with that, some not. However to me it looks like the remote job market is
about 100x more competitive than on-site. Employers seem to value being able
to talk face-to-face etc, and in principle I don't think there is a lot wrong
with that. If you don't like it, start a competing company which hires remote
people - it is a free market. If remote working is truly more effective,
remote work should get more common.

------
philosopheer
_If you don’t trust your employees to work remotely you should_ tell them that
work is expected onsite. If it is important to them to work remotely, they
should _n’t have_ let you _hire_ or have pai _d them_

also, people who obsess over issues tend to have issues with the issues they
obsess over. Con-men, for instance, obsess over matters of trust, as do people
who have been conned. Don't work for or hire people who obsess over trust.
People with trusting and trustworthy personalities and a good sense of
boundaries expect it and don't obsess over it because it's built into their
(metaphoric? literal?) DNA.

------
st3v3r
Yes and no, I suppose. I consider myself to be a pretty good employee, but I
know that I would struggle a lot working remotely. Someone who's used to
working remotely probably has that discipline, but for now, I know I lack it.

------
smcg
"no evidence that an open office supports collaboration" \-- sure, but the
choices aren't just open office or working remotely. Face to face interaction
is valuable for collaboration, regardless of the office layout.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Also destructive to productivity.

Things I'd happily pay for right now:

\- for people to stop "collaborating" in the office I sit in; even over-the-
ear headphones and loud music aren't enough to cancel that out

\- for people to stop standing behind me and having (work-related)
conversations

\- for the guy working next to me to actually sit on his damn ass and not move
around the office every 10 minutes

In general, I absolutely _hate_ feeling presence and attention of other people
when I'm trying to focus. With each new day I spend in a modern workplace, I
more and more understand why cubicles are a _fucking awesome idea_.

One day I swear I'll build myself one out of pizza boxes.

~~~
vinceguidry
If I were you I'd push _hard_ for an office to work in at your job. Like, go
out and get some job offers and tell them you'll take one of these jobs if you
don't get your way.

Work environment is everything and once I started taking it seriously, my life
enjoyment improved immensely.

~~~
TeMPOraL
I'm not pushing too hard, because beside the points I raised, I'm generally
happy about my job. A nice and fair company, with good atmosphere and friendly
people. I guess today was one of those days when my inner introvert reared his
ugly head.

Either way, right now I'm considering moving out of town, so I'm trying to
push them into letting me work remotely part of the week ;).

------
raitom
Question for remote workers here: I'm forced to work remotely during the next
3 months (thanks to the US Visa system) and with my coworkers, we're
struggling to find a good communication software for our daily huddle.

What we use right now is Hangout for the video and a VOIP solution for the
sound. The video quality is not so bad but the sound sucks.

We tried Skype, Slack video and couple of other software but I'm not really
satisfied by any of them. Discord has a perfect sound but I'd like to know if
there's a software out there more "professional"?

~~~
rbritton
We tried a number of voice options last year. The best voice quality we've
found that works internationally is TeamSpeak.

~~~
raitom
Yeah, Teamspeak uses the same sound codec (Opus I think) as Discord. I use
that to talk with my friends and famility that are 6k miles away and the sound
is almost perfect.

------
jwtadvice
If I’m hiring for a candidate that has expressed a need to work remotely, I
interview them very differently. First, I give extra importance to the
communication with the candidate over email/LinkedIn to set up the phone
screen, and also the phone screen itself. I know that I will be interacting
with the person primarily this way. It’s extremely helpful to obtain referrals
from people who have worked with the person remotely before, so they can
provide feedback about how frequently and engaged that person has been with
the on-site team in the past. I also look for and ask questions probing the
persons communication skills more than my usually technically-focused
interviews.

The reason for this is that I’ve experienced different results working with
the same people from remote than when they are on-site. For that reason I
don’t think it’s enough to assume that because a developer is a good remote
worker they will work well in an office setting or that if they are a
productive office worker they will function highly from remote.

Basically, people are hired into specific roles. If you’ve hired someone for
an open space agile environment and the role/work dramatically changes (going
remote, acquired by “waterfall method inc”, etc) the hiring decision very well
may no longer be informative.

------
pavel_lishin
At work, we just figured out a weird problem and resolved it quickly, because
five of us are sitting side by side and we could quickly discuss it.
Meanwhile, the two remote people are still somewhat confused, and I'm trying
to explain it in chat - and likely by the time I'm done explaining the
problem, a commit will be added to a pull request to fix it.

Granted, I'm probably not the best communicator, but being on location can
speed things up _a lot_.

But that's also not about trust.

~~~
_dark_matter_
So, uh, we usually just hop on video chat for this. They should have _been_ on
video chat when you were talking about the problem. The issue with your
company is not that remote working is less collaborative, it's that you're not
doing the _basic_ , _minimum_ effort required to make remote working even
possible.

~~~
pavel_lishin
We usually do - we're in a remote office, so we have 4 people in Austin, TX, 6
in New York, one remote in San Diego, and one of the Austin folks was working
from home. So for standups, etc., we do a video call.

But this time, it would have literally taken more time to dial up the two
remote-and-interested parties than it did to solve the problem.

If we were all remote, we would probably have done that, since it would be
almost a necessity. But five heads is enough to solve the problem, and we have
five heads here...

------
indymike
There's more to working from home than the worker.

Sometimes the management team or coworkers can't work well with remote
workers. There are lots of reasons for this, both good and bad.

------
dpcan
Author of this needs to run a company for a while. If you really are the 110%
employee you say you are, you are an edge case. The reality is, most people
need to be told to go here, sit there, do this, for X hours, and I need these
results. Otherwise, nothing gets done. And as far as work environment is
concerned, literally everyone is different. I need a TV on playing reruns of
The Office to be productive. We are all strange creatures.

~~~
nicoburns
Does it really need to be sit there and do this for X hours and I need these
results? Would "I need these results (in X timeframe)" not also work?

I'm not saying there aren't benefits to working in an office with fixed hours
(e.g. despite the advent of email and IM communication is often better in
person).

But:

1\. At jobs with fixed hours I often spend a couple of them a day effectively
doing nothing because I'm burnt out that day. And conversely I will go home at
home time even if I'm being given really productive at that time.

2\. I often work more effectively at home due to lack of distractions and
precisely because I'm not expected to be looking like I'm doing some all of
the time. For example, sometimes it can really help to get out of the house,
go for a walk, and think for a bit. Doing this for 20 minutes can be more
productive than 6 hours of sitting at a desk trying to work on the same
problem while looking at the a computer screen. But you can't really do that
in an office.

~~~
dpcan
Why not be a contractor then? You get to do whatever you want whenever you
want and get paid when the job is done, and done correctly (granted you've
setup your contracts this way).

------
pcmaffey
Sure, as a rule of thumb. But what about young people, still learning how to
be a professional? Structure, consistency, being surrounded by people smarter
and more accomplished than you... these are the best ways to learn. Of course,
there are plenty of self-motivated kids out there who don't need college to
learn and prep for life, but for the majority, immersion in an environment
raises the bar.

------
vonklaus
I am easily distracted and also like the team environment because you can
tighten the feedback loop and communicate efficiently. I am the same way as
the author-- night owl, ect. Going to an office is a solution for me and an
option I wish I had, and enjoyed in the past. I would ammend the authors
point:

You should trust employees who have a good track record to work remotely if
they want and are sufficiently operating independently.

JR employees should be allowed to work part time remotely after some time in
office.

There isnt a good way to inprint culture remotely, and there is a learning
curve for jr devs who need senior devs for support/the internal support
structure. So most Incs would be in bad shape if all there strong engineering
talent worked from 6pm to 9am (as I would left to my own devices) because
their jr devs wouldnt grow and other devs with supporting software on dif
schedules have to wait.

Tldr not all offices are open plan, growing a team (culturally & skill-wise)
is easier in the office, part-time remote work and coordination is a good
tradeoff/reward for employees of all skillsets and functions.

------
dalbasal
I don't disagree with the the underlying points, but I do think it's hard to
take a full stock of something like this. Workplaces as places where people
work is a fairly big piece of culture to just change.

It's clearly true that work can be done elsewhere, but that doesn't mean
workplaces are something we can just abandon and leave everything else the
same. Imagine if a parliament decided they didn't need to see each-other in
person. The whole system would be different.

This doesn't mean you shouldn't get a remote job. Maybe whole companies should
be built this way from the ground up. Companies are cultures of a sort, with
their fair share of cultural pathologies. Being in physical proximity is one
of the ways companies function culturally, at present. All these things will
need to be resolved some other (probably cultural) way for companies to
function remotely.

------
vacri
I've worked with several devs who are trustworthy in general, but the days
they work from home they are curiously unproductive. Or you try to get in
contact with them on an issue of theirs and they never seem to be around. Yet
in the office they're perfectly functional and available.

Not to mention that tech staff are a seller's market at the moment - trust or
not, most companies don't get a lot of choice with the staff they get to have.
The article's author is supremely selfish in assuming all staff are like them.

------
sokoloff
Has anyone found a truly workable remote alternative to everyone standing
around a whiteboard for shared, interactive sketching?

Let me stipulate that I'd pay a sizable sum ($5K per location wouldn't be out
of the question at all) if I could find something that gave me very similar
dynamics to 5 people standing around a whiteboard and taking turns drawing,
talking, correcting, improving a shared diagram. (So, this doesn't have to be
"cheap", but does have to be "awesome".)

~~~
afastow
[https://business.smarttech.com/en](https://business.smarttech.com/en)

I've only used these in an academic setting and I don't know how much they
cost but I think it's exactly what you're asking for.

~~~
sokoloff
I've used a couple generations of them and have an older one in my basement.
IMO, they're better than nothing but still a very great gap between these and
a shared single-location whiteboard.

It's hard to capture the dynamics between people. (Reading the room for
understanding, quickly collaborating on a drawing, etc.) Smartboards always
felt like taking turns playing some laggy VR game.

------
Tharre
To play devils advocate: How can you have a ROWE, if you can't really measure
engineer productivity? This just seems to lead back to the most lines of code
added = most work done attitude.

This is a problem with traditional butts-in-seats as well of course, but (one
could argue) less so, as your employees at least have to spent X hours trying
to solve the problem. And if you already going to spent so much time, why not
do it right.

------
SurrealSoul
When I worked at a startup, we had a local office and an office on the other
coast. To keep communications open we had an iPad facetime 100% of the time
with the other office.

I feel like this is what remote working is missing, you may not have legs and
be able to strut into the lunch room to talk about non-business but at the
very least you can some presences improv the "brain-storming" sessions

------
tropo
This means also trusting their home (cheap door, no alarm, landlord, kids,
wife...) and malware-infested computer with business data. It kind of implies
that company data is on computers with internet connections, which is a no-no
if you care about security.

------
znpy
This is basically a repost, the same text but on Medium passed a couple of
weeks ago.

Also, the fact that it works for the author doesn't mean it doesn't work for
everybody else.

~~~
the_watcher
There is a note at the bottom of the post that it originally ran on Medium
(which freely licenses its content in this way in the absence of explicit
revocation of consent from the author). The piece also explicitly acknowledges
that working remote doesn't work for everyone, and states "That is fine."

------
compuguy
There are exceptions to this, especially if you work with governments and
classified material. You obviously can't work from home.

------
bedros
the biggest mistake people do is assuming one size fits all. working for home
is not for everyone, some people are more productive in a group settings when
they other people around are working, and they get more incentive to work
harder.

Personally, I prefer giving the choice to allow people to work from home if
they are productive; but we need to remember it's not for everyone

------
eagsalazar2
What a pile of straw man BS. Most objections to working remotely have nothing
to do with trust (at least for decent developer or designer jobs) but instead
are about quality of collaboration and company culture.

People who write cocky condescending articles like this are almost always just
stumping for doing what _they_ want which is to work at home themselves.

~~~
matwood
> Most objections to working remotely have nothing to do with trust

For business types, it absolutely does. I've had to answer the question before
"if people are working at home, how will we know they are working?" My
response is "how do you know they are working at work? The same way."

~~~
T-hawk
The disconnect here is about the definition of "working". For many managers,
that means "attending my meetings" and "easy to ask for status reports" more
so than it means "producing good software". The former are what's easier to
know in the office versus remote.

------
unlogic
The article contains in total 61 occurrences of "I", "me", and "my"; yet
somehow the problem of the author is not narcissism, but open offices.

------
thecourier
your presencial influence as leader matters.

I can't imagine facebook or amazon being built using remote workers. grinding
is hard, painful and demoralizing. but a close team of uber-focused engineers
led by example, frequently beat the asses of the 'work-from-home-is-so-comfy'
guys.

about why I hire these people: they are gems, who need a coach to make them
achieve greatness as a team. this is moneyball.

------
jack9
This title ensures I ignore the article. Wrong wrong wrong. Might as well say
"offshore is just as good as in-house"

------
sagivo
have nothing to add. AMEN!

------
Vampires123432
Working from home was removed from our office because of "abuse".

Who was "abusing" it?

We have 7 Indian (not American) females working in our office in various
functions. All (100%) of them were found to have been "working" from home on
multiple occasions where they were inaccessible (not logged in, not responding
to emails). Their reasons for working from home ranged from children to car
troubles. By all measurable attributes, their work output was less than their
peers.

Now before you knee jerk, please understand that I'm simply pointing out the
measurable facts of the situation. I'm not making any claims regarding
cultural background. I am, however, questioning whether or not there exists a
cultural component here that leads to a different understanding of the "work
from home policy". To that degree, the statement, "If you don't trust your
employees to work remotely you shouldn't have hired them" can perhaps come
across as a bit racist.

~~~
shas3
Indian: feathers or dots?

Seriously, what's the point of mentioning their ethnicity and gender, exactly?
I'm thankful that I'm not your co-worker.

~~~
Vampires123432
Your comment is racist.

I am also pointing out that the article itself has a racist undertone.

Culture exists.

~~~
shas3
Wtf is "culture exists"? Like "culture of Indians"? You're digging yourself
deeper in a hole. My comment about feathers and dots was ironic to highlight
your dog-whistle. India is a country of 1.2 billion people with "many
cultures". In any case, tarring people of certain ethnicities or race with
"cultures" IS the problem with racism.

------
balls187
> Treat your employees like adults.

Adults get up and go to work.

I do treat my employees like adults, but I expect them to act like adults.
Like making a decision to join the rest of the team in the office for an
agreed set amount of time.

Our official policy is it's up to the Manager. I prefer a team, and not just
someone who produces code. So I prefer people to be in the office.

Children expect the world to revolve around them. Adults do not.

~~~
eplanit
> Children expect the world to revolve around them. Adults do not.

It seems like the sentiment is "you have to come to where _I_ am to do work,
just like _I_ do", which smacks of wanting the world to revolve around you.
Who has childish expectations in this scenario?

~~~
balls187
> Who has childish expectations in this scenario?

So any employee who sets boundaries for their employee's behavior, is being
childish?

> "you have to come to where _I_ am to do work, just like _I_ do"

Should read

"you have to come where the _team_ is to do work, just like the _team_ does."

~~~
balls187
*employer who sets boundaries.

------
oliwarner
Article is clearly written by an idealist.

I've worked with plenty of people who are _superb_ in their field, but need
constant whipping to stay on track.

The threat of your manager sticking their head round the corner is a stick
that keeps on-site employees grinding along.

Good management helps, but positing that you should only hire people you trust
with your life (or whatever nonsense it is they're saying) is silly.

~~~
shanemhansen
> need constant whipping to stay on track

> The threat of your manager sticking their head round the corner is a stick
> that keeps on-site employees grinding along.

I would appreciate it if you'd share your current company/team, I'd imagine
some other hner's would appreciate the heads up too, so they can avoid it.

------
midgetjones
> Here’s the cycle when I’m forced to be in a chair in your office at 9am

This is where the author lost any sympathy from me. It just seems petulant. Go
to bed earlier. Your body will get used to it.

~~~
NickBusey
Seriously? Some of us are night owls. Maybe musicians who need to be up late
for shows (like me). Not everyone is you.

~~~
LordKano
I am such a person.

I got a job that requires me to be in the office at 08:30 and I do it. I have
no difficulty going to bed at 11:30 and being asleep by 12:30. I have no
difficulty getting up at 06:40 and starting my day.

I can do all of these things because I am a responsible adult.

But I don't feel right. I'm not a morning person. I am most productive in the
afternoon. Telecommuting from 10:00 to 18:00 would make the most sense for me
but I understand that most employers simply do not have the flexibility to
come up with custom solutions for everyone.

~~~
madez
> I can do all of these things because I am a responsible adult.

You are saying that if anyone is not willing to do these things, they cannot
be responsible adults. How rude and arrogant of you, if you really mean what
you say.

~~~
castis
If you cannot go to bed at a reasonable time in order to function at a job you
have been hired to do, then no, you are not a responsible adult.

~~~
madez
You should ask someone who actually knows about that topic, e.g. any doctor
that works with people with sleep problems, what they think of your statement.

~~~
castis
I suppose I should have said "willing to go to bed at a reasonable time" but I
don't supposed that would have left you satiated.

> You should ask someone who actually knows about that topic

The irony of you calling someone out for being rude is almost palpable.

~~~
madez
I understand you are angry because of how I reacted.

See, you are talking bad about other people, people you don't know, whose
stories you might not even have ever imagined. And denying someone to possibly
be a responsible adult is very bad in my book. Look how society treats people
who are not adult or considered irresponsible.

Having that in mind, I reacted rather direct and rude, but hopefully
understandibly so.

