
I Only Work Remotely - biffa
https://shift.newco.co/why-i-only-work-remotely-2e5eb07ae28f#.e7ao8hp5i
======
Jaruzel
One of the opening lines resonated with me:

    
    
      "...I cannot trust employers to provide me with an adequate work environment."
    

This is becoming more and more the default position, especially in the
contract market.

A recent contract I had, had quite poor office space - small old desks, old
17" monitors, no personal storage, chairs in poor repair, and a badly working
hot-desk system (I have yet to encounter 'working' hot-desking). As a
designer, I was expected to work on these 17" monitors (or 15" laptop screens)
do multiple large document work, and loads of complex diagrams in Visio. Not a
fun experience.

In comparison, my home office contains an executive office chair bought to my
specifications, a large desk laid out just for me, and a nice 24" 1920x1200
monitor (soon to be replaced with a 27" 2456x1440 one). I have Skype for audio
and video calls, and my kitchen has food and drink in it that I actually like.

When I'm in the zone, and working from home, my productivity is doubled
compared to working in a poor open plan environment, so where I can, I request
work from home arrangements in my contracts.

Like the author of the article, I too am not a morning person - people may
scoff at this, but it's a real thing. Before noon I am almost useless, the
proverbial bear with a sore head. Once the sun is past the yard arm however,
my focus kicks in, and I can power through my tasks until about 8pm-10pm. It's
a full working day, just offset.

I don't really know the point I'm making here... but I do empathise heavily
with the article author.

~~~
gcp
In most engineering offices I've been into being a morning person would mean
you have less overlap with everyone else, since coming in late and staying
late is the norm.

In one company I consulted for, a morning person almost got fired when a
regional manager noticed he left 2 hours earlier than everyone else. It was
hilarious, in the saddest possible way.

~~~
westbywest
Having young children can place constraints on your ability to shift work
hours away from conventional 9-5. Childcare/schooling/etc are not as flexible
in the schedules they follow, and not everyone has a spouse/partner with
sufficient free time to compensate for your unavailability.

~~~
Arizhel
Exactly. This is why people with children shouldn't also have jobs. At least
one person needs to be at home to take care of the kids. However, with divorce
so commonplace, you can't count on having one spouse earning an income any
more, it's just too much of a risk, so I don't think anyone should have any
kids at all. Having kids simply is not compatible with living in modern
society. (No, this is not satire.)

~~~
programmarchy
You're not wrong. Women entering the workforce instead of staying home to
mother children has a detrimental effect on families, despite receiving praise
as social progress.

It's good for corporations because it doubles the labor supply, lowering wages
for both men and women. States love it because they receive more income tax,
since household work was previously untaxed. Families, especially children,
are getting the shaft.

~~~
Arizhel
>Women entering the workforce instead of staying home to mother children has a
detrimental effect on families, despite receiving praise as social progress.

It IS progress, for individual women or single moms who weren't lucky enough
to hook up with a good-enough husband, or who didn't want to go the
traditional family-and-kids route in life. It's been detrimental to society
overall however because it's become a norm, and almost a requirement for
families to earn enough to stay out of the ghetto; families don't feel they
have the luxury to have only one working parent because the cost-of-living is
too high, and also, many women feel (usually correctly) that they'd commit
career suicide by taking off a few years to be a stay-at-home mom, because
companies don't value this and see workers who take a few years' break as no
longer employable.

>Families, especially children, are getting the shaft.

Yep.

------
throwaway2016a
So to provide another point of view...

I worked exclusively from home for two years. The cabin fever was so bad I
couldn't take it anymore. I may be in the minority for programmers but I need
other people around and I need the energy of an office.

From a management standpoint. A good whiteboard session goes a long way to
kill communication issues on projects that are creative or not 100%
straightforward. Although, of course, you don't need to be in the office
"every" day for that.

~~~
ryanSrich
I've been working remotely for more than three years now. I've dealt with
cabin fever a number of times.

Early on my initial reaction was to find a co-working space. My employer was
more than willing to help out. I started looking around the city and
eventually found one I thought I liked. After a few days I realized I hated
it. I wanted to escape the office scene and here I was, given the freedom to
do that, right back in an office.

The second thing I tried was going to more meetups. This failed mostly because
meetups are on Tuesdays and Thursdays. This clashed with my workout schedule.
When I changed my workout schedule I found that going to meetups was a major
chore. I rarely found any value in it and my networking skills are super
shitty. I'd go, sit for an hour, not talk to anyone and leave. A complete
waste of time.

The last thing I tried and something that has worked for me for over a year
now is a combination of coffee shops, a co-working space, and my home office.
I'm a man that needs options. I can't be tied down to just working at home, or
just working at an office. Somedays I don't want to see or hear anyone. Those
are the days I stay home. Other days I want the noise and movement of a coffee
shop. So I'll venture out to the 100s of shops in my area. I meet more people
there than I ever did at meetups.

~~~
mstade
+1 for options. I've been working 100% remotely for about a year and three
months now and while I do most work out of my home office, I tend to venture
out at least 3-4 times a week to coffee shops or other venues, just to get a
bit of buzz and white noise. I keep to myself and do my work, but don't use
headphones or anything like that to drown out my surroundings. When I go out
somewhere, I tend to stay there for 2-4 hours, depending on the place. I
rarely mix places up in the same day, and generally just rotate between the
same few places, maybe venturing outside the box a few times a month.

Sometimes though, I'll go nowhere for weeks. Like you say: options. It's nice
to have them.

------
mi100hael
_> 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._

This used to be me and I used to believe it was just the way things were. I'd
naturally sleep 10+ hours until noon on the weekends, struggle to wake up for
work, and then struggle to fall asleep before midnight. I had little energy
for exercise and always felt stressed trying to find the time to stay on top
of all of my other responsibilities.

But the truth is, it's perfectly possible for anyone to adjust their sleep
schedule and become a morning person. It just takes some conscious effort and
the will-power to suffer through a week or two of re-adjustment.

1\. Set your alarm for the same time _every day_ , including weekends. Wake up
as soon as it goes off and don't snooze. Yes, it's hard at first. But it's not
inhuman, so just deal with it. It'll get easier.

2\. You can have a cup or two of coffee as soon as you wake up, but no
caffeine after noon.

3\. Put down screens like phone, laptop, and TV after about 8pm. The
artificial, bright light throws off off your body's natural instinct to get
sleepy when it gets dark. Spend some time preparing for the next day so you
aren't stressed in the morning, and then read a book or something until you
feel tired.

Bonus points if you get a workout in sometime during the day. It'll help you
fall asleep earlier which will make waking up early easier. Also realize that
alcohol reduces quality of sleep, so cutting back or avoiding it altogether
will make waking up easier.

~~~
hobarrera
> But the truth is, it's perfectly possible for anyone to adjust their sleep
> schedule and become a morning person. It just takes some conscious effort
> and the will-power to suffer through a week or two of re-adjustment.

That's not 100% true. I've done it, and deal with a couple of weeks of pain to
realign my schedule.

I then went to bed late ONCE, and slept late the following morning. My
schedule had the re-sync'd back to it's original form, undoing three weeks of
work.

I can't really explain it, but it doesn't matter how much effort I put in,
just staying up very late ONCE, screwes up my schedule, and I have to go back
to two weeks to pain to realign my clock again.

~~~
maccard
> I then went to bed late ONCE, and slept late the following morning. My
> schedule had the re-sync'd back to it's original form, undoing three weeks
> of work.

How long had you been doing the night owl schedule before that? You're trying
to break a habit that you've been forming for years in a matter of weeks (for
the record, I was a self proclaimed night owl until about a year ago)

~~~
hobarrera
> How long had you been doing the night owl schedule before that?

Probably for about 13 years (since I was ~16).

------
swerner
I have worked remotely for the better part of the last 15 years. I am now
looking for a new job and am applying almost exclusively to positions that are
several 100km away, if not on a different continent. The reason: the potential
employer already understands that this will be a remote position. Any employer
closer than 150km is just too likely to ask for "can't you just come in", and
anyone 10 minutes from here will most likely not agree to remote work at all.

~~~
padobson
Allowing remote work is a good signal for process quality too. Distributed
teams don't share code on thumb drives or assign undocumented tasks at the
water cooler.

~~~
gcp
Or have singular people in the company with undocumented, critical knowledge.

PS. "Distributed teams" isn't the same as "working remotely", although many
things that make the latter work apply to the former too.

~~~
bb611
Not always true, my last job had one director who worked 100% remote. She had
multiple years of process knowledge she chose to share only when specifically
needed to answer a question in a meeting or email. Much of this was critical
information like "last year we published this report this way, but we promised
to change the format this year." Even better, "we agreed not to change for 3
years but we're doing a ground-up rebuild in 2018."

A significant subset of my job for a year and a half was figuring out how to
maximize the number of answers I could get from her, and recording them in the
team wiki.

~~~
gcp
_Not 100% true_

I don't understand what part you're disagreeing with. If anything, you're very
strongly reinforcing my point.

~~~
bb611
Sorry, apparently I didn't include the critical fact that she worked 100%
remote.

Updated my original comment.

------
codingdave
The "I cannot trust employers" statement struck me. I agree with it strongly,
but react differently. Rather than dictate my working environment to people I
do not trust to take care of me, I just say no. If I do not trust an employer,
I am fortunate enough to have enough savings in the bank to be able to say no
to the job offers and walk away until I find someone I can trust. It works
well... It makes job changes take a bit longer, and the searches are
difficult, but the end results are good.

~~~
cableshaft
Not everyone is has gotten to that point. Congratulations on getting there,
I'm sure it took quite a bit of effort.

------
supergeek133
It's a comfort/environment problem, at its core. Just like was pointed out in
the article.

Do you know what the most popular type of monitor stand is in a major
corporation? Paper reams. In fact recently where I work they came around to
people with these and asked they not do it because it screws up their paper
ordering/estimation.

Why is this a problem? Because offices are super picky about the $100
equipment order but NOT about the $2000 plane ticket/hotel. One is considered
a necessary expense and the other is "waste".

People are more productive when they are comfortable/have the tools they need.
The building doesn't matter as much. Just an opinion.

You don't want to allow work from home? Cool, give me my two large enough
monitors, my adjustable stand, a motorized sit/stand desk, and maybe something
simple like free coffee/soda so I'm not spending $X/day on it. Let me come in
at 10 and stay until 6 if it suits me.

At the office, make sure there are places I can go to escape from noise when I
need to. What would even be MORE awesome is if you somehow worked it out if I
could get a discount on noise cancelling headphones.

Pretty simple stuff, and really at the core of what is written here. The title
is just meant to infuriate some of you.

~~~
Arizhel
>and maybe something simple like free coffee/soda so I'm not spending $X/day
on it.

That always annoys me, because I don't drink that crap. Soda in particular is
extremely unhealthy.

If you're going to offer free food/drinks, then give people an actual choice
so people like me aren't feeling left out. Don't just assume that everyone
likes Coke(TM), or Starbucks(TM), or nasty Folgers(TM) coffee. Try offering
some healthy food or snacks, like yogurts or fresh fruit so employees stay
healthy.

>At the office, make sure there are places I can go to escape from noise when
I need to.

1000 times this! I once worked at a horrible place like this where there was
no place to escape to. They told me I could go sit in the "break room" for a
break; except that this stupid room was extremely brightly lit and had a
stupid TV blaring CNN all day long. We were explicitly not allowed to go to
other parts of the building and use the comfy chairs in the more dimly-lit
common areas to relax for a bit, away from the noisy open-plan work area.

>What would even be MORE awesome is if you somehow worked it out if I could
get a discount on noise cancelling headphones.

No. First, they should be free, but secondly, they simply don't work. I tried
that at the above place. It was even worse than putting up with the open-plan
environment, because then I constantly had people walking up behind me and
tapping me on the shoulder, which was horribly disturbing and made me flinch
badly. Maybe I should have just backhanded someone reflexively so people would
have stopped doing it.

The fundamental problem with all this stuff is that employers simply do not
give two shits about the happiness or comfort of their employees in the
office, and are simply too stupid and shortsighted to see how this translates
directly into both increased productivity and retention.

~~~
supergeek133
> If you're going to offer free food/drinks, then give people an actual choice
> so people like me aren't feeling left out.

That's OK too, was just being specific for illustration. I don't really care
the result, but I do enjoy caffeine. Haha. My point was just to follow on with
the "I'm more comfortable at home because $X".

Example: I like soda. It is free in our cafeteria until 2:30 when they close.
After that it is $1.80 in the machine for a bottle. Sure I can bring my own
but come on.

> The fundamental problem with all this stuff is that employers simply do not
> give two shits about the happiness or comfort of their employees in the
> office, and are simply too stupid and shortsighted to see how this
> translates directly into both increased productivity and retention.

Pretty much.

------
mathgeek
There's a much simpler reason that I only work remotely: companies are willing
to let me.

I love being close to my kids, my wife, and the general comforts of a home
office. There are many other reasons I prefer to work remotely. That said, if
there were no companies allowing me to work this way, I wouldn't say "sorry, I
only work remotely" and become unemployed.

------
chukye
I smoke weed to get creative, drink a lot of coffee and do a lot of online
meetings, have some crazy hours, but I also get my work done before(better?)
everyone else.

I would never fit in any workplace (tried a few but none fit), I have a big
chair, 3 big monitors and a bong, also can talk with my team fellows every
time I want, but we really don't need to talk too much, if you understand your
product, understand your clients and your needs, that's just not too much to
talk, just hard work to do.

~~~
edoceo
You looking for work? I only hire "pot heads".

~~~
jmkni
Why?

~~~
edoceo
I'm in the weed business

------
chrismorgan
Formerly on medium.com and discussed a couple of times:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=https:%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F@yani...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=https:%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F@yanismydj%2Fwhy-
i-only-work-
remotely-2e5eb07ae28f&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story)

Primary discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13230508](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13230508)

------
labrador
Some of us have been making these arguments for decades to little effect. The
manager either has discretion to let people work at home or he/she doesn't.
And if he/she does it's very much their personal preference. Rock star devs
can work at home if their managers are allowed to make that decision and the
rock star demands it. Most of the time it feels like a whim of management.

~~~
EleventhSun
I've been explicitly told not to do it and still do it. So long as you're
productive it doesn't matter.

------
ccvannorman
YES.

>when I’m forced to be in a chair in your office at 9am:

> \- I force myself to be up early and rush to work, feeling ill prepared

> \- I try to focus and be effective in the morning, but struggle and the day
> is off to a bad start, killing my mood and momentum

> \- I’m tired in the afternoon and cannot work effectively at my peak work
> time. I drink tons of coffee trying to kickstart my productivity

> \- I go home when I’m finally starting to get going

> \- I am restless in bed and can’t sleep because I drank too much coffee and
> I’m worried about getting up early

> \- By the end of the week I am tired, frustrated, angry, and disappointed
> with my performance

~~~
EduardoBautista
Just wake up earlier.

------
coding123
The most incredible thing for me was avoiding getting sick. Been remote about
4 years now, the number of colds I get went from 2 per year to about 1 every 2
years. I shouldn't have said that.

~~~
gcp
This stops working once you get portable germ carriers. Err, I meant kids.

------
krosaen
Employers need to take folks like this into consideration when setting their
workplace policies, such as to what degree to allow flexible hours.

There are always trade offs. Thinking specifically about workplace hours,
having at least some amount of time everyday where you know everyone will be
in the same place physically has some major benefits: knowing you'll have a
chance to pair with someone, having some overlap where you get to joke a round
while making coffee, perhaps eat a meal together, draw on a whiteboard (each
of which have virtual alternatives that aren't as good IMO). But if having any
such constraints at all means you miss out on 5-10% of really smart creative
people, is that too large a cost?

------
ivanhoe
For me spending 8+hours in the office never really worked well. I'm effective
for a few hours in the morning (unless interrupted by someone) and then just
sit out the rest of the day pretending to be busy. For me the best part of
working remote is that I can split my work day into a 2-3 chunks, few hours
each. IMHO this is absolutely the most productive way to organize the time, it
really helps me to stay focused through out the day. Also to be able to finish
other things in life, beside work.

------
chad_strategic
I feel as if I wrote this article.

Help I'm trapped in cubicle... and the programmer next insists on having a
mechanical keyboard. (He is not old enough to remember real mechanical
keyboards.)

------
npsimons
If employers had to pay employees _from the time they left their front door_ ,
instead of externalizing the cost to the employees, we'd find out pretty
quickly just how "inefficient" remote working really was. That, and/or
salaries would start to compensate for real estate prices.

------
greyman
I currently work from home, but before I also worked in an openspace and also
in the cubicle with just 4 people. I still can't say openspace is worst...
probably depends on one's own preferences. Yes, sometimes it gets noisy and
productivity goes down, but if I was stuck on something, and could just
immediately get up and walk 10 meters and ask a more knowledgeable colleague
made up for that.

But if your work is clearly defined and you have easy access to all the
information, then probably yes, being completely alone is most productive for
me. But for example in the past I worked on a project with ~100 other
developers, and not every information required to do the job done was readily
available...sometimes it was acquired only by discussing with a colleague, and
doing that in person is often the quickest way.

~~~
Arizhel
>but if I was stuck on something, and could just immediately get up and walk
10 meters and ask a more knowledgeable colleague made up for that.

Working in a cubicle environment is no different here. There's nothing
preventing you from getting up, leaving your cube, and walking 10 meters to
another cube to ask a question.

------
neogodless
It makes sense that the nature of management work (over-communicating) lends
itself to physically connected open office areas. Of course, the other half of
their job is getting out of the way of the producers. Could a manager answer a
few questions I have?

Can you describe to me the difference between the nature of work that requires
group creativity and individual focus (or rather, which employee roles fit
more into one or the other)?

How much of each do the various roles of your employees spend their time on?

How much control (or influence) do your employees have over whether or not
they are in an environment that suits their need for focus (and when that
focus ends)?

------
n0mad01
tl;dr because he has the opportunity to.

------
mdekkers
I only work remotely. I will travel for meetings that should be face to face,
but slack, skype/hangouts, email and phone should be the main form of comms
for day to day stuff. No open plans. No constant interruptions.

------
jhoechtl
Kept reading until I hit

> Remove the safety nets and let the bad actors fail

I like to have a safety net.

~~~
jdbernard
I think you're interpreting this differently than the author intended. Later
he says this:

> Without tons of rules and process, it becomes very obvious who cares about
> the organization and who does not, thanks to the lack of rules & process and
> not because of them.

An abundance of rules and process provides a system that bad actors can and
will game, giving the appearance of adding value without actually moving the
needle.

> Even if we wanted to, we can’t write a rule that will magically make people
> engaged. We have to compel them by building a workplace they love and can do
> great, meaningful work in.

------
_nalply
I wonder how this collides with the inane recruiting. Do you keep your mouth
shut till you have the contract, then declare that you will only working
remotely?

~~~
sleepychu
Seems like a good strategy might be to just not apply to jobs where attending
the office frequently would be practical. [0]

[0] -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13520729](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13520729)

------
billirvine
As a founder of startups, I take a bit of exception to the tonality.

Yes, lots of inexperienced founders/leaders drink deep of the open office
koolaid and do it wrong. But doing it right (allowing flexibility, having
private spots, etc.) yields better overall results because people are more
creative in groups. The chance serendipity of investigating new ideas with
your fellows will always result in a better work product.

~~~
justinlaster
I strongly disagree. In fact, I'm of the opinion these days that if you can't
communicate effectively and proficiently over text, you're in the wrong field;
at the very least I'm going to question how much you are "with it."

There is nothing stopping a completely remote company from having "jam"
sessions between developers. Is there any solid evidence that working in an
office together yields a better work product? We see plenty examples of
products that are built by completely remote organizations, and no one has
ever pointed to them and gone "man, if only they worked in a face to face
situation this would be so much better!"

~~~
AckSyn
Only anecdotally. My initial hiring is for three months in the office minimum.
That's for acclimation of the kind of workflow/procedural stuff they should
learn and general SOP for the company. After that, we offer working from
home/remote on a per person consideration.

Some make the cut, other's can't handle it.

~~~
TheRealDunkirk
I agree with this from both sides. As someone who's worked from home for many
years for 2 different employers, I _want_ to be in the office for a few-to-six
months to get the lay of the land before spending most of the time at home.
And I like the weekly meeting with the whole team, and the occasional 5-minute
trip to the office for an ad-hoc meeting, to stay connected.

We technical types can presume that technology runs the world, but, as much as
it pains me to admit it, myself, it doesn't. People -- personal interactions
-- still run the world, and always will. Being face-to-face with the people
you work with is a fundamentally-necessary part of doing good with for and
with them.

But the amount of face-to-face time required to be effective varies WIDELY for
different people and projects and types of work. These discussion always
devolve into blanket statements and proclamations, but it's a REALLY
subjective subject.

------
battlebot
Wow, I feel like I wrote this myself. Unfortunately, I have had very little
success being "remote only." Maybe I'll keep trying.

------
bshimmin
_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._

So, er, everyone else has to be accommodating of this guy's abnormal working
hours, because the first two hours of the day that society normally considers
to be working hours aren't convenient for him?

~~~
Wilya
What he's saying, is pretty much that he doesn't want to work for people that
think like you.

And it's okay. Not everyone can be a good fit for every company.

~~~
bshimmin
It absolutely is okay for him, you're right. And it's absolutely great that
there is such demand for tech right now that people can afford to be so
particular about their working hours and their various ways of working.

What I find less great is the suggestion that all employers should "accept
your employees for who they are and optimize for their abilities" \- does
anyone really think that if everyone just worked whatever hours they found
most pleasing, this would genuinely result in a situation that was even
vaguely practical? What would happen to the people with children who actually
find that working 9-5 is convenient because they get to spend a few hours with
their children when they get back from work before they go to bed? Would those
guys just sit around stuck for two hours in the morning whilst the night owls
had a bit of a lie-in, and then have to cart the laptop around with them in
the evening so they can Slack their late-working colleagues whilst they're
giving the children a bath?

I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong and I'm just a dinosaur (who actually happens
both to work remotely and to work strange hours sometimes too).

~~~
Wilya
It obviously depends on what work there is to do. In most of what I do, I work
alone, with little need for cooperation, working through the backlog of
tickets to implement. And the same goes for my coworkers. So I don't know why
the morning people would have to wait for the night owls or why the night owls
would need the morning people to stay around late. Everyone has their own
stuff to do. If I need to talk to other people, I do it between 11AM and 5PM.
Or schedule ahead of time so people can anticipate.

~~~
bshimmin
Yes, it certainly depends on the nature of the work. If you work pretty much
entirely independently (and remote work often can be like this, especially
freelance), then working hours become less important - if your arrangement is
that the software will be deployed by 9am Friday and all the features
implemented and testable by that point, and that's your sole responsibility,
no one is going to be bothered if you worked 4pm to midnight every day to do
it.

I once worked with a very senior creative who was exceptional at his job. We
all worked in an office together - this was a few years before the current
remote phenomenon had quite the momentum behind it that it now has. He came in
at midday, on a good day, and normally stayed late into the evening (I think
he enjoyed having a little red wine whilst he was working, which probably
slightly stretched the boundaries of acceptability in that office). His work
was exceptional - on-brief but always extremely innovative. But, you know,
when you actually wanted to schedule a meeting with him to discuss a project,
it was always bloody hard work - he collaborated very well with the other
members of his team who enjoyed staying late in the evening, but he was a
constant thorn in the side of the project managers who often wanted to talk to
him in the morning when he was never there.

So, yes - it depends.

------
bitwize
Don't you just love it when someone with zero direct reports thinks he can
tell managers how to manage?

It's a _job_ , it's not a fucking Montessori school, or a correspondence
course. If you don't want your employability to dry up once rockstar ninjas
become commonplace enough that the demand bubble for them pops, you will
cultivate the essential skills of showing up when and where your employer
demands and otherwise being their huckleberry. Know what that means? It means
someone who can be counted on. Showing up at the office on time is a first-
line test of _dependability_. That's why companies ask it of you.

~~~
Jaruzel
That is an utterly antiquated position. I bet you don't even let poor Bob
Cratchit have time off at Christmas.

In this day and age, _dependability_ is delivering your tasks accurately and
on time. Everything else is just chaff.

More managers should get with the program, and understand that skilled workers
want to Work to Task, Not To Time.

~~~
eeZah7Ux
> That is an utterly antiquated position.

Not antiquated enough: throughout history the large majority of workers have
been farmers. Even without being able to read and write, they were/are
entirely responsible of their work - and farming wasn't easy at all.

Same for artisans, shopkeepers at al. When people are not bossed around they
can manage themselves.

