
Why Showing Your Face at Work Matters - dougbright
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine/2012-summer/53407/why-showing-your-face-at-work-matters
======
cletus
Working from home is a popular topic for us engineers. Generally speaking
there are two broad camps in this argument:

1\. Those who want to work from home and argue largely from that position.
They say they'll be just as productive, you can write code from anywhere,
having a more flexible schedule will make them happier and more productive and
so on; and

2\. Those that think there is more to your job than the lines of code you
write. In even small companies (maybe even especially small companies?)
culture is important. Culture transmits largely by physical proximity. Osmosis
if you will. There is value in team camaraderie, whiteboard sessions, going to
lunch with colleagues, sometimes just sitting around and shooting the breeze
about whatever.

I fall very firmly into camp (2). This also applies to splitting teams
geographically (common within Google) and, all other things being equal,
you're better off having your organization in N locations versus N+1
locations.

Raises and promotions are more a function of relationships than anything else.
Not being there decreases visibility and diminishes relationships. Or perhaps
it's just that those who basically just want to write code see no value in
and/or spend no time on building relationships?

So I think if you found a group of likeminded people that just wanted to put
their heads down and write code then they could probably work together as an
effective distributed team but as soon as you're in the minority in that
situation you're losing out and (IMHO) it's not what's best for a colocated
team anyway.

~~~
marknutter
"Those that think there is more to your job than the lines of code you write.
In even small companies (maybe even especially small companies?) culture is
important. Culture transmits largely by physical proximity. Osmosis if you
will. There is value in team camaraderie, whiteboard sessions, going to lunch
with colleagues, sometimes just sitting around and shooting the breeze about
whatever."

You're waiving your hands here; flailing, even. None of this is quantifiable,
it's all your based on your gut feeling. There are plenty of ways culture can
transmit online, but I'm afraid my examples would involve just as much
conjecture as yours do.

I telecommute, but also make a trip to be on location every couple of months.
I agree that face to face contact is important to some degree, but not in any
way I could accurately measure. I'm _FAR_ more productive when I'm
telecommuting because I don't have colleagues interrupting me with questions
ever 10 minutes, I don't feel the temptation to "shoot the shit", I can work
through lunch, and I waste no time commuting. As a result I'm more productive
than the average non-telecommuting worker.

Raises and promotions may be a function of relationships, but perhaps they
shouldn't be? Perhaps they should be based on performance.

~~~
adrianhoward
_As a result I'm more productive than the average non-telecommuting worker._

Although sometimes optimising somebody's individual productivity gets in the
way of optimising the productivity of the company as a whole.

You need to figure out where the bottlenecks are before you know the right
place to optimise :-)

~~~
mindcrime
_Although sometimes optimising somebody's individual productivity gets in the
way of optimising the productivity of the company as a whole._

That's the real rub. It's entirely possible that the Right Thing To Do - from
the perspective of the firm - is the do something other than what is most
optimal for the individual. Sp, as a lot of us geeks tend to be fairly
individualistic, and because it can be hard to isolate the variables when
you're talking about team productivity, a lot of us fall on the side of
"optimize for the individual."

As somebody who's _radically_ individualistic, and who is also a startup
founder, I find myself torn on the idea of whether or not it even makes sense
to _have_ an office, or whether it makes sense to push for a completely
distributed team.

I'm getting a bit of a real-world experiment with these issues now, as my
$DAYJOB has me in Chicago for a 6 month consulting gig and my co-founders are
back in the RTP area. We use email and IM heavily now... but we had an in-
person "hack day" last weekend when I was home, and there was definitely value
in all 3 of us being in the same room, huddled up together.

I'm leaning towards thinking firms probably should have offices, and that most
people should be in the office at least part of the time. But I would take a
pretty laissez-faire approach towards it, I think. Provide offices, but give
people fairly unlimited freedom to work remotely or come into the office as
they see fit.

~~~
adrianhoward
_I'm leaning towards thinking firms probably should have offices, and that
most people should be in the office at least part of the time. But I would
take a pretty laissez-faire approach towards it, I think. Provide offices, but
give people fairly unlimited freedom to work remotely or come into the office
as they see fit._

That sounds like a good idea.

I'd maybe consider running some experiments too. See what happens when you
have everybody work in the office for a month. See what happens if you have
everybody working remotely for a month. I've had clients try things like that
and be surprised by the results.

------
fleitz
Working from home reduces visibility, you don't work from home to make more
and get promoted, you work from home to avoid the retardation of a commute,
busy work, excessive meetings, etc.

You work from home so you can put in 2 hours work, accomplish as much as
anyone else did and spend the remaining 6 enjoying your life.

I'm pretty sure that everyone who decides to work from home did so for quality
of life reasons rather than climbing the corporate ladder reasons.

~~~
umjames
Thank you, I'm glad I'm not the only one who sees the benefits.

It's true, some jobs are soul-crushing enough that you'd rather not be there.
You might have family and/or financial responsibilities that make you have to
keep such a job. You may be bootstrapping a business on the side so you can
escape from such a job, but in the meantime, you still need your regular
paycheck.

Not every job has you working with self-motivated co-workers and great bosses.
Some jobs put you in a cube farm in a room where everyone fights over the
thermostat. Sometimes you have to head a weekly meeting where you have to
explain to other programmers why you get NullPointerExceptions on line 5 when
line 4 initializes the variable to null. Some jobs still make you use CVS. The
office talk at some jobs is never about learning anything, but it sure is loud
and distracting.

If you were offered a chance to work from home and avoid a lot of that, I'm
sure you'd also jump at the opportunity. Getting a promotion in such a job
isn't worth it.

~~~
monksy
That can actually turn into a good thing. When you're not facing the other
person, you should become better and better at communicating what exactly is
the issue. At the very worse this leaves a paper trail that can indicate "see
I worked on this"

------
simonsarris
The article does a good job of going over a few (seemingly obvious) biases,
but I also expected an honest discussion of job duties (implicit or explicit)
that get missed when one works from home. I'm disappointed that part of the
topic was skipped.

I know the HN crowd is fairly pro- working from home, and I am too, but I was
wondering if some of the more experienced (than myself) people here could
chime in with examples of implicit/explicit things that are "missed" when team
members work from home.

The only major one I can think of is mentoring, of new hires and interns,
which seems to be done much better in person than over email. I would think
that mentoring these two groups is an implicit duty in most companies, but it
would seemingly always fall on the backs of those who are not working from
home.

I would also think that actually being there in person for new hires and
interns also helps shape company culture for those people, or otherwise make
them feel like more of a team. I suppose that all of this could be mitigated
by not working from home for the first month+ of interns/new hires starting.

~~~
suresk
Personally, I overwhelmingly dislike working from home, although it is nice to
have the option to do so occasionally when I'm sick, waiting for something to
be delivered to my house, the weather is poor, etc..

The main ways I think it is harder for you to contribute remotely are:

1) Whiteboard sessions

I've spent a lot of time sitting around a whiteboard, talking out a (software)
design for something and collaboratively working it out on the board. I've yet
to see software that can come close to this, and even those that sort of do
involve a bit of overhead vs just walking into an empty conference room.

2) Debugging/working through things on someone else's machine

Sometimes you can solve a problem or work through some design much more
quickly by just sitting down at a computer with someone and walking through
the code. This is certainly possible to do remotely, but it always feels a lot
more clunky, and I tend to avoid it.

3) Office talk

Not office gossip, but simply overhearing co-workers talking about something
and either learning something or offering them a better way to do it. This
adds happens fairly frequently in my experience, and it is hard to duplicate
remotely.

Sure, if you have everyone working remotely, you can invest time to figure out
ways to mitigate these losses, but if it is just one or two people working
from home full-time, I think either way you are adding less net value than if
you were there in person, all else being equal.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Agreed so far.

What's wrong with working from home?

When the CEO brings guests to the office so that they can "meet the team",
you're never there. When the guests ask about your project, someone else on
your team will represent you.

When your manager is muttering jokes to the team during the design meeting,
you won't hear those jokes. Some of the jokes may involve the projects that
are already being discussed in other parts of the company but which haven't
yet officially arrived on your team's radar: You will tend to be the last to
find out about those projects.

When one of your direct reports is fighting back tears, you won't see those
tears.

When the VIP, whose schedule is booked so tightly that you can't get a
meeting, is hanging out in the kitchen at the end of the day, you're not there
to talk to her for five minutes.

Every time you present something, you'll be unable to see your audience's
reactions in real-time, you won't see their raised hands, the remote slideshow
software will take five minutes to launch, and the high-latency phone
connection will drop at least once.

Now, I've worked at a company with a lot of remote employees, and a good
company and a good manager who are conscious of these difficulties can
compensate for a lot of this. But you're still playing at a higher difficulty
level than everyone else.

~~~
worldvoyageur
The two parent comments from suresk and mechanical_fish are exactly right
about the real, though unquantifiable benefits of being in close proximity to
peers and bosses.

I work for a large organization with a big head office and dozens of smaller
offices around the world.

I've received more than my fair share of promotions. However, of twenty two
years in the same organization I've worked in eight different cities in three
countries, eighteen years out of and four years in head office. Despite being
consistently ambitious, every single one of my promotions was from my two
stints in head office. And my organization prides itself in believing it has
an uncompromisingly objective and merit based promotion process.

At best, rigorous reward systems will dampen the natural human bias toward the
people you see every day. Humans are wired to be tribal and to coalese into
groups. Plus, as the parent comments illustrate, there are actual benefits to
being in close proximity that can't be replicated remotely. Were it not so,
urban real estate would be no more expensive than rural and there would be no
cities.

This is not necessarily a bug that needs to be fixed. Rather, it is a feature
of the system to understand and use.

If ambition/money is high on your list of priorities, then work in close
physical proximity to your peers and bosses.

If other things in life are higher on your list of priorities, accept that you
are making a trade-off that is right for you. Work remotely and don't be
surprised that the physical rewards fall disproportionately on those who work
in court around the king. You have chosen different rewards.

~~~
bstpierre
> If other things in life are higher on your list of priorities, accept that
> you are making a trade-off that is right for you. [...] You have chosen
> different rewards.

Yes! I used to work with someone who, when someone suggested, "That's a
career-limiting move", would say, "I don't want a career, I want a job." (He
is a brilliant engineer, by the way.) His point was that he had other goals
than promotions. Having that job was simply his way of having enough money to
fund the toys that made his life fun.

Years ago I made a choice to move to a rural area; there are no decent tech
jobs within a 1 hour commute. On occasion I've had to work away from home for
extended periods, but for the most part I've been a full-time telecommuter. I
drive a couple of hours to an office to spend a day every other week, or once
a month, depending on the organization. I'm "missing out" on advancing my
career, but the money is still decent, I get to put my kids to bed every
night, I can water the garden at lunchtime -- and pick a fresh salad, etc.

------
kamaal
Let me explain this to you in simple terms.

If your manager appreciates 'blow your trumpet' culture where 'making noise'
is more important than work, then Working from home might be disastrous to
you. But if your manager understands the wastage of time during
travel/commute. The troubles faced by programmers due to frequent meetings and
interruptions, the need for solitary isolation to think and work on tough
problems. He won't have problems, and will rather appreciate you for taking
more time to be productive and get work done.

People who stay late are thought to be productive, and doing more work.
Unfortunately this is the problem with our Industry. And unless your manager
has done some real work himself he won't understand most of this. And trust me
expecting a technically sound manager is asking for too much.

Your ordinary corporate middle level manager, is totally incapable of
understanding this. Because he despises any form of extreme nerd/tech/geek
culture. He perceives that as a threat to his own kingdom, he is afraid that
your success will overshadow his noise making. He will do everything in his
power to keep people mediocre, to make himself look good to his bosses. In all
of this a ferevrishly hacking geek churning features, coding by the minute,
his way of work, culture and cult is a threat/disease that can destroy the
managers career.

Working from home, will not work with those kind of managers.

~~~
adrianhoward
Where do the managers (and team members for that matter) fit in who have tried
telecommuting experiments, seen productivity drop, moved back to co-located
teams, and seen productivity rise back to previous levels again?

~~~
flyinRyan
Well, it works for some, so either the team of this theoretical person or
manager was a unique snowflake or there were people problems causing this
distinction (e.g. people who abuse it, crappy manager who was using stupid
metrics that prove their biases).

~~~
adrianhoward
Wasn't trying to say that "telecommuting doesn't work". It obviously can - and
there are often good reasons for it (hell - I do it myself most of the time).

I was just pointing out that people choosing not to telecommute isn't
necessarily caused by management idiocy. There is, indeed, a lot of evidence
(see <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4207309>) that the optimum for
productivity is a radically co-located team.

Of course there are other issues. Telecommuting is a great option to have and
solves some problems. Sometimes the best folk cannot co-locate. Sometimes
quality of life issues are more important. Sometimes the on-site work
environment can't be made effective due to issues outside the relevant
people's control.

However, a lot of geek folk seem to automatically assume that telecommuting ==
always more productive, and management that prefer co-location == always
idiots. This isn't backed up by the facts.

------
EzGraphs
Many of the comments are focused on how workers _should_ be evaluated. The
article is discussing how workers _are_ evaluated. In fact, the authors
emphasize:

 _"Managers may not be aware they are making evaluations based on face time."_

You can argue that managers should be aware of a bias in this area and strive
to minimize its effect. However, workers need to simply be realistic about the
effect of working remotely - regardless of whether it seems fair to them.
Personally, I prefer to work remotely - but I have always been wary about not
spending enough time in the office because of the tendencies described in the
article. Physical presence is a powerful thing, and difficult to ignore.
Email, IM, Skype, and phone calls are much easier to ignore.

------
rushabh
We have been experimenting in work-from-home recently, switching from a work-
in-office only setup.

Work from home has a lot of ambiguity unless you are doing support (which you
can do from anywhere). When you are working on long term projects its
important for everyone to know what you are up-to, else people might thing you
are goofing off.

To fix this, we sync up once a month where everyone demos what they have been
doing for the month. So short term activity is evaluated by responses to
customer, commits, chatrooms and long term activity is evaluated on "demo
day".

We just had our first "demo day": <http://erpnext.com/demo-day---june.html>

(disclaimer: we are a really small team of 3 devs + 1 support + 1 admin)

------
seivan
That seems like it only applies to WidgetFactories and not FilmCrews.

Read more here; <http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/45814>

I wouldn't make my career in a WidgetFactory anyway.

~~~
adrianhoward
_That seems like it only applies to WidgetFactories and not FilmCrews._

Why?

------
cup
This is the advice I recieved from an old supervisor who was known around the
world for the quality and depth of her research.

1\. It doesn't matter how hard you work but how hard people think you're
working. If the door is shut and you're working all night you're only hurting
yourself as people will fail to give you the recognition you deserve. Work
hard, but make your hard work known.

2\. You don't have to be intelligent to create great research. You can buy
intelligence (and equipment etc) etc. What you need is imagination,
organisation, motivation and an ability to network.

------
pinaceae
I think it all depends on the overall setup of the company/team. If you are
the odd one out telecommuting, then yes, issues arise.

But, anecdotal evidence to the rescue, here is my personal experience:

I work for a US-headquartered software company. I live in Austria. I lead a
product team. My team members live in France and Germany. We _all_
telecommute. We see each other in front of clients or at organized internal
events. The rest is done through various online solutions.

Everyone is on equal footing. I, as a manager, am a telecommuter myself. I can
relate, understand how to measure performance as I am measured this way
myself.

Do _I_ have a disadvantage against the colleagues in the US HQ? Absolutely,
but they cannot do my job as I cover Europe. Which is fine. My team has no
drawback.

And yes, by now, I am a strong advocate of tele-work for knowledge workers. A
lot of reasons, but often overlooked is the ecological one. I actually use my
home more. I don't have a separate office that sits around empty (still
heated/ac'ed) for non-working hours. I don't waste energy hauling my physical
presence back and forth to work. And yes, my company saves a metric ton of
money on office space savings.

------
freshfunk
This reminds me of an incident I had with a former employer. It was xmas break
and I was at home the final week (xmas to new years). I spent about 75% of my
time working.

When I got back I was accused of taking "10 days off." He counted the Saturday
I left to the Sunday before I got back. By that logic, I often took 2 days off
a week.

Anyway, even after I told him I was working during that time he still said
"this wasn't the end of it." When I told him he was overly sensitive to face
time he seemed to want to just deny reality.

~~~
gcp
Sounds like your boss is just an asshole, really.

------
mb_72
It's not an either / or situation - it can be 'and'. I work from home 2-3 days
a week, and I'm in the office the other days (and that includes days I do for
'credibility', i.e. I go in, say hi to everyone, work all day in my office,
then say bye again when I leave - might as well be at home those days, but I
realise sometimes it's necessary just to turn up for the sake of it). If there
is 'pure' technical work to be done, it's more efficient working from home.
For one, you save time on the commute. My manager gets check-in updates (via
Assembla), and we can talk via the phone or via email. I can provide updated
staging builds for him to download and test too, if necessary. If you have a
reasonable manager, a reasonable employee, good tools, and can balance in /
out of office days, then the situation can be a big 'win' for everybody. More
work gets done, there's enough 'face time', and it's far less stressful.

------
ozataman
I believe this article is missing the point. When you're physically present at
the office, you get plenty of opportunities to have conversations with
different people and voice your opinion, revealing your thought patterns,
values and abilities. These often complement and boost people's observations
of you during actual assigned work.

This effect is not about "passive face time" or merely people seeing that
you're there from a distance. It is about plugging into the whole environment
in the office - which is what you need your leaders to be good at.

Taking it further, a bunch of great happenstance opportunities really come up
by being in the right place at the right time talking to the right people
hitting the right chords. You will never stumble upon these opportunities if
you're constantly away, chucking away at your "assigned" duties.

------
ef4
There's nothing magical about proximity. It's all just a question of
sufficiently high-bandwidth, low-friction communication.

There's no getting around our monkey brains' desire to see other people's
faces and bond with them. But that's just a technical problem: high quality
video that starts instantly, or that is always on, provides the same stimulus.
The fact that most remote workers don't have that kind of setup just shows why
we're not quite there yet.

So the problems with remote work that people discuss endless are not problems
with remote work per se. They're problems with our nascent, not-quite-good-
enough-yet tools for remote work. But the tools are getting better really
fast.

------
rlu
I guess it depends what sort of track you're trying to get promoted in. If
you're trying to get a raise and continue to be an individual contributor
(i.e. not manage anyone) then I don't think WFH should really be an issue.

However, if you do want to become a lead and have reports then I think it
makes perfect sense to promote those that go into the office. I personally
would never want to report to someone who consistently works from home if I'm
going into the office.

There's a difference between kissing ass and having a good relationship with
your boss. A human relationship flourishes with actual proximity.

------
ANH
I work remotely, but make it into the office every couple of weeks. I had
already worked with this team for two years prior to making this arrangement,
so the managers and I know each other well. However, it does seem the new
folks on the team (and one or two of the old ones) treat me with some
suspicion. I'm the sole developer on this project, so the "12 engineers in
front of a whiteboard" thing does not apply.

Anyway, I'm happier for not having to spend three hours commuting each day,
and if Lines of Code is any judge (I know, I know), I'm an order of magnitude
more productive.

------
fierarul
I guess it depends on the company.

If you telework only part of the week, I think you have a clear advantage
since the telework days are when you actually get stuff done!

If you telework full-time but you still have colleagues that show-up then
there may be some bias as the article shows and people need to be aware of it.

Another solution to this problem is to have the entire company work remotely.
Not sure how well this scales, but for a small company such as ours it seems
to be the best solution.

------
GoodIntentions
Working from home limits your opportunities to kiss ass

------
jimmytucson
So this applies if your manager/team is in another city/timezone? Ironically,
I got my first promotion and biggest bonus as the only NY member of a London-
based team. However, I certainly wondered whether being the lone wolf in my
region was good for my career in the long run.

------
codeonfire
I can't speak of other jobs, but developers shouldn't care about raises and
promotions, because if they are in an organization where those matter, there
are going to be non-technical ladder climbers who will promote each other and
take all the money allocated for raises. The only real choices for developers
are a) start a business b) job hop c) work at valve. 360-degree evaluations
are a farce because these evaluations just go directly to one or more non-
technical manager to 'help' with their decisions on advancement and raises.
It's lip service. If you don't have a budget and hiring authority, all you
really have is the ability to quit, and the wealthiest developers hop often.
In instances where developers become too powerful and high up on the tech
ladder they are going to be given fancy titles and isolated anyways, so why
not work from home?

~~~
jcdavis
This has to be one of the more ridiculous things I've read on HN recently. I
(or any other developer) shouldn't be care about getting raises? Why exactly?
There are lots of plenty of good places to work not called Valve that don't
suffer over-politicalization

~~~
codeonfire
I think I made it very clear why you shouldn't care. If developers don't have
any power in deciding who gets raises, developers are not likely to get
raises. Are you going to work 80 hour a week in the office hoping for a
promotion like an idiot year after year so you can get 3% instead of 1%? No,
you're going to go across town and get 15%. If you disagree that's fine, but
by and large this is my experience.

~~~
zeroonetwothree
Some companies give real raises (15% or more) to their developers.

------
ricardobeat
All this assuming the majority of other employees or managers don't work
remotely too.

~~~
bung
I was going to go on this tangent as well, but the article and the comments
are focusing on teams that do mostly work in offices.

------
lcargill99
Signal is signal and noise is noise. A bias towards passive face time is
embracing noise and will reduce the ability to execute.

------
nerdfiles
Forget this. I'm not reading this hogwash.

Look, make working outside a practical consideration. I need the sun, not
shoddy impressionist artwork, not another goddamn water cooler. I want to pull
my drink from a nearby stream and then commit my bug.

Get out of my face with your goddamn ugly buildings and their ugly interiors.
My code is ugly enough without having to deal with in-building noise and 'in-
office' politics.

------
nerdfiles
I just do not understand. We're at the point now where all of our commit
messages are on display. How could anyone seriously argue:

"Our findings suggest that remote workers might be further handicapped by
perceptions that they are not as responsible or committed as other employees.
To avoid such unfair perceptions, managers who implement telecommuting and
flexible hours should revise their performance appraisals to measure mostly
objective outputs, such as number and type of projects completed or expert
evaluations of project quality."

Rather, we're _already_ doing this. Check the commit logs. Obviously one can
make trait-inferences based on commit logs. If one can infer a "life story
model" from a Facebook profile, one can infer a "worker commitment model" from
a github profile.

And "... remote workers might be ..."? Seriously? This is the kind of argument
coming from MIT? Look, I'm not going to argue the difference between a theory-
might-be-true and a theory-is-probably-true. Nor will I argue that they're
_just_ working with theories, the just-theory argument. I don't want to bore
you to death, but you obviously don't need _evidence_ to corroborate a claim
that _might_ be true. I mean, c'mon... A lot of "findings" might be true. That
said, who's to say their explanation establishes any causal connection at all.
All sorts of things lead to the perception of lack of commitment, but most
notably, that someone fails to perform unit tests, or doesn't document, etc.
-- but "hallway conversations"? This presupposes that the content of the
conversation is even contextualized by the work itself that is to be done. I
mean, with such a "finding" there are an infinite number of provisional
assumptions which can be thrown in, when there's already a perfect focal point
for determining commitment, etc. -- again, the commit(ment) logs.

Is this just bad writing, or am I missing something?

------
gcb
Gotta love how the comments here have datapoints than the whole study the
article mentions

