
Why I Only Work Remotely - ylhert
https://medium.com/@yanismydj/why-i-only-work-remotely-2e5eb07ae28f#.4kfetslon
======
d357r0y3r
I rarely work remote even when I have the opportunity to do it; I'll explain.

The author seems to have a single-mindedness about optimizing their own
performance. If performance in terms of your value to the business was about
sitting down at a computer and coding, getting in a "flow" state, etc, I would
agree. Problem is, personal efficiency doesn't necessarily align with value
generated. I've seen engineers spend months regularly obtaining "flow" with
few interruptions or meetings, only to have the projects scrapped because they
weren't what the business needed. The fact that the code was immaculate didn't
end up mattering at all.

Informal, personal communication can make a big difference. Yes, getting up
and talking to someone _is_ more efficient than starting an email thread or
slack conversation in many cases. Many of those conversations are engineer to
engineer and involve important technical decisions.

And, an aside: remote meetings are simply worse than in-person meetings.
Having worked on several teams where some members were in completely different
locations (and time zones), I never want to experience that again. Give me
every person relevant to my work in the same physical space; I don't want to
get blocked from doing my work because you've gone dark on slack.

I promise, I get it. If I had my way, I'd work on whatever I wanted to work
on, with no meetings or interruptions. I'd just be a lone wolf cranking out
awesome features and feeling great about it. That's just not what any business
needs, and it's certainly not what they pay me for.

~~~
babyrainbow
I don't get you. What does a developer has to do with deciding what the
business needs? If your job is that, ie, figuring out what a business needs,
then by all means work closely with people..But I am not sure that is the type
of work being discussed in this context.

~~~
SamBam
If your job is doing exactly what you're told to do, and nothing else, then
you'll find that you are very replaceable.

~~~
pc86
And yet the same people who say that developers are not interchangeable cogs
in a larger machine will fight tooth and nail requirements that they attend
meetings, interact with business analysts or users, or generally do anything
other than programming.

------
iguanayou
Agreed. I've been working remotely for 2 years now and don't think I could go
back to an office. The open office floor plans are just horrendous for
actually getting any work done.

The article doesn't talk about the high cost of commuting but this is the
biggest factor for me. Having that extra two hours per day, and not being
exhausted when I get home, has really expanded the amount of living (social,
fitness, hobbies) I've been able to do and has expanded my life more than
anything else. Not to mention the cost savings.

It's a lot more difficult to find remote jobs than traditional office jobs,
especially ones that pay well. But the extra effort in the job search more
than pays off.

~~~
el_benhameen
How do you generally look for and find jobs?

~~~
iguanayou
My first remote job started as an on-site office job, and I was able to
convince my boss over time to eventually go 100% remote.

My current contract is with a local company that happens to support remote
work. I found this job through a recruiter. But like I said, it was a rare
find. The recruiters I work with know that I'm looking for remote-only, but
those positions are few and far between.

My contract is ending soon so I'll be looking at the online job boards in
addition to working with recruiters; it remains to be seen how much success
I'll have with that.

~~~
pjmlp
> The recruiters I work with know that I'm looking for remote-only, but those
> positions are few and far between.

The biggest problem is that many companies that refuse remote work, don't have
any issues outsourcing big piles of it to the other side of the planet.

~~~
wott
Or having several offices across the country and departments/teams split
between theses offices, resulting in having just 1 or 2 department/team
members in a few of the offices.

The only difference with home office and the only thing that matters to them
is that there is a warder (they call him a manager).

------
vonnik
I've worked remotely for years, I've worked in an open-office where presence
was mandatory, and now I run a startup with a distributed team of engineers on
several continents.

While working in a shared office has pros and cons, the benefits are huge. One
of the main benefits is in how information is shared. Sharing an office, you
overhear conversations, and the chances of random but important information
about how things work and how people relate to each other is much higher. In
addition, the bandwidth of the non-verbal and paraverbal information is much
richer. People working remotely forego most of that information, and their
understanding of the org and its culture is diminished.

So why do we have a distributed team? Because we hire the top contributors to
our open-source project without imposing a geographic filter, and it's the
best, most efficient way we've found to build a really strong engineering
team. We're aware of the shortcomings of how information flows, and struggle
constantly to improve how we communicate.

~~~
throwaway5752
Left my work computer to go to my personal computer only to reply and upvote
your comment. I have worked for and managed teams in both shared office and
remote companies. I could hardly say what you said any better myself.

I think the nature of what companies are best fits for remote work, and how
best to mitigate the loss of passive information sharing/lower bandwidth of
subtle communication cues would be a great subject for a book or article.

My short version would be: it primarily solves a recruiting problem in
extremely difficult to recruit for fields, takes advantage of a bit of
arbitrage in some people's utility of remote work (introvert, commute, family,
etc), and information needs to be overshared (more meetings than one might
prefer, more documentation, more explicit processes, etc).

------
willholloway
I feel that gigantic metropolises are not optimal environments for software
engineering.

NYC, and it's helter skelter of noise and traffic and garbage and tiny living
spaces, in my humble experience and opinion is not conducive to hard
engineering problems.

I am probably completely wrong here and just a hopeless introvert with an axe
to grind, but from my experience, working in home offices in towns like
Boulder, Colorado, with a central, easily bikable office/startup HQ, would
present the optimal small company setting.

A quality employee cares, they care about the problems of your company when
they shower, when they sleep, when they are knowing their spouse in a biblical
sense. The problems of the company they have pledged their allegiance to, like
a knight in Game of Thrones pledges allegiance and service to their lord, are
always on their mind.

So if you are paying for knowledge work, you would do well to dispel any
notions of body/mind duality. Physical health equates to mental health, and a
town like Boulder, CO is about the perfect size for optimal maintenance of a
human body/mind. And there are hundreds of other communities in America with
similar attributes to Boulder, CO.

And if you can take advantage of the space that your workers are already
paying for in their rent or mortgages. Spaces that may have gyms and/or pools
which are physically and mentally rejuvenating, well you will come out ahead.

I think the future of work will be semi-distributed, and this mad
consolidation into a few coastal cities will be seen in the future as a gross
inefficiency.

~~~
Nav_Panel
> I think the future of work will be semi-distributed, and this mad
> consolidation into a few coastal cities will be seen in the future as a
> gross inefficiency.

I disagree with this prediction.

1) If given the choice, most people would prefer to walk to their day-to-day
destinations rather than drive.

2) In order to create an area in which most destinations are within walking
distance of the residents, a certain level of density is needed. This level of
density manifests itself in "the traditional city", ranging from the
relatively low traditional density San Francisco Mission district (25k ppl/sq
mi) to the medium density neighborhoods in Brooklyn (for example, my
neighborhood, Bedford-Stuyvesant, has a density of 57k ppl/sq mi. Williamsburg
is similar) to ultra high density Manhattan areas, such as the Upper East
side, which supports a population density of 120k ppl/sq mi (!!!). Older
European cities are often within these density bounds.

Less density than the Mission and other forms of transportation become
necessary for day-to-day tasks, and the city's face starts to resemble more
driving-oriented (midwestern) cities.

3) In order to go beyond one's immediate neighborhood, quality public transit
is important, as owning a car is an extreme unnecessary expense if the
neighborhood is truly walkable.

4) Very few walkable metropolitan areas exist in the USA today, as transit is
insufficient and neighborhoods are sparsely populated relative to a
traditional city. Most that do are historic urban cores: for example, I'm
writing this reply from Downtown LA, which appears visually similar to parts
of Manhattan, is relatively walkable, and has decent transit options, but not
nearly on the level of NYC.

5) Since so few desirable, walkable metropolitan areas exist with sufficient
public transit, the ones that do featuring housing that is either extremely
expensive (supply/demand) or, as mentioned, poorly maintained/insufficient.
This forces the vast majority of people to live much further than walking
distance from their workplaces -- often up to an hour or more away -- if they
want to live in a pleasant apartment in a pleasant neighborhood within their
means.

6) The result is that (due to shipping, coastal) cities predating cars are the
only ones that can offer this living experience, and you will pay considerably
for the privilege of walking to the bodega at 3 AM while extremely
intoxicated, saying hello to the friendly person behind the counter, and
buying a gatorade before you pass out in your 8'x10' bedroom.

\-----------------

NYC had a chance to remain at least somewhat affordable (by building transit
options when acquiring right-of-way in undeveloped Long Island and Queens from
the 30s thru the 60s), and Robert Moses completely blew it (because of his
personal hatred of minorities and poor people). If you want to find out more
about that particular topic, I suggest you read Robert Caro's book "The Power
Broker".

One idea espoused in the book is that when you build mass transit before you
build the community, you end up with a medium-to-high density community. When
you build highways before you build the community, you end up with a low
density community. These community patterns are nearly impossible to change --
this is why people complain Los Angeles builds "trains to nowhere" \-- the
existing communities are low density, but medium density is a prerequisite for
a train line to be useful to sufficient numbers of people.

The only way to fix this in the future is to build cities with this idea in
mind (or, alternatively, pray that self-driving cars fix everything).
Redevelop existing areas to support new transit (an older Uber driver pointed
out to me multiple new, high density developments in downtown LA, and
suggested they were helping improve the area's safety and commercial
diversity). Urban areas don't have to feel like NYC, but we chose a path back
in the 1950s whose ultimate result was to dissolve the communities and
lifestyles necessary for individual human happiness.

Looking forward, I'm seeing this "mad consolidation into a few coastal cities"
become a "consolidation into a larger number of smaller cities" considerably
more dense than Boulder, CO, and we will see this redevelopment of urban cores
as a sign of what's to come.

~~~
ghaff
Fashions and preferences come and go. And, for many people, they change based
on their stage in life and changing priorities.

There are tradeoffs associated with life in, especially dense, cities. Yes,
walking to restaurants/stores/etc. can be nice. So can stepping out onto a
deck or patio without a lot of noise and nearby neighbors--or the ability to
hop in a car and be in forests or mountains in 30 minutes.

Also, while I think that fully autonomous vehicles are further out than many
people here seem to think, I have to believe that once they do eventually
exist, they'll make dispersed living relatively more attractive. If you have a
"personal driver" at your beck and call, I have to believe that makes being
able to walk to a nearby restaurant or taking the subway to see a play less
compelling as tradeoffs against more crowded/noisier/etc. housing.

~~~
Nav_Panel
> _Fashions and preferences come and go. And, for many people, they change
> based on their stage in life and changing priorities._

I think the highway-focused building plans of the USA from the 1950s thru Now
is the fad, rather than the dense city. Extremely dense cities were
"fashionable" for the couple _thousand_ years before that. You could argue
this was because we didn't have sufficient transit technology, and you might
be right, but it doesn't feel like a truly compelling argument _against_ the
dense city.

> _So can stepping out onto a deck or patio without a lot of noise and nearby
> neighbors--or the ability to hop in a car and be in forests or mountains in
> 30 minutes._

(1) These things can certainly exist in a city if you choose a neighborhood
wisely and (2) pretty much every dense city also has at least one suburb
available for people who desire these things.

> _If you have a "personal driver" at your beck and call, I have to believe
> that makes being able to walk to a nearby restaurant or taking the subway to
> see a play less compelling as tradeoffs against more crowded/noisier/etc.
> housing._

Compared to taking the subway, I agree.

Compared to walking, I agree that many would rather take a convenient,
inexpensive driverless car, but a sizable amount would also rather walk,
assuming the time taken to get from A to B is relatively similar regardless of
mode of transportation.

Walking has a lot of benefits, but driverless cars really do throw a big "what
if?" into the whole urban planning situation. I personally believe that many
will want to remain in dense housing for the social/community benefits, but at
the same time, we'll have to wait and see...

------
late2part
Richard Hamming said [1] it best:

 _Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts
about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if
you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and
tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow
you don 't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard
work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door
open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as
to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause
and effect sequence because you might say, ``The closed door is symbolic of a
closed mind.'' I don't know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation
between those who work with the doors open and those who ultimately do
important things, although people who work with doors closed often work
harder. Somehow they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but
enough that they miss fame. _

[1] -
[http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html](http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html)

~~~
RUG3Y
This is anecdotal. It seems to me that there's a time for the door to be open
and a time for the door to be closed. Having the option to either at the
appropriate time makes a huge difference.

------
hkarthik
Remote work optimizes for the individual employee, and often the short term
gain of finding early talent before you have an established brand and network
effects where talent starts gravitating towards you.

However, at the later stages of a company when you want 100+ engineers or
more, it can be a major damper to organizational growth. Front line management
becomes a necessity to keep teams healthy and get a consistent culture across
the company. Career paths also require curation that is hard to do with people
spread across offices and timezones.

So essentially what we end up with is remote work being optimized for small
startups and slow growth companies. Large companies that will always waver
back and forth on it, without actually figuring out how to make it work at
scale. From a career stability standpoint, it's kind of a beating. Every job
will seem awesome for a short period and then devolve into a shit show.

Those of you who are betting the farm on remote work should keep all this in
mind. The smartest remote folks I know have realized this and just do
consulting/contracting and making lifestyle choices to support this way of
life.

I say this as someone who worked remote for 3 years from Texas and moved out
to SF to work in a big office for a major tech company. There's huge benefits
to remote work, but it's not a panacea.

------
mwcampbell
Other reasons to allow or even encourage remote work:

In the US, there's a growing polarization between the coasts and middle
America ("flyover country"). I, for one, don't want all the good programming
jobs to be on the west coast.

Remote work, where the workers bring their own equipment and office setup, is
probably better for people with disabilities. For example, an employer doesn't
have to care or possibly even know that a worker is using a screen reader or
other assistive technology. Assuming, of course, that all the applications one
has to use on the job are accessible.

In fact, let's take it a step further, and propose remote work with strictly
text-based communication. Yes, yes, we lose the nuances that are communicated
through tone of voice, facial expressions, etc. But think of all the kinds of
discrimination, whether overt or accidental, that disappear. Disabilities
(including hearing and speech impairments), accents, race, and age are now
completely irrelevant. Sounds like a big win to me.

~~~
dennisgorelik
> we lose the nuances that are communicated ... But think of all the kinds of
> discrimination

That reminds me communist utopia: lets make all people equal ... by making
everyone poor.

~~~
mwcampbell
That's a good point. And on further reflection, I'm not sure I'd actually want
to go with what I suggested at the end. After all, I work remotely, but I've
talked to my boss by phone several times just today, because it's so
convenient.

------
swozey
At home I can control the noise & temperature of my work environment. These
aren't brought up often but they're huge to my productivity. I can't work well
when I'm uncomfortable. Trying to code with numb fingers or while sweating is
miserable to my productivity.

~~~
Raphmedia
My home office has a $3000 computer, $600 chair, high end keyboard and mouse,
a huge 4k screen. My office temperature is at the optimal for my body and my
setup is positioned according to the sun coming in the window.

At work it usually* is a $600 computer, a $60 chair, low end dirty keyboard
and mouse, small low quality screen. The office is cold, I have glare in my
screens... and I share a room with 60 persons.

It's hilarious how my personal setup outclass my professional one.

* I am lucky enough to have found an employer which value his employees and that's not the case right now for me.

~~~
criddell
Have you ever thought about buying your own keyboard, mouse, monitor, and
chair?

~~~
Raphmedia
I'm not going to invest money into my employer's company unless I get a return
on that investment.

Edit: That's a slippery slope. What next? Buying a new microwave, new window
blinds, a modern thermostat, softer toilet paper ...

~~~
swozey
If it's something that isn't standard or I know is so peculiar to me
(mechanical keyboard, expensive mouse, headphones) that the company can't
redistribute it when I leave, I just buy it myself and bring it in.

That slippery slope is also slippery on the other end, ok, company A bought
you "xyz gamer laptop" when everyone uses MBPs or what not. 99% chance it's
going to go sit in the closet for a few years after you leave until donated or
sold whereas if you used the standard equipment it can be cleaned and
released.

I'd rather skip the hassle and bring my own things in if it's not a change to
the standards.

~~~
Raphmedia
There's a difference between setting up your entire programmer team with Razer
products and upgrading your programmer's team computers from old 2001 computer
to average 2016 computers.

When it comes to the chair it's inexcusable for the company to provide
equipment that will hurt the health of their employees.

~~~
swozey
You're arguing over a shitty employer vs. a good employer but my point was
about wanting customized hardware/peripherals that nobody else in the company
will ever use. That's not really the point that I was making.

Yes, there are shitty employers that don't care about you being comfortable or
provided with the proper hardware for your job, we've all been there. I
couldn't tell you the last time I started a new job and wasn't given a current
generation laptop and nice monitors (not Apple quality but totally fine).

That's just poor management. I'm costing you the same money to get less work
done if my laptop is slow. It doesn't benefit the business at all.

------
pzh
I completely agree with the author's points, except for one small caveat--the
overall quality of projects that one can find in remote work (at least based
on my personal experience and search) is usually abysmal. At first glance, a
good indicator would be the salaries that remote companies pay, and most
remote companies tend to pay peanuts, using 'remote' as an excuse to underpay,
and thus also signaling that they don't care to pay a premium for software
engineers because their projects don't really need top talent or a lot of
experience. From all this, it also follows that career development is quite
stagnant at remote companies. I wish things were different, but until the Big
Five start allowing and encouraging remote-only distributed work, things won't
change a lot...

~~~
sparrish
Remote work can be about enjoying your work (and work environment) as well as
the lifestyle it provides (flexible work hours, no commute, live in the
mountains/at the beach/etc). That is worth something and most remote workers
who value those things gladly give up some pay and project 'quality' to have
them.

I wouldn't trade my daily lunch with my wife and kids for twice the salary.

~~~
pzh
The problem is that we are talking about something like one fifth of the
salary with no vacation and no benefits for remote. Also, projects boring as
heck.

------
seanwilson
The time to travel to the office is often ignored too (it sounds lazy to even
mention it because it's the norm). If you're working remotely and it takes 30
mins to get to the office, you're at an absolute minimum burning 5 hours a
week going back and fourth from the office when you could be doing something
else. Add in the extra time changing to and from work clothes, and having to
leave the office to get food instead of eating at home and the time adds up.

If you're freelance and bill by the hour as well then those hours easily add
up to an extra day a week you could be working.

~~~
criddell
I actually enjoy my commuting time. I listen to podcasts or think about what I
need to do when I get to work (or home). If I'm on my bicycle, I find that my
mine really wanders and I enjoy that.

Once I'm at work, I get down to it and am good for about 4 hours or so (on
good days) of really good work. Spend an hour or two on email, light reading,
talking to coworkers, and that's my day.

~~~
hash-set
You're the only one. Commuting SUCKS!

~~~
morganic
Just haven't found good enough podcasts

~~~
bbcbasic
Is there a podcast that will stop me wanting to vomit as the bus driver breaks
hard every 10 seconds, or help me battle my way through the queue to get onto
said bus?

------
elliotec
I work at a company which has a beautiful building, I spend the majority of
time in the office which is fantastic, the social aspect plus internal
networking is very good.

I work from home on average maybe 0.8 days a week, for various reasons, but I
get lots of work done and am quite productive from home.

There are some things that you just can't do the same from home. You can be
much more agile when working in proximity. Face to face conversations are
important and effective. There is a lot of missing out if you work 100%
remotely in companies that aren't 100% remote.

~~~
Klathmon
My workplace is 80% remote, but not in the way you might think.

Just about everyone works from home 4 days a week, and comes into the office
one day.

It expands the hiring pool by a pretty significant amount, one of our devs is
2 hours away (4 hours round trip, and he still commutes less than his wife
does every week), it lets us get a lot of the "face to face" benefits done in
one day, and the rest of the time is remote.

We do also have a couple fully remote, and a couple "always in office".

It works out nice though as we tend to remember to include the "always remote"
people on our in office day because most of us know how much it sucks getting
left out.

~~~
jgrant27
This actually sounds workable. One other thing that is clear is that a 5-day
onsite 40 hour work-week is not productive. IMO a 4-day week split between
office and home would be way more productive.

~~~
hash-set
I don't know where you live, but the stress of commuting alone has led me to
want to get out of the business. Companies have got to smarten up! There's no
earthly reason why dedicated knowledge workers need to be on some cube farm or
stupid newsroom office every day. It sucks.

------
framebit
Lone wolves can and do produce a lot of valuable output for businesses.
However, on bigger teams, somebody's gotta take care of the juniors.

Junior devs, interns, even moderately experienced devs can all benefit
immensely from mentoring by senior devs. Mentoring is a fuzzy thing that
happens in the margins, and that's exactly the kind of thing that's hard to
replicate in full-remote work.

Of course, everything in moderation. Senior devs need some time alone to churn
and burn through tasks, but less experienced devs need guidance, leadership,
and experienced perspective. And sometimes you need a mercenary like the
author to just run solo and get it done. Different strokes for different
folks.

~~~
ilaksh
How can anyone seriously believe, at this point, that effective mentoring or
other collaborative work cannot take place over the internet with things like
git, Github, Skype, Google Hangouts, Facetime, WebRTC, Slack, Screenhero,
telephones, etc., etc.?

~~~
intern4tional
No one is saying that effective mentoring cannot take place over the internet;
the statement is simply being made that it is much easier to do in person.

Less tooling may be required, less time invested, etc. to have effective
mentoring happen when you are in person.

------
imsofuture
Yep, I've been 100% remote for 5 years now (wow, it feels weird to see that
number!) and am never going back, for the same reasons.

The only caveat is that it's important that you work in an organization that
is aligned with remote work, if not remote-first. Just scoring 'permission' to
work remotely somewhere not used to it, is probably a recipe for a pretty bad
time.

~~~
lacampbell
_Just scoring 'permission' to work remotely somewhere not used to it, is
probably a recipe for a pretty bad time._

Why is that?

~~~
ghaff
Because the processes and mindset won't be setup for it. Decisions will get
made in hallway conversations or even in meetings in which no one thought to
send out a phone number for the remote employee to attend.

Hence the idea that remote working is probably most effective when companies
treat it as the norm--at least on a group by group basis.

~~~
lacampbell
Right.

I've actually never worked at a place with a large number of devs under the
same roof.

------
RMarcus
>It’s the same reason that communism does not work nearly as well as
capitalism — things work best when you give people freedom as individual
actors.

You said "capitalism" but you meant "liberalism," and you said "communism"
when you meant "authoritarian dictatorship."

But setting aside this equally unnecessary and inaccurate argument, the whole
tone of this article seems to glorify the archetype of the "110%" employee.
I'm "passionate" about programming and computer science, but I also don't just
want to pull up a JIRA and bang away code.

Even if we accept the author's premise that open offices and social work
environments are bad for productivity (which many people here have already
pushed back against), I didn't try to find a job with lots of smart people so
I could only interact with them via email. Sure, an open office occasionally
distracts me and gets me out of the "flow," but it's almost always to help
someone or join an interesting conversation. These things are valuable to me
on their own, because (1) I like interesting conversations and (2) it means I
can ask someone for help whenever I need it. And that's a better long-term
feeling than slamming out code every day, which, by month two or three, starts
to feel a little uninspiring.

------
alistproducer2
Different Strokes for different folks. My personal feeling is that a company
should allow employees to do what they want. If the company has an office
setting and an employee wants to do the office thing then let them. But if you
have an employee who is telling you that they work better from home take them
at their word and let the results the judge of whether or not they're telling
the truth.

------
pbhowmic
I have been working remotely for nearly 3 years now. It is a necessity for me,
my kids are very young and some some medical issues, so there is a lot of
therapy and special schools involved with 1 pm dismissal times. I love the
flexibility but my wife has trouble distinguishing between work-from-home and
stay-at-home-dad and that is constant struggle.

~~~
ylhert
I've heard people with families kids can struggle with this. The people I know
who've been successful at it seem to always have some kind of office work
space where they can close the door and get a bit of isolation, or, they
invest in an offsite office of some kind.

~~~
sparrish
This is the key - separate office. I've been working from home for 7+ years.
My wife and I homeschool our 7 kids. They all know when dad is in the office,
he's working and the only interruption I allow is a request for a hug. When I
take breaks, we have fun, get rowdy, and help with school work and chores. But
when dad's in the office, he's working (even if I'm just burning cycles on
HN!)

------
sgt
Some employers would argue that your privacy is forfeited during working
hours. After all they pay you a salary, and if they want you in the office so
be it - even if it is a less effective environment. Needless to say, I
sympathize with the OP view here.

~~~
tswartz
Good point. It's often stipulated in the contract or made clear during the
interview process what the expectations are, which is good. The unfortunate
part is that employers may not realize that their policies are actually
decreasing productivity.

~~~
vinceguidry
Maximizing individual employee productivity may not be even in the top ten
list of company priorities. For one, making sure that what the company wants
to be built is actually built is _massively_ more important. This seems to be
hard for many companies.

My roommate's startup has gutted their remote team, only one guy is still
there and his days are numbered. From what my roommate told me, managing
remote employees can be more trouble than it's worth.

I remain unconvinced that the clamor for remote work environments is really in
company's best interests. When push comes to shove, doing remote right
requires an investment on the parts of both the team and the company, and if
one side doesn't or cannot pull their weight, then it becomes unmanageable,
bringing the company down with it.

Employees can bitch about the employers, but they're the ones paying the
salaries.

~~~
jgrant27
It's a fact that having everyone in an office 5 days a week sadly and far too
often does _not_ result in a company getting what it wants built. The problem
with that lies elsewhere, usually with management and hiring.

------
tswartz
I agree that forcing the same strict work hours (9am - 7pm) is not always
effective. The author explains exactly why that doesn't work for them and why
they are much less effective.

However, I've found that when people all have different hours (especially over
different timezones) it's difficult for the one-off meetings when something
needs to be hashed out in person or skype. I suppose this problem may actually
be a side effect of our office having strict working hours so we don't know
how to operate on the days when most of the office is remote and working on
different hours. Companies like 37Signals have clearly figured out how to
build a collaborative and productive company across multiple timezones.

------
chriogenix
I've been 100% remote for the last 8 years. I recently have been commuting for
personal reasons and its only 30 min each way and I can already feel the drain
it causes. Over a working career a normal commute(30min-1hour) each way can
add up to a massive amount of lost time. Working remote is optimal for the
kind of work I'm doing now. Previously I was running a larger business and we
started to run into issues around 50 people on a remote team. There's
advantages to both. I think the ideal environment is 4 days remote, 1 day in
an office for in person meetings. To combat being out of contact with people
in the business/industry, I attend as many conferences and meetups as I can.

------
stevesearer
For as much as people like to hate on open offices on HN, it still baffles me
why there aren't more Y Combinator startups founded with remote work or
private offices as core company principles.

Just a guess, but I wonder if the decision to just go with open offices has to
do with the ability to scale such a plan quickly and easily, whereas scaling a
remote team is too difficult or building or rearranging private offices takes
too long and costs too much.

A possibly poor analogy might be the difference between going with some cloud
provider which scales more quickly vs building out your own server which is
more costly and possibly more difficult to maintain.

~~~
eob
We (Cloudstitch, YC S15) are building remote work into our company DNA right
from the start. It's been an educational journey, and we're stronger team
because of it.

One thing we've learned is that "diversity" is so much more than just
race/gender/ethnicity. Geographic location, even within the US, can be a
profound contributor to the diversity of ideas, experiences, and
opportunities. Makes you realize a non-remote team is living in a [geographic]
bubble by definition.

If you're interested in building a better web stack / CMS that integrates with
your office suite, give us a holler at hello@cloudstitch.com :-)

PS: Re open office plans in early-stage startups, I suspect cost savings are a
driving factor.

------
amichal
None of the authors headings are necessary in an in-person office environment.
We have both "open" areas and offices with doors. We don't enforce a specific
work hours and we most definitely could care less about butts-in-seats,
results are what matter. That said I just spent an hour in an office with a
co-worker comparing notes on our two separate projects with similar needs and
scored a sample of some nice fudge his partner made. Yesterday i spent the
morning at the cafe and last week I sat at my desk and got 9hr straight coding
without talking to anyone.

------
lacampbell
_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._

The author blames this on a 9-6 schedule. But honestly I think it's way more
likely a problem with drinking too much damn coffee. Everything he wrote in
that part hit home, i was experiencing it very badly... until I started
limiting myself to one big caffeinated drink before lunch a day. It's improved
my quality of life a lot, I am tired way less.

------
501startups
I feel this works best for companies under 20 people (Lawn Love, MailJoy, et
al.) and greater than 1000 (i.e. Google, Facebook, et al.).

------
ebbv
The main problem I see with this article is the author is totally focused on
himself. If you are a solo developer this is fine, but if you are part of a
team then his attitude is detrimental.

I work as part of a team and we all work remotely most of the time, but we
work the same hours because working different hours would cause problems. It's
hard to conduct a daily stand up if everyone's working weird hours. We have
some flexibility for people but everybody has to be around for the 9:30 stand
up. This helps with coordinating of larger projects and bringing up blockers
which the PO or Scrum Master can remove.

If some lone developer is working 3pm to 11pm then that person is not really
coordinating with the rest of the team.

Also I'd really hate to hear what this guy thinks of pair programming.

~~~
ylhert
I love the teams I work with, but that doesn't mean I want them to interrupt
me all day long while I'm trying to do meaningful work.

I think it's important to be flexible with work hours, but that goes both
ways. My concern is with places where strict requirements are set up for
hours, and places that are not willing to be more open minded about crossover
work hours. As far as I am concerned, 4 hours of overlap per day amongst the
team is sufficient. If more overlap than that seems necessary, it is probably
a process problem.

I love pair programming! However I cannot pair program in an open office plan
with tons of noise/distractions.

~~~
ebbv
Four hours of overlap CAN work but it depends on the overlap.

For example, if the rest of the team is working more "normal hours", starting
before 10am and you don't start until 3pm, that means they can't have the
whole team can't have a stand up meeting until 3pm when you get on. End of the
day stand up meetings CAN work, but the natural flow is to start the day with
it so you can talk about what you WILL be working on today and what you DID
work on yesterday, rather than what you think you'll be working on tomorrow.

Also, it's hard to ensure the whole team has overlap if the times are too
flexible. I have a teammate who starts at 7am, if we had another teammate who
wanted to start at 4pm, they would never overlap.

------
Aldur42
The article mentions that strict rules hurt good actors and help bad actors,
and you should fix this by filling your organization with good actors. For
very small startups this might be possible. However if you need to hire a
large number of developers this becomes increasingly difficult. It is far
easier to hire "bad actors". If a company finds itself in a situation where
adding a bad actor will increase company revenue beyond the actors cost, it
financially imperative to hire bad actors. Eventually the good to bad ratio
slips in the direction of bad, and strict rules end up helping more than they
hurt. Good people leave to new places, and the vicious cycle continues.

------
doughj3
The first question I now ask recruiters when they reach out is whether or not
the position is on-site or remote. Google, Microsoft, Amazon... no remote
work, at least not for any of the positions they frequently contact me about.

------
ceejay
IMO humans are just bad at communicating in a precise / efficient way. Most
people I meet / work with who are not in a technical field are usually very
bad at explaining their business needs in face-to-face let alone by email or
over the phone, etc... And ironically isn't it usually the case that these are
the people who are (a) the stakeholders, or (b) the ones writing the
paychecks.

Until technical folks start taking over the world (maybe we're in the infancy
stages of that?) I think most people who want to work remotely will need to
expect to be in the office regularly if not every work day.

------
desireco42
This is super important. I can sign under this text like I wrote it.

I can say that I like to see people in person and interact with them, but all
the problems, not only with startups, but with office environment in general
were spot on.

------
kin
Everyone has something that works really well for them. It's nice to have an
employer that respects that.

Personally, I find a lot of value in putting a face on everyone in my team. To
me, it's a lot easier to work through a problem in person vs. over Slack or
Skype.

But that's not to say I disagree with the OP. I totally value the efficiency
of working in isolation if and when I'm at a point where I just need to be
heads down to finish a task. At my office, we have the luxury of isolated
couch rooms where it feels like working from home w/ the office and your
coworkers steps away.

~~~
hash-set
I have had the same issues, but you have to know when to pick up a phone.

------
yahyaheee
This article summarizes everything I think about workplaces. Thanks for the
write up, we need to stay vocal for people to get an understanding

------
gumby
I pretty much strongly agree but I will offer one defence of "work rules" that
isn't completely pointy-haired.

The reality is that not everyone has the same level of productivity or
commitment. With a few rules it's often possible to get more than their
salary's cost out of them. Sure, we'd all like to work in an environment of
nothing but awesome co-workers, but that doesn't scale. Hell, you presumably
support "rules" like "we've decided that the implementation language is L" so
everybody's code works together.

What _is_ brain damaged is that some companies are too stupid or fearful to
understand when the rules do and don't apply.

------
gdulli
I've had good results with finding companies that don't force bad working
conditions, and asking for an alternative to open seating when necessary. I've
always been accommodated. If people aren't at least asking for flexibility,
they should be.

I haven't had to sacrifice the ability to have face to face communications and
relationships with my co-workers. I'm not saying these are my best friends,
just that there's subtly more that comes across in person vs. remote.

------
Heraclite
I'm still trying to figure out the ideal lifestyle. When you work remotely, it
gets boring after a while not being able to socialize. When you have to go to
work every day, it gets tiring commuting.

I'm thinking the perfect mix is to live 1.5 hours from a big city where the
jobs are. Go to the office if needed once/twice a week. Do the rest remotely,
enjoy living in a house instead of a cramped appartment.

Is anyone doing this?

------
LeanderK
Having to work remotely is one of the main reasons why it's so hard for me to
contributed to open source projects (i am a student btw). I guess it's not for
everyone.

I need people to function, people to work with, people to talk about work,
people to discuss decisions with and people to not talk to one another. It's
what's motivating me, what keeps thinking for hours about problems.

------
dkarapetyan
Did this at a previous workplace and it seemed to work but the company culture
has to be aligned as well. There is an intangible touch-feely stuff that gets
lost behind the unfeeling glare of the monitor and if the rest of the company
is ill-equipped to deal with that missing piece then it won’t work out.

------
blizkreeg
In my experience, both, an entirely distributed team and an entirely localized
team do well. It becomes exponentially harder to pull it off when you have
some people working in the office, and others distributed.

------
ClayFerguson
I agree with every word of this article and after 25yrs experience as a
developer I have all similar experiences. Being a computer programmer is about
the same as being a 'writer' (book author), and no one expects an author to
sit with other authors in a special building to be able to write. With modern
technology, and the wastefulness of time and energy spent commuting, there is
just no longer any reason for a programmer to not be able to work remote. I
mean even if all you are considering is gasoline use and pollution savings,
even that alone is enough of a reason for society to say let developers work
at home. There's just no downside to it.

I have been working at home for the past year, and I don't think there's any
way i'd ever accept another non-remote job again. In any large city you're
gonna be sitting in traffic a total of 10hrs a week. That's insanity. That's
well over one full work day. With a web-cam you can still have face to face
meetings. The only thing that I find missing occasionally is the use of a
whiteboard, but that is a very minor thing. Having a whiteboard is not a good
trade-off for 10hrs spent in traffic. Not even close. Of course in 10yrs VR
will totally make it irrelevant where someone's physical location is, but i
think even the basic webcams we have today already does as well.

~~~
ryandrake
Most books don't require 10-100 authors, each focusing on the paragraph that
they are experts in, needing to hold the pages together with APIs that are
agreed upon by all co-authors. The collaborative aspect of a software project
is much greater than that of a book.

Yes, there are books that have a multiple of co-authors, but these co-authors
tend to not operate lone-wolf.

~~~
brilliantcode
I too think the book analogy is misplaced here. Books are physical products.
They are written by one guy sometimes two but it's super rare. Once it's
printed, it's done. Customer can't call you up and demand you rip out entire
chapters or revive their favorite character which you bastardly left out.

Looking at software, it becomes very complicated when you throw multiple
engineers. If it's written in a manner where people don't talk to each other
for weeks and just showing up with the pieces as if building an oil tanker
with prefabricated parts that are put together.

Software is much more complicated endeavour and it's fueled by the endless
changes that can be made. Nothing is solid or have physical constraints that
clearly limit options once the product is out the door, where as software can
very easily ebb and flow with changing stakeholders and turnover.

50 shades of grey didn't have multiple authors that came before each other and
a group of guys writing it together and readers demanding changes that caters
to them.

------
X86BSD
A question to all of you who only work remotely, and I'm sure it's been
covered by HN so forgive me, but where do you find reliable work that's
remote? I can see getting lucky maybe and scoring one maybe two gigs that
allow remote but a caterer doing it? When my wife's gig is up she would love
to work from home. She already works from home two days a week.

But she has no idea how to make a career out that reliably. She started out
doing QA/testing, now she is all into oracle and DB2. Using oracle tools and
IBM tools for managing/writing SQL for enormous databases. Government sized
databases.

She is making low six figures now here in KC.

Thanks for any advice or leads on remote only work as a career!

~~~
citizens
I only work remotely, but it does really limit the pool of available work.
Weworkremotely.com is a good resource.

~~~
X86BSD
Thanks for taking the time to reply both of you. I've always wondered how
those of you who are able to do remote 100% of the time do it. This helps get
us started. Thank you.

------
edblarney
Great post - with a very huge caveat: being out of the office means you miss a
lot of nuance that is very, very important.

There is a cultural language, and a lot of facts outside the scope of normal
direction.

I've worked remotely often and this has always been a huge issue: requirements
can almost never be communicated succinctly, they come in waves and
indirections.

So if we can solve that one ... this makes more sense.

As for the 'open office' concept, I can't think of anything more absurd. When
I visit my clients I can't get anything done.

------
brilliantcode
I think a right balance between remote & on-site is a better argument. I've
worked remotely for a few years and I quickly found myself very isolated and
it's contributed to my social anxiety.

Remote working can be a blessing during bad weathers or you want to take a
little break from commuting.

