

End the Office? Students Want Right to Work From Home  - rajeshvaya
http://itechtalks.blogspot.com/2011/11/end-office-students-want-right-to-work.html

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tallanvor
The problem is these people are only thinking about themselves, and not
considering the affects of their actions on coworkers. They need to understand
how to be a member of the team first, and after that they'll understand how
much flexibility in terms of devices, working hours, and location is
appropriate.

My office lets people have too much flexibility when choosing their work hours
and location. --It's not that people don't work hard, but when you have
inexperienced people coming in at noon, that ends up being several hours of
time that they're working in the evening without being able to get help from
more experienced people. If I had a dollar for every time I found out a
coworker struggled for hours on an issue only to have me or another more
experienced person provide an answer in 5 minutes, well, I'd have a much
healthier retirement account.

Working remotely is also difficult as it can be much harder to properly
explain things when you're not able to sit next to each other, point things
out, and even grab a piece of paper to sketch stuff out in order to clarify
things.

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jriddycuz
Excellent point.

I am near the start of my career (3 years in or so) as a programmer, and I
spent much of the first part of that working remotely. Though I enjoyed not
having to get dressed and drive in traffic to be at the office by 8am, this
severely stunted the development of my work skills. Now, when I was working
for a startup, I would spend hours and hours at home on projects and remained
fairly disciplined, but that was due to the passion I felt for my work. When
that startup folded I had to enter the regular workforce for financial
reasons, and I found it much harder to be motivated about what I was doing.
When working remotely, I found myself constantly distracted and unfocused, and
even though I felt I had fairly strong communications skills, my ability to
communicate with co-workers did not develop.

There are numerous problems with younger employees working remotely, but the
way it stunts one's development as a professional is probably the worst. Now
that I'm in an office, I am constantly exposed not only to people more
knowledgeable than I, but also people who have learned how to be a
professional and how to work in a team.

One thing in particular that struck me is that I didn't really know how to
behave in an office. True, there are a lot of ways that the modern office is
kind of depressing, but developing decent working relationships based on
mutual respect with your co-workers does a lot to make a workplace tolerable
and even enjoyable. This respect is not developed in most cases unless you
actually observe and learn some office behavioral norms.

Working remotely can be awesome, and stodgy companies should learn that
flexibility has its advantages. But these advantages are often strongest for
experienced employees who know how to organize themselves and motivate
themselves to get a job done wherever they are for little reason other than
professional pride and a paycheck.

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aforty
Why are we linked to some blog instead of the original source, especially when
it's just copied verbatim and with an annoyingly low-res graphic.

Original source with high-res info-graphic:
<http://mashable.com/2011/11/08/work-from-home-2/>

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aforty
Looks like the OP is just trying to plug his "blog." Very lame.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=rajeshvaya>

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spacemanaki
Wow, those posts are just scraping content from other sites.

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rick888
Working from home isn't a right. I've done both (worked from home and an
office) and it takes a certain kind of person to actually be able to get work
done at home. The same sort of discipline that you need to run your own
company. Most people just don't have this discipline.

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poink
There are ways around this. You can do pair programming with screen sharing
and VOIP, for example. As a company/manager/lead you might have to enforce
good practice, but that's also true in the office.

(The less your team needs to worry about this stuff, the more likely they are
to be successful no matter where you put them.)

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fennecfoxen
I did pair programming with screen sharing and VOIP at my last job: we had one
guy who was remote (he moved to the east coast because his wife got a snazzy
job in animation, and we didn't feel like letting him go). We tried all the
tricks. It works, but it's not like the real thing, and it's a lot more
obnoxious and stressful for both parties, even when there aren't technical
difficulties. I'd say: don't do it regularly unless you have to.

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lawnchair_larry
Better yet, don't do pair programming it all. People still do that?

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fennecfoxen
Pair programming is the only reason that team's still going, after what
management's done to it, with the employee turnover it's gone through amidst
idiotic hiring constraints. But even before that, it was doing pretty well.

How about you run your team the way that works for you, and if someone else
does pair programming and it works for them, maybe it's okay? :)

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dfxm12
I work in a huge multi-national corporation. Some of the people I interact
with are co-located with me, however, most are not. I've even worked with
people who are 100% remote. What does it matter to them where I'm sitting?
Now, I agree there is something to be said about team building & sheer
convenience, depending on the nature of your work, but as long as you are
getting the job done, who cares if you are sitting behind your desk 40 hrs/wk?

This should also be a no-brainer for employers. Flex schedules/working from
home is an excellent perk, and is low hanging fruit in terms of a company
"going green", since there are less people driving to work and offices
supporting fewer people produce a smaller carbon footprint.

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fennecfoxen
The occasional work-from-home won't hurt most offices, and is really great for
the occasional appointment and the like. But there's a lot to be said for
having everybody in the same room as the norm.

I've worked with 100% remote people, and have seen the difference.

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synnik
I'm less interested in what college students think about office work than I
would be to see what changes they may have (or not) after 3 years of
experience.

I'm not disputing the results... I've just noticed that a few years of
experience tends to temper attitude a bit, once people learn the reasons
behind various policies.

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dhd
The market for top talent remains competitive - particularly for top
engineering and consulting roles. Companies that pay attention to shifts in
workforce values and evolve accordingly will always have a competitive
advantage.

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veyron
What is the mobile direct link? iPad safari is unsupported:

"Dynamic Views in Blogger require the use of a modern browser, and are not
currently supported on mobile devices."

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dman
Can people list what they use for screen sharing when doing remote work? This
is my first job where I am having to work with people remotely and I am
noticing that iteration times are much higher because its inefficient to
describe concepts remotely. Online whiteboards would be appreciated too.

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thegir
What kind of things are you doing that you need to share a screen? If it's
mostly document based can using Google Docs be used? Skype also has some
screen sharing abilities I think.

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rsanchez1
What a bunch of spoiled brats. Next they'll want us to pay their student loans
for them. Oh wait...

