
How to end the "work from home" debate - mijustin
http://justinjackson.ca/remote-work-debate/
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dmschulman
Absolute power corrupts absolutely. I know some very well versed and honest
developers who have had the opportunity to work more and more from home. It's
amazing how a little extra freedom can change people's accountability.

That is not to say remote working is something to be looked down upon (quite
the opposite in my opinion), but productivity comes down to the individual
worker in a remote situation, not the management team behind them.

I believe Yahoo was justified in their decision to reign in the slack due to
this idea.

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mijustin
If they're honest, what's to fear? I think the developers that you're talking
about have shows that they're "only honest with supervision".

Companies like Automattic, 37signals, and GitHub hire "managers of one". These
are that can produce great work, without having someone looking over their
shoulder.

Yes: remote work isn't for everyone. That's why I think it comes down to
managers empowering their people to do _their_ best work. If a developer can
be honest, and say: "You let me work remotely, but I keep getting distracted.
I either need you to teach me better work-from-home-habits _or_ I'll need to
come back to the office."

That's what managers should aim for.

~~~
dmschulman
I think it was naivety on a few of their parts. When you get all that freedom
your first thought is to maximize is while still being able to deliver on your
work. If you're not careful, that balance can be thrown off rather quickly.

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tenpoundhammer
I think the author is primarily correct, but what if they know they don't have
the right people? What if the best way right now is to reel them in and keep a
close eye on them until they can re-staff? You can't re-staff a company over
night, it takes years.

~~~
Avenger42
I think the other part of what he's saying is that if they don't already know
whether they have "the right people", it's because they've got mediocre
management that has allowed them to skate by without setting concrete goals
and building a culture of achievement.

I get that metrics don't always work well, and they may be harder to enforce
for people you don't see day-in and day-out, but there's nothing stopping them
from setting a goal of "complete work on X by day Y", and hold people to that,
regardless of whether they're in the office or at home.

~~~
mijustin
Yes: figuring out if people are productive is hard whether they're at the
office or not.

I'd love to see more discussion on this: what are good ways for managers to
know if their team is being productive?

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pasbesoin
The reason that, at my last corporate gig, the best and most
responsible/burdened developers were on IM well into the evenings, after a
full day in the office. Because "Speed and quality are often sacrificed when
we work from home."

I understand that Yahoo management screwed the pooch. From my position,
outside of that management, it appears that the fallout is now in part on some
of the most productive people.

I put up with that bullshit long enough. Were I at Yahoo, I'd immediately
decide that they were asking me to pay for others' mistakes. And I'd be
looking to move.

That's just me. I abhor the needless and counter-productive distraction of
open offices. But... some of the best people I've worked with were and are the
same way. And... they were generally acknowledged to be the best in their
domains at those companies.

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snowwrestler
I'm tired of the argument that if you hire only rock stars, it doesn't matter
if they work remotely.

There are not that many rock stars in the world. Even fewer of them want to
work for you. (Most rock stars work for themselves already.)

Thus, this argument is a fantasy for most companies, especially large
companies. It's like saying if you only hire scrupulously honest people, you
don't need accounting controls. It's logically consistent, but a bad idea in
the real world.

Of course, most employees think they _are_ rock stars.[1] That gap between
perception and reality is what makes it hard to manage people.

1\. [http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57568186/everyone-
thinks...](http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57568186/everyone-thinks-they-
are-above-average/)

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SilasX
A lot of these indignant "work from home is awesome, yahoo sucks" posts seem
to be written so broadly as to imply that a car factory can and should let its
shop floor workers "work from home". I guess "good managers" would install
tele-robotics...

~~~
mijustin
OP here. I don't think I'm implying that a car factory worker should let it's
employees work from home. ;)

Maybe I should expand on this part here: " _Yes, every job, product, and
company will have certain constraints. The point is to create as much job
flexibility as you can so your people can succeed._ "

What's missing from a lot of manager-employee relationships is conversation:
figuring out what works for individual employees within a given context (a
specific culture, specific product, etc...).

What was sad about the Yahoo edict was that it was broad and general:
"Everyone needs to stop working from home." That's a big culture shift without
any interaction.

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SilasX
Thanks for replying! I did miss the caveats, and I'm sorry I picked yours as
an example; I was mainly referring to the general tone of this class of
articles, which promote WFH in such broad and general terms that it's not
clear what limits they recognize for the practice.

