
Programmers are most likely to work from home - staringmonkey
https://qz.com/950973/remote-work-for-programmers-the-ultimate-office-perk-is-avoiding-the-office-entirely/
======
NumberSix
The article does not discuss the impact of the open office movement. I've
worked from home, in actual offices, in cubicles both cramped and spacious,
and open offices. It can be quite difficult to focus at home due to various
distractions, especially if you do not have a separate room or area for work.
It is difficult to separate work and non-work with a home office. There are a
variety of communications issues with colleagues when working from home.
However, programming requires high levels of concentration and focus; I work
on complex algorithms and mathematical software which requires extremely high
levels of concentration and focus. Open offices are simply too noisy and full
of interruptions. Thus, given a choice between an open office and home, home
wins.

But in general I would rather work in a quiet office near my colleagues. There
is a clear separation between work and non-work. Communication is faster and
easier, less prone to misunderstandings. This however means something like an
actual office or a quiet spacious cubicle with high sound absorbent walls.

In his book Deep Work, Cal Newport argues in favor of a "hub and spoke" office
layout where knowledge workers can work in quiet in offices on the spokes, but
meet and collaborate at hubs, such as common areas with food, coffee machines,
printers etc. This seems like a much better way to balance the need for deep
concentration on the one hand with "collaboration," annoying MBA buzz-word at
present.

~~~
return0
I think working from home is superior (for tech/programming work). In terms of
work, it's the best way to not only avoid distractions, but also lay out your
time in a way that is conducive to completing a project in the way you
intended, and to let your ideas be fully implemented. This means projects
finish sooner, much sooner than in a 9-5 environment. I believe that, when you
know that you cannot escape the office until 5, that introduces some
intellectual laziness and willingness to just kill or dilate time. The office
does offer some perks, but they are not related to work itself, they are all
about socializing / banter / feeling of being part of a team. Working from
home does mean that home becomes workplace , and vice versa, but that is not
necessarily a bad thing, as long as work gets done faster. People used to work
mostly from home until the industrial era.

Personally, I have gotten a second job in an office for the 'office
experience', yet i often do even this work at home, because i work faster
there.

I think some "work from home" problems are problems of perception. It's not
very well accepted to say that you work from home yet[1], making you feel like
the job is somehow inferior. Also, the location of your home matters, if you
live in a mixed commercial/residential place, it doesn't feel wrong to be at
home and work all morning.

Discipline can be an issue until you establish a work routine. Much like
driving to the office primes you to get into work mode, a morning walk to the
local bakery can prime you to begin working at home.

1\.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW3lhfVpLL4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IW3lhfVpLL4)

~~~
pionar
> I think working from home is superior (for tech/programming work).

I disagree with you, specifically one point.

>The office does offer some perks, but they are not related to work itself,
they are all about socializing / banter / feeling of being part of a team.

That "banter" or "socializing" _is_ work related. I've found that working from
home (been doing it 2 years now) has one very big disadvantage - unless the
whole team is remote.

You _will_ be excluded from meetings, decisions and conversations. You _will_
always have a feeling that you're missing something. You _will_ miss important
hallway conversations that can impact the work you do.

~~~
timmaah
I'm the only one at our small company that works remotely. I miss so much of
what is going on decision wise.

Any talk of new clients, potential new business, larger future projects are
all communicated to me once they are mostly already hashed out. This keeps me
from playing a bigger part in the company and thus the work they throw my way
is more on the grunt/boring side.

I love working remotely though and I'm not working in the tiny open office
they have. I would be interested in seeing what the dynamic is like with a
full remote team.

~~~
Taniwha
I've mostly worked at home since my son was born (he's 26 now). I used to go
in one day a week, I worked for startups for years and would start full time,
drop off to 4->3->2 days a week. These days I never go in (I live 10,000km
away at the moment, it's no longer a 1 hour drive in the Valley).

I think there's a few things you have to realise about working at home: \- you
get to avoid almost all office politics \- you will eventually lose at office
politics

Essentially you need to have a manager who will step up and root for you, and
you guys need to talk so he/she knows where your head is at

~~~
timmaah
> you will eventually lose at office politics

Yup. We are small enough that we all report directly to the CEO. Though
anywhere I've worked remotely or not it is always me looking out for me. Never
had a manager help with that.

~~~
Taniwha
I've found that having that explicit discussion with every new manager helps a
lot, eventually you get a crap one and lose, but then that's probably time to
move on

------
eddieh
I like working from my office. I don't understand people that like working
from home.

Possible confounding variable: I live exactly two blocks from my office and
don't have to commute. Perhaps, in actuality, people don't like to commute?

~~~
skizm
I will name some the reasons I like to work from home and none involve a
commute:

\- I'm in an open office situation.

\- Standing desk is awkward when everyone else is sitting.

\- If I make a loud noise eating or sneezing or something like 5 people stare
at me trying to figure out what is going on.

\- I can't have twitch or a baseball game on in the background because nosey
co-workers will walk by, see my screen, and comment or internalize that I'm a
slacker because I like a running commentary instead of music when I work.

\- _Constantly_ being pulled aside for conversations that can be answered in a
sentence or two via slack or email. (not having me in person forces people to
think about and write down exactly what they want to say or ask before they
actually say it)

\- My home setup is significantly nicer than my office set up.

\- Open office means I hear all about everyone's past or upcoming weekends,
vacations, etc.

\- I enjoy stretching or doing small exercises throughout the day, which is
super weird to do while in the office (plus no yoga mat).

\- People low key hate me because I am the only person with a mechanical
keyboard and make lots of noise when I start typing a lot. (I've learned to
ignore the not so subtle stare downs)

So probably my biggest thing is the open office problem. As a programmer,
being in the middle of a group of chatty 20-30 somethings all day is not great
for productivity.

~~~
aidenn0
Yeah, all but one of your complaints would be solved by a door[1]. Are there
actually programmers who prefer the open-office setting? It's not like I
magically stop socializing if you put me in an office.

The only thing worse than open-office for me is a setting where my back is to
a space that people are walking through. I can't even have my back to an open
doorway in an office (assuming the hallway outside is somewhat busy), or I
spend much of my time in a low-grade fight-or-flight situation.

If you put me in an open office where people are regularly walking by behind
me, you are probably getting (at best) 60% of my productivity in an office
with a door. Actually, in this job market, you are getting 0% of my
productivity because I will work elsewhere.

1 [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door)

~~~
skizm
Well also, my preferred attire (work or otherwise) is barefoot+gym
shorts+shirtless, I would enjoy nothing more than consecutive full days
without human contact during the week, the ability to fart and pick my nose
without hesitation, and not having to worry the bathroom stalls are full when
I need to take a shit, but I realize most of those are unreasonable to ask of
an office so I left them off the list. However, those are more reasons
unrelated to an open office I would prefer to work from home on the regular.

~~~
cylinder
You forgot climate control too. Office buildings always seem to have their
HVAC poorly calibrated and controlled by some mysterious ghost.

There are _so_ many reasons... I think you either get it, or you don't.

------
jonmb
I've worked both in offices and remotely. They each have their pros and cons.
I prefer remote.

The biggest pros of remote work for me are no commute + not needing to get
dressed in business clothes every day. I don't have to fight traffic, I don't
have to iron clothes every day, I don't have to find parking and spend 10
minutes walking to and from my car, etc. I don't have to do a whole bunch of
little things that going into the office required.

So the biggest advantage for me is saving time. And now I get to use all that
extra time for spending more quality time with my wife and dog, side projects,
exercise, video games, etc. I get more sleep! That's an important one.

The downsides to working from home is that it is harder to communicate in some
situations, especially if you're the only guy working from home. It is easier
to be overlooked for promotions since people don't know your face and see it
every day. You miss out on the social aspect of work, though this can be
mitigated if you're able to drive/fly-in to see your team occasionally. You
miss out on the office banter, though some people would consider that a good
thing.

Many other points people raise such as having lack of focus, being taken
advantage of, and so on apply equally to being remote and working in the
office (depending on the office) so I consider those to be moot points. If you
can't focus at home, that's a fixable problem with your own mind and your
environment.

------
edw519
After 38 years of commercial programming, 15 of them remote, here's the thing
that almost no one talks about: working remotely actually benefits the company
much more that the programmer. Here's why:

1\. Profitability manufacturing something increases dramatically when lowering
overhead and driving direct labor. Direct labor in software are the
programmers. Time spent programming (usually) produces product. Time spent not
programming flushes money down the toilet. I have never found a better way to
increase the direct labor / overhead ratio than by working remotely.

2\. Proper process building software can give geometric increases in value.
Things like business requirements, technical specifications, test plans, UAT,
QA, project management, etc. When programmers are in the office, it's just too
easy for managers and analysts to "wave their hands" and "call a meeting". Too
often, that's their answer to everything. The meetings rarely serve their
(ususally undefined) purpose. They give the appearance of progress without the
progress. Problem #1: You've just wasted a little bit of your programmers'
time. Problem #2: You will waste a whole lot more of their time at the other
end when things aren't right.

3\. Workingly remotely enforces discipline. Things need to be written down.
It's hard to peer review meeting notes or Skype recordings. Specs, reqs, test
plans, etc. need to be documented and reviewed BEFORE wasting programmer time.
I generally try to turn down any meeting or Skype without something in
writing. (Skype / Webex is just another way for managers to waste programming
resources that doesn't feel as bad as a physical meeting.)

I have hard data via thousands of tickets over the years to say that working
remotely has easily made me at least twice as productive. Mainly by getting
others to leave me alone and to drag them kicking and screaming into the 21st
century by doing their jobs. The most important job of someone who doesn't
program? Enabling those who do.

The main reason I love remote is not because of my home office, or short
commute, or good 4-legged company, or working in my underwear, or anything
else about _me_. It's because I have never found a better way to get shit
done.

~~~
matwood
> Workingly remotely enforces discipline.

This is key, and one of the main drivers I used to convince the owners of my
company to become remote friendly.

------
NateDad
I've worked remote for about 5 years (and about 18 years total). When I lost
my last job, I resolved to only look for remote work. Commuting is a giant
waste of time, which is the most precious resource we all have. I could live
near Boston and have a tiny house with no yard and mediocre schools, or I
could live an hour outside Boston and have a huge yard and amazing schools.
The choice is clear. But it means that if I were to work in the tech hub, I'd
never see my kids during the week.

When done right, remote is awesome. There's no reason every programming
company couldn't be remote-friendly these days.

There are two things that companies often do that screw up remote workers:

1.) Having meetings in meeting rooms. This _does not work_ for remote people.
Remote people cannot participate in a conversation from a speakerphone when
the majority of people are in the same room. You just can't break into
conversations between people in the room.

2.) Having an open office. This prevents the fix to #1 - which is to have
meetings via hangouts or other video chat, with everyone (even people in the
office) participating via headset & personal video camera. The open office
makes cross talk between mics too painful (with judicious muting you can sorta
fix it, but it's a hassle).

These are fixable problems, but the company has to be committed to good remote
culture to do so.

------
archeantus
I've been thinking a lot about this lately and I've decided that working
remote IS the most important benefit of my job.

I've been fully remote doing iOS development for nearly four years now, and I
am not interested in entertaining any new job offer unless my fully remote
status can be retained.

Are there downsides to this mentality? Yes. Am I missing out on
networking/schmoozing opportunities by being remote? Almost assuredly. But as
I've been thinking about it lately, I don't think I want any of that stuff. I
can't see myself enjoying the job of management or being a director, etc. I
would probably enjoy the pay, but not the work.

So for me the most important thing is that I love my job, I get paid very
well, and I'm home to watch my five kids grow up.

I don't think I'm interested in trading in that setup, not for any job title.

~~~
jonmb
>> I'm home to watch my five kids grow up. <<

And when you're old and looking back on your life, this is what you're likely
going to appreciate much more than being a director inside of an office's four
walls. Good stuff.

------
maxxxxx
If I actually had an office and not some little box with neighbors talking the
whole day I may be ok with going to an office. Working from home is my only
chance to actually think without distractions.

------
BeetleB
I work in a big company.

It's easy to see all the useful things I would have missed out on if I worked
remotely. Examples:

\- Networking: Serendipity plays a bigger role than anything else. And you get
a lot less of it the fewer people you interact with. Simply bumping into
people at the cafe is quite valuable.

\- Career coaching: Lots of classes, talks, invited speakers, etc. Some can be
done remotely, but roughly half require you to be live.

Also: Going to work makes it easier to leave work there when you come home.

~~~
jamestimmins
To your first point, Richard Hamming's essay _You and Your Research_ hits on
this topic by distinguishing between people who work with their door open and
people who work with their door closed.

As he put it, the people who worked with the door closed got more work done in
the short term, but in the long run had fewer serendipitous strokes of
brilliance.

~~~
dasmoth
When comparing this to today's workplaces, the most striking point is that
_they all had doors_.

~~~
BeetleB
To be fair, we're comparing Bell Labs, where almost all researchers are the
best in the world, to an average tech company.

------
ahallock
I've invested thousands of dollars in my home setup (which will never be
done), to create an amazing working environment. Why would I want to give that
up? Sure, employers may give you a little $ to customize your desk and
equipment, but if I'm going to be spending so much of my life at a computer,
it'd better be amazing.

~~~
CydeWeys
My employer's work environment is worth much more to me per year than the
entire cost of your home setup thanks to all of the free meals and the gym
equipment alone. Just something worth thinking about.

~~~
k__
I don't know what bothers me more. People willingly selling their souls to
companies or the companies that spend humongous amounts of money to keep their
employees away from their homes and lifes...

~~~
CydeWeys
Why do you think I'm "selling my soul" just because I go into the office and
eat the free food they provide? I work normal 40 hour weeks. I'm not being
dragged away from my home and my life. You've got an overly cynical take on
it. They're just nice perks that the company can provide cheaply at scale,
e.g. I'd rather get three free meals per day than the $5,000 it costs my
employer to make those meals per employee, because if I were buying those
meals out it'd cost more than $5,000 per year.

~~~
nommm-nommm
Usually when offices offer those perks it is to keep people at work and blur
the line between work and home. It's not cynical to point that out. By
offering really expensive perks they are filtering for people who value those
perks over salary (because there really is no free lunch)

~~~
CydeWeys
I don't think that's true. We don't have any perks that are explicitly
targeted at keeping people in the office longer than the normal workday, e.g.
we do have beer for various weekly events but it's from 5-6pm only. Again, I
think you are being too cynical. The perks exist in order to provide a
desirable workplace and be competitive in the hiring market. They help attract
and retain talent in a way that simple salary does not. They also take
advantage of the company's economy of scale in order to provide greater
utility for the same amount of money, e.g. I'd rather my employer spend $5K
per year on feeding me three meals a day than get the ~$3K after-tax and have
to pay for my meals myself.

~~~
k__
I know people have different priorities and that's okay.

I see it like this: I did things to improve my quality of life and people who
can't do this are missing out.

I can use a computer system of my choosing, most companies admins aren't too
BYOD friendly.

I can bring my girlfriend to work, buy groceries, prepare my own food and eat
it. I could not do this if I was at an office somewhere else. Most companies
got small kitchens where you can't cook as good as at home and many companies
only grant you 30-60min break, which aren't enough for all this.

Also, my girlfriend works shifts, so when I work at her place, we sit together
in the living room most of the time. The social interactions I normally would
have with some random coworkers I now can have with the person I love. When I
stop working, she often starts, so when I would get home from office, I
wouldn't meet her there.

I can sleep till 10 and have my first meeting while I'm still in bed.

~~~
CydeWeys
> I know people have different priorities and that's okay.

That's quite a change of tune from your previous statement:

> I don't know what bothers me more. People willingly selling their souls to
> companies or the companies that spend humongous amounts of money to keep
> their employees away from their homes and lifes...

If you'd said originally what you said now then I'd have had no disagreement,
but instead you literally accused people like me of "selling our souls" for
going into the office to work and taking advantage of the perks there.

~~~
k__
Yes, I'm sorry.

------
ryandrake
I'm more of a "cat herder" than programmer these days, and I probably would
have great difficulty doing my job from home, or with others working from
home. Face-to-face conversations and in-person meetings are tools that have
their uses, just as E-mail and asynchronous chat, phone calls and video
conferences are tools that have _their_ uses. To me, the cost of tossing out
those "in person" tools does not make up for the pleasure of eliminating my [2
hour each way] commute.

~~~
k__
Good to know that remote work prevents me from becoming a "cat herder"

------
xchaotic
This is so obvious, but so few roles allow for that. I am below my market rate
but happy and motivated, as I am 100% remote. Imagine if someone offered
market rate, they'd still be ahead, without the need to pay for the office
space.

------
gdulli
I'd be bored sitting at home all day instead of being around people, and then
there's the more subtle ways my work is more effective when in-person contact
with others happens by default rather than letting the temptation to do
solitary work win out.

If I chose a job with a bad commute or bad co-workers or bad working
conditions I guess I'd be unhappy about going into the office. But it seems
more logical to address the root cause than the symptom. Fundamentally wanting
to be separate from other people doesn't seem like the most functional pattern
to encourage. But I get it, the uninterrupted coding is the part of the job
that's the most fun.

------
johan_larson
I've been working from home now for a year and a half, and I love it. It's
really quiet, and no one interrupts me. The best possible arrangement would be
a private office at work, but working at home is miles better than an open-
plan office.

~~~
HenryBemis
I find that when I'm coding, if I get stuck I take a break and go to my baby
daughter and start talking to her about the problem (she's 4 months old so her
skills are not that great).

3/4 times while talking to her I find workarounds. Her smile is the extra
bonus!

~~~
BatFastard
Indeed it is the process of describing the problem verbally that helps me
think about it in different ways. I would guess my mind takes shortcuts when
thinking about it. However when I have to engage the speaking part of my
brain, I can't take the shortcuts.

------
rocketlionqb
I would rather work from home. I lose about two hours commuting to and from. I
would save on gas. My home office is confortable. I can cook lunch. I can go
to the gym before everyone gets off at 5. I wouldn't have to listen to co-
workers who likes to eat lunch with their mouths wide open. I won't have to
smell the sack of diapers my co-workers like to microwave for lunch. I
wouldn't have smell the daily onion odor from co-workers that enjoy showering
bi-monthly. No broken A/C at the start of summer every year. No death/suicide
commute dodging idiots that can't drive. I need another job...

------
nsxwolf
I've been working remote almost exclusively for 13 years now. It has its own
benefits and problems but I really, really hate hearing it described as a
"perk". We've had the technology for many jobs to be 100% remote for a very
long time now, and I still see it treated by companies as a benefit like
"summer hours" or casual Fridays or whatever.

It's pretty insulting, actually, to frame people like me as entitled slackers.

------
neverminder
As someone who's stuck in open office torture chamber and dreaming about
working remotely I can't help but notice an obvious trend - developers from
poorer countries are "outbidding" those who are not in what seems to be just
another race to the bottom. Unless of course you're a highly sought after
specialist with experience in some narrow area, or you have good contacts.

------
ensiferum
I think I'd be utterly depressed if I worked from home. Every day without any
human interaction. Plus I really love the clear boundary between work and
home. Wouldn't want to pollute my home with work.

~~~
douche
> Every day without any human interaction

It's the best, I love it. Any human interaction you get is chosen, rather than
imposed.

~~~
ensiferum
Yeah, well my current situation is that since I live alone in a new country
with 0 friends the _only_ interaction I have during the day (excluding
shopping for food) is at the office. So I have to take both the bad and the
good (i.e. the noise of the open office and the chance for some socialiazing)

------
mouzogu
It depends on the office and your personal circumstances. If I dread going to
the office for whatever reason (uncomfortable, noisy, bad commute, dislike
coworkers) then of course I'd rather work from home.

I think this argument of WFH detracts somewhat from the issue of making the
office itself a better place. There is so much that can be done in that area
to alleviate some of the issues around not wanting staff to wfh.

For me, the main issues are noise, lack of privacy and lack of environmental
control. I get some of the same stress in my office that I would get standing
in a busy highstreet during rush hour. I dislike open plan office, hot-desking
etc - give me a space, I'm comfortable working and relaxing in - a second home
almost. Or maybe I'm just a spoilt millenial.

------
dec0dedab0de
I've been working from home for a few years now, and I think the one thing I
would miss the most is having my own private bathroom. If I'm ever in a
position to design an office, the bathrooms will all be individual, or at
least have stalls that go all the way down.

------
chrismealy
Never being on call is the ultimate perk.

~~~
CydeWeys
I actually like being on call, because I get paid for it and we've written a
stable service that rarely has issues.

------
mr_tristan
Many companies frequently build a hierarchy of "direct reports". That
hierarchy really loves having people they oversee being local. It's kind of a
cultural thing, but it requires a very, very patient and rational manager to
oversee people they can't physically interact with. In my experience, most
managers don't fit this bill.

Add to the fact that most of these direct reports are done via a direct 1:1
meeting, most company cultures just really, really want to do critical
communication verbally.

I've rarely encountered a company that puts quality written communication at a
high priority. The last few I've worked at have these half-assed wiki's (e.g.,
Confluence) where pages are written poorly and then forgotten about about 15
minutes after the page is updated. And then random email blasts.

It's this focus on verbal instead of written communication that is a blocker
for remote work. As a remote employee, if nothing important is clearly written
down, it's difficult to be a "self-starter". You can't just research a problem
yourself, you frequently need to be handed work. Thus, in most businesses I've
found, the remote employees end up in this strange "in house consultant" style
role.

I suspect companies where everyone is remote also prioritize written
communication.

------
lbrindze
I have worked in a quite office and an open office and I think at the end of
the day my feelings are the same. I am more productive and can get more done
in less time when I do my own thing in my own space.

One thing I think worth mentioning though is as our systems become more and
more distributed there is a clear advantage to having the limitations in
communication folks are bringing up. It really forces you into a mindset where
you have to nail down your API so others can neatly interface with your work.
When I'm in the same location as a teammate, I'm more likely to just go over
and ask them how their module/service works, which I might argue leads to more
intertwined, less decoupled code. If I am physically removed from other team
members, I am forced to make more independent resilient systems because in
order for projects to be more successful, I have to more closely stick to the
predefined API specs from the outset.

I am fortunate in that I have garnered enough skill/demand that I can work
from my boat, sailing around Mexico, so for me, the freedom independent
contracting has allowed in my personal life is unmatched. I undrrstand why
managers and business owners are loathe to offer this kind of work, and I
think partly it's because a few bad eggs has given wfh a bad rep

------
taternuts
I really think the best situation is a place that doesn't care all that much
if you work from home, but you aren't technically a WFH employee. I used to be
100% remote and yes that had it's perks, but I think overall wasn't the best
for me as someone who, left to their own devices, will likely sit out my couch
at home all day every day. I actually enjoy going into the office for at least
half the day and leave for home when I feel like it. Usually that's after
breakfast and lunch from the cafeteria :)

It's nice though, to have real life friends at the office. Especially when you
move to a new place and don't really have your old friends around. I don't
really feel any loneliness because of this. I still keep in contact with my
remote friends, but you know... it's not quite the same.

------
throwaway2016a
Anecdote but I'm sure other people feel the same:

I get cabin fever working from home more than a few days a week. I need human
interaction and video chat and Slack don't cut it.

I found working from home I cooked a lot less (went out to eat instead just to
get out of the house) and the days tended to blend together.

------
eikenberry
Hard to imagine why. Better work environment, better equipment, better office
mates, better commute, fewer distractions, lower stress, etc. Plus it
structures the communications better, so you have less of the random
conversations and more use of ticketing systems and like.

------
pmontra
Well, I'm self employed and work for customers mainly from my home (backend
development, web technologies). One or two on site meetings per week and
that's it. Sometimes I had to go to customers sites in my town two or three
days per week, usually during design phases. Working at home (I live alone)
and avoiding the office is definitely great. Zero commuting time, I worked
this morning, went on a 2 hours 50 km bicycle ride in the afternoon, got a
shower and back to work. I'll probably get back those working hours on
Saturday morning. I try very hard to allocate some time for my interests. I'll
be back to working in a office only if business goes very bad and I can't
avoid it.

~~~
rubicon33
For how many months, or years, have you been working from home? And, how often
are you interacting in person with people?

I've found WFH to be great, but, after a while I really miss human
interaction.

~~~
pmontra
Eleven years after thirteen as employee. I go out almost every day. Friends,
family, technical meetups are the main activities. Customers, of course. I
must plan to do something outside home or it would be unbearable. We're social
animals after all.

------
samfisher83
You spend 8 hours a day working. Why would you want to be isolated from other
people? As a kid you go to school you are around people. Working from home
seems like you are kind of isolated from people. Its not the same as over
skype or slack.

~~~
aphexbr
"You spend 8 hours a day working. Why would you want to be isolated from other
people?"

So that you can get the work done and not have to think about it when you go
socialising with people you actually choose to spend time with?

"As a kid you go to school you are around people."

....and for a lot of people that was the most frustrating, difficult time of
their lives that they wish to avoid reliving. Personally, I can't stand office
politics, find smalltalk very distracting when it's happening around me and
would much rather avoid the 1 hour commute each way.

I can't work from home in my current position, sadly, but I'd jump at the
chance to do so. If I found myself feeling isolated from people, it would be
much preferable to go somewhere with my laptop for lunch rather than fighting
over the microwaves in the office kitchen every day.

------
akinalci
I enjoy working in an office environment because working in my home can be
isolating. But cubicles with low walls where I'm constantly seeing and hearing
my officemates is awful. Who thought this could possibly be a good idea for
work that requires focus?

Also, a year after moving to San Francisco to work for a team based in the
city, they relocated us to the South Bay. Now everybody on the team spends 3-4
hours daily commuting from SF/Oakland/Berkeley and it's awful.

I suspect these are the kinds of measures companies take when they want to
reduce their workforce without layoffs.

------
pklausler
So many companies require you to relocate to work for them, and then fail to
provide an acceptable office environment that allows concentration, so they
let you work from your (new) home. It's bizarre.

------
k__
I'm much happier since I started working remote.

I've never been the 9-5 office guy and my coworkers were always joking about
me not being in office before 10.

When I finally missed a promotion to head of development because the higher
ups said it can't be the 10-o-clock guy, I left the company and with it
employment in general.

As a contractor I can work from wherever I want, get paid much more per month
and can keep much more of it because of cheap private insurance and pension
funds.

I also can take as much holidays as I like.

I see my family and friends more often AND get more exiting new projects.

~~~
josho
This thread has been eye opening. I had always assumed companies seeking
remote employers were looking for cheap labor. Do you have any wisdom to share
for someone looking to make the switch to remote?

------
cliffy
I've had really good experiences working from home, and awful ones too. It
usually comes down to having a distributed-first mindset among the team and
management.

The ideal would be to have an office with a super short commute when I need a
change of scenery, but the option to work from home whenever I feel like it.

The requirement to sit your rear in a specific chair at a specific time is
pretty stupid when you can code anywhere you can carry your laptop.

------
HenryBemis
Not only for devs. I was working for a mega-big US company doing audit/sec and
90% of the time I was working from home, and it was the best thing!

------
JimboOmega
Having worked from home and on remote teams... I didn't like it as much as
working with others, because I never felt attached to the team.

A shocking amount (to me, anyway) of my motivation comes from caring about the
people involved in the organization... That attachment just doesn't form with
people I hear on the occasional conference call or daily slack messages.

------
jordanlev
So many comments in this thread are comparing working at the office vs.
working from home -- but there is a 3rd option, which is to rent your own
office! I do this, it's not very expensive (a few hundred dollars a month --
if I get 2 extra hours of productivity per month then it's paid for itself).

------
stuaxo
I always used to want to go into the office to give me structure. Recently I
worked with a client where the office was so loud it was impossible to get
stuff done.

The difference in productivity working quietly at home vs in an office with
loud music being composed and conversations being had across it was night and
day.

------
matz1
That's why I prefer open space office, because if I want privacy I can just
work at home or somewhere else. What's the point going to an office where i
will be in my own private space.

------
ryanmarsh
"working from home" aka "actually getting work done"

------
craigvn
I actually prefer working in the office. When at home there are too many
distractions, too easy to go to the shops (or driving range) or start working
on your own projects.

------
nebabyte
> For programmers, the ultimate office perk

will vary depending on which programmer you ask

------
jaequery
how about them phone meetings? i really dreaded them made me almost hate wfh

~~~
MadManE
It's not that it's a phone meeting. It's that it's a pointless meeting.

------
uncensored
Bose 35 noise cancelling headphones (or similar) should be provided to every
programmer who is required to work in an open office environment, and even for
remote programmers who have to work from coffee shops.

It's a hustle to find remote work at top pay, not impossible but harder than
getting top pay for onsite. When will that change?

I've been remote since August 2015, and it's been a challenge to keep getting
highly compensated remote work, but I managed it somehow.

------
douche
Any day I don't have to go to the office is a good day.

------
humbleMouse
There is a dirty secret that nobody talks about and the real reason that
companies want programmers in the office.

Companies want their top performers in the office so they can serve as
trainers/mentors/teachers to the new college kids and the incompetent older
people they hire.

I think this is the real reason companies crack down on working from home.
It's infuriating as a top performer - I just want to get my assigned work done
and leave it at that. I don't want to teach all your shitty college grads how
to actually code.

edit: I'm not against mentoring people and helping build teamwork, knowledge
sharing, etc. I'm just saying that an all out ban on WFH makes me feel like I
am sitting in an open office all day doing other people's assigned work.

I actually am very social and enjoy teaching and helping people. I just wish
it wasn't one extreme or the other - I can still mentor/knowledge share with
tools like WebEx.

edit2: I am a contractor who was recently banned from WFH. We used to have a
very lax WFH policy and it was great. Now I'm banned from WFH completely. The
article was discussing the merits of WFH policies, which I am commenting on.

~~~
grardb
This comment doesn't read like it was written by a "humbleMouse" :)

I don't think this is a healthy attitude to have towards less experienced
developers. Literally every experienced developer was once inexperienced, and
I think for the vast majority of people, it's hard to become a senior or even
intermediate developer without some mentorship along the way.

I believe this is especially true for aspects outside of writing code. This
probably isn't true at every company, but from where I've worked, a big part
of being a senior engineer is understanding how to tie in business goals to
development. That's not really easy to learn in a tutorial online or by
contributing to open source.

Anyway, I would just take caution when writing comments like this, and realize
that in order for our profession to live on, we need experienced people
mentoring inexperienced people. You were there once upon a time, and you
probably wouldn't have liked it if people called you a "shitty college grad"
and refused to help you out.

~~~
freehunter
I completely understand where he's coming from in writing that. Sometimes it
feels like my entire day is spent training new hires, repeating the same
things over and over again. In jobs where being an expert is a requirement,
it's very frustrating to see the company hire employees fresh out of college
and expect the senior employees to feed them 10 years of experience in a
matter of weeks. And then either they take that knowledge and leverage it into
a higher paying job or they get discouraged that they were hired for a job
they are woefully unprepared for (through no fault of their own) and they
leave. And then the company hires more college grads for pennies on the dollar
and the cycle repeats.

There's a real danger as a senior level employee that if you go out of your
way to mentor younger coworkers, you become the go-to training guy. Your
coworkers stop asking their peers or their manager for help and start asking
you directly. Other coworkers send the new hires directly to you so your
manager doesn't even see the amount of questions you're answering. And all the
while your actual workload isn't getting any lighter. And if you complain, you
look like an asshole. What kind of person won't help train new employees? Why
are you so anti-social? Why aren't you a team player? It's just one or two
questions here and there. And when it comes to performance reviews, your
mentoring counts for a hell of a lot less than the number of projects you
finished on time, so now when the company isn't doing so well, your output per
dollar is a heck of a lot lower than the people you trained, so you're out the
door. No one sees that the new employees never would have finished their
project without your help. Your name isn't on that checklist, it was _their_
project. What do you mean you helped? We gave you two weeks to train them, why
are they still coming to you for help? Did you not train them properly?

So either you get laid off, or you quickly realize that you have to start
turning away questions and mentoring. I love training new employees. But
that's not my job. My job is finishing projects. If mentoring gets in the way
of shipping, guess which one I'm going to drop first?

~~~
apathy
My god this sounds exactly like academia: your job as a professor at a
research university is to obtain grants, publications, and donations. Pretty
much everything else is incidental. "Service" to a department, to students,
etc. is "emphasized" in reviews, but if push comes to shove, the asshole with
a bunch of big grants is going to steamroll the "nice" junior faculty who
"mentors" the asshole's students. If you're teaching, preparing to teach, or
holding office hours, you're not writing grants or manuscripts. And the odds
are that everyone will say "thank you so much!!" as you get turned down for
tenure, UNLESS you managed to satisfy your true primary responsibilities so
efficiently as to leave time for the "fun" stuff (teaching, watching people
discover, blah blah)

There's a balance -- you can do more with more hands, and they need to be well
trained hands. But if they're not your direct reports, ultimately they're not
your problem. (This also means that you will need to be responsible for the
outcomes of those you mentor, and you'll need to learn how to let slow
learners go. Oh noes, you're becoming management! It's almost as if there's a
reason that good managers with domain expertise are hard to find.)

I guess it comes down to, are you going to be a "helpful" "mentor" or are you
going to accept formal responsibility for the success or failure of mentees
(vis-a-vis grants, contracts, successful projects, etc.)? Instead of being a
martyr, it seems that explicitly accepting or denying responsibility for
people who eat up your time (within reason) is the best long-term strategy.
You can still succeed without doing this, and you can still fail while doing
this, but the odds are in your favor if you demand accountability. (Also,
there's nowhere to hide if you aren't as good as you think you are; I think
that's a feature, rather than a bug, but opinions may vary.)

~~~
kamaal
Just like academia the onus of learning is on the individual in all settings.
The senior guy or the professor owes nothing to the junior folks or students,
if they themselves don't care.

The issue in a corporate setting is you are expected to make up for other
people. Same in college.

Sorry but almost all forms of failure have individual liability. Merely
knowing this helps a lot of people take their situation seriously and do
something about it.

~~~
cableshaft
Or lack of documentation/communication within the company.

When key information regarding how you're supposed to do this thing or where
that thing is located or how you're supposed to test Y, or how should this
particular bit that wasn't communicated in the user story but was talked about
in a meeting you weren't at be tackled, or whatever is locked inside people's
heads you need to consult with them to get that information out of there.

And yes having information locked inside of senior employees is a bad idea for
the company overall, but that's been the case to some extent at pretty much
every company I've worked for.

------
meritt
> I don't want to teach all your shitty college grads

humbleMouse's profile: "Mid-Twenties"

lol.

~~~
sctb
Please don't personally attack other users like this, no matter what they've
said. We detached this subthread from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14098242](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14098242)
and marked it off-topic.

~~~
meritt
I'd advise you to read the rest of the thread as the vast majority of the
responses were criticizing his vitriolic attitude, and based on the number of
upvotes my comment received, I'd argue a large percentage of the HN userbase
agreed with it.

~~~
dang
It doesn't matter how many people agreed with it—HN is a constitutional
democracy and some rules override upvotes. In this case, the rule is that you
shouldn't respond to a crappy comment (which that one was) with an even
crappier and less civil one.

~~~
meritt
I point out irony with the age of one user and somehow that's "even crappier"
and "less civil" than his comment which is ridiculing _every single college
graduate_ and "incompetent older people" as being useless and a waste of this
his time? Why was his comment not detached?

I think you and Scott need to re-evaluate your heavy-handed rules and consider
your direct role in enabling the entitled, elitist, and often misogynistic
attitudes that are so prevalent within the current tech culture. Instead of
allowing the community to let this user know that, hey, maybe you shouldn't
diminish every single person other than yourself, that maybe the problem
actually lies with himself? Someone needs to let these individuals know their
behavior is unacceptable, and you are in a unique position to achieve just
that: You could have detached his thread, but instead you choose to focus on
anyone criticizing him?

Instead you're providing this ridiculous protectionist world in which people
like him get away this attacking an entire class of people but as soon as
someone turns the tables on him, you swoop and provide protection? This is
pretty fucking ridiculous.

~~~
tomhoward
Please, what Dan and Scott are trying to do is promote civility. It's a hard
and thankless job. It's your choice to make it harder or easier for them.

They agreed with you that the comment you were replying to was inappropriate;
they just wanted you to be civil in pointing that out. If you look at their
comment feeds, that's what they consistently and tirelessly do, regardless of
the topic or ideology at hand.

 _I point out irony_

... but you did it in a personally pointed and uncivil way. That's what
matters here.

 _ridiculing every single college graduate_

The comment was overheated and crass, but it didn't actually say that.

 _Why was his comment not detached_

It was a root comment. Root comments can't get detached. But the comment is
ranked low in the thread.

 _I think you and Scott need to re-evaluate your heavy-handed rules_

From the guidelines and Dang and Scott's comment feeds, the rules are simple
and reasonable: be civil. Even in response to incivility.

They seem perfectly happy for people to call out bad behaviour in others - hey
it saves them from having to do it.

But they hate it when users go tit-for-tat and create a cascade of incivility,
as it diminishes the community for everyone and makes their job harder.

They're even happy getting suggestions from the community, but again, be civil
about it. Attacking them as being partly responsible for all the ills in tech
culture is a bit much, given their long history of relentlessly and earnestly
working to curtail incivility and bigotry in all its forms on this site.

But hey you got it right with this follow up comment:

 _maybe you shouldn 't diminish every single person other than yourself..._

That's very well said :)

But in all seriousness, you're getting outraged and taking things personally
when it would just make things better for everyone if you could be a bit
reflective and say "OK guys, fair cop, I'll try to do better next time".

------
draw_down
It's not really a perk. It comes with its own set of problems, friends.

~~~
zepolen
Your comment does not provide any value until you list the problems you have
found.

~~~
CydeWeys
Social isolation is a huge issue for me. When I spend multiple consecutive
days working from home I start to get mildly depressed. Going out at night
after a day of working from home doesn't fix it. I think it has to do with
what I'm used to from nearly two decades of schooling: socializing with and
being in the company of many other people during the daylight hours of
weekdays.

~~~
adrian1973
A stipend so remote workers can rent a desk at a coworking space would help
solve the socializing issue. It might sound crazy (or at least rare), but
renting a desk at a coworking space is probably far less expensive than
providing space and a desk and facilities at a company's own offices.

~~~
CydeWeys
That's definitely one solution, but at that point you're eliminating a lot of
the benefits of working from home. If I'm going to be commuting to a coworking
space anyway, why wouldn't I just commute to my actual office, and be
physically colocated with my actual coworkers rather than random people? I
should point out that my commute to work is only ten minutes one-way.

I suspect that the coworking space idea only works for people that are located
a long distance from the main office (potentially 1000s of kms), but have a
coworking space nearby.

