
Ask HN: Is any tool lacking for more companies embrace remote work? - soneca
I know there is a work culture in the way too, but aside from that, what kind of tool (if any) would make more companies decide to try remote work?
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alistairSH
The first hurdle isn't tool or tech-related; it's management. They need to buy
in. If they don't, remote work won't work.

About half my team is remote, and that's not uncommon for my division. We use
Slack for collaboration. It was rolled out recently - prior to Slack, it a mix
of (lots of) email and Skype. We use BlueJeans for larger meetings.

For day-to-day work, this all works well. But, it's also ingrained in the
culture - we've had many remotes for a long time.

For new project kick-offs, especially greenfield dev, it makes sense to bring
the remotes into the office for a week or more. I've done this three times now
over the past 5 years. It fosters a sense of team and also allows easy white-
boarding and fast/effective collaboration.

All my remotes are within an hour +/\- time zone and a short flight away
(office near DC, remotes in Carolinas and Mid-West). Teams spread across
continents introduce more problems.

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savethefuture
My companies biggest concern is ensuring that people are still working while
at home, when in the office they have the ability to walk around and see that
you are at your desk. While it is still possible to be working on other things
besides work, they at least see you are in the office and in front of your
computer. When at home they've said in the past "We dont know if you're really
working". For my position remote work would work great, if I dont have code to
show for, I'm getting fired, but other positions in the company have a problem
"proving" work I guess. So it comes down to a lack of trust and guarantee that
people are still working while outside the office.

~~~
BjoernKW
That's another problem with cargo cult work today: Work is commonly measured
in time wasted instead of value created.

The reason for this is that when it comes to work society is still largely
caught in Taylorism / assembly line thinking. When you had to maximise the
output of an assembly line measuring work in terms of time made sense. With
office / white collar / knowledge work this management approach simply breaks
and it has been broken for decades: Mock work, people pretending to "work"
while in reality they're only butts in seats is a widespread phenomenon that
not only impairs productivity but mental and physical health as well.

It shouldn't matter how much time you spend on a task as long as it gets done
before the deadline and you're available for others to ask questions or give
feedback. The current system favours those who are less productive. It also
favours those who've learned to game the system.

There are saner, more reasonable approaches to assessing work such as results-
only work environments and value-based pricing. It's about time we adopt
approaches like these instead of relying on 200 year old cargo cult management
methods.

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31reasons
Eye contact, Face-to-Face meetings, shared space, white boards. I think next
generation VR will be a tipping point for remote work.

~~~
jpindar
What exactly are we going to be seeing with VR that we can't see on a regular
monitor now?

~~~
GFischer
The success of the Microsoft Surface Hub shows that regular web meetings have
a long way to go yet:

[https://convergenttechblog.com/2016/12/22/the-microsoft-
surp...](https://convergenttechblog.com/2016/12/22/the-microsoft-surprise-
surface-hit-of-the-year-the-surface-hub/)

Comments here are enlightening:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13166032](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13166032)

 _Its a product that finally got almost everything right when it comes to a
digital whiteboard. And yes to another point that was raised here certainly
integration with Mircosoft services was a plus. Its great to have a computer
interface that is remote on half the board and white board interface on the
other. You can mock up while you have the specs inches away from your face on
a huge screen so everyone in the room can read and interact. The skype
integration kills it as well; there 's been a number of times I've seen teams
huddled around the board mocking things up with one or two people remote._

