
Workplace flexibility is the way to win the war for talent - Mz
https://venturebeat.com/2017/08/20/workplace-flexibility-is-the-way-to-win-the-war-for-talent/
======
koliber
I find this to be more and more important the more experienced I get. At some
point, I had a poignant realization. I work to earn money. I then use the
money to provide for myself & my family, to buy things and experiences, and to
build a safety net. I do these things to have a relatively stressless, happy,
and fulfilling life.

If I just maximize for cash earned, I need to compensate for other things. I
want to maximize free time and minimize commute. I have errands to run and
things to do. Having flexible work, with a work from home option is worth more
to me than making more money. Otherwise, I need to spend more on an apartment
close to the office. A more expensive car can make a commute more bearable. I
value peace and quiet, and city living is at odds with this. Reconciling all
this while working a 9-5 at a central office in the city costs a lot of money.

I currently work at 15Five, where "Embrace Freedom & Flexibility" is one of
our core values. We actually are active in living this and our other core
values. You can feel the effect directly. I have spent a lot of time thinking
about this, and arrived at the same conclusion as this article.

~~~
GoToRO
I agree with you. The question then becomes: if you achieved this level of
performance, isn't it better to work for yourself rather than work for
somebody who all the time undervalues your performance? Isn't it better in the
long run to build a product that might need minimum level of attention once
it's done?

~~~
stult
That depends on your risk tolerance, though. Self-employment, especially the
entrepreneurial kind, inherently has a higher risk of failure. Sure, you might
win big and build a self-sustaining business that earns you a tidy living, but
then again you might also go bankrupt and lose everything because you can't
pay your bills.

~~~
BjoernKW
Is self-employment really so much riskier than sequential employment? With the
latter if you're laid off you instantly lose all your income. As a self-
employed consultant / freelancer if you lose a customer who quite likely still
have other customers, which mitigates the overall risk.

~~~
mmcconnell1618
I wouldn't say riskier, just more churn. Higher highs and lower lows but you
can probably extract more value because there is no middle man (i.e. an
employer).

However, one significant risk is losing out on promotions and status if you
ever want to return to the corporate world. Seniority is often measured in
"time in seat" and taking 10 years off to build your own business can make it
harder to jump right back in at a level you'd expect.

The other risk is the stress of uncertainty. At a corporate gig you get a
paycheck every two weeks like clockwork. The moment that pattern ends, panic
ensues and the company is gone. When you work for yourself you have to be
responsible for ensuring the paycheck is there. Quite often freelance work can
be feast or famine. You may get a bigger payday than you ever expected one
month but prepare because the next month might not bring in a dime.

~~~
tome
> At a corporate gig you get a paycheck every two weeks like clockwork.

Which country is that? I've only ever heard of monthly salaries for
professionals.

~~~
ianleeclark
United States. I've had every payment system from once a month (while working
at a Unviersity), to the 1st and 15th of every month (small company in
Austin), to every 2 weeks (Much bigger company in Wisconsin).

------
fogetti
Give me clear goals which are measurable, and I will get things done either
remotely or on-site. It doesn't matter which one. This is a win-win situation
because my manager can track my progress based on the previously setup
measurements. And to achieve this, location is irrelevant.

Things usually start turning south when managers just simply demand speed. Or
eagerness. Or dedication. Or other bullshit which has no relevance regarding
any specific task.

These are the cases which brilliantly show the lack of management skills.
These are the kind of little men who demand you to be at the office all time.
You can call them control freaks, or micro-management fetishists. It doesn't
matter. These people just show one thing with their behaviour: that they don't
trust their subordinates.

~~~
bluGill
That is technically true, but you do NOT want clear goals though. Clear goals
are for junior "code monkeys" who just do what they are told without any
concern for if they are going the right thing.

If you want input into your work and the feeling that you are actually doing
the right thing you need to have the context around your goals. Your physical
presence in the offices lets you take part in "water cooler" and "hallway"
conversations with various people.

Yes you can do some of that via email, forums, and the like. However the human
factor of your presence changes the tone of the conversation. It isn't just
you either, the other person(s) involved.

When you have a short, critical, task that needs to be done fast, then staying
home without a phone or email is the best way to get it done fast. However for
anything else communication is an important part of your job and physical
presence aids that.

That isn't to say remote work cannot - it does. However there are real
disadvantages to it that need to be considered.

~~~
fogetti
And what would be those disadvantages? You listed things which you think are
supporting the arguments to be present in the office. But one argument which
is supporting on-site presence, doesn't make it automatically an argument
against working remotely.

And you are basically trying to put words in my mouth. I didn't say a word
that I will do what I am told without concern. That's only your implication.

Correct me if I am wrong, but you imply that because requirements are usually
unclear: that means that clear goals are undesirable. Does that sound logical
to you? Because to me that's a big no-no. I only saw people pushing this kind
of mentality who like to fish in troubled waters and enjoy the mess to take
advantage of it for their own sake (i.e. climbing corporate ladders).

And let me highlight one thing: if I am supposed to clear things up and
organize my work, than what is my manager supposed to do? In this world that
you imagined there is no role for a manager IMO. And that would be pretty much
fine with me. It's just far from reality.

I won't subscribe to the idea that the office is a rainbow colored fairytale.
I am coming from the exact opposite direction of thinking.

~~~
lloeki
"Clear goals" can have different levels of abstraction. Junior code monkeys
may need finely grained detailed steps while climbing the technical,
architectural or management ladder will make your goals more abstract as they
encompass greater breadth and depth, yet them not being any less clear. "Steer
team to deliver product A in 3 months with top quality" or "provide analysis
of strange crash events P, Q, R that appear to be vaguely related and
originate in lib K, and propose possible short-term mitigation tactics as well
as systemwide refactoring strategies to reduce or remove dependency on
regularly problematic but heavily used lib K within a mid-term timeframe, and
we'll talk about your conclusions in two weeks" can be just as clear to some
people as "implement method foo doing X according to spec point Y.Z by the end
of the day" is to others.

~~~
lliamander
This is true. However, I think at the highest levels of autonomy is when
people actually get to define what their goals are[0].

That is not to say that it cannot be done remotely. In fact, in most large
tech organizations, the highest autonomy positions will almost certainly
entail a lot of remote collaboration (with customers, sales, suppliers,
support, remote engineering teams, etc.). However, the more autonomy one is
granted, the more _context_ one needs to make the correct decisions. Context
requires access to high-signal information sources (i.e. relationships with
the right people). Being in the office is a good way to discover those
information sources.

You also have to make yourself highly visible. You can certainly do that while
being remote, but there is more conscious effort involved.

[0] [https://rkoutnik.com/2016/04/21/implementers-solvers-and-
fin...](https://rkoutnik.com/2016/04/21/implementers-solvers-and-finders.html)

------
shearnie
I'm currently working remote and took the job over an on-premises gig in the
big smoke.

It's a 200 pay cut per day.

However factoring in expenses in fuel and parking and car wear, and the 10
hours of time lost commuting per week. I'm counter-intuitively better off by
the equivalent 200 per day.

Reason being my time spent NOT commuting is invested in my bootstrapped
startup. If I had to commute, I was essentially earning money by sitting in
traffic rather than coding, which had to be spent to an offshore developer
while I'm in a car instead of at my machine. So that including expenses in
commuting will erode my net income. Not to mention the stress and health and
mental performance impact commuting does to you. Sitting in traffic,
cognitively processing the driving, finding a car park, walking ten minutes
from a car park to premises.

My motivation and energy is sapped by the time I'm in the office. And more so
by the time I get home.

Prior to this I was doing the commute to make sure the boss sees me gig for a
year and compared to now, the difference in performance I notice is
remarkable.

~~~
timje1
I can't remember the exact details, but I remember there being a British study
that found that cutting an hour a day off your commute increases your
happiness more than a ~30% payrise (figures misremembered).

If you've gotten back two hours a day, that's a massive quality of life
improvement!

------
dalbasal
The problem with conversations like these.....

If you're going to be talking about "HR issues" out in the open, you can only
say certain things. Things people like. The " _skeptics of completely virtual
organizations_ " or opponents of flextime, increased holidays, work-life
balance, on-site childcare, employee empowerment, higher pay.... they can't
exactly blog about it and get an applause. But clearly, they still set the
agenda.

I want those things like everyone else does. I'm also pretty sympathetic to a
lot of the arguments that they are good for business. But, we can't have a
discussion when only one side speaks. I am somewhat skeptical about an
existing large company virtualizing itself without major teething issues. I
know very little about these thing, so who cares..

Anyway, where's the CEO blog on "why I make everyone work 9-5." or "never
allow anyone to work from home." I know you're out there. Speak your piece!

~~~
BjoernKW
The reason why there's no one publicly taking that position is that an honest
argument perhaps wouldn't exactly be favourable to the person making that
argument.

"I'm a petty control freak who needs to constantly supervise his subordinates
in order to feel valuable."

Well, good for you sir!

The only arguments against remote work I keep hearing are the quite hazy "Face
time is better." and "Water cooler talk is valuable." ones. Nobody making
those arguments seems to be willing to substantiate them, though:

Why exactly is face time better? If it is certainly it should be sufficient to
just occasionally have people talk face to face, shouldn't it? Then why have
everyone in the same office every time, all the time?

If creative, serendipitous talk only happens around the proverbial water
cooler you might have a deeper problem with the communication flows in your
organisation. Perhaps information silos are your real problem in that case.

I think that reluctance towards remote work often points to more fundamental
issues within an organisation.

~~~
gervase
I would also say in some cases, it's because their arguments are based on
things people don't like to acknowledge.

"I require my workers to be in the office because if I don't constantly ride
them, they will be on Facebook/Reddit/etc. all the time instead of working.

This is due to hiring second-string developers that I can pay less than self-
motivated superstars.

I have consciously made this decision because I can extract more useful work
for less money out of a larger team of underpaid developers than I can from a
happy, higher-paid, but much smaller team."

Obviously this business model depends on the market, product, etc. but
regardless of all of that, NO one in this scenario consciously wants to
confront this, because it just makes everyone feel depressed.

~~~
s73ver_
They might not be able to hire that team of self-motivated superstars. Let's
face it, some 95% of software development is likely boring, run of the mill
CRUD stuff or similar. Those self-motivated superstars are going to gravitate
toward companies where they can do interesting and novel things, regardless of
the pay (those places do generally pay well, usually).

------
trevyn
"If conversely you capped the salary of computer programmers, we would expect
a flood of companies competing with every possible other amenity they were
allowed to offer and managers being very _very_ polite to computer
programmers. (In fact this _does_ happen with relatively better computer
programmers, which tells us that something is bounding the salaries of top
programmers underneath their purely financial equilibrium.)"

~~~
stult
It's only their preferences that are bounding their salaries in those cases.
At some point, a polite manager is worth more than X more in compensation. The
type of person who becomes a top programmer tends to value being in an
environment conducive to being a better programmer, because that's how you get
to be among the best. So many naturally tend to value productivity enhancing
perks more than comp at the upper end.

~~~
HelloNurse
>It's only their preferences that are bounding their salaries in those cases.
At some point, a polite manager is worth more than X more in compensation.

A good boss isn't a benefit that can be awarded or revoked by the company.
Sometimes money isn't enough to induce employees to remain in a bad
environment or leave a good environment for a bad one, but normally a decent
manager is expected and taken for granted, and if salaries are "bounded" below
market that employer is dead meat.

~~~
bruxis
I just want to note the caveat here that an extremely polite boss is by no
means guaranteed to be a good boss.

------
durgiston
I personally don't get the love for working at home/remote. I HATE working at
home. To me, home is home and work is work. I don't want to mix them, and I
feel awful when I have to stay home all day, or don't get to interact casually
with my coworkers. Its just so depressing to be alone all the time.

That being said, a bad office environment is definitely a turn off, and at
this point in my career free lunch and the ilk isn't that much of a perk
anymore. I want reasonable hours, decent vacation and health-insurance, and a
big income.

~~~
joeax
I work with a guy just like you, and I think that's great. Some people are
natural extroverts, and love the interactions and water cooler conversations
that come with that personality type.

Just don't drag me into the office just because that's your personal
preference. I will be miserable and looking for a new job.

~~~
adrianmonk
It's not necessarily about introversion and extroversion. I'm a natural
introvert, and I also have working at home. I want a strong, clear boundary
between work and personal activities. It's not so much about being in an
office; it's about being a place that isn't home.

~~~
joeax
You need a home office for your own sanity, this much is true. I found this
out the first year when the kids were out of school. Many others I've talked
to also found satisfaction in co-working centers.

------
danieltillett
There is another alternative which is the moneyball approach [1]. Identify
those people overlooked because they don’t meet the current fashionable ideal
and hire on the basis of what they can actually produce.

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

~~~
sgift
First step would be to find a good way to evaluate peoples performance.
Progress at that front seems to be ... very slow.

~~~
danieltillett
Measuring performance is not hard. What is hard is estimating future
performance at the hiring stage.

One area that could be worked on is dealing with “difficult” people. At the
moment most managers are not really incentivised to hire for performance, but
they are certainly incentivised at a personal level to hire people who do as
they are told and don’t make waves. Most managers would prefer a 0.1x person
who was pleasant to manage than a 10x person who made their life difficult.

~~~
humanrebar
Measuring performance is very hard. Some very productive employees are great
until they leave for another opportunity. Then team productivity grinds to a
halt because they never optimized for maintainability or learnability of their
code and systems.

You could blame the 10X dev. But it's fair to say that there isn't much talk
about how to quantify those kinds of concerns.

~~~
majormajor
> Measuring performance is very hard. Some very productive employees are great
> until they leave for another opportunity. Then team productivity grinds to a
> halt because they never optimized for maintainability or learnability of
> their code and systems.

It's not that hard to see that your codebase is a mess.

Even if you have no ability to judge the codebase and systems yourself,
extreme case, spin that super-productive person up on an independent side
project for a few weeks or months and see how the rest of the team grapples
with things.

There are a lot of parts of management that aren't hard, but are annoying and
potentially unpleasant - if you realize this dev is much less valuable to the
long term health of your systems than you thought, that could lead to
difficult decisions and a tricky mentoring situation - so they get ignored
because managers are either too lazy, "too nice," or just too oblivious.

------
SirLJ
Once you cross into the 6 digit salary territory, free lunches and similar
gimmicks are not going to cut it anymore... the only thing that keeps me in my
current company is the working from home factor and all the perks it entitles
like no traffic, home gym, after lunch naps, swimming at 17:00, etc

------
gedrap
Just treat adults as adults, show a little bit of trust.

I don't like strict schedules, where you have to just sit through the required
number of hours, or show up at some specific time for no reason (i.e. it does
not affect other people). Don't force people to sit in a crammed open space
office, all day every day, no matter the weather and other factors, because
'collaboration' or whatever. Commuting to the office when it is -20C
definitely sucks. If someone wants to setup their ideal working environment at
home - perfect, win win. Most of the time it doesn't even cost much.

Sure, making it work requires some effort from both parties. But it's too
often ruled out for no reason (or some BS reason).

I made this switch and that's one of the best things that happened to my
quality of life.

------
wslh
Flexibility was always our "secret" but even if we have people working
remotely we prefer people who work at our offices. Few cabdidates are ready
and responsible to work remotely. This is our experience.

So our other flexibility method is time. Most developers work 6 hours per day
and that works.

~~~
9to5isdead
Given someone who is ready and responsible to work remotely, which would you
prefer, office based or remote based? I feel as though writing off remote work
due to the performance of someone not able to work remotely is a bit unfair.

I am full time remote, and the hours per day I can work range between a couple
of hours and a dozen. So long as the work is done and the clients are happy,
that's what matters. The main thing is self-discipline, having the self-
discipline to get the work done and to provide top quality work. You have the
flexibility to choose your best working space, working hours, and working
style, so go and produce your best work.

~~~
wslh
I prefer to work and interact with people face to face than work remotely. It
is great that technology enabled us to work everywhere and have the
flexibility to continue working outside the office but I feel alienated when I
don't interact with people in a more human compatible way.

------
snarfy
When they won't let me adjust my subs pay, this is about the only thing I can
give them. I don't care what hours they work or where they work as long as
they get their work done. They need to attend meetings but video conferencing
is always used.

------
vlokshin
This is important but so difficult. I'm one of the co-founders at
Turtle(dot)ai. We have no problem attracting amazing developers who want total
remote flex and to work 10-30 hours per week across different projects.

We absolutely have a hurdle with convincing most companies that output =
output and that remote work is ok. Companies still put an unreasonable amount
of value on butt-in-seat, 9-5 work.

Why? How can we get hiring managers and companies past this?

We try to convince with logic. We show what companies spend on hiring their
own devs (20K+ hiring cost, 10-20K/mo salary). Startups tend to go hire-crazy
after raising, but it's rare that they need to go 0 to 1 with full-time, local
hiring. Going remote can save them a ton (on hourly and on not paying a salary
for someone to twiddle their thumbs or show up before a boss does).

Our "easy way out" is to find companies who are already remote friendly. I
remain convinced that this is a cultural hurdle we'll get over, but I'd be a
liar if I told you I had timing perfectly predicted.

------
pascalxus
If there's such a huge war for talent, then why don't those employees have
more bargaining power? Last I checked on glassdoor, salaries for SE are way
below living costs in the bay area. And the vast majority of SE don't even
have enough bargaining power to leave the bay area and work remotely. I
strongly suspect, the "war for talent" is a huge myth, or perhaps, isolated to
small specialties. I've worked for a company in the bay area that had huge
growth and taken part in much of the hiring. We seemed to have more than
enough talent available - so much so, we were actually turning some of it
away. If anything, the problem was more - being able to recognize talent and
hire it, rather than lack of supply.

~~~
exolymph
Glassdoor is not a random sample.

------
RealityNow
This is why I never understood the obsession with working for the big
prestigious corporations like Google and the unicorns. As far as I'm aware,
they don't allow remote work and working from home without an excuse correct?

~~~
ThePawnBreak
> This is why I never understood the obsession with working for the big
> prestigious corporations like Google and the unicorns.

Money.

~~~
RealityNow
Factor in cost of living in the bay area and it's not quite as glamorous as it
sounds

~~~
ulucs
Oh come on. Sure, as I live in Middle East my rent might be 450$/month but
after you consider that I'm paid 5$/hr, I'd gladly take 60k/yr (which is very
low end) even if my rent and other expenses quintupled

~~~
RealityNow
It's all relative. I'm just saying that someone who's talented enough to get a
job at Google could probably land a cushy remote gig and live somewhere dirt
cheap, saving more money and enjoying a higher quality of life.

~~~
ThePawnBreak
At Google, it is completely not out of the ordinary to make 300k a year as a
senior, or 200k after 2-3 years with the company. To get a remote job making
that is orders of magnitude more difficult.

Also, nobody wants to hire junior remote people, so if you go to MIT it's
either 160k at Google or 40k remote. Maybe after 4 years at Google someone'll
be willing to pay you 50% of what you make there, but you don't really want to
move away after being in a place for 4 years to get a remote job and be
completely depended on your employer.

I'm from Eastern Europe and I tried to get a remote job before emigrating. I
applied to dozens of places and could only get an interview at one company
that was paying about 25k because Eastern Europe is cheap anyway. Was rejected
for lack of experience. Got a job in Western Europe for 4x more.

In addition, the are many many interesting things to work on at Google and
smart people to learn from, whereas the few remote jobs that exist are mostly
making CRUD is the web framework du jour.

tl;dr There is almost no market for remote devs.

------
joeax
Hopefully, more employers are waking up to this reality. I'd bet there are
thousands of devs out there willing to take a pay cut for the opportunity to
work at home full time, some who have confided this to me personally. It
actually makes financial sense too.

The true cost of commuting: [http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-
true-cost-of-c...](http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-
commuting/)

------
nradov
While workplace flexibility is a good idea in general, this article is based
on a false premise. Business isn't war, and there is little evidence that
"talent" even exists as a specific quality.

[http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/07/22/the-talent-
myth](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/07/22/the-talent-myth)

------
gerbilly
In most jobs you are being paid for a blend of:

\- Skills and abilities.

\- Availability.

In workplaces where facetime is valued, they are maximizing availability.

Sometimes this can be legitimate, since you do have to collaborate with others
and be available to answer questions etc.

However in my experience those workplaces which are obsessed with availability
tend to be disorganized firefighting organizations that operate in an in 'all
hands on deck' style.

------
cseanmccoy
I think rather than choosing one over the other a company has to find a
balance. While working remotely offers employees flexibility whether it's the
ability to manage different branches in different locations or as the article
suggests a "reward," there's still value in human to human interaction.
Digital means of communication offers instant service, it's mostly
transparent, and there's limited chance of miscommunication or forgetting
directives as the log of messages provides users with a written history of the
conversation. At the same time, working collaboratively in an office of fellow
employees yields to an established vernacular. Workers are acquainted with
other workers styles, methods and tricks for business. There's more learning
opportunities, I believe available for same place working, because a team of
people are experiencing the same challenges in real time.

------
Corrado
Thinking about it more carefully, I value working at different times or not
even a contiguous time range. Sometimes I get up at 4AM and have all kinds of
good ideas and am ready to go. In fact, I would probably get more done in 24
hours if I could break it up into 3-4 parts. This type of schedule is
difficult, if not impossible, to achieve by going into the office.

I really like being around (most of) my coworkers and would probably feel left
out if I worked from home all the time. That's why I really like the
flexibility to work from any location at any time. If only I could convince
the bosses that me not being in my desk, or answering chat/email questions
right away, was the best way for me to work I would be happy. Hmmm... now I
know what to ask in my next job interview. :)

------
pklausler
It's not remote vs on-site for best performance from engineers, it's nice and
quiet vs distracting. An open office jam-packed with noise makes remote work
look way more attractive.

------
AndrewKemendo
We're a 100% remote company, and you would probably not be surprised at the
extreme level of push back we've gotten from VC's about that, to the point
where it's the reason they won't invest.

Now, that might be a BS excuse on their part, but in many cases I know it's
not.

There are many many benefits to being a remote company, but it does take a
particular kind of person to make it work. The best people for remote tend to
be older and more highly skilled in my experience.

------
audiolion
This article seems loosely based on ideas from the Dropbox blogpost on open
offices [0]. The connection being the mention of employers offering all kinds
of perks and more office space or private space never is one of them, that it
could be a useful perk to attract talent.

[0] Is the open office layout dead? -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15060623](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15060623)

------
Arelius
Rad, where is our flexible work conference/meetup? I guess we'd want to do
that remotely? Scheduling might still be difficult.

------
xchaotic
DHH from 37signals / basecamp agrees with that. I just wonder what happens
when there is enough flexible companies offering similar terms. I guess it's
back to square one then?

~~~
baxtr
Sure. Then the next level will start and we will have achieved a great
milestone. The way I see it though is that we are quite some time away from
that point. (Unfortunately)

------
akshay1938
Rightly said

------
tweedledee
If you can't find people of talent then you're not paying enough.

I quit working because I couldn't get paid more than $300K working for someone
else despite the fact that I make my employers way way more than that. I quit
to do my own startup and made a ton of money. I'm now retired way too young.
I'd love to go back to work because I like having a big impact on people's
lives but now I'd need at least $500K to break even on taxes if I moved back
to the US and no one is paying that for me.

~~~
ghostbrainalpha
Can you explain what is involved in "Having to make $500k, just to break even
on taxes"? I can't wrap my head around it. Are you currently living somewhere
that does not tax investment income?

~~~
tweedledee
I live in a Caribbean Tax haven which is zero tax. I'm comparing that to SF
which is high tax.

