
My Biggest Takeaway on 37Signals’s New Book on Remote Work - jasonshen
http://www.jasonshen.com/2013/my-biggest-takeaway-on-37signalss-new-book-on-remote-work-hint-its-not-technology/
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chrissnell
I'm not a huge fan of remote work and I'll tell you why.

First, though, I'll tell you that I'm currently working remote for an SFO
startup and before that, I spent six years working remote for a large cloud
provider based in Texas. Before all of that, I was an on-site worker for the
first 14 years of my career.

I don't like remote work. It's not because I'm not efficient or don't get shit
done (I am and I do). My chief complaint about remote work is how it socially
isolates the worker. No matter how many Google Hangouts or morning standups
you do, you are losing out on a huge part of the social experience of working
onsite. One of the greatest things about working around smart people is the
chit-chat that you get by working right next to them. I'm talking about the
conversations you have on the way to lunch or standing around the soda
fountain. This stuff is spontaneous and fast-flowing and it's precious. As
much as I wish this could be replicated over IRC or IM, it just doesn't happen
that way. There's something magical about the conversation from four geeks
riding together in a car on the way to lunch.

The other aspect to social isolation is personal happiness and the desire that
most of us have to be in the presence of others. Over the last six years of
working remote, I've gotten really tired of being alone all the time. Working
from a busy coffee shop helps, but you're still not chit-chatting and you have
to contend with shitty Internet connections and poor security (pack up your
laptop to use the restroom, etc).

Working remote is not all that it's cracked up to be. It took me several years
of actually doing it to realize this. I love my job at this awesome company
but if I could work onsite and still have my family here with me, I'd do it in
a heartbeat.

~~~
jasonshen
I've never done remote so I'm totally asking because I'm curious: have you
ever tried working at a co-working space?

~~~
chrissnell
That's a good question. Yes, I've been wanting to do this for a while but I've
not found one in my city (Tacoma, WA) that meets my needs. We do have one and
when I toured it on a Tuesday in the early afternoon, it was almost deserted.
Definitely not the social place that I want. It might be worth taking the
train to Seattle on occasion to work at one of the great co-working places
there, which are more focused on startups, new tech, etc.

~~~
rhizome
If you were working in an office, wouldn't you be likely to be commuting into
Seattle? You could recreate that which you are lamenting.

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michaelt
One of the things I'm wary about, as someone who has a first-world standard of
living, is that if my employers think my job can be done over the internet
from 50 miles away, they think it can be done over the internet from 5,000
miles away in some country with lower costs of living.

Those of you who work remotely: How do you differentiate yourself, in the
employment market, from people in asia, eastern europe etc?

~~~
ryandrake
In other words, if your job can be done from home, it can be done from India.

People promoting a world where telecommuting is widespread better be careful
what they wish for.

~~~
YZF
Pretty much every big tech company already has an office in India so why does
this matter? The reality is the number of people in India who can compete for
your job is limited and their standard of living and salary will keep getting
higher. The other thing is that this is not a zero sum game. The demand for
software developers isn't constant. It keeps growing and the availability of
more developers will accelerate it's growth. Think of how much bad code is
written right now that will need a complete rewrite in two years ;-) or x10
people to maintain.

------
jusben1369
I still want to see a good argument against the startup notion that you have
to all come together and work as a team. That a close knit group of 5 - 50
people in a startup in one location has a competitive advantage (via constant
facetime) than a remotely built comparable startup. Every year the Bay Area
becomes more insanely expensive yet young devs and entrepreneurs still flock
there in droves.

~~~
fishtoaster
Even if you start from the premise that, for a given developer, that developer
contributes more locally than remotely, there's still a pretty good argument
for remote work: talent pool.

You can have a fair-to-middling programmer in the bay area locally, or the
best programmer in all of Michigan remotely. What you lose by not having
people locally you gain by having better people, in theory.

This applies to any locale as well. If you limit your search to only those
people within driving distance of your office, you're almost guaranteed to get
a lower caliber dev than if you were able to hire any dev in the world.

~~~
wensing
Most web apps are not that difficult to program. What needs the most
innovation in a startup is the business model. Communicating that locally is
hard enough. Remote? No thank you.

~~~
fishtoaster
When I said "best" programmer, I meant it more holistically. That's algorithm
skills, architecture skills, communication, ability to pick up new things,
culture fit, etc etc.

Put that all into an imaginary 1-100 rating: you can get a 60-70 programmer in
the bay area, or an 80-90 programmer remote. How many points does being local
make up for? That's a question specific to your company, but if it's less than
that difference in overall developer quality, remote may be a good call.

------
CaveTech
My workplace is kind of a weird fusion between old and new; Our development
side basically functions like a start-up, but development isn't our core
business.

While our office does allow things like remote work, my manager is definitely
has the mentality that if I'm not at work by 9AM sharp, I'm slacking off and
unprepared. I've also caught a decent amount of flack for not always bring a
pen and paper to meetings, as a lot of people seem dumbfounded that there's
other ways of taking notes.

I guess my main point is that traditional businesses still have a ton of
tradition and norms pressed against them by older generations. Sometimes I
have to keep up an absurd charade to keep clients or managers happy, even
though they provide no value, and sometimes even waste my time.

------
general_failure
It feels like we are focusing on the wrong things. It's not just about getting
things done. It's about having fun doing it. I cannot be happy working
remotely. I have worked alone for many years and I went back to proper
employment because I missed work place. I like working closely with like
minded people. I like dropping by people's offices and thinking out loud about
ideas and discussing on whiteboard. I like the energy of doing together.

I currently work in a team which is spread over 5 countries. It's honestly
quite miserable. I hate all the communication overhead and constantly
irritated when I cannot reach people in person in 2-3 hours.

------
poulsbohemian
I have nominally been a remote worker since 2006 - during some of that I've
been a road warrior, the past two years I've been predominantly at home. I've
hired and managed dozens of remote workers as well. To me the big advantages
are: 1) Good talent exists everywhere, so why limit where I can hire them? 2)
I have better equipment and working conditions at my home office than any
employer or customer site I've ever works at - thus, I am more productive. I
find cubicles and florescent lights, along with the constant disruptions of
offices to be killers on productivity. I recognize that many people want that
environment, but I really don't. My social life is outside the office as well,
so I can't even speak to that as being a boost of an office environment. Your
milage might vary, but for me, I won't ever work in a centralize office
environment or ask others to if I can avoid it. When I travel to meet with
customers, honestly I'm repulsed by the _lack_ of productivity I see in the
face time that is suppose to be a bolster. For example, when you aren't face-
to-face for hours at a time, it forces you to be more diligent at good
communication and choosing the right channel for communication. When you know
you can just lean over the cube wall or invite people to a conference room,
you are more likely to kill an hour of their day wasting time.

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jrochkind1
The author's "biggest takeaway" is "The shift to remote work will be driven by
Millenials"... and the author actually thinks they're recommending the book?

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DigitalSea
I think companies need to move past the whole "no remote working allowed"
thing. Old style management coupled with fear of procrastination are two
reasons many companies don't embrace remote working. If you have proper
management and metrics in place, it's easy to ensure remote workers are
hitting targets and putting hours in; source control, time management, Google
Hangouts/Skype for meetings, email. There is no excuse.

Marissa Meyer seems to be stuck in the old world of IT thinking herself. While
she's taken Yahoo! to a better place because of her leadership, Yahoo! have
lost a fair share of remote talent because of the rules she put in place
banning remote working. Tonnes of companies embrace it (Github for one) and it
opens up your recruitment opportunities 100 fold.

The only downside of remote workers is that they are separate from the core
physical team, so they don't nearly get close to enough opportunities to
partake in social bonding and that rapport you establish with your co-workers
getting to physically speak to them in the office and eat lunch with them.
Remote working means you are detached from the company culture which depending
on the place could either be a good or bad thing. If a job is just a job to
you and you are good at what you do, then this is hardly an issue.

~~~
RogerL
"core physical team"

What is that, in the context of remote work?

I worked remotely for 3 years at my last job. The lead lived half way across
the country from HQ, as did I, and as did the lead QA. More importantly, we
regularly traveled for different installations and tests, so today to talk to
Joe you were calling Texas, but week he'd be in NM, and so on. Meanwhile you
were on your own rotation. I perhaps exaggerate the amount of travel, as there
were plenty of times where most people were at HQ except for the permanent
remote workers, but the larger point is that it _had to work_ with no core
team in one place, because many times during the year there was no such beast.

It works.

~~~
DigitalSea
Core team as in people physically in the one location within the same time
zone who can solve problems in person. As someone who works for a company
where people are moving about it does work most of the time and quite well,
but the time zone differences can sometimes be frustrating when you need an
answer on something important the other person is sleeping.

I understand some places might not have a core team, but a lot of places do.
Sometimes it is required to have people you can physically talk to, Internet
connections can be unreliable as can Skype and syncing files across the
country or world can sometimes hinder progress if one or the other have slow
Internet connections.

------
LukeWalsh
I had a software internship after my freshman year of college that lead in to
working remotely while at school for the next 9 months.

I learned as much from that as I have from any internship, and it allowed me
to optimize my time. I would go whole weeks without working, and then spend an
entire weekend moving my project forward.

I completely agree that our generation will change the way we think about the
structure of our "work week."

~~~
alabut
The millennial thing might be a distraction from the main point about the
benefits of remote work. Some of the biggest taskmaster startup CEOs I've
worked for were twenty somethings, whereas I have other friends in their 30's
that have been working remotely for years. YMMV.

The best part about working remote is that it requires good teamwork because
nothing will get done without solid communication, whereas colocated teams
often skimp on process because they assume they'll make it up via adhoc
meetings instead.

------
bitL
I am firmly in the camp of remote work lovers.

It allowed me to travel around the world while working on world-class
engineering and mathematical problems, make artistic movies from my travel,
compose trendy music, get influences from outstanding random people I met,
collaborate, have unexpected fun, experience different cultures.

And this all while I am one of the fastest developers of my company, solving
some of the most difficult problems that come (inventive and creative
problems, not CRUD). Internal communication can be handled easily if people
understand and _trust_ each other. The unearned mistrust targeted towards high
performers and envy of less competent managers/coworkers is what is killing
corporations nowadays, not remote work.

I love to work alone (on deep analytical problems) as well as love to
collaborate with others in person or over Internet (putting pieces together
and having fun creating) - location doesn't matter nowadays anymore and if it
matters to you, you might end up behind the times as you won't be attractive
to many people, some of them invaluable.

------
h2s
When the first line of your article contains an Amazon referral link to buy
the book and make you a quick buck, how is anybody expected to take your
subsequent glowing praise of the book's contents seriously? Ending the post
with a quick disclaimer doesn't mitigate this loss of credibility.

~~~
karlmdavis
Using that logic, how could you possibly take the book itself seriously, since
the publisher isn't just giving it away for free?

------
MichaelTieso
After working remotely for several years, I actually look forward to going
back into the office and connecting with others. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad
if a co-working space was available to me but I find that I really need people
around me to communicate and interact with every so often.

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henrik_w
"I remember working on a number of student groups at Stanford where we might
have had meetings once a week for an hour or two where we’d talk about what
needed to get done, and then actually did the work on our own..."

It sounds like the weekly meetings were in person, which makes sense. When you
figure out _what_ to do, and maybe _how_ to do it, face-to-face is very
valuable. In software development, there is a lot of this kind of decision-
making. Actually implementing what you have decided doesn't require
collaboration as much, so then remote is fine.

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MarkMc
"In today’s economy, the quest for talent is so great that organizations can
no longer afford to merely look at individuals co-located in their physical
presence"

Is that true? Isn't it more important for the talent pool to have a high ratio
of good to bad applicants? If I add 'you can work remotely' to a job
description will it mean I have to wade through twice as many poor applicants
before I find a good one?

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Sukotto
Lately I've been thinking a lot about finding remote work and have just posted
an _Ask HN_ about it.

Would love to hear about people's experiences:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6709601](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6709601)

