Although sometimes optimising somebody's individual productivity gets in the way of optimising the productivity of the company as a whole.
That's the real rub. It's entirely possible that the Right Thing To Do - from the perspective of the firm - is the do something other than what is most optimal for the individual. Sp, as a lot of us geeks tend to be fairly individualistic, and because it can be hard to isolate the variables when you're talking about team productivity, a lot of us fall on the side of "optimize for the individual."
As somebody who's radically individualistic, and who is also a startup founder, I find myself torn on the idea of whether or not it even makes sense to have an office, or whether it makes sense to push for a completely distributed team.
I'm getting a bit of a real-world experiment with these issues now, as my $DAYJOB has me in Chicago for a 6 month consulting gig and my co-founders are back in the RTP area. We use email and IM heavily now... but we had an in-person "hack day" last weekend when I was home, and there was definitely value in all 3 of us being in the same room, huddled up together.
I'm leaning towards thinking firms probably should have offices, and that most people should be in the office at least part of the time. But I would take a pretty laissez-faire approach towards it, I think. Provide offices, but give people fairly unlimited freedom to work remotely or come into the office as they see fit.
I'm leaning towards thinking firms probably should have offices, and that most people should be in the office at least part of the time. But I would take a pretty laissez-faire approach towards it, I think. Provide offices, but give people fairly unlimited freedom to work remotely or come into the office as they see fit.
That sounds like a good idea.
I'd maybe consider running some experiments too. See what happens when you have everybody work in the office for a month. See what happens if you have everybody working remotely for a month. I've had clients try things like that and be surprised by the results.
Although sometimes optimising somebody's individual productivity gets in the way of optimising the productivity of the company as a whole.
You need to figure out where the bottlenecks are before you know the right place to optimise :-)