14 ms·

Working remotely is excellent. 1.5 hours less commuting - that's more time to get work done or go to the gym or read the news. No one can come to my desk to soc

by dplgk 11y ago

Working remotely is excellent. 1.5 hours less commuting - that's more time to get work done or go to the gym or read the news. No one can come to my desk to socialize or ask a quick question to fuck up my flow. No one requiring me to arrive at an office at an arbitrarily early time. No dress code. No ad hoc meetings in the conference room. Listening to music I like aloud. All conf calls done on speaker. I'm home to receive any deliveries. I could go on.

usaphp 11y ago
Eating home cooked food fresh instead of microwaving it
- mod 11y ago
  My house has a microwave, and I get good use of it!
- askafriend 11y ago
  I love the microwave though.
  - cxseven 11y ago
    Microwaving cooks food without generating as much carcinogenic char as other methods, so it can actually be healthier. Relatedly, freezing is the healthiest way to preserve and transport fruits and vegetables. It also allows them to be harvested when naturally ripe, rather than artificially ripened.
    - compumike 11y ago
      Alternatively, use something like https://www.pantelligent.com/ https://www.pantelligent.com/ (disclosure: co-founder / engineer) so you can control cooking temperatures. This lets you get delicious browning without the non-tasty and non-healthy burnt "char" bits. Edit: sales team just added coupon code T2F8NB9UBC for HN readers! [expires 11/16 at 11:59pm PT]
      - bluehawk 11y ago
        Why can't I find out how much it costs without giving you my email?
      - pil4rin 11y ago
        yourmom@gmail.com delivered this info Pantelligent Pantelligent is the ultimate kitchen tool that helps you cook better food with step-by-step directions and real-time temperature feedback. You’ll also get access to Pantelligent’s FREE app available for iPhone, iPad and Android packed with deliciously smart recipes to try out at home. 60-Day Money-Back Guarantee If you are not fully satisfied for any reason, just return your device for a full refund within 60 days, no questions asked. We'll even cover return shipping! IN STOCK $199 with Free US Shipping Add to Cart Free US shipping. 1-year limited warranty.
      - kevinqiu1 11y ago
        Only comes in non-stick? That's no bueno.
    - byoung2 11y ago
      Microwaving cooks food without generating as much carcinogenic char as other methods, so it can actually be healthier. Since the microwave is often used for reheating food that was cooked with these other methods, there's often no advantage.
      - cxseven 11y ago
        Sure, and it's often used to heat up things like Hot Pockets. For this reason and scary radiation, the microwave is heaped with undeserved disrepute. This is unfortunate for another big reason: it's one of the most convenient ways for a single person to cook a small amount of healthy food. Many people are under the impression that healthy cooking requires warming up the stove/oven and dirtying pans, so they give up and eat processed food. There ought to be more awareness of recipes for the microwave. Many restaurants are using them to good effect.
        byoung2 11y ago
        My point was that if I fry or BBQ something and then later reheat it in the microwave, the damage was already done, so the fact that the microwave is safe does me no good. I agree that the microwave is a cleaner way to cook vegetables, for example.
    - dalore 11y ago
      Call me when a microwave can create the tasty maillard reaction that's needed for so many foods. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction
      - cxseven 11y ago
        There's this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convection_microwave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convection_microwave , but I'd rather stick to flavoring my food in some way other than generating a bunch of carcinogens like acrylamide.
- tootie 11y ago
  And using your own private bathroom.
  - workitout 11y ago
    Forgot about that, it's wonderful to be able to use my own bathroom instead of thinking about which co-workers sat on the toilet before me or did they have a contagious disease, etc.
- tmlee 11y ago
  Access to kitchen is golden. You can steam, stir fry, use conventional oven, all great options to a healthy meal.
jcroll 11y ago
> No one can come to my desk to socialize Yeah who would want that? I've done both and both have their pros and cons, socializing is definitely a perk and introvert or extrovert should not be underestimated in keeping you healthy and happy and a skilled professional.
- vogt 11y ago
  You answered your own question. An introvert would not want that. You can force your standards of what makes someone a "happy and skilled professional" on them if you like, but that's not always a case grounded in reality.
  - lojack 11y ago
    As an introvert, I like a little bit of socialization throughout my day. Too much is certainly draining, but if I worked from home I would become a hermit and have an unhealthy amount of socialization.
    - m_mueller 11y ago
      Exactly. I feel like as an introvert it's more important to be in an environment where you regularly meet people since you won't do it intentionally. Socializing skills are important for the vast majority of people, the only exceptions being celebrities like Linus who have lots of people seeking them out.
  - modfodder 11y ago
    I am an introvert and occasionally miss the forced socialization of working in an office. After long periods of working from home, I'm usually ready for some office work.
    - vogt 11y ago
      I personally miss some human interaction after long periods of time at home, but not office interaction. It works for me to break up my schedule to socialize with my wife, friends and family to properly quell those feelings.
libraryatnight 11y ago
I jog during the time I normally would be commuting, on nice days I work with the windows open, at the office I have a certain level of anxiety - just thanks to the traffic around me. I'm with you on this, working from home is awesome. It suits my personality.
- gkop 11y ago
  Just a thought: you might someday find a home and work orientation where you can jog to work and shower there. This arrangement is certainly possible in cities like SF. Also many offices have windows that can be opened (if I were your colleague I would definitely want the window open if it meant something to you). (It sounds like you are happy! I just wanted to point out to you and others that these two particular perks do not necessarily require working from home) Edit: same general idea goes for the folks down thread appreciating access to a full kitchen. In fact, if one were designing an office, would this thread not be a great place to get ideas to distinguish your new office in awesome ways?
  - byoung2 11y ago
    I interviewed at Whisper when they were in a mansion in Santa Monica. It was an interesting setup that had all the amenities of home like a full kitchen, shower, pool, laundry. Those are all perks few offices have so you could differentiate your company if you had them.
Thaxll 11y ago
And you lose all social interactions. I enjoy people stopping by my desk and having random chat with them.
- quanticle 11y ago
  While you're in the middle of diagnosing an important issue in production? While you're working out a tricky graph algorithm? Having some social interaction is nice. The problem is that there are too many people who'll stop by and initiate social interaction while you're in the middle of something more important. What's worse, in an open plan office like mine, your flow isn't just disrupted by people stopping by at your desk. Your flow is interrupted by people stopping by at any of your neighbors desks. God forbid you sit next to a PM who has foot traffic coming and going at all hours of the workday. For me the best working situation would be an office (doesn't have to be big) with a door that closes. After that comes working at home. Finally, at the bottom, is working in an open plan office (which is unfortunately my current situation).
  - vinceguidry 11y ago
    Get a big pair of comfy headphones, one that you can wear for hours, and put them on whenever you don't want to be bothered. You don't even have to listen to music, they're just there to signal that you're not to be bothered. If someone does bother you, pull one side off, say you're busy, send an email or come back after X-o'clock. Wait for an acknowledgement then pull the ear cup back and go back to work. Only break protocol for your boss's boss, even then only accept one sentence from him, give one sentence back, and unless the office is on fire say you're deep into Y and you'll stop by later to discuss. When you do stop by, make sure to mention that interrupting you like he did is not pleasant and request he use Slack or whatever instant messager your company uses. Your boss can just learn to use email. It may take a few discussions before he'll respect it but it'll be worth it. Send anyone who complains a link to Paul Graham's Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule.
cpncrunch 11y ago
Working remotely is an awesome experience for me as well, but I work for myself so it might be different if you work in a regular job that lets you work from home. I have the ability to ignore customers who are being overly pushy/demanding/rude, and I can take time off whenever I like. I tend to take a lot of breaks during the day to watch TV, do exercise, etc. I'm married, so that is sufficient social interaction for me. For work communication, I find email/skype to be more efficient than being in an office and having "status" meetings every day. However, I can see that if you work for someone else, there could be a lot of pressure if things aren't going well or if you have a demanding boss, and you might feel trapped being at home and not having anywhere else to escape to.
mildbow 11y ago
I've found, after coding+managing remotely[0], that it takes a specific set of traits to be a successful remote worker. - strong work ethic: no one needs to tell you that it's time to start working for the day/after lunch etc. - strong communication: not the same as being an extrovert. might even help if you are an introvert. Just comfortable with text being the dominant means of articulation. - strong 9-5 boundaries: might not be 9-5, might not be exactly 8 hours, but they have work hours and non-work hours and adhere to them. - not junior: I've met a few junior devs who are good remote workers, but overwhelmingly most are seasoned. Maybe it just takes time to figure out the work-life balance/discipline integral to being an effective remote worker? - trustworthy: the kind of person you can hand off something to and know it will be done. - not great at ping pong: maybe those relate to the strong work ethic? That is, they never took/had time for honing ping pong skills at work ? Maybe that's just me :) I work remotely too so maybe the traits are biased towards the positive. [0] Team lead with one on ones + reviews for ~20 people.
- err4nt 11y ago
  Great list! I agree with all but the 9-5 premise. The thing that makes it easy for me is Git! Having all of our work stored in version control gives our team 100% accountability in a totally painless way. And if there's ever a project I'm working on outside of git, I do daily dump archives so each day is snapshotted. No need to track hours, no need to wonder what somebody did all day. If you want to know what I did last tuesday go check my commit! Version control = accountability and trust
  - mildbow 11y ago
    The 9-5 premise is about having regular hours (whatever they are) so team members can get in touch if they need to. It's also about signaling when team members can't get in touch. Both are important since they are implicit to an office but something you need to be careful to correctly define/signal when you are working remotely. I don't really look at commit logs because, to me, they reflect how one prefers to work, rather than how productive they are being. 2 people can easily have 2 or 20 commits for the same feature set. I'm not going to be calling one a 10x engineer based on that :) To that end I don't believe in looking at commit log, or time tracking (!) because both can be falsified pretty easily: they are just another form of counting lines of code IMO. I prefer to look at how much customer value someone is delivering and how much other team members listen to them.
macjohnmcc 11y ago
I've telecommuted for a company two time zones away for over six years and have only visited the company's offices twice in that time for less than four days total. Not being interrupted and everybody defaulting to using e-mail for communications has to be the best benefit of it besides not having to commute.
mirimir 11y ago
Same here. I often work to loud music. Loud like a pair of old JBLs at 50W per channel. I usually work in a bathrobe or sweats. And I abhor meetings, unless I'm billing at a decent rate. Also, I totally don't get the complaints about loneliness and isolation. I have the company of family and friends. And I distinguish firmly among clients, coworkers and friends.
foobarian 11y ago
I'm not a fan of people interrupting either, but I've come to realize it does help the team run more efficiently. If I get 3 legitimate interruptions a day where 5 minutes of my time saves the other developer an hour, overall it means my team just accomplished 3 hours of work in 15 minutes. Or say some error or urgent request comes up, it's been my experience at our office that the point person can look around, grab people into a quick meeting and resolve something in 10 minutes that would otherwise kick around in email for days. It also helps on the social side to be "plugged into" the company. When you run across some weird error or feature request it's really valuable to know who you can even ask about a related part of the codebase or functionality. And you build that mental database by socializing. Just a few of points the other way :-) I've done both remote and office work and just happen to prefer the higher bandwidth/iteration speed of in-person work.
- bunderbunder 11y ago
  I switched from remote back to in-person about 2 months ago, and to be honest I'd completely forgotten how much easier it is to get some things done in a co-located environment. There were a lot of great things about working from home, but getting things done at anything above a "banging out the actual code" scale was not one of them. I wish I could take back all my prior invocations of the complaint that someone interrupting me for 15 seconds eats 15 minutes of my productivity. Not only have I come to recognize just how transparently self-centered that meme is (and I'm embarrassed that I couldn't see it before, but given all the other great things about working from home I suppose a little confirmation bias is understandable), I've also realized that there are really quite a few domains where premature optimization is the root of all evil.
  - will_pseudonym 11y ago
    When I'm onsite with my team, it's so enjoyable because we can laugh and joke and mull over problems together. It's got a real sort of in the trenches feel to it. It's hard for me to think of those distractions as negative. I think that the interruptions thing is definitely true, but the things that interrupt us are our devices, not our people. You can tell a colleague that you've got to get more uninterrupted time, but your device continually beckons. Another thing that interrupts me is slow system access. I'm trying to develop on a test database that's abhorrently slow. Each time I'm forced to wait, I quickly pick up my phone, or load up a Hacker News tab.
erikb 11y ago
How long do you do it? I think it's different in your first year and your tenth.
nwatson 11y ago
My last 2 years as a remote worker (from east coast for a SV company) have been the most productive in terms of software output in my life. I've been able to focus on the task at hand very well, and have been given pretty free reign to work on some large projects crucial to the company's product. The most difficult part was having to deal with a dead-weight VP of Engineering (my boss) who had no process, knowledge, who could not think on his feet in person or over the phone. I had to talk to the CEO and product management to understand the next evolution they wanted, and to actively thwart fruitless conversations and diversions from the boss. I asked for wikis, better bug-trackers, or other tools to better coordinate documentation and work. Finally, after a new CEO and after the VP Engineering was fired about four months ago, things have improved. We immediately followed through on Confluence (great wiki for organizing and documenting engineering and other efforts), JIRA (OK bug tracker), transitioned to git with Bitbucket. Communication and recording of designs, etc., has improved a lot. The new VP Engineering hired a month ago has improved things more -- he's rational, understands the technology, is good at organizing effort, and doesn't asked stoopid questions. I no longer venture into inappropriate and unprofessional phone behavior, which I resorted to many times previously out of frustration. I regretted so many times joining the company, and knew from my initial interview discussions with the VP Engineering that I shouldn't have joined in the first place. The salary and options were too good to pass up, though, and the problem addressed was interesting enough. I also knew others in the company and thought it might be fun working there. I spent many late nights working on stuff for a boss who could not appreciate the magnitude of what was being requested and delivered. I also spent many late nights repeatedly diagnosing scalability and performance problems that were not my own but rather in a few modules I had to invoke. Even after being presented with clear evidence in myriad in-house and customer cases this prior boss could not clearly grasp the urgency of fixing the issues. The issue was live at customer sites for over eight months before they were finally fixed. So ...: - I miss SV friends after my move to the Southeast and haven't quite found "my people" here yet ... so I feel somewhat isolated - I work very effectively and don't take liberties with schedule, but I don't overwork either unless there's an urgent issue - I get to work from home or from a local coffeeshop, restaurant, or other venue -- I like this freedom - I get to do a lot of my daughter's events in daytime, nobody's looking over my shoulder - ... all these pros/cons were heavily dominated, though, by one big negative -- make sure you can get along with your boss, which wasn't my case - why didn't I jump ship? it's hard to find another remote gig, and my terms were, I believe, pretty decent; the company has a chance of doing something decent and being worth something -- largely due to product area, C-level reputation, good sales -- the product has some shortcomings that will eventually be overcome [edit: minor changes, formatting]
repomies691 11y ago
You only explain the benefits from the workers point of view. What about the customer? Why should someone opt to buy work from remote employees instead of having them on-site?

by dplgk 11y ago

usaphp 11y ago

Eating home cooked food fresh instead of microwaving it

mod 11y ago
My house has a microwave, and I get good use of it!
askafriend 11y ago
I love the microwave though.
- cxseven 11y ago
  Microwaving cooks food without generating as much carcinogenic char as other methods, so it can actually be healthier. Relatedly, freezing is the healthiest way to preserve and transport fruits and vegetables. It also allows them to be harvested when naturally ripe, rather than artificially ripened.
  - compumike 11y ago
    Alternatively, use something like https://www.pantelligent.com/ https://www.pantelligent.com/ (disclosure: co-founder / engineer) so you can control cooking temperatures. This lets you get delicious browning without the non-tasty and non-healthy burnt "char" bits. Edit: sales team just added coupon code T2F8NB9UBC for HN readers! [expires 11/16 at 11:59pm PT]
    - bluehawk 11y ago
      Why can't I find out how much it costs without giving you my email?
    - pil4rin 11y ago
      yourmom@gmail.com delivered this info Pantelligent Pantelligent is the ultimate kitchen tool that helps you cook better food with step-by-step directions and real-time temperature feedback. You’ll also get access to Pantelligent’s FREE app available for iPhone, iPad and Android packed with deliciously smart recipes to try out at home. 60-Day Money-Back Guarantee If you are not fully satisfied for any reason, just return your device for a full refund within 60 days, no questions asked. We'll even cover return shipping! IN STOCK $199 with Free US Shipping Add to Cart Free US shipping. 1-year limited warranty.
    - kevinqiu1 11y ago
      Only comes in non-stick? That's no bueno.
  - byoung2 11y ago
    Microwaving cooks food without generating as much carcinogenic char as other methods, so it can actually be healthier. Since the microwave is often used for reheating food that was cooked with these other methods, there's often no advantage.
    - cxseven 11y ago
      Sure, and it's often used to heat up things like Hot Pockets. For this reason and scary radiation, the microwave is heaped with undeserved disrepute. This is unfortunate for another big reason: it's one of the most convenient ways for a single person to cook a small amount of healthy food. Many people are under the impression that healthy cooking requires warming up the stove/oven and dirtying pans, so they give up and eat processed food. There ought to be more awareness of recipes for the microwave. Many restaurants are using them to good effect.
      - byoung2 11y ago
        My point was that if I fry or BBQ something and then later reheat it in the microwave, the damage was already done, so the fact that the microwave is safe does me no good. I agree that the microwave is a cleaner way to cook vegetables, for example.
  - dalore 11y ago
    Call me when a microwave can create the tasty maillard reaction that's needed for so many foods. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction
    - cxseven 11y ago
      There's this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convection_microwave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convection_microwave , but I'd rather stick to flavoring my food in some way other than generating a bunch of carcinogens like acrylamide.
tootie 11y ago
And using your own private bathroom.
- workitout 11y ago
  Forgot about that, it's wonderful to be able to use my own bathroom instead of thinking about which co-workers sat on the toilet before me or did they have a contagious disease, etc.
tmlee 11y ago
Access to kitchen is golden. You can steam, stir fry, use conventional oven, all great options to a healthy meal.

jcroll 11y ago

> No one can come to my desk to socialize Yeah who would want that? I've done both and both have their pros and cons, socializing is definitely a perk and introvert or extrovert should not be underestimated in keeping you healthy and happy and a skilled professional.

vogt 11y ago
You answered your own question. An introvert would not want that. You can force your standards of what makes someone a "happy and skilled professional" on them if you like, but that's not always a case grounded in reality.
- lojack 11y ago
  As an introvert, I like a little bit of socialization throughout my day. Too much is certainly draining, but if I worked from home I would become a hermit and have an unhealthy amount of socialization.
  - m_mueller 11y ago
    Exactly. I feel like as an introvert it's more important to be in an environment where you regularly meet people since you won't do it intentionally. Socializing skills are important for the vast majority of people, the only exceptions being celebrities like Linus who have lots of people seeking them out.
- modfodder 11y ago
  I am an introvert and occasionally miss the forced socialization of working in an office. After long periods of working from home, I'm usually ready for some office work.
  - vogt 11y ago
    I personally miss some human interaction after long periods of time at home, but not office interaction. It works for me to break up my schedule to socialize with my wife, friends and family to properly quell those feelings.

libraryatnight 11y ago

I jog during the time I normally would be commuting, on nice days I work with the windows open, at the office I have a certain level of anxiety - just thanks to the traffic around me. I'm with you on this, working from home is awesome. It suits my personality.

gkop 11y ago
Just a thought: you might someday find a home and work orientation where you can jog to work and shower there. This arrangement is certainly possible in cities like SF. Also many offices have windows that can be opened (if I were your colleague I would definitely want the window open if it meant something to you). (It sounds like you are happy! I just wanted to point out to you and others that these two particular perks do not necessarily require working from home) Edit: same general idea goes for the folks down thread appreciating access to a full kitchen. In fact, if one were designing an office, would this thread not be a great place to get ideas to distinguish your new office in awesome ways?
- byoung2 11y ago
  I interviewed at Whisper when they were in a mansion in Santa Monica. It was an interesting setup that had all the amenities of home like a full kitchen, shower, pool, laundry. Those are all perks few offices have so you could differentiate your company if you had them.

Thaxll 11y ago

And you lose all social interactions. I enjoy people stopping by my desk and having random chat with them.

quanticle 11y ago
While you're in the middle of diagnosing an important issue in production? While you're working out a tricky graph algorithm? Having some social interaction is nice. The problem is that there are too many people who'll stop by and initiate social interaction while you're in the middle of something more important. What's worse, in an open plan office like mine, your flow isn't just disrupted by people stopping by at your desk. Your flow is interrupted by people stopping by at any of your neighbors desks. God forbid you sit next to a PM who has foot traffic coming and going at all hours of the workday. For me the best working situation would be an office (doesn't have to be big) with a door that closes. After that comes working at home. Finally, at the bottom, is working in an open plan office (which is unfortunately my current situation).
- vinceguidry 11y ago
  Get a big pair of comfy headphones, one that you can wear for hours, and put them on whenever you don't want to be bothered. You don't even have to listen to music, they're just there to signal that you're not to be bothered. If someone does bother you, pull one side off, say you're busy, send an email or come back after X-o'clock. Wait for an acknowledgement then pull the ear cup back and go back to work. Only break protocol for your boss's boss, even then only accept one sentence from him, give one sentence back, and unless the office is on fire say you're deep into Y and you'll stop by later to discuss. When you do stop by, make sure to mention that interrupting you like he did is not pleasant and request he use Slack or whatever instant messager your company uses. Your boss can just learn to use email. It may take a few discussions before he'll respect it but it'll be worth it. Send anyone who complains a link to Paul Graham's Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule.

cpncrunch 11y ago

Working remotely is an awesome experience for me as well, but I work for myself so it might be different if you work in a regular job that lets you work from home. I have the ability to ignore customers who are being overly pushy/demanding/rude, and I can take time off whenever I like. I tend to take a lot of breaks during the day to watch TV, do exercise, etc. I'm married, so that is sufficient social interaction for me. For work communication, I find email/skype to be more efficient than being in an office and having "status" meetings every day. However, I can see that if you work for someone else, there could be a lot of pressure if things aren't going well or if you have a demanding boss, and you might feel trapped being at home and not having anywhere else to escape to.

mildbow 11y ago

I've found, after coding+managing remotely[0], that it takes a specific set of traits to be a successful remote worker. - strong work ethic: no one needs to tell you that it's time to start working for the day/after lunch etc. - strong communication: not the same as being an extrovert. might even help if you are an introvert. Just comfortable with text being the dominant means of articulation. - strong 9-5 boundaries: might not be 9-5, might not be exactly 8 hours, but they have work hours and non-work hours and adhere to them. - not junior: I've met a few junior devs who are good remote workers, but overwhelmingly most are seasoned. Maybe it just takes time to figure out the work-life balance/discipline integral to being an effective remote worker? - trustworthy: the kind of person you can hand off something to and know it will be done. - not great at ping pong: maybe those relate to the strong work ethic? That is, they never took/had time for honing ping pong skills at work ? Maybe that's just me :) I work remotely too so maybe the traits are biased towards the positive. [0] Team lead with one on ones + reviews for ~20 people.

err4nt 11y ago
Great list! I agree with all but the 9-5 premise. The thing that makes it easy for me is Git! Having all of our work stored in version control gives our team 100% accountability in a totally painless way. And if there's ever a project I'm working on outside of git, I do daily dump archives so each day is snapshotted. No need to track hours, no need to wonder what somebody did all day. If you want to know what I did last tuesday go check my commit! Version control = accountability and trust
- mildbow 11y ago
  The 9-5 premise is about having regular hours (whatever they are) so team members can get in touch if they need to. It's also about signaling when team members can't get in touch. Both are important since they are implicit to an office but something you need to be careful to correctly define/signal when you are working remotely. I don't really look at commit logs because, to me, they reflect how one prefers to work, rather than how productive they are being. 2 people can easily have 2 or 20 commits for the same feature set. I'm not going to be calling one a 10x engineer based on that :) To that end I don't believe in looking at commit log, or time tracking (!) because both can be falsified pretty easily: they are just another form of counting lines of code IMO. I prefer to look at how much customer value someone is delivering and how much other team members listen to them.

macjohnmcc 11y ago

I've telecommuted for a company two time zones away for over six years and have only visited the company's offices twice in that time for less than four days total. Not being interrupted and everybody defaulting to using e-mail for communications has to be the best benefit of it besides not having to commute.

mirimir 11y ago

Same here. I often work to loud music. Loud like a pair of old JBLs at 50W per channel. I usually work in a bathrobe or sweats. And I abhor meetings, unless I'm billing at a decent rate. Also, I totally don't get the complaints about loneliness and isolation. I have the company of family and friends. And I distinguish firmly among clients, coworkers and friends.

foobarian 11y ago

I'm not a fan of people interrupting either, but I've come to realize it does help the team run more efficiently. If I get 3 legitimate interruptions a day where 5 minutes of my time saves the other developer an hour, overall it means my team just accomplished 3 hours of work in 15 minutes. Or say some error or urgent request comes up, it's been my experience at our office that the point person can look around, grab people into a quick meeting and resolve something in 10 minutes that would otherwise kick around in email for days. It also helps on the social side to be "plugged into" the company. When you run across some weird error or feature request it's really valuable to know who you can even ask about a related part of the codebase or functionality. And you build that mental database by socializing. Just a few of points the other way :-) I've done both remote and office work and just happen to prefer the higher bandwidth/iteration speed of in-person work.

bunderbunder 11y ago
I switched from remote back to in-person about 2 months ago, and to be honest I'd completely forgotten how much easier it is to get some things done in a co-located environment. There were a lot of great things about working from home, but getting things done at anything above a "banging out the actual code" scale was not one of them. I wish I could take back all my prior invocations of the complaint that someone interrupting me for 15 seconds eats 15 minutes of my productivity. Not only have I come to recognize just how transparently self-centered that meme is (and I'm embarrassed that I couldn't see it before, but given all the other great things about working from home I suppose a little confirmation bias is understandable), I've also realized that there are really quite a few domains where premature optimization is the root of all evil.
- will_pseudonym 11y ago
  When I'm onsite with my team, it's so enjoyable because we can laugh and joke and mull over problems together. It's got a real sort of in the trenches feel to it. It's hard for me to think of those distractions as negative. I think that the interruptions thing is definitely true, but the things that interrupt us are our devices, not our people. You can tell a colleague that you've got to get more uninterrupted time, but your device continually beckons. Another thing that interrupts me is slow system access. I'm trying to develop on a test database that's abhorrently slow. Each time I'm forced to wait, I quickly pick up my phone, or load up a Hacker News tab.

erikb 11y ago

How long do you do it? I think it's different in your first year and your tenth.

nwatson 11y ago

My last 2 years as a remote worker (from east coast for a SV company) have been the most productive in terms of software output in my life. I've been able to focus on the task at hand very well, and have been given pretty free reign to work on some large projects crucial to the company's product. The most difficult part was having to deal with a dead-weight VP of Engineering (my boss) who had no process, knowledge, who could not think on his feet in person or over the phone. I had to talk to the CEO and product management to understand the next evolution they wanted, and to actively thwart fruitless conversations and diversions from the boss. I asked for wikis, better bug-trackers, or other tools to better coordinate documentation and work. Finally, after a new CEO and after the VP Engineering was fired about four months ago, things have improved. We immediately followed through on Confluence (great wiki for organizing and documenting engineering and other efforts), JIRA (OK bug tracker), transitioned to git with Bitbucket. Communication and recording of designs, etc., has improved a lot. The new VP Engineering hired a month ago has improved things more -- he's rational, understands the technology, is good at organizing effort, and doesn't asked stoopid questions. I no longer venture into inappropriate and unprofessional phone behavior, which I resorted to many times previously out of frustration. I regretted so many times joining the company, and knew from my initial interview discussions with the VP Engineering that I shouldn't have joined in the first place. The salary and options were too good to pass up, though, and the problem addressed was interesting enough. I also knew others in the company and thought it might be fun working there. I spent many late nights working on stuff for a boss who could not appreciate the magnitude of what was being requested and delivered. I also spent many late nights repeatedly diagnosing scalability and performance problems that were not my own but rather in a few modules I had to invoke. Even after being presented with clear evidence in myriad in-house and customer cases this prior boss could not clearly grasp the urgency of fixing the issues. The issue was live at customer sites for over eight months before they were finally fixed. So ...: - I miss SV friends after my move to the Southeast and haven't quite found "my people" here yet ... so I feel somewhat isolated - I work very effectively and don't take liberties with schedule, but I don't overwork either unless there's an urgent issue - I get to work from home or from a local coffeeshop, restaurant, or other venue -- I like this freedom - I get to do a lot of my daughter's events in daytime, nobody's looking over my shoulder - ... all these pros/cons were heavily dominated, though, by one big negative -- make sure you can get along with your boss, which wasn't my case - why didn't I jump ship? it's hard to find another remote gig, and my terms were, I believe, pretty decent; the company has a chance of doing something decent and being worth something -- largely due to product area, C-level reputation, good sales -- the product has some shortcomings that will eventually be overcome [edit: minor changes, formatting]

repomies691 11y ago

You only explain the benefits from the workers point of view. What about the customer? Why should someone opt to buy work from remote employees instead of having them on-site?