7 ms·

You know, if you move out of San Francisco and let your employees be remote you can save an insane amount of money on office space, pay employees less and allow

You know, if you move out of San Francisco and let your employees be remote you can save an insane amount of money on office space, pay employees less and allow them to have a higher quality of life. Tech's insitence on being in one of the most expensive areas is just bizarre when most employees can pick up a laptop and work anywhere there's wifi.

eva1984 10y ago
I think it is not that easy. Meeting will be a huge pain. And the communication is not as easy as you can do in person. Also some ideas/conversations sparks during casual talking, if remote, those small things will be missed.
- arethuza 10y ago
  "Meeting will be a huge pain" Not sure if that's true - I work in a company that has a very flexible approach to remote working and pretty much every meeting we have has some people remote (or indeed I am remote) and I don't think it makes much difference to the quality of discussions.
  - wsinks 10y ago
    You work for Cisco?
  - eva1984 10y ago
    I didn't say meeting is impossible, there are a lot of solutions out there. But it is not the same quality as meeting with real person. The images are laggy, and audio is often here and there. And as the person remote, I feel like, it increases the distraction, so the quality of conversion is not the same as you might have if present in the meeting. I just don't buy remote is the remedy to cost-cutting, it brings new drawbacks. Personally, I don't feel the same level of collaboration with my remote 'colleagues' than onsite ones. But it could be personal.
    - notmything 10y ago
      It's a cultural thing - you're just not set up to do it well. Image the problems working from home would solve: housing costs, high density living, pollution, no commute time, improved communities, improved family life. We need a cultural shift.
    - quanticle 10y ago
      It's only not the same quality if you're the only one who is off-site. But consider the hypothetical case where there is no central office, and everyone's working from home. Then you don't have to deal with the problem of terrible conference room microphones, since everyone has their own headset. You don't have to deal with not being able to see the whiteboard, because people use other collaboration tools. As sibling commenters are saying, the terrible experience that off-site workers have today is because companies haven't invested in the infrastructure to allow off-site workers to collaborate in the same way as workers in the office. Slack can replace the hallway conversations. Shared Google Docs can replace white-boards. Skype can replace meeting rooms. You just have to invest in the infrastructure, both physical and cultural to make it happen. And, as a side benefit, it's a lot easier to record the outcomes of meetings with these new tools, which makes it much easier to go back and reference what people said.
    - jads 10y ago
      I see what you're trying to say, but you need to understand that those "distractions" or "drawbacks" you refer to about remote workers also exist, differently, for office workers. This does sound personal and simply that your company (or your experience) doesn't have the infrastructure to properly support remote workers. Because of this, your experience of remote workers is skewed (understandably). That would affect the remotes as well and doesn't set anyone up for a good working environment. If your desk were all wobbly, lighting dim and office space generally just lousy, you'd say the same thing about the office space and how it isn't conducive to a positive work environment. I work remotely for an SF company and, honestly, I dislike making trips to head office sometimes. Why? Because the entire place is a distraction. I observe (and get dragged into) multiple coffee walks/chats a day that take up 20/30 minutes at a time. The constant distractions of an open plan office are something that office workers don't notice, but remotes do. I can get more work done in 8 hours at home that I feel I can do in three days in that office. I've spent most of my career in an office and only became a remote worker a few years ago, but it's clear to me now just how much of a distraction an office is. I would argue that this is already a more than justifiable benefit of having a larger remote workforce. A large % of my colleagues are also remote, and it works great. Almost every meeting happens with at least someone on VC, and it works. In-person meetings happen in the office, but Slack has become our primary method of sharing ideas and having conversation. Ideas have definitely formed over lunch, but more of them form when there's an active conversation in a Slack channel. All of your reservations are justified, though, because that seems to be the default thinking of many people who either haven't been remote themselves or who have had a less than stellar experience of remote working. I can honestly say that the majority of our remote force across different teams (eng, support, sales) are the best in the company. But remote working isn't for everyone, and there have been people who thought it was be perfect way to work, only to crash and burn because they couldn't handle it.
- notmything 10y ago
  Ahhh, the old "ideas during casual talking" trope. In all my years I've never seen anything of significance come out of people talking over lunch - for most companies, the concept of unexpected collaboration based on overhearing something in the office just isn't true and is mostly not required. I'm sure that sometimes unexpected collaboration may happen that might have a small tangible benefit to a company but I can guarantee you that most companies do not need this and the benefits of a work from home culture on the whole city and America's general mental health will be better than whatever new feature you cooked up over your company provided lunch. imagine the problems working from home would solve: housing costs, high density living, pollution, no commute time, improved communities, improved family life. The odd piece of collaboration that may come out of lunch chat is really not worth the pain that our cities and resident workers are going through. Can't afford a decent sized house? Probably because everyone wants to be close to work so you're priced out. You'll feel the pain when you get married and want kids; very long commute or sub-standard living conditions, great choice... Like you said, I'm sure small things will be missed but employees having a great standard of living is likely going to do the company more good than not. I do admit that we would need a cultural shift for this to really work though.
  - eva1984 10y ago
    I did have that experience myself. Me and colleague are talking about, back in last November, Paris attack thing. And we are working in the media sector, he just mentioned that we could use the user behavior stream to detect whether something big happens. Now it becomes a viral item detector, also providing real time metrics to other services. It might not be significant, but it did evolve into something useful.
  - notmything 10y ago
    In response to your response (which I cannot reply to)- that's just one example. I did say that it may benefit some companies some of the time but I highly doubt that it's worthwhile enough to be a driver for EVERYONE to work from a central location in every company. That one time when something awesome happened at the office just doesn't outweigh the need to cut pollution, solve the housing crises and have better family lives. America is experiencing its worst mental health and depression crisis ever, I would not be surprised if working conditions were a massive factor. Companies should not live and die by water cooler conversations (and mostly don't).
- stephenr 10y ago
  > Meeting will be a huge pain. VoIP exists. Video conferencing exists. Meetings are usually better when kept short, so the reduced/shortened meetings are a positive thing. > And the communication is not as easy as you can do in person. Remote working means you have to communicate via either text, audio, audio + video, or diagrams.. So the only thing you can't really do, is touch the other person. Im pretty sure most work places discourage that kind of "communication" anyway. > Also some ideas/conversations sparks during casual talking, if remote, those small things will be missed. Why, because you think remote workers don't have casual conversation? I worked for several years with a medium size company that had a couple of hundred staff all around the globe. I'd argue the amount of non project specific, but still technical discussion was higher than when I worked in an office.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    > I worked for several years with a medium size company that had a couple of hundred staff all around the globe. I'd argue the amount of non project specific, but still technical discussion was higher than when I worked in an office. And the good thing? When you're working remotely, you can tune out those conversations if you need to focus on something. Try that when people in your office decide to have a room-wide chat.
- fpgaminer 10y ago
  Research by Microsoft suggests that distributed development has no impact on various software quality measures (bugs, code churn, complexity, etc). See: http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=102351 http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=1023...
  - montibbalt 10y ago
    Well of course I won't have any impact on code quality when I don't actually write any code, because I can't stay focused while working from home. I'll take a non-open plan office over WFH any day
    - tamana 10y ago
      That's a false choice I most cases, and msft generally had private offices anyway.
- glasz 10y ago
  stop it. meetings aren't important. most of the time some dickhead is presenting shit or talking useless things. we've got tools like skype and zoom and whatever. quick and important decissions need communication, not meetings. and thanks to our devices we can communicate during the night, even, and steal everyones sleep.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
sytse 10y ago
I totally agree. The big costs are not in the perks but in the cost of locating everyone in the Bay Area. At GitLab we're remote only. You have to be thoughtful about organizing communication https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/ but we like it and will promote it to other organizations https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-remoteonly-org/issues/1 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-remoteonly-org/issues/1
- hanthonym 10y ago
  During my job search I wanted to applied at Gitlab, sadly my niche is mobile development across all platforms and no mobile Gitlab app.
  - sytse 10y ago
    I'm sorry but indeed currently we don't have an official app. There are multiple community made ones https://about.gitlab.com/applications/ https://about.gitlab.com/applications/
jroseattle 10y ago
This is true in the aggregate, but there is substantive impact on culture, team unity, collaboration and all matter of things that happen when people are together. I believe this is a consideration of many Sili-valley based companies that are opening engineering centers in Seattle. It is less expensive than the Valley/SanFrancisco (although costs are soaring), but you can still get the benefit of having unified teams.
tamana 10y ago
Instead, Dropbox chose to cancel the commute support, to push employees to live in SF and spend more on rent Inreresting that management decided to buy giant chrome idol and museum display before cutting back on employee transport and food.

eva1984 10y ago

I think it is not that easy. Meeting will be a huge pain. And the communication is not as easy as you can do in person. Also some ideas/conversations sparks during casual talking, if remote, those small things will be missed.

arethuza 10y ago
"Meeting will be a huge pain" Not sure if that's true - I work in a company that has a very flexible approach to remote working and pretty much every meeting we have has some people remote (or indeed I am remote) and I don't think it makes much difference to the quality of discussions.
- wsinks 10y ago
  You work for Cisco?
- eva1984 10y ago
  I didn't say meeting is impossible, there are a lot of solutions out there. But it is not the same quality as meeting with real person. The images are laggy, and audio is often here and there. And as the person remote, I feel like, it increases the distraction, so the quality of conversion is not the same as you might have if present in the meeting. I just don't buy remote is the remedy to cost-cutting, it brings new drawbacks. Personally, I don't feel the same level of collaboration with my remote 'colleagues' than onsite ones. But it could be personal.
  - notmything 10y ago
    It's a cultural thing - you're just not set up to do it well. Image the problems working from home would solve: housing costs, high density living, pollution, no commute time, improved communities, improved family life. We need a cultural shift.
  - quanticle 10y ago
    It's only not the same quality if you're the only one who is off-site. But consider the hypothetical case where there is no central office, and everyone's working from home. Then you don't have to deal with the problem of terrible conference room microphones, since everyone has their own headset. You don't have to deal with not being able to see the whiteboard, because people use other collaboration tools. As sibling commenters are saying, the terrible experience that off-site workers have today is because companies haven't invested in the infrastructure to allow off-site workers to collaborate in the same way as workers in the office. Slack can replace the hallway conversations. Shared Google Docs can replace white-boards. Skype can replace meeting rooms. You just have to invest in the infrastructure, both physical and cultural to make it happen. And, as a side benefit, it's a lot easier to record the outcomes of meetings with these new tools, which makes it much easier to go back and reference what people said.
  - jads 10y ago
    I see what you're trying to say, but you need to understand that those "distractions" or "drawbacks" you refer to about remote workers also exist, differently, for office workers. This does sound personal and simply that your company (or your experience) doesn't have the infrastructure to properly support remote workers. Because of this, your experience of remote workers is skewed (understandably). That would affect the remotes as well and doesn't set anyone up for a good working environment. If your desk were all wobbly, lighting dim and office space generally just lousy, you'd say the same thing about the office space and how it isn't conducive to a positive work environment. I work remotely for an SF company and, honestly, I dislike making trips to head office sometimes. Why? Because the entire place is a distraction. I observe (and get dragged into) multiple coffee walks/chats a day that take up 20/30 minutes at a time. The constant distractions of an open plan office are something that office workers don't notice, but remotes do. I can get more work done in 8 hours at home that I feel I can do in three days in that office. I've spent most of my career in an office and only became a remote worker a few years ago, but it's clear to me now just how much of a distraction an office is. I would argue that this is already a more than justifiable benefit of having a larger remote workforce. A large % of my colleagues are also remote, and it works great. Almost every meeting happens with at least someone on VC, and it works. In-person meetings happen in the office, but Slack has become our primary method of sharing ideas and having conversation. Ideas have definitely formed over lunch, but more of them form when there's an active conversation in a Slack channel. All of your reservations are justified, though, because that seems to be the default thinking of many people who either haven't been remote themselves or who have had a less than stellar experience of remote working. I can honestly say that the majority of our remote force across different teams (eng, support, sales) are the best in the company. But remote working isn't for everyone, and there have been people who thought it was be perfect way to work, only to crash and burn because they couldn't handle it.
notmything 10y ago
Ahhh, the old "ideas during casual talking" trope. In all my years I've never seen anything of significance come out of people talking over lunch - for most companies, the concept of unexpected collaboration based on overhearing something in the office just isn't true and is mostly not required. I'm sure that sometimes unexpected collaboration may happen that might have a small tangible benefit to a company but I can guarantee you that most companies do not need this and the benefits of a work from home culture on the whole city and America's general mental health will be better than whatever new feature you cooked up over your company provided lunch. imagine the problems working from home would solve: housing costs, high density living, pollution, no commute time, improved communities, improved family life. The odd piece of collaboration that may come out of lunch chat is really not worth the pain that our cities and resident workers are going through. Can't afford a decent sized house? Probably because everyone wants to be close to work so you're priced out. You'll feel the pain when you get married and want kids; very long commute or sub-standard living conditions, great choice... Like you said, I'm sure small things will be missed but employees having a great standard of living is likely going to do the company more good than not. I do admit that we would need a cultural shift for this to really work though.
- eva1984 10y ago
  I did have that experience myself. Me and colleague are talking about, back in last November, Paris attack thing. And we are working in the media sector, he just mentioned that we could use the user behavior stream to detect whether something big happens. Now it becomes a viral item detector, also providing real time metrics to other services. It might not be significant, but it did evolve into something useful.
- notmything 10y ago
  In response to your response (which I cannot reply to)- that's just one example. I did say that it may benefit some companies some of the time but I highly doubt that it's worthwhile enough to be a driver for EVERYONE to work from a central location in every company. That one time when something awesome happened at the office just doesn't outweigh the need to cut pollution, solve the housing crises and have better family lives. America is experiencing its worst mental health and depression crisis ever, I would not be surprised if working conditions were a massive factor. Companies should not live and die by water cooler conversations (and mostly don't).
stephenr 10y ago
> Meeting will be a huge pain. VoIP exists. Video conferencing exists. Meetings are usually better when kept short, so the reduced/shortened meetings are a positive thing. > And the communication is not as easy as you can do in person. Remote working means you have to communicate via either text, audio, audio + video, or diagrams.. So the only thing you can't really do, is touch the other person. Im pretty sure most work places discourage that kind of "communication" anyway. > Also some ideas/conversations sparks during casual talking, if remote, those small things will be missed. Why, because you think remote workers don't have casual conversation? I worked for several years with a medium size company that had a couple of hundred staff all around the globe. I'd argue the amount of non project specific, but still technical discussion was higher than when I worked in an office.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  > I worked for several years with a medium size company that had a couple of hundred staff all around the globe. I'd argue the amount of non project specific, but still technical discussion was higher than when I worked in an office. And the good thing? When you're working remotely, you can tune out those conversations if you need to focus on something. Try that when people in your office decide to have a room-wide chat.
fpgaminer 10y ago
Research by Microsoft suggests that distributed development has no impact on various software quality measures (bugs, code churn, complexity, etc). See: http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=102351 http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=1023...
- montibbalt 10y ago
  Well of course I won't have any impact on code quality when I don't actually write any code, because I can't stay focused while working from home. I'll take a non-open plan office over WFH any day
  - tamana 10y ago
    That's a false choice I most cases, and msft generally had private offices anyway.
glasz 10y ago
stop it. meetings aren't important. most of the time some dickhead is presenting shit or talking useless things. we've got tools like skype and zoom and whatever. quick and important decissions need communication, not meetings. and thanks to our devices we can communicate during the night, even, and steal everyones sleep.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

sytse 10y ago

I totally agree. The big costs are not in the perks but in the cost of locating everyone in the Bay Area. At GitLab we're remote only. You have to be thoughtful about organizing communication https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/ but we like it and will promote it to other organizations https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-remoteonly-org/issues/1 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-remoteonly-org/issues/1

hanthonym 10y ago
During my job search I wanted to applied at Gitlab, sadly my niche is mobile development across all platforms and no mobile Gitlab app.
- sytse 10y ago
  I'm sorry but indeed currently we don't have an official app. There are multiple community made ones https://about.gitlab.com/applications/ https://about.gitlab.com/applications/

jroseattle 10y ago

This is true in the aggregate, but there is substantive impact on culture, team unity, collaboration and all matter of things that happen when people are together. I believe this is a consideration of many Sili-valley based companies that are opening engineering centers in Seattle. It is less expensive than the Valley/SanFrancisco (although costs are soaring), but you can still get the benefit of having unified teams.

tamana 10y ago

Instead, Dropbox chose to cancel the commute support, to push employees to live in SF and spend more on rent Inreresting that management decided to buy giant chrome idol and museum display before cutting back on employee transport and food.