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I do not understand the obsession the software industry has for locality. Wouldn't it make sense for people to work anywhere? Haven't Bay Area companies heard o

I do not understand the obsession the software industry has for locality. Wouldn't it make sense for people to work anywhere? Haven't Bay Area companies heard of something called the Internet? If you have to have people in the office to make sure they're working, you already have a fundamental hiring problem.

mcpherrinm 10y ago
I want to work with my team in person. That has nothing to do "making sure they're working". It's just easier, for me, and presumably many others, to be able to collaborate in person. Maybe there's a future where seamless video conferencing, Beam robots, and better text communication could replace in-person conversation, coffee and lunch chats, and other office-place experiences. I've tried, and I don't think we're there yet.
- lostcolony 10y ago
  But that provides a better incentive for remote teams. I agree that teams work better in person, but when you have separate teams, working on only tangentially related things, it makes sense to separate them out. Obviously for small startups this doesn't make sense. But mid to late stage, opening a satellite office for development somewhere else seems like a no brainer. I assume I'm missing something though.
  - VLM 10y ago
    Two mythologies Our secret sauce is one thing. Exactly one thing. What do you mean "tangentially related" we'd outsource anything unrelated. The exit strategy is to be bought by a multinational megacorporation not to have two offices, or even ten. There's sort of a financial fund raising dead zone between having one office and being purchasable and having 500 offices and buying little companies. Very few companies jump that gap and its safer to try and get bought that to try and become Google2.0
  - DasIch 10y ago
    It does make sense to separate teams who do different things but these teams do have to align and communicate occasionally. Meeting up in person in a meeting room is an incredibly convenient way to do that.
  - mcpherrinm 10y ago
    Satellite offices do make sense, however, I wouldn't want to be in one at this point in my career. I'm only a few years out of school, and not 100% settled into what I want to do. Being in a bigger headquarters (or a major non-HQ office) is important for me to socialize with other teams, find out what they're doing, and possibly switch to those teams.
  - deleted 10y ago
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JoshTriplett 10y ago
> I do not understand the obsession the software industry has for locality. For many types of problems, collaborating in person works far better than collaborating online. Lower friction, easier to have a conversation, easier to sit around a computer and experiment, and generally easier to handle things in a few minutes that would take longer otherwise.
- maqr 10y ago
  Yes, let's all keep believing that. If companies realized that all programmers can actually work decentralized, we might not be able to command a decent salary as it becomes a global race to the bottom...
  - sidlls 10y ago
    Most programming is work that can be done in a decentralized fashion. Some can't be. In either case the salary commanded is influenced by a number of factors other than supply (quality of the supply, for example). So I'm not sure a "global race to the bottom" of the apocalyptic kind you imply would result in such a realization.
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
    As a developer, I've specifically pushed to maintain a co-located team, precisely because the type of work my team does works far better when co-located. I do decentralized development regularly, and for some kinds of work it works fine. For other kinds of work, it makes simple tasks take an order of magnitude longer.
    - jasonjei 10y ago
      As far as I know, kernel.org does most of their work decentralized. Is XNU (Darwin) a significantly better kernel? I have doubts about that claim.
      - JoshTriplett 10y ago
        The Linux kernel does distributed development quite successfully, and scales extremely well. However, it does so partly by sacrificing some forms of coordination between developers; for instance, kernel maintainers don't consider duplicated effort to solve the same issue a problem, because the overall process still scales even if some individual developers end up wasting their time. On the other hand, the development of any one individual patch series to implement one feature typically occurs either by one developer, or by a set of co-located developers in one organization, not by geographically distributed developers. And some other kinds of work, such as backporting or rebasing a series of patches, doesn't work well when geographically distributed.
jgmmo 10y ago
I think it's the fear of eventual outsourcing that drives some of the 'remote workers need not apply'. People think if they can keep jobs in the office then they can keep themselves in a job.
joeax 10y ago
I'm a big proponent of remote working, but I can see how some early-stage startups need a lot of face to face interaction, not just with other devs but all the way up to the CEO. But yeah, your everyday, run-of-the-mill corporate coding job can easily be done at home. The problem is a trust factor with these companies: they don't trust the tools that enable remote working as much as they don't trust their ability to manage their remote people.
scythe 10y ago
Having people in the office supports communication at much higher frequency and much lower latency than any video-conferencing method, not to mention that video-conferencing is uncomfortable and sometimes hard to hear. It's also vastly easier to simply walk over and look at a coworker's screen rather than trying to screen-share, and it doesn't require you to stop anything you're doing. Additionally the sense of camaraderie supports motivation and helps to assuage the crushing boredom of what is for most of us a profession of financial convenience after we failed at our actual dreams.
- nickjj 10y ago
  I don't know about that. I've done hundreds of hours of pair programming with Google Hangouts and usually it's pretty good. Google Hangouts is decent for every type of sharing except "let another user control my computer directly". I can press a button and usually within a few seconds I can see the chat recipient's screen on my end. Now I can watch his screen and we can pair with voice chat. I have my own screen to do occasional Googling and pasting info to chat if needed. Basically I would find that far more efficient than unplugging my laptop, walking up to someone's office, plopping down, having to Google something while we pair, and now show him my laptop because there's no way to get it on his screen without duplicating the search work on his machine.
bbcbasic 10y ago
Today, the internet can't compete with face to face communication. Even with Skype etc. I think this is the reason rather than keeping tabs on the work you are doing. This may change in the future of course if we can get VR to a real level of fidelity. > If you have to have people in the office to make sure they're working, you already have a fundamental hiring problem. It is possible to be remote and have your screen recorded to make sure you are typing for 8 hours, vs. being local and just being trusted to get on with it.

mcpherrinm 10y ago

I want to work with my team in person. That has nothing to do "making sure they're working". It's just easier, for me, and presumably many others, to be able to collaborate in person. Maybe there's a future where seamless video conferencing, Beam robots, and better text communication could replace in-person conversation, coffee and lunch chats, and other office-place experiences. I've tried, and I don't think we're there yet.

lostcolony 10y ago
But that provides a better incentive for remote teams. I agree that teams work better in person, but when you have separate teams, working on only tangentially related things, it makes sense to separate them out. Obviously for small startups this doesn't make sense. But mid to late stage, opening a satellite office for development somewhere else seems like a no brainer. I assume I'm missing something though.
- VLM 10y ago
  Two mythologies Our secret sauce is one thing. Exactly one thing. What do you mean "tangentially related" we'd outsource anything unrelated. The exit strategy is to be bought by a multinational megacorporation not to have two offices, or even ten. There's sort of a financial fund raising dead zone between having one office and being purchasable and having 500 offices and buying little companies. Very few companies jump that gap and its safer to try and get bought that to try and become Google2.0
- DasIch 10y ago
  It does make sense to separate teams who do different things but these teams do have to align and communicate occasionally. Meeting up in person in a meeting room is an incredibly convenient way to do that.
- mcpherrinm 10y ago
  Satellite offices do make sense, however, I wouldn't want to be in one at this point in my career. I'm only a few years out of school, and not 100% settled into what I want to do. Being in a bigger headquarters (or a major non-HQ office) is important for me to socialize with other teams, find out what they're doing, and possibly switch to those teams.
- deleted 10y ago
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deleted 10y ago
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JoshTriplett 10y ago

> I do not understand the obsession the software industry has for locality. For many types of problems, collaborating in person works far better than collaborating online. Lower friction, easier to have a conversation, easier to sit around a computer and experiment, and generally easier to handle things in a few minutes that would take longer otherwise.

maqr 10y ago
Yes, let's all keep believing that. If companies realized that all programmers can actually work decentralized, we might not be able to command a decent salary as it becomes a global race to the bottom...
- sidlls 10y ago
  Most programming is work that can be done in a decentralized fashion. Some can't be. In either case the salary commanded is influenced by a number of factors other than supply (quality of the supply, for example). So I'm not sure a "global race to the bottom" of the apocalyptic kind you imply would result in such a realization.
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  As a developer, I've specifically pushed to maintain a co-located team, precisely because the type of work my team does works far better when co-located. I do decentralized development regularly, and for some kinds of work it works fine. For other kinds of work, it makes simple tasks take an order of magnitude longer.
  - jasonjei 10y ago
    As far as I know, kernel.org does most of their work decentralized. Is XNU (Darwin) a significantly better kernel? I have doubts about that claim.
    - JoshTriplett 10y ago
      The Linux kernel does distributed development quite successfully, and scales extremely well. However, it does so partly by sacrificing some forms of coordination between developers; for instance, kernel maintainers don't consider duplicated effort to solve the same issue a problem, because the overall process still scales even if some individual developers end up wasting their time. On the other hand, the development of any one individual patch series to implement one feature typically occurs either by one developer, or by a set of co-located developers in one organization, not by geographically distributed developers. And some other kinds of work, such as backporting or rebasing a series of patches, doesn't work well when geographically distributed.

jgmmo 10y ago

I think it's the fear of eventual outsourcing that drives some of the 'remote workers need not apply'. People think if they can keep jobs in the office then they can keep themselves in a job.

joeax 10y ago

I'm a big proponent of remote working, but I can see how some early-stage startups need a lot of face to face interaction, not just with other devs but all the way up to the CEO. But yeah, your everyday, run-of-the-mill corporate coding job can easily be done at home. The problem is a trust factor with these companies: they don't trust the tools that enable remote working as much as they don't trust their ability to manage their remote people.

scythe 10y ago

Having people in the office supports communication at much higher frequency and much lower latency than any video-conferencing method, not to mention that video-conferencing is uncomfortable and sometimes hard to hear. It's also vastly easier to simply walk over and look at a coworker's screen rather than trying to screen-share, and it doesn't require you to stop anything you're doing. Additionally the sense of camaraderie supports motivation and helps to assuage the crushing boredom of what is for most of us a profession of financial convenience after we failed at our actual dreams.

nickjj 10y ago
I don't know about that. I've done hundreds of hours of pair programming with Google Hangouts and usually it's pretty good. Google Hangouts is decent for every type of sharing except "let another user control my computer directly". I can press a button and usually within a few seconds I can see the chat recipient's screen on my end. Now I can watch his screen and we can pair with voice chat. I have my own screen to do occasional Googling and pasting info to chat if needed. Basically I would find that far more efficient than unplugging my laptop, walking up to someone's office, plopping down, having to Google something while we pair, and now show him my laptop because there's no way to get it on his screen without duplicating the search work on his machine.

bbcbasic 10y ago

Today, the internet can't compete with face to face communication. Even with Skype etc. I think this is the reason rather than keeping tabs on the work you are doing. This may change in the future of course if we can get VR to a real level of fidelity. > If you have to have people in the office to make sure they're working, you already have a fundamental hiring problem. It is possible to be remote and have your screen recorded to make sure you are typing for 8 hours, vs. being local and just being trusted to get on with it.