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I agree with you. I personally am much more distracted at home because "I'm home". When I'm at work, I'm in work mode. I also find that I solve a lot of yesterd

by snarf21 10y ago

I agree with you. I personally am much more distracted at home because "I'm home". When I'm at work, I'm in work mode. I also find that I solve a lot of yesterdays roadblocks during my commute (20 mins each way) and the shower. Solving problems is not always about characters per second of new code. Over the years, I can't even count the number of times that I heard a conversation taking place and was able to step in and say "that's wrong" and stop several people from a multiple day detour. I do think 40 person open spaces are bad but small ones for a team of 2-5 that are all working on the same project are great (ideal imo), especially in a sealed room with lots of white boards, etc. I do think that remote will become more and more common as companies see it as a way to reduce costs. It seems like the author is mainly concerned about what is best for them, not the team. Requirements and clarifications constantly evolve. It is expensive to have every requirement exactly defined with full test cases when you aren't sure what you need to build. Being involved in that process gets everyone to good enough quicker. Also, I'm not sure what to do when a customer calls (8-6, presumably) and has an issue and the night owl is the one who knows that part of the system, telling the customer to call back at 1:00 cause that's when Bob is awake seems pretty silly. Most tech companies have hours ~8-6, because that is their customers hours too, not out of a mandate to irritate employees. I do agree with the author that if the employer only cares about butts in seats, then it is a bad place to work but that has nothing to do with remote vs on site.

porpoisemonkey 10y ago
> personally am much more distracted at home because "I'm home". When I'm at work, I'm in work mode. Not sure if you've tried this or if it's practical for you, but I've found that having a completely dedicated space, with dedicated tools, can create a working context that helps boost productivity. I won't name them due to privacy concerns but my company has been very good about dealing with remote workers and provides a basic set of office amenities to any worker who is selected to go remote (convertible standup desk, remote access point with office telephone, all-in-one printer w/ ink refills, etc.) > Over the years, I can't even count the number of times that I heard a conversation taking place and was able to step in and say "that's wrong" and stop several people from a multiple day detour. I'm not sure what your experience is but a trend I've noticed is that this tends to occur when only a subset of team members are remote - in fully-remote teams the use of collaboration tools (mailing lists, Jabber, IRC, etc) can often replicate these kinds of ad-hoc conversations with the added bonus of automatically capturing the information discussed. I generally think environments where ad-hoc conversations are necessary to maintain overall effectiveness as being tool deficient.
- snarf21 10y ago
  I think it is more me personally than being about a dedicated space. I also probably average about 3 ad-hoc white board sessions in my office per week with varying people and topics. Additionally, I feel much more a part of a team all working towards a common goal when there is personal interaction. This is just what works for me, others prefer quiet. I work best in chaos and distractions. Part of it is my brain. If I think about only one thing/task all day, invariably I'll spend half the night still thinking about it. I've talked to others that only feel productive during hours 2-5 of a 6 hour work window. To each their own. Most of my experience that I was referencing was fully on-site teams. I wasn't saying that ad-hoc conversations were necessary but that they inevitably happen. Last week the CEO came and told the support team "I talked with customer X and we're going to upgrade their hardware. Then they can use the new apps but also their existing fobs". I'm in the same room and interjected that their fobs aren't compatible. That plan was scraped and a new plan was created to help the customer. Solving an incident like this via tools requires almost all conversations to be done via tools and inevitably you have to invite everyone to everything or otherwise you defeat the point. However, this means that people now spend a lot of time "listening to virtual ad-hoc conversations" via the tools just in case it is relevant or you have input. It can also be solved with meetings but again you have to over-invite and it is more time people aren't working on the tasks they are already behind on. Incidentally, this is one of my biggest issues with Slack, etc. You can use it to have fewer meetings but really all you have done is turn your day into lots and lots of micro meetings that may or may not be relevant or require your input. People need to learn how to plan and run productive meetings but that is a different topic. :) Business communication tools and project management are actually two of my biggest personal passions. I've even created a free online tool (MVP right now) to help people practice team communication in a fun and interesting way.
  - jsjohnst 10y ago
    One could also argue that the right people aren't being involved in decisions. If support doesn't know the hardware is compatible, they shouldn't just assume and send it anyway. That doesn't do anyone any good.
  - porpoisemonkey 10y ago
taurath 10y ago
I've worked remote full time and am now in an office full time with occasional work from home days. The difference between having a dedicated home office "space" to do/think about work and just going to the "home" space and trying to get work done is night and day. Occasional working from home is completely different than full time working at home. Once you've carved out a good space and have reduced distractions outside of work space (say a spouse asking you to do chores) you can maintain work mode the entire time, sometimes even better than at work. The sense of control is amazing for getting hard stuff done and concentration. There's something to be said for transition time though. My routine was that I would always leave the house whenever I was done with work, whether to go get groceries or go to the gym, or just go for a 10m walk. I can't cognitively switch from work things to home things in the blink of an eye, I don't think the hardware we have allows for that.
morgante 10y ago
> Most tech companies have hours ~8-6, because that is their customers hours too, not out of a mandate to irritate employees. The majority of tech companies do not have hours 8–6. That's farcical. Only truly archaic companies require developers to show up at 8am. More importantly, most developers are not on "tech support" duty so setting hours by customer call-ins is pointless.
- jsjohnst 10y ago
  Samsung in Korea requires their engineers to be in at 8am, being even one minute late can be grounds for termination. That may be proving your point, up to you to decide! ;)

by snarf21 10y ago

porpoisemonkey 10y ago

> personally am much more distracted at home because "I'm home". When I'm at work, I'm in work mode. Not sure if you've tried this or if it's practical for you, but I've found that having a completely dedicated space, with dedicated tools, can create a working context that helps boost productivity. I won't name them due to privacy concerns but my company has been very good about dealing with remote workers and provides a basic set of office amenities to any worker who is selected to go remote (convertible standup desk, remote access point with office telephone, all-in-one printer w/ ink refills, etc.) > Over the years, I can't even count the number of times that I heard a conversation taking place and was able to step in and say "that's wrong" and stop several people from a multiple day detour. I'm not sure what your experience is but a trend I've noticed is that this tends to occur when only a subset of team members are remote - in fully-remote teams the use of collaboration tools (mailing lists, Jabber, IRC, etc) can often replicate these kinds of ad-hoc conversations with the added bonus of automatically capturing the information discussed. I generally think environments where ad-hoc conversations are necessary to maintain overall effectiveness as being tool deficient.

snarf21 10y ago
I think it is more me personally than being about a dedicated space. I also probably average about 3 ad-hoc white board sessions in my office per week with varying people and topics. Additionally, I feel much more a part of a team all working towards a common goal when there is personal interaction. This is just what works for me, others prefer quiet. I work best in chaos and distractions. Part of it is my brain. If I think about only one thing/task all day, invariably I'll spend half the night still thinking about it. I've talked to others that only feel productive during hours 2-5 of a 6 hour work window. To each their own. Most of my experience that I was referencing was fully on-site teams. I wasn't saying that ad-hoc conversations were necessary but that they inevitably happen. Last week the CEO came and told the support team "I talked with customer X and we're going to upgrade their hardware. Then they can use the new apps but also their existing fobs". I'm in the same room and interjected that their fobs aren't compatible. That plan was scraped and a new plan was created to help the customer. Solving an incident like this via tools requires almost all conversations to be done via tools and inevitably you have to invite everyone to everything or otherwise you defeat the point. However, this means that people now spend a lot of time "listening to virtual ad-hoc conversations" via the tools just in case it is relevant or you have input. It can also be solved with meetings but again you have to over-invite and it is more time people aren't working on the tasks they are already behind on. Incidentally, this is one of my biggest issues with Slack, etc. You can use it to have fewer meetings but really all you have done is turn your day into lots and lots of micro meetings that may or may not be relevant or require your input. People need to learn how to plan and run productive meetings but that is a different topic. :) Business communication tools and project management are actually two of my biggest personal passions. I've even created a free online tool (MVP right now) to help people practice team communication in a fun and interesting way.
- jsjohnst 10y ago
  One could also argue that the right people aren't being involved in decisions. If support doesn't know the hardware is compatible, they shouldn't just assume and send it anyway. That doesn't do anyone any good.
- porpoisemonkey 10y ago

taurath 10y ago

I've worked remote full time and am now in an office full time with occasional work from home days. The difference between having a dedicated home office "space" to do/think about work and just going to the "home" space and trying to get work done is night and day. Occasional working from home is completely different than full time working at home. Once you've carved out a good space and have reduced distractions outside of work space (say a spouse asking you to do chores) you can maintain work mode the entire time, sometimes even better than at work. The sense of control is amazing for getting hard stuff done and concentration. There's something to be said for transition time though. My routine was that I would always leave the house whenever I was done with work, whether to go get groceries or go to the gym, or just go for a 10m walk. I can't cognitively switch from work things to home things in the blink of an eye, I don't think the hardware we have allows for that.

morgante 10y ago

> Most tech companies have hours ~8-6, because that is their customers hours too, not out of a mandate to irritate employees. The majority of tech companies do not have hours 8–6. That's farcical. Only truly archaic companies require developers to show up at 8am. More importantly, most developers are not on "tech support" duty so setting hours by customer call-ins is pointless.

jsjohnst 10y ago
Samsung in Korea requires their engineers to be in at 8am, being even one minute late can be grounds for termination. That may be proving your point, up to you to decide! ;)