16 ms·

I Only Work Remotely

252 points by biffa 10y ago

chrismorgan 10y ago
Formerly on medium.com and discussed a couple of times: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=https:%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F@yanismydj%2Fwhy-i-only-work-remotely-2e5eb07ae28f&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=https:%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F@yani... Primary discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13230508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13230508
n0mad01 10y ago
tl;dr because he has the opportunity to.
bshimmin 10y ago
I am a night owl. You can tell me I have to have my butt in a chair within your line of sight at 8 or 9am, but that is very wasteful. You are wasting my time and yours. I am not a morning person. I will start being very effective around 11am and I really get going in the afternoon/evening. So, er, everyone else has to be accommodating of this guy's abnormal working hours, because the first two hours of the day that society normally considers to be working hours aren't convenient for him?
- GoToRO 10y ago
  There are many types of work. The hardest type needs people to be at their peak performance level. Imagine having to jump a fence in one shot. There is no way to do it "step by step".
- eliasbagley 10y ago
  Nobody is being forced to hire him.
- nlightcho 10y ago
  Working hours is a pretty arbitrary concept that depends on the business. Every hour is a working hour if you run a 24/7 store.
- Wilya 10y ago
  What he's saying, is pretty much that he doesn't want to work for people that think like you. And it's okay. Not everyone can be a good fit for every company.
  - bshimmin 10y ago
    It absolutely is okay for him, you're right. And it's absolutely great that there is such demand for tech right now that people can afford to be so particular about their working hours and their various ways of working. What I find less great is the suggestion that all employers should "accept your employees for who they are and optimize for their abilities" - does anyone really think that if everyone just worked whatever hours they found most pleasing, this would genuinely result in a situation that was even vaguely practical? What would happen to the people with children who actually find that working 9-5 is convenient because they get to spend a few hours with their children when they get back from work before they go to bed? Would those guys just sit around stuck for two hours in the morning whilst the night owls had a bit of a lie-in, and then have to cart the laptop around with them in the evening so they can Slack their late-working colleagues whilst they're giving the children a bath? I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong and I'm just a dinosaur (who actually happens both to work remotely and to work strange hours sometimes too).
    - Wilya 10y ago
      It obviously depends on what work there is to do. In most of what I do, I work alone, with little need for cooperation, working through the backlog of tickets to implement. And the same goes for my coworkers. So I don't know why the morning people would have to wait for the night owls or why the night owls would need the morning people to stay around late. Everyone has their own stuff to do. If I need to talk to other people, I do it between 11AM and 5PM. Or schedule ahead of time so people can anticipate.
      - bshimmin 10y ago
        Yes, it certainly depends on the nature of the work. If you work pretty much entirely independently (and remote work often can be like this, especially freelance), then working hours become less important - if your arrangement is that the software will be deployed by 9am Friday and all the features implemented and testable by that point, and that's your sole responsibility, no one is going to be bothered if you worked 4pm to midnight every day to do it. I once worked with a very senior creative who was exceptional at his job. We all worked in an office together - this was a few years before the current remote phenomenon had quite the momentum behind it that it now has. He came in at midday, on a good day, and normally stayed late into the evening (I think he enjoyed having a little red wine whilst he was working, which probably slightly stretched the boundaries of acceptability in that office). His work was exceptional - on-brief but always extremely innovative. But, you know, when you actually wanted to schedule a meeting with him to discuss a project, it was always bloody hard work - he collaborated very well with the other members of his team who enjoyed staying late in the evening, but he was a constant thorn in the side of the project managers who often wanted to talk to him in the morning when he was never there. So, yes - it depends.
- Sanddancer 10y ago
  Or all the other devs are thinking, "woot, less hours of pager duty." Having people work off shifts can be rather beneficial if you stagger things properly. Scheduling like that, you hold meetings right after lunch, and that's about it. Everything else works just the same. Long as the scheduling is consistent, then having people slightly off the normal schedule works just fine.
- gcp 10y ago
  I work for a company with offices in USA, Europe and Taiwan. What's a "normal working hour"?
  - johnward 10y ago
    Normal working hours changes based on the project I'm on. I often work with people in a timezone that is 12 hours off my own. In that case one of us ends up on a 10pm call at some point. I actually prefer 7am-4pm but found that would just lead to 7-7 as "work", more likely useless meetings, usually creeps in later. Now I just start at 9.
    - freehunter 10y ago
      I had a project with a company in Singapore that had me working 3am Sunday morning, almost every week. That got old, fast.
swerner 10y ago
I have worked remotely for the better part of the last 15 years. I am now looking for a new job and am applying almost exclusively to positions that are several 100km away, if not on a different continent. The reason: the potential employer already understands that this will be a remote position. Any employer closer than 150km is just too likely to ask for "can't you just come in", and anyone 10 minutes from here will most likely not agree to remote work at all.
- padobson 10y ago
  Allowing remote work is a good signal for process quality too. Distributed teams don't share code on thumb drives or assign undocumented tasks at the water cooler.
  - gcp 10y ago
    Or have singular people in the company with undocumented, critical knowledge. PS. "Distributed teams" isn't the same as "working remotely", although many things that make the latter work apply to the former too.
    - bb611 10y ago
      Not always true, my last job had one director who worked 100% remote. She had multiple years of process knowledge she chose to share only when specifically needed to answer a question in a meeting or email. Much of this was critical information like "last year we published this report this way, but we promised to change the format this year." Even better, "we agreed not to change for 3 years but we're doing a ground-up rebuild in 2018." A significant subset of my job for a year and a half was figuring out how to maximize the number of answers I could get from her, and recording them in the team wiki.
      - gcp 10y ago
        Not 100% true I don't understand what part you're disagreeing with. If anything, you're very strongly reinforcing my point.
chukye 10y ago
I smoke weed to get creative, drink a lot of coffee and do a lot of online meetings, have some crazy hours, but I also get my work done before(better?) everyone else. I would never fit in any workplace (tried a few but none fit), I have a big chair, 3 big monitors and a bong, also can talk with my team fellows every time I want, but we really don't need to talk too much, if you understand your product, understand your clients and your needs, that's just not too much to talk, just hard work to do.
- smonff 10y ago
  Can you elaborate on smoking "weed to get creative"? Wich kind of tasks do you achieve by doing this?
  - kdelano 10y ago
    For my part, after taking THC(tincture) I "get creative" on architecture solutions, new feature ideation, and things like that. I generally keep any code I write during this time in a separate branch to code review while sober before merging in - it's the ideas that are most important, not the actual code.
    - battlebot 10y ago
      Maybe try not using drugs as a crutch? It reminds me of a perverse version of what athletes use steroids for. Be your own man, not some chemically altered monster.
      - jp555 10y ago
        I guess you don't drink coffee? How many people use caffeine to chemically alter their state? How about using alcohol to ease social interaction anxiety? Nicotine is another very popular tool for altering one's state. We are all essentially bags of chemicals. If someone hacks their diet to optimize nutritional chemical input, are they a chemically altered monster? Where's the line? Even playing sports together, sharing in a rush of dopamine to bond, could be considered here.
deleted 10y ago
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mathgeek 10y ago
There's a much simpler reason that I only work remotely: companies are willing to let me. I love being close to my kids, my wife, and the general comforts of a home office. There are many other reasons I prefer to work remotely. That said, if there were no companies allowing me to work this way, I wouldn't say "sorry, I only work remotely" and become unemployed.
bitwize 10y ago
Don't you just love it when someone with zero direct reports thinks he can tell managers how to manage? It's a job, it's not a fucking Montessori school, or a correspondence course. If you don't want your employability to dry up once rockstar ninjas become commonplace enough that the demand bubble for them pops, you will cultivate the essential skills of showing up when and where your employer demands and otherwise being their huckleberry. Know what that means? It means someone who can be counted on. Showing up at the office on time is a first-line test of dependability. That's why companies ask it of you.
- gcp 10y ago
  Understanding that cost of housing, commute length and variability and paycheck are intrinsically linked is a first-line test of employers not being stupid. That's why employees ask it of you.
- Jaruzel 10y ago
  That is an utterly antiquated position. I bet you don't even let poor Bob Cratchit have time off at Christmas. In this day and age, dependability is delivering your tasks accurately and on time. Everything else is just chaff. More managers should get with the program, and understand that skilled workers want to Work to Task, Not To Time.
  - bjornlouser 10y ago
    We must satisfy the emotional needs of management before thinking about the product.
  - eeZah7Ux 10y ago
    > That is an utterly antiquated position. Not antiquated enough: throughout history the large majority of workers have been farmers. Even without being able to read and write, they were/are entirely responsible of their work - and farming wasn't easy at all. Same for artisans, shopkeepers at al. When people are not bossed around they can manage themselves.
- battlebot 10y ago
Jaruzel 10y ago
One of the opening lines resonated with me: "...I cannot trust employers to provide me with an adequate work environment." This is becoming more and more the default position, especially in the contract market. A recent contract I had, had quite poor office space - small old desks, old 17" monitors, no personal storage, chairs in poor repair, and a badly working hot-desk system (I have yet to encounter 'working' hot-desking). As a designer, I was expected to work on these 17" monitors (or 15" laptop screens) do multiple large document work, and loads of complex diagrams in Visio. Not a fun experience. In comparison, my home office contains an executive office chair bought to my specifications, a large desk laid out just for me, and a nice 24" 1920x1200 monitor (soon to be replaced with a 27" 2456x1440 one). I have Skype for audio and video calls, and my kitchen has food and drink in it that I actually like. When I'm in the zone, and working from home, my productivity is doubled compared to working in a poor open plan environment, so where I can, I request work from home arrangements in my contracts. Like the author of the article, I too am not a morning person - people may scoff at this, but it's a real thing. Before noon I am almost useless, the proverbial bear with a sore head. Once the sun is past the yard arm however, my focus kicks in, and I can power through my tasks until about 8pm-10pm. It's a full working day, just offset. I don't really know the point I'm making here... but I do empathise heavily with the article author.
- gcp 10y ago
  In most engineering offices I've been into being a morning person would mean you have less overlap with everyone else, since coming in late and staying late is the norm. In one company I consulted for, a morning person almost got fired when a regional manager noticed he left 2 hours earlier than everyone else. It was hilarious, in the saddest possible way.
  - lj3 10y ago
    Can confirm; I have been that morning person who left 2 hours before everyone else and, while I didn't get fired, I was punished for it.
    - mbrzuzy 10y ago
codingdave 10y ago
The "I cannot trust employers" statement struck me. I agree with it strongly, but react differently. Rather than dictate my working environment to people I do not trust to take care of me, I just say no. If I do not trust an employer, I am fortunate enough to have enough savings in the bank to be able to say no to the job offers and walk away until I find someone I can trust. It works well... It makes job changes take a bit longer, and the searches are difficult, but the end results are good.
- cableshaft 10y ago
  Not everyone is has gotten to that point. Congratulations on getting there, I'm sure it took quite a bit of effort.
- cr0sh 10y ago
  > If I do not trust an employer, I am fortunate enough to have enough savings in the bank to be able to say no to the job offers and walk away until I find someone I can trust. I call it "FU Money" - because when you want to walk away, you can tell 'em and leave. It's a great position to be in.
battlebot 10y ago
Wow, I feel like I wrote this myself. Unfortunately, I have had very little success being "remote only." Maybe I'll keep trying.
greyman 10y ago
I currently work from home, but before I also worked in an openspace and also in the cubicle with just 4 people. I still can't say openspace is worst... probably depends on one's own preferences. Yes, sometimes it gets noisy and productivity goes down, but if I was stuck on something, and could just immediately get up and walk 10 meters and ask a more knowledgeable colleague made up for that. But if your work is clearly defined and you have easy access to all the information, then probably yes, being completely alone is most productive for me. But for example in the past I worked on a project with ~100 other developers, and not every information required to do the job done was readily available...sometimes it was acquired only by discussing with a colleague, and doing that in person is often the quickest way.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  >but if I was stuck on something, and could just immediately get up and walk 10 meters and ask a more knowledgeable colleague made up for that. Working in a cubicle environment is no different here. There's nothing preventing you from getting up, leaving your cube, and walking 10 meters to another cube to ask a question.
billirvine 10y ago
As a founder of startups, I take a bit of exception to the tonality. Yes, lots of inexperienced founders/leaders drink deep of the open office koolaid and do it wrong. But doing it right (allowing flexibility, having private spots, etc.) yields better overall results because people are more creative in groups. The chance serendipity of investigating new ideas with your fellows will always result in a better work product.
- justinlaster 10y ago
  I strongly disagree. In fact, I'm of the opinion these days that if you can't communicate effectively and proficiently over text, you're in the wrong field; at the very least I'm going to question how much you are "with it." There is nothing stopping a completely remote company from having "jam" sessions between developers. Is there any solid evidence that working in an office together yields a better work product? We see plenty examples of products that are built by completely remote organizations, and no one has ever pointed to them and gone "man, if only they worked in a face to face situation this would be so much better!"
  - AckSyn 10y ago
    Only anecdotally. My initial hiring is for three months in the office minimum. That's for acclimation of the kind of workflow/procedural stuff they should learn and general SOP for the company. After that, we offer working from home/remote on a per person consideration. Some make the cut, other's can't handle it.
    - TheRealDunkirk 10y ago
      I agree with this from both sides. As someone who's worked from home for many years for 2 different employers, I want to be in the office for a few-to-six months to get the lay of the land before spending most of the time at home. And I like the weekly meeting with the whole team, and the occasional 5-minute trip to the office for an ad-hoc meeting, to stay connected. We technical types can presume that technology runs the world, but, as much as it pains me to admit it, myself, it doesn't. People -- personal interactions -- still run the world, and always will. Being face-to-face with the people you work with is a fundamentally-necessary part of doing good with for and with them. But the amount of face-to-face time required to be effective varies WIDELY for different people and projects and types of work. These discussion always devolve into blanket statements and proclamations, but it's a REALLY subjective subject.
krosaen 10y ago
Employers need to take folks like this into consideration when setting their workplace policies, such as to what degree to allow flexible hours. There are always trade offs. Thinking specifically about workplace hours, having at least some amount of time everyday where you know everyone will be in the same place physically has some major benefits: knowing you'll have a chance to pair with someone, having some overlap where you get to joke a round while making coffee, perhaps eat a meal together, draw on a whiteboard (each of which have virtual alternatives that aren't as good IMO). But if having any such constraints at all means you miss out on 5-10% of really smart creative people, is that too large a cost?
throwaway2016a 10y ago
So to provide another point of view... I worked exclusively from home for two years. The cabin fever was so bad I couldn't take it anymore. I may be in the minority for programmers but I need other people around and I need the energy of an office. From a management standpoint. A good whiteboard session goes a long way to kill communication issues on projects that are creative or not 100% straightforward. Although, of course, you don't need to be in the office "every" day for that.
- mcjiggerlog 10y ago
  I work remotely and do end up going a bit crazy if I work from home 100% of the time, especially as I live alone. A good compromise was going to a free coworking space for the afternoons which has been working out great. I don't have that rush to leave the house in the morning, I chat to some people, I can come/go as I please, I am not constantly interrupted like when I am in the office. It has the benefit of being 5 minutes away on my scooter, too. For me it's a great balance. I feel way more productive and energised. Every 3 months I go work from the office for a week and the thing I notice more than anything is that I am absolutely shattered by the end of the week. Offices and commuting are incredibly tiring and pretty terrible for work life balance.
  - sleepychu 10y ago
    Who provides the free co-working space and why?
    - mcjiggerlog 10y ago
      Google (https://www.campus.co/madrid/en https://www.campus.co/madrid/en) and I believe because they want to encourage (and then seed) local startups. I'm sure there are other free alternatives (coffee shops etc.) but to be fair I think there are proper paid ones for not that much if you don't require your own permanent desk.
- pionar 10y ago
  > From a management standpoint. A good whiteboard session goes a long way to kill communication issues on projects that are creative or not 100% straightforward. Totally. I find that things are resolved much more quickly when I'm in the office vs. working from home.
_nalply 10y ago
I wonder how this collides with the inane recruiting. Do you keep your mouth shut till you have the contract, then declare that you will only working remotely?
- sleepychu 10y ago
  Seems like a good strategy might be to just not apply to jobs where attending the office frequently would be practical. [0] [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13520729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13520729
jhoechtl 10y ago
Kept reading until I hit > Remove the safety nets and let the bad actors fail I like to have a safety net.
- npsimons 10y ago
  Yeah, the assumption that only bad actors will fail is galling; the unstated assumption that even high performing good actors will never fail just smacks of ego or naivety (how good can you be if you've never failed?).
- jdbernard 10y ago
  I think you're interpreting this differently than the author intended. Later he says this: > Without tons of rules and process, it becomes very obvious who cares about the organization and who does not, thanks to the lack of rules & process and not because of them. An abundance of rules and process provides a system that bad actors can and will game, giving the appearance of adding value without actually moving the needle. > Even if we wanted to, we can’t write a rule that will magically make people engaged. We have to compel them by building a workplace they love and can do great, meaningful work in.
labrador 10y ago
Some of us have been making these arguments for decades to little effect. The manager either has discretion to let people work at home or he/she doesn't. And if he/she does it's very much their personal preference. Rock star devs can work at home if their managers are allowed to make that decision and the rock star demands it. Most of the time it feels like a whim of management.
- EleventhSun 10y ago
  I've been explicitly told not to do it and still do it. So long as you're productive it doesn't matter.
mi100hael 10y ago
> I am a night owl. You can tell me I have to have my butt in a chair within your line of sight at 8 or 9am, but that is very wasteful. This used to be me and I used to believe it was just the way things were. I'd naturally sleep 10+ hours until noon on the weekends, struggle to wake up for work, and then struggle to fall asleep before midnight. I had little energy for exercise and always felt stressed trying to find the time to stay on top of all of my other responsibilities. But the truth is, it's perfectly possible for anyone to adjust their sleep schedule and become a morning person. It just takes some conscious effort and the will-power to suffer through a week or two of re-adjustment. 1. Set your alarm for the same time every day, including weekends. Wake up as soon as it goes off and don't snooze. Yes, it's hard at first. But it's not inhuman, so just deal with it. It'll get easier. 2. You can have a cup or two of coffee as soon as you wake up, but no caffeine after noon. 3. Put down screens like phone, laptop, and TV after about 8pm. The artificial, bright light throws off off your body's natural instinct to get sleepy when it gets dark. Spend some time preparing for the next day so you aren't stressed in the morning, and then read a book or something until you feel tired. Bonus points if you get a workout in sometime during the day. It'll help you fall asleep earlier which will make waking up early easier. Also realize that alcohol reduces quality of sleep, so cutting back or avoiding it altogether will make waking up easier.
- hobarrera 10y ago
  > But the truth is, it's perfectly possible for anyone to adjust their sleep schedule and become a morning person. It just takes some conscious effort and the will-power to suffer through a week or two of re-adjustment. That's not 100% true. I've done it, and deal with a couple of weeks of pain to realign my schedule. I then went to bed late ONCE, and slept late the following morning. My schedule had the re-sync'd back to it's original form, undoing three weeks of work. I can't really explain it, but it doesn't matter how much effort I put in, just staying up very late ONCE, screwes up my schedule, and I have to go back to two weeks to pain to realign my clock again.
  - maccard 10y ago
    > I then went to bed late ONCE, and slept late the following morning. My schedule had the re-sync'd back to it's original form, undoing three weeks of work. How long had you been doing the night owl schedule before that? You're trying to break a habit that you've been forming for years in a matter of weeks (for the record, I was a self proclaimed night owl until about a year ago)
ccvannorman 10y ago
YES. >when I’m forced to be in a chair in your office at 9am: > - I force myself to be up early and rush to work, feeling ill prepared > - I try to focus and be effective in the morning, but struggle and the day is off to a bad start, killing my mood and momentum > - I’m tired in the afternoon and cannot work effectively at my peak work time. I drink tons of coffee trying to kickstart my productivity > - I go home when I’m finally starting to get going > - I am restless in bed and can’t sleep because I drank too much coffee and I’m worried about getting up early > - By the end of the week I am tired, frustrated, angry, and disappointed with my performance
- EduardoBautista 10y ago
  Just wake up earlier.
coding123 10y ago
The most incredible thing for me was avoiding getting sick. Been remote about 4 years now, the number of colds I get went from 2 per year to about 1 every 2 years. I shouldn't have said that.
- gcp 10y ago
  This stops working once you get portable germ carriers. Err, I meant kids.
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ivanhoe 10y ago
For me spending 8+hours in the office never really worked well. I'm effective for a few hours in the morning (unless interrupted by someone) and then just sit out the rest of the day pretending to be busy. For me the best part of working remote is that I can split my work day into a 2-3 chunks, few hours each. IMHO this is absolutely the most productive way to organize the time, it really helps me to stay focused through out the day. Also to be able to finish other things in life, beside work.
supergeek133 10y ago
It's a comfort/environment problem, at its core. Just like was pointed out in the article. Do you know what the most popular type of monitor stand is in a major corporation? Paper reams. In fact recently where I work they came around to people with these and asked they not do it because it screws up their paper ordering/estimation. Why is this a problem? Because offices are super picky about the $100 equipment order but NOT about the $2000 plane ticket/hotel. One is considered a necessary expense and the other is "waste". People are more productive when they are comfortable/have the tools they need. The building doesn't matter as much. Just an opinion. You don't want to allow work from home? Cool, give me my two large enough monitors, my adjustable stand, a motorized sit/stand desk, and maybe something simple like free coffee/soda so I'm not spending $X/day on it. Let me come in at 10 and stay until 6 if it suits me. At the office, make sure there are places I can go to escape from noise when I need to. What would even be MORE awesome is if you somehow worked it out if I could get a discount on noise cancelling headphones. Pretty simple stuff, and really at the core of what is written here. The title is just meant to infuriate some of you.
- Arizhel 10y ago
  >and maybe something simple like free coffee/soda so I'm not spending $X/day on it. That always annoys me, because I don't drink that crap. Soda in particular is extremely unhealthy. If you're going to offer free food/drinks, then give people an actual choice so people like me aren't feeling left out. Don't just assume that everyone likes Coke(TM), or Starbucks(TM), or nasty Folgers(TM) coffee. Try offering some healthy food or snacks, like yogurts or fresh fruit so employees stay healthy. >At the office, make sure there are places I can go to escape from noise when I need to. 1000 times this! I once worked at a horrible place like this where there was no place to escape to. They told me I could go sit in the "break room" for a break; except that this stupid room was extremely brightly lit and had a stupid TV blaring CNN all day long. We were explicitly not allowed to go to other parts of the building and use the comfy chairs in the more dimly-lit common areas to relax for a bit, away from the noisy open-plan work area. >What would even be MORE awesome is if you somehow worked it out if I could get a discount on noise cancelling headphones. No. First, they should be free, but secondly, they simply don't work. I tried that at the above place. It was even worse than putting up with the open-plan environment, because then I constantly had people walking up behind me and tapping me on the shoulder, which was horribly disturbing and made me flinch badly. Maybe I should have just backhanded someone reflexively so people would have stopped doing it. The fundamental problem with all this stuff is that employers simply do not give two shits about the happiness or comfort of their employees in the office, and are simply too stupid and shortsighted to see how this translates directly into both increased productivity and retention.
chad_strategic 10y ago
I feel as if I wrote this article. Help I'm trapped in cubicle... and the programmer next insists on having a mechanical keyboard. (He is not old enough to remember real mechanical keyboards.)
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neogodless 10y ago
It makes sense that the nature of management work (over-communicating) lends itself to physically connected open office areas. Of course, the other half of their job is getting out of the way of the producers. Could a manager answer a few questions I have? Can you describe to me the difference between the nature of work that requires group creativity and individual focus (or rather, which employee roles fit more into one or the other)? How much of each do the various roles of your employees spend their time on? How much control (or influence) do your employees have over whether or not they are in an environment that suits their need for focus (and when that focus ends)?
mdekkers 10y ago
I only work remotely. I will travel for meetings that should be face to face, but slack, skype/hangouts, email and phone should be the main form of comms for day to day stuff. No open plans. No constant interruptions.
npsimons 10y ago
If employers had to pay employees from the time they left their front door, instead of externalizing the cost to the employees, we'd find out pretty quickly just how "inefficient" remote working really was. That, and/or salaries would start to compensate for real estate prices.

252 points by biffa 10y ago

Formerly on medium.com and discussed a couple of times: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=https:%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F@yanismydj%2Fwhy-i-only-work-remotely-2e5eb07ae28f&sort=byPopularity&prefix&page=0&dateRange=all&type=story https://hn.algolia.com/?query=https:%2F%2Fmedium.com%2F@yani... Primary discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13230508 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13230508

n0mad01 10y ago

tl;dr because he has the opportunity to.

bshimmin 10y ago

I am a night owl. You can tell me I have to have my butt in a chair within your line of sight at 8 or 9am, but that is very wasteful. You are wasting my time and yours. I am not a morning person. I will start being very effective around 11am and I really get going in the afternoon/evening. So, er, everyone else has to be accommodating of this guy's abnormal working hours, because the first two hours of the day that society normally considers to be working hours aren't convenient for him?

GoToRO 10y ago
There are many types of work. The hardest type needs people to be at their peak performance level. Imagine having to jump a fence in one shot. There is no way to do it "step by step".
eliasbagley 10y ago
Nobody is being forced to hire him.
nlightcho 10y ago
Working hours is a pretty arbitrary concept that depends on the business. Every hour is a working hour if you run a 24/7 store.
Wilya 10y ago
What he's saying, is pretty much that he doesn't want to work for people that think like you. And it's okay. Not everyone can be a good fit for every company.
- bshimmin 10y ago
  It absolutely is okay for him, you're right. And it's absolutely great that there is such demand for tech right now that people can afford to be so particular about their working hours and their various ways of working. What I find less great is the suggestion that all employers should "accept your employees for who they are and optimize for their abilities" - does anyone really think that if everyone just worked whatever hours they found most pleasing, this would genuinely result in a situation that was even vaguely practical? What would happen to the people with children who actually find that working 9-5 is convenient because they get to spend a few hours with their children when they get back from work before they go to bed? Would those guys just sit around stuck for two hours in the morning whilst the night owls had a bit of a lie-in, and then have to cart the laptop around with them in the evening so they can Slack their late-working colleagues whilst they're giving the children a bath? I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong and I'm just a dinosaur (who actually happens both to work remotely and to work strange hours sometimes too).
  - Wilya 10y ago
    It obviously depends on what work there is to do. In most of what I do, I work alone, with little need for cooperation, working through the backlog of tickets to implement. And the same goes for my coworkers. So I don't know why the morning people would have to wait for the night owls or why the night owls would need the morning people to stay around late. Everyone has their own stuff to do. If I need to talk to other people, I do it between 11AM and 5PM. Or schedule ahead of time so people can anticipate.
    - bshimmin 10y ago
      Yes, it certainly depends on the nature of the work. If you work pretty much entirely independently (and remote work often can be like this, especially freelance), then working hours become less important - if your arrangement is that the software will be deployed by 9am Friday and all the features implemented and testable by that point, and that's your sole responsibility, no one is going to be bothered if you worked 4pm to midnight every day to do it. I once worked with a very senior creative who was exceptional at his job. We all worked in an office together - this was a few years before the current remote phenomenon had quite the momentum behind it that it now has. He came in at midday, on a good day, and normally stayed late into the evening (I think he enjoyed having a little red wine whilst he was working, which probably slightly stretched the boundaries of acceptability in that office). His work was exceptional - on-brief but always extremely innovative. But, you know, when you actually wanted to schedule a meeting with him to discuss a project, it was always bloody hard work - he collaborated very well with the other members of his team who enjoyed staying late in the evening, but he was a constant thorn in the side of the project managers who often wanted to talk to him in the morning when he was never there. So, yes - it depends.
Sanddancer 10y ago
Or all the other devs are thinking, "woot, less hours of pager duty." Having people work off shifts can be rather beneficial if you stagger things properly. Scheduling like that, you hold meetings right after lunch, and that's about it. Everything else works just the same. Long as the scheduling is consistent, then having people slightly off the normal schedule works just fine.
gcp 10y ago
I work for a company with offices in USA, Europe and Taiwan. What's a "normal working hour"?
- johnward 10y ago
  Normal working hours changes based on the project I'm on. I often work with people in a timezone that is 12 hours off my own. In that case one of us ends up on a 10pm call at some point. I actually prefer 7am-4pm but found that would just lead to 7-7 as "work", more likely useless meetings, usually creeps in later. Now I just start at 9.
  - freehunter 10y ago
    I had a project with a company in Singapore that had me working 3am Sunday morning, almost every week. That got old, fast.

swerner 10y ago

I have worked remotely for the better part of the last 15 years. I am now looking for a new job and am applying almost exclusively to positions that are several 100km away, if not on a different continent. The reason: the potential employer already understands that this will be a remote position. Any employer closer than 150km is just too likely to ask for "can't you just come in", and anyone 10 minutes from here will most likely not agree to remote work at all.

padobson 10y ago
Allowing remote work is a good signal for process quality too. Distributed teams don't share code on thumb drives or assign undocumented tasks at the water cooler.
- gcp 10y ago
  Or have singular people in the company with undocumented, critical knowledge. PS. "Distributed teams" isn't the same as "working remotely", although many things that make the latter work apply to the former too.
  - bb611 10y ago
    Not always true, my last job had one director who worked 100% remote. She had multiple years of process knowledge she chose to share only when specifically needed to answer a question in a meeting or email. Much of this was critical information like "last year we published this report this way, but we promised to change the format this year." Even better, "we agreed not to change for 3 years but we're doing a ground-up rebuild in 2018." A significant subset of my job for a year and a half was figuring out how to maximize the number of answers I could get from her, and recording them in the team wiki.
    - gcp 10y ago
      Not 100% true I don't understand what part you're disagreeing with. If anything, you're very strongly reinforcing my point.

chukye 10y ago

I smoke weed to get creative, drink a lot of coffee and do a lot of online meetings, have some crazy hours, but I also get my work done before(better?) everyone else. I would never fit in any workplace (tried a few but none fit), I have a big chair, 3 big monitors and a bong, also can talk with my team fellows every time I want, but we really don't need to talk too much, if you understand your product, understand your clients and your needs, that's just not too much to talk, just hard work to do.

smonff 10y ago
Can you elaborate on smoking "weed to get creative"? Wich kind of tasks do you achieve by doing this?
- kdelano 10y ago
  For my part, after taking THC(tincture) I "get creative" on architecture solutions, new feature ideation, and things like that. I generally keep any code I write during this time in a separate branch to code review while sober before merging in - it's the ideas that are most important, not the actual code.
  - battlebot 10y ago
    Maybe try not using drugs as a crutch? It reminds me of a perverse version of what athletes use steroids for. Be your own man, not some chemically altered monster.
    - jp555 10y ago
      I guess you don't drink coffee? How many people use caffeine to chemically alter their state? How about using alcohol to ease social interaction anxiety? Nicotine is another very popular tool for altering one's state. We are all essentially bags of chemicals. If someone hacks their diet to optimize nutritional chemical input, are they a chemically altered monster? Where's the line? Even playing sports together, sharing in a rush of dopamine to bond, could be considered here.

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mathgeek 10y ago

There's a much simpler reason that I only work remotely: companies are willing to let me. I love being close to my kids, my wife, and the general comforts of a home office. There are many other reasons I prefer to work remotely. That said, if there were no companies allowing me to work this way, I wouldn't say "sorry, I only work remotely" and become unemployed.

bitwize 10y ago

Don't you just love it when someone with zero direct reports thinks he can tell managers how to manage? It's a job, it's not a fucking Montessori school, or a correspondence course. If you don't want your employability to dry up once rockstar ninjas become commonplace enough that the demand bubble for them pops, you will cultivate the essential skills of showing up when and where your employer demands and otherwise being their huckleberry. Know what that means? It means someone who can be counted on. Showing up at the office on time is a first-line test of dependability. That's why companies ask it of you.

gcp 10y ago
Understanding that cost of housing, commute length and variability and paycheck are intrinsically linked is a first-line test of employers not being stupid. That's why employees ask it of you.
Jaruzel 10y ago
That is an utterly antiquated position. I bet you don't even let poor Bob Cratchit have time off at Christmas. In this day and age, dependability is delivering your tasks accurately and on time. Everything else is just chaff. More managers should get with the program, and understand that skilled workers want to Work to Task, Not To Time.
- bjornlouser 10y ago
  We must satisfy the emotional needs of management before thinking about the product.
- eeZah7Ux 10y ago
  > That is an utterly antiquated position. Not antiquated enough: throughout history the large majority of workers have been farmers. Even without being able to read and write, they were/are entirely responsible of their work - and farming wasn't easy at all. Same for artisans, shopkeepers at al. When people are not bossed around they can manage themselves.
battlebot 10y ago

Jaruzel 10y ago

One of the opening lines resonated with me: "...I cannot trust employers to provide me with an adequate work environment." This is becoming more and more the default position, especially in the contract market. A recent contract I had, had quite poor office space - small old desks, old 17" monitors, no personal storage, chairs in poor repair, and a badly working hot-desk system (I have yet to encounter 'working' hot-desking). As a designer, I was expected to work on these 17" monitors (or 15" laptop screens) do multiple large document work, and loads of complex diagrams in Visio. Not a fun experience. In comparison, my home office contains an executive office chair bought to my specifications, a large desk laid out just for me, and a nice 24" 1920x1200 monitor (soon to be replaced with a 27" 2456x1440 one). I have Skype for audio and video calls, and my kitchen has food and drink in it that I actually like. When I'm in the zone, and working from home, my productivity is doubled compared to working in a poor open plan environment, so where I can, I request work from home arrangements in my contracts. Like the author of the article, I too am not a morning person - people may scoff at this, but it's a real thing. Before noon I am almost useless, the proverbial bear with a sore head. Once the sun is past the yard arm however, my focus kicks in, and I can power through my tasks until about 8pm-10pm. It's a full working day, just offset. I don't really know the point I'm making here... but I do empathise heavily with the article author.

gcp 10y ago
In most engineering offices I've been into being a morning person would mean you have less overlap with everyone else, since coming in late and staying late is the norm. In one company I consulted for, a morning person almost got fired when a regional manager noticed he left 2 hours earlier than everyone else. It was hilarious, in the saddest possible way.
- lj3 10y ago
  Can confirm; I have been that morning person who left 2 hours before everyone else and, while I didn't get fired, I was punished for it.
  - mbrzuzy 10y ago

codingdave 10y ago

The "I cannot trust employers" statement struck me. I agree with it strongly, but react differently. Rather than dictate my working environment to people I do not trust to take care of me, I just say no. If I do not trust an employer, I am fortunate enough to have enough savings in the bank to be able to say no to the job offers and walk away until I find someone I can trust. It works well... It makes job changes take a bit longer, and the searches are difficult, but the end results are good.

cableshaft 10y ago
Not everyone is has gotten to that point. Congratulations on getting there, I'm sure it took quite a bit of effort.
cr0sh 10y ago
> If I do not trust an employer, I am fortunate enough to have enough savings in the bank to be able to say no to the job offers and walk away until I find someone I can trust. I call it "FU Money" - because when you want to walk away, you can tell 'em and leave. It's a great position to be in.

battlebot 10y ago

Wow, I feel like I wrote this myself. Unfortunately, I have had very little success being "remote only." Maybe I'll keep trying.

greyman 10y ago

I currently work from home, but before I also worked in an openspace and also in the cubicle with just 4 people. I still can't say openspace is worst... probably depends on one's own preferences. Yes, sometimes it gets noisy and productivity goes down, but if I was stuck on something, and could just immediately get up and walk 10 meters and ask a more knowledgeable colleague made up for that. But if your work is clearly defined and you have easy access to all the information, then probably yes, being completely alone is most productive for me. But for example in the past I worked on a project with ~100 other developers, and not every information required to do the job done was readily available...sometimes it was acquired only by discussing with a colleague, and doing that in person is often the quickest way.

Arizhel 10y ago
>but if I was stuck on something, and could just immediately get up and walk 10 meters and ask a more knowledgeable colleague made up for that. Working in a cubicle environment is no different here. There's nothing preventing you from getting up, leaving your cube, and walking 10 meters to another cube to ask a question.

billirvine 10y ago

As a founder of startups, I take a bit of exception to the tonality. Yes, lots of inexperienced founders/leaders drink deep of the open office koolaid and do it wrong. But doing it right (allowing flexibility, having private spots, etc.) yields better overall results because people are more creative in groups. The chance serendipity of investigating new ideas with your fellows will always result in a better work product.

justinlaster 10y ago
I strongly disagree. In fact, I'm of the opinion these days that if you can't communicate effectively and proficiently over text, you're in the wrong field; at the very least I'm going to question how much you are "with it." There is nothing stopping a completely remote company from having "jam" sessions between developers. Is there any solid evidence that working in an office together yields a better work product? We see plenty examples of products that are built by completely remote organizations, and no one has ever pointed to them and gone "man, if only they worked in a face to face situation this would be so much better!"
- AckSyn 10y ago
  Only anecdotally. My initial hiring is for three months in the office minimum. That's for acclimation of the kind of workflow/procedural stuff they should learn and general SOP for the company. After that, we offer working from home/remote on a per person consideration. Some make the cut, other's can't handle it.
  - TheRealDunkirk 10y ago
    I agree with this from both sides. As someone who's worked from home for many years for 2 different employers, I want to be in the office for a few-to-six months to get the lay of the land before spending most of the time at home. And I like the weekly meeting with the whole team, and the occasional 5-minute trip to the office for an ad-hoc meeting, to stay connected. We technical types can presume that technology runs the world, but, as much as it pains me to admit it, myself, it doesn't. People -- personal interactions -- still run the world, and always will. Being face-to-face with the people you work with is a fundamentally-necessary part of doing good with for and with them. But the amount of face-to-face time required to be effective varies WIDELY for different people and projects and types of work. These discussion always devolve into blanket statements and proclamations, but it's a REALLY subjective subject.

krosaen 10y ago

Employers need to take folks like this into consideration when setting their workplace policies, such as to what degree to allow flexible hours. There are always trade offs. Thinking specifically about workplace hours, having at least some amount of time everyday where you know everyone will be in the same place physically has some major benefits: knowing you'll have a chance to pair with someone, having some overlap where you get to joke a round while making coffee, perhaps eat a meal together, draw on a whiteboard (each of which have virtual alternatives that aren't as good IMO). But if having any such constraints at all means you miss out on 5-10% of really smart creative people, is that too large a cost?

throwaway2016a 10y ago

So to provide another point of view... I worked exclusively from home for two years. The cabin fever was so bad I couldn't take it anymore. I may be in the minority for programmers but I need other people around and I need the energy of an office. From a management standpoint. A good whiteboard session goes a long way to kill communication issues on projects that are creative or not 100% straightforward. Although, of course, you don't need to be in the office "every" day for that.

mcjiggerlog 10y ago
I work remotely and do end up going a bit crazy if I work from home 100% of the time, especially as I live alone. A good compromise was going to a free coworking space for the afternoons which has been working out great. I don't have that rush to leave the house in the morning, I chat to some people, I can come/go as I please, I am not constantly interrupted like when I am in the office. It has the benefit of being 5 minutes away on my scooter, too. For me it's a great balance. I feel way more productive and energised. Every 3 months I go work from the office for a week and the thing I notice more than anything is that I am absolutely shattered by the end of the week. Offices and commuting are incredibly tiring and pretty terrible for work life balance.
- sleepychu 10y ago
  Who provides the free co-working space and why?
  - mcjiggerlog 10y ago
    Google (https://www.campus.co/madrid/en https://www.campus.co/madrid/en) and I believe because they want to encourage (and then seed) local startups. I'm sure there are other free alternatives (coffee shops etc.) but to be fair I think there are proper paid ones for not that much if you don't require your own permanent desk.
pionar 10y ago
> From a management standpoint. A good whiteboard session goes a long way to kill communication issues on projects that are creative or not 100% straightforward. Totally. I find that things are resolved much more quickly when I'm in the office vs. working from home.

_nalply 10y ago

I wonder how this collides with the inane recruiting. Do you keep your mouth shut till you have the contract, then declare that you will only working remotely?

sleepychu 10y ago
Seems like a good strategy might be to just not apply to jobs where attending the office frequently would be practical. [0] [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13520729 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13520729

jhoechtl 10y ago

Kept reading until I hit > Remove the safety nets and let the bad actors fail I like to have a safety net.

npsimons 10y ago
Yeah, the assumption that only bad actors will fail is galling; the unstated assumption that even high performing good actors will never fail just smacks of ego or naivety (how good can you be if you've never failed?).
jdbernard 10y ago
I think you're interpreting this differently than the author intended. Later he says this: > Without tons of rules and process, it becomes very obvious who cares about the organization and who does not, thanks to the lack of rules & process and not because of them. An abundance of rules and process provides a system that bad actors can and will game, giving the appearance of adding value without actually moving the needle. > Even if we wanted to, we can’t write a rule that will magically make people engaged. We have to compel them by building a workplace they love and can do great, meaningful work in.

labrador 10y ago

Some of us have been making these arguments for decades to little effect. The manager either has discretion to let people work at home or he/she doesn't. And if he/she does it's very much their personal preference. Rock star devs can work at home if their managers are allowed to make that decision and the rock star demands it. Most of the time it feels like a whim of management.

EleventhSun 10y ago
I've been explicitly told not to do it and still do it. So long as you're productive it doesn't matter.

mi100hael 10y ago

> I am a night owl. You can tell me I have to have my butt in a chair within your line of sight at 8 or 9am, but that is very wasteful. This used to be me and I used to believe it was just the way things were. I'd naturally sleep 10+ hours until noon on the weekends, struggle to wake up for work, and then struggle to fall asleep before midnight. I had little energy for exercise and always felt stressed trying to find the time to stay on top of all of my other responsibilities. But the truth is, it's perfectly possible for anyone to adjust their sleep schedule and become a morning person. It just takes some conscious effort and the will-power to suffer through a week or two of re-adjustment. 1. Set your alarm for the same time every day, including weekends. Wake up as soon as it goes off and don't snooze. Yes, it's hard at first. But it's not inhuman, so just deal with it. It'll get easier. 2. You can have a cup or two of coffee as soon as you wake up, but no caffeine after noon. 3. Put down screens like phone, laptop, and TV after about 8pm. The artificial, bright light throws off off your body's natural instinct to get sleepy when it gets dark. Spend some time preparing for the next day so you aren't stressed in the morning, and then read a book or something until you feel tired. Bonus points if you get a workout in sometime during the day. It'll help you fall asleep earlier which will make waking up early easier. Also realize that alcohol reduces quality of sleep, so cutting back or avoiding it altogether will make waking up easier.

hobarrera 10y ago
> But the truth is, it's perfectly possible for anyone to adjust their sleep schedule and become a morning person. It just takes some conscious effort and the will-power to suffer through a week or two of re-adjustment. That's not 100% true. I've done it, and deal with a couple of weeks of pain to realign my schedule. I then went to bed late ONCE, and slept late the following morning. My schedule had the re-sync'd back to it's original form, undoing three weeks of work. I can't really explain it, but it doesn't matter how much effort I put in, just staying up very late ONCE, screwes up my schedule, and I have to go back to two weeks to pain to realign my clock again.
- maccard 10y ago
  > I then went to bed late ONCE, and slept late the following morning. My schedule had the re-sync'd back to it's original form, undoing three weeks of work. How long had you been doing the night owl schedule before that? You're trying to break a habit that you've been forming for years in a matter of weeks (for the record, I was a self proclaimed night owl until about a year ago)

ccvannorman 10y ago

YES. >when I’m forced to be in a chair in your office at 9am: > - I force myself to be up early and rush to work, feeling ill prepared > - I try to focus and be effective in the morning, but struggle and the day is off to a bad start, killing my mood and momentum > - I’m tired in the afternoon and cannot work effectively at my peak work time. I drink tons of coffee trying to kickstart my productivity > - I go home when I’m finally starting to get going > - I am restless in bed and can’t sleep because I drank too much coffee and I’m worried about getting up early > - By the end of the week I am tired, frustrated, angry, and disappointed with my performance

EduardoBautista 10y ago
Just wake up earlier.

coding123 10y ago

The most incredible thing for me was avoiding getting sick. Been remote about 4 years now, the number of colds I get went from 2 per year to about 1 every 2 years. I shouldn't have said that.

gcp 10y ago
This stops working once you get portable germ carriers. Err, I meant kids.

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ivanhoe 10y ago

For me spending 8+hours in the office never really worked well. I'm effective for a few hours in the morning (unless interrupted by someone) and then just sit out the rest of the day pretending to be busy. For me the best part of working remote is that I can split my work day into a 2-3 chunks, few hours each. IMHO this is absolutely the most productive way to organize the time, it really helps me to stay focused through out the day. Also to be able to finish other things in life, beside work.

supergeek133 10y ago

It's a comfort/environment problem, at its core. Just like was pointed out in the article. Do you know what the most popular type of monitor stand is in a major corporation? Paper reams. In fact recently where I work they came around to people with these and asked they not do it because it screws up their paper ordering/estimation. Why is this a problem? Because offices are super picky about the $100 equipment order but NOT about the $2000 plane ticket/hotel. One is considered a necessary expense and the other is "waste". People are more productive when they are comfortable/have the tools they need. The building doesn't matter as much. Just an opinion. You don't want to allow work from home? Cool, give me my two large enough monitors, my adjustable stand, a motorized sit/stand desk, and maybe something simple like free coffee/soda so I'm not spending $X/day on it. Let me come in at 10 and stay until 6 if it suits me. At the office, make sure there are places I can go to escape from noise when I need to. What would even be MORE awesome is if you somehow worked it out if I could get a discount on noise cancelling headphones. Pretty simple stuff, and really at the core of what is written here. The title is just meant to infuriate some of you.

Arizhel 10y ago
>and maybe something simple like free coffee/soda so I'm not spending $X/day on it. That always annoys me, because I don't drink that crap. Soda in particular is extremely unhealthy. If you're going to offer free food/drinks, then give people an actual choice so people like me aren't feeling left out. Don't just assume that everyone likes Coke(TM), or Starbucks(TM), or nasty Folgers(TM) coffee. Try offering some healthy food or snacks, like yogurts or fresh fruit so employees stay healthy. >At the office, make sure there are places I can go to escape from noise when I need to. 1000 times this! I once worked at a horrible place like this where there was no place to escape to. They told me I could go sit in the "break room" for a break; except that this stupid room was extremely brightly lit and had a stupid TV blaring CNN all day long. We were explicitly not allowed to go to other parts of the building and use the comfy chairs in the more dimly-lit common areas to relax for a bit, away from the noisy open-plan work area. >What would even be MORE awesome is if you somehow worked it out if I could get a discount on noise cancelling headphones. No. First, they should be free, but secondly, they simply don't work. I tried that at the above place. It was even worse than putting up with the open-plan environment, because then I constantly had people walking up behind me and tapping me on the shoulder, which was horribly disturbing and made me flinch badly. Maybe I should have just backhanded someone reflexively so people would have stopped doing it. The fundamental problem with all this stuff is that employers simply do not give two shits about the happiness or comfort of their employees in the office, and are simply too stupid and shortsighted to see how this translates directly into both increased productivity and retention.

chad_strategic 10y ago

I feel as if I wrote this article. Help I'm trapped in cubicle... and the programmer next insists on having a mechanical keyboard. (He is not old enough to remember real mechanical keyboards.)

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neogodless 10y ago

It makes sense that the nature of management work (over-communicating) lends itself to physically connected open office areas. Of course, the other half of their job is getting out of the way of the producers. Could a manager answer a few questions I have? Can you describe to me the difference between the nature of work that requires group creativity and individual focus (or rather, which employee roles fit more into one or the other)? How much of each do the various roles of your employees spend their time on? How much control (or influence) do your employees have over whether or not they are in an environment that suits their need for focus (and when that focus ends)?

mdekkers 10y ago

I only work remotely. I will travel for meetings that should be face to face, but slack, skype/hangouts, email and phone should be the main form of comms for day to day stuff. No open plans. No constant interruptions.

npsimons 10y ago

If employers had to pay employees from the time they left their front door, instead of externalizing the cost to the employees, we'd find out pretty quickly just how "inefficient" remote working really was. That, and/or salaries would start to compensate for real estate prices.