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What I find a bit odd is that this is ostensibly about becoming more innovative. But does anyone really believe that major strategic business and product innov

by zzalpha 10y ago

What I find a bit odd is that this is ostensibly about becoming more innovative. But does anyone really believe that major strategic business and product innovation occurs at the level of the individual contributors and teams who will be affected by this change? I mean, sure, cool new features happen at that level, but you can't tell me the iPhone would've fallen out of a "water cooler" conversation between a couple of C++ devs on a Wednesday afternoon in the office.

pm90 10y ago
> I mean, sure, cool new features happen at that level, but you can't tell me the iPhone would've fallen out of a "water cooler" conversation between a couple of C++ devs on a Wednesday afternoon in the office. I think you are severely discounting the advantages of having people nearby/ in the same office. I'm not against working remotely, but personally do prefer a mix between working in the office and WFH. Its a lot easier to whiteboard designs and explain concepts. Its easy to ask a question and get an answer. There's also the other aspect of building a shared culture and getting to know your coworkers. That promotes a sense of comraderie so that when e.g. someone on the team has to take time off, there is a deadline for a deliverable or there is a service outage, the team works much more quickly and cohesively to solve problems. This also allows a better division of labor and I've seen this lead to many innovations as one person on the team focuses exclusively for a small time on solving a problem.
- zzalpha 10y ago
  None of which addresses my point. I'm not talking about innovation in the small, where a dev comes up with a clever new bit of user experience or a snazzy new algorithm. That stuff is nice but it's incremental. I'm talking strategic innovation, the stuff that makes or breaks big companies like IBM when they're struggling to compete in 2017. I would never claim there aren't advantages to co-located engineers. But I struggle to believe that one of those advantages is big picture innovation as implied by the article.

by zzalpha 10y ago

pm90 10y ago

> I mean, sure, cool new features happen at that level, but you can't tell me the iPhone would've fallen out of a "water cooler" conversation between a couple of C++ devs on a Wednesday afternoon in the office. I think you are severely discounting the advantages of having people nearby/ in the same office. I'm not against working remotely, but personally do prefer a mix between working in the office and WFH. Its a lot easier to whiteboard designs and explain concepts. Its easy to ask a question and get an answer. There's also the other aspect of building a shared culture and getting to know your coworkers. That promotes a sense of comraderie so that when e.g. someone on the team has to take time off, there is a deadline for a deliverable or there is a service outage, the team works much more quickly and cohesively to solve problems. This also allows a better division of labor and I've seen this lead to many innovations as one person on the team focuses exclusively for a small time on solving a problem.

zzalpha 10y ago
None of which addresses my point. I'm not talking about innovation in the small, where a dev comes up with a clever new bit of user experience or a snazzy new algorithm. That stuff is nice but it's incremental. I'm talking strategic innovation, the stuff that makes or breaks big companies like IBM when they're struggling to compete in 2017. I would never claim there aren't advantages to co-located engineers. But I struggle to believe that one of those advantages is big picture innovation as implied by the article.