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The sad thing really is that tech lives and breathes Internet. It sells cloud stuff, digital collaboration tools, connectivity, yet when it comes to employment

by rdtsc 10y ago

The sad thing really is that tech lives and breathes Internet. It sells cloud stuff, digital collaboration tools, connectivity, yet when it comes to employment it is stuck to 20th century factory mindset : you have to be in the factory by the lathe to grind your piece out and drop it on the conveyor belt. Even worse many even put people in large noisy factory-like rooms (open floor plans) where they commute to in the morning, so they can sit there and be distracted and unproductive, and then have them commute back at the evening. There is a network effect as well, even if people work for companies which are remote, and they could move to a different state to be with family they won't, because most other companies are not fully remote so they stick to a tech hub just not to have to move again if they switch jobs. You'd think Google, Facebook and Microsoft would lead the effort for working from home but that's not the case. If they switched you'd see very interesting side effects: areas of the country that are stagnating might revitalize, they'd be less traffic congestion, the whole IT work culture in US might change.

dforrestwilson1 10y ago
Or potentially just positioning some big development offices outside of their historic areas rather than the gigantic corporate campus mindset..
FilterSweep 10y ago
> you have to be in the factory by the lathe to grind your piece out and drop it on the conveyor belt. This is the aggravating concept of "face time" which is pushed onto engineers and people in areas who are not in direct sales or relationship roles. It also harkens to the prioritization of Sales over Product. At a prior job, a developer who worked with me had asked a director (non technical) why he couldn't work remotely more. He had been chastised in the past for it, despite the fact I could list his commits from our SVN. He was more productive at home, having removed commute and additional costs going to the office. This director could not provide a more ambiguous answer than "You work at the company so you should be visible here." And then, like you said, the 3 companies provide a luxury campus for employees that are actually attractive. Any annoying little fledgling developer could get dismissed with a pseudo-falsehood "Google developers go in to the office every day - why can't you?"
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- galdosdi 10y ago
  > the 3 companies provide a luxury campus for employees that are actually attractive. Sort of. They still use open-plan offices (at least, to some degree; I can't know whether all 3 use them for all teams in all locations). All the free gourmet food and trendy furniture in the world can't increase productivity enough to make up for the effects of large open-plan offices.
hkmurakami 10y ago
It is true that because we are bound by our limitations as humans, we communicate, build and maintain trust, etc. better in person. There are studies that have shown that without direct face to face contact, trust gradually erodes. But iirc a related study showed the relative effectiveness of voice or video communication, or once or twice a month face time holding back this trust erosion. So while complete remote work may actually have real detriments, it should be feasible to mitigate these drawbacks.
- bwb 10y ago
  Well said. We ran a 130+ remote company, we found that even just meeting once a year in a big group meetup where half the company came every other year connected people so much for subsequent google hangout calls.

by rdtsc 10y ago

dforrestwilson1 10y ago

Or potentially just positioning some big development offices outside of their historic areas rather than the gigantic corporate campus mindset..

FilterSweep 10y ago

> you have to be in the factory by the lathe to grind your piece out and drop it on the conveyor belt. This is the aggravating concept of "face time" which is pushed onto engineers and people in areas who are not in direct sales or relationship roles. It also harkens to the prioritization of Sales over Product. At a prior job, a developer who worked with me had asked a director (non technical) why he couldn't work remotely more. He had been chastised in the past for it, despite the fact I could list his commits from our SVN. He was more productive at home, having removed commute and additional costs going to the office. This director could not provide a more ambiguous answer than "You work at the company so you should be visible here." And then, like you said, the 3 companies provide a luxury campus for employees that are actually attractive. Any annoying little fledgling developer could get dismissed with a pseudo-falsehood "Google developers go in to the office every day - why can't you?"

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
galdosdi 10y ago
> the 3 companies provide a luxury campus for employees that are actually attractive. Sort of. They still use open-plan offices (at least, to some degree; I can't know whether all 3 use them for all teams in all locations). All the free gourmet food and trendy furniture in the world can't increase productivity enough to make up for the effects of large open-plan offices.

hkmurakami 10y ago

It is true that because we are bound by our limitations as humans, we communicate, build and maintain trust, etc. better in person. There are studies that have shown that without direct face to face contact, trust gradually erodes. But iirc a related study showed the relative effectiveness of voice or video communication, or once or twice a month face time holding back this trust erosion. So while complete remote work may actually have real detriments, it should be feasible to mitigate these drawbacks.

bwb 10y ago
Well said. We ran a 130+ remote company, we found that even just meeting once a year in a big group meetup where half the company came every other year connected people so much for subsequent google hangout calls.