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That's why programmers should work remotely. It's the best thing I've ever done for my career. Moved back from Management to IC because it was remote and it's b

That's why programmers should work remotely. It's the best thing I've ever done for my career. Moved back from Management to IC because it was remote and it's been amazing.

mooreds 9y ago
Remote work is great for so many reasons. Off the top of my head: For the company: * less office space expense * bigger talent pool * low cost benefit * increased documentation * encourages the trend towards outcome based management (as opposed to butts in seats) For the programmer: * more control over their work environment * more control over their time * no "commuting" subsidy for their employers * arbitrage payscales and standard of living * working vacations become possible There are some downsides in terms of increased coordination costs and I have some friends that will never get to work remote because of security concerns, but for most developers this trend is fantastic.
- hackermailman 9y ago
  One of the downsides is managers think we don't do anything all day as they can't stand over us monitoring for efficiency, so insist we are available at a whim on Slack, which makes Slack the new open office where you have to stop reasoning about what you're building and answer somebody's meme post on Slack or a manager's musings that would've been an email in the past you could reply to later. To me this is just as great as disturbance as the door opening to the foozball and video game room with a crowd of people yelling.
  - chrisco255 9y ago
    Perhaps you could write a chat bot that periodically makes arbitrary comments or adds reactions to others' posts?
  - devmunchies 9y ago
    I've been looking into https://twistapp.com/ https://twistapp.com/ for the reasons you said about slack.
  - mooreds 9y ago
    Agreed slack can be a disturbance, but seems like the issue might be management expectations, not what the preferred method for interrupting you is :)
  - greymeister 9y ago
    When management don't understand how to gauge productivity they resort to this "ass-in-seat" metric. It's the circumstance I've dealt with in most of my software positions and also the source of most friction to WFH or remote employees.
- maxxxxx 9y ago
  The problem with remote work is that you need very competent managers who understand the work deeply and can keep things together. From my experience there are not too many managers who can lead a remote team competently.
  - mooreds 9y ago
    Sorry, I don't understand why competent management is required for remote work but not for non-remote work. Is there some advantage for onsite work in terms of management? In my experience, incompetent management won't do a good job of leading a team in any circumstances (remote or non remote).
    - maxxxxx 9y ago
      Incompetent management is always a problem but in remote teams it's even worse. With onsite teams the manager can at least track attendance and can generally see if people are doing some work. With remote teams your only measure is the output of people and that's very hard to judge if you are not competent. I think you also need to hire differently for remote. People need to be self-motivated and self-sufficient.
      - mooreds 9y ago
        > I think you also need to hire differently for remote. People need to be self-motivated and self-sufficient. I think this is true, but I think that most hiring managers would prefer to hire for self-motivated and self-sufficient regardless of the role location. But maybe I'm too optimistic.
        maxxxxx 9y ago
        "But maybe I'm too optimistic." Unfortunately I think so.
        tene 9y ago
        It's nice when you can hire someone self-motivated and self-sufficient but it's certainly not the only criteria. I've worked with people who struggle quite a bit to be productive when working from home, but that wasn't a problem because we just didn't let them work from home and they were very productive when at the open-plan office interacting with people who were being productive. If the biggest issue I have with a direct report is that they require a bit of attention to keep them focused and productive, then that's a high-quality employee I'll be very happy with.
- recursive 9y ago
  The downside for me is communication has more overhead and friction. Communicating in person is less effort. YMMV.
- fredley 9y ago
  I'd list working vacations as a downside. Proper time off, and the expectation that when you are on vacation you are on vacation is really important. I work 1-2 days a week from home and it's a great balance. It gives me time to really get stuck into things with minimal distraction, and be more flexible with time. That said, the days in the office are really useful too - nothing beats sitting with other people physically when you need to communicate.
  - mooreds 9y ago
    I don't think you should take all your vacations as working, but if you have a limited amount of vacation time and want to take a trip to see family or whatnot, a working vacation can be helpful. But I agree, time off the grid is important and at least some of your vacation days should be non working.
    - bmj 9y ago
      This is exactly what I do. If it's a family trip, when I know there will "down-time," I'd rather work a half day and save my vacation time for a proper trip. I've done some longer trips with my family (4-6 weeks), and working remotely has allowed us to take those longer trips when I didn't have six weeks of vacation. I would typically take two weeks off, work three or four days, take another two weeks off, work a few days, etc, etc.
  - TallGuyShort 9y ago
    I take proper vacations, too, but it's when I actually need a vacation only. For certain events I have to travel somewhere, but don't or can't necessarily participate in something the whole time. I can still be there, still be productive, and I miss neither work nor the event. More time to spend on actual vacations when I do want to disconnect for a week or more at a time.
- probinso 9y ago
  I'm pretty sure that larger talent pool is a myth. Not everybody has the discipline to work remotely. Perhaps are able to cast a wider net, but there are a lot more rotten fish. I would expect that a larger talent pool maybe the case for smaller cities
  - calafrax 9y ago
    not everyone has the discipline to work in an office either. not sure the proportion is any different.
  - mooreds 9y ago
    Actually, I think the larger talent pool is pretty inescapable. Here's some wild guesses: There are 3.87M software devs in the USA in a population of 325 million: https://www.census.gov/popclock/ https://www.census.gov/popclock/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_demograph... Call it a density of 1% across the USA. San Francisco has a population of 870k, round up to 1M. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco If you assume that SF has a software engineer density 20X what the US does, then they have approx 200,000 engineers available for hire. Assume that only 25% of software engineers are good for a remote job. That means that you'd have 960k engineers available for hire remotely, almost 5x the pool of SF. Yes a lot of assumptions above (and there's also a skills matching and discovery issue), but I think that illustrates the size of the talent pool for remote hiring. And that doesn't include software engineers who aren't residents of the USA.
hashberry 9y ago
Yes... for the first time in my career my desk is next to a window with natural light and fresh air. All previous positions have been in cubicles or stuck in the middle of an open floorplan.
ivanhoe 9y ago
but you need to do it properly: work-space/office physically separated from the living space (especially when you have a family), well-defined work hours (and free time that's really free) and at least some level of self-discipline...
nhumrich 9y ago
Remote isnt for everyone though. I much prefer to go into an office with coworkers. If remote works for you, great, but for me, i get far more work done being in an office.

That's why programmers should work remotely. It's the best thing I've ever done for my career. Moved back from Management to IC because it was remote and it's been amazing.

mooreds 9y ago

Remote work is great for so many reasons. Off the top of my head: For the company: * less office space expense * bigger talent pool * low cost benefit * increased documentation * encourages the trend towards outcome based management (as opposed to butts in seats) For the programmer: * more control over their work environment * more control over their time * no "commuting" subsidy for their employers * arbitrage payscales and standard of living * working vacations become possible There are some downsides in terms of increased coordination costs and I have some friends that will never get to work remote because of security concerns, but for most developers this trend is fantastic.

hackermailman 9y ago
One of the downsides is managers think we don't do anything all day as they can't stand over us monitoring for efficiency, so insist we are available at a whim on Slack, which makes Slack the new open office where you have to stop reasoning about what you're building and answer somebody's meme post on Slack or a manager's musings that would've been an email in the past you could reply to later. To me this is just as great as disturbance as the door opening to the foozball and video game room with a crowd of people yelling.
- chrisco255 9y ago
  Perhaps you could write a chat bot that periodically makes arbitrary comments or adds reactions to others' posts?
- devmunchies 9y ago
  I've been looking into https://twistapp.com/ https://twistapp.com/ for the reasons you said about slack.
- mooreds 9y ago
  Agreed slack can be a disturbance, but seems like the issue might be management expectations, not what the preferred method for interrupting you is :)
- greymeister 9y ago
  When management don't understand how to gauge productivity they resort to this "ass-in-seat" metric. It's the circumstance I've dealt with in most of my software positions and also the source of most friction to WFH or remote employees.
maxxxxx 9y ago
The problem with remote work is that you need very competent managers who understand the work deeply and can keep things together. From my experience there are not too many managers who can lead a remote team competently.
- mooreds 9y ago
  Sorry, I don't understand why competent management is required for remote work but not for non-remote work. Is there some advantage for onsite work in terms of management? In my experience, incompetent management won't do a good job of leading a team in any circumstances (remote or non remote).
  - maxxxxx 9y ago
    Incompetent management is always a problem but in remote teams it's even worse. With onsite teams the manager can at least track attendance and can generally see if people are doing some work. With remote teams your only measure is the output of people and that's very hard to judge if you are not competent. I think you also need to hire differently for remote. People need to be self-motivated and self-sufficient.
    - mooreds 9y ago
      > I think you also need to hire differently for remote. People need to be self-motivated and self-sufficient. I think this is true, but I think that most hiring managers would prefer to hire for self-motivated and self-sufficient regardless of the role location. But maybe I'm too optimistic.
      - maxxxxx 9y ago
        "But maybe I'm too optimistic." Unfortunately I think so.
      - tene 9y ago
        It's nice when you can hire someone self-motivated and self-sufficient but it's certainly not the only criteria. I've worked with people who struggle quite a bit to be productive when working from home, but that wasn't a problem because we just didn't let them work from home and they were very productive when at the open-plan office interacting with people who were being productive. If the biggest issue I have with a direct report is that they require a bit of attention to keep them focused and productive, then that's a high-quality employee I'll be very happy with.
recursive 9y ago
The downside for me is communication has more overhead and friction. Communicating in person is less effort. YMMV.
fredley 9y ago
I'd list working vacations as a downside. Proper time off, and the expectation that when you are on vacation you are on vacation is really important. I work 1-2 days a week from home and it's a great balance. It gives me time to really get stuck into things with minimal distraction, and be more flexible with time. That said, the days in the office are really useful too - nothing beats sitting with other people physically when you need to communicate.
- mooreds 9y ago
  I don't think you should take all your vacations as working, but if you have a limited amount of vacation time and want to take a trip to see family or whatnot, a working vacation can be helpful. But I agree, time off the grid is important and at least some of your vacation days should be non working.
  - bmj 9y ago
    This is exactly what I do. If it's a family trip, when I know there will "down-time," I'd rather work a half day and save my vacation time for a proper trip. I've done some longer trips with my family (4-6 weeks), and working remotely has allowed us to take those longer trips when I didn't have six weeks of vacation. I would typically take two weeks off, work three or four days, take another two weeks off, work a few days, etc, etc.
- TallGuyShort 9y ago
  I take proper vacations, too, but it's when I actually need a vacation only. For certain events I have to travel somewhere, but don't or can't necessarily participate in something the whole time. I can still be there, still be productive, and I miss neither work nor the event. More time to spend on actual vacations when I do want to disconnect for a week or more at a time.
probinso 9y ago
I'm pretty sure that larger talent pool is a myth. Not everybody has the discipline to work remotely. Perhaps are able to cast a wider net, but there are a lot more rotten fish. I would expect that a larger talent pool maybe the case for smaller cities
- calafrax 9y ago
  not everyone has the discipline to work in an office either. not sure the proportion is any different.
- mooreds 9y ago
  Actually, I think the larger talent pool is pretty inescapable. Here's some wild guesses: There are 3.87M software devs in the USA in a population of 325 million: https://www.census.gov/popclock/ https://www.census.gov/popclock/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_demograph... Call it a density of 1% across the USA. San Francisco has a population of 870k, round up to 1M. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco If you assume that SF has a software engineer density 20X what the US does, then they have approx 200,000 engineers available for hire. Assume that only 25% of software engineers are good for a remote job. That means that you'd have 960k engineers available for hire remotely, almost 5x the pool of SF. Yes a lot of assumptions above (and there's also a skills matching and discovery issue), but I think that illustrates the size of the talent pool for remote hiring. And that doesn't include software engineers who aren't residents of the USA.

hashberry 9y ago

Yes... for the first time in my career my desk is next to a window with natural light and fresh air. All previous positions have been in cubicles or stuck in the middle of an open floorplan.

ivanhoe 9y ago

but you need to do it properly: work-space/office physically separated from the living space (especially when you have a family), well-defined work hours (and free time that's really free) and at least some level of self-discipline...

nhumrich 9y ago

Remote isnt for everyone though. I much prefer to go into an office with coworkers. If remote works for you, great, but for me, i get far more work done being in an office.