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The failed promise of telecommuting is a tragedy of the tech world. I'm a Kansan born and raised in the KC area (suburban rather than rural), and I wish a work-

The failed promise of telecommuting is a tragedy of the tech world. I'm a Kansan born and raised in the KC area (suburban rather than rural), and I wish a work-from-home career was more feasible in my line of work. I'd like nothing more than to live in a small Midwestern town; the city-hives hold no real attraction to me. The Internet should have freed more of us to live where we want, but in the most connected point in the world's history we're clustering in tech hubs.

sologoub 8y ago
Agree that the promise of remote work hasn’t quite panned out, yet. However, the article is also noting something related: > Today, operators sitting at computers hundreds of miles from the farm can easily steer gigantic harvesters via satellite. Kansas’s agricultural landscape needs fewer and fewer human caretakers. In a way, they are realizing “telecommuting” for harvester operators and impacting local population. I wouldn’t be surprised if one operator is able to command multiple machines in multiple fields, thereby reducing the total number of operators you need, even concurrently. As for most “tech work” these days, I feel like we could absolutely do well with remote teams. In some cases I would miss the white boarding sessions, but that’s something you could fly people in for if it’s really needed or use myriad of other tools for.
- chrischen 8y ago
  The alternative to virtual density is real density (à la big cities like Tokyo, New York). In my opinion remote technology has not been able to come close with the bandwidth increases of real proximity yet. The promise of VR, telepresence, is still unable to match the benefits of real presence.
  - sologoub 8y ago
    Don’t know if VR/telepresence has given any real benefit to typical tech work. That said, my team at a prior employer was distributed between our offices in LA, SF, Seattle, Bozeman MT, Toronto. We met in person no more than once a quarter and did everything else via hangouts, conf calls and slack. Even though we were very spread out, the team was one of the most productive in the org. I don’t know if any tech would have made us measurably more productive. One argument could be made that we worked on an existing system, but we actually rebuilt completely, while also keeping the old one operational. There was a lot of greenfield work done and a lot of ideation. Periodic in-person sessions helped, but it’s really hard to make an argument that these same ideas would not have come to be without those in-person meetings. Where I think you need the density you described is in searching for new work and/or funding/company creation. It’s pretty hard to sell convince someone to be your first customer when you never met face-to-face in person. Hiring remotely should be pretty doable, but requires a leap of faith that many are unwilling to take.
  - state_less 8y ago
    I suppose the benefits depends on the knowledge work. A mathematician might benefit from the quiet solace of the country side, the human bandwidth being of marginal benefit, and instead focus on the problem. When they're ready, they transmit the proof, where it will be studied, reviewed and disseminated (if correct). If you're not considering the information you receive too heavily, then you'd probably want more synchronization and bandwidth to add value. Call center work, sales over VR (currently done over video phone) and the like.
    - blahedo 8y ago
      > A mathematician might benefit from the quiet solace of the country side, the human bandwidth being of marginal benefit, But most of the working (academic) mathematicians I know, while they need some time in "quiet solace" or whatever, absolutely need to spend some time bouncing ideas off other mathematicians. Not unlike computer scientists, actually. And that's easier when the other mathematicians are local-ish.
      - ebullientocelot 8y ago
        I'm just a math grad student, no claim to being a pro, and I can concur already that really digging into the meat of something, some new theorem, say, is MUCH easier with peers to throw off the wall ideas at.
  - DanAndersen 8y ago
    Yeah -- my actual area of research/work is VR, hopefully for practical use cases, and it's hard to see anything in current VR tech that would help for remote working. For those who do remote teams, having something like Slack helps more, where casual channels for chatting can serve as the virtual water cooler. I wonder if there's any potential in building VR-based telepresence tools specifically for those doing graphics/gamedev/VR work itself. When working on complex graphics-related projects, you still have to download and build someone else's code; nothing yet that's as easy as just going over to someone else's cubicle and looking at their build on their monitor. Maybe one day we'll have a distributed multi-user layer on top of the Unity Editor or its equivalent.
    - abakker 8y ago
      A personal theory of mine is that one reason telecommuting is hard is that is really screen-real-estate bound. I've been remote for 5 years, full time, and in that time I have come to rely on an iPad Pro, 2 laptops and 2 30 inch 4k monitors, all on all the time. I'm on the phone maybe 4 hours a day, sometimes up to 8. (I don't work in coding, FWIW). I have so many documents, projects, collaboration windows, schedules, emails, calendars, and checklists open all the time that it is easily more productive to add more screens. One thing I have learned is that collaboration and individual productivity are kind of opposing forces. To do one well, I do the other poorly. As a result I split my time between them (I manage a team, so I try to push for more collaboration so that they can work efficiently more of the time). When I am working solo, I prefer the untethered laptop with one screen. When I am collaborating, I would gladly double what I have now. I say this because I can see a day in (in my mind's eye), when I have augmented reality glasses that provide infinite, location/object-fixed screen real estate around my house and office that I can use to collaborate better, and then simply set aside when I don't need it. I really want to be free to have the room around me be a canvas on which to work and collaborate. I'm interested in VR, but I prefer the experience of the AR solutions I have seen so far since I don't need to contend as much with focus and motion sickness.
      - walrus01 8y ago
        Go whole hog and buy a 43" LG 4K monitor ($700). Not a tv, has no tuner, has native display port inputs. Best thing I did all year for productivity. I found that at a certain point adding more screens looks cool to view from afar, when not sitting, or to impress non technical guests. But in practical reality, the wider you spread things out, the amount of body and neck swiveling (like watching a tennis match) becomes highly frustrating.
  - christophilus 8y ago
    Anecdotal counter point: I've worked remotely for years. I do plenty of brainstorming via Zoom and Slack. It works just fine for me. I never felt productive in the typical tech office space-- open-plan or cubicles. When I was an office worker and really needed to get stuff done, I'd go home. If I can help it, I'm never going back to an office.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    I think it’s overrated. I worked for a startup in the 90s where my team was in Sacramento, Upstate NY, Toronto and a Wisconsin. At the time, Nextel and ICQ were good enough. That was a great team and great time.
jpao79 8y ago
How do we know that remote telecommuting work isn't working? If you could telecommute to work and could live virtually anywhere, Kansas would not likely be at the top of the list due to a somewhat harsh winter climate. I'd imagine people would locate somewhere remote but with a temperate climate (i.e. Central California coast, Florida, Colorado, Western Washington, or even Costa Rica, etc.).
- goseeastarwar 8y ago
  His point was that you should be able to live and work from where ever you'd like.
- jlarocco 8y ago
  Your argument doesn't make sense. The OP says he himself wants to live in a small Kansas town, but can't because it's so difficult to find remote work. I'm sure the majority of people agree with your statement, but not everybody. I'm kind of in the same boat. I'd love to live in a small mountain town, but finding remote work (even as a software developer) is significantly more difficult than finding in-person work in a larger city.
- mwcampbell 8y ago
  Surely I'm not the only one who would prefer to live and work near where I grew up, regardless of the weather.
- madengr 8y ago
  I like the weather here I KS. I won’t live anywhere that does not get a continuous hard freeze to kill off all those things that bite.
bsiemon 8y ago
It is interesting to consider why there is a preference to work physically together. The hive metaphor could shine some light here. Is telework effective/possible when there are workers and managers? In my experience managers resist telework. What if we had a pervasive culture of self organization and direction?
- danharaj 8y ago
  The bandwidth in person is much higher and the latency is much lower. This is particularly important to managers, yea.
  - imnotlost 8y ago
    For those that do seagull management... yea.
- hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
  I realize it's kind of a popular opinion on HN to shit on managers as only valuing "face time" and poo-pooing telework, but as an individual programmer, I find working at home without face-to-face interaction with product managers and designers a major pain in the ass. I can have a design discussion much more effectively with an in-person session than remotely. Of course, when I just want "get shit done" time I love working at home, but if I actually need to have a lot of interaction with other people I find it much more efficient to do it in person.
  - cup-of-tea 8y ago
    But surely a design discussion is once a week at most, not every single day, and certainly not randomly throughout the day.
    - hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
      When in the early stages of a product I'd argue a design discussion is much more than once a week, though I totally agree with you about not wanting it "random throughout the day."
lisper 8y ago
You should put some contact info in your profile.
- DanAndersen 8y ago
  Done!
WalterBright 8y ago
As a counterpoint, the D programming community could not exist without the internet and telecommuting. It's spread out all over the world, and we only meet once a year at Dconf. I remember "telecommuting" in the 1980s with a fax machine (international phone at a buck a minute was impractical) and mailing floppy disks (weeks of delays for international).
- doesnt_know 8y ago
  That's not really a specific counter point is it? The backing foundation is a non-profit that is backed by individuals, presumably they need a day job (not remote?) in order to be able to keep the organization running.
  - WalterBright 8y ago
    It is on point, as people are able to telecommute to cooperate and produce a large, complex product. The fact that it is organized differently than a traditional manager/worker org chart may be an interesting factor in its ability to successfully operate in a decentralized manner.
- christophilus 8y ago
  Yup. See many other OSS products. Elastic, the company behind Elasticsearch, is nearly 100% remote as an organization. Works like a charm.
- cup-of-tea 8y ago
  Geeks have been doing this for decades, though, via IRC and email communication mainly. The problem is non technical people don't get that and insist on silly face to face meetings all the time.
niftich 8y ago
Telecommuting "succeeded" in the form of offshoring. A seemingly dissimilar form of work, offshore workers nonetheless provide talent at a lower cost, in a locale that's far removed from the home office, but managed closely by supervisors at the remote site. Widespread telecommuting -- in the sense of independent workers with no on-site supervision -- would lead to the same labor cost arbitrage. You wouldn't be working in Kansas. You'd be out of work, with a very smart guy in Romania or Belarus doing your job.
- paulryanrogers 8y ago
  IME that's already happened and in some cases come back to on shore. Programming is fundamentally communication: translating business and consumer needs into technical solutions. If a remote team shares the language and enough culture to do that work well then the money will follow. I'd guess that culture, needs, and language are diverse enough that it won't be a race to the bottom any time soon.
aantix 8y ago
Remote software dev jobs definitely exist. Especially in SF/NYC/Austin/Seattle. I live in Lincoln, NE, consult with SF startups. Most companies are on Slack (or some sort of chat) and colleagues would rather Slack messages all day instead of walking over to someone's desk, making your case for remote work even more feasible. If you find a job that seems interesting (even if remote isn't advertised), just ask.. Some companies may surprise you. Here's my write-up on how to ask: "How to Get a Remote Job, Even When Remote Isn’t Advertised" https://medium.com/@aantix/how-to-get-a-remote-job-even-when-remote-isnt-advertised-286f955264a0 https://medium.com/@aantix/how-to-get-a-remote-job-even-when... A large list of job sites with Remote listings. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JfNAbUX_lN9K3MCNHO15GJtJ5qpk7H9Cl3xTBwv2FR8/edit#gid=366809548 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JfNAbUX_lN9K3MCNHO15...

sologoub 8y ago

Agree that the promise of remote work hasn’t quite panned out, yet. However, the article is also noting something related: > Today, operators sitting at computers hundreds of miles from the farm can easily steer gigantic harvesters via satellite. Kansas’s agricultural landscape needs fewer and fewer human caretakers. In a way, they are realizing “telecommuting” for harvester operators and impacting local population. I wouldn’t be surprised if one operator is able to command multiple machines in multiple fields, thereby reducing the total number of operators you need, even concurrently. As for most “tech work” these days, I feel like we could absolutely do well with remote teams. In some cases I would miss the white boarding sessions, but that’s something you could fly people in for if it’s really needed or use myriad of other tools for.

chrischen 8y ago
The alternative to virtual density is real density (à la big cities like Tokyo, New York). In my opinion remote technology has not been able to come close with the bandwidth increases of real proximity yet. The promise of VR, telepresence, is still unable to match the benefits of real presence.
- sologoub 8y ago
  Don’t know if VR/telepresence has given any real benefit to typical tech work. That said, my team at a prior employer was distributed between our offices in LA, SF, Seattle, Bozeman MT, Toronto. We met in person no more than once a quarter and did everything else via hangouts, conf calls and slack. Even though we were very spread out, the team was one of the most productive in the org. I don’t know if any tech would have made us measurably more productive. One argument could be made that we worked on an existing system, but we actually rebuilt completely, while also keeping the old one operational. There was a lot of greenfield work done and a lot of ideation. Periodic in-person sessions helped, but it’s really hard to make an argument that these same ideas would not have come to be without those in-person meetings. Where I think you need the density you described is in searching for new work and/or funding/company creation. It’s pretty hard to sell convince someone to be your first customer when you never met face-to-face in person. Hiring remotely should be pretty doable, but requires a leap of faith that many are unwilling to take.
- state_less 8y ago
  I suppose the benefits depends on the knowledge work. A mathematician might benefit from the quiet solace of the country side, the human bandwidth being of marginal benefit, and instead focus on the problem. When they're ready, they transmit the proof, where it will be studied, reviewed and disseminated (if correct). If you're not considering the information you receive too heavily, then you'd probably want more synchronization and bandwidth to add value. Call center work, sales over VR (currently done over video phone) and the like.
  - blahedo 8y ago
    > A mathematician might benefit from the quiet solace of the country side, the human bandwidth being of marginal benefit, But most of the working (academic) mathematicians I know, while they need some time in "quiet solace" or whatever, absolutely need to spend some time bouncing ideas off other mathematicians. Not unlike computer scientists, actually. And that's easier when the other mathematicians are local-ish.
    - ebullientocelot 8y ago
      I'm just a math grad student, no claim to being a pro, and I can concur already that really digging into the meat of something, some new theorem, say, is MUCH easier with peers to throw off the wall ideas at.
- DanAndersen 8y ago
  Yeah -- my actual area of research/work is VR, hopefully for practical use cases, and it's hard to see anything in current VR tech that would help for remote working. For those who do remote teams, having something like Slack helps more, where casual channels for chatting can serve as the virtual water cooler. I wonder if there's any potential in building VR-based telepresence tools specifically for those doing graphics/gamedev/VR work itself. When working on complex graphics-related projects, you still have to download and build someone else's code; nothing yet that's as easy as just going over to someone else's cubicle and looking at their build on their monitor. Maybe one day we'll have a distributed multi-user layer on top of the Unity Editor or its equivalent.
  - abakker 8y ago
    A personal theory of mine is that one reason telecommuting is hard is that is really screen-real-estate bound. I've been remote for 5 years, full time, and in that time I have come to rely on an iPad Pro, 2 laptops and 2 30 inch 4k monitors, all on all the time. I'm on the phone maybe 4 hours a day, sometimes up to 8. (I don't work in coding, FWIW). I have so many documents, projects, collaboration windows, schedules, emails, calendars, and checklists open all the time that it is easily more productive to add more screens. One thing I have learned is that collaboration and individual productivity are kind of opposing forces. To do one well, I do the other poorly. As a result I split my time between them (I manage a team, so I try to push for more collaboration so that they can work efficiently more of the time). When I am working solo, I prefer the untethered laptop with one screen. When I am collaborating, I would gladly double what I have now. I say this because I can see a day in (in my mind's eye), when I have augmented reality glasses that provide infinite, location/object-fixed screen real estate around my house and office that I can use to collaborate better, and then simply set aside when I don't need it. I really want to be free to have the room around me be a canvas on which to work and collaborate. I'm interested in VR, but I prefer the experience of the AR solutions I have seen so far since I don't need to contend as much with focus and motion sickness.
    - walrus01 8y ago
      Go whole hog and buy a 43" LG 4K monitor ($700). Not a tv, has no tuner, has native display port inputs. Best thing I did all year for productivity. I found that at a certain point adding more screens looks cool to view from afar, when not sitting, or to impress non technical guests. But in practical reality, the wider you spread things out, the amount of body and neck swiveling (like watching a tennis match) becomes highly frustrating.
- christophilus 8y ago
  Anecdotal counter point: I've worked remotely for years. I do plenty of brainstorming via Zoom and Slack. It works just fine for me. I never felt productive in the typical tech office space-- open-plan or cubicles. When I was an office worker and really needed to get stuff done, I'd go home. If I can help it, I'm never going back to an office.
- Spooky23 8y ago
  I think it’s overrated. I worked for a startup in the 90s where my team was in Sacramento, Upstate NY, Toronto and a Wisconsin. At the time, Nextel and ICQ were good enough. That was a great team and great time.

jpao79 8y ago

How do we know that remote telecommuting work isn't working? If you could telecommute to work and could live virtually anywhere, Kansas would not likely be at the top of the list due to a somewhat harsh winter climate. I'd imagine people would locate somewhere remote but with a temperate climate (i.e. Central California coast, Florida, Colorado, Western Washington, or even Costa Rica, etc.).

goseeastarwar 8y ago
His point was that you should be able to live and work from where ever you'd like.
jlarocco 8y ago
Your argument doesn't make sense. The OP says he himself wants to live in a small Kansas town, but can't because it's so difficult to find remote work. I'm sure the majority of people agree with your statement, but not everybody. I'm kind of in the same boat. I'd love to live in a small mountain town, but finding remote work (even as a software developer) is significantly more difficult than finding in-person work in a larger city.
mwcampbell 8y ago
Surely I'm not the only one who would prefer to live and work near where I grew up, regardless of the weather.
madengr 8y ago
I like the weather here I KS. I won’t live anywhere that does not get a continuous hard freeze to kill off all those things that bite.

bsiemon 8y ago

It is interesting to consider why there is a preference to work physically together. The hive metaphor could shine some light here. Is telework effective/possible when there are workers and managers? In my experience managers resist telework. What if we had a pervasive culture of self organization and direction?

danharaj 8y ago
The bandwidth in person is much higher and the latency is much lower. This is particularly important to managers, yea.
- imnotlost 8y ago
  For those that do seagull management... yea.
hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
I realize it's kind of a popular opinion on HN to shit on managers as only valuing "face time" and poo-pooing telework, but as an individual programmer, I find working at home without face-to-face interaction with product managers and designers a major pain in the ass. I can have a design discussion much more effectively with an in-person session than remotely. Of course, when I just want "get shit done" time I love working at home, but if I actually need to have a lot of interaction with other people I find it much more efficient to do it in person.
- cup-of-tea 8y ago
  But surely a design discussion is once a week at most, not every single day, and certainly not randomly throughout the day.
  - hn_throwaway_99 8y ago
    When in the early stages of a product I'd argue a design discussion is much more than once a week, though I totally agree with you about not wanting it "random throughout the day."

lisper 8y ago

You should put some contact info in your profile.

DanAndersen 8y ago
Done!

WalterBright 8y ago

As a counterpoint, the D programming community could not exist without the internet and telecommuting. It's spread out all over the world, and we only meet once a year at Dconf. I remember "telecommuting" in the 1980s with a fax machine (international phone at a buck a minute was impractical) and mailing floppy disks (weeks of delays for international).

doesnt_know 8y ago
That's not really a specific counter point is it? The backing foundation is a non-profit that is backed by individuals, presumably they need a day job (not remote?) in order to be able to keep the organization running.
- WalterBright 8y ago
  It is on point, as people are able to telecommute to cooperate and produce a large, complex product. The fact that it is organized differently than a traditional manager/worker org chart may be an interesting factor in its ability to successfully operate in a decentralized manner.
christophilus 8y ago
Yup. See many other OSS products. Elastic, the company behind Elasticsearch, is nearly 100% remote as an organization. Works like a charm.
cup-of-tea 8y ago
Geeks have been doing this for decades, though, via IRC and email communication mainly. The problem is non technical people don't get that and insist on silly face to face meetings all the time.

niftich 8y ago

Telecommuting "succeeded" in the form of offshoring. A seemingly dissimilar form of work, offshore workers nonetheless provide talent at a lower cost, in a locale that's far removed from the home office, but managed closely by supervisors at the remote site. Widespread telecommuting -- in the sense of independent workers with no on-site supervision -- would lead to the same labor cost arbitrage. You wouldn't be working in Kansas. You'd be out of work, with a very smart guy in Romania or Belarus doing your job.

paulryanrogers 8y ago
IME that's already happened and in some cases come back to on shore. Programming is fundamentally communication: translating business and consumer needs into technical solutions. If a remote team shares the language and enough culture to do that work well then the money will follow. I'd guess that culture, needs, and language are diverse enough that it won't be a race to the bottom any time soon.

aantix 8y ago

Remote software dev jobs definitely exist. Especially in SF/NYC/Austin/Seattle. I live in Lincoln, NE, consult with SF startups. Most companies are on Slack (or some sort of chat) and colleagues would rather Slack messages all day instead of walking over to someone's desk, making your case for remote work even more feasible. If you find a job that seems interesting (even if remote isn't advertised), just ask.. Some companies may surprise you. Here's my write-up on how to ask: "How to Get a Remote Job, Even When Remote Isn’t Advertised" https://medium.com/@aantix/how-to-get-a-remote-job-even-when-remote-isnt-advertised-286f955264a0 https://medium.com/@aantix/how-to-get-a-remote-job-even-when... A large list of job sites with Remote listings. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JfNAbUX_lN9K3MCNHO15GJtJ5qpk7H9Cl3xTBwv2FR8/edit#gid=366809548 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JfNAbUX_lN9K3MCNHO15...