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It's a penny wise, pound foolish decision though, considering engineering salaries. It's hard to quantify, and often an externalized cost to the facilities mana

It's a penny wise, pound foolish decision though, considering engineering salaries. It's hard to quantify, and often an externalized cost to the facilities management and decision makers, but my own experience suggests open offices are incredibly expensive as a negative multiplier on the engineering output. The "actual work" starts getting done in the evenings, on planes, and on weekends, while the business hours are a circus of meetings and "grab-ass" as the top comment in this thread so eloquently put it. I'm building my own company now, fully remote, and from an engineering output point of view I've never seen such productivity. No ass-in-seat supervision, no assigned hours, just straight throughput of engineering tasks being closed and features being shipped every day.

watwut 8y ago
> The "actual work" starts getting done in the evenings, on planes, and on weekends, while the business hours are a circus of meetings and "grab-ass" as the top comment in this thread so eloquently put it. And thus, there is no incentive to change it. Cause total productivity is the same.
mwcampbell 8y ago
> I'm building my own company now, fully remote How do you counter the common argument that face-to-face communication is the most high-bandwidth and one shouldn't throw away that competitive advantage unnecessarily? I'm not a proponent of that position; on the contrary, I don't want to accept it. But a lot of people think that way.
- linuxftw 8y ago
  I find video chat to be as productive or even moreso than face-to-face meetings for small groups of people. In face to face meetings, many companies (like ones I have worked for) have limited meeting spaces and it's quite hard to book a conference room for more than an hour. Often times, we'd shuffle from one conference room to another. So even in-person isn't quite as effecient and productive as it could be.
- s-shellfish 8y ago
  It's not the most high bandwidth for all of us. More information doesn't always equal better.
  - mwcampbell 8y ago
    What specific drawbacks, or groups of people for whom face-to-face is a problem, do you have in mind? FWIW, I personally don't benefit from the "high bandwidth". I'm legally blind; I can't read facial expressions or body language, or even recognize specific faces. SO for me, face-to-face amounts to little more than audio communication with full frequency range and zero latency or drop-outs. All that to say that I can only understand face-to-face communication (edit: as it works for most people) second-hand, so I'm curious, not being argumentative.
    - s-shellfish 8y ago
      Some people are hyper-reactive to certain types of information. Whether you want to call it a preference or a handicap, I don't know. I personally have PTSD. I will nearly instinctively read things into faces that I can never be sure is there. This is perpetually confusing and often overloading for me, not to mention a useless waste of thinking cycles. It's taken me years to learn how to be less reactive, but it's always a process of reducing information down to a minimal set of what is most consistent, structured, and true with respect to the social environment. Which often does reduce down to pure language, the direct translation of a statement and the direction it aligns with. It gets labeled many things, like social anxiety, aspergers, many other stigmatized disorders - but this is often my root problem - being overloaded with the amount of information present in social environments. I have greater clarity when I can think separated from people physically, most often through text. I've gotten better with audio, but in person communication is still something of a struggle. I'm not being argumentative either. Just people have differences, and they aren't always easy to notice, identity, or correct.
      - mwcampbell 8y ago
        Thanks for that. So I gather that audio is also more difficult for you than text, but less difficult than face-to-face.
- groby_b 8y ago
  Face-to-face is more effective than video conferencing, but not in the way that you'd trivially expect. Most designated meetings, you can have just fine over a video conferencing system. Where f2f excels is in the conversations after you leave the meeting room - just a casual question to some other person from the meeting, which evolves into an impromptu 5-minute chat. (That is usually more valuable than the entire meeting :) Spontaneous conversation is incredibly valuable. (Which, ironically, is also cited for open offices). I believe that if you start with a fully remote setup, you are growing a culture that will move these conversations to IM or other channels, by necessity. You'll likely be fine. But you cannot move a company that has grown up with a culture of f2f meetings to a culture of IM conversations - it's too deeply ingrained. IOW, you're not "throwing away" something if you build a remote culture from the start. Both models can work, but switching models is hard.
  - mwcampbell 8y ago
    It does seem plausible that requiring an in-person team to switch to IM and other electronic communication would be more difficult than starting out remote. I work on accessibility for people with disabilities, and I'm blind myself (well, legally blind), so I think a lot about including people with disabilities. It seems to me that working with people with some kinds of disabilities, e.g. deafness or a severe speech impediment, would be akin to forcing an in-person team to switch to IM. (I have no direct experience working with people with those disabilities, so I'm happy to be educated.) So I speculate that starting out remote would also make the team more inclusive in this area.
bsenftner 8y ago
"It's a penny wise, pound foolish decision" Yes, and repeated infinitely throughout the global corporate world. Basically saying over and over again: corporations care more about dollars than their people, and the people must change or leave - if you want this job at all. What? you're the top in your field? So what, you're not special. Get to work.
Florin_Andrei 8y ago
> It's a penny wise, pound foolish decision though, considering engineering salaries. Yeah, but people are replaceable. Whereas you, as an entrepreneur, only have one life to live. Choose wisely. /s

watwut 8y ago

> The "actual work" starts getting done in the evenings, on planes, and on weekends, while the business hours are a circus of meetings and "grab-ass" as the top comment in this thread so eloquently put it. And thus, there is no incentive to change it. Cause total productivity is the same.

mwcampbell 8y ago

> I'm building my own company now, fully remote How do you counter the common argument that face-to-face communication is the most high-bandwidth and one shouldn't throw away that competitive advantage unnecessarily? I'm not a proponent of that position; on the contrary, I don't want to accept it. But a lot of people think that way.

linuxftw 8y ago
I find video chat to be as productive or even moreso than face-to-face meetings for small groups of people. In face to face meetings, many companies (like ones I have worked for) have limited meeting spaces and it's quite hard to book a conference room for more than an hour. Often times, we'd shuffle from one conference room to another. So even in-person isn't quite as effecient and productive as it could be.
s-shellfish 8y ago
It's not the most high bandwidth for all of us. More information doesn't always equal better.
- mwcampbell 8y ago
  What specific drawbacks, or groups of people for whom face-to-face is a problem, do you have in mind? FWIW, I personally don't benefit from the "high bandwidth". I'm legally blind; I can't read facial expressions or body language, or even recognize specific faces. SO for me, face-to-face amounts to little more than audio communication with full frequency range and zero latency or drop-outs. All that to say that I can only understand face-to-face communication (edit: as it works for most people) second-hand, so I'm curious, not being argumentative.
  - s-shellfish 8y ago
    Some people are hyper-reactive to certain types of information. Whether you want to call it a preference or a handicap, I don't know. I personally have PTSD. I will nearly instinctively read things into faces that I can never be sure is there. This is perpetually confusing and often overloading for me, not to mention a useless waste of thinking cycles. It's taken me years to learn how to be less reactive, but it's always a process of reducing information down to a minimal set of what is most consistent, structured, and true with respect to the social environment. Which often does reduce down to pure language, the direct translation of a statement and the direction it aligns with. It gets labeled many things, like social anxiety, aspergers, many other stigmatized disorders - but this is often my root problem - being overloaded with the amount of information present in social environments. I have greater clarity when I can think separated from people physically, most often through text. I've gotten better with audio, but in person communication is still something of a struggle. I'm not being argumentative either. Just people have differences, and they aren't always easy to notice, identity, or correct.
    - mwcampbell 8y ago
      Thanks for that. So I gather that audio is also more difficult for you than text, but less difficult than face-to-face.
groby_b 8y ago
Face-to-face is more effective than video conferencing, but not in the way that you'd trivially expect. Most designated meetings, you can have just fine over a video conferencing system. Where f2f excels is in the conversations after you leave the meeting room - just a casual question to some other person from the meeting, which evolves into an impromptu 5-minute chat. (That is usually more valuable than the entire meeting :) Spontaneous conversation is incredibly valuable. (Which, ironically, is also cited for open offices). I believe that if you start with a fully remote setup, you are growing a culture that will move these conversations to IM or other channels, by necessity. You'll likely be fine. But you cannot move a company that has grown up with a culture of f2f meetings to a culture of IM conversations - it's too deeply ingrained. IOW, you're not "throwing away" something if you build a remote culture from the start. Both models can work, but switching models is hard.
- mwcampbell 8y ago
  It does seem plausible that requiring an in-person team to switch to IM and other electronic communication would be more difficult than starting out remote. I work on accessibility for people with disabilities, and I'm blind myself (well, legally blind), so I think a lot about including people with disabilities. It seems to me that working with people with some kinds of disabilities, e.g. deafness or a severe speech impediment, would be akin to forcing an in-person team to switch to IM. (I have no direct experience working with people with those disabilities, so I'm happy to be educated.) So I speculate that starting out remote would also make the team more inclusive in this area.

bsenftner 8y ago

"It's a penny wise, pound foolish decision" Yes, and repeated infinitely throughout the global corporate world. Basically saying over and over again: corporations care more about dollars than their people, and the people must change or leave - if you want this job at all. What? you're the top in your field? So what, you're not special. Get to work.

Florin_Andrei 8y ago

> It's a penny wise, pound foolish decision though, considering engineering salaries. Yeah, but people are replaceable. Whereas you, as an entrepreneur, only have one life to live. Choose wisely. /s