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Don’t work “remotely”
- ricardoreis 8y agoNo, it isn't simply bad or unworkable. It's a tradeoff, with both positive and negative aspects to consider.
- mooreds 8y agoActually the tl;dr for me was "focus on distributed work, not remote work". The name matters.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- chapium 8y agoRemote work is fine if you dont mind being pigeon holed into one range of tasks, paid well relative to your cost of living, have no career advancement, and want to wear whatever you want at work.
- Retric 8y agoMost people regularly job hot for one reason or another. In such a situation their are very few reasons not to work from home.
- claydavisss 8y ago"No career advancement" is actually just fine for a lot of people, particularly older workers. People should not underestimate the value of getting an "urban" salary in the sticks, it can be the equivalent of a huge relative pay increase. One day someone will figure out how to be a salary calculator for remotes and this benefit will go away as employers will try to tailor the salary for local cost-of-living.
- nf05papsjfVbc 8y agoHave you looked at Gitlab's salary calculator?
- jhall1468 8y agoNot a great example. They just pay low period. Their target is 50th percentile. That's hardly going to result in a big paycheck relative to most SF startups, let alone the big companies.
- nf05papsjfVbc 8y agoI know their pay isn't good but it is calculated based on where one lives and is similar to what the parent-post mentioned.
- ghaff 8y agoThis was discussed fairly recently. There are some oddities to the calculator. For example, the entire state of Oregon and the entire state of Massachusetts are on a single pay schedule even though there are enormous CoL differences between the main urban areas and the rural areas of those states.
- wil421 8y agoLarge MNCs and the like already do this today. Their HR departments likely have tools to calculate cost of living globally. Or they have local partners who do it for them.
- chrismeller 8y agoI didn’t end up working for them for completely unrelated reasons, but one company I was considering a few years ago used the US government pay scales for locality-based supplemental pay. They were unrelated to the government, but I think one of the original founders had military experience so they went with what they knew. Not a perfect solution, but an easy one.
- ironchef 8y agoI’ve been working “distributed” (per the article) for about 17 years. My range of tasks has been across the board (engineering, support, presales, ops, etc). I’ve had quite a bit of career advancement (although I don’t really care about titles).... and I get payed CA salary while not living in CA. Just wanted to post so folks understand there is a range of opportunities out there... you just need to find them...
- powvans 8y agoI think that last sentence is the key: "you just need to find them." You'll work harder to find career opportunities that fit with the distributed lifestyle, but for me it is worth it because of all the non-career opportunity that comes with it. I've been distributed/remote for almost 10 years and my experience hits all the same points you made. I also have no doubt that my choice has limited my career. But career is just one scope of life. Not commuting to an office has afforded me the time to exercise more, see my children every single day, participate in their lives in ways that would not be possible otherwise, eat healthier, spend time with my aging parents who come to see my children at least once a week, and on and on.
- Kephael 8y agoI have a very hard time believing a real CA salary is being paid to remote workers. For engineering at leading companies, seventeen years of experience would be over 400K TC. However, I could believe someone paying a remote worker on the low end of entry-level compensation of around 120K for remote work.
- ska 8y agoIt's not at all hard to believe some people are receiving CA salaries (and note, your 400k TC line only applies to a relatively small group of companies and senior positions). On the other hand, I agree it is unlikely for the majority of remote workers. Depends a lot on your skill level and how rare/in-demand it is I suppose.
- ironchef 8y ago
- scrollaway 8y agoHi, I'm a life-long remote worker. I went from freelancer, to junior employee, to senior employee, to founder/cto and I'm now on my second startup. This spanned a variety of tech jobs and even some non-tech ones. Career advancement is absolutely possible as a remote worker. (In my case, spanning multiple companies, but I do not believe it's zero even if you stay at the same company).
- nosequel 8y agoThis is not the case for any remote worker I know and I've been 100% remote (and working with other remotes) for 12 years. We all get paid way more than the going rate in the town we live. All have moved up considerably in the engineering world. I work with more than one remote VP, have worked with a handful of remote heads-of-X-department. Either my world is filled with just lucky people who break outside the norm or you don't at all know what you are talking about.
- k__ 8y agoI'm working remote for 4 years and I had the impression to be truely free and successfull you have to work on your own career advancement.
- wonderwonder 8y agoThis is largely accurate most items but there are exceptions for when the whole team is remote. Where I work, the entire software department is remote, we are scattered all over the world and it works great. When everyone is remote, issues of lack of career advancement aren't much of an issue as they have to choose someone to lead projects and that person is going to be remote. I am relatively new to remote work so I am still adjusting but I find that for me the negatives are that I actually work more hours as its harder to gauge how I am thought of without face to face time and the lack of real human interaction can lead to feelings of isolation. Working to get past that. I currently live in a city but am planning on moving to a cheaper area and taking my higher urban salary with me which is great. Even thinking about just traveling every summer with my family, as long as I have internet connection I can work and get paid and I have the unique opportunity to show my kids areas of the world they would never see.
- amyjess 8y agoUm... where do I sign up? Because that sounds like the perfect job for me. (Edit: I'm not actually looking to change jobs right now, so don't take the first sentence literally and start sending me positions. But I'm contemplating a move out of state next year, and if that happens I'd be seriously tempted to look at remote work.)
- scarecrowbob 8y agoAnecdotally, I am the main dev for a very small remote business, and I've done quite a wide range of tasks up and down the LAMP stack, from deployment automation to server admin to developing software projects to fixing CSS to doing "sales engineer" work. My actual work experience has been quite deep in a lot of those areas, though obviously not as much as person that only does those things with their career. That's a function of the scope of my interests and the size of the company. I am 100% fine not "advancing", because there is no "advancement" to be had at a small firm. We just get pay raises and more days off. I dunno what else I am supposed to want. And I certainly wouldn't be allowed to play banjo if I had to go into an offie.
- cpburns2009 8y agoMy experience has largely been the same. I get to work on a little bit of everything, and occasionally get to dive deep into different areas as the need arises. And the pay follows.
- ataturk 8y ago95% of developers have no career advancement anyways. Don't bullshit yourself.
- ascendantlogic 8y agoNever heard of the assertion that VCs hate remote teams. Anyone care to expand on that?
- krallja 8y agoDefinitely my experience; one of the first things that happens after an A-round is all the remote workers get asked to move near HQ, and can’t, so they have to resign with no severance. And the standard startup recruiting playbook is to say “we will consider remote for the right candidate” when inquired, but all their hires seem to come from the same central California town the company founders live in.
- ascendantlogic 8y agoWhat's the reasoning for that though from the VC perspective?
- NullPrefix 8y agoThey want to come in and see the monkeys working at the zoo.
- dudul 8y agoI wonder if readers will take this comment seriously, but it very much sums up the reasoning based on my experience. And some CEOs think that too. I've been part of startups where VCs would stop by to pat on the CEO on the back, take a little tour of the office, happy to see 15-ish bozos banging on the keyboard. Sometimes they would invite some of their buddies to show off their monkeys. I don't know, maybe it was the VC version of a dick fight.
- maxxxxx 8y agoI have seen that too. It's especially important to show off someone from MIT or Stanford when the VCs do their rounds.
- wastedhours 8y agoI usually appreciate a good semantic argument, but not really sure what it adds in this context? I think the root of every conversation on "remote", "distributed", or "agile" working is not how it's perceived from a nomenclature perspective, but that it's something that has to be open to everyone. You need to work somewhere where the default is non-location, only-core-hours specific, otherwise it falls down. Am fortunate to work in a place that offers "agile" working (it's not a developer focused environment, so that word isn't loaded for us). You go where you need to to get the job done, within a set of core hours work how you need to. You can work from home independently for days or weeks on end, or you can turn up to a desk every day, or you can collaborate in a meeting room, on Skype, or in a cafe. We have an HQ, but not enough desks for everyone to turn up every day, so there's an expectation of being fluid in how you work. Every meeting has a video conference link, and very few decisions are made by the proverbial watercooler. It takes time and discipline to make it work, but that's spread by default and expected across the entire workforce.
- sk1pper 8y agoIt set up the clickbait title pretty nicely, at least.
- chrismeller 8y agoI think you just summed up the article in a much more concise and significantly less annoying and pedantic way.
- pavlov 8y ago> "We have an HQ, but not enough desks for everyone to turn up every day" Management by musical chairs?
- wastedhours 8y agoSaves a lot of money - why have individual desks if you're giving every employee a laptop anyway and we might only turn up once or twice a week? Only need to pay for 60% of the floorspace you otherwise would have to, and you get the benefits of in-person collaboration, as well as reasonable cost savings of remote working. There's no hierarchy to seating, and although it's an open office, disturbances are quite well contained.
- sergiotapia 8y agoDoesn't matter what you call it, eventually you'll find yourself being left out of some decision making if you're remote. Accept it as the trade-off like I have. It's just the cost of doing business.
- awinder 8y agoThe author is making the distinction between “remote work”, which has this downside, versus “distributed work”, which would seek to build a culture where being left out due to in-person communication methods just isn’t possible. Distributed companies i.e., Elastic seem to have solved this issue. Being a remote team member on a collocated team has this issue in spades.
- sigstoat 8y ago> Doesn't matter what you call it, eventually you'll find yourself being left out of some decision making if you're remote. the only companies where everyone is involved in every decision they want to be involved in are <3 people.
- sergiotapia 8y agoThat number is more like 7 in my experience.
- davidmr 8y agoMaybe I’m just a grouch in general, but I pray for a time when we have sufficient data available that this ceaseless and monotonous drone of posts about whether remote work is the best thing since sliced bread or if it’s the 7th sign of the apocalypse can just all be replaced by “here are the data and there are some pretty clear conclusions that answer questions X, Y, and Z”. Anyone who knows more about this than I do, are we close to that day?
- Angostura 8y agoSince, I suspect the answer tends tobe driven by the culture of an organisation, and within individual teams within it, and by the proclivities of individual workers, I fear you may be waiting a long time.
- davidmr 8y agoThat’s true of any kind of success in any organization, yet there are still studies that show that certain types of traits indicate success at certain types of organizations, etc. Even in a general sense, I’d be happy if these types of conversations could have data-driven discussions.
- ghaff 8y agoYou need to be careful of cargo culting though. There have been a lot of "traits of successful organizations" types of books and papers over the years. And it often turns out that there are unsuccessful organizations that often have very similar characteristics and successful organizations that take the opposite approach.
- davidmr 8y agoWell that’s fair. If it’s all unknowable anyway, I’d be happy to know that. Anything that lessens the blogspam on the topic!
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- LaGrange 8y agoITT: people who didn't read the article beyond the clickbaity title. ITA: someone's trying to coin a new buzzword. I don't even mind the buzzword, it maybe even captures the point of companies such as 37 Signals better than "remote." But I am bothered by the "fault tolerance" section. Because it pretty much boils down to "it's easier to find a scab." In fact, the term might be a bit unfair to the "replacement" worker, as it's unlikely they have the means to find out that the previous employee has left for reasons they're comfortable with. This is just another time when I'm worried that "distributed" work might be a double-edged sword if it ever becomes truly common. I still think it's worth it — as an autistic person I _really_ appreciate being in control of how and when I socialise and the amount of stimuli I receive — but it's not all roses.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- davnicwil 8y agoYeah, this is actually a really good point and I didn't notice it before - "remote" is a relative word and implies there is a place that you're not which is considered the center of action. But whatever word is used.. maybe it won't matter for that much longer? I think another thing that will be interesting to watch is if/how quickly the extra word "remote"/"distributed"/etc disappears because it becomes redundant or outmoded. Think of the internet: every service on the internet was once "e-{service}". Over time that mostly just became "service", because the fact you are on the internet is now assumed, and doesn't have to be qualified. Indeed, if you're not on the internet that might be the thing you have to qualify now. Will we see job listings in 10-15 years with "Engineer (Colocated Office)"?
- anticensor 8y agoI think yes. Just as horseless carriage became car, remote will become norm in a few decades.
- hprotagonist 8y agoThe primary difficulties i have with remote work are linked: 1. I usually wind up alphabetizing my socks at some point. 2. a lack of face to face contact and the setting of being in my own space keeps me in a semi-permanent doubt/guilt cycle about my work quality and how my effort and reponsiveness is being perceived.
- ben_jones 8y ago2 just identified a strong guiding emotion in my life I didn't know how to describe but that I've felt for awhile. I'd append to it and say it also affects me outside of work in that I feel guilty being at the gym at 1pm instead of being at work, or being underdressed in basketball shorts during the day because I'm entirely at home or doing errands. American Culture in particular pushes a lowest common denominator of what it thinks work should be: 7-6 while counting commute, sporadic overtime paid or otherwise, and various other things that are entirely not to the benefit of the individual worker. It's crazy.
- giantsloth 8y agoThis seems like a case of capitalist imposed enculturated guilt for not having a butt in seat for 8 hours a day (regardless of actual productivity). Rather than alphabetizing your socks, go to the gym or improve some other skill set interspersed with your paid work. Embrace the fact that you can build a schedule around you and your wants and desires and not that of your companies.
- giantsloth 8y agoI'm really curious why people are down voting this comment.
- ryanSrich 8y agoI’ve been working remotely for just a few months shy of 5 years. I’ve moved from coast to coast in that time. I’ve held 4 different positions in the same company. The _only_ thing that has worked for #2 is relying less on Slack and email and more on phone calls. It completely eliminates the guilt factor. I encourage everyone on my team to be more open to phone calls during the day. No real work gets done on slack. Call each other.
- otaviokz 8y agoI feel like the post is a 25 cent practices discussion wrapped in a $25 semantics discussion, with the added injury of a click bait title.
- baroffoos 8y agoI was expecting something interesting about the problems of working remote. Just closed the article when I realized the main point of the article was to keep doing what you are doing but call it something else.
- draw_down 8y agoYou can work “remotely”, it’s fine. I promise.
- jeremyvdw 8y agoCool, Russ Olsen used this remote/distributed workers analogy back in july 2016 here http://blog.cognitect.com/cognicast-transcripts/104 http://blog.cognitect.com/cognicast-transcripts/104
- ramtatatam 8y agoRemote (or distributed, as article is advocating to call it) work will not fit everyone's style. It requires certain level of self discipline and recognition that the one needs to develop certain habits in order to be able to efficiently deliver work while doing this remotely. What I noticed is that in early days of my startup when I was working remotely I was able to contribute much more than now, when I'm required to work from the (open plan) office. Working remotely gives flexibility on work hours (i.e. I could do normal 9-5 and then in the evening I usually checked in to add some extra but I could do that as I did not have to wake up early in the morning in order to commute to the office). Working remotely makes it more challenging (for some) to resist temptation to procrastinate. And also it requires leaders to understand how to measure the output (although, of course, leaders need to understand that despite the fact where does the worker deliver their work from).
- k__ 8y agoIf you like to work in an office, work in an office. If you don't like to work in an office, then don't. For whatever reason.
- DanielBMarkham 8y ago"...That said, I just don’t encounter the need for deep strategy and vision-setting sessions with cross-functional teams of my colleagues on a frequent basis. ..." And you won't, either. I think this is very simple. Either you are a distributed team working on digital artifacts that live primarily online .... or you are a cross-functional team trying to creatively solve a problem for somebody. If you know what you're doing, the solution is locked in, and all you're accomplishing by showing up somewhere is moving cards around on a wall? Stay home. If you don't know what you're doing -- requirements are in flux, the customer can't decide, the project is high-risk/high-stress, etc? Show up where the other people are. And it doesn't have to be one way or the other. I've worked great projects where we all co-located, got into a groove, then finished it up from home -- only to repeat when the next big hunk of problems showed up. So many of these tech essays seem to based on turning the contrast way up, insisting that the answer must be X or Y, then defending it. Why can't it be both? Seeing success in teams working both ways, wouldn't the more logical position be that in some cases each has its advantages?
- pdimitar 8y agoI read the post as venting disappointment towards the strong anti-remote-work bias, for what it's worth.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- slics 8y agoRemote working = “Cast Away” by Tom Hanks. At some point, even the best of us need the human interaction or we start losing our other needed skills. (My 2c anyways)
- choot 8y agoI've been remote: 1. I now get more sleep 2. I see my kids playing, i often take 5 minute break to watch them play and this motivates me more 3. I usually bring down my pace upto the 5th slowest employee in the team. (40 people in our team) 4. I don't try to do a lot. If a task is estimated as 2 hours and i did that in 10 minutes, i go to gym or roam around the market, till 2 hours have gone. Then i report the task as completed. We use discord, somtimes i record the "i am working noise, keyboard chatter etc.." on a recorder and leave it on my desk playing when i leave. People end up thinking that i am at the desk working. This motivates other people to work, so don't seee anything wrong with this
- kierenj 8y agoHope it's for a big faceless company who you hate, then? You can't imagine how wilfully disruptive, disrespectful and generally dickish this comes across. I'd urge you to get a job you actually like or try to make a difference in the world. What a waste. So rude, disrespectful, dishonest. Why? Edit: re-reading this, it sounds fairly rude in itself. I admit I was dumbstruck by this but don't mean to cause as much offence as came across. Isn't it so incredibly offensive to do this to a team of people who are labouring to build something great (presumably)?
- dana321 8y agoExactly, remote from where? Working from home is a better term.
- SirLJ 8y agoWorking remotely for many years is the greatest perk for me, this is the only thing keeping me at this job... To booth, the team I am managing is across the country, so no point going to the office anyway - I only go few time a year to pickup my boss to go for lunch/informal chat...
- mms1973 8y agoI WFH twice a week, the only drawback is I miss the hot blonde at the end of the corridor
- edoo 8y agoIt is possible but takes the right team. Lots of people are perfect for it. It really depends on the lifestyle you live. If you are running it you have to replace people pretty quick if it doesn't work out and you'll probably end up with a pretty good team. When I was young I started out contracting remotely from home. That blows if you don't have some reasonable guarantee of steady hours. It can get hard to enjoy free time when your home is your office and you are hungry for work. If I was ever going to go back to hit or miss income I'd only do fixed price projects with nailed down scopes.
- wpietri 8y agoAs somebody who is currently working remotely, I think this is a decent take. A distributed culture can definitely get better results than a remote one. But there's something in the section on collaboration I want to take issue with: > Product Management is mostly about consistent execution of plans, not painting high-level visions. It's a common view that software developers are an output device, like a printer. You tell them what to build by sending them very detailed instructions. They follow the instructions to the letter, and their work is judged by compliance. Perfection is perfectly conforming to some one else's plan. I think this is bunk. It might have made a little sense when releases were every 18 months to 3 years. But in an age where companies are releasing dozens of times per day [1], it's foolish. Perfectly following a plan means you believe nobody will learn anything during the time it takes to follow the plan. But if you are releasing early and often, you can learn a ton from users. You can be much more innovative and much more effective than competition. That only happens, though, if you treat team members not as rote plan-followers but as creative professionals who are deep collaborators. Where vision isn't something a few HiPPOs hammer out in exclusive twice-annual sessions, but where everyone constantly participates and refines it. If a company's process has already shut down collaboration, then of course the difficulties of remote collaboration aren't a problem. The challenge -- still unsolved, I think -- is how to maintain both a high level of collaboration and fast iteration without having to have everyone together. [1] E.g., https://www.infoq.com/news/2014/03/etsy-deploy-50-times-a-day https://www.infoq.com/news/2014/03/etsy-deploy-50-times-a-da...
- conanbatt 8y agoI find that definition of Product management being "Project management"
- ska 8y agoAgree. OP's use of "Product management" is not the usual one - but many companies have fuzzy concepts/boundaries between the two so that may be the route. Usually products without someone filling the product manager (not project manager) role in some way suffer for it.
- gnulinux 8y agoI absolutely detest every single aspect of remote work. Every time my coworkers or I wfh (and all companies I worked were very lax as to when you can wfh) small, tiny communication problems start occurring that bite us in the future. I find it easier to motivate myself in the office, with people, free snacks/food. I don't think slack/hangouts is a replacement for face-to-face conversation. I cannot even imagine working remote full time. It's not just that I don't trust myself, I don't trust other people too.
- ravenstine 8y ago> small, tiny communication problems start occurring that bite us in the future Like?
- Heliosmaster 8y agoRemote working might not be for everybody.. and that is okay. There are plenty of people who cannot make themselves go to the gym on their own, they won't travel alone, etc. And plenty of people who do. > It's not just that I don't trust myself, I don't trust other people too. This sentiment seems to say that you don't trust your colleagues in general, and that doesn't really make a difference remote or at the job. There are plenty of "chair warmers" at every office...
- c-smile 8y ago> Remote working might not be for everybody That's definitely so. In the same way as 5% (read in some study quite long ago) of us are capable to manage other people. Remote work requires self-discipline/determination to reach end result. Looking on developers I know personally I would estimate 30-20% of them are capable to do remote work. Actually that is not about just remote strictly speaking. In office those 70%-80% require tight supervision/mentoring/other forms of motivation.
- stareatgoats 8y agoThis is currently the main impediment to a remote (distributed) organization I'm sure. I'm however also convinced it's a problem that will eventually be overcome, as savings/benefits of a distributed organization become evident while broadband infrastructure continues to penetrate the remotest (and cheapest) of places, and as new generations becomes accustomed to it. FWIW.
- gregw2 8y agoI'm convinced it's possible for a business to work in a distributed manner, but I think there are certain business scenarios (and/or persons' personality types/collaboration styles) where it's problematic. Anecdote: I've been in two startups, one working remotely ("distributed") and one working in the room with the CEO. The degree of situational awareness was very different. When I was sitting 5 feet from the CEO, I knew the company was in the tank and in grave danger of going under. We turned it around. When I was remote, based on the daily/weekly phone calls I knew the project I was working on was in trouble and way behind, but had no idea till the CEO drove up to meet me that he and the other execs had no salary for 3 months and the company was out of money. (They found a buyer for a pittance within a year to save face.) I had a sense of urgency in both cases... but the urgency was different when in-person. And the awareness was WAY different.
- sailfast 8y agoReal questions from someone who has been leading remote teams for awhile: Which one helped you better focus on your role and deliver what you needed to help the company? Hearing all these things in-person can definitely be good context, but there is also a risk that you hear something wrong, succumb to gossip, or lose focus based on worries that may not be necessary. (Of course I’d argue it’s best for the employee to judge rather than be left in the dark, but I’m curious here specifically) Part of this comes down to company culture as well - getting remote comms channels down is really hard, and takes a LOT of effort from senior management, especially for things that are nuanced or may change. How do you not panic anyone but also let them know there may be a need for urgency, etc (in-person works well for that) When you were remote, was the CEO remote as well, or just you?
- dboreham 8y agoBy definition the CEO is not remote, right?
- sailfast 8y agoFair enough - I meant was the CEO in an office with others, or was everyone distributed. I find that when it's "a few folks are remote" vs. "everyone is remote" (even culturally) this makes a big difference in how context is provided to an organization.
- lukethomas 8y agoI wrote something similar over the weekend about how remote teams are great for people on a maker's schedule, but people on a manager's schedule tend to dislike it. https://fridayfeedback.com/p/how-to-make-remote-work-more-common/ https://fridayfeedback.com/p/how-to-make-remote-work-more-co... I think finding this balance is the crux of the remote work experience. Meetings are necessary, but where is the line drawn? Collaboration is important, but do you need to have whiteboarding sessions to get things done?
- Heliosmaster 8y agoReally well put. And I want to add another anecdote: when remote working, I used to do pair programming through Skype, with screen sharing. And I couldn't really feel any difference than doing this in person (it was a half remote/half office type of job), apart from the fact that we were not bothering anybody and there wasn't any other noise around our work. So it actually felt better than pair programming in presence.
- progressiveweb 8y agoI will add that people in departments that can't work remotely will grow bitter and start making up false feedbacks. One account executive I worked with decided to give remote working a bad name by fabricating that her own lack of ability to close was due to remote working co-workers-when half the client is remote calling to a conference.
- frogpelt 8y ago> "few people want to move there". It's like that Yogi Berra saying, "Nobody comes here anymore. It's too crowded."
- wolco 8y agoBut it's true. No one moves here anymore because it is crowded. People moved before it was crowded.
- xivzgrev 8y agoI recently did a job search in SF and very few companies were hiring or open to remote. I agree with the author that it's very ironic that tech gives us the tools to work remote but yet most tech firms insist on working face to face. Certain functions may be more conducive to it or more in demand to consider it.
- Eiriksmal 8y ago>Teams hold more meetings when they don’t have enough important work to do otherwise. This is... quite the statement. Teams hold more meetings as the size of their organization increases and any one individual cannot complete the work on their "shared digital artifact." This horrific, pre-digital concept termed "teamwork" emerges and the team discovers the most effective form of getting work done, as a team, is talking to one another.
- burtonator 8y agoI've ran a distributed company for about 6 years now. We started as a conventional company located in San Francisco. For some context - we're https://www.datastreamer.io https://www.datastreamer.io ... we provide data feeds around blogs, news, and social media to search engines, and data analytics companies. We have about a petabyte of content in our index now. Our SF location was SWEET. Downtown. 100 year old building. Brick walls, super nice place - until they tore it down to build the new Transbay terminal. Long story short but at that point we decided to give distributed work a try. Back then there weren't many companies doing it but I decided to embrace the benefits of it in terms of what it could do for my company. This isn't discussed often but there are actually PERKS to distributed work. If your team is in different timezones. This means you can coordinate ops so that if there's an emergency no one actually has to wake up. This has massive long term implications for morale and hiring! You can now hire ops people and tell them that they never have to be woken up in the middle of the night. We will often have issues with data indexing of sites at odd hours. We can't control when a site being indexed breaks so it can happen at unusual times. Usually at 5AM when I'm sleeping. One downside is that each country has its own hurdles for hiring. My advice is find 2-4 countries (including your own) that are close to your timezone. You will have banking, political, and infrastructure issues so limiting the number of distinct countries you work with reduces your risk. We prefer the US, Poland, Germany, Spain, and Brazil. It definitely takes some re-thinking in terms of tools. Lots of video conferencing. Lots of slack. Lots of email. Lots of Github issues. I think it's worth it though. Also, don't rule out being a hybrid company. If you have a central office (or offices) you can have the benefits of both worlds.
- t_akosuke 8y agoI've been remote for a few years and it's been a very frustrating experience for me, one that had turned me off developing in the end. hearing from you how it can be done right is very enlightening and encouraging at the same time - i wish i had found such a carefully crafted work environment! mind if i drop you a line in private?
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- Touche 8y agoThe most annoying thing about the tech giants that askew remote is that they also choose to locate themselves in the most expensive cities in the country. Here's a tweet today from the creator of Babel on how he is moving to the east bay because housing is more affordable. https://twitter.com/sebmck/status/1064252136349822977 https://twitter.com/sebmck/status/1064252136349822977 . If someone who's created that much value is not able to afford an area then it's insulting that tech giants expect us to move there (or have a 2 hour commute to somewhere affordable). There's this terrible myth that I want to kill; that software engineering is a well-paid field. That's a lie. Here's something pharmacists, account managers, farmers can afford: 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom houses near where they work. We can't. We're asked to live in apartments in Jersey and commute 45 minutes to Manhattan every day. Or we work remotely and are expected to take a smaller wage, where the company can't wait to get big enough so that it can force us all to move.
- softawre 8y agoThere are tons of jobs all around the country where software engineers can live like kings. I'm typing this from my home office in the midwest, I have a 3500sqft home in the best school district in the state, and the house cost <2x my yearly salary. There are tradeoffs, sure. But it's not a lie to say software engineering is a well paid field.
- Touche 8y agoI also live in the midwest and have a similar plush lifestyle. It's dishonest if you think your arrangement is typical.
- softawre 8y agoTypical for what set of people? I guess all that I really know about is - stories I read about bay area devs here and - stories from the people I work with here in my state (there are maybe 5 real tech companies in the state, and I know people at all of them). Even the people on my team who make lower salaries (say 70k-90k in the midwest), half of them have spouses that don't work and they are doing just fine with kids and enough house to support them all. Compared to this dev who created Babel (and is probably a better dev that anybody on my team), it seems insane. It sounds like you're not disagreeing with the tradeoffs, you know them well if you live here. So what do you mean is atypical?
- Twirrim 8y agoThat floating header on the site is amazingly annoying. Reading, and scrolling down a bit on the mouse, so the content I'm reading reaches the top of the page. Maybe a second after I stop scrolling, boom, suddenly the header re-appears out of nowhere and covers right what I'm reading. I actually gave up reading the content, not because I wasn't interested, but because that damn header kept hiding the content.
- asavadatti 8y agoSave this as a bookmark and click it to eliminate floating headers: javascript: (function()%7B(function%20()%20%7Bvar%20i%2C%20elements%20%3D%20document.querySelectorAll('body%20*')%3Bfor%20(i%20%3D%200%3B%20i%20%3C%20elements.length%3B%20i%2B%2B)%20%7Bif%20(getComputedStyle(elements%5Bi%5D).position%20%3D%3D%3D%20'fixed')%20%7Belements%5Bi%5D.parentNode.removeChild(elements%5Bi%5D)%3B%7D%7D%7D)()%7D)()
- LiterallyDoge 8y agoPartial remote is optimal for me, both in quality and speed of how I work. Even if it wasn't at home, I can't stand being in the same physical space for that long, I burn out. Kinesthetic learning something something something productivity efficiency sh ./buzzwords.sh
- xte 8y agoIn my limited personal experience: pro of "decentralized" work - no itinere ⇒ no travel cost, wasted time, bad weather... - comfort at work cons: - tech limitation, you are often forced to use bad proprietary software that really suc*s - if your partner also work from home maybe more family stress being more time together - a tendency of work more while being rewarded less Other things balance, for instance connection problems may cost you but that's the same for protest or adversity on roads. You pay less for travel but you generally pay more for "personal hardware" etc.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- RickJWagner 8y agoI've worked from my house for 8 years now. It saves gas, etc. I don't need the social aspect of work (I'm introverted). I really, really like working remotely. But it's not for everybody. Sub-par performers especially will drag down productivity So it's a mixed bag, IMHO. But for me, I love it.
- seymour333 8y agoSemantic pedantics and the developers who love them
- 1manowar1 8y agoIn this globalised world where unique competence is hard to find, companies that want to survive the coming years have to allow “remote”. Not every one want to live in SV. VCs will have to adapt or loose.
- RestlessMind 8y agoThe article looks at the benefits of distributed computing and makes the case that similar benefits could apply to distributed working (eg. scalability). Then it is only fair that we also look at other aspects of distributed systems and try to identify constraints on this model. I can think of: 1. Just because a system is distributed does not mean you have a lot of very small machines (eg. a system with 10 machines each with 1MB RAM will beat one with 1000 machines each with 10KB RAM). Similarly, having 5-10 distributed offices could net all the benefits mentioned in the article while avoiding costs of having 500 employees working from home/wework/... 2. Just because your system is distributed, you don't locate one machine on each continent. Machines are still arranged in proximity and having cross datacenter communication significantly erodes performance. Similarly, having distributed offices in far away timezones (eg. US west coast and India) imposes tremendous costs on collaboration. Having office in nearby timezones would be much better (eg. Seattle, Denver, SF). One particular case where far-away timezones help is ease of having 24-hour oncall support. 3. Different machine profile in your system, or different composition of your clusters, makes it harder to tune the system for performance or quality. Similarly, having employees in vastly different jurisdictions would mean you have additional costs on compliance / regulations / etc. 4. When you are prototyping or bootstrapping a new product, you do that quickly over a small setup (one machine). Similarly, it might make sense to bootstrap your startup in your garage (or a single city) until it is ready to scale.
- alexchamberlain 8y agoI’ve never worked on a distributed team. While I can see how it works effectively for collaborating between senior contributors, how do you effectively mentor in a distributed environment?
- mac01021 8y agoUsing Slack/email/whatever, mainly. I think it works just fine when the domain in which you're mentoring is like software engineering. It's not like you need to show them the proper technique for wielding an axe or anything else with a lot of physicality to it.
- malcolmgreaves 8y agoIf you know precisely what to do, then remote work is ok. However, once you need to communicate with people and problem solve with them, all forms of digital communication are inferior to face-to-face.
- pdimitar 8y agoOnly voice works just fine and has worked for me for 8 years now.
- malcolmgreaves 8y agoI suspect that (1) you don't have strong relationships with the people that you've only communicated with via voice, (2) if you do, then it took a very long (multi-year) time to create that trust: significantly longer than through face-to-face communication, (3) you do not do a active, engaging brainstorming and problem solving sessions (e.g. whiteboarding) with your colleagues that you communicate with voice only.
- pdimitar 8y agoI see some sort of assumption in your comment that I should be bonding with people I work with -- and by "bonding" I mean stepping outside the of work relationships. I don't aim for that. If it happens naturally, I welcome it. But I don't actively pursue it. But your assumptions are mostly false: I've actively brainstormed and planned with people in voice-only sessions -- and they rarely exceeded 25-30 minutes. And that went on and on for the 1-year contract, every week or two, and only once did we have trouble getting a message across. Building trust can take anywhere from 2 to 8 weeks if you are a down-to-earth productive programmer -- which I am. Not sure where your multi-year idea of building trust comes from? I am not attacking you. But I can't stand behind this very widely believed legend that face-to-face trumps everything. That's provably false in literally half my work relationships during my 17-year-long career. When people have common vision and are working honestly for the interests of their employer -- and are professionals -- things go pretty smoothly and the machine gets oiled fast.
- bsvalley 8y agoIt all comes down to 2 things: - If you're single, working at an office is good for you. Surround yourself with people who share a common interest. Yeah, it's work, but I'm sure you'll meet people who have similar interests outside of work. Go share a 2 bedroom apartment with someone else in downtown and enjoy the social life. - If you're married (or even with kids), remote work is what you should be looking for so that you take away the bad energy you collect at the office and you don't bring it back home. You can spend more time with your family which is what matters the most. The bad energy includes a long commute to get to work since you can't afford living next to the office. Competitive environment and politics. Dress code, loud open space environments where you can't get anything done, constant distraction, having to fake working 8h straight sitting in front of a screen while anyone can look over your shoulders. You need to be able to afford a bigger home to host your family so you need to move far from your office. You can get flexibility in both, not only remotely. As long as you're not forced to commute more than 30 min to work, usually Tech giants are flexible companies in terms of hours, etc.
- knappe 8y agoThis is bad advice because each and every pro listed when you're married is also a pro when not married. So I guess I don't get it. Also, there are a million ways to meet people and from my experience meeting people through work is really one of the worst ways to go about it (if you're looking for a relationship). Go join a singles club or something.
- lucasmullens 8y agoFor many people, their coworkers are their main group of friends. I personally would have fewer friends if I worked remotely. If I was married, I would prioritize my family over my friends, and would likely prefer remote work.
- hiram112 8y ago> For many people, their coworkers are their main group of friends. From what I've experienced, this is true only until your late 20s, or about 20% of your career.
- Matticus_Rex 8y agoAt first glance this seems semantic, but I think it hits on something that really makes a huge difference between my current work situation and my previous remote work experience. I naturally gravitate to remote work -- it works for me. Where it's tough is at the edges of "my" work. What is mine, and how does it interface with everyone else's? This was a constant struggle with distributing the work at my old company (and this was prior to Slack's ubiquity, which doubtless would have helped). My current company uses Holacracy as its organizing system, and even besides the fact that the tools are better now, the role clarity and distributed authority provided by Holacracy make an absolutely massive difference. From talking with friends at other Holacracy-powered companies that aren't remote, the difference is still big there, but a lot of the highlights are extra-highlighted in a remote setting. Things really get "distributed" in a meaningful way.
- pdimitar 8y agoRemote / distributed requires discipline and wearing different hats while you sit in the same physical chair (if you work at home and not in remote co-working spaces). And you must be damn good at distilling your thoughts into a succint text -- in short amounts of time. Fail these two and of course you will think remote/distributed doesn't work. It's not for everybody. I only find myself improving all the time by working at a home office. I respect the people who dislike it but they rarely return the favor.
- l8again 8y agoTo me if you are in the bay, and have one office up in SF and another one down in PA, you are still "distributed" / "remote" or whatever you want to call it. Once you have two offices, it doesn't matter if its 50 miles or 500 miles.
- ahel 8y agoblairreeves.me uses an invalid security certificate. The certificate is not trusted because it is self-signed. The certificate is only valid for . Error code: MOZILLA_PKIX_ERROR_SELF_SIGNED_CERT
- herostratus101 8y agoDon't use "clickbait" titles.
- DenisM 8y agoAny suggestions for remote brainstorming with whiteboard and all that? I would like a large-ish collaborative drawing surface, and ability to see the faces of my collaborators (2-3 people), as well ability to request and grant control of the board. So much of our design came out of impromptu design sessions, I don't see a future without it.
- tgsovlerkhgsel 8y agoMisleading clickbait title - pretends to be against remote work, actually promotes a different form of remote work.
- alwaysreading 8y agoStrongly agree that the entire remote work concept needs to redfined and couched in different language. The definition right now is vague and confusing and I think clarity would help make the concept more standardized across industries and companies of different sizes.
- rasikjain 8y agoRemote may not be ideal for everyone. Some prefer office setting. It all boil down to individual needs and preferences. In my case, I chose Remote option as a necessity when we had our kids. Due to the necessity, the client agreed for a partial remote work arrangement. This gave me a sense of satisfaction and balance in work/life. After this experience, I continue working with other clients with option of partial remote work.