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> and face-to-face communication is very important to this job [citation needed] It can be important for some people, and for some teams, but it's not very i

> and face-to-face communication is very important to this job [citation needed] It can be important for some people, and for some teams, but it's not very important for every person or every team.

dymk 7y ago
> It can be important for some people, and for some teams, but it's not very important for every person or every team. [citation needed] It's clearly important enough for Amazon, Facebook, and Google to invest heavily in already established tech hubs where it's incredibly expensive to build, so they can have their engineers working in the same physical location(s).
- CiPHPerCoder 7y ago
  Do I understand your argument correctly? Effectively, what I'm reading is, "Because large tech companies do X, it's very important for everyone else too (including billion-dollar companies that don't do X)."
  - dymk 7y ago
    You're not understanding my argument correctly. I'm saying, in spite of it being cheaper to distribute their engineers and hire remote, they do not. These aren't companies run by incompetent people, and they're large enough to have some remote workforce, so they understand how remote workers compare to onsite with as few other variables changed. These companies hire onsite because it's important to be able to meet face-to-face. Emotion is particularly poorly conveyed over email or VC, and sometimes to convince somebody of something, meeting them in person is the best way to do that.
    - CiPHPerCoder 7y ago
      Okay that's a more reasonable argument than what I thought you were making. I'd contend that you're not considering the impact of sunk cost fallacies on business decision-making. Or if you have considered it, you've probably discounted it far more than is warranted. It could be the case that, out of all the people currently employed by these companies, the majority believe they thrive in an onsite role rather than a remote one. Years of self-selection (especially if exacerbated by a lack of diversity in their employment experience, since these companies tend to hire out of colleges) could lead to a feedback loop. Just because they're smart people doesn't mean they're impervious to human cognitive distortions. How many of these companies have even trialed 100% remote positions, even if only for a year?
    - q3k 7y ago
      > These aren't companies run by incompetent people. It's not about incompetence, it's about not willing to introduce difficult changes and admitting they are wrong. See: open plan offices. There's tons of successful, fully distributed companies.
malcolmgreaves 7y ago
It's quite literally how nearly every successful business currently operates. Digital communication suffers from lag and resolution. There simply isn't the requisite bandwidth and speed to communicate the same information that humans get from all of our five senses. Jobs are about relationships.
minwcnt5 7y ago
I don't think the fact that humans are social animals needs a citation. Most people are healthier and happier spending their time in social groups. Even as a highly introverted person, I'd much rather interact with live people every day than work remotely and only interact electronically. Of course there are exceptions, but I would guess that building a company, or even parts of it, from the exceptions is a lot of trouble.
- CiPHPerCoder 7y ago
  > I don't think the fact that humans are social animals needs a citation. Humans can (and should) get their social needs met anywhere, not only at their place of employment. I've worked both onsite and remote throughout my career. I'd never advocate for forced remote work (because some people want to get their social needs met through their employer). Rather, I'd argue that it should be considered as an option.
  - minwcnt5 7y ago
    For me it's not just about having social needs met, it's also that for a lot of engineering work in-person collaboration is crucial. Serendipitous interactions are important. Passionate discussions involving emotion and empathy are important. Being able to easily grab a co-worker's attention for a minute to show them something on your screen or sketch an idea out on a whiteboard is important. You can technically make some of these things to happen remotely using technology, but in practice, there's just too much friction, and these sorts of interactions don't happen. I agree that not all roles require this sort of thing. There are employees who can come to the office, work 8 hours, and go home, all without speaking a word to another person. There are probably thousands of employees at Google who could probably be just as effective working remotely. That said, having worked there, I think that's not true for the vast majority of SWE work.
    - slavapestov 7y ago
      When I worked at an open office in Google, a good fraction of the people had headphones on most of the day. While there was some serendipitous discussion, much of the time we'd book meeting rooms, specifically to avoid distracting those around us.
xauronx 7y ago
I was actually doing research a couple of days ago to support more remote workers for my company and... unfortunately almost all of the research I found was backing co-location. There are degrees of remote work, but it seems that for most teams and most products being co-located provides the most productivity. There are a lot of shades of gray there, like, if someone commutes for 2 hours through stressful SF traffic to get to a campus where they jump on a Google Hangout since their team members are spread across 3 buildings... yeah, I don't think productivity is going to get much of a boost. However, our team is in a suburb of Cleveland Ohio where you can live within 30 miles, get here in 30 minutes and have dirt-cheap housing. I'm having a hard time coming up with collateral to support my "modern" viewpoint on the benefits of remote workers.
- achenatx 7y ago
  my theory is that if you try to convert a co-located workforce to remote you are going to struggle because you have a mix of people that are able and unable to properly function that way. However if you start a company with that model from day one, over time you select for people that can handle the remote aspect. It becomes a core cultural value. Southwest is the fun airline. What would american airlines have to do to become a fun airline? They would have to fire 2/3 of their staff.

> and face-to-face communication is very important to this job [citation needed] It can be important for some people, and for some teams, but it's not very important for every person or every team.

dymk 7y ago

> It can be important for some people, and for some teams, but it's not very important for every person or every team. [citation needed] It's clearly important enough for Amazon, Facebook, and Google to invest heavily in already established tech hubs where it's incredibly expensive to build, so they can have their engineers working in the same physical location(s).

CiPHPerCoder 7y ago
Do I understand your argument correctly? Effectively, what I'm reading is, "Because large tech companies do X, it's very important for everyone else too (including billion-dollar companies that don't do X)."
- dymk 7y ago
  You're not understanding my argument correctly. I'm saying, in spite of it being cheaper to distribute their engineers and hire remote, they do not. These aren't companies run by incompetent people, and they're large enough to have some remote workforce, so they understand how remote workers compare to onsite with as few other variables changed. These companies hire onsite because it's important to be able to meet face-to-face. Emotion is particularly poorly conveyed over email or VC, and sometimes to convince somebody of something, meeting them in person is the best way to do that.
  - CiPHPerCoder 7y ago
    Okay that's a more reasonable argument than what I thought you were making. I'd contend that you're not considering the impact of sunk cost fallacies on business decision-making. Or if you have considered it, you've probably discounted it far more than is warranted. It could be the case that, out of all the people currently employed by these companies, the majority believe they thrive in an onsite role rather than a remote one. Years of self-selection (especially if exacerbated by a lack of diversity in their employment experience, since these companies tend to hire out of colleges) could lead to a feedback loop. Just because they're smart people doesn't mean they're impervious to human cognitive distortions. How many of these companies have even trialed 100% remote positions, even if only for a year?
  - q3k 7y ago
    > These aren't companies run by incompetent people. It's not about incompetence, it's about not willing to introduce difficult changes and admitting they are wrong. See: open plan offices. There's tons of successful, fully distributed companies.

malcolmgreaves 7y ago

It's quite literally how nearly every successful business currently operates. Digital communication suffers from lag and resolution. There simply isn't the requisite bandwidth and speed to communicate the same information that humans get from all of our five senses. Jobs are about relationships.

minwcnt5 7y ago

I don't think the fact that humans are social animals needs a citation. Most people are healthier and happier spending their time in social groups. Even as a highly introverted person, I'd much rather interact with live people every day than work remotely and only interact electronically. Of course there are exceptions, but I would guess that building a company, or even parts of it, from the exceptions is a lot of trouble.

CiPHPerCoder 7y ago
> I don't think the fact that humans are social animals needs a citation. Humans can (and should) get their social needs met anywhere, not only at their place of employment. I've worked both onsite and remote throughout my career. I'd never advocate for forced remote work (because some people want to get their social needs met through their employer). Rather, I'd argue that it should be considered as an option.
- minwcnt5 7y ago
  For me it's not just about having social needs met, it's also that for a lot of engineering work in-person collaboration is crucial. Serendipitous interactions are important. Passionate discussions involving emotion and empathy are important. Being able to easily grab a co-worker's attention for a minute to show them something on your screen or sketch an idea out on a whiteboard is important. You can technically make some of these things to happen remotely using technology, but in practice, there's just too much friction, and these sorts of interactions don't happen. I agree that not all roles require this sort of thing. There are employees who can come to the office, work 8 hours, and go home, all without speaking a word to another person. There are probably thousands of employees at Google who could probably be just as effective working remotely. That said, having worked there, I think that's not true for the vast majority of SWE work.
  - slavapestov 7y ago
    When I worked at an open office in Google, a good fraction of the people had headphones on most of the day. While there was some serendipitous discussion, much of the time we'd book meeting rooms, specifically to avoid distracting those around us.

xauronx 7y ago

I was actually doing research a couple of days ago to support more remote workers for my company and... unfortunately almost all of the research I found was backing co-location. There are degrees of remote work, but it seems that for most teams and most products being co-located provides the most productivity. There are a lot of shades of gray there, like, if someone commutes for 2 hours through stressful SF traffic to get to a campus where they jump on a Google Hangout since their team members are spread across 3 buildings... yeah, I don't think productivity is going to get much of a boost. However, our team is in a suburb of Cleveland Ohio where you can live within 30 miles, get here in 30 minutes and have dirt-cheap housing. I'm having a hard time coming up with collateral to support my "modern" viewpoint on the benefits of remote workers.

achenatx 7y ago
my theory is that if you try to convert a co-located workforce to remote you are going to struggle because you have a mix of people that are able and unable to properly function that way. However if you start a company with that model from day one, over time you select for people that can handle the remote aspect. It becomes a core cultural value. Southwest is the fun airline. What would american airlines have to do to become a fun airline? They would have to fire 2/3 of their staff.