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Does anyone here have some perspective from the employer side? While the benefits for the employee are pretty clear, I am skeptical about the higher productivi

Does anyone here have some perspective from the employer side? While the benefits for the employee are pretty clear, I am skeptical about the higher productivity claims.

lnsru 7y ago
As already somebody wrote earlier, you cannot make decisions with remote workers at water cooler anymore. You must tweak your processes and write everything down. This requires more work from lazy management. Basically, home office from employer side is a bad thing since it requires more work and better processes. This transition is barely doable for crappy shops (I work in such). First issue is to force people write everything down and it’s already impossible for some companies. I would say, home office option strongly correlates to company’s culture. Stay away from employers, where it is forbidden. Such place probably has already very toxic culture.
rficcaglia 7y ago
Top benefit is access to a global talent pool. Also, in a fully distributed team, everyone logs all time against defined tasks (eg GHI or trello card) so you get useful data. Having no single time zone means no “management by walking around” so you need to embrace disciplined delegation and accountability. Managers are valued for knowledge rather than baby sitting. Edit: typo
b_t_s 7y ago
Employee retention, continuity, and fewer disruptions. I'm not management but I am on the interview team, and I can tell you that hiring senior and architect level positions isn't easy in this job market. Loose one of those folks and an entire scrum team is crippled for maybe 3 to 9 months. Say 10 people for 6 months at 2/3 productivity, and you're looking at 20 developer months wasted, and user facing projects delayed or tabled. Even if you happen to find someone quick, you're loosing years worth of company specific history/experience. As a remote engineer at a good but little known medium sized company, I could get an offer from a FAANG company(no interview, automatic hire, big raise) and realistically I'd probably tell them no. They don't have offices where I want to live, so if they won't do remote, then they just don't have a compelling offer. My quality of life would suffer too much. The most important and overlooked part of the hiring pipeline is employee retention, and my employer has already retained the $%^&* out of me by letting me work remote.
- zarkov99 7y ago
  Right, I understand your point completely, my wife is fully remote, and we are both pretty burrowed in where we live, so it would take some doing to get us to move. It seems to me though that all this talk about greater productivity is self-serving nonsense. Remote work is a loss for the employer, all else being equal, though it might very well be worth it at least in this market.
  - b_t_s 7y ago
    Yea, I'm not sold on the productivity thing either, at least not on an individual contributor level when everything is going perfectly. But high turnover and/or low headcount in the senior engineering ranks can really send your team/company productivity right down the drain. And with a little investment in tooling and process, having a third of the team on video rather than in the room is a fairly modest inconvenience. And I'm sure better than half of slack messages at my company are between people sitting in the same room.
  - thirdsun 7y ago
    I disagree about the self-serving nonsense part. Sure, it requires a certain degree of discipline and self organization, but whenever I work at home on side projects, even if they aren't particularly enjoyable, I'm freuqently surprised by how much faster I seem to work if I'm not interrupted by chatty co-workers, ringing telephones and other minor annoyances that are quite significant in their sum. Don't get me wrong, all these things have their time and place, but asynchronious communication allows me to deal with them when I feel like it, which is a major advantage for me.
    - zarkov99 7y ago
      Sure, but do you just do more work or do you do the same work in less time (and use the extra the time for work balance) ? In my experience most people will just do the later.
      - thirdsun 7y ago
klipt 7y ago
You can hire people with lower salaries in countries with cheaper cost of living. Instead of Americans in Silicon Valley who need huge salaries to pay their Bay Area mortgage.
rongenre 7y ago
I imagine a big benefit to employers is that if a valued employee doesn't live in a tech hub, then there are limited opportunities to get another job. It's the counterpart to the Silicon Valley saying "My job security is I can get another job"

Does anyone here have some perspective from the employer side? While the benefits for the employee are pretty clear, I am skeptical about the higher productivity claims.

lnsru 7y ago

As already somebody wrote earlier, you cannot make decisions with remote workers at water cooler anymore. You must tweak your processes and write everything down. This requires more work from lazy management. Basically, home office from employer side is a bad thing since it requires more work and better processes. This transition is barely doable for crappy shops (I work in such). First issue is to force people write everything down and it’s already impossible for some companies. I would say, home office option strongly correlates to company’s culture. Stay away from employers, where it is forbidden. Such place probably has already very toxic culture.

rficcaglia 7y ago

Top benefit is access to a global talent pool. Also, in a fully distributed team, everyone logs all time against defined tasks (eg GHI or trello card) so you get useful data. Having no single time zone means no “management by walking around” so you need to embrace disciplined delegation and accountability. Managers are valued for knowledge rather than baby sitting. Edit: typo

b_t_s 7y ago

Employee retention, continuity, and fewer disruptions. I'm not management but I am on the interview team, and I can tell you that hiring senior and architect level positions isn't easy in this job market. Loose one of those folks and an entire scrum team is crippled for maybe 3 to 9 months. Say 10 people for 6 months at 2/3 productivity, and you're looking at 20 developer months wasted, and user facing projects delayed or tabled. Even if you happen to find someone quick, you're loosing years worth of company specific history/experience. As a remote engineer at a good but little known medium sized company, I could get an offer from a FAANG company(no interview, automatic hire, big raise) and realistically I'd probably tell them no. They don't have offices where I want to live, so if they won't do remote, then they just don't have a compelling offer. My quality of life would suffer too much. The most important and overlooked part of the hiring pipeline is employee retention, and my employer has already retained the $%^&* out of me by letting me work remote.

zarkov99 7y ago
Right, I understand your point completely, my wife is fully remote, and we are both pretty burrowed in where we live, so it would take some doing to get us to move. It seems to me though that all this talk about greater productivity is self-serving nonsense. Remote work is a loss for the employer, all else being equal, though it might very well be worth it at least in this market.
- b_t_s 7y ago
  Yea, I'm not sold on the productivity thing either, at least not on an individual contributor level when everything is going perfectly. But high turnover and/or low headcount in the senior engineering ranks can really send your team/company productivity right down the drain. And with a little investment in tooling and process, having a third of the team on video rather than in the room is a fairly modest inconvenience. And I'm sure better than half of slack messages at my company are between people sitting in the same room.
- thirdsun 7y ago
  I disagree about the self-serving nonsense part. Sure, it requires a certain degree of discipline and self organization, but whenever I work at home on side projects, even if they aren't particularly enjoyable, I'm freuqently surprised by how much faster I seem to work if I'm not interrupted by chatty co-workers, ringing telephones and other minor annoyances that are quite significant in their sum. Don't get me wrong, all these things have their time and place, but asynchronious communication allows me to deal with them when I feel like it, which is a major advantage for me.
  - zarkov99 7y ago
    Sure, but do you just do more work or do you do the same work in less time (and use the extra the time for work balance) ? In my experience most people will just do the later.
    - thirdsun 7y ago

klipt 7y ago

You can hire people with lower salaries in countries with cheaper cost of living. Instead of Americans in Silicon Valley who need huge salaries to pay their Bay Area mortgage.

rongenre 7y ago

I imagine a big benefit to employers is that if a valued employee doesn't live in a tech hub, then there are limited opportunities to get another job. It's the counterpart to the Silicon Valley saying "My job security is I can get another job"