10 ms·

Want to attract top tech talent? Offer telecommuting

316 points by chanks 15y ago

bravura 15y ago
At MetaOptimize, I am competing with Google and Facebook and LinkedIn and a host of other companies to recruit top ML + NLP talent. But, the benefit of my recruiting model is that I hire people remote and part-time. A lot of strong strong people are in academia, but love their academic post and don't want to move. They just want build cool stuff on the side and make some extra money. The fact that Google + Facebook + LinkedIn + friends must own you full time, asses in seats, creates a unique hiring opportunity for me.
jordanb 15y ago
I routinely have people begging me to work for them, but probably 4 in 5 clam up when I specify that -- while I'm happy to spend as much time with them as necessary to get the specs and make everyone comfortable -- I will not sit in their office to do the programming. I can not, for the life of me, understand why that is such a sticking point with so many people. Fortunately I have enough people who are willing to work with me anyway that I can forget about the ones who don't, but it seems mind-numbingly obvious to me that if you're desperate for the skills I have, you should be willing to work with a requirement that doesn't cost you anything. As near as I can fathom, it's a psychological thing. Remote people don't seem like they're part of your "empire" as you look out across the office and see all the busy beavers hunched over their computers.
- zem 15y ago
  also, they can't keep an eye on you to see that you're not slacking off on company time (the horror of it all!)
  - elai 15y ago
    Communication is just more awkward compared to face to face time.
  - jdp23 15y ago
    agreed, I think lack of trust (or alternatively the desire for the illusion of control) is a huge barrier for a lot of managers and organizations
  - jshen 15y ago
    But they rarely are able to tell if I'm slacking off in the office either. They can't tell the difference between me working on their code or my own fun side projects.
    - duck 15y ago
      That isn't how their minds work though.
- httpitis 15y ago
  Been full time remote for 10 years. So true, and I second your questioning as to why onsite is so important to many ppl.
- ssharp 15y ago
  It's a sticking point because being virtual is much different than being co-located, especially when only one member is virtual. If you don't have the experience in managing or working with a virtual group, you're going to be reluctant to get into it. Aside from some good anecdotal pieces here, research shows that communications are the critical factor of successful telecommuting. Trust is based on communications, and you can't work effectively in an organization without trust.
  - brunomlopes 15y ago
    I think you're on to something with "only one member is virtual" and previous experience. Communication is essencial and harder to manage if just one member is virtual. So, it may not be worthwhile to manage just that one member differently, hence the requirment for "on-site" programming.
  - jordanb 15y ago
    I've been on projects with a mix of telecommuters and people who have to work on-site, and communication is no more an issue than with any other configuration. The only problem with a 'mixed' team is that you can get resentment among people who are required to go to the office every day, but that's a problem of company policy. Face-to-face communication is enormously disruptive to engineers, to the extent that -- even when I worked on-site -- I would spend 90% of my time communicating with other engineers over IM. At one company, I worked across the desk from another engineer, such that I could reach out and touch him. Yet we'd say good morning to each other, and we'd go to lunch together frequently, but the entire rest of the time we'd communicate via IM. Engineers need to talk with the management and clients for three reasons: 1) To get the specification 2) to clarify the specification during development and 3) to get feedback during testing/qa. The only component of that which needs to happen during development is #2 and seeking clarification is engineer-driven, so if the engineer doesn't have a problem with picking up the phone or sending an email or scheduling a meeting (activities I do constantly with clients) then it's not a significant barrier. One fourth type of communication between management and engineers is what I like to call "comfort talk": management hovering around engineers asking for "status updates," or small-talking about an unrelated project, or asking for an explanation of some technical point or the other, or fishing for some decision that needs to be made so that he can make it himself. I call this "comfort talk" because most of it is useless but it makes the manager feel involved in the project. They don't want to do it over IM because IM doesn't give that same comfy feeling, and they can do it by phone, but there's a mental barrier to picking up a phone that makes them reconsider if it's important. It's much easier to roam over to an engineer and hover behind him until his concentration breaks. Of course "comfort talk" is (almost never) beneficial to the engineer or his productivity. In fact it's the enemy of productivity. I still have to put up with a good deal of it by phone when working remotely, but far far less than I would in person (due to the mental barrier). The reduction in this "communication" is a godsend to me but makes the relationship feel less comfy for the manager, so once again we’re talking about psychological issues on the part of management.
- daemin 15y ago
  I think this is because some people run on "manager time" and they like being able to poke in every hour or so just to check up, or bug you with something different that's so urgent it just popped up.
lancefisher 15y ago
I live in Missoula, MT and I'm not willing to move because my family is here, and I love the city. Programmers here are willing to take a pay cut to stay, and I know several that telecommute to out of state jobs that pay better than most local companies. I telecommute too, but my employer is local.
atacrawl 15y ago
With an unemployment rate of just 4% among tech professionals, and shortages in specific fields, flexibility shouldn't be a last resort. I would have guessed that tech unemployment would be lower than the national average, but 4% is really low.
- dasil003 15y ago
  Especially considering how "lazy" programmers are.
- il 15y ago
  The unemployment rate for college graduates as a whole is under 5%. White collar workers are not the ones feeling the brunt of the recession.
  - braddunbar 15y ago
    Wow. That's a statistic that doesn't get reported nearly enough. It puts an entirely different spin on the unemployment rate.
    - hugh3 15y ago
      It could probably afford to be aired in the "is college a waste of time and money?" threads which crop up here every day too.
      - il 15y ago
        I doubt it, the correlation does not imply causation. My hunch is that the people graduating from college are the kind of people that would find it easier to find a job anyway.
        InnocentB 15y ago
        There was actually an interesting study about this which got mentioned recently on the Freakonomics podcast (you can see a transcription of the segment at http://freakonomicsradio.com/does-college-still-matter-and-other-freaky-questions-answered.html http://freakonomicsradio.com/does-college-still-matter-and-o..., the original study is at http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/tlemieux/papers/unintended.pdf http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/tlemieux/papers/unintended.pdf). Basically, it uses men who were eligible for the Vietnam draft (who enrolled in college in greater numbers than they otherwise would have, to avoid military service) to demonstrate that success from college graduates is more than a "these people are the ones who were already going to succeed" thing.
melipone 15y ago
I agree. We need to see more of that. I would suggest to offer a few trips a year to the "office" though for morale.
mgkimsal 15y ago
This is sort of a no-brainer. I'm pitched by recruiters about once a week, and they're all for far away positions - typically SF area, but other areas too. I can't sell my house any time soon - the market just isn't moving - so I'm somewhat held hostage by geography. This doesn't mean that I can't travel onsite and visit your office regularly, nor does it mean skype and phone don't work out here in the sticks :) Telecommuting requires the entire team or ideally the entire company be set up to work like that - just having one guy out in a different state or country on his own doesn't work very well in most cases. I understand that. What I don't get is why more companies aren't structuring themselves to take advantage of remote workers. If you have strong procedures in place to deal with remote/offsite workers (fulltime or not), you can more easily integrate short term labor when you need it - you'll have the shared workspaces, file transfers, documentation, version control, etc, already set up and ready to let new people in as needed. This seems like this would be a competitive advantage that more companies should be looking at. Maybe they will be in the coming years as the impact of underwater mortgages and geography-locked workers starts to impact the broader tech labor market.
- hello_moto 15y ago
  The keywords in your post are these: "Strong Procedures". Most startups/tech companies don't necessary have that.
  - mgkimsal 15y ago
    Many of the people involved have been involved in other operations before. "Strong procedures" should be a prerequisite for funding (for those seeking funding), no?
    - sedachv 15y ago
      You're really being optimistic.
    - ericd 15y ago
      Yeah, not really. Strong procedures are frequently a hinderance at that size, so they just don't get put in place.
pdenya 15y ago
I used to work in NYC but I've been working from home for a couple years now for an agency based in NYC (I live in CT now). I make good money but I've been offered a 20k+ raise and other bonuses to work in the city. Barely considered it.
- savagejen 15y ago
  A 20k difference isn't enough to cover either the time on a commute to and from NYC or the price difference in living costs.
savagejen 15y ago
I wouldn't take a pay cut for it, but it might help me make a decision between two equally good offers.
wyclif 15y ago
Startups that demand relocation to NYC or SF are a total show stopper here. Many of us are held hostage by geography-- maybe you own a home, maybe you have kids in a school they're flourishing in, maybe your parents need help. If you're a family man you won't like spending your wife and children's time in Bay Area or Metro NYC traffic. But here's the thing: the technology most startups use means they can transcend geography to an extent. I do not underestimate the value of having a team in the same location. It does affect morale and company culture. But with the right people and the right technology those issues are quickly going to wind up in the rearview mirror. When I look at a company, I want to see if they are set up to do remote work, or are they landlocked?
- metageek 15y ago
  >or are they landlocked? Nice term.
- michaelchisari 15y ago
  I want to see if they are set up to do remote work, or are they landlocked? I love this term. Maybe I'll use it on my resume.
  - wyclif 15y ago
    Hi, Michael. I love Appleseed and give you guys mad props.
- spitfire 15y ago
  amen to this. With the money startups manage to pull in you can find a very nice town to settle in and absolutely pamper your staff - and still have lower costs than SF or nyc. A particularly good selling point for getting the more experienced developers with family. Come work for us in friendly brattleboro Vermont! (I've been there, it's like Gilmore girls in real life). Bonus if you're within train distance of the city you can get the best of all worlds.
shimonamit 15y ago
I liked the ending: Maybe if we called it 'cloud commuting', CIOs would buy in.
- HockeyBiasDotCo 15y ago
  Perfect!
- RexM 15y ago
  Same, that was a nice touch.
SoftwarePatent 15y ago
Want to attract top tech talent? Offer a high salary.
- famousactress 15y ago
  I think there's a difference between attracting and keeping (productive). High salaries can lead to a 'golden handcuffs' scenario where the company can flounder, do stupid things, mistreat employees.. and they'll stick around for the cash. I think paying well is a good idea, but it's not a complete strategy and I don't think it actually is as likely to bring the lifestyle satisfaction that telecommuting can for many people.
bphogan 15y ago
I would love to do more remote work, but then I hear horror stories about people having problems not being around people. Feelings of isolation set in after a couple of months, and people end up going to a gig where they are around people. To those doing remote work, is this common?
- enjo 15y ago
  Coworking spaces work wonders for this.
  - umjames 15y ago
    The biggest benefit of a co-working space is that you are in more control of when you want to be around other people. You can always go home when you need pure isolation. At your employer's workplace, you don't have that control. You can be interrupted at any time by anything. You don't appreciate that flexibility until you have to use headphones and music to drown out your co-workers' inane personal conversations.
- bartonfink 15y ago
  I haven't found that to be the case, but then I have my life set up such that I don't need work to fill a social outlet. I have my wife, two dogs, friends and neighbors to socialize with when I feel the itch.
- gchucky 15y ago
  I'm one of those people who left a telecommute job to work in an office. The walls definitely closed in on me and I felt increasingly isolated, and I had to get out. I think it was when I realized that I was sitting around my apartment for 23+ hours a day that I started looking for a new position. I think there's something inherent in working with people around you that you can't really replicate online. Being able to go over and talk to someone and ask them a question is invaluable when compared to having to message/email someone and wait for them to respond. It took us far longer to get sprint planning done (we were also doing Scrum) over the phone because no one wanted to talk, and that's easier to shrug off when you're at home. There's some level of team building that's missing when you telecommute - you don't go out for lunch with people, or have any sort of real social interaction. Honestly I think it's up to the team/company to help work through those issues. We set up a chat system so we could talk during the day and that did seem to help for awhile, though.
mgkimsal 15y ago
Posting another thought here. I have a suspicion that there's enough people in the SF area (and a couple of the the other "big" markets) that will actively fight against telecommuting, specifically because it will lower wages in those areas. As someone else posted, yes, I understand the value of a team being in the same room. But that value comes at a premium price, and it's one which may not always be worth paying. However, given the boom/busy/buyout cycle in the bay area (as an example), enough of the same workers can move from company to company as the companies are merged, bought out, or close, that this keeps the talent supply close enough to what is needed to make it harder to embrace telecommuting. You just need a few more people to fill in a few gaps, right? They need to be on site, or they're not a 'team player', or just not serious about their career in tech if they don't want to move to the valley! (have heard this before). If the majority of companies out in SF set themselves up to embrace telecommuting, that would mean it would be easier to fill that next position with someone from Idaho, Kansas or Utah. That would mean the company could pay a lower wage. Why would the culture of startup workers want to embrace something that will end up driving down their salaries?
- zem 15y ago
  how does that work? the people paying the salaries would surely love to get someone who can do the same work for less, and the people receiving the salaries aren't the ones who make the decision as to whether a new hire can telecommute or not.
  - georgieporgie 15y ago
    the people receiving the salaries aren't the ones who make the decision as to whether a new hire can telecommute or not. True, but they can whisper into the right ears every day, 9 - 5. And it's quite easy to negatively impact a coworker's productivity, if you so wish.
    - zem 15y ago
      i think you're attributing far too much cunning and big-picture thinking to developers. specifically, the logic chain here would have to run "this dude is telecommuting, which means that he can live somewhere cheaper than sf, which means that he can accept a lower salary, which means that salaries across the board will tend to drop, which means that my salary will be affected, which means i'd better shaft him". i'm not saying that a malicious developer can't whisper into the right ears and get someone into trouble, but it's usually because of some more directly personal dislike or jealousy.
angrycoder 15y ago
I've spent the bulk of the past 8 years telecommuting, even when I've had full time positions locally. It requires a strong commitment to communication and the experience to recognize when the communication is failing so you can get off your ass for a face to face meeting or phone call. I also ending up working a hell of a lot more hours than I would if I just had a desk job. But I wouldn't have it any other way. I don't give a shit about your corporate culture or your ping pong table or your office politics or your ego battles, I only care about solving problems and producing solid solutions. Telecommuting lets focus on doing just that while leaving all the other nonsense behind.
- pstack 15y ago
  Agreed. I haven't been in the market for a job in a very long time, but the quickest way to lose my interest in your position is to tell me I can't work from home. After almost fifteen years, I can think of no other way. (Especially in my case, where my colleagues are all spread across the globe, anyway).
crenelle 15y ago
I have telecommuted for several gigs and positions. The most difficult situation to deal with is when most of the rest of the company doesn't telecommute, so everyone is not in the habit of cluing you in to what's going on. You may have all the tools required to establish and maintain decent communications, but they often don't bother to adopt any of it for their end. I even remote-developed for a large networking company with enormous communications facilities designed to solve problems like that -- but they had me fly over to headquarters all the time instead.
- chc 15y ago
  Speaking from experience, this can be a problem even when you're not telecommuting.
- dpritchett 15y ago
  Thanks for bringing up that bit about being left out by coworkers. It reminded me of a passage from "Being Geek". Luckily the book is largely compiled from blog posts and here's the relevant post by Rands on the inadvertent exclusion faced by lone telecommuters attached to onsite teams: http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2009/04/15/the_pond.html http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2009/04/15/the_pond.ht...
kayoone 15y ago
I worked from home for the past couple of years and now work in an office and have to communte everyday. But i have to say i like working in a space with other engineers to discuss ideas and concepts and energy more as sitting alone at home.
dabent 15y ago
I have failed to understand why someone in India can do my job, but telecommuting is still frowned upon.
- random42 15y ago
  I suppose for the premium amount you are being paid, as compared to the Indian worker, being physically present is a requisite. I cannot say, I disagree with the logic myself.
  - cosgroveb 15y ago
    Paying a premium so we can play butts-in-seats and management can feel like they're tending properly to the cube farm...
    - random42 15y ago
      I cant say anything for your management, but my management (actually my immediate boss), is very reasonable. Being a developer himself, he understands what programmers need to be productive. He allows remote work, time to time. In time is as late as 11:30 AM (which is also just because, we have standup that time). In all, a very reasonable person to work for/with/under, who believes in not micro-managing people. However, co-locating has its own benefits, and I suppose thats why he does not hire remote workers (for permanent positions). We have hired remote contractors in the past, and they worked fine to good, but it required lot of effort on collaborating.
michaelchisari 15y ago
I love Chicago, you just can't beat this city for the kind of value you get for the price. The closest competitor is New York in terms of food and culture, but the costs are astronomically higher. When I'm contacted by a job recruiter for a position that pays more, but requires moving to somewhere like Mountain View, I will rarely entertain the idea. Sure, I'll fly into the office, I'll do it quite regularly actually, but there's no way I'm picking up and moving to a city with considerably less to offer, yet which costs substantially more. I understand the value of social capital, and working with people face to face. But how often does that really need to happen? As developers, our job is ultimately to write code, and that can happen anywhere.
ddlatham 15y ago
I see several comments saying more companies should be hiring remote workers, building their culture to support it, and why aren't they doing it? It's interesting to see the numbers in this article. What's remarkable is that, even after two years of flattish compensation, technology professionals are willing to sacrifice $7,800 on average to work from home The article speaks as if this is a huge amount, but as a chunk of total salary, it's probably 5-15% for most tech jobs. So the question for employers is, is it worth an extra 5-15% in salary to have your team work together in person? In many cases it is.
- Vivtek 15y ago
  That's not a huge amount. Say you have a mere half-hour commute = 1 hour a day x 250 working days a year, your $7800 turns into $31.20 an hour for the most boring work you'll ever do - even a truck driver usually gets to see different scenery from day to day. And that's if you manage to live a mere half-hour from work, which in any major city is seriously unlikely. If you're good at tech, why would you take a second job as an automobile driver for chump change?
  - orangecat 15y ago
    Exactly. One of the few clear-cut results of happiness studies is that commuting really, really sucks. I can understand why telecommuting might not work for some companies, but there's rarely an excuse for not offering flexible hours, so you can at least dodge rush hour by coming in earlier or later.
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  - ddlatham 15y ago
    I agree, but the comment was turning the table around and looking at it from the employer's perspective. If enough employees continue to be willing to commute for a mere 5-15% more in salary, then employers will continue to, quite rationally, pay them to do so.
adnam 15y ago
I recently quit my job because they wanted me to telecommute.
- trustfundbaby 15y ago
  Care to share the reason why?
  - adnam 15y ago
    I figured working from home would be great for the first month, and then I would start going mad. And when I asked who was going to pay for my chair, desk and computer, and who would pay the heating, lighting, ADSL and air-conditioning ... it looked like I was going to be out of pocket too.
    - jrsmith1279 15y ago
      You don't already have a chair, desk, computer, and internet access at home? Air conditioning may cost more, but you'd no longer be paying high gas prices to drive to and from work (which I'm assuming your company doesn't pay for now?).
    - jacques_chester 15y ago
      In Australia you the employee can get a tax deduction for work expenses. If you work from home you can claim partial rent, partial electricity bills, partial internet and so on. Whereas if the employer pays for these things, they may have to levy a Fringe Benefits Tax on the value of the payments at the top marginal tax rate. In total dollars it is sometimes cheaper to bump the salary and let the employee actually do the taxman dance. Of course, I am not a lawyer, not a tax accountant and I don't work for the ATO. Seek advice, YMMV etc.
    - technomancy 15y ago
      > I figured working from home would be great for the first month, and then I would start going mad. Why not quit after the first month then?
jherdman 15y ago
Like hell I would! Nothing beats face-to-face communication, and the wonderful things that can arise from spontaneous interactions.
edw519 15y ago
In the past 4 hours I have exchanged ones and zeros with people and computers in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona, California, Germany, Singapore, and India. And got 3 "office days" worth of work done. And I haven't even brushed my teeth yet. :-) You know what telecommuters say, "Once you've deployed a killer app in your pajamas, you can never go back."
- udp 15y ago
  Don't you find it gets a bit lonely after a while? I've been working as a full-time programmer from home for about a year and a half now, and it's beginning to get a bit weird. Aside from not having physical coworkers, I don't leave work, go home and do something else, because work is always all around me. There's this never-ending pattern of 9-5 quickly becoming 2 PM - 8 AM, until I finally pull an all nighter and it resets. It doesn't help that I'm 100% passionate about what I do...!
  - steve-howard 15y ago
    I almost never _have_ to go into work (though my boss has requested that I spend some time there because others tend to need me for things), but the thought of being alone for a whole day gets me out the door. I love what I do, but people are interesting too.
  - russell 15y ago
    I worked for more than 10 years from home in the mountains above SV with a client in Chicago. I had a wife and 3 school age kids. We had rules and a discipline: when I was in my office, I was not available for chatting, discipline, or other home things. I worked mainly 8 to 5 and the personalities of the family members were such that it worked. If I wanted a hacker fix, I would go to some meeting in the valley, I was the last survivor of a 30 person development office. That in itself was eerie.
  - technomancy 15y ago
    > Don't you find it gets a bit lonely after a while? At work we spend 80% of the day pairing over voip and SSH. It's ironic because I moved from California to Seattle because I got tired of telecommuting all by my lonesome from down there, but these days with pairing it doesn't bother me at all.
mdink 15y ago
I started an interesting thread awhile back about this very topic: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2202187 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2202187 Had some interesting comments...
pbj 15y ago
I was reading a study a while back about how an absurdly high percentage of total jobs could be done via telecommute but aren't. It's crazy to think about how many millions upon millions of dollars in fuel costs and reduced emissions could be saved by having more telecommuters. Not only that, but companies could save so much money by having reduced or no office space/electricity/etc. Plus they'd get the added benefit of increased worker satisfaction in most cases.
- praptak 15y ago
  What you said, plus the employee commute time - I have actually turned down a (nominally) better paid job offer to accept a (nominally) lower one. The pay is lower, but the almost instant commute means I actually earn more per (work + commute) hour. On top of that I also save on fuel, car wear and tear and road jam frustration.
rickmb 15y ago
In my experience, the number of people that actually have what it takes to telecommute effectively is extremely small, and most of those are self-employed already. Of those that want to telecommute and have a steady job, very few can actually handle the responsibility and the lack of stimulus from co-workers for longer periods of time. Flexible hours, working from home on a regular basis, sure, no problem, but actual full time telecommuting requires a lot of commitment, discipline and communication skills.
igorgue 15y ago
My advice would be, talent /= experience. I'm sick and tired of companies being super picky because I don't know their technology stack or maybe just one element, they don't even offer a technical test these days. I wont learn Cassandra or Scala because they are popular on super-webscale sites, I did, though, learn Haskell, Node, MongoDB, Redis, Python, Ruby, not because they teach that in college. I think that tells you I can learn other technologies. But I get a feeling - in many interviews I've had in the last couple of month - they get disappointed when I tell them I don't know Scala, Cassandra, Hadoop... Most good programmers I know (they're not genius level, nor most of the people here) are willing to relocate wherever you are, but they might not know the super-awesome-webscale technologies you use because they work for actual businesses that charge customers and don't need a billion uniques a month to be profitable. Instead of bitching about the lack of talent (and there are many programmers like me) be willing to train people on your weird-ass technology stack.
- Bravais 15y ago
  One less to compete against... :) I know Scala, Cassandra and Hadoop, execute across all of the SDLC, as well as just flat out code, and available I might add. Telecommute only.
  - lanstein 15y ago
    And here I was thinking I'd heard the term SDLC for the last time...
  - Bravais 15y ago
    New record for HN I think, from +60 to -5 karma points. Tough crowd. Miss the HN early days...
- scythe 15y ago
  You say you refuse to learn them. If you're not going to learn their technology what use can you possibly be?
  - dman 15y ago
dekayed 15y ago
I think it is also important for in-office workers be allowed to telecommute when needed. Having that flexibility offers a lot of freedom as there are times where you need to be out of the office but can still work. I currently have a family situation where I try and be at my parents' home a week a month and having the option to work from there has been a huge help. It is definitely a big factor in why I would stick around in my current job for a while at least.
- krschultz 15y ago
  I actually would prefer that to an all-telecommute gig. Be in the office 16-18 days a month out of 20, but those 2 or 4 days a month you want to work from home you can.
jasonkester 15y ago
I've been working a remote contract these last 6 month, and one thing that surprises me is how I bill a lot less hours than I would if I were on site. If I boot up in the morning, spend 30 minutes trying to get into something, fail and end up back here on HN, I don't bill any time. If I did the same thing sitting in a cube, I'd get paid for it. The end result is that the client gets a much better deal by having me off site. Works great for me too, since I can justify billing out at a higher rate that reflects the fact that they get essentially all my productive time for the week, and nothing else. Everybody wins. As an added bonus, if I really can't get started in a morning, I can bail and go bouldering for the day and not feel guilty about it. The bizarro world salaried version of me would spend that same day sitting in a cubicle secretly playing video games on the clock.
- bconway 15y ago
  If I did the same thing sitting in a cube, I'd get paid for it. Why? I bill for work done regardless of my location, I never thought it might be out of the ordinary.
  - proexploit 15y ago
    I think he's attempting to explain that he hasn't actually done anything (maybe loading up some programs, getting reference material together, etc.) and then does something unrelated. I wouldn't bill for that either unless it took a significant portion of time AND I wouldn't have to do it again later.
    - jasonkester 15y ago
      And of course there's no real mechanism to not get paid for time spent daydreaming if you're sitting in an office on salary. On the point in question though, no, I won't bill time warming up the dev environment unless I actually use it for productive work. You lose the odd fraction of an hour here and there, but really if you're trying to add up things like that to get yourself paid an extra 2 hours at the end of the week you're probably just not charging enough for your time.
  - 15y ago
Harkins 15y ago
Anecdote: I've been traveling for the last three months, but most of my network is in Chicago. I hear from recruiters and hiring managers every couple days and, despite the consensus that Chicago has a "developer crisis" (to use the words of an Obtiva blog post), every single job has onsite only.
- shareme 15y ago
  MY linkedin profile reads Greater ChicagoLand and yet I always get recruiter emails from jobs in every place except Chicago
- pacaro 15y ago
  I read "Anecdote" as "HNecdote", not sure what that says about anything.
megamark16 15y ago
Thinking back to the recent post about Performable paying a $12,000 referral bonus: I consider myself a perfect candidate for the Performable job, with the exception of location and willingness to pick up my family and move them across the country. For a competitive salary (by midwest standards, which would be a lot less than what you'd pay in Boston) I'd tell them to keep that $12,000 and use it to fly me out to boston twice a month for a few days at a time, and let me work from home the rest of the time. I work hard when I'm at home. Shoot, I built AppRabbit from the ground up evenings and weekends from the recliner in my home office. Plus, I spend more than an hour a day commuting right now, so you can have that time too :-)
spoiledtechie 15y ago
<shameless plug for a job> I know im a bit late to the game. I have been looking for a telecommuting job for the past 6 months with no such luck. I am a solid programmer and I get the job done. I hobby code at home and have an awesome work ethic. I have several years experience and have been everything for GIS software to coding directly on the GPU. I have worked on all three types of mobile devices for my current job, and have a pretty intense background of C#. If anyone has a job that they would love to fill with a telecommuter. Please look my direction. my blog at spoiledtechie.com my email spoiledtechie with gmail. Thanks for the look see!
- krallja 15y ago
  Hi Scott, I know we talked about this already once before, but my team is looking for remote C# developers. http://jobs.cheezburger.com http://jobs.cheezburger.com Jacob Cheezburger Inc.
- bruce511 15y ago
  Not to pick on you, but let me ask this question; Since you want to be a remote worker, what do you bring to the table that a remote worker in say Mexico doesn't? Or India? Or China? 'Cause sure as hell they'd be a lot cheaper... And while quantity doesn't equal quality, I'm certainly not so egotistic as to suppose there isn't a single Indian smart enough and keen enough to do whatever I can do for a fraction of the cost. So why doesn't my boss hire him? Cause I'm in the office when something needs to get done. Because I'm the one who has a relationship with the customers. Because I make the people around me more productive as I pass on my knowledge. Oh, and perhaps because I am the boss.
brndnhy 15y ago
If you're "top tech talent", compromising on salary will likely not be part of your telecommuting scenario.
adyacplus 15y ago
I have never earned a dollar in IT, but in other fields I got a lot of success, so I consider IT a hobby. Perhaps I could be a top tech talent if enough money and flexible conditions were around, anyway I think programmers are mere pawns in game of business, so it seems better to devote time and energy to develop better strategies.
droz 15y ago
I think I may be in the minority, but I don't think people are thinking of the consequences of this telecommuting push. I like the fact that there is a place where I do work and where I live. I do not want these two places to be the same. Much for the same reason people don't put a television in the bedroom. The bedroom is for sleeping, the living room is for TV. I find that with the remote people I need to work with, I'm working around their schedule of when they will be around. It is difficult to communicate over IM, IRC, telephone and Skype (doesn't feel a fluid as face-to-face interaction). If everyone starts becoming remote, then what's the point of having an office? If enough companies come to the same conclusion, what's the point in owning a building (from the eyes of a real estate guy). And ultimately, what's the point of having big office parks and so on and on. That's a lot of land and lot of capital at stake if this ever actually took off. If a company asked me to be remote, I'd tell them I'm going to start looking for other employment options.
- cagey 15y ago
  > Much for the same reason people don't put a television in the bedroom. ? I think having a TV in _every_ room is most consumers' dream come true.
- jacques_chester 15y ago
  > If everyone starts becoming remote, then what's the point of having an office? If enough companies come to the same conclusion, what's the point in owning a building (from the eyes of a real estate guy). And ultimately, what's the point of having big office parks and so on and on. That's a lot of land and lot of capital at stake if this ever actually took off. It'll be put to other uses. That's how capitalism works my friend. What do you think happened to all those old factories and warehouses in big cities? People live in them now.
  - bruce511 15y ago
    yes. And more to the point what happened to the people who used to _work_ in them? 'Cause those jobs are now being done outside the US by people prepared to work for far less. If decentralizing is an option then the US border certainly isn't a barrier. Understand that a telecomuting job is the easiest job to offshore. At the end of the day if you never come in to the office you might as well be living in India. Cause then we'd have to pay you less. Oh wait, there's some super-keen, super bright chap in India who'll do your work for a tenth of the price? hmm let me think about that for a while.
earl 15y ago
I've previously worked for a pair of bosses who telecommuted. Never again. At least for the types of algorithmic / machine learning software I work on, frequent in person collaboration is really helpful and none of the remote collaboration software came close to standing in front of the same piece of paper / monitor / whiteboard.
deleted 15y ago
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cheez 15y ago
Haha, cloud computing!
Andys 15y ago
http://remote-jobs.com/ http://remote-jobs.com/
kalleboo 15y ago
I've never had a proper job in an office - I started working an online gig in uni, and I've been working for them ever since. It's great not needing to be in one place. I've started taking round-the-world trips - live cheap in hostels, work in coffee shops using their WiFi. Hanging out in Singapore and Tokyo sure motivates me to work a lot more than my apartment at home.
fshaun 15y ago
As with many things, working from home entails tradeoffs whose [dis]advantages will be weighted differently. For me, it's great when I need to concentrate and bang out the code. No distractions, and I can poll IMs instead of needing a context switch when someone drops by. If I'm stuck on a problem I'll go for a walk, cook food, or take the laptop out to a coffee shop to work. I enjoy the flexibility. Downsides for me: I do miss some of the random office chatter -- finding out cool problems coworkers have solved and generally learning by osmosis. And I have yet to find a great replacement for 3-4 people standing at a wall of whiteboards. IMs, skype and meeting highlights solve some problems. Our group is 2/3 remote spanning 8 time zones, so we're used to working a bit harder on communication. As for social factors, it was hard at first. I'd find myself not leaving the apartment for weeks, which was less than good... I'm making an effort to get out of the house daily, whether hitting the gym, buying groceries, or just strolling around. This is getting easier, especially as spring seems to finally be hitting Boston. The biggest non-technical advantage for me is not needing a car. I detested commuting. Instead of spending an extra hour or two driving I can take breaks (or even naps) in the day and have the same "door-to-door" time. Financially, it's also a winner. I don't even know how much gas costs here. There are 4 zipcars within a few blocks if I need them. Work-life separation is trickier. I'd love to have an apartment with an extra room for an office, but that would likely cancel out any vehicle savings. Getting a separate desk to split work and personal computing helped a ton here.
keefe 15y ago
sane people like to work for other sane people and work should be about what you produce unless you have necessary human interactions
deleted 15y ago
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Garbage 15y ago
Quite offtopic. But still I wanted to share this. ;) Why working at home is both awesome and horrible - http://theoatmeal.com/comics/working_home http://theoatmeal.com/comics/working_home
johnbacon 15y ago
Timely article, comsidering 37Signals is relocating their entire team to Chicago. Apparently they are freaked out, not about their employees, but about people in their homes who might break in to their stuff. Aka ex spouses et al. So David H said they will all work from the Chicago office, with iMacs Chained to their desks and wear uniforms. No more working from home or laptops unless it's on open source projects. I'd link to the post on 37Signals blog, but I'm in bed and on an iPhone. Just cruise to their corporate blog. They posted the details a few days ago.
- joelrunyon 15y ago
  I'm on an iPhone but I did anyways. Here's the link - http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2838-were-relocating-everyone-to-chicago http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2838-were-relocating-everyone... Look at the date - April 1st. Context.Context. Context.
  - johnbacon 15y ago
    Thanks for the context Joel. April fools is what I get for reading that on April 15th!
amorphid 15y ago
I like hiring people that are available to meet locally, and then let them work remotely for most things.
- hkarthik 15y ago
  I think this is the best of both worlds, and probably the right way to go for startups in cities with a huge urban sprawl.
BenSS 15y ago
I've telecommuted for 8 years now and I'm looking for a new gig. I'm really surprised how difficult it is to to find good companies who are really in to telecommuting and are looking for my skill set (web, cms, mobile). While it can be isolating if you don't force yourself to get out once in a while the flexibility and productivity sure can't be beat.

316 points by chanks 15y ago

At MetaOptimize, I am competing with Google and Facebook and LinkedIn and a host of other companies to recruit top ML + NLP talent. But, the benefit of my recruiting model is that I hire people remote and part-time. A lot of strong strong people are in academia, but love their academic post and don't want to move. They just want build cool stuff on the side and make some extra money. The fact that Google + Facebook + LinkedIn + friends must own you full time, asses in seats, creates a unique hiring opportunity for me.

jordanb 15y ago

I routinely have people begging me to work for them, but probably 4 in 5 clam up when I specify that -- while I'm happy to spend as much time with them as necessary to get the specs and make everyone comfortable -- I will not sit in their office to do the programming. I can not, for the life of me, understand why that is such a sticking point with so many people. Fortunately I have enough people who are willing to work with me anyway that I can forget about the ones who don't, but it seems mind-numbingly obvious to me that if you're desperate for the skills I have, you should be willing to work with a requirement that doesn't cost you anything. As near as I can fathom, it's a psychological thing. Remote people don't seem like they're part of your "empire" as you look out across the office and see all the busy beavers hunched over their computers.

zem 15y ago
also, they can't keep an eye on you to see that you're not slacking off on company time (the horror of it all!)
- elai 15y ago
  Communication is just more awkward compared to face to face time.
- jdp23 15y ago
  agreed, I think lack of trust (or alternatively the desire for the illusion of control) is a huge barrier for a lot of managers and organizations
- jshen 15y ago
  But they rarely are able to tell if I'm slacking off in the office either. They can't tell the difference between me working on their code or my own fun side projects.
  - duck 15y ago
    That isn't how their minds work though.
httpitis 15y ago
Been full time remote for 10 years. So true, and I second your questioning as to why onsite is so important to many ppl.
ssharp 15y ago
It's a sticking point because being virtual is much different than being co-located, especially when only one member is virtual. If you don't have the experience in managing or working with a virtual group, you're going to be reluctant to get into it. Aside from some good anecdotal pieces here, research shows that communications are the critical factor of successful telecommuting. Trust is based on communications, and you can't work effectively in an organization without trust.
- brunomlopes 15y ago
  I think you're on to something with "only one member is virtual" and previous experience. Communication is essencial and harder to manage if just one member is virtual. So, it may not be worthwhile to manage just that one member differently, hence the requirment for "on-site" programming.
- jordanb 15y ago
  I've been on projects with a mix of telecommuters and people who have to work on-site, and communication is no more an issue than with any other configuration. The only problem with a 'mixed' team is that you can get resentment among people who are required to go to the office every day, but that's a problem of company policy. Face-to-face communication is enormously disruptive to engineers, to the extent that -- even when I worked on-site -- I would spend 90% of my time communicating with other engineers over IM. At one company, I worked across the desk from another engineer, such that I could reach out and touch him. Yet we'd say good morning to each other, and we'd go to lunch together frequently, but the entire rest of the time we'd communicate via IM. Engineers need to talk with the management and clients for three reasons: 1) To get the specification 2) to clarify the specification during development and 3) to get feedback during testing/qa. The only component of that which needs to happen during development is #2 and seeking clarification is engineer-driven, so if the engineer doesn't have a problem with picking up the phone or sending an email or scheduling a meeting (activities I do constantly with clients) then it's not a significant barrier. One fourth type of communication between management and engineers is what I like to call "comfort talk": management hovering around engineers asking for "status updates," or small-talking about an unrelated project, or asking for an explanation of some technical point or the other, or fishing for some decision that needs to be made so that he can make it himself. I call this "comfort talk" because most of it is useless but it makes the manager feel involved in the project. They don't want to do it over IM because IM doesn't give that same comfy feeling, and they can do it by phone, but there's a mental barrier to picking up a phone that makes them reconsider if it's important. It's much easier to roam over to an engineer and hover behind him until his concentration breaks. Of course "comfort talk" is (almost never) beneficial to the engineer or his productivity. In fact it's the enemy of productivity. I still have to put up with a good deal of it by phone when working remotely, but far far less than I would in person (due to the mental barrier). The reduction in this "communication" is a godsend to me but makes the relationship feel less comfy for the manager, so once again we’re talking about psychological issues on the part of management.
daemin 15y ago
I think this is because some people run on "manager time" and they like being able to poke in every hour or so just to check up, or bug you with something different that's so urgent it just popped up.

lancefisher 15y ago

I live in Missoula, MT and I'm not willing to move because my family is here, and I love the city. Programmers here are willing to take a pay cut to stay, and I know several that telecommute to out of state jobs that pay better than most local companies. I telecommute too, but my employer is local.

atacrawl 15y ago

With an unemployment rate of just 4% among tech professionals, and shortages in specific fields, flexibility shouldn't be a last resort. I would have guessed that tech unemployment would be lower than the national average, but 4% is really low.

dasil003 15y ago
Especially considering how "lazy" programmers are.
il 15y ago
The unemployment rate for college graduates as a whole is under 5%. White collar workers are not the ones feeling the brunt of the recession.
- braddunbar 15y ago
  Wow. That's a statistic that doesn't get reported nearly enough. It puts an entirely different spin on the unemployment rate.
  - hugh3 15y ago
    It could probably afford to be aired in the "is college a waste of time and money?" threads which crop up here every day too.
    - il 15y ago
      I doubt it, the correlation does not imply causation. My hunch is that the people graduating from college are the kind of people that would find it easier to find a job anyway.
      - InnocentB 15y ago
        There was actually an interesting study about this which got mentioned recently on the Freakonomics podcast (you can see a transcription of the segment at http://freakonomicsradio.com/does-college-still-matter-and-other-freaky-questions-answered.html http://freakonomicsradio.com/does-college-still-matter-and-o..., the original study is at http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/tlemieux/papers/unintended.pdf http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/tlemieux/papers/unintended.pdf). Basically, it uses men who were eligible for the Vietnam draft (who enrolled in college in greater numbers than they otherwise would have, to avoid military service) to demonstrate that success from college graduates is more than a "these people are the ones who were already going to succeed" thing.

melipone 15y ago

I agree. We need to see more of that. I would suggest to offer a few trips a year to the "office" though for morale.

mgkimsal 15y ago

This is sort of a no-brainer. I'm pitched by recruiters about once a week, and they're all for far away positions - typically SF area, but other areas too. I can't sell my house any time soon - the market just isn't moving - so I'm somewhat held hostage by geography. This doesn't mean that I can't travel onsite and visit your office regularly, nor does it mean skype and phone don't work out here in the sticks :) Telecommuting requires the entire team or ideally the entire company be set up to work like that - just having one guy out in a different state or country on his own doesn't work very well in most cases. I understand that. What I don't get is why more companies aren't structuring themselves to take advantage of remote workers. If you have strong procedures in place to deal with remote/offsite workers (fulltime or not), you can more easily integrate short term labor when you need it - you'll have the shared workspaces, file transfers, documentation, version control, etc, already set up and ready to let new people in as needed. This seems like this would be a competitive advantage that more companies should be looking at. Maybe they will be in the coming years as the impact of underwater mortgages and geography-locked workers starts to impact the broader tech labor market.

hello_moto 15y ago
The keywords in your post are these: "Strong Procedures". Most startups/tech companies don't necessary have that.
- mgkimsal 15y ago
  Many of the people involved have been involved in other operations before. "Strong procedures" should be a prerequisite for funding (for those seeking funding), no?
  - sedachv 15y ago
    You're really being optimistic.
  - ericd 15y ago
    Yeah, not really. Strong procedures are frequently a hinderance at that size, so they just don't get put in place.

pdenya 15y ago

I used to work in NYC but I've been working from home for a couple years now for an agency based in NYC (I live in CT now). I make good money but I've been offered a 20k+ raise and other bonuses to work in the city. Barely considered it.

savagejen 15y ago
A 20k difference isn't enough to cover either the time on a commute to and from NYC or the price difference in living costs.

savagejen 15y ago

I wouldn't take a pay cut for it, but it might help me make a decision between two equally good offers.

wyclif 15y ago

Startups that demand relocation to NYC or SF are a total show stopper here. Many of us are held hostage by geography-- maybe you own a home, maybe you have kids in a school they're flourishing in, maybe your parents need help. If you're a family man you won't like spending your wife and children's time in Bay Area or Metro NYC traffic. But here's the thing: the technology most startups use means they can transcend geography to an extent. I do not underestimate the value of having a team in the same location. It does affect morale and company culture. But with the right people and the right technology those issues are quickly going to wind up in the rearview mirror. When I look at a company, I want to see if they are set up to do remote work, or are they landlocked?

metageek 15y ago
>or are they landlocked? Nice term.
michaelchisari 15y ago
I want to see if they are set up to do remote work, or are they landlocked? I love this term. Maybe I'll use it on my resume.
- wyclif 15y ago
  Hi, Michael. I love Appleseed and give you guys mad props.
spitfire 15y ago
amen to this. With the money startups manage to pull in you can find a very nice town to settle in and absolutely pamper your staff - and still have lower costs than SF or nyc. A particularly good selling point for getting the more experienced developers with family. Come work for us in friendly brattleboro Vermont! (I've been there, it's like Gilmore girls in real life). Bonus if you're within train distance of the city you can get the best of all worlds.

shimonamit 15y ago

I liked the ending: Maybe if we called it 'cloud commuting', CIOs would buy in.

HockeyBiasDotCo 15y ago
Perfect!
RexM 15y ago
Same, that was a nice touch.

SoftwarePatent 15y ago

Want to attract top tech talent? Offer a high salary.

famousactress 15y ago
I think there's a difference between attracting and keeping (productive). High salaries can lead to a 'golden handcuffs' scenario where the company can flounder, do stupid things, mistreat employees.. and they'll stick around for the cash. I think paying well is a good idea, but it's not a complete strategy and I don't think it actually is as likely to bring the lifestyle satisfaction that telecommuting can for many people.

bphogan 15y ago

I would love to do more remote work, but then I hear horror stories about people having problems not being around people. Feelings of isolation set in after a couple of months, and people end up going to a gig where they are around people. To those doing remote work, is this common?

enjo 15y ago
Coworking spaces work wonders for this.
- umjames 15y ago
  The biggest benefit of a co-working space is that you are in more control of when you want to be around other people. You can always go home when you need pure isolation. At your employer's workplace, you don't have that control. You can be interrupted at any time by anything. You don't appreciate that flexibility until you have to use headphones and music to drown out your co-workers' inane personal conversations.
bartonfink 15y ago
I haven't found that to be the case, but then I have my life set up such that I don't need work to fill a social outlet. I have my wife, two dogs, friends and neighbors to socialize with when I feel the itch.
gchucky 15y ago
I'm one of those people who left a telecommute job to work in an office. The walls definitely closed in on me and I felt increasingly isolated, and I had to get out. I think it was when I realized that I was sitting around my apartment for 23+ hours a day that I started looking for a new position. I think there's something inherent in working with people around you that you can't really replicate online. Being able to go over and talk to someone and ask them a question is invaluable when compared to having to message/email someone and wait for them to respond. It took us far longer to get sprint planning done (we were also doing Scrum) over the phone because no one wanted to talk, and that's easier to shrug off when you're at home. There's some level of team building that's missing when you telecommute - you don't go out for lunch with people, or have any sort of real social interaction. Honestly I think it's up to the team/company to help work through those issues. We set up a chat system so we could talk during the day and that did seem to help for awhile, though.

mgkimsal 15y ago

Posting another thought here. I have a suspicion that there's enough people in the SF area (and a couple of the the other "big" markets) that will actively fight against telecommuting, specifically because it will lower wages in those areas. As someone else posted, yes, I understand the value of a team being in the same room. But that value comes at a premium price, and it's one which may not always be worth paying. However, given the boom/busy/buyout cycle in the bay area (as an example), enough of the same workers can move from company to company as the companies are merged, bought out, or close, that this keeps the talent supply close enough to what is needed to make it harder to embrace telecommuting. You just need a few more people to fill in a few gaps, right? They need to be on site, or they're not a 'team player', or just not serious about their career in tech if they don't want to move to the valley! (have heard this before). If the majority of companies out in SF set themselves up to embrace telecommuting, that would mean it would be easier to fill that next position with someone from Idaho, Kansas or Utah. That would mean the company could pay a lower wage. Why would the culture of startup workers want to embrace something that will end up driving down their salaries?

zem 15y ago
how does that work? the people paying the salaries would surely love to get someone who can do the same work for less, and the people receiving the salaries aren't the ones who make the decision as to whether a new hire can telecommute or not.
- georgieporgie 15y ago
  the people receiving the salaries aren't the ones who make the decision as to whether a new hire can telecommute or not. True, but they can whisper into the right ears every day, 9 - 5. And it's quite easy to negatively impact a coworker's productivity, if you so wish.
  - zem 15y ago
    i think you're attributing far too much cunning and big-picture thinking to developers. specifically, the logic chain here would have to run "this dude is telecommuting, which means that he can live somewhere cheaper than sf, which means that he can accept a lower salary, which means that salaries across the board will tend to drop, which means that my salary will be affected, which means i'd better shaft him". i'm not saying that a malicious developer can't whisper into the right ears and get someone into trouble, but it's usually because of some more directly personal dislike or jealousy.

angrycoder 15y ago

I've spent the bulk of the past 8 years telecommuting, even when I've had full time positions locally. It requires a strong commitment to communication and the experience to recognize when the communication is failing so you can get off your ass for a face to face meeting or phone call. I also ending up working a hell of a lot more hours than I would if I just had a desk job. But I wouldn't have it any other way. I don't give a shit about your corporate culture or your ping pong table or your office politics or your ego battles, I only care about solving problems and producing solid solutions. Telecommuting lets focus on doing just that while leaving all the other nonsense behind.

pstack 15y ago
Agreed. I haven't been in the market for a job in a very long time, but the quickest way to lose my interest in your position is to tell me I can't work from home. After almost fifteen years, I can think of no other way. (Especially in my case, where my colleagues are all spread across the globe, anyway).

crenelle 15y ago

I have telecommuted for several gigs and positions. The most difficult situation to deal with is when most of the rest of the company doesn't telecommute, so everyone is not in the habit of cluing you in to what's going on. You may have all the tools required to establish and maintain decent communications, but they often don't bother to adopt any of it for their end. I even remote-developed for a large networking company with enormous communications facilities designed to solve problems like that -- but they had me fly over to headquarters all the time instead.

chc 15y ago
Speaking from experience, this can be a problem even when you're not telecommuting.
dpritchett 15y ago
Thanks for bringing up that bit about being left out by coworkers. It reminded me of a passage from "Being Geek". Luckily the book is largely compiled from blog posts and here's the relevant post by Rands on the inadvertent exclusion faced by lone telecommuters attached to onsite teams: http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2009/04/15/the_pond.html http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2009/04/15/the_pond.ht...

kayoone 15y ago

I worked from home for the past couple of years and now work in an office and have to communte everyday. But i have to say i like working in a space with other engineers to discuss ideas and concepts and energy more as sitting alone at home.

dabent 15y ago

I have failed to understand why someone in India can do my job, but telecommuting is still frowned upon.

random42 15y ago
I suppose for the premium amount you are being paid, as compared to the Indian worker, being physically present is a requisite. I cannot say, I disagree with the logic myself.
- cosgroveb 15y ago
  Paying a premium so we can play butts-in-seats and management can feel like they're tending properly to the cube farm...
  - random42 15y ago
    I cant say anything for your management, but my management (actually my immediate boss), is very reasonable. Being a developer himself, he understands what programmers need to be productive. He allows remote work, time to time. In time is as late as 11:30 AM (which is also just because, we have standup that time). In all, a very reasonable person to work for/with/under, who believes in not micro-managing people. However, co-locating has its own benefits, and I suppose thats why he does not hire remote workers (for permanent positions). We have hired remote contractors in the past, and they worked fine to good, but it required lot of effort on collaborating.

michaelchisari 15y ago

I love Chicago, you just can't beat this city for the kind of value you get for the price. The closest competitor is New York in terms of food and culture, but the costs are astronomically higher. When I'm contacted by a job recruiter for a position that pays more, but requires moving to somewhere like Mountain View, I will rarely entertain the idea. Sure, I'll fly into the office, I'll do it quite regularly actually, but there's no way I'm picking up and moving to a city with considerably less to offer, yet which costs substantially more. I understand the value of social capital, and working with people face to face. But how often does that really need to happen? As developers, our job is ultimately to write code, and that can happen anywhere.

ddlatham 15y ago

I see several comments saying more companies should be hiring remote workers, building their culture to support it, and why aren't they doing it? It's interesting to see the numbers in this article. What's remarkable is that, even after two years of flattish compensation, technology professionals are willing to sacrifice $7,800 on average to work from home The article speaks as if this is a huge amount, but as a chunk of total salary, it's probably 5-15% for most tech jobs. So the question for employers is, is it worth an extra 5-15% in salary to have your team work together in person? In many cases it is.

Vivtek 15y ago
That's not a huge amount. Say you have a mere half-hour commute = 1 hour a day x 250 working days a year, your $7800 turns into $31.20 an hour for the most boring work you'll ever do - even a truck driver usually gets to see different scenery from day to day. And that's if you manage to live a mere half-hour from work, which in any major city is seriously unlikely. If you're good at tech, why would you take a second job as an automobile driver for chump change?
- orangecat 15y ago
  Exactly. One of the few clear-cut results of happiness studies is that commuting really, really sucks. I can understand why telecommuting might not work for some companies, but there's rarely an excuse for not offering flexible hours, so you can at least dodge rush hour by coming in earlier or later.
- deleted 15y ago
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- ddlatham 15y ago
  I agree, but the comment was turning the table around and looking at it from the employer's perspective. If enough employees continue to be willing to commute for a mere 5-15% more in salary, then employers will continue to, quite rationally, pay them to do so.

adnam 15y ago

I recently quit my job because they wanted me to telecommute.

trustfundbaby 15y ago
Care to share the reason why?
- adnam 15y ago
  I figured working from home would be great for the first month, and then I would start going mad. And when I asked who was going to pay for my chair, desk and computer, and who would pay the heating, lighting, ADSL and air-conditioning ... it looked like I was going to be out of pocket too.
  - jrsmith1279 15y ago
    You don't already have a chair, desk, computer, and internet access at home? Air conditioning may cost more, but you'd no longer be paying high gas prices to drive to and from work (which I'm assuming your company doesn't pay for now?).
  - jacques_chester 15y ago
    In Australia you the employee can get a tax deduction for work expenses. If you work from home you can claim partial rent, partial electricity bills, partial internet and so on. Whereas if the employer pays for these things, they may have to levy a Fringe Benefits Tax on the value of the payments at the top marginal tax rate. In total dollars it is sometimes cheaper to bump the salary and let the employee actually do the taxman dance. Of course, I am not a lawyer, not a tax accountant and I don't work for the ATO. Seek advice, YMMV etc.
  - technomancy 15y ago
    > I figured working from home would be great for the first month, and then I would start going mad. Why not quit after the first month then?

jherdman 15y ago

Like hell I would! Nothing beats face-to-face communication, and the wonderful things that can arise from spontaneous interactions.

edw519 15y ago

In the past 4 hours I have exchanged ones and zeros with people and computers in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Florida, Arizona, California, Germany, Singapore, and India. And got 3 "office days" worth of work done. And I haven't even brushed my teeth yet. :-) You know what telecommuters say, "Once you've deployed a killer app in your pajamas, you can never go back."

udp 15y ago
Don't you find it gets a bit lonely after a while? I've been working as a full-time programmer from home for about a year and a half now, and it's beginning to get a bit weird. Aside from not having physical coworkers, I don't leave work, go home and do something else, because work is always all around me. There's this never-ending pattern of 9-5 quickly becoming 2 PM - 8 AM, until I finally pull an all nighter and it resets. It doesn't help that I'm 100% passionate about what I do...!
- steve-howard 15y ago
  I almost never _have_ to go into work (though my boss has requested that I spend some time there because others tend to need me for things), but the thought of being alone for a whole day gets me out the door. I love what I do, but people are interesting too.
- russell 15y ago
  I worked for more than 10 years from home in the mountains above SV with a client in Chicago. I had a wife and 3 school age kids. We had rules and a discipline: when I was in my office, I was not available for chatting, discipline, or other home things. I worked mainly 8 to 5 and the personalities of the family members were such that it worked. If I wanted a hacker fix, I would go to some meeting in the valley, I was the last survivor of a 30 person development office. That in itself was eerie.
- technomancy 15y ago
  > Don't you find it gets a bit lonely after a while? At work we spend 80% of the day pairing over voip and SSH. It's ironic because I moved from California to Seattle because I got tired of telecommuting all by my lonesome from down there, but these days with pairing it doesn't bother me at all.

mdink 15y ago

I started an interesting thread awhile back about this very topic: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2202187 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2202187 Had some interesting comments...

pbj 15y ago

I was reading a study a while back about how an absurdly high percentage of total jobs could be done via telecommute but aren't. It's crazy to think about how many millions upon millions of dollars in fuel costs and reduced emissions could be saved by having more telecommuters. Not only that, but companies could save so much money by having reduced or no office space/electricity/etc. Plus they'd get the added benefit of increased worker satisfaction in most cases.

praptak 15y ago
What you said, plus the employee commute time - I have actually turned down a (nominally) better paid job offer to accept a (nominally) lower one. The pay is lower, but the almost instant commute means I actually earn more per (work + commute) hour. On top of that I also save on fuel, car wear and tear and road jam frustration.

rickmb 15y ago

In my experience, the number of people that actually have what it takes to telecommute effectively is extremely small, and most of those are self-employed already. Of those that want to telecommute and have a steady job, very few can actually handle the responsibility and the lack of stimulus from co-workers for longer periods of time. Flexible hours, working from home on a regular basis, sure, no problem, but actual full time telecommuting requires a lot of commitment, discipline and communication skills.

igorgue 15y ago

My advice would be, talent /= experience. I'm sick and tired of companies being super picky because I don't know their technology stack or maybe just one element, they don't even offer a technical test these days. I wont learn Cassandra or Scala because they are popular on super-webscale sites, I did, though, learn Haskell, Node, MongoDB, Redis, Python, Ruby, not because they teach that in college. I think that tells you I can learn other technologies. But I get a feeling - in many interviews I've had in the last couple of month - they get disappointed when I tell them I don't know Scala, Cassandra, Hadoop... Most good programmers I know (they're not genius level, nor most of the people here) are willing to relocate wherever you are, but they might not know the super-awesome-webscale technologies you use because they work for actual businesses that charge customers and don't need a billion uniques a month to be profitable. Instead of bitching about the lack of talent (and there are many programmers like me) be willing to train people on your weird-ass technology stack.

Bravais 15y ago
One less to compete against... :) I know Scala, Cassandra and Hadoop, execute across all of the SDLC, as well as just flat out code, and available I might add. Telecommute only.
- lanstein 15y ago
  And here I was thinking I'd heard the term SDLC for the last time...
- Bravais 15y ago
  New record for HN I think, from +60 to -5 karma points. Tough crowd. Miss the HN early days...
scythe 15y ago
You say you refuse to learn them. If you're not going to learn their technology what use can you possibly be?
- dman 15y ago

dekayed 15y ago

I think it is also important for in-office workers be allowed to telecommute when needed. Having that flexibility offers a lot of freedom as there are times where you need to be out of the office but can still work. I currently have a family situation where I try and be at my parents' home a week a month and having the option to work from there has been a huge help. It is definitely a big factor in why I would stick around in my current job for a while at least.

krschultz 15y ago
I actually would prefer that to an all-telecommute gig. Be in the office 16-18 days a month out of 20, but those 2 or 4 days a month you want to work from home you can.

jasonkester 15y ago

I've been working a remote contract these last 6 month, and one thing that surprises me is how I bill a lot less hours than I would if I were on site. If I boot up in the morning, spend 30 minutes trying to get into something, fail and end up back here on HN, I don't bill any time. If I did the same thing sitting in a cube, I'd get paid for it. The end result is that the client gets a much better deal by having me off site. Works great for me too, since I can justify billing out at a higher rate that reflects the fact that they get essentially all my productive time for the week, and nothing else. Everybody wins. As an added bonus, if I really can't get started in a morning, I can bail and go bouldering for the day and not feel guilty about it. The bizarro world salaried version of me would spend that same day sitting in a cubicle secretly playing video games on the clock.

bconway 15y ago
If I did the same thing sitting in a cube, I'd get paid for it. Why? I bill for work done regardless of my location, I never thought it might be out of the ordinary.
- proexploit 15y ago
  I think he's attempting to explain that he hasn't actually done anything (maybe loading up some programs, getting reference material together, etc.) and then does something unrelated. I wouldn't bill for that either unless it took a significant portion of time AND I wouldn't have to do it again later.
  - jasonkester 15y ago
    And of course there's no real mechanism to not get paid for time spent daydreaming if you're sitting in an office on salary. On the point in question though, no, I won't bill time warming up the dev environment unless I actually use it for productive work. You lose the odd fraction of an hour here and there, but really if you're trying to add up things like that to get yourself paid an extra 2 hours at the end of the week you're probably just not charging enough for your time.
- 15y ago

Harkins 15y ago

Anecdote: I've been traveling for the last three months, but most of my network is in Chicago. I hear from recruiters and hiring managers every couple days and, despite the consensus that Chicago has a "developer crisis" (to use the words of an Obtiva blog post), every single job has onsite only.

shareme 15y ago
MY linkedin profile reads Greater ChicagoLand and yet I always get recruiter emails from jobs in every place except Chicago
pacaro 15y ago
I read "Anecdote" as "HNecdote", not sure what that says about anything.

megamark16 15y ago

Thinking back to the recent post about Performable paying a $12,000 referral bonus: I consider myself a perfect candidate for the Performable job, with the exception of location and willingness to pick up my family and move them across the country. For a competitive salary (by midwest standards, which would be a lot less than what you'd pay in Boston) I'd tell them to keep that $12,000 and use it to fly me out to boston twice a month for a few days at a time, and let me work from home the rest of the time. I work hard when I'm at home. Shoot, I built AppRabbit from the ground up evenings and weekends from the recliner in my home office. Plus, I spend more than an hour a day commuting right now, so you can have that time too :-)

spoiledtechie 15y ago

<shameless plug for a job> I know im a bit late to the game. I have been looking for a telecommuting job for the past 6 months with no such luck. I am a solid programmer and I get the job done. I hobby code at home and have an awesome work ethic. I have several years experience and have been everything for GIS software to coding directly on the GPU. I have worked on all three types of mobile devices for my current job, and have a pretty intense background of C#. If anyone has a job that they would love to fill with a telecommuter. Please look my direction. my blog at spoiledtechie.com my email spoiledtechie with gmail. Thanks for the look see!

krallja 15y ago
Hi Scott, I know we talked about this already once before, but my team is looking for remote C# developers. http://jobs.cheezburger.com http://jobs.cheezburger.com Jacob Cheezburger Inc.
bruce511 15y ago
Not to pick on you, but let me ask this question; Since you want to be a remote worker, what do you bring to the table that a remote worker in say Mexico doesn't? Or India? Or China? 'Cause sure as hell they'd be a lot cheaper... And while quantity doesn't equal quality, I'm certainly not so egotistic as to suppose there isn't a single Indian smart enough and keen enough to do whatever I can do for a fraction of the cost. So why doesn't my boss hire him? Cause I'm in the office when something needs to get done. Because I'm the one who has a relationship with the customers. Because I make the people around me more productive as I pass on my knowledge. Oh, and perhaps because I am the boss.

brndnhy 15y ago

If you're "top tech talent", compromising on salary will likely not be part of your telecommuting scenario.

adyacplus 15y ago

I have never earned a dollar in IT, but in other fields I got a lot of success, so I consider IT a hobby. Perhaps I could be a top tech talent if enough money and flexible conditions were around, anyway I think programmers are mere pawns in game of business, so it seems better to devote time and energy to develop better strategies.

droz 15y ago

I think I may be in the minority, but I don't think people are thinking of the consequences of this telecommuting push. I like the fact that there is a place where I do work and where I live. I do not want these two places to be the same. Much for the same reason people don't put a television in the bedroom. The bedroom is for sleeping, the living room is for TV. I find that with the remote people I need to work with, I'm working around their schedule of when they will be around. It is difficult to communicate over IM, IRC, telephone and Skype (doesn't feel a fluid as face-to-face interaction). If everyone starts becoming remote, then what's the point of having an office? If enough companies come to the same conclusion, what's the point in owning a building (from the eyes of a real estate guy). And ultimately, what's the point of having big office parks and so on and on. That's a lot of land and lot of capital at stake if this ever actually took off. If a company asked me to be remote, I'd tell them I'm going to start looking for other employment options.

cagey 15y ago
> Much for the same reason people don't put a television in the bedroom. ? I think having a TV in _every_ room is most consumers' dream come true.
jacques_chester 15y ago
> If everyone starts becoming remote, then what's the point of having an office? If enough companies come to the same conclusion, what's the point in owning a building (from the eyes of a real estate guy). And ultimately, what's the point of having big office parks and so on and on. That's a lot of land and lot of capital at stake if this ever actually took off. It'll be put to other uses. That's how capitalism works my friend. What do you think happened to all those old factories and warehouses in big cities? People live in them now.
- bruce511 15y ago
  yes. And more to the point what happened to the people who used to _work_ in them? 'Cause those jobs are now being done outside the US by people prepared to work for far less. If decentralizing is an option then the US border certainly isn't a barrier. Understand that a telecomuting job is the easiest job to offshore. At the end of the day if you never come in to the office you might as well be living in India. Cause then we'd have to pay you less. Oh wait, there's some super-keen, super bright chap in India who'll do your work for a tenth of the price? hmm let me think about that for a while.

earl 15y ago

I've previously worked for a pair of bosses who telecommuted. Never again. At least for the types of algorithmic / machine learning software I work on, frequent in person collaboration is really helpful and none of the remote collaboration software came close to standing in front of the same piece of paper / monitor / whiteboard.

deleted 15y ago

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cheez 15y ago

Haha, cloud computing!

Andys 15y ago

http://remote-jobs.com/ http://remote-jobs.com/

kalleboo 15y ago

I've never had a proper job in an office - I started working an online gig in uni, and I've been working for them ever since. It's great not needing to be in one place. I've started taking round-the-world trips - live cheap in hostels, work in coffee shops using their WiFi. Hanging out in Singapore and Tokyo sure motivates me to work a lot more than my apartment at home.

fshaun 15y ago

As with many things, working from home entails tradeoffs whose [dis]advantages will be weighted differently. For me, it's great when I need to concentrate and bang out the code. No distractions, and I can poll IMs instead of needing a context switch when someone drops by. If I'm stuck on a problem I'll go for a walk, cook food, or take the laptop out to a coffee shop to work. I enjoy the flexibility. Downsides for me: I do miss some of the random office chatter -- finding out cool problems coworkers have solved and generally learning by osmosis. And I have yet to find a great replacement for 3-4 people standing at a wall of whiteboards. IMs, skype and meeting highlights solve some problems. Our group is 2/3 remote spanning 8 time zones, so we're used to working a bit harder on communication. As for social factors, it was hard at first. I'd find myself not leaving the apartment for weeks, which was less than good... I'm making an effort to get out of the house daily, whether hitting the gym, buying groceries, or just strolling around. This is getting easier, especially as spring seems to finally be hitting Boston. The biggest non-technical advantage for me is not needing a car. I detested commuting. Instead of spending an extra hour or two driving I can take breaks (or even naps) in the day and have the same "door-to-door" time. Financially, it's also a winner. I don't even know how much gas costs here. There are 4 zipcars within a few blocks if I need them. Work-life separation is trickier. I'd love to have an apartment with an extra room for an office, but that would likely cancel out any vehicle savings. Getting a separate desk to split work and personal computing helped a ton here.

keefe 15y ago

sane people like to work for other sane people and work should be about what you produce unless you have necessary human interactions

deleted 15y ago

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Garbage 15y ago

Quite offtopic. But still I wanted to share this. ;) Why working at home is both awesome and horrible - http://theoatmeal.com/comics/working_home http://theoatmeal.com/comics/working_home

johnbacon 15y ago

Timely article, comsidering 37Signals is relocating their entire team to Chicago. Apparently they are freaked out, not about their employees, but about people in their homes who might break in to their stuff. Aka ex spouses et al. So David H said they will all work from the Chicago office, with iMacs Chained to their desks and wear uniforms. No more working from home or laptops unless it's on open source projects. I'd link to the post on 37Signals blog, but I'm in bed and on an iPhone. Just cruise to their corporate blog. They posted the details a few days ago.

joelrunyon 15y ago
I'm on an iPhone but I did anyways. Here's the link - http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2838-were-relocating-everyone-to-chicago http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2838-were-relocating-everyone... Look at the date - April 1st. Context.Context. Context.
- johnbacon 15y ago
  Thanks for the context Joel. April fools is what I get for reading that on April 15th!

amorphid 15y ago

I like hiring people that are available to meet locally, and then let them work remotely for most things.

hkarthik 15y ago
I think this is the best of both worlds, and probably the right way to go for startups in cities with a huge urban sprawl.

BenSS 15y ago

I've telecommuted for 8 years now and I'm looking for a new gig. I'm really surprised how difficult it is to to find good companies who are really in to telecommuting and are looking for my skill set (web, cms, mobile). While it can be isolating if you don't force yourself to get out once in a while the flexibility and productivity sure can't be beat.