5 ms·

Working together in person has to be 10 times more effective. Major doubt that anyone thinks remote working is actually more effective from the companies perspe

Working together in person has to be 10 times more effective. Major doubt that anyone thinks remote working is actually more effective from the companies perspective. The only argument I ever here is that antisocial people prefer not seeing other people and getting their work done alone.

almost_usual 6y ago
Not sure where you came up with this, judging by the number of product announcements on HN in the past year people seem pretty busy.
- amw-zero 6y ago
  Did anyone have a choice in the matter?
  - almost_usual 6y ago
    Post COVID WFH and flexible in office work weeks are the norm now at least in the Bay Area. I'm sure being in person is 10x more productive for some fields but software engineering is not one of them. If it were we wouldn't have had a year of tech companies performing exceptionally well.
j4yav 6y ago
I worked at a highly successful all-remote company (pre-COVID) with over 1500 employees and it was certainly not filled with antisocial or otherwise damaged people, and it was clear we were just as effective there with complete freedom to work on our own schedules and from wherever we wanted.
toomanybeersies 6y ago
My productivity probably doubled when I moved to remote working last year. In the morning, I don't need to commute an hour to the office, giving me an extra hour of sleep. My workspace is also superior to what I'd ever get in the office. But the biggest boost in my productivity has come from the lack of distractions when working from home. If I'm trying to focus on something, I can set my status as busy and mute notifications, leaving me to work in peace without interruption.
- mjfl 6y ago
  > My productivity probably doubled when I moved to remote working last year. Everyone who claims this is lying to themselves.
  - randmeerkat 6y ago
    I guess I’m lying to myself too then. My productivity has doubled as well.
    - mjfl 6y ago
      It's good to get some insight now and then.
  - jjav 6y ago
    > Everyone who claims this is lying to themselves. Certainly not everyone. At my employer a VP produced a report for 2020 showing how his division had increased both productivity and response times across the board by a non-trivial margin due to WFH. Doesn't mean this generalizes across all teams but certainly at least some are seeing such data.
    - mjfl 6y ago
      Your VP lied to your company, to get paid more.
  - Toutouxc 6y ago
    My productivity is possibly 20-50 % higher now. Am I too lying to myself? Or do you draw the line somewhere else?
- jjav 6y ago
  > My workspace is also superior to what I'd ever get in the office. An interesting factor is how this is dependent on how confident we can be to continue WFH. Like many people, I'm nowhere near prepared to have a good home office, the house is way too tiny. Which was fine when I didn't WFH more than a few days a month. But I could easily solve that by moving to a cheaper area where I could get a house with enough space for a dedicated home office. But to do that I need to be confident WFH will continue. Hard to predict what to do. (So what I've done in the interim is lease a small office walking distance from my house, lots of vacancies right now.)
house9-2 6y ago
Working remotely does not stop collaboration. I have been working primarily remote for the past 12 years. I meet with my team every day for standup and am in constant contact with team members throughout the day, sometimes pair programming or helping to debug issues. This is not much different than working in a colocated situation, except my coworkers don't have to smell my B.O. The tooling available these days makes remote work better than in person IMO.
- riffraff 6y ago
  As another person remote for 12 years exactly, I agree that nowadays we have nice tools, but some things are still better in person. For example, walking to a whiteboard and sketching something is easier than doing the same in zoom, unless everyone in the team owns a wacom tablet, and even then, physical "big visible charts" generally work better than online ones. I think the trade off is in favour of remote, for me, but it is highly dependent on job, person, team.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    I've come around to thinking that regular shared docs work fine for most purposes (or even better than whiteboards). But to the degree that whiteboards really do matter, just give everyone whatever is the appropriate tablet and set up the software. The cost is trivial in the scheme of things. (I actually don't care for tablets that aren't an LCD screen. You don't get the direct feedback.)
- crucialfelix 6y ago
  Even back in 2000 we were using ICQ to chat with other developers sitting nearby. It was faster and less intrusive.
nilkn 6y ago
I'm an engineering manager, and I can say my teams are just as productive today (100% remote) as they were pre-COVID (100% in-office). I do have very high performing teams, though, and I'm sure that plays a role. I think one "secret" is that we have small-ish teams (3-5 engineers), each with a very engaged and technically savvy leader. I've known other managers to have up to 20 IC reports. I can see that kind of structure falling apart when remote in such a way that your underperformers start completely slacking off and you're too busy to even notice. It's way harder for that to happen in smaller teams where your team lead/manager is very engaged in the team's work and your relative output is quite visible.
- ht_th 6y ago
  > my teams are just as productive today (100% remote) as they were pre-COVID (100% in-office). How much of this is the result of working with an established team that existed before you moved to work-from-home? Do you think the same will be true for teams that are created in a work-from-home setting from the start? I ask, because I am worried about training and retaining new people. A lot of work is not satisfying in itself. Part of my motivation comes from working together with a group of people I've come to known well. Often I care more about the people I work with than the problems I am working on. I consider this people aspect part of my intrinsic motivation to work. I fear that once we're all working from home, our motivations become more and more extrinsically. After that, why bother working for THIS company or problem? Can I trust myself and my colleagues to be involved enough to finish anything in the long run? Or should I start to expect anyone to jump ship anytime?
graphtrader 6y ago
I just can't disagree more. If you are a productive worker and very social the office is a huge negative. Because I am social everyone always wants to talk to me in the office. All remote has really done is given me an office with a locked door that I now control who and when I can be disrupted and distracted. If you are a slacker at home I am sure you slacked in the office as well. To me it all depends if we are talking from a middle management perspective or not. The company is better off but the redundancy of middle management is on full display right now. There will be huge opportunity though for companies that get leaner middle management wise and poach high performing remote talent across the country. This to me seems very obvious. Not to mention, it is not like you are going to have the luxury as a company of cutting remote cost post COVID. Remote cost is sunk cost for the remainder of my working life. I assume the biggest factor right now with how the company spins the narrative with remote work has to do with what things look like with the timing and length of the office lease. At some point in the future though, the cost of the office will become a competitive disadvantage.
mbrodersen 6y ago
That depends on your personality. I am way more productive working from home.

almost_usual 6y ago

Not sure where you came up with this, judging by the number of product announcements on HN in the past year people seem pretty busy.

amw-zero 6y ago
Did anyone have a choice in the matter?
- almost_usual 6y ago
  Post COVID WFH and flexible in office work weeks are the norm now at least in the Bay Area. I'm sure being in person is 10x more productive for some fields but software engineering is not one of them. If it were we wouldn't have had a year of tech companies performing exceptionally well.

j4yav 6y ago

I worked at a highly successful all-remote company (pre-COVID) with over 1500 employees and it was certainly not filled with antisocial or otherwise damaged people, and it was clear we were just as effective there with complete freedom to work on our own schedules and from wherever we wanted.

toomanybeersies 6y ago

My productivity probably doubled when I moved to remote working last year. In the morning, I don't need to commute an hour to the office, giving me an extra hour of sleep. My workspace is also superior to what I'd ever get in the office. But the biggest boost in my productivity has come from the lack of distractions when working from home. If I'm trying to focus on something, I can set my status as busy and mute notifications, leaving me to work in peace without interruption.

mjfl 6y ago
> My productivity probably doubled when I moved to remote working last year. Everyone who claims this is lying to themselves.
- randmeerkat 6y ago
  I guess I’m lying to myself too then. My productivity has doubled as well.
  - mjfl 6y ago
    It's good to get some insight now and then.
- jjav 6y ago
  > Everyone who claims this is lying to themselves. Certainly not everyone. At my employer a VP produced a report for 2020 showing how his division had increased both productivity and response times across the board by a non-trivial margin due to WFH. Doesn't mean this generalizes across all teams but certainly at least some are seeing such data.
  - mjfl 6y ago
    Your VP lied to your company, to get paid more.
- Toutouxc 6y ago
  My productivity is possibly 20-50 % higher now. Am I too lying to myself? Or do you draw the line somewhere else?
jjav 6y ago
> My workspace is also superior to what I'd ever get in the office. An interesting factor is how this is dependent on how confident we can be to continue WFH. Like many people, I'm nowhere near prepared to have a good home office, the house is way too tiny. Which was fine when I didn't WFH more than a few days a month. But I could easily solve that by moving to a cheaper area where I could get a house with enough space for a dedicated home office. But to do that I need to be confident WFH will continue. Hard to predict what to do. (So what I've done in the interim is lease a small office walking distance from my house, lots of vacancies right now.)

house9-2 6y ago

Working remotely does not stop collaboration. I have been working primarily remote for the past 12 years. I meet with my team every day for standup and am in constant contact with team members throughout the day, sometimes pair programming or helping to debug issues. This is not much different than working in a colocated situation, except my coworkers don't have to smell my B.O. The tooling available these days makes remote work better than in person IMO.

riffraff 6y ago
As another person remote for 12 years exactly, I agree that nowadays we have nice tools, but some things are still better in person. For example, walking to a whiteboard and sketching something is easier than doing the same in zoom, unless everyone in the team owns a wacom tablet, and even then, physical "big visible charts" generally work better than online ones. I think the trade off is in favour of remote, for me, but it is highly dependent on job, person, team.
- ghaff 6y ago
  I've come around to thinking that regular shared docs work fine for most purposes (or even better than whiteboards). But to the degree that whiteboards really do matter, just give everyone whatever is the appropriate tablet and set up the software. The cost is trivial in the scheme of things. (I actually don't care for tablets that aren't an LCD screen. You don't get the direct feedback.)
crucialfelix 6y ago
Even back in 2000 we were using ICQ to chat with other developers sitting nearby. It was faster and less intrusive.

nilkn 6y ago

I'm an engineering manager, and I can say my teams are just as productive today (100% remote) as they were pre-COVID (100% in-office). I do have very high performing teams, though, and I'm sure that plays a role. I think one "secret" is that we have small-ish teams (3-5 engineers), each with a very engaged and technically savvy leader. I've known other managers to have up to 20 IC reports. I can see that kind of structure falling apart when remote in such a way that your underperformers start completely slacking off and you're too busy to even notice. It's way harder for that to happen in smaller teams where your team lead/manager is very engaged in the team's work and your relative output is quite visible.

ht_th 6y ago
> my teams are just as productive today (100% remote) as they were pre-COVID (100% in-office). How much of this is the result of working with an established team that existed before you moved to work-from-home? Do you think the same will be true for teams that are created in a work-from-home setting from the start? I ask, because I am worried about training and retaining new people. A lot of work is not satisfying in itself. Part of my motivation comes from working together with a group of people I've come to known well. Often I care more about the people I work with than the problems I am working on. I consider this people aspect part of my intrinsic motivation to work. I fear that once we're all working from home, our motivations become more and more extrinsically. After that, why bother working for THIS company or problem? Can I trust myself and my colleagues to be involved enough to finish anything in the long run? Or should I start to expect anyone to jump ship anytime?

graphtrader 6y ago

I just can't disagree more. If you are a productive worker and very social the office is a huge negative. Because I am social everyone always wants to talk to me in the office. All remote has really done is given me an office with a locked door that I now control who and when I can be disrupted and distracted. If you are a slacker at home I am sure you slacked in the office as well. To me it all depends if we are talking from a middle management perspective or not. The company is better off but the redundancy of middle management is on full display right now. There will be huge opportunity though for companies that get leaner middle management wise and poach high performing remote talent across the country. This to me seems very obvious. Not to mention, it is not like you are going to have the luxury as a company of cutting remote cost post COVID. Remote cost is sunk cost for the remainder of my working life. I assume the biggest factor right now with how the company spins the narrative with remote work has to do with what things look like with the timing and length of the office lease. At some point in the future though, the cost of the office will become a competitive disadvantage.

mbrodersen 6y ago

That depends on your personality. I am way more productive working from home.