4 ms·

As someone who's worked only remotely for several years, this makes sense. I know many will disagree with this assertion but in my estimation in-person collabor

As someone who's worked only remotely for several years, this makes sense. I know many will disagree with this assertion but in my estimation in-person collaboration is far better than online-only. I think the best balance is at least a couple days per week in the office and the rest remote.

TeMPOraL 6y ago
"Couple days per week in the office" kind of defeats the whole point of going remote in the first place.
- mgkimsal 6y ago
  For some people, yes. For others, no. I've been 'remote' for... 12 years now, but do travel to offices sometimes, and do enjoy being able to do some face to face time with folks, even sometimes for multiple days or weeks at a stretch. The core matter is who decides when I need to be in an office. If it's me or mostly me, it's great. If it's solely at the discretion of others, that's where problems often are (regardless of whether it's full time or not).
  - mech422 6y ago
    Personally, I'm over 20 years WFH now and love it. The last 5 years have been working with people on other continents, and I actually had the choice of time zones to work (I usually work nights for this, as I'm a night owl and it lets me sleep during day time when Arizona summers get hot). I haven't had any of the issues people seem to encounter. I don't work to socialize, so I don't miss lunches and such. For programming or devops stuff, you can definately do 100% remote. I understand people have different tastes, so I find it funny how polarized people get about it. In-office to WFH is a spectrum - just pick the spot your comfortable on it.
    - mgkimsal 6y ago
      > In-office to WFH is a spectrum - just pick the spot your comfortable on it. Yep. It's the autonomy part that is the problem in nearly all cases. Choosing your own spot on that spectrum is the key part. And your spot may have to change over time, based on other parts of your life. Being forced to spot X is where all the contention comes in, it seems. I did miss occasional lunches, dinners, break room chats with folks, but now run a coworking spot in town. I have most of the socialization aspects I missed, without them being tied to work (no office politics with these folks, just... socialization).
      - mech422 6y ago
        Luckily, I think the autonomy part is on the rise...At least for tech workers. I basically no longer entertain positions that aren't 90+% WFH (so companies do quarterly or yearly get togethers, which aren't so bad), and there seems to be more of them all the time. In an industry where working with 'offshore' dev. groups is fairly routine, it seems especially silly to require 'local' resources to come on-site.
- mciancia 6y ago
  You can still save some time on commute that way ;)
- a4isms 6y ago
  I have worked with 50% remote people for decades. There are all sorts of ways this can be productive. The most obvious, which may or may not appeal to the majority of HN’s demographic, is people with families. If you’re 50% WFH, you can structure your parental life around the remote days. It’s not that you work less on those days, but the time you would otherwise spend commuting is time you can spend on weekday family things. Another scenario I’ve seen is people who want a "remote home.” Fed up with the prices for living in a major metropolitan area, or perhaps because they prefer a smaller town and/or living in a rural area, they buy a place with double their usual commute. That can be brutal, but if you only do that a couple of days of the week, and can structure your F2F work on those days, the total number of hours commuting isn’t so bad.
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
  If you're only coming in a few days a week, you don't need to live as close to the office. Like the difference between a 30 minute commute twice a day five days a week versus a 90 minute commute twice a day once a week.
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    It's certainly better than nothing. I agree that different people like WFH for different reasons. For my job, anything that lets me move farther from the Bay Area would be better. 1 day WFH per week doesn't let me do that, but maybe 3 days WFH per week would. My current commute is 4 hours, so maybe Id be willing to do an 8 hour commute if it was only twice a week. A week per month would be even better: I could move out of $tate and just fly to the South Bay once a month.
    - smabie 6y ago
      4hrs? Why/how do you survive. I don't think I could live like that.
- wongarsu 6y ago
  It still allows employees to work uninterrupted while managing their own time on the other days, and allows the company to save roughly half the office space (unless everyone comes in at the same days). It also spares you a lot of commute. Sure, it doesn't allow other things like working from a beach somewhere in Spain. But it's a compromise that keeps many benefits from both solutions.
- reemployed 6y ago
  +1. I was surprised by myself when deciding between competing offers recently. Even after enduring a year of isolation, and beginning my search with the express goal of joining a team on-site, I chose the fully remote position. I found the on-site guys tended to be old-school (not meant as a compliment). Also, in such turbulent and uncertain times, I realized that mobility is a major benefit. If my city turns even more Mad Max this summer (the jobs aren't coming back, people are pissed...), it will be a relief to be able to "bug out" with zero ceremony.
- wffurr 6y ago
  It’s the thin edge of the wedge for breaking the forty-hour week (or fifty or sixty or more depending on your company). On your days at home, you can be just as productive as a day in the office without spending a full eight hours locked in your home office space.
voxl 6y ago
It's easier, I agree, but I would not say its better. Collaborating online requires documentation, its more effort, but the artifacts you produce can be a lot more useful for everyone involved.
tkiolp4 6y ago
The problem is that everyone (in the team) needs to be in the office the exact same two days. That’s difficult to synchronize, some people may want to be at the office on Fridays, while other may prefer Mondays or Wednesdays or...
- mulmen 6y ago
  I solve hard problems for a living. This doesn't even register. My post-vaccine plan is to have a "mulmen day" where I set the expectation with my teammates and stakeholders that I am in the office and a "float" day where I come in to align with someone else's day who I need to work with face-to-face for whatever reason. If everyone works this way then we can meet most scheduling needs. If we expand this to two float days a week then it is trivial. There's no reason for the whole team to be colocated on the same day on a regular basis. Those kind of team-wide meetings never benefit from whiteboarding or any other in-person process. In fact the limitations of remote work make that kind of collaboration better because you have to actually prepare your thoughts and material. Even pre-covid getting calendar time required a week of notice. Office hours were once-a-week and required at least 24 hours notice. Personally my office hours are on Wednesday. If someone books a session I come in, if not I don't. Nothing changes. In Covid times I have had the most productive period of my career while my team grew by 50%. I have no problem getting coworker time ad-hoc, even remote. Communication is not difficult. We got better at using tooling to write documents and draw diagrams. We don't use whiteboard analogies. I honestly see no downside to the remote work and a long list of personal, professional and environmental benefits.
- nullsense 6y ago
  Currently in a 2 days WFH scenario atm where everyone just picks whatever random days they want. I'm not a fan. There's almost no consistency even though people set which days they are at home. Hard to describe, but it's mentally impossible to keep track of when starting a meeting if everyone is in the meeting who is supposed to be because I can't keep track of everyone's days, so I don't know if they're just not on the call yet, or forgot about the call and need to ping them, or are in the office but grabbing a coffee before coming to the meeting etc. If it's all the same days that'd be great but doesn't seem like it's work for everyone. I know certain days/times where I can't have meetings at home because the space is otherwise occupied and I need to keep quiet etc.
giantandroids 6y ago
> but in my estimation in-person collaboration is far better than online-only. Being able to talk to others in person and quickly is certainly useful, but its a double edged sword as that quite often results in your stream of thoughts being disrupted and focus gone in a flash. This is one of the reasons I love WFH as a developer. I can get right into my zone and focus on solving problems or being creative without someone walking up to my desk to ask if I read the email they sent me.
Arete314159 6y ago
I feel like ideally, in say a 3/2 scenario, most people would be in the office on the same days. But I wonder how that would be accomplished. Everyone's reasons for wanting to stay home certain days might be different.
- nullsense 6y ago
  It shakes out that 2/3rds simply choose Tuesday/Thu WFH and the remaining 1/3 is basically random.
aspaceman 6y ago
“Maximum of 14 days every year”
benibela 6y ago
It becomes rather chaotic when some people are in the office and some are remote. When everyone is fully remote, you should always reach them quickly by dropping a chat, but when they are offline they tend to be stuck in meetings

TeMPOraL 6y ago

"Couple days per week in the office" kind of defeats the whole point of going remote in the first place.

mgkimsal 6y ago
For some people, yes. For others, no. I've been 'remote' for... 12 years now, but do travel to offices sometimes, and do enjoy being able to do some face to face time with folks, even sometimes for multiple days or weeks at a stretch. The core matter is who decides when I need to be in an office. If it's me or mostly me, it's great. If it's solely at the discretion of others, that's where problems often are (regardless of whether it's full time or not).
- mech422 6y ago
  Personally, I'm over 20 years WFH now and love it. The last 5 years have been working with people on other continents, and I actually had the choice of time zones to work (I usually work nights for this, as I'm a night owl and it lets me sleep during day time when Arizona summers get hot). I haven't had any of the issues people seem to encounter. I don't work to socialize, so I don't miss lunches and such. For programming or devops stuff, you can definately do 100% remote. I understand people have different tastes, so I find it funny how polarized people get about it. In-office to WFH is a spectrum - just pick the spot your comfortable on it.
  - mgkimsal 6y ago
    > In-office to WFH is a spectrum - just pick the spot your comfortable on it. Yep. It's the autonomy part that is the problem in nearly all cases. Choosing your own spot on that spectrum is the key part. And your spot may have to change over time, based on other parts of your life. Being forced to spot X is where all the contention comes in, it seems. I did miss occasional lunches, dinners, break room chats with folks, but now run a coworking spot in town. I have most of the socialization aspects I missed, without them being tied to work (no office politics with these folks, just... socialization).
    - mech422 6y ago
      Luckily, I think the autonomy part is on the rise...At least for tech workers. I basically no longer entertain positions that aren't 90+% WFH (so companies do quarterly or yearly get togethers, which aren't so bad), and there seems to be more of them all the time. In an industry where working with 'offshore' dev. groups is fairly routine, it seems especially silly to require 'local' resources to come on-site.
mciancia 6y ago
You can still save some time on commute that way ;)
a4isms 6y ago
I have worked with 50% remote people for decades. There are all sorts of ways this can be productive. The most obvious, which may or may not appeal to the majority of HN’s demographic, is people with families. If you’re 50% WFH, you can structure your parental life around the remote days. It’s not that you work less on those days, but the time you would otherwise spend commuting is time you can spend on weekday family things. Another scenario I’ve seen is people who want a "remote home.” Fed up with the prices for living in a major metropolitan area, or perhaps because they prefer a smaller town and/or living in a rural area, they buy a place with double their usual commute. That can be brutal, but if you only do that a couple of days of the week, and can structure your F2F work on those days, the total number of hours commuting isn’t so bad.
6gvONxR4sf7o 6y ago
If you're only coming in a few days a week, you don't need to live as close to the office. Like the difference between a 30 minute commute twice a day five days a week versus a 90 minute commute twice a day once a week.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  It's certainly better than nothing. I agree that different people like WFH for different reasons. For my job, anything that lets me move farther from the Bay Area would be better. 1 day WFH per week doesn't let me do that, but maybe 3 days WFH per week would. My current commute is 4 hours, so maybe Id be willing to do an 8 hour commute if it was only twice a week. A week per month would be even better: I could move out of $tate and just fly to the South Bay once a month.
  - smabie 6y ago
    4hrs? Why/how do you survive. I don't think I could live like that.
wongarsu 6y ago
It still allows employees to work uninterrupted while managing their own time on the other days, and allows the company to save roughly half the office space (unless everyone comes in at the same days). It also spares you a lot of commute. Sure, it doesn't allow other things like working from a beach somewhere in Spain. But it's a compromise that keeps many benefits from both solutions.
reemployed 6y ago
+1. I was surprised by myself when deciding between competing offers recently. Even after enduring a year of isolation, and beginning my search with the express goal of joining a team on-site, I chose the fully remote position. I found the on-site guys tended to be old-school (not meant as a compliment). Also, in such turbulent and uncertain times, I realized that mobility is a major benefit. If my city turns even more Mad Max this summer (the jobs aren't coming back, people are pissed...), it will be a relief to be able to "bug out" with zero ceremony.
wffurr 6y ago
It’s the thin edge of the wedge for breaking the forty-hour week (or fifty or sixty or more depending on your company). On your days at home, you can be just as productive as a day in the office without spending a full eight hours locked in your home office space.

voxl 6y ago

It's easier, I agree, but I would not say its better. Collaborating online requires documentation, its more effort, but the artifacts you produce can be a lot more useful for everyone involved.

tkiolp4 6y ago

The problem is that everyone (in the team) needs to be in the office the exact same two days. That’s difficult to synchronize, some people may want to be at the office on Fridays, while other may prefer Mondays or Wednesdays or...

mulmen 6y ago
I solve hard problems for a living. This doesn't even register. My post-vaccine plan is to have a "mulmen day" where I set the expectation with my teammates and stakeholders that I am in the office and a "float" day where I come in to align with someone else's day who I need to work with face-to-face for whatever reason. If everyone works this way then we can meet most scheduling needs. If we expand this to two float days a week then it is trivial. There's no reason for the whole team to be colocated on the same day on a regular basis. Those kind of team-wide meetings never benefit from whiteboarding or any other in-person process. In fact the limitations of remote work make that kind of collaboration better because you have to actually prepare your thoughts and material. Even pre-covid getting calendar time required a week of notice. Office hours were once-a-week and required at least 24 hours notice. Personally my office hours are on Wednesday. If someone books a session I come in, if not I don't. Nothing changes. In Covid times I have had the most productive period of my career while my team grew by 50%. I have no problem getting coworker time ad-hoc, even remote. Communication is not difficult. We got better at using tooling to write documents and draw diagrams. We don't use whiteboard analogies. I honestly see no downside to the remote work and a long list of personal, professional and environmental benefits.
nullsense 6y ago
Currently in a 2 days WFH scenario atm where everyone just picks whatever random days they want. I'm not a fan. There's almost no consistency even though people set which days they are at home. Hard to describe, but it's mentally impossible to keep track of when starting a meeting if everyone is in the meeting who is supposed to be because I can't keep track of everyone's days, so I don't know if they're just not on the call yet, or forgot about the call and need to ping them, or are in the office but grabbing a coffee before coming to the meeting etc. If it's all the same days that'd be great but doesn't seem like it's work for everyone. I know certain days/times where I can't have meetings at home because the space is otherwise occupied and I need to keep quiet etc.

giantandroids 6y ago

> but in my estimation in-person collaboration is far better than online-only. Being able to talk to others in person and quickly is certainly useful, but its a double edged sword as that quite often results in your stream of thoughts being disrupted and focus gone in a flash. This is one of the reasons I love WFH as a developer. I can get right into my zone and focus on solving problems or being creative without someone walking up to my desk to ask if I read the email they sent me.

Arete314159 6y ago

I feel like ideally, in say a 3/2 scenario, most people would be in the office on the same days. But I wonder how that would be accomplished. Everyone's reasons for wanting to stay home certain days might be different.

nullsense 6y ago
It shakes out that 2/3rds simply choose Tuesday/Thu WFH and the remaining 1/3 is basically random.

aspaceman 6y ago

“Maximum of 14 days every year”

benibela 6y ago

It becomes rather chaotic when some people are in the office and some are remote. When everyone is fully remote, you should always reach them quickly by dropping a chat, but when they are offline they tend to be stuck in meetings