10 ms·

Working Remotely

201 points by daleharvey 15y ago

kvgr 15y ago
Great post, do you know if there is any list of techcompanies looking for remote/parttime workers? I am student from Europe and would really like to start working for some interesting company, but when I read job lists, most of them do not have option for remote work, and if they do then, just for US citizens.
- epenn 15y ago
  On the first of every month there is an automated "Who is hiring?" post to HN. Then people/companies reply in the comments with what they have available. There are always a good number of remote jobs posted as well. Here is a link to the current thread for August: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2831646 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2831646
- daleharvey 15y ago
  Thanks the only remote job listings I have seen are on hacker news http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2719028 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2719028 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2270791 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2270791 (cant find a more recent one) and as I mentioned in the post, working on open source / following open source companies is a good idea as there is quite a large correlation between being distributed and open source
mfowler 15y ago
Nice post, I'm curious if you ever make the venture to HQ to meet up with your coworkers or are you 100% virtual? I've found that the occasional trip to the office to meet and greet, bond over drinks and do some rapid fire planning seems to recharge both those in the office and those on the remote teams.
- daleharvey 15y ago
  yeh definitely, I am just back this weekend from a 3 week trip over to the office, I really enjoy spending time with coworkers and I even enjoy spending some time in the office, I just like having time not in the office as well.
warambil 15y ago
Great post. I work remotely and I feel great. 100% satisfied
cpenner461 15y ago
I've been working remotely as a dev for the past 6 months or so - love it! My take on his questions: “Doesn’t it get lonely?” Not really. I'm on IRC all day so have plenty of technical interaction throughout the day, and there's always the outside world (lunch, friends, etc). “How do you get work done?” I almost think I get more work done working remotely than I do in an office because I won't spend 30m here and there talking about my weekend or whatever, I just work. Casual web surfing (HN etc) is about the same (i.e. occasionally when I need a break). I spend a few days every other month or so actually at the office, which has proven to be very productive, but in a different way. There's a dynamic that (I've found) you can only get in person, face to face, that doesn't involve cranking out lines of code, but just being able to talk through various issues/strategies/directions/etc. It's refreshing to have that time every over month or so. “Doesn’t it affect your quality of life?” Absolutely! But in a very very good way. Granted I was commuting 1hr+ each way, so I immediately gained 10+ hours a week and save $3-400/mo on gas. The flexibility is amazing. Working at an office I had to leave early (6am) to try to beat the traffic. This morning I took my son to Panera to pick up bagels for the family before starting work (for example). The whole experience thus far really makes me wonder why more companies don't embrace it more.
Tomis 15y ago
At my current work place (which I'm looking to change, by the way) I work remotely but with a horrible twist. First of all I have to come into the office and stay there for 8 hours a day -which is normal- but then I have to login to another computer via remote desktop and work on that environment, even though I have a perfectly functional computer right in front of me. Things wouldn't be so bad if the remote server wouldn't be a few thousand kilometers away and the lag weren't so noticeable that it induced regular urges to go take a nap and took away most of the desire to write any kind of code. I think most of you agree that anything less than instant response when you type a word or scroll a page is practically torture when done for 8 hours a day. I would have never imagined that it would be possible to have better working conditions at home than at work, but nevertheless here I am, living the horror. One of the things I've learned from this experience is that I still tremendously enjoy programming stuff at home and that when I have a good working environment I can become more productive by orders of magnitude.
- arethuza 15y ago
  So you go into the office to then work remotely? You have my profound sympathy.
  - Tomis 15y ago
    Yeah, that's pretty much it. I've confronted my manager about this and his first answer was an attempt to bullshit me by saying we're working remotely (as opposed to locally) for security reasons; the obvious reply to that monumental pile of crap was to employ my 1337 haX0r skills to copy a whole folder from the remote machine right onto my local desktop (ctrl+C/ctrl+V, actually) - there's your security right there. Working at that place made me a witness to a constant stream of fail.
- microarchitect 15y ago
  I do this too. I work in the semiconductor industry where I'm told this is the norm. It really sucks.
  - 15y ago
neebz 15y ago
I have been working remotely for around 8 months. The best thing about remote work is not that you can work from home but the fact that you don't need to be in office to work. We know you can work in cafes etc. but also you can work while travelling around the globe. That's one great advantage and I love it. I get the luxury to go around, stay in new cities (heck even countries) and meet new people while working. All I need to ensure is that I have internet access.
- smackfu 15y ago
  I have been tempted by that, a working vacation, but how do time zones work out? Do you not need to be available at particular hours? I work from home but have a fairly regular schedule of phone meetings during the Eastern Time Zone working day. (Those same phone meetings would also get quite expensive overseas.)
  - neebz 15y ago
    Yup Time Zones does become an issue. You need to plan accordingly. You can't go to Australia where there is a full 12-14 hour flip. But still you are not really short of places to travel. Frankly it's good to start with travelling in your own country first. Can't say about phone meetings as we usually have our conversations over Skype.
    - smackfu 15y ago
      Yes, seems like iPhone Skype client into the 800 numbers over Wi-Fi would probably be the best way to handle that.
  - fortes 15y ago
    Google Voice / Skype are the way to go here. Keep a US number that rings on your computer (or on your cell)
- JonWood 15y ago
  So very true - I'm going away for a week with extended family in the middle of August, and because I work remotely anyway work had no problem with me working from a different place. That means I get a week of seeing family and relaxing with them in the evening without having to take any holiday to do so.
jonnathanson 15y ago
Employers that understand the concept of flex hours seem to get it. But it's a big leap for a lot of companies. It requires placing faith in employees and hoping for the best from them (i.e., that they'll tailor their schedules to their peak performance hours), rather than mistrusting them and fearing the worst (i.e., that they'll just slack off). Incidentally, companies entrenched in that latter mindset -- those that fear the worst from their employees -- usually end up getting the worst from their employees. So it becomes a vicious cycle: company treats employees like dirt; employees feel demotivated; company sees demotivated employees and decides its lack of faith in them is justified; rinse and repeat.
- mashmac2 15y ago
  It is a big leap for a company... Does anyone know where I could find resources (case studies, testimonials, etc) to promote remote work? 'Hard' data would certainly help convince the boss. Stories like this are great, but they'll need more concrete evidence to back it up.
  - allwein 15y ago
    It's not directly on remote work, but I just finished reading "Why Work Sucks and How To Fix It", written by two of the people that helped institute Best Buy's Results Only Work Environment (ROWE). It's a great summary of ROWE, a lot of the troubles they had with corporate culture and perception, as well as ways to make an argument for ROWE in your own workplace. Amazon Affiliate Link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591842921/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=keysofgeni-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=1591842921 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591842921/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...
  - robertpateii 15y ago
    lately there's been a big push in the US government for an increase in teleworking. if you need specific examples, a 2010 telework report is available on this page: http://www.telework.gov/ http://www.telework.gov/. There may be other public studies too with some hard data in them. There's also a white paper linked on this page http://www.lifesize.com/Industry_Solutions/Government_Solutions/Telework_Solutions.aspx http://www.lifesize.com/Industry_Solutions/Government_Soluti... (but you have to register for it.) full disclosure: i work at www.lifesize.com and we do eat our own dog food. One of my team members has been working remotely in another state for several months and many of our team often work from home.
feint 15y ago
I previously worked remotely as a freelancer and loved it. Now being in a position to build a team for Pen.io, I'm certainly looking at having some remote devs.
gordonguthrie 15y ago
Dale and I worked together (more or less remotely) for a number of years. There is another side to this story that he doesn't bring out. There are managerial challenges when you are responsible for for is working remotely. For the first 3 years or so of Hypernumbers we were rotating between 7- and 6- day working, going down to 5-day working in the summer. The real concern when you are working with young developers (I was mid-40s, Dale was early 20s) is about burnout. Particularly with software developers. Young men working long and engaging hours with addictive work practices, with the usual poor dietary habits - this is a bad accident waiting to happen. At if.com we had a particular developer who physically turned green during a big push. Easy to spot in the work place, remotely not so much... Dale has a quite common tendency for diurnal drift - a 25 hour cycle. Nothing wrong with it, slightly alarming when you sign off in chat at midnight, go to bed, start up at 7am when you get up and he's still there. Diurnal drift can rapidly turn into social isolation though (and a one way ticket to the bin). Our industry has a lot of people at one end of the autistic spectrum - and remote working is not an policy for everyone. Domestic circumstances also count a lot - support at home, friends, community stuff. I heartily agree with what Dale says about communication, practices and procedures. I have long thought that the main lesson of open source projects is that they can only succeed if all the modalities are tip-top. We adopted 'open source processes' at hypernumbers to drive quality - and remotish working helped drive them in. The circumstances of hypernumbers were a bit different though. Normally you would look to colocate the person specifying the system and the people who are writing it. With hypernumbers we spent the first couple of years essentially cloning Microsoft Excel so the business processes were optimised for remote working. (This is also one reason why open source programmes are dominated by clones.) So it is a bit more nuanced I think than in his write up. Would I hire remote workers again? Yes I would. Contrary to received wisdom I try and hire people from the 'other' end of the autistic spectrum (the end I would put Dale on). On conventional measures of productivity (production SLOC per person per day) I would regard the experience at hypernumbers very highly - although the total difference in working procedures versus if.com where I have 'before' measurements from make it hard to allocate outcomes to a particular aspect of how we worked.
- Ixiaus 15y ago
  I work from home all the time and I agree heartily with what you've said regarding burnout. It's that "work feels empty and I don't want to touch a computer" feeling and I can always tell when it starts to come on, usually following an intense week-two week push. When it does, I make sure not to touch the computer or atleast touch it minimally until I start to feel excitement to work on something again (usually takes 3 to 4 days). I also have to take issue with his routine - diurnal drift has always been a problem for me (hard for me to get up early, easy to stay up late == bad sleeping habits and a sloppy daily routine); I find I cannot maintain a structured and meaningful routine if I start slipping outside of my established "get up early (early here is 7AM or 6AM), shower, work, exercise, read, sleep" cycle (excluding other creature habits like meals &c...). I'm a rare one in that I don't actually socialize with any developer community at all - but I do have a vibrant and active social life outside of computers - most of my friends aren't anywhere near the programmer/developer culture. I would say exercise (I hit a CrossFit gym three times per week) and an active social life, whatever that means to you, and a structured daily routine are the keys to working remotely and on your own.
mgkimsal 15y ago
I've had mixed results, both with myself and other people I've used, and part of the difference is focus. If you're a remote developer for one company, with one set of tasks, I've found it's easier. If you're doing remote contract work for multiple clients, you've just added in some more hurdles. I'm considering taking on a full-time developer to help out with my work, and while I'm OK working for people remotely, I'd probably prefer this person to be local and we get an office, at least for part time meeting space (if there was a coworking area nearby I'd use it). The difficulty I've had is finding other developers who are communicative with emails, ticket systems, phone calls, whatever. I've worked with a couple dozen devs over the past few years, and can count on one hand those that were strongly professional in their attitude towards communication - documenting things clearly, keeping in regular contact, knowing when to ask questions, preemptively helping out with ambiguous issues, etc. Certainly "working from home" can be great, but you do need an emphasis on "work" rather than the "from home" to be successful with it. I know people see what I do and say "awesome, I'd love to work from home". The reality is, many people need the structure that going to an office provides (I wouldn't even mind it myself now and then).
beanstr 15y ago
At one of my jobs about 2 years ago I regularly used to work remotely once twice a week. Until now the most I have worked remotely in one stretch is 1 week. I have been working on an online / smartphone based food ordering project for about 6 months. This work was getting done on the side along with my day job which required me to be in the office from 9 to 5. I always thought about the day when I would become fully involved with my personal project and leave my day time job. That day came sooner than I was hoping for and it come on the terms of my employer rather than mine because of some budget cuts and project discontinuations. This is my first week working from home on my personal project. Yesterday I contacted a couple of shared office spaces where I can find a cubicle. I am still debating whether to work from home or to find a shared cubicle and get into the routine of going to office and interacting with other startups that share office space in the same building. This phase and my personal experience in this phase will help me lay some guidelines on working from home when we actually have employees. So far I feel good. I can work until late in the night and wake up late because I do not have to take a shower and drive to start working in the morning and use my lunch time as shower time. I am feeling that working from home requires better planning and focus than working from office with other employees. I feel somewhat inexperienced in writing a whole lot on this subject as I am in my first week of working from home but for me there will not be a better time to read other people's comments on this topic.
bcl 15y ago
I've been working remote for over 5 years now. Some keys are: Have a door on your home office so the family doesn't interrupt. Use IRC, email, IM to maintain communication with your team. Have enough self-discipline to work instead of slack off when you run up against hard problems. Hobbies outside the house so that you don't spend 24 hours a day working. I personally don't work at coffee shops, I find them too distracting. I love my quiet office where I can concentrate for large blocks of time. As a company you should be hiring remote developers. It makes it alot easier for you to find good employees when you aren't limiting yourself to only locals, or only those who want to relocate.
- dataminer 15y ago
  I agree with you on coffee shops, they are too distracting. I found my refuge at the local library, it is 5 minutes drive from home, the environment is very respectable, no distractions, openvpn and ssl works perfectly.
  - bcl 15y ago
    Good idea! I'll have to give that a try.
mattvot 15y ago
How do you get into the developer scene in Edinburgh, Where do you hangout?
- daleharvey 15y ago
  tonight there is refresh, a bunch of designers / developers go for burgers and beer - http://refreshedinburgh.org/ http://refreshedinburgh.org/ I wont be able to make it tonight though. next wednesday there is techmeetup, some talks + beer and pizza, then we go to the pub afterwards - http://techmeetup.co.uk/ http://techmeetup.co.uk/ through techmeetup its usually quite easy to find out about a lot of the other events that go on, edinburgh uni run a lot of events, there are side meetups like the lean startup meetings and functional programming meetup, and the usual python / ruby / java / linux user groups.
  - mistrQ 15y ago
    Just turn up? I'm a CS student at Edinburgh and always planned to hit up techmeetup but something always came up (coursework). Last year now, last chance!
    - daleharvey 15y ago
      yup techmeetup is an open, no sign up needed event, I know what you mean about time, I have been meaning to go to refresh edi for months now and only made one. definitely worth making the time for though
      - peterbraden 15y ago
        second this. When I was a developer in Edinburgh, these events were what introduced me to Edinburgh's vibrant startup/tech scene.
jconley 15y ago
I work remotely and have done so off and on for much of my career. For about 9 months of the last year I took a trip around the US and lived in a RV. All the while being as productive as my colleagues. Does allowing your employees to be happier people increase their productivity and loyalty? Yup, I think so.
brendanlim 15y ago
I worked remotely for close to four years. I started realizing that there was little separation between work-life and personal-life. I was at my "office" all of the time and my employers knew this. I started working more during off-hours because that's what I was used to doing at home. Also, communication through IM, Campfire, etc. got pretty tiring and my face-to-face social skills ended up deteriorating after a while. Just my personal experience.
- equalarrow 15y ago
  I second this - and add a little more. I worked with a company - as a contractor - for a number of years in the beginning of their startup mode. Out of the 4 developers in the company, I was the only one that came into the office. For me, it was lame. Everything over email, im, or phone is not the way I like to work. There's something about face to face that makes a difference. I saw many, many times things getting blown up out out of proportion because it was not conveyed correctly over email or im. I want that social interaction that you can only get being face to face with other devs - lunches, coffee, after work drinks, etc. Not only that, there's all kinds of office activities like whiteboarding, pairing (I know you can do this via remote too, but again, face to face is still valuable), going over to someone's desk and just talking about something. The other thing I've noticed at my office is we need to now bring in all these other tools to keep everyone apprised of when builds have been deployed, etc. And all these tools detract from the amount of time someone can focus on something - there are guys that have all this hooked into their im and it's really distracting when you're sitting with them. In closing, I'm of the opinion that I would prefer to have everyone in the office 5 days a week. If someone wants to work at home a day here or there thats totally fine, but overall, I've just experienced it not being beneficial for the group.
theone 15y ago
From employers perspective, remote working doesn't gives confidence, if they doesn't have faith in employee. And its really difficult to have faith on any new / average employee.
vfapp 15y ago
What about all the masturbation???
clueless123 15y ago
I've worked remotely for the the last six years. It started because of having to work for a Fortune 100 with overseas resources (at crazy hours) then operations support for another huge company (crazy hours again) Then for the last 2 years doing contract python/django development.
- clueless123 15y ago
  By now I think I know the subject :), here are some useful tidbits I've learned over time. I work on an home-office space, it is quiet,it holds all my work stuff, it is "the" office. The kids know if I am in there.. I am "at work". I do plenty of one-to-one over chat/skype/phone with peers,vendors and customers. Nothing different then on a real office. I regularly do 2/3 hour pair programming sessions with members of my team. We use x11vnc + skype, (we use the pilot-copilot technique ), we get lots done and by the end of a session, our thought-spaces are 100% in sync. I don't miss the "social interaction" at the office, I got plenty of friends in the "real world" and they don't care to hear from my work (nor would understand it if I told them) I also get plenty of "geek interaction" with other developers, over beers at the local pub. The key for remote development is to realize that development is creative work. Hours of work are not important, tasks done are.
- clueless123 15y ago
  Another technique that I find very useful for assigning remote work: I "purchase" tasks from my team for X $ with deliverable at Y time. I don't really care how long or when they do it, as long as the deliverable is on time I am happy. I can do this, because I am a developer and know how long a task should take,(at least to me) so I know if I am getting a "good deal" for my money. If the developer that "sells" me the finished task got it done in 5 minutes or 5 hours is irrelevant to me.
bjc 15y ago
approx 11300miles for me, for last 4 years and loving it
ChrisGrey 15y ago
The way Dale describes his working practices feels contradictory. He addresses loneliness by saying he goes out to coffee shops and bars. While that may be nice for Dale it wouldn't enfuse me with confidence (were I his boss) that he is focussed on MY needs. He says that it is very important that a remote worker is open to as many communications channels as possible. But he doesn't start work until late morning and then works through into the night. If his colleagues need to speak to him at 0900 where are the communication channels into his dream cycle? If he needs to talk to them at 2100 does he call them at home when their working day is done? My gut feeling is that this works nicely for Dale but not so much for his colleagues!
- gordonguthrie 15y ago
  Actually it worked well when Dale and I worked together. Most comms are near-real time: e-mail to the mailing list. For 'now' real-time you have chat, and for 'actually now, really now' you get on the mobile phone. My working hours were typically 7am to about 4pm and then again 9pm til midnight so we got good overlap. As his boss, addressing his loneliness and isolation was one of MY needs - people's performance isn't in isolation of the rest of their life. For Dale this never turned out to be a problem, for others not so...

201 points by daleharvey 15y ago

kvgr 15y ago

Great post, do you know if there is any list of techcompanies looking for remote/parttime workers? I am student from Europe and would really like to start working for some interesting company, but when I read job lists, most of them do not have option for remote work, and if they do then, just for US citizens.

epenn 15y ago
On the first of every month there is an automated "Who is hiring?" post to HN. Then people/companies reply in the comments with what they have available. There are always a good number of remote jobs posted as well. Here is a link to the current thread for August: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2831646 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2831646
daleharvey 15y ago
Thanks the only remote job listings I have seen are on hacker news http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2719028 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2719028 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2270791 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2270791 (cant find a more recent one) and as I mentioned in the post, working on open source / following open source companies is a good idea as there is quite a large correlation between being distributed and open source

mfowler 15y ago

Nice post, I'm curious if you ever make the venture to HQ to meet up with your coworkers or are you 100% virtual? I've found that the occasional trip to the office to meet and greet, bond over drinks and do some rapid fire planning seems to recharge both those in the office and those on the remote teams.

daleharvey 15y ago
yeh definitely, I am just back this weekend from a 3 week trip over to the office, I really enjoy spending time with coworkers and I even enjoy spending some time in the office, I just like having time not in the office as well.

warambil 15y ago

Great post. I work remotely and I feel great. 100% satisfied

cpenner461 15y ago

I've been working remotely as a dev for the past 6 months or so - love it! My take on his questions: “Doesn’t it get lonely?” Not really. I'm on IRC all day so have plenty of technical interaction throughout the day, and there's always the outside world (lunch, friends, etc). “How do you get work done?” I almost think I get more work done working remotely than I do in an office because I won't spend 30m here and there talking about my weekend or whatever, I just work. Casual web surfing (HN etc) is about the same (i.e. occasionally when I need a break). I spend a few days every other month or so actually at the office, which has proven to be very productive, but in a different way. There's a dynamic that (I've found) you can only get in person, face to face, that doesn't involve cranking out lines of code, but just being able to talk through various issues/strategies/directions/etc. It's refreshing to have that time every over month or so. “Doesn’t it affect your quality of life?” Absolutely! But in a very very good way. Granted I was commuting 1hr+ each way, so I immediately gained 10+ hours a week and save $3-400/mo on gas. The flexibility is amazing. Working at an office I had to leave early (6am) to try to beat the traffic. This morning I took my son to Panera to pick up bagels for the family before starting work (for example). The whole experience thus far really makes me wonder why more companies don't embrace it more.

Tomis 15y ago

At my current work place (which I'm looking to change, by the way) I work remotely but with a horrible twist. First of all I have to come into the office and stay there for 8 hours a day -which is normal- but then I have to login to another computer via remote desktop and work on that environment, even though I have a perfectly functional computer right in front of me. Things wouldn't be so bad if the remote server wouldn't be a few thousand kilometers away and the lag weren't so noticeable that it induced regular urges to go take a nap and took away most of the desire to write any kind of code. I think most of you agree that anything less than instant response when you type a word or scroll a page is practically torture when done for 8 hours a day. I would have never imagined that it would be possible to have better working conditions at home than at work, but nevertheless here I am, living the horror. One of the things I've learned from this experience is that I still tremendously enjoy programming stuff at home and that when I have a good working environment I can become more productive by orders of magnitude.

arethuza 15y ago
So you go into the office to then work remotely? You have my profound sympathy.
- Tomis 15y ago
  Yeah, that's pretty much it. I've confronted my manager about this and his first answer was an attempt to bullshit me by saying we're working remotely (as opposed to locally) for security reasons; the obvious reply to that monumental pile of crap was to employ my 1337 haX0r skills to copy a whole folder from the remote machine right onto my local desktop (ctrl+C/ctrl+V, actually) - there's your security right there. Working at that place made me a witness to a constant stream of fail.
microarchitect 15y ago
I do this too. I work in the semiconductor industry where I'm told this is the norm. It really sucks.
- 15y ago

neebz 15y ago

I have been working remotely for around 8 months. The best thing about remote work is not that you can work from home but the fact that you don't need to be in office to work. We know you can work in cafes etc. but also you can work while travelling around the globe. That's one great advantage and I love it. I get the luxury to go around, stay in new cities (heck even countries) and meet new people while working. All I need to ensure is that I have internet access.

smackfu 15y ago
I have been tempted by that, a working vacation, but how do time zones work out? Do you not need to be available at particular hours? I work from home but have a fairly regular schedule of phone meetings during the Eastern Time Zone working day. (Those same phone meetings would also get quite expensive overseas.)
- neebz 15y ago
  Yup Time Zones does become an issue. You need to plan accordingly. You can't go to Australia where there is a full 12-14 hour flip. But still you are not really short of places to travel. Frankly it's good to start with travelling in your own country first. Can't say about phone meetings as we usually have our conversations over Skype.
  - smackfu 15y ago
    Yes, seems like iPhone Skype client into the 800 numbers over Wi-Fi would probably be the best way to handle that.
- fortes 15y ago
  Google Voice / Skype are the way to go here. Keep a US number that rings on your computer (or on your cell)
JonWood 15y ago
So very true - I'm going away for a week with extended family in the middle of August, and because I work remotely anyway work had no problem with me working from a different place. That means I get a week of seeing family and relaxing with them in the evening without having to take any holiday to do so.

jonnathanson 15y ago

Employers that understand the concept of flex hours seem to get it. But it's a big leap for a lot of companies. It requires placing faith in employees and hoping for the best from them (i.e., that they'll tailor their schedules to their peak performance hours), rather than mistrusting them and fearing the worst (i.e., that they'll just slack off). Incidentally, companies entrenched in that latter mindset -- those that fear the worst from their employees -- usually end up getting the worst from their employees. So it becomes a vicious cycle: company treats employees like dirt; employees feel demotivated; company sees demotivated employees and decides its lack of faith in them is justified; rinse and repeat.

mashmac2 15y ago
It is a big leap for a company... Does anyone know where I could find resources (case studies, testimonials, etc) to promote remote work? 'Hard' data would certainly help convince the boss. Stories like this are great, but they'll need more concrete evidence to back it up.
- allwein 15y ago
  It's not directly on remote work, but I just finished reading "Why Work Sucks and How To Fix It", written by two of the people that helped institute Best Buy's Results Only Work Environment (ROWE). It's a great summary of ROWE, a lot of the troubles they had with corporate culture and perception, as well as ways to make an argument for ROWE in your own workplace. Amazon Affiliate Link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591842921/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=keysofgeni-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=1591842921 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591842921/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...
- robertpateii 15y ago
  lately there's been a big push in the US government for an increase in teleworking. if you need specific examples, a 2010 telework report is available on this page: http://www.telework.gov/ http://www.telework.gov/. There may be other public studies too with some hard data in them. There's also a white paper linked on this page http://www.lifesize.com/Industry_Solutions/Government_Solutions/Telework_Solutions.aspx http://www.lifesize.com/Industry_Solutions/Government_Soluti... (but you have to register for it.) full disclosure: i work at www.lifesize.com and we do eat our own dog food. One of my team members has been working remotely in another state for several months and many of our team often work from home.

feint 15y ago

I previously worked remotely as a freelancer and loved it. Now being in a position to build a team for Pen.io, I'm certainly looking at having some remote devs.

gordonguthrie 15y ago

Dale and I worked together (more or less remotely) for a number of years. There is another side to this story that he doesn't bring out. There are managerial challenges when you are responsible for for is working remotely. For the first 3 years or so of Hypernumbers we were rotating between 7- and 6- day working, going down to 5-day working in the summer. The real concern when you are working with young developers (I was mid-40s, Dale was early 20s) is about burnout. Particularly with software developers. Young men working long and engaging hours with addictive work practices, with the usual poor dietary habits - this is a bad accident waiting to happen. At if.com we had a particular developer who physically turned green during a big push. Easy to spot in the work place, remotely not so much... Dale has a quite common tendency for diurnal drift - a 25 hour cycle. Nothing wrong with it, slightly alarming when you sign off in chat at midnight, go to bed, start up at 7am when you get up and he's still there. Diurnal drift can rapidly turn into social isolation though (and a one way ticket to the bin). Our industry has a lot of people at one end of the autistic spectrum - and remote working is not an policy for everyone. Domestic circumstances also count a lot - support at home, friends, community stuff. I heartily agree with what Dale says about communication, practices and procedures. I have long thought that the main lesson of open source projects is that they can only succeed if all the modalities are tip-top. We adopted 'open source processes' at hypernumbers to drive quality - and remotish working helped drive them in. The circumstances of hypernumbers were a bit different though. Normally you would look to colocate the person specifying the system and the people who are writing it. With hypernumbers we spent the first couple of years essentially cloning Microsoft Excel so the business processes were optimised for remote working. (This is also one reason why open source programmes are dominated by clones.) So it is a bit more nuanced I think than in his write up. Would I hire remote workers again? Yes I would. Contrary to received wisdom I try and hire people from the 'other' end of the autistic spectrum (the end I would put Dale on). On conventional measures of productivity (production SLOC per person per day) I would regard the experience at hypernumbers very highly - although the total difference in working procedures versus if.com where I have 'before' measurements from make it hard to allocate outcomes to a particular aspect of how we worked.

Ixiaus 15y ago
I work from home all the time and I agree heartily with what you've said regarding burnout. It's that "work feels empty and I don't want to touch a computer" feeling and I can always tell when it starts to come on, usually following an intense week-two week push. When it does, I make sure not to touch the computer or atleast touch it minimally until I start to feel excitement to work on something again (usually takes 3 to 4 days). I also have to take issue with his routine - diurnal drift has always been a problem for me (hard for me to get up early, easy to stay up late == bad sleeping habits and a sloppy daily routine); I find I cannot maintain a structured and meaningful routine if I start slipping outside of my established "get up early (early here is 7AM or 6AM), shower, work, exercise, read, sleep" cycle (excluding other creature habits like meals &c...). I'm a rare one in that I don't actually socialize with any developer community at all - but I do have a vibrant and active social life outside of computers - most of my friends aren't anywhere near the programmer/developer culture. I would say exercise (I hit a CrossFit gym three times per week) and an active social life, whatever that means to you, and a structured daily routine are the keys to working remotely and on your own.

mgkimsal 15y ago

I've had mixed results, both with myself and other people I've used, and part of the difference is focus. If you're a remote developer for one company, with one set of tasks, I've found it's easier. If you're doing remote contract work for multiple clients, you've just added in some more hurdles. I'm considering taking on a full-time developer to help out with my work, and while I'm OK working for people remotely, I'd probably prefer this person to be local and we get an office, at least for part time meeting space (if there was a coworking area nearby I'd use it). The difficulty I've had is finding other developers who are communicative with emails, ticket systems, phone calls, whatever. I've worked with a couple dozen devs over the past few years, and can count on one hand those that were strongly professional in their attitude towards communication - documenting things clearly, keeping in regular contact, knowing when to ask questions, preemptively helping out with ambiguous issues, etc. Certainly "working from home" can be great, but you do need an emphasis on "work" rather than the "from home" to be successful with it. I know people see what I do and say "awesome, I'd love to work from home". The reality is, many people need the structure that going to an office provides (I wouldn't even mind it myself now and then).

beanstr 15y ago

At one of my jobs about 2 years ago I regularly used to work remotely once twice a week. Until now the most I have worked remotely in one stretch is 1 week. I have been working on an online / smartphone based food ordering project for about 6 months. This work was getting done on the side along with my day job which required me to be in the office from 9 to 5. I always thought about the day when I would become fully involved with my personal project and leave my day time job. That day came sooner than I was hoping for and it come on the terms of my employer rather than mine because of some budget cuts and project discontinuations. This is my first week working from home on my personal project. Yesterday I contacted a couple of shared office spaces where I can find a cubicle. I am still debating whether to work from home or to find a shared cubicle and get into the routine of going to office and interacting with other startups that share office space in the same building. This phase and my personal experience in this phase will help me lay some guidelines on working from home when we actually have employees. So far I feel good. I can work until late in the night and wake up late because I do not have to take a shower and drive to start working in the morning and use my lunch time as shower time. I am feeling that working from home requires better planning and focus than working from office with other employees. I feel somewhat inexperienced in writing a whole lot on this subject as I am in my first week of working from home but for me there will not be a better time to read other people's comments on this topic.

bcl 15y ago

I've been working remote for over 5 years now. Some keys are: Have a door on your home office so the family doesn't interrupt. Use IRC, email, IM to maintain communication with your team. Have enough self-discipline to work instead of slack off when you run up against hard problems. Hobbies outside the house so that you don't spend 24 hours a day working. I personally don't work at coffee shops, I find them too distracting. I love my quiet office where I can concentrate for large blocks of time. As a company you should be hiring remote developers. It makes it alot easier for you to find good employees when you aren't limiting yourself to only locals, or only those who want to relocate.

dataminer 15y ago
I agree with you on coffee shops, they are too distracting. I found my refuge at the local library, it is 5 minutes drive from home, the environment is very respectable, no distractions, openvpn and ssl works perfectly.
- bcl 15y ago
  Good idea! I'll have to give that a try.

mattvot 15y ago

How do you get into the developer scene in Edinburgh, Where do you hangout?

daleharvey 15y ago
tonight there is refresh, a bunch of designers / developers go for burgers and beer - http://refreshedinburgh.org/ http://refreshedinburgh.org/ I wont be able to make it tonight though. next wednesday there is techmeetup, some talks + beer and pizza, then we go to the pub afterwards - http://techmeetup.co.uk/ http://techmeetup.co.uk/ through techmeetup its usually quite easy to find out about a lot of the other events that go on, edinburgh uni run a lot of events, there are side meetups like the lean startup meetings and functional programming meetup, and the usual python / ruby / java / linux user groups.
- mistrQ 15y ago
  Just turn up? I'm a CS student at Edinburgh and always planned to hit up techmeetup but something always came up (coursework). Last year now, last chance!
  - daleharvey 15y ago
    yup techmeetup is an open, no sign up needed event, I know what you mean about time, I have been meaning to go to refresh edi for months now and only made one. definitely worth making the time for though
    - peterbraden 15y ago
      second this. When I was a developer in Edinburgh, these events were what introduced me to Edinburgh's vibrant startup/tech scene.

jconley 15y ago

I work remotely and have done so off and on for much of my career. For about 9 months of the last year I took a trip around the US and lived in a RV. All the while being as productive as my colleagues. Does allowing your employees to be happier people increase their productivity and loyalty? Yup, I think so.

brendanlim 15y ago

I worked remotely for close to four years. I started realizing that there was little separation between work-life and personal-life. I was at my "office" all of the time and my employers knew this. I started working more during off-hours because that's what I was used to doing at home. Also, communication through IM, Campfire, etc. got pretty tiring and my face-to-face social skills ended up deteriorating after a while. Just my personal experience.

equalarrow 15y ago
I second this - and add a little more. I worked with a company - as a contractor - for a number of years in the beginning of their startup mode. Out of the 4 developers in the company, I was the only one that came into the office. For me, it was lame. Everything over email, im, or phone is not the way I like to work. There's something about face to face that makes a difference. I saw many, many times things getting blown up out out of proportion because it was not conveyed correctly over email or im. I want that social interaction that you can only get being face to face with other devs - lunches, coffee, after work drinks, etc. Not only that, there's all kinds of office activities like whiteboarding, pairing (I know you can do this via remote too, but again, face to face is still valuable), going over to someone's desk and just talking about something. The other thing I've noticed at my office is we need to now bring in all these other tools to keep everyone apprised of when builds have been deployed, etc. And all these tools detract from the amount of time someone can focus on something - there are guys that have all this hooked into their im and it's really distracting when you're sitting with them. In closing, I'm of the opinion that I would prefer to have everyone in the office 5 days a week. If someone wants to work at home a day here or there thats totally fine, but overall, I've just experienced it not being beneficial for the group.

theone 15y ago

From employers perspective, remote working doesn't gives confidence, if they doesn't have faith in employee. And its really difficult to have faith on any new / average employee.

vfapp 15y ago

What about all the masturbation???

clueless123 15y ago

I've worked remotely for the the last six years. It started because of having to work for a Fortune 100 with overseas resources (at crazy hours) then operations support for another huge company (crazy hours again) Then for the last 2 years doing contract python/django development.

clueless123 15y ago
By now I think I know the subject :), here are some useful tidbits I've learned over time. I work on an home-office space, it is quiet,it holds all my work stuff, it is "the" office. The kids know if I am in there.. I am "at work". I do plenty of one-to-one over chat/skype/phone with peers,vendors and customers. Nothing different then on a real office. I regularly do 2/3 hour pair programming sessions with members of my team. We use x11vnc + skype, (we use the pilot-copilot technique ), we get lots done and by the end of a session, our thought-spaces are 100% in sync. I don't miss the "social interaction" at the office, I got plenty of friends in the "real world" and they don't care to hear from my work (nor would understand it if I told them) I also get plenty of "geek interaction" with other developers, over beers at the local pub. The key for remote development is to realize that development is creative work. Hours of work are not important, tasks done are.
clueless123 15y ago
Another technique that I find very useful for assigning remote work: I "purchase" tasks from my team for X $ with deliverable at Y time. I don't really care how long or when they do it, as long as the deliverable is on time I am happy. I can do this, because I am a developer and know how long a task should take,(at least to me) so I know if I am getting a "good deal" for my money. If the developer that "sells" me the finished task got it done in 5 minutes or 5 hours is irrelevant to me.

bjc 15y ago

approx 11300miles for me, for last 4 years and loving it

ChrisGrey 15y ago

The way Dale describes his working practices feels contradictory. He addresses loneliness by saying he goes out to coffee shops and bars. While that may be nice for Dale it wouldn't enfuse me with confidence (were I his boss) that he is focussed on MY needs. He says that it is very important that a remote worker is open to as many communications channels as possible. But he doesn't start work until late morning and then works through into the night. If his colleagues need to speak to him at 0900 where are the communication channels into his dream cycle? If he needs to talk to them at 2100 does he call them at home when their working day is done? My gut feeling is that this works nicely for Dale but not so much for his colleagues!

gordonguthrie 15y ago
Actually it worked well when Dale and I worked together. Most comms are near-real time: e-mail to the mailing list. For 'now' real-time you have chat, and for 'actually now, really now' you get on the mobile phone. My working hours were typically 7am to about 4pm and then again 9pm til midnight so we got good overlap. As his boss, addressing his loneliness and isolation was one of MY needs - people's performance isn't in isolation of the rest of their life. For Dale this never turned out to be a problem, for others not so...