5 ms·

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 c

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.
- gordonguthrie 15y ago
  From a managers perspective it is very difficult to manage. Internet startups have a cult-like culture at the moment - uber-important, the 'next Google' and all that statistically unlikely guff - with remote working that can make a perfect storm for mental illness. That was the sort of stuff that used to keep me up at nights. People were doing long hours for shite wages, the last thing you want is to fry their neurons. Burn out is more than just 'don't want to touch the computer for a couple of days' - you can really damage people.
  - Ixiaus 15y ago
    I manage a remote worker and I'm the CTO of my own co-founded startup; yes there's a lot of stuff going on all at once, but I think it's a bit extreme to posit anything related to mental illness. If someone tanks like that, it's their failure as an individual to know what their boundaries are and how to uphold those boundaries (this would go so far as to even quit the job or stop what you are doing till you are well again). I had to learn those personal lessons the hard way - a long time ago I was a quintessential nerd in that I didn't ever exercise, eat properly, or maintain a healthy routine AND I worked 80+ hour weeks. That was in an office with co-workers. Burnout wasn't just the symptom, it was one of many symptoms of a deep psychological shortcoming on my part: self-worth. The more self-esteem you have, generally, the more capable of knowing what your boundaries are and how/when to uphold them in the face of an encroaching white collar executive that doesn't understand what you do or why staring at a screen for 12 hours and eating donuts as a breakfast "bonus" is (IMHO) mistreatment. That example is an extreme one, but it's where I came from and now I manage my time effectively, have an equilibrium in my life that is healthy and feels good, and I own my own company...

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.

gordonguthrie 15y ago
From a managers perspective it is very difficult to manage. Internet startups have a cult-like culture at the moment - uber-important, the 'next Google' and all that statistically unlikely guff - with remote working that can make a perfect storm for mental illness. That was the sort of stuff that used to keep me up at nights. People were doing long hours for shite wages, the last thing you want is to fry their neurons. Burn out is more than just 'don't want to touch the computer for a couple of days' - you can really damage people.
- Ixiaus 15y ago
  I manage a remote worker and I'm the CTO of my own co-founded startup; yes there's a lot of stuff going on all at once, but I think it's a bit extreme to posit anything related to mental illness. If someone tanks like that, it's their failure as an individual to know what their boundaries are and how to uphold those boundaries (this would go so far as to even quit the job or stop what you are doing till you are well again). I had to learn those personal lessons the hard way - a long time ago I was a quintessential nerd in that I didn't ever exercise, eat properly, or maintain a healthy routine AND I worked 80+ hour weeks. That was in an office with co-workers. Burnout wasn't just the symptom, it was one of many symptoms of a deep psychological shortcoming on my part: self-worth. The more self-esteem you have, generally, the more capable of knowing what your boundaries are and how/when to uphold them in the face of an encroaching white collar executive that doesn't understand what you do or why staring at a screen for 12 hours and eating donuts as a breakfast "bonus" is (IMHO) mistreatment. That example is an extreme one, but it's where I came from and now I manage my time effectively, have an equilibrium in my life that is healthy and feels good, and I own my own company...