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> Go look at Buffer, Zapier, Automattic, GitLab, and more, who are Remote First companies with thriving cultures. I really don't think pointing to a couple com

> Go look at Buffer, Zapier, Automattic, GitLab, and more, who are Remote First companies with thriving cultures. I really don't think pointing to a couple companies that are remote and have decent culture invalidates the point that offices foster collaboration and culture sharing. No, it's not impossible to do those things in a remote environment, but it is absolutely much harder. It's not that hard to understand some companies aren't willing to put in the work required to build strong collaborative cultures remotely.

p0wn 5y ago
Why is it much harder? I disagree. In office I usually only ever talk to people I directly work with. And, as an engineer, not very often. Every time I'd go in an office I'd just be sitting in front of a computer. If they had lunches then we'd all chat but it was all just bullshitting. I don't see how remote makes it harder to collaborate or 'culture share'. Culture sharing seems something woke people like to do a bit too much these days anyways. Rather stay home and keep my opinions to myself.
- postingposts 5y ago
  Because it filters out the people who do all of category B (bullshitting, talking, having meetings) who normally spend their time taking away from category A (I am paid to do a task which I will do, and then be paid)
diob 5y ago
Ironically I think those are the same companies that aren't willing to put in the work required to build strong collaborative cultures _onsite_.
- noahtallen 5y ago
  (I work at one of the listed companies, and these views are my own.) Honestly, on-site just wouldn’t work well with the existing company culture at all. My current team has members in at least 7 countries in North America and Europe. Some teams are more time-zone collocated, but many are not. The culture is built so that async communication — and in particular, publicly searchable written communication — is the default for nearly everything. So having a big time zone split isn’t a problem when you’re used to communicating via long-form written communication. Obviously, on-site is hugely different. If I went on-site, I would not be working with my specific team. I’m not even sure how the company could possibly reorganize to make that happen at all. It’s not like new hires in X geographic region are placed in Y division. So the best that could be done on-site is you get to make social connections. Can’t really have an on-site collaborative culture if none of your teammates live in the same city. And you can’t change that after the fact either, because people live in so many different places! And as a side note, having frequently worked in OSS projects, communication and work is very distributed anyways. So it’s important to be habitually in tune with that style of communication and work to be effective in a large OSS project with maintainers spread the world. So I would argue that even trying to have an on-site collaborative culture doesn’t make any sense if your company is truly globally distributed.
- BaseballPhysics 5y ago
  > Ironically I think those are the same companies that aren't willing to put in the work required to build strong collaborative cultures _onsite_. Having worked for a company with a strong in-office culture that's significantly eroded during remote work, no, this isn't remotely true and is an almost comical underestimation of how hard it is to convert from an office-first to remote-first company. The real issue is that if you're gonna be a remote-first company, you have to truly commit to it, and that requires significant effort and a complete change in mindset across many activities, including a profound retraining of management and staff behaviours.
  - diob 5y ago
    I would argue the same things that make remote successful (good communication, documentation, processes) are things that would benefit an onsite company just as much. I am interested in what you strong in-office culture, like, what does that mean? What things didn't translate to remote?
    - BaseballPhysics 5y ago
      Well, as just one example, communication patterns have to drastically change. Ours is a very open access office culture. If someone wants to come and ask me a question they are encouraged to do so because we strongly believe in open information sharing, quick decision making, and a high level of autonomy. The result is I cannot count the number of times colleagues have taken advantage of the fact that they could just pop by to ask a quick question, inform me of a decision they're taking, or raise a concern. The remote work equivalents of that are ad hoc text-based communications--which are extremely low bandwidth, disadvantage slow typists, and lack the emotional subtext provided by facial expressions or body language--or scheduling voice or video calls, which is relatively high friction and still is at best a lackluster substitute for a face-to-face conversation due to poor quality, laggy audio, crappy video, and so forth. As a result, a ton of that communication has simply shut down in our organization. The reality is we are not, and for a very long time will not be, in a world where virtual communications tools are as effective as face-to-face interactions. In this world of Zoom, who hasn't accidentally interrupted a colleague, struggled to get a word in edgewise, or found it difficult to hear someone due to a poor audio connection? Or wished for a whiteboard you could use to draw out a concept during an ad hoc problem solving activity? Or thought about pinging someone to have a quick conversation about some topic, only to give up and just write an email because setting up a video session just seemed like a little too much work? And if your organization relies on a lot of ad hoc communication to function, it will suffer without changes to culture and practices.
drewcoo 5y ago
If the claim is a universal then just one exception disproves it.
tapanjk 5y ago
> but it is absolutely much harder Agree. But the upside is big too. Is learning to ride a bicycle hard? Of course. But once you learn to ride a bicycle, the benefits are immense. That is why people learn to ride a bike in spite of the initial difficulty. They know that the payoff is much larger in the end. If you can figure out how to be effective in a remote setup, you will not only learn how to work remotely, but also how to communicate well in a team. Physical distance should and will become a nonissue for a software development team.
silicon2401 5y ago
> offices foster collaboration and culture sharing... for you > offices foster collaboration and culture sharing... for you Not everyone is like you. Your claims simply don't apply to those of us who have an easier time collaborating with professional colleagues remotely. It's unfortunate that we are completely disregarded and told what our preferences should be by people who completely fail or are unwilling to understand us
- colinmhayes 5y ago
  I think the future is probably a set of companies that are full remote and a set that have some sort of hybrid model. You can go ahead and work at the remote companies, but saying "The office fosters culture and collaboration is a myth" just because of the way you work and a few companies that have figured out a good remote situation rings hollow.
  - eappleby 5y ago
    I don't think he said that offices foster collaboration is a myth. He said (which I agree) is that an office fosters collaboration for some people and it does not foster collaboration for other people and that it is in the best interest of a company's shareholders if they evaluate and consider the opinions of its workers who are on both sides of the spectrum.
- humanistbot 5y ago
  Not everyone is like you either.
  - silicon2401 5y ago
    What new information does this comment add to the conversation? I never said everyone is like me, I'm responding to someone making a blanket statement that doesn't actually apply to everyone.
itsdrewmiller 5y ago
How do we even know they have great culture? A year ago Basecamp would have 100% been included in that list. They have great marketing.

p0wn 5y ago

Why is it much harder? I disagree. In office I usually only ever talk to people I directly work with. And, as an engineer, not very often. Every time I'd go in an office I'd just be sitting in front of a computer. If they had lunches then we'd all chat but it was all just bullshitting. I don't see how remote makes it harder to collaborate or 'culture share'. Culture sharing seems something woke people like to do a bit too much these days anyways. Rather stay home and keep my opinions to myself.

postingposts 5y ago
Because it filters out the people who do all of category B (bullshitting, talking, having meetings) who normally spend their time taking away from category A (I am paid to do a task which I will do, and then be paid)

diob 5y ago

Ironically I think those are the same companies that aren't willing to put in the work required to build strong collaborative cultures _onsite_.

noahtallen 5y ago
(I work at one of the listed companies, and these views are my own.) Honestly, on-site just wouldn’t work well with the existing company culture at all. My current team has members in at least 7 countries in North America and Europe. Some teams are more time-zone collocated, but many are not. The culture is built so that async communication — and in particular, publicly searchable written communication — is the default for nearly everything. So having a big time zone split isn’t a problem when you’re used to communicating via long-form written communication. Obviously, on-site is hugely different. If I went on-site, I would not be working with my specific team. I’m not even sure how the company could possibly reorganize to make that happen at all. It’s not like new hires in X geographic region are placed in Y division. So the best that could be done on-site is you get to make social connections. Can’t really have an on-site collaborative culture if none of your teammates live in the same city. And you can’t change that after the fact either, because people live in so many different places! And as a side note, having frequently worked in OSS projects, communication and work is very distributed anyways. So it’s important to be habitually in tune with that style of communication and work to be effective in a large OSS project with maintainers spread the world. So I would argue that even trying to have an on-site collaborative culture doesn’t make any sense if your company is truly globally distributed.
BaseballPhysics 5y ago
> Ironically I think those are the same companies that aren't willing to put in the work required to build strong collaborative cultures _onsite_. Having worked for a company with a strong in-office culture that's significantly eroded during remote work, no, this isn't remotely true and is an almost comical underestimation of how hard it is to convert from an office-first to remote-first company. The real issue is that if you're gonna be a remote-first company, you have to truly commit to it, and that requires significant effort and a complete change in mindset across many activities, including a profound retraining of management and staff behaviours.
- diob 5y ago
  I would argue the same things that make remote successful (good communication, documentation, processes) are things that would benefit an onsite company just as much. I am interested in what you strong in-office culture, like, what does that mean? What things didn't translate to remote?
  - BaseballPhysics 5y ago
    Well, as just one example, communication patterns have to drastically change. Ours is a very open access office culture. If someone wants to come and ask me a question they are encouraged to do so because we strongly believe in open information sharing, quick decision making, and a high level of autonomy. The result is I cannot count the number of times colleagues have taken advantage of the fact that they could just pop by to ask a quick question, inform me of a decision they're taking, or raise a concern. The remote work equivalents of that are ad hoc text-based communications--which are extremely low bandwidth, disadvantage slow typists, and lack the emotional subtext provided by facial expressions or body language--or scheduling voice or video calls, which is relatively high friction and still is at best a lackluster substitute for a face-to-face conversation due to poor quality, laggy audio, crappy video, and so forth. As a result, a ton of that communication has simply shut down in our organization. The reality is we are not, and for a very long time will not be, in a world where virtual communications tools are as effective as face-to-face interactions. In this world of Zoom, who hasn't accidentally interrupted a colleague, struggled to get a word in edgewise, or found it difficult to hear someone due to a poor audio connection? Or wished for a whiteboard you could use to draw out a concept during an ad hoc problem solving activity? Or thought about pinging someone to have a quick conversation about some topic, only to give up and just write an email because setting up a video session just seemed like a little too much work? And if your organization relies on a lot of ad hoc communication to function, it will suffer without changes to culture and practices.

drewcoo 5y ago

If the claim is a universal then just one exception disproves it.

tapanjk 5y ago

> but it is absolutely much harder Agree. But the upside is big too. Is learning to ride a bicycle hard? Of course. But once you learn to ride a bicycle, the benefits are immense. That is why people learn to ride a bike in spite of the initial difficulty. They know that the payoff is much larger in the end. If you can figure out how to be effective in a remote setup, you will not only learn how to work remotely, but also how to communicate well in a team. Physical distance should and will become a nonissue for a software development team.

silicon2401 5y ago

> offices foster collaboration and culture sharing... for you > offices foster collaboration and culture sharing... for you Not everyone is like you. Your claims simply don't apply to those of us who have an easier time collaborating with professional colleagues remotely. It's unfortunate that we are completely disregarded and told what our preferences should be by people who completely fail or are unwilling to understand us

colinmhayes 5y ago
I think the future is probably a set of companies that are full remote and a set that have some sort of hybrid model. You can go ahead and work at the remote companies, but saying "The office fosters culture and collaboration is a myth" just because of the way you work and a few companies that have figured out a good remote situation rings hollow.
- eappleby 5y ago
  I don't think he said that offices foster collaboration is a myth. He said (which I agree) is that an office fosters collaboration for some people and it does not foster collaboration for other people and that it is in the best interest of a company's shareholders if they evaluate and consider the opinions of its workers who are on both sides of the spectrum.
humanistbot 5y ago
Not everyone is like you either.
- silicon2401 5y ago
  What new information does this comment add to the conversation? I never said everyone is like me, I'm responding to someone making a blanket statement that doesn't actually apply to everyone.

itsdrewmiller 5y ago

How do we even know they have great culture? A year ago Basecamp would have 100% been included in that list. They have great marketing.