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Because "we as a species" evolved to work in groups. Humans are not loners. We eat, work, recreate and live in groups. To ship any complex groundbreaking produc

Because "we as a species" evolved to work in groups. Humans are not loners. We eat, work, recreate and live in groups. To ship any complex groundbreaking product, you have to collaborate closely with a big group. Only in the last few decades, and only a minority of Human population in that period, has there been so much emphasis on "privacy".

Johnny555 4y ago
To ship any complex groundbreaking product, you have to collaborate closely with a big group. My company shipped several ground breaking projects during COVID enforced WFH where there was not even the possibility of getting together in person. And now as we've grown we've added teams all over the globe (3 offices in the USA, one in Canada, 2 in Europe and one coming online soon in Australia), so collaboration on a complex project means communicating with teams that are asleep during your working hours.
- RestlessMind 4y ago
  During COVID, we relied on the existing relationships and the shared context to get things done. In fact, it was a once in a century event and was easy to rally troops, the same way it is easy to unify a society when there is a war. Now that most of the team is churned, I am observing a steep drop in productivity. New members have neither any shared context nor any meaningful bonds between them. If I were to bet, I would put my money on in-person teams easily outperforming fully-remote teams. Looking forward to see some data in the next few years.
  - shawnb576 4y ago
    This is exactly right. At the start of the pandemic, my company (a large well known Bay-Area tech company) saw improvements in our developer productivity metrics. Over 2020, they faded. I'm at a new company now, we have done a lot of hiring, seen a lot of churn, and it is really hard to get "think big" projects running.
skirmish 4y ago
Are you saying that collaborating closely online is not collaborating? Meanwhile family and pets provide social companionship. Why do you consider that inferior?
- RestlessMind 4y ago
  Family and pets are some of the greatest form of companionship. Online collaboration is pretty lame. It is very transactional, builds very shallow relationships and takes immense effort to agree on complex decisions. I have been doing fully remote since March 2020 (duh) and have met almost all the new colleagues since then in person for work offsites. Most common sentiment is that no one misses commute but otherwise, in-person is so much better to work with each other. Funnily enough, my company toots the horn of fully-remote. But execs have started meeting in person regularly. It’s just not advertised broadly, but bumping into one of them occasionally and being friends with their assistants reveal so much about “remote for proles but in-person for execs” setup.
csnover 4y ago
I think you’re right that humans work best in groups, but there is a difference between collaborating with a group and being physically proximal to a group. You can collaborate with dozens of people over the internet, or you can be the only programmer in an open office with dozens of co-workers who can’t help you. Many of the most complex (software) products in the world are open source: web browser engines like Blink and Gecko, operating systems like Linux and its various distributions, compilers like GCC and LLVM, nearly every programming language, etc. Nearly all of that work is done collaboratively within a group, but it is not done in physical proximity to the rest of the group. Which works fine!
- RestlessMind 4y ago
  For the open source work I am familiar with, the initial work to get the project off the ground is done by a small group of people who are physically collocated. Same with startups - I am seeing a lot of founding teams these days where founders are physically near each other and eventually plan to scale up with remote teams once the product has some traction. Happy to bookmark this comment and check back in 2025 if startups are getting created in person or are fully remote right from the genesis.

Johnny555 4y ago

To ship any complex groundbreaking product, you have to collaborate closely with a big group. My company shipped several ground breaking projects during COVID enforced WFH where there was not even the possibility of getting together in person. And now as we've grown we've added teams all over the globe (3 offices in the USA, one in Canada, 2 in Europe and one coming online soon in Australia), so collaboration on a complex project means communicating with teams that are asleep during your working hours.

RestlessMind 4y ago
During COVID, we relied on the existing relationships and the shared context to get things done. In fact, it was a once in a century event and was easy to rally troops, the same way it is easy to unify a society when there is a war. Now that most of the team is churned, I am observing a steep drop in productivity. New members have neither any shared context nor any meaningful bonds between them. If I were to bet, I would put my money on in-person teams easily outperforming fully-remote teams. Looking forward to see some data in the next few years.
- shawnb576 4y ago
  This is exactly right. At the start of the pandemic, my company (a large well known Bay-Area tech company) saw improvements in our developer productivity metrics. Over 2020, they faded. I'm at a new company now, we have done a lot of hiring, seen a lot of churn, and it is really hard to get "think big" projects running.

skirmish 4y ago

Are you saying that collaborating closely online is not collaborating? Meanwhile family and pets provide social companionship. Why do you consider that inferior?

RestlessMind 4y ago
Family and pets are some of the greatest form of companionship. Online collaboration is pretty lame. It is very transactional, builds very shallow relationships and takes immense effort to agree on complex decisions. I have been doing fully remote since March 2020 (duh) and have met almost all the new colleagues since then in person for work offsites. Most common sentiment is that no one misses commute but otherwise, in-person is so much better to work with each other. Funnily enough, my company toots the horn of fully-remote. But execs have started meeting in person regularly. It’s just not advertised broadly, but bumping into one of them occasionally and being friends with their assistants reveal so much about “remote for proles but in-person for execs” setup.

csnover 4y ago

I think you’re right that humans work best in groups, but there is a difference between collaborating with a group and being physically proximal to a group. You can collaborate with dozens of people over the internet, or you can be the only programmer in an open office with dozens of co-workers who can’t help you. Many of the most complex (software) products in the world are open source: web browser engines like Blink and Gecko, operating systems like Linux and its various distributions, compilers like GCC and LLVM, nearly every programming language, etc. Nearly all of that work is done collaboratively within a group, but it is not done in physical proximity to the rest of the group. Which works fine!

RestlessMind 4y ago
For the open source work I am familiar with, the initial work to get the project off the ground is done by a small group of people who are physically collocated. Same with startups - I am seeing a lot of founding teams these days where founders are physically near each other and eventually plan to scale up with remote teams once the product has some traction. Happy to bookmark this comment and check back in 2025 if startups are getting created in person or are fully remote right from the genesis.