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Face to face collaboration is a lot more efficient. Startups gain from the small tight knit team being able to do impromptu brain storming and discussions on th

by gt565k 4y ago

Face to face collaboration is a lot more efficient. Startups gain from the small tight knit team being able to do impromptu brain storming and discussions on the fly. Can’t do that when everyone is behind a monitor. I am a firm believer that 100% remote work is actually a net negative for collaboration. Workshops, ideation, brainstorming, all of these thrive when people are engaged in the moment, not on a scheduled zoom call. There’s definitely a balance between in-office and WFH. WFH is great for corporate jobs cuz half your day is filled with boring meetings, but for start-ups, it’s the opposite.

nbaugh1 4y ago
Yeah I think the balance should be hiring people local to your office who are willing to go in (ideally WANT to go in) but also give them the option to decide for themselves when they want to be in office vs at home. As much as I love working from home, if most of my team was together in an office that's a reasonable commute from my home, I'd definitely not want to be left out/behind by staying home everyday - personally.
- jossclimb 4y ago
  That might work if you're working on a very popular stack, doing something like web development on react etc, but anything more specialised then that (unless you're in the valley or somewhere with a big tech community), is going to be a challenge to hire in. If you can hire globally the talent pool becomes much more fruitful.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  Find people locally that want to go in. Filter the rest. Offer these people remote? Believe everyone will have a reasonable commute in and use the missing out emotional trigger to get people back. Then they can sit at their desk remote into meetings with others at different locations while talking as loudly as possible while everyone else puts their headphones on and browses slashdot?
rybosworld 4y ago
The problem with statement's like yours is that there is no evidence to support the things you are saying. - "I am a firm believer that 100% remote work as actually a net negative for collaboration." You're entitled to your beliefs, but they are just that. I'd hate to see companies making decisions based on "feelings" they have in regards to one format being more effective than another. - "Workshops, ideation, brainstorming, all of these thrive when people are engaged in the moment, not on a scheduled zoom call." I'll counter your anecdote with my own: I've observed no difference.
- MAGZine 4y ago
  "there's no evidence to support the things you are saying, but they're wrong." Is it really hard to believe that activities that rely on communication thrive in environments that support high-bandwidth communication? nb: lack of evidence does not substantiate the absence of something, it may mean nobody has bothered to collect the evidence (or that the evidence is difficult to capture).
  - rybosworld 4y ago
    Why did you append "but they're wrong" to my quote? That's not different than lying.
    - MAGZine 4y ago
      It's not lying, that's how your comment came across to me. It was extremely dismissive. A simple 'but could you provide evidence?' would be fine. But no--it was more akin to "there is no evidence, your argument is invalid." Maybe you didn't use the word 'wrong', but you did dismiss their opinion without consideration, and then proceeded to commit the same fallacy so as to prove a point. So not only was your comment dismissive, but it was devoid of content or constructive conversation. Actually, the inclusion of the counter example actually made it the opposite of constructive imo. Why participate in the same rhetoric you're throwing out, even for example, when what you're saying is already quite clear? This isn't debate club. It's a conversation.
version_five 4y ago
Agreed. This is common sense, and is historically one of the main reasons why business travel exists. A caveat might be that "pure" software development jobs where the role is mostly to just sit and code probably have a smaller benefit. But for most early startups, such a job shouldn't really exist because there's so much more to do. I'd be interested to see the analysis done differently, comparing how people actually spend their time vs just where they spend it.
jossclimb 4y ago
A quick look at projects as huge as the Linux Kernel and its distributions (debian, arch, fedora), platforms such as kubernetes, apache, entire languages such as rust, python etc, databases (postgres, etc) shows this is nonsense. Most of the internet is run on software built by geographically dispersed engineering teams working asynchronously. Software so well developed and innovative that companies as large and office based as Microsoft eventually had to back down and hop on the ride.
Delphiza 4y ago
"Net negative"? So you're saying that remote workers are uncollaborative? If that were true, all remote companies would have people that un-talked to each other, which is hardly the case. Maybe less efficient, but certainly not negatively. It is the small difference in collaborative efficiency that allows different types of people and organisations to function.
throwawaycopter 4y ago
> Face to face collaboration is a lot more efficient. That's really not my experience. I'm always very confused when I see this statement being thrown around as if it was a universal truth. Perhaps depends on your role? Honestly, for all the companies I worked in the past decade, the ones where I had better quality communication were the ones where I worked remotely. Then again, I'm a software developer. Developers tend to be good at communicating through pull requests, documentation, screen sharing and text-based chat where you can send snippets.
- slotrans 4y ago
  > That's really not my experience. I'm always very confused when I see this statement being thrown around as if it was a universal truth. Because it's obviously true. Communicating through pull requests is shockingly inefficient. It can take days or even weeks to accomplish what face-to-face communication would accomplish in SECONDS.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    Why would a face to face conversation help? A smile is going to suddenly explain why you using a 7 character variable is jeopardizing the project? People are so afraid to confront others in person so if you talk to them they will just accept your changes so they don't have to deal with the person breathing on them anymore? I can see that..
  - throwawaycopter 4y ago
    As I said, this makes me very confused. Face to face communication tend to be absolutely inefficient in my experience. They are a hindrance more often than not.
  - dudul 4y ago
    Please explain with a case study or an example. IME face to face communication gives the impression that communication happened. The impression that a problem was discussed and solved. When talking people barely listen and just wait for their turn to speak and feel like they are contributing. Written communication can be re-read, it can be looked at your own pace when you're focused. It can be challenged with comments and it's much harder to hand wave the questions away.
macNchz 4y ago
Having worked on a number of early stage startups and projects, in varied remote/in-person settings, and currently fully remote, the only thing I genuinely miss from an office is having a huge whiteboard to gather around. In my experience, whatever gains come from increased communications bandwidth in-person are kind of a wash with losses to focused work being in a distracting environment.

by gt565k 4y ago

nbaugh1 4y ago

Yeah I think the balance should be hiring people local to your office who are willing to go in (ideally WANT to go in) but also give them the option to decide for themselves when they want to be in office vs at home. As much as I love working from home, if most of my team was together in an office that's a reasonable commute from my home, I'd definitely not want to be left out/behind by staying home everyday - personally.

jossclimb 4y ago
That might work if you're working on a very popular stack, doing something like web development on react etc, but anything more specialised then that (unless you're in the valley or somewhere with a big tech community), is going to be a challenge to hire in. If you can hire globally the talent pool becomes much more fruitful.
ipaddr 4y ago
Find people locally that want to go in. Filter the rest. Offer these people remote? Believe everyone will have a reasonable commute in and use the missing out emotional trigger to get people back. Then they can sit at their desk remote into meetings with others at different locations while talking as loudly as possible while everyone else puts their headphones on and browses slashdot?

rybosworld 4y ago

The problem with statement's like yours is that there is no evidence to support the things you are saying. - "I am a firm believer that 100% remote work as actually a net negative for collaboration." You're entitled to your beliefs, but they are just that. I'd hate to see companies making decisions based on "feelings" they have in regards to one format being more effective than another. - "Workshops, ideation, brainstorming, all of these thrive when people are engaged in the moment, not on a scheduled zoom call." I'll counter your anecdote with my own: I've observed no difference.

MAGZine 4y ago
"there's no evidence to support the things you are saying, but they're wrong." Is it really hard to believe that activities that rely on communication thrive in environments that support high-bandwidth communication? nb: lack of evidence does not substantiate the absence of something, it may mean nobody has bothered to collect the evidence (or that the evidence is difficult to capture).
- rybosworld 4y ago
  Why did you append "but they're wrong" to my quote? That's not different than lying.
  - MAGZine 4y ago
    It's not lying, that's how your comment came across to me. It was extremely dismissive. A simple 'but could you provide evidence?' would be fine. But no--it was more akin to "there is no evidence, your argument is invalid." Maybe you didn't use the word 'wrong', but you did dismiss their opinion without consideration, and then proceeded to commit the same fallacy so as to prove a point. So not only was your comment dismissive, but it was devoid of content or constructive conversation. Actually, the inclusion of the counter example actually made it the opposite of constructive imo. Why participate in the same rhetoric you're throwing out, even for example, when what you're saying is already quite clear? This isn't debate club. It's a conversation.

version_five 4y ago

Agreed. This is common sense, and is historically one of the main reasons why business travel exists. A caveat might be that "pure" software development jobs where the role is mostly to just sit and code probably have a smaller benefit. But for most early startups, such a job shouldn't really exist because there's so much more to do. I'd be interested to see the analysis done differently, comparing how people actually spend their time vs just where they spend it.

jossclimb 4y ago

A quick look at projects as huge as the Linux Kernel and its distributions (debian, arch, fedora), platforms such as kubernetes, apache, entire languages such as rust, python etc, databases (postgres, etc) shows this is nonsense. Most of the internet is run on software built by geographically dispersed engineering teams working asynchronously. Software so well developed and innovative that companies as large and office based as Microsoft eventually had to back down and hop on the ride.

Delphiza 4y ago

"Net negative"? So you're saying that remote workers are uncollaborative? If that were true, all remote companies would have people that un-talked to each other, which is hardly the case. Maybe less efficient, but certainly not negatively. It is the small difference in collaborative efficiency that allows different types of people and organisations to function.

throwawaycopter 4y ago

> Face to face collaboration is a lot more efficient. That's really not my experience. I'm always very confused when I see this statement being thrown around as if it was a universal truth. Perhaps depends on your role? Honestly, for all the companies I worked in the past decade, the ones where I had better quality communication were the ones where I worked remotely. Then again, I'm a software developer. Developers tend to be good at communicating through pull requests, documentation, screen sharing and text-based chat where you can send snippets.

slotrans 4y ago
> That's really not my experience. I'm always very confused when I see this statement being thrown around as if it was a universal truth. Because it's obviously true. Communicating through pull requests is shockingly inefficient. It can take days or even weeks to accomplish what face-to-face communication would accomplish in SECONDS.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  Why would a face to face conversation help? A smile is going to suddenly explain why you using a 7 character variable is jeopardizing the project? People are so afraid to confront others in person so if you talk to them they will just accept your changes so they don't have to deal with the person breathing on them anymore? I can see that..
- throwawaycopter 4y ago
  As I said, this makes me very confused. Face to face communication tend to be absolutely inefficient in my experience. They are a hindrance more often than not.
- dudul 4y ago
  Please explain with a case study or an example. IME face to face communication gives the impression that communication happened. The impression that a problem was discussed and solved. When talking people barely listen and just wait for their turn to speak and feel like they are contributing. Written communication can be re-read, it can be looked at your own pace when you're focused. It can be challenged with comments and it's much harder to hand wave the questions away.

macNchz 4y ago

Having worked on a number of early stage startups and projects, in varied remote/in-person settings, and currently fully remote, the only thing I genuinely miss from an office is having a huge whiteboard to gather around. In my experience, whatever gains come from increased communications bandwidth in-person are kind of a wash with losses to focused work being in a distracting environment.