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I know that this is not a popular opinion here. I think its hard to put the genie back in the bottle, but I also think a tremendous amount of innovation happens

I know that this is not a popular opinion here. I think its hard to put the genie back in the bottle, but I also think a tremendous amount of innovation happens in person. Existing companies will probably continue to operate just fine, but the next wave of game changing companies will be small and in person.

glimshe 3y ago
A tremendous amount of innovation happens in person and not in person. Alone and working in teams. The next wave of game changing companies will be the ones to hire the best people. I find it very unlikely that being 100% in person will be a competitive advantage versus companies that can simply hire the best and ask them to work in the way they consider the most productive.
- azemetre 3y ago
  Some of the most important software I use in my day to day work (neovim, git, alacritty, plus all the CLTs that assist me) are all created in distributed teams around the world. How do we know that saying in-person innovation isn't a post hoc justification? You can't mandate innovation, you can't order innovation, innovation only comes from individuals; I doubt they would have been less innovative if they worked in person or remotely, and we'll unlikely ever know since we can't run a perfect experiment to verify this. The next wave of game changing companies will be solely due to individuals being at the right place at the right time, whether that's remotely or in person I doubt that one aspect would be critical.
- itronitron 3y ago
  For many companies, innovation means doing something that was established years ago as industry best practices.
- rcme 3y ago
  We have lots of examples of in-person companies that have succeeded. Genuinely curious, what are the best examples of remote-only success?
  - chrisco255 3y ago
    Automattic (WordPress authors) is an old one.
  - primax 3y ago
    I think Atlassian have been fully remote for ages
    - ndiddy 3y ago
      I think that's an argument against fully remote companies having good products though.
      - sleepybrett 3y ago
        snarf
  - reducesuffering 3y ago
    Linux probably
  - olyjohn 3y ago
    What do you consider an in-person company? Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc may have offices, but half of them are in other countries around the world. Teams are constantly having remote meetings to meet up with their counterparts on the other side of the world. That's not in-person work. That's remote work in an office. If you have to meet virtually with people in other offices, and do sync-ups with them, and use out of band tools to collaborate, are you really in-person? Why am I doing 9pm meetings when my job is in-office? What kind of in-person collaboration are you doing when you're not meeting in-person?
    - rcme 3y ago
      > If you have to meet virtually with people in other offices, and do sync-ups with them, and use out of band tools to collaborate, are you really in-person? Obviously there is a spectrum, but having worked at multiple FAANG companies, teams are generally collocated and a majority of your interactions are within your team. And of course these companies are only able to have many offices because they experienced a large amount of success when there was only one office.
Thoeu388 3y ago
Well, people are too different today, to the point they can not tolerate close proximity to each other. I am right with conspiracy nut job. If we cooperate in person, you would be exposed to my rants and other quirks. With remote there is no such issue. We can cooperate just fine. I think some people just hate remote, because they do not have their own social circle. They also have no working habits to be productive with async communication. They expect prepackaged deal of friendship, mentorship and support.
1letterunixname 3y ago
"Innovation" is a hand-waving term. If you absolutely need to have a brainstorming meeting in-person, schedule it. That's likely the exception, not the rule. Too often, I see people who head to the office to have loud social conversations while not doing any real work. (Do they have a bullshit job? How much does said bullshit job make? How does one guarantee they meet their performance ranking threshold for said bullshittery?) Otherwise, commuting and interruptions isn't conducive to focus and getting shit done. Fuck, my monitors at home are bigger than anything in any office and I have my keyboard tray, so why on Earth would I want to go into an office with a shittier setup? Also, most offices took away their snacks in the trendy spirit of being cheap and enshitifying their culture.

glimshe 3y ago

A tremendous amount of innovation happens in person and not in person. Alone and working in teams. The next wave of game changing companies will be the ones to hire the best people. I find it very unlikely that being 100% in person will be a competitive advantage versus companies that can simply hire the best and ask them to work in the way they consider the most productive.

azemetre 3y ago
Some of the most important software I use in my day to day work (neovim, git, alacritty, plus all the CLTs that assist me) are all created in distributed teams around the world. How do we know that saying in-person innovation isn't a post hoc justification? You can't mandate innovation, you can't order innovation, innovation only comes from individuals; I doubt they would have been less innovative if they worked in person or remotely, and we'll unlikely ever know since we can't run a perfect experiment to verify this. The next wave of game changing companies will be solely due to individuals being at the right place at the right time, whether that's remotely or in person I doubt that one aspect would be critical.
itronitron 3y ago
For many companies, innovation means doing something that was established years ago as industry best practices.
rcme 3y ago
We have lots of examples of in-person companies that have succeeded. Genuinely curious, what are the best examples of remote-only success?
- chrisco255 3y ago
  Automattic (WordPress authors) is an old one.
- primax 3y ago
  I think Atlassian have been fully remote for ages
  - ndiddy 3y ago
    I think that's an argument against fully remote companies having good products though.
    - sleepybrett 3y ago
      snarf
- reducesuffering 3y ago
  Linux probably
- olyjohn 3y ago
  What do you consider an in-person company? Microsoft, Google, Facebook, etc may have offices, but half of them are in other countries around the world. Teams are constantly having remote meetings to meet up with their counterparts on the other side of the world. That's not in-person work. That's remote work in an office. If you have to meet virtually with people in other offices, and do sync-ups with them, and use out of band tools to collaborate, are you really in-person? Why am I doing 9pm meetings when my job is in-office? What kind of in-person collaboration are you doing when you're not meeting in-person?
  - rcme 3y ago
    > If you have to meet virtually with people in other offices, and do sync-ups with them, and use out of band tools to collaborate, are you really in-person? Obviously there is a spectrum, but having worked at multiple FAANG companies, teams are generally collocated and a majority of your interactions are within your team. And of course these companies are only able to have many offices because they experienced a large amount of success when there was only one office.

Thoeu388 3y ago

Well, people are too different today, to the point they can not tolerate close proximity to each other. I am right with conspiracy nut job. If we cooperate in person, you would be exposed to my rants and other quirks. With remote there is no such issue. We can cooperate just fine. I think some people just hate remote, because they do not have their own social circle. They also have no working habits to be productive with async communication. They expect prepackaged deal of friendship, mentorship and support.

1letterunixname 3y ago

"Innovation" is a hand-waving term. If you absolutely need to have a brainstorming meeting in-person, schedule it. That's likely the exception, not the rule. Too often, I see people who head to the office to have loud social conversations while not doing any real work. (Do they have a bullshit job? How much does said bullshit job make? How does one guarantee they meet their performance ranking threshold for said bullshittery?) Otherwise, commuting and interruptions isn't conducive to focus and getting shit done. Fuck, my monitors at home are bigger than anything in any office and I have my keyboard tray, so why on Earth would I want to go into an office with a shittier setup? Also, most offices took away their snacks in the trendy spirit of being cheap and enshitifying their culture.