5 ms·

So you're saying programmers' time is not expensive enough?

sokoloff 3y ago
It's probably closer to the outputs (and differences in output) not being measurable enough. I had a private office setup in one place. It was phenomenal and by far the best work environment (physical and otherwise) I've ever had. The biggest problem was: we couldn't double the size of the team without it being a half-year leasing and construction project. So, we'd sawtooth among "far too much space and lots of pent-up hiring; a Goldilocks zone; out of space; hiring freeze; lease/construct offices; loop". My office now is whatever I want to do with my house. That's also good for heads-down work (and obviously for the commute), but terrible for collaborative whiteboard design work.
- otteromkram 3y ago
  > but terrible for collaborative whiteboard design work. Not at all. If you think so, maybe try switching jobs to non-remote and let someone fine with virtual whiteboarding take your role on.
  - eadmund 3y ago
    In my experience, there is nothing like being in a room with a team. There is something about the physicality of presence, the way the communication has both lower latency (because it is not intermediated by electronics) and higher bandwidth (because in person even things like the way someone shifts in his shoes or his eyelid quivers is information). I have worked remotely for a significant portion of the past few decades. I work remotely. I anticipate working remotely for the remainder of my career. I enjoy working remotely. But working in-person has some real advantages. I just don’t believe that they outweigh the disadvantages.
    - sokoloff 3y ago
      Similar here. I expected to hate working remotely when my company decided to switch. It turns out that I love it overall once through the adaptation period (for individuals and for the company). Even with that, I think there is an optimal number of times per year to get the team together in one physical space and that number is probably somewhere in the one to three range, but by my estimation it sure isn't zero.
    - silverlake 3y ago
      I agree communication is better when everyone is present. If a remote team was required to be available that would solve most of the problems. It’s about the culture of WFH which currently assumes slow async responses.
      - xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
        That's a cultural thing. All my remote colleagues are present and responsive. I certainly do not think it's a healthy assumption. WFH does not imply async. Timezones do.
        photonbeam 3y ago
        Ive always been very surprised at companies that want in-office but then spread the workforce across a handful of timezones
    - i_am_a_peasant 3y ago
      My new year resolution is to never do remote work at my next job. I wanna be that guy known for being always there, at his job, doing what he's paid to do.
      - JohnFen 3y ago
        You can be known for always being there, at your job, doing what you're paid to do, and still work remote. Just be there, at your job, doing what you're paid to do.
        i_am_a_peasant 3y ago
        Fair enough. But I just can't replace real human interaction with remote communication. I just can't. Same way I could never get in a long distance relationship with someone. I need to be in the same room as them and look them in the eye when I'm explaining something to them. I actually like the 2-5 minutes of chit chat in the common kitchen every morning, talking about where my colleague went skiing that weekend. And I am an introvert.
        JohnFen 3y ago
        > But I just can't replace real human interaction with remote communication. I just can't. That's entirely fair. You work best in a particular sort of arrangement, just as others work best in other sorts of arrangements. Nobody is wrong here.
        i_am_a_peasant 3y ago
        For sure, I was just describing it the way I frame it for myself. I'm not gonna judge people who prefer to do nothing but remote
        hibernator149 3y ago
        Honest question because I'm curious. What is your definition of an introvert and how do you know you are one?
  - paulryanrogers 3y ago
    Not sure why this is down voted. A decent virtual whiteboard can be better than physical. No more chicken-scratch text labels, plenty of pre-drawn widgets to drop in, easily shuffle things around, sticky arrows, everyone can have a different color pointer, etc. The learning curve is a bit higher than physical, yet worth the pain. Also, no judgement about attire, eye contact, stance, or demands to stay during a fire alarm ("it's just a drill!"). Shame that Slack killed Screen Hero. Perhaps the founder's Pop.com effort will catch on.
    - eropple 3y ago
      I've been working remotely for most of my career and I intend to keep doing so, but if a "decent" virtual whiteboard can do that, I've yet to see it. FigJam, Miro, etc. all seem to be technically fine but unable to come up with flows that are as clearly obvious for collaboration as "two people standing there at a whiteboard". I can use all these tools quite effectively (I've got a LucidChart tab open right now) for solo use or semi-independently with close colleagues on the same board, but attempting to add other people creates chaos and a mess over the conference bridge because the affordances are so different from what people want out of rapid, high-bandwidth low-worrying-about-the-color-of-the-rectangle idea swapping. Though I disagree with them and with you--I downvoted that post for its writer being a jerk, not for being subjectively wrong. "If you think virtual whiteboards maybe aren't very good you should give somebody else your remote job" is "man, shut up" territory.
    - pfooti 3y ago
      When people are in a room you can have multiple voice conversations at once. When you are remote, you cannot. I know you can replace voice side channels with text, but this is a lossy proposition. Turn-taking in general is better in person due to high bandwidth channels for nonverbal communication. I say all of that as an autistic person who has trouble with all kinds of tacit communication (it may be that I have studied it so much in order to fit in that I really notice it), so yes there are downsides to being in person (I can pretend to make eye contact on a video), but I'm talking here about why the average developer or product person might have good reason to prefer in-person for a two pizza meeting. Nice whiteboarding app affordances are great, but the low effort of onboarding to a physical whiteboard also encourages broader participation.
  - cjaybo 3y ago
    > Not at all The arrogance required to tell someone that their experience is false is something I have trouble wrapping my head around.
    - musicale 3y ago
      > The arrogance required to tell someone that their experience is false is something I have trouble wrapping my head around. It's my least favorite thing about HN, but it's one of the opiates of the internet. Alternate phrasing like "not in my experience" might be slightly better. I still think "downvote to grey" is a regression vs. simply letting popular comments be voted higher.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      It's human nature to think that our personal experience and worldview is representative of the general population, even though it almost never actually is. It's a thing we have to consciously be on guard about. "We tend to mistake the limits of our vision for the limits of the world." If you allow the misperception to take hold, it's a short step to concluding that anyone who isn't like you is weird or wrong in some way.
danaris 3y ago
When the execs of tech companies are still able to make several orders of magnitude more money than any of the programmers they employ, and their companies are able to make profits in the trillions, with a t, no; programmers' time is not priced appropriately for the amount of productivity we enable.
- kridsdale1 3y ago
  Thankfully there is nothing at all but entrenched competition preventing you from leaving and becoming one of those execs on your own. This very website is here to help you achieve this dream. The delta in your compensation to theirs is the effective price that you are willing to pay to not bother with that hassle.
- dasil003 3y ago
  This doesn’t follow, at least not without a lot more analysis. The biggest tech companies have tens of thousands of engineers make anything from low 6-figures to low 7-figures. That’s a huge salary burden that dwarfs exec compensation. Systematically paying more could easily outstrip revenues if leadership is wrong about predicting the future, which would lead to either salary cuts or layoffs, neither of which is well received. And are you saying engineers deserve most of the value because they wrote the code? What about other functions, what do they deserve? These aren’t easy questions to answer. But the reality is we don’t have to because hiring is a market. You get paid what you negotiate. This is the same for execs as it is for worker bees, the only difference is the value of your skills according to whoever is holding the purse strings.

It's probably closer to the outputs (and differences in output) not being measurable enough. I had a private office setup in one place. It was phenomenal and by far the best work environment (physical and otherwise) I've ever had. The biggest problem was: we couldn't double the size of the team without it being a half-year leasing and construction project. So, we'd sawtooth among "far too much space and lots of pent-up hiring; a Goldilocks zone; out of space; hiring freeze; lease/construct offices; loop". My office now is whatever I want to do with my house. That's also good for heads-down work (and obviously for the commute), but terrible for collaborative whiteboard design work.

otteromkram 3y ago
> but terrible for collaborative whiteboard design work. Not at all. If you think so, maybe try switching jobs to non-remote and let someone fine with virtual whiteboarding take your role on.
- eadmund 3y ago
  In my experience, there is nothing like being in a room with a team. There is something about the physicality of presence, the way the communication has both lower latency (because it is not intermediated by electronics) and higher bandwidth (because in person even things like the way someone shifts in his shoes or his eyelid quivers is information). I have worked remotely for a significant portion of the past few decades. I work remotely. I anticipate working remotely for the remainder of my career. I enjoy working remotely. But working in-person has some real advantages. I just don’t believe that they outweigh the disadvantages.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    Similar here. I expected to hate working remotely when my company decided to switch. It turns out that I love it overall once through the adaptation period (for individuals and for the company). Even with that, I think there is an optimal number of times per year to get the team together in one physical space and that number is probably somewhere in the one to three range, but by my estimation it sure isn't zero.
  - silverlake 3y ago
    I agree communication is better when everyone is present. If a remote team was required to be available that would solve most of the problems. It’s about the culture of WFH which currently assumes slow async responses.
    - xyzzy_plugh 3y ago
      That's a cultural thing. All my remote colleagues are present and responsive. I certainly do not think it's a healthy assumption. WFH does not imply async. Timezones do.
      - photonbeam 3y ago
        Ive always been very surprised at companies that want in-office but then spread the workforce across a handful of timezones
  - i_am_a_peasant 3y ago
    My new year resolution is to never do remote work at my next job. I wanna be that guy known for being always there, at his job, doing what he's paid to do.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      You can be known for always being there, at your job, doing what you're paid to do, and still work remote. Just be there, at your job, doing what you're paid to do.
      - i_am_a_peasant 3y ago
        Fair enough. But I just can't replace real human interaction with remote communication. I just can't. Same way I could never get in a long distance relationship with someone. I need to be in the same room as them and look them in the eye when I'm explaining something to them. I actually like the 2-5 minutes of chit chat in the common kitchen every morning, talking about where my colleague went skiing that weekend. And I am an introvert.
        JohnFen 3y ago
        > But I just can't replace real human interaction with remote communication. I just can't. That's entirely fair. You work best in a particular sort of arrangement, just as others work best in other sorts of arrangements. Nobody is wrong here.
        i_am_a_peasant 3y ago
        For sure, I was just describing it the way I frame it for myself. I'm not gonna judge people who prefer to do nothing but remote
        hibernator149 3y ago
        Honest question because I'm curious. What is your definition of an introvert and how do you know you are one?
- paulryanrogers 3y ago
  Not sure why this is down voted. A decent virtual whiteboard can be better than physical. No more chicken-scratch text labels, plenty of pre-drawn widgets to drop in, easily shuffle things around, sticky arrows, everyone can have a different color pointer, etc. The learning curve is a bit higher than physical, yet worth the pain. Also, no judgement about attire, eye contact, stance, or demands to stay during a fire alarm ("it's just a drill!"). Shame that Slack killed Screen Hero. Perhaps the founder's Pop.com effort will catch on.
  - eropple 3y ago
    I've been working remotely for most of my career and I intend to keep doing so, but if a "decent" virtual whiteboard can do that, I've yet to see it. FigJam, Miro, etc. all seem to be technically fine but unable to come up with flows that are as clearly obvious for collaboration as "two people standing there at a whiteboard". I can use all these tools quite effectively (I've got a LucidChart tab open right now) for solo use or semi-independently with close colleagues on the same board, but attempting to add other people creates chaos and a mess over the conference bridge because the affordances are so different from what people want out of rapid, high-bandwidth low-worrying-about-the-color-of-the-rectangle idea swapping. Though I disagree with them and with you--I downvoted that post for its writer being a jerk, not for being subjectively wrong. "If you think virtual whiteboards maybe aren't very good you should give somebody else your remote job" is "man, shut up" territory.
  - pfooti 3y ago
    When people are in a room you can have multiple voice conversations at once. When you are remote, you cannot. I know you can replace voice side channels with text, but this is a lossy proposition. Turn-taking in general is better in person due to high bandwidth channels for nonverbal communication. I say all of that as an autistic person who has trouble with all kinds of tacit communication (it may be that I have studied it so much in order to fit in that I really notice it), so yes there are downsides to being in person (I can pretend to make eye contact on a video), but I'm talking here about why the average developer or product person might have good reason to prefer in-person for a two pizza meeting. Nice whiteboarding app affordances are great, but the low effort of onboarding to a physical whiteboard also encourages broader participation.
- cjaybo 3y ago
  > Not at all The arrogance required to tell someone that their experience is false is something I have trouble wrapping my head around.
  - musicale 3y ago
    > The arrogance required to tell someone that their experience is false is something I have trouble wrapping my head around. It's my least favorite thing about HN, but it's one of the opiates of the internet. Alternate phrasing like "not in my experience" might be slightly better. I still think "downvote to grey" is a regression vs. simply letting popular comments be voted higher.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    It's human nature to think that our personal experience and worldview is representative of the general population, even though it almost never actually is. It's a thing we have to consciously be on guard about. "We tend to mistake the limits of our vision for the limits of the world." If you allow the misperception to take hold, it's a short step to concluding that anyone who isn't like you is weird or wrong in some way.

danaris 3y ago

When the execs of tech companies are still able to make several orders of magnitude more money than any of the programmers they employ, and their companies are able to make profits in the trillions, with a t, no; programmers' time is not priced appropriately for the amount of productivity we enable.

kridsdale1 3y ago
Thankfully there is nothing at all but entrenched competition preventing you from leaving and becoming one of those execs on your own. This very website is here to help you achieve this dream. The delta in your compensation to theirs is the effective price that you are willing to pay to not bother with that hassle.
dasil003 3y ago
This doesn’t follow, at least not without a lot more analysis. The biggest tech companies have tens of thousands of engineers make anything from low 6-figures to low 7-figures. That’s a huge salary burden that dwarfs exec compensation. Systematically paying more could easily outstrip revenues if leadership is wrong about predicting the future, which would lead to either salary cuts or layoffs, neither of which is well received. And are you saying engineers deserve most of the value because they wrote the code? What about other functions, what do they deserve? These aren’t easy questions to answer. But the reality is we don’t have to because hiring is a market. You get paid what you negotiate. This is the same for execs as it is for worker bees, the only difference is the value of your skills according to whoever is holding the purse strings.