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Why Five Days in the Office Is Too Many

• com2kid 14y ago
  In contrast, I am energized by going into the office and working side by side with my peers to solve hard problems. I dislike programming by myself, it is dull, boring, and much more error prone than when I have someone to bounce ideas off of. (Rubber Ducking only goes so far!) Really every time this topic is brought up the overall consensus seems to be "it varies for different people." Some people seem to really benefit from working at home, some benefit from working in an office. The real thing that gets to me is those who, for whatever reason, do not seem to understand that different people have different needs!
  • enjo 14y ago
    Yep! There are times I want to be in the office. There are times I want to be at a coffee shop. There are times I want to be at home. As an executive, I feel like it's my job to provide as much flexibility to my team as I possibly can. Inspiration can strike anywhere, in any environment. I want to capture that for my business. I find that people really appreciate it as well. Really it comes down to meeting management. Limit the requirement for face-time and structure the company in a way that you can minimize how often people have to collaborate. I find this makes the voluntary (and spontaneous) interactions even more valuable. The Yahoo decision really bothers me in a really visceral way. My team is made up of highly skilled professionals who deserve to be treated like adults. Forcing them into the office is the opposite of that (at least to me).
    • res0nat0r 14y ago
      This policy hasn't been set in stone as a permanent measure. I'm sure it is being put in place for now to help the company get its act together to help bring it back from the sub par arena it has been swimming in for so long. Once that hopefully happens then the policy could be lifted.
      • outside1234 14y ago
        you mean like at Google. oh wait.
        • res0nat0r 14y ago
          Google and Amazon both don't allow permanent work from home positions.
          • outside1234 14y ago
            exactly.
    • devcpp 14y ago
      Your sound like an executive too, putting emphasis on well-researched words, and mentioning things like capturing inspiration. As far as I've seen, there is little inspiration involved in most programming environments, just a lot of thinking.
      • enjo 14y ago
        I'm going to assume this was meant to be insulting. A lot of that is going around on HN these days. It's really too bad. I'll just leave it at this. Isn't inspiration often the end-result of careful thought? I don't see what about an office makes it the right place for the thinking you see in programming environments. I've solved more hard problems in the shower than I have at my desk.
        • dwj 14y ago
          enjo is absolutely right. I regularly require inspiration in order to solve difficult problems. This inspiration generally never happens when sitting in front of a computer screen - most of my ideas come when I am walking, swimming, cycling, etc. Certainly there are many dull development jobs that require no inspiration or even much thinking - I worked in many of them before I got bored to death and started my own business. If you are in one of those dead-end jobs, you're not the kind of person that enjo is talking about.
        • devcpp 14y ago
          Sorry if you found that insulting. I guess I got used to this aspetic cold language you see on HN to make emotion invisible. That's one of the things I miss from Reddit. I know there are many people like you that somehow intuitively capture these abstract concepts, and I respect that. I just find it amusing that you can notice these things even when the person is out of work. That's when you differentiate the manipulative managers from the true ones. My point wasn't particularly focusing in offices. Being pragmatic and rather emotion-less, I find programming requires more logic and method than feelings.
  • gnosis 14y ago
    "In contrast, I am energized by going into the office and working side by side with my peers to solve hard problems." Let me know if you still feel that way in 20 years.
    • soneca 14y ago
      Well, I hope he will! Probably with different peers and surely with different problems. But that would be my goal. Sure, the "into the office" part can change. But I also hope he can change in a range of 20 years, without having the need to be inflexible to what he claim as a preference in the past. Actually, this statement sounded so out of purpose, that I am having a second thought that I maybe have lost something here.
    • com2kid 14y ago
      It's been 7 years so far and I'm hanging in there! I have been fortune enough to have always had my choice of teams to work with, so far that has meant great coworkers and very challenging work. If I'm not pounding my head against a wall I'm not having fun. :)
    • onemorepassword 14y ago
      I still feel that way after more than 20 years. But it helps a lot if company policy doesn't force you to come in every day, or be in at 9am. And of course if the people involved are people that you like to work with.
  • joonix 14y ago
    I like a mix of both and I like freedom. I want to leave from 10am to 2pm and work at home if I feel like it, without having people judge me for it.
  • quaunaut 14y ago
    I'm new into the industry, but I thought working from home would be a blast. But surprisingly, I'm finding I hate just having nowhere to go during the day, no reason to go outside, see the world, aside from exercise. It saps me of my energy. Sadly, the company I work for is based in a place I couldn't stand to live, but it's telling that even despite that, I'm genuinely thinking about moving there.
    • obviouslygreen 14y ago
      I don't mean to be condescending, but the only "telling" thing about that is your inexperience. If you already know it's a place you couldn't stand to live, it's an extremely bad idea to move there. Do not second-guess yourself like this! You will end up regretting it. Telecommuting is not for everyone, but being new to the industry, your perspective is likely to change over the next few years if you stick around. I'm not saying it'll reverse -- you may find that your first impression was right -- but your point of view will be altered by your experiences, and without those experiences to draw on, you cannot expect to have a well-formed impression of this arrangement. Not liking working at home is not a good reason to move to a place where you won't like going outside.
      • quaunaut 14y ago
        This is incredibly true. Though, the main thing keeping me in line right now, is that I'm just over a year away from moving to where I really want to be- Seattle! Once I'm there, I don't know what I'm gonna do. Probably program at a cafe every day.
        • jcheng 14y ago
          When you get to Seattle, check out Office Nomads in Capitol Hill. Sounds like you will find lots of like-minded people there.
    • ablativenotion 14y ago
      You might want to look into coworking spaces where people that are not working for the same company, such as freelancers or remote workers, share an office.
  • vacri 14y ago
    I'm much the same, plus I don't have the discipline to work from home. What's on the tv? What's online? Hey, I nearly finished that level in that game! What can I find in the fridge? Plus if you have decent colleagues, it makes the job more enjoyable.
    • ido 14y ago
      That used to be the situation for me (or at least I thought it was), but after a few years of being self employed (and most of that time having no choice but to make working from home function) I now have no problems being productive at home (or at least not much more so than at the office).
  • deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  • ido 14y ago
    What mostly bothers me is the commute, if I can get to the office at any given workplace within half an hour or less door-to-door (preferably 15 minutes & not via car) the barriers to coming to the office are significantly reduced. At any rate I think the optimal situation for me is a mix of both.
    • hamidr 14y ago
      Yes. and it sucks even more when the city your living is a crowded one.
  • jakerocheleau 14y ago
    TIL about "rubber ducking" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging
  • djhworld 14y ago
    I think the bigger problem is most working environments are not conducive to productivity or pleasant places to be. You see awesome offices in places like Google, Facebook et al where workers have plenty of space around their desk, and other areas in the building where they can work/socialise/relax. Unfortunately most businesses are not like that, they cram as many people as they can into vast open plan offices where desk space is at a premium and you can forget having a quiet space to work.
    • RougeFemme 14y ago
      I don't work in a "Google-style" office, but I'm not stuck in an open plan office, either. I have a spacious (for a cube) cube, but it's not quiet, at least not when certain folks are in the office, which is all too frequent.
  • smrtinsert 14y ago
    Extroverts become energized through contact, but I would say most programmers are not extroverted.
• stfu 14y ago
  Not relevant to the subject, but I was just wondering if anyone can enlighten me on the use of is/are. Why is the headline Why five days in the office >is< too many and not >are< too many?
  • aaronblohowiak 14y ago
    The collection as a whole is the thing that is being compared. 400 computers are on the desk. 200 students are better than you. (everyone one of those students are individually better than you.) 200 students is better than none. (the total number is being compared as a singular item to the quantity 0)
    • djacobs 14y ago
      I'm not an expert on this, but I have a different take. I think that "is" happens when there is an implicit gerund before the plural noun. - [Working] five days in the office is too much (I do think that the title should be "too much", not "too many") - [Having] two hundred students is better than [having] none. That is, there is an implicit subject, and it is not the plural noun, which is actually a direct object.
    • huffman 14y ago
      Would "200 students are better than none" be invalid? When you swap out the number with some other word i.e. "Some students is better than none", using "are" is the correct choice.
      • corin_ 14y ago
        Anybody would understand you, but there is a difference. Using the word "none" doesn't help explain, so change that to "me". "200 students are better than me" means that there are 200 all of which are better than me, it's not grouping them together, just counting them. "200 students is better than me" would mean that as a collective they are better than me, but I might well be better than each of them individually.
        • 14y ago
• flurdy 14y ago
  I would have even looser guidelines, but still suggest some facetime in the office if possible. Mostly the team themselves should be able to mandate their own locations and hours to fit their needs. If they are productive... Some teams may prefer heavy pair programming and thus may need to be most of time in the same location. Others(most) would use some sort of hybrid where the 5 hours 3 days a week probably works well. And then some will be very much independent tasks where then locations are mostly irrelevant apart from whenever syncing is needed and general communications with other teams and stakeholders. But teams and even when pairing you do not always need to be permanently physically in the same location if they know each other well and can communicate freely across chat and screen sharing etc. However mostly in person will trump all communications.
  • jmspring 14y ago
    It should be up to the team, that is what is key. Way too many times management will try and dictate based on what they think is right without taking in the desires and the makeup of the team. This usually is shown in the form of all hands meetings on a very regular basis -- more than one startup I've been at have fallen into this trap.
    • trhtrsh 14y ago
      "all-hands" meetings are an artificial attempt to instill a social-heirarchy, by elevating the presenters over the rest of the staff. Being invited to speak at an all hands is attempt to award social currency, by telling the presenter that they are special. All-hands have no value, with one exception: If they provide an open mic for questions, it's a rare opportunity to put an exec on the spot in front of everyone.
• RougeFemme 14y ago
  I think the mix of introverts vs. extroverts is relevant, too. Generally, extroverts are energized by being around people, while introverts need some mental downtime to recharge their batteries. And at least for me, downtime is hard to come by while in the office.
  • soneca 14y ago
    I always wondered about offices with "loneliness rooms". Not to sleep, or meditate, but to work. Some place where anyone can go if he/she don't want to be around other people. A mix of open spaces and discreet rooms, where you can go and people won't even notice you are going there. I wouldn't even put doors in there, not to be mistaken to a place where you hide. Just a very small room, with no space for hanging around, just one chair and desk. Thinking more about it, maybe open, gardened spaces, but with lonely chair-desks, which disposal and landacape shows it is suposed to be distant of eveything (so it isn't so claustrophobic as the first scenario I imagined)
    • seanmcdirmid 14y ago
      We have focus rooms in our semi-open plan. They suck, they aren't fairly utilized and usually monopolized, or they are quickly turned into the service of other purposes (like store rooms or guest offices).
      • soneca 14y ago
        I imagine that must be hard to manage the use of the rooms. I think an open plan with distanced, isolated through architecture one-person workspaces might work better. But that demands a lot of space, must be hard to implement.
        • RougeFemme 14y ago
          I like that idea, but agree it would be hard to manage. First-come, first serve can still lead to monopolizing the room. There would need to be time limits, but again, that requires management. And if I'm in there and "on a roll", I would have to have to leave just because of a time constraint. Unless I could just go home and continue working.
• jonathanjaeger 14y ago
  Personally I like the routine of getting up every morning having my coffee and going to the office. But you need a good working environment. I'm not a programmer though, and I often realize some people can get a lot more down without the pull of meetings and unintended interruptions throughout the day. Perhaps I'm just lucky my job is devoid of meetings, for the most part.
• methehack 14y ago
  The very term "work from home" suggests separation. That's the wrong model. This is not about introverts and extroverts. Working with a remote team is not a choice about whether to collaborate or not. When a team is set up properly, remote work is no less collaborative than any other kind of work. The tools are there, widely available, and free. Everyone on a team needs to be using them, yes, but duh. As near as I can tell, there is a shortage of talent. Smart companies will exploit the newly available infrastructure and realize that they can have "face time" remotely. Then, they'll have access to a much wider pool of talent. Win! Is it me or are silicon valley companies -- startups, in particular -- really not into hiring remote people? Seems like, with the cost of living in the valley and the dramatic shortage of talent, and the volume and enormity of ideas, they'd have the most to gain. If I'm right about not liking remote hires, anyone have any ideas why? Provincialism? If you were worth hiring, you'd live here already? Hahahahaha.
  • onemorepassword 14y ago
    I'm all in favor of letting people work from home and facilitating remote work for certain kinds of projects, but if you seriously think remote work is no less collaborative or technology can replace "face time", I assume you're missing a lot of human communication skills. Not only does physical interaction have a much higher bandwidth, it goes well beyond just the work. The more you interact, at lunch or in the hallways, the better you will be able to communicate with each other on all levels, and the better you'll be able to collaborate. And this is not a one time thing, this is a continuous process. I would never hire people who lack the ability to recognize that vast difference to work remotely. For one thing, you don't have the ability to compensate if you don't even understand there is something to compensate for. Hell, I wouldn't even hire a person like that to work on site. And the fact that there appears to be a strong overlap between people who favor remote work and short-sighted people who seem unable to recognize its disadvantages is not exactly encouraging companies to hire remote workers. Yes, hiring managers read HN, and these kinds of comments aren't helping to promote remote work. Quite the opposite. The pro remote working crowd comes across as a bunch of immature self-entitled whiners.
    • 14y ago
• AndrewKemendo 14y ago
  Prerna is a good CEO and did some great things at Khush which helped her acquisition. Even still this intro is maddening: >The freedom to work outside a traditional office was one of the main reasons I left the corporate world eight years ago, at age 23, to start a software company. Maddening because she spent about a year in that "corporate world." Hardly a good sampling period. I don't disagree with her conclusions, however to cast that wide of a net seems a little cheap considering not all business structures and markets are conducive to the same flexibility "knowledge workers" have.
  • marquis 14y ago
    I spent less than 3 months total in the corporate world at her age and quickly knew I wanted out. I haven't been back in over 10 years and don't believe it makes my thoughts on the matter irrelevant.
    • cbs 14y ago
      I've been to Tahoe. It doesn't make my thoughts on California in general irrelevant, but incredibly suspect if I make a statement about any part of the state that is not a high elevation desert currently covered in snow.
  • thinker 14y ago
    It really doesn't take that long to figure out if you are the corporate type or not. I spent 10 months at a large tech consulting firm and knew that wasn't the work life I wanted.
• peachananr 14y ago
  I love working at the office but not the whole 8 hours. I love it in the morning but when it's afternoon, I find myself more productive elsewhere, maybe a cafe. This is an interesting approach that allows experiments. Would love to see how this will turn out. :)
  • textminer 14y ago
    I agree with this. I find the convention most stifling-- my instinct in the afternoon is to go work somewhere else, but quickly guilt* starts to pop up and tell me I'm doing something wrong, even if it's just to do work more ably. (* - this guilt is a weird thing I can't really describe. It also lessens as I advance further in my career and am more sure of myself.)
• ifben 14y ago
  I treat college like a 9-5 job, going to the library to study at 9 am and attending classes throughout the day. I don't need to do this, but there are very specific reasons why I do: - If I study at home, I have no sense of urgency. Home is the place I associate with relaxation, so it's kind of cruel to expect myself to get work done there. The general public in the library holds me accountable to make it look like I have a purpose to be there. - There are places I'd rather be than the library, like home. This motivates me to get my work done as quickly as possible and move on to other things that are important to me. - We are social creatures, and interacting with others is important to our well-being. Given two days where I get the same amount of work done, I'll feel more accomplished on the day where I adequately socialize. This is true even if my interactions are largely superficial.
  • seanmcdirmid 14y ago
    College was more like a 10AM to 11PM job for me. The library was a place to sleep, the best place to work was the eating areas. Now, I prefer coffee shops for out of office working. Home is too comfortable, while I can hit Starbucks early and grab a taxi when the roads aren't so crowded after rush hour.
• iuguy 14y ago
  At Mandalorian we have to work 9-530 days, our customers expect to be able to contact us in this period. What we do though is allow everyone to work from home unless they absolutely need an office environment. Once a quarter we meet up face to face, have a day set aside for meetings, discussions, presentations and that's about it. We have IRC for techies and Google chat for non-techies, along with Google Hangout for when we need some face to face discussion. So far it's working pretty well. People who need to pick kids up from school pick kids up from school. People who need to receive deliveries or have plumbers round don't have to worry about taking time out to do so. Additionally everyone's travel costs are miniscule when not on customer site, which I think is a massive positive for all of us. On the whole I believe that a happy workforce is a productive workforce, and that creating stress for employees is counterproductive. If we need meetings we can have them. If we need physical space together we can arrange it. Aside from that, I'd rather focus on the results than the time put in.
• Illotus 14y ago
  At first glance I thought that this was an article for moving to 4 day work week.
• Uncompetative 14y ago
  I find it disgusting that people are forced to commute at great expense to our planet's dwinding natural resources, their finances, time and stress so that they can physically congregate for an 'inspiring water-cooler moment' that may catalytically lurch their company towards an original, otherwise undiscoverable, profitable path or endless corporate meetings to please unnecessarily multi-layered paranoid management when we have telecommuting, telepresence and the good old fashioned telephone in technology-centric industries. I could understand 'going to work' if 'work' was a Foundry, or a Mine, but if we are sitting in traffic jams and on crowded trains for hours every day, unpaid, just so we can sit in front of a computer and program software when it is clearly more likely that we will be interrupted to 'sign a card for Jane from accounts who is leaving to have her baby' and lose our flow as a result then the corporations of the future will be leaner and more agile by being virtual.
  • smrtinsert 14y ago
    Its a false premise quite honestly. Look at some place like Google, absolutely brilliant people work there and brainstorm there, yet their greatest "ideas" are acquisitions.
• deleted 14y ago
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