7 ms·

Fog Creek’s Remote Work Policy

91 points by MattRogish 13y ago

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
mberning 13y ago
This is true old school thinking at its worst. If my employer is going to put up all these rules and barriers maybe I should put up a few of my own. I bet the managers or whatever they fancy themselves to be at Fog Creek have very little appreciation for all of the small yet tangible things that employees go out of their way to do for them. Things like answering important emails in the evening, especially when it is for a high profile client or partner. Staying late when critical bugs come up. Etc. I bet all that kind of stuff is just expected of the employees.
- mistermann 13y ago
  I'm just picking your comment at random out of this thread...do you know Joel Spolsky who runs Fog Creek? I'm reading all these critical comments in this thread and reconciling it in my head with what I know of him (from his extensive blogging and podcasting) and I'm thinking, have so many years passed that no one knows who this person is they're criticizing? For example: > I bet the managers or whatever they fancy themselves to be at Fog Creek have very little appreciation for all of the small yet tangible things that employees go out of their way to do for them. I simply can't imagine any reasonable person who is familiar with Joel writing such a thing.
  - cpayne 13y ago
    I totally agree. Fog Creek are incredibly transparent, both internally and externally. There are quite a few negative comments in this thread that I just can't understand. Fog Creek are transparent on who earns [1]what. For those who have complained in this thread, I'd love to know how much more you are earning, and can I have a job there too! [1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000038.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000038.html
  - lucisferre 13y ago
    I don't think anyone needs to know anything about Joel to criticize these policies. Having an opinion about Joel should really have no bearing on the discussion.
    - mistermann 13y ago
      Certainly it does. If the tone of the message is inconsistent with his many years of writing, then you should suspect that there is a high possibility that the message came out wrong, or you misinterpreted it.
  - RogerL 13y ago
    This blog post was not written by Joel, nor does not sound like Joel. I think the comments are justified; the blog post feels quite abrasive to me. It's a little hard to put my finger on it, but the repeated distinction between work and vacation is a bit grating. Contrast this with a company like Netflix that don't count vacation days, and that assume that it their job to ascertain the productivity of their employees. I don't know, the whole post just doesn't sit 'right' with me. It's sort of "I bust my gut for you, I even try to work while I'm visiting with family, and you put me down for not having a room with a door that shuts and tell me I'm on vacation?!? (expletive deleted)" That's probably not at all how it is as Fog Creek, but that's the feeling I get from this blog post. Probably just unfortunate wording.
    - slantyyz 13y ago
      >> Probably just unfortunate wording. Yes. People sometimes spend too much time parsing tone of written text (hmm, I wonder why the OP talks about using video for face-to-face communication?). I can't tell you how many times I've told people working for me to stop spending time parsing the tone of an email from a coworker or client and just pick up the phone and call them. Most of the time, any concerns with a poorly worded (or angry-sounding) e-mail are cleared up with a 2 minute conversation.
    - mistermann 13y ago
      Very well written negative critique.
    - cpayne 13y ago
      It's HR policy document! Which part of any HR documentation isn't abrasive?
jaggederest 13y ago
As someone who works remotely, I think the really key things are institutional, rather than individual. They discuss moving everything to online, and that's essentially the biggest part of what you need. When "showing up to work" no longer includes going out to coffee in the mornings, but instead means logging onto the chat room and wishing everyone good morning, you've achieved a measurable step. Isolated office space, all those things are nice to have, but without having everything available via TCP/IP, it's a nonstarter. I've worked from many an airport that essentially fits none of these criteria without too many problems aside from reliable power supply - the nice thing about working remotely is that you can tune your environment to your own tastes.
- daigoba66 13y ago
  I concur. I think another useful strategy is to treat all employees as remote workers even when at then office. This way there isn't as big a context switch and you can more effectively work from anywhere.
utnick 13y ago
This seems like a lot of rules... and kind of unfriendly. Especially for just a short stint working remotely. Whats the worst that could happen if one of the workers has a less than ideal setup while temporarily working remotely for a few days? Would it really affect company outcomes? If not, I think developer happiness would be improved by having a more laissez-faire attitude from management.
- fphhotchips 13y ago
  To me this isn't about seeming friendly or unfriendly, it's about defining boundaries of what is vacation time and what isn't. It's about saying "No, what you're doing isn't working from home, it's vacation. Don't feel guilty about not getting anything done, just go and have a break." Compare that to being fuzzy about it - you're not really having a decent break (because you're trying to get work done) and you're not getting any work done (because your 8 year old niece is pulling on your shirt, your brother wants to go golfing and your dad has the TV up extra loud).
  - LordHumungous 13y ago
    That's why a good manager should define goals of things that need to get done. As long as the goals are being met, management should allow their developers the freedom to choose their own work environment and hours, within reasonable bounds. Demanding that your employees have headsets at home is called micromanaging.
    - kamaal 13y ago
      >>That's why a good manager should define goals of things that need to get done. Good managers are nearly extinct species, whom you encounter once in a while in years. The remainder get to become managers by their political work and a results oriented work environment is something they will never build. Because if we were to measure progress by results, those managers will be the first to be fired. >>As long as the goals are being met, management should allow their developers the freedom to choose their own work environment and hours Their goals are very different than our goals. The goal of leaders is to produce results. The goal of management is to keep the wheels running, regardless of whether the running produces any results. A good manager is automatically a leader.
ryankshaw 13y ago
often, even though I normally work in my office, I will take a few hours to go work under a tree in a park. I used to worry a lot about my wifi hotspot situation but I've found that sometimes, not having the internet at all is good to get you ultra-focused on the task you are working on, especially when you've got your entire dev environment on your laptop. no coworker interruptions, no HN, no Twitter, not even if you wanted them. Also, being in real sunlight (although in the shade) & outside is great for the mind.
rickjames28 13y ago
I found that a previous job where I could work remotely here and there, I was extremely productive. So much time is wasted on the getting ready to go out (more than just grabbing a shower and throwing on some jeans/shorts and a t-shirt), doing the half hour or more commute, "settling into the office" (chitchatting with your co-workers). And then I was ready to blow that taco stand by the end of day. While at home I tended to work longer hours and sometimes twice as productive. But remote desktop just sucks no matter how fast your connection is.
sigre 13y ago
This reads like yet another autocratic, micro-managing HR document. "Have a room with a door that shuts." Seriously? How about this: hire smart people you trust, give them whatever tools and support they need to do their jobs most productively, then get out of the way.
- legutierr 13y ago
  Rules like this usually exist because there were people who did the opposite at some time in the past. It's a simple enough requirement; isn't having it better than disallowing remote work, or disciplining someone for problems created by not having a door (kid runs in in the middle of a staff or client meeting) when no such requirement was previously specified? I would say one of the tools required to be productive as a programmer is a focused work space. You can give that tool to people who come to the office. But if someone works from home, that's the one tool they have to provide themselves.
- jacques_chester 13y ago
  > "Have a room with a door that shuts." Seriously? Yes. Seriously: http://www.dorsethouse.com/books/pw.html http://www.dorsethouse.com/books/pw.html > How about this: hire smart people you trust, give them whatever tools and support they need to do their jobs most productively, then get out of the way. Good idea: http://www.dorsethouse.com/books/pw.html http://www.dorsethouse.com/books/pw.html
  - parennoob 13y ago
    I don't understand -- if you could give some rational, reasoned argument or study that shows that smart people are very less productive on an average if they are working remotely instead of repeatedly chanting the link to a book whose reviews read "Bill Gates has built a company full of managers who read Peopleware" (that is supposed to be a plus?), your argument might make more sense.
    - jacques_chester 13y ago
      Firstly I was pointing to the origin of "a door that shuts". It's not an example of micromanagement, it's an example of a finding from a study performed by IBM that programmers in private offices were more productive on any measure. Secondly I was pointing out that the same book also tells managers to recruit bright people, give them goals, enable their work, and then go away. I suspect Peopleware is the most widely not-actually-read book in this industry.
mrgreenfur 13y ago
Seems pretty micromanagey and harsh. Why so many rules? I work with tons of remote people and appreciate the headset and bandwidth requirements, but it could certainly be phrased better. How about like this: "All new hires are given a nice headset, please use it, no one likes static or echo."
kevinconroy 13y ago
Seem like too many rules for you? Use this as a reminder about why it's important to ask probing questions whenever you interview for a job. Find out what the culture is like and if it is a good fit for you. I know several developers who thrive with the environmental conditions listed here and would love having the company have rules to enforce these conditions. I also know several developers who would burn out. It's vitally important to find something that's a good fit for you. No need to hate on their rules if it works for their team. Edit: Also, if you don't like this list, what would rules does your team have in place to ensure an effective, productive remote work policy? Does it scale up with the team?
- seiji 13y ago
  After looking at it again, it isn't a crazy number of rules (some are overly demanding, like video chat), but the rules seem to exist because they are trying to codify behavior of people not completely gelled into their teams. When I've worked with teams where everybody gets along, there's always updates or chats flying around with everybody telling everybody else when and where they'll be doing what for how long without any guidelines, prompting, or pompousness.
  - tghw 13y ago
    Video chat seems trivial, but we found out the hard way it's pretty important for team communication.[0] Think of all the impromptu meetings you have on site, just popping into someone's office to ask them about something, pulling someone else in, and ending up having an important design discussion. It's much harder to do in a chat room. [0] As mentioned elsewhere, I was Fog Creek's first full-time remote dev.
    - seivan 13y ago
      Yay for context switches. Because we all know how much developers love being interrupted for something that is probably documented - if it isn't probably should be.
andrewcooke 13y ago
i work from home and all the advice here is sensible, and describes how i work (except that you don't need that much upstream bandwidth for google meetup). yet, as others have said, there's a bad vibe to this article. i do these things because they make sense for me. maybe they make sense for many others too. but what i expect from an employer is the trust that i will know what works for myself. working from home depends completely on trust. if you need rules like these it sounds like you're either making bad hires, or you have control issues. couldn't you replace them with: "you can work remotely, but it's your responsibility to make it work"? and if you really must, add "here are some things you should probably consider: good bandwidth; remote desktop access; time zones; ..."
vacri 13y ago
Being able to participate in a video conference usually means at least 5 mbps up Bollocks. Just bollocks.
happywolf 13y ago
I am just curious what is the impetus to all these rules. To me it seems the system has been abused until the management decided to define boundaries. In fact, these rules make sense, to the point if one could be hired by FC, they have no reason not to know these. If rules need to be explicitly spelled out, I am worried the issue would be far more subtle than written rules can address. (hint: cancelling WFH by Yahoo)
- tghw 13y ago
  I am. At least partly. I was the first remote dev at Fog Creek, and I can see very much where some of these rules came from. There are essentially two main themes here. The first is communication. When I started work, we hadn't been doing video chats, since everyone was on site. A lot of communication happened in HipChat and everything else was either at the weekly stand-up or impromptu meetings between two devs. However, once someone is offsite, all of the in-person communication is cut off. This removes context from the chat rooms, and filling in that context over chat is often more difficult than just explaining it. In our case, this was compounded by us being forced to abandon our chat software to find a new system and going through two inferior systems, which cut me off even more from the teams. If regular video calls had been policy, it would have been much easier to work out the chat situation. The second is distraction-free work environments. Early in my remote work, I went to visit my significant other in another country for several weeks, working remotely while she was at work. Unfortunately, there was a problem getting her internet installed before I got there, so I spent the first week working from a McDonald's (it had the most reliable wifi). I know my productivity suffered for it during that week. Fortunately, we got internet working and I had a better environment to work from after that. I left the company about 18 months ago, but from what I understand, none of these policies are due to any intentional abuse of the system, but more from experience with the difficulties of remote work in a company that is used to having everyone on site.
wallywax 13y ago
It's not just cheap internet access that has slow upstream. I have the second from the top tier of service from the fastest ISP in my area (a major and very affluent suburb of an extremely large US city) and my upstream is only 2mbps. Moving to the top tier, which costs over $100/mo, would only get me 4mbps. It's annoying for sure. But, that said, I do video conferences on a regular basis from my home office and it works perfectly fine. I feel like that guideline is both unrealistic in the US market, and also unnecessary.
m0nastic 13y ago
I worked from home exclusively for about 6 years (this year is the first time I've been back working at an office), and admittedly, my work almost never involved other people (except for clients, who are remote even if I was in an office, as the majority of the application testing I've done was remote testing), so I'm certainly outside of their demographic. But the one thing which just seemed weird to read was that it gives the impression of everyone being constantly chatting and doing video calls at a moment's notice, which seems to run counter to the "give every developer their own office" and create a distraction-free environment for programmers. I think I would feel constantly interrupted working in that environment, which seems counter to Fogcreek's whole persona as a place that's "developer-oriented".
parennoob 13y ago
"You still have stuff like chat, commit messages, code reviews, cases, Trello boards, etc. Be a little paranoid for this time about showing your work. It will help you feel good about your time, and us feel good about granting it." Run through a de-weaselizer, this reads: "Be a good little pet, and do an extra set of tricks when we take you out to the park, so you feel good about running around in the park and we feel good about granting you the privilege to go out once a week." Yeah, bullshit. Place where I work operates on a culture of complete trust, period. Example: Once, a guy on my team had to go to his parents' house out in the country and was stuck with a slow internet connection. No problem, he did some stuff, stuck it out for as much as he could and then shelved it. I bet he enjoyed his time there much more than he would have sitting in a bunch of chatrooms anyway, and he did it on company time. He was much happier when he came back, and probably did twice the usual amount of work when he did on average. As his co-worker who was working when this guy was at his parents' house, did I feel slighted or angry at him? No, for heaven's sake -- he was seeing his family, and enjoying a few choice, uninterrupted hours with them. Webapps can fucking wait. I was perfectly happy doing his share of the work. The culture in the American software industry glorifies ass-in-seat hours (directly or indirectly -- this notion of "exhibiting your productivity" is just another version of ass-in-seat hours) at a cost to actual productivity, happiness, and general well-being by waving the distant promise of some sort of vague payout in front of you, and getting you to constantly compete with your co-workers at "putting in more time". Reject this sort of rubbish unconditionally if you have even the slightest choice.
- mistermann 13y ago
  In your opinion would it be safe to assume employee morale at Fog Creek is low due to working in such an obviously tyrannical environment?
  - parennoob 13y ago
    Employee morale at my local McDonald's is tremendous. They also have tons of these micro-managey rules. Does that mean you would instantly want to work there?
vinceguidry 13y ago
I don't think I would enjoy the work environment here, and it's not because of the rules or whatever. Good development seems to me to be a very solitary activity. The more people you involve, the more friction you create, the more time and energy you burn in meetings, the more you end up arguing about things you really shouldn't be arguing about. I'm the sole back-end Rails developer at my company and I like it that way. At my last job there was one other guy I could have been working with, but it was much faster just doing everything myself. (we weren't just coders) When I freelanced, I ended up having to run a front-end guy off a project because his work wasn't good enough and it was holding everything up. Once I redid his work the rest of the job went swimmingly. I'm the kind of dev you can hand a vague idea to and leave me for three weeks and I'll come back with a finished project that's exactly what you were looking for and more. It just seems like that's the right way to make stuff, and I don't think I could work any other way anymore. I couldn't work at Fog Creek because I can just tell I wouldn't be half as productive there.
- bloodorange 13y ago
  However, if you really "click" with another developer, you can achieve more than double one person's output by pair-programming (if you also take quality into account). This can't work by pairing any two developers arbitrarily.
LordHumungous 13y ago
>at Fog Creek, it’s sort of assumed that everyone’s working steadily and diligently. In the absence of new information, the assumption is that you’re producing. Well that's a dumb assumption. The managers at Fog Creek don't do code reviews, don't look at commit logs, don't look at the features that developers have built? They just assume that everyone is being productive because they are in the office. >When you step outside the HQ work environment, you should flip that burden of proof. The burden is on you to show that you’re being productive. At my job productivity is shown by the code I commit and the features I build, not the time that I visibly appear to be typing away at my keyboard. Apparently Fog Creek does it a little differently. I'm glad I don't work there.
- thezilch 13y ago
  No. RTFM It’s because a few normal ways of staying involved (face time, informal chats, lunch) have been removed. From experiences of my own and from stories of my co-workers', this is the most brutal part of WFH. It takes a lot more of yourself to work diligently when you're alone and don't get the same face time, and this is about, frankly, stating how to achieve the same advantages in the next best way. Your co-workers may not know how to get that face-time back from you either; you need to initiate.
- tghw 13y ago
  > The managers at Fog Creek don't do code reviews, don't look at commit logs, don't look at the features that developers have built? Correct. The only managers are the founders and maybe one other person. Everyone else is part of a dev team. The managers trust the teams to do what they need to do. > At my job productivity is shown by the code I commit and the features I build, not the time that I visibly appear to be typing away at my keyboard. What gives you the impression that anyone is counting time at the keyboard? Having been both an on-site employee and the first remote dev, I can tell you it was very much about getting your code written, nothing more.
bliti 13y ago
I think these are reasonable expectations. Working remotely does not imply that you get to set the boundaries and rules of employment. It merely allows you to work from another place. I have been working remotely for the past 4+ years, and actually do so in the way they describe. I have an office with a door, do not babysit or have people around during work hours, let people know (family included) that I am at work, and make sure to communicate a lot with the team. You can't take your child to a non-remote job, you can't have your friends or parents dropping by, and and can't isolate yourself from others. It is strange that working remotely would allow for those things. Not really. Less so when the work is programming. Which requires a good amount of concentration and quietness.
- LordHumungous 13y ago
  Their ideas are actually good but I think phrasing it in a tone of "do this or we will think you are a slacker" is counter productive. A better approach would be to say "if you are working from home, here are some ideas that we highly encourage to make your work environment better."
  - bliti 13y ago
    Good point. I did not think the tone would create that impression in others. One point in your feedback I might be confusing is the following. Seems that some people might believe that working remotely allows them other freedoms. Am I interpreting this incorrectly? If not, may you ( or another member) elaborate more?
    - LordHumungous 13y ago
      Yes, working remotely allows many more freedoms. For example, you can work in your underwear if you want. You can play your music as loud as you like. Most rules a company may set for your home work environment can't really be enforced, so I think that by allowing an employee to work remotely you are automatically trusting them to get work done without supervision. If you feel you can't give them that trust, then don't let them work remotely.
rrrhys 13y ago
As an IT worker with no possibility for remote work currently I would happily agree to this policy which other posters (who presumably do some remote work) seem so unhappy about.
sergiotapia 13y ago
I work remotely exclusive and the list present here doesn't seem that bad to me. I do feel it's a slight bugger to have to constantly ping someone that 'I'm here!'. The submitted commits and code reviews should be plenty for that. The place I work has similar guidelines and we communicate via Skype instead of Google Hangouts - and it works very well. There has to be _some_ interaction between team members, otherwise you're just a code-spitting robot, no? I enjoy the daily meetings as it lets me see what everyone is up to and let's me share what I've been doing as well. I guess I like working in a team that talks.
- tghw 13y ago
  They pretty explicitly call out "chat, commit messages, code reviews, cases, Trello boards" as ways of pinging the rest of the team.
georgebonnr 13y ago
I think the only thing that would dissuade me from working at this company is the poor communication of these rules. There is an easy way to communicate clear goals and principles without sounding passive aggressive and authoritarian. This writer obviously wasn't aware of it didn't care. I can handle high expectations. But I would be miserable somewhere where poor communication was the norm.
kamaal 13y ago
One of the biggest hypocrisy that exists here in India at least with regards to 'Remote Work' or 'Work From Home' policy is how late night and after office-hour work hours are handled. While companies come up with all sorts of reasons to deny work-from-home during the day, they some how assume all those reasons(which they them self give) will magically vanish while employees reach home in the evening and now employees should be able to work late nights from home. How does this work out? During the day you don't want employees to work from home, telling them they won't be productive and after office hours you expect them to be most productive while working from home?
Mc_Big_G 13y ago
No thanks. This is all completely the opposite of how I want to work and I would never ask my dev resources to work like this. I wouldn't employ anyone that thought this was all a good idea and can't think of a single high quality dev that would accept it.
bithive123 13y ago
Can someone explain to me why this page starts with a picture captioned "know thyself" of a cow reading a placard about cows? Just when I think it makes sense...no, I'm confused.
- RoyceFullerton 13y ago
  Because Reddit front page
OldSchool 13y ago
After decades of successful remote work on both sides of the paycheck, I find this recent trend pushing against it with formality and micromanagement pretty revolting. There are jobs that require specifically to-the-second availability called "customer service agent" or "receptionist," and timeliness is their whole point of existing and they pay a lot less which tells me that just being there isn't worth all that much. Otherwise, wherever and whenever you're working, you should be judged on the outcome of those projects for which you're responsible, nothing else. If collaboration is required, your smart people (you hire people that are smarter than you in their field right?) will know they need to deliver their best in order to keep their jobs so they will work it out themselves. How that's going to happen, whether if it means getting together in an office, temporary conference room, Skype, or google hangout they probably know more options than you do. If you want to reasonably keep status on them, hold a standup once a day. Anything regularly beyond that specifically for no other purpose than management is telling them that you don't trust them and therefore they shouldn't trust you.
nilkn 13y ago
I actually don't think these rules are unreasonable at all for permanent remote work (though they seem a tad stringent for ad hoc temporary remote stints). I mean, is it seriously asking that much for you to get a good headset and have a room for working? Working from home at all is a tremendous privilege, and these strike me as relatively minor requests over the long run. If it was requested that you dress up, then yes, that would be ridiculous. However, the tone of this post honestly sounds a little frustrated with remote work rather than supportive of it, and I think that is what is leading to the comments here. After reading this, my impression is the author doesn't trust remote developers (despite a claim to the contrary) and that he generally looks down on remote developers. I would worry that remote developers are not seen as first-class citizens of the developer ecosystem at the company. In short, even though I agree with these rules for the most part, remote development is something that needs to either be rejected or embraced, not regulated. There's not much middle-ground, because that's going to lead to micro-management.
bowlofpetunias 13y ago
Seems ridiculously anal to me. Our only policy is: a) Make sure your team knows where you're at. b) Get the job done. No approval, know anal micromanagement about how you do your job. If you can deliver whilst sitting in the garden watching the kids, kudos to you. Not coincidentally, the same policy applies to working in the office...
venomsnake 13y ago
I have been working remotely for 7 years now. What made it possible: 1. Strict work hours - I must be online at 0900 and respond on IMs and such until 1800. You can work outside of that time if feeling like it and the occasional long lunch break is not a problem as long as you have a phone with you. 2. Fast broadband. 3. Dedicated room.
trustfundbaby 13y ago
I was excited about reading this, but came away very very disappointed. I guess I was expecting Fog Creek to be a lot more gung-ho about working remotely and they weren't, but it wasn't just that, but the fact that they sounded the way the large companies I have worked with sound about remote arrangements ... like they're doing you a favor, instead of giving you a way to be awesome. To be fair,I have never run a company of any appreciable size, so I really can't argue with the way Fog Creek chooses to run things (they know what works best for them) ... but it just left me a little dismayed because either all the aspirational ideas I have about work will eventually be dashed when I do get to a position to run a company of my own, and I'll have to write things like "The burden is on you to show that you’re being productive" in the company handbook or Fog Creek just stopped being a company I looked up to in terms of company culture, neither of which is good.
- tghw 13y ago
  Fog Creek had a long standing no-remote policy. The first experiments to change that started about two years ago, when I moved away from New York and started working remote. They are still getting the hang of it, these policies seem to be another step in that process.
dangero 13y ago
I'm kind of surprised that remote working issues haven't been completely solved at this point and it seems like there's still a big opportunity there to start a business in that space. There are a lot of cultural barriers there I think that still need to be overcome. What if your company gave you 2 options: 1. Work in the office. 2. Work wherever you like, but let us install software on your computer that will monitor what you are doing at all times. Would you be offended? Would you consider the work from home option?
tghw 13y ago
I was Fog Creek's first full time remote dev. I left the company about 18 months ago to pursue my own company. There seems to be some confusion and questions in this thread, so let's do this: AMA (Ask Me Anything)
clarky07 13y ago
This sounds awful to me. I get that you're writing a paycheck and you want people to work, but that's got to get done on the hiring and firing end of things. Hire good workers. Fire people that don't work out. >Be a little paranoid for this time about showing your work. It will help you feel good about your time, and us feel good about granting it. The last section is just ridiculous imo. If someone is doing their job, you should know it. If they aren't doing their job, you should know that as well. Being paranoid about my job is not going to help me feel good about my time. Promise. It might make me start looking for a new place to work though.
ibstudios 13y ago
All of these things make sense to me. BTW are you guys using reportsfortrello.com yet? I think it would help with your "Team Awareness" rule since it allows you see all of the recent activities of other board members. full disclosure: I created reportsfortrello.com.
lawnchair_larry 13y ago
Can anyone recommend a good wireless headset for this?

91 points by MattRogish 13y ago

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

This is true old school thinking at its worst. If my employer is going to put up all these rules and barriers maybe I should put up a few of my own. I bet the managers or whatever they fancy themselves to be at Fog Creek have very little appreciation for all of the small yet tangible things that employees go out of their way to do for them. Things like answering important emails in the evening, especially when it is for a high profile client or partner. Staying late when critical bugs come up. Etc. I bet all that kind of stuff is just expected of the employees.

mistermann 13y ago
I'm just picking your comment at random out of this thread...do you know Joel Spolsky who runs Fog Creek? I'm reading all these critical comments in this thread and reconciling it in my head with what I know of him (from his extensive blogging and podcasting) and I'm thinking, have so many years passed that no one knows who this person is they're criticizing? For example: > I bet the managers or whatever they fancy themselves to be at Fog Creek have very little appreciation for all of the small yet tangible things that employees go out of their way to do for them. I simply can't imagine any reasonable person who is familiar with Joel writing such a thing.
- cpayne 13y ago
  I totally agree. Fog Creek are incredibly transparent, both internally and externally. There are quite a few negative comments in this thread that I just can't understand. Fog Creek are transparent on who earns [1]what. For those who have complained in this thread, I'd love to know how much more you are earning, and can I have a job there too! [1] http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000038.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000038.html
- lucisferre 13y ago
  I don't think anyone needs to know anything about Joel to criticize these policies. Having an opinion about Joel should really have no bearing on the discussion.
  - mistermann 13y ago
    Certainly it does. If the tone of the message is inconsistent with his many years of writing, then you should suspect that there is a high possibility that the message came out wrong, or you misinterpreted it.
- RogerL 13y ago
  This blog post was not written by Joel, nor does not sound like Joel. I think the comments are justified; the blog post feels quite abrasive to me. It's a little hard to put my finger on it, but the repeated distinction between work and vacation is a bit grating. Contrast this with a company like Netflix that don't count vacation days, and that assume that it their job to ascertain the productivity of their employees. I don't know, the whole post just doesn't sit 'right' with me. It's sort of "I bust my gut for you, I even try to work while I'm visiting with family, and you put me down for not having a room with a door that shuts and tell me I'm on vacation?!? (expletive deleted)" That's probably not at all how it is as Fog Creek, but that's the feeling I get from this blog post. Probably just unfortunate wording.
  - slantyyz 13y ago
    >> Probably just unfortunate wording. Yes. People sometimes spend too much time parsing tone of written text (hmm, I wonder why the OP talks about using video for face-to-face communication?). I can't tell you how many times I've told people working for me to stop spending time parsing the tone of an email from a coworker or client and just pick up the phone and call them. Most of the time, any concerns with a poorly worded (or angry-sounding) e-mail are cleared up with a 2 minute conversation.
  - mistermann 13y ago
    Very well written negative critique.
  - cpayne 13y ago
    It's HR policy document! Which part of any HR documentation isn't abrasive?

jaggederest 13y ago

As someone who works remotely, I think the really key things are institutional, rather than individual. They discuss moving everything to online, and that's essentially the biggest part of what you need. When "showing up to work" no longer includes going out to coffee in the mornings, but instead means logging onto the chat room and wishing everyone good morning, you've achieved a measurable step. Isolated office space, all those things are nice to have, but without having everything available via TCP/IP, it's a nonstarter. I've worked from many an airport that essentially fits none of these criteria without too many problems aside from reliable power supply - the nice thing about working remotely is that you can tune your environment to your own tastes.

daigoba66 13y ago
I concur. I think another useful strategy is to treat all employees as remote workers even when at then office. This way there isn't as big a context switch and you can more effectively work from anywhere.

utnick 13y ago

This seems like a lot of rules... and kind of unfriendly. Especially for just a short stint working remotely. Whats the worst that could happen if one of the workers has a less than ideal setup while temporarily working remotely for a few days? Would it really affect company outcomes? If not, I think developer happiness would be improved by having a more laissez-faire attitude from management.

fphhotchips 13y ago
To me this isn't about seeming friendly or unfriendly, it's about defining boundaries of what is vacation time and what isn't. It's about saying "No, what you're doing isn't working from home, it's vacation. Don't feel guilty about not getting anything done, just go and have a break." Compare that to being fuzzy about it - you're not really having a decent break (because you're trying to get work done) and you're not getting any work done (because your 8 year old niece is pulling on your shirt, your brother wants to go golfing and your dad has the TV up extra loud).
- LordHumungous 13y ago
  That's why a good manager should define goals of things that need to get done. As long as the goals are being met, management should allow their developers the freedom to choose their own work environment and hours, within reasonable bounds. Demanding that your employees have headsets at home is called micromanaging.
  - kamaal 13y ago
    >>That's why a good manager should define goals of things that need to get done. Good managers are nearly extinct species, whom you encounter once in a while in years. The remainder get to become managers by their political work and a results oriented work environment is something they will never build. Because if we were to measure progress by results, those managers will be the first to be fired. >>As long as the goals are being met, management should allow their developers the freedom to choose their own work environment and hours Their goals are very different than our goals. The goal of leaders is to produce results. The goal of management is to keep the wheels running, regardless of whether the running produces any results. A good manager is automatically a leader.

ryankshaw 13y ago

often, even though I normally work in my office, I will take a few hours to go work under a tree in a park. I used to worry a lot about my wifi hotspot situation but I've found that sometimes, not having the internet at all is good to get you ultra-focused on the task you are working on, especially when you've got your entire dev environment on your laptop. no coworker interruptions, no HN, no Twitter, not even if you wanted them. Also, being in real sunlight (although in the shade) & outside is great for the mind.

rickjames28 13y ago

I found that a previous job where I could work remotely here and there, I was extremely productive. So much time is wasted on the getting ready to go out (more than just grabbing a shower and throwing on some jeans/shorts and a t-shirt), doing the half hour or more commute, "settling into the office" (chitchatting with your co-workers). And then I was ready to blow that taco stand by the end of day. While at home I tended to work longer hours and sometimes twice as productive. But remote desktop just sucks no matter how fast your connection is.

sigre 13y ago

This reads like yet another autocratic, micro-managing HR document. "Have a room with a door that shuts." Seriously? How about this: hire smart people you trust, give them whatever tools and support they need to do their jobs most productively, then get out of the way.

legutierr 13y ago
Rules like this usually exist because there were people who did the opposite at some time in the past. It's a simple enough requirement; isn't having it better than disallowing remote work, or disciplining someone for problems created by not having a door (kid runs in in the middle of a staff or client meeting) when no such requirement was previously specified? I would say one of the tools required to be productive as a programmer is a focused work space. You can give that tool to people who come to the office. But if someone works from home, that's the one tool they have to provide themselves.
jacques_chester 13y ago
> "Have a room with a door that shuts." Seriously? Yes. Seriously: http://www.dorsethouse.com/books/pw.html http://www.dorsethouse.com/books/pw.html > How about this: hire smart people you trust, give them whatever tools and support they need to do their jobs most productively, then get out of the way. Good idea: http://www.dorsethouse.com/books/pw.html http://www.dorsethouse.com/books/pw.html
- parennoob 13y ago
  I don't understand -- if you could give some rational, reasoned argument or study that shows that smart people are very less productive on an average if they are working remotely instead of repeatedly chanting the link to a book whose reviews read "Bill Gates has built a company full of managers who read Peopleware" (that is supposed to be a plus?), your argument might make more sense.
  - jacques_chester 13y ago
    Firstly I was pointing to the origin of "a door that shuts". It's not an example of micromanagement, it's an example of a finding from a study performed by IBM that programmers in private offices were more productive on any measure. Secondly I was pointing out that the same book also tells managers to recruit bright people, give them goals, enable their work, and then go away. I suspect Peopleware is the most widely not-actually-read book in this industry.

mrgreenfur 13y ago

Seems pretty micromanagey and harsh. Why so many rules? I work with tons of remote people and appreciate the headset and bandwidth requirements, but it could certainly be phrased better. How about like this: "All new hires are given a nice headset, please use it, no one likes static or echo."

kevinconroy 13y ago

Seem like too many rules for you? Use this as a reminder about why it's important to ask probing questions whenever you interview for a job. Find out what the culture is like and if it is a good fit for you. I know several developers who thrive with the environmental conditions listed here and would love having the company have rules to enforce these conditions. I also know several developers who would burn out. It's vitally important to find something that's a good fit for you. No need to hate on their rules if it works for their team. Edit: Also, if you don't like this list, what would rules does your team have in place to ensure an effective, productive remote work policy? Does it scale up with the team?

seiji 13y ago
After looking at it again, it isn't a crazy number of rules (some are overly demanding, like video chat), but the rules seem to exist because they are trying to codify behavior of people not completely gelled into their teams. When I've worked with teams where everybody gets along, there's always updates or chats flying around with everybody telling everybody else when and where they'll be doing what for how long without any guidelines, prompting, or pompousness.
- tghw 13y ago
  Video chat seems trivial, but we found out the hard way it's pretty important for team communication.[0] Think of all the impromptu meetings you have on site, just popping into someone's office to ask them about something, pulling someone else in, and ending up having an important design discussion. It's much harder to do in a chat room. [0] As mentioned elsewhere, I was Fog Creek's first full-time remote dev.
  - seivan 13y ago
    Yay for context switches. Because we all know how much developers love being interrupted for something that is probably documented - if it isn't probably should be.

andrewcooke 13y ago

i work from home and all the advice here is sensible, and describes how i work (except that you don't need that much upstream bandwidth for google meetup). yet, as others have said, there's a bad vibe to this article. i do these things because they make sense for me. maybe they make sense for many others too. but what i expect from an employer is the trust that i will know what works for myself. working from home depends completely on trust. if you need rules like these it sounds like you're either making bad hires, or you have control issues. couldn't you replace them with: "you can work remotely, but it's your responsibility to make it work"? and if you really must, add "here are some things you should probably consider: good bandwidth; remote desktop access; time zones; ..."

vacri 13y ago

Being able to participate in a video conference usually means at least 5 mbps up Bollocks. Just bollocks.

happywolf 13y ago

I am just curious what is the impetus to all these rules. To me it seems the system has been abused until the management decided to define boundaries. In fact, these rules make sense, to the point if one could be hired by FC, they have no reason not to know these. If rules need to be explicitly spelled out, I am worried the issue would be far more subtle than written rules can address. (hint: cancelling WFH by Yahoo)

tghw 13y ago
I am. At least partly. I was the first remote dev at Fog Creek, and I can see very much where some of these rules came from. There are essentially two main themes here. The first is communication. When I started work, we hadn't been doing video chats, since everyone was on site. A lot of communication happened in HipChat and everything else was either at the weekly stand-up or impromptu meetings between two devs. However, once someone is offsite, all of the in-person communication is cut off. This removes context from the chat rooms, and filling in that context over chat is often more difficult than just explaining it. In our case, this was compounded by us being forced to abandon our chat software to find a new system and going through two inferior systems, which cut me off even more from the teams. If regular video calls had been policy, it would have been much easier to work out the chat situation. The second is distraction-free work environments. Early in my remote work, I went to visit my significant other in another country for several weeks, working remotely while she was at work. Unfortunately, there was a problem getting her internet installed before I got there, so I spent the first week working from a McDonald's (it had the most reliable wifi). I know my productivity suffered for it during that week. Fortunately, we got internet working and I had a better environment to work from after that. I left the company about 18 months ago, but from what I understand, none of these policies are due to any intentional abuse of the system, but more from experience with the difficulties of remote work in a company that is used to having everyone on site.

wallywax 13y ago

It's not just cheap internet access that has slow upstream. I have the second from the top tier of service from the fastest ISP in my area (a major and very affluent suburb of an extremely large US city) and my upstream is only 2mbps. Moving to the top tier, which costs over $100/mo, would only get me 4mbps. It's annoying for sure. But, that said, I do video conferences on a regular basis from my home office and it works perfectly fine. I feel like that guideline is both unrealistic in the US market, and also unnecessary.

m0nastic 13y ago

I worked from home exclusively for about 6 years (this year is the first time I've been back working at an office), and admittedly, my work almost never involved other people (except for clients, who are remote even if I was in an office, as the majority of the application testing I've done was remote testing), so I'm certainly outside of their demographic. But the one thing which just seemed weird to read was that it gives the impression of everyone being constantly chatting and doing video calls at a moment's notice, which seems to run counter to the "give every developer their own office" and create a distraction-free environment for programmers. I think I would feel constantly interrupted working in that environment, which seems counter to Fogcreek's whole persona as a place that's "developer-oriented".

parennoob 13y ago

"You still have stuff like chat, commit messages, code reviews, cases, Trello boards, etc. Be a little paranoid for this time about showing your work. It will help you feel good about your time, and us feel good about granting it." Run through a de-weaselizer, this reads: "Be a good little pet, and do an extra set of tricks when we take you out to the park, so you feel good about running around in the park and we feel good about granting you the privilege to go out once a week." Yeah, bullshit. Place where I work operates on a culture of complete trust, period. Example: Once, a guy on my team had to go to his parents' house out in the country and was stuck with a slow internet connection. No problem, he did some stuff, stuck it out for as much as he could and then shelved it. I bet he enjoyed his time there much more than he would have sitting in a bunch of chatrooms anyway, and he did it on company time. He was much happier when he came back, and probably did twice the usual amount of work when he did on average. As his co-worker who was working when this guy was at his parents' house, did I feel slighted or angry at him? No, for heaven's sake -- he was seeing his family, and enjoying a few choice, uninterrupted hours with them. Webapps can fucking wait. I was perfectly happy doing his share of the work. The culture in the American software industry glorifies ass-in-seat hours (directly or indirectly -- this notion of "exhibiting your productivity" is just another version of ass-in-seat hours) at a cost to actual productivity, happiness, and general well-being by waving the distant promise of some sort of vague payout in front of you, and getting you to constantly compete with your co-workers at "putting in more time". Reject this sort of rubbish unconditionally if you have even the slightest choice.

mistermann 13y ago
In your opinion would it be safe to assume employee morale at Fog Creek is low due to working in such an obviously tyrannical environment?
- parennoob 13y ago
  Employee morale at my local McDonald's is tremendous. They also have tons of these micro-managey rules. Does that mean you would instantly want to work there?

vinceguidry 13y ago

I don't think I would enjoy the work environment here, and it's not because of the rules or whatever. Good development seems to me to be a very solitary activity. The more people you involve, the more friction you create, the more time and energy you burn in meetings, the more you end up arguing about things you really shouldn't be arguing about. I'm the sole back-end Rails developer at my company and I like it that way. At my last job there was one other guy I could have been working with, but it was much faster just doing everything myself. (we weren't just coders) When I freelanced, I ended up having to run a front-end guy off a project because his work wasn't good enough and it was holding everything up. Once I redid his work the rest of the job went swimmingly. I'm the kind of dev you can hand a vague idea to and leave me for three weeks and I'll come back with a finished project that's exactly what you were looking for and more. It just seems like that's the right way to make stuff, and I don't think I could work any other way anymore. I couldn't work at Fog Creek because I can just tell I wouldn't be half as productive there.

bloodorange 13y ago
However, if you really "click" with another developer, you can achieve more than double one person's output by pair-programming (if you also take quality into account). This can't work by pairing any two developers arbitrarily.

LordHumungous 13y ago

>at Fog Creek, it’s sort of assumed that everyone’s working steadily and diligently. In the absence of new information, the assumption is that you’re producing. Well that's a dumb assumption. The managers at Fog Creek don't do code reviews, don't look at commit logs, don't look at the features that developers have built? They just assume that everyone is being productive because they are in the office. >When you step outside the HQ work environment, you should flip that burden of proof. The burden is on you to show that you’re being productive. At my job productivity is shown by the code I commit and the features I build, not the time that I visibly appear to be typing away at my keyboard. Apparently Fog Creek does it a little differently. I'm glad I don't work there.

thezilch 13y ago
No. RTFM It’s because a few normal ways of staying involved (face time, informal chats, lunch) have been removed. From experiences of my own and from stories of my co-workers', this is the most brutal part of WFH. It takes a lot more of yourself to work diligently when you're alone and don't get the same face time, and this is about, frankly, stating how to achieve the same advantages in the next best way. Your co-workers may not know how to get that face-time back from you either; you need to initiate.
tghw 13y ago
> The managers at Fog Creek don't do code reviews, don't look at commit logs, don't look at the features that developers have built? Correct. The only managers are the founders and maybe one other person. Everyone else is part of a dev team. The managers trust the teams to do what they need to do. > At my job productivity is shown by the code I commit and the features I build, not the time that I visibly appear to be typing away at my keyboard. What gives you the impression that anyone is counting time at the keyboard? Having been both an on-site employee and the first remote dev, I can tell you it was very much about getting your code written, nothing more.

bliti 13y ago

I think these are reasonable expectations. Working remotely does not imply that you get to set the boundaries and rules of employment. It merely allows you to work from another place. I have been working remotely for the past 4+ years, and actually do so in the way they describe. I have an office with a door, do not babysit or have people around during work hours, let people know (family included) that I am at work, and make sure to communicate a lot with the team. You can't take your child to a non-remote job, you can't have your friends or parents dropping by, and and can't isolate yourself from others. It is strange that working remotely would allow for those things. Not really. Less so when the work is programming. Which requires a good amount of concentration and quietness.

LordHumungous 13y ago
Their ideas are actually good but I think phrasing it in a tone of "do this or we will think you are a slacker" is counter productive. A better approach would be to say "if you are working from home, here are some ideas that we highly encourage to make your work environment better."
- bliti 13y ago
  Good point. I did not think the tone would create that impression in others. One point in your feedback I might be confusing is the following. Seems that some people might believe that working remotely allows them other freedoms. Am I interpreting this incorrectly? If not, may you ( or another member) elaborate more?
  - LordHumungous 13y ago
    Yes, working remotely allows many more freedoms. For example, you can work in your underwear if you want. You can play your music as loud as you like. Most rules a company may set for your home work environment can't really be enforced, so I think that by allowing an employee to work remotely you are automatically trusting them to get work done without supervision. If you feel you can't give them that trust, then don't let them work remotely.

rrrhys 13y ago

As an IT worker with no possibility for remote work currently I would happily agree to this policy which other posters (who presumably do some remote work) seem so unhappy about.

sergiotapia 13y ago

I work remotely exclusive and the list present here doesn't seem that bad to me. I do feel it's a slight bugger to have to constantly ping someone that 'I'm here!'. The submitted commits and code reviews should be plenty for that. The place I work has similar guidelines and we communicate via Skype instead of Google Hangouts - and it works very well. There has to be _some_ interaction between team members, otherwise you're just a code-spitting robot, no? I enjoy the daily meetings as it lets me see what everyone is up to and let's me share what I've been doing as well. I guess I like working in a team that talks.

tghw 13y ago
They pretty explicitly call out "chat, commit messages, code reviews, cases, Trello boards" as ways of pinging the rest of the team.

georgebonnr 13y ago

I think the only thing that would dissuade me from working at this company is the poor communication of these rules. There is an easy way to communicate clear goals and principles without sounding passive aggressive and authoritarian. This writer obviously wasn't aware of it didn't care. I can handle high expectations. But I would be miserable somewhere where poor communication was the norm.

kamaal 13y ago

One of the biggest hypocrisy that exists here in India at least with regards to 'Remote Work' or 'Work From Home' policy is how late night and after office-hour work hours are handled. While companies come up with all sorts of reasons to deny work-from-home during the day, they some how assume all those reasons(which they them self give) will magically vanish while employees reach home in the evening and now employees should be able to work late nights from home. How does this work out? During the day you don't want employees to work from home, telling them they won't be productive and after office hours you expect them to be most productive while working from home?

Mc_Big_G 13y ago

No thanks. This is all completely the opposite of how I want to work and I would never ask my dev resources to work like this. I wouldn't employ anyone that thought this was all a good idea and can't think of a single high quality dev that would accept it.

bithive123 13y ago

Can someone explain to me why this page starts with a picture captioned "know thyself" of a cow reading a placard about cows? Just when I think it makes sense...no, I'm confused.

RoyceFullerton 13y ago
Because Reddit front page

OldSchool 13y ago

After decades of successful remote work on both sides of the paycheck, I find this recent trend pushing against it with formality and micromanagement pretty revolting. There are jobs that require specifically to-the-second availability called "customer service agent" or "receptionist," and timeliness is their whole point of existing and they pay a lot less which tells me that just being there isn't worth all that much. Otherwise, wherever and whenever you're working, you should be judged on the outcome of those projects for which you're responsible, nothing else. If collaboration is required, your smart people (you hire people that are smarter than you in their field right?) will know they need to deliver their best in order to keep their jobs so they will work it out themselves. How that's going to happen, whether if it means getting together in an office, temporary conference room, Skype, or google hangout they probably know more options than you do. If you want to reasonably keep status on them, hold a standup once a day. Anything regularly beyond that specifically for no other purpose than management is telling them that you don't trust them and therefore they shouldn't trust you.

nilkn 13y ago

I actually don't think these rules are unreasonable at all for permanent remote work (though they seem a tad stringent for ad hoc temporary remote stints). I mean, is it seriously asking that much for you to get a good headset and have a room for working? Working from home at all is a tremendous privilege, and these strike me as relatively minor requests over the long run. If it was requested that you dress up, then yes, that would be ridiculous. However, the tone of this post honestly sounds a little frustrated with remote work rather than supportive of it, and I think that is what is leading to the comments here. After reading this, my impression is the author doesn't trust remote developers (despite a claim to the contrary) and that he generally looks down on remote developers. I would worry that remote developers are not seen as first-class citizens of the developer ecosystem at the company. In short, even though I agree with these rules for the most part, remote development is something that needs to either be rejected or embraced, not regulated. There's not much middle-ground, because that's going to lead to micro-management.

bowlofpetunias 13y ago

Seems ridiculously anal to me. Our only policy is: a) Make sure your team knows where you're at. b) Get the job done. No approval, know anal micromanagement about how you do your job. If you can deliver whilst sitting in the garden watching the kids, kudos to you. Not coincidentally, the same policy applies to working in the office...

venomsnake 13y ago

I have been working remotely for 7 years now. What made it possible: 1. Strict work hours - I must be online at 0900 and respond on IMs and such until 1800. You can work outside of that time if feeling like it and the occasional long lunch break is not a problem as long as you have a phone with you. 2. Fast broadband. 3. Dedicated room.

trustfundbaby 13y ago

I was excited about reading this, but came away very very disappointed. I guess I was expecting Fog Creek to be a lot more gung-ho about working remotely and they weren't, but it wasn't just that, but the fact that they sounded the way the large companies I have worked with sound about remote arrangements ... like they're doing you a favor, instead of giving you a way to be awesome. To be fair,I have never run a company of any appreciable size, so I really can't argue with the way Fog Creek chooses to run things (they know what works best for them) ... but it just left me a little dismayed because either all the aspirational ideas I have about work will eventually be dashed when I do get to a position to run a company of my own, and I'll have to write things like "The burden is on you to show that you’re being productive" in the company handbook or Fog Creek just stopped being a company I looked up to in terms of company culture, neither of which is good.

tghw 13y ago
Fog Creek had a long standing no-remote policy. The first experiments to change that started about two years ago, when I moved away from New York and started working remote. They are still getting the hang of it, these policies seem to be another step in that process.

dangero 13y ago

I'm kind of surprised that remote working issues haven't been completely solved at this point and it seems like there's still a big opportunity there to start a business in that space. There are a lot of cultural barriers there I think that still need to be overcome. What if your company gave you 2 options: 1. Work in the office. 2. Work wherever you like, but let us install software on your computer that will monitor what you are doing at all times. Would you be offended? Would you consider the work from home option?

tghw 13y ago

I was Fog Creek's first full time remote dev. I left the company about 18 months ago to pursue my own company. There seems to be some confusion and questions in this thread, so let's do this: AMA (Ask Me Anything)

clarky07 13y ago

This sounds awful to me. I get that you're writing a paycheck and you want people to work, but that's got to get done on the hiring and firing end of things. Hire good workers. Fire people that don't work out. >Be a little paranoid for this time about showing your work. It will help you feel good about your time, and us feel good about granting it. The last section is just ridiculous imo. If someone is doing their job, you should know it. If they aren't doing their job, you should know that as well. Being paranoid about my job is not going to help me feel good about my time. Promise. It might make me start looking for a new place to work though.

ibstudios 13y ago

All of these things make sense to me. BTW are you guys using reportsfortrello.com yet? I think it would help with your "Team Awareness" rule since it allows you see all of the recent activities of other board members. full disclosure: I created reportsfortrello.com.

lawnchair_larry 13y ago

Can anyone recommend a good wireless headset for this?