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So when do we embrace remote working? I've worked remotely for big American companies like Motorola (I live in Sweden) and continue to work from home for local

So when do we embrace remote working? I've worked remotely for big American companies like Motorola (I live in Sweden) and continue to work from home for local Swedish companies. Almost all the people I interface with are in various offices in various timezones around the world anyway. I also do game programming jams e.g. Ludum Dare over a weekend occasionally, and these are also distributed remote efforts. Yet we manage to work at a furious pace with the same immediacy and accessibility as if we were sitting in the same room. It works well. It works well for me, and I believe it can be made to work well in general. This is not just about IT type jobs; most office-work can be done remotely. Only people actually manipulating machinery directly need to be in physical contact with their machine. But there is a definite distrust and dislike of it, especially among management types.

MaulingMonkey 13y ago
I have yet to crack the code in motivating myself in a remote-work setting, despite working as a programmer and despite my best intentions. For those whom it works, great, but that... let's call it skepticism instead of distrust -- that skepticism isn't wholly unfounded.
mahyarm 13y ago
It makes it easier for managers to work with people in open offices. They can keep a passive ear open for other people's status and possibly change design decisions as it happens. Remotely, a lot of potential communication gets dropped and you have to do a lot of active effort to get status and so on. It's basically more work to manage remote workers. Just like its more work to have your team spread throughout a building or on another floor. There is also the micro-management aspect of it, where they can shoulder surf and make sure people are only doing work activities. Some people probably get some sort of emotional satisfaction in telling people what to do in person too. Timezones can be annoying for communication. Anybody who has to do 8pm india/china meetings can tell you that.
ggreer 13y ago
The biggest problem is that there's no gradual migration process. The first remote worker on a team forces everyone to change how they work and communicate. Even with the whole team accommodating the remote person, they'll still miss out on a lot. It can be frustrating for both sides. Also, the software for real-time collaboration sucks. Even if you constantly screen-share and video chat, it's not as good as working in the same room. Simple things like pointing at a section of code are difficult to do, and synchronizing files can be a pain. I'm working on solving this (Floobits YC S13 yadda yadda), but there's still much to be done.
- willvarfar 13y ago
  One small startup I helped out briefly many years ago was using Linux/KDE. They had it set up so that everyone's desktop was accessible from everyone else's desktop. In Linux you usually have several desktops which are easy to switch between, and they made it so that everyone else's desktops appeared in your desktop list. There are virtual desktop products for windows too. I don't know if they used standard software for this, or whether it was their own cobbled-together scripts with normal screen-sharing apps like vnc. I was not involved in setting it up. But it worked very well. I recall discussing using mosix (that's how old it was) too, so we were a big beowulf cluster for compiles etc. That appealed to them, but I don't know if it was acted on after I moved on. In this particular case it wasn't about monitoring, this was about collaboration. But you can see how such a system would appeal to managers too. This complete lack of privacy took some getting used to, but it was super focusing. It quickly sunk in that everything you did (on your screen) was visible to everyone else, and whilst there was toleration for reading the news and so on, everyone was self-censoring themselves to apply themselves. This was in an open-plan office, but with modern bandwidth could work well remotely.
- rurounijones 13y ago
  There may not be a full migration path but I would say the first thing that needs to change (and still hasn't happened in many companies) is getting everyone: * To use shared sources for things (company/department wide Wikis, bug-trackers etc) instead of c:/my_docs/spec.v1.docx being mailed about. * Reduce the number of meetings (Which, in my experience, are usually unnecessary in a software-dev environment at least) Obviously some roles are going to be less amenable to Remote working but without the above 2 (or even the first bit) done most companies couldn't even do it if they wanted.
jsumrall 13y ago
How is a construction worker or teacher supposed to remote work? The problem is not that people like us can't afford to move, but that the average employee in normal other work roles cant. Sweden is much better at this, but I think even there I didn't meet anyone who telecommuted who wasn't in the tech industry.
- willvarfar 13y ago
  All over the world people really do do remote learning, even at primary school level. Another fun thing you see in Sweden is prefabricated houses. In England, prefabs have a horrid reputation from the war years, but modern Swedish houses and flats are assembled from large prefabricated sections that arrive on a lorry and are assembled in just a day or two.
  - mattlutze 13y ago
    Remote learning for primary school requires a significant amount of time on the part of the parent, and lots of communal time for the children so that they develop adequate social skills. Prefab has been a force particularly in commercial and industrial construction in the US for some time. My company has done a lot of work in the design and construction of standardized/commoditized hospital rooms, for example. It makes construction like an exercise in Legos :-)
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MaulingMonkey 13y ago

I have yet to crack the code in motivating myself in a remote-work setting, despite working as a programmer and despite my best intentions. For those whom it works, great, but that... let's call it skepticism instead of distrust -- that skepticism isn't wholly unfounded.

mahyarm 13y ago

It makes it easier for managers to work with people in open offices. They can keep a passive ear open for other people's status and possibly change design decisions as it happens. Remotely, a lot of potential communication gets dropped and you have to do a lot of active effort to get status and so on. It's basically more work to manage remote workers. Just like its more work to have your team spread throughout a building or on another floor. There is also the micro-management aspect of it, where they can shoulder surf and make sure people are only doing work activities. Some people probably get some sort of emotional satisfaction in telling people what to do in person too. Timezones can be annoying for communication. Anybody who has to do 8pm india/china meetings can tell you that.

ggreer 13y ago

The biggest problem is that there's no gradual migration process. The first remote worker on a team forces everyone to change how they work and communicate. Even with the whole team accommodating the remote person, they'll still miss out on a lot. It can be frustrating for both sides. Also, the software for real-time collaboration sucks. Even if you constantly screen-share and video chat, it's not as good as working in the same room. Simple things like pointing at a section of code are difficult to do, and synchronizing files can be a pain. I'm working on solving this (Floobits YC S13 yadda yadda), but there's still much to be done.

willvarfar 13y ago
One small startup I helped out briefly many years ago was using Linux/KDE. They had it set up so that everyone's desktop was accessible from everyone else's desktop. In Linux you usually have several desktops which are easy to switch between, and they made it so that everyone else's desktops appeared in your desktop list. There are virtual desktop products for windows too. I don't know if they used standard software for this, or whether it was their own cobbled-together scripts with normal screen-sharing apps like vnc. I was not involved in setting it up. But it worked very well. I recall discussing using mosix (that's how old it was) too, so we were a big beowulf cluster for compiles etc. That appealed to them, but I don't know if it was acted on after I moved on. In this particular case it wasn't about monitoring, this was about collaboration. But you can see how such a system would appeal to managers too. This complete lack of privacy took some getting used to, but it was super focusing. It quickly sunk in that everything you did (on your screen) was visible to everyone else, and whilst there was toleration for reading the news and so on, everyone was self-censoring themselves to apply themselves. This was in an open-plan office, but with modern bandwidth could work well remotely.
rurounijones 13y ago
There may not be a full migration path but I would say the first thing that needs to change (and still hasn't happened in many companies) is getting everyone: * To use shared sources for things (company/department wide Wikis, bug-trackers etc) instead of c:/my_docs/spec.v1.docx being mailed about. * Reduce the number of meetings (Which, in my experience, are usually unnecessary in a software-dev environment at least) Obviously some roles are going to be less amenable to Remote working but without the above 2 (or even the first bit) done most companies couldn't even do it if they wanted.

jsumrall 13y ago

How is a construction worker or teacher supposed to remote work? The problem is not that people like us can't afford to move, but that the average employee in normal other work roles cant. Sweden is much better at this, but I think even there I didn't meet anyone who telecommuted who wasn't in the tech industry.

willvarfar 13y ago
All over the world people really do do remote learning, even at primary school level. Another fun thing you see in Sweden is prefabricated houses. In England, prefabs have a horrid reputation from the war years, but modern Swedish houses and flats are assembled from large prefabricated sections that arrive on a lorry and are assembled in just a day or two.
- mattlutze 13y ago
  Remote learning for primary school requires a significant amount of time on the part of the parent, and lots of communal time for the children so that they develop adequate social skills. Prefab has been a force particularly in commercial and industrial construction in the US for some time. My company has done a lot of work in the design and construction of standardized/commoditized hospital rooms, for example. It makes construction like an exercise in Legos :-)

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