6 ms·

I'm still convinced that we're just a few years away from a time when people don't have to commute to an office just to sit at a computer. That company in Londo

by byoung2 13y ago

I'm still convinced that we're just a few years away from a time when people don't have to commute to an office just to sit at a computer. That company in London could save some money and so could the employee in Barcelona if telecommuting were an option.

gaius 13y ago
I think a lot of geeks have a vision of a perfect world when a detailed, unambiguous spec arrives in their email, they write the code and upload it, then the money is transferred to their accounts. There is a fundamental flaw with this concept, which is writing a spec that good is more work that just writing the code yourself. And the guy who writes that spec will need to collaborate with others enough that having everyone in the one place to do that makes sense. Videoconferencing works if you want to discuss something with which you are both familiar with someone you already know, and this admittedly is a large part of many people's jobs. But for everything else, you really do need to be there.
- nawitus 13y ago
  I think videoconferencing sucks because the tech is so primitive. In 10 years we'll have proper videoconferences which are using augmented reality and have sufficient quality to replace physical meetings 90% of the time. Of course, even conference calls suffer from the use of low-quality software and hardware. For some reason companies tend to use $1 microphone and $5 speakers for conference calls.
  - gaius 13y ago
    At one job, we had a full, no-expense-spared, telepresence suite. For formal meetings or presentations it was acceptable, but you still had to think about it a bit (e.g. pay special attention to whose turn it was to speak next, compensate for the body language or lack thereof, etc). For just hanging out, which is how most collaborative thinking work actually happens, it was useless, even with the best shared whiteboards money could buy. If you had 10 hours to work on a problem, you'd get far more done if you spent half of them traveling and actually stood in a room with everyone around a real whiteboard.
  - eriksank 13y ago
    If someone cannot write it, he will want to say it, and if he cannot even say it, he will want to come over to gesticulate.
    - collyw 13y ago
      God that annoys me. He can explain things properly, so assumes moving his arms around will make it clearer.
  - ghaff 13y ago
    I could have made the exact same statement 10 years ago though. And where are we? (I think we're in a place where we realize it's really difficult to replace face-to-face.)
  - majc2 13y ago
    When I used to work in banking - they had high quality equipment from Tandberg (now Cisco) - and it was genuinely as good as watching SD TV. Nothing beats face-to-face, but proper kit gives decent results.
- nilkn 13y ago
  I'm sure there a jobs in this industry where a constant physical presence is needed. But many of us are professionally employed and notice that we go into an office every day and then communicate entirely over the computer. Given that situation, it makes sense to conclude your job would me more efficient if you simply telecommuted (provided you wanted to). The rewards of telecommuting become even more pronounced for those of us who live in expensive cities and are forced to either spend exorbitant amounts of money to live near the office or else waste a lot of our lives commuting in traffic.
  - gaius 13y ago
    I used to think that too, but as I have gotten older I have realized that I'm absorbing huge amounts of non-verbal data just from the ambience. People put in a email what they want the record to show, but what they actually want from you is something more subtle. A 2-minute chat in the corridor can convey far more information sometimes than a whole day exchanging email.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- sliverstorm 13y ago
  I realize this is a personal issue and others certainly don't feel this way, but telecommuting every day would be so ridiculously lonely to boot.
  - byoung2 13y ago
    Telecommuting doesn't mean that you have to be alone. You could go to a shared work space that is closer to home, or to a coffee shop, or the mall, or a park.
    - abalashov 13y ago
      As someone who spent years working out of coffee shops nearly every day, I can say it is definitely not equivalent to the level of engagement and concentration provided by a proper workspace. Oh, you can get a lot done there. But it's no office or home office. And the home office is monotonous and lonely.
- 001sky 13y ago
  There is a fundamental flaw with this concept, which is writing a spec that good is more work that just writing the code yourself. Some in Congress should probably read this, too...
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- dreamfactory 13y ago
  The irony is that this is positioned as something that devs want to happen and businesses oppose. The reality is that the large companies want to offshore work as much as possible. This would be extremely bad news for developers in first world countries, if it weren't for the fact that they only have jobs because it works so badly in practise.
ryguytilidie 13y ago
So you believe the job of an engineer is "just to sit at a computer"? You dont make other useful contributions outside of that?
- EGreg 13y ago
  There's always the occasional sperm donation to eager groupies :)
  - aet 13y ago
    Haha
- byoung2 13y ago
  So you believe the job of an engineer is "just to sit at a computer"? The job is to write code, which could be done from anywhere (home, coffee shop, on the train, at the beach). The other stuff like collaboration, meetings, architectural discussions, etc., could be done virtually or scheduled for, say once a week. The benefit of a few hallway discussions is far outweighed by the 10+ hours per week spent commuting to the office.
  - mason55 13y ago
    There is a HUGE number of engineer positions where the job isn't just "to write code". If that's all you're contributing then you're in for a very limited career.
    - collyw 13y ago
      Having worked in both I realise recently. You can stick to the corporate world. Get told to use Java, Oracle, etc. Get well paid. Have decent career prospects. "Just write code". Or my current position which is to develop the in house database, in the language if my choosing. Get to experiment with new technologies. Design it all myself (so no one to blame if it goes badly). I would be better paid in the first job, but its way less interesting.
eriksank 13y ago
Your boss may not understand what exactly you do, but he can surely see you come in, sit at your desk, and see you leave at the end of the day. How is someone who cannot program his way out of a paper bag otherwise going to manage things?
- dllthomas 13y ago
  Peer assessments?
- rahoulb 13y ago
  Task lists and measuring customer satisfaction?
7952 13y ago
I think a lot of companies will push back against this. A lot of service companies don't really make anything but provide a kind of social network based around offices. If you eliminate the offices the company looses power and could be dis-intermediated.

by byoung2 13y ago

gaius 13y ago

I think a lot of geeks have a vision of a perfect world when a detailed, unambiguous spec arrives in their email, they write the code and upload it, then the money is transferred to their accounts. There is a fundamental flaw with this concept, which is writing a spec that good is more work that just writing the code yourself. And the guy who writes that spec will need to collaborate with others enough that having everyone in the one place to do that makes sense. Videoconferencing works if you want to discuss something with which you are both familiar with someone you already know, and this admittedly is a large part of many people's jobs. But for everything else, you really do need to be there.

nawitus 13y ago
I think videoconferencing sucks because the tech is so primitive. In 10 years we'll have proper videoconferences which are using augmented reality and have sufficient quality to replace physical meetings 90% of the time. Of course, even conference calls suffer from the use of low-quality software and hardware. For some reason companies tend to use $1 microphone and $5 speakers for conference calls.
- gaius 13y ago
  At one job, we had a full, no-expense-spared, telepresence suite. For formal meetings or presentations it was acceptable, but you still had to think about it a bit (e.g. pay special attention to whose turn it was to speak next, compensate for the body language or lack thereof, etc). For just hanging out, which is how most collaborative thinking work actually happens, it was useless, even with the best shared whiteboards money could buy. If you had 10 hours to work on a problem, you'd get far more done if you spent half of them traveling and actually stood in a room with everyone around a real whiteboard.
- eriksank 13y ago
  If someone cannot write it, he will want to say it, and if he cannot even say it, he will want to come over to gesticulate.
  - collyw 13y ago
    God that annoys me. He can explain things properly, so assumes moving his arms around will make it clearer.
- ghaff 13y ago
  I could have made the exact same statement 10 years ago though. And where are we? (I think we're in a place where we realize it's really difficult to replace face-to-face.)
- majc2 13y ago
  When I used to work in banking - they had high quality equipment from Tandberg (now Cisco) - and it was genuinely as good as watching SD TV. Nothing beats face-to-face, but proper kit gives decent results.
nilkn 13y ago
I'm sure there a jobs in this industry where a constant physical presence is needed. But many of us are professionally employed and notice that we go into an office every day and then communicate entirely over the computer. Given that situation, it makes sense to conclude your job would me more efficient if you simply telecommuted (provided you wanted to). The rewards of telecommuting become even more pronounced for those of us who live in expensive cities and are forced to either spend exorbitant amounts of money to live near the office or else waste a lot of our lives commuting in traffic.
- gaius 13y ago
  I used to think that too, but as I have gotten older I have realized that I'm absorbing huge amounts of non-verbal data just from the ambience. People put in a email what they want the record to show, but what they actually want from you is something more subtle. A 2-minute chat in the corridor can convey far more information sometimes than a whole day exchanging email.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
sliverstorm 13y ago
I realize this is a personal issue and others certainly don't feel this way, but telecommuting every day would be so ridiculously lonely to boot.
- byoung2 13y ago
  Telecommuting doesn't mean that you have to be alone. You could go to a shared work space that is closer to home, or to a coffee shop, or the mall, or a park.
  - abalashov 13y ago
    As someone who spent years working out of coffee shops nearly every day, I can say it is definitely not equivalent to the level of engagement and concentration provided by a proper workspace. Oh, you can get a lot done there. But it's no office or home office. And the home office is monotonous and lonely.
001sky 13y ago
There is a fundamental flaw with this concept, which is writing a spec that good is more work that just writing the code yourself. Some in Congress should probably read this, too...
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
dreamfactory 13y ago
The irony is that this is positioned as something that devs want to happen and businesses oppose. The reality is that the large companies want to offshore work as much as possible. This would be extremely bad news for developers in first world countries, if it weren't for the fact that they only have jobs because it works so badly in practise.

ryguytilidie 13y ago

So you believe the job of an engineer is "just to sit at a computer"? You dont make other useful contributions outside of that?

EGreg 13y ago
There's always the occasional sperm donation to eager groupies :)
- aet 13y ago
  Haha
byoung2 13y ago
So you believe the job of an engineer is "just to sit at a computer"? The job is to write code, which could be done from anywhere (home, coffee shop, on the train, at the beach). The other stuff like collaboration, meetings, architectural discussions, etc., could be done virtually or scheduled for, say once a week. The benefit of a few hallway discussions is far outweighed by the 10+ hours per week spent commuting to the office.
- mason55 13y ago
  There is a HUGE number of engineer positions where the job isn't just "to write code". If that's all you're contributing then you're in for a very limited career.
  - collyw 13y ago
    Having worked in both I realise recently. You can stick to the corporate world. Get told to use Java, Oracle, etc. Get well paid. Have decent career prospects. "Just write code". Or my current position which is to develop the in house database, in the language if my choosing. Get to experiment with new technologies. Design it all myself (so no one to blame if it goes badly). I would be better paid in the first job, but its way less interesting.

eriksank 13y ago

Your boss may not understand what exactly you do, but he can surely see you come in, sit at your desk, and see you leave at the end of the day. How is someone who cannot program his way out of a paper bag otherwise going to manage things?

dllthomas 13y ago
Peer assessments?
rahoulb 13y ago
Task lists and measuring customer satisfaction?

7952 13y ago

I think a lot of companies will push back against this. A lot of service companies don't really make anything but provide a kind of social network based around offices. If you eliminate the offices the company looses power and could be dis-intermediated.