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At the same time, some companies that formerly embraced remote employees have decided that it's better to have them under one roof. Recent notable examples: Yah

At the same time, some companies that formerly embraced remote employees have decided that it's better to have them under one roof. Recent notable examples: Yahoo and Reddit have told all of their remote employees to relocate or find a new job.

MCRed 12y ago
It's management instinct to want to see people. IF they can't see you, I think they feel that maybe you're slacking off. (Of course, the manager never sees you when you write a bunch of code in the middle of the night because you didn't get any real work done in the office.) These changes, particularly in the Yahoo case, reflect poorly on those managers in my mind, not on the concept of remote work. The ideal programming environment is effectively remote- every engineer in their own office, with multi-party audio or video (e.g.: google hangouts) for collaboration. If your primary cost is engineering staff, why would you make them %50 less effective when they're working and on top of that take 2 hours out of their day each day for a stressful commute?
- albakes 12y ago
  I think it's more about cultivating culture. It's almost impossible to build culture with 80% of your staff working remotely on different timezones. There are ways around it but it's just way better to see your team.
  - ajslater 12y ago
    I disagree. Denying that online cultures exist is just as silly as denying that quality software cannot be written by remote people. You've just posted to a very distinct culture. All of my remote gigs have had very different cultures. People communicated, friends were made, etc, etc.
- thirdtruck 12y ago
  If your primary cost is engineering staff, why would you make them %50 less effective when they're working and on top of that take 2 hours out of their day each day for a stressful commute? Because the engineers are not the ones doing the accounting or managing. The accountants and managers do. It's similar to how social events tend to be planned by socially-focused people, which is how a shy and/or introverted person can end up being dragged to a noisy bar for their birthday.
otakucode 12y ago
Yahoo was a bit of a freak case. They literally had NO way of telling what people were doing. I don't mean 'they didn't have a system that monitored every keystroke', I mean they had NOTHING. Not even a way to say "did this person complete some problem tickets?" Not sure what happened with Reddit, I hadn't heard of them getting rid of remote workers. Odd because Reddit is exactly the kind of site I would expect to benefit massively from having pretty much the entire staff be remote.
- jcromartie 12y ago
  It's true: http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/01/after-raising-50m-reddit-forces-remote-workers-to-relocate-to-sf-or-get-fired/ http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/01/after-raising-50m-reddit-f...

MCRed 12y ago

It's management instinct to want to see people. IF they can't see you, I think they feel that maybe you're slacking off. (Of course, the manager never sees you when you write a bunch of code in the middle of the night because you didn't get any real work done in the office.) These changes, particularly in the Yahoo case, reflect poorly on those managers in my mind, not on the concept of remote work. The ideal programming environment is effectively remote- every engineer in their own office, with multi-party audio or video (e.g.: google hangouts) for collaboration. If your primary cost is engineering staff, why would you make them %50 less effective when they're working and on top of that take 2 hours out of their day each day for a stressful commute?

albakes 12y ago
I think it's more about cultivating culture. It's almost impossible to build culture with 80% of your staff working remotely on different timezones. There are ways around it but it's just way better to see your team.
- ajslater 12y ago
  I disagree. Denying that online cultures exist is just as silly as denying that quality software cannot be written by remote people. You've just posted to a very distinct culture. All of my remote gigs have had very different cultures. People communicated, friends were made, etc, etc.
thirdtruck 12y ago
If your primary cost is engineering staff, why would you make them %50 less effective when they're working and on top of that take 2 hours out of their day each day for a stressful commute? Because the engineers are not the ones doing the accounting or managing. The accountants and managers do. It's similar to how social events tend to be planned by socially-focused people, which is how a shy and/or introverted person can end up being dragged to a noisy bar for their birthday.

otakucode 12y ago

Yahoo was a bit of a freak case. They literally had NO way of telling what people were doing. I don't mean 'they didn't have a system that monitored every keystroke', I mean they had NOTHING. Not even a way to say "did this person complete some problem tickets?" Not sure what happened with Reddit, I hadn't heard of them getting rid of remote workers. Odd because Reddit is exactly the kind of site I would expect to benefit massively from having pretty much the entire staff be remote.

jcromartie 12y ago
It's true: http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/01/after-raising-50m-reddit-forces-remote-workers-to-relocate-to-sf-or-get-fired/ http://venturebeat.com/2014/10/01/after-raising-50m-reddit-f...