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Look, I get that working remotely is good for many workers, but let's admit that's why we're doing it instead of pretending it's about "getting a leg up on comp

Look, I get that working remotely is good for many workers, but let's admit that's why we're doing it instead of pretending it's about "getting a leg up on competition". > They prioritize communication and collaboration by necessity This is exactly what remote culture doesn’t do. A remote culture inherently has decided that being off-site is more important to them than being able to communicate and collaborate quickly and easily. > It is easy to reach out for help Easier than standing up and asking for help over the cubicle wall? No. I can see how the increased difficulty of communication could be arguably a better thing, but let’s not pretend it’s easier. > There is a lot less wasted communication This is true, but it’s balanced by the fact that the non-wasted communication costs a whole lot more. And I think it’s also an overstated claim: just because you can refer back to your communication doesn’t mean anyone actually can find the communications or actually does go back and refer to it. > There is a lot less posturing I can see how this is annoying, but I’m not sure how this relates to a claim of productivity. In the end, I’m not sure presenting ideas with logic is actually the best way to do things: often I’d rather just do what the best doers on the team suggest, with or without justification. The best plan is the one that gets the job done quickly and with quality, even if it’s one that’s hard to justify logically beforehand. Requiring logical justification for things means that you prioritize the talk of people who talk well over the intuition of people who are actually good at their jobs. It’s worth noting that posturing tends to be most effective for people who are respected by their teammates, which tends to correlate with being good at your job in technical fields. Posturing evolved as a behavior for a reason, and I’d not be so quick to discard it. Also, there’s an apparent contradiction between "Even if we are over-communicating, it is okay, because we aren't forcing a squadron of employees to sit in a meeting room pretending to be interested.” and "I have to believe that it has something to do with the fact that most of the effective communication is either written, or is done in large meetings where lots of people are watching.” Either your meetings are larger or they aren’t; don’t pick whichever fits the point you’re trying to make. > There is often a higher caliber of workers Uh, okay. If we’re allowed to make vague unjustified claims, I guess I can just counter with, “Remote work tends to lead to unhealthier workers because they don’t go outside”. > You get a huge portion of your life back This is also a pretty unjustified claim. When I worked from home I found that it was a lot harder to “turn off” when my workday was done. Citing commute times is a good justification for living near where you work, not necessarily for working remotely. I’m a 25 minute train ride from my work, and having an excuse to get up and go out is pretty good for me in general.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago
All of that is obsolete thinking. Good headset-and-webcam collaboration tools make it actually easier to ask for help, than 'over the cubicle wall'. Because now everyone in the company is your digital neighbor. We are all remote at my company. We've had to train managers to stay in their damn offices and put on the headset, instead of walking around or gathering people in conference rooms. Because being away from the collaboration tool is the biggest source of isolation and communication trouble we have. If everybody is jacked in, can see everybody else in their space, knows who is talking to whom at a glance, and can talk/webcam/share with a mouse click, why then we get so much more done. More than being physically present, which really means being close to 1 or two people but physically isolated from everybody else in the building.
joeax 11y ago
This is an authoritarian way of thinking. Basically, I prefer to be onsite therefore everyone should be onsite. You make the claim that the author fails to substantiate the benefits of working remote, but you also failed and just countered with your own opinions. BTW - since I work from home I just got to on a 20 min jog with my wife. Yes, we do go outside.
- copsarebastards 11y ago
  > Basically, I prefer to be onsite therefore everyone should be onsite. That is the opposite of true: I prefer to work remotely. The purpose of my post was to tear apart bullshit claims that working remotely fixes all sorts of problems. Working remotely is better for workers, not for companies (at least not in the ways claimed).
sandover 11y ago
Very much agree. There's a herd mentality in the programmer community on this issue. Having worked remotely for a year myself, I think remote work should be considered harmful for the career of most engineers. For engineers who are in the habit of thinking of their job and their career (and maybe a lot of other things?) exclusively in mechanistic terms of inputs and outputs, it's a tempting abstraction. But when you work remotely, you're basically advertising your work as commodity work. You're basically consistently reminding the company -- and the job market -- that you are substitutable. In economic terms, that is simply not a smart signal to be sending. It's also short sighted in terms of the arc of your career. Right now you might be making economic value in the marketplace strictly by extruding a software widget from your keyboard. Great! But at some point, the odds are good (not 100%, but good) that the way you'll make value is by enabling others to build software; reading body language, detecting issues in a team; or negotiating; or motivating; or selling; etc. The proportion of people reading this who will hack til their retirement day is quite small. Sitting in your home office being "productive" isn't preparing you to do much that's important in the second half of your career. It's a case of over-fitting. You're optimizing around your current skill set and not thinking about the larger portfolio of useful -- human -- skills.

JoeAltmaier 11y ago

All of that is obsolete thinking. Good headset-and-webcam collaboration tools make it actually easier to ask for help, than 'over the cubicle wall'. Because now everyone in the company is your digital neighbor. We are all remote at my company. We've had to train managers to stay in their damn offices and put on the headset, instead of walking around or gathering people in conference rooms. Because being away from the collaboration tool is the biggest source of isolation and communication trouble we have. If everybody is jacked in, can see everybody else in their space, knows who is talking to whom at a glance, and can talk/webcam/share with a mouse click, why then we get so much more done. More than being physically present, which really means being close to 1 or two people but physically isolated from everybody else in the building.

joeax 11y ago

This is an authoritarian way of thinking. Basically, I prefer to be onsite therefore everyone should be onsite. You make the claim that the author fails to substantiate the benefits of working remote, but you also failed and just countered with your own opinions. BTW - since I work from home I just got to on a 20 min jog with my wife. Yes, we do go outside.

copsarebastards 11y ago
> Basically, I prefer to be onsite therefore everyone should be onsite. That is the opposite of true: I prefer to work remotely. The purpose of my post was to tear apart bullshit claims that working remotely fixes all sorts of problems. Working remotely is better for workers, not for companies (at least not in the ways claimed).

sandover 11y ago

Very much agree. There's a herd mentality in the programmer community on this issue. Having worked remotely for a year myself, I think remote work should be considered harmful for the career of most engineers. For engineers who are in the habit of thinking of their job and their career (and maybe a lot of other things?) exclusively in mechanistic terms of inputs and outputs, it's a tempting abstraction. But when you work remotely, you're basically advertising your work as commodity work. You're basically consistently reminding the company -- and the job market -- that you are substitutable. In economic terms, that is simply not a smart signal to be sending. It's also short sighted in terms of the arc of your career. Right now you might be making economic value in the marketplace strictly by extruding a software widget from your keyboard. Great! But at some point, the odds are good (not 100%, but good) that the way you'll make value is by enabling others to build software; reading body language, detecting issues in a team; or negotiating; or motivating; or selling; etc. The proportion of people reading this who will hack til their retirement day is quite small. Sitting in your home office being "productive" isn't preparing you to do much that's important in the second half of your career. It's a case of over-fitting. You're optimizing around your current skill set and not thinking about the larger portfolio of useful -- human -- skills.