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Comment by tomtheelder | Hacker News Reader

I appreciate a lot of the sentiment of this article, but not the self-congratulatory, sanctimonious tone.

It refuses to acknowledge that there are people out there who are less productive when working remotely (for example, me, which I discovered after recording personal data on it), and those who are substantially less happy when working remotely. In addition, those of us who prefer an office environment sometimes find it more difficult to work with remote coworkers: something that is more or less important depending on what your day to day tasks include.

If I were running a company I would always permit employees to work remotely, or work from home when they want, but I think it's counterproductive to pretend that everyone wants that and would benefit from it.

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I also think it absurd to presume that there's zero benefit to having folks face-to-face from time-to-time.

Wanna work from home 4 days out of 5? I say go nuts.

But I would want some amount of face-to-face time, not to see asses in seats (which seems to be what every work-from-advocate assumes... as though there's no other concerns beyond accountability, a strawman if I've every seen one), but because it helps build team camaraderie.

I've seen this first hand. I'm the Product Owner for geographically distributed team. Skype is used heavily as a mechanism for the team to communicate, but we also include quarterly face-to-face get-togethers where the team can sit in a room and whiteboard problems, pair program, or really whatever they want to do that feels useful.

The first time we did this everyone, every single person, raved about how valuable the activity was. Not because they were inherently more productive, and certainly not because they were being held accountable. Rather, the simple act of people in a room together further cemented their bonds as a team.

Humans are social animals. We're used to physical proximity as a component of communication. Hell, the NYT had an article about why it's hard to make friends after 30:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/fashion/the-challenge-of-m...

Two of the three are proximity, and repeated, unplanned interactions.

That's just not possibility in a 100% remote working environment.

> The first time we did this everyone, every single person, raved about how valuable the activity was.

The first time, yes. But I'd rather not do this every day (or even every week). Once a quarter or so seems just about right.

Exactly. I work for a 100% remote company and have never been happier. I probably have been more productive in other places, but that's a factor of the tech stack C# vs Ruby. I'm focused, productive, and happy. I know and like my coworkers. We meet 1-2x per year for a company retreat, and we meet online weekly. Everything else is ad-hoc and works just fine.

The two times I did this with two separate teams I hated it.

I'm a very social guy, so it isn't an introvert thing, but I work 100% remote, I don't want to meet and be confined to 'activities' or environments where I can't be productive. If I wanted to be in an office, I have plenty of job offers to do so. If I wanted to meet my co-workers on 'activities' (like the once a year retreats with parties and trust falls and what-not) I would join the local kumbaya group.

Just thinking I have to travel for a week, away from my friends, my family my routines for someone to have face-to-face time with me that could have been done on skype/hangouts is ridiculous, and whenever I hear about yearly retreats/trips I pass on the job.

I find that reasoning odd - you wouldn't take a break from your routine even if it's just once a year?

If I do, I will do for my family/friends, not my employer. I work my 40 hours a week, so why should I break my routine for a pseudo-gathering where I have little to no connection with people??

like the once a year retreats with parties and trust falls and what-not

Nice strawman!

We got the team together, shared meals and drinks in the evening, and basically did engineering work during the day.

The team took the opportunity to do some broader architectural work that needed doing, and to do some knowledge sharing across silos that had developed. Basically stuff that's more amenable to a room and a whiteboard.

ie, they got some sh*t done while getting to know each other better.

But hey, if you can't be bothered to spend face time with your team mates on occasion, I'm sure you can find organizations that will cater to your particular whims. Ours would not be one of them, that's all.

And that is great, my organization actually respects this and doesn't force me to go to any annual things. To each their own, but shared meals and drinks in the evening is for me too much. I work 8 hours for you, after I want to see my family or friends, not my co-workers. Or do sports, or whatever else. The problem with these retreats is 8+hours work and then off time with co-workers. I don't care about that. AT ALL.

I'm not very social at all. But I do like traveling, so my ideal job is one where I work remotely (from home) 3 weeks a month, and then about 1 week a month I have to travel to a customer site and work there on-site. It gets me out of the house, lets me see a new place and meet some new people so I get my fill of socialization, but it's temporary and I don't have to hang around these same people 5x a week for the next several years.

I hate travelling. I probably have more miles in the air than most from my previous life. I hate it. I will go to any length if it avoids me being in a plane or car.

Maybe I'm getting old, but break up my routine for a 'retreat' thing and I will get pissed as hell and will fight as much as possible to do it.

> but we also include quarterly face-to-face get-togethers where the team can sit in a room and whiteboard problems, pair program, or really whatever they want to do that feels useful.

To me, that sounds utterly horrifying. I'm unable to fly because of the TSA (I cannot tolerate being touched, and even the slightest risk of a pat-down is unacceptable). Any job where I'd be expected to fly cross-country is a job that I simply won't be able to do.

I want my next job to be a remote job because I'm probably going to be moving soon, and I'd like to completely decouple "where I work" from "where I live". Even if I could fly, the idea of working a remote job where I'd have to travel defeats the whole purpose of working remote.

> It refuses to acknowledge that there are people out there who are less productive when working remotely

What? Direct quote from the piece:

"In the case of working from home/remote work, some employees do not do their best work from home, or simply don’t like it. That is fine."

That looks like an explicit acknowledgement to me.

The author touches on this:

>In the case of working from home/remote work, some employees do not do their best work from home, or simply don’t like it. That is fine—but you should trust your employees and treat them like adults.

Although this doesn't address your point about your difficulty working with remote employees, when you're in an office.

My mistake, misread.

FTA:

> In the case of working from home/remote work, some employees do not do their best work from home, or simply don’t like it. That is fine—but you should trust your employees and treat them like adults. Let them make the call for themselves.

it directly addresses performance and that employees should be enabled to make the choice.

Sorry, I somehow completely skimmed over part of the quote. You're right.

Exactly. Not everyone can do it. Also, at larger companies, you don't always have the luxury of holding out for those unicorn employees. Often times you just need bodies now, so mediocre devs will do.

And not everyone can do social interaction all the time. We are all different and need different environments to work well.

Most articles on remote work don't acknowledge that there are some software jobs that, at least sometimes, require proximity to some physical system.

As one example, part of my job involves writing interactive software for physically gigantic computer systems with a room-sized spatial tracking system.

We can hack away on these programs remotely on our laptops, but to be confident in the program's correctness and performance you really have to test your code in "the room".

Many games have these issues. Dev equipment for unreleased devices the need to stay locked away, for large games multiple terabytes of data updated daily.

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