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Comment by mgkimsal | Hacker News Reader

Adding on:

We've also had a housing crisis which is keeping many people chained to their current regions due to underwater mortgages and no housing sales. 5 years ago people could move their families across country for a good job. Even if they want to now, they can't. This is just not acknowledged by most companies.

I was approached a couple years ago by a company that was starting up - 'ex google founders' and all that. The product/service was pitched to me as a collaboration/communication tool to help remote teams work more effectively. Sounded great, but I was not allowed to work remote. I had to upsticks and move to SF. To work on a remote collaboration tool. WTF?

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There really is a huge difference between working in person with someone and working remotely. I've seen misunderstandings that could waste literally weeks of programmer time get corrected by a 15-minute pair-programming session.

It doesn't really surprise me that ex-Googlers would insist you work in person. As a large multinational, Google feels the pain of distributed teams more than many companies, which is probably why they're founding their startup. It'd probably sink their startup if one of their key employees was not working in person with them.

> I've seen misunderstandings that could waste literally weeks of programmer time get corrected by a 15-minute pair-programming session.

Are they things that wouldn't have similarly been resolved by remote pairing?

With what tools? In theory, if you have a shared screen, and real-time voice communication, and remote whiteboards, and ideally real-time video, it should be basically the same as being there. The technology to do this is very, very expensive at the moment, though, which is presumably the raison d'etre of this startup.

You also miss out a lot on serendipity. Many of the best ideas that eventually become actual Google products happen because a bunch of folks are hanging out over beers, or they're sharing the latest cool thing they've stumbled across on the Internet, or they're shooting each other with nerf darts before going home. This sort of relaxed socialization seems to be exactly what you need to get creative ideas to bubble up to the surface. When you have to feel like you're "on a call" to get together with someone, you don't get this sort of spontaneous idea generation.

>> With what tools? In theory, if you have a shared screen

VNC, emacs

>> and real-time voice communication,

telephone

>> and remote whiteboards, and ideally real-time video

projector, webcams, monitor

>> The technology to do this is very, very expensive at the moment, though, which is presumably the raison d'etre of this startup.

When you are considering $75k versus $150k per year, the above is not expensive

>In theory, if you have a shared screen, Webmeeting

>real-time voice communication Webmeeting

>remote whiteboards, Webmeeting

>ideally real-time video skype

> When you have to feel like you're "on a call" to get together with someone, you don't get this sort of spontaneous idea generation.

Some of our best ideas at a previous startup came straight out of our Scrum meetings: when we had the CEO, the COO, and everyone all arguing (no bruises, but close sometimes) about what we should/could do next. I'd like to try that over web conf.

Plus, you still get the idea generation from external techie meetings. I'm in San Diego. I'm not moving to NYC. But we still have a great tech scene.

It did strike me as odd that if they're trying to solve that problem, having some people, you know, actually work remotely, would in fact indicate if the product was solving problems - dogfooding and all that.

I've felt those "week vs 15 minute" issues. Some of that is developer-specific, no doubt, but that's fundamentally a communication issue that needs to be managed.

I've also worked gigs where people were in the same room and didn't talk to each other, or wouldn't answer emails due to office politics, and in general stuff that should have taken 15 minutes still took a week, even though everyone was in the same building.

The underwater mortgages are a very good point. Many engineers bought expensive houses and are now chained to them. It is not unprecedented for companies to cover full relocation, including when necessary buying the dud house themselves from the new employee at a price that allows him to move.

well in all fairness their product was not developed yet!

how did their product end up turning out, out of curiosity?

I never followed up and they never gave me the full name until I'd sign an NDA (which I didn't).

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