by amix on 10/16/19, 8:15 AM with 263 comments
by ChuckNorris89 on 10/16/19, 9:09 AM
Management there only values "butt time in seats" and the ability to come over and interrupt you by tapping you on the shoulder whenever they need something.
As one of my ex CEOs put it: "If I don't see my employees stressing out at thier desks I get the impression they're not working."
Until we get over this psychological attachment of management loving to visually see their slaves on the open office plantation through their private panopticon[1] offices, remote won't take off no matter how many studies get published.
by yodsanklai on 10/16/19, 11:51 AM
I've noticed that one thing that make me work harder than in an office, is that I feel that I need to earn the trust that my employer gives me. In an office, sometimes I feel that just being there is enough to justify my salary, even if I'm just chatting with colleagues or browsing the web. I discipline myself better when I work remotely.
Another thing that makes a difference for me: I suffer from back pain when sitting in a chair for too long. At my place, I can lie down if needed.
On the downside, I suffer from being far from where decisions are taken, and I sometimes miss important information.
by greggman2 on 10/16/19, 12:18 PM
First off let me acknowledge that some people prefer remote work and also say up front I do not.
I recent YouAreNotSoSmart podcast interviewed Laurie Santos from Yale and if I understood her research basically claims we often both individually and as a society choose things we think will make us happy but actually don't. Examples seemed to include anything that takes you away from people. One example was the ATM machine. It's more convenient than a bank teller but interacting with the teller adds to your quota of needed interaction for happiness. Things like the fact that you can order a Starbucks coffee on your phone and pick it up with no interaction as another tiny example. I'm sure those were minor examples but she was basically claiming we're often inadvertently choosing things that actually make us less happy.
For me I prefer in office work because I want to be around other people. I want them to interrupt me too. Not 100% of the time but I enjoy the camaraderie, the conversations, going over solutions together, etc...
So in that context, is it possible the push for remote work fits in that line? We think it will make us happy but it for many people it will have the unintended consequence of isolating them and actually make them less happy.
I'm not saying you shouldn't be given the choice. Maybe you are different. Maybe you have special needs (someone you need to take care of for example) or maybe you're remote location has family or friends around. But, if Laurie Santos is correct then maybe a large percent of people are actually making a bad choice?
PS: I don't know if I trust her research. I'm only passing on my interpretation what I though she said in the interview.
by settsu on 10/16/19, 10:25 AM
After about 16 years of on-site work (at various jobs), I did almost 5 years of remote work (for a single company), having just recently returned to an in-office role (despite focusing on landing another remote position, the best opportunity wasn’t.)
And, frankly, I find neither inherently, categorically superior. It has far more to do with a number of unique variables, among them: culture, software tools, and the people themselves.
So while I do largely agree with the core argument of the linked post (roughly summarized: asynchronous communication helps facilitate productivity for knowledge workers), I also feel too much emphasis is placed on working remotely as inherent in part of the solution.
How about we just teach and incentivize people to, for example, not interrupt others unnecessarily, how to recognize when someone may be deeply focused on a task, how to indicate such an effort is currently underway, plus to recognize when it may be appropriate, necessary, and healthy to stop the “deep work“ and address communal, biological, and psychological needs? All regardless of the exact mode of the work.
by jrockway on 10/16/19, 9:37 AM
It is assumed that everyone needs to do exactly 40 hours of work per week, but ask yourself this: for every person in your company, what do their next 40 hours look like? 40 hours worth of HR policies need to be created. 40 hours worth of sales calls need to be made. 40 hours worth of snacks need to be ordered for the office. 40 hours worth of website text updates need to be made. 40 hours worth of UIs need to be designed. 40 hours worth of code needs to be typed in. Isn't it strange that all these vastly different tasks take the same number of hours to complete in a week? My guess is that chattin' is what takes up whatever time remains; people are required to pretend that they do 40 hours of work every week, so they come up with their own way of filling the time. Planning is always valued (and a good idea!), so if you report "yeah I spent the week planning for our Q3 XXX" then it sounds like the money spent on your salary was worth it, and it continues to pay.
As a software engineer, I've never had the problem of not having enough work to do. Tasks are always added to the backlog at a faster rate than they are removed from the backlog. But I feel like a lot of other jobs aren't like this, and the "there is infinite work forever!" thing is most prevalent in fields like engineering, design, art, fabrication, etc.
Meanwhile, most of the people in your average office aren't doing any of those things. To some extent, they're on retainer, waiting for their skills to be needed. And, trying to optimize this is perilous. If you get employee utilization up to 100%, people complain loudly (Amazon fulfillment center workers aren't sending 1000 Slack messages a day). If you try to not pay people for the time periods where they're not being utilized, you just get the "gig economy" which is awful.
I dunno, it all makes very little sense to me. Sometimes I wonder what percentage of the US economy is about doing work that doesn't need to be done, and how many people would not have jobs if we decided "we're not paying for this anymore". I think I'm scared about it, though.
by BeetleB on 10/16/19, 2:59 PM
The other thing that came out of that thread was "If you're remote and don't respond quickly enough, people assume you're slacking off - while in the office people visibly slack off all the time and it's considered OK".
by Tade0 on 10/16/19, 9:33 AM
Until recently we used Toggl to track work time and the guidance was to have "6h of focused work daily".
I'm managing 5h 15min-ish, but only when working remotely. When I'm in the office that number organically drops to around 3h 40min.
Only person really doing those hours(and above) is one guy who's not into chit-chat.
by atilaneves on 10/16/19, 11:37 AM
by ninkendo on 10/16/19, 1:32 PM
People will start conversations with just "Hello", and wait for me to respond, as if we're talking on the phone or something. This, to me, fundamentally misses out on the benefits of online communication: You don't need to wait to establish a conversation with me to ask me your question; you can just come out with it. And your question/problem can become just another item on my TODO list, which I can prioritize throughout the day:
- If it's something I can answer/address right away, I can do so
- If it's something that will take some investigation, I can start investigating it (and let you know how much time I'll need, etc)
- If it's something clearly low-priority, I can wait until later when I'm not as busy to address it
- If it's something that doesn't really make sense, or there are things I can explain to you to help point you in the right direction, I can spend a moment to help dig up some information for you.
If you just say "Hello" (or "Ping", etc) you're taking away my ability to prioritize your question/problem, and are asking me to agree to spend time on something before I know what it is.
If instead you begin the conversation with the question/problem that needs addressing, you're adding an item to my TODO queue, which can be re-sorted/re-prioritized continuously throughout the day, and allows me to be more effective. I can get to your question when it makes sense for me to do so.
I have my status permanently set to http://nohello.com to hopefully drive this point home with people, and anecdotally I've seen a lot less drive-by "Hello" messages on Slack. Additionally I've just stopped responding to people when they say "Hello". I just hope that doesn't come off as me being a jerk, though...
by k__ on 10/16/19, 3:14 PM
Where do I get the best ideas to solve a problem?
Not when I'm sitting in front of it for 8h a day.
I get them when I stand up, buy groceries, do my laundry, shower, etc.
Does this provide huge value to the company I work for? Totally
Does the people at the company think I cheat them? Many do
Would they feel better if I sat in their office for 8h, have worse ideas, provide lower value and generally feel worse? Somehow many do too
by jillesvangurp on 10/16/19, 11:48 AM
Any kind of meeting is a synchronization bottleneck. People synchronize their workday around these. Workdays and office hours are synchronization points as well. They create bottlenecks in our traffic system even where literally everybody is trying to get to work at the same time just so they can be at a standup meeting.
Treat it as a technical problem and get rid of unnecessary blocking activities and things run smoother. It's true for software, it's true for logistics, and it is true for work processes. The same principles apply and you can use similar design patterns (queues, events, etc.). A side effect of non blocking processes is that people can work more effectively without waiting for people to talk to them or meetings to happen. It enables remote work but is just as effective when used on site.
Git was invented to support asynchronous development where independent groups of developers work on their own branches and exchange patches or pull requests when they want to synchronize. Works great for OSS but it is now also common in non remote software teams. Create a ticket, assign it, create a branch for it, do some work, create a pr, pr gets reviewed, ci builds trigger and if you figured out deployment automation, ultimately the change goes to production as well. It's all orchestrated via events that trigger somebody or something to pick up the work for the next thing. It's great. It replaced a work process where people were bottle-necked on central version repositories that required a lot of ceremony around branching and merging because it was so tedious; which in turn made commits a big deal and necessitated commit freezes and lots of communication overhead, meetings, and delays. Git got rid of most of that.
by everdrive on 10/16/19, 11:01 AM
by gm on 10/16/19, 1:44 PM
I guess the article also assumes different time zones when working remotely?
I filed the article under the "rubbish bin". I've worked remotely for several years, and maybe I live in a different planet, because "async" and remote work do NOT go hand in hand for me. If anything, Slack means people can reach me even when I'm taking a dump, and I'm expected to reply at that moment.
by TheThickOfIt on 10/16/19, 9:31 AM
by Udik on 10/16/19, 12:04 PM
Sharing the space with your children or partner? Asynchronous communication. Being able to take short breaks in your own space? Asynchronous communication. Not being distracted by people chatting about their weekend? Asynchronous communication.
One of the major benefits of remote working, for me, is just not having other people around. It's not much a matter of communication but simply of the relax and focus I get when I don't have to be aware of others.
by mscasts on 10/16/19, 9:12 AM
At home this obviously never happens for me. The only distraction I have is Slack and my dog that reminds me that it's time for a walk.
So I can attest to this.
by tomasGiden on 10/16/19, 11:46 AM
I can recommend the work on Dynamic work design by Nelson P. Repenning to make a case for both in what context either is best but even more importantly, when and how to move back and forth between different work modes. Here is a good introduction: https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/a-new-approach-to-design...
by dunkelheit on 10/16/19, 2:08 PM
I can't really do "fire and forget" messaging. When I ask something I want the reply to arrive as quickly as possible because I don't want to lose the context that I have in my mind right now and load it again later when I receive a reply. On an async channel this results in compulsive checking for replies which of course kills productivity. Almost-sync channels like Slack are the worst - who didn't experience the frustration of their chat partner suddenly disappearing without a word in the middle of a discussion?
On a related note I very much prefer a focused half-hour meeting to a whole day of async back-and-forths.
Inbound messages are problematic too because they provide the same kind of addictive random gratification that social media is infamous for.
Any tips for dealing with these problems?
by jpincheira on 10/16/19, 8:51 PM
As a remote team, implementing the async communication style will allow you to never have to depend on fixed calendar meetings. No need to have to organize everybody together in a room, at a specific time, to just make a decision.
I wrote a bit about how to do this within a remote team, which is a guideline into how to set a basic async comm process for a remote team. Hope you find it helpful:
https://standups.io/blog/a-basic-guideline-for-async-communi...
by atoav on 10/16/19, 12:14 PM
1. Find the person involved, talk to them and try to resolve it right away
2. Write a mail to them, print it out, clamp it to the related paper and hang it on the wall.
We were a very tiny 7-person company with rooms in the same building and still the approach outlined in point 1 rarely was more productive than just waiting for them to reply. For situations that happened more often I created email templates so there was even less work.
Another advantage of method 2 is that unresolved work in the end of the day is already taken care of and if you are working in shifts the handover is easier then.
by bryanmgreen on 10/16/19, 5:03 PM
Anyways, I think a big barrier to this dream are the tools that can promote and sustain asynchronicity.
It's really hard to keep communication open and job responsibilities/deliverables clear without being mircomanage-y. Lots of leaders will have to give up control - which is going to be really hard, to say the least. Software tools will need to be security-blankets for managers as much as performance trackers for employees. Give them a little pat on the head that "it's all ok". That's going to be hard to accomplish.
by zarro on 10/16/19, 2:32 PM
Its because they worry that it creates incentives that could lead to a decrease in productivity over time.
I think the root of it really is the first line Management. These guys need to be really good at their job in order for WFH FT to be more productive. If these aren't all that efficient to begin with, that will make it much more visible in a WFH situation. I think all parties intuitively feel this.
by kmlx on 10/16/19, 10:27 AM
by UserIsUnused on 10/16/19, 10:20 AM
by monkeydust on 10/16/19, 1:43 PM
by iblaine on 10/16/19, 3:14 PM
by auiya on 10/16/19, 3:05 PM
I feel like this is the main benefit.
by WomanCanCode on 10/16/19, 12:50 PM
by mattoxic on 10/16/19, 11:18 AM
by MarkMc on 10/16/19, 1:46 PM
by vkaku on 10/16/19, 10:57 AM
And more often, the answer is somewhere in between, and it's hard to generalize.
by yason on 10/16/19, 11:23 AM
If you're in the i/o bound phase remoting is often hard. You need to talk to people, pull answers from them, communicate, coordinate, reach agreements and nail down development plans. You can't do anything anyway unless you agree on the next steps first.
Conversely if you're brain bound all you want is a laptop and being alone at home because it's way more efficient to focus on a problem when you can forget about everything else. You can't plan ahead anyway unless you dig down in the code and see for yourself first what will work and what needs to change.
These phases alternate in worklife, maybe based on projects, time of the month, the whatever happenstances take place in the progress of development. Usually when you're stuck in one phase you really need to spend time in the other phase for a while. This is normal.
This has consequences. People working remotely tend to maximise their time on what they're efficient at, i.e. brain bound programming. At the office it's easier to invite people to meetings through the week to get work done that way because you can't really be brain bound at the office anyway. Thus remote types and office types tend to inflate their favourite phase as much as possible.
This inflation happens because these two phases are inherently incompatible with each other, and crossing the gap to switch phases is tedious.
But if you only ever work i/o bound you begin to wonder how could people work remotely at all. After all, everything happens in the office anyway so maybe working from home could work if only we add enough meetings to keep the remote people more tightly in the loop... And people working steadily from home begin to fathom, in time, whether it's possible at all to work at the office as all you have is constant breaks, meetings, people coming to ask about stuff and you can't ultimately get any real work done.
Different things begin to become important for people who don't alternate. So there's a slight confirmation bias in how people flock to the position and environment that maximises the kind of work they're really good at. But the caveat is that in doing this that you could be comfort-siloing yourself. So natural and healthy alternating between phases is what keeps you open and able to adjust to changes in work life and work projects.
On the other hand, people who alternate too often begin to get nothing done. You need to allocate batches of time for both phases in some moderate proportion. How to balance that is more of an art than anything else.
Sounds familiar, anyone? This is a dynamic I've observed in my own work life over and over again.
by travisoneill1 on 10/16/19, 2:47 PM
by buboard on 10/16/19, 3:39 PM
by xtat on 10/16/19, 3:03 PM
by helpPeople on 10/16/19, 3:31 PM
An owner of a company I'm close with found her employee was abusing work from home. This same employee was formerly a Superstar or so we thought.
Maybe bad management, but I found myself calling a 7 hour work from home day 8 hours too.
by joshuakarjala on 10/16/19, 10:48 AM
by PunchTornado on 10/16/19, 9:43 AM
I bet most people from those 8h work a maximum 4. The rest is chatting and socializing. I like it.