I tried sharing these studies at my ex employers in Europe hoping they'd spare me the hellish 40 minute commute in stop/start traffic and they weren't interested at all.
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.
As someone who has gone to the dark side, there's an interesting tradeoff here. There's basically three scenarios:
(1) all employees are trusted and unmeasured, but you have to tap people on the shoulder every once in a while to confirm that they're on track. Naturally, this is easier if everyone is on-site.
(2) everyone is accountable for producing of tickets, and you can check that everyone is at least doing some work. Check-ins can happen via comments in tickets.
(3) Everyone just does whatever they think they're supposed to be doing, and the manager only finds out something is wrong when the employee volunteers the information or the project isn't delivered on-time.
(1) is the common case, (2) requires time and skills many managers don't have (and creates @#$% Jira commentary form the peanut gallery), (3) requires building an excellent team with years of mutual trust between them, and still goes wrong all the time.
Seeing you at your desk working, and asking a casual question or two at the water cooler is by far the easiest (laziest?) way to make sure things don't go too far sideways.
It’s a valid concern. If you don’t have transparency into ongoing work, then you aren’t ready for remote workers.
If the only method for your manager to know what people are working on is to tap people on shoulders, then doing that isn’t a “bad behavior” for the manager, it’s necessary behavior.
Of cause a better solution is to have trust and plans. (Agile, scrum, waterfall, napkin sketches or whatever it doesn’t matter as long as people align during planning and have transparency into the plan). But in the absence you still need to have management in sync with what is going on.
Naturally the best pathway forwards is to look into changing your system to include all these value adding elements. But enabling remote work while management is critically dependent on physical presence to continue operation is not a good idea. And the solution is not just for managers to “give up the mindset” of knowing what’s going on below them. Trust is great when it works, and toxic when it doesn’t. The agile mantra of increasing trust is not just supposed to advocate blind trust. It’s about building a framework and working routine where we are validated in trusting each other.
> 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."
This really hits the nail on the head, in my experience this is accurate for employers that are anti-remote, they want to be able to see people "work". I've argued that that means they are essentially paying people to be there 8 hours a day, not that they're working 8 hours a day. You see it a lot in stale offices, people are sitting at their desks appearing busy. Work doesn't get completed in the that time and they start hiring more busy drones.
It's absolutely baffling to me that we can't look at the statistics at a higher level and recognise that it's a highly inefficient way of working.
This is my experience of British management over the last quarter of a century. I am an expensive contract resource but I still get paid for turning up and not so much for providing working software.
When I am working remotely, due to the organisation's inability to measure productivity, fostered by their management's "bums on seats" culture, I can't demonstrate that remote work is a benefit to them.
David Graeber's book "Bullsh*t Jobs" is about that.
These companies main priority is not efficiency and productivity. If it was, they could hire less people to do the same work and that would foster unemployment.
They have a political and social role: hire as many people as possible. Keep them employed and busy and keep an eye on them.
Become too big to fail and you'll be rewarded with overbudgeted contracts (and even bailouts, sometimes).
I call this “general wants to see his army”. I can read Wikipedia all day, but I must be present. Funny thing, all managers are allowed to work from home. Developers not! There is open office with small desks for 8-12 people in one space.
Personally I work remotely in Norway with a similar commute, but I do travel into the office for some face to face meetings. Most is done via slack or something similar though and my productivity is vastly higher. I also don't need to waste 2 hours every day of my personal time that I can instead spend with my wife and children.
They also save on office space.. I don't see how this is not a win win for everyone either.
Unless your work output is very easy to measure, demanding you show up to work in one of the only ways to ensure you're at least putting in an effort for your employer.
Of course, one of the hardest professions to measure output for is software engineers.
I once worked with a guy who, it was discovered after a long time, actually had two Silicon Valley jobs. That he actually showed up at! He walked/drove between them a few times a day, and managed to keep the illusion up for quite a while.
Maybe the problem is you were trying to invalidate their e tire management worldview with those studies. Instead, a more effective strategy might have been convincing management that while their methods were generally fine, for your specific case you might buck the trend. At least, that's how I've had luck with this problem. And also reassuring(and proving through my actions) that they wouldn't need to devote special time just to managing me vs managing the horde.
Remember, we live in a corporate culture where people who have offices with doors that close praise the “collaboration” of the open office that the rest of us serfs suffer under. You’re dreaming if you think productivity is actually the goal: power is the goal (their power over you). If you manage to produce anything in spite of management’s best efforts to thwart you, that’s entirely accidental.
The worst thing is that Europeans take this attitude with them when they move to USA and then enforce it everywhere. They just can't imagine somebody working remotely properly and have the need to micromanage over IM, i.e. employees getting messaged immediately when one's status switches to "away" or similar.
> the ability to come over and interrupt you by tapping you on the shoulder whenever they need something.
Yeah, the answer to the OP articles question about why the remote studies work out that way isn't a big mystery.
The first thing you learn working from home is self-motivation and training yourself to get "in the zone". Then try doing the same at an office, where interruptions are far more often.
But that said not all offices are like this. A lot of companies work to 'protect' their creatives/engineers from disruption from the extroverts/talkers. Either by isolating them in separate closed office rooms or having rules like headphones on = don't bother them.
I believe a change must come from bottom up and not from top down. Management won't change since they have little incentive to do so. Employees who are not happy with synchronous office work with a lot of interruptions should quit and start small successful companies that are asynchronous and remote.
To help this movement, we built open source SaaS boilerplate. We also built Async, an asynchronous team communication tool designed specifically for small teams of software engineers.
Remote has already taken off. Some people will always be stuck in the slave master mentality by choice, not because they don't know any better. They just love to control others and make others' lives miserable. Many managers literally have no other skills or purpose in this world other than that. Fuck them. The rest of us will be productive remotely while the master and slaves will work in open offices where the idiot executives actually believe that random sharing of bullshit is what writes code, fills in the accounting books, and in general does actual work. As long as those morons are making money though, their idiocy will live on. And how can you not make money in advertising these days? So it's a long uphill battle for the rest of us who prefer to get things done and do non work stuff afterwards than the moronic control freaks who think collaboration is the key and somehow the code or article writes itself. The alternative is starting that fifth game of foosball before lunch and getting to actual work sometime in the afternoon, continuing at home, and maybe finishing by two to three am if you're lucky. No wonder people work so many hours with such little efficiency.
If there's anything I've learned working office jobs at corporations, it's that you can't change the culture around "butt in seats" management because it's almost like one of the core identities of the leadership. There's always a non-technical C-level executive at the top who values "butt in seats" management, and remote work isn't one of those things that anybody will speak out to defend, particularly against the superior(s) at the top of the food hierarchy.
It's kind of like how legalizing prostitution makes way more sense especially for the sex workers, but nobody ever talks of legalizing it because nobody wants to be the guy to bring it up or challenge the status quo.
Just leave and get a job at any remote-friendly company. The grass is really greener.
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.
Yea, I've also noticed that I'm actually way more responsive working remotely because I overcompensate to signal that I'm available and working (or at least not slacking off). The fact that I'm in a totally opposite timezone makes me further want to ensure the high degree of trust. I'll immediately respond to Slack messages I get even at 2am if I still happen to be awake.
Meanwhile when I was working in an office, I felt that Slack messages were often a distraction that pulled me out of my flow state. I felt that if it were really that important or urgent (it rarely is), then they'd just come to my desk and tap me on the shoulder.
Looks like "working harder to compensate for not being there" is a common theme among us remote workers.
By the way, regarding:
> I suffer from back pain when sitting in a chair for too long. At my place, I can lie down if needed.
I suggest wearing a smartwatch that will notify you when you have been inactive for at least an hour. Try to do a couple minutes of stretches or bodyweight exercises when you get the notification. I see the opportunity to be able to squeeze in tiny amounts of exercise as another benefit of working remotely.
Since remote work seems to be the topic this article on async communication spawned I wanted to throw this out there for reactions.
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.
I'm sympathetic to this line of thought. I don't think remote work is for everyone.
However, I see fewer people on net because I work in-office. Basically just my coworkers, no one else. The vast majority of public interactions I have going into work are fleeting and poor (driving next to someone, ignoring someone on the train with headphones). At work, I talk to the same people every single day. Then because of my commute time, I get home late enough that I can't go out or do anything after work. On weekends, I usually have chores to do that I can't do during the week because of how busy I am.
In comparison, back when I was working from home, I would go running and pass people on trails. I would go to meetups at my local church after I got out of work, or take trips into the city to attend conferences on weekends. If you're spending 2 hours or above commuting to work every day (which is not that unusual), you're going to be pushed towards human interactions that are very brief and inconsequential, because you literally will not have time to do anything more significant.
Quality vs quantity matters a lot here. I think people occasionally hype up inter-office relationships too much. I like the people I work with, but I would much rather spend my limited "interaction time" on family members or friends that I've known for years, instead of on coworkers and commuters on the train. I make casual conversation with my coworkers, I don't talk to them about intimate struggles or goals in my life.
Not everyone wants to work remotely because they're antisocial -- sometimes it's literally the opposite motivation.
Good points. As someone who's had the option to work remotely for most of my ~21 year career, I find the sweet spot is a mix. For writing code / solving hard problems / doing "Deep Work", I am much more effective when I can control my environment and eliminate not just time and stress of commute but rule out whole categories of distraction and interruption. OTOH, there is no substitute for human connection; in terms of team dynamics, personal energy / motivation, and effectiveness in driving change, my most impactful moments and projects have all benefited hugely (if not outright depended on) my physical presence. Of course YMMV. So much depends on your personality, your role, your team and manager and company... but IMHO / IME, a mix of remote and onsite is ideal.
I think it's absolutely true that most people will prefer an office or at least a community to work in most the time in person. I've done both and normally prefer an office. However most offices nowadays are very badly run and promote open layout and daily scrums etc. If offices weren't effectively sabotaged this way they would be much better.
Every office critique in the OP article was made as well by my father in convo. He isn't in tech but ran a small biz his whole life. Not unique problems to tech we just have a weird culture atm.
So my thought is the breakout companies that are learning how to respect engineering and get away from the hokey practices of current middle management will be the only ones attracting senior talent. Things will shift eventually and the office can maybe make a comeback.
I didn't like most of my colleagues in the office and beyond work we had not much to talk about; almost no "office friendships" survived when I moved jobs. OTOH I throw parties at home where I invite people I consider interesting. Remote work is perfect for that, do your 100% at work, then just forget about it and live your life for the rest of the day.
Here's an anecdote for you. I work remote and normally make time for activities or groups at least a few times a week. Once, after something upset me I decided to spend a couple weeks not going out. I rapidly went toasty. By the end of the first week I couldn't concentrate on anything. I was restless, anxious, and desperately unhappy. So yes, I need some social interaction to feel normal. But it doesn't come from my co-workers.
I'm much happier not interacting with people like tellers, clerks, cashiers, and the like, because I have a speech impediment and I'd much rather not have to devote the mental and physical effort to talking. I also live in an area where travel can become treacherous and I don't own a car. Do those things apply to everyone? No. But they apply to me. I actively dislike people who think "the study says it's a good thing so I'm going to force it on you... you're welcome" is a valid mindset.
Similarly, I've noticed that being open to being disturbed means being open to having random tasks dumped on you outside the ticketing system, which takes time away from what they're actually tracking your time on. Email and Slack can do the same thing, but seeing someone right there sitting all alone and lonely without my task to keep them occupied seems to be a powerful incentive for some people to air-drop random work.
This is interesting, and reflecting a bit, it show to me why I like remote work. I train a few times a week in a gym setting that is very social, I have 3 roommates, I call my coworkers quickly if I need something, I'm pretty outgoing and friendly when I go to a coffee shop or market. Overall, I feel like I have other paths to get my social interactions from, so the ability to isolate myself for hard work gives me a lot of relief from the negative parts of work, without feeling like I miss a lot of the positive ones.
I have a family, wife, kids, and I prefer my remote job, because I can focus on them, not on the relationships with co-workers. The commute is another problem.
To fill up the social meter without a family I think I would prefer one or two days in an office, but similar results could be achieved at a co-working space or taking the time to make friendships locally and spend time with them in the evening.
A problem with most theories like this is that they treat interaction as though it can only ever add up to a positive impact. Too much unwanted interaction can burn somebody out just as much as not enough wanted interaction. That's one of the reasons that we talk about "emotional labor".
I feel like someone always chimes in to say this, but the underlying assumption here is that a significant portion of one's social fulfillment should come from their office workers, which I think is ludicrous.
Let's be real here, what percentage of people - especially engineers - really find that their social needs are being satisfied through their office jobs? After you or your co-worker leaves their job, how many ex-coworkers do you actually still remain in contact with?
I've always found office relationships to be fairly boring. Because they're you're co-workers, you have to keep a certain level of professionalism and political-correctness so as to avoid offending people. This basically confines the realm of acceptable dialogue to banal things like the weather and small-talk. If you want to say anything interesting about anything interesting like say politics, you basically have to first probe them to make sure they're not going to get offended and passive aggressively retaliate. Anything you do outside of work like a cool side project or that band you're in can't be seen as threatening to your dedication to your job, so it's safer not to bring it up.
And I'm prob going to get a lot of flack for this, but I think most office workers are fairly boring - going to work, going home to their significant others/kids, and waiting to retire. Or maybe they're really interesting but don't feel comfortable talking about interesting things at the office for the reasons I mentioned above.
Ultimately I think it's better to find social fulfillment on your own and not expect it in the office, otherwise you're bound to be disappointed. But I get that it's unfortunately hard to make friends after school. I think there are a lot of reasons for that, but that would require another long post that's outside the scope of this comment.
I find interacting with people who are forced to be there (like fast food workers/coworkers/bank tellers) doesn't really count for in-person interaction.
Personally, I'd rather interact with people who are honestly there, and aren't economically forced to submit to me or me to them.
EDIT: Wait, are you a manager referring to your subordinates? If so, you may have forgotten how stressful it is to constantly be submissive to everyone around you. If you're the same rank or above everyone else I can understand wanting interaction, but if you're on the receiving end then any interaction is an implicit demand you cut more flesh off yourself to please them.
Socializing is important, but commuting, sitting in an open office with bright lights, loud co-workers etc doesn't balance against my social needs very well. I work on a small team, me and my co-workers see each other usually twice a week, once in the office and once at the coffee shop. Along with my other social activities, I get plenty of interaction and I still don't have a daily commute. The social aspect of work only becomes super important when work is your whole life and you've got nothing else going on.
"but interacting with the teller adds to your quota of needed interaction for happiness"
Is there some evidence that mundane interactions with total strangers actually make everyone happier? I know some people who thrive on social interactions, but for many of us it is a chore rather than an opportunity. A rather taxing chore at that.
I accept there's some daily "human interaction" quota for optimal happiness, but reject that ordering a big mac in person moves that needle at all. At a store where the salesperson walks you through options for a few minutes, sure, but not for purely transactional interactions.
The issue I often have with discussions of remote work vs. on-site, is how much confirmation bias tends to be incorporated into the conclusions made.
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.
While "remote workers are more productive" is in the article's title, I disagree that the author is suggesting that working remotely is a necessary part of the solution. The article's subtitle is "Async isn’t just for remote teams".
I think the post makes it clear to that office workers could benefit a ton from async communication. And I agree completely. Sync communication at my previous job was such a drain on my productivity. For me, Slack made communication easier, but it made focus more difficult and work more stressful.
I think you're right that software tools can make a big difference. The author seems to be promoting its product - Twist - as a great Slack alternative. And I think it looks solid.
I agree with you that neither is inherently superior. However, I think this with regards to the business and generating business value. If you consider the quality of love improvements, they are phenomenal for the employee.
Personally, I believe in a hybrid solution. You work remotely say 2 days of the week, and you spend rest of the time in the office. This makes sure that you get your dose of water-cooler talk, as well as having time to yourself to get things done.
I would like to see an improvement in the culture, too, and I've seen organisations experiment with "Do Not Disturb" desks, with very limited success.
Every office I've been in has been open-plan. If it's full of developers it will mainly be quiet and conducive to work. Put just one person in there who needs to talk, especially Sales and Marketing, and it's all going to fall apart.
^ This, 100%. It's all about decoupling physical presence from notions of "working" or "interruptible".
I find async comm tools like Slack invaluable for allowing ppl to display their status (eg "DND"), as well as the ability to control notifications -- and to catch up on topics when unable to participate in realtime. These things have immense value, whether you're remote or not.
I'll never forget the experience, some 20 years ago, being on the critical path for an imminent major release, heads-down, working furiously to deliver a mission-critical feature, and enduring a steady stream of shoulder-taps (despite headphones and body language) that made it ~impossible to do my job. Silver lining was, it made it crystal clear to me that I needed to carve out time for "deep work", and empowered me to push for and receive permission to work remotely at a time and in an org where that was a nearly unique exception. I chose to spend about half my working days remote, and across various jobs and companies and industries since, have sought and pushed for and mostly maintained this balance. I'm convinced we'd all be happier and more effective if such a balance were available more broadly.
I find that acceptance of remote work (or conversely, aversion to remote work / working from home) is an excellent signal of whether or not a company will be a good cultural fit for me and a satisfying place to work.
Actually I think you kinda nailed it earlier with “among them: ...the people themselves”. A company’s / managers job should be to maximize each workers productivity and comfort (because comfort will lead to longer service, and longer service means increased productivity). Given that studies show that remote work isn’t destroying productivity, the rational thing to do is to allow workers who find remote work beneficial to work that way without stigmatizing them.
Great points, the pendulum is still swinging so I expect more and more pro-remote content in the coming years.
I personally prefer mostly remote work, but I think it's much harder to pull off - there are no play books on how to do it and if you don't do it from the start it becomes exponentially more difficulty to execute correctly.
Sometimes I wonder if the underlying issue is that there isn't enough actual work for people to do. I worry that I'm about to sound super out of touch, but hear me out; I'm not making a value judgement about anyone's job.
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.
Many, if not most, jobs have a peak utilization rate well below 100%. The most obvious example is fire fighting. IIRC, a firefighter should spend less than 10% of their time fighting fires. If they're spending more than that, then they're likely to be busy when you need them.
Sure, they're likely to spend a good chunk of the other 90% working, but it's just busywork. That busywork might be important: they spend a lot of time inspecting and maintaining their fire trucks, for example. But it's not their "real job". Their real job is to be close to the fire truck so that they can respond when an alarm rings.
It's much the same for the rest of us, except that the line is grey, not black and white like it is for firefighters. We have a priority list, and stuff on the bottom of the list will never get done unless it bubbles up in priority for one reason or another. That stuff at the bottom is real work, but since there's always stuff that's more important it's comparable to "washing the fire truck".
And even the stuff at the top of the list is busywork in a way: it's always possible for more important stuff to come in and bump it out of the way. A server can go down, or an important customer can call, or ...
It should always be "I get paid for giving my employee 40h/ week of availability for work". that doesn't necessarily mean code. there's design, meetings, bugs to find, etc.
ofc, short breaks should be in those paid times. And the hour/week is not the same in every country.
But 40/week doesn't have to be every week, just average (as some times there is less work to do, and other times stuff is on fire and must be fixed)
also, that rate has nothing to do with being remote or on-site.
As you optimize a process to get 100% resource utilization, response time for any change gets closer and closer to infinity. You need some slack for things to work, and the more things change, the more slack it requires.
And that's not even considering how humans are physically unable to work 8 hours day in and day out.
I would guess in some positions, like those requiring clearances, that it is more important to have cleared employees there when needed than micromanaging if they are working 40 hours per week.
You wont keep most employees around for part time work, but you want to make sure if your production systems go down or customer orders need to be expedited, or an emergency patch, etc... that you have a team that knows how to do the work, can get it done fast enough and is cleared to do the work (if applicable).
In some cases it might be cheaper to have employees that might be idle a bit than to lose money on downtime. Just a guess though.
This is amusing. Not long ago I was in a thread about how to do remote work well and the top complaint amongst remote workers was "not responding quickly to IM" (between remote workers). And the general sentiment was the expectation to respond quickly is greater in remote work. That alone made me not want to take remote jobs. At my current work place, my IM status says that whoever IM's me should not expect a response and that if their query is urgent, they should simply walk over to my cube and talk (I don't mind). If not urgent, they should email.
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".
Funny thing is, when I am a freelancer, who gets paid much more money per hour than an employee, people valued my time and would send me mails or text messages and wait hours or days for an answer,.
When I was an remote employee, people paid me less and called me three times before 10am.
Somehow, many employers have the perception to own every minute their employees are awake.
When I was using the "pomodoro" technique, I first started with the goal of 14 pomodoros per day (14 x 25min of focused work).
My (fairly successful) friend who had done pomodoro told me that was not a reasonable goal. 10-12 seems a more reasonable
goal for most people.
When doing focused reading in grad school I could do maybe 8-9 hours on a good day.
Working on a personal project I enjoy at home, I can do maybe 7-8 hours of focused coding in a day
(but probably not multiple days in a row).
At work I probably do 4 hours of focused coding on average. This is partly because of non-coding tasks,
but also my attention tends to peter out beyond 4.5 hours.
This article hits on a lot of good points to me, because I often see people treat chat like it's a stand-in for an IRL conversation.
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...
An important point about asynchronous vs. synchronous is that it's not just about the communication but about the work processeses. What enables people to work more effectively is removing synchronization bottlenecks in processes. Any kind of synchronization point causes people to do silly things like wait for that to happen, delay activities until after they've happened, or try to organize meetings around these points. The more synchronization points you have, the slower things get. Usually we call this bureaucracy.
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.
If a boss needs to see you in your seat to "know" you're working, it's very likely that said boss cannot actually tell which employees are effective or talented, either.
"No expectation of immediate reply"? HA! I SO wish. Slack kills any async expectation. Specially if you install it on your cellphone. Then you're on the clock 24/7.
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.
Anecdotal but I'm the opposite. I hate working from home and love having a team around me, sharing goals and ideas and hyping each other. Different strokes etc.
I'm similar, but perhaps for less positive reasons.
Being able to work from home if I need to is nice, and I sometimes take advantage of it, but generally I like to be in the office so I can have a better idea of what is going on.
This is partly paranoia due to astonishingly (often deliberately) terrible communication under a previous regime where for instance I discovered my own line manager was leaving two days before he did by overhearing it mentioned in a conversation between people who worked on a completely different project, though even now under a much better environment I feel being in the office keeps me better abreast of things I need to know, before it becomes an emergency that I don't know them.
It also creates opportunities for unplanned collaboration whereby I hear a problem that I can help with, saving others time banging their heads against it, and sometimes works the other way around for me too.
And contrary to many of the other anecdotes here, I have far more attractive distractions at home than my colleagues could hope/fear to provide for me! Though maybe that speaks more about my will-power than it days about my work & home environments...
The article starts by simply assuming its conclusion in a complete non-sequitur: that all the listed benefits of remote working stem from asynchronous communication.
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.
I work remotely for about 80% of the workweek. I am most effective at home. At work people talk to me and interrupt me quite often. You get interrupted by people walking by etc or just striking up a conversation.
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.
I could work from home 80% of the time if I wanted, but actually prefer working at an office because I find it less distracting. The office is a 'clean' space where I'm only surrounded by work related thing. I have my work computer on my work desk with my work setup, and nothing else. There is pretty much nothing else to do here other than work. Home is cluttered and I'm surrounded by all kinds of 'distraction' not related to working.
This is probably the ideal split. The one period when I was working from home four days a week and going to the office once was without a doubt the most productive of my life.
Get all the staff meetings and brainstorming and shit-shooting done in one day, then actually work the rest of the time. As it is, I have at least a half dozen different ways that you can get in touch with me if you really need to, over text, voice, video, screensharing, etc.
The other thing about working remote is that you need to actually commit to it, and get prooerly setup. It's difficult to do that if it's an irregular or one-day-a-week thing; the work-from-home day just becomes an unofficial vacation day.
It is easy to make a case for either synchronous or asynchronous communication just as easily as making cases for on collocation or remote work or office landscapes or individual rooms. But what is most often missing us the context. And it is quite naive to believe one way is always better than the other.
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...
I think I am not really well-adapted for async communication.
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.
Nobody is adapted to asynchronous communication, it's always going to make you less productive. The key is that your immediate request is forcing someone else to put down their thing to help you, the same way that other people interrupt you when they message you. In optimizing for team performance, we don't get individual maximums.
Mostly, try to reduce switchyness. Not all input is blocking, sometimes you can put a question out early and have hours/ days/ weeks before you need an answer. Work on identifying potential hangups early and often. Try to handle your communication in batches. Respond to urgent messages faster, but spend time between deep tasks or in the lame duck part of the day doing email.
i have a personal kanban type page in ms onenote. one section is Waiting For... where I add things I'm waiting for like responses to questions I've emailed out. I can scan that in the morning to see who hasn't responded to what questions and send out follow ups or schedule calls, etc
thanks for your honesty; i think it takes some adjusting both personally and culturally from the company so not entirely your fault.
i would broach the subject with the team to the extent possible. i think it requires buy in from others to the extent that if you're getting stuck with regularity, then those with whom you work don't seem to be empowering you with either the autonomy or information you need to work async.
so, the company needs to resolve that either via empowering you (=> individuals), or get their knowledge/discussion norms set up to empower async/remote type stuff, to include such things as escalation guidelines (e.g. can use phone call for urgent matters, but gitlab issue is 24hr turn around), project planning, decision provenance/knowledge storage, etc.
The benefits you get from implementing asynchronous communication with your organization are huge. This is exactly why I felt the need to resign from my job last year to go build a platform that is designed from the ground up to support this.
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:
> 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:
> 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 remote teams. Hope you find it helpful.
> 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 remote teams. Hope you find it helpful:
Joke about async communication or copy-paste error?
A thing to consider is that these remote methods are not bound to remote workers. I had a job were I had two choices when a certain situation occured that stopped me from finishing work:
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.
I think an asynchronous workplace (remote or not) is mostly a good one as people tend to be more effective without interruption.
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.
The reason people don't like remote workers by instinct isn't because they don't realize that they people COULD be more productive at home.
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.
my office is hell to work in. everyone simply shows up next to your screen and starts talking.
that is why async comms from remote locations has been a blessing for me. i can simply queue the non important messages for later.
once they've realised that i won't answer for a couple of hours they started being a lot more aware of what messages they're sending. thus comms improved greatly once everyone started working from home. the occasion call takes care of any face2face situations.
overall major win
I have this issue as well. People will show up at my desk to get something done. Yes it should be in some sort of ticket, but then they are in a queue and might get another admin, so if they just show up they will probably get their stuff done so they will leave me alone and i can get onto other work (it is not that i don't want to see people, but i have lots of work usually).
Their tool Twist is the result of their own problems while developing their app (Todoist) , and they use it internally.
Usual tools made by companies that use it (dogfooding) use to be better.
Personally I think flexibility is the future. Allow employees to decide or work inhouse or remotely. I work in a very large financial services technology company. I value to closeness to colleges and the quick, sharp interactions that can happen with that - but - there are times when I am wokring on something larger I would be more effective at home or a remote location where sales etc can physically come to my desk and suck my time.
I think this is key, but it costs a lot from companies (and also people), culturally, economically, and sometimes constrained by law.
Should you keep all seats even when 20% of your workforce prefers to work remote? What do you do with those seats when they are empty? It's possible, and it's great when it's there, just not as simple as choosing one option or the other.
I happen to prefer to work alone, but I recognize those times when meetings or pair programming are truly valuable and needed, and I jump to it at once when needed. It's about recognizing the pros and cons of each approach, and minimize the impact of the cons as much as you can.
I hope flexibility is the future. I take advantage of this a lot, but unfortunately, my company has a lot of new managers. They LOVE meetings. I really cant stand it.
This article conveniently overlooks problems when remote workers need supervision to keep them in line with expectations. I’ve had both good and bad experiences managing remote teams. The difference seems to be the quality of the remote workers. The quality of a remote persons work is inversely proportional to the supervision they require.
> It leads to lower quality discussions and suboptimal solutions. When you have to respond immediately, people don’t have time to think through key issues thoroughly and provide thoughtful responses. Your first response to any given situation is often not your best response.
Management here doesn't like remote employees because they cant order them around like they do us. Also they don't like the fact that those employees don't stay in the office longer and are not bonding with other people here.
Oh it's quite simple, I don't get interrupted. At work I might get 15 minutes of work done before there is someone at my desk, and headphones are the international sign of "hey lets bother that guy".
Productivity depends on the phase of work. Simplisticly put there are two phases of mental work such as programming: i/o bound and brain bound.
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.
Communications can often be better working from home. Open offices really inhibit conversations because you don't want to disturb your neighbors. At home you can talk to whoever you want for as long as you want as loud as you want.
For the same pay, would you rather have one person get a lot done in 6 hours or another person get little done in 9 hours? If an employee was underperforming for 10 hours a day, would your friend keep them on? Truthfully, the only things that matter from the company's perspective are the output and the price. It's wrong to misrepresent your hours worked, just as it's wrong to lie about the color of your pants, but a rational company wouldn't ask about either.
I don't get it why the workplace is viewed as only a place to work. We spend 8h of the day there. That would be a sad life if you only worked in those 8h. The workplace is actually a place to socialize, to do the things that you love, chat with your friends, have fun.
I bet most people from those 8h work a maximum 4. The rest is chatting and socializing. I like it.
> The rest is chatting and socializing. I like it.
The problem I have with this is that I don't really get to choose who I can chat and socialize with -- I like my work colleagues, but they're not my main social circle and never will be because I find it unhealthy if your colleagues are your core friends since if you ever want or need to leave (or get fired), it makes it all the more painful and makes an already stressful situation even more stressful. I'm a firm believer that you should enjoy the company of the people you work with, but that you should have a strong social life outside of work too so that you don't feel socially trapped in that job.
ChuckNorris89|6 years ago
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.
[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panopticon
fizx|6 years ago
(1) all employees are trusted and unmeasured, but you have to tap people on the shoulder every once in a while to confirm that they're on track. Naturally, this is easier if everyone is on-site.
(2) everyone is accountable for producing of tickets, and you can check that everyone is at least doing some work. Check-ins can happen via comments in tickets.
(3) Everyone just does whatever they think they're supposed to be doing, and the manager only finds out something is wrong when the employee volunteers the information or the project isn't delivered on-time.
(1) is the common case, (2) requires time and skills many managers don't have (and creates @#$% Jira commentary form the peanut gallery), (3) requires building an excellent team with years of mutual trust between them, and still goes wrong all the time.
Seeing you at your desk working, and asking a casual question or two at the water cooler is by far the easiest (laziest?) way to make sure things don't go too far sideways.
nabdab|6 years ago
If the only method for your manager to know what people are working on is to tap people on shoulders, then doing that isn’t a “bad behavior” for the manager, it’s necessary behavior.
Of cause a better solution is to have trust and plans. (Agile, scrum, waterfall, napkin sketches or whatever it doesn’t matter as long as people align during planning and have transparency into the plan). But in the absence you still need to have management in sync with what is going on.
Naturally the best pathway forwards is to look into changing your system to include all these value adding elements. But enabling remote work while management is critically dependent on physical presence to continue operation is not a good idea. And the solution is not just for managers to “give up the mindset” of knowing what’s going on below them. Trust is great when it works, and toxic when it doesn’t. The agile mantra of increasing trust is not just supposed to advocate blind trust. It’s about building a framework and working routine where we are validated in trusting each other.
BigJ1211|6 years ago
This really hits the nail on the head, in my experience this is accurate for employers that are anti-remote, they want to be able to see people "work". I've argued that that means they are essentially paying people to be there 8 hours a day, not that they're working 8 hours a day. You see it a lot in stale offices, people are sitting at their desks appearing busy. Work doesn't get completed in the that time and they start hiring more busy drones.
It's absolutely baffling to me that we can't look at the statistics at a higher level and recognise that it's a highly inefficient way of working.
bogle|6 years ago
When I am working remotely, due to the organisation's inability to measure productivity, fostered by their management's "bums on seats" culture, I can't demonstrate that remote work is a benefit to them.
throwaway9301|6 years ago
David Graeber's book "Bullsh*t Jobs" is about that.
These companies main priority is not efficiency and productivity. If it was, they could hire less people to do the same work and that would foster unemployment.
They have a political and social role: hire as many people as possible. Keep them employed and busy and keep an eye on them.
Become too big to fail and you'll be rewarded with overbudgeted contracts (and even bailouts, sometimes).
lnsru|6 years ago
tyfon|6 years ago
They also save on office space.. I don't see how this is not a win win for everyone either.
Your ex CEO sounds like a psychopath.
BurningFrog|6 years ago
Of course, one of the hardest professions to measure output for is software engineers.
I once worked with a guy who, it was discovered after a long time, actually had two Silicon Valley jobs. That he actually showed up at! He walked/drove between them a few times a day, and managed to keep the illusion up for quite a while.
I'm guessing he has 4 "remote" jobs now :)
oh_sigh|6 years ago
esotericn|6 years ago
It's then empirically obvious that I get more done and am happier.
If they don't like it, they can sack me. I earn more than twice minimum wage, ergo I can work half the year and get by.
It's never happened yet because it turns out actually people like people who get stuff done. Who knew?
Behind this monitor I'm looking out at the river, watching Winter roll in as I eat lunch. :)
commandlinefan|6 years ago
bitL|6 years ago
dmix|6 years ago
Yeah, the answer to the OP articles question about why the remote studies work out that way isn't a big mystery.
The first thing you learn working from home is self-motivation and training yourself to get "in the zone". Then try doing the same at an office, where interruptions are far more often.
But that said not all offices are like this. A lot of companies work to 'protect' their creatives/engineers from disruption from the extroverts/talkers. Either by isolating them in separate closed office rooms or having rules like headphones on = don't bother them.
otabdeveloper4|6 years ago
Well, yes, that's what you're being paid for.
The alternative is hard KPI's and getting fired for not meeting them, which is not something you really want.
tima101|6 years ago
To help this movement, we built open source SaaS boilerplate. We also built Async, an asynchronous team communication tool designed specifically for small teams of software engineers.
mnm1|6 years ago
JDiculous|6 years ago
It's kind of like how legalizing prostitution makes way more sense especially for the sex workers, but nobody ever talks of legalizing it because nobody wants to be the guy to bring it up or challenge the status quo.
Just leave and get a job at any remote-friendly company. The grass is really greener.
_pmf_|6 years ago
unknown|6 years ago
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yodsanklai|6 years ago
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.
BurningFrog|6 years ago
And your employer suffers from your lack of input in those decisions.
JDiculous|6 years ago
Meanwhile when I was working in an office, I felt that Slack messages were often a distraction that pulled me out of my flow state. I felt that if it were really that important or urgent (it rarely is), then they'd just come to my desk and tap me on the shoulder.
ricc|6 years ago
By the way, regarding:
> I suffer from back pain when sitting in a chair for too long. At my place, I can lie down if needed.
I suggest wearing a smartwatch that will notify you when you have been inactive for at least an hour. Try to do a couple minutes of stretches or bodyweight exercises when you get the notification. I see the opportunity to be able to squeeze in tiny amounts of exercise as another benefit of working remotely.
fwsgonzo|6 years ago
silviot|6 years ago
I have no data to back this claim, but I can provide this single data point.
I completely agree with both your other points about trust/discipline and important decisions though.
unknown|6 years ago
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greggman2|6 years ago
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.
danShumway|6 years ago
However, I see fewer people on net because I work in-office. Basically just my coworkers, no one else. The vast majority of public interactions I have going into work are fleeting and poor (driving next to someone, ignoring someone on the train with headphones). At work, I talk to the same people every single day. Then because of my commute time, I get home late enough that I can't go out or do anything after work. On weekends, I usually have chores to do that I can't do during the week because of how busy I am.
In comparison, back when I was working from home, I would go running and pass people on trails. I would go to meetups at my local church after I got out of work, or take trips into the city to attend conferences on weekends. If you're spending 2 hours or above commuting to work every day (which is not that unusual), you're going to be pushed towards human interactions that are very brief and inconsequential, because you literally will not have time to do anything more significant.
Quality vs quantity matters a lot here. I think people occasionally hype up inter-office relationships too much. I like the people I work with, but I would much rather spend my limited "interaction time" on family members or friends that I've known for years, instead of on coworkers and commuters on the train. I make casual conversation with my coworkers, I don't talk to them about intimate struggles or goals in my life.
Not everyone wants to work remotely because they're antisocial -- sometimes it's literally the opposite motivation.
chrisweekly|6 years ago
starvingbear|6 years ago
bitL|6 years ago
jschwartzi|6 years ago
msla|6 years ago
Similarly, I've noticed that being open to being disturbed means being open to having random tasks dumped on you outside the ticketing system, which takes time away from what they're actually tracking your time on. Email and Slack can do the same thing, but seeing someone right there sitting all alone and lonely without my task to keep them occupied seems to be a powerful incentive for some people to air-drop random work.
nscalf|6 years ago
myspy|6 years ago
To fill up the social meter without a family I think I would prefer one or two days in an office, but similar results could be achieved at a co-working space or taking the time to make friendships locally and spend time with them in the evening.
0xcde4c3db|6 years ago
JDiculous|6 years ago
Let's be real here, what percentage of people - especially engineers - really find that their social needs are being satisfied through their office jobs? After you or your co-worker leaves their job, how many ex-coworkers do you actually still remain in contact with?
I've always found office relationships to be fairly boring. Because they're you're co-workers, you have to keep a certain level of professionalism and political-correctness so as to avoid offending people. This basically confines the realm of acceptable dialogue to banal things like the weather and small-talk. If you want to say anything interesting about anything interesting like say politics, you basically have to first probe them to make sure they're not going to get offended and passive aggressively retaliate. Anything you do outside of work like a cool side project or that band you're in can't be seen as threatening to your dedication to your job, so it's safer not to bring it up.
And I'm prob going to get a lot of flack for this, but I think most office workers are fairly boring - going to work, going home to their significant others/kids, and waiting to retire. Or maybe they're really interesting but don't feel comfortable talking about interesting things at the office for the reasons I mentioned above.
Ultimately I think it's better to find social fulfillment on your own and not expect it in the office, otherwise you're bound to be disappointed. But I get that it's unfortunately hard to make friends after school. I think there are a lot of reasons for that, but that would require another long post that's outside the scope of this comment.
EDIT: Just after I posted this I see this on the front page https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21274511#21274909 Kind of supports my thesis.
twoquestions|6 years ago
Personally, I'd rather interact with people who are honestly there, and aren't economically forced to submit to me or me to them.
EDIT: Wait, are you a manager referring to your subordinates? If so, you may have forgotten how stressful it is to constantly be submissive to everyone around you. If you're the same rank or above everyone else I can understand wanting interaction, but if you're on the receiving end then any interaction is an implicit demand you cut more flesh off yourself to please them.
potta_coffee|6 years ago
jekrb|6 years ago
I'm curious if daily social video calls with your remote co-workers would be helpful in that regard.
MikeSchurman|6 years ago
MadWombat|6 years ago
Is there some evidence that mundane interactions with total strangers actually make everyone happier? I know some people who thrive on social interactions, but for many of us it is a chore rather than an opportunity. A rather taxing chore at that.
mLuby|6 years ago
settsu|6 years ago
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.
mkolodny|6 years ago
I think the post makes it clear to that office workers could benefit a ton from async communication. And I agree completely. Sync communication at my previous job was such a drain on my productivity. For me, Slack made communication easier, but it made focus more difficult and work more stressful.
I think you're right that software tools can make a big difference. The author seems to be promoting its product - Twist - as a great Slack alternative. And I think it looks solid.
gamesbrainiac|6 years ago
Personally, I believe in a hybrid solution. You work remotely say 2 days of the week, and you spend rest of the time in the office. This makes sure that you get your dose of water-cooler talk, as well as having time to yourself to get things done.
bogle|6 years ago
Every office I've been in has been open-plan. If it's full of developers it will mainly be quiet and conducive to work. Put just one person in there who needs to talk, especially Sales and Marketing, and it's all going to fall apart.
chrisweekly|6 years ago
I find async comm tools like Slack invaluable for allowing ppl to display their status (eg "DND"), as well as the ability to control notifications -- and to catch up on topics when unable to participate in realtime. These things have immense value, whether you're remote or not.
I'll never forget the experience, some 20 years ago, being on the critical path for an imminent major release, heads-down, working furiously to deliver a mission-critical feature, and enduring a steady stream of shoulder-taps (despite headphones and body language) that made it ~impossible to do my job. Silver lining was, it made it crystal clear to me that I needed to carve out time for "deep work", and empowered me to push for and receive permission to work remotely at a time and in an org where that was a nearly unique exception. I chose to spend about half my working days remote, and across various jobs and companies and industries since, have sought and pushed for and mostly maintained this balance. I'm convinced we'd all be happier and more effective if such a balance were available more broadly.
JDiculous|6 years ago
awinder|6 years ago
bananatron|6 years ago
I personally prefer mostly remote work, but I think it's much harder to pull off - there are no play books on how to do it and if you don't do it from the start it becomes exponentially more difficulty to execute correctly.
jrockway|6 years ago
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.
bryanlarsen|6 years ago
Sure, they're likely to spend a good chunk of the other 90% working, but it's just busywork. That busywork might be important: they spend a lot of time inspecting and maintaining their fire trucks, for example. But it's not their "real job". Their real job is to be close to the fire truck so that they can respond when an alarm rings.
It's much the same for the rest of us, except that the line is grey, not black and white like it is for firefighters. We have a priority list, and stuff on the bottom of the list will never get done unless it bubbles up in priority for one reason or another. That stuff at the bottom is real work, but since there's always stuff that's more important it's comparable to "washing the fire truck".
And even the stuff at the top of the list is busywork in a way: it's always possible for more important stuff to come in and bump it out of the way. A server can go down, or an important customer can call, or ...
hrbf|6 years ago
UserIsUnused|6 years ago
ofc, short breaks should be in those paid times. And the hour/week is not the same in every country.
But 40/week doesn't have to be every week, just average (as some times there is less work to do, and other times stuff is on fire and must be fixed)
also, that rate has nothing to do with being remote or on-site.
marcosdumay|6 years ago
And that's not even considering how humans are physically unable to work 8 hours day in and day out.
siffland|6 years ago
You wont keep most employees around for part time work, but you want to make sure if your production systems go down or customer orders need to be expedited, or an emergency patch, etc... that you have a team that knows how to do the work, can get it done fast enough and is cleared to do the work (if applicable).
In some cases it might be cheaper to have employees that might be idle a bit than to lose money on downtime. Just a guess though.
BeetleB|6 years ago
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".
k__|6 years ago
Funny thing is, when I am a freelancer, who gets paid much more money per hour than an employee, people valued my time and would send me mails or text messages and wait hours or days for an answer,.
When I was an remote employee, people paid me less and called me three times before 10am.
Somehow, many employers have the perception to own every minute their employees are awake.
I would never go back to such a work culture.
diminoten|6 years ago
Tade0|6 years ago
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.
greenshackle2|6 years ago
When I was using the "pomodoro" technique, I first started with the goal of 14 pomodoros per day (14 x 25min of focused work). My (fairly successful) friend who had done pomodoro told me that was not a reasonable goal. 10-12 seems a more reasonable goal for most people.
When doing focused reading in grad school I could do maybe 8-9 hours on a good day.
Working on a personal project I enjoy at home, I can do maybe 7-8 hours of focused coding in a day (but probably not multiple days in a row).
At work I probably do 4 hours of focused coding on average. This is partly because of non-coding tasks, but also my attention tends to peter out beyond 4.5 hours.
graeme|6 years ago
I am, however, bad at time tracking by disposition, and haven't made a full system yet.
atilaneves|6 years ago
ninkendo|6 years ago
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...
k__|6 years ago
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
jillesvangurp|6 years ago
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.
everdrive|6 years ago
gm|6 years ago
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.
mewpmewp|6 years ago
gherkinnn|6 years ago
Your phone is with you at all times. Work should not be.
TheThickOfIt|6 years ago
dspillett|6 years ago
Being able to work from home if I need to is nice, and I sometimes take advantage of it, but generally I like to be in the office so I can have a better idea of what is going on.
This is partly paranoia due to astonishingly (often deliberately) terrible communication under a previous regime where for instance I discovered my own line manager was leaving two days before he did by overhearing it mentioned in a conversation between people who worked on a completely different project, though even now under a much better environment I feel being in the office keeps me better abreast of things I need to know, before it becomes an emergency that I don't know them.
It also creates opportunities for unplanned collaboration whereby I hear a problem that I can help with, saving others time banging their heads against it, and sometimes works the other way around for me too.
And contrary to many of the other anecdotes here, I have far more attractive distractions at home than my colleagues could hope/fear to provide for me! Though maybe that speaks more about my will-power than it days about my work & home environments...
rimliu|6 years ago
I will be cynical but this does not sound like some work is being done there. Reminds me of the guys of the gym who spend 90% time here just talking.
Udik|6 years ago
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.
mscasts|6 years ago
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.
dagw|6 years ago
thrower123|6 years ago
Get all the staff meetings and brainstorming and shit-shooting done in one day, then actually work the rest of the time. As it is, I have at least a half dozen different ways that you can get in touch with me if you really need to, over text, voice, video, screensharing, etc.
The other thing about working remote is that you need to actually commit to it, and get prooerly setup. It's difficult to do that if it's an irregular or one-day-a-week thing; the work-from-home day just becomes an unofficial vacation day.
lazyjones|6 years ago
Interesting, you never get phone calls, texts, Amazon deliveries etc.?
tomasGiden|6 years ago
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...
dunkelheit|6 years ago
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?
kbsletten|6 years ago
Mostly, try to reduce switchyness. Not all input is blocking, sometimes you can put a question out early and have hours/ days/ weeks before you need an answer. Work on identifying potential hangups early and often. Try to handle your communication in batches. Respond to urgent messages faster, but spend time between deep tasks or in the lame duck part of the day doing email.
damontal|6 years ago
maximente|6 years ago
i would broach the subject with the team to the extent possible. i think it requires buy in from others to the extent that if you're getting stuck with regularity, then those with whom you work don't seem to be empowering you with either the autonomy or information you need to work async.
so, the company needs to resolve that either via empowering you (=> individuals), or get their knowledge/discussion norms set up to empower async/remote type stuff, to include such things as escalation guidelines (e.g. can use phone call for urgent matters, but gitlab issue is 24hr turn around), project planning, decision provenance/knowledge storage, etc.
jpincheira|6 years ago
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...
detaro|6 years ago
> 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 remote teams. Hope you find it helpful.
> 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 remote teams. Hope you find it helpful:
Joke about async communication or copy-paste error?
atoav|6 years ago
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.
bryanmgreen|6 years ago
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.
zarro|6 years ago
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.
kmlx|6 years ago
siffland|6 years ago
UserIsUnused|6 years ago
monkeydust|6 years ago
anbotero|6 years ago
Should you keep all seats even when 20% of your workforce prefers to work remote? What do you do with those seats when they are empty? It's possible, and it's great when it's there, just not as simple as choosing one option or the other.
I happen to prefer to work alone, but I recognize those times when meetings or pair programming are truly valuable and needed, and I jump to it at once when needed. It's about recognizing the pros and cons of each approach, and minimize the impact of the cons as much as you can.
xfitm3|6 years ago
iblaine|6 years ago
auiya|6 years ago
I feel like this is the main benefit.
WomanCanCode|6 years ago
mattoxic|6 years ago
MarkMc|6 years ago
vkaku|6 years ago
And more often, the answer is somewhere in between, and it's hard to generalize.
yason|6 years ago
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.
bryanlarsen|6 years ago
travisoneill1|6 years ago
buboard|6 years ago
xtat|6 years ago
helpPeople|6 years ago
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.
whatshisface|6 years ago
joshuakarjala|6 years ago
PunchTornado|6 years ago
I bet most people from those 8h work a maximum 4. The rest is chatting and socializing. I like it.
dkersten|6 years ago
The problem I have with this is that I don't really get to choose who I can chat and socialize with -- I like my work colleagues, but they're not my main social circle and never will be because I find it unhealthy if your colleagues are your core friends since if you ever want or need to leave (or get fired), it makes it all the more painful and makes an already stressful situation even more stressful. I'm a firm believer that you should enjoy the company of the people you work with, but that you should have a strong social life outside of work too so that you don't feel socially trapped in that job.