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Comment by cmdrfred | Hacker News Reader

Have you given any thought to a "results only" workplace? I have never worked in one but I think I'd thrive in such an environment. Would that solve your concerns about remote work?

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The problem is that, unlike exams and stuff, where lots of effort went into studying how long each question should take a 'typical' person, in actual work, the problem hasn't actually been solved before, at least not by the current team, and no-one really knows how long it would take. There's no obvious theoretical objective way of measuring. So, you can waste two thirds of your time on estimating and negotiating times and pays for little micro-projects (which is doable, though at a huge overhead), or simply work normal hours, and check that everyone is approximately working to the best of their ability.

This latter method is by far the easier method, for everyone. I have worked remotely quite a lot, using both methods, and the second method is far more sustainable, in my opinion. (I mean, you just sync your hours with your workmates, and just make sure you're always online in the online chat application; if the company doesnt chat in your absence on online chat, well, it might not be the right company for you; but many do. A lot).

I wonder why time spent is a concern at all. Lets say you hire me to build you a dashboard for your company. You tell me what data you want where and ask me how long I think it would take. I give you that number and you do wage * time to get at the cost of that stage of the project. From time to time we video chat and I demonstrate what I have thus far. If you feel my work is unacceptable you terminate our relationship. Where does hours worked come into play? In the modern workplace I often feel punished for efficiency and relegated to sitting at a desk twiddling my thumbs for that crime.

But you've created a pretty simple project and outcome here where the outcome is measurable and clear. I say build a widget, you build a widget. You're basically a factory worker. (As an aside here, if you've ever worked with a consultant or freelancer, you know that objectives that seem simple and clear to both sides end up not being so clear when the product is delivered and then disagreements ensure).

What if, however, I'm an engineer that's working on a new piece of machinery? This is a project that requires the involvement of many highly skilled workers, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, computer programmers, etc. I might be responsible for a single system or even component, but my work directly relies on several other's work, and it may change depending on the circumstances (say the mechanical engineer has designed an arm that would damage a critical electrical system). Now you've got a moving target. One day your work was x, now the circumstances shifted and it's y. With potentially hundreds of people involved it would be very difficult to asses what any one person's contribution was based on your standard above. Indeed, if you could asses that from the beginning, you wouldn't need all those engineers to design your machine since you had already done that work.

I see how that can be a problem in that context, NASA might never be a candidate for much remote work beacuse they are working on some of humanity's most complex projects for example. I just dont think a lot of work is that complex. Accounting, sales, insurance adjusters, data entry and many other office tasks are easy to quantify. My point is at the end of the day both parties need to be happy enough to continue the relationship tomorrow, I simply dont think i'd care how many hours you put in only if you generate more value then you consume.

Become a consultant, and you'll be rewarded for results instead of time spent.

That's not necessarily true, though. Consultants often work hourly on contracts, which means that you're typically punished for being efficient as you won't have as many billable hours.

This generally means that you're better off being less efficient while still meeting the deadlines/goals.

Of course, there's a tradeoff since proving yourself to be more efficient than expected could result in more work etc, but it's not as clear cut as being rewarded for efficiency.

I haven't tried it. I think the idea is really interesting but it always seemed to me like it was somewhat in contradiction with why people become employees in the first place. My perception is that people ultimately sort themselves into different roles in the workforce and those who are employees are doing it mostly because they want a consistent income every month, perhaps a social environment to participate in and a fair amount of direction. If you don't want those things you go freelance or become an entrepreneur.

When I look at past and current people I've managed my feeling is maybe 1 in 4 would respond really well to the "results only" workplace and the other 3 might quit.

I think the whole discussion of remote work is colored by the fact that there is a particular personality type - smart, introverted, self-motivated, results-oriented - which operates very well remotely. A lot of these people gravitate toward the tech industry. Some of them get a taste of remote and then they talk it up like it's the future of work for everyone because it is so great for them. I totally get it, I prefer remote myself, and if those people produce then I'm happy to let them be as remote as they want to be forever.

It's just that those people aren't 100% of the workforce (probably not even 30%).

I think what you are describing is exactly that cause of remote work being a hot topic of discussion. It was really aggravated in the 00's with ads like "Mother of 4 makes $5,000 a Day Working from Home!". Now enough of those people found that it was a relative scam, or a niche field that they couldn't cope in.

I believe this has already been done extensively. It is called "outsourcing". For many companies this didn't end well. One of the reasons may be the following:

It is more expensive to control the results than to control the process.

Especially in software development, you need quality assurance throughout the whole process, because checking the results or result modules in a blackbox-fashion may lead to catastrophic results.

I know some programmers who were always able to produce code that fulfils the spec, after a few corrections. But any small change in the spec, and the whole thing falls apart. Show them their own code a few weeks later, and they won't be able to maintain it. Leave them alone a few months with their code, and they will refuse to work on it anymore, because they literally can't make any sense of it anymore.

Amen. E.g. - I had to pick up a project after these 2 guys in the place I was at in the late 90s that solely survived on the skills of the (rather good) QA in the project.

Alas, it was a C program, and any significant change in the (batch) input data would cause the thing to dump core. I'm not blaming the QA for failing to provide all possible variations of the client data (spec???), just the chumps who couldn't do "defensive programming" (e.g. - I/O error or null pointer checks)

Leaving these guys unattended for any length of time would be a disaster.

Very very insightful, can't upvote this enough.

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