Comment by jasode | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jasode | Hacker News Reader

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>Then maybe everyone creating textual output for a living wouldn't have to transport their physical body to an office.

Remote work hasn't taken off on a large scale because massively successful multi-billion dollar companies like Google/Facebook/Amazon/Apple/SpaceX were not built with remote workers.

You get (relatively) minor companies touting it such as Automattic and Basecamp. Those smaller businesses haven't achieved enough success to convince business leaders on a large scale.

So to riff on your writing... "if only there were a multi-billion dollar company built on the competitive advantages of remote work."

If that happened, we'd then have Harvard Business Review doing endless case studies on its superiority.

EDIT TO ADD:

There is a limited type of "remote" work that existing successful companies will allow (and even encourage): it's the offsite remote _team_.

Some examples include IBM's team to build the "personal computer" down in Miami instead of working in the New York offices. Amazon (Seattle hq) has Lab126 (Silicon Valley) working on the Kindle. Google wanted a rewritten Javascript V8 engine and hired Lars Bak from Denmark. From the story I remember, Lars Bak made it a condition of employment to not relocate to California and because he already had the reputation, Google agreed. At first, he worked out of his home in Denmark but then he opened a Google office and his programming team then worked in that office.

Those semi-remote scenarios are about as far as you're going to get until other businesses with full remote employees working from home proves to the business world that "remote working" is a competitive advantage.

Remote office with an onsite team in that remote office -- yes. Remote telecommuting from home on a large scale? Not yet.

Red Hat and Canonical have achieved great success with a lot of remote workers. Heck pretty much the entirety of Linux and its ecosystem is remote.

All I hear is excuses and lack of willingness to work remotely, coped with lack of experience on how to make it work. From all sides.

The secret is following the procedure and working remotely even if the person is sitting next to you. (I don't mean get into a video chat if the person is sitting next to you) but:

- Procedures for idea exchange. You might talk to the person next to you or through a private PVT channel but make the ideas circulate.

- "Oh Slack/IRC/etc is distracting", do you know what else is distracting? My colleague next to me. Deal with those.

- Have good tools and follow procedures.

>Heck pretty much the entirety of Linux and its ecosystem is remote.

I'm a full 100% remote worker and I would never bring up "Linux development" as evidence for businesses to adopt remote work. If remote work evangelists want to argue for the benefits of work-from-home, please do not use Linux as an example because it undermines credible business thinking. As I've said before[1] and paste again here:

Open source development as "obvious" proof of remote work superiority is often brought up but proponents don't realize they aren't the same. E.g. open source project like Linux kernel where volunteers choose what they want to work on, with little or zero effects on careers for missing deadlines has different dynamics than businesses.

If we want to convince businesses to adopt remote work, the Linux kernel is not a relevant example. Businesses have:

1) finite budget

2) deadlines

3) pressure to innovate for marketplace acceptance or go bankrupt

We need a better explanation for why business-related success of Google Pagerank/Bigtable, Apple iPhone, Facebook, etc comes more from teams in the office rather than remote workers on Skype. The Linux project -- even though it is "successful" -- is not that explanation.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15047805

>E.g. open source project like Linux kernel where volunteers choose what they want to work on

The vast majority of Linux kernel contributors work for companies who pay them to work on the Linux kernel. Many of those developers do have some flexibility in what they spend their time on but it's not like they can do whatever they feel like.

>The vast majority of Linux kernel contributors work for companies who pay them to work on the Linux kernel.

Sorry for not being clear, the context was "building" a product. E.g. rewind the clock to 1991 when Linux Torvalds and volunteers and hobbyists are "working remotely" via USENET and exchanging emails. The Linux kernel they iterated on is an astounding achievement but that collaborative process is a totally different dynamic than a business that has to spend real money and get a product out.

Developers in open source companies do have finite budgets, do have deadlines and have some pressure to innovate.

And yes, they do often work for upstream projects as part of their jobs, pushing for changes they need for their deadlines.

Most of open source work is done by companies. And yes, a lot of them with remote workers.

Though I agree, I don't expect an iPhone to be made remotely though, hardware is complicated.

>Developers in open source companies do have finite budgets,

Yes, the employees of companies at Intel, RedHat, and IBM contributing to Linux work within a finite budget (paid salaries) but The Linux Kernel itself does not have a budget. If Intel/RH/IBM all stopped funding programmers to work on Linux, the Linux project would still continue with volunteers. It may continue at a slower pace but it would continue nonetheless.

The point remains: Linux kernel remote workers cannot be used as a case study for businesses to adopt remote telecommuting.

It does answer communication problems though right? Compared to any business project, the kernel is behemoth.

>Compared to any business project, the kernel is behemoth.

The Linux kernel's ~26 million lines-of-code[1] is much smaller than the proprietary code bases at Google, Facebook, and Microsoft. E.g. Google had 2 billion LOC in 2015.[2] MS Windows is ~50 million LOC. All those companies have faster commit velocities to their repos than the Linux project.

[1] https://phoronix.com/misc/linux-2017/index.html

[2] https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2016/7/204032-why-google-stor...

I thought Jeff Dean built everything at Google.. :)

They were also built in a time where "Super Commutes" weren't necessary.

They still aren't "necessary", especially on a programmer's salary.

It's only might be necessary if you want a large, single family house.

> Remote work hasn't taken off on a large scale

Which is fortunate for any US or European citizen who hopes to ever find employment again.

I'm not worried with the competition from abroad.

Culture is an issue (both from the contractor and the hiring sides), quality is another (in some places).

> culture is an issue

maybe in theory, but every company I've ever even heard of has been more than happy to throw together almost any random group of people regardless of culture (or even language) as long as they had the right credentials and expect for culture issues to sort themselves out and good quality to appear. But if consistent culture is the important thing... it's a lot easier to find a homogeneous culture in Hyderabad, India than it is in San Francisco, CA (of all places).

Even with remote work, cultural barriers are still an issue.

It's a double standard though. I was at one of the big companies mentioned. I was the only one on my team in my office. Everyone else was remote in a time zone. My manager wasn't on site. But I couldn't work from home, and my desk space was reduced several times during my time there.

What was the difference (in policy or whatever) that allowed your colleagues to remote in but you not?

Not GP, but many companies have a policy allowing employees to live in remote places, but if you live in the same city as the office, you're not allowed to work from home.

The idea seems to be that remote employees are expected to establish a little mini-outpost of that company within their own home, while local employees who "work from home" are more often than not really handling errands or lounging or whatever. It's a double-standard, but a very common one in my experience.

Thank you for the explanation.

Maybe it was about their home not being a good environment to work (spouse running a daycare operation for kids, whatever), not about the company policy.

Isn't that the same for any new/fringe idea though? Working non-remotely has been the status-quo since before it was possible to work remotely.

More curiously, I'd like to see if remote work was responsible for preventing a company from reaching milestones like being a multi-billion dollar company.

> Working non-remotely has been the status-quo since before it was possible to work remotely.

As a farmer, I like to think of it as the original working remotely career. Especially in history where your entire land-base and home were one in the same. Working in an office away from home is the 'new fangled' way to work.

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