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Comment by jimmaswell | Hacker News Reader

As someone who has worked on fully remote game dev volunteer projects for nearly 10 years, it's unbelievable how much the cultural inertia of physical presence has prevented companies from making the rational move of eliminating all possible office space in favor of remote work and skype meetings. So much money wasted on rent, security, and upkeep and so much time (and even lives) lost to commuting when there isn't a single compelling reason programmers need to cohabitate a physical office to get their job done.

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Communication between team members is a huge issue in remote work.

It works if everyone is on site. It also works if everyone is remote.

But when some are at the office and some aren't, communication and information sharing becomes a lot harder. Mostly it's a process and tool issue, but still humans will rather just turn around and ask the team than spend a minute writing their issue on Slack/whatever.

It's true. I worked at a company that was 100% remote when it started and kept the remote culture as it grew from 4 to 25 people, but one city in particular ended up having enough people that they decided to rent space in a big shared office, coworking-style. Ultimately, people who worked in that space ended up being more connected to what's going on, due to physical proximity. You wander past a hallway conversation and you end up joining, or at least knowing about it. You go to lunch with your coworkers and happen to get a little work talk in. You ask questions more easily from someone who's right across the desk from you because you can read social cues about how "interruptible" they are. Jokes come across better in person than via messaging. There are lots of subtle ways in which in-person interaction is just inherently different than remote, and the office people end up tighter.

It's not even remote vs non-remote. My employer had many medium sized offices of 100-200 people, and we merged with a company that had one single 5000+ person campus. That was a major culture clash for sure in terms of documentation and processes

doist?

But it's not actually hard, managers just aren't trained on how to deal with the split. Leadership can demonstrate how to manage both, and if there are still problems, you can just mix up the office seating.

Even in remote-heavy orgs, communication issues remain if the culture or process is shit. If you have 10 different Jira sites, 4 forms of communication, and documents in 15 different systems, it's going to suck no matter where people work.

Simplistic answer but it is that simple: just don't do that.

I like remote work to an extent, but its not that simple, and whether programmers "need" something or what "can" happen is a really not the best point to argue, because for example you don't "need" anything more than C if you require portable code to do anything that pretty much any other general purpose language does. I've also done these volunteer projects. They work because timelines are pretty up in the air, there's often little or no funding to be concerned with, everyone is working on it because they want to, and they're only working when they are well-motivated to do so. There are many more constraints in a proper company and job. Remote communication doesn't even come close to the interaction of a roughly synchronized office environment. Of course, there are downsides to the traditional office setup too, but in eliminating those concerns you introduce more problems presented by remote setup. I know people who even have the option of remote work and choose not to, and I can empathize with that sentiment.

Even though I would absolutely prefer to work remotely, I have to disagree with you.

I find that there are significant benefits to working in the same physical location.

It's just way easier to go to someone's desk and ask them something than to have to set up a video chat. Human interaction is just naturally an in person thing. So much is lost if you can only video chat. Sure it may not affect the work directly but I think it really affects a team's dynamic. Lots of great ideas happen just from random office interactions, whether it be lunch or just talking over coffee. These kinds of things are really hard to reproduce in a remote environment.

That's not to say there aren't reasons working remotely is beneficial. I just don't think it's fair to just say the only reason companies opt for physical proximity is cultural.

> It's just way easier to go to someone's desk and ask them something than to have to set up a video chat

That's not a benefit, that's a downside. Interrupting someone while they're working kills productivity. You're far better asking in chat and having someone you're not interrupting help.

I'm sorry that you feel that way. I consider being able to help another person to be a huge privilege.

What you describe sounds like it's putting one person's progress over another. Sure a mentor may be disrupted but by unblocking someone else they're still increasing the overall productivity of the team and thus is a net gain.

> You're far better asking in chat and having someone you're not interrupting help.

This only works when your question is general enough that many people can help you

Not every programmer does his/hers best working remote and communicating through slack/skype meetings. People have different personality traits. The remote devs in your volunteer projects were probably self-selecting.

Also, some dev positions require extensive communication and that is easier in person.

Companies invest a lot in their employees. They don't want them to leave. In many managers' eyes, physical presence in the office makes it much easier to gauge employee satisfaction and whether they may be out interviewing. Also, it seems that in many organizations still, the employees that arrive to work earliest, are most punctual, most consistent, most organized, best dressed are viewed as more competent and are favored.

> So much money wasted on rent,

Although this now translates to a cost on me needing an extra room in the house for an office.

I do fine using my normal desk. Open AWS and Skype at the start of the day, do work, close them at 5, that's it. Bring a laptop to a different corner of the house or a library/coffee shop if you can't adapt to using your personal space for work. Working outside is nice when the weather permits.

If I didn't work from home, I'd not have a room for an office. Working from home means I need an extra room realistically.

I do fine using my normal desk.

Not everyone has space in their apartment for a "normal desk".

Bring a laptop to a different corner of the house or a library/coffee shop if you can't adapt to using your personal space for work.

Not every coffee shop likes having people lounging around for 8 or more hours a day, making minimal purchase. Aside from the fact that most are too noisy to concentrate, have shit wifi, bathrooms that are frequently occupied / barely work, etc.

I get it personally. Remote requires better communication skill, and additional tooling and management to work around time differences.

Besides, I know many people that are not as productive at home.

Did I hear leftovers?

Especially when their stuff runs on AWS.

what that does have to do with remote work? I commute to work everyday, but my team's code doesn't run in a cpu under my desk.

Systems administration used to be done in-house.

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