Working Remotely
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There are managerial challenges when you are responsible for for is working remotely. For the first 3 years or so of Hypernumbers we were rotating between 7- and 6- day working, going down to 5-day working in the summer.
The real concern when you are working with young developers (I was mid-40s, Dale was early 20s) is about burnout. Particularly with software developers. Young men working long and engaging hours with addictive work practices, with the usual poor dietary habits - this is a bad accident waiting to happen. At if.com we had a particular developer who physically turned green during a big push. Easy to spot in the work place, remotely not so much...
Dale has a quite common tendency for diurnal drift - a 25 hour cycle. Nothing wrong with it, slightly alarming when you sign off in chat at midnight, go to bed, start up at 7am when you get up and he's still there. Diurnal drift can rapidly turn into social isolation though (and a one way ticket to the bin).
Our industry has a lot of people at one end of the autistic spectrum - and remote working is not an policy for everyone.
Domestic circumstances also count a lot - support at home, friends, community stuff.
I heartily agree with what Dale says about communication, practices and procedures. I have long thought that the main lesson of open source projects is that they can only succeed if all the modalities are tip-top. We adopted 'open source processes' at hypernumbers to drive quality - and remotish working helped drive them in.
The circumstances of hypernumbers were a bit different though. Normally you would look to colocate the person specifying the system and the people who are writing it. With hypernumbers we spent the first couple of years essentially cloning Microsoft Excel so the business processes were optimised for remote working. (This is also one reason why open source programmes are dominated by clones.)
So it is a bit more nuanced I think than in his write up.
Would I hire remote workers again? Yes I would. Contrary to received wisdom I try and hire people from the 'other' end of the autistic spectrum (the end I would put Dale on).
On conventional measures of productivity (production SLOC per person per day) I would regard the experience at hypernumbers very highly - although the total difference in working procedures versus if.com where I have 'before' measurements from make it hard to allocate outcomes to a particular aspect of how we worked.
I also have to take issue with his routine - diurnal drift has always been a problem for me (hard for me to get up early, easy to stay up late == bad sleeping habits and a sloppy daily routine); I find I cannot maintain a structured and meaningful routine if I start slipping outside of my established "get up early (early here is 7AM or 6AM), shower, work, exercise, read, sleep" cycle (excluding other creature habits like meals &c...).
I'm a rare one in that I don't actually socialize with any developer community at all - but I do have a vibrant and active social life outside of computers - most of my friends aren't anywhere near the programmer/developer culture. I would say exercise (I hit a CrossFit gym three times per week) and an active social life, whatever that means to you, and a structured daily routine are the keys to working remotely and on your own.
Internet startups have a cult-like culture at the moment - uber-important, the 'next Google' and all that statistically unlikely guff - with remote working that can make a perfect storm for mental illness.
That was the sort of stuff that used to keep me up at nights. People were doing long hours for shite wages, the last thing you want is to fry their neurons. Burn out is more than just 'don't want to touch the computer for a couple of days' - you can really damage people.
I had to learn those personal lessons the hard way - a long time ago I was a quintessential nerd in that I didn't ever exercise, eat properly, or maintain a healthy routine AND I worked 80+ hour weeks. That was in an office with co-workers. Burnout wasn't just the symptom, it was one of many symptoms of a deep psychological shortcoming on my part: self-worth. The more self-esteem you have, generally, the more capable of knowing what your boundaries are and how/when to uphold them in the face of an encroaching white collar executive that doesn't understand what you do or why staring at a screen for 12 hours and eating donuts as a breakfast "bonus" is (IMHO) mistreatment. That example is an extreme one, but it's where I came from and now I manage my time effectively, have an equilibrium in my life that is healthy and feels good, and I own my own company...
I disagree - managers have a duty of care towards their employees.
> The more self-esteem you have, generally, the more capable of knowing what your boundaries are and how/when to uphold them in the face of an encroaching white collar executive that doesn't understand what you do or why staring at a screen for 12 hours and eating donuts as a breakfast "bonus" is (IMHO) mistreatment.
I'm sorry but employment is a power-relationship and saying that the critical thing is 'self-esteem' is simply wrong.
I agree with this, but I still maintain the original point you were responding to - I still think it is an individual responsibility.
> I'm sorry but employment is a power-relationship and saying that the critical thing is 'self-esteem' is simply wrong.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by "power-relationship" a bit more? I still do think self-esteem is a critical component; when you are hiring people to be a cog in the wheel, the last thing you look for is individuality - so yes, when herding the sheep, as a manager you come from the power position and benefit by taking care of your sheep so they output most effectively.
But I suppose the question over which points are being argued here has more to do with what kind of personality we are talking about? Like I said, I agree with what you say when the person in question is desirable as a replaceable part (as is the case in many larger corporations) but I disagree when we start talking about autonomous individuals (the irreplaceable people in an organization - small or large).
I suppose it was my fault for relating the concept of "remote worker" with one of "autonomous individual" - when in fact there are people of many different personality types and roles that engage in remote working.
I've worked for a big corporation in the past that bore a particularly onerous, victim-blaming animus toward its employees. Anytime anyone, anywhere, had an issue with his boss, he was told to "learn to manage upward." "Managing upward" became a catch-all excuse for allowing a boss's failures to be re-characterized as your own. As it so happened, our division had a few downright abusive bosses. I mean, abusive in the legally actionable sense of the word. And their direct reports would invariably try to "manage upward," then get firmly reprimanded for doing so. To top it off, they'd be labeled internally as malcontents, politically isolated, and subjected to further abuses. Not surprisingly, very few people below the upper-middle-management tier of this company stuck around for longer than a year.
I am your boss. I allocate your work. Your pay depends on me. Your promotion depends on me. Your reference for your next job depends on me. I can fire you.
It is pretty straight forward.
I'm also naturally prone to staying up late and sleeping late. I've been that way since I was a (young) teenager. My normal routine is going to bed between 2 and 3am and getting up between 9 and 10am. It works out fine, but if I don't keep that schedule, I'm worthless the next day.
After years of working from home and feeling rather unsatisfied with it, a couple of years ago I started to lay down a more firm schedule. Work from 10 to1, break for lunch, work from 1:30 to 5:30 or 6. A few months ago, I turned the guest bedroom into a dedicated office space. Both of these things have made a tremendous difference.
Without a dedicated workspace and a set schedule, I find that I end up working off and on throughout the day, easily distracted, tending to wander. As a result, I would be less productive, but yet it would feel like I was always working. That lead to some serious issues with burnout and depression and made it very difficult to spend any sort of quality time with my family.
“Doesn’t it get lonely?” Not really. I'm on IRC all day so have plenty of technical interaction throughout the day, and there's always the outside world (lunch, friends, etc).
“How do you get work done?” I almost think I get more work done working remotely than I do in an office because I won't spend 30m here and there talking about my weekend or whatever, I just work. Casual web surfing (HN etc) is about the same (i.e. occasionally when I need a break). I spend a few days every other month or so actually at the office, which has proven to be very productive, but in a different way. There's a dynamic that (I've found) you can only get in person, face to face, that doesn't involve cranking out lines of code, but just being able to talk through various issues/strategies/directions/etc. It's refreshing to have that time every over month or so.
“Doesn’t it affect your quality of life?” Absolutely! But in a very very good way. Granted I was commuting 1hr+ each way, so I immediately gained 10+ hours a week and save $3-400/mo on gas. The flexibility is amazing. Working at an office I had to leave early (6am) to try to beat the traffic. This morning I took my son to Panera to pick up bagels for the family before starting work (for example).
The whole experience thus far really makes me wonder why more companies don't embrace it more.
But it's a big leap for a lot of companies. It requires placing faith in employees and hoping for the best from them (i.e., that they'll tailor their schedules to their peak performance hours), rather than mistrusting them and fearing the worst (i.e., that they'll just slack off).
Incidentally, companies entrenched in that latter mindset -- those that fear the worst from their employees -- usually end up getting the worst from their employees. So it becomes a vicious cycle: company treats employees like dirt; employees feel demotivated; company sees demotivated employees and decides its lack of faith in them is justified; rinse and repeat.
Does anyone know where I could find resources (case studies, testimonials, etc) to promote remote work? 'Hard' data would certainly help convince the boss. Stories like this are great, but they'll need more concrete evidence to back it up.
Amazon Affiliate Link:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591842921/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...
There's also a white paper linked on this page http://www.lifesize.com/Industry_Solutions/Government_Soluti... (but you have to register for it.)
full disclosure: i work at www.lifesize.com and we do eat our own dog food. One of my team members has been working remotely in another state for several months and many of our team often work from home.
Flex hours/location isn't for everyone. Personally speaking, I believe companies should offer it to everyone and not necessarily restrict it...BUT...let the buyer beware, so to speak. If an employee wants to take up a customized schedule, he or she had better be prepared to do good work under it.
This seems completely ridiculous to me, as do some of the replies. The idea that you don't know whether or not you're getting the employee's 'best' or if the employee is 'slacking off' is frankly your problem at best. More accurately, it's irrelevant.
I think this is one of the ideas that remote work can help improve. I'd like to be paid for the value of my work, not for your impression of the amount of my potential that I appear to be exercising in your favor... and that's what it is, right? If the employee is in the office you determine whether he/she is 'slacking off' by whether you see them browsing facebook (or HN?)... That's a flawed way to evaluate someone's worth as your employee. I find it interesting and compelling that remote employment forces us to change that dynamic.
Perhaps I should clarify: when I say that adopting flex time requires a leap of faith for certain companies, I'm simply making an observation. I don't condone that mindset. In fact, I think it's every bit as ridiculous and antiquated as you do. But a lot of employers are old-school that way: they don't trust their employees, and opening up to a concept like flex time is inherently going to require a bit of a leap of faith for them.
My entire point was that such companies -- as it so happens, a lot of companies -- still view their employees from an inherent place of mistrust or wariness. Yes, it's their problem. And yes, it will prevent them from getting the best and brightest. No argument there. I was simply pointing out that such a mindset exists and that it is still fairly prevalent. I was not in any way justifying it or lending credence to it.
In a perfect world, I agree: it should not have to be a leap of faith. But in the world as it exists, it's still a big jump for many, many employers.
You're right, it's rampant and in some markets it's hard to find an opportunity to work for a company while avoiding this kind of attitude. Shame. I've thought a lot about turning to contracting to 'solve' this problem. I'd rather have a dispassionate agreement based on what I think an hour of my time is worth than a personal one about how much of my available time I'm giving to an employer incapable or uninterested in evaluating my work product.
Fortunately, at present I'm on a ridiculously amazing team at an awesome startup and this isn't a problem I'm currently faced with.. but I've seen quite a bit of it in the past, and I expect to come across more in the future.
I do not judge employee worth by whether or not I can see them working/goofing off. I judge them by whether or not they produce the goods on time and to spec.
That said I have a remote worker and it is a constant battle to see whether or not I am getting what I need out of him. He is poor at communications and so the rest of the team feel as if they do not know what he is doing at any time (so they assume, in the absence of any other data, that he is not pulling his weight).
I am sure that he works long hours and does indeed try to produce the goods but that doesn't take away the perception (if he cannot be contacted at 1000 people assume he is still in bed (and he might be for all I know)). If he comes into the office and spends time talking to people they see it as interference (with a dollop of "why is he sat here chatting to me instead of getting on with the work we are trying to complete").
I think it takes a very disciplined person to work remotely and those disciplines are: working at home as if you were going to the office; be fanatical about communicating with your colleagues; make sure everyone knows what your routine is (if it isn't the same as theirs) so that they understand why you cannot be contacted at 1000 in the morning.
I think it's important to make the distinction between remote employees and remote teams. I think having a remote employee or two on a non-remote team is a challenge... I don't think the qualities required to work remotely are all that rare or require that much discipline. You could argue that it requires loads of discipline to come into work every day.. but you wouldn't, because it's second nature to us.. because we're judged on showing up.
Anyways, like I said.. being a remote worker on a non-remote team is pretty tricky. I've dealt with this challenge in the past and the best advice I can give is to allow/encourage your local employees to telecommute occasionally. The last team I was on that dealt with that virtually everyone started working from home one day a week and the group pretty quickly started adapting to different practices in terms of communication, expectations, and handing off work products. Was really beneficial all the way around, and it makes the odd completely-remote employee way less of a perceived rogue.
I personally don't work at coffee shops, I find them too distracting. I love my quiet office where I can concentrate for large blocks of time.
As a company you should be hiring remote developers. It makes it alot easier for you to find good employees when you aren't limiting yourself to only locals, or only those who want to relocate.
The best thing about remote work is not that you can work from home but the fact that you don't need to be in office to work.
We know you can work in cafes etc. but also you can work while travelling around the globe. That's one great advantage and I love it.
I get the luxury to go around, stay in new cities (heck even countries) and meet new people while working. All I need to ensure is that I have internet access.
That means I get a week of seeing family and relaxing with them in the evening without having to take any holiday to do so.
One of the difficulties I've had with remote work, as mentioned in the op and comments here, is lack of daily structure and socializing. I think learning a new language is one of the best antidotes for this. You can do a language program for four hours a day and meet a huge variety of people from all over the world while picking up an incredibly useful and rewarding skill. The natural focus on conversation and collaboration is a great counterweight to the solitary nature of programming. Good programs also tend to offer a lot of cultural and social events outside of classes. It's pretty low stress and leaves plenty of time in the day to get work done.
Aside from all this, it's pretty awesome to be able to live in a nice, sunny, furnished, utilities and internet included studio with a balcony and view in one of the nicest areas of a giant cosmopolitan city for ~33% or less of what a similar arrangement would cost in SF or NYC.
As far as getting that foot in the door, go to where the entrepreneurs are. Go to meetups, conferences, anywhere entrepreneurs and web-minded people congregate, and talk with people about their work and ideas. With Android, you definitely have a skill that's highly in demand. If you show intelligence and enthusiasm, it's very possible you'll get offers on the spot. Hope that helps.
Both before and during the interview I made it clear that I was looking for a job where I could work remotely (I'd have a 2 hour commute each way otherwise). It turned out they thought I was the best person for the job, and they were willing to be flexible on exactly where I worked so long as I was in the office for the team meeting on a Monday morning. Getting a day off a week was a pleasant side effect of them not having enough money to pay for me full time, and me deciding I'd rather have more free time then more money.
In summary the key factor in getting a remote job is to make it very clear that it's part of your terms. If the company really wants you they'll be flexible. If not, there are plenty of other jobs out there for a good developer at the moment.
Can't say about phone meetings as we usually have our conversations over Skype.
I have been working on an online / smartphone based food ordering project for about 6 months. This work was getting done on the side along with my day job which required me to be in the office from 9 to 5. I always thought about the day when I would become fully involved with my personal project and leave my day time job. That day came sooner than I was hoping for and it come on the terms of my employer rather than mine because of some budget cuts and project discontinuations. This is my first week working from home on my personal project.
Yesterday I contacted a couple of shared office spaces where I can find a cubicle. I am still debating whether to work from home or to find a shared cubicle and get into the routine of going to office and interacting with other startups that share office space in the same building.
This phase and my personal experience in this phase will help me lay some guidelines on working from home when we actually have employees. So far I feel good. I can work until late in the night and wake up late because I do not have to take a shower and drive to start working in the morning and use my lunch time as shower time. I am feeling that working from home requires better planning and focus than working from office with other employees.
I feel somewhat inexperienced in writing a whole lot on this subject as I am in my first week of working from home but for me there will not be a better time to read other people's comments on this topic.
I'm considering taking on a full-time developer to help out with my work, and while I'm OK working for people remotely, I'd probably prefer this person to be local and we get an office, at least for part time meeting space (if there was a coworking area nearby I'd use it). The difficulty I've had is finding other developers who are communicative with emails, ticket systems, phone calls, whatever. I've worked with a couple dozen devs over the past few years, and can count on one hand those that were strongly professional in their attitude towards communication - documenting things clearly, keeping in regular contact, knowing when to ask questions, preemptively helping out with ambiguous issues, etc.
Certainly "working from home" can be great, but you do need an emphasis on "work" rather than the "from home" to be successful with it. I know people see what I do and say "awesome, I'd love to work from home". The reality is, many people need the structure that going to an office provides (I wouldn't even mind it myself now and then).
Does allowing your employees to be happier people increase their productivity and loyalty? Yup, I think so.
the only remote job listings I have seen are on hacker news
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2719028 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2270791 (cant find a more recent one)
and as I mentioned in the post, working on open source / following open source companies is a good idea as there is quite a large correlation between being distributed and open source
I've found that the occasional trip to the office to meet and greet, bond over drinks and do some rapid fire planning seems to recharge both those in the office and those on the remote teams.
I work on an home-office space, it is quiet,it holds all my work stuff, it is "the" office. The kids know if I am in there.. I am "at work".
I do plenty of one-to-one over chat/skype/phone with peers,vendors and customers. Nothing different then on a real office.
I regularly do 2/3 hour pair programming sessions with members of my team. We use x11vnc + skype, (we use the pilot-copilot technique ), we get lots done and by the end of a session, our thought-spaces are 100% in sync.
I don't miss the "social interaction" at the office, I got plenty of friends in the "real world" and they don't care to hear from my work (nor would understand it if I told them)
I also get plenty of "geek interaction" with other developers, over beers at the local pub.
The key for remote development is to realize that development is creative work. Hours of work are not important, tasks done are.
I "purchase" tasks from my team for X $ with deliverable at Y time. I don't really care how long or when they do it, as long as the deliverable is on time I am happy.
I can do this, because I am a developer and know how long a task should take,(at least to me) so I know if I am getting a "good deal" for my money. If the developer that "sells" me the finished task got it done in 5 minutes or 5 hours is irrelevant to me.
My gut feeling is that this works nicely for Dale but not so much for his colleagues!
As his boss, addressing his loneliness and isolation was one of MY needs - people's performance isn't in isolation of the rest of their life. For Dale this never turned out to be a problem, for others not so...
Just my personal experience.
I worked with a company - as a contractor - for a number of years in the beginning of their startup mode. Out of the 4 developers in the company, I was the only one that came into the office. For me, it was lame. Everything over email, im, or phone is not the way I like to work. There's something about face to face that makes a difference. I saw many, many times things getting blown up out out of proportion because it was not conveyed correctly over email or im.
I want that social interaction that you can only get being face to face with other devs - lunches, coffee, after work drinks, etc. Not only that, there's all kinds of office activities like whiteboarding, pairing (I know you can do this via remote too, but again, face to face is still valuable), going over to someone's desk and just talking about something.
The other thing I've noticed at my office is we need to now bring in all these other tools to keep everyone apprised of when builds have been deployed, etc. And all these tools detract from the amount of time someone can focus on something - there are guys that have all this hooked into their im and it's really distracting when you're sitting with them.
In closing, I'm of the opinion that I would prefer to have everyone in the office 5 days a week. If someone wants to work at home a day here or there thats totally fine, but overall, I've just experienced it not being beneficial for the group.
next wednesday there is techmeetup, some talks + beer and pizza, then we go to the pub afterwards - http://techmeetup.co.uk/
through techmeetup its usually quite easy to find out about a lot of the other events that go on, edinburgh uni run a lot of events, there are side meetups like the lean startup meetings and functional programming meetup, and the usual python / ruby / java / linux user groups.
Last year now, last chance!
First of all I have to come into the office and stay there for 8 hours a day -which is normal- but then I have to login to another computer via remote desktop and work on that environment, even though I have a perfectly functional computer right in front of me.
Things wouldn't be so bad if the remote server wouldn't be a few thousand kilometers away and the lag weren't so noticeable that it induced regular urges to go take a nap and took away most of the desire to write any kind of code.
I think most of you agree that anything less than instant response when you type a word or scroll a page is practically torture when done for 8 hours a day. I would have never imagined that it would be possible to have better working conditions at home than at work, but nevertheless here I am, living the horror.
One of the things I've learned from this experience is that I still tremendously enjoy programming stuff at home and that when I have a good working environment I can become more productive by orders of magnitude.
You have my profound sympathy.
Working at that place made me a witness to a constant stream of fail.
It really sucks.
mstsc /v:servername /admin mstsc /v:servername /console
admin or console switch depends on version of Windows. One of them will work. Most ppl don't know this. It also has the advantage (in a pinch) that if you need to login to a server, you can log out the current console session and login yourself. Something you can't do with regular terminal sessions (Unless the server is in a domain, and you can connect to terminal services manager remotely and log ppl off)
http://weblogs.asp.net/owscott/archive/2003/12/30/Managing-T...
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2005/02/remotely-managing-r...
(be sure to read the comments for additional tips)