End the Office? Students Want Right to Work From Home | Hacker News Reader

End the Office? Students Want Right to Work From Home

itechtalks.blogspot.com

19 pointsrajeshvaya24 comments

The problem is these people are only thinking about themselves, and not considering the affects of their actions on coworkers. They need to understand how to be a member of the team first, and after that they'll understand how much flexibility in terms of devices, working hours, and location is appropriate.

My office lets people have too much flexibility when choosing their work hours and location. --It's not that people don't work hard, but when you have inexperienced people coming in at noon, that ends up being several hours of time that they're working in the evening without being able to get help from more experienced people. If I had a dollar for every time I found out a coworker struggled for hours on an issue only to have me or another more experienced person provide an answer in 5 minutes, well, I'd have a much healthier retirement account.

Working remotely is also difficult as it can be much harder to properly explain things when you're not able to sit next to each other, point things out, and even grab a piece of paper to sketch stuff out in order to clarify things.

Excellent point.

I am near the start of my career (3 years in or so) as a programmer, and I spent much of the first part of that working remotely. Though I enjoyed not having to get dressed and drive in traffic to be at the office by 8am, this severely stunted the development of my work skills. Now, when I was working for a startup, I would spend hours and hours at home on projects and remained fairly disciplined, but that was due to the passion I felt for my work. When that startup folded I had to enter the regular workforce for financial reasons, and I found it much harder to be motivated about what I was doing. When working remotely, I found myself constantly distracted and unfocused, and even though I felt I had fairly strong communications skills, my ability to communicate with co-workers did not develop.

There are numerous problems with younger employees working remotely, but the way it stunts one's development as a professional is probably the worst. Now that I'm in an office, I am constantly exposed not only to people more knowledgeable than I, but also people who have learned how to be a professional and how to work in a team.

One thing in particular that struck me is that I didn't really know how to behave in an office. True, there are a lot of ways that the modern office is kind of depressing, but developing decent working relationships based on mutual respect with your co-workers does a lot to make a workplace tolerable and even enjoyable. This respect is not developed in most cases unless you actually observe and learn some office behavioral norms.

Working remotely can be awesome, and stodgy companies should learn that flexibility has its advantages. But these advantages are often strongest for experienced employees who know how to organize themselves and motivate themselves to get a job done wherever they are for little reason other than professional pride and a paycheck.

I agree. There's a level of team bonding and synergy that is lost when people aren't working with each other face-to-face on a regular basis. No one expects soldiers to telecommute to work.

Why are we linked to some blog instead of the original source, especially when it's just copied verbatim and with an annoyingly low-res graphic.

Original source with high-res info-graphic: http://mashable.com/2011/11/08/work-from-home-2/

Thanks for linking. How do people make those info graphics?

Adobe Illustrator, most likely.

Looks like the OP is just trying to plug his "blog." Very lame.

http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=rajeshvaya

Wow, those posts are just scraping content from other sites.

Working from home isn't a right. I've done both (worked from home and an office) and it takes a certain kind of person to actually be able to get work done at home. The same sort of discipline that you need to run your own company. Most people just don't have this discipline.

There are ways around this. You can do pair programming with screen sharing and VOIP, for example. As a company/manager/lead you might have to enforce good practice, but that's also true in the office.

(The less your team needs to worry about this stuff, the more likely they are to be successful no matter where you put them.)

I did pair programming with screen sharing and VOIP at my last job: we had one guy who was remote (he moved to the east coast because his wife got a snazzy job in animation, and we didn't feel like letting him go). We tried all the tricks. It works, but it's not like the real thing, and it's a lot more obnoxious and stressful for both parties, even when there aren't technical difficulties. I'd say: don't do it regularly unless you have to.

Better yet, don't do pair programming it all. People still do that?

Pair programming is the only reason that team's still going, after what management's done to it, with the employee turnover it's gone through amidst idiotic hiring constraints. But even before that, it was doing pretty well.

How about you run your team the way that works for you, and if someone else does pair programming and it works for them, maybe it's okay? :)

I'm not really that kind of person, but I find that I'm able to get things done from home when there is a clear definition of the work and a firm deadline. I think that's a difference between running a company and working from home - you can still be managed while working from home.

I work in a huge multi-national corporation. Some of the people I interact with are co-located with me, however, most are not. I've even worked with people who are 100% remote. What does it matter to them where I'm sitting? Now, I agree there is something to be said about team building & sheer convenience, depending on the nature of your work, but as long as you are getting the job done, who cares if you are sitting behind your desk 40 hrs/wk?

This should also be a no-brainer for employers. Flex schedules/working from home is an excellent perk, and is low hanging fruit in terms of a company "going green", since there are less people driving to work and offices supporting fewer people produce a smaller carbon footprint.

The occasional work-from-home won't hurt most offices, and is really great for the occasional appointment and the like. But there's a lot to be said for having everybody in the same room as the norm.

I've worked with 100% remote people, and have seen the difference.

I'm less interested in what college students think about office work than I would be to see what changes they may have (or not) after 3 years of experience.

I'm not disputing the results... I've just noticed that a few years of experience tends to temper attitude a bit, once people learn the reasons behind various policies.

It's also a few years of having real responsibilities and bills to pay.

The market for top talent remains competitive - particularly for top engineering and consulting roles. Companies that pay attention to shifts in workforce values and evolve accordingly will always have a competitive advantage.

What is the mobile direct link? iPad safari is unsupported:

"Dynamic Views in Blogger require the use of a modern browser, and are not currently supported on mobile devices."

Can people list what they use for screen sharing when doing remote work? This is my first job where I am having to work with people remotely and I am noticing that iteration times are much higher because its inefficient to describe concepts remotely. Online whiteboards would be appreciated too.

I've used Skype and found it more-or-less acceptable.

What kind of things are you doing that you need to share a screen? If it's mostly document based can using Google Docs be used? Skype also has some screen sharing abilities I think.

What a bunch of spoiled brats. Next they'll want us to pay their student loans for them. Oh wait...

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