Comment by gigantor | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gigantor | Hacker News Reader

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Case study: At my last employer, we had a two remote workers and a project manager. Our entire team knew they were doing very little work, especially knowing one of the remote employees was maintaining a household with 4 children, and getting paid quite a bit more. One had the gall to ask us how to access source control very late in a project. Morale was clearly affected by those who had to come in every day and work their set 7.5 hours and had to make a case to stay home for the cable guy.

To make things fair, we really wish this blanket policy at Yahoo was put in effect, axed all remote arrangements, and reevaluate their remote arrangements on a case-by-case basis and bring fairness back without individually discriminating.

The reports of 'Yahoo is all against telecommuting' do not tell the entire story and are taking advantage of sensationalist headlining. Telecommuting works when everyone has a certain level of discipline, as it's far too easy to take advantage of and end up being complacent. Places do exist that essentially issue paychecks just because you're an employee in the system. I wouldn't be surprised to know far too many Miltons from Office Space are out there.

Case study: At my last employer, we had a guy who worked on-site and still had the gall to ask us how to access source control very late in a project. Being a moron who isn't held accountable doesn't get solved because you're not remote.

I would imagine that moronic tendencies are easier to notice on a day-to-day face-to-face basis, though.

Not in software, commit logs reveal everything.

Also:

"Our entire team knew they were doing very little work"

Allow me to clarify; there were no commits to source control on the very project we were working on. That was proof to us that no work was being done, unless there's one massive pending check-in waiting to happen, which would violate our team's internal standards.

In this case it was the same - I had complained several times that this individual had contributed absolutely nothing to the project, and this was proof. He asked how to access source control, and then while showing me what he was trying to access source control for it was apparent he didn't even know which operating system we were running on. He had written no code, and had never even successfully run the software. My point is that if people are going to tolerate useless employees, it can happen on-site just as easily as off-site.

At the risk of invoking a No True Scotsman, that sounds like a hiring problem, not a remote working problem.

That's just poor management, not against working remote. If the employee isn't doing the required work or holding his own weight, by all means, he or she should be let go. It takes a manager with a backbone to do something about it before it starts to affect other employees morale.

The point is, if good management comes in to take over, the first thing they'll do is bring everyone into the office to sort shit out. Especially since in a dysfunctional team, the most obviously dysfunctional members may not necessarily be the root cause of the dysfunction.

New management cannot simply take the incumbent on-site team members' word for it that it's all the fault of the remote guys. Which is probably part of what's happening at Yahoo.

Also, the words "the entire team knew" are a big red flag. Any team of responsible adults would have confronted the issue already. The fact that they haven't indicates that there is much more going on than just a two rogue remote workers.

You are absolutely right. It's more work on management to have productive remote employees (and to do it right). But, there are reliable ways of understanding remote employee productivity - though, they aren't always obvious.

especially knowing one of the remote employees was maintaining a household with 4 children

You're saying people having a household with kids can't be productive employees?

I'm pretty sure he's saying the guy/gal working from home with 4 kids running around can't be a productive employee. Which is probably true for most cases. Kids can be a giant distraction.

Kids can be a distraction, for sure. Just like coworkers or officemates who frequently disrupt others (even if not directly, such as the cube next to someone trying to concentrate).

When at home, if I feel the a distraction looming, it's easy to shut the door. Problem (mostly) solved.

When the poster says "maintaining", I'm guessing the employee was doing double-duty as a stay-at-home mom/dad, at which point you can't always just shut the door for 8 hours.

You're 100% correct if that is the meaning. But, that isn't "working" full time (unless it was a pre-agreed arrangement). That shouldn't be allowed, but poor management will not catch/act on it.

However, I was specifically replying to the context of having distractions (kids, in this case) in gcp's and alistairSH's comments.

There was nothing in the gigantor's post that suggested the remote employee was working in the same room, or even the same building, as zir kids.

For all we know, said employee was paying alimony for them.

Remote workers require at least as much management competence as local workers. A lot of companies forbid remote workers from routinely being the primary child care provider (while working) for exactly this reason.

Often the companies that do this are the ones with the most liberal work-from-home policies, IMO.

> One had the gall to ask us how to access source control very late in a project.

Is this to suggest that he'd been there from the beginning of the project and yet hadn't even checked out the code, let alone committed any work?

Also, if he hadn't been committing any changes at all from the beginning, I would think the manager would be calling him up asking what in the world is going on.

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