That said, in my experience there are some things that are just done better face to face. Not many, but some.
* meetings where you want to sketch something out--I haven't found a digital solution for sketching say, architecture diagrams, that works as well as a whiteboard.
* the chance to meet and interact with someone outside of your team/department by happenstance, say at a FAC. Of course, you can go onto different slack channels, but I think the interaction wouldn't be as fluid.
* one on ones. While I guess a hangout might give you some of the face to face time, video conferencing isn't as high bandwidth as face to face conversation, including all the nuances of pauses, body language, etc.
I think there might be others, and I bet they all have the component of physicality that can't be delivered digitally. (Yet? Maybe VR will deliver it.)
I'm not a fan of required in office work, but see the tremendous value in it on occasion.
Edit: formatting
We can still make face to face work, I just don't believe everybody has to commute everyday - it's all about balance - we just need a culture shift.
Agreed!
Bandwidth.
No NBN and what you have is copper by default, maybe cable then a sat connection. This is the price paid for poor leadership. NBN should be thought of as the rail of the 21st century. Instead we get a few main lines, some branch lines, everyone else gets donkey carts. [0]
[0] Aus, Melbourne perspective.
I agree, NBN has been turned into a joke, however, I would be surprised if most people around Sydney and its suburbs don't have access to fast enough broadband to use email and other online services they require - but yes, bad internet infrastructure would prove to be an issue and would need to be addressed.
(I say this as someone happily working from home in the East)
However, I do anticipate that a culture shift to working from home will require higher bandwidth as more services move to the cloud and as workers start to require video conferencing.
Are there good internet providers? If so, which ones should I look for at an Airbnb I will stay at?
You got it, the reason people are required to work from a central office is that current managers are simply not able to manage remote teams.
Here's an article explaining it : http://read.reddy.today/read/3/remote-teams-are-the-future-b...
Are there any job sites / directories specifically for finding remote-work jobs?
As a fellow Aussie I'd love to work remotely, but I don't necessarily want to work for an overseas company, for example.
We seriously need to move away from tech companies only setting up base in Sydney and Melbourne and in turn, killing other cities and making us all live in ridiculously overpriced apartments so we don't have to commute for hours per day.
I would love to live in a more rural area one day but this is just never going to happen while I work in tech.
As sad as it is, I think it is significantly easier to find a US or Europe based company to work for from Sydney than an Australian based company.
All the friends I have that work remote are doing so for US based companies (GitHub, Docker and me at Discourse)
Sydney based companies in usually will only offer you a day or two from home and even that is often pushing it.
Even the better tech companies (e.g. Atlassian) aren't keen on WFH.
I consider it to be a form of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structural_violence
I can see the highway coming from the Sydney harbour bridge from my office window - it's alway congested, it takes a huge amount of time to get to and from work.
I guarantee most of the people burning fuel, creating congestion and stopping themselves (and everyone else) from getting home to their families on time have jobs that could easily be done from home.
The argument that unexpected collaboration happens when people are forced to go to the office is a joke and certainly not worth protecting when you consider all the other negative effects of commuting and working in a central location:
- Rising house prices
- Sprawling high density housing resulting in more people living in smaller areas creating a massive strain on infrastructure and massive reduced living standards
- Commuting for hours per day which affects family life
- Creating pollution hot spots
- Burning large amounts of oil and petrol
A truck spilt several tons of dirt onto the Sydney harbour bridge last week, this caused hours of delays for thousands of people trying to get home. Why should one truck accident hold thousands of people to ransom? How many people missed their kids bed time because of that?
Most companies even being amenable to change based on me bumping into someone from a different department is a laughable idea. We need a massive culture shift in the way we approach most office work. It's an absolute scandal.