The optimal results come from people working mainly at the office. Now this may be completely different for development houses, our coders are some of the most productive when working remote, IT in general is below average though.

I wonder how much your conclusions would hold for non-public-sector jobs.

AFAIK it's typically harder to fire a public-sector worker for under-performance, than in the private sector. Perhaps that either (a) adds to the temptation to goof around at home, or (b) attracts the kinds of workers who were always more apt to goof around, given the opportunity.

Those who end up in public sector usually are those who value the job security or do it out of dedication. Which doesn't mean they're bad at their job, in my experience it was the exact opposite, but the government sector is waaaaay understaffed, and pay can't be risen to private-sector levels because of rigid union agreements.

Also, the competence problems are related more to regulations... why spend your time e.g. learning Docker when you're happy enough you can finally use Ubuntu instead of RHEL? So basically unless you lesrn it in your time off there's no motivation to learn new stuff because it will be outdated when regulation molasses finally catches up.

Now, when it comes to bugs, I'll admit, tossing it up on big screens and inviting a few co-workers is just awesome. It's like playing solitaire with someone watching... they always see things that you would not.

My take on this is people who actually "develop stuff" or to put it bluntly - get shit done - developers, architects, field consultants, release engineers, etc etc - are used to being judged by easily quantifiable metrics - repo commits, defects, system downtime etc etc - for these folks working from home is no different than going to the office with a couple of logistical adjustments.

If you don't have the baseline there are other ways of getting this figured out, not as accurate but good enough typically - instead of comparing someone's office vs. home velocity you go by the average velocity you're after and see if they can hang with that while working from home (and again, I don't see why this would be difficult to figure out).

I imagine this problem only grows with the size of the group/company.

So what do I do? Fire everyone? Don't think that's a practical solution. Try to hire people who are easier to work with? Sure, but good luck. Hard to determine that during the interview process. I don't think telling people to 'grow up' is a real solution here.

You also say to the complaining employee that you monitor all of your employees and ensure that they are being productive (any good manager should be doing this.) and that their productivity is none of their concern. Then you ask them if they are holding up the project, and how, and then you go from there.

It's just poor management. Managers are mostly incompetent, or if they are, they are afraid of backlash and unable to lead.

This isn't nuclear fusion. If this is difficult for a manager they shouldn't be a manager.

>This isn't nuclear fusion. If this is difficult for a manager they shouldn't be a manager.

That's what makes me think you don't actually have any experience here. That... or you've just been blessed with more luck in your management endeavours than I have (or maybe I am just bad, certainly a possibility.)

Ahh, so I must never have done it, if I offer a different experience. I've managed teams before-with a mix of remote and onsite. And trust me-it is not that difficult, for competent managers. Managers are too often afraid to lead. The peter principle is very true.

The fact is not offering WFH causes many people to move on as well. I've lost many team members to it. Just as low pay does. People leave. This is the new reality. Businesses want to disrupt but don't want to be disrupted. They want to commoditize workers-not be commoditized themselves.

My problem is to ensure my team's success, and my team knows what their deliverable are by their deadlines. If you don't do anything for 20 days and finish it on 21 because it's easy? Fine by me. Just get it done.

Now if you don't work on hard-to-solve problem, or projects that don't require high collaboration, why not.

Edit: I should add that I've been working fully remote (500km away of the office) for almost 3 years, and then with a team split on two different continents for one year. I so much enjoy being in the office since then, even just for having lunch and coffee with anyone, and being able to stop by anyone's desk/office to unblock an issue.

The secret is that you need to be fully committed to remote. If you do this you force yourself to actually find workflows that work remotely. If you just work two days a week remote you wind up isolated for two days and don't collaborate during that time.

A lot of companies that fail at remote work also fail because they have a mix of office and remote workers. This only works if you force every conversation to happen online. Otherwise you have the inner circle in the office and the outer circle that is remote.

The point is that a lot of remote work failures are simply companies that had remote workers but didn't have a workflow that was amenable to remote work.

The article you linked to is about a very specific style of brainstorming that was once very popular. (Basically throw out a bunch of ideas with no filter/criticism.) It's that type of brainstorming that research has largely discredited. I don't think anyone seriously suggests that people working together on a problem in a room never works.

I have. It has (mercifully) largely fallen out of fashion but it was a very popular "ideating" approach at one time.

It just works, but then again, I'm not creative, nor coding, or really collaboratively building anything that needs to brainstorm or deeply integrate with others, I'm architecting and operating.

I can't imagine going back to an office. I'm generally much happier, I feel like I'm more focused and I feel a stronger commitment to my work.

My brother once told me that most people keep their jobs simply because they show up. I didn't much believe him but having working in this business for more than a decade now I tend to agree. Maybe it's not most people, but a significant number anyway. That's not trying to be mean spirited or anything – I totally understand those who choose to wear the minimum required amount of flair. They care just enough not to get fired, maybe a little bit more but not much, and that's ok.

For me, I'm not going to lie, I've had those days where I've felt that I've done enough just by showing up. It's not been most days, but I've sure had them. But now that I'm remote I never have those days. I like showing up, because the balance in my life is so much better – I think it's because now it's mostly on my terms. Sure, I more or less have to, or at least try to make sure there's as much time overlap as possible with my co-workers, but where I work or how I work is up to me.

It wasn't always enjoyable though. Initially it was a real struggle because most people were in the office, and I'd get left out because they'd do face-to-face meetings or discuss things offline and I'd get a pretty crappy tl;dr out of it. But this is something I pointed out early on, and coupled with a growing need in the business for people to work remotely we just kind of figured it out. They're getting rid of office space because it's expensive, and rather than making people redundant that they would probably have to re-hire anyway they just have people work from home either fully or most days, and employ a desk sharing solution. I think we're up to something like 3 or 4 people per desk now. Now everything happens in emails, chat, github, etc. It's all online, it has to be or it just doesn't work.

Anyway, this is turning into a rant, so I'll stop. I just came to say I can't imagine having to work in an office again. I don't mind it from time to time, it can be nice, but I'd like it to be my choice rather than something I have to do. Again, mileage clearly varies.

On the other hand, trying to gain any influence over the larger organization was almost impossible, especially after the manager who hired me left.

Making appointments for the doctor, court, etc. don't require a sick day, you have more time in your life from a lack of commute (for a 30 minute commute, that's 5 hours/wk), you can schedule around your most productive hours, (later in the day for me), you can be tasked based such that if you finish all your work in 32 hours, you don't have to put in time just cause, you can exercise or go for a run during the day (many can't because of lack of shower facilities or a strict 1 hr lunch), you can eat home cooked meals without having to cook a huge serving that will last you the week and you can take a nap if you feel sleepy after lunch without worrying about optics, you don't have to be in at some specific time if you've had a hard time sleeping the night before,. I don't ever feel rushed in the morning and always eat breakfast followed by a meditation.

I find mind mapping software superior to whiteboarding when collaboration in my case because my own sketches and handwriting are nearly indecipherable to anyone but me. Also, for work I find tools like slack to be more useful because they are async, not ruining my flow and messages can be very information dense with links, images, etc.

I'm much, much more productive at home. I communicate well via slack/phone/Facetime. Also, junior devs will craft their questions in a coherent manner. In doing so, they've found that when they formally present their questions, they can often solve it on their own, making them better devs. I often only work 32-35 hrs/wk, yet I am more productive. This extra time allows me to do more self-learning. Before, the lat thing I'd want to do after driving home is deal with more code. Even if I have to work 10-15 hours more per week, it's less stressful than dealing with coming home from the office at 8pm, exhausted and not wanting to cook so I would eat unhealthy, expensive takeout food and watch some mind-numbing TV.

Most importantly I have more time and opportunities to see the people who really matter in my life...my significant other, my friends, my niece, etc. (this was the norm before the industrial revolution.)

All of what you said leads to a happier/healthier employee which more times than not leads to a more productive employee. Happier/healthier employees that are more productive make the company more $ at the end of the day.

But that's not what it's about. Not even close. (Yes, to some micromanagers, that is what it means. But if your job sucks because your manager is an asshole, it's going to suck whether you're at home or at work)

I hate co-located teams. The problem is that they work. They are the best and only method I know about to have groups of people solve complex problems creatively. If your problem isn't complex or need a creative solution? Don't use them. But the more rote and simplistic the work you're doing, the more you're going to be replaced by robots. So there's that.

I get the fact that folks hate it. Like I said, I hate it also. But that doesn't change the fact that I've seen it work -- over and over again. I've also seen it horribly abused and misunderstood, but I can't help that. Under the appropriate circumstances, it's the best thing we have going right now.

>They are the best and only method I know about to have groups of people solve complex problems creatively

A vast number of open source projects, including Linux, are created by very distributed groups of people. I would find it hard to argue that none of those projects involve solving complex problems creatively.

Note that by solving complex problems creatively, I mean business problems. Not technology. We don't need a co-located team to figure out that a bubble sort is the wrong tool for this job. We need a co-located team to figure out that we're headed down the wrong road and that 3 months of coding might be replaced with two system calls. That kind of conversation can be extremely uncomfortable or impossible to make happen with ten folks meeting over a IM link twice a day.

It doesn't quite have that feel when you are doing that over Slack.

I would be very wary of companies that can't perform because physical attendance is mandatory every single day!

Somehow that sounds more reasonable to me.

I'd like to work on-site, but I don't want to abuse it...

This one too, actually; you have so little control of being distracted in open office compared to working at home, and you wouldn't want to bankrupt your boss drinking the copious amounts of coffee you need to compensate, right?

Some managers seem to think: "If there are some butts and those butts are in chairs and I can see those chairs and those butts all in a row in a big room outside my office then my team is kicking ass. I'm gonna buy me some more chairs."

So many people have phone phobia in this field. I feel that if you want to work from home you need to make voice calls work for you.

(It usually doesn't happen more than once a week. Being reasonably acccessible on Slack reduces the need for these calls somewhat.)

(It would typically be initiated the same way, e.g. via a Slack question if they are ok talk on the phone. If there's no reply and it's blocking other stuff; yeah I am going to place an actual 20th century phone call.)

Clicking the green button on Discord or a softphone is not.

I have never used a physical 'telephone handset' (and don't have a desk phone)

;)

Phone calls are less information dense to many developers to something like slack, especially if you need to send a link, a document, etc.

Slack is also async in that I don't have to immediately answer. I can get to a nice commit point in 5 or so minutes and not have to stop in the middle of a deep thought.

If it's a scheduled call once a week though, that shouldn't matter at all. Maybe they just don't like you :D j/k. A lot of devs think they communicate as well via voice