As remote practices become more common and the tech becomes better at supporting it, what changes are you observing, and what’s the future?
It seems like there is a shift that is a bit different from “outsourcing” practices of prior eras.
How would you describe these changes? And where do you fit in with the changes?
Top comments (10)
I’ve seen an unfortunate anti-pattern develop which is the “remote company that actually has a headquarters where most of the devs work.” In other words, I find “mixed remote” companies to have poor communication. I find that all remote companies make sure to develop each person’s skill set in remote coworking (and let’s be honest— working remotely takes a lot of skills). And I’ve found that “100% co-located” companies have high communication too. It’s when you mix the two cultures you get bad scenarios like “oh we forgot to open the conference call so Beth can join remotely.” “Nah, it’s too late. We can catch her up later.” Which totally sucks. Communication skills are as important as technical skills.
Point being, I think there will be a lot of important learnings and retrospectives coming out in the near future about how to best organize a company.
Surely that shift from 100% colocated to more companies offering remote work necessitates the step you go through where teams who are used to being in the same building forget to or work poorly with their remote team-mates. There's a learning process to go through that will ultimately produce a better company, but you can't expect it to be smooth sailing from the start. The important thing in this situation is that the companies that are going remote keep working hard to make their remote employees part of the company until it becomes as natural as a company that was started fully remote.
I've been working from home for the last three years. I have also managed geographically separate teams in the past and I've just started managing another team that is spread around the globe.
The good; no travel time to get to work. The ability to work in teams that are not geographically limited. Increased flexibility.
The bad; lack of social integration and more difficult to build team relationships. This impacts team development and cohesion.
The risks; it is easily possible to prefer one geography over another, which is sometimes difficult to avoid. Effort must be put in to include the whole team.
Overall I think that working from home us useful, and having teams that are actually virtual, in that everyone operates online. It reduces energy utilization simply to travel to a place of work, which is both a waste of time and ecologically questionable. But at the same time it requires team discipline.
I remember when I started coding I relied very much on the help of my colleagues. I used to have them come over at my computer and help out or just sit next to them as they explain how they made stuff work.
I've worked remotely for the better part of the last decade and I've missed that type of interaction and easy access with the senior developers but at the same time, I was forced to teach myself how to do my own research.
The way I see it, the byproduct of the dev ecosystem going remote is that it will make life harder for new developers but at the same time will force mediocre developers (like myself) to up their game.
I think VSCode LiveShare will help with closing the gap of distance pair programming :)
IMHO Skype call + sharing session will be almost like sitting at the same desk.
More and more truly pure remote companies or startups like InVision. This is something that solves a lot of problems for a work visa in my country and earning a salary with a better currency than the country of residence is really cool.
<<< Very "Remote".
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8248056...
A lot of big tech outsourcing was for wage suppression & control.
If you can get things done, you can usually decide your own terms (office or not).
If I wanted to hire you (Ben) then it would be on your terms probably now (if possible). If you wanted to hire me, I would suggest you come to me.
(I saw your travel post, you should go (for Dev) on:
coinsbank.com/cruise-europe-result: crypto, finance, experts, growth, connection, exposure, visiting other countries to understand your audience 👈. Timing & fit seem vgood).
Tech will always be a mix of on-site & off-site workers depending on the organization (if cities become cheaper due to remote workers, then people will move back to the city). Remote will continue to grow but certain things are better on-site.
With regard to fitting in, I am working the same way I always have: Focus on non-tech industries, remote, travel, binge/relax, my schedule.
The only change right now is posting on social media as me, like this post. However, this is temporary.
i like it as a mix, although i can only admit ive only just started working from home more recently. i feel like distractions can occur at home or at work and mixing working at home and at the work place balances it out. Getting extra sleep and making food at home isnt too bad either.:P
Actually, this topic is one of the "should be mentioned" type of thing for me. You can consider me as a remote work advocate. I am a developer at a big company, where remote is not an option. Especially in Turkey, there is a lot of concern about bad sides of the remote working. For me, the main reason of these concerns is lack of trust in work environment. Most of the people do not trust their colleges, they think remote work will leads us to abuse of the system. Besides, there are few companies which have remote options. I think this is a good start for all of the Turkey. I hope in future we can see more companies like them. Lastly, even if it includes bad sides. We should give a try. I can leads us to great achievements with disciplined and talented persons.
I've never experienced remote working.
I hope someday I'll.
Actually, I'm still jr. developer.
I'm afraid of about that :)