<story><title>IBM says remote working is great after forcing employees to work from office</title><url>https://thenextweb.com/insider/2017/05/08/ibm-remote-working-panel/#.tnw_fGon9xiN</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nobleach</author><text>The no-work-from-home mentality is something I wish would die. I&amp;#x27;ve heard form plenty of friends who&amp;#x27;ve been interviewing with tech companies lately, that it&amp;#x27;s a discouraged practice. I make it a contingency for any job I&amp;#x27;ve considered over the last 5 years. We&amp;#x27;re all adults, if you are worried that you won&amp;#x27;t know what I&amp;#x27;ve been up to, you can check my Pull Requests in our source control system. If you worry that communication is an issue, just watch the Slack channels in which I&amp;#x27;m involved. I mean, I can come to work and put on my headphones and talk to you via Slack, or do so from my couch at home. The most common excuse I get is that &amp;quot;some bad apples ruined it for the whole bunch&amp;quot;. I&amp;#x27;m sorry... a multi-billon dollar company isn&amp;#x27;t kindergarten. It is entirely possible to create a behavior improvement plan for ONE &amp;quot;bad apple&amp;quot;. The rest of us big boys and girls can probably handle it. I just switched team at my current job and have started getting the &amp;quot;well, we don&amp;#x27;t want to abuse it&amp;quot; talk. What??? Abuse? quit treating it like it&amp;#x27;s some sort of privilege. I work. I use a laptop... which means as long as I have an internet connection and VPN access, I can do it from anywhere! If you&amp;#x27;re worried you can&amp;#x27;t get an answer to your question on a moment&amp;#x27;s notice, try Slacking me sometime.&lt;p&gt;I find this very common with managers that are scared that they are irrelevant. (they may not understand what their employees actually do) So they work hard to micro-manage the details they _do_ understand. It&amp;#x27;s sad. I&amp;#x27;m a pretty good self-starter&amp;#x2F;motivator, and when I work from home, I typically start an hour earlier. When I&amp;#x27;m at my desk in the building, I get distracted all day (whether by requests, or just talking to other employees) When will the tech industry learn?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>eksemplar</author><text>We&amp;#x27;ve measured productivity of remote work compared to in house work. I work in the public sector so it&amp;#x27;s mainly not programming, but caseworking and similar. We&amp;#x27;ve found that productivity is way down when people work at home, we&amp;#x27;ve however also found that allowing people to slack once in a while increases their overall performance.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></comment>
<story><title>IBM says remote working is great after forcing employees to work from office</title><url>https://thenextweb.com/insider/2017/05/08/ibm-remote-working-panel/#.tnw_fGon9xiN</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>nobleach</author><text>The no-work-from-home mentality is something I wish would die. I&amp;#x27;ve heard form plenty of friends who&amp;#x27;ve been interviewing with tech companies lately, that it&amp;#x27;s a discouraged practice. I make it a contingency for any job I&amp;#x27;ve considered over the last 5 years. We&amp;#x27;re all adults, if you are worried that you won&amp;#x27;t know what I&amp;#x27;ve been up to, you can check my Pull Requests in our source control system. If you worry that communication is an issue, just watch the Slack channels in which I&amp;#x27;m involved. I mean, I can come to work and put on my headphones and talk to you via Slack, or do so from my couch at home. The most common excuse I get is that &amp;quot;some bad apples ruined it for the whole bunch&amp;quot;. I&amp;#x27;m sorry... a multi-billon dollar company isn&amp;#x27;t kindergarten. It is entirely possible to create a behavior improvement plan for ONE &amp;quot;bad apple&amp;quot;. The rest of us big boys and girls can probably handle it. I just switched team at my current job and have started getting the &amp;quot;well, we don&amp;#x27;t want to abuse it&amp;quot; talk. What??? Abuse? quit treating it like it&amp;#x27;s some sort of privilege. I work. I use a laptop... which means as long as I have an internet connection and VPN access, I can do it from anywhere! If you&amp;#x27;re worried you can&amp;#x27;t get an answer to your question on a moment&amp;#x27;s notice, try Slacking me sometime.&lt;p&gt;I find this very common with managers that are scared that they are irrelevant. (they may not understand what their employees actually do) So they work hard to micro-manage the details they _do_ understand. It&amp;#x27;s sad. I&amp;#x27;m a pretty good self-starter&amp;#x2F;motivator, and when I work from home, I typically start an hour earlier. When I&amp;#x27;m at my desk in the building, I get distracted all day (whether by requests, or just talking to other employees) When will the tech industry learn?</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Joky</author><text>Remote working kills team work IMO. I would never want to work fully remotely, and I can&amp;#x27;t collaborate as well with fully remote teammate. How do you get a whiteboard brainstorming sessions?
2 days remote &amp;#x2F; week is a good balance that fits me quite well.&lt;p&gt;Now if you don&amp;#x27;t work on hard-to-solve problem, or projects that don&amp;#x27;t require high collaboration, why not.&lt;p&gt;Edit: I should add that I&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;s desk&amp;#x2F;office to unblock an issue.</text></comment>