<story><title>Why Showing Your Face at Work Matters</title><url>http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine/2012-summer/53407/why-showing-your-face-at-work-matters</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>marknutter</author><text>&quot;Those that think there is more to your job than the lines of code you write. In even small companies (maybe even especially small companies?) culture is important. Culture transmits largely by physical proximity. Osmosis if you will. There is value in team camaraderie, whiteboard sessions, going to lunch with colleagues, sometimes just sitting around and shooting the breeze about whatever.&quot;&lt;p&gt;You&apos;re waiving your hands here; flailing, even. None of this is quantifiable, it&apos;s all your based on your gut feeling. There are plenty of ways culture can transmit online, but I&apos;m afraid my examples would involve just as much conjecture as yours do.&lt;p&gt;I telecommute, but also make a trip to be on location every couple of months. I agree that face to face contact is important to some degree, but not in any way I could accurately measure. I&apos;m &lt;i&gt;FAR&lt;/i&gt; more productive when I&apos;m telecommuting because I don&apos;t have colleagues interrupting me with questions ever 10 minutes, I don&apos;t feel the temptation to &quot;shoot the shit&quot;, I can work through lunch, and I waste no time commuting. As a result I&apos;m more productive than the average non-telecommuting worker.&lt;p&gt;Raises and promotions may be a function of relationships, but perhaps they shouldn&apos;t be? Perhaps they should be based on performance.</text></item><item><author>cletus</author><text>Working from home is a popular topic for us engineers. Generally speaking there are two broad camps in this argument:&lt;p&gt;1. Those who want to work from home and argue largely from that position. They say they&apos;ll be just as productive, you can write code from anywhere, having a more flexible schedule will make them happier and more productive and so on; and&lt;p&gt;2. Those that think there is more to your job than the lines of code you write. In even small companies (maybe even especially small companies?) culture is important. Culture transmits largely by physical proximity. Osmosis if you will. There is value in team camaraderie, whiteboard sessions, going to lunch with colleagues, sometimes just sitting around and shooting the breeze about whatever.&lt;p&gt;I fall very firmly into camp (2). This also applies to splitting teams geographically (common within Google) and, all other things being equal, you&apos;re better off having your organization in N locations versus N+1 locations.&lt;p&gt;Raises and promotions are more a function of relationships than anything else. Not being there decreases visibility and diminishes relationships. Or perhaps it&apos;s just that those who basically just want to write code see no value in and/or spend no time on building relationships?&lt;p&gt;So I think if you found a group of likeminded people that just wanted to put their heads down and write code then they could probably work together as an effective distributed team but as soon as you&apos;re in the minority in that situation you&apos;re losing out and (IMHO) it&apos;s not what&apos;s best for a colocated team anyway.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>davidw</author><text>&amp;#62; You&apos;re waiving your hands here; flailing, even. None of this is quantifiable&lt;p&gt;Just because it is not easy to quantify does not mean there isn&apos;t some truth to it.  &apos;Flailing&apos; and &apos;hand waving&apos; seem exaggerated.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why Showing Your Face at Work Matters</title><url>http://sloanreview.mit.edu/the-magazine/2012-summer/53407/why-showing-your-face-at-work-matters</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>marknutter</author><text>&quot;Those that think there is more to your job than the lines of code you write. In even small companies (maybe even especially small companies?) culture is important. Culture transmits largely by physical proximity. Osmosis if you will. There is value in team camaraderie, whiteboard sessions, going to lunch with colleagues, sometimes just sitting around and shooting the breeze about whatever.&quot;&lt;p&gt;You&apos;re waiving your hands here; flailing, even. None of this is quantifiable, it&apos;s all your based on your gut feeling. There are plenty of ways culture can transmit online, but I&apos;m afraid my examples would involve just as much conjecture as yours do.&lt;p&gt;I telecommute, but also make a trip to be on location every couple of months. I agree that face to face contact is important to some degree, but not in any way I could accurately measure. I&apos;m &lt;i&gt;FAR&lt;/i&gt; more productive when I&apos;m telecommuting because I don&apos;t have colleagues interrupting me with questions ever 10 minutes, I don&apos;t feel the temptation to &quot;shoot the shit&quot;, I can work through lunch, and I waste no time commuting. As a result I&apos;m more productive than the average non-telecommuting worker.&lt;p&gt;Raises and promotions may be a function of relationships, but perhaps they shouldn&apos;t be? Perhaps they should be based on performance.</text></item><item><author>cletus</author><text>Working from home is a popular topic for us engineers. Generally speaking there are two broad camps in this argument:&lt;p&gt;1. Those who want to work from home and argue largely from that position. They say they&apos;ll be just as productive, you can write code from anywhere, having a more flexible schedule will make them happier and more productive and so on; and&lt;p&gt;2. Those that think there is more to your job than the lines of code you write. In even small companies (maybe even especially small companies?) culture is important. Culture transmits largely by physical proximity. Osmosis if you will. There is value in team camaraderie, whiteboard sessions, going to lunch with colleagues, sometimes just sitting around and shooting the breeze about whatever.&lt;p&gt;I fall very firmly into camp (2). This also applies to splitting teams geographically (common within Google) and, all other things being equal, you&apos;re better off having your organization in N locations versus N+1 locations.&lt;p&gt;Raises and promotions are more a function of relationships than anything else. Not being there decreases visibility and diminishes relationships. Or perhaps it&apos;s just that those who basically just want to write code see no value in and/or spend no time on building relationships?&lt;p&gt;So I think if you found a group of likeminded people that just wanted to put their heads down and write code then they could probably work together as an effective distributed team but as soon as you&apos;re in the minority in that situation you&apos;re losing out and (IMHO) it&apos;s not what&apos;s best for a colocated team anyway.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>stfu</author><text>Oh if only social interations were that easy quantifiable. Life would be a lot easier. We could avoid all wars, be full of love and full of love and happiness, developing only the most successful products without ever failing to understand the (irr)ationality of our clients. Social data is so subjective, as it is almost impossible to control externalities, and something like the (un)importance of &quot;facetime&quot; is in my opinion always circumstantial. Therefore I would agree with the gut feeling comment, as it comes really down to the individual employee to evaluate his intentions/priorities/relationships and what works best for that situation.</text></comment>