[kamaal]

Let me explain this to you in simple terms.

If your manager appreciates 'blow your trumpet' culture where 'making noise' is more important than work, then Working from home might be disastrous to you. But if your manager understands the wastage of time during travel/commute. The troubles faced by programmers due to frequent meetings and interruptions, the need for solitary isolation to think and work on tough problems. He won't have problems, and will rather appreciate you for taking more time to be productive and get work done.

People who stay late are thought to be productive, and doing more work. Unfortunately this is the problem with our Industry. And unless your manager has done some real work himself he won't understand most of this. And trust me expecting a technically sound manager is asking for too much.

Your ordinary corporate middle level manager, is totally incapable of understanding this. Because he despises any form of extreme nerd/tech/geek culture. He perceives that as a threat to his own kingdom, he is afraid that your success will overshadow his noise making. He will do everything in his power to keep people mediocre, to make himself look good to his bosses. In all of this a ferevrishly hacking geek churning features, coding by the minute, his way of work, culture and cult is a threat/disease that can destroy the managers career.

Working from home, will not work with those kind of managers.

[xxpor]

>Your ordinary corporate middle level manager, is totally incapable of understanding this. Because he despises any form of extreme nerd/tech/geek culture. He perceives that as a threat to his own kingdom, he is afraid that your success will overshadow his noise making. He will do everything in his power to keep people mediocre, to make himself look good to his bosses. In all of this a ferevrishly hacking geek churning features, coding by the minute, his way of work, culture and cult is a threat/disease that can destroy the managers career.

Why would you continue to work for such a shit manager? My manager is is all about interacting with customers, prioritizing tasks, and shielding us from the bullshit.

I suspect that a lot of the difference is in companies where the managers are devs vs MBAs

[einhverfr]

Indeed. In fact I would say "management usually gets in the way more than it helps."

However, this isn't the only issue and it's not the only reason to work face-to-face. There are many cases where face-to-face communications are just better. These include design sessions and the like where more and better real time feedback can be given by a group than in any other approach. For this reason I think periodic get-togethers are important even for teams which work remotely.

[adrianhoward]

Where do the managers (and team members for that matter) fit in who have tried telecommuting experiments, seen productivity drop, moved back to co-located teams, and seen productivity rise back to previous levels again?

[flyinRyan]

Well, it works for some, so either the team of this theoretical person or manager was a unique snowflake or there were people problems causing this distinction (e.g. people who abuse it, crappy manager who was using stupid metrics that prove their biases).

[adrianhoward]

Wasn't trying to say that "telecommuting doesn't work". It obviously can - and there are often good reasons for it (hell - I do it myself most of the time).

I was just pointing out that people choosing not to telecommute isn't necessarily caused by management idiocy. There is, indeed, a lot of evidence (see http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4207309) that the optimum for productivity is a radically co-located team.

Of course there are other issues. Telecommuting is a great option to have and solves some problems. Sometimes the best folk cannot co-locate. Sometimes quality of life issues are more important. Sometimes the on-site work environment can't be made effective due to issues outside the relevant people's control.

However, a lot of geek folk seem to automatically assume that telecommuting == always more productive, and management that prefer co-location == always idiots. This isn't backed up by the facts.