[marknutter]

"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."

You're waiving your hands here; flailing, even. None of this is quantifiable, it's all your based on your gut feeling. There are plenty of ways culture can transmit online, but I'm afraid my examples would involve just as much conjecture as yours do.

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'm FAR more productive when I'm telecommuting because I don't have colleagues interrupting me with questions ever 10 minutes, I don't feel the temptation to "shoot the shit", I can work through lunch, and I waste no time commuting. As a result I'm more productive than the average non-telecommuting worker.

Raises and promotions may be a function of relationships, but perhaps they shouldn't be? Perhaps they should be based on performance.

[davidw]

> You're waiving your hands here; flailing, even. None of this is quantifiable

Just because it is not easy to quantify does not mean there isn't some truth to it. 'Flailing' and 'hand waving' seem exaggerated.

[stfu]

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 "facetime" 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.

[adrianhoward]

As a result I'm more productive than the average non-telecommuting worker.

Although sometimes optimising somebody's individual productivity gets in the way of optimising the productivity of the company as a whole.

You need to figure out where the bottlenecks are before you know the right place to optimise :-)

[mindcrime]

Although sometimes optimising somebody's individual productivity gets in the way of optimising the productivity of the company as a whole.

That's the real rub. It's entirely possible that the Right Thing To Do - from the perspective of the firm - is the do something other than what is most optimal for the individual. Sp, as a lot of us geeks tend to be fairly individualistic, and because it can be hard to isolate the variables when you're talking about team productivity, a lot of us fall on the side of "optimize for the individual."

As somebody who's radically individualistic, and who is also a startup founder, I find myself torn on the idea of whether or not it even makes sense to have an office, or whether it makes sense to push for a completely distributed team.

I'm getting a bit of a real-world experiment with these issues now, as my $DAYJOB has me in Chicago for a 6 month consulting gig and my co-founders are back in the RTP area. We use email and IM heavily now... but we had an in-person "hack day" last weekend when I was home, and there was definitely value in all 3 of us being in the same room, huddled up together.

I'm leaning towards thinking firms probably should have offices, and that most people should be in the office at least part of the time. But I would take a pretty laissez-faire approach towards it, I think. Provide offices, but give people fairly unlimited freedom to work remotely or come into the office as they see fit.

[adrianhoward]

I'm leaning towards thinking firms probably should have offices, and that most people should be in the office at least part of the time. But I would take a pretty laissez-faire approach towards it, I think. Provide offices, but give people fairly unlimited freedom to work remotely or come into the office as they see fit.

That sounds like a good idea.

I'd maybe consider running some experiments too. See what happens when you have everybody work in the office for a month. See what happens if you have everybody working remotely for a month. I've had clients try things like that and be surprised by the results.

[theorique]

Raises and promotions may be a function of relationships, but perhaps they shouldn't be? Perhaps they should be based on performance.

Not saying you're wrong - performance is a great metric to use for gauging contribution to an organization. However, I find that proposals that begin with "people should" or "groups should" are often about as easy to implement as cat herding.

[Angostura]

As someone else pointed out just because something is difficult to measure doesn't make it unimportant.

One part of your post intrigues me.

> don't have colleagues interrupting me with questions ever 10 minutes

Let's assume that your colleagues aren't idiots. That they need these questions answered. Either they are having to go away and ask someone else, or they are having to figure the answer out themselves (potentially taking a lot more time than if you had simply given the answer) or they are deciding to make do without the answer.

Each of those is potentially detrimental to the organisation's effectivenesses as a whole. Your "productiveness" is more than simply the sum of the code that you produce.

Moreover you're missing all those 'interesting little problems' that turn up, that you would know the answer to, if anyone only thought to ask you.

You're at risk of diminishing your total value.

(And yes, I primarily teleworked for several years).

[marknutter]

That makes sense on the surface, and there's certainly value to spreading knowledge, but when you're in the same room there's a much lower barrier, so the tendency is to ask questions first, rather than making a serious attempt at solving the problem on your own. Make no mistake, we still ask each other questions when we're in a bind, but this communication is asynchronous. We ping the other person over chat, but that person is free to respond in their own time. I can't count the number of times I've gotten an IM from a colleague asking a question, only to get a "nevermind, I figured it out :)" message 5 minutes later. To me, that's a much more productive workflow for both individuals and the organization as a whole.