[owenmarshall]

>anecdotes don't necessarily translate into what actually works efficiently

>I'm just saying it doesn't work for everyone and it's harder even for motivated people like me

>for many I'm sure there's a noticeable difference between productivity in the office (due to a variety of factors) vs. working from home.

So the only anecdotes you'll entertain are the ones that support the decision you've already made. Got it.

Snark aside, I strongly believe the parent was right - people should be judged on the results they bring to the company, not how effective they are at turning the office's oxygen into carbon dioxide and their merit at weighing down their company assigned chair.

Even if a company with one thousand employees doesn't have all A-players, why should we assume that even the B or C players can't effectively bring their B or C game outside the office? Shouldn't we structure the companies policies around the assumption that your employees are trustworthy and deserving of flexibility, and if they aren't maybe they shouldn't be an employee?

[jonathanjaeger]

I'm going to concede my points, as I think I was too one-sided in my arguments.

I often see great remote employees, I just think it's important to note that we often view things in too binary a way. As in remote = good and we should hate everyone who doesn't allow it. If someone's not pulling their weight then they shouldn't be on the team. But when I work in an office, there are conversations I have that would have never happened if I worked remotely.

Not everything is so black and white and I honestly think in tech there are many roles that would suffer without the collaboration of an office environment. That doesn't mean we shouldn't have remote employees when the context is right and it helps getting A players who don't want to work in an office, but I don't think we should put remote as the holy grail of things like I often see on HN.

[owenmarshall]

>I often see great remote employees, I just think it's important to note that we often view things in too binary a way. As in remote = good and we should hate everyone who doesn't allow it.

I think this is a very fair point to make.

>Not everything is so black and white and I honestly think in tech there are many roles that would suffer without the collaboration of an office environment.

This one too, but I think there's a big caveat there - these are roles that would suffer if the company doesn't adapt.

I can't speak for every company, but the ones I've seen & have experience with that have adopted some form of pro-"work from home" policy all fall into two groups: companies that adopt the policy in order to save money on infrastructure, and companies that want to encourage employee flexibility.

I've never seen the first group try to adapt: meetings are still held in conference rooms between the hours of 9:30 and 4:30, most discussion happens in hallways, managers judge employees on presence...

I think it's very possible for companies to design roles to encourage collaboration outside of offices; that said it's not necessarily easy or inexpensive. There are absolutely trade-offs that must be made.

But I fear that if you look at remote work only through the lens of saving money on office space -- or attracting top talent -- your company probably won't be one of the ones that does it well.