Why IT companies don't hire remote programmers?

[mrsheen]

From company's point of view I can't think of any advantages of forcing programmers come to office every day. Why is this style of working so unpopular between employers?

Here is a short list of advantages:

Meetings, brainstorms can be done remotely - and very often are. Many companie already work remotely.

There are less distractions when you work from home.

Your boss knows _exactly_ what you achieved by looking at your commits.

Contrary to common belief, knowledge and new ideas spread quicker in a team. Think of common chat window vs water tank herding.

Some companies say that remote jobs are threat to their security. In 99% of cases this is not true (VPN anyone?)

Some people say that meeting in person every day on a lunch is very important. I am saying, bitch please, I won't do my job any better if I have pizza with you on a regular basis.

Some bosses _need_ to see you in the office otherwise they feel uneasy and lose sense of control over a team. This is both funny and sad..

[CyberFonic]

PHBs need to assert their control. If you are not there then they feel somewhat lost. Believe it or not, their bragging amongst other managers is firstly about how many direct reports they have.

If you get a bunch extroverts onto a team, they want to have meetings, pizza lunches, etc. All that activity makes them feel productive.

On the other hand, if you have introverts working remotely they can get on with the task at hand. Bring them together once a month for a day and it will form the social bonds that work well when they're back to interacting over the internet - the exact tools is a question of preferences.

[tkimmel]

Remote can be great, but it does kind of seem like it requires somewhat better (and more technical) management than having everyone on-site.

If a bunch of programmers are in the office, it's a lot easier to see them at a desk and sort of say, "yeah looks like they're working..." With remote developers, whoever is in charge of their productivity needs to be technical enough to eyeball what's getting done, know that it feels like about the right amount of work (or not), and be confident in their appraisal of the team's productivity.

I think oftentimes remote teams can be much more productive, but requires either a more political technical technical lead or a more technical PM to really work.

[solomatov]

Completely remote work usually has overhead. First, time zone differences really hurt work.

>Meetings, brainstorms can be done remotely - and very often are. Many companie already work remotely.

Meetings over internet work worse than in person. Also, I don't know any decent low cost software for this. Skype works well with sound, but video is far from ideal. The same with google hangouts.

Personally, I work from home 3 days/week and 2 days/week in the office. We have team members in other location with a large time difference of about 8 hours and this complicates things a lot.

[eip]

I have been working remote for most of the last ten years. It's great. I am more productive and happier.

I have separate rates for remote and onsite work so it's clear to employers that if they want to waste my time and energy it costs extra.

[halfcat]

>From company's point of view I can't think of any advantages of forcing programmers come to office every day. Why is this style of working so unpopular between employers?

I have seen companies on both sides, where remote work is successful and where it fails, and where it is successful, it is built into the business model, starting from the hiring process, to select individuals who are technically competent, and who also have demonstrated the ability to work independently. This severely limits the number of people that qualify, and limits the company's ability to grow aggressively. Some companies do not have the option of slow-and-steady growth, due to investor involvement. Most others are going to prefer reasonably aggressive growth (more money), and that means foregoing remote work in favor of hiring workers who are more easily replaceable. If a company can hire from the pool of workers who are technically competent, but who need a little oversight to stay productive, and that process works to produce the output needed, then that is much easier to achieve than having a long and expensive hiring process where the company delays growth while waiting for the perfect new hire.

>There are less distractions when you work from home.

For a lot of people, this is not true. Where it is true, it's still difficult to justify a remote work policy. Distractions can come from a significant other, kids, pets, roommates, a TV, or internet access. If you are single with no kids or pets and live alone, it's true you at least have control over most of your distractions. In situations where the quantity of distractions is fewer, there are still distractions that the employer has no way of detecting and managing. Suppose your coworker chooses to watch TV while he works, which leads him to write code with more bugs. He still hits the number of commits (or whatever metric), but his reduced productivity is difficult to detect and correct. What if you are unusually disciplined, and your estimate of other people's discipline is wrong by a significant margin? In that case, everyone working from home could be a huge hit to productivity. The employer can't have a policy of, "All single employees without kids, pets, or roommates, and who are also very disciplined, may work from home." As someone who does work from home 2-3 days per week, and who also has a spouse, a kid, 2 dogs, TV, and internet, I find that there are a lot of days when I'm working from home that I would have gotten significantly more done at our office.

>Some bosses _need_ to see you in the office otherwise they feel uneasy and lose sense of control over a team. This is both funny and sad..

This is probably not the man keeping you down, or a twisted need for control, or whatever. This probably has much more to do with the chosen business model, and the fact that most employees are not going to be a good fit for remote work. While you may be the ideal case, that is definitely not the norm. The company has to set policies based on all employees, and unfortunately that means the weakest link wins.