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>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. |