I think this is hyperbole. They all basically boil down to: if you work from home, please work from home. And keep in touch.
I work from home. As a rule, the best-running projects are those with daily video meetings. The 2nd best involve phone calls. The worst involve emails.
Faces have enormous bandwidth. Voices a bit less. Email has bugger all for the things that matter.
As a rule...for you and your team. Companies like this don't pay developers for face-time, BS meetings just to "check in" (which is the vast majority of all face-to-face meetings), and so on. They pay us for our expertise in writing software or doing other similar technical work.
If a company offered me the choice between working from home under the conditions listed for Fog Creek or not working from home at all, I'd choose the latter and consider option c) quitting to obtain employment with a company that recognizes I'm not in kindergarten anymore, and don't care to be treated like I am.
> Companies like this don't pay developers for face-time, BS meetings just to "check in" (which is the vast majority of all face-to-face meetings), and so on. They pay us for our expertise in writing software or doing other similar technical work.
They pay us to make business problems go away. It just so happens that our tool for that is usually software.
A major insight of agile methods is to put the developers close to the coalface, because infrequent or indirect contact leads to the wrong thing being built.
I frequently find while working with customers that we have entirely different mental models of the project. And I only find that out because I am constantly asking them questions about their business.
Working from home also means: less stress because you don't have to be constantly "on" and playing the visibly social game eight hours a day (or pretending certain morons in the office aren't morons), slightly less availability (or non-interruptable availability on your schedule, not theirs) to get more focused work done, and no pants.
Perhaps "insane number" is wrong. I probably meant "insanely specific requirements."
The 1 wasn't even running to rector st this evening, so I couldn't get to work even if I wanted to.
Do they have a "if you work in the office, please work in the office" list of rules?
My experience has been that most people "working" in an office aren't working at all for the overwhelming majority of their day. But that's just office life and it's just the way it is. Marissa Mayer wants everyone in the office because she wants to set a "good" example: businesses like Yahoo absolutely depend upon vacuuming away the activities of people sitting in droll offices.
An explicit one? No. But it's not needed, because there's a social pressure to be working. People can see you not working in the office. But if you're at home, no one knows if you're not working. So some guidelines are put in place.
I think this is hyperbole. They all basically boil down to: if you work from home, please work from home. And keep in touch.
I work from home. As a rule, the best-running projects are those with daily video meetings. The 2nd best involve phone calls. The worst involve emails.
Faces have enormous bandwidth. Voices a bit less. Email has bugger all for the things that matter.