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Are Remote Offices Becoming The New Normal? (backchannel.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the digital-nomads dept.

"As companies tighten their purse strings, they're spreading out their hires -- this year, and for years to come," reports Backchannel, citing interviews with executives and other workplace analysts. mirandakatz writes: Once a cost-cutting strategy, remote offices are becoming the new normal: from GitHub to Mozilla and Wordpress, more and more companies are eschewing the physical office in favor of systems that allow employees to live out their wanderlust. As workplaces increasingly go remote, they're adopting tools to keep employees connected and socially fulfilled -- as Mozilla Chief of Staff David Slater tells Backchannel, "The wiki becomes the water cooler."
The article describes budget-conscious startups realizing they can cut their overhead and choose from talent located anywhere in the world. And one group of analysts calculated that the number of telecommuting workers doubled between 2005 and 2014, reporting that now "75% of employees who work from home earn over $65,000 per year, putting them in the upper 80th percentile of all employees, home or office-based." Are Slashdot's readers seeing a surge in telecommuting? And does anybody have any good stories about the digital nomad lifestyle?

12 of 250 comments (clear)

  1. Hate the office life by makotech222 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Software dev here. Going to the office is worst part of the job. Dressing in uncomfortable clothes, sitting in a freezing office, while classic rock blasts on repeat over the speakers. Always looking for a remote job so i don't have to deal with that shit any more.

    1. Re:Hate the office life by HanzoSpam · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Unfortunately, any job you can do from home can be done more cheaply from Bangalore. Just ask anyone who ever worked for IBM.

      --

      Progressivism: Parasites helping parasites to help themselves - to other people's stuff.
    2. Re:Hate the office life by Z00L00K · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I agree - a lot is outsourced to India because it's cheaper. The problem is that they don't always produce what you want but what they think you want. What we in the west takes for granted and don't have to specify is uncharted territory in India. So if you order a pig you get a chicken.

      --
      If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
    3. Re:Hate the office life by Dutch+Gun · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I've never worked in a dev house that doesn't have some kind of music blasting. Usually electronic, sometimes rock or indie - depends what the boss is into usually.

      Damn. Does any other dev besides me actually require silence to be able to work? That's especially true when concentrating on solving difficult problems. I've never actually been in an office where they blast music, and I work in the videogame industry which is notoriously casual, even among software developers. I wouldn't last a week.

      Besides which, peoples' taste varies so widely that it seems like you're just inflicting pain on everyone but yourself and the few you also share your musical tastes. To me, it's incredibly rude to assume you have the right to inflict your music on everyone else around you.

      --
      Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
  2. I have a remote option but go in anyway by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I get things done quicker leaving the distractions of my home and going to a dedicated work environment.

    I also prefer in person collaboration, problems get resolved much quicker.

    Of course, it helps that my job is only a 5 min drive away, I like the people there, and there's plenty of free food/drinks.

    1. Re: I have a remote option but go in anyway by JoeMerchant · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Major difference between my home and office working situation: at home, my office door locks, and my family knows to respect my space while I am working. At work, I have a cube, no door, and I am present to serve whoever makes the effort to walk to my cube entrance.

      The family is still a distraction, but they're much easier to manage than the drop-in crowd.

    2. Re:I have a remote option but go in anyway by ProzacPatient · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I work from home and I get what you're saying but I'll tell you that keeping your workspace clean and professional (Having it in its own dedicated room is even better) and sticking to a morning routine like; getting up, having breakfast and getting dressed as though you're on your way to the office, can go a long way to improve your work-at-home ethic.

  3. good for the environement by sxpert · · Score: 3, Insightful

    hopefully it will help reducing the pollution due to the millions of people driving to work...

  4. It's about time by fluffernutter · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Proper managers can manage this. It makes sense, it's about time.

    --
    Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
    1. Re:It's about time by David_Hart · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I'm waiting for the employee that knows how to do the job and can do it well and on time without management. I hear this is possible, but I suspect only as an academic premise.

      At one job I went two years without a manager and the work still got prioritized, including adjustments based on business needs, and completed on time. Part of the feedback from my various managers is that I got a lot done, get it done on time, and keep everyone happy, but that I don't meet with the manager regularly enough to discuss what I am doing. And they think that they need to somehow "fix it".

      My thought is that you have met such an employee. But that you think that you knew better and had to tell them what to do. More than likely they ignored you and went about getting the job done.

  5. Re:Streamlined Outsourcing by Darinbob · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you are absolutely invaluable then there may be two surprises. One is that you get replaced anyway because upper management is stupid. The other is that you're not as invaluable as you thought. In both cases you have to prove that you're invaluable instead of just assuming it. I thought I was invaluable to a critical project once, but they went and cancelled the project and then downsized...

  6. A wave of steel, toxic fumes & rubber dust by Max_W · · Score: 1, Insightful

    passes every day near my place. These are people driving in private cars to the offices to switch on a computer and connect to a network.

    They could do it perfectly well from private offices at home without spending two ours of driving and without destroying the environment. But the problem is that the current cast of business leaders does not understand technology well.

    Even at the highest levels we see a complete technological ignorance. For example, John Podesta could just turn on two factor authentication on his Gmail account, and we would not have to hear all this stink about his leaked emails. It is free, and it takes five minutes to turn it on.

    In my opinion it should be a law that office employees must work at least two days per week from home. And let companies to think how to organize it well. It would be also a task for architects, for furniture constructors, software developers how to incorporate effective private offices into our dwellings.