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Slashdot Asks: Are Remote Software Teams More Productive? (techbeacon.com)

Posted by EditorDavid on from the teams-that-telecommute dept.

A recruiter with 20 years of experience recently reported on the research into whether remote software teams perform better. One study of 10,000 coding sessions concluded it takes 10-15 minutes for a programmer to resume work after an interruption. Another study actually suggests unsupervised workers are more productive, and the founders of the collaboration tool Basecamp argue the bigger danger is burnout when motivated employees overwork themselves. mikeatTB shares his favorite part of the article: One interesting take on the issues is raised by ThoughtWorks' Martin Fowler: Individuals are more productive in a co-located environment, but remote teams are often more productive than co-located teams. This is because a remote team has the advantage of hiring without geographic boundaries, and that enables employers to assemble world-class groups.
The article shares some interesting anecdotes from remote workers, but I'd be interested to hear from Slashdot's readers. Leave your own experiences in the comments, and tell us what you think. Are remote software teams more productive?

2 of 165 comments (clear)

  1. Re: Wasting time on fiddly shit (rant) by Lorens · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yes. Exactly. I just spent 4 hours the other day making a table that is mixed with dynamic controls and an amalgamation of ASP.NET and jQuery pixel fucking perfect when it came to borders for the control because it had to match the look of the old classic website to 'preserve the user experience.' What if I told you the user isn't going to notice that a button is 2 pixels higher up on this page when viewed in Internet Explorer 9? I could have spent the day doing something that adds value to the product, not fiddling with tiny quirks no user is going to notice anyway.

    Don't be so sure...

    $user complains that she can't open her email.

    $me: we did copy over all your settings and your password hasn't changed. Can you show me?

    $user: I used to click there, points to blank area on Desktop where Outlook icon used to be.

    $me: try moving your pointer up half an inch and clicking there (pointing to Outlook icon).

    $user: uhh OK I guess, I don't think i'll be able to get used to this new system

    From https://www.reddit.com/r/tales...

  2. Re: Wasting time on fiddly shit (rant) by Cytotoxic · · Score: 3, Informative

    I think I used to work with her!

    My favorite is:

    $user: I can't find my document!

    $me: Where did you save it?

    $user: In Word.

    $me: Yes, I understand it was a Word doc... but where did you save it? Was it in your network documents folder? On your team's shared folder?

    $user: Oh, yeah. Sorry. It was in Word. .... Fast forward 10 minutes as I look through recent documents and other breadcrumb trails and ask questions about the contents of the document in question.

    $me: Is this what you were looking for? (pointing to an excel spreadsheet)

    $user: Yes! That's it! Thank you so much! I hate this computer..... it is always losing my documents! Can I get a new computer?