I guess I'm the opposite. I don't have the problem of distractions when working from my home office. This is largely because I have a very dedicated home office space, no interruptions, so nothing to cause a distraction.
Also, I can confidently attest that I get a LOT more work done working from home, where no one is poking their head in my cubicle to interrupt me. I also set my IM banner message to "Priority interrupts only" when I am writing code. Most people will respect that.
I do a lot of freelance contract programming, some on-site and some remote. I can definitely promise higher productivity and shorter deadlines to a client if I can work remote. Just the ability to focus deeply without distractions makes such a tremendous difference in TTM for any project. I agree that every distraction costs 10-15 minutes of catch-up time when one is deeply entrenched in code. Add in commute time for onsite days and it becomes even more of an impact.
Focusing on algorithms, complex object-models or coding end-to-end feature sets across multiple tiers of a large MVC enterprise application or large cloud-based app that flows from a back-end database through a services/API tier, back through client-side factories and controllers to the UI views... the more you can concentrate, the faster that sort of work can be done, and the more likely it gets done in fewer debug cycles. Debugging end-to-end through services and front-end at the same time is something that also takes a ton of real-time concentration.
There are valid arguments both ways, and of course it depends on the situation, how much interaction with other developers is required, etc... but in general I do my best work (and more of it in less time) when I can work remotely, just due to fewer distractions. [It really sucks these posts
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I guess I'm the opposite. I don't have the problem of distractions when working from my home office. This is largely because I have a very dedicated home office space, no interruptions, so nothing to cause a distraction.
Also, I can confidently attest that I get a LOT more work done working from home, where no one is poking their head in my cubicle to interrupt me. I also set my IM banner message to "Priority interrupts only" when I am writing code. Most people will respect that.
I do a lot of freelance contract programming, some on-site and some remote. I can definitely promise higher productivity and shorter deadlines to a client if I can work remote. Just the ability to focus deeply without distractions makes such a tremendous difference in TTM for any project. I agree that every distraction costs 10-15 minutes of catch-up time when one is deeply entrenched in code. Add in commute time for onsite days and it becomes even more of an impact.
Focusing on algorithms, complex object-models or coding end-to-end feature sets across multiple tiers of a large MVC enterprise application or large cloud-based app that flows from a back-end database through a services/API tier, back through client-side factories and controllers to the UI views... the more you can concentrate, the faster that sort of work can be done, and the more likely it gets done in fewer debug cycles. Debugging end-to-end through services and front-end at the same time is something that also takes a ton of real-time concentration.
There are valid arguments both ways, and of course it depends on the situation, how much interaction with other developers is required, etc... but in general I do my best work (and more of it in less time) when I can work remotely, just due to fewer distractions. [It really sucks these posts