Does the programmer work from home?

For software technologists, office space does not seem to have a big impact on productivity-after all, most software engineers have the impression that they are burying themselves in front of a computer and that they can produce the code we expect as long as they have a computer connected to the Internet or a corporate VPN. Ideally, the company can save a lot of fixed workplace costs in such a way. It sounds like a winning choice.

Today, however, there are few companies that can truly "work from home", while companies such as Google and Facebook allow employees to choose to work at home at "inconvenient times", but do not allow employees to do so in the long run; Yahoo!, which enforces lax policies in "Home Office", After the new boss Marissa took office, the policy of allowing employees to work from home was abolished.

So what are the gaps between ideals and reality? It is clear that allowing employees to work from home is a tender benefit: In a busy job, employees are inevitably confronted with a variety of unexpected situations. For example, the child is sick, the home leaks, encountered snow out of the safe, temporary need to wait at home to buy new washing machine installation completed ...

In these situations, providing employees with "Home Office" benefits allows employees to juggle life and work, reflecting the company's concern for their employees. On the other hand, if the main work output of a software technology job is determined by the wisdom and experience of the individual, then it is not a problem to work in any environment.

But this is not the case, and the reason for canceling the policy of allowing employees to work from home is that "in order to create a new innovation and collaboration culture for the company, employees must report to the company" Marissa. But shouldn't innovation be done by individuals? Is it not possible to collaborate over a network?

Zappos CEO Hsieh, speaking of the importance of face-to-face communication, said: "While Zappos is expanding through technology, we still rely heavily on face-to-face interaction, which seems odd." The reason is that our biological form evolves much slower than technology. We are a social species and should be born to interact face-to-face with people on different occasions, not just by using email or phone, or at home. ”

I agree with that. Creativity is often generated by collisions between different individuals rather than by individual individuals in the day-to-day environment. On the other hand, although through the network collaboration can achieve the technology without delay interaction. However, web-based collaboration can often deliver much less information than face-to-face interaction. In a team with a benign culture of technology, culture is often passed on to new members of the organization by way of example. However, the way of telecommuting has greatly restricted the process of culture establishment and transmission. Obviously, in the process of sitting alongside a person and accomplishing a project, we end up with not only the code to complete the work, but also the interplay of two of people and the sparks of thought collisions. And these are difficult to achieve through a remote collaborative approach.

Another disadvantage of Home Office is efficiency. In fact, for the most part, home is not a suitable office environment, at least for me personally. Too much business can lead to distraction, and lack of visible stress from colleagues around you can lead to slack work. I do not deny that there are some people even at home can strictly distinguish between work and life, but I believe that for most people, if the choice of long-term Home Office, I am afraid it is difficult to draw a clear line between work and life.

As a technical manager, I would like to believe in the consciousness of the team members, but also willing to take care of the team members occasionally encounter difficulties, so I would like to keep everyone in the "special circumstances" occasional Home Office rights, but from the cultural establishment, collaboration, innovation, and experience transfer perspective, I prefer to have as many overlapping office hours as possible. Only in this way can we really build a highly trusted and dynamic team within the organization.

Author: Paragraph read, Vice president of Watercress Project.