Remote working for software development? Yay or Nay? Advantages & disadvantages?
Possibly the most hilarious remote working live video EVER….
But seriously after some excellent comments from a recent post on LinkedIn I thought I’d further explore the advantages & disadvantages of remote working and share a few experiences I’ve had recently.
And with Coronavirus rapidly advancing is it time to get your remote working strategy in place?
So what are the….
Advantages?
***Lack of distraction / deep focus on analytical tasks
***Save commute time
***More productive & able to schedule in exercise, hobbies, family time (pick up kids etc), do the shopping, gardening into your day
***You can live anywhere in the world
***Less stress on city infrastructures as people can live rurally or in the burbs
***Your candidate pool for recruiting is the whole world (that has an internet connection)
***Less meetings
***Create a remote working culture (NOT ‘working from home’)
***Modern tools for remote working like slack, trello, google drive, zoom are free (or cheap) & readily available
***Mobile technology has never been better (and will continue to improve)
***Geographical spread can help with technical support of apps
Disadvantages?
***Distraction from kids / home life (Do you have a home office / quiet place set up?) See video above ;-)
***Lack of human connection
***Lack of banter / hanging out with work mates
***Lack of ‘water cooler’ conversations
***Miscommunications
***Missing out on decisions made at the ‘water cooler’
***Lack of collaborating / problem-solving / on-the-fly white boarding / brain-storming
***Difficult timezones that make it hard to connect with some workers
***Geographical spread can help with technical support of apps
Like when Christchurch had the earthquakes 9 years ago working from home (or in cafes, people’s living rooms, libraries or just about anywhere) became a necessary and essential way to ‘get on with things’. Most people in tech will have tooling set up for remote / home working. Are we going to see this soon with Coronavirus? Quite likely. US companies like Amazon & Microsoft have already encouraged staff to be working from home last week….
My main focus here is on software development and of course remote work lends itself nicely to programming & analytical deep dive work where focus & concentration can be gained away from distraction but the argument is always that the team has better communication & collaboration when they’re co-located. But is this really the case?
I had an interesting conversation with a CPO the other day and asked them what their view of remote working was? He mentioned for a great software engineer it was a no brainer sure remote working was fine but what detriment would it have to the rest of the team? He felt that the optimum agile team was 4-8 engineers with a product owner & a designer and felt that the collaboration and lightening quick problem solving that you get with the team together was fundamental. I guess not having to wait for your remote guy or girl to come online in 4 hours to ask for a key bit of info and then see the moment pass….could be frustrating.
I also bumped into a remote worker the other day at my local cafe, a talented senior front end developer who is purely working remote. He mentioned the interview process was conducted faceless to prevent bias which was interesting and he loved the set up; flexibility of hours, starting early he was being able to have late afternoons to get out in the sunshine etc which really suited him.
It does pose a couple of key questions…..
Does remote work suit more senior, experienced workers who have learnt to be self motivated? I think this comes down to attitude - a passionate, engaged, motivated worker will nail it no matter where they are in the world.
Human nature is about connection - are we going to miss this as remote workers? Or does the increased productivity, less BS allow us to connect more with our family & close friends that really matter…quite possibly.
With countries now in isolation from Coronavirus this is certainly going to be tested and maybe we’ll see remote working explode because of having traditional working practices challenged at it’s core out of necessity…survival of the human race…but for many remote or mobile working is just the norm…an interesting debate.
I’d really like to hear your comments & thoughts?
I'm Paul, I Iove coffee and I’m Founder & Principal Consultant of Sunstone, an IT Recruitment & HR company specialising in recruiting IT roles within software, web, mobile, blockchain, big data, infrastructure, security & networks in Christchurch, South Island of New Zealand.