LogFAQs > #930373626

I think trying to boil it down to subjective preference dumbs it down and plays into the exact kind of concession foolmo wants.

It's not just about "I prefer interacting with people" vs "I don't." Like I don't really wanna get into a remote cock measuring contest (one I lose to puns based on his stated credentials, to be clear) but I'd be extremely surprised if Foolmo has used remote to interact with anything but a fairly small group of peers in a coding team based on his thoughts, oftentimes the same peers regularly, where communication breakdowns are less prone to happen because it's a regular thing and you have a lot of experience communicating with those same people.

As a programmer who often needs to provide IT support and also work with the end user a lot, I have done it in that situation, and also a wide variety of others, most of the time in situations where the commute saved is 5-15 minutes so I'm inherently humoring both options, I've done both options with literally hundreds of people of varying experiences and backgrounds and have observed the benefits and pitfalls of both approaches.

On teams of people in your field specifically, most of your problems lie in less senior members (I've been on both sides of this, being the more experienced and less experienced) being less inclined to iron out a full understanding in a remote situation, as remote sorta inherently suppresses flow of dialogue, causing them to waste a lot of time to "figure it out themselves" in particular with completely new bits of codebase and such. That can be good for learning, but oftentimes it's just a waste of time and spoon feeding any ambiguities in the starting point is a better use of time, letting them learn more about it as they interact with the codebase in a way that actually adds to it. But you can't just assume they need to be spoonfed everything either, otherwise your more important points become obscured. Hence why the async communication is never quite optimal in those situations. As you work with them more, and on more familiar terms, it will be closer to optimal.

When there's a more limited overlap in skillets it also becomes an issue of it becoming increasingly implausible to present an ironclad remote friendly communication. Like if I'm a programmer with some math background talking to another programmer who is primarily a Mathematician who has been brought in for theoretical knowledge more than coding, it's not reasonable for either of us to fully grasp the levels of understanding of the other very well and a face to face can really iron out things a lot more efficiently and get us both moving quicker.

And then you've got the people who just are kinda bad at understanding things as the receiver of information without it being eye to eye, back and forth. That doesn't mean they're bad at their job-- it's not optimal to simply fire them because they're not good at processing information that they can't provide immediate feedback to and have all the extra inputs that face to face gives you, but they inherently just have trouble conveying themselves in a remote situation so if you want them at maximum efficiency being face to face is just more effective if possible. Saves you a lot of time clarifying yourself remotely, and them a lot of time processing what you're communicating.

These are not hypotheticals. These are situations I've observed. I feel if you're the kind of person who has remoted with like 10 or 20 co-workers on a coding team, several times, and haven't really been broad with the types and number of people you've worked with, you're just not going to understand all the scenarios where remote can fail, especially since it's so often not going to be obvious you're not conveying yourself properly because the lost productivity isn't on your end, but it can. That doesn't mean it isn't far better in many situations as well, and if the commute is 4 hours it being better as an absolute may even be close to accurate just cause of that high cost, but yeah.
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