Why Five Days in the Office Is Too Many

In contrast, I am energized by going into the office and working side by side with my peers to solve hard problems.<p>I dislike programming by myself, it is dull, boring, and much more error prone than when I have someone to bounce ideas off of. (Rubber Ducking only goes so far!)<p>Really every time this topic is brought up the overall consensus seems to be "it varies for different people." Some people seem to really benefit from working at home, some benefit from working in an office.<p>The real thing that gets to me is those who, for whatever reason, do not seem to understand that different people have different needs!

I find it disgusting that people are forced to commute at great expense to our planet's dwinding natural resources, their finances, time and stress so that they can physically congregate for an 'inspiring water-cooler moment' that may catalytically lurch their company towards an original, otherwise undiscoverable, profitable path or endless corporate meetings to please unnecessarily multi-layered paranoid management when we have telecommuting, telepresence and the good old fashioned telephone in technology-centric industries.<p>I could understand 'going to work' if 'work' was a Foundry, or a Mine, but if we are sitting in traffic jams and on crowded trains for hours every day, unpaid, just so we can sit in front of a computer and program software when it is clearly more likely that we will be interrupted to 'sign a card for Jane from accounts who is leaving to have her baby' and lose our flow as a result then the corporations of the future will be leaner and more agile by being virtual.

The very term "work from home" suggests separation. That's the wrong model. This is not about introverts and extroverts.<p>Working with a remote team is not a choice about whether to collaborate or not. When a team is set up properly, remote work is no less collaborative than any other kind of work. The tools are there, widely available, and free. Everyone on a team needs to be using them, yes, but duh.<p>As near as I can tell, there is a shortage of talent. Smart companies will exploit the newly available infrastructure and realize that they can have "face time" remotely. Then, they'll have access to a much wider pool of talent. Win!<p>Is it me or are silicon valley companies -- startups, in particular -- really not into hiring remote people? Seems like, with the cost of living in the valley and the dramatic shortage of talent, and the volume and enormity of ideas, they'd have the most to gain. If I'm right about not liking remote hires, anyone have any ideas why? Provincialism? If you were worth hiring, you'd live here already? Hahahahaha.

At Mandalorian we have to work 9-530 days, our customers expect to be able to contact us in this period. What we do though is allow everyone to work from home unless they absolutely need an office environment. Once a quarter we meet up face to face, have a day set aside for meetings, discussions, presentations and that's about it. We have IRC for techies and Google chat for non-techies, along with Google Hangout for when we need some face to face discussion.<p>So far it's working pretty well. People who need to pick kids up from school pick kids up from school. People who need to receive deliveries or have plumbers round don't have to worry about taking time out to do so. Additionally everyone's travel costs are miniscule when not on customer site, which I think is a massive positive for all of us. On the whole I believe that a happy workforce is a productive workforce, and that creating stress for employees is counterproductive. If we need meetings we can have them. If we need physical space together we can arrange it. Aside from that, I'd rather focus on the results than the time put in.

I think the mix of introverts vs. extroverts is relevant, too. Generally, extroverts are energized by being around people, while introverts need some mental downtime to recharge their batteries. And at least for me, downtime is hard to come by while in the office.

I treat college like a 9-5 job, going to the library to study at 9 am and attending classes throughout the day. I don't need to do this, but there are very specific reasons why I do:<p>- If I study at home, I have no sense of urgency. Home is the place I associate with relaxation, so it's kind of cruel to expect myself to get work done there. The general public in the library holds me accountable to make it look like I have a purpose to be there.<p>- There are places I'd rather be than the library, like home. This motivates me to get my work done as quickly as possible and move on to other things that are important to me.<p>- We are social creatures, and interacting with others is important to our well-being. Given two days where I get the same amount of work done, I'll feel more accomplished on the day where I adequately socialize. This is true even if my interactions are largely superficial.

I would have even looser guidelines, but still suggest some facetime in the office if possible. Mostly the team themselves should be able to mandate their own locations and hours to fit their needs. If they are productive...<p>Some teams may prefer heavy pair programming and thus may need to be most of time in the same location. Others(most) would use some sort of hybrid where the 5 hours 3 days a week probably works well. And then some will be very much independent tasks where then locations are mostly irrelevant apart from whenever syncing is needed and general communications with other teams and stakeholders.<p>But teams and even when pairing you do not always need to be permanently physically in the same location if they know each other well and can communicate freely across chat and screen sharing etc. However mostly in person will trump all communications.

Not relevant to the subject, but I was just wondering if anyone can enlighten me on the use of is/are. Why is the headline <i>Why five days in the office &#62;is&#60; too many</i> and not <i>&#62;are&#60;</i> too many?

Personally I like the routine of getting up every morning having my coffee and going to the office. But you need a good working environment. I'm not a programmer though, and I often realize some people can get a lot more down without the pull of meetings and unintended interruptions throughout the day. Perhaps I'm just lucky my job is devoid of meetings, for the most part.

Prerna is a good CEO and did some great things at Khush which helped her acquisition. Even still this intro is maddening:<p>&#62;The freedom to work outside a traditional office was one of the main reasons I left the corporate world eight years ago, at age 23, to start a software company.<p>Maddening because she spent about a year in that "corporate world." Hardly a good sampling period.<p>I don't disagree with her conclusions, however to cast that wide of a net seems a little cheap considering not all business structures and markets are conducive to the same flexibility "knowledge workers" have.

I love working at the office but not the whole 8 hours. I love it in the morning but when it's afternoon, I find myself more productive elsewhere, maybe a cafe.<p>This is an interesting approach that allows experiments. Would love to see how this will turn out. :)

At first glance I thought that this was an article for moving to 4 day work week.