In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Alex Martelli) wrote:
> Unfortunately, I entirely understand _why_ most software development > firms prefer face-to-face employees: when I found myself, back when I > was a freelance consultant, alternatively working remotely for some > time, and at the client's office for another part of the time, I saw my > productivity soar by 3-4 times when I was working locally, physically > right next to the rest of the team, rather than remotely Actually, it's a quadratic problem. If your productivity goes up N-fold by having face time with your co-workers, consider also that your co-workers' productivity also goes up N-fold by having face time with you. For the most part I find coding to be a solitary activity (unless I'm doing pair programming, but that's another post). Face time is good for design, code review, and solving problems. It's also good for catching snippets of conversations which aren't directly related to what you're doing but keep you in the big-picture loop anyway. Most of the really good design work I've been involved in has happened during random spontaneous hallway discussions. You start with, "Hey, Joe, what do you think about ...?", then you go find an empty room with a whiteboard, and a couple of hours later, you've both earned your salaries for the month. Sometimes, somebody who you didn't even think knew anything about the topic of discussion will notice what you're drawing on the board and contribute what turns out to be the winning idea. That's really hard to do when working remotely (even if you're both in the same time zone, let alone 5, or 8, or 12 hours apart). I find my most productive way of working is to come into the office every day and appear to get nothing useful done. I go to meetings, schmooze, argue, eat lunch with co-workers, try to sell my ideas to anybody who I can get to listen, and deal with bureaucratic stupidity. Then I got home and get in a good 3 or 4 solid hours of coding where there's nobody to bother me. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list