Do you work from home?
I once worked at a company where no-one on the dev team ever verbally spoke. Literally all of the communication was done by typing in Google Hangouts…even though we were all in the same office and sat within a few feet from each other.
It was like an unwritten rule that you did not physically speak to other developers…which might make you think that we didn’t get along. But that wasn’t the case at all. On Hangouts everyone would be joking, sharing memes / gifs etc. and communicating in much the same way that developers do when they are working remotely.
So what was the point of us being in an office? Indeed, what is the point of any software developer spending hours of their life commuting into an office to do the exact same thing as what they would do if they were working from home?
It’s a conversation that I see quite a lot on social media and the arguments that I see for people being in an office never (or very rarely) apply to our profession. Here are two arguments that seem to crop up the most:
Collaboration.
Software developers collaborate using Git…no physical proximity required. Open-source software like Laravel / Symfony / React (and even Git itself!) have thousands of contributors. Are they all sitting in an office together, ‘collaborating’?
Company Culture.
Software developers (for the most part) sit with their headphones on, looking at a screen. Doing this in an office does not contribute any more to company culture than doing it at home….imho.
The one thing that does concern me about all of the developers being at home all of the time is something which never seems to be mentioned…and that is junior developers. When you’re in an office it’s much easier to see whether or not someone is busy so a junior dev can spot an opportunity to ask something. Equally for senior devs it is easy to glance over and see if someone appears to be struggling with something.
If everyone is at home, then those opportunities do not exist. And one common trait amongst junior devs is that they are often too scared to admit when they are struggling. It could be quite a demoralizing experience for someone at home, on their own, faced with a problem that they don’t fully understand…especially for a new starter who does not know anyone.
But I’ll save that particular conversation for next time because conversations regarding junior developers are also quite common on social media. Especially the subject of how to get experience.
As far as my own working arrangements are concerned…I go to the office once or twice a month. I’ve always produced my best code at home, with no distractions and without time constraints and other constraints that working in an office imposes upon you. I do a lot of my work in the evening in my office in the garden when it’s nice and quiet. I can just stick my headphones on and get lost in my own little code-trance!
I love writing code but doing it in an office does make it feel more like work to me. What about you? What are your thoughts on office working / remote working? What is your current working arrangement and how is it working out?
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