Working from home and what gets in the way

Over the past few days, a debate about working from home erupted. If you weren’t following closely, you might have missed that Marissa Mayer, the CEO, announced the end of working from home at Yahoo. A storm of reactions followed, then reactions to the reactions and articles reacting to those, all giving Yahoo a good dressing-down for the move. The topic stopped being interesting after a few days, so an article explaining what motivated Yahoo’s boss slipped by. Surprisingly, the reason for ending work from home was pretty blunt: Yahoo employees simply weren’t working. The VPN access logs suggested they weren’t even bothering to pretend. In any case, I was struck by the wave of criticism Yahoo faced over the move. We work from home at GoodData, and I hardly know anyone who doesn’t need to do it occasionally. Nobody works from home permanently, but because the team is distributed, we deal with some aspects of remote work every day. If someone tells you working from home has no drawbacks and is the ideal setup, they’re very lucky it works for them.

Context matters most

I’ve had a few colleagues who worked from home for long stretches, and they were unusually unanimous about one drawback. Almost all said they felt cut off from what was going on.

The biggest drawback of working from home is losing the context that comes simply from being with the rest of the team. To me, the most valuable thing that makes a team a team is the conversations that happen in passing. These are brainstorming sessions that spring up spontaneously. I can’t imagine how to include someone who isn’t physically sitting with us. You might say we could use video links, but even with equipment straight out of Big Brother it wouldn’t be the same. You probably won’t have that equipment anyway. At worst, you’ll end up on Skype with choppy sound or video, and one side or the other will have to mute to avoid feedback.

Context in the wider sense often comes from outside your desk and your workload. You bump into someone in the kitchen and start talking, go to lunch with someone, get drawn into a discussion, and so on. All those moments build context, and they happen simply because you are together with the rest of the team. You could argue that regular daily meetings can recreate it. Yes, partly . You can also buy ham at the supermarket that’s 75% meat and topped up with water…

Communication barriers

There are several ways to communicate with other team members. I’d rank them by how hard it is to start the conversation, from the easiest to those with bigger barriers. This reflects my own experience and preferences. Yours might differ, but I expect the order will be much the same.

• Turn to a colleague and ask.
• Send an instant message.
• Write an email.
• Make a call.
• Travel somewhere to meet in person.

For some conversations, you’ll naturally pick a less convenient option because it will get you to a solution fastest. On the other hand, there are a thousand and one times when communication falls through simply because you can’t call out to a colleague across the desk. Working from home leaves you with little to call out to besides the bedding or your wife.

Monotony

Monotony is one of the things that kills creativity. If you work from home once in a while, you’ll feel much more productive than at the office. That probably comes down to two factors. You’ve put up the communication barriers I just described, so it’s much harder to pull you away from what you’re doing. You’ve also broken out of the routine of your workplace, which gives your brain a subconscious jolt. If you work from home all the time, you’ll be in that routine for a full twenty-four hours, well beyond the eight-hour workday. Sooner or later it will start to bother you, and it could easily hurt your work habits and results.

Context, communication barriers and monotony all make a clear case against long-term work from home. I can imagine it working under certain conditions.

• Small, highly specialized teams (no more than five people).
• Experienced developers who are on the same wavelength.
• Clear assignments, preferably tasks people can work on independently.
• The ability to maintain context.

I mentioned monotony, and occasional work from home, even once a week, can be just the change that gives you a boost and brings fresh ideas.