In a recent Ipsos/Reuters poll, which questioned 11,383 people in 24 countries, about half believed that they would be at a disadvantage in earning promotions because of the lack of face-to-face contact. Previous research suggests part-time telecommuters do not communicate less frequently with managers. … After four years of experience, the average male telecommuter will earn about 6.9% less than a non-telecommuter. (
I hate politics and would strongly prefer to work at companies that signal for less politics. With that said, I think politics is fundamentally about resource contention.
So another way to state my preference is I strongly prefer companies that delegate all decision making to be purely empirical or by the data, and organizationally flat.
As opposed to by political pandering, positioning, attacking opponents, and realpolitick of human actors, with deep organization charts, characteristic of large corporation / Washington DC style decision making.
Actually I think doing everything by the data is a good way to reform conventional politics. If you could just measure absolutely every economic and political signal it should be possible to start using machine learning to identify improved policy (e.g. "remove this rent-seeking law X.")
My guess is simply that workers would shirk. In what world do telecommuters have video feed watching them? Who would cover the costs of (probably multiple) always-on cameras? I think people being physically around raises awareness of others, provides more sensory info and focuses attention on common tasks. Even multiple cameras isn't as good as reality.
Weak management tends to be the first to downplay the benefits of telecommuting. Been telecommuting for 20+ yrs, currently do so as a VP of a 26 yr old software biz with tech and non-tech directs in 3 countries. Loyalty, culture and coalitions can be built and maintained on a VPN unless management and culture are of the sort that also couldn't build them well face to face.
How much would widespread telecommuting undercut the need for auto-autos? (Why plan cities to achieve greater densities when folks telecommute?) Can agglomeration more generally be simulated by telepresence?
It seems then that maybe we do not disagree significantly. However, I wouldn't characterize this blog's influence on public discourse as insignificant. I have read several insightful posts here, and going by the comment count, I'd say that it does have a decent readership. Also, PR, to borrow the term you used, is not just the pronouncements of CEOs and politicians, but rather the sum total of all public discourse (which blogs like this are an important part of). So even when no harm is intended, its probably worth the effort to use more factually meaningful and sensitive terms..
Yes, but both Robin and I are writing comments on comments of a relatively unknown blog, so we don't have to think about PR. It would be different if we were politicians CEOs.
While my analogy probably wasn't perfect, neither does yours seem to be. I think if you describe a person who is just a little overweight as "relatively obese", he/she will probably dislike that more than "On the chubby side". The latter sounds better because the term does not include the word "obese", which carries more negative connotations due to the greater undesirability of the condition of obesity. I think it is reasonable to apply the same reasoning when comparing the terms "relatively autistic" and "less socially adept".
Actually, no, that was not what I was primarily concerned about. Like I said, I did not find the term "relatively autistic" to be the most meaningful one possible, based on my years of interaction with software developers in my mid-sized company, and elsewhere at conferences, etc. I think there are actually very very few developers that fall under the autism spectrum. Most people consider autism to be a type of disability, and therefore "relatively autistic" does a poorer job of realistically describing the social skills of developers as a group than, say, "less socially adept". That said, I do think that if software developers as a group are routinely described as "relatively autistic", it certainly might lead to a public image of them being mildly disabled or something like that which would be quite far from reality - not to mention that it can reasonably be considered somewhat insensitive to just casually use that term. I wouldn't have thought that my expressing this sentiment (even if indirectly) would have elicited much vocal disagreement, but clearly it has from some readers of this blog. Perhaps it's not a total loss though, seeing how it has it has at least served to amuse in this case!
1. When I read this post, it's interesting that you thought the problem with telecommuting is monitoring. Maybe it's just a cultural thing, but my vague guess is that this kind attitude is the same reason people think the problem with crime is lack of surveillance and lack of police. Too much crime? Let's give more power to NSA! We need more police!
You know there are many ways to solve coordination and social problems. You could create better surveillance and monitoring, or you could teach people some values when they grow up. I remember talking to a Mexican exchange student, and she was wondering how can people leave such valuable stuff for grabs? Don't people steal it? It feels like some of these solutions create a lot more problems than they solve, and they come from a very unhealthy mindset.
Maybe telecommuting is a bad example, but given that this is a blog that is about *bias* I feel when your model is that people are selfish, and not to be trusted, the solutions are going to unhealthy. I just hope this kind of attitude doesn't wash on my shores. I think this undermines a lot of econ, and American culture.
I think it would be nice to talk to say Silicon Valley companies, and ask them what they think about this. Do you feel you would be more productive if there was a guy watching you behind your back all the time? More innovative perhaps? For example, I have practiced an instrument. There's a big difference between when someone is watching me do something, and practicing alone. When you are being watched, you just became extremely risk averse in order to not look stupid.
2. I have telecommuted a year or so. It's nice to be in a office with people. I missed that as an employee. I didn't really care so much for the office politics. The work community is different from other communities, but it's still a community. My guess is that there are health benefits of being part of a community. It's also much more easier to communicate some ideas face-to-face.
I'm not dismissing the coalition hypothesis at all, but at least my view there are many benefits to office presence, and also all kinds of costs to monitoring.
We may say that someone with poor physical coordination is somewhat physically challenged. (The difference from your example being that yours isn't necessarily permanent.)
[You seem concerned that the "relatively autistic" label will lower the status of software engineers, lol.]
Well, most physical disabilities are discrete quantities, unlike social skills. A good physical analogue to social skills would be high blood pressure or obesity, not a paralyzed leg or something like that and it's perfectly normal to say "relatively high blood pressure" or "on the chubby side".
Of course there's no disagreement that the line for autism that psychiatrists draw is bound to be somewhat arbitrary - nevertheless the term "relatively autistic" doesn't seem to me the best one to use. As an analogy, if someone is not in good physical shape and thus not inclined to be physically active, would referring to them as "relatively physically challenged" be meaningful, or would the more prominent effect instead be that of ascribing to them a disability that the vast majority of individuals in that group do not actually suffer from?
Social skills form a pretty much continuous distribution, all the way from smooth talking ladies man on the left to rain man on the right, and somewhere in between psychiatrists put a line and everything beyond that line they call "autism", aspergers used to be a part of autism, but is no longer recognized, now it's all called "autism spectrum disorder". For Robin's point all that matters is that software engineers are on average more to the right of the distribution than the average person (Robin used the words "relatively autistic"), whether or not that qualifies them to fall beyond the essentially arbitrary line of autism that psychiatrists made up doesn't really matter.
Ok - I work in the software industry and though I am not a software developer I have worked closely with many of them. My feeling is that while it is certainly possible that there is a slightly higher proportion of socially less adept people among developers, I would probably think of just some of them as having Aspergers rather than being autistic (although I'm probably not thoroughly knowledgable about the differences). I also think that the vast majority of these individuals do not actually have any disorder like Autism or Aspergers but are instead simply the type who are inclined to work on technical problems and are less motivated to expend effort in a role requiring more social efforts where the contribution of one's day-to-day work to the project is less directly obvious (or even present sometimes). Your conjecture that "relatively autistic folks may gain less trust and loyalty via in person meetings" probably does have some truth to it, but then I think that managers are less likely to approve telecommuting for such employees as they may not have enough confidence in their communication skills.
It's not hard to believe that there are good videoconferencing systems, although the fact that there are ones that are worse than telephones, let alone Skype, suggests that there is some selective pressure to make it terrible, perhaps emphasis on bandwidth at the expense of latency.
Do you and your coworkers use it for group meetings, or only one on one?
I hate politics and would strongly prefer to work at companies that signal for less politics. With that said, I think politics is fundamentally about resource contention.
So another way to state my preference is I strongly prefer companies that delegate all decision making to be purely empirical or by the data, and organizationally flat.
As opposed to by political pandering, positioning, attacking opponents, and realpolitick of human actors, with deep organization charts, characteristic of large corporation / Washington DC style decision making.
Actually I think doing everything by the data is a good way to reform conventional politics. If you could just measure absolutely every economic and political signal it should be possible to start using machine learning to identify improved policy (e.g. "remove this rent-seeking law X.")
There's also the issue of distractions from family. Going to work provides an excuse not to simultaneously help your spouse with child care, etc.
My guess is simply that workers would shirk. In what world do telecommuters have video feed watching them? Who would cover the costs of (probably multiple) always-on cameras? I think people being physically around raises awareness of others, provides more sensory info and focuses attention on common tasks. Even multiple cameras isn't as good as reality.
Weak management tends to be the first to downplay the benefits of telecommuting. Been telecommuting for 20+ yrs, currently do so as a VP of a 26 yr old software biz with tech and non-tech directs in 3 countries. Loyalty, culture and coalitions can be built and maintained on a VPN unless management and culture are of the sort that also couldn't build them well face to face.
How much would widespread telecommuting undercut the need for auto-autos? (Why plan cities to achieve greater densities when folks telecommute?) Can agglomeration more generally be simulated by telepresence?
It seems then that maybe we do not disagree significantly. However, I wouldn't characterize this blog's influence on public discourse as insignificant. I have read several insightful posts here, and going by the comment count, I'd say that it does have a decent readership. Also, PR, to borrow the term you used, is not just the pronouncements of CEOs and politicians, but rather the sum total of all public discourse (which blogs like this are an important part of). So even when no harm is intended, its probably worth the effort to use more factually meaningful and sensitive terms..
Yes, but both Robin and I are writing comments on comments of a relatively unknown blog, so we don't have to think about PR. It would be different if we were politicians CEOs.
While my analogy probably wasn't perfect, neither does yours seem to be. I think if you describe a person who is just a little overweight as "relatively obese", he/she will probably dislike that more than "On the chubby side". The latter sounds better because the term does not include the word "obese", which carries more negative connotations due to the greater undesirability of the condition of obesity. I think it is reasonable to apply the same reasoning when comparing the terms "relatively autistic" and "less socially adept".
Actually, no, that was not what I was primarily concerned about. Like I said, I did not find the term "relatively autistic" to be the most meaningful one possible, based on my years of interaction with software developers in my mid-sized company, and elsewhere at conferences, etc. I think there are actually very very few developers that fall under the autism spectrum. Most people consider autism to be a type of disability, and therefore "relatively autistic" does a poorer job of realistically describing the social skills of developers as a group than, say, "less socially adept". That said, I do think that if software developers as a group are routinely described as "relatively autistic", it certainly might lead to a public image of them being mildly disabled or something like that which would be quite far from reality - not to mention that it can reasonably be considered somewhat insensitive to just casually use that term. I wouldn't have thought that my expressing this sentiment (even if indirectly) would have elicited much vocal disagreement, but clearly it has from some readers of this blog. Perhaps it's not a total loss though, seeing how it has it has at least served to amuse in this case!
1. When I read this post, it's interesting that you thought the problem with telecommuting is monitoring. Maybe it's just a cultural thing, but my vague guess is that this kind attitude is the same reason people think the problem with crime is lack of surveillance and lack of police. Too much crime? Let's give more power to NSA! We need more police!
You know there are many ways to solve coordination and social problems. You could create better surveillance and monitoring, or you could teach people some values when they grow up. I remember talking to a Mexican exchange student, and she was wondering how can people leave such valuable stuff for grabs? Don't people steal it? It feels like some of these solutions create a lot more problems than they solve, and they come from a very unhealthy mindset.
Maybe telecommuting is a bad example, but given that this is a blog that is about *bias* I feel when your model is that people are selfish, and not to be trusted, the solutions are going to unhealthy. I just hope this kind of attitude doesn't wash on my shores. I think this undermines a lot of econ, and American culture.
I think it would be nice to talk to say Silicon Valley companies, and ask them what they think about this. Do you feel you would be more productive if there was a guy watching you behind your back all the time? More innovative perhaps? For example, I have practiced an instrument. There's a big difference between when someone is watching me do something, and practicing alone. When you are being watched, you just became extremely risk averse in order to not look stupid.
2. I have telecommuted a year or so. It's nice to be in a office with people. I missed that as an employee. I didn't really care so much for the office politics. The work community is different from other communities, but it's still a community. My guess is that there are health benefits of being part of a community. It's also much more easier to communicate some ideas face-to-face.
I'm not dismissing the coalition hypothesis at all, but at least my view there are many benefits to office presence, and also all kinds of costs to monitoring.
We may say that someone with poor physical coordination is somewhat physically challenged. (The difference from your example being that yours isn't necessarily permanent.)
[You seem concerned that the "relatively autistic" label will lower the status of software engineers, lol.]
Well, most physical disabilities are discrete quantities, unlike social skills. A good physical analogue to social skills would be high blood pressure or obesity, not a paralyzed leg or something like that and it's perfectly normal to say "relatively high blood pressure" or "on the chubby side".
Of course there's no disagreement that the line for autism that psychiatrists draw is bound to be somewhat arbitrary - nevertheless the term "relatively autistic" doesn't seem to me the best one to use. As an analogy, if someone is not in good physical shape and thus not inclined to be physically active, would referring to them as "relatively physically challenged" be meaningful, or would the more prominent effect instead be that of ascribing to them a disability that the vast majority of individuals in that group do not actually suffer from?
Social skills form a pretty much continuous distribution, all the way from smooth talking ladies man on the left to rain man on the right, and somewhere in between psychiatrists put a line and everything beyond that line they call "autism", aspergers used to be a part of autism, but is no longer recognized, now it's all called "autism spectrum disorder". For Robin's point all that matters is that software engineers are on average more to the right of the distribution than the average person (Robin used the words "relatively autistic"), whether or not that qualifies them to fall beyond the essentially arbitrary line of autism that psychiatrists made up doesn't really matter.
Ok - I work in the software industry and though I am not a software developer I have worked closely with many of them. My feeling is that while it is certainly possible that there is a slightly higher proportion of socially less adept people among developers, I would probably think of just some of them as having Aspergers rather than being autistic (although I'm probably not thoroughly knowledgable about the differences). I also think that the vast majority of these individuals do not actually have any disorder like Autism or Aspergers but are instead simply the type who are inclined to work on technical problems and are less motivated to expend effort in a role requiring more social efforts where the contribution of one's day-to-day work to the project is less directly obvious (or even present sometimes). Your conjecture that "relatively autistic folks may gain less trust and loyalty via in person meetings" probably does have some truth to it, but then I think that managers are less likely to approve telecommuting for such employees as they may not have enough confidence in their communication skills.
It's not hard to believe that there are good videoconferencing systems, although the fact that there are ones that are worse than telephones, let alone Skype, suggests that there is some selective pressure to make it terrible, perhaps emphasis on bandwidth at the expense of latency.
Do you and your coworkers use it for group meetings, or only one on one?