Developers Work From Home
After presenting developers work from home data, I will present key opportunity and challenges that arise from it. I will then conclude with personal opinion and recommendation regarding work for home for developers.
Key data
Stack overflow 2023 developer survey disclosed that:
- 42% respondants developers work in totally remote environment
- 42% in hybrid environment, mixing in office and remote work
- 16% in fully in-office.
- Self-employed developers work remotely for 70% of them.
Because of collection source, the sample could be skewed towards more remote than in office sample, but remain one trustable labor source worldwide.
An other survey on developers (terminal.io) found 80% say they they want to work remotely at least 80% of the time. Crossing data means around 40% of developers are dissatisfied with the remote policy of their company.
Reasons invoked to prefer remote include productivity and focus, saving stress, and saving time & money related no longer having to having to commute, -while mentionned advantages to work in office include better communication, bonding, and better team efficiency.
Adapting to the employes
Choosing a model
When it comes to organizing the same team of developers, the 3 work styles (in-office, hybrid and fully remote) are challenging to make coexist. Based on the company choice, it will face different challenges.
Challenges and optimization
There is several challenges to make a comfortable work environment:
- Providing reasonable commute time, as this is uncompensated unavailability
- Comfortable space and quiet
- Lack of distraction
These can be challenging to provide for both remote and in office organisation, for different reasons.
In office organization
To offset workplace challenges, this is an example of things to implement in an in-office organization:
- A central positionning regarding transportation of the team.
- Sufficient space and separation to avoid lack of focus related to overhearing discussions.
- Formal and informal discussion spaces away from the screen.
In office organization will face a lot of recruitment challenges however. Their recruitment area is more limited, and developers who are willing to engage durably in them are fewer.
Remote organization
Remote organization is highly desirable for both employees and employers, because it allows broader area employment, it removes necessity of large offices, it removes necessity to commute, and cut down distractions; without any possible doubt, in terms of efficiency remote is king.
However, full remote is not suited to all, and transitionning to it is difficult for employers. Some employees can have unfriendly home environments, prefer the office, and if they have been hired on that premise, disagree with change.
Finally, while efficient, it may be ill suited for the purpose of bonding between employees, for a set proportion of them who prefer in-person interaction by a higher margin.
To counterbalance this, an efficient remote organization should ideally:
- Have in-person events. These events should include as little actual development as possible, and be more of a planned occasion to meet, plan in team, and have informal discussion.
- Propose to compensate for working in nomad offices such as coworking environments.
Hybrid organization
A hybrid workplace will be variably occupied, and both formal and informal meeting may need some level of effort to include remote workers: in office calls, remote meetings, and text retranscriptions.
While this compromise can be tempting, it is important to care that employees can variably adapt to this organization, as they would need to transit with their equipment frequently, and might poorly coordinate their office days with the people they wanted to meet in person.
Efficient organizations should include either a calendar to book the office, or an office large enough for everyone to come at the same time.
They should also include working devices to make remote meetings such as meeting rooms with included quality audio i/o devices.
Why I believe in remote
Work from home and in office don’t have to win one over another. Both offers probably should coexist to satisfy a large panel of opinions.
However, as a decider one can reap stronger benefits from a work from home company model in the current state of the market.
While this require some knowledge of how these organizations can work fluently, we however saw how clever management can partly offset these problems.
As a remote enthusiast, I cannot wait to see more company daring to embrace this model, as it is, to my own standpoint, a great opportunity both for businesses and employees.