Comment by rhubarbtree
Comment by rhubarbtree 20 hours ago
The commute doesn’t help you, but working in an office next to your team mates will accelerate your work.
Software development is a team sport and individual productivity is not the same as team productivity. Communication bandwidth in person is much higher when colocated. Startups move fast and higher bandwidth increases velocity, reduces errors, improves quality and team cohesion.
For other situations remote can be “good enough”, and has advantages eg bigger recruitment pool or cheaper labour, but in general in person is just going to be a lot faster with higher quality results.
A lot of engineers don’t wish this to be true, because wfh is often better for them as individuals, but it is what it is.
I’ve worked in plenty of startups (the overwhelming majority of my career, actually) and did not perceive the performance of in-office teams to be significantly better than the remote teams I’ve been on. The floor is probably lower for remote teams (in that ineffective remote teams are horribly ineffective), but the ceiling is comparable, and the average is (again, in my experience) anywhere from comparable to slightly better, because folks are working the ways+hours they’re most effective, not what someone else thinks should be the most effective.