> collaborating with a co-worker in the same office is a matter of going over to their desk or grabbing an open conference room
Oh, how much I hate when this happens. Biggest problem is of course that people don't even realize the ensuing context switching is a problem, because it still feels like useful progress is being done, when in fact in most cases no progress is made.
The most common case for interrupting a coworker is when you don't know how to do something. As a general rule of thumb, all companies should have internal wikis for all questions that can be answered with documentation. If the answer is missing, then my answer is to write a wiki document for it. There are of course technical questions on the technologies used, which are a Google search away and I have a rule to not answer questions that can be easily searched (teach a man to fish, yada, yada).
Other reasons for interrupting a coworker are for design decisions or for discussing/prioritizing bugs, but those meetings need to be scheduled, preferably in the morning, not whenever anybody feels being chatty.
The real downside of working remotely is the lack of interhuman relationships that happen in a regular workplace, a problem that really can't be solved by technology.
Other competent technologists will understand the negative impacts of context switching... but Googling and structured meetings fail to capture all of the chance encounters that can be so pivotal to a project. Perhaps it's just me... but I've never found a way to schedule the free-wheeling ideation that can be achieved through chance, brief interpersonal encounters.
> a problem that really can't be solved by technology.
But that isn't necessarily heightened by technology, either. I got along just fine with several of my remote colleagues; I actually preferred emailing, IM-ing, or chatting on the phone with them to interacting with many of my colleagues in the office.
Some of them were remote because they needed to be elsewhere in the world, yet were so valuable to the company that they continued to be employed in any fashion that could be managed.
That was part of the pleasure of interacting with them: They were both sharp and down to earth. The jokes were pithy, and the work got done.
Do you hate it because it's inefficient or because it's cutting you from a pleasure source ?
Some times I feel like the efficiency argument is a bit of an excuse that we use because being in the zone feels so good. Especially if you're the geeky type that doesn't derive much pleasure from social interaction it feels like someone just pulled the plug from your morphine drops and put some Tabasco instead. On the other side, working in the after-glow of the zone is inefficient but nobody seems to mind too much about that.
At least in my own experience, I'm pretty sure the efficiency argument is not an excuse. There are some days when I really don't enjoy what I'm doing all that much (e.g. "One customer says that form with the thing doesn't work — fix that"), but I still hate getting pulled away multiple times when I'm being productive because I can't just immediately go back to being productive, and now I'm doing something tedious and taking even longer at it.
Oh, how much I hate when this happens. Biggest problem is of course that people don't even realize the ensuing context switching is a problem, because it still feels like useful progress is being done, when in fact in most cases no progress is made.
The most common case for interrupting a coworker is when you don't know how to do something. As a general rule of thumb, all companies should have internal wikis for all questions that can be answered with documentation. If the answer is missing, then my answer is to write a wiki document for it. There are of course technical questions on the technologies used, which are a Google search away and I have a rule to not answer questions that can be easily searched (teach a man to fish, yada, yada).
Other reasons for interrupting a coworker are for design decisions or for discussing/prioritizing bugs, but those meetings need to be scheduled, preferably in the morning, not whenever anybody feels being chatty.
The real downside of working remotely is the lack of interhuman relationships that happen in a regular workplace, a problem that really can't be solved by technology.