Remote Only - <AUTHOR> https://www.remoteonly.org/ <comment><USER3> My somewhat reductive conclusion about remote work is that it boils down to the ability to be an effective writer.

If you're not good at written communication, or you work with people who are not good at it, remote work will be miserable.

People who are not highly fluent in the company's written language or those with some level of dyslexia will struggle. Also some people get frustrated with the more analytic approach required by text, relying instead on spoken rhetoric.

I think even if you're colocated, there are huge benefits to following the remote work practices and improving your written communication. Documenting your work in an issue manager and using chat primarily for communication means no one will miss out, even if someone is sick, a new starter, or on a different team. All these things can make a dev organisation much more effective and break down silos.

<comment><USER4> People say that, yet in my experience it's not actually true. We just need to communicate enough to coordinate. I'm not a great communicator, I don't think most people at my work are great communicators, yet we work just fine as a remote company. I feel people exaggerate this belief.

Regular chatter in public chat channels seems sufficient. What really seems to matter is work ethics.

<comment><USER5> I don't work remotely as such, but usually with distributed teams. Personally I find skype chats or similar the best way. Writing emails is quite a long winded way to get to where you want and takes me a while. Chats are more two way so you can judge where the other person is with understanding the problem, and has the benefit of being written down for future reference.

<comment><USER6> Yeah, I find Skype or Slack or some other form of IM to be absolutely invaluable in making remote work effective. But it's also semi-synchronous and interruptive, relative to email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Disadvantages > Scares investors - Scares some partners - Scares some > customers - Scares some potential employees, mostly senior non-technical > hires - Onboarding is harder, first month feels lonely

We do a full remote policy at SerpApi.com, however I found this disadvantages list a bit dishonest, they are more way numerous and important, the most obvious are missing real human contacts (and it doesn't get easier with time), and harder life and work separation.

<comment><USER8> This assumes that the only place a remote worker can work from is their home. There is nothing more detrimental to a person's psyche. Cafes and coworking spaces are the most obvious and effective solution to this problem.

I made countless friends while working remotely and a good 90% of them I met in a coworking space (and the so called "digital nomad" community is made of some really awesome people). Plus you have the option to change coworking space if you don't like the people, the coffee, the wallpapers or whatever. You can't do that with a traditional office (or it would be reaaally hard to justify).

<comment><USER9> > This assumes that the only place a remote worker can work from is their > home. There is nothing more detrimental to a person's psyche.

That is rather hyperbolic. Many remote workers do fine working from home. Others do not. Not all people are the same. Any of us can think of things that are "more detrimental to a person's psyche" for nearly all individuals.

<comment><USER10> For example, coworkers who use the bathroom and just rinse their hands. That is worse for my psyche than working from home.

<comment><USER11> Is there something filthy on your junk? Better get it clean than keep dirtying your hands

<comment><USER12> But, see, the way to get it "clean" is by washing ones hands regularly with soap and warm water (ideally before touching it [1]).

Really, though, you're making the (likely false) assumption that ones "junk" is the only thing touched in the restroom. You're also ignoring the potential for aeresolized bits of feces sprayed by commercial flush mechanisms.

None of this adds up to "filthy" per se, but hand washing is one of the best disease spreading preventions we know of.

Personally, if they're not going to wash I'd rather someone not go anywhere near the sink after using the restroom instead of _also_ touching the fixtures and giving the bacteria on their hands a drink of water.

[1] I once worked in a building with a dentist who washed both before and after.

<comment><USER13> I always do both and it feels extremely weird to see people not actually do it. In between bathroom breaks at work I've touched my desk, keyboard, smartphone screen, perhaps adjusted my shoes, perhaps shook someones hand. By that time, hands already feel filthy enough to not want to touch myself anywhere before washing.

<comment><USER12> I suspect that's where you may be crossing over into an irrational fear of dirt and/or germs, which can lead to, at the very least, people being dismissive of concerns.

After all, your desk, keyboard, smartphone screen, and even shoes aren't likely to be places _other_ people have touched, so not much potential for spreading anything.

Shaking hands, though.. filthy habit ;)

<comment><USER13> Your keyboard is filthy, but your fingers aren't really the best bet for germs to infect you, unless you put them in an orifice or touch some skinless area probably. I'll avoid further details.

But yes, I'm not suggesting that not washing your hands all the time greatly increase your likelihood of getting infected with something. Just slightly. I just have slight OCD and it's still weird to me how people don't feel anywhere close to the same way I do about these things.

<comment><USER14> I guess I don't see the risk? It's been close to 20 years since I last had a stomach flu, and never got salmonella yet. I believe total avoidance of all bacteria is just going to make my immune system more lax.

Don't worry though, I do wash my hands after a bathroom visit. I just don't care that much if someone else doesn't.

<comment><USER12> > I guess I don't see the risk?

That's the point, though. Once you "see" it, it's way too late.

> It's been close to 20 years since

That's just anecdata, but, as you point out, you do wash your hands.

> total avoidance of all bacteria

That's not exactly possible (and essentially deadly, unless there are archea that can take the place of all our gut bacteria.. I'm not sure).

> I just don't care that much if someone else doesn't.

I'd agree it's unreasonable to care more than just slightly, since they'd be increasing the risk more for themselves than for you. However, increased risk for everyone (including you) is non-zero.

<comment><USER14> > That's the point, though. Once you "see" it, it's way too late.

I see your point, but it simply falls to things I rather not care about. Adding a mental/habitual burden on something that is either unlikely or not that serious isn't just worth it; a life is more relaxed if it can be disregarded.

I also acknowledge that it's not something that can be simply chosen though. I do I know about certain things way more than some of my friends, even if I didn't want to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Doesn't seem to be much discussion about the environmental impact of remote work.

Lately I have been feeling how ridiculous it is for me to drive everyday to a office and sit at a computer then drive home. So inefficient from an energy usage perspective.

I see so many jobs that could easily be remote if people could deal with the issues outlined here.

Imagine the difference in traffic and office space if every job that could be remote was. I would think the environmental impact would be huge.

In a utopian view I could see us returning to small villages as there is no need to move to the city. You could live in smaller communities wherever you like with others you get along with in person.

High speed internet has made this possible, but it seem like we have just scratched the surface of how it could change society and the planet.

<comment><USER16> _Imagine the difference in traffic and office space if every job that could be remote was._

I was wondering how much work cannot be remoted and it seems a lot. Remote work is a privilege.

<comment><USER15> It seems to me nearly all white collar office/desk jobs could be remote as they basically involve sitting at a desk with a computer and phone. I believe more than half of all jobs in the US are considered white collar.

Perhaps I'm overly optimistic about what could be done remote, but modern cities seem to be basically a bunch of tall buildings with offices that have a desk and computer to sit at.

<comment><USER16> _It seems to me nearly all white collar office /desk jobs could be remote as they basically involve sitting at a desk with a computer and phone. I believe more than half of all jobs in the US are considered white collar._

You are cheating! Not all white collar workers can work remotely. Everything healthcare, legal, teachers, everybody with a public-facing work, computer technicians, sales... Actually, could anybody make the reverse list? Better than dismiss the discussion with another downvote.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I've worked mostly remote for over 20 years, both as an engineer and a business owner. I wouldn't give it up for the world.

However, simple fact: not all people are cut out for it. Some perfectly fine engineers are better in an office environment with other people. Sometimes an office environment is LESS distracting for those people, not more.

It also depends on where they are in life: A person with toddlers is going to have a better work life if they can get away occasionally. I had my own struggles with this and had to work through the new environment.

So, both are good and can work depending on when and where your life is at, and neither is perfect.

<comment><USER18> I completely agree with this. Probably due to being much earlier in my career, I haven't yet learnt how to separate my personal life from my work life well. I use the office and my commute to form a boundary, which works very well so I have a good work life balance, but as soon as I work from home I either get much less done, or I get much more done and have no free time. I hope to improve at this, in 10 years time (when I hope to own a house/have a family/etc) I'd hope that I'm working from home 1-2 days a week _every week_, but I'm not there yet.

<comment><USER19> I've been working remotely for the past half year (same job and same place, I just started doing it remotely) and I was a little afraid of that: mixing my personal and professional time.

For me at least it turns out that the fear was completely unfounded, before I always got in at roughly the same time and always left at the same time, leaving the laptop and phone on the office. Now while technically the laptop and phone are always accessible I've found that I've no problem in keeping my working time within a very strict schedule, normally I start at ~8.00 and usually at 16.00 almost exactly I'm logging out, plus the phone goes automatically into do not disturb mode until the following morning, effectively recreating my office working routine. Your mileage may vary of course but I was surprised at how easy it was to completely separate my activities and preventing them blending together.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Yo, you gotta tell me when you're working. You must. You're on a team that is depending on you and somebody has to know where the fuck your are and when you're going to fix whatever is broken today.

"Where's will?" "I don't know, our manifesto says nobody gets to know when he's working." "Well he broke the site." "That's his right as a sovereign citizen." The end.

<comment><USER21> If Kevin broke the site, it's a process problem. Kevin didn't break the site, he introduced code that might have broken the site, and the lack of tests to have detected the it broke the site. Jane then peer reviewed the code that might have broken the site and approved it. Bob then failed to notice that the site was broken during QA. The QA environment was apparently configured differently enough by Taylor that the site could appear working in dev and QA, and pass unit and functional tests without exploding until it hit production.

The team broke the site.

<comment><USER22> As true as this is, unexpected problems happen. Kevin may be the only one that can fix it, or at least be able to fix it a lot more effectively than others. The issue might not be Kevin's fault (i.e it's really a process problem), but being able to talk to him immediately (or at least know his schedule) will go a long ways in getting the issue resolved in an acceptable time frame.

Nothing against remote work, but knowing everyone's typical working hours makes things run a lot more smoothly.

<comment><USER23> If your process cannot revert a breaking change with a figurative snap of fingers, the process is broken. It is like driving a car with no brakes.

About the only time where I've seen this fail is if it was a publicised feature launch that was way premature.

<comment><USER24> And when it's the build server itself that's broken? No process can account for every possible edge case, and you need to have flexibility to handle the unexpected.

<comment><USER25> At some point problems reach the "Call Kevin now, I don't care what time it is" level. Your processes should enable anyone to handle problems that are not at this level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> This "manifesto" really clarified for me something that I've often noticed about people who strongly believe in remote working but had trouble putting to words. For a lot of people remote work is less about the actual remote aspect of it and more about the kind of relationship the employee has with their employer. It is a relationship where I think the employee is more empowered and freer to find a work life balance that satisfies them.

<comment><USER27> Precisely. And I think this is why many employers are also highly hesitant about remote work (at times). They don't necessarily want to give their employees that much power, but they lack the courage to say that directly. And instead you hear the criticism that it's less productive.

<comment><USER28> An an employer who allows people to work remotely. My experience has been that some employees cannot handle the responsibility and their output drops a lot if they're not behind their desk. Others are fine / better. (Because I found it hard to tell some people they're not allowed to work remotely, while others can, I ended up replacing the ones who performed poorly when working remote.)

My point is that you cannot really argue for or against remote work without taking into account that your employees might not all be suitable for that work style. (But if you're building a new organisation then you can pick the right people from the start)

<comment><USER29> If you give people more explicit feedback about their performance and hold them accountable only for their performance regardless of where they get the work done, the problem disappears. I get the sense that you're holding yourself responsible for the performance of your employees, but for remote work to be successful, you need to hold the employees responsible. If you find that some employees aren't responsible enough to handle that, don't you want more responsible employees anyway?

<comment><USER28> Yes, I came to the same conclusion: I need employees that don't need to be micro-managed. Changing their behaviour (if that is even possible) seemed to require more effort than I was prepared to put in, so I ended up replacing them.

However, I haven't found a good way to assess whether potential hires are good at this. Everyone claims to be an independent self-starter who is great at remote work whilst in the hiring process...

<comment><USER30> This is the kind of thing you can suss out of personal references. Of course, many people will provide the best / most reliable (for them) references they possibly can, but you can still get a good signal with the right question. Ex. "Can you tell me about any times ____ pulled through without oversight", or "delivered something both useful and unexpected", etc. Anything that isn't a fast, resounding "yes" with details is probably a "no".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Honestly, I find it a bit weird so much of this blog post focus on making all information visible and documenting everything (which I agree with) and then there is:

> People don't have to say when they are working.

That just seems a bit at odds with the rest of the post and I don't really agree with it.

Sometimes there are questions that only one person (let's say Nick) can answer or situations where Nick is more valuable than other employees. Let's say I've got a moderately time sensitive issue and I'm pretty sure Kevin knows the answer as he's an expert in the subject, alternatively, I could pull aside Bob, Joe, and Linda and we could probably figure it out after a little while.

Knowing when Nick will be back online plays a big factor in what I chose to do next. If Nick is offline for lunch and will be back in an hour, I'll wait for Nick. If Nick started work early and is now offline for a long weekend, well then I need to pull Bob, Joe, and Linda away from their work to help me.

Having at least a general idea of when people will be available seems like it'd be even more important in a situation where I can't ask the people around me, "Has anyone seen Nick today?"

<comment><USER32> If all information is visible and everything is well documented, it should be rare to have the situation where one person is the only one that can answer that question. This will totally still happen for remote teams, but I think it happens more in other organizations that rely on face time and verbal information exchange.

I still generally agree that knowing when folks are online can be helpful and don't see a big issue with that as long as you don't have a culture that starts measuring people by how many hours they put in. Rather than an upfront "I will be working today from X to Y" something passive like a Slack recent activity indicator could be enough.

<comment><USER31> > If all information is visible and everything is well documented, it should > be rare to have the situation where one person is the only one that can > answer that question. This will totally still happen for remote teams, but I > think it happens more in other organizations that rely on face time and > verbal information exchange.

I worked at my last job for just over 2 1/2 years and, while we had an actual office, for the first two years I was there, we also had a true "unlimited vacation/remote work" policy. It wasn't unheard of that some people would take 4-6 week vacations and others would work remote for multiple months.

Documentation was great, but you can't document __everything __you know, so there will always be gaps. I 'm a developer, so these will be dev focused, but some scenarios I can remember where one specific person was needed are:

\- Legacy code. Bob was the only one around when this code was written and it hasn't been touched in years, now it's breaking and no one understands why. (In an ideal world, there wouldn't be knowledge silos like this, but there always are)

\- Specialties. Most developers know this tool, but Bob is an expert. We need to do something that requires an expert. We need Bob.

\- Bob left an ominous, yet vague comment on my PR. I don't want to merge until I get clarification. (something like "This looks hacky. I guess it works, but we should probably change this ASAP." or "Eww")

<comment><USER33> > \- Legacy code. Bob was the only one around when this code was written and > it hasn't been touched in years, now it's breaking and no one understands > why. (In an ideal world, there wouldn't be knowledge silos like this, but > there always are)

Not sure if valid, if some legacy code was written a few years before, probably even author will have no clue what's wrong.

<comment><USER23> The author might have a higher chance of figuring it out. This is playing the likelihood game though. In perfect world, the code would be tight and small enough that you wouldn't take long to understand it, and then the complex components (there are always a bunch of these) are well tested and documented. Especially rationale for design decisions or implementation quirks.

Old code does not necessarily mean legacy code.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> LOL Disadvantage: "The need to prepare food."

Are we talking about generally existing as a human being? Yeah, until they invent food replicators you're gonna have to prepare your own food. Get used to it.

I'd say getting to use your own kitchen to prepare your own delicious and nutritious meals is one of the prime advantages of remote work. It saves you way more money over going out to eat, and it's a much more healthy alternative to blindly trusting a restaurant or some food service company like Sysco.

Then again, I am a bit of a maverick in that I make all of my lunches at home, even when I have an office I must travel to for work. You can do your entire week in advance on a Sunday evening, spending less than $30. Not. A. Hardship.

We really should push back against the catered meals and supposed "perks." That's money the company could have spent on increasing your salary or paying a higher dividend to shareholders. Instead of doing that, they've decided they're going to spend your money on an army of chefs to keep you at the office 24/7.

I'll take the higher pay, greater freedom and autonomy, and my own home cooked meals, thank you much.

<comment><USER35> I think it's an intended joke; a dual of "home food" in the advantages.

(Unless you, or someone else contributed that after reading and before I did, of course...)

<comment><USER34> That's what I get for not reading the whole thing

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> For the love of all that is sane, please top trying to push nonstop video calls onto remote employees.

Embrace asynchronous communication.

<comment><USER37> pair programming is more effective IN PERSON

<comment><USER12> I don't think I've ever seen any objective evidence on this one way or the other.. have you?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Didn't see anyone top level mention it, but:

Disadvantages -> Timezones

Timezones make scheduling team meetings hard, and if your organization ever becomes big enough to warrant a physical office people far away will start working late hours to keep up with the main office.

YMMV, but it's 3 AM here in Berlin and until 10 minutes ago I was still actively working.

<comment><USER39> I've been full-time remote for just shy of 5 years and timezones is definitely an issue. Up to 4 hour difference is sustainable indefinitely, 8 hours can be with the right people (doing split days is great for this), but beyond 8 hours and the amount of effort required for synchronous communication (video calls) causes it to not happen and the team loses cohesion.

You need the synchronous communication to have non-work conversations, and you need those non-work conversations to develop and maintain the relationships required (trust, rapport, etc.) for remote work.

> if your organization ever becomes big enough to warrant a physical office

...then you probably don't have enough buy-in to be a fully remote company and that is far harder to work around than timezones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> > Save on compensation due to hiring in lower cost regions

Pay people what they're worth regardless of where they live. If you have a developer in Nigeria or Ukraine or Vietnam that is as equally capable as a developer in the Bay Area, they should be paid the same.

Doing otherwise, at best, perpetuates Western hegemony, and at worst is simply racism.

<comment><USER41> This is a bit ridiculous. It's not hegemony or racism. It's how markets work. People in those markets have fewer opportunities for highly paid employment. As a result, employers have more leverage in negotiations. It's as simple as that.

<comment><USER42> _It 's how markets work._

Markets work by paying for value created. I've tested extensively, and found that I'm equally capable of writing code on a beach in Thailand as in a felt cube in California.

I'll grant that there is a Cost of Living difference between those places, but I would prefer that difference to be captured by _me_ rather than somebody else's company. It's me doing the work and creating the value, so that seems reasonable. If you want to purchase my services, you get to pay my market rate. End of story.

Never drop your rate when working remote. That should probably be written in the article we're discussing.

<comment><USER23> Unfortunately, you will get outpriced by people doing "the same" work for less. Since you cannot know the global prices, you cannot even meet them, much less compete. Lowest bidder often wins.

<comment><USER42> I know, right? I've lost track of all the money I've lost from clients going with the lowest bidder over the years. I must be literally _hundreds of dollars_ by now.

A bit of advice: Those cheap guys are not your competition, and those bargain hunter clients are not the ones you're trying to land. Let them all race to the bottom all they want. Maybe one of them will find a dev who doesn't know his value yet, but the rest will get their money's worth. It doesn't concern you.

There is only one of you, and your rate is the same whether you're onsite in the Bay Area or working remote from anywhere else you choose to be.

That mindset has served me well over the years. I'd recommend taking it on board.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> My biggest problem is this: While there is a surplus of remote only positions, this surplus always wants the same thing: very senior developers with tons of wide experience sets.

Seems like there's a lot of talent being left on the floor by only looking for senior developers. There's a lot of goodwill that can be earned by trusting in potential and helping candidates grow into a position. Even an experienced developer in one set of languages and frameworks is junior to others -- and they can't get the foot in the door anywhere remotely.

The "years of experience" drought is real, but I feel like it's an eternal desert for remote work.

<comment><USER44> That is something bad at our industry. Managers or whoever do that decision believes that being senior automagically makes you a genious, when it can be the other way around, the more senior you are, the more averse to change you are. I doubt that senior could easily change to remote lifestyle after years of onsite.

People must learn that anyone can be remote, the thing is that everyone must agree to communicate better instead of more.

<comment><USER45> > _the more senior you are, the more averse to change you are. I doubt that > senior could easily change to remote lifestyle after years of onsite._

Why not? Going from on-site to remote is _strictly easier_ , as the only thing it needs is to stop leaving home every morning.

I don't get this "the more senior you are, the more averse to change you are" \- the only thing I've seen is older people having higher expectations and less tolerance for abuse and working for pie-in-the-sky promises of future wealth. But maybe my bias is showing, I'm nearing 30, so pretty old by software industry standards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> > Fast internet everywhere - 100Mb/s+ cable, 5GHz Wifi, 4G cellular

I used to say that. Now I live in a rural area, and the fastest speed that's even _available_ is 5Mbps (and the uptime isn't great). My house also has zero cell service from any provider.

It's also a bit presumptive that everyone can afford a 100Mbps connection. The last place I lived, it was like $120/month for 100Mbps. Not everybody can afford that.

That being said, has anyone out there come up with creative solutions for working remotely on a crappy connection?

<comment><USER47> 1\. A lot of places that are remote will cover or subsidize internet costs for employees 2\. I think the the poor access to Internet in rural areas is more of a US thing. In LDCs we have often wider availability for low cost 4g and/or more equal distribution of telecom infrastructure in general.

<comment><USER42> You have misunderstood. The grandparent is not saying that fast internet is expensive. He's saying that there is simply no way of attaining it at his house for any price.

That describes a lot of places in the developed world. My little farming town in rural France, as well as the medium sized City in England where I lived previously.

<comment><USER48> >no way of attaining it at his house for any price

I bet Amazon jungle doesn't have gbit internet either. The question is whether OP chose a location without internet knowingly or he was cut off and left stranded.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> _Selects for self starting people_

The article has the arrow causality backwards on this one, and it describes the biggest pitfall with remote work: you absolutely need to seek out and only hire people who will find things to do and work around problems on their own, rather than waiting for instruction from above.

That describes a surprisingly small subset of employees. School trains you for the age of four to take instructions from the person in charge, act, then wait for more instructions. You can make it all the way to retirement on many career tracks without ever deviating from that pattern.

It does not work at all in a remote organisation.

</comment><comment><USER49> > People don't have to say when they are working.

This is a bad idea.

People should not have to work all on the same schedule, but having some shared understanding of when people work or take time off is certainly a good thing.

<comment><USER50> I read this as "You don't constantly have to announce that you are working", maybe some copy editing would make the intent clearer.

<comment><USER49> If you mean announcing every time you walk the dog, or run a quick errand, then sure, of course.

I work remotely and keep regular hours. I communicate any major deviation from those hours.

I've worked with people that keep super random hours. That is fine too, but they have to communicate some kind of expectations to the team. It's super frustrating when they don't. It becomes hard to manage if you're directly depending on them for any reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> I'd be interested to know some long term remote workers experiences with regards to interruptions. It's one of the things that I believe would be better. In many places I've worked I tend to become a "go to" person which results in many many interruptions, it doesn't make too much difference how much you write down, it's usually always quicker to just ask someone who you know knows the answer to whatever question you have. Remote working seems like it would put up just enough of a barrier that written information / async communication would be an easier go to?

<comment><USER52> Ping! That's me.

I've long been that "go-to" guy. I'm friendly, I like to help, and I'm a bit of a jack-of-all-trades. That's fine, it's my natural fit and I enjoy it.

I've been working remotely (from home) for about 2 months now and my productivity is through the roof. It's astonishing. When I work 8 hours, I get ~6.5 hours productive work done. That feels like a theoretical maximum. In the office, 8 hours "at work" – read "in the building" – often felt like 2 or 3 hours of actual work, on a good day.

You spend _so much time_ in the office chatting to people, getting coffee, overhearing interesting conversations, waiting in a meeting room for people to turn up, waiting at the door for people to come to lunch, getting there in the first place, setting up, packing up. It's madness, really. (I'm in Melbourne, Australia. I think our work ethic is different to you Americans.)

I'm lucky, my partner is also a freelancer. We wake up – often at 5am – and make a cup of tea and a slice of toast. "First breakfast." Half an hour later we're awake and we wander upstairs to the office. We put some ambient music on, or not. We knuckle down and work. Two hours later, sun's up, we make a coffee and have "second breakfast". :-)

It's transformed how I live and work. I'm lucky in that my boss is an old friend and he trusts me absolutely. The work I'm doing is exclusively for him, so it's not a problem that I'm not around colleagues. We just use the phone or iMessage to communicate.

We set a weekly rhythm so I don't have to tell him when I'm working; but, because he's a friend, if he calls and I'm not at my desk that's cool.

I am in love with this situation. I can never go back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> I think the key (and very appealing thing to me and a lot of people) is:

The _results of work_ over the _hours put in_.

It also relates to the the idea of saying whether you're working or not. If you're producing great results, it shouldn't matter when/how/how much time it takes you to do it (provided maybe people can get ahold of you in an emergency). But I also seems like the key to this working is being willing to get rid of people that aren't meeting that high bar (whether weren't up to snuff or weren't because they weren't putting in enough time).

I think most organizations are unwilling/uncomfortable holding people to this high of standard on outputs, and so measure inputs (40 hours, at least not looking like you're slacking off) instead.

Charlie Munger tells a story about Fedex and how they needed to move all their packages around different planes every night in one central location. They had a team of workers to do it, but they were having trouble getting the work finished on time and keeping people motivated.

Eventually they decided -- instead of paying people by the hour -- to just pay them the same thing no matter how long it took (per shift), and let everyone go home when they were done. Lo and behold the night teams got their packages moved around much faster and and made just as much money and Fedex was able to deliver better and quicker everyone was happy.

<comment><USER54> "Eventually they decided -- instead of paying people by the hour -- to just pay them per shift, and let everyone go home when they were done. Lo and behold that worked and the night teams got their packages moved around much faster and made just as much money and everyone was happy."

The problem is that such a situation is often not stable. The next boss will come in and think "these guys work only 5 hours so I either hire less people or give them more work".

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> The usual skepticism from HN comes up whenever telecommuting is brought up. However, it _was_ tech's promise. I think people should be asking how to fix its problems rather than nagging that it "doesn't work for me". But maybe i'm biased as an indie dev.

<comment><USER56> What do you work on as an indie dev?

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Nitpicking, but it's something I've seen in many other places: Why is the emphasis on the word "over" instead of the alternatives, which seem to be the focus here?

Example:

Flexible working hours _over_ set working hours.

Why not:

 _Flexible_ working hours over _set_ working hours.

</comment><comment><USER58> I prefer [http://asyncmanifesto.org/](http://asyncmanifesto.org/) which is subtler and more concise. Also doesn't feel like just some individual's POV.

I don't see myself sharing [https://www.remoteonly.org/](https://www.remoteonly.org/) as it can easily look scary to employers.

</comment><comment><USER59> The details notwithstanding; I work for a F50 and my wife works for Gitlab. I was a tad bit skeptical at first (and I'm the one that encouraged her to apply). But watching her go through it, remote only is quickly becoming much more appealing - at least the way Gitlab does it.

</comment><comment><USER60> The "remote only" movement would do itself a huge favor if:

1) Advocates didn't dismiss the real disadvantages as merely things other people are "scared of"

2) A recognition that optimizing personal productivity doesn't always mean success for a team, product or business

<comment><USER61> 1) Is entirely the introvert/extrovert divide, that extrovert management and busybodies decry

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> "Save on compensation due to hiring in lower cost regions" \- just NO! Sink it, please!

</comment><comment><USER63> "People don't have to say when they are working"

We are a remote only company and don't agree with this at all. People should have flexible working hours but others must know when they are working. It removes confusion and sets clear expectations.

</comment><comment><USER64> > Fast internet everywhere - 100Mb/s+ cable

Now that made me laugh out loud. This author must live in a nice bubble to think that.

<comment><USER65> I was in Seoul last week. I had 400Mb/s on my phone... It's devastating how far behind some first-world countries are in data infrastructure.

<comment><USER64> Seoul is not everywhere. South Korea is quite technologically advanced.

Try doing more traveling in SE Asia, you'll see how bad it can be.

<comment><USER65> We actually spent three months in Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines and also had a fabulous experience with cell data.

<comment><USER64> You will typically find cell data to be better than cable or land connections in nearly all the countries you mentioned.

But remote developers don't typically work off cell data; your data limit will get hit very quickly.

Philippines in particular has terrible internet connections for homes, in general.

In fact in many places, cell data is the _only_ data available, there are no land connections.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Most of the comments on here relate to aspects of remote work and its limitations, but I haven't seen anyone say what seems obvious to me - <USER2> an office is nice! It's good for me to have a place that my brain associates exclusively with work. It's nice to interact with teammates in person. If I need quiet time or even if the weather is nice and I don't feel like going into the office, I can go work from a cafe somewhere. I certainly see the appeal of remote work, but to me, having an office with the option of working from home is preferable.

</comment><comment><USER67> This is good but impractical. Many workplaces are full of jackasses who don't care about the rules, and are not going to take the extra effort of saving a screenshot to meeting notes to help out the remote guy/people. Instead this person will happily subtly disadvantage the remote people just because it makes him/her look one shade better. There are lots of these types out there, i.e. those that think middle school politics is the name of the game. So manifestos like this are of little practical value.

<comment><USER68> I think this site is aimed at remote only / remote first companies where this particular problem should be less of an issue.

</comment></comment><comment><USER69> Observation: This almost completely conflicts with the agile manifesto.

Opinion: As an architect I feel that f2f whiteboard and brainstorming sessions are invaluable. But for a dev working on a feature, it might be better to seclude. This is just an example to say that we will never find a policy that works for everyone company-wide and world-wide. The company should do it's best to accommodate it's employees' work style, for them to be productive and happy. As for remote, I think it should be embraced, not enforced.

<comment><USER61> The best thing is a mix.

When you're figuring out if an idea will even work, you need time to dick around with it and try things to see if it is even possible.

Once you know the possibilities, talking it over in person and drawing pictures helps disseminate knowledge and iron out rough spots.

Then you go finish the work.

One of those needs and benefits from collaboration, the others, it actively hinders

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> I like this kind of manifesto much more than the ones we've seen before in this industry. This one feels much much more honest.

</comment><comment><USER65> > Working long hours or weekends is not encouraged nor celebrated.

What does this have to do with building a remote-only company?

Different companies have different cultures, and that's okay. Would Uber be nearly as successful if they were fully remote? Maybe. Would Uber be nearly as successful without a long hours culture? I'm highly skeptical.

</comment><comment><USER71> The list of disadvantages is missing perhaps the biggest one from a founder's perspective: The conventional wisdom is that remote companies don't get acquired.

If a founder is even considering a big exit due to acquisition then a remote- only workforce is a non-starter. Same goes for investors with the same ambitions.

</comment><comment><USER72> This is not just 'remote only' but has other good practices as writing down requirements and processes. This is exceptionally healthy approach, even if you have local employees. It prevents silos and people undermining other people's work.

Great manifesto.

</comment><comment><USER73> IMO first and foremost remote teams require good management (it helps all teams, but in remote teams it is critical): someone who will enable remote work, weed out people who spend most of their time non-productively and translate his management demands into requests that fit the workflow and schedule of his remote team.

This is a rare (and often underappreciated) skill. But until more people have it, remote work will be limited (statistically) to non-critical components and small parts of teams. My 2c.

</comment><comment><USER74> I work for a remote team and we have a huge advantage in that what we build is a video communication app, much like video texting. So while we do spend some time in Slack, we also can easily communicate with video, which conveys nuance and allows us to feel more connected, plus see things like bugs very easily. It's not really designed for business use, but it's definitely handy for any remote team.

</comment><comment><USER75> Not sure if it's just my perception, but it seems the pendulum has swung back around and remote work is looked at unfavorably.

I've worked remotely the last 3+ years and I'm currently looking for a new gig. Seems like there aren't a lot of companies who are ok with full-time remote.

For the few that are, there is really stiff competition for those few jobs.

<comment><USER76> Check out German software-related companies. Small ones are usually flexible to be persuaded to hire you, if you can get through to them, that is. A good application should work, and as usual, don't give up too soon. They don't even know they can handle it. Maybe do some research as to how they'd have to do payroll, to reduce the scariness of someone overseas.

<comment><USER77> Where can I specifically find German tech companies?

<comment><USER76> Look at the HRB and GnR "Type of Register" on the advanced search of [0], and add keywords such as "IT", "net _" , "_net" and similar. I'm not that well- versed in these matters, so while I think there is some source you could find a list of these names and just run a regex on, I don't know where to get that list. Also consider mining the CN fields of server certificates on German IP ranges/all IPv4 addresses (it's just 2^32), and check their Impressum. There you can look for a string ending in " GmbH" and " AG" in a footer, to get the company name to use your regex on. The benefit there is that it should yield all companies that have a German website with HTTPS, and I'd take a lack of HTTPS for the company website or a website not reachable via a second level domain under the .de TLD as a red flag. Assume to require a small German introduction telling the recipient to forward the English part to an English speaking colleague, preferably in the IT department, because the risk of hitting someone who can't understand your English application is quite large.

[0]: [https://www.handelsregister.de/](https://www.handelsregister.de/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> what do you look for in a candidate when hiring for a remote position ? I am 3 years experienced dev and cant even get my resume filtered for first round. I do have 3 months of remote Gsoc experience if that counts. But i am curious, is there some particular factor that gives an edge over other candidates ?

<comment><USER39> One of the benefits listed in the manifesto (and often touted elsewhere) is that you are not limited to a specific region when hiring.

Unfortunately, what this means for candidates is they may have to compete with a LOT more people.

Another challenge you're likely facing is that a lot of companies are only willing to hire senior developers to work remotely because hesitant upper management thinks they will be more trustworthy (completely ignoring the level of trust inherent in having someone write code for them when they themselves can't even verify it).

That negativity aside, here's some advice: As much as there is some backlash around the idea of a GitHub profile being mandatory, one VERY practical use of an open source portfolio of some kind is that almost all open source project work is done remotely using the very same skills required for successful remote employment. This applies even more so to non-programming contributions, in my opinion, which means you don't even need to contribute code to demonstrate these skills.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> some thoughts about remote work at Stack Overflow [0]

[0]: [https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/09/29/making-remote-work- beh...](https://stackoverflow.blog/2017/09/29/making-remote-work-behind- scenes/)

</comment><comment><USER80> From a legal/hr/pay role perspective, how do you hire full time around the world?

<comment><USER81> It is pretty complex, but we have some information in our handbook. [https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/)

<comment><USER82> Gitlab, thank you for posting your handbook that can be reviewed transparently ahead of time by prospective hires.

The complexity of hiring in various countries and jurisdictions is often completely under appreciated by anybody who hasn't had to set up or wind down an entity. GitLab's page[1] gives a flavour of the machinations required to for a legal entity that represents your company to process payroll and adhere to local and regional labour, tax and medical insurance regulations and practices.

I'm very appreciate of companies committed to remote work, especially more so when they are receptive to hiring international staff due to the extra non- trivial administrative overhead required.

[1] [https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people- operations/global-c...](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people- operations/global-compensation/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER83> Question for remote workers: how do you deal with the innate need for managers to know that you are busy?: i.e. that you're not just more or less slacking off for a salary.

<comment><USER84> Managers should just be concerned that the tasks and goals assigned to their staff are being worked on, that they will be delivered on time based on a mutually agreed upon schedule. Communication (verbal, written, predictive based on data analysis) is key. Being "busy" should never be the point, getting things done should be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> > Asynchronous communication over synchronous communication.

I think it is a mistake to try to bundle "remote" work with "asynchronous" work.

These are orthogonal things.

</comment><comment><USER86> As far as I understand it, Lightbend (the maintainers of Scala and Akka) is also a remote only workplace with developers working around the world.

</comment><comment><USER87> Anorher fantastic remote only company is Moon Studios, the creators of Ori And The Blind Forest.

</comment><comment><USER88> you need to be in physical proximity to your co-worker only if you need to smell them.

</comment><comment><USER89> Just curious. Why does the site's title have HTML in it? Bug or feature? :)

</comment><comment><USER90> The title of this html page is it's own html source. Is that intentional?

</comment><comment><USER81> When joining any company, I recommend understanding the values, culture, and work environment. It is not one size fits all. You should ensure that you would enjoy working with the people, values, and environment you are joining. Remote work may not be for everyone, and doesn't need to be, however it can be wonderful! It has been life-changing for me and my family. My son's math scores have gone up 30% since joining GitLab, because I now have time in the afternoon to dedicate to helping with his homework, before he's exhausted after his latest sports game/practice. That is just one example of how it has impacted my life, but there are many more. I'm home for dinner. I have more time for my friends, but I also have more time for work (I had a 3 hour commute before GitLab). My health has improved. I am happier. At GitLab, we take steps to make remote work successful. In addition to our daily "social" call together, we also enable our team members to rent space at a co-working facility (we work, for example), or work from anywhere with an internet connection if that is preferable for them. It is not unusual for my teammates to see me taking Video conferencing calls from the beach. It has been proven that humans do their best thinking surrounded by nature, and I try to take advantage of that. I love the freedom that remote work gives me and my fellow team members. But I agree that we must always be thinking about how to maximize the benefits of this arrangement and decrease the downsides. If you are willing to put in the effort, which includes changing the way you work and communicate, as asynchronous communication is required to make remote work successful, it can be very rewarding. I don't feel that I have less human contact, I feel that I have more but different contact. I definitely get more direct time with my friends and family, but I also get to know more people at work. In an office building, I tended to only spend time with those who sat near me or interacted regularly with me. Occasionally it ventured out passed that if I joined the SCUBA group, or something similar. At GitLab, our team calls, our meetings, and our summits allow me to get to know people from around the world that I would have never had the opportunity to learn from before. We have different experiences and perspectives and it is fascinating! If you know that remote work isn't for you, that you love decisions being made in hallways vs. organized communication, for example, then it is great that you know that. The wonderful thing is that there are many companies conducting their business in different ways, that we should all be able to find the one that matches our needs and values. I'm thrilled to have found a company that matches my needs, to balance wellness, work, family, and friends, while making an impact in our industry. If you are at a remote company and feel that things could be done better, I hope that they are willing to hear your recommendations. I wouldn't give up on the model without trying to make it work. If you work at GitLab and have recommendations, I'm happy to hear them!

<comment><USER91> I just started working remotely, after a year plus of a three-hour commute.

My quality-of-life improvements have been very similar to yours. I cannot believe how much happier I am now, on a daily basis.

I have written some of the best code of my life while sitting on a picnic table in a park. I see my friends more. I see my family more. I have more energy to put into my work, which results in better work satisfaction.

I pinch myself every day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER92> The page you're looking for could not be found.

</comment><comment><USER93> Does anyone know of any open source/free + preferably self-hosted applications for remote technical support on residential networks. (Users not on LAN)

Thanks in advance!

</comment><comment><USER94> anyone every try to juggle more than one remote job simultaneously? seems feasible...

</comment><comment><USER87> Another fantastic remote only company is Moon Studios, the creators of Ori And The Blind Forest.

</comment><comment><USER11> Its hard to have remote junior developers in my experience. Certain things are much easier explained in person than over conferencing software.

<comment><USER95> I work with junior developers that are fully remote without any issues. We communicate via IM, Slack, email, and Skype as needed. Not sure how to do something, let's have a quick screen share and we'll work through it. Finished with your assigned feature, submit a pull request and I'll leave comments accordingly or we'll review it via a screen share. It's not impossible to do but may require some to change their collaboration approach.

<comment><USER44> Exactly, remote working is not about tech expertise but more about effective communication.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> I've loved it, in the past when circumstances dictated it; I would love to make it the normal mode. I get so much more done.

I think the optimal distribution in one day in office, allocated to organizational work and planning and meetings, and four off-site to actually do the work.

Being "in the office" is mostly a waste of time for deep work that actually produces results.

The only thing being in the office I've found is better is feather-smoothing, and honestly, that actually works better async, if you have people that can work async.

</comment><comment> cup-of-tea Wow it really seems like I should be doing remote work. This is the exactly how I'd like work to be, in particular the emphasis on written communication. I've been trying to make the company I work at more like this but it's proving a losing battle. It turns out that what I really want is simply a remote job.

</comment><comment><USER96> Sounds very naive to be really honest.. working random hours without any info for your peers when you are avilable to consult is counter productive, I've witnessed project holdups too many times because someone decided to come late or really early. I also see no real way for manager/sup to know when someone is slacking off and maintain discipline. Cant really see any compamy thriving on such model.</comment>


I Just Drove Eight Hours on Tesla Autopilot - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-10/i-just-drove-8-hours-on-tesla-autopilot-and-lived-to-tell-the-tale <comment><USER2> Put aside the silly title and the inconsistency between the subtitle and content ("the only real problem was the driver behind the wheel" vs "The sensors failed to register a rapidly accelerating gold-colored SUV beside me and would have driven directly into its path had I not quickly taken over") and this article has a really good point to make:

As we get closer but not entirely to autonomous vehicles, figuring out how to communicate to users (at what point do we stop calling them drivers?) the necessary level of engagement (and notifying them when that level changes) is going to be increasingly critical.

<comment><USER3> > the necessary level of engagement (and notifying them when that level > changes) is going to be increasingly critical.

Is there an "uncanny valley" style term for this?

<comment><USER4> There should be, and the best candidate term is "Children of the Magenta", a term describing pilots who are too dependent on the Magenta lines on their instrumentation.

99% Invisible did a good podcast episode on this a year ago: [http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the- magent...](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/children-of-the-magenta- automation-paradox-pt-1/)

Their follow-up podcast episode talks explicitly about this problem (first seriously discussed in the context of airplane automation) becoming important in the context of self-driving cars, and how Google is very aware of this (hence Google's push for 100% automated cars, since the middle valley is so dangerous).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _" Consider this: If a Toyota driver had standard cruise control set for 70 miles per hour on the highway and failed to take over and reduce speed for a 25 mph turn, would we blame the cruise control for the resulting crash? Relinquishing full control to Autopilot is no different."_

That's why Toyota calls is _cruise control_ and not _autopilot_

<comment><USER6> >An autopilot is a system used to control the trajectory of a vehicle without constant 'hands-on' control by a human operator being required. Autopilots do not replace a human operator, but assist them in controlling the vehicle, allowing them to focus on broader aspects of operation, such as monitoring the trajectory, weather and systems

Autopilot doesn't mean fully autonomous. It was never that originally in aviation either, basicLly just controlling altitude and speed. I'd say Tesla's use of "autopilot" is pretty spot on.

<comment><USER7> The difference is that "keep height, speed and direction" is a pretty safe way to operate an airplane at altitude: there are no sudden obstacles, and there is a lot of infrastructure to make sure traffic stays nicely separated. A human reaction time of a few seconds is fine.

It's not for a ground vehicle in normal environments.

<comment><USER8> If I'm not wrong, autopilot can follow set route also and if the airport supports it, it can land autonomously too. Tesla's use of the term is highly misleading.

<comment><USER9> No, but granted we're getting into semantics. Feature 1 you describe is provided by the Flight Management System[0], and feature 2 is provided through Autoland[1]. [0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_management_system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_management_system) [1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoland)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> when you call it Autopilot and not SuperiorCruiseControl you've set expectations. It's no use trying to re-define the term more accurately after the fact. They'll survive but the halo got dented.

<comment><USER11> The Professionals® that actually use a real autopilot tell us that Tesla's is aptly named-- it's limited in its functionality and is designed to _assist_ the operator of the machinery and to reduce fatigue.

The Problem® is one of public perception/branding. Hollywood has convinced the overwhelming preponderance of the population that airplanes on autopilot can taxi away from the terminal, navigate to the runway, avoid collisions with buildings, vehicles and other planes, line up on the runway, take off, navigate to the destination, line up with the correct runway from the correct direction, land the plane, and taxi to the final terminal.

Naming your not-fully-autonomous car driving software "autopilot" is going to have a perception problem. Educating the public after the fact is a hard battle.

<comment><USER12> Read the post-mortem of the Air France flight from Brazil to Paris. The pilots did not even know the basic error recovery conditions of flying the plane they were in (recognizing dual input, recognizing a stall) because they so rarely flew the plane. Auto pilot can handle navigation to destination, lining up with the runway after being given the approach vectors by the pilot that he/she received from ATC.

If auto pilot in Tesla were used like auto pilots in modern commercial air travel, it would cover 95% of the operation time of the cars.

<comment><USER13> One pilot, singular, did not know how to recover. The other two did. The one who was at the controls attempted to perform a correct recovery. He was thwarted by the unbelievably idiotic design of the Airbus control system, in which conflicting inputs are simply averaged, and the only indication that something strange is happening is a warning light.

Edit: regarding the pilot who did the wrong thing, I don't think it's fair to say that he didn't know how to recover, either. He almost certainly knew how to recognize and recover from a stall. He was a glider pilot, where stalls are a matter of course. It seems that he panicked, which prevented him from thinking clearly and taking the proper actions. People do that sometimes, and a big reason you have two pilots is so the other one can step in when one of them gets stupid. The fatal flaw with the Airbus was the system which failed to adequately inform the other pilot of the first pilot's stupid actions. (In any sensibly designed aircraft, the two sets of controls will move together, providing physical feedback of each pilot's inputs to the other pilot.)

<comment><USER12> >and the only indication that something strange is happening is a warning light.

In addition to the warning light there is an audio warning "DUAL INPUT" and tactile feedback (stick vibration). The fact that the pilots did not recognize this condition feeds into my point about them not flying the plane nearly often enough to actually understand how it behaves in anything other than an ideal condition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> It looks bad that the Tesla didn't detect the SUV. But on the flip side, if the SUV had also had Autopilot, maybe it would have been a less dangerous situation. And when more cars have autopilot systems, maybe they'll be better able to communicate their proximity to one another.

</comment><comment><USER15> The problem isn't autopilot, it's overconfidence in autopilot. The driver who was killed was allegedly watching a movie and speeding when he crashed. Tesla's response is that autopilot is still in beta and people shouldn't rely on it too heavily, oh and by the way here's a story of a man who's Tesla drove him to the hospital after he had abdominal pain. There are plenty of Youtube videos of people screwing around while using autopilot, with a few near misses when autopilot screwed up.

When building a several ton vehicle you need to design for human flaws, and Tesla hasn't. Every other manufacturer with adaptive steering and autopilot- esque features has created attention checkers to ensure the driver doesn't rely too heavily on autopilot. If one of them released a beta autopilot the NHTSA would be on the phone in record time telling them to knock off the foolishness.

Tesla makes very cool cars, and the technologies they and other autonomous car companies are developing will absolutely save lives, but it's stupid to ignore the human factor until you've developed a car that 100% doesn't need a human driver.

</comment><comment><USER16> The author states that autopilot made him a better driver but I can't see how.

If the car is doing most of the work that requires a person's attention then they will pay attention to something else.

This will prove fatal when the sensors fail or there is some unforeseen condition.

Hunans are, at this point, able to detect and possibly correct for for more errors. Sure the car would be able to react more quickly but maybe it won't react at all.

</comment><comment><USER17> Am I wrong in thinking that the problems complained about here are precisely because it uses sensors and a camera and not lidar?

(I did a bit of research, and reading around says "probably", but i trust HN's opinion a bit more :P)

<comment><USER18> The situational awareness of this thing is not good. The author points out that it didn't notice a rapidly approaching car prior to a lane change. The only side-looking sensors Tesla has are ultrasonics, which are too short range.

The Tesla sensor suite is:

\- a bumper-level 2D radar, good for not rear-ending cars in front. Not good for obstacles at windshield height. Will detect a car. Might detect a bicycle. Won't detect most pedestrians.

\- a forward facing camera using MobileEye software. This 1) recognizes lane lines, 2) tries to range the car ahead by putting a rectangle around the recognized rear end, and 3) reads speed limit signs. It may be able to recognize pedestrians. (Unclear. See [1])

\- some ultrasonic sensors which detect obstacles to the side and rear at short range. Mostly useful for parking.

This just isn't enough. Tesla isn't profiling the road, and will drive off a cliff if the lines lead there, as the parent article points out. We had that figured out in the DARPA Grand Challenge a decade ago, where the vehicles didn't need road lines.

Compare Google's system.

[1] [https://electrek.co/2016/06/26/tesla-autopilot-tests- pedestr...](https://electrek.co/2016/06/26/tesla-autopilot-tests-pedestrians- auto-emergency-braking-video/)

<comment><USER19> Could a human have detected the vehicle? Our only sensor is line of sight optical (with a few mirrors) and near misses when merging are very common.

<comment><USER20> From reading the article, it sounds like the human _did_ detect the vehicle, and that's what prevented a collision.

<comment><USER19> Yeah but it wasn't clear on the exact circumstances. If it was accelerating from behind then it could have been occluded by another car. The human may have only seen it because they were free from concentrating on other things, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I like this video, which shows the Tesla autopilot in action with the driver- side display (which is usually hidden by the wheel) visible: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZetTg73Ebyo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZetTg73Ebyo)

Looking at it, it seems that the autopilot mostly adds another layer of indirection. Instead of driving directly, the driver gives the autopilot orders like "maximum speed 60" or "move one lane left/right". The driver still has to pay attention to what's happening around to give it the correct orders. In the example given in the article, the driver still has to check whether the lane is free before giving the car an order to move into that lane.

</comment><comment><USER22> To me this is analogous to streets that are dangerous because pedestrians and cyclists are seldom seen. Drivers come to expect very simple patterns, and roads are engineered with forgiving design, and so drivers know they can be distracted with no issues.

Then something changes.

</comment><comment><USER23> I believe there will be another death in a Tesla vehicle with Autopilot enabled within a year. As drivers get more used to using it they will get more complacent. More features and improvements will roll out, requiring almost- but-not-quite complete inattention, which will increase driver's trust in the Autopilot, ironically putting them in more danger from the 1-in-100000 situations that humans handle easily.

Full autonomy is the only safe mode long term.

<comment> ux-app i agree. it's a dangerous game Tesla is playing at

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Interesting that this story made the front page and the story today of the Tesla autopilot crash in China that was posted several times did not.

</comment><comment><USER25> The scariest bit from the article: the driver who died was very familiar with the autopilot limitations.

<comment><USER26> Most people who die due to inattentive driving are aware of their car's limitations.

<comment><USER25> Now imagine a whole bunch of drivers who are not very familiar with autopilot limitations, especially if the autopilot works great 99.99% of the time.

<comment><USER27> if it works 99.99% of the time that will likely be higher than the average human driver

<comment><USER25> You're missing the point. The current Tesla "autopilot" is not ready, and is not intended, for full time driving. Not yet. However, it might appear to work well, and some Tesla drivers will forget that it's not ready. That's the problem with half-finished "autopilots".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I wonder to what extent the Tesla not seeing the SUV was due to it being gold colored. There must also be colors of cars that humans are less likely to see, too. I wonder if certain vehicle colors might be phased out to aid road safety in the near future.

</comment><comment><USER29> I wrote the following a little while ago just after the auto pilot crash was reported. Since then my feelings on auto pilot haven't' changed. it's the future but right now it actually makes things harder due to the uncanny valley situation its currently in.....

If you've never used the Tesla autopilot its a weird feeling.

It's not a fully self driving car and its obviously not strictly human controlled. Unfortunately it ends up being more mentally taxing to use this hybrid approach than to just drive yourself.

Consider highway driving, with normal human powered mode you are in full control so if you see brake lights a half kilometer up ahead you can disengage the cruise control and react on your own, everyone who has driven is comfortable with this.

With this assisted driving the car doesn't slow down right away, and its not clear if the car just can't see the tail lights lighting up yet or if its decided it doesn't need to react yet and as such you start to second guess the car,

\- should I drive or should I leave it to the car?

\- what if it turns when I grab the wheel? Will I make things worse by driving?

\- does the car even see the object up ahead? How can I tell, its impossible to expect the car to tell you of an object that it cant' even see.

It becomes just more taxing to use the hybrid approach to driving and as such I don't use it at all. I have no doubt that the Tesla auto pilot is safer than driving, but I also have no doubt that it can royally screw up.

I've come to the conclusion that some assisted driving, like auto braking for obstacles that you will imminently hit is good but the kind of assisted driving where it can almost automatically drive for you is not really anywhere near ready, if you follow Tesla's rules on how to use it, it actually makes driving harder:(

<comment><USER13> I just did about 400 miles on autopilot today (and thousands previously) and I find it to be the total opposite. It's infinitely more relaxing than fully manual driving.

You still have to pay attention and decide, but the minutiae of making tiny steering movements is gone, leaving more capacity for higher level observation and planning.

The second guessing you describe simply doesn't happen for me. I'm capable of taking over and driving competently in any situation autopilot can handle. I never try to guess whether the car can see something; if it fails to respond in a way I like, I just take over. If I want to brake for a car and autopilot isn't braking, I brake. There's no need and no reason to wait for the car to maybe do it on its own or maybe not.

Disengaging autopilot, performing some maneuver, and reengaging it takes no significant time or effort beyond the maneuver itself. If you're sitting there wanting the car to react to something and it hasn't yet and you're waiting to see if it will, you're doing it all wrong.

<comment><USER30> > If you're sitting there wanting the car to react to something and it hasn't > yet and you're waiting to see if it will, you're doing it all wrong.

Okay, but what if you're the sort of prematurely-conscientious person who holds a door for someone who's still 30 seconds away from the door? You'll _always_ be doing things before the autopilot gets to them, because you're doing them before you're "supposed" to do them (which in normal human driving is almost never a problem, so there's nothing discouraging people from this.) Thus, the autopilot will never get to do anything, so there's no point to turning it on.

<comment><USER28> Suppose you're right about that type of person and autopilot never getting to do anything. I think it's still worth having it on. People make errors. The one time that person misjudges something and is about to hit something on the road, there's a good chance autopilot will see it and brake. It only needs to happen once to be worth it.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Higher Education - Dangerously Close to Becoming Irrelevant - <AUTHOR> http://www.openeducation.net/2008/08/12/higher-education-dangerously-close-to-becoming-irrelevant/ <comment><USER2> "Today, certifications like the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert, and the Red Hat Certified Architect certificates are sometimes worth more to an employer than a four-year degree in computer science." Um, no.

Or at least, I think that in fact higher education is completely in step with business practices, it's just that those business practices are also outmoded. Especially the insistence that everyone work in a office ("tethered to a place"), fit into rigid hierarchies, job descriptions and roles ("the experience is closed"), sign NDAs, non-competes and closely guard intellectual property ("each student/employee is isolated though surrounded by peers").

It's ironic that Deming is referenced at the end, because he was all about building quality, no matter how hard, long and laborious that is, and I think this article is all about scare tactics driving quick fixes while protecting the people in positions of power and the hierarchy they've built. The goal is obviously to make higher education more like job training, which is going to make it easier to fit people into cookie cutter roles that are even easier to ship overseas. "The World is Flat?" Please.

</comment><comment><USER3> Another article missing the basic point that university is not supposed to be a preparation for the workplace (as much as employers might wish it to be), it's a preparation for life.

If you train for a job, you're not doing a degree, you're doing an apprenticeship.

An MCSE is useful for a couple of years. A degree is useful for your whole life.

</comment><comment><USER4> An employer who values an MCSE more than a university degree in computer science is most certainly one that I don't work for.

<comment><USER5> If their customers pay well, please name those employers so I can go into business and compete against them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I may not totally agree with Certifications replacing Higher education but education is changing for sure, people who are not seeing it are either closing their eyes or are refusing to accept reality(Colleges i am talking to you).

Today's generation is certainly more rebellious than previous generation, they are questioning everything that is not right and ready to change it. Colleges are suddenly becoming obstructions( I am not talking about all the colleges here but most of them). This generations wants everything on-demand be it entertainment or education. Now if you are telling them, Rebel against RIAA but not against colleges(apples and oranges). To them, both are obstructions in the path of what they want. They want knowledge which can give them practical results and they have just found a medium(internet) where they can obtain it. What colleges are telling them now is learn Quantum Physics or Organic Chemistry, you might use it in the future. It is like telling, Learn how to use a Gun, your country might be invaded sometime(that should be taught in Middle Eastern colleges though).

We all know the purpose of colleges, They prepare you to face real world and secure your future, they are unable to do that currently. I have hardly met any Hackers, who got their hacking skills from college(Everyone has self taught himself with the help of a new medium). So if currently people are becoming successful, it is in spite of higher education not because of it. We have seem lot of successful people as example too, who have done really well without higher education( Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Michael Dell). The phenomena of more successful people without higher education will only be more common now.

Life is not divided into semesters. You don't get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you find yourself. - Bill Gates

<comment><USER7> I think you're confusing the high profile exceptions (Jobs, Gates, Dell) with the rule. I think you're generalizing based on your own experiences, which aren't necessarily representative of the whole.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Higher Education, and education in general, used to teach values. There is so much cynicism (much of it warranted) that this no longer works like it used to. But this is also one of the key differences between a substantive education and trade school.</comment>


TypingDNA verifies your identity based on typing behavior - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/14/typingdna-authenticator-chrome/ <comment><USER2> I don't understand the security model here. This seems like an irrevocable universal login factor, aspects of which can be observed by hostile websites through Javascript. How is this not the worst of all possible MFA worlds? What don't I understand about how the modeling works?

Also: _We are conducting ongoing experimental research based on typing biometrics. Some of the predictions(soft biometrics traits) we study by typing biometrics are gender, age, IQ, race, openness, and Jungian /4 letter type personality profile of a person. Potential use cases: Human Resources, Marketing, Health care_ is a pretty squicky thing to also be planning to build with this.

<comment><USER3> I guess it would be useful as a layer to signal if a user should be checked more carefully. Given it can be used passively, it could be used to flag that there is a mismatch between the user signed in and their historical typing and that whatever they were up to looked at in more detail.

<comment><USER4> This would be amazing for detecting people with multiple accounts.

However it's only limited by the amount of effort a malicious actor wants to take. I'm sure a machine learning model could be generated to fudge your typing to match any other profile, or to just make it look like any other person.

<comment><USER3> I agree. Would be interesting to try it out on HN :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It looks like this post was heavily ring-voted (i.e. friends or colleagues upvoting for promotional reasons) and we've gotten complaints about booster comments in the thread.

Please don't do those things! They're against the rules and we ban accounts and sites that do them, plus HN users have gotten really good at noticing them and then they get mad. So, not in your interests all around.

</comment><comment><USER6> 2 questions:

1) A friend of mine recently broke his arm. His typing profile is going to be quite different from normal until he's fully healed. What do you do in this case? Is there a "reset my typing profile" thing you can do?

2) This seems vulnerable to replay attacks in a way that hardware-based 2FA systems aren't. How does this system prevent that?

<comment><USER7> 3) what happens when I get a new keyboard.

While my general 'rhythm' might stay the same, a) specific keys slow me down consistently depending on keyboard, and b) the length of press might be quite different between even the chicklet apple keyboards (different 'depths'), let alone different brands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> >false positives as low as 0.1 percent

Nice marketing. Another way to write that? 1 in 1000. That's really really high. If you're using a service that you feel like you need 2FA on, would you really want to use this? I'll stick with my hardware token for now.

<comment><AUTHOR> We believe that it's safe to use a password + TypingDNA than just the password. Most people do not use ANY 2FA today, you are certainly an exception. So are we. We use Yubikeys and Authenticators internally, but this is the kind of solution that can make things more user friendly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Every day, I enter information using a Kinesis keyboard using Dvorak (at my desk), at a MacBook Pro's keyboard (taking notes at meetings), and using an Android on-screen keyboard.

I guess that this service would only allow me to log in using one of those three keyboards, because the typing would look extremely different between them.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's an interesting use case, you should try it out with the Dvorak keyboard...

<comment><USER2> In case this wasn't clear: they're not saying you won't generate a model from their Dvorak typing, but rather that the model you generate is likely to depend on the keyboard layout, and so will break if they try to log in from a different keyboard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This will not work for anyone who actually cares about security and uses a password manager that autofills.

</comment><comment><USER11> this sounds great until you get hit by a "phishing" attack that steals your typing profile. it's probably that hard to do, all you need is to convince your victim to type something. a signup form would work pretty well, plus you get a nice primary key (email/username) so you can even share your stolen typing profiles with your hacker buddies! then what are you going to do? change your typing profile?

</comment><comment><USER12> If you send your typing patterns for passwords, couldn't they be decrypted by using the other collected typing data? Or do they mean you just enter the TypingDNA password into TypingDNA?

I'd be more interested in a tool that prevents any typing data from ever leaving my computer (maybe by opening all web forms in a text editor).

</comment><comment><USER13> Alright so how do privacy minded individuals prevent being identified this way? Browser add-on to randomize inter-keystroke delays?

</comment><comment><USER14> Is there docs on how I can integrate this into my app, do you have a javascript library?

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure, here: [https://api.typingdna.com/index.html](https://api.typingdna.com/index.html) (includes usage samples in different languages). You can sign up and find out more... I thought you knew that. Thanks for asking!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> How does it work? Machine-learning I assume, but what kind?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's ML ofc, pattern recognition algorithms in a nutshell.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> bye bye 2FA texts! good riddance</comment>