> The digital nomads that move to a new room weekly tend to have a hard time focussing on work. People that move every couple of months or that have a camper tend to do better.
My experience has been similar.
Honestly, I don't care what people do in their off hours, where they live, or how often they move around. The real problems come from mismatched priorities. Many of the self-described digital nomads are looking to travel, socialize, and essentially vacation all day while putting in just enough work to collect a paycheck. This creates perverse incentives to sandbag, exaggerate effort, pawn off work on coworkers, stretch deadlines, cut corners, and other behaviors that bring the whole team down.
Digital nomads are easy to single out, but the same pattern can apply to people who want remote jobs so they can focus on their side hustle, or who try to be full-time caregivers for small children during the day. In theory, it shouldn't matter if people can get their work done. In practice, it becomes a game of minimizing their work. Ultimately, it's the rest of the team that suffers, which is why I'm very careful to only hire people who can make the job their top priority during working hours.
Meh, I feel like it's probably healthy to minimize work, not dishonestly, but especially if the alternative is going into the office and not being productive for those hours anyway.
> Meh, I feel like it's probably healthy to minimize work
That’s missing the point. I don’t expect people to do work for the sake of doing work. We’re trying to get something done.
The problem comes when individuals on the team try to minimize their own workload at any cost, which inevitably creates more work for other team members. They either find ways to shift difficult tasks to other people on the team, or they cut corners and saddle the team with technical debt.
I know the popular framing is to think of workers vs. big evil corporations, but in reality most of these people end up hurting their coworkers far more than the company by selfishly minimizing their own workloads.
> if the alternative is going into the office and not being productive for those hours anyway
In a properly functioning team, that should never happen. I can’t think of any time in my professional career where our work backlog has literally gone to zero. A properly managed roadmap and backlog means there should always be something to work on.
I don’t expect employees to work extra hours to chip away at the backlog, but if someone finishes their assigned tasks early then they need to step up and help the team or work on the next tasks in the backlog.
If someone is constantly running out of work and finding themselves spending unproductive hours at the office, their team is likely oversized in the first place. Those people are either moved to another team or at the top of the list when it’s time for layoffs, sadly.
I think it's only sometimes healthy to take on more stuff after you've completed what you set out to that day. In my mind, the reward for productivity should not be more work. Fuck that. At the office or not, most of the time I'll try and get what I set out to do that day done, and then leave unless there's something pressing. Mostly though, if there was something pressing, then it would have been part of my goal for that day anyway.
You'd put someone on the chopping block for being too efficient? That doesn't sound sensible.
I think OP means during your work day. You don't want to be working with someone that is working remotely so that, during their work day, they can also look after a young child, or is focused on organizing and going for a long social lunch, or thinking where in this new city they are going to visit.
You want someone who, for the hours that they are working, main priority (unless there is an unlikely emergency) is getting their work done. (and responding on Hacker news)
I'm pretty sure that everyone is interested in minimizing work that they don't like.
I bet you do the same. I bet that if you had a skill that is highly valued, but you're not really into it, you'd do all in your power to minimize the work you put in... Be it in the office or remotely.
Fuck! I had a contract and had a new manager installed 2 months into a 3 month contract. I had to be in the office 9 to 5 every workday - no exceptions. I couldn't leave and I basically did nothing during that month.... While being in the office.
My experience has been similar.
Honestly, I don't care what people do in their off hours, where they live, or how often they move around. The real problems come from mismatched priorities. Many of the self-described digital nomads are looking to travel, socialize, and essentially vacation all day while putting in just enough work to collect a paycheck. This creates perverse incentives to sandbag, exaggerate effort, pawn off work on coworkers, stretch deadlines, cut corners, and other behaviors that bring the whole team down.
Digital nomads are easy to single out, but the same pattern can apply to people who want remote jobs so they can focus on their side hustle, or who try to be full-time caregivers for small children during the day. In theory, it shouldn't matter if people can get their work done. In practice, it becomes a game of minimizing their work. Ultimately, it's the rest of the team that suffers, which is why I'm very careful to only hire people who can make the job their top priority during working hours.