I disagree somewhat. I dont feel that I "Bleed ones and zeros" but find the solitude in my home office far less distracting than an office cubical, and tend to be way more productive.
I think you really just have 2 basic types of people: those who want to get their work done(and do it well) and those who arent really committed.(for whatever reason, incompetent, lazy, bad work ethic, not interested in the work, etc...) If you have a team of the first type, you will get things done, if not, you wont. A less experienced developer with motivation to get things finished will not let distance get in the way.
Not to go off on a tangent about office architecture, but I feel that cube farms are the worst of all worlds for any intellectually demanding work.
One extreme, private offices for everyone, works pretty well in that you have quiet when you need it and you can also collaborate verbally without disrupting others.
The other extreme, a bunch of people in one room, works pretty well in that you can get a peripheral sense of what everyone else is doing, talking to the person next to you doesn't require hollering through 3/4 height walls, and you can always put on your headphones to signal "leave me the heck alone".
The middle ground, cube farms, tend to eliminate both useful silence and useful noise.
Personal preference matters, too. Some people just can't function in a noisy bullpen environment, while others tend to just "go dark" and run in the wrong direction if left alone.
My company is planning on moving into a new office space divided into just two sections, one speaking-in-normal-tones-is-OK bullpen, and a distinct shut-the-hell-up fishbowl space to accommodate the different work styles. I'm eager to see how it works. I actually see myself shuffling from zone to zone depending on the nature of what I'm working on.
Another middle ground is where everyone has an office with a door that closes but there are 2-3 engineers in that office. Back in the day when AT&T Bell Labs was the coolest thing ever, that was the system they had and the best companies I've worked for replicated it as well.
Yeah, I've worked a handful of places that have done that.
It only failed me when I was working at a place where my office mates where on different projects, so all of their interaction was just noise to me, and all of my interactions was just noise to them.
I find it works well if the 1-2 other people working in the same space are working on the same thing, ideally as a cross-functional team, (i.e. don't have an office full of "UX" people down the hall from an office full of "DB People")
Yup. I think Jeff is making a faulty generalization here. I've worked remotely for years, quite successfully. While I wish that meant I was a super rock star code god, it ain't so. You do have to be reasonably conscientious, but you don't have to be a elite coder.
I agree, I'm sure there are lazy seasoned developers that love programming more than anything. People that are likely to get distracted by new stuff and their own projects.
Regardless of skill level there are people that work well from home and others that don't.
I think you really just have 2 basic types of people: those who want to get their work done(and do it well) and those who arent really committed.(for whatever reason, incompetent, lazy, bad work ethic, not interested in the work, etc...) If you have a team of the first type, you will get things done, if not, you wont. A less experienced developer with motivation to get things finished will not let distance get in the way.