The choice is not the choice you think
So, the other day, I was talking to a colleague in the business. They were looking for a freelancer. And they launched into that routine about “needing the person to be on site because it’s really intense work.” I instinctively did my slight shrug and aggravation and ignored them.
I was thinking about this this morning, and it struck me that that conversation was actually a nice little microcosm of pet peeves, learnings and misapprehensions that I see routinely.
Firstly, it seemed so obvious to me that looking for someone ” to be on site because the work is intense” is a really dumb idea. But I was struck by how often I hear it. So I decided to take a moment and walk through, in my own head, why I viscerally loathe that line of thinking, even though it probably makes perfect sense in the head of the person thinking it. And it struck me: they are making a false choice. I believe, though I’m not 100% sure, that the logic in their head is that the person they can get - working on site or at home - is the same quality of person, so why not have the added advantage of having the person on site?
The problem with this, to me, is that you’re not actually talking about the same quality of person either on site or off. Firstly, you’re radically reducing your potential pool of people by limiting it to a single city. And no matter how great the Flash pool is here in New York, it is a drop in the bucket compared to the pool in the rest of the world. And secondly, I think it’s pretty obvious that the best people often prefer to work at home, and therefore even within your city, you’re limiting your pool. And, finally, there may be real obstacles to a good person working on site - planning for child care, for instance, or taking care of a pet.
So really when you say someone has to work on site, you’re basically radically reducing the likely quality of the person you’re going to get. And sure, there’s a benefit to having the person on site, but does that benefit overcome the quality differential? My experience says probably not.
Then I got to thinking about a conversation we have in the office here a lot about our three offices. There’s been a movement afoot here by some people to have our teams completely co-located. Certain team members go on and on about the benefits of having the whole team in the same place. And I’m always a bit frustrated by it, because, again, it’s sort of a false choice. I usually turn it around and say “do you want the best team, or a team that happens to all be in the same city?” We have offices in three cities for no other reason than each of these cities has a great talent pool - there are people in Boston and SF you simply can’t get in NY. Having a presence in other cities allows us to get a better quality of people. And I believe if I were a client, I’d want the best, wherever they are.
Then THIS got me thinking about the underlying logical fallacy that I think people fall into often: first, they make false choices for themselves. They simplify or leave out crucial data: “do you want a team together or dispersed” is a very different choice than “do you want the best team, albeit dispersed, or a good team that is in the same city?” I think we make this mistake more often than we realize.
As a freelancer, I can completely back up what this brilliant man is saying. ;) When a prospective client says they’d need me to come into their office full time for the duration of a project, that’s a deal-breaker. (It’s nice when you can afford to be picky, eh?)
I think some agencies want to bring their freelancers into the office because they don’t trust that they will meet their deadlines and/or produce good quality work without supervision. I think that’s so misguided though, because when you treat your freelancers like children, you get an amateur quality product. It’s so easy, just hire good people, pay them well, and trust them to do their fucking job. If they want to work in the office, awesome. If they work better at home, awesome. It’s the internet, people, we can afford to be flexible here.
