[HN Gopher] The Winners of Remote Work
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The Winners of Remote Work
Author : remt
Score : 122 points
Date : 2021-08-31 12:28 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| seibelj wrote:
| > _There are already examples of how gains are captured by the
| few and not the many._
|
| The New York Times - "Feel Bad About Everything, Always"
|
| Remote work is amazing, net on net it vastly improves lives,
| reduces commute time / traffic / car pollution, reverses the
| decades long trend of economic activity centralizing in a few
| boom cities, and I believe will reduce inequality longterm as
| workers will be able to get good, high-paying jobs no matter
| where they live.
| vehemenz wrote:
| You'd have a stronger argument if remote work didn't have the
| potential to increase rural living and exurban sprawl, both of
| which contribute massively to energy waste and ecological
| destruction. At least in the US.
|
| Boom cities were never the problem. The problem is commuting,
| which stems from a lack of housing.
|
| Forcing everyone out of the cities creates a worse set of
| problems. It means more wasteful roads to nowhere and doubling
| down on our third-world transportation infrastructure. It means
| more clearing of wild land, one of the best resources the US
| has if you've done any traveling at all. It means more boom-
| bust bedroom communities and vacant strip malls. It means more
| culturally insulated communities and Trump-like politicians.
| ghaff wrote:
| >The problem is commuting, which stems from a lack of
| housing.
|
| I think you'll find that a great many people don't want to
| live in the denser areas where offices often tend to be. You
| can scold about that all you want, but you could make cities
| arbitrarily dense and a lot of people, indeed more, wouldn't
| want to live in them if they weren't making a commuting
| tradeoff because of work.
| walshemj wrote:
| Depends when I worked in London id have loved to be able to
| live near the office in Red lion Square or in a flat with a
| view of the Thames.
|
| Or Fitzrovia
| vehemenz wrote:
| If you're going to quote a line, quote the context. The OP
| was talking about "boom cities" as a problem, which they
| aren't by themselves. The problem is the unaffordability of
| the cities, caused by lack of housing, which leads folks to
| live outside of the city and commute.
|
| My main point was that arguing for remote work/sprawl was
| not a ecologically-friendly argument. Sure, lots of people
| want to live in the middle of nowhere. But the negative
| externalities, looking to the future, are many, and they
| are something to consider when trying to praise WFH as a
| potential solution for anything.
|
| Yes, everyone that reads this forum supports WFH because
| they benefit directly from it. From a birds-eye view
| though, looking at urban development and the cultural
| decline of isolated populations in the US, it looks like it
| could be a disaster.
| luffapi wrote:
| Wouldn't wfh decrease the cost of living in the city,
| since currently most high paying jobs make living within
| commuting distance a requirement? To make an extreme
| example, cost of living on the Bay Area should go down if
| wfh becomes widespread. There are other reasons to want
| to live in SF aside from getting paid a high salary in
| tech, so housing prices should "fallback" to whatever
| people value the culture/scenery... at. What you would
| probably see is a more even (and healthy) distribution of
| growth in _all_ metro areas instead of being centered in
| a few with all of the cost of living increases associated
| with that.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm not sure SF is a great example. For most tech
| workers, they're giving themselves a _worse_ commute by
| living in the city rather than somewhere else in the
| South Bay closer, in many /most cases, to where their
| office is. So, yes, their jobs may be a major reason
| they're in the Bay Area overall, but mostly not in SF
| itself.
|
| This is of course much less true in industries like
| finance.
| sokoloff wrote:
| That seems like a perfectly fine amount of context to
| quote to me. You could make cities as dense as you want
| and many people would explicitly choose to live in an
| area where they can have a private yard. There's no
| strategy of densification that will preserve that for
| everyone.
|
| You can make the inside of your box as amazing as you can
| imagine and some (not small) segment of people will opt
| to live where the sun can shine into their yard.
| slavapestov wrote:
| Demand for homes in dense cities outstrips supply though, and
| I suspect this will continue to hold even if all office jobs
| offered remote work as an option to those that want it.
|
| Nevermind the fact that only a fraction of all jobs _can_ be
| meaningfully done remotely, and a majority of employees
| wouldn 't take the option if it was offered anyway.
|
| You can argue that remote work drives demand for larger
| spaces, but again this comes down to the housing shortage.
| There's no reason that more 2 and 3 bedroom apartments
| couldn't be built if taller buildings were actually allowed
| to be built in the cities where demand for housing is high.
| corpdronejuly wrote:
| Why do you imagine that rural towns are all terrible suburban
| sprawl?
|
| The issue is that we have allowed our built environment to
| become too centralized. In that sense the Boom Cities ARE the
| problem. Instead of one strip mall a dozen corner stores on
| an old school, "It's a wonderful life" small town main
| streets we have Times Square, and a bunch of overbuilt "new
| urbanist" attempts to mimic the magic that took 200 years to
| build.
|
| Leon Krier has made this point visually here.
| https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EUX70P7UYAEchHS.jpg:large
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| I don't really agree with your post, but wow, that is a
| _beautiful_ and profound image.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| But but but.. what about the gas stations, shiny offices and
| all those things we have built with an explicit purpose to take
| advantage of you physically moving in?
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Creative destruction.
| warkdarrior wrote:
| That's only for poor people, those who bring you food, clean
| your house, and deliver your Amazon boxes.
| ecshafer wrote:
| >The New York Times - "Feel Bad About Everything, Always"
|
| This would be a bad thing for them, if the New York Times sold
| the news, which I don't think they do any more. The New York
| Times instead sells brand image to people. They sell a series
| of a talking points, ideas, and topics that show you are in the
| in group and on the right side. So that when someone brings up
| remote work, you can show how empathetic you are, and how
| worldly you are and say "Remote work is fine but really it
| shows how the gains are captured by the few and not the many, I
| read in the Times that... ".
| SonOfKyuss wrote:
| Do you have a trustworthy news source that doesn't do this?
| trhoad wrote:
| Try telling that to the office cleaner.
| seibelj wrote:
| Luckily new jobs for house cleaners will be created.
| avnigo wrote:
| > Google [...] would reduce the pay of those who choose to work
| remotely or move farther from the office. Avoiding the office
| saves employees money -- in commuting costs, for example
|
| I don't understand the reasoning behind this, and I've seen it
| being used again and again. Employees are compensated on the work
| they provide during work hours, and only rarely do companies
| provide compensation to specifically accommodate for commutes,
| usually done as an incentive for people with costly commutes.
|
| The concern most companies have has to be more about the real
| estate play, and how the offices they have paid for or are
| renting won't be getting as much use. Other than that, in terms
| of energy usage, heating/cooling, etc., I would imagine the cost
| savings of having people work remotely are considerable.
|
| If anything, as I see it, work from home employees should be
| compensated for the costs of working from home, which include
| higher utility expenses, or even office furniture to enable their
| work -- some companies have paid stipends for home office setups,
| for example.
|
| I think, long term, companies may have to rethink how they set up
| their offices so not as much cost is sunk in real estate, so much
| so that they risk penalizing employees who would be saving them
| money otherwise, if it weren't for the existing office-centric
| solution.
| googlr29783 wrote:
| > Google [...] would reduce the pay of those who choose to work
| remotely or move farther from the office.
|
| Sample size of 1 here: Google approved my working remotely in a
| small town outside a major city at the same compensation as
| working in the office in that major city. So no pay cut.
|
| I think there's a game of telephone going on with the facts in
| these articles:
|
| "could see different changes in pay" -> could lose money" ->
| "would reduce pay"
| SlowBall wrote:
| Exactly (Google employee here as well). Those articles are
| completely disingenuous. You could have made the headline
| "Google will increase the pay of remote workers" and it would
| be equally true.
| [deleted]
| altgoogler wrote:
| > In June, Google told rank-and-file employees it would reduce
| the pay of those who choose to work remotely or move farther
| from the office.
|
| To echo the statement from the other Googler who posted, this
| quote from the article is simply not true. It implies that if
| any employee chooses permanent WFH, you get a pay cut.
|
| If you follow the link [1] from the article, you'll see the
| following reasons:
|
| * Google supplied an online calculator to see how their
| possible relocation would affect their pay
|
| * Pay rates are defined by metropolitan statistical areas (MSA)
|
| * Google says "Our compensation packages have always been
| determined by location, and we always pay at the top of the
| local market based on where an employee works from,"
|
| So, if you choose to WFH permanently _and_ you commute far
| enough to live in a different MSA than your office, then you
| _might_ see a paycut.
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/the-great-reboot/pay-cut-
| googl...
| adolph wrote:
| 1. Perform gradient descent using online MSA calculator and
| Zillow
|
| 2. Move to superfund site nearest NYC or FS
|
| 3. Profit!
| kansface wrote:
| > Other than that, in terms of energy usage, heating/cooling,
| etc., I would imagine the cost savings of having people work
| remotely are considerable.
|
| You'd have much higher costs around compliance and taxation,
| which represent an ongoing expense since laws are always
| changing and people moving. That probably works out after a few
| employees in any given state. Companies also lose money by
| flying everyone in once or twice a year. Now that I think about
| it, I wouldn't mind seeing some math on the subject.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >I don't understand the reasoning behind this, and I've seen it
| being used again and again.
|
| They do it because if you won't accept a 20% cut to work out in
| the sticks then there are plenty of other good people who will.
|
| It's got nothing to do with the length of your commute or the
| cost of unused offices or even the value you provide (as long
| as that covers your wages).
|
| They can do this for exactly the same reason they only need to
| pay a cleaner minimum wage. That is there is more than enough
| supply to meet the demand.
| ohazi wrote:
| > They do it because if you won't accept a 20% cut to work
| out in the sticks then there are plenty of other good people
| who will.
|
| So the options are:
|
| 1. Convince all of the other good people that they can and
| should demand more.
|
| 2. Convince your bosses that you are indispensable.
| Clubber wrote:
| 3. Quit because you don't want to work for a company that
| thinks so little of you.
| fairity wrote:
| > Employees are compensated on the work they provide during
| work hours.
|
| Industry-average compensation is primarily a function of supply
| and demand. Remote work increases labor supply and decreases
| costs of labor. Both of these factors will cause compensation
| to go down. How employers justify pay decreases is largely
| besides the point, imo.
| pvm3 wrote:
| The Winners of Remote Work don't live in the United States. The
| pandemic has accelerated globalization.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| The winner of globalization was the US though
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| >The pandemic has accelerated globalization.
|
| Is that really the case? There is some evidence that
| globalisation had plateaued over the last decade or so. I can't
| find any recent evidence one way or the other.
|
| https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/world-trade-exports-const...
| co2benzoate wrote:
| The winners of remote work are all fleeing to New Zealand,
| leaving the rest to wallow in decaying infrastructure and a
| healthcare system bursting at the seams.
| j8hn wrote:
| I wasn't aware that New Zealand are accepting immigrants
| right now.
|
| Which visa does NZ allow you to live there and work remotely?
| ThePadawan wrote:
| Only if you consider Remote Global Work.
|
| As a European, it is very disheartening to see how many
| companies espouse "we are now embracing remote work company-
| wide", which on closer inspection means "California hours +-2h
| time difference".
| ghaff wrote:
| California to Europe is tough for many things. I work US East
| Coast timezone and collaborate a lot with Europe--but that
| feels like it's getting near the limit for any regular
| synchronous activity unless one side or the other starts to
| work atypical hours.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| I do totally get it. I only take an issue with the (maybe
| unintentional) duplicity of pretending that "remote work in
| the continental US" can only mean "remote work".
| quadrifoliate wrote:
| I have seen many European companies as well who do this
| unintentional duplicity of "remote" meaning "anywhere in
| the EU/EEA".
|
| In addition to the obvious time zone constraints, I think
| payroll taxes and such are a major regulatory boundary
| that you need to cross in addition to having "all your
| shit together" as one of the top comments puts it.
| handrous wrote:
| > In addition to the obvious time zone constraints, I
| think payroll taxes and such are a major regulatory
| boundary that you need to cross in addition to having
| "all your shit together" as one of the top comments puts
| it.
|
| This can be annoying even across state boundaries, let
| alone internationally, for smaller companies that aren't
| already operating in several states. Consider also things
| like group health insurance, which are often
| geographically bound (sometimes even to a single city).
| ThePadawan wrote:
| Right?
|
| It boggles the mind that the biggest companies on Earth
| are the likes of Instagram instead of a huge company
| called "Adapt" which takes care of all that between
| employee and employer as a third party.
| ghaff wrote:
| I have no personal experience but I have been told that
| even if you farm a lot of things out there is a certain
| amount of paperwork (and cost) that you have to handle
| in-house.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| Hm, that's a shame. That seems to me to be just
| accidental, not essential complexity, too.
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, a lot of it is a patchwork of government rules and
| regulations. Here's a long post about it from Mitchell at
| HashiCorp:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17022563
| walshemj wrote:
| Which would then crucify its employees and suck rent out
| of both sides.
|
| Also there are vast diferences in labor law between
| countries
| nathanvanfleet wrote:
| It's not nearly as easy to have people in a timezone 16 hours
| offset than you might think. So I am not surprised that they
| would be two very different decisions.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| Right, so that's the point where your job offer should say
| "Remote - US" or "Remote - UTC-8 +-3h".
|
| And I have seen a few companies do that! I would say that
| this is around 20% of the companies.
|
| The other 80% simply list those jobs as "Remote", so they
| show up on their job pages under all continents, or at
| least, under their "outside the US" filters.
|
| Then sometimes it's not mentioned at the top of the job
| offer, but in the footnotes with the "we hire regardless of
| disability etc." statements.
|
| All of these things are _fine_. They 're just a far cry
| from that blog post that the CEO made 10 months into
| quarantine, talking about how the company will open itself
| to global remote work.
| exdsq wrote:
| You can always join, work nights, and shift the hours over
| the first month or two. Probably worth it for a 2x pay
| increase.
| mLuby wrote:
| It's unfortunate for North Americans who want to work
| elsewhere too. A globalized workforce is good for peace,
| prosperity, and human rights.
|
| Another comment pointed out that shared time zone "remote
| working mercilessly exposes some of the flaws in the
| organization."
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28369657)
|
| I'll add that global/fully async remote work is _even more
| merciless,_ especially on Agile figuring-it-out-as-we-go-
| along orgs. Communication has to be written and clear enough
| to avoid back-and-forth, changes are possible on the order of
| a day, not an hour so planning ahead and evaluating critical
| paths is more important, and everyone has to be able to pick
| up and put down work that 's become blocked by someone on the
| other side of the planet. It's a tall order, but I'd like to
| think that the benefits are worth it for both individual and
| company.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Just go work for an European Unicorn.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| ...do you have their phone number?
| SonOfKyuss wrote:
| Working parents in the US have definitely benefited from the
| flexibility that comes with remote work as well.
| pc86 wrote:
| Only to the extent that schools and daycares are still open.
| 28367090 wrote:
| The pandemic accelerated the _end_ of globalization.
| Globalization is over. The US will become less and less
| involved in the other countries -- even less than it is now --
| and corporations will not be hiring teams that are mix of time
| zones, languages, and cultures. They will continue to hire
| people with credentials like those in charge, who look like,
| speak like, and have the same goals / culture as those in
| charge.
|
| And that's going to be in US major cities.
| WaitWaitWha wrote:
| > Avoiding the office saves employees money -- in commuting
| costs, for example
|
| It saves money for businesses exponentially more. The office
| space, associated utilities, physical security, cleaning,
| supplies, insurance, etc. are insane amount of savings.
|
| I owned a small "remote business" in the 90's and it allowed me
| to be competitive with multi-million ventures.
| kccqzy wrote:
| And now the employee has to pay out of pocket for that ~100sqft
| or so of the home that has become an office: the heating or air
| conditioning of that space, the implicit cost in rent when the
| employee seeks a bigger place to rent, etc.
| madamelic wrote:
| Yeah, but the comfort for the employee will go up because
| they get to define their own space and not have to share it.
| If they want blinding lights and warm: you got it. If they
| want darkness and cold: you got it.
|
| Companies should probably kick in a small office stipend, but
| the cost / sq foot of suburb vs cost / sq foot downtown is
| usually pretty huge.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| yes but they only make those savings if they can ditch the
| buildings completely, which most can't.
| jackcosgrove wrote:
| Those savings could be wiped out from a security breach by a
| remote worker. Compliance will be much harder with remote work,
| and I don't think that's priced in yet since the trend is so
| recent.
| neogodless wrote:
| Survival of the fittest.
|
| Human society has had a lot of versions of "how things work" in
| regards to obtaining and distributing resources. As some of the
| work force transitions from physical, in-person employment
| (trading labor for pay) to increasingly virtual employment, some
| things are de-coupled, like high "cost of living" areas being
| less strongly related to "high paying employment centers."
|
| But for employees, it's just an amplification of the previous
| trend towards inequality in employment that was already
| happening.
|
| Another way to think about this is specialization. A few people
| can specialize in certain remote tasks - obviously the examples
| of education (for fitness, academia, etc.) - because creation is
| not tied to consumption, especially for digital goods and
| services.
|
| The distribution of employment has always shifted over time as
| productivity has increased for certain types of work, and then
| new methods of employment has popped up as technology and
| entertainment and culture evolved. In a free country a couple
| hundred years ago, many people might work their own farm and
| largely sustain themselves off that work. But today a tiny slice
| of the population manages massive scale farms. What does everyone
| else do? Industries have evolved from nothing - large scale
| housing, transportation, etc.
|
| To try to wrap this up, this article isn't going far enough. The
| goal might be to predict the future. If everything we know we
| need and want can be produced by a shrinking work force, what
| will the rest of the population do to earn their keep? Will some
| kind of redistribution scheme of resources arise, like socialism
| or universal basic income?
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > As some of the work force transitions from physical, in-
| person employment (trading labor for pay) to increasingly
| virtual employment, some things are de-coupled, like high "cost
| of living" areas being less strongly related to "high paying
| employment centers."
|
| First of all, there's no transition from trading labor for pay.
| That remains in place ... because capital.
|
| Secondly, the coupling or decoupling is mostly a short-term
| choice made mostly by capital. We've already seen some
| companies signalling their intention to pay people less if they
| live outside the local area and work remote. I see no reason to
| expect that the state of this coupling will change to anything
| other than what-works-best-for-capital.
| goldbricked wrote:
| For the most part of the last century, the question was
| answered by creating more demand to keep the work force steady,
| thusly increasing the amount of produced goods and services
| constantly with the increased productivity.
|
| However the increased productivity also applies to extraction
| of ressources and destruction of ecosystems. On a planet with
| limited ressources we need to do the exact opposite, imho. That
| is decrease the amount of work done in extractive and
| destructive labour and channel all following and already
| existing productivity gains into sustainable work.
|
| This will definitely need serious redistribution schemes, as
| well as lots of regulation.
| drewburg wrote:
| I haven't seen any mentions here if being in a startup
| fundamentally changes the argument. I think startups would want
| to leverage the individual talent and personal time sacrifice to
| bootstrap themselves and build their dream team. I have found the
| opposite, that they want to be even more controlling in work
| environment. I am probably biased as it did take a few months to
| adjust to remote work and find a decent balance of zoom
| meetings/reporting but now have a good groove between my peers
| and boss. Given HR's surveys to determine who wants to return to
| the office, I would rather stay remote. Out of my past 2 startup
| jobs in the past decade, it's 50/50 whether remote worked well.
|
| My recent anecdote: Startup out of stealth a month ago informed
| me during 2nd round that they were only considering programmers
| willing to relocate and live in Austin. No remote option
| whatsoever. Asking what would happen if there are additional
| lockdown measures reinstituted, for Delta or even just whatever
| other 'virus-of-the-year' comes along, they didn't have any
| answer other than to repeat Austin-based only.
|
| Bonus: Their founders and early execs are today only located in
| SF bay area and have no plans to relocate and the in-office only
| policy would only be for the devs.
| [deleted]
| gravypod wrote:
| Sounds like an awful environment. If a CEO can't see the value
| in hiring good people that you don't need to micro manage and
| allowing them to decide if it makes sense to be in person or in
| office I don't think working at that kind of company would be
| fun.
|
| Hire good people, entrust them with executing on core business
| needs, allow them to choose however they make the magic happen.
| devonbleak wrote:
| The issue with this approach seems to be that hiring is
| fundamentally broken - hiring managers haven't really found a
| process with a high correlation of "good interview
| performance" = "good worker". I've personally been burnt a
| ton of times by remote people who knocked the interview
| process out of the park and then just didn't deliver and it's
| difficult to tell for quite a while without some kind of
| micro-managey framework in place.
|
| With enterprise I'm playing more with averages so that one
| person on the team that may not be carrying their weight
| isn't going to drag down the entire business. For a startup
| where it's more critical that everybody be firing on all
| cylinders it makes sense they want to have more control and
| accountability to make sure their limited resources are being
| spent appropriately.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| What do you use in-person that is unavailable for remote
| work? Butt-in-seat time?
| Arainach wrote:
| It's much easier to see the intangibles. For instance,
| I'm a fairly senior team member who's a core subject
| matter expert for a few major things our team owns. A
| huge chunk of my day involves people asking me questions
| about them.
|
| In person, it's trivial to see everyone coming up to my
| desk, hear me jumping into team discussions, and so on.
| Remote, it's on me to let management know that's what my
| time is being spent on, and if I'm lying it's
| significantly harder to verify.
| throwanem wrote:
| So what I hear you saying is that management has a trust
| problem.
| throwdecro wrote:
| If it wasn't for the possibility of COVID transmission, an
| office with remote management sounds like it would be a fun and
| conveniently located place to hang out and chill.
| masterof0 wrote:
| Honest question: Why would a company pay an US based engineer a
| high salary when they can get a team overseas equally or even
| more qualified (whatever metrics you prefer to use: leetcode
| count, school ranking, GitHub stars, etc...) for the same amount
| of money or less? I understand if you are Raedon/Being/...
| Wouldn't remote work at least in the US force local engineer to
| accept less money for their work?
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > when they can get a team overseas equally or even more
| qualified (whatever metrics you prefer to use: leetcode count,
| school ranking, GitHub stars, etc...)
|
| Those people are already in demand and oversubscribed, so the
| US-based engineers are still in demand.
|
| Yes, companies would love to pay less, but at the high end it
| is already a world market for talent.
| ameixaseca wrote:
| Yes but you also have a number of other issues to take into
| account: timezones, language barriers, cultural differences,
| ability of an engineer to get on a plane/car/train/boat and
| meet face-to-face in a reasonable amount of time, and so forth.
|
| Remote work within borders is one thing, but remote work from
| different continents is an entirely different beast.
|
| Not to mention the sheer difference in labour-related laws and
| conventions across the world and how little recourse you may
| have if - let's say - your employee decides to take your source
| code with them and resell. Or take the idea and start a product
| themselves. Or anything similar that you could very easily sue
| locally. How much trouble would you go to sue? Translate and
| certificate every document? Comply with local laws regarding
| representation? Can you even sue?
|
| You may think these are extreme examples, and yes it all tends
| to work out in general, but even with local employees people
| sometimes get burn so you need to take these into account when
| jumping into something uncertain. It's becoming more common for
| sure but there are risks and they are not null.
| frozenport wrote:
| Many small companies lack the ability to organize these kinds
| of efforts, as hiring is usually local or word of mouth.
|
| Large companies like NVIDIA/Intel/Microsoft have tried to do it
| with mixed results. In particular your savings rarely exceed
| 50%.
| sebular wrote:
| The simple answer is that "whatever metrics you prefer to use"
| include qualifications that overseas engineers often cannot
| satisfy.
|
| Great engineers are human members of a team, and there's more
| to a team member than their LeetCode score (seriously?) and/or
| how many GitHub stars they've obtained.
|
| Just some examples off the top of my head:
|
| If you're building products to target US-based consumers, you
| don't need to provide as much contextual information to a US-
| based engineer. They will have a stronger intuitive
| understanding of the product, and there's a better chance that
| they'll know when it's appropriate to push back and question
| something. There's a reduced cognitive load in communicating
| with them. And of course, there's a better chance you're going
| to enjoy spending hours working with them.
| masterof0 wrote:
| > Great engineers are human members of a team, and there's
| more to a team member than their LeetCode score (seriously?)
| and/or how many GitHub stars they've obtained. I was
| referring to performance metrics in general, I didn't said
| those were the ones to take into account. I have definitely
| seen people here in HN referring to github stars,
| stackoverflow points, etc... as some sort of badge of honor.
|
| Also I find your answer pretty condescending towards folks
| overseas, although that's your opinion. In my team at Google,
| we have people from all over the world, and they are amazing.
| Don't see how they don't have the "required qualifications"
| you are referring to.
| babesh wrote:
| I would estimate that well over half of Silicon Valley
| engineers are foreign born. If you add the non local US
| engineers, you are probably at over 90%.
|
| Those equally or more qualified overseas people working for
| little were in short supply. Why would they work for you for
| pennies when they could move to Silicon Valley, make tons more,
| and have potential for much, much more?
|
| With remote work, what makes you think that the market will be
| inefficient? The overseas equally or more qualified will demand
| more money and look for more opportunities.
|
| These companies that adjust pay based on location remind me of
| the wage fixing scheme led by Steve Jobs. Once Mark Zuckerberg
| refused to play along, compensation exploded. Companies that
| pay the best for remote workers will have their pick of the
| best.
| masterof0 wrote:
| > Why would they work for you for pennies when they could
| move to Silicon Valley, make tons more, and have potential
| for much, much more?
|
| Who says all talented engineers overseas can come to the US?
| There is a huge amount of QA companies in Ukraine that
| contract their service to the west, for example, can they
| come to the US? I doubt it. Overseas workers don't get the
| chance to make demands, US companies have leverage over them.
| Because there are way more talented engineers than high
| paying jobs. I have you seen how much people get paid in
| toptal, and other online contractor companies?
| babesh wrote:
| I am saying that the US was already playing the pick the
| cream of the crop game. It was playing it in two ways.
| First it identified obvious talent (math Olympiads,
| etc...). Second, the people who were the most driven got to
| Silicon Valley by any means necessary, showing tremendous
| grit.
|
| Examples:
|
| former boss's family got out of Russia, had guns pointed at
| them on the way to the airport
|
| coworker who got an H1-B, was desperate to get out of
| Russia, we found him because a product he was working on
| was exceptional
|
| several coworkers from other countries that were math or
| computer science olympiads
|
| btw these people end up in American colleges as undergrads
| or grads
| ianmcgowan wrote:
| Many big companies do exactly that, and have done since long
| before Covid. I work with IT dev, support, and QA groups in
| India and the Philippines and it definitely can be made to
| work. There are the usual frustrations though, mostly around
| timezones and some cultural differences.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| Are the wages of US tech workers skyrocketing because they
| switch jobs often? If so, remote workers can switch even
| faster. The most capable workers had already emigrated to US,
| so the question is, has the pool of workers expanded more than
| the pool of competitive jobs?
| masterof0 wrote:
| > The most capable workers had already emigrated to US
|
| This is insanely wrong. What makes you think that?
| trhway wrote:
| No. Companies able to manage additional offshore complexity
| produce enough per engineer to not care for the savings, and
| the effort required to deal with that complexity can in many
| cases be more productively spent on growing revenues. Such
| companies go offshore for additional talent, not savings.
| busterarm wrote:
| ^ This.
|
| Engineering needs product management. This isn't cheap or
| easy to do when you're offshoring for cost.
| justaguy88 wrote:
| If they can put them in US-compatible timezone, sure.
|
| But coordinating teams across anything more than a 4-ish hour
| difference is a total pain
| foobiekr wrote:
| Time zone. For whatever reason, and not for lack of looking,
| there aren't really development ecosystems like
| India/Pakistan/Estonia/Slovakia/... in south and central
| america.
| elboru wrote:
| I'm a developer located in Latin America, I've worked for
| several clients and I know tons of companies that outsource
| work from here. What do you think is missing? I sincerely
| would like to know the perception from the other side.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > when they can get a team overseas equally or even more
| qualified (whatever metrics you prefer to use: leetcode count,
| school ranking, GitHub stars, etc...) for the same amount of
| money or less?
|
| If they could, they would [0].
|
| [0] https://restofworld.org/2020/india-engineering-degree/
| masterof0 wrote:
| Makes sense.
| subpixel wrote:
| I believe it will, and what Google has done, by adjusting
| (down) remote salaries, essentially hands managers at lesser
| companies an argument-ending example.
|
| There will be exceptions, especially among the most skilled and
| experienced HN readers. But I am on calls all day with
| engineers and managers whose salaries may vary by six figures
| depending largely on their location.
|
| When the results of paying far less are acceptable to
| companies, companies will pay less and less.
| Dig1t wrote:
| This problem, and distribution of talent, reminds me a little of
| Sturgeon's Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law)
|
| Despite the somewhat unkind analogy, the distributions kind of
| line up and it makes sense to me why the top 10% of workers on
| platforms like Outschool or whatever earn significantly more. In
| many cases in life there is a group of people/things/songs/movies
| etc. that are significantly better than the rest in their
| respective category (usually about 10%), and the rest fall into a
| category of their own. idk, this is entirely intuitive, but I'd
| say it makes sense to me that people, and their ability to do
| some task well, would follow the same distribution.
| blakesterz wrote:
| https://archive.is/Vltrp
|
| They attempt to answer "How will this affect the average tech
| worker?" ... with ... "In June, Google told rank-and-file
| employees it would reduce the pay of those who choose to work
| remotely or move farther from the office." and they then say
| "Should this worry the most in-demand engineers and product
| management? Probably not."
|
| They finish with "But in the long term, remote work's promise is
| more ambivalent." which seems like about the only real thing we
| can all agree on. We'll know how this all shakes out in maybe 5
| or 10 years?
|
| What was pretty interesting, and something I've never heard
| before was "some Peloton instructors earned more than $500,000".
| cblconfederate wrote:
| How many is "Some", because the article makes it sound like
| it's a career option for all fitness people. It sounds like it
| is as rare as being a TV fitness person
| m0llusk wrote:
| Google is a really bad point of normalization for remote work
| metrics. Google has consistently emphasized working together in
| offices as a central strategy and has spent vast amounts on
| physical facilities and also transportation infrastructure such
| as their own bus lines in order to support all of this. Even
| other large companies cannot compete with this level of
| emphasis on office space.
| ghaff wrote:
| >What was pretty interesting, and something I've never heard
| before was "some Peloton instructors earned more than
| $500,000".
|
| It's not really new in that you had doubtless well-paid
| "personalities" who had workout shows on TV forever. It just
| stands to reason that with mass broadcast, the money flows to a
| relatively small number of popular people rather than a large
| number of fairly modestly paid people teaching small classes in
| local studios.
|
| Though I suspect that a lot of this current phenomenon is out
| of necessity rather than preference from the perspective of
| participants.
| devit wrote:
| The article starts talking about professions where working
| remotely allows to service more or in fact all possible customers
| in the world at once (e.g. musicians, teachers).
|
| That is not the case for programmers, consultants and contractors
| (or more precisely, the Internet already had that effect for
| website/app/SaaS builders without need for remote work).
|
| What will happen for them is that employees from poor countries
| and outside main cities will be better able to participate,
| increasing work offer, but also it will be easier for businesses
| outside main cities to find workers, increasing work demand.
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.is/Vltrp
| OneEyedRobot wrote:
| If there's a large increase in the amount of remote work, I
| wonder how much software architectures will change in order to
| accommodate the lessened interaction?
| ghaff wrote:
| Arguably, some level of modularity is good anyway and that's
| been the general trend. And a lot of software, perhaps
| especially large open source projects, are developed by a
| fairly distributed set of individuals and teams already.
| bennysomething wrote:
| This is partly why I keep thinking I should have become an
| electrician or a carpenter: the only real competition is local,
| there is always demand in cities. I knew a very wealthy
| electrician who started his own business and it seems to be a
| common path. Unlike programming where the common path is work for
| someone else and burn out.
| sct202 wrote:
| You're still working for someone else in the trades. All your
| clients are basically mini-bosses and your performance ratings
| are public on Yelp and Angies List.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| Never too late to switch. Maybe this remote working trend will
| lead to outsourcing of programmers and we'll see a rise of
| electrician and carpenter bootcamps as people flee software
| development. You'll just be ahead of the curve.
| stainforth wrote:
| Or be the one that sells the bootcamps, or even the one that
| sells a prebuilt platform that creates bootcamps to those
| that are selling the bootcamps. Picks and shovels so to
| speak. But wait now you're developing software again.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| Its like a platform for platforms but on the cloud yes?
| TremendousJudge wrote:
| That's not developing software, that's selling it.
| owly wrote:
| 1. You still can. 2. Could be good, could be bad.
| cardosof wrote:
| I believe this has something to do with the statistical
| distribution of compensation - normal-like for electricians,
| dentists, and more power-like for coders and people from highly
| creative or sports fields.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's all about leverage. There are certainly less good and
| better electricians and dentists, but at the end of the day
| they can only string so much wire and drill so many teeth in
| a day at rates that are pretty much set by the market. They
| have some leverage if they set up a business and employ
| people but there are still both lower and upper bounds.
|
| Whereas a Pro Bowl quarterback or A-list movie star is worth
| maybe $100s of millions to a team or studio relative to
| players/actors who are "only" very competent. Coders are
| somewhere in between.
| analog31 wrote:
| People run out of teeth, there is no limit to code. And if
| your dentist runs late you don't hire three dentists to
| make them run even later.
| schnevets wrote:
| I can understand programmers romanticizing "the trades", where
| effort is more justly rewarded. All of us have had sleepless
| all-nighters where that bug just didn't get resolved (or,
| worse, the solution didn't end up being necessary). Compare
| that to an engineer staying at the job site after hours to keep
| wiring or returning to the office to process paperwork/respond
| to inquiries/strategize. It's still hard, but at least the work
| will be fruitful.
|
| In Software Development, you can "get by" with an effort
| between 2-6 (where 5 is an average worker) or you can "excel"
| with an effort of 9-10, but putting in a 7-8 just stops being
| be worthwhile after a few years. Compare that to a local
| business owner, where greater hustle always appears
| commensurate to a greater reward.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| ... but the greater effort is more or less all "hustle" and
| not the actual work. Not really comparable, I think, to most
| programmers' experience of work.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| As someone who grew up on construction sites before escaping to
| cushy office work, I can tell you that there are a lot of
| negatives that many don't consider when romanticizing the
| trades. Physical work means physical risks: From injuries to
| long term issues with knees, backs and shoulders. From constant
| exposure to toxic materials to the ever enjoyable dust boogers.
|
| There's a reason that tradespeople get paid what they do. (and
| IMO, it is still very underpaid)
| handrous wrote:
| From what I've seen, the smart ones with good business sense
| are the ones who make real money in the trades, and they're
| mostly doing sales, supervision, training, and _maybe_
| personally handling some limited amount of the trickier bits
| of the actual labor (or cases where they have to come back to
| fix things, if they really care about customer service), by
| some time in their 30s. They may acquire some minor,
| persistent aches and pains from the work in their 20s or
| early 30s, but are mostly out of the rougher side of the job
| before it seriously harms their QOL. Like a lot of business,
| the real money 's in selling other people's labor at a
| markup, not in selling your own labor.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| > Like a lot of business, the real money's in selling other
| people's labor at a markup, not in selling your own labor.
|
| I hate that this is true, and am glad I found a way to make
| a living that avoids both, but congratulations on getting
| to the core of the matter with great clarity.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| Quite correct, but I would add that a necessary skill is
| also in being able to herd cats with a high turnover
| workforce that is made up with a high percentage of semi-
| functional addicts and/or flakes.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Correct
|
| Electricians have to work in less than desirable conditions
| (dusty attics, outdoors, etc). Most of the material is your
| responsibility.
|
| Accidents can and do happen. The days where you are less than
| 100% but you would be able to WFH don't exist.
|
| Think it's annoying to plug a network cable under your desk?
| It's like that but 7hrs per day or more.
| walshemj wrote:
| And developers don't have the risk of death by
| electrocution even with low voltage - when you work with
| Medium and High voltage its a lot more dangerous
| edgyquant wrote:
| Electrical is like plugging in a network cable through the
| wall and up the ceiling, then down a really slim corridor
| to another wall, before finally placing the cord in the PC
| (all while trying to not pump another cord going the same
| route.) I worked beside a couple of electricians in my
| early 20s and it was fun but frustrating (like
| programming.)
| bennysomething wrote:
| Funnily enough I actually grew up on building sites too, my
| dad was a builder / small time property developer. Out of all
| the trades I noticed the electricians had it easiest. I
| distinctly remember holding plaster board above my head while
| standing on scaffolding while a joiner (USA speak: carpenter)
| nailed it to the ceiling. And him telling me "see this is why
| you should pass your exams so you don't end up doing this".
| However it was obvious who the smart guys were they had their
| own businesses and directed their guys rather than do the
| dirty work. When I was 16 I said to my parents I was thinking
| of doing electrician apprenticeship, my dad said it would be
| a shame to miss out on the fun and adventure of university,
| so I did that instead. Think it was a mistake.
| eric4smith wrote:
| The only winners of remote work will be those who are self
| disciplined enough to get work done without outside supervision
| or motivation.
|
| That goes for every single field that does remote work -
| learning, teaching, Knowledge work etc.
|
| But let's be honest - some people need the motivation of a
| workplace -- and that's ok!
|
| We are all different. Im somewhere in the middle... love working
| from home but it's easy to get distracted with side projects,
| feeding birds, germinating seeds etc.
|
| I realize when I need to really buckle up, I go in the office for
| a few weeks and that puts me back on track with the major
| projects.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| > enough to get work done without outside supervision or
| motivation.
|
| Sounds like a business opportunity
| tellersid wrote:
| I have been going into the office when I could work remote.
|
| I don't feel like it is a motivation thing. It all comes down
| to for me is getting sick of being at home so much.
|
| I think many people on my team are not doing well mental health
| wise from being at home so much.
|
| The most miserable people I know are software engineers that
| have been working remote for years making great money. One guy
| I know works at night because he can. Sleeps to 2pm. Basically,
| never leaves the house for anything. Seems unable to connect
| though that being a total shut in is why he is not happy even
| though he is killing it objectively. Practically hiding from
| the world.
| slickrick216 wrote:
| I think you are totally right about the self motivation part.
| I'd wonder though is it just that people who aren't motivated
| are easier to see in a remote work setting vs the office as you
| judge people by their tangible outputs alone. In the office
| setting this is obscured but the same cohort aren't actually
| doing anything more or less.
| papito wrote:
| I can be as unproductive at work as I can be at home, but
| coasting in the office is so exhausting, I'd rather do work.
| ohazi wrote:
| I can even recall a handful of times when I was trying to
| solve a fiddly problem, and couldn't concentrate because
| our (open floor plan) office was a zoo.
|
| I would tell my boss I needed some quiet, would go home,
| would sit down and solve the problem, and would come back
| the next day feeling _much_ less frustrated.
| papito wrote:
| I should have done that more often. Open floor, combined
| with Slack and over-communication made me 4x less
| productive.
| abeppu wrote:
| But ... in the office, was the "supervision" really from
| someone physically looking at you with direct line of sight? I
| feel like on a remote team, everyone still knows who else is
| getting stuff done, in part because our work products are
| digital artifacts which often need attention from our
| coworkers, whether that's "review this PR", "review this
| design", "read this email and implement the policy change
| described in it" etc.
|
| There are some high level stats that suggest that in aggregate,
| productivity increased with WFH, though I'm not sure how much
| of that stemmed from people working in the hours that they
| previously would have commuted.
| epicide wrote:
| (For me) while I also get distracted from work while at home, I
| find it is about the same amount as in an office. The biggest
| difference is the distractions are far more healthy and
| productive than the ones I'm left to in an office.
| luffapi wrote:
| > _love working from home but it's easy to get distracted with
| side projects, feeding birds, germinating seeds etc._
|
| For programmers at least "productivity" comes from writing
| leveragable code, not by working more hours. Watching birds,
| gardening and generally being relaxed and rested will
| _increase_ the quality of the code you write. It may even allow
| you to envision solutions impossible to come up with under the
| daily grind of commute- >stand up->lunch
| gossip->meetings->commute. I think managers that understand how
| to develop good software are few and far between.
|
| Productivity aside, your routine sounds awesome and everyone
| who can should try to achieve something similar without concern
| for their employer's productivity. I assure you the concern for
| well-being is not bi-directional.
| jb_s wrote:
| That's lovely. I work in consulting and every hour I get
| distracted I have to make up at some other point in the day.
| usually late at night after my kid is asleep.
|
| yes I'm looking for other work...
| pc86 wrote:
| There are also plenty of programmers who are just lazy and
| don't want to work a lot. Check out any of the dozens
| (hundreds?) of comments on Blind of people working 15, 20, 25
| hours a week. Total.
|
| "I'm sitting on my porch drinking a beer and watching birds
| but _trust me I 'm totally working right now_" doesn't take
| you very far.
| mcguire wrote:
| That depends, though. How many people reading this thread
| would say, "I'm sitting in my cube surfing the 'net, but
| _trust me I 'm totally working right now"?_
| luffapi wrote:
| The best code I've ever written was when I was only working
| 10 hours a week. Hours worked has no positive correlation
| with quality of code written. Good managers know letting
| their devs watch birds and relax will result in a much
| higher quality of output then forcing them into the office
| and dropping by their desk to prod them.
| orwin wrote:
| I've had weeks were i worked 60 hours of crunch, but most
| weeks, even if i was at the office i work barely more than
| 25 hours. Between reading tech news, gossip, researching a
| bit on this totally new tech that seems nice, trying to
| justify a POC to my n+1/n+2 and preparing slides on "why
| leaving Jenkins totally make sense", i did so much false
| work that honestly would annoy me if i was a manager. Now
| i'm leaving my computer for 30 minute pauses, it is far
| healthier for me, i'm more effective at my job and i
| stopped wasting my time and the time of my collegues on
| meaningless presentations. I still do somes on "clean code"
| or "how to rework your commits to prepare efficient code
| reviews", but it is for the benefit of the team, while the
| one i did pre-covid were for my entertainment.
| geodel wrote:
| Well wining and dining has taken management folks quite far
| and writing same-old CRUD app thousandth time by hand is
| not gonna take developers very far.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| Good for those people, I have worked plenty of jobs where I
| really don't actually work much over 20 hours a week and
| still get top ratings.
|
| Screw the grind culture crap
| ffjffsfr wrote:
| Large corporations will always win because they have the power
| and might. Remote work will just allow them to hire cheaply from
| low income locations and what employees are going to do about it.
| iainctduncan wrote:
| I have done remote work for a long time (because ...Canada), and
| the real issue is that it requires management to have their shit
| together. I also assess companies for acquisitions now so I talk
| every month to companies about what's working and what isn't.
| I've seen some very successful companies with partially remote or
| even 100% remote teams. And... they have their shit together.
| Managers have to actually know what the hell they are going to do
| _tomorrow_ , instead of making stuff up when the stand-up
| happens. Workers have to be lined up in their swim lanes and the
| whole thing has to be orchestrated... you know, like _actual
| agile_ instead of the reactive pfaffery that everyone passes off
| as "hybrid agile" (boy do I hear that phrase a lot in
| diligence!)
|
| Given how much I've seen it work, and how bad the tech talent war
| is right now, I'm pretty confident there will be lots of remote
| only options in 6-12 months when upper managers finally wrap
| their heads around the fact that this is what they have to do to
| find and hold top talent now. At the competitive companies, upper
| execs/board members will start dropping middle managers who can't
| hack it when they see their attrition numbers in the losing part
| of the spread.
| astockwell wrote:
| The #1 question I wish I could get answered for any prospective
| company (as an interviewee):
|
| "Do you have your shit together?"
|
| Seriously. This could avoid so much heartache.
| stingraycharles wrote:
| It's actually fairly easy to ask, and many candidates ask me
| that: "how do you organize yourselves?"
|
| It's a very reasonable question to ask during an interview.
| shreddit wrote:
| Since most companies employ humans, i'd say most of them
| don't.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| I think at a certain point in your career you often get hired
| because things are messed up. That isn't bad, that is why
| they are ready to pay for experience and skill.
| Clubber wrote:
| >Workers have to be lined up in their swim lanes and the whole
| thing has to be orchestrated... you know, like actual agile
| instead of the reactive pfaffery that everyone passes off as
| "hybrid agile" (boy do I hear that phrase a lot in diligence!)
|
| Swim lanes isn't agile per se, it's just business communicating
| their priorities and assigning it to development. I remember
| when agile came out, it was great from the development point of
| view. It was almost immediately perverted by consultants trying
| to make a buck trying to sell scrum as a panacea to all
| development costs and overruns. There's an awful lot of snake
| oil salesmen in tech. Other than that, I agree with everything
| you said.
|
| https://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html
| mumblemumble wrote:
| The Agile Manifesto is not gospel.
|
| For starters, I would argue that, "The most efficient and
| effective method of conveying information to and within a
| development team is face-to-face conversation," has proven,
| in the fullness of time, to be an oversimplification.
|
| More importantly, the Agile Manifesto _not_ saying something
| two decades ago does not mean that it has no place in
| contemporary agile software development. We 've had 20 years'
| worth of time to learn since then. It would be a shame if we
| hadn't.
|
| To that end, I do think that active orchestration - and, for
| that matter, written communication - is critical to being
| really agile at any sort of scale. It doesn't necessarily
| need to be done using swim lanes, but they do happen to be a
| nice mental model (and visual mnemonic) for keeping track of
| real-world phenomena such as varying quality of service
| obligations.
|
| But I also think that it makes sense to leave them out of any
| concrete definition of what it means to be agile. Not only is
| there more than one way to satisfy that need, there's also no
| guarantee that every team will have that need.
| lmilcin wrote:
| To be fair, same things apply when your team isn't working
| remotely. It is not like being able to plan one day in advance
| has less value when you work in person.
|
| It is just that remote working mercilessly exposes some of the
| flaws in the organization.
|
| For example, people who look for a way to slack off now can do
| this much easier. The problem really is selecting right
| personnel and motivating them. If you try to treat the problem
| with a stick it most likely will fail with remote people.
| mumblemumble wrote:
| I've bounced back and forth among remote and co-located
| positions of varying levels of effectiveness. I haven't seen
| much trouble with remote workers slacking off. But I have
| seen a lot of tension with mixed teams, typically around this
| problem of remote people getting frustrated about management
| not having their shit together. The overarching theme that
| I've seen is that it's really easy to confuse "enjoyable" and
| "effective." And co-located offices give you all sorts of
| opportunities to mix those up, because oftentimes the most
| enjoyable ways for a co-located team to work aren't really
| the most effective. But nobody cares, because they're
| enjoying it.
|
| By contrast, one of the (un?)happy accidents of remote life
| is that it tends to cause ineffective organization and
| communication styles to also be unenjoyable.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Yes, it's a wonderful filter, isn't it?
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| The whole thing is complicated and companies do, eventually,
| adjust.
|
| Anecdote. I am in process of looking for a full time remote since
| my mega boss decided that hybrid is good enough for me and no
| amount of paperwork could convince her otherwise. Right now I am
| remote until delta dies off or HR changes its mind.
|
| I told no to recruiter 2 weeks ago, because the job was not
| remote. Just today it seems the company received a lot of nos,
| because I got a very similar job description and it is now
| remote.
|
| Now.. the companies are trying to make remote less appealing (
| and trying to argue that you should be paid less ), but, quite
| frankly, remote is worth a lot to me now. You would think smart
| companies would want to use it to their advantage.
|
| Instead, most of the stories I hear from my social circle goes
| smth like this 'old guard wants us back in office'.
| shock-value wrote:
| > Now.. the companies are trying to make remote less appealing
| ( and trying to argue that you should be paid less ), but,
| quite frankly, remote is worth a lot to me now.
|
| If remote is itself valuable to you then it would stand that
| companies could get away with offering a lower salary for
| remote work, at least in your case.
| mlac wrote:
| I really do think the "old guard" has the most to lose from
| commercial real estate investments.
|
| Think about who sits on the board for a major company... It's
| owners and executives from commercial real estate firms. There
| is a ton of money around commercial real estate, so letting it
| all just collapse (or losing even 10% of that market) is
| billions of dollars shifted around the economy.
|
| Most "normal" people who are working from home have little
| interest in commercial property (aside from a REIT, maybe), so
| they don't care at all if the office buildings go empty.
|
| It's not hard to imagine the board rooms having these
| discussions and being pushed toward getting people back in the
| office. And it's evident they are pushing the propaganda
| machine with effectiveness studies and articles about how
| remote work doesn't work.
| pc86 wrote:
| What evidence do you have that major companies' boards are
| filled with "executives from commercial real estate firms?"
| mlac wrote:
| Sorry and thank you for calling it out.
|
| I should have written "Executives with interest in
| commercial real estate". From heads of consulting firms to
| executives with commercial real estate in their own
| organizations, nearly all of them have a strong interest in
| commercial real estate doing well. I would expect most, if
| not all large companies to have exposure to commercial real
| estate and many make a lot of money from building and
| investing in commercial real estate.
|
| But the people that have the strongest interest in this
| doing well are the people who are in the boardroom. I
| really think there are few similar issues where the
| interest of the board and the interest of employees are
| opposed (many workers want to stay home, many board members
| want them back in the office).
|
| Take Google - Robin L. Washington sits on Google's board
| and also Honeywell's. Honeywell has $5 BN on their books in
| "Property, plant, and equipment". Not sure how much of that
| is office buildings vs. manufacturing, but still even 10%
| is $500 M.
|
| It's not like it's some major conspiracy, it's just that
| boards are small, you can make hops between large
| companies, and it only takes a small push to make all large
| corporations lean toward return to work. For most companies
| with exposure to real estate it makes sense. Most others'
| (I'd argue) have board members with an interest in propping
| up commercial real estate. Most common people do not have a
| direct interest, but will feel pain if the commercial real
| estate market significantly changes.
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm skeptical that executives in commercial real estate have
| that much leverage over major corporations. I expect things
| like a bias towards the status quo, sunk cost fallacies,
| concerns about long-term culture/productivity, and so forth
| are more than enough to make companies hesitant to go
| mostly/fully remote.
| orwin wrote:
| Looking at this in another way. Of the 5 managers i know at
| the bank i'm working in (and i'm pretty high up since the
| sbject i'm working on is transversal to 90% of devs teams
| in the bank), all of them have real estate. Either because
| they are now old and invested early (in the 2000's), or
| because they inherited it. I'm not talking about one or two
| appartments, i'm talking about whole buildings in Paris and
| Villas on the Cote d'azur. The incentives are here, not
| only for the executive but also for the middle-high
| managment.
| mlac wrote:
| Exactly - board members / senior executives are the
| people who can afford to invest in commercial real
| estate.
| Clubber wrote:
| It depends if said corporations own the building / land or
| not.
| mlac wrote:
| Even if they don't directly own the land, at some point
| organizations likely service companies that would be
| impacted by a drop.
|
| And once an organization gets to a certain size it just
| makes sense to run and buy your own properties.
| Clubber wrote:
| I think there is also a lot of commercial real estate
| tied up in derivatives.
| schnevets wrote:
| The article describes gains made by "superstars", who can be seen
| as self-motivated and capable of making a big impact. I am
| extremely concerned about how we cultivate superstars in the
| remote work world.
|
| I have been working remote for over 5 years now, but I wouldn't
| have survived without a lot of luck and years of experience as an
| intern/entry level employee at an office with some brilliant
| mentors.
|
| I have tried mentoring in the same vein as those who taught me,
| but it hasn't caught on as well. I am concerned about how many
| people entering the workforce fail to reach that superstar
| threshold because they are missing a few key elements (which may
| be face-to-face interaction). I am also quickly learning that the
| high-impact employee does not necessarily make the best mentor.
| ghaff wrote:
| I entered the workforce in a very different time with very
| different tools which makes it hard for me to think through the
| counterfactual: "What if I had had to be remote when I first
| started working?" But I think it would have been very difficult
| and I might have been less successful as a result.
|
| Even today, I feel like I'm cruising a bit on existing in-
| person relationships. (I was large remote pre-COVID but I still
| met a lot of people at in-person events and meetings.
| jdgiese wrote:
| We're fully remote and have hired a few engineers out of
| college. They're very independent and productive. Who knows
| if they'd be even better if they worked onsite, but I doubt
| it.
| ghaff wrote:
| As I say, very different time. I didn't even really have
| email prior to entering the workplace and, while there were
| conference calls to manufacturing sites and the like and
| other (frequent) phone calls, it was a very in-person swing
| by offices/desks/labs sort of environment. But that's
| obviously different from what a fresh engineering grad has
| been exposed to.
| hawthornio wrote:
| I'm a fresh grad who has basically only worked remote (except
| a summer internship freshman year and TA-ing in person 2
| years ago), so I'll report back in 5 years as a counter-
| factual ;)
| muh_gradle wrote:
| New York Times articles really disappointing me lately.
| roflc0ptic wrote:
| This article really isn't about remote work writ large, it's
| about websites/organizations that provide platforms for
| individuals to sell services to consumers. The fact that you can
| make popular workout videos from your home is orthogonal to the
| behavior of consumers on the Peloton platform.
|
| It's an interesting and important observation that good
| communicators win disproportionately as telecommunications get
| better - e.g. because recorded music is a thing, as a
| songwriter/guitarist I'm competing with Frank Zappa for
| mindshare. But this just isn't about remote work. Feel like I got
| clickbaited.
| echopurity wrote:
| It's got to be clickbait. If there are winners, then how many
| workers are losing by working remotely? It seems obvious that
| the vast majority of people win big by not being forced to
| commute into a full day at an office where they would rather
| not be.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| _how many workers are losing by working remotely_
|
| I think the big losers are the service workers that provided
| services for all of those office employees: coffee shop
| workers, restaurants, drycleaners, caterers that provided
| employee lunches, cleaning people, etc.
|
| A Starbucks, a drycleaner and 2 or 3 restaurants that were in
| my former office building have shut down permanently. My
| company stopped stocking snacks and catering lunches 3 days a
| week, and presumably they or the building have cut back on
| cleaning as well as general building maintenance staff.
|
| Some of those jobs will come back when (if) we return to in-
| office work, but since it will probably be part time in-
| office work, not all of those jobs will be back.
|
| Food trucks seem to be doing pretty well - when employees
| dispersed, they did too. I don't go into the city much since
| I don't go to the office, but now I visit the same food
| trucks in my own town and they seem to be pretty busy.
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| Yeah, there are a _lot_ of businesses that have gone under
| because they were geared to serving office workers. Out
| here in Silicon Valley, a Panera-esque chain called
| Specialty's just shut down completely within a couple
| months after offices closed; most of their locations were
| only open Monday through Friday for breakfast and lunch.
| Downtown San Jose hasn't been completely decimated, but I'm
| pretty sure there are a lot of places that aren't coming
| back.
|
| (N.B.: There is one Specialty's location that has re-
| opened, near Moffett in Mountain View; apparently the
| family that started the chain decades ago bought the
| assets, and their one original location, back.)
| spaceisballer wrote:
| You're exactly correct here. Our complex isn't in the
| greatest area, but it sure was nice to have a dry cleaner
| right across the street. But in our complex we had a
| cafeteria and two satellite snack places. They are closed
| until our building hits a % of capacity as stated in their
| contract. I feel like there is a big opportunity for food
| trucks. Maybe use those empty mall parking lots and set up
| some times for people to grab food, set up outdoor dining.
| francisofascii wrote:
| To use an example from the parent post, local, cyclist spin
| trainers are losing, since people are simply using the
| Pelaton trainers at home, rather than going to an "in person"
| spin class. The local, small time trainer can't compete with
| a celebrity/model trainer. Similar to how TV and movies hurt
| local theatres. In the end, it is more efficient, but there
| are "losers".
| ghaff wrote:
| I'm not convinced a lot of these trends stick post-COVID. A
| lot of people _like_ the in-person part of the spin class
| and probably would prefer it to the highly-paid video pro.
|
| That said, behaviors will have changed for a lot of things
| over the course of a couple of years. People have developed
| new habits. Not all of that--including going into an office
| five days a week in many cases--are going to just reset.
| umeshunni wrote:
| The same principles that apply to remote work apply here.
|
| Why would I want to drive 10-15 minutes, park, change and
| all that for a 30 or 60 minute spin class when I can take
| that same class in my garage or living room.
| asdff wrote:
| because then you wouldn't need a spin bike in your garage
| or living room
| edgyquant wrote:
| There's a difference between social interaction because
| you want it and working. I work from home and use the gym
| and martial as (non-drinking) social time during the
| week.
| teclordphrack2 wrote:
| There are urban areas where the housing choices, the lack
| of space, means you are going to be doing your hobbies
| outside of the home.
| ghaff wrote:
| Because you want to get out of the house and socialize
| with people as well as get some exercise. Now some of the
| same logic _does_ apply to people wanting to get back
| into office. But I doubt it 's true to the same degree
| and most people have more than a 10-15 minute commute.
|
| While I have no personal interest in gyms or exercise
| classes, they are social for many people.
| mym1990 wrote:
| Because some people like to have separation of concerns
| in their life. I don't necessarily want to have my home
| be where I workout and where I work. Especially given
| that I live in a small studio. I do classes 1x a week
| still, and being in a room, 15 minutes down the street,
| surrounded by people in the same mindset helps me focus
| on that task.
|
| This doesn't fit into everyone's wants and needs...but
| just because you can't fathom why YOU would want to do
| something doesn't mean there isn't a completely valid
| reason for those around you.
| closeparen wrote:
| What reason do we have to believe that there will be a
| point in the future with less COVID risk than there is
| today? By what mechanism will that arise?
| mym1990 wrote:
| Vaccination numbers still have a lot of room to grow, the
| virus may mutate into something that has a lower kill
| rate, the vaccine efficacy will likely improve, etc...
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| My (limited!) understanding is that mutations that make
| pathogens more contagious but less fatal are
| evolutionarily advantageous, so to the degree we can talk
| about Covid-19 having "self-interest," becoming ever
| closer to Bad Case of Flu is within it.
| ghaff wrote:
| Well, and at some point, even relatively cautious
| rational people go: "I'm not permanently curtailing my
| activities." I live in a deep blue state and, while you
| see masks, life has returned to normal in a lot of
| respects.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Just want to note that pre-COVID, not many people would
| even have considered not-in-person equivalents to things
| that they thought they preferred in-person. When I say
| "not even considered", in many cases I mean "were not
| even aware they existed".
|
| It might be that their pre-COVID apparent preferences
| remain their actual preference post-COVID, but I would
| not take that for granted.
| francisofascii wrote:
| Post-Covid, I tend to agree. If people continue to work
| from home, rather than in an office, then the in-person
| spin class and other in-person activities could actually
| surge in popularity, since people will want more in-
| person interaction.
| datavirtue wrote:
| Pelaton trainers, on average, are far superior to in-
| person instructors. The experience is better in-home and
| less time is in used travelling and changing. My
| equipment. My home. Die hard educated professional
| leading the class. The only in-person that comes close
| runs about $300-500 a month.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's not all about impersonal efficiency for many people.
| Damogran6 wrote:
| There's also the people using spin class trainers in Apple+
| that wouldn't ordinarily use one...it's not a zero sum
| game. (I have it playing the the background as I ride my
| roadbike, it provides enthusiasm even if the effort doesn't
| line up with the road.)
| gringoDan wrote:
| This makes complete sense - just another example of power law
| dynamics of the internet.
|
| Short-term, we're going to see companies pursue a remote model in
| order to attract talent. This will be great for employees; live
| in Colorado, go on hikes and have a great lifestyle while
| commanding a SF salary!
|
| Longer-term, companies are going to realize that (except for the
| top ~10% of performers, who will always command a high salary)
| having remote workers in the US is functionally equivalent to
| having remote workers in Mexico or Argentina. US workers are in
| for a rude awakening when they realize they're competing in a
| labor market with a more driven, lower cost-of-living population
| in the rest of the world.
|
| Shameless plug - I wrote a blog post about all of this back in
| December: https://paranoidenough.com/2020/12/07/Labor-Market-
| Arbitrage...
| justaguy88 wrote:
| Time zone 'compatibility' is extremely important
|
| Happily hire north/south, but too many hours east/west and
| people have to give up off-time just to have regular meetings
| datavirtue wrote:
| Offshoring failed for the same reason s we will not have the
| worries you espouse.
| zz865 wrote:
| I'm not sure why you think it failed, my company's biggest
| office is in India, same as my last job.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| There are real drawbacks to remote only in terms of culture and
| employee committment. Those who can afford it will probably
| keep being hybrid I think. Those who want to cut costs will
| outsource. But since software companies are swimming in money I
| am not sure its a huge priority.
| blahblahblogger wrote:
| Agreed. My company (Pinterest) recently opened "new offices"
| for engineering talent, but they were in Mexico City and
| elsewhere.
|
| The idea that we'll be competing with other US-based workers is
| wrong.
|
| In the long run our remote-work "more freedom" fantasy will
| come to an end.
| Sevii wrote:
| The focus on programmers as the vanguard of the remote work
| trend distracts from what could be the real change the
| outsourcing of white collar work.
|
| Why do we need our lawyers, accountants, human resources and
| other back office employees to be American when Chilean workers
| will do those jobs for half or a quarter the pay?
|
| What outsourcing did to manufacturing jobs, remote work may do
| to white collar jobs.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| Law and accountancy is much harder to outsource than
| programming. You usually have to be U.S certified so thats
| pretty much protected.
| justaguy88 wrote:
| You could set up a US Law school in another country
| ghaff wrote:
| There's no shortage of lawyers and law school grads from
| 2nd and 3rd tier schools aren't actually all that well
| paid on average. The big NY white shoe firm salaries?
| They mostly come from a relatively small number of
| schools, students who did well, often had good
| internships or clerkships, maybe were on law review,
| maybe have connections, etc.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| The school is less of a problem than the state-by-state
| bar exam, I believe.
| sangnoir wrote:
| You don't need to pass the bar to be a paralegal & do the
| grunt work while the firm is billing US rates. Bigger law
| and accounting firms already utilize this model, whereby
| entry level employees do the bulk of the raw work, and
| the audit report/advisory/legal filing gets pushed up the
| hierarchy while being simultaneously refined and
| improved, sometimes sent back down the chain. Many
| revisions later, the final version is signed off, by
| someone who has passed the state bar, and possibly has
| their name on the building - if the client is a big deal.
| ThalesX wrote:
| You have the Ubers and AirBnBs circumventing laws around
| the world and you think it's hard to optimize for a remote
| law and accountancy practice? Just have offshore remoters
| do the bulk of work and have it signed by a certified local
| lawyer / accountant.
| joelbluminator wrote:
| It's not impossible I guess, you will need to find people
| who know U.S law well. If you're talking about
| accountancy that's pretty complex stuff. You can
| outsource the grunt work easily (going over Excel sheets,
| that has been ousourced for decades already) but the
| substantial work no, I don't think it's that easy.
| ThalesX wrote:
| I don't think it's easy either. There are smart people
| everywhere in the world. If these people could be easily
| paid and could get their results validated by a local
| expert, there would be a lot of financial incentive for
| these smart people to learn the US law, for example, and
| create case files for the local experts to evaluate and
| sign on.
|
| Would it cut the need for the local experts? No. Would it
| reduce their numbers? Maybe, it could also diversify
| them. Would it lower the cost for the service? I also
| think so.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Would it result in the "superstar" local experts (to use
| TFA's terminology) making huge amounts of money? Almost
| certainly.
| oblio wrote:
| To paraphrase Morgan Freeman in the Dark Knight:
|
| So your target for disruption is law firms and your
| strategy is to do something illegal to build a huge
| business that destroys them?!?
| lthornberry wrote:
| Certified lawyers/accountants have ethical compliance
| responsibilities. They should be doing meaningful review,
| not just "signing off." There are savings to be realized,
| but they are more limited than one might think. The
| difference here is that there are professional
| associations with both the ability to discipline people
| who don't follow the rules, and a deep interest in doing
| so.
| ThalesX wrote:
| You can do meaningful reviews of folders others have
| prepared for you, others that get paid pennies compared
| to what you would pay locally.
|
| > The difference here is that there are professional
| associations with both the ability to discipline people
| who don't follow the rules, and a deep interest in doing
| so.
|
| If I understand correctly, then indeed yes, it would be
| hard to disrupt this space. But I have a feeling someone
| smarter than me, perhaps even yourself, will find a way
| to go around it. At one point taxi medallions seemed
| unmovable.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think, for law, you could probably get some utility out
| of lawyers within the same families of legal system (i.e.
| english descended systems have a lot of similarities) but
| the specialization here is too extreme... That all said,
| I've got a relative that's a military lawyer who has done
| the standard thing of being regularly relocated across
| the globe - and he is still bar certified in Mass. I
| imagine if you could build enough of an expectation of
| work you could take raw law school grads in Mexico City
| and prep them to pass the NY/Mass/Whatever bar exam as is
| relevant to your company. This would be a big investment
| on both the individual and company's side but maybe
| there's some space there to cut under standard US rates?
|
| Taxi disruption worked to various degrees depending on
| how much the local certification meant - in most locales
| it was just "Can drive cars" - in areas where there is a
| geographic knowledge test the ride-share disrupters have
| fared less well. I think it's essentially the same for
| lawyers - their certification is extremely non-trivial, a
| lot of laywers only ever get certified in a single state
| due to how much of an investment it is and how little
| value you get out of it.
|
| I could see a proposition coming from the opposite side -
| trying to unify portions of the law so that the regional
| specialty becomes irrelevant - but you'd need to fight
| against a lot of unfriendly folks and sovereignty
| concerns to do anything on that front.
|
| Instead, the market players we can see in the legal space
| today focus elsewhere - legal matters that are
| predictable enough that you can essentially mass-produce
| responses for needs. For common contract law this seems
| like a great fit - but as soon as anything gets
| complicated you need to pull a warm body into the mix.
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