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Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

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Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#251

Post by the_gipsy »

It sounds exactly like Stockholm Syndrome.

You should try having fun and making friends outside of work. I suppose you can connect with IT people in meetups for example for OSS.

> As soon as a company's IT department is practically fully remote, why should they page a German wage for someone who is a face on a screen, when they can pay a fraction for that same face broadcasted from a few hundred kilometers further east or south?

I personally wouldn't want to be paid for being "A German physically present" - I prefer it if my skills are valued at my job. If your job is just showing up in the daily and spewing out some code from a ticket, then maybe you should take perspective on that. I think most of the positions that are like that, are already filled by foreign workers. There is so much more to a developers job than that, and mostly everything can be done remotely with a minimum of effort.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#253

Post by CoastalCoder »

bodge5000 wrote: post #183
stingraycharles wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there are many “subcultures” (for lack of better description) within WFH and WFO. You’re describing two of them, but there’s also a group of WFH’ers that believes the whole organization should be remote as to standardize the processes to be asynchronous, and there are WFO’ers that still like to work from home one or two days a week. There’s also WFH but within the same country, WFH globally across all timezon…

Absolutely, there are always going to be subcultures within this kind of thing, but I highly doubt the majority of those want to force their preference to others, certainly for the WFH crowd and to be fair I'd assume from the WFO crowd either, at least not consciously. > There’s definitely no such thing as the WFO’er that wants to force their preferences upon others any more than there are WFH’ers doing the same thin…

I've had a job where I was the only remote developer, and the experience was terrible. I was excluded from or forgotten for lots of important meetings and social events.

I personally wouldn't want to force everyone to WFH, but I'll never willingly repeat that experience either.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#254

Post by asdadsdad »

Oh my - I've been waiting to hear this since forever, and you couldn't have said it better. I feel exactly the same way, and I feel like specially the younger tech workers are losing a big chunk of what it means to build work relationships (which are some of the best), and to connect with people. I don't know how to fix it as like you said, most people will scream when you mention work from office/

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#256

Post by walls »

nrb wrote: post #211
adamhp wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I support fully remote work and will likely never be returning to office in my lifetime if I can help it. Here I play devil's advocate. Even though it is a hypothetical world you've constructed, you still framed it from the perspective of this world. I can do the same thing you did with a different bias. Imagine a world where everyone is socially isolated, forced to work 8 hours a day from their living sp…

> Need to get in touch with Bill? Just stroll over to his desk. Sorry to be flippant, but to me this is one of the worst parts of office life summed up in one statement. The bar for other people to carelessly interrupt you can be unbelievably low sometimes.

It's not surprising that people who would do this happen to be the people who want to return to the office.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#257

Post by krageon »

mudrockbestgirl wrote: post #107
thunky wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It all doesn't sound so bad when you frame it differently I disagree, it still sounds bad. It sounds like elementary school for adults.

> It sounds like elementary school for adults. I think that sounds pretty amazing.

To people that loved their school days the current office culture is probably already great. To people that did not, the office is just as bad. Except it is worse, because it feels like something you inflict on yourself.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#259

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

kotlin2 wrote: post #237
bodge5000 wrote: post #118

With all due respect, this is mostly my problem with the "work-from-office" (WFO for ease) crowd. Generally, the stance of the WFH crowd is that each individual should get a choice of what makes that individual happy. Very few, if any, of the WFH crowd want mandatated WFH, it would make no sense. But then the WFO crowd often says no, I don't care what makes you happy, because you being in makes me happy. That doesn't…

WFO isn't necessarily about personal preference. People who want everyone to WFO believe that WFO produces better outcomes for the company. That is different than someone who desires to work from an office or remotely out of personal preference. For instance, I may prefer to WFH because it makes my life more convenient, but I can also accept that WFO produces better outcomes for the company. Personally, I haven't see…

> The closest work-related argument I've heard is that some people work better when they're free of distractions at the office. That takes us back to companies being collaborative human endeavors. One may feel they work better in isolation, but part of ones job is to interact with others, even if that's not fun.

Have you worked in an open office or cubical farm? My hearing the sales guys isn't 'collaboration', it's distraction. Hearing my coworkers at the much-lauded ping pong table having a great time while I'm trying to get work done isn't collaboration either. Collaboration is often code for 'meetings'. As evidenced by my outlook calendar, those haven't stopped. I find that people who make this argument are those who either spend the majority of their day 'collaborating' or those who have offices they can escape to when they need to think.

> One data point is the BLS released quarterly productivity numbers last month. Productivity is down 4.1% [0]. That's pretty massive.

Mass WFH started in 2020 - I don't think you can link a Q2 2022 productivity decrease to WFH, considering the previous quarter will have had even more WFH. In fact, it's easier to link it to the return to the office.

Edit: Hell, we can even see that non-farm business sector productivity INCREASED in both 2020 and 2021.

https://www.bls.gov/news.release/prod2.t02.htm

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#260

Post by bogota »

bodge5000 wrote: post #118

With all due respect, this is mostly my problem with the "work-from-office" (WFO for ease) crowd. Generally, the stance of the WFH crowd is that each individual should get a choice of what makes that individual happy. Very few, if any, of the WFH crowd want mandatated WFH, it would make no sense. But then the WFO crowd often says no, I don't care what makes you happy, because you being in makes me happy. That doesn't…

Came exactly here to say this. Because of WFH im able to have a awesome job and see my family living in other countries and also my parents at home much more frequently now.

If you want to work in an office you can do that it’s your choice. Many people also have young kids and two working parents making the WFH flexibility ideal. Lots of reasons for WFH exist but they don’t matter. If you do your job and the company is happy why do we even need to have this discussion?

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