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

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

#491

Post by cpif » Wed, Oct 19, 2022, 4:17 PM UTC

I hate commuting, I don't much care for my coworkers, I'm fairly antisocial in general, and I love hanging out at home. Remote work seems to have solved a number of work-life balance and accessibility problems.

So while I can't quite buy any sunny version of the act of "going to work," I do feel like something is missing. Maybe the miserable aspects were "character-building." The whole thing reminds me of recent high school graduates who are disoriented by the realization that their formerly rich social life was unnatural and enforced.

I think remote work is here to stay and I'm personally glad for it. But perhaps your opinions would sound less "controversial" if you framed what you feel you're missing out on as a mysterious je ne sais quoi of workplace life. I would never say, "Yeah, I miss seeing my coworkers every day," but I probably would say, "Yeah, sometimes I have an odd sense of Stockholm Syndrome for those freaks." And maybe creating a space to talk about that feeling is important.

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

#492

Post by ghaff » Wed, Oct 19, 2022, 4:19 PM UTC

z9znz wrote: post #427

ghaff wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, I have about a five minute drive to the nearby train station and then I'm something over an hour by train and subway into the city depending upon where I'm going. Aside from not being able to actually walk to the train station, I'm not sure how you improve on that given the distance no matter what country you're in. And having done that commute about 3 days a week for over a year, it was pretty bad even th…

Your public transport options are not common for most US dwellers. There are 10s of millions of people in the US who don't have access to any real public transport, especially trains.

Yes, I think it probably is uncommonly good for the US--all the hate the MBTA gets notwithstanding. But that's sort of my point. The city has relatively good public transit that is pretty much as convenient to me as is reasonable. And the commute still sucks. (I'm pretty far out but not unreasonably so.)

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

#493

Post by distances » Wed, Oct 19, 2022, 4:19 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #442

distances wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that just from commuting? For me the cost is 50-100€ per month depending on the cost of the public transport ticket, and that I can deduct from taxes anyway. Plus a couple of extra lunches I would buy with WFO. So basically negligible.

I assume that's just a bus/subway pass? At least where I live, parking at the train station, a monthly train pass, plus a monthly transit pass would be something like $500 or $600 dollars. To say nothing of taking almost 90 minutes door to door.

Yes that's the scale for monthly public transport ticket price in large number of continental European cities. I don't own a car so I may be out of touch with those expenses, 15% just sounded to me like a lot.

The time value is of course then on top, but the parent accounted for that separately.

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

#494

Post by allisdust » Wed, Oct 19, 2022, 4:21 PM UTC

On the other hand, down south in South asia, thanks to the remote work boom, the packages being offered to developers have gone to insane levels. Good devs with 5 years of experience are being offered $80k in non equity compensation. We got beat at 3 recent offers because we could only offer $60k usd in non equity compensation.

I'm not sure how long the good days are going to last but I don't have a good feeling about this.

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

#495

Post by ghaff » Wed, Oct 19, 2022, 4:21 PM UTC

z9znz wrote: post #449

ghaff wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really depends where you live both in Europe and the US. Many people in Europe have long commutes (and even public transportation can be time-consuming). At least some number of people in the US whose companies have city offices choose to live in the city and walk/cycle/take public transit but many do not. If I were to commute to our city office it's something like 3 hours round trip daily. Even being able to go 9…

> especially given they probably live in a relatively small apartment. Yeah, I can very much sympathize with people... some of my ex-colleagues in fact... who lived in small apartments (and even shared apartments with others) during the COVID forced work from home times. Oh and people with kids, especially small ones... A lot of people in nice cities intentionally choose cheaper apartments at the expense of space bec…

And add to that the fact that pretty much all the urban things which were pretty much the justification for choosing a small city apartment weren't even available.

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

#496

Post by thex10 » Wed, Oct 19, 2022, 4:21 PM UTC

sunsunsunsun wrote: post #321

One of the reasons I have been pushing hard for full work from home at my company is purely economical. Having to work from the office is actively degrading my quality of life, my wife and I have a child on the way and we are stuck in a 1 bedroom apartment because we simply cannot afford to buy a home anywhere in the city which my office is located. My pay would have to at a minimum double to even qualify for a mortg…

Economically speaking, does your job not pay enough for you to afford a 2-3 bedroom apartment?

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

#497

Post by warcher » Wed, Oct 19, 2022, 4:22 PM UTC

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…

Honestly as I operated a fully remote small business for a long long time, I think you're missing the real remote work lever.

Access to talent. Dramatically increased access to talent. Exponentially increased. You can get anybody across the whole world if you like, or at the very least anybody within a reasonable time difference.

This cannot possibly be overstated as an impact on your business. Talent is actually fairly evenly distributed across the world, but you only had access to a tiny slice of it before.

The issue here is that most management I've run into has a seriously hard time managing, recruiting, retaining, or honestly even identifying talent. Most of the time people just punt and say "Well they got hired at a FAANG, or somebody else promoted them, or they went to a school with a basketball team I've heard of, so how bad could they be" or something on those lines. So they're missing out on all these great people that were previously outside their narrow slice of who could reasonably drive in.

And managing a remote team is a big pain in the ass, no question about it.

So it's harder with a meaningful upside. Managers that can turn the corner will win, the rest are gonna get left behind. It's even more stark in tech, because organizations that can make that adjustment are going to poach a ton of talent from managers that can't get it together. WFH is very very very popular in tech. (I'm not really a WFH fan aside from family concerns, but family concerns are probably the biggest driver in my working decisions, so that's that. WFH is a big deal if you've got kids, and the best, most skilled workers you can get often are dealing with kids and a family. Folks with decent emotional intelligence, work experience, good energy, these people are textbook quality workers, but are usually married with a family.)

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

#498

Post by unethical_ban » Wed, Oct 19, 2022, 4:22 PM UTC

hirvi74 wrote: post #329

UnpossibleJim wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to hop on the train of criticism, but there are plenty of other ways to invest yourself in your career other than being a social butterfly around the coffee pot. Admittedly I'm a bit socially awkward and fully aware of my flaws, but that's part of the reason I enjoy terminal work in the first place. Commits and Slack are about as social as I was in the office, anyway and when I was social, people wished I would k…

Maybe I have some sort of Office-PTSD or something, but I make it very clear to my coworkers that we can be friendly, but we aren't friends. You don't need my cellphone number, we don't need to go grab drinks after work, etc.. I've just noticed that if you turn your back for a second, then out come the wolves. Less coffee pot talk the better as far as I am concerned. I have my friends and life outside of work, and I…

I have friends who are not in my profession. But I have very few friends in my profession who are not my coworkers. There is definitely social bonding to be done with people who deal with the same work you do 40 hours a week, who understand your work life in a way that others don't.

Less coffee pot talk means work sucks. It means you don't learn about other roles in your organization. It means not breaking down communication barriers between people and departments. It means people know less about each other and each other's work. It means less empathy and sympathy around common struggles.

Nowhere is anyone saying "your only friends must be work friends". But if you are unable or uninterested in establishing any connection with the people around whom you work day in and day out, IMO, that's abnormal.

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

#499

Post by Ancalagon » Wed, Oct 19, 2022, 4:24 PM UTC

sahila wrote: post #384

Ancalagon wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hot take this is the right line of thought. Restructure society so we work less, not so that we can work more.

But doesn’t this drive home OP’s point further? For people who work in service jobs - healthcare, schools, shopping, and restaurants/cafes, for example - how would you approach working less? People want to go out and eat and places are already struggling to hire. Parents want in person learning for their young kids.

Pay people more, hire more employees. The market will decide which businesses remain viable. I am honestly hopeful demand for places like restaurants decreases or the market becomes less viable because of the labor shortage, simply because that industry has mistreated its employees for so long and many have moved on the bigger and better things for themselves.

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

#500

Post by mcrad » Wed, Oct 19, 2022, 4:25 PM UTC

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #180

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…

I'd also add that comments like this: > Now, I am fully aware that there's a low of people for whom the horror of commute doesn't make up for the gains of socializing and others that just abhor having to talk to real-life people. Then there are people who work mainly to get paid and do not care to invest themselves beyond what is necessary. Are remarkably condescending. Folks opting for a better work-life balance, wh…

Implicit judgment? Remarkably condescending? It's a statement of fact that many WFH advocates are paycheck-grabbers who want to extend the least effort for the most pay.

Maybe the worst part about WFH is the increased tendency to cherry pick a line of text and derail the main topic. All because feelings of being judged personally, possibly by a sub-optimal word choice of the sender. It's almost like we are being forced to debate semantics instead of substance with attitudes like that.