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

You clearly have no close family, otherwise we wouldn't have this thread at all, simple as that. I've become parent of 2, 1 right before covid, 1 during. It took over my whole world and some (significantly some) more. I used to do tons of adrenaline/adventure sports in the mountains, now I do practically 0. I don't complain, life is about priorities.

Even if I didn't have kids, I wouldn't waste more time in the office than necessary (which is now 2 days/week). I would be enjoying life proper, which definitely doesn't happen in front of screen and on meetings. I've met people like you, but you are truly a tiny minority, most folks do IT for money and the fact they can't do any white collar profession outside it, and money are too good. Stop paying them, 0% will ever come again. Would you?

But then again, what do you think the consensus among developers in high-wage countries is? Do you think most people gladly see their salary drop by double percentage points because "someone else is just as good who gets paid that amount"? If you extrapolate from your thinking, what do you think would happen eventually?

Driving to the office in a car is bad for the environment (particulate matter causes allergies and sometimes cancer), it wastes everyone's time and it makes the cities worse. Detach a little from your individual situation and see how weird it was to commute to a far-away city and building and then usually use ssh to log in to servers that are usually not in that building/state in the first place. (And if you use public transportation, you can get coronavirus again for no reason)

>Have I been under some weird form of Stockholm Syndrom where I actually enjoyed something that was pure torture to most?

It's not about it being torture. It's about priorities. How and where you want to spend your days. We are mortal--that's what the past two years made crystal clear. Very mortal.

>And finally, I feel no one else is realizing that they are happily hacking away at the amazingly well-paid branch they're sitting on. 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? German is hardly used in business context here anyway and lower-wage countries within ±3 hours timezones abound.

It goes both ways. You can also work for companies for world-competitive rates. I have zero reason to fear someone from an eastern country catching up to my 20 year career and 10 year university education.

You should change your mindset on this unfounded fear of being replaced by a cheaper worker. You are presumably a software engineer. Capable software engineers are one of the most well-paid and sought-after professions in the world; seniors are earning way more than doctors now.

>I know that "the office" is a bad place for a lot of people. There may be product managers that ignore the noise-cancelling headphone stop-sign

Yep.

Also, open-plan offices/buildings which make you unable to focus on anything.

> I absolutely do get that for some people (fresh parents, people living at home to take care of their parents etc.) remote work is a real blessing.

For most senior engineers, remote work is a real blessing.

Also, if you do remote work, make sure that the company actually knows how to do remote work. Lots of companies are learning resistant and of course remote work sucks if they still want you to work synchronously, their video chat sucks or is non-existant, their VPN doesn't work half the time and they leadership suddenly disappeared at the beginning of 2021.

Regardless, having a good brainstorming session in person and actually building a strong sense of community and shared responsibility with a team you're on is so much better in real-life than remote for me.

Another thing is that finding an office space was really hard and we got extremely lucky. Try finding a payable office space in a capital city is not an "easy alternative" for the regular Joe I would say.