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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?

#711

Post by cableshaft »

knowledge-clay wrote: post #607
listenallyall wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on... people work far less than they ever did before, that should be pretty obvious if you just think about it. Further, tons of "work" is done with zero physical strain, lots of those "work" hours are the in-between stuff -- travel, meetings, calls, lunches -- meaning that actual hours laboring are even less. https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours

> people work far less than they ever did before Sure, if you look at the last 150 years, but the data you linked is basically flat since 1980: over the last 30 years in the United States, working hours are down 2%.

Yeah, if anything that chart highlights how workers in the US are getting screwed compared to countries like Germany on number of hours worked. They're working only about 77% as many hours, on average.

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

#712

Post by llampx »

closewith wrote: post #13
badpun wrote: post #8

> 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. This has already happened and has resulted in unific…

If that is the case, why are dev salaries in, for example, Dublin so much higher than Berlin (€115,000 vs €86,000 if Levels.fyi is to be believed)? Both are EU capitals with excellent, well-educated workforces.

Irish cost of living is much, much higher than Berlin though, so I think overall the Berlin dev would be coming out ahead, at least this was the case until 2021 when everything exploded in terms of cost of living.

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

#713

Post by ozim »

closeparen wrote: post #611
AlwaysRock wrote: post #356

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> younger tech workers are losing a big chunk of what it means to build work relationships (which are some of the best) I dont want to judge but its really hard not to if you see work relationships as some of the best relationships available. They are absolutely relationships that are formed from forced repeated interaction. Maybe I have had a few co workers who I would have naturally become friends with outside of w…

Repeated, unplanned interaction is the basic formula for all friendship development. Most people don't "naturally" become friends with strangers they brush past in public one time. Work is not the only place that can provide repeated, unplanned interaction but once out of school it is the big one.

When I WFH it opens up time to have repeated, unplanned interaction with other people than those chosen by whoever is employing me at the moment.

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

#714

Post by cableshaft »

tchaffee wrote: post #58
benjaminwootton wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem for us office advocates is that you travel into an empty office and sit on Zoom calls anyway. Of course we shouldn't drag you into the office just to appease us, but the experience of working together is effectively not available right now.

Only if you work with all people who highly value remote work. My office always has people there. And we have the option to work fully remote. Some people have never been to the office. Finding the right company culture for you is often overlooked in favor of things like the right tech stack.

Yeah, our office now seems to always have at least 30 people at it, maybe as many as 75. Hard to tell for sure, I've never been, just judging by pictures people have taken at company meetings and the cacophony of chatter and office noise I hear when someone on my team hops on a meeting when they went into the office (only one person on my team does, and even they don't seem to go in more than 1-2 times a week).

But there's still plenty of people WFH, and plenty of people who couldn't come into the office if it was suddenly mandated (which it hasn't been yet, just encouraged), because they live several states away.

I'm almost certainly giving up a better bonus and performance review by not going into the office regularly and playing office politics, but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make. I shouldn't have to make that sacrifice, but I never really played the office politics game even when I did go into the office every day, so not a big change there.

But 30+ people should be enough to get that "in-office watercooler" experience for those who like to work in the office.

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

#715

Post by wizofaus »

jspash wrote: post #704
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.

So... a WeWork then?

I'm in a WeWork building currently, and I do kinda like it, maybe it's the novelty, but seeing so many other little start-ups and various micro-businesses doing their thing, often in shared spaces, is curiously inspiring and various other perks do make coming into the office attractive enough that I do it more than I technically need to or are even expected to (it helps that it's only a very easy 15-min bike ride away!). Plus for the team I work with, I generally do find it easier to get (and provide) help when in the same physical space, and it's rarely distracting.

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

#716

Post by llampx »

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…

Interestingly, I've had the opposite experience. Working from home full-time means an office, which is an extra room. One per person, if you have a partner (open office is acceptable at the office, not at home!) and this means a couple or family who could get by with a 2br apartment now needs a 3br one.

The caveat is of course that I wanted to stay in the same city, or any city generally. I would get cheaper housing in a village, but I don't want to live in a village. Suburbs? Around Berlin where I live, they are not cheap.

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

#717

Post by antipaul »

Could age be a factor?

Once people get older and have families, I feel like they prioritize that over the social aspect of work. So they like remote.

Whereas younger people kind of want to do more socializing at work. So they may prefer going in (and commuting doesn’t feel so bad when you haven’t been doing it for years or decades)

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

#718

Post by cableshaft »

Georgelemental wrote: post #166
atribecalledqst wrote: post #154

At least for me, my primary hangup for going back to the office is that COVID -isn't over-! Since I can do my job just as well from home as from the office, I'd far prefer to stay in an environment where I have control over my level of risk. (I realize not everybody has this at home, but I live alone) For this reason, when I hear corporate taking advantage of the between-wave lull to trumpet going back to the office,…

At this point COVID is about as over as it will ever be. So do you plan to continue living as you are for the rest of your life?

You can pick and choose what you want to be exposed to, and how often. Like I'm willing to risk being exposed with a few friends once a week to play board games, dine indoors every once in a while, preferably during a time when they're not too busy, meet up with family once every month or so, shop in some stores sometimes, depending on how widespread it is currently, how long it's been since I've been vaccinated, etc (I just got the new booster so I'm a bit less strict recently), etc.

If I have to go into the office every day it's extremely difficult to manage that, especially since I know most of those people aren't going to be taking it very seriously.

Also there's been so many 'Covid exposure' emails from my workplace it's been ridiculous. They stopped bothering to report it a while back, but it was already in the double digits.

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

#719

Post by djha-skin »

lezojeda wrote: post #664
djha-skin wrote: post #217

It is our unfortunate shared lot in life that we chose a profession most suited to introverted people. For some reason when I say the word introvert people get offended. I find these are these types of people are my favorite people to be around. In particular I found that they have a superpower: they can just sit there in front of a screen for absolutely hours if not days without talking to anybody and just get thing…

>I'm hoping that the recession will kick in harder than it is now and allow the managers to start requiring people to come back in. Those who threaten to quit will make the manager's lives easier so that they don't have to lay people off. This is sort of happening at Facebook right now. Hoping for a worse economic situation for everyone just so we go back to the office with you? Really?

Hoping is too strong a word I guess. I don't wish ill on anyone. I have several coworkers that are remote out of state. I'm glad to work with them.

I just can see what's going to happen with the economy and I guess I'm looking forward to a sort of silver lining. Kind of like how the pandemic was awful but let people work from home en masse in the first place.

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

#720

Post by sokoloff »

fool1987 wrote: post #643
sokoloff wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In order for employment to be stable over the long-run, the productive employee has to create more value for the employer than they receive. (Employers have all kinds of overheads, unproductive employees, and friction/loss that has to be covered in order for the employer to not run out of money.) I hope (and work to ensure) that my employer gets an over-unity multiple of value from me and my team’s work. That keeps e…

Oh yeah for sure I am not disputing that this is the way that the system works - the whole thing rests on the compromise point between the employer's margin and the employee's wage. Both need each other to some degree and so a compromise is reached which is the market value of labour. That said, other models of system are available - worker coops and other models of employee-owned business can and do exist. They have…

Make it a worker-owned coop; the productive worker still has to create more value than they get paid unless someone else is continually putting money into the coop.
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