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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?

#781

Post by dont__panic »

joenot443 wrote: post #460
dont__panic wrote: post #340

Most of my distaste for WFO comes from two places: - the USA's failure to provide even a single city that's pleasant to live in and travel around without a car - tech company insistence on open office layouts that are not conducive to deep work The first one sounds like a commute problem... but it manifests in more ways than you think. When you have to travel around in a car, everything is expensive. Parking is a pai…

> - the USA's failure to provide even a single city that's pleasant to live in and travel around without a car New York, for good reason, is considered one of the most desirable cities there is. I've spent lots of time in cities all over the world, when you have the means and the network, I found none of them held a candle to NYC.

I've tried living in NYC. Wasn't a fan. Too many cars, too much trash all over the place, too hard & expensive to get out of the city on the weekend.

Right now I live in a small New England town, which suits my hobbies and walkability desire pretty well. The biggest con, of course, is the difficulty finding other young folks with similar interests... but I found that tough in NYC, too.

What made NYC "one of the most desirable cities" to you? I suspect you're more interested in night life, museums, theatre, etc. than me. If you're not interested in that stuff (I mostly just want places to hike, bike, run, and good food/craft beer)... NYC's value:cost ratio really falls apart. But I understand that different people have different preferences.

Sidenote: if anyone reads this and knows of a moderate size town that's walkable, bikeable, close to nature (preferably by bike), has good food and beer, low crime, where I don't have to deal with huge volumes of cars on a daily basis... I'd love to hear about it! Right now Fort Collins, CO and Montpelier, VT are high on my list.

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

#782

Post by dont__panic »

dxscorp wrote: post #369
dont__panic wrote: post #340

Most of my distaste for WFO comes from two places: - the USA's failure to provide even a single city that's pleasant to live in and travel around without a car - tech company insistence on open office layouts that are not conducive to deep work The first one sounds like a commute problem... but it manifests in more ways than you think. When you have to travel around in a car, everything is expensive. Parking is a pai…

Check out Boston/Brookline, I have a car to go see family / go north for nature but rarely use it!

When I've visited Boston, I found it to be a pretty car-dependent city, both in Cambridge and in the city center. To the point where crossing the street at corners in Cambridge was uncomfortable because cars are parked way way too close to the corner, impeding visibility. Is Brookline significantly different? Personally I wish I could live in a community with no street parking and only essential car traffic, but keep my car in a garage within biking/walking distance for longer trips.

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

#783

Post by dont__panic »

joshvm wrote: post #388
dont__panic wrote: post #340

Most of my distaste for WFO comes from two places: - the USA's failure to provide even a single city that's pleasant to live in and travel around without a car - tech company insistence on open office layouts that are not conducive to deep work The first one sounds like a commute problem... but it manifests in more ways than you think. When you have to travel around in a car, everything is expensive. Parking is a pai…

This is basically how my company works. We're sort of remote-first in that we have plenty of foreign employees around the world, but we also have a coworking space that people in that city are free to work from. Nobody is forced to work in the office and we have bookable rooms for meetings so nobody is disrupted. It's open plan/hot desks, so I tend to do my coding work from home, but I'm <10 mins from the building so…

Would you mind sharing the company name? That sounds like a lovely model of employment. After getting used to my own espresso setup at home, I don't think I could work at an office without at least a decent machine (about as first-world a problem as it gets, I know).

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

#784

Post by cableshaft »

listenallyall wrote: post #761
cableshaft wrote: post #711

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yea, really screwed. Choosing the top country by least hours worked is not appropriate as a baseline. Look at Mexico, or any Asian country besides Japan. They work their asses off compared to Americans. Meanwhile software engineers in the U.S. make more than twice their German counterparts' salary: https://www.google.com/amp/s/codesubmit.io/blog/software-eng... Of course, not everyone is a software engineer. But it d…

It's not 1:1 for other reasons either besides just pay, like you don't have to pay anything for college tuition in Germany and they have universal healthcare, so you pay a ton less for healthcare expenses also, so that helps close the gap for lesser pay (also, you're working 30% less hours on average, so you have more free time to pursue other things, including a part time job if you really need to).

$400/month of my take home pay for over a decade was just in student loan payments, and I got off easy compared to a lot of Americans there. My wife, for example, is still paying about $1000/month, and that's after knocking it down by about $30k recently thanks to a couple windfalls. And she's been paying hers for almost 10 years at this point as well.

They also pay about 80% of your prior salary in unemployment, whereas here it's a hard cap at a really small amount (I think last time I was on it I was getting about a third of my previous salary, and my salary was a lot lower then).

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

#785

Post by ianbutler »

dmitrygr wrote: post #539
ianbutler wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So without hopefully coming off too flippant, noise canceling headphones can solve all of that, they did for me in an open office space at least.

I rarely wish pain on others, but for you, I wish migraines caused by pressure on the sides of your head, like some people have. Maybe a lesson will be learned.

To wish pain on someone for such an innocent comment on my end comes off rather bad for you. Just saying. Plus I don't wear over ear headphones, because I do get tension headaches, the newest Airpods however, are in ear and imo have the best active noise cancelling ever produced in a consumer product, so no need for ear cups.

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

#786

Post by recursive_ »

abeppu wrote: post #145

Before the pandemic and surge of remote work, a lot of us complained not just about going to the office, but that the office itself was pretty crappy. The open plan creates an environment of high distraction, low privacy, and physical discomfort. Whether or not people wanted to listen to music or anything for hours at a time, they were pushed to do it just to drown out a constant background noise of words that are hi…

Well summarized. I think a lot of people forget how anti-productive many working environments were before the pandemic.

My employer at the time had us working in a retrofitted warehouse as software developers. Huge sprawling floor plans with cubicle farms thrown in. The sound acoustics of the building, lighting (sky lights mixed with arrays of fluorescent lights), and the shear amount of people walking around my desk made it nearly impossible to stay focused for any reasonable amount of time. This forced nearly all of us to use noise cancelling headphones which in turn killed any sort of social aspect of being in office.

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

#787

Post by LawTalkingGuy »

tdeck wrote: post #743
LawTalkingGuy wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being paid so you can't claim to be outraged at being told to work. If your morale issues aren't handled by your salary then you should simply leave. Investigate contracting. If you need convincing to return the the office you were hired to work in then you probably aren't the type of employee a boss would want to retain.

> Your morale issues aren't handled by your salary then you should simply leave. If you're a "manager", morale issues on the team are your issues. This is basic, obvious stuff; if the manager isn't comfortable thinking about these things, maybe they should leave their job? Again, if you don't like the way an employee works, you can order them to change it. If they don't, you can fire them. But you seem to be under th…

> If you're a "manager", morale issues on the team are your issues.

If being told to do things that the company is paying you to do is triggering your morale issues then you probably aren't going to work out at all. If all you wanted was a few dollars more you'd have already asked that in a far simpler way.

When I get a coffee I don't check which one the barista wants to make, I assume they're willing to make anything on the menu because a job is a package deal.

> that employees need to feel a certain way about following your orders and realize that you were right all along

No, and in fact my point is that as your hypothetical boss I and the managers would have decided if we think WFH is working. Given that we already decided I'm not opening it up to you to debate and honestly I wouldn't believe you were arguing openly because you've got a huge motive to stay home and comfy.

The point of an office is to assemble a critical mass and if I'm trying to get everyone in and you aren't willing, you're basically deprecating yourself. As much as I may like you I'm not going to retain you because now I want a different style of work done than you want to do.

> you seem to be under the impression that "I'm the boss" is some kind of rational or moral argument

You're stuck on this idea like you have a right to have things discussed with you and to make everyone hold until you're happy that the situation centers you and you've been well heard. That's silly. You're like a landscaper and if I sell the house with the yard I'm letting you go.

It's not about disrespecting you because it's not about respecting you because it's not about you.

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

#788

Post by MiddleEndian »

hkxer wrote: post #747
skirmish wrote: post #736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. I noticed my hearing was getting worse since in office I kept increasing music volume in (futile) attempts to block out chatterboxes at the next desk. Destroying your health is not worth whatever faster promotions in-office work promises.

Noise canceling headphones?

I've spent so much time wearing headphones in offices that I find headphones to be physically uncomfortable.

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

#789

Post by BaseballPhysics »

LawTalkingGuy wrote: post #787
tdeck wrote: post #743

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your morale issues aren't handled by your salary then you should simply leave. If you're a "manager", morale issues on the team are your issues. This is basic, obvious stuff; if the manager isn't comfortable thinking about these things, maybe they should leave their job? Again, if you don't like the way an employee works, you can order them to change it. If they don't, you can fire them. But you seem to be under th…

> If you're a "manager", morale issues on the team are your issues. If being told to do things that the company is paying you to do is triggering your morale issues then you probably aren't going to work out at all. If all you wanted was a few dollars more you'd have already asked that in a far simpler way. When I get a coffee I don't check which one the barista wants to make, I assume they're willing to make anythin…

> Given that we already decided I'm not opening it up to you to debate and honestly I wouldn't believe you were arguing openly because you've got a huge motive to stay home and comfy.

So, this is a basic labour rights question: How much say does the employee have in the way the business functions?

Your attitude seems to be "if you don't like management's decisions, you never should've worked there in the first place". It's clear your view is that management runs the business, the workers work, and they should not, and do not, have any meaningful say in the way the business functions.

And if you want to run your company that way, hey, that's your call.

But that's not the only way to run a business. Hell, this attitude is why labour unions were invented.

And given industry-wide labour shortages, I suspect you'll find that labour is a lot more empowered, and many people will opt to flee for another workplace where they have a greater say.

Again, your choice. But with that choice comes consequences.

As an aside, this comment:

> You're being paid so you can't claim to be outraged at being told to work.

Is a pretty strong indication that I'd never ever want to work for you.

Study after study shows that monetary compensation is not, in and of itself, motivating. There are myriad factors that lead someone to stay or leave a workplace, and "being paid" is just one, and not always a particularly big one.

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