Everyone would have to sit two meters apart, which means two times the square feet
No... it's four times the square feet.
Remote work means anyone can take your job
111–120 of 458 posts
Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job
#112As someone who basically never worked in an office since I began working as a dev in the early 90s; you have to protect yourself and carve out niches and knowledge that takes actual time and elbow grease to catch up to. Sure many people anywhere in the world can do what I do, but with the deep knowledge I have about some subjects (banking/payments/insurances backends & production firmware), it is not very likely to g…
try to find cheap react/node devs in the U.S, good luck with that. The cost of skills doesn't always translate to how hard it is to acquire it. I mean, some medical nurses study for 5-10 years and specialise and specialise only to earn 1/2 what a react dev earns in the U.S
I think we were talking about work-from-home/remote people and for me that is ‘earth’; I can find really good people for next to nothing because everyone jumped on the bandwagon. And this is not a stab at the technology; it is saying that it is a not a niche; I have maintained an yoy upward income for over 25 years by picking things that are valuable always. And, in line with this article, if I can have excellent react/node (and Go.. and C# and Java...) people for $1k/mo or less, then that is not for me. It might work well now; I want things to work out longterm. Because, you know, shit happens and they might kick everyone but the bottomline out...
Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job
#113Many service workers will still want to live in or around relatively expensive areas.
I live just outside of Chicago: 10 minutes to the beach; 20 minutes to downtown; 20 minutes to a hub airport; 15 minutes to top class sports, theatre, and concert options; A+ school district with reasonable diversity; ice rink, gymnastics center, bike trails, parks, music lessons, and art lessons within a mile or two.
Sure, my taxes are through the roof and my house is small, but quality of life here, particularly for families, is just unbeatable. If you go more than another 10 miles out to get the massive sq. footage you are giving something up.
Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think living in the West where dev salaries are best a lot of the readers of this blog article would be concerned about a big change to the status quo. But article is pretty speculative
You’re conflating ‘the West’ with the Bay Area. Most people in European countries, or even smaller American cities, are pretty relaxed about the idea of California job opportunities becoming more widely distributed.
Yea I guess that is true. But that may or may not be mistaken, I mean, depending on the skill of even lower paid devs in other parts of the world. Its hard to say how things will shake out but I would say the better you have it now the more you don't want things to change, even if there are some scenarios where you gain.
Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job
#115True, but... Anyone can already take your job, as long as they are willing to relocate, or your company opens a new office near them. It is more important than ever to differentiate yourself. To do that you need to find something to do that you love, and then find (or more often make) a niche in that that that you become one of the top ten people in within your context. By context I mean you don't need to be the best…
Anyone can already take your job, but currently they require local level wages to live with your local cost of living.
Outsourced people can take your job, for much less money.
Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job
#116This article seems to ignore the fact that working with people in vastly differing timezones can be a real nuisance. Yes, it can also be a boon for some positions, like follow-the-sun type SRE or customer support, but for a lot of positions, having people working massively different schedules is a real challenge. It can absolutely work, given the right async workflows, but it can also absolutely fail. I'm inclined to…
Almost my entire (small) company is based in NYC, but we have one programmer in Europe. He just adjusts his schedule to US Eastern Time hours. Might be harder if he was in Australia, but that still leaves a lot of flexibility. Heck, as I'm writing this, it's 11:20 am where I live, and I just overheard my sister get out of bed in the next room. Last night, she was taking an online MCAT prep course until after I went t…
In my experience, Eastern Time to Central European Time synchronous communications works pretty well without anyone having to deviate too much from normal working hours. Add Pacific Time to the mix and you're starting to need people willing to take calls at 6am and/or in the evening.
But, yes, some people are willing to adjust their personal time zones. I know someone who lives in Hawaii and runs a PR agency with mainland US clients. She just normally gets up very early.
Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job
#117It also means i can take someone else's job. It balances out.
The more highly qualified you are the more at risk to offshoring your job is. A long time ago, Albany Molecular, a contract research organization, highlighted they were based in Albany, NY. A shithole, yes, but a shithole with cheap cost of living. Nowadays, the PhD jobs are based in Shanghai, Szeged and Hyderabad. The only thing that's left stateside is regulatory functions and support. You don't need a PhD for that…
I guess the sweatshop jobs these days are mechanical Turk things in Calcutta, Bhubaneswar, and... New Orleans?
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/16/technology/ai-humans.html
Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
The more highly qualified you are the more at risk to offshoring your job is. A long time ago, Albany Molecular, a contract research organization, highlighted they were based in Albany, NY. A shithole, yes, but a shithole with cheap cost of living. Nowadays, the PhD jobs are based in Shanghai, Szeged and Hyderabad. The only thing that's left stateside is regulatory functions and support. You don't need a PhD for that…
Do you have any proof for that? Everything I know says that more qualified people congregate, in general in the places with the highest cost of living...
more qualified people congregate, in general in the places with the highest cost of living
That has to do with short job tenures (in the US) and industry consolidation. In the past, someone might have joined Upjohn in Kalamazoo, Eli Lilly in Indianapolis or Dow in Midland and stayed there their whole careers. Nowadays everyone changes jobs every 5 years and employment is in San Francisco, Boston and San Diego. It's problematic.
Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job
#119More like anyone can rip off employers. When you are dealing internationally, you are out of the bounds of US law. There is no guarantee that your code won't simply be stolen. You have no recourse except travel twelve time zones to a place you have no power in. No one need worry about outsourcing. It's been proven that the only work going to outsourcing is low risk service labor like phone support.
Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Anyone can already take your job, as long as they are willing to relocate, This where immigration restrictions make a difference. A Brazilian developer has trouble working in SV, but no trouble working remote.
You vastly underestimate the tax and legal implications of an American company hiring and paying a Brazilian in Brazil.
You vastly underestimate the difficulty of immigrating to the United States (or even just _visiting_ it legally).