I'm looking down at my half full glass and all I can think is....fantastic news. Remote work means I can take any job I want.
Remote work means anyone can take your job
201–210 of 458 posts
Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job
#202Real time, remote communication through tools like zoom, slack, and lucidchart (in my humble opinion) has been solved. It might take some getting used to, but in the right environment a group of properly motivated individuals can achieve the same productivity as their peers in a conference room. Asynchronous communication across timezones has not been solved, and I struggle to see how it would be. A lot of collaborat…
> Asynchronous communication across timezones has not been solved, and I struggle to see how it would be.
I disagree, at least if we are talking about what tools to use. But many people who are used to being face-to-face aren't used to async. Async communications require patience, foresight, and good writing skills. You need to envision the end result of the collaboration, provide as much of your perspective as possible without writing a wall of text, and ask good questions. Then, in 8 hours, your coworkers do the same. And over a few days, consensus arrives.
Easier said than done, I admit. It takes time and deliberate practice to do this well. It is not how people are used to collaborating. But that does not mean it doesn't work - it means people only succeed when they put in the effort learn new communication skills.
Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job
#203More 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.
As a counter example IP laws in Canada are aligned with US and is the same timezone, yet with currency exchange salaries are discounted by 30%.
Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job
#204The implication from this litter of thinkpieces on HN is that proximity to a tech hub (SV/NY) is your only competitive advantage as a knowledge worker—your butt is close to their chair. This runs counter to the other prevailing wisdom about SV/NY, which is that those areas are hubs—and essential to the tech industry—because the world's top talent is drawn to it. So which is it?
The same set of people aren't saying both things. The people who believe SV and NY have top talent are exactly the ones who think remote work is great. I'm excited about the trend; a bigger pool of talented engineers for me to work with means I'll be able to accomplish more and have to compromise less on my career goals. The people who worry that remote work will be a disaster are the ones who never believed SV engin…
> The people who worry that remote work will be a disaster are the ones who never believed SV engineers were more talented in the first place.
Or that technical talent does not really contribute to success as much as the prevailing theories believe?
Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job
#205Earlier quoted context omitted.
> [...] what they outsourced were their bottom tier workers, the unproductive people. That might be true to some extent, but I think there's a problem with that line of thought. People are a "moving target". What may be a bottom-tier worker now, could very well be a valuable employee in 5-10 years. Many folks have built their career by starting at a low level and then getting promoted and upskilled over time through…
An additional problem MBAs sometimes miss is that when you export jobs to contract orgs is that this accumulated institutional knowledge is lost—it’s no longer held in-house. Conversely it contributes to the expertise of the contract org. But not all orgs think long term. Or they get enthralled by “core competency”.
I don't think this is really missed by the MBAs, HN's favorite punching bag. These types of opportunity costs are absolutely a part of the make/buy decision process (but maybe undervalued?). I think it has much more to to with the "enthralled by core competency" aspect.
Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job
#206> Now, you can either hire someone from San Francisco and subsidize their obscene rent, or you can hire someone from Omaha. You can get the same work done, but cheaper. What would you choose? This depends on the assumption that there's a big supply of workers in Omaha that are able to step in and do the job. I'm an outsider, but I'd guess that the people worth $600,000 Facebook salaries are already living there and w…
Within software at least, there are simply more people that have significant 'clock time' working within well run software companies in San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, etc.
It's no different than college football players that spend their four years in well run systems that run pro style offenses. Sure, there may be a kid that has insane athletic ability that is playing at Calhoun Community College, but someone like Jerry Juedy ( wide receiver for Alabama ) is the player that the Denver Broncos will choose if they can get him.
There simply aren't as many well run software companies in Omaha as there are in Seattle. And one could argue that the best free agents are going to be the ones coming out of those cities who can command higher market rates because companies believe there is higher ROI.
Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job
#207It should be "Anyone _Could_ Take Your Job"
It's the Jevons_paradox [1]. More available workers will lead to more demand for workers. It's a two edged sword. Unlike unskilled labour, remote workers can switch employers, too. This turns an employer market into a worker market. Actually it is even true for unskilled if there is a local surplus of unskilled work.
The world is essentially in an intelligence war for resources. No player can pass on brain soldiers. We see a decline in wages because there are still people not connected to the internet.
I would expect that once that transition period is over, remote work becomes a liability to a company. Companies will have to create unique and enticing work environments to bind workers.
Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job
#208Real time, remote communication through tools like zoom, slack, and lucidchart (in my humble opinion) has been solved. It might take some getting used to, but in the right environment a group of properly motivated individuals can achieve the same productivity as their peers in a conference room. Asynchronous communication across timezones has not been solved, and I struggle to see how it would be. A lot of collaborat…
> There is nothing that makes developers in San Francisco more talented than their counterparts living in Tennessee
I think there's more to this. There's a "network effect" of living in a place like SV. I felt that the bar was much higher in the West Coast due to the high density of companies and talent attracted.
Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job
#209Real time, remote communication through tools like zoom, slack, and lucidchart (in my humble opinion) has been solved. It might take some getting used to, but in the right environment a group of properly motivated individuals can achieve the same productivity as their peers in a conference room. Asynchronous communication across timezones has not been solved, and I struggle to see how it would be. A lot of collaborat…
I've worked for Swiss companies from the west coast of North America (9 hours difference). It's not perfect, but I started early and they kept an eye on slack until late. Most of the time we communicated in the couple hours of overlap we had. It works because as a developer it's a plus to have multiple hours of good focus time with no meetings or interruptions. Plus we can cover each other for pager duty so nobody ha…
Ive been on projects like this as well (the other way though - working from Spain for clients in San Francisco). You can definetly make it work, but its far from ideal. As you go through your day, questions inevitably pop up outside of the overlap hours. If you have to wait until the next day to get answers, you either have to pause what you are doing and switch to something else, or continue under assumptions that might be proven wrong the next day.
Coming back to the states and being able to collaborate real time throughout the day was always a boost to productivity.
In my digital nomad days, the golden place for a client was always New York. This is because it would allow me to have solid overlap from anywhere in the states, and also good enough overlap in Europe.
Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job
#210> Now, you can either hire someone from San Francisco and subsidize their obscene rent, or you can hire someone from Omaha. You can get the same work done, but cheaper. What would you choose? This depends on the assumption that there's a big supply of workers in Omaha that are able to step in and do the job. I'm an outsider, but I'd guess that the people worth $600,000 Facebook salaries are already living there and w…
I've traveled to a lot of customer sites throughout the Midwest and to a couple dozen of their offshore plants in Mexico and China. Some of those customers are giant automotive OEMs and Tier 1 manufacturers with brand new glassy R&D labs with brand name equipment and Ivy League engineers making salaries well into the 6 figures. But some are tiny, self-taught, rural mom-and-pop outfits working from their garage with used equipment who might make more money as a line worker in the former shops.
One critical thing to I've really come to experience in my travels is that all humans are basically the same. Those Ivy League engineers are no more intelligent or hard-working or creative than the guy in his garage or the site engineer from the Mexican or Chinese state university, instead it's often the opposite. If they're able to use the people, tools, and budget their position affords them, they can be more productive, but on the spot without those aids if anything they're less productive.
The only differences are social connections, credentials, resources, the value multiplier from the volume that goes through their business, and the fraction of that value they're able to extract.
The former three factors stack up against the engineer from Omaha. The last two mean that Facebook or Ford can easily afford those higher salaries while the Omaha garage cannot.