381–390 of 458 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
But shouldn't we account for that and adjust accordingly so we aren't ruining society in a race to the bottom? It's all choices, we don't HAVE to allow it to happen.
Should we? I don't see why one guy making $70k and two guys making nothing is superior to three guys making $20k.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Remote work is not the same as out-sourcing. Out-sourcing was a necessary evil and only worked for large/mature companies with carved out business processes that could be offloaded. These companies were never remote-first. With companies being forced to modify their internal processes to be remote-first, what they will realize is that remote does work once they align to it. And once they realize that, there is no sto…
Can you provide an example where this worked for a large scale company? I’ve heard this at smaller companies but nowhere big
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think that 'Tennessee' is the correct spelling for Shenzhen. The low cost of living states in the US are still expensive compared to low cost of living countries. There is engineering talent around the world, and I don't see how the rural parts of the US are going to compete with more urban populations in other well educated parts of the world.
Anectodal, but I spent a year on a recent project collaborating with a group of firmware engineers in Shenzhen, and it was an absolute nightmare. Apart from the timezones, the code quality was horrendous and basically never worked correctly. They also ignored all common standards, and made assumptions about things like ordering of fields in JSON. None of their engineers spoke english, so code communication had to go…
I'm sorry but that is a silly prejudice. You worked with one group.
Real 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…
> Real time, remote communication through tools like zoom, slack, and lucidchart (in my humble opinion) has been solved. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Remote meetings can be far more frustrating and inefficient because of latency, total lack of turn-taking cues, inability to read emotional expressions of concern or worry on one person or to "read the room", emotional fatigue from lack of cues, and so on. And th…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
European countries are outliers due to EU regulations. Any EU "citizen" can work anywhere in the EU, so pragmatically speaking, why would you only want to hire Spanish people instead of opening the door to French, Italian or German candidates? It comes at literally zero cost to the company. Some industries are heavily regulated in the US and having non-US based employees can become a real headache for US companies. A…
> European countries are outliers due to EU regulations. Any EU "citizen" can work anywhere in the EU, so pragmatically speaking, why would you only want to hire Spanish people instead of opening the door to French, Italian or German candidates? It comes at literally zero cost to the company. The employer needs to pay social contributions in the employee's residence country. And more often than not, the employee cann…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In the first wave of outsourcing, companies saw that the contract organization provided more or less equivalent results at substantially reduced cost. What they failed to realize is what they outsourced were their bottom tier workers, the unproductive people. They got excited by the reduced cost with minimal reduction in effectiveness. When they try to outsource their better talent that’s where they failed to recogni…
I am in LA and a friend tells me he can't hire good in house engineers locally. When I suggest Vietnam/etc he indeed mentioned tradeoffs regarding timeshift/culture. I guess you can't have it both ways.
Presumably he means that he can't hire them for the amount he's willing to pay.
Companies don't hire people remote first and especially junior people. Now it will be even harder for junior people to get a job, any job, companies will stick to who they have and even fire some.
Employees don't want to work with company on the other side of globe, because company might just cut them off with no pay and what they are going to do? How do you sue a company from another continent?
There is also a lot more in terms of laws and regulations, where even hiring people from another country in EU is not just "hire and forget".
Last note, there are people who want to live in high expense areas, want to live in big cities because that is a lifestyle they like. I see on HN that mostly people argue like everyone would like to live in some forgotten small town only to pay less rent. I am not big fan of big cities but somehow I like to have a cinema or selection of pubs bigger that one or two.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
"The room" has lost most of its meaning, hasn't it? You're no longer limited to working with people who live within driving distance of yourself, you can now meet super smart people from all over the world on lots of websites, talk to them, work with them, learn from them, get inspired by them.
> "The room" has lost most of its meaning, hasn't it? I don't think so. Trust and sense of shared purpose and ability are still largely built in person. The continued productivity people claim during the pandemic lockdown is mostly coasting off what was largely established in person before. Websites, chat-rooms, and video calls are no substitute for the environment created by the physical agglomerations of people fou…
Before the internet, you had to go live in a metropolis to even know of these other people that were also interested in what you like, much less talk to or work with them. That has changed dramatically, and you absolutely can work with very bright people on very advanced things while you live somewhere in the middle of nowhere.
Don't get me wrong, it's still nice to meet people in person, but if you can't find a community online where people are smarter than you and/or better than you in whatever you do, you're either a super genius or you're not looking.
Seems like this article ignores the gigantic wave of out-sourcing throughout IT that already happened in previous decades and in many cases returned to near-shore / onsite work. What you actually see if you look at remote work job boards is many (if not most) companies in say, the USA, want remote people from the USA (or at least the same timezone as the USA). I think this is what will happen in other countries too.
Have been using Upwork for years, even when it was called something else...I forget the name. Useful for CERTAIN types of jobs, especially recurring ones
If you ignore trust and need for stable income then maybe. Companies don't hire people remote first and especially junior people. Now it will be even harder for junior people to get a job, any job, companies will stick to who they have and even fire some. Employees don't want to work with company on the other side of globe, because company might just cut them off with no pay and what they are going to do? How do you…
+1 for this. I've been 100% remote 5+ years now and I regularly contemplate going rural -- like far, far away rural -- but always hesitate because the lack of amenities and things to do is fairly limited.
Fear of losing a job and not being able to get another remote gig is also a concern; being near-ish to a big city gives me some fallback options.