Remote work means anyone can take your job • Hacker News Board

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#401

Post by azinman2 » Thu, May 28, 2020, 8:33 PM UTC

HarryHirsch wrote: post #324

narrator wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think outsourcing manufacturing is destructive of human progress. You got huge companies like AMD and NVIDIA , who certainly contribute to human progress, who outsource all their manufacturing to TSMC because only a few companies worldwide can make those kinds of semiconductors.

Back then, Commodore had an advantage over the competition because they had MOS Technologies as a subsidiary and could rapidly iterate on hardware design. Same in the life sciences business. Nothing is easier than dreaming up a compound, but then you encounter reality, some compounds may be difficult to access synthetically, there are unexpected interactions, and these issues are best sorted out when synthetic chemis…

Which is why the trend with Apple is to do everything in-house (SoC, etc). Tight vertical integration facilitates difficult software-hardware technologies.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#402

Post by Communitivity » Thu, May 28, 2020, 8:45 PM UTC

ashtonkem wrote: post #252

Communitivity wrote: post #38

True, 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…

Your recommendation to become the top 10 in something is either impossible, or only achievable by narrowing definitions down to inanity. I can easily be the top 10 in written in run on , but who cares? Recommending that people become the top 10 in their industry is an impossible recommendation; as there might be hundreds of people in my company who perform a similar role, let alone within my industry. It’s a bit like…

'Top 10' is a convenient label. It's more about the answer to the question 'who are the most respected experts in X within the Y', and maybe even make X be instead 'X using Z'. Several careers having been made by being known as a leader using a particular technology, or a co-creator of the technology from the beginning, though it always comes with other things to back it up as well:

* Tim Berners-Lee - the web, W3C

* Peter Saint-Andre - XMPP, messaging RFCs

* DHH - Ruby on Rails

* Martin Fowler - Design Patterns

..and many more.

Yes, getting to the Tim Berners-Lee level of industry recognition is unreasonable to expect for most. But I think it is reasonable to think that this is doable, with the depth of the expertise niche needed to be outstanding being inversely proportional to the talent of the expert. One person might have an expertise niche of messaging, while another has RabbitMQ as their main niche. Both are viable to base a living off of.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#403

Post by dougmwne » Thu, May 28, 2020, 8:53 PM UTC

gregkerzhner wrote: post #399

dougmwne wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually if you look at cost of living data, the USA is in quite an interesting position. It contains both some of the most expensive and cheapest cost of living in the developed world. Salaries in some areas are some of the highest in the world, and in other places are closer to Eastern Europe or South America once you've accounted for things like taxes and healthcare. There's a seriously huge gap in pay when lookin…

Exactly. Although if the Buckeye was motivated, he could currently get a remote gig and make 100k. It wouldn't be SF rates, but it would still be higher than the local shops. It will be interesting to see how such arbitrage gets affected by more remote companies entering the field.

It will be interesting since I am the "motivated Buckeye" and selfishly, don't want the arbitrage opportunity to go away.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#404

Post by Communitivity » Thu, May 28, 2020, 9:01 PM UTC

renewiltord wrote: post #392

dmitriy_ko wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economy is not a zero-sum game. There's no reason you can't have everyone making $70K.

Sure. And that's a no-brainer. We'd all agree on that. The interesting part is when there are trade-offs. So that's my position on the trade-off.

This is getting into a discussion of Universal Basic Income, which I am a big fan of.

But I'd posit that salaries are not a zero-sum game, in the microcosm or the macrocosm.

Within a company each department head likely gets a certain amount of raises to distribute within their department, maybe enough to give most people X%, but also enough to give 2 or three 1.5X%. The company itself has a limited amount it can spend on labor costs.

Within a country there is the monetary supply. There is approximately $1.5 trillion physical currency in circulation. That equates to about $5k per person. Yes there is money that is not backed by physical currency, but the more of that you create (or the more physical currency you create) the higher inflation goes. If we want UBI then we need to back it with something. The Saudis backed it with their annual oil profits, Alaskans the same, and the Norwegians straight out created an investment fund from oil surplus profits. Getting to a workable UBI is not going to be a stopgap fix, and will likely take around 50 years to implement correctly.

It's doable from a technical perspective, in a number of ways. I worry about the political perspective. Our parties are divisive and one party can tear down any of the works of a past administration. So what is to prevent the UBI investment fund being repurposed, similar to Social Security's outcome.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#405

Post by toss1 » Thu, May 28, 2020, 9:04 PM UTC

>"Remote work means anyone can take your job"

It also means you can take anyone else's job

It is up to us to provide better value than competitors

It is up to managers to recognize that value is barely related to initial cost/sticker price/hourly rate

Time will tell how those trends sort

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#406

Post by andrekandre » Thu, May 28, 2020, 9:05 PM UTC

ipnon wrote: post #366

booleandilemma wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...and then find (or more often make) a niche in that that that (sic) you become one of the top ten people in within your context Whatever happened to just getting a normal job and putting in an honest day’s labor? Now we’re expected to become “one of the top ten”... what exactly? How is that supposed to work? What about those of us with families for goodness sake. We can’t all be super Linus Torvalds ninja hackers p…

An honest day's labor only existed in the middle of the 20th century. Before the New Deal you had to work hard on a farm or a factory to make ends meet. After the Great Stagnation in the 1970s, the economy cannot sustain widespread growth in prosperity for all classes of American society. The Post-World War II economic expansion was a 1 time miracle enabled by the picking of several low hanging fruits. "These figurat…

that may be true, but i think the parent posters point still stands regardless:

> We can’t all be super Linus Torvalds ninja hackers putting out code 12 hours a day.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#407

Post by andrekandre » Thu, May 28, 2020, 9:11 PM UTC

subhobroto wrote: post #368

Avicebron wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I won't claim to be the thought leader on this, however I'm happy to look at some hypothetical ideas. To be clear I'm not looking to reverse globalization completely or stop it. Rule 1: International trade deals forbid offshoring of manufacturing. Example, cars from Ford can't be made in Mexico for 1/10th the price. This is universal and enforceable by dissolution of companies that don't comply. Rule 2: Stringen…

> cars from Ford can't be made in Mexico for 1/10th the price Sure, but then the buyers of said cars from Ford has to pay the premium. The heavy growth of Amazon, Walmart has proven that the U.S. customer does not care about well paid workers, their benefits or their health - why would they agree to pay more for cars? > but take advantage of US infrastructure for the rest of their business. Fair enough. This point is…

> Regulations never help.

BIG RED FLASHING CITATIONS NEEDED SIGN HERE

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#408

Post by maemilius » Thu, May 28, 2020, 9:22 PM UTC

ashtonkem wrote: post #232

cvlasdkv wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of bootcamp grads across the companies I've worked and they all make 100k+ (and some are established senior engineers). Like you are implying: status signaling from degree mills is pretty useless compared to actual competency.

My subjective experience is that boot camp grads are not as successful in the interview and job acquisition process. Whether or not that’s due to differences in education or purely signaling behavior is something I have yet to fully make up my mind about.

I've had a similar experience at my job and I think it's actually both things.

On one side you have people that managed to claw their way through the boot camp but didn't actually pick up any of the skills; they memorized enough to get through instead of actually learning stuff. On the other side, you have people that did learn but aren't confident in their skills and so flub the interview when their confidence gives out.

I've watched the latter happen on more than one occasion and I really wish I knew how to handle it as an interviewer.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#409

Post by blaser-waffle » Thu, May 28, 2020, 9:27 PM UTC

frockington1 wrote: post #276

gexla wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> someone has to be the "top dog" attracting the top talent As I said in my comment, this is the big shift I would be looking for. The shift in the top dogs. The top dog could become a Chinese company snagging US expertise rather than the other way around. That could then create effects where US workers are applying to jobs abroad. The real competition might not be positioning yourself as the talent. The real competi…

I can't imagine any of my US coworkers every working for a Chinese company. The non-zero chance of being sent to a 're-education camp' if you ever have to travel is a big concern

It's a BIG concern? Really?

No US worker is going to get set to a re-education camp for a 2-5 day set of business meetings in Shanghai. Bug your phone or capture all your internet traffic? Maybe. Arresting a foreign national working for a Chinese firm? Unlikely.

Anyone who is 'unreliable' enough for the Chinese government to arrest them isn't going to get hired by a Chinese firm -- doubly so because the largest firms in CN are state-owned.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#410

Post by ashtonkem » Thu, May 28, 2020, 9:27 PM UTC

Communitivity wrote: post #402

ashtonkem wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your recommendation to become the top 10 in something is either impossible, or only achievable by narrowing definitions down to inanity. I can easily be the top 10 in written in run on , but who cares? Recommending that people become the top 10 in their industry is an impossible recommendation; as there might be hundreds of people in my company who perform a similar role, let alone within my industry. It’s a bit like…

'Top 10' is a convenient label. It's more about the answer to the question 'who are the most respected experts in X within the Y', and maybe even make X be instead 'X using Z'. Several careers having been made by being known as a leader using a particular technology, or a co-creator of the technology from the beginning, though it always comes with other things to back it up as well: * Tim Berners-Lee - the web, W3C *…

At a certain point you’re talking about programmer celebrities and trying to draw general career advice from them, which is silly. We can’t all be celebrities, and any career advice based on that is kind of pointless.

Now talking about having a niche is a fair argument, but that’s literally a completely new argument. “Be in the top 10” and “specialize” are not the same pieces of advice, at all.