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3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

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Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#121

Post by conanbatt »

mgkimsal wrote: post #116
amatic wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is the international remote scene? Does it exist in big (top paying?) companies in the US? To clarify, can people outside the US be hired to do remote work for US companies?

> To clarify, can people outside the US be hired to do remote work for US companies? It's often called 'offshoring', I think. I know plenty of US companies large and small that hire remote workers. It also doesn't seem like it's a net win in most cases that I've seen, but people generally don't set themselves up to re-evaluate their decisions 3, 6 and 12 months later, nor have the willpower to reverse the decision if…

Do note that the workforce in tech is already like 20% immigrants. They don't have a cultural mismatch. They can go back to their countries and work remotely at lower cost of living and possibly lower taxes.

Companies generally only allow this when they are forced. There are limits to remote work.

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#122

Post by ck425 »

NeverFade wrote: post #92
ck425 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're comparing a terrible commuting scenario to a great remote scenario. You're also looking at this from the perspective of someone with an established family. Of course remote looks better! There are more commuting scenarios that living in the SF (or London or NYC or insert major city here) with a long commute and crazy house prices. I live and work(ed) in a medium size city where a mid-level engineer can afford…

> Moving out to a suburbs gives me a bit more space but not much else. It also comes at the expense of being further away from everything and having to drive everywhere. There's a lot of room between everyone in the same dense massive urban areas and everyone going full remote from the suburbs. Remote works lets you choose where you want to live and work. You can stay in the city if that's your thing, or move to the…

> I don't understand comments that pretend as if remote work is going to force everyone to "work from the suburbs".

I mentioned the suburbs because the comparison you setup was suburbs vs expensive city life. I was critiquing the flawed comparison.

> Areas that are very dense in tech aren't ideal for dating. Tech is male-dominated, so if your preferred partner is female, you will find dating in Silicon Valley quite challenging.

I was making the point about expensive cities more generally. Other similar areas such as London and NYC don't have that issue.

There's also the advantages of actually being in an office. Having structure enforced by a physical separation, the social aspect of being in an office etc. Those aren't valuable to everyone but to many they're incredibly valuable.

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#123

Post by ck425 »

NeverFade wrote: post #70
ck425 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yes, many employers would rather that we physically commute to their offices every morning. They'd also rather we worked 12-hour shifts and got paid minimum wage for it. This is factitious comparison. Remote works great for a lot of people and it's undoubtable good that there are more options. But there are legit reasons for both businesses and employees to prefer working from an office. Office working isn't some p…

Remote work is a coveted benefit, subject to the same economics as other coveted benefits: employers will have to offer it as it becomes normalized, and offered by their competitors in the war for talent. Similar to how office food benefits used to be extremely rare niche, and now are extremely common. Not sure where you got "ploy" or "evil employers", nothing in my post implies those things.

> Not sure where you got "ploy" or "evil employers", nothing in my post implies those things.

"They'd also rather we worked 12-hour shifts and got paid minimum wage for it."

^ That's where I got it from. The framing that office work was something employers forced upon employees against their will. Many of us prefer an office and are keen to get back to one.

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#124

Post by myWindoonn »

ck425 wrote: post #123
NeverFade wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remote work is a coveted benefit, subject to the same economics as other coveted benefits: employers will have to offer it as it becomes normalized, and offered by their competitors in the war for talent. Similar to how office food benefits used to be extremely rare niche, and now are extremely common. Not sure where you got "ploy" or "evil employers", nothing in my post implies those things.

> Not sure where you got "ploy" or "evil employers", nothing in my post implies those things. "They'd also rather we worked 12-hour shifts and got paid minimum wage for it." ^ That's where I got it from. The framing that office work was something employers forced upon employees against their will. Many of us prefer an office and are keen to get back to one.

You might not know the history of employment. Employment is the latest iteration of a series of systems which require the bulk of the population to contribute labor to shared efforts which are designed by small elite groups. Your society explicitly asks you to trade labor for food, shelter, and other basic benefits of living in a civilization.

Specifically, we know that 12-hour shifts (without overtime or adequate breaks) were a thing that employers would want, because they used to exist. Similarly, we know that employers would want to pay below minimum wage, because they used to. In fact, both of these things still happen regularly today, despite the laws having changed.

Yes, when we look at history, we often feel that folks were doing evil/bad/harmful/etc. things, because we can't help but judge them based on our values which we hold today. The best that can be said is that people are complicated and that good/evil is not a good framing for weighing why people did what they did.

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#125

Post by ip26 »

jayd16 wrote: post #21

I don't think we'll really know what the future holds until people start coming back to work. When everyone is on zoom, its easy to keep zoom etiquette. Its a lot harder if we revert back to in office meetings and a dial in number if someone happens to be WFH that day.

Five years ago the dial-in was an issue, but Teams is making it pretty darn painless/automatic.

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#126

Post by [deleted] »

crandycodes wrote: post #5

I work at Microsoft and in Azure Cosmos DB, the same org as Steve. Leadership believing in remote makes all the difference. We'd been doing more and more remote hiring in the years before COVID, especially when remote made a specific skillset's talent pool larger. This led to some remote-friendly, bordering on remote-first culture. When COVID hit, we adapted really fast. I had taken a short break from Cosmos DB befor…

[deleted]

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#127

Post by NeverFade »

conanbatt wrote: post #120
NeverFade wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's incredibly easy to compete with "top paying" companies once you offer remote work, due to huge gaps in taxation and cost-of-living. Let's do the math: $400k salary in SFBay is $238k net. $300k in any state that doesn't have an income tax (like Texas, Florida, Washington) is $211k net. Factor in cost-of-living differences, and as an employee, I'd be much better off earning $300k remotely than $400k in SFBay. From…

By the same process, you can also hire a 15 year of experience software engineer from europe or south america for 80k a year, and doing it as a contractor would also mean no payroll taxes. In the remote game, people living in the US have a formidable economic foe. But there is a reason why companies haven't done this massively before, both for international remote and US remote. Very few companies pre-Covid were full…

How many software engineers with 15 years of experience, perfect English, strong up-to-date skills, and ability to work seamlessly with an American team, do you think exist in South America or Europe (very different timezone)?

If it was so easy to reduce payroll cost (the biggest cost in the budget of all tech companies) then it would have been done years ago, COVID or no COVID.

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#128

Post by [deleted] »

crandycodes wrote: post #5

I work at Microsoft and in Azure Cosmos DB, the same org as Steve. Leadership believing in remote makes all the difference. We'd been doing more and more remote hiring in the years before COVID, especially when remote made a specific skillset's talent pool larger. This led to some remote-friendly, bordering on remote-first culture. When COVID hit, we adapted really fast. I had taken a short break from Cosmos DB befor…

[deleted]

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#129

Post by cccc4alll »

crandycodes wrote: post #5

I work at Microsoft and in Azure Cosmos DB, the same org as Steve. Leadership believing in remote makes all the difference. We'd been doing more and more remote hiring in the years before COVID, especially when remote made a specific skillset's talent pool larger. This led to some remote-friendly, bordering on remote-first culture. When COVID hit, we adapted really fast. I had taken a short break from Cosmos DB befor…

The opening of the talent pool flows both ways. The company options are also more open to high performance engineers. High performers are not limited by geography anymore. Many more companies are open to remote option.

This means increased competition for high performers and increase in salary.

All high performing tech engineer should interview with multiple companies and negotiate for increase in salary from all of them.

Forget this silly notion of location based COL salary adjustments. That's industry propaganda to suppress salary levels.

Re: 3 years ago, remote top paying gigs were hard to find. Today they are the norm

#130

Post by joshuamorton »

NeverFade wrote: post #74
joshuamorton wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Find a co-working space. Alternatively, they can work for an employer who has an office and then they don't need to pay for access to a co-working space. Their choice to do so doesn't harm you, they simply value certain aspects of the job differently, much as people value vacation vs raw salary differently. > That includes other cities. You can still live in SF if you want, or choose any of the other dozens of citi…

I believe you express an opinion that is shared by many people who are simply comforted and reassured by the status-quo. Additionally, you work for Google, which has been quite stringent about keeping all work on-site. You'd like to keep your job, so cognitive dissonance induces you to conclude - without much evidence - that this status quo is The Best of All Worlds. Working full-time from the office is a condition t…

> You'd like to keep your job, so cognitive dissonance induces you to conclude - without much evidence - that this status quo is The Best of All Worlds.

No, I'm just unhappy working from home, and greatly miss the office. You don't need to invent a conspiracy theory.

> It is not at all necessary in our modern world

I never said it was. I said that many employees find it preferable. I agree some do not. But you're solution seems to be to ban offices.

> Overall, onsite office work binds you to exactly one option, remote work allows you a huge freedom of choice - and that is categorically a positive thing.

But you're proposing not the option of remote work, but remote only. That does remove choice, the choice to work from my company's office in proximity to my coworkers. I value that.

> However, there are so many other options available, and I dare suggest you shouldn't declare them all inferior before trying them.

I don't think I have. Please stop putting words in my mouth and getting defensive about other people's preferences.

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