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Tell HN: Don't root for WFH, it might destroy well-paying jobs

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Re: Tell HN: Don't root for WFH, it might destroy well-paying jobs

#111

Post by corobo »

cudgy wrote: post #103
corobo wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally most of my neighbours have jobs that can't be outsourced due to the fact they're physical jobs. Yes I'd love it if they had the training to get good jobs, and the great news there is -- they've already been there and done it! :) Yes I'd absolutely give up some of my salary, assuming it's a fair question and not "haha well you wouldn't give up half of your salary to hire someone so I'm right" yea I don't gi…

Must be nice living in a utopian society where physical jobs pay as well as knowledge workers. In such a place, your community can easily give up some of their salary. Not sure your community is representative of most in the world however.

I feel like you've deliberately missed the point at multiple levels to get some snark in so just to jump right to the core: Silicon Valley salary is the utopian society you're so snarkily describing, and as OP has pointed out it's coming to an end.

The majority of the world is not on SV wages, so yeah they pay "as well as knowledge workers" in that none of the above pays nearly as much as you're thinking outside of your utopian society bubble. Trade jobs (electrician, plumber, etc) can earn equivalent or more in the real world :)

Re: Tell HN: Don't root for WFH, it might destroy well-paying jobs

#112

Post by WanderPanda »

zaphirplane wrote: post #108
WanderPanda wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel it was long overdue for the market to correct this anomaly. I believe there have been some synergies in concentrating geeks in one place but it just went out of control.

How will that help ? A person living in city x needs to be paid y to have a z quality of life. In another city they would need to be paid another amount to have the same quality of life. Zero to do with their occupation

Salary is not about providing a certain level of quality of life for an employee. It is about the value the employee can create for the company. There part of the value can be due to the synergies of being physically close. In the mid term the salary will be dependent on what the employee brings to the table and not how expensive his lifestyle is (at least in companies that will do well in the long term)

Re: Tell HN: Don't root for WFH, it might destroy well-paying jobs

#113

Post by nyuszika7h »

This is a very self-centered and US-centric attitude. You assume that everyone who wants to work from home only does it to have a "king-like lifestyle". Some of us don't have the privilege to be able to get non-remote jobs that easily, for example because we live in another country and traveling/moving isn't an option, or because of many other factors like social anxiety making remote work much less stressful and allows us to be more productive, especially if given the option to just write in a text chat (e.g. Slack) rather than forcing verbal communication, eye contact and all.

Re: Tell HN: Don't root for WFH, it might destroy well-paying jobs

#114

Post by neximo64 »

RestlessMind wrote: post #94
neximo64 wrote: post #5

So its not nice working amongst people who can be even more talented and picked from a wider pool of people?

Nope, it's much nicer to maintain your relative power and privilege. Stop being altruistic and learn from Doctors. If you don't fight for your power, it will be snatched from you and no one will care about you. Just ask all the former workers in the manufacturing sector in midwest, whose only available career option now is to work at a Walmart. Do you think it is "nice" for them to compete with a global pool of manuf…

Unless you also buy things that are more expensive (not 5% but 2-5x more pricey) simply because they're made in the US your argument holds no weight.

You would have the cushey job because of the 'power' for a while. But it has nothing to do with altruism - to win you need to adapt and have the best product or service.

Re: Tell HN: Don't root for WFH, it might destroy well-paying jobs

#115

Post by staticassertion »

adventured wrote: post #52
staticassertion wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Proposing the opposite is to propose suicide. That feels extreme... I don't think the opposite of "some jobs will leave the US" is "I'm going to kill myself". Ditto the rest of your post. Nothing but a bunch of straw man/ slippery slope.

You didn't actually say anything in retort. Merely saying ditto, or saying that something is supposedly a straw-man, isn't a supported position, it's the lack of supporting your position/claims. It's particularly obvious "suicide" is meant as a figure of speech, although frankly it's not too far from the truth, given what deindustrialization (loss of very large numbers of manufacturing jobs) did to large swaths of th…

Yeah, I don't have to have a substantive response to a strawman.

Re: Tell HN: Don't root for WFH, it might destroy well-paying jobs

#116

Post by voisin »

Yeri wrote: post #14

I don't see how this is not already happening pre-WFH: most big tech companies have offices in Ukraine, Belarus, India, China, etc with "low cost" tech workers.

Like many things Pandemic related, this isn’t creating a new trend but rather accelerating trends already under way.

Push for WFH at your peril.

Re: Tell HN: Don't root for WFH, it might destroy well-paying jobs

#118

Post by helij »

RestlessMind wrote: post #89
mssundaram wrote: post #9

Hot take: if you're a mediocre dev, maybe be worried; if you're in a niche and have deep expertise you'll be fine.

This has a flywheel effect where once you start gathering critical mass in a place, the original experts lose their edge eventually. See what happened to manufacturing, where China is leaps and bounds ahead of Western nations.

You haven't seen any european factories did you? They are proper high-tech in comparison to your average chinese one.

What people might not realise that manufacturing is still going on in Europe and US. It's just that less people are working in factories. Output is 'more' than in decades before. Automation and all that.

Re: Tell HN: Don't root for WFH, it might destroy well-paying jobs

#119

Post by danaris »

MrRiddle wrote: post #72
bugmen0t wrote: post #8

Your post seems more nationalist than anything else. I’ve worked at a geo-distributed company for a long while and let me tell you: The diversity of viewpoints and experiences will make your teams stronger, happier and more resilient. That culture needs to be consciously built though. That won’t happen in and of itself. But it’s so, so worth it. To anyone else reading this: Don’t buy into the "us versus them" rhetori…

Your post is all sorts of wrong. - It’s nationalistic to defend the income of your fellow Americans? If it is, then everyone should be a nationalist. - Geo diversity improves the company? How come? Language barriers, cultural barriers, time zone barriers, in person location barriers, the list goes on. You just threw in some buzz words without any substance.

> - It’s nationalistic to defend the income of your fellow Americans?

Yes, that's (part of) the definition of nationalism.

> If it is, then everyone should be a nationalist.

No, they really shouldn't. For the same reason that we shouldn't all be trying to sabotage each other trying to improve our own status.

> - Geo diversity improves the company? How come?

He described exactly how. You may have had a different experience personally, but that doesn't mean he's wrong. There have been numerous studies showing that diverse groups produce better results than homogeneous ones, for exactly the reasons he described.

Re: Tell HN: Don't root for WFH, it might destroy well-paying jobs

#120

Post by silicon2401 »

mch82 wrote: post #53
underseacables wrote: post #2

What percentage of a pay decrease would you accept to work from home? If your job said come into the office, or take a 30% cut and work from home, would you do it?

Zero pay cut. Why should a person take a pay cut in exchange for being more effective at home?

Because I would take your job for a pay cut, if it let me be completely remote.
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