Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

For programmers, remote working is becoming the norm

economist.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 461 posts

Re: For programmers, remote working is becoming the norm

#431

Post by VRay »

thealig wrote: post #337
jimsimmons wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eat your veggies, kids are dying in Africa

I lost it while reading your comment... Honestly, I get how the sentiment of "suck it up, you are privileged" is sometimes annoying.

I think the average coder in the USA only has about as much purchasing power as a regular old skilled tradesman did 60 years ago.. My grandfather was a dockworker, and with his dockworker pay he could comfortably afford a full-time stay-at-home wife, 4 kids, a heavy drinking habit, AND a mistress

Re: For programmers, remote working is becoming the norm

#432

Post by Cookingboy »

arcturus17 wrote: post #173
Cookingboy wrote: post #57

As preferable as WFH is for many and as productive as many people can be while working remote, at the end of the day, you can't change human nature. There is a reason why companies like Google are doubling down in Silicon Valley real estate. They believe that the best, most innovative type of work are the results of organic discussions and unscheduled, unplanned, casual human interactions. So many cool ideas and new…

I've thought deeply about at lot of the points you lay out, but at the end of the day I don't think the answers are so clear-cut. I think about these issues a lot because I run my own consultancy - I'm currently hiring freelancers 100% remotely, but as the moment to hire my first few full-time employees looms, I'm having to think very deeply about my hiring model. I've had very positive experiences with remote work t…

I don't have much to add and I don't disagree with much of what you wrote, just wanna say thanks for the write up.

Re: For programmers, remote working is becoming the norm

#433

Post by Cookingboy »

jimsimmons wrote: post #273

What bothers me more is that these tech companies aren’t even trying to have a conversation with their employees. If they did a survey and collected opinions from their employees the decision would be pretty trivial. But the managerial gang knows that and they want to side step it. The companies want to pretend they care about the employees. They claim to be giving them perks. In reality, these perks are just gamific…

>If they did a survey and collected opinions from their employees the decision would be pretty trivial.

There are surveys at Facebook, Google, etc. The vast majority of people do not want full remote only. Most of them prefer a hybrid approach.

Re: For programmers, remote working is becoming the norm

#434

Post by Cookingboy »

disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #324
Cookingboy wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They are doubling down on real estate because they have sunken costs, I'm pretty sure a company like Google that has no problem killing unsuccessful products after multi-billion dollar investments, knows how not to fall for the sunken cost fallacy. > execs themselves probably have serious personal real estate positions and As opposed to move to a different state, buy a house 3x the size for the same money, and save…

> I'm pretty sure a company like Google that has no problem killing unsuccessful products after multi-billion dollar investments, knows how not to fall for the sunken cost fallacy. You're making the assumption that people behave rationally. In actuality, rationality takes effort and as such, is rarely used. We are irrational beings who are capable of rational thought, that doesn't mean that we always do. Additionally…

>You're making the assumption that people behave rationally.

What? No, my original post was completely about how people don't act rationally, and that's why WFH will not be as amazing despite it can be more product in many cases.

Re: For programmers, remote working is becoming the norm

#435

Post by closeparen »

karottenreibe wrote: post #407
closeparen wrote: post #397

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bit less dramatic than I would expect; $37.50 USD/hour is the wage I made as an intern in San Francisco 5 years ago.

It's a bit more dramatic if you look at cost of living again as GP did. Numbeo again: > You would need around 3,309.51$ (12,912.27zł) in Warsaw to maintain the same standard of life that you can have with 8,500.00$ in San Francisco, CA (assuming you rent in both cities).

I mean from the employer's perspective. I wouldn't have expected a "cheap" foreign labor market to be anywhere in the range paid to US workers, but maybe like 20-30% of the cheapest US worker.

Re: For programmers, remote working is becoming the norm

#436

Post by lytefm »

jimsimmons wrote: post #273

What bothers me more is that these tech companies aren’t even trying to have a conversation with their employees. If they did a survey and collected opinions from their employees the decision would be pretty trivial. But the managerial gang knows that and they want to side step it. The companies want to pretend they care about the employees. They claim to be giving them perks. In reality, these perks are just gamific…

> WFH won’t ever happen. These managers have to maintain appearances, name drop names and pretend to be “in the know”.

There are many smaller companies who can't afford having these kind of managers and work culture - else they'd have a hard time hiring and retaining developers.

Re: For programmers, remote working is becoming the norm

#437

Post by ridaj »

oblio wrote: post #411
ridaj wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Pay in low-COL satellite offices of big companies isn’t massively different from pay in Silicon Valley (averages are more different as more senior people will be in the main office) Software engineer pay is quite different, between, say, London and Paris, or between Switzerland and any place in Europe... And it has more to do with talent competition than cost of living. France or Germany aren't inexpensive places t…

> And it has more to do with talent competition than cost of living. This statement is easily falsifiable. Salaries for anything are much higher in Switzerland. I doubt there's more "janitor talent competition" in Switzerland than in France, yet Swiss janitors are paid more :-)

I bet it's harder to staff a janitor job in Switzerland than in France, with unemployment rate being so much higher in the latter country... Might that explain the difference as well?

I guess what I'm saying is that businesses as a whole tend to hire people at the lowest possible costs given to them by the job market, not based on what they want the worker's disposable income to be after costs are deducted.

Costs of living do affect the offer side of the market - the willingness of people to take various jobs at various salaries.

What I'm observing in software engineering is places with smaller differences in cost of living than in pay levels, which I'd attribute to talent competition...

Re: For programmers, remote working is becoming the norm

#438

Post by dang »

grawprog wrote: post #72

I dunno, for a group of people who seem to believe you're worth a ridiculous amount of money per hour, think of what your time is worth. You folks that make a living programming off exceedingly decent wages. You don't break your bodies every day, you're not forced to spend all day moving wood and metal, filling bags full of garbage, hauling shit that weighs 50+ lbs all day every day. You just gotta sit and think and…

Please don't post flamewar comments to HN. It leads to repetitive, nasty discussions, and worse. We're trying to go the other way here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: For programmers, remote working is becoming the norm

#439

Post by dang »

thiht wrote: post #290
grawprog wrote: post #72

I dunno, for a group of people who seem to believe you're worth a ridiculous amount of money per hour, think of what your time is worth. You folks that make a living programming off exceedingly decent wages. You don't break your bodies every day, you're not forced to spend all day moving wood and metal, filling bags full of garbage, hauling shit that weighs 50+ lbs all day every day. You just gotta sit and think and…

Oh shut up. Just because others have it worse doesn’t mean you can’t complain when you get fucked or that you can’t try to continue improving your situation. That’s the worse possible argument.

Please don't break the site guidelines like this, no matter how wrong some other commenter is or you feel they are.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: For programmers, remote working is becoming the norm

#440

Post by axiolite »

Cookingboy wrote: post #399
oytis wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But we are talking about engineering work, right? That's what discussed article is about.

A huge portion of an engineer’s job (especially senior level engineers) aren’t strictly technical. This seems to be something people miss.

> an engineer’s job (especially senior level engineers) aren’t strictly technical.

Text is able to convey information that is not entirely technical as well... This seems to be something people miss.

Have you ever read a novel?

Post reply on HN