The Winners of Remote Work • Hacker News Board

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#31

Post by SonOfKyuss » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 2:14 PM UTC

ecshafer wrote: post #19

seibelj wrote: post #6

> There are already examples of how gains are captured by the few and not the many. The New York Times - "Feel Bad About Everything, Always" Remote work is amazing, net on net it vastly improves lives, reduces commute time / traffic / car pollution, reverses the decades long trend of economic activity centralizing in a few boom cities, and I believe will reduce inequality longterm as workers will be able to get good,…

>The New York Times - "Feel Bad About Everything, Always" This would be a bad thing for them, if the New York Times sold the news, which I don't think they do any more. The New York Times instead sells brand image to people. They sell a series of a talking points, ideas, and topics that show you are in the in group and on the right side. So that when someone brings up remote work, you can show how empathetic you are,…

Do you have a trustworthy news source that doesn’t do this?

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#32

Post by goldbricked » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 2:15 PM UTC

neogodless wrote: post #23

Survival of the fittest. Human society has had a lot of versions of "how things work" in regards to obtaining and distributing resources. As some of the work force transitions from physical, in-person employment (trading labor for pay) to increasingly virtual employment, some things are de-coupled, like high "cost of living" areas being less strongly related to "high paying employment centers." But for employees, it'…

For the most part of the last century, the question was answered by creating more demand to keep the work force steady, thusly increasing the amount of produced goods and services constantly with the increased productivity.

However the increased productivity also applies to extraction of ressources and destruction of ecosystems. On a planet with limited ressources we need to do the exact opposite, imho. That is decrease the amount of work done in extractive and destructive labour and channel all following and already existing productivity gains into sustainable work.

This will definitely need serious redistribution schemes, as well as lots of regulation.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#33

Post by ghaff » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 2:18 PM UTC

schnevets wrote: post #15

The article describes gains made by "superstars", who can be seen as self-motivated and capable of making a big impact. I am extremely concerned about how we cultivate superstars in the remote work world. I have been working remote for over 5 years now, but I wouldn't have survived without a lot of luck and years of experience as an intern/entry level employee at an office with some brilliant mentors. I have tried me…

I entered the workforce in a very different time with very different tools which makes it hard for me to think through the counterfactual: "What if I had had to be remote when I first started working?" But I think it would have been very difficult and I might have been less successful as a result.

Even today, I feel like I'm cruising a bit on existing in-person relationships. (I was large remote pre-COVID but I still met a lot of people at in-person events and meetings.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#34

Post by stainforth » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 2:20 PM UTC

booleandilemma wrote: post #26

bennysomething wrote: post #11

This is partly why I keep thinking I should have become an electrician or a carpenter: the only real competition is local, there is always demand in cities. I knew a very wealthy electrician who started his own business and it seems to be a common path. Unlike programming where the common path is work for someone else and burn out.

Never too late to switch. Maybe this remote working trend will lead to outsourcing of programmers and we’ll see a rise of electrician and carpenter bootcamps as people flee software development. You’ll just be ahead of the curve.

Or be the one that sells the bootcamps, or even the one that sells a prebuilt platform that creates bootcamps to those that are selling the bootcamps. Picks and shovels so to speak. But wait now you're developing software again.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#35

Post by sct202 » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 2:21 PM UTC

bennysomething wrote: post #11

This is partly why I keep thinking I should have become an electrician or a carpenter: the only real competition is local, there is always demand in cities. I knew a very wealthy electrician who started his own business and it seems to be a common path. Unlike programming where the common path is work for someone else and burn out.

You're still working for someone else in the trades. All your clients are basically mini-bosses and your performance ratings are public on Yelp and Angies List.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#36

Post by vehemenz » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 2:22 PM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #6

> There are already examples of how gains are captured by the few and not the many. The New York Times - "Feel Bad About Everything, Always" Remote work is amazing, net on net it vastly improves lives, reduces commute time / traffic / car pollution, reverses the decades long trend of economic activity centralizing in a few boom cities, and I believe will reduce inequality longterm as workers will be able to get good,…

You'd have a stronger argument if remote work didn't have the potential to increase rural living and exurban sprawl, both of which contribute massively to energy waste and ecological destruction. At least in the US.

Boom cities were never the problem. The problem is commuting, which stems from a lack of housing.

Forcing everyone out of the cities creates a worse set of problems. It means more wasteful roads to nowhere and doubling down on our third-world transportation infrastructure. It means more clearing of wild land, one of the best resources the US has if you've done any traveling at all. It means more boom-bust bedroom communities and vacant strip malls. It means more culturally insulated communities and Trump-like politicians.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#37

Post by co2benzoate » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 2:22 PM UTC

pvm3 wrote: post #22

The Winners of Remote Work don't live in the United States. The pandemic has accelerated globalization.

The winners of remote work are all fleeing to New Zealand, leaving the rest to wallow in decaying infrastructure and a healthcare system bursting at the seams.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#38

Post by iainctduncan » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 2:26 PM UTC

I have done remote work for a long time (because ...Canada), and the real issue is that it requires management to have their shit together. I also assess companies for acquisitions now so I talk every month to companies about what's working and what isn't. I've seen some very successful companies with partially remote or even 100% remote teams. And... they have their shit together. Managers have to actually know what the hell they are going to do tomorrow, instead of making stuff up when the stand-up happens. Workers have to be lined up in their swim lanes and the whole thing has to be orchestrated... you know, like actual agile instead of the reactive pfaffery that everyone passes off as "hybrid agile" (boy do I hear that phrase a lot in diligence!)

Given how much I've seen it work, and how bad the tech talent war is right now, I'm pretty confident there will be lots of remote only options in 6-12 months when upper managers finally wrap their heads around the fact that this is what they have to do to find and hold top talent now. At the competitive companies, upper execs/board members will start dropping middle managers who can't hack it when they see their attrition numbers in the losing part of the spread.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#39

Post by ghaff » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 2:27 PM UTC

francisofascii wrote: post #28

echopurity wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's got to be clickbait. If there are winners, then how many workers are losing by working remotely? It seems obvious that the vast majority of people win big by not being forced to commute into a full day at an office where they would rather not be.

To use an example from the parent post, local, cyclist spin trainers are losing, since people are simply using the Pelaton trainers at home, rather than going to an "in person" spin class. The local, small time trainer can't compete with a celebrity/model trainer. Similar to how TV and movies hurt local theatres. In the end, it is more efficient, but there are "losers".

I'm not convinced a lot of these trends stick post-COVID. A lot of people like the in-person part of the spin class and probably would prefer it to the highly-paid video pro.

That said, behaviors will have changed for a lot of things over the course of a couple of years. People have developed new habits. Not all of that--including going into an office five days a week in many cases--are going to just reset.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#40

Post by schnevets » Tue, Aug 31, 2021, 2:28 PM UTC

bennysomething wrote: post #11

This is partly why I keep thinking I should have become an electrician or a carpenter: the only real competition is local, there is always demand in cities. I knew a very wealthy electrician who started his own business and it seems to be a common path. Unlike programming where the common path is work for someone else and burn out.

I can understand programmers romanticizing "the trades", where effort is more justly rewarded. All of us have had sleepless all-nighters where that bug just didn't get resolved (or, worse, the solution didn't end up being necessary). Compare that to an engineer staying at the job site after hours to keep wiring or returning to the office to process paperwork/respond to inquiries/strategize. It's still hard, but at least the work will be fruitful.

In Software Development, you can "get by" with an effort between 2-6 (where 5 is an average worker) or you can "excel" with an effort of 9-10, but putting in a 7-8 just stops being be worthwhile after a few years. Compare that to a local business owner, where greater hustle always appears commensurate to a greater reward.