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The Winners of Remote Work

nytimes.com

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Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#161

Post by jackcosgrove »

WaitWaitWha wrote: post #48

> Avoiding the office saves employees money — in commuting costs, for example It saves money for businesses exponentially more. The office space, associated utilities, physical security, cleaning, supplies, insurance, etc. are insane amount of savings. I owned a small "remote business" in the 90's and it allowed me to be competitive with multi-million ventures.

Those savings could be wiped out from a security breach by a remote worker. Compliance will be much harder with remote work, and I don't think that's priced in yet since the trend is so recent.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#162

Post by teclordphrack2 »

umeshunni wrote: post #69
ghaff wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The same principles that apply to remote work apply here. Why would I want to drive 10-15 minutes, park, change and all that for a 30 or 60 minute spin class when I can take that same class in my garage or living room.

There are urban areas where the housing choices, the lack of space, means you are going to be doing your hobbies outside of the home.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#163

Post by 908B64B197 »

masterof0 wrote: post #122

Honest question: Why would a company pay an US based engineer a high salary when they can get a team overseas equally or even more qualified (whatever metrics you prefer to use: leetcode count, school ranking, GitHub stars, etc...) for the same amount of money or less? I understand if you are Raedon/Being/... Wouldn't remote work at least in the US force local engineer to accept less money for their work?

> when they can get a team overseas equally or even more qualified (whatever metrics you prefer to use: leetcode count, school ranking, GitHub stars, etc...) for the same amount of money or less?

If they could, they would [0].

[0] https://restofworld.org/2020/india-engineering-degree/

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#164

Post by ghaff »

mym1990 wrote: post #151
closeparen wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What reason do we have to believe that there will be a point in the future with less COVID risk than there is today? By what mechanism will that arise?

Vaccination numbers still have a lot of room to grow, the virus may mutate into something that has a lower kill rate, the vaccine efficacy will likely improve, etc...

Well, and at some point, even relatively cautious rational people go: "I'm not permanently curtailing my activities." I live in a deep blue state and, while you see masks, life has returned to normal in a lot of respects.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#165

Post by datavirtue »

ghaff wrote: post #39
francisofascii wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Pelaton trainers, on average, are far superior to in-person instructors. The experience is better in-home and less time is in used travelling and changing. My equipment. My home. Die hard educated professional leading the class. The only in-person that comes close runs about $300-500 a month.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#166

Post by datavirtue »

gringoDan wrote: post #82

This makes complete sense – just another example of power law dynamics of the internet. Short-term, we're going to see companies pursue a remote model in order to attract talent. This will be great for employees; live in Colorado, go on hikes and have a great lifestyle while commanding a SF salary! Longer-term, companies are going to realize that (except for the top ~10% of performers, who will always command a high…

Offshoring failed for the same reason s we will not have the worries you espouse.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#167

Post by ghaff »

justaguy88 wrote: post #145
joelbluminator wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Law and accountancy is much harder to outsource than programming. You usually have to be U.S certified so thats pretty much protected.

You could set up a US Law school in another country

There's no shortage of lawyers and law school grads from 2nd and 3rd tier schools aren't actually all that well paid on average. The big NY white shoe firm salaries? They mostly come from a relatively small number of schools, students who did well, often had good internships or clerkships, maybe were on law review, maybe have connections, etc.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#168

Post by drewburg »

I haven't seen any mentions here if being in a startup fundamentally changes the argument. I think startups would want to leverage the individual talent and personal time sacrifice to bootstrap themselves and build their dream team. I have found the opposite, that they want to be even more controlling in work environment. I am probably biased as it did take a few months to adjust to remote work and find a decent balance of zoom meetings/reporting but now have a good groove between my peers and boss. Given HR's surveys to determine who wants to return to the office, I would rather stay remote. Out of my past 2 startup jobs in the past decade, it's 50/50 whether remote worked well.

My recent anecdote: Startup out of stealth a month ago informed me during 2nd round that they were only considering programmers willing to relocate and live in Austin. No remote option whatsoever. Asking what would happen if there are additional lockdown measures reinstituted, for Delta or even just whatever other 'virus-of-the-year' comes along, they didn't have any answer other than to repeat Austin-based only.

Bonus: Their founders and early execs are today only located in SF bay area and have no plans to relocate and the in-office only policy would only be for the devs.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#169

Post by abeppu »

eric4smith wrote: post #3

The only winners of remote work will be those who are self disciplined enough to get work done without outside supervision or motivation. That goes for every single field that does remote work - learning, teaching, Knowledge work etc. But let’s be honest - some people need the motivation of a workplace — and that’s ok! We are all different. Im somewhere in the middle… love working from home but it’s easy to get distr…

But ... in the office, was the "supervision" really from someone physically looking at you with direct line of sight? I feel like on a remote team, everyone still knows who else is getting stuff done, in part because our work products are digital artifacts which often need attention from our coworkers, whether that's "review this PR", "review this design", "read this email and implement the policy change described in it" etc.

There are some high level stats that suggest that in aggregate, productivity increased with WFH, though I'm not sure how much of that stemmed from people working in the hours that they previously would have commuted.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#170

Post by spaceisballer »

Johnny555 wrote: post #140
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.

how many workers are losing by working remotely I think the big losers are the service workers that provided services for all of those office employees: coffee shop workers, restaurants, drycleaners, caterers that provided employee lunches, cleaning people, etc. A Starbucks, a drycleaner and 2 or 3 restaurants that were in my former office building have shut down permanently. My company stopped stocking snacks and ca…

You’re exactly correct here. Our complex isn’t in the greatest area, but it sure was nice to have a dry cleaner right across the street. But in our complex we had a cafeteria and two satellite snack places. They are closed until our building hits a % of capacity as stated in their contract. I feel like there is a big opportunity for food trucks. Maybe use those empty mall parking lots and set up some times for people to grab food, set up outdoor dining.
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