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The Winners of Remote Work

nytimes.com

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Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#191

Post by throwdecro »

drewburg wrote: post #168

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 bala…

If it wasn't for the possibility of COVID transmission, an office with remote management sounds like it would be a fun and conveniently located place to hang out and chill.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#192

Post by masterof0 »

babesh wrote: post #147
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?

I would estimate that well over half of Silicon Valley engineers are foreign born. If you add the non local US engineers, you are probably at over 90%. Those equally or more qualified overseas people working for little were in short supply. Why would they work for you for pennies when they could move to Silicon Valley, make tons more, and have potential for much, much more? With remote work, what makes you think that…

> Why would they work for you for pennies when they could move to Silicon Valley, make tons more, and have potential for much, much more?

Who says all talented engineers overseas can come to the US? There is a huge amount of QA companies in Ukraine that contract their service to the west, for example, can they come to the US? I doubt it. Overseas workers don't get the chance to make demands, US companies have leverage over them. Because there are way more talented engineers than high paying jobs. I have you seen how much people get paid in toptal, and other online contractor companies?

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#193

Post by masterof0 »

cblconfederate wrote: post #177
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?

Are the wages of US tech workers skyrocketing because they switch jobs often? If so, remote workers can switch even faster. The most capable workers had already emigrated to US, so the question is, has the pool of workers expanded more than the pool of competitive jobs?

> The most capable workers had already emigrated to US

This is insanely wrong. What makes you think that?

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#194

Post by masterof0 »

sebular wrote: post #146
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?

The simple answer is that "whatever metrics you prefer to use" include qualifications that overseas engineers often cannot satisfy. Great engineers are human members of a team, and there's more to a team member than their LeetCode score (seriously?) and/or how many GitHub stars they've obtained. Just some examples off the top of my head: If you're building products to target US-based consumers, you don't need to prov…

> Great engineers are human members of a team, and there's more to a team member than their LeetCode score (seriously?) and/or how many GitHub stars they've obtained. I was referring to performance metrics in general, I didn't said those were the ones to take into account. I have definitely seen people here in HN referring to github stars, stackoverflow points, etc... as some sort of badge of honor.

Also I find your answer pretty condescending towards folks overseas, although that's your opinion. In my team at Google, we have people from all over the world, and they are amazing. Don't see how they don't have the "required qualifications" you are referring to.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#195

Post by j8hn »

co2benzoate wrote: post #37
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.

I wasn't aware that New Zealand are accepting immigrants right now.

Which visa does NZ allow you to live there and work remotely?

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#196

Post by devonbleak »

gravypod wrote: post #190
drewburg wrote: post #168

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 bala…

Sounds like an awful environment. If a CEO can't see the value in hiring good people that you don't need to micro manage and allowing them to decide if it makes sense to be in person or in office I don't think working at that kind of company would be fun. Hire good people, entrust them with executing on core business needs, allow them to choose however they make the magic happen.

The issue with this approach seems to be that hiring is fundamentally broken - hiring managers haven't really found a process with a high correlation of "good interview performance" = "good worker". I've personally been burnt a ton of times by remote people who knocked the interview process out of the park and then just didn't deliver and it's difficult to tell for quite a while without some kind of micro-managey framework in place.

With enterprise I'm playing more with averages so that one person on the team that may not be carrying their weight isn't going to drag down the entire business. For a startup where it's more critical that everybody be firing on all cylinders it makes sense they want to have more control and accountability to make sure their limited resources are being spent appropriately.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#197

Post by babesh »

masterof0 wrote: post #192
babesh wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would estimate that well over half of Silicon Valley engineers are foreign born. If you add the non local US engineers, you are probably at over 90%. Those equally or more qualified overseas people working for little were in short supply. Why would they work for you for pennies when they could move to Silicon Valley, make tons more, and have potential for much, much more? With remote work, what makes you think that…

> Why would they work for you for pennies when they could move to Silicon Valley, make tons more, and have potential for much, much more? Who says all talented engineers overseas can come to the US? There is a huge amount of QA companies in Ukraine that contract their service to the west, for example, can they come to the US? I doubt it. Overseas workers don't get the chance to make demands, US companies have leverag…

I am saying that the US was already playing the pick the cream of the crop game. It was playing it in two ways. First it identified obvious talent (math Olympiads, etc...). Second, the people who were the most driven got to Silicon Valley by any means necessary, showing tremendous grit.

Examples:

former boss's family got out of Russia, had guns pointed at them on the way to the airport

coworker who got an H1-B, was desperate to get out of Russia, we found him because a product he was working on was exceptional

several coworkers from other countries that were math or computer science olympiads

btw these people end up in American colleges as undergrads or grads

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#198

Post by chipotle_coyote »

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…

Yeah, there are a lot of businesses that have gone under because they were geared to serving office workers. Out here in Silicon Valley, a Panera-esque chain called Specialty’s just shut down completely within a couple months after offices closed; most of their locations were only open Monday through Friday for breakfast and lunch. Downtown San Jose hasn’t been completely decimated, but I’m pretty sure there are a lot of places that aren’t coming back.

(N.B.: There is one Specialty’s location that has re-opened, near Moffett in Mountain View; apparently the family that started the chain decades ago bought the assets, and their one original location, back.)

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#199

Post by chipotle_coyote »

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...

My (limited!) understanding is that mutations that make pathogens more contagious but less fatal are evolutionarily advantageous, so to the degree we can talk about Covid-19 having “self-interest,” becoming ever closer to Bad Case of Flu is within it.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#200

Post by bcrosby95 »

devonbleak wrote: post #196
gravypod wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like an awful environment. If a CEO can't see the value in hiring good people that you don't need to micro manage and allowing them to decide if it makes sense to be in person or in office I don't think working at that kind of company would be fun. Hire good people, entrust them with executing on core business needs, allow them to choose however they make the magic happen.

The issue with this approach seems to be that hiring is fundamentally broken - hiring managers haven't really found a process with a high correlation of "good interview performance" = "good worker". I've personally been burnt a ton of times by remote people who knocked the interview process out of the park and then just didn't deliver and it's difficult to tell for quite a while without some kind of micro-managey fra…

What do you use in-person that is unavailable for remote work? Butt-in-seat time?
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