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Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

economist.com

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Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#261

Post by onion2k »

atq2119 wrote: post #229
onion2k wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's arguably the entire purpose of nukes at this point. That is absolutely not true. There are people in the governments of every nuclear power would use their weapons aggressively given the chance. That's why policies of disarmament are so necessary. As long as humans have nuclear weapons the probability of practically annihilating our species and leaving any survivors living in the stone age again remains higher t…

I certainly hope you're right in your implied statement about climate change.

I completely believe humanity can and will deal with climate change. It'll take a few wars, an anti-capitalist revolution in a first world country or two, and a massive shift towards equality and justice for poorer people, but it will happen.

Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#262

Post by MrPatan »

koonsolo wrote: post #244
bigwavedave wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the other people in the room are also knowledgeable, you will come to an even better conclusion much faster face-to-face. > In my experience, having "group reasoning" is faster and with better results. Why is face-to-face required for "group reasoning"?

You want high and fast bandwidth between the different brains. Me writing something in my cocoon for 15 minutes, then someone reading that and replying what is wrong with that is not very efficient. Just throwing some thoughts in the open air and others responding to that, crystallizes much faster. Same with giving feedback about user interfaces. It's so much easier to just walk to someone's desk and point at what yo…

Calls are even lower latency, you skip the "walk to their desk" bit.

Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#263

Post by quietbritishjim »

oivey wrote: post #221
nirui wrote: post #210

> ... There is a more intriguing possibility, however. Work that is largely done remotely may be more efficient compared with an office-first model. I don't think in-person real-time communication is always effective. No, I personally think it's one of the least method of communication that can happen in an office environment when the topic gets slightly complex (that is, if the topic is complex enough for you to wri…

On the other hand, for complex topics I’ve found that a face-to-face conversation is often much more effective because it allows both parties to have a rapid back and forth to resolve misunderstandings or gaps in the conversation. Asynchronous communication is poor at this.

Absolutely agreed. I've often found myself seeing that someone has misunderstood something, and wanting to write "if the source of your misunderstanding is (a) then [several paragraphs] whereas if it's (b) then [several different paragraphs]. Asking them whether it's (a) or (b) by email adds another cycle and often isn't understood anyway. It's just far more effective to communicate synchronously (face to face or by phone).

Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#264

Post by redisman »

_fat_santa wrote: post #119
EMM_386 wrote: post #19

Everyone should keep in mind that water seeks its own level. And think of this on a global scale. I've been working remotely for almost a decade as a senior software engineer. Now, post-Covid, almost everyone realizes they can do the same. Salaries are going to drop in the "rich world", and it's not just because people are now fleeing places like SF/SV to lower cost of living areas. We are also beginning to compete g…

Like others have said, this story has been repeated numerous times in some variation in the past and has never panned out. I think the reason is that many people conflate "remote" with "asynchronous". Having a company go fully remote is one thing, having a company move to a culture of asynchronous work is something completely different. Some tech companies will be able to do this, but the problems really arise for co…

Asynchronous is the real difficult part. A lot of companies already have offices in locations with good engineering talents and they usually work as a independent unit. It’s just really hard to coordinate a project when you have 0-1h of possible overlap time for meetings

Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#265

Post by dash2 »

SturgeonsLaw wrote: post #235
zerocount wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those things are also insurance against being killed. Are you supposed to just hope the bad people don't pick you? No, you invest in offense so you can have a better defense.

I know man, I know. I'm not so naive as to say that if a country was enlightened enough to disband their military, then other countries would leave them be. They would be a seen as a ripe fruit, and they would be picked. I just wish it wasn't like this. I wish we didn't have people engaged in the business of enabling industrial scale murder. I wish it wasn't profitable. I wish the citizenry would see through the prop…

Modern warfare is much less likely to involve the nation’s poorest dying for the sake of the richest. There’s a recent article about how the average American soldier is now better educated than the average civilian. The specialist weapons we’re talking about shift the balance towards capital and away from labour in the killing production function.

Is that a good thing? I’m not so sure. The age of mass armies was also the age of democratisation. If war is waged by defence firms and brilliant technocrats, then maybe defence firms and brilliant technocrats will run the country.

Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#266

Post by rimliu »

oivey wrote: post #221
nirui wrote: post #210

> ... There is a more intriguing possibility, however. Work that is largely done remotely may be more efficient compared with an office-first model. I don't think in-person real-time communication is always effective. No, I personally think it's one of the least method of communication that can happen in an office environment when the topic gets slightly complex (that is, if the topic is complex enough for you to wri…

On the other hand, for complex topics I’ve found that a face-to-face conversation is often much more effective because it allows both parties to have a rapid back and forth to resolve misunderstandings or gaps in the conversation. Asynchronous communication is poor at this.

Yes, it is like flying a toy drone in your room vs. flying a drone on the Mars. In the first case if you see it heading into the wall you can correct it immediately. On the Mars it may be already too late when you find out it is heading into some boulder.

Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#267

Post by andylynch »

nootropicat wrote: post #198
nigrioid wrote: post #171

You guys are missing it. This leads straight to outsourcing.

Yes. There's no room for current American dev salaries in a world where remote-first jobs are a norm. Sure there are timezone differences, but EST is doable for Europe. 08:00 EST = 13:00 UTC, so working 8h in EST means 13:00-15:00 -> 21:00-23:00 in European timezones. Some people may even prefer it. Europe has a larger population of devs that's underutilized because it's dispersed among multiple countries. India is t…

This is definitely happening as has been for a while - Poland was first on a big scale now but in places like Czechia too.

Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#268

Post by sokoloff »

bigwavedave wrote: post #223
koonsolo wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the other people in the room are also knowledgeable, you will come to an even better conclusion much faster face-to-face. In my experience, having "group reasoning" is faster and with better results.

> If the other people in the room are also knowledgeable, you will come to an even better conclusion much faster face-to-face. > In my experience, having "group reasoning" is faster and with better results. Why is face-to-face required for "group reasoning"?

It’s a round-trip latency difference. Standing in the same room, we can get perhaps 100, but certainly 50, responses in an hour from a small group. Video conferencing might be 15% less and that relatively slight difference is already frustrating. In asynchronous written form, it probably takes 3 days to get 100 “turns” and maybe a week or more if there’s timezone “smear”. The written async responses can be higher quality on average, but where reaching consensus in minimal wall clock time is important, face-to-face wins.

Why is Slack “better” than physically mailed correspondence? It’s roughly the same phenomenon, just on an even shorter timescale (including that Slack isn’t better for everything).

Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#269

Post by redisman »

rsj_hn wrote: post #101
Aeolun wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if you get a really good person in third world, he will in the end cost similarly as good person in first world Inevitably. Because a person like that will very quickly move to the first world.

Exactly. Companies will fall over themselves to sponsor a visa. And he will jump at the chance to take it. Maybe not in 100 years, but right now that's how it is.

Exactly. Poor countries have huge problems other than low salaries. Corruption, crime, lack of freedoms, bad infrastructure, poor investment options, etc. As much as many Americans like to think their country sucks, it’s a literal dream land for a large percentage of the world population.

Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#270

Post by saimiam »

koonsolo wrote: post #244
bigwavedave wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the other people in the room are also knowledgeable, you will come to an even better conclusion much faster face-to-face. > In my experience, having "group reasoning" is faster and with better results. Why is face-to-face required for "group reasoning"?

You want high and fast bandwidth between the different brains. Me writing something in my cocoon for 15 minutes, then someone reading that and replying what is wrong with that is not very efficient. Just throwing some thoughts in the open air and others responding to that, crystallizes much faster. Same with giving feedback about user interfaces. It's so much easier to just walk to someone's desk and point at what yo…

What crystallizes may have been reached quickly but there is no guarantee it is the best possible choice given all the known and unknown unknowns that the experts may have not considered.

Then there is also the hierarchy of expert advice to consider where a room of experts some who are more senior (or louder or more convinced about their rightness) might push you towards a worse outcome than a well thought through option.

I feel a decision taken “live” with the help of experts needs to be viewed with more skepticism than less.

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