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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

#271

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"?

> Why is face-to-face required for "group reasoning"?

Because it raises the bar on starting a meeting. And it keeps half the meeting from being muted/camera-off and totally zoned out.

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

#272
post #194

What I find offensive is the notion that workers consider a 10-25% increase in hours as commensurate with a 5% pay cut. End commuting. It's unpaid labor.

Sounds like a post from r/antiwork but I do understand your point. In fact, when I was working in London it was doing the maths on my "unpaid labour" at the time which made me quit and start my first business.

1.5 hours each way * 5 days a week = 15 hours a week That's 780 hours a year (not including holidays/sick leave etc) That's 32.5 24 hour days! One whole calendar month sat in my car each year.

As soon I did that maths it was only a question of time before I quit.

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

#273
post #167

At very least my office is going to have to improve my working conditions for me to go back a significant portion of time. Crowded noisy open plan space with constant interruptions aint gonna cut it any more. Give me private space (office or not), stop interrupting me, and give me my 3-monitor setup I have at home and we can talk :-)

Same here.

I have 2x 27" 1440p IPS screens at home, which is just perfect for coding. The single 24" 1080p screen is not going to cut it at the office.

At home I'm also using my desktop (rysen-based + nvme) pc for work and it feels about 10x faster than the macbook air they supply (which I haven't done real work on for the last year). I'm also using a Logitech G815 + Logitech G102 with a massive mouse pad. My desk has been lowered (I've cut the legs shorter to an exact height) to a point where my knees/legs are in the air to allow blood flow. I also have an electric foot warmer for the winter months (pet heating pad in a nice cover). Other than that, nicer headphones + speakers + studio microphone and overall desk aesthetics...So I want to see them replicate my very comfortable setup that I have at home vs the office. Also having fiber at home without silly restrictions.

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

#274
post #221
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.

> 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.

Face-to-Face conversation can also happen remote synchronous.

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

#275
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You do realize that what you are describing could have happened any time in the last years or decades for the same reasons but didn’t? The conditions also didn’t really change to make this more true.

Decades? Bandwidth for global scale videoconferencing didn't exist even 10 years ago, especially in poorer parts of the world. Speeds like 8Mbps/1Mbps or even 8/512kbps over ADSL were common. People also had much weaker hardware.

I think the switch to remote work started to really happen just as it actually became practical for a sufficient percentage of people, which is basically now.

https://www.submarinenetworks.com/news/global-bandwidth-pric... "Carriers reached an impressive 67Tbps of capacity on their international internet, private and voice networks in 2011"

https://www2.telegeography.com/hubfs/assets/Ebooks/state-of-... "Total international bandwidth now stands at 618 Tbps"

(note it's from the same company)

That's an increase of 9.2x.

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

#276

Not mentioned enough on this topic: not all engineers are software engineers and not all software engineers never need to touch hardware. If you plan to work on/with web frameworks, advertisements, data science, or pure CS topics for your whole career, then there's probably no excuse to force you to come into the office 5 days a week. But good luck doing that as a software engineer at a company like SpaceX, Tesla, In…

Most of my job is working on drivers for hardware that is in lab thousands of kilometers away. I've never been in that lab, I just ssh to system with hardware to interact with it.

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

#277
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…

One reason I have found real-time communication ineffective is that it favors the narcissists and egoists in the conversation who are comfortable talking over everyone else.

Guess what happens in this situation – Bob spends 40 minutes talking out of the hour's meeting about how his way is right, interrupts everyone, and by the end of the hour meeting the boss is saying “Well, why don't we do a proof of concept with Bob's suggestion” simply because everyone is bored and hungry. Meanwhile, Jane had a novel and imaginative idea that went completely ignored because Bob kept cutting her off saying why it wouldn't work early on when she was trying to explain the concept.

Oh, and did I say that this interruption and talking for a long time seems to get ten time worse over video calls for some reason – perhaps because Bob finds it easier to pontificate while in his pajamas compared to having to stand up and talk in front of his peers in the office.

Yeah, I know the standard retort for this is "your meeting must have an agenda" et cetera. Guess what, look at the last 5 meetings on your calendar and tell me truthfully how many of them have a real agenda (mindlessly repeating the title as the description doesn't count). People don't want to do it, because, guess what, it adds an element of asynchronous communication when you have to think of the agenda ahead of time.

So, I have found that just going the whole way and just having the entire communication asynchronously is often better at ensuring more equitable participation.

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

#278
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…

One reason I have found real-time communication ineffective is that it favors the narcissists and egoists in the conversation who are comfortable talking over everyone else. Guess what happens in this situation – Bob spends 40 minutes talking out of the hour's meeting about how his way is right, interrupts everyone, and by the end of the hour meeting the boss is saying “Well, why don't we do a proof of concept with B…

it puts an element of asynchronous communication when you have to think of the agenda ahead of time.

Oh, the difficultly of getting people to think about things in advance. The number of meetings where it's clear that basically nobody has actually put any thought in, done any research, even read the entire meeting invitation.

Meetings become a way to force people to spend time on a topic, and the act of being there where everyone can see them means they can't goof off and do something else again.

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

#279

Not mentioned enough on this topic: not all engineers are software engineers and not all software engineers never need to touch hardware. If you plan to work on/with web frameworks, advertisements, data science, or pure CS topics for your whole career, then there's probably no excuse to force you to come into the office 5 days a week. But good luck doing that as a software engineer at a company like SpaceX, Tesla, In…

I have spent my whole career working at places like AMD and NVidia, either writing systems software or doing computer architecture.

Yes, we work with various forms of pre- and post-silicon devices but you will find that either they can be accessed remotely, or you can send them by courier to whoever needs one.

So, sure, _some_ people need to be in the lab touching the hardware, especially during bringup, but the immense majority of the people, the immense majority of the time, can work remotely.

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