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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

#281

Post by fps_doug »

tchalla wrote: post #274
oivey wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To me, it sucks. (Video) calls are exhausting and less flexible, and nothing beats having a huge, real whiteboard and three people taking turns refining a diagram or flowchart while discussing it.

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

#282

Post by Cederfjard »

tchalla wrote: post #274
oivey wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I don’t really know why, but now I’ve found this to be less effective than IRL for some reason. Like I have to make more of an effort to be properly understood, and come away less certain that we’re on the same page (and that we have to follow up more often because there were indeed misunderstandings). At least I experience this with some people, less so with others.

Not sure if this is due to something I lack, or if (some) people are less attentive/perceptive/focused in phone/video calls.

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

#283

Post by brainwipe »

lend000 wrote: post #169

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…

You're right that not all engineers get to WFH but more can than you'd imagine.

I know defense contractors that are working from home. Two of them did so before the pandemic too - remoting into hardware they're not allowed to physically touch even if they were in the lab!

A neighbour is a civil engineer and the huge screens he needed to do his job were only in the office. Now that he's moved that huge screen (and I mean massive, it's like a telly), the office have told him that he only needs to go into the office to meet clients.

I have a product design dear friend who bought himself a Prusa 3D printer and now can pretty much 100% WFH. He prefers it because he no longer has to share resources.

A neighbour is a network engineer and he spent 2020 decommissioning hardware in the server room and moving it into the cloud - something he said was inevitable for his business but the pandemic hastened it. He now WFH pretty much 100% of the time.

I know someone who works for a SSD manufacturer in the states and they WFH most of the week.

All the web/data devs I know WFH pretty much full time - except one but only because his boss is draconian.

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

#284

Post by irrational »

icelancer wrote: post #178
irrational wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>where I say, "Hey, let me show you something." So... what you like is making it harder for other people to work by forcing them to pay attention to you according to your whims. I much prefer a coworker reaching out to me on Slack and saying "When you have time, let me show you something." And then I get back to them when I've finished what I am working on.

Sure, that's fine - you like that. Do you have empathy towards 90% of the remainder of a company who doesn't like that?

Do you mean 90% of developers? Because 100% of the developers I work with agree with me.

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

#285

Post by tchalla »

playing_colours wrote: post #253
arp242 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an issue not just with Russians, but with differences between mainland Europe and Anglo-Saxon culture in general (UK too). Funny enough, it gets worse the better at English you get: if you're obviously not very good at English then people tend to give you the benefit of the doubt. If you're reasonably good at English in such a way that it's not obvious you're not a native speaker at a glance then people tend…

The Germans and people from eastern Europe are usually straightforward in their communications. There might have been a shift towards conflict-avoidance in younger generations (< 30 yo) though.

> The Germans and people from eastern Europe are usually straightforward in their communications.

May be, Germans (and most Europe) are "straightforward" from an American perspective. I find Europeans with their own shade of "subtlety" which you could only learn if you were part of the culture. Otherwise, they are "subtle" and "measured" too.

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

#286

Post by fps_doug »

quadrifoliate wrote: post #277
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…

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 sounds like it's a workaround for dealing with bad co-workers? You can still have these in async communication and others will just give up eventually. And then the guy who gets asked something but doesn't reply until at least two others pester him via phone repeatedly.

Assuming you have a well-working team, real-time still seems more efficient to me, at least at my current job.

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

#287

Post by arpa »

EMM_386 wrote: post #176
arpa wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

yeah, no. Salaries are going to rise all over the world, especially if you talk about salaries. Is it true that a junior dev can have $240k/y in US for example? screw decades of my experience, imma be a junior dev :D You also have to take into account that working for US company is not that desirable because of the employer culture, for example. Some of us like worker protection laws, for example, or government-manda…

> yeah, no. Salaries are going to rise all over the world. Jesus. That's not how global economics works.

That's exactly how global economics work, albeit not instantly.

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

#288

Post by llampx »

zerocount wrote: post #213
bob1029 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Going from any of these items to 4 requires an extra special leap of faith. I personally see anything short of a full 4 as essentially being office work theater. Our company operates as a 4 tier and I've been here for going on 7 years now. We still have to get on a daily standup call at a fixed time every day, and I still have to participate in other scheduled obligations (mainly tech calls with customers), but the r…

Are you really worried about a co-worker drinking beer and dicking around instead of helping with a busted merge? Did you make a bad hire? That's the kind of hyperbole managers use to rein everyone in.

Yes, GP is a really disingenuous comment. What if it was a parent needing to take the child to the doctor at 11am on a Tuesday? Or they had taken vacation? Other than that, if hours are flexible and the team member communicated that they would be unavailable from 11am to 2pm and will make it up, then it is their right to do what they want with their time.

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

#289

Post by zamalek »

simonswords82 wrote: post #272
ouid wrote: 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 tha…

And here's the other side of it: you were ruining the commute for everyone causally tied to their workplace (from baristas to doctors) by adding undue stress to transport infrastructure. Then there's the impact on the environment.

Dropping your commute isn't an entirely selfish idea.

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

#290

Post by nottorp »

david-gpu wrote: post #279
lend000 wrote: post #169

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 imme…

Works at lesser known places as well :) Courier the boards, remote into a leee-nucks connected to them, work on the soc manufacturer's sample which you can order from anywhere and then remote into the real board. Lots of solutions to do the job from home.
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