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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

#351

Post by 46Bit »

zmmmmm wrote: 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 :-)

I strongly agree. I'm remote for the next few years because family has taken me outside a big metro area. But when I move back I'm gonna be open to working in an office, just so long as it's actually good. If I have to be a sardine in a deskfarm then I'd rather WFH; if the office has flexible spaces and enough desks and good equipment then maybe.

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

#352

Post by ghaff »

brsg wrote: post #343

I think there's 2 opposing forces that will affect "us" (rich country engineers) over the coming decade. 1) An absolutely insatiable demand for software as _everything_ needs to be remote friendly and digital. 2) An equally insatiable demand to offshore engineering talent for a fraction of the cost. I'm not sure which will have a greater effect. Technically, if the demand for software grows faster than the world's ab…

Rationally, it's hard to see why one branch of engineering--especially in a few locations in one country today--should generally have significant compensation premiums relative to other branches of engineering. There are a lot of dynamics involved but even just talking US universities, a lot of would-be engineering majors don't have strong preferences for one specific branch of engineering. And if there's a big salary gap...

Of course, there are legit differences in demand for all sort of reasons but it's hard to imagine some equalization of demand and compensation not happening. Especially given that for programming, as opposed to computer science more broadly, the barriers of entry are lower than for engineering more broadly.

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

#353

Post by InitialBP »

spaetzleesser wrote: post #35
taf2 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s not just shitty ISPs it’s also pretty bad corporate VPN or “security” features that really just break the internet for home working people… we encounter one network that is like a proxy of sorts… it times out all connections after like 4 minutes- a really shitty feature for voice applications

I definitely noticed that during COVID my company's IT department has upped its game a lot.

Penetration tester here. While my company was concerned about business at the beginning of the pandemic, we quickly saw a large uptick in business from corporate customers who were integrating remote employees into their new norm.

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

#354

Post by mehphp »

brsg wrote: post #343

I think there's 2 opposing forces that will affect "us" (rich country engineers) over the coming decade. 1) An absolutely insatiable demand for software as _everything_ needs to be remote friendly and digital. 2) An equally insatiable demand to offshore engineering talent for a fraction of the cost. I'm not sure which will have a greater effect. Technically, if the demand for software grows faster than the world's ab…

> Personally, I'm seeing moving into management as more attractive everytime I see an article posted here about remote work.

Any chance you can expand on this?

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

#355

Post by cblconfederate »

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…

I would like to reply in text, but i d rather call you, ruin your flow and bother you with insignificant details

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

#356

Post by ghaff »

twelvechairs wrote: post #44

I see four main tiers: 1 - 9-5 in office (business as usual), 2 - semi-remote (part of week in the office), 3 - fully remote with fixed hours, 4 - fully remote outcomes-based (no fixed hours but may also be 'on call'). The title of this article perhaps indicates a move from 1 to 3 or 4 but its content discusses 2. All the information I've seen is that business are definitely moving more to 2 than 3 or 4, though some…

I suspect that the "coastal historic town just outside the city" (or other pleasant location that is within a 1 to 2 hour drive of an urban metro office--which is often not actually in the city) is probably fairly sticky. Even if a lot of people in the US don't want to make the tradeoffs to live in an urban core, for all sorts of reasons they may want to live within striking distance of a US city as opposed to moving to some small mountain town much less a beach in Thailand.

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

#357

Post by brightball »

kwertyoowiyop wrote: post #350

> Economists have less insight into why remote workers might be more productive. One possibility is that they can more easily focus on tasks than in an office, where the temptation to gossip with a co-worker looms large. Wow, how out of touch and patronizing is this? How about, it’s hard to concentrate in these cheap open-plan offices where you have to listen to every other conversation in the vicinity?

There’s also out of sight, out of mind pressure.

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

#358

Post by cblconfederate »

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…

Aside from what others say, there is a trend to 'cloudify' even things like bench work in biology. Companies that allow people to run remote experiments. This will probably change the way university labs teach things

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

#359

Post by zz865 »

pharmakom wrote: post #248

I think remote first is more efficient for companies because they have a wider pool of candidates to select from. I think the productivity bump during covid WFH was actually due to there being little else to do and people had not established proper work boundaries. I still think individuals are, for the most part, more productive in the office. However, smart companies will recognise that top talent will refuse to co…

> I think remote first is more efficient for companies because they have a wider pool of candidates to select from.

Its efficient for high paying companies in high COL areas. It is going to suck if you're trying to get a developer in a small town and never had to pay much before.

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

#360

Post by cblconfederate »

dSebastien wrote: post #181

There's no going back to the legacy reality. I don't know why some people can't seem to cope with the idea that reality is something that changes over time. I wrote about this a while ago: https://medium.com/management-matters/going-back-to-work-no-...

Sad that it takes a pandemic to do the obvious
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