Once your office job is remote, why would your employer continue to pay you instead of somebody for 1/10 of the rate who works double the hours overseas? I think we are about to see pay rates for office employees plummet.
Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why
431–440 of 487 posts
Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why
#432Very grateful that my employer has committed to remaining flexible with remote work. Full time in the office, hybrid, or full time remote. It’s up to the individual. Full time remote has done wonders for my health - instead of a 2 hour commute I get to exercise. Instead of coming home stressed, annoyed, and sitting in front of the TV, I go outside for a solid hour+ after I close my laptop. I travel more liberally now…
> and my gratefulness translates into feelings of loyalty towards my employer . Yes and in turn translates to better quality work. In my case, I'm consciously adding extra web dev cherries on top every chance I can. I haven't set foot in the office since the beginning of 2020, mostly due to lockdown. My boss is okay with it because he's happy with my work. I will never go back, I'd quit first. Things I don't miss: *…
You are me. We had cubicle walls that were so short they didn't make any difference with noise because half the employees were on their feet while having conversations away. Constant talking. It was endless. Non stop complaining about significant others. Thankfully I had an hour lunch to get away for awhile.
We overheard every call because it was cubicle after cubicle in one big room. But hey! Let's complain about the customer that we just overheard you talking to for 30 minutes. Let's relive it after every call. Man.
Hey yeah, let's have our personal cell phone alert tone be a Linkin Park song at the loudest possible volume and always leave on their desk next to you. What a hell hole.
Micromanagement? You got it! You haven't experienced pedantry until you've met my supervisor. If you misspeak a word he pretends to not understand what you mean until you've re-spoken it in a way he understands. Now that we converse over chat/email almost entirely that ridiculous behavior has subsided.
They rarely cleaned the bathrooms thoroughly. One urinal. One stall. Just gross.
Microwave encrusted with who knows what. Janitors don't clean microwaves I guess?
I'm not one of those people that has very specific temperature needs. But of course we had one of those people that was very underweight in the office that needed it to be much warmer than normal. Why can't those people just wear more layers of clothing and not make the rest us suffer in sweat?
Parking? Okay that was close. If you can find a spot. I will never go back to the office. I will also quit my job first.
Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why
#433Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just want to point out that reading rudeness in that comment is your own choice, my intent was really a suggestion. Rudeness here is in the eyes of those who call it that.
You responded to someone describing their experience with an aggressive “just do it and don’t bother people fine with wfh,” implying that the poster was somehow trying to encroach on your ability to WFH. They never said that. You even express your frustration directly in a sibling comment below. Pretending your comment wasn’t rude, especially after elsewhere expressing your explicit frustration, is only half-true at…
Making up stuff is half true at best too but whatever, have a nice day you too :)
Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why
#434Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
No. There are other parts of a business besides developers/engineers.
Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why
#435Earlier quoted context omitted.
You responded to someone describing their experience with an aggressive “just do it and don’t bother people fine with wfh,” implying that the poster was somehow trying to encroach on your ability to WFH. They never said that. You even express your frustration directly in a sibling comment below. Pretending your comment wasn’t rude, especially after elsewhere expressing your explicit frustration, is only half-true at…
Making up stuff is half true at best too but whatever, have a nice day you too :)
FYI, it also read as excessively dismissive, bordering on aggressive to me. There's plenty of ways to phrase your disagreement without invalidating the person you're talking to quite so much.
Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why
#436Earlier quoted context omitted.
First: you can disagree with someone and not be an asshole about it. Please consider reading the HN guidelines again. Second: you are dismissing the fact that having an office to go to gave a lot of people a routine as well as forced social interaction. Now, it requires strict discipline to try and enforce it on yourself, whereas before it was a default. I share this commenter’s experience. That you don’t is fantasti…
I just want to point out that reading rudeness in that comment is your own choice, my intent was really a suggestion. Rudeness here is in the eyes of those who call it that.
You assumed they didn't consider they could just do it themselves. The issue is motivation. Going to work helped motivate them do these other things. Biking to work seems less pointless than biking to nowhere because they need to get to work, the exercise is a secondary benefit.
Edit: Recommending they find a coworking space they can bike to and work from could have been a nicer suggestion (assuming pandemic ever goes away)
Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why
#437Very grateful that my employer has committed to remaining flexible with remote work. Full time in the office, hybrid, or full time remote. It’s up to the individual. Full time remote has done wonders for my health - instead of a 2 hour commute I get to exercise. Instead of coming home stressed, annoyed, and sitting in front of the TV, I go outside for a solid hour+ after I close my laptop. I travel more liberally now…
Just as a contrast, I think I've had the exact opposite WFH/lockdown experience as you. My quality of life has tangibly and significantly degraded across every positive point you listed. Even if my employer began offering office access, I don't think it will ever be the same as what I had before. I used to bike to work, a productive 2 hours of exercise that kept me very healthy, mentally and physically. I got to see…
Similar situation, WFH/lockdown massively degraded the quality of my life. Work became more stressful and metric-driven, social life died as all my friends & coworkers moved to their hometowns and I did too, and I've gained weight / fallen into a rut.
I was just under a year into my first role as a software developer after a career change, and I was learning a lot from my coworkers and still meeting people. If I was at a later stage in my career I would have probably loved this, but WFH has been pretty terrible for me.
Also important to note, my commute was only about 10-15 minutes and I was extremely lucky for that.
Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why
#438Earlier quoted context omitted.
That was a pretty rude dismissal of a fraction of my experiences during all of this. You might want to reflect on what WFH has done to your social skills.
My social skills are absolutely fine, i can assure you of that. But I am utterly annoyed with selfish people effectively pulling the whole collectivity back to the office because they can't go bike for two hours or some other dumb reason. It's okay if you got a bit lazy during the pandemic and no one is denying that... but you don't have to pull all your coworkers to the office, you can just go bike or do some other…
Conversely, other people are annoyed with "selfish" people forcing what could otherwise be a productive in-person meeting to now need to include one person dialed in over zoom, perhaps without a video feed. Hope you weren't planning on collaborating using physical media such as whiteboard or post-it notes. Obviously we can do our best to reduce unnecessary meetings, but for those remaining necessary meetings, an in-person meeting is almost always more productive than a zoom meeting in my experience.
This is why both sides are so fired up over remote vs in-person. Your decision to work either remotely or in person has negative consequences for your co-workers either way. WFH folks are mad that they are being asked to commute, in-office folks are mad that they are being forced to use clunky online tools strictly to accommodate their remote-only peers.
Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why
#439You guys are missing it. This leads straight to outsourcing.
Is it still called outsourcing if the work stays in the same country or state? Some people on HN probably hope this transfers jobs from high COL trendy cities to low COL remote workers 100 miles away.
Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why
#440Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> 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. This happens in Zoom meetings and phone calls all the time too. It’s even worse in remote land when it happens…
I have had great experiences over the past two years with the "Chat" box in Zoom (where introverts have the power to asynchronously "talk over" the blowhard extrovert!). And with the "Raise Hand" option in Microsoft Teams (which feels like less of an escalation than literally raising your hand in a physical meeting).
As someone who is accustomed to getting steamrolled in office meetings, the past two years have been life-changing. I actually feel like a member of a team for the first time in my career.