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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

#461

Post by nottorp »

Sodman wrote: post #459
nottorp wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. And that is why you should seek remote only companies if possible. Add in asynchronous work culture. Let the "productive" people waste their time in video meetings.

Asynchronous culture and no-meetings-ever is great if you're a somebody who has the ability/experience/authority to take a high level task and run with it without needing to collaborate with or have input from anyone else, but that's not how most companies work in reality. If you're waiting for multi-day turnaround times on agreements because there's back and forth where two parties are trying to have a debate over r…

> It's true that many meetings could have been an e-mail, but there are a few crucial meetings that can save days by just getting everyone together in a room for 30 minutes to reach an agreement.

Oh, and what stops you from doing that in an async company? If the meeting is justified, that is. It's the other 98% of meetings that you get rid of.

And incidentally, why "everyone in a room" and not "everyone in a group chat"?

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

#462

Post by decafninja »

nly wrote: post #257
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.

I've just gone back to an office (I changed jobs) and I'm shocked how maybe 5 out of 8 of my team choose regular office work over hybrid simply because of the free lunches and dinners. Personally I find standing on a train for 45 minutes each way, and not being able to do small household errands on my breaks, like I can when I work from home, means my entire Mon-Fri is a cycle of sleep-eat-commute-work with no time t…

Are you me?

Switched jobs that is 100% back to office but quadrupled my pay (and significant boost in company brand name too), otherwise I’d be disgruntled.

The commute into NYC is as miserable of an experience and a huge collective waste of time.

But a lot of my coworkers on my new team love the fact that they can eat breakfast lunch and dinner at the office for free. Then again they are all young and single.

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

#463

Post by decafninja »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #444
michaelt wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm shocked how maybe 5 out of 8 of my team choose regular office work over hybrid simply because of the free lunches and dinners. Some people I know are bachelors who don't cook (weird lifestyle, but it takes all sorts I guess) so employers with canteens are a big attraction for them. Other people, I suspect, have reasons for getting back to the office that they're a bit shy about. Joking that you're just here for…

As much as I'm ashamed to admit it, my diet suffered when I went totally WFH. I went from eating a healthy salad 4x a week to 'eating out of the pantry' with grocery runs every two weeks or so. You can't keep salad greens around shopping that infrequently. Granted, shopping that infrequently was a consequence of trying to limit exposure in a global pandemic, but my dietary habits are much less healthy now, lol.

I’m the opposite. Lost 20lb during WFH eating healthy meals at home with the occasional takeout cheat meal. Gained it all back once I had to return to the office and resort to eating supposedly “healthy” meals provided by the company. No time to prep at home because frankly after being punched kicked and beaten up by the 800lb gorilla that is the miserable commute I’m in no mood to do so.

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

#464

Post by evenhovercraft »

Steltek wrote: post #426
ren_engineer wrote: post #415

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I got to see other people, even if they weren't strictly friends. Hell, I went outside on a regular basis! all of the complaints about remote work are more about the pandemic rather than remote work

Very true but it felt strange how everything that evenhovercraft listed as something gained from remote work was also something that I had lost. I don't think a post-Covid world would change that for me. My office is downtown, with restaurants and attractions and people. My home is in a streetcar suburb and while it has lots of nice things to walk to, it doesn't have what you would call a night life.

Just wanted to say - I hope you’re able to find ways to get those things back in your life. Remote work is certainly not without its challenges and of course, not for everyone. Companies should let the individual decide for themselves.

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

#465

Post by abecedarius »

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.

> offensive ... It's unpaid labor.

If the extra pay for the extra commute is offensively low, don't take the offer.

(That said, I'm happy remote-first is getting more common.)

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

#466

Post by rmdashrfv »

Steltek wrote: post #402
evenhovercraft wrote: post #349

Very 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…

My quality of life dramatically went down as well. I'm a highly extroverted SWE and I need some modicum of social interaction to be able to function at peak performance. Prior to the pandemic, I had a social life that I was very much grateful for.

I'm also a minority and don't come from Ivy League/Top 10, so I felt that my biggest advantage was the impression I could make on others in person. In a remote-first world, I lose my biggest advantage.

Me aside, I can't help but think there are some underlying drawbacks to a remote-first world that we aren't talking about enough. But I know that, at least within the tech industry, I'm in the minority by believing that a life that is easier and more comfortable is automatically the better design.

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

#467

Post by rmdashrfv »

znpy wrote: post #405
Steltek wrote: post #402

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> I used to bike to work, a productive 2 hours of exercise that kept me very healthy Just go and bike for two hours around the block and don't bother people fine with wfh. It's literally something nobody is preventing you from doing (besides yourself).

I find your take really interesting because everyone who is pro-WFH tells people that they love WFH because of this long list of things that I was doing before the pandemic, and they were free to do as well. I personally find the notion that by merely having a commute, your quality of life is 10x diminished than if you didn't.

If most employers make people return to office, are people just going to drop exercising? Would it not be fair to call that ridiculous?

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

#468

Post by rmdashrfv »

technofiend wrote: post #364
quadrifoliate wrote: post #277

Earlier 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…

It's no fun if you don't enjoy confrontation but interrupting the interrupters a few times will eventually send the message you won't tolerate that kind of behavior. They will eventually learn it's not tolerated or accepted. One of my old bosses would just say "Hang on, hang on..." over and over until the steamroller figured out they weren't going to be able to speak endlessly and they'd stop talking. Then he would r…

> One of my old bosses would just say "Hang on, hang on..." over and over until the steamroller figured out they weren't going to be able to speak endlessly and they'd stop talking

This is what people need to learn how to do. And I think this is the biggest issue I have with WFH is that it puts people in a position where they don't have to develop the skills necessary to resolve conflict. They can just leave a call or ignore an email.

I had a conflict with one manager while working remotely at one job and rather than even address the issue with me, she just removed me from the team Slack channel. I sent a very apologetic and peacemaking message, which she proceeded to ignore. Although I don't work there anymore, we do live in the same city. So if I do see her and she tries to pull a fake smile, I hope she's ready to address that immediately.

However you feel about interpersonal communication, I think I speak for everyone when I say: I don't want to be part of any organization where people can rise up to positions of leadership or decision-making without having any capacity or tolerance for conflict.

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

#469

Post by rmdashrfv »

koboll wrote: post #403

There is literally no possible in-office benefit that can ever top never having to commute, or eliminating all time-sinks of office life and replacing them with casually doing chores, taking naps, and cuddling and sex with my partner (who also works from home) scattered throughout the day. That's why I'm never, ever going back into an office under any circumstances. Are there drawbacks? Absolutely. You're damn right…

There is something inherently good about not having everything you could possibly want right when you want it.

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

#470

Post by comp_throw7 »

ghaff wrote: post #352
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 salar…

I mean, trivially speaking, the reason you might see a continued mismatch is that supply is only one factor - demand is the other. Increased compensation is a factor of both the size of the mismatch in supply and demand, as well as the willingness-to-pay on the demand side. Willingness-to-pay is largely a function of the returns on that kind of labor, which are much greater for software engineering than they are for other engineering disciplines, and those returns are increasing over time, not decreasing.

And, like... we _do_ see that the growth in CS degrees granted (broadly speaking - the most granular data I could find is "Computer and information sciences") does slightly outpace other the growth in other Engineering degrees: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d20/tables/dt20_322.10.a...

CS/CIS went from 43,066 in 2010-11 to 88,633 in 2018-19, while Engineering went from 76,356 to 126,687 over the same time period. ~106% increase vs ~66% increase. Of course, degrees granted are a lagging indicator; if you graduated in 18-19 you didn't start later than 14-15. It's possible that the rate of increased enrollment in CS has continued to itself increase, since compensation really only obviously went on a tear a couple years after that. Nonetheless I'm very bullish on the 5-10 year outlook for SWE compensation, to the extent that it's reasonable to make predictions that far out in the future.

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