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Ask HN: How to find a job in 2021 if I dislike remote?

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Re: Ask HN: How to find a job in 2021 if I dislike remote?

#121
post #73

(shameless plug) I work at Yieldstreet. Our company is filled with people just like yourself. Our policy is 3 days a week from the office and 2 days remote, so obviously we tend to attract people who like working in an office - in person collaboration, grabbing lunch, etc. We have engineering offices in NYC, Miami, Boston, Malta, and Brazil (Porto Alegre and Florianópolis). Many open engineering roles (recently raise…

Absolutely not a "shameless plug"! Thank you to share.

Re: Ask HN: How to find a job in 2021 if I dislike remote?

#122
post #2

Do you live in/near a big city? If you do, there should be enough in-office jobs there. I feel similarly about remote but with a couple of differences: - I'm not extroverted all, I still vastly prefer office over remote. - It's not about socialising, I find the work itself much better when I can meet my coworkers in person.

I am the same. Introvert, but prefer to work around people. When we started SimpleLegal, for 2 years we were just working from home. I ended up getting a desk at a coworking space just to be around other people. If for no other reason than to commiserate with others.

You wrote: > I do not see this expressed enough, and thank you for your comment. Yes, I agree. Even when I am pissed off by the "sea of mediocrity" a couple of levels back, it really helps to halve(!) my blood pressure by agreeing with co-workers about the terribleness of X, Y, or Z!

Re: Ask HN: How to find a job in 2021 if I dislike remote?

#123
post #116

Just want to say you are not alone. I too want to have a place to go. Whether it's a co-working space or an office for the company I work for, waking up and working in the same place every day is slowly driving me crazy. The WFH people are probably the most vocal online (especially on Reddit as subreddits tend to create echo-chambers), so it feels as though _everyone_ wants to work from home, but ultimately I think/h…

> ultimately I think/hope most people understand the social benefits of working in an office.

As far as I'm concerned, there aren't any.

But you know what? At the end of the day I don't care where someone works, as long as they extend me the same courtesy. The last place I worked at (before the lockdowns) gradually eliminated WFH, converted to an open plan office, and generally made life miserable for software devs who prefer peace and quiet over socializing at work. I'm much happier working from home, although I have some uncommon advantages there: no kids and amazing internet.

Re: Ask HN: How to find a job in 2021 if I dislike remote?

#124
post #31
post #14

> Are those days just over? Depending on your job function and industry. For tech, yes, those days are over for at least for another 5 to 10 years, is my guess. COVID has generally proven to both employers and employees that productivity doesn't drop that much. It will also weed out bad people managers who need to "see" people physically who need to "get a feel" as a management metric. The only major factor that woul…

"COVID has generally proven to both employers and employees that productivity doesn't drop that much" Is that a personal observation of yours, or has this now become "fact"? The reason I ask is that I would like to find studies - not just surveys or anecdotal evidence - that attempt to quantify the quality and productivity of WFH since the recently pandemic changes. At work, we've had countless discussions about this…

I too am curious, but its going to be very difficult to measure, and as you say, it it absolutely not a fact.

Lockdown has certainly damaged some industries, but it has also taught a generation of people tech things they probably would have retired without learning, and the value of that may exceed everything else long term. It is very difficult to isolate things like this, and we wont get another sample, even if we get another pandemic later. I totally get its been good for some, but it was bad time for me, though people are terrible at self evaluating stuff like this.

I know that students at my university did worse the past two years than they did the year before. And by worse I mean substantially beyond the typical variance. This is in terms of student results like course completion and grades. As well as mental health metrics such as surveys on stress etc, and in terms of the number who seek aid through uni services. But there are confounders everywhere. The way they did worse differs in character more than magnituide as well. It looks like the majority did just about normal, with what looks like a small minority doing very badly. However, this is just one uni and it will be another few years before it gets collated, anonymized further, and published. It also may not apply to real work.

Leadership overall seem to be somewhere between cautiously neutral and rather pessimistic in the organisations where I have insight which is a bad sign, as except for the ones who personally wanted to work from home, no one seems to be happy with it, including showing up in management stress level surveys. The snooping management meme does not apply. Most of us researchers had permission to work from home before we started too.

Re: Ask HN: How to find a job in 2021 if I dislike remote?

#125

You’re not alone. My startup is specifically going against the trend and trying to hire in just two locations (Austin and SF), because our founding group feels the same as you. So far when we’ve been recruiting people we lead with “we have two offices and strongly prefer candidates work in one of them.” It either ends the conversation or is our #1 selling point. I think over time the market will discover what percent…

Indeed. You are not alone @OP.

BTW, pretty neat trick to help with culture fit for a start-up.

Re: Ask HN: How to find a job in 2021 if I dislike remote?

#126
LinkedIn has made the process of finding an on-site position more difficult.

They will list a position as being local to your search, but when you view the listing, it will actually be for a remote job. There is no way to really search for on-site jobs in LinkedIn.

Re: Ask HN: How to find a job in 2021 if I dislike remote?

#127
Yes there are jobs that require you to be onsite but you might have to consider switching and I am hiring though for a relatively junior role. I work in the molecular diagnostic industry( COVID test) and you absolutely have to be at work if you want to interact with hardware. There are plenty of other companies out there in the medical/ biomedical/ space(astranis)/ auto( Tesla/Ford) that require you to be present at least 50% of your time( hybrid). I can help you guide you in that regards if you would like. This is assuming your are a software engineer employed here in the us. All other cross functions(Marcom, accounting) is still remote. Also if you are in the Silicon Valley checkout Apple. Seems like they are hell bent on getting everyone back in to the office, though you won’t be shooting the Breeze at work, won’t have time to even breath.

Re: Ask HN: How to find a job in 2021 if I dislike remote?

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar happened to me with Stripe, an out of left field "by the way we need you in the office for 3/4 days per week when we return". Goodbye and good luck.

To throw shade (probably will get some down votes here!), I would have nodded my head in agreement... but keep your samurai sword close at hand. When they start to push you to return to office can use all sorts of stalling tactics. At worst, make up some crazy situation where you "need" to WFH due to elder-care/illness-care/single-parent-child-care. As long as you are highly productive, it will be hard for them to fi…

Or just get a better job, it's a workers market at the moment

Re: Ask HN: How to find a job in 2021 if I dislike remote?

#129
Some people have to spend 1 hour in a vehicle to get to work, plus extra time to get ready for work. You can rather spend that same time with your family, or exercise, or learn something new, or sleep, or whatever.

Going to work every day is such an spectacularly awful way of spending resources just so that you can be in an office sitting in a workstation that is inferior to what you have at home.

Re: Ask HN: How to find a job in 2021 if I dislike remote?

#130
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is true. When I say people I'm working from home, they look with pitty. When I say, I'm working remotely, people's impression change. I don't know why this is like this, but it is true for me.

But then what s the point ? We re forced to work from home to avoid contaminating our colleagues but it s fine to crowd a coworking space ? Sounds very inefficient to me but I guess people like us are a minority. Gladly in my country we have 0 case (Hong Kong) so we work at the office now, thank God.

Good luck with that approach, I hope you enjoy your office.

Yet the [zero covid] approach has largely cut off Hong Kong from both China and the world - a severe blow for a place that built its success on global connections. Even more than recent political changes, the authorities' refusal to adapt to living with the virus is eroding Hong Kong's viability as an international city, according to almost two dozen diplomats, chambers of commerce, recruiters, pilots and other expatriates. ....

In a survey released this month, the British Chamber of Commerce found that 70 percent of respondents hoping to add staff in Hong Kong had encountered difficulties, with many citing quarantine restrictions. ....

Jan Willem Moller, chairman of the Dutch Chamber of Commerce, said that about a quarter of Dutch businesspeople have left this year, and that the departures would "increase significantly" if the quarantine rules stay in place ....

At least 240 Cathay pilots have quit since May, according to employees who reviewed internal numbers. The carrier is reeling, with staff morale at "rock bottom" after hefty pay cuts last year and more departures imminent, several pilots said ....

Resentment spilled over last month when more than 120 students were ordered to a government quarantine camp known as Penny's Bay after they were deemed to be contacts of a pilot who was among three who tested positive on return from Germany

https://www.yahoo.com/news/hong-kong-clinging-zero-covid-132...

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