Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 243 posts

Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#61

Post by spoonjim »

tarentel wrote: post #21
Uptrenda wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't take it personally. You should expect a large number of companies to ghost you. It's just part of the process. Keep going and believe in yourself.

It really shouldn't be. It doesn't take long or much effort to send a quick boilerplate email saying they're not hiring you.

It shouldn't be, but it is. So the lesson when a company ghosts you shouldn't be one of personal insult (although it's hard to avoid that feeling), it should be "that company is poorly led and/or managed."

Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#62

Post by dml2135 »

CoffeeOnWrite wrote: post #39
ketzo wrote: post #18

This doesn't quite answer your trend, but personal anecdote: I recently switched jobs, and as part of my job interview process, I was pretty firm about only looking for companies that were working at least part of the week in the office. I just really thrive on in-person work. Fast forward a few weeks... and I ended up taking a job with a startup that was fully remote. I loved their product, loved the founders, loved…

I'm happy for you! Out of curiosity, did your current housing situation provide the space for a comfortable and productive home office, or is this unexpected development putting pressure on your housing situation? (If you're part of a trend, that has implications for preferred housing layout and square footage. And, of course people in different housing situations should be expected to respond differently to fully-re…

Living in NYC, I can't tell if by "status implications" you mean that a 600 sq ft apartment is swanky or cheap.

Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#63

Post by ragnot »

lefstathiou wrote: post #24

Early on (during Covid) I made the decision that remote work was not for our company (SAAS for financial services) and two years in have zero regrets about it. We are clear about our expectations so there are no surprises to employees and new hires (or we filter out people that want it). Most of our clients in financial services have reached the same conclusion. One of my clients at a large bulge bracket said “if the…

I at least respect that you are being upfront about it. I do think that you'll have a hard time sourcing the high-caliber software engineer you might want to get though.

Sure you'll get junior/mid-grade ones (which honestly might be enough for you) but I don't think you are going to like what happens to your candidates in the coming years. Remote work is just such a perk that it is literally one of the make or break points for many software engineers. People will inevitably migrate to companies with the better perks and it is hard to beat coding with your own kitchen and bathroom 10 steps away.

You also kind of gave yourself away with the "if these people insist on not being in the office we may just outsource the job for a tenth of the comp" in the sense that your industry views developers as a cost center and not the reason the company is generating value. If you've ever outsourced you know the challenges of time zone, language barrier and quality are a hard one to beat. You might as well hired a half-way decent developer in the beginning, but hey at least you saved a buck so you got your quarterly bonus right?

Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#64

Post by zxexz »

My company maintains an office, which some people local go in once or twice a week. But it's 100% remote-first, and everybody (including leadership) has no desire to go back to "in-person-first". The remote shift was a major boon to hiring - being able to recruit talent from all over the US.

Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#65

Post by gkop »

dml2135 wrote: post #62
CoffeeOnWrite wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm happy for you! Out of curiosity, did your current housing situation provide the space for a comfortable and productive home office, or is this unexpected development putting pressure on your housing situation? (If you're part of a trend, that has implications for preferred housing layout and square footage. And, of course people in different housing situations should be expected to respond differently to fully-re…

Living in NYC, I can't tell if by "status implications" you mean that a 600 sq ft apartment is swanky or cheap.

Ah, I meant cheap (in terms of apartment space and interior, not in terms of rent). I'm in a nice neighborhood in Oakland, CA fwiw.

Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#66

Post by ragnot »

waylandsmithers wrote: post #43
jelling wrote: post #37

For some hard data, in San Francisco and NYC, the mass transit agencies are starting to plan for never getting back to full ridership again. And by plan, I mean starting to ask for federal funding to keep the systems alive (which I think they should) because the fare revenue is never going to return to pre-pandemic levels but the physical plant remains just as expensive to operate. Keep in mind: these are two of the…

Boston too is switching some lines permanently onto weekend schedules with less frequent trains

Which ones? Personally curious.

Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#67

Post by theonething »

_fat_santa wrote: post #3
pram wrote: post #2

I'm in the interview loop with two places atm (one is Google) and they're both remote. Last time I was frantically looking hard in 2019 I couldn't find any remote positions, so it's still a lot easier from my pov. Also I've found that submitting job applications through LinkedIn's 'easy apply' thing is rarely successful. It doesn't seem like recruiters often check that. I've had the most replies from going through th…

Personally I never use easy apply or go through websites, I always talk to a recruiter on LinkedIn. Usually I'll get 1-2 messages per week from recruiters about a position, I'll politely decline but tell them I would like to keep in touch. Whenever I go looking for another gig, all those recruiters are hit up. IMO, having a recruiter helps you cut through a ton of BS like filling out job applications, recruiter takes…

Man, I ignore all the recruiters that contact me. It's just too many. Not humble bragging, it's just the reality. And not trying to rude. I have trouble keeping up with my personal emails, much less random recruiters on the internet. I hope it doesn't come back to bite me.

So far in my career (10+ years), I've just applied to company job postings and that's worked out pretty well for me.

Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#68

Post by idiotsecant »

recvonline wrote: post #27

I was looking for new work this year and found a company which hired me for +40% salary increase and remote/timezone free. Personally I have young kids and therefore prefer flexible times, fully remote etc. Being in Europe, I think fully remote is getting embraced. It‘s the third company where I get US level salary plus all the benefits (30 days vacation, unlimited sick leave etc). I see a strong trend from young fam…

I think remote work is definitely a double-edged sword. For the time being wage pressure is high but as large organizations find out that they can recruit talent that would have accepted a little bit less and done just as good of a job they will begin to lower wages for these remote positions, which will lead to people being willing to accept a little less, which will lead to lower wages, etc until an equilibrium is reached a little bit above what typical tech wages would have been remotely but well below what US tech wages are now. This will be a moderately good thing for workers outside the US, a moderately bad thing for workers inside the US, and a fantastic thing for the companies who reduced the cost of their labor pool substantially.

I feel like there is definitely a little bit of job security in staying with a place that insists on local work only, but those places will become less attached to that position as they see industry peers successfully migrate away from it.

Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#69

Post by nicoburns »

CoffeeOnWrite wrote: post #56
idiotsecant wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can people really tell anything about your living situation from your teams call background, though? Just aim your camera at a neutral wall and you're good to go. You could be living in a giant palace or a inner city slum and nobody would know the difference.

Heh, a neutral wall in my 600 sq ft place? I have such limited layout options to put my desk, that would be an additional challenging constraint. Virtual backgrounds are popular in my workspace, and I think a more general solution to the issue. I'm not a huge fan of virtual backgrounds, they make things even more artificial, anyhow I would use them occasionally but for the fact that Google Meet does not support them…

A simple blur can be a good compromise if you want to hide your room. Although personally I just make sure it's tidy and allow people to see it.

Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#70

Post by ragnot »

We are still full remote and I don't think anyone has any intention to go back to "in-person" honestly.

As a side note: I think the reason you are going to find so much friction with this is for the first time in recent history "workers" (specifically software engineers) have incredible leverage over management. I honestly don't think we've seen this since the days of labor unions.

Think about it: software engineers have such an in-demand, ubiquitous skillset that they can command huge salaries, get incredible perks AND now they can say "I don't want to be constrained to a location". Don't like your job? Don't worry about it, get a pay raise and you don't even have to change your office (because it's your bedroom/study/den/whatever). Boss is being a dick? Move and get a raise. Don't like co-workers who talk to much? You don't even have a water cooler to gossip around!

Software engineers have so much power now it's ridiculous and it honestly pisses off a lot of people who spent their entire lives brown-nosing and grinding only to have a young hotshot come in and earn more than they ever did at their age. I mean if I could get $5 for the number of times I've had older people tell me that I'm being too greedy for demanding SWE comps because "I never earned that much at your age" I could buy a really nice house in the Bay Area.

Post reply on HN