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Remote startups will win the war for top talent

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451–460 of 492 posts

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sweeping effect is already happening. The Mayor of NYC and state governor are directly petitioning companies to “fill our downtown!” For Pete’s sake. So, with that in mind, I’m advocating for employees who want to go back to consider how their vocal opinions affect other employees who don’t want it, which based on the ghost-town hybrid office attempts and midtown NYC being at like 40% capacity are a critical mass…

The great thing about markets is that we can both get what we want. You can get a remote job, and I can get an in-person job. I will continue to argue against any government regulations forcing the issue one way or another. But if companies start demanding workers return and the pool of jobs available to you shrinks, that's not my problem. To be clear, I oppose Mayor Adams's (and anyone else's) inept efforts to disto…

Yes I agree, interested to see how it plays out. But I’d argue Adams and Albany’s pressure on PwC or whoever to renew their midtown lease paired with my various employee-unity rants ITT will be what results in the meaningful RTO events. There won’t be any laws, just social pressure.

The market might solve it via PwC tanking over 10 yrs due to talent, but in the meantime that’s 10 yrs of people who deserve to see their families more too and can’t.

You could argue they should just be good enough at their jobs and/or choose the right career as to get remote options. Fair enough and this is what I’ve done.

But the implied primitive that the market decides who gets more family time, especially when it’s almost as simple as internet at the office or internet at home, seems very socially wrong to me.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#452
post #141

I've been working 100% remotely for about 6.5 years now. Overall I love it. However, there are very real drawbacks that have taken me awhile to fully realize. For me, the primary one is that it's _way_ too easy for everyone to get deeply frustrated with each other. Social interactions and chit-chat lead to a better understanding of people and a more accurate mental model of what people actually mean when they say som…

> I don't have an easy solution. Isn't RTO pretty easy?

[deleted]

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#453
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure that happens today, in part because it's so painful to 'do the right thing'. I stayed in San Diego for a month last year and didn't pay a single penny of income tax to the city. Meanwhile my home city was paid for my income and I was a lightweight customer during that month. I think the idea would be something along the lines of creating virtual citizens that live in the locality and meet all of the obligations…

You wrote: > Where is your citizenship? If you had young children who attended local schools (even for one month), do you think that is fair? (Assume pay low/zero tax.)

It's not really up to me to say if its fair, it's up to the people of San Diego. I definitely spent a lot more money in town (on vacation) than I would if I lived there full time. That said, I'm guessing most would say it's not fair.

My point though is that this kind of things happens all of the time because there isn't a clean process to handle these situations. The concept of a virtual country could actually help fix this by establishing channels to compensate communities for services used by roaming visitors.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#454
post #99
post #2

Remote startups may win the war for top talent (in the short term) but who will win on productivity and by extension revenue? I guess we will all see that in the next 24 months.

This is the crucial question. Colocated employees clearly cost more in the form of office space. They can also command higher salaries than similarly-skilled remote workers because they constitute a significantly smaller labor pool. Despite the counter-arguments in the article I do find it plausible colocated employees (ed: or maybe organizations) may be, on average, more productive. But because there are so many con…

This thread treats the question as if it has a single correct answer, but there's a pretty big probability it will vary between sectors, companies, employees and countries.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You raise an excellent point: I hope the shift to remote forces in-person companies to make their offices more attractive for workers (i.e. not open offices) to compete for the shrinking pool of people willing to work in-person. But for the sake of argument imagine the least-bad in-person office you've worked at, and a company able to pay up to high six figures. Are you saying there's does not exist a salary in that…

The utility of money decreases as you have more of it. The first $100k a year is huge. The second $100k a year is useful. By the time you're at 300k, 400k, the utility is very low unless you just really enjoy collecting sports cars. I have a nice home. It is 25 years old, but I do a lot of work on it myself. I have a nice enough vehicle that is reliable. I can afford whatever books I want, to go hiking wherever, and…

> The utility of money decreases as you have more of it.

I think this is an important point. Especially for well-paid professions I'm betting that most companies cannot afford to pay high enough salaries to get skilled developers to work in person and they'll either make do with early-career folks or realize being in-person isn't actually as critical as they thought.

> Why would I give up a work environment I like ... just to make more money that wouldn't make a difference to my life?

For someone without the nasty habit of consumerism the only thing that comes to mind would be the ability to "retire" early and work on whatever projects or organizations light your fancy. (Teaching, non-profit work, hiking the Appalachian Trail, local government, home improvements, open source...)

Not trying to convince anyone, mind you, just answering your question why someone might do that. I worked with some folks who retired in their early thirties after a few 18-month stints with overtime+hazard pay. Not my cup of tea, but they seem to enjoy working on their motorcycles.

Thanks for your input!

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#456

"Your remote team is my company's opportunity." Purely anecdotal based on my own experience, but at my company we have some people who work in an office and lots more that work remotely. The in office staff contribute more ideas, work, fixes, and functional software than the remote teams by a factor of 4 or 5, or sometimes, depending on the in office worker, 10 times. Those are hard numbers right out of our project m…

> by a factor of 4 or 5, or sometimes, depending on the in office worker, 10 times. These are very specific numbers - how do you measure this?

Their post says this already. It's metrics from their project management system i.e. tickets.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#457

"Your remote team is my company's opportunity." Purely anecdotal based on my own experience, but at my company we have some people who work in an office and lots more that work remotely. The in office staff contribute more ideas, work, fixes, and functional software than the remote teams by a factor of 4 or 5, or sometimes, depending on the in office worker, 10 times. Those are hard numbers right out of our project m…

> Not that you couldn't have a good remote team - I just think the methods of communication available are not best suited to our monkey brains. We're social animal, and we work best socially.

Working remote requires a number of changes, and it may even require training that your company isn't providing, because as you clearly have guessed, in-person interaction is more natural.

But how this looks to me, is that your company is doing a great disservice to the remote workers by not provided them with the tools and comms to be fully productive. You are letting them sort it out for themselves when they may not know how to, which is... bad.

Claiming you're doing better because "monkey brains" is just silly. Many things take practice, including clear communication over video and text.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Polio, Monkey Pox, Covid variant x I don't really think these are reasons to work remotely, at this point. Until we eradicate disease, we have and will continue to operate in a world with small but not-insignificant risk of disease transmission.

Lower pollution. At this point it's almost criminal to force people to go to the office. Companies should be required to apply and get approval from the government on a case by case basis and explain why that employee needs to commute to the office and add pollution to the air we share.

>> Polio, Monkey Pox, Covid variant x

> Almost criminal

This is hyperbole and degrades your point.

> Companies should be required to apply and get approval...

Are you sure your perspective isn't too biased towards professionals working in tech and business service industries? Your proposal is logically consistent with lowering emissions and changing the culture of the way we work, but it rests on a few assumptions that have not yet been demonstrated, namely the effectiveness of remote work. I worry you're underestimating the impact (stifling) that this will have on the flexibility and growth of businesses across many industries.

I also see this as a major loss of individual freedom. You can argue that this loss of freedom is worth the cost, but I don't think you can say that this criticism is invalid.

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#459
post #141

I've been working 100% remotely for about 6.5 years now. Overall I love it. However, there are very real drawbacks that have taken me awhile to fully realize. For me, the primary one is that it's _way_ too easy for everyone to get deeply frustrated with each other. Social interactions and chit-chat lead to a better understanding of people and a more accurate mental model of what people actually mean when they say som…

> I don't have an easy solution. Isn't RTO pretty easy?

RTO?

Re: Remote startups will win the war for top talent

#460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can pay as much as you want but after a certain threshold I'm curious if there is a multiplier a company could pay you personally to convince you to endure the commuting stress and inflexibility of an in-person office? I.e. would you go back to a commute for 1.2x, 1.5x, 2x, or 3x your current salary?

For me personally, 2x-3x. And that is assuming a ~20-30 minute commute I don't need to move/uproot my family.

Thanks, that's good to know!

My guess is that if the salary premium required for in-person workers ends up being ~2x or more, most companies will decide that going remote is feasible after all.

On the other hand, if the salary premium employees demand ends up only being, say ~1.3x, then many companies will just bite the bullet and pay it.

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