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Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

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141–150 of 830 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#141

Post by polio »

I think remote work is here to stay. There are too many people who insist on it, and will move jobs for it. The downsides you mention are valid, but rampant offshoring will be mitigated because of reasons pertaining to culture, language, and timezone. Office work is not going anywhere, though. Many of us do enjoy it for the same reasons you do.

I think the value of removing commuters from the road is an enormous win. Cities can be re-fashioned at the scale of pedestrians, and urban cores can be built around residential and recreational uses.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#142

Post by turdprincess »

bodge5000 wrote: post #118

With all due respect, this is mostly my problem with the "work-from-office" (WFO for ease) crowd. Generally, the stance of the WFH crowd is that each individual should get a choice of what makes that individual happy. Very few, if any, of the WFH crowd want mandatated WFH, it would make no sense. But then the WFO crowd often says no, I don't care what makes you happy, because you being in makes me happy. That doesn't…

Not sure I agree - the hybrid model where some are in office and some on video is unfair to the remote folks. Watching coworkers whiteboard from a zoom call makes it much harder to collaborate as the remote employee. It’s also harder to get a turn to speak when you are a face on the camera vs in the room. For these reasons I’ve insisted that in hybrid meetings, everyone dials in individually and whiteboards on a virtual whiteboard even if they are in the room. This is effectively demanding “all remote” from the in-office crowd and taking away their face to face interaction.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#143

Post by peyton »

bodge5000 wrote: post #118

With all due respect, this is mostly my problem with the "work-from-office" (WFO for ease) crowd. Generally, the stance of the WFH crowd is that each individual should get a choice of what makes that individual happy. Very few, if any, of the WFH crowd want mandatated WFH, it would make no sense. But then the WFO crowd often says no, I don't care what makes you happy, because you being in makes me happy. That doesn't…

You can literally flip the O and H and change the “what makes me happy” part to get the opposite side’s point of view.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#144

Post by qorrect »

nemomarx wrote: post #121
adamhp wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: I support fully remote work and will likely never be returning to office in my lifetime if I can help it. Here I play devil's advocate. Even though it is a hypothetical world you've constructed, you still framed it from the perspective of this world. I can do the same thing you did with a different bias. Imagine a world where everyone is socially isolated, forced to work 8 hours a day from their living sp…

Do you get breaks to play pingpong and catered food at your offices? I've never worked anywhere that actually paid for food, honestly, and while a few places have had pingpong tables it's hard to justify leaving my desk to go use them when there's tasks I could be getting done. A minor point, but I've always wondered if you're ever actually allowed to use the nice benefits like that, or if they're just something star…

> Do you get breaks to play pingpong and catered food at your offices?

Oh yeah, it was great ( billiards,pinball,foosball,restaurant catered lunches,beer fridays ). It never lasts, usually a company gets purchased and all those niceties are the first to go. This has happened to me three times.

It made for a fun workplace, those were definitely my favorite jobs.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#145

Post by abeppu »

Before the pandemic and surge of remote work, a lot of us complained not just about going to the office, but that the office itself was pretty crappy. The open plan creates an environment of high distraction, low privacy, and physical discomfort. Whether or not people wanted to listen to music or anything for hours at a time, they were pushed to do it just to drown out a constant background noise of words that are highly salient in your problem domain. You're probably constrained to the desk or chair set up that your office manager picked. The bottom line is you're spending a lot of time in an environment about which you may have zero input or control.

At home, I can work in silence if I want. If I want background noise, I can play music on a stereo or turn on the TV in the next room. When my back hurts, I can lie down on the sofa, or stretch and foam roll in a way which would be conspicuous in the office. I can be barefoot all day if I want. I can snack on the food that I like enough to buy, without broadcasting the pretention of bringing my own food to the micro kitchen. I can eat healthier lunches than the office catered food. Even without considering commuting, or the amount of time spent in synchronous interactions, just being able to control my own space is sooo much more comfortable. I injured my back this year, and taking care of it has been so much easier at home than it would have been in open plan hell.

A bunch of that stuff is nominally compatible with being "in the office" -- just give me a private office, with real walls, the ability to buy my own furniture, etc. But tech long ago decided that engineers get cubicles or open plan desks, that the way you know we're working is seeing that we're looking at screens rather than seeing our actual output, that a clean modern spaceship aesthetic is more important than workers being able to control or customize their workspace. Is it that we don't value the office, or that the office has been created by people who don't value us?

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#147

Post by unethical_ban »

shp0ngle wrote: post #106

This post and the “parenting” post should join together. Have a kid, then you’ll be happy you work remotely and won’t miss other people.

Other than the large exception of taking care of small children and the timing of getting them from school, I have heard it is nice for people to have an outlet from home life.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#149

Post by dagw »

shp0ngle wrote: post #106

This post and the “parenting” post should join together. Have a kid, then you’ll be happy you work remotely and won’t miss other people.

I have a kid. They're older now, but working at the office was the only way I could get a solid 8 hours of uninterrupted work done. Plus meeting and talking to other adults about Not Kids is very nice.

Re: Ask HN: Why don't I see gold at the end of the remote working rainbow?

#150

Post by shmatt »

I'll start with the second part

> why should they page a German wage

I totally agree. In the U.S there is a lot of discussion about most companies introducing location based remote pay, based on the cost of living in your city. People thing this is ludicrous, and want to be paid SV wages in rural America.

On the other hand, they have no problem paying Indian engineers a fraction. They use a lot random reasons that don't end up making sense. Work hours, ability to vet the engineering quality from so far away.

But then when I ask - If your star amazing Indian H1B engineer wanted to move back closer to his family, and promised to work U.S hours, would you agree to pay them a SV wage? The answer is always no. So I think there is definitely a double standard here, and in the very long term this will change, and wages will balance out to a bit lower than what they were during peak 2021 tech

To the first part. You're completely ignoring people having to commute to the office, wake up an hour or 2 earlier, only see their child ~30 minutes a day, not being able to cook their own lunch or go to the restroom without seeing someones legs right next to yours. Even if people value solving problems face to face, they can also value the above more

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