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

There aren't enough remote jobs to go around

chartr.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–96 of 96 posts

Re: There aren't enough remote jobs to go around

#91

Post by whywhywhywhy »

KerrAvon wrote: post #27
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing lots of people on teams very vocal about not wanting to work with remote people either and saying no to anyone that has the inkling of it. Something the remote crowd might not realize is happening.

I've seen those posts on HN. Something the in-person crowd might want to consider is that a lot of interesting roles are going to involve lots of work with people who aren't in the room with you no matter whether you're in office or WFH. If you go in being highly vocal about no remote work, you may not be considered for roles that aren't fully remote but do involve a lot of videoconferencing. And maybe that's OK with…

Think it's more likely the interesting work is gonna fall on the in office teams rather than the remote inclusive teams.

One has free form ideation and camaraderie the other is people sitting in silos in a chatroom

Re: There aren't enough remote jobs to go around

#92

Post by whywhywhywhy »

mike_d wrote: post #18
whywhywhywhy wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seeing lots of people on teams very vocal about not wanting to work with remote people either and saying no to anyone that has the inkling of it. Something the remote crowd might not realize is happening.

Sounds like a pretty toxic environment. Working with remote employees is no different than working with someone in another office. Consider the pre-pandemic prevalence of "phone booths" and one person conference rooms, so you can be in a meeting as the only local attendee. As far as the other location is considered, you are remote just with access to a bigger coffee maker.

> Working with remote employees is no different than working with someone in another office

This is just a straight up lie, the speed of communication is literally 50% in real life by my reckoning. The huge vocal delay pauses, the having to focus more to get information out of low bandwidth sound, lack of body language (camera body language doesn't translate the same as in person). That's before we get to "ummmmmm.... errrr..." "Sorry can you repeat that" "oh sorry no you go first" "Oh can you mute your mic please I can hear myself" and videocall bandwidth only allowing 1 person to talk at once with a 2 second barrier either side of each thought from the sound delay and mute dance.

Literally video calls are so broken that you can't do creative discussions in them, if the tech was magnitudes better then maybe but these small delays and lack of presence make it a objectively different beast to working in the same space.

Re: There aren't enough remote jobs to go around

#93

Post by marcus_holmes »

medvezhenok wrote: post #73
marcus_holmes wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the evidence points to workers (especially programmers) being more productive when working from home, not less.

Short term yes, long term unclear. I’ve personally experienced something that could be cranked out in a multi day white boarding session stretch out for months of on/off meetings. It’s harder to collaborate remotely.

You're probably an extrovert if you experience greater productivity from a whiteboard session than an email conversation.

I used to do this, too; get the whole team together around a whiteboard and sketch a new thing out. Some of the team made very little contribution in the sessions; I always put this down to them not being very quick (they made good contributions later over email). When I took some management training later I learned that this style of collaboration doesn't suit everyone: the "quiet" folks were just extremely uncomfortable sharing their ideas in the public forum of the whiteboard session.

Now I create a slack channel for this, and stretch the process out over a couple of days. I get more input and better ideas this way.

Re: There aren't enough remote jobs to go around

#94

Post by adamsmith143 »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #90
adamsmith143 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>just pretend to work if they’re not in the office. What makes you think they'd be any different in an office? Have you actually walked around an office before? A Significant portion of people are faffing about for the majority of the day. But in remote there's no need to do kabuki and swap tabs whenever your boss walks by so you look busy.

As I said some used to be productive when we worked in the office for years and now it's extremely obvious to everyone who has to work with them that they don't do anything if they're not visible.

Then put them on pip and get rid of them.

Re: There aren't enough remote jobs to go around

#95

Post by runamok »

sgtnoodle wrote: post #55
ghaff wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worse than that. It presumably costs more to operate a building than to mothball it and at least try to sublease it. If there's really no value in filling the building up with people, it's a bit like deciding to drive your car around aimlessly because "I own it so I should use it."

I'm currently on paternity leave, and I do need to drive my car every so often to keep the 12V battery charged up...

Buy a trickle charger, they cost under $20. :-) That being said, leaving a car sitting for many months is not great without fuel stabilizer IIRC.

Re: There aren't enough remote jobs to go around

#96

Post by WWLink »

ghaff wrote: post #70
sundaeofshock wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You got a citation for that? I’m a part of the 20% who enjoys going into the office a few times a week. There are three other folks who show up regularly; the rest rarely — if ever — make an appearance. I’m fine with this arrangement and I don’t see a need to force everyone else back in. With the the exception of misguided upper management, I suspect most people take a more nuanced view of remote work.

I suspect that most people who would like more coworkers to come back into the office appreciate that they have very little say in the matter and should probably largely keep quiet about their preferences--and perhaps seek out somewhere where things are different if they care. I suspect many have preferences but not strong enough ones to take imminent action.

Honestly idk if even 50% of that 20% care. Maybe nobody cares! It's all good. :)

My guess was that a lot of the management demanding people to return to the office, are the kinda people that want to be around a lot of people, so they ask everyone to come back so they feel better. That's all.

I don't know where I fit in all this. I went full remote and at my company they don't allow everyone to do that - it's more of an "ask your boss and maybe they'll let you" kinda thing lol.

I'm not even an introvert. At least, I don't consider myself one. I like being around others and chatting and socializing and stuff. I just don't care for the expectation to be there at the same time for many hours every day. My office is big and noisy and there's a ton of people in the room making noise. It is distracting as hell.

It's also not in my favorite place to hang out. It's a kinda boring commercial area on a busy street with no good places to walk or hang out outside the office. IDK. I do visit sometimes.

Post reply on HN