This article rests basically everything on one assertion: organisational productivity is equal or better with remote work. It would be prudent to show some evidence of this when making the subsequent points.
Why is remote work seen as a gift?
141–150 of 564 posts
Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?
#142Earlier quoted context omitted.
From personal experience, I am MUCH happier getting out of the house a couple of times a week. Lockdowns felt like house arrest, and commuting 5 days a week felt completely unnecessary and exhausting. For many people I know this is the case, so I don't think pure remote or location work are "it".
> From personal experience, I am MUCH happier getting out of the house a couple of times a week. You can still do that. My friend rented an office a five minute walk from his home - it costs him 3% of his salary.
Yes, I live near a large park. I walk/run there every day, but the point is, the routine of doing everything alone (walking, shopping, working, eating) starts grinding on you.
Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?
#143I find it kind of amusing (and annoying) that employers like to play the salaray game as it fits their needs. I got interviewed a few times, and some stated that they cannot pay the salary I was asking, because i don't live in a high-density, high-cost-for-living area, while others argued that they have to respect their local salaries, which are below what I would expect in my area. I'm yet to meet the employer that…
Maybe "Where do you live?" should be one of those questions employers shouldn't be allowed to ask? Like what's your religion or what's your sexual orientation?
Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?
#144I find it kind of amusing (and annoying) that employers like to play the salaray game as it fits their needs. I got interviewed a few times, and some stated that they cannot pay the salary I was asking, because i don't live in a high-density, high-cost-for-living area, while others argued that they have to respect their local salaries, which are below what I would expect in my area. I'm yet to meet the employer that…
This is underselling the value of economic clustering. Even if everyone works from home, there are advantages to drawing from local talent pools (people know people and can vouch for their work, cultural norms make it easier to work together, there are less labour law difficulties, there is less geopolitical risk of parts of your team being sanctioned because you hired Chinese or Russian programmers, etc, etc). All e…
> Even if everyone works from home, there are advantages to drawing from local talent pools (people know people and can vouch for their work, cultural norms make it easier to work together, there are less labour law difficulties, there is less geopolitical risk of parts of your team being sanctioned because you hired Chinese or Russian programmers, etc, etc)
You could reframe these points so that they look like advantages of global businesses... you'll have someone to vouch for and evaluate people across multiple talent pools (increasing talent supply), the majority of your team will never be sanctioned simultaneously (diversifying that risk), and as for cultural norms, don't we all know that diversity is strength.
Saying there are no advantages to global remote first besides cost is underselling it; there are important advantages, for one
> It starts to make sense when you realise salaries are driven by the cost to replace an employee
asynchronous remote makes documentation and written communication central, which at the end of the day makes it easier to replace employees.
Cost is important too, if you can literally hire 50% more workforce that's one hell of a deal.
Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?
#145I find it kind of amusing (and annoying) that employers like to play the salaray game as it fits their needs. I got interviewed a few times, and some stated that they cannot pay the salary I was asking, because i don't live in a high-density, high-cost-for-living area, while others argued that they have to respect their local salaries, which are below what I would expect in my area. I'm yet to meet the employer that…
Maybe "Where do you live?" should be one of those questions employers shouldn't be allowed to ask? Like what's your religion or what's your sexual orientation?
So long as there are governments involved in the employee-employer relationship, this can’t happen. I don’t actually care where you live, but I do care that I can legally employ you, pay you, pay taxes/social charges, and that I understand the obligations of the arrangement we’re contemplating entering.
Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live. That's like saying the price of goods and services should be about the cost of producing them. No no no: the price is about what buyers will bear. In the same way, salaries are about what the worker will bear. If there is an arbitrage lever to maximize profit, any business will use it.
What's at the other end of "bear" when the thing being bought is food or housing? Seems like a dangerous analytical framework.
People go hungry and homeless. This is visible today.
This is literally why one function of the state is to act as a non-market-participant so it can provide a safety net. There are some things markets can't and shouldn't try to do.
Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because that's labor theory of value which is Marxism and marx is just some guy. Arguments against will be that value "is" what people are willing to pay for them, which is some combination of supply and demand, but I find this just too simple. Technically it's true that the "value" of something is the price someone last paid for it, but then we get situations where we say a Bitcoin is worth 40k usd or whatever tf th…
Have you actually read Marx? If you haven't, I recommend you start with https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price... . It'll clarify much of your confusion on basic economics.
I have read Marx, and he fails to satisfy his confusion on basic economics...
Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?
#148When you are in the office, the company has almost all your attention. There is almost nothing to distract you from work.
When you are at home, there are a million things to distract you. There's laundry that needs to be done, the kitchen cleaned, kids that want to play, there's a full fridge with stuff to make a sandwich, a TV that you can turn on, etc.
When you are forced to go to the office, you are forced to take care of everything you need to do outside of working hours. You have to make sure you have child care available, you have to make appointments for service technicians in your free time, or ask someone else to take care of it.
Seen like this, I think it's obvious remote work is a perk for the employee. Employee gets more flexibility, but employer gets less attention. So I understand why employers would pay more for people who come to work on site.
Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?
#149I find it kind of amusing (and annoying) that employers like to play the salaray game as it fits their needs. I got interviewed a few times, and some stated that they cannot pay the salary I was asking, because i don't live in a high-density, high-cost-for-living area, while others argued that they have to respect their local salaries, which are below what I would expect in my area. I'm yet to meet the employer that…
> It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live. That's like saying the price of goods and services should be about the cost of producing them. No no no: the price is about what buyers will bear. In the same way, salaries are about what the worker will bear. If there is an arbitrage lever to maximize profit, any business will use it.
Of course, this is very much what a business is. It's an engine, running on the difference in energy between two or more goods or services.
In fact, if you think about it, the upper limit to profit margin is
profit_margin = (price_sell - price_buy) / price_sell
Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you believe managers don’t do useful work, that doesn’t even strike me as a very cynical take. I disagree with it though, I manage a distributed team and I can do my work fine without the team being in the office. I think the serendipity arguments for on-site are much stronger than “manager doesn't trust team member to be productive on their own” which the entire world discovered was bullshit during the corona…
Many managers are not very good and mostly believe managing means flogging the herd to work harder; that’s not really possible remotely.
Many individual contributors are not very good and mostly overrate their own ability to be productive while working from home.