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Why is remote work seen as a gift?

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Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#161

Post by micahbule »

zahrc wrote: post #123
nlnn wrote: post #109

I've worked either both fully remote and fully in the office over the past decade depending on job at the time, and noticed little difference in work productivity at home vs. the office. The major difference has been in the dead time around work. Time spent commuting, lunch breaks, coffee breaks, etc. When working in an office, nothing much is achieved during those (maybe some socialising or reading), and work takes…

Productivity is purely dependent on the individual or even teams. But I definitely agree with the “dead time”. It would be a utopian world where employees respect and consider living conditions (eg single vs married; cost of living in specific area) and commutes. Make yourself valuable to negotiate better terms, or look for something better.

>Make yourself valuable to negotiate better terms, or look for something better

I could not agree more. You would always have leverage with salary negotiations during interviews if you can justify the value you bring on the table. For technical positions, unless the hiring process does not involve any technical assessment, it's quite easy to spot who knows what they're doing from those who are just good on paper.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#162

Post by izacus »

zpeti wrote: post #15

It’s a gift if you don’t have small children. It’s ridiculously harder if you do. It’s like trying to work in an emergency room, where every minute there’s some emergency, and you’re trying to do something different. Of course most people working in tech aren’t facing this issue and so think working from home is great for everyone.

Let's not bring any nuance to this conversation. It's all about "ME ME ME ME ME AND ME!". I don't have children, so obviously my arrangement is superior and has to be codified for everyone and anyone everywhere and you are WRONG if you disagree.

(Seriously, this debate is about as dumb as any other american political debate, just bunch of myopic people screaming at each other with no ability to think.)

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#163

Post by lbriner »

I wish people would stop posting articles that imply that remote working is somehow objectively better when it has already been made more than clear that it doesn't work well for everyone.

I really miss the contact from the office but since most people don't go in any more, it is not worth much of my time to travel there.

Yes, we employ some people fully remotely, which is fine because that's what we knew at the time so we do get the benefit of the wider pool.

However, just because "I work really effectively at home", it doesn't mean that there are people who are not taking multiple trips to the shops, to school etc. since they can and although they could be doing their work when they get back, there is also a good chance that they won't or they'll be distracted etc.

Our productivity has definitely been lower during remote-only working although it is hard to attribute that to any one specific thing. The truth is that particularly in non-quantifiable work like development, it is hard to get a thermometer on how productive people are. The gut is unreliable and we want to trust people but if for no other reason, the office has less distractions for most people who can concentrate on their work more.

Could people make it work better? Yes. Will it always work well for everyone? No.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#164

Post by RHSeeger »

MrGilbert wrote: post #25

I 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.

It's a balancing act. If companies pay based on value added to the company, they will wind up paying more than average in low COL areas, and less than average in high COL areas; so they won't be able to hire people in high COL areas at all. If they scale pay based on COL, they'll be able to hire people in both areas. So yes, it's not "fair" to people in lower COL areas, but it's not arbitrary either.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#165

Post by micahbule »

newaccount74 wrote: post #148

When 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…

I disagree employers don't have a win on the remote work setup. For one, they can reduce a lot of overhead for the upkeep of physical offices. There's also giving the idea of giving the employee more time for themselves, when in truth they really actually extended his work hours; just at the comfort of their homes and at their own pace. While it's not perfect for everyone, remote work has its perks for both employees AND employers.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#166

Post by micahbule »

osullip wrote: post #4

I've done it for close to a decade. Just before COVID, I had enough of the isolation, lack of contact with my team and working outside of the rest of the world's flow. COVID forced another 2 years of it on me. Now I work in a bar to meet people and do all the human contact things. I write software 3 days a week, still remote, and enjoy the balance.

This best describes why it's actually both a gift and a curse.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#167

Post by RHSeeger »

dontlaugh wrote: post #95
toyg wrote: post #49

Earlier 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.

Why shouldn’t the price of goods be the cost of producing them?

For the same reason that you don't want to earn the exact minimum you need to survive. You want more/better. So does the person selling the widget; so why charge the absolute minimum for their widget if they can get more for it? That extra money goes towards their "more/better".

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#168

Post by regularfry »

sdiacom wrote: post #63
skrebbel wrote: post #7

Earlier 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…

By saying "serendipity" here, we abstract it into its own unique cutesy concept, preventing proper analysis of its actual tangible benefits. This leads people to talk about it as if it's some magical emergent property of water coolers. When we talk about some of the tangible things that we might actually want this "serendipity" for, these are the ones that I constantly see pop up: - Spontaneously detecting and addres…

No, "serendipity" here has value primarily not within a single team, but as a discovery mechanism between teams. There's research on this. It has its highest value for new starters trying to figure out how the org fits together, but is also useful for inter-team workflow discovery and reinforcement, especially at the start of projects. You shouldn't need it within a single team unless that team is already dysfunctional (which I think is your point).

Basically all orgs need something that acts as a random mixing function so that connections between areas can form and strengthen. Working in the same building can provide that, if the building layout allows for it, but it's far from the only option.

The problem is that managers, particularly those with a strongly hierarchical, Taylorist mindset, won't necessarily appreciate the value of lateral connections between teams. They end up benefiting from serendipity by accident because when they force people into the office those lateral connections form anyway.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#169

Post by [deleted] »

RHSeeger wrote: post #164
MrGilbert wrote: post #25

I 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. It's a balancing act. If companies pay based on value added to the company, they will wind up paying more than average in low COL areas, and less than average in high COL areas; so they won't be able to hire people in high COL areas at all. If they scale pay based on COL, they'll be able to hire people in both areas. So yes, it's not "fair" to p…

[deleted]

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#170

Post by dorwi »

lunarhustler wrote: post #137
toyg wrote: post #49

Earlier 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.

Except the market ain't going to bear it, not for a long time anyway. If I am a CEO of a remote-first company and it truly doesn't matter for me where the employees are located it makes no sense to overpay for labor in high cost of living area. So if there's a company A that pays $X in high COL area, and $X/3 in a low COL area. And then there's a company B that pays $X/2 everywhere. Then people from the low COL area…

"As a result, company B gets the same results 2 times cheaper" - that's just an assumption. If I turn it around, it sounds - "people on average in high COL area do the same work two times faster than in low COL area".
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