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Why is remote work seen as a gift?

cdoyle.me

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Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#191

Post by hzay »

burmanm wrote: post #132
hzay wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What setup enabled all this productivity? I hope I'm wrong but this comment reads like it came straight out of this piece of satire - http://www.columbia.edu/~sss31/rainbow/wife.html

I don't think there's any "weird setup", other than having a separate room for work/computer. It's pretty good insulator for all the interruptions. And of course, better coffee. The additional productivity probably came from the added time per day and reduced fatigue from lower amount of noise (office room vs. open office floor). I don't think there's anything weird about it, I at least found working at the office ve…

Sorry, I meant what setup keeps the kids away from your productive time.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#192

Post by brigandish »

m000 wrote: post #135
givemeethekeys wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> companies out there stating that remote is "complicated" It's complicated because a large number of managers haven't figured out how to manage a remote team.

I think it is complicated because a large number of management jobs are "bullshit" (see [1]). I.e. they could be eliminated, and productivity would not be affected, or it could even be improved. Remote work does an exposé on the usefulness of these roles. And of course, those holding them, would be eager for everyone to return to the office work theater. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

There certainly are bullshit jobs and people doing valuable roles in bullshit ways, but Graeber’s claim that more than half of societal work is bullshit is also clearly bullshit, and not just because I read some of the book and sighed heavily before putting it down, but also because of claims like this that I didn’t see in the book but are in the Wikipedia page:

> duct tapers, who temporarily fix problems that could be fixed permanently, e.g., programmers repairing shoddy code...

To think that code can be “fixed permanently” shows a complete lack of understanding and insight into programming, and brings to mind the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect - if Graeber is so wildly wrong about a subject I know well, why do I trust him on those I don’t?

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#193

Post by MrPatan »

regularfry wrote: post #146
komali2 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes! I can't wait for food production and distribution to be put in the hands of government officials. Access to food is going to be equalized so hard!

The market has been taking care of it for too long, we're getting too fat, we need a few decades of food controlled by the police to get back into shape.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#194

Post by jwmoz »

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's a free market so ultimately the best offer will secure a developer.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#195

Post by ragazzina »

HatchedLake721 wrote: post #70
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. There are perfectly valid reasons why that's not the case, see here: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/total-rewards/compensation... https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2019/02/28/why-we-pay-local-ra...

> "It’s something that kind of happened organically," Sid says. "Every time we hired someone, we’d discuss what a reasonable compensation would be. And many times, it came back to what they were making beforehand, and that really depended a lot on where they were.

What a bunch of hypocrites. The perfectly know that what a person is currently making does not come "organically" into the conversation. The employer does whatever is in its power to have this information from the candidate.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#196

Post by pjerem »

lordnacho wrote: post #8

It's framed as a gift in order to manipulate the negotiating position. The fact is both employer and employee benefit from it, but if the employer can emphasize the benefits to the employee they can extract a bit of value from the relationship.

You can easily defuse the argument though. As a candidate, you can say that remote working is a trade off you are willing to accept because of your interest for the job.

You don’t even have to lie but you can just act like you don’t care about working remotely or not (which, in my personal case, is just the truth).

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#197

Post by herbst »

natymad wrote: post #183
herbst wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure why that would be an issue. I am 'just a coder' all I do is pushing and pulling things from git.

- You can easily steal code - if you were working on a company laptop with USB device protection (can't connect drives to transfer without approval) and heavy website moderation (can't send code to yourself), leaking code would prove way more difficult. Compare that to just copy+paste on your personal computer. (ofc it's possible to steal from company laptops too, but you'll leave a very visible trail). - You're a se…

I've only really worked at 2 different companies. Both had none of the mentioned protections. One was a windows without real AD, and the other was a MacBook I setup myself. I never even heard of USB protection there like.

I really understand where you are coming from, but that's definitely not the standard I have witnessed so far.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#198

Post by logifail »

interactivecode wrote: post #178
sokoloff wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely! Everyone is free to select among their options the one that they most prefer.

though you have to admit in basically all situations the employer has more leverage than a single employee.

> though you have to admit in basically all situations the employer has more leverage than a single employee

This depends on how happy/able the employee is to leave to find an alternative.

A while ago I was at a trade fair in Germany and happened to see an advert from a jobs website, it read (roughly translated): "Hate your job ... ? It's your own fault!" (ie that you've not yet left the job you claim to hate...)

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#199

Post by bsenftner »

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…

> But eventually the market forces will do their thing.

After you're necessity for that market equalization is long gone.

We're in a situation where the wealth class can literally wait it out for more than a generation for market conditions they prefer to normalize. The Market is manipulated and owned, and not by us. The tipping point is past, and the majority of society has yet to realize, our only hope at this point probably requires violence and capital destruction, sadly.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#200

Post by mejutoco »

lbriner wrote: post #163

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…

Let‘s say productivity is the same remotely and in person.

Would that not make remote automatically better because of all the pollution and time lost commuting?

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