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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?

#331

Post by lampshades »

fastball wrote: post #322
lampshades wrote: post #314

I wish I had an office to go to. I never leave my house anymore and it is becoming very very old. Before everyone says, “oh, go get some hobbies and live your life, work isn’t here for your social life,” understand that I have young children and no free time. I am nearing middle age in a city I moved to for work. I don’t have the base level of social interaction most people inherit by birth or school and no time to b…

What about a co-working space?

I do go to a co-working space occasionally and my employer provides the credits for up to twice a week. But, it’s not the same.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#332

Post by yoden »

fwlr wrote: post #103
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…

No, I believe managers do useful work. What I mean is that knowledge workers have discovered they have the capability to do their job just as effectively when remote, while managers have simultaneously discovered they don’t have the capability to do their job nearly as effectively when remote; i.e. a lot of managers are realizing they relied on face-to-face interpersonal skills to motivate, track, and manage their em…

I think this is a very insightful comment.

If you're an experienced individual contributor, the shift to remote work was great. You got less oversight at work and more free time in your personal life. This category is a lot of the hacker news audience, so remote work is popular here.

It was less good if you were a new contributor. You might find yourself with less development and struggling to break into existing cliques within the organization. You may not have built good practices in personal time management. None of this is malicious, it is just failures that are easier to have happen when working remote and not being careful.

Managers have an even harder time. Good managers work by building strong relationships with their team members, not with carrots or sticks. That's harder in a remote environment, due to the default-private nature of most remote communication. The lack of relationships hurts individual contributors too, who become even more like cogs in a machine.

Overall, I think the ability to retain experienced employees and hire from a wide range of locations outweighs these costs of remote work, but they are real and significant. For Big Tech, where acquiring talent is relatively easier due to salaries and name recognition, you can see why they might prioritize in-office work.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#333

Post by [deleted] »

danaris wrote: post #240
Kbelicius wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What assumption is being made? What are you turning around?

The assumption they're claiming lunarhustler made is that engineers in Silicon Valley and engineers in (say) Utica, NY work at approximately the same speed and quality. The assumption dorwi's asking you to make is that moving to Silicon Valley somehow makes you work twice as fast, or that only engineers who work twice as fast live there. Basically, lunarhustler is making the assumption that humans who can program end…

[deleted]

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#334

Post by m000 »

eru wrote: post #227
m000 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

If bullshit jobs are so common, does that mean capitalism isn't actually all that ruthless? Why are companies putting up with them? (I know that in eg France is basically impossible to fire people, so I can see why they might have lots of bullshit jobs.)

> Why are companies putting up with them?

There's always the human factor in capitalism. And with the human factor comes ego.

IIRC, Graeber roughly compares CEOs to feudal kings. You want more people under your rule as a metric of success. Also, the "king" often seeks to have a big "court" (top-level managers) to reflect their prestige.

The effect is cascading. The "king's court" members want their own smaller courts (second-level managers) and compete with their peers for power, as measured by the headcount. As we go down, unecessary hires will start to occur, only to justify a title.

And everyone involved in the theater has an incentive to turn a blind eye on the situtation.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#335

Post by horns4lyfe »

m463 wrote: post #269
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…

I find the dead time is shared and my employer frequently benefits. For example, I sometimes lay off work but remain in my home office, and lightly task switch between personal stuff and work stuff. By this I mean I answer some messages, mind some not-very-engaged, long-running tasks, or scratch some itch not on the schedule. Sometimes I reinstall a system. Without the physical toll of going to the office in person,…

The “physical toll” is a good description. I think forcing people to drive through stressful traffic into an office where they sit all day, especially if it’s a big office park and there’s nothing interesting to walk to, exacts a massive physical toll on people. And in the process inflicts massive external costs on society.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#336

Post by horns4lyfe »

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…

Giving people the option to work remotely is objectively better, because it satisfies both parties.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#337

Post by bcrosby95 »

dorwi wrote: post #170
lunarhustler wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

If you're paid $300k/year it's probably some kinda fancy faang job. How productive you are in that environment doesn't necessarily translate into productivity in others. And vice versa.

Beyond that, highest paid people I know aren't paid well because they're 5x as productive, they're paid well because they solve really hard problems - the types of problems you don't run into at most companies.

To use an analogy: neurosurgeons aren't expensive because they're really good at "doctoring". Even if you had all the $$$ in the world you wouldn't consult one for a sprained ankle.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#338

Post by brookst »

monkeynotes wrote: post #313
brookst wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of living thing is a mess. I think it will get sorted out as it becomes clear remote workers can and do still get offers. The current thinking seems to be “if you live in a low cost area, that means there is no competition for you”. Which used to be true, and is not true. And there are tons of just dumb things in remote work policy today. My company does cost of living adjustment based on the state you’re in…

During the hiring process Gitlab literally reclassified my city based off of data from a free crowd sourced website with about 10 data points. They struck their original offer and reduced it by ~10k just as I'd passed the final round. They refused to even talk about it, even as I protested they'd wasted so much of my time and I was about to sign. I walked away and found a much better paying job elsewhere.

That’s really irritating. Though I guess with the news today, maybe a bullet dodged.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#339

Post by fleddr »

The "return to the office" move is largely management/extrovert bias. Managers collaborate all day long, it's what they do, whilst "workers" tend to be overwhelmed by the many meetings. Further, extroverts get energy out of being around people.

Another factor is that some (many) managers frankly have no idea what their employees do. Physical presence management is the coping strategy.

That being said, I do agree that in-person collaboration is richer and things can spontaneously be invented in ways virtual work will not allow for.

My advise: don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Coming in 2 days per week or so does have benefits, but there's also this other thing:

"It doesn’t matter where you work, as long as you get the work done."

I don't think everybody comprehends the consequences of this, which are not only positive. It's an open invitation to move your position to the lowest cost country that outputs quality that is acceptable. Flexibility goes both ways.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#340

Post by anticensor »

selestify wrote: post #175
taneq wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Look familiar?

Wow, how have I not heard of this framing before? So then, are there equivalent analogies to the laws of thermodynamics? An equivalent entropy as an arrow of time?

Decrease of profit margins over time?
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