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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?

#391

Post by anthonypasq »

mcv wrote: post #90
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.

Employers are the buyers of labour. If food prices depend on what the consumer can bear, then labour prices should depend on what the employer can bear. And most of them can bear a lot more than they're currently paying.

thats because the person you're responding to is wrong. its simply finding an equilibrium price.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#392

Post by hinkley »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #383
beauzero wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If large corporations or governments were actually trying to reduce hydrocarbon dependence they would bend over backward to promote work from home.

For about two decades I was a big-time transit advocate. Did lots of organizing and protests, in addition to working with our local transit agency to improve their service to the public. Work from home was always one of our "commute alternatives" that we promoted but once the pandemic started and a significant number of information workers started working from home, my fellow transit advocates turned strongly against…

> If lots of well-paid people can work from home, they're not forced to sit next to people different than them on the bus and train each day.

This is why I always use the cashier at businesses instead of the machine. I’m fully convinced that cashiers are the only “low” people that some people deal with all day and we lose something as a society if they go away.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#393

Post by mejutoco »

paulcole wrote: post #270
mejutoco wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No. Because in your made-up equal productivity scenario we can just as easily make up the idea that people are less happy working remotely. The reality is that some people like remote work and some don’t. Some organizations have chosen to be remote and some haven’t. Nobody’s right or wrong. They can make the choice that they believe is best for them — sometimes that choice requires trading off things they like for th…

This conversation was in the context of OP

> I wish people would stop posting articles that imply that remote working is somehow objectively better

> we can just as easily make up the idea that people are less happy working remotely.

We can make up the idea that the sun is blue, but I think you missed my point. Please note I talk about productivity.

In the context of people claiming remote/in-person work is more productive and asking each other for proof, discussing about burden of proof, why not simply assume that remote is exactly as productive as in-person? Unless some undeniable proof is presented.

I find it an elegant way to diffuse this proof-of-burden.

Personally I decided a long time ago which one I prefer.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#394

Post by knorker »

eru wrote: post #234
knorker wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you want to play that game? Because if location doesn't matter then there are a billion people in India who are willing to do your job for much much less. In salary per value to the company you are extremely overpaid, assuming you live in the west. I don't think you want to open that can of worms. Edit to add: All those people moving from India to the US for the money could then stay in India. You're not competing…

Yes, I want to play that game. I want people in India to be paid more, if possible. I want to open that 'can of worms'. The big problem is that labour in India isn't all that productive. Offshoring isn't some magic bullet. Companies have tried that and are still trying. Google, Microsoft etc have offices in India. They also keep their offices in the US and Europe not just out of imaginary obligation to westerners, bu…

Offshoring is not the same thing.

There are great people in India. It's just more conducive for them to get better pay if they manage to get an H1B and move to the US.

If they could just "work remote", then you (as an American, or at least someone who can and does work in the US? Well, applies to any western country) are no longer competing with "people from India who manage to get an H1B and have a family situation compatible with moving countries", but suddenly with ALL qualified workers in India.

Big tech in the west employs HUGE numbers of expats from lower paid countries. A very large portion of which Big tech paid for the H1B (or equiv) and relocation costs.

If you are remote, then you're only valued on your output. And I'm not saying you're in a poor position against a random engineer from India (nor presumably from a random engineer in the US), but you'll be in a poor position against the equivalent of your amazing local coworker who moved from India (or hell, any European country with less pay) because that's where the job was.

If the job is "anywhere, because it's remote", then I'm saying that you may not be on the winning side of this change.

Opening up "work from anywhere" is not like offshoring to save costs. More like given two equally valuable people, why should an employer pay a premium to one, just because they chose to live in a higher cost of living country?

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#395

Post by aembleton »

seydor wrote: post #295
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…

> 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. So you are saying that working from office is objectively worse.

I think that is subjectively worse as its applying it from his viewpoint instead of an objective measure.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#396

Post by ARandomerDude »

rcme wrote: post #371
fleddr wrote: post #339

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…

> "It doesn’t matter where you work, as long as you get the work done." This sentiment is weird to me. When people express this, I think they have a myopic view on work. Like they view work as a series of JIRA tickets that need to be closed out. As a senior leader, one of your jobs is to teach the younger folks how to do their jobs efficiently. Your personal output is not that important. You are there to be a force m…

> As a senior leader, one of your jobs is to teach the younger folks how to do their jobs efficiently.

I'm in the leadership position you describe, and I've found remote work to be amazing for teaching because of screen-sharing. It's so much easier to get the team talking about some code over Teams/Slack/etc. than it is awkwardly huddled around someone's monitor or looking at a TV in the office. Remotely, you're able to see the code and have high-quality audio, and you don't have to worry about some higher up manager seeing a group gathering and thinking now's a good chance to get some internal publicity...

Of course, none of the above applies if the tools aren't used. I think the key to mastering remote teaching is good scheduling.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#397

Post by Someone1234 »

rr888 wrote: post #348
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…

I got a job back where everyone is in the office 4/5 days a week. Its great I love it, its really annoying when someone works from home a day and you can just go over problems. Look for jobs like this, they're still out there.

> its really annoying when someone works from home a day and you can just go over problems.

If you have no way of communicating with people remotely, that seems like the core issue. Or you’re just not using the tools available?

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#399

Post by knorker »

pmoriarty wrote: post #243
knorker wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you want to play that game? Because if location doesn't matter then there are a billion people in India who are willing to do your job for much much less. In salary per value to the company you are extremely overpaid, assuming you live in the west. I don't think you want to open that can of worms. Edit to add: All those people moving from India to the US for the money could then stay in India. You're not competing…

There are time zones issues, communication issues, and culture issues that are difficult if not impossible to cost-effectively overcome for offshoring to countries like India.. Otherwise all jobs would have been offshored already, whether local employees "wanted to play that game" or not. Employers aren't hiring locally out of the goodness of their hearts.

Big tech is largely staffed by people they "imported" for the job (don't mean that in a bad way, as it includes me).

Why pay to get H1B and shipping for someone from India when you can just hire that same person in place and not only save on that, but also salary?

Offshoring in my experience does not usually work on an individual basis.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#400

Post by philwelch »

ericmay wrote: post #220
franciscop wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it is true, the best you can do is vote with your feet. I have had the situation where I was offered "locally competitive salaries" (not in the USA though), and every time I've rejected it I had a 50%-100% better offer within few weeks . There ARE companies that will pay better and independently of your location, you do need to be good though (as in companies are proactively seeking you out) and keep searching.…

I’m really surprised that nobody has set up address as a service yet so that you can claim for example to live in New York by virtue of an address auto command “a New York salary”.

Seattle would be a better choice—still a relatively high cost of living but no state income tax yet.
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