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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?

#401

Post by knorker »

welshwelsh wrote: post #315
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 please. If companies could replace highly paid Americans with lower paid Indians without hurting the bottom line they should do so without hesitation. Unfortunately it's not that simple. It usually turns out that these lower paid employees are significantly worse, and Indian nationals who are highly competent demand salaries similar to Americans.

> Unfortunately it's not that simple. It usually turns out that these lower paid employees are significantly worse,

But it's literally the exact same people, in this case. Big tech currently pays to move them to the US, and then pays them higher salary.

That is very different from spinning up a department in India.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#402

Post by FpUser »

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. Your personal output is not that important. You are there to be a force multiplier. Teaching is much easier in person."

I am actually doing mentoring every once in a while and it goes just fine over Skype thank you. I am remote since 2000.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#403

Post by tsgagnon »

ARandomerDude wrote: post #396
rcme wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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…

I'm in the leadership position you describe, and I've found remote work to be amazing for teaching because of screen-sharing.

I'm in a agreement on this. I find reviewing changes much easier with screen-share than in person.

It also makes the process feel less confrontational in some respects.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#404

Post by dayvid »

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…

The same people who talk about automation and AI taking over want people to go back to the office. It makes no sense that it's table stakes and a requirement.

I remember the first time I worked remote, I had an appointment that took me away from the office and had to work at a coffee shop for most of the day. I immediately felt more relaxed and got my work done fast. I asked my boss if I could be remote a few days a week. He said no, probably because it was a small business and other employees would want to do this as well. A few years later, the company became remote.

I wound up moving during the pandemic and when we started return to office, I wanted to work in the Boston office close to me. The company said it's not my team's office. I was still able to find a way to work at the office a few days out of the week. Now the company says you can choose to work from any office in the country.

It's not rocket science. Certain scenarios make more sense for in-office work (tight-knit team that needs to be in constant communication with each other or new employee who needs more guidance), remote work (you're more experienced or have self-discipline and can get tasks done on your own or ask for help with a good infrastructure), or hybrid work (both scenarios combined or you can have 1-2 days out of the week that are team days).

Otherwise, you wind up in an office where a lot of people are wasting time either way with lowest common denominator conversations, living in congested cities with price gouge real estate and soul crushing commutes or remote locations you don't really want to live in because commercial real estate was cheap.

The overall assumption should be that you're a professional who's treated as a professional by the company with respect (assuming your a high-paid employee with professional experience). A lot of these return to office calls and recent corporate behavior makes me realize a lot of managers (usually not great ones) or companies sees employees as children who can't be trusted instead of adults who can perform professional work and communicate effectively.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#405

Post by fleddr »

paulrpotts wrote: post #352
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." Having worked with a number of overseas teams in China and India, it's actually somewhat difficult for US-based teams to work with teams up to 12 hours "distant" and also who have different sets of official holidays. I've been in so many status meetings that are either late at night for me or late at night for overseas team members so we can sync…

Doesn't have to be Asia, can also be Panama. You're not safe.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#406

Post by fleddr »

thinknubpad wrote: post #359
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's an open invitation to move your position to the lowest cost country that outputs quality that is acceptable. We tried that before, outsourcing was a huge trend maybe 20-30 years ago? The problem is the second part of your sentence. There's a reason that particular business practice settled into a niche of call centers. It turned out that good workers want to be paid what they are worth, regardless of location.…

You're quite out of touch. If you think outsourcing is a telco niche you should check again.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#407

Post by monkeynotes »

DiggyJohnson wrote: post #373
monkeynotes wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't more complicated, it is just different. Here, let me hire for an office instead... "You may not struggle with office work and may do fine interacting in person, but that’s not true for a lot of people." I have people who do far better at home than in the office, and some on the other end of the spectrum. People come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and finding the right people is the same challenge regardles…

> finding the right people is the same challenge regardless. Are you claiming that the complexity of managing in-office is usually, roughly the same as managing remote teams? I'm asking towards magnitude/degree, not if both are sometimes true. If not, you are stating the obvious: "People come in all sorts of shapes and sizes" In my experience, more people struggle with remote than in-office. I've found a lot of satis…

I am saying exactly the obvious: "People come in all sorts of shapes and sizes", this is the nexus of the original comment.

Case in point, you struggle with WFH, others thrive. I just don't see any problems with employees not enjoying WFH as being significantly more complex than, say, an issue with someone struggling to get into the office on time. Or being stressed out by a stupidly long commute, or having no time with their children. And so on. There are pros and cons abundant that pretty much level it all out.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#408

Post by ghaff »

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…

Although it's been creeping back up [1] transit use still seems to be down relative to pre-COVID. The stats aside that's pretty much my anecdotal observation as well. Rush hour traffic seems to be as bad as ever. But commuter trains that were packed by the end of the line pre-pandemic aren't especially crowded at all. Subway usage feels lighter as well.

[1] https://www.osc.state.ny.us/reports/osdc/impact-covid-19-pan...

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#409

Post by yamtaddle »

baxtr wrote: post #160

I really hate working fully remote so much. I love going to the office and meeting people. It gives me energy and a sense of belonging. I would never want to work for a fully remote company.

I prefer working in an office, but I don't prefer it to the tune of thousands of dollars a year in transportation costs and ~10 days per year of driving during rush hour (plus all the extra micromorts and risk of much higher costs that come with that).

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#410

Post by pc86 »

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…

> Teaching is much easier in person.

In my experience this is not the case for developers. Being over someone from behind or having someone peer at my screen while I'm typing is much worse than just screen sharing where we both have our keyboards and two large monitors.

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