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Brian Chesky: Ability to hire from anywhere is more valuable than in-office work

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Re: Brian Chesky: Ability to hire from anywhere is more valuable than in-office work

#161
post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even though there is, today, half a dozen startups dedicated to solving just that (Deel comes to mind), yes, it definitely is reasonable. I just don’t appreciate people sanctimoniously dishing out lessons all while not applying what they, unprompted, decided to preach.

You are manufacturing your own outrage.

I honestly fail to see the outrage here. Mild annoyance, perhaps?

Re: Brian Chesky: Ability to hire from anywhere is more valuable than in-office work

#162
A topic that rarely comes up when talking about remote work is where workers are in their career. I can’t imagine being at the start of my career and having to figure out, via Slack, who my mentors are going to be. Or how to get ad hoc advice from someone more senior without feeling like I was “bothering” them. I’ve been remote for the majority of my career now, but definitely got a lot out of in-person interactions when I was younger.

Re: Brian Chesky: Ability to hire from anywhere is more valuable than in-office work

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s very different to outsource to a giant Indian consulting firm vs offshoring to a network of people working from home across Western Europe. The former is challenging and not likely to succeed in many scenarios. The latter is now the default playbook at places I work

the key trick is that once you outsource enough of your key competitive advantage - the question arises - what is the company and who creates value - contractors or company management? why shouldn't these contractors open their own company, do the same work and capture entire value they produce, instead of working for fixed salary?

Some will. Just like some employees will start companies. It’s no different.

A company’s intellectual property is still theirs.

Re: Brian Chesky: Ability to hire from anywhere is more valuable than in-office work

#164

These remote-vs-office discussions where nobody discusses the actual work involved are fairly pointless. Disregarding the obvious scenarios of presence-required in order to work (i.e. manufacturing), the question applies: what is most productive for "information work"? In my personal experience, I've found collaboration conducted face-to-face far more effective than doing so in a distributed/online way. There is a hi…

I see plenty of people going to workplace, give minimum effort and pretend busy anyway. Physical presence has nothing to do with productivity.

For me, I’m definitely going to be more productive when I’m saving 2-3 hours of commute per day

Re: Brian Chesky: Ability to hire from anywhere is more valuable than in-office work

#166
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems from your answer that you have a self-image as a "professional" and that motivates you to work hard even though it may have minimal impact on your compensation. Have you considered the economic rationality of that stance?

'Nothing good' happens by 'self-oriented individuals doing the least', in fact I would go further and say 'almost nothing' happens at all. If you've ever been on a 'decent team' you'll see that there are many 'in between' elements of an operating situation that have to be accommodated, and it takes a bit of extra focus and goodwill by everyone if it's going to work out. This applies not only to tight-knit groups, but…

It is not immoral to not give 120% to an amoral organization that 1) will only reward the extra work with more work and 2) considers you a replaceable cog.

It is a business transaction. You should treat it as such.

The company is not your family and your colleagues are not your brothers. You are one mass layoff away from learning that. And no, your "extra productivity" won't save you from it, but bootlicking just might.

It's not about how hard you work, but how your work is perceived. You're far more likely to go up in the ladder from becoming buddies with your manager than you are by being the guy that gets his hands dirty and fixes everything when the project catches fire.

It is to the company's detriment to promote such a person.

Re: Brian Chesky: Ability to hire from anywhere is more valuable than in-office work

#167
post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems from your answer that you have a self-image as a "professional" and that motivates you to work hard even though it may have minimal impact on your compensation. Have you considered the economic rationality of that stance?

'Nothing good' happens by 'self-oriented individuals doing the least', in fact I would go further and say 'almost nothing' happens at all. If you've ever been on a 'decent team' you'll see that there are many 'in between' elements of an operating situation that have to be accommodated, and it takes a bit of extra focus and goodwill by everyone if it's going to work out. This applies not only to tight-knit groups, but…

I think that actually the one that might have a wrong perception of what "being a professional" means might actually be you, no offense intended, i'll explain my point:

First a couple questions: when you go to you grocer and order and pay 5 apples, do you get exactly 5 apples or do you get 6, or even 7? When you call a professional plumber to fix your sink do they charge you less at the end of the work, or do they charge exactly what their job entailed(or even more)?

Being a professional means exchanging skills and time for money, then why is it that we have developed a company culture in which if you "just" do your job you are seen as a slacker and a terrible employee/person?

This is complete nonsense obviously, and this also one of the tricks that the elites are using since time immemorial to get exponentially richer by exploiting the workers, everyday we are giving away our time and money to enrich the someone else, but at least there needs to be some fairness, it maybe was there in the 1990s but clearly not anymore.

Not every situation is the same, but company dynamics are widely studied and understood by many now, and i suppose we can all agree that getting a 2% raise after pouring many hours of good work everyday is just a complete joke.

Please stop defending practices that just favour the rich and powerful and start taking pride in our value as persons, as opposed to the value that HR attributes us.

Re: Brian Chesky: Ability to hire from anywhere is more valuable than in-office work

#168
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the are many Clueless [1] in the world [1]: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-...

Anyone who actually believes this should for the good of everyone else, leave their careers now. I mean, it's fun to read about completely arbitrarily made up characters at 'Dunder Mifflin' used as the basis some kind of deep metaphor, but then to find that people actually believe this stuff? 'Believing' this piece says more about the reader, because the piece itself doesn't say anything, it's a kind of Rorschach tes…

I'm sorry but... what?

There's no believing in metaphorical realities here. It's the real life.

Being an employee is a bad bargain. You sacrifice a massive chunk of the returns from your work to your employer in the form of profits in favor of a small form of stability (or you did in the past anyways). That's just how capitalism works.

Naturally if you go above and beyond sacrificing yourself for this bad bargain, you are losing even more than you would by only doing the necessary to stay employed. Again, this is a fact, not some theory.

The made up characters are just there for the metaphor, but the underlying discussion is not made up.

I've been a Clueless for the majority of my life. I have the equivalent output of 3-4 engineers at the same level and I never got paid 3-4x the salary, even after I got promoted. It's the sad reality of capitalism.

> The piece itself doesn't say anything

Sorry but that must be a bad faith argument. Even if you disagree with the overall theory of how Sociopaths exploit Clueless and Losers to get rich, the individual pieces are more often than not 100% correct. In my view, it's spot on since it's simply a visualization of capitalism.

Re: Brian Chesky: Ability to hire from anywhere is more valuable than in-office work

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "in your area" really mean when looking for remote work? Are you referring to speciality or geographic area? For some specialities, if the specialty doesn't have remote work (say it's robotics or biotech or something else with a heavy lab component), you might be out of luck. If it's geographic, well, find headhunters in another geography.

>What does "in your area" really mean when looking for remote work? Due to employment, tax and labor laws in my country, remote work still has to be done for a company that has a presence in my country. I can't have an employment contract with a company not based here, only B-2-B. So remote basically limits me to local companies, which don't usually offer 100% remote work posibilities.

you can but you need to setup your own company and work as a contractor.

Re: Brian Chesky: Ability to hire from anywhere is more valuable than in-office work

#170
post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone who actually believes this should for the good of everyone else, leave their careers now. I mean, it's fun to read about completely arbitrarily made up characters at 'Dunder Mifflin' used as the basis some kind of deep metaphor, but then to find that people actually believe this stuff? 'Believing' this piece says more about the reader, because the piece itself doesn't say anything, it's a kind of Rorschach tes…

I'm sorry but... what? There's no believing in metaphorical realities here. It's the real life. Being an employee is a bad bargain. You sacrifice a massive chunk of the returns from your work to your employer in the form of profits in favor of a small form of stability (or you did in the past anyways). That's just how capitalism works. Naturally if you go above and beyond sacrificing yourself for this bad bargain, yo…

Oh yes you are 4 times better than everyone else but treated just the same.

Are you sure about that? Maybe some introspection needed?

Also - the issue is not that some people are exploitative - that can happen. It’s the rest of it.

The person who wrote the article is making the ‘bad faith’ argument passing on cynical stupid delusions.

This idea that most orgs promote willy nilly is ridiculously wrong. It’s a contradiction of reality.

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