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Nvidia, one of tech's hottest companies, is fine with remote work

fortune.com

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Re: Nvidia, one of tech's hottest companies, is fine with remote work

#61

Post by jmye »

cj wrote: post #52
moffkalast wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe they would be able to afford more if they didn't spend so much of the budget on renting out offices, eh? Remote work has gotta be leagues cheaper, even if you own the building you still don't even have to pay people their commute fees.

The biggest cost savings from remote work comes from lower talent cost (read: 20-50% lower salaries) because instead of hiring exclusively in a few cities, you can now stop hiring in expensive cities and hire everywhere else.

Wait till they realize there are high-quality devs in SE Asia, South America and India. That remote job can be done by anyone, anywhere. Literally.

Some industries may have regulatory protection, but I don’t think it’ll be long before others start mass-outsourcing the kinds of jobs people thought were safe.

Re: Nvidia, one of tech's hottest companies, is fine with remote work

#62

Post by ghaff »

jebarker wrote: post #45
sandworm101 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone looks to india, but that isnt the only cheaper labor market. If you work a tech job in the bay area, the most threatening labor market isnt india or china, but west virginia and alabama. The most direct threat isn't the overseas person willing to work for 10% of your wage, but your drop-in replacement willing to work for 80% of your wage because they are paying 50% less in rent.

Wouldn't a Bay Area company outsourcing to West Virginia just be remote work?

I think the point is that it's remote with presumably fluent English, cultural similarity, and a time zone difference that is absolutely routine for many, many teams.

Re: Nvidia, one of tech's hottest companies, is fine with remote work

#63

Post by rnikander »

credit_guy wrote: post #21
hmmmcurious1 wrote: post #5

Remote vs office is just smoke and mirrors. A company with a good product will thrive no matter the policy. Making a big deal of returning your cattle to the farm is just to soothe investors when you have a subpar product

> A company with a good product will thrive no matter the policy A different way to say it is "If you found a gold mine, you can afford to do things others can't". 99% of companies don't sit on gold mines like Nvidia.

What is Nvidia's gold mine? They don't make their own chips, right? Doesn't that mean that other companies can quickly catch up, if they are even behind?

Re: Nvidia, one of tech's hottest companies, is fine with remote work

#64

Post by famahar »

hipparchus wrote: post #49

Ok, I'll bite the bullet: how do you train interns and/or junior employees in a fully remote environment? I only have two years of experience so I'm still super new, but it's something I'm confronted with this, and I just don't know how to train people in a fully remote environment. It's from little things to catching an intern who doesn't know a couple extremely handy shortcuts with tools that they are still learnin…

Remotely it takes more intentional effort. I think a hybrid model for juniors is best. If fully remote is the only option then you really need to be proactive about supporting the junior. I don't think a on site model for mentoring translates directly to a remote model. You really need to plan communication.

Re: Nvidia, one of tech's hottest companies, is fine with remote work

#65

Post by [deleted] »

jmye wrote: post #61
cj wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest cost savings from remote work comes from lower talent cost (read: 20-50% lower salaries) because instead of hiring exclusively in a few cities, you can now stop hiring in expensive cities and hire everywhere else.

Wait till they realize there are high-quality devs in SE Asia, South America and India. That remote job can be done by anyone, anywhere. Literally. Some industries may have regulatory protection, but I don’t think it’ll be long before others start mass-outsourcing the kinds of jobs people thought were safe.

[deleted]

Re: Nvidia, one of tech's hottest companies, is fine with remote work

#66

Post by raverbashing »

hipparchus wrote: post #49

Ok, I'll bite the bullet: how do you train interns and/or junior employees in a fully remote environment? I only have two years of experience so I'm still super new, but it's something I'm confronted with this, and I just don't know how to train people in a fully remote environment. It's from little things to catching an intern who doesn't know a couple extremely handy shortcuts with tools that they are still learnin…

Focus on Screen sharing, huddle/discord (something that lets you talk but lets you off the "meeting mode") or actual days in office if possible

Re: Nvidia, one of tech's hottest companies, is fine with remote work

#67

Post by lvl102 »

rr808 wrote: post #12
lvl102 wrote: post #8

Why are companies so hellbent on asking their workers to waste hours in commute? WFH hurts people with “soft” skills the most. MBA types.

I think its the unknown. Are big corporations with lots of WFH employees successful in the long term? The reality is no one really knows so its a risk. Maybe it'll turn out fine, maybe it'll increase productivity, maybe the company will slowly die as the culture crumbles. There is a lot of arguments going on but realistically no one has ever tried it.

Whenever big corp types bring up this topic, I stuff Brian Moynihan in their faces. If Moynihan, CEO of Bank of America, ran one of the biggest banks in the world remotely for a decade, I am sure some mids writing spaghetti code can manage.

Re: Nvidia, one of tech's hottest companies, is fine with remote work

#68

Post by sheepscreek »

away271828 wrote: post #25
rr808 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think its the unknown. Are big corporations with lots of WFH employees successful in the long term? The reality is no one really knows so its a risk. Maybe it'll turn out fine, maybe it'll increase productivity, maybe the company will slowly die as the culture crumbles. There is a lot of arguments going on but realistically no one has ever tried it.

I know there are a lot of people here who are determined to insist that remote work is an unalloyed good. And that any effort to get people to come into an office is a plot by commercial real estate-owning MBAs. But things really aren't that simple. I work for a company that was pretty remote-friendly before and is quite heavily remote now to the point of closing down some major offices (mostly big suburban ones, not…

Like all things in life, there is a trade-off when we choose remote work over on-site work, or the other way around. I’ll share my personal experience below.

I’ll reframe the argument to “can a company be 100% remote (where possible) without affecting profitability and productivity?” Anecdotally, I think the answer is yes.

Culture does take a hit. Can be harder for more inexperienced team members to quickly integrate. It also takes longer to develop bonds with colleagues and “enjoy” work in the same way as being in-office. In other words, working remotely takes all the fun out of office work. But in return, you gain an unthinkable level of flexibility. This is a big deal for anyone who likes to travel/live outside the city/has a family.

So to leaders who say remote work isn’t the same quality, etc. - that’s pure BS. What they really want is to get 8+ hrs from you. They belong to the school of thought “if we can keep our employees in the campus longer, more work gets done”.

That might be true to a degree. Remote work removes most serendipitous moments from work. You won’t accidentally bump into a colleague from a previous team, brainstorm crazy ideas together in your lunch break and create something magical. Which means innovation needs to be more intentional. The culture has to evolve and promote some free learning time and non-roadmap/exploratory work (such as a hackathon).

Anyway, this has been my personal experience working in both styles on both sides (engineer + leader). I don’t believe everyone will agree with me, and that’s fine. However it is safe to generalize that a significant % of people have been very successful at remote work, and aren’t buying the pseudo reasons against it.

Re: Nvidia, one of tech's hottest companies, is fine with remote work

#69

Post by xtracto »

rnikander wrote: post #63
credit_guy wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A company with a good product will thrive no matter the policy A different way to say it is "If you found a gold mine, you can afford to do things others can't". 99% of companies don't sit on gold mines like Nvidia.

What is Nvidia's gold mine? They don't make their own chips, right? Doesn't that mean that other companies can quickly catch up, if they are even behind?

Look at the history of 3dfx . They were up there with envidia at the dawn of 3D graphic cards wars. But bad logistics brought them down.

Mainly they decided to manufacture their tech here in Mexico instead of in Asia. But here on Mex we dont have the skills to to such high tech manufacturing.

Re: Nvidia, one of tech's hottest companies, is fine with remote work

#70

Post by xtracto »

jmye wrote: post #61
cj wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest cost savings from remote work comes from lower talent cost (read: 20-50% lower salaries) because instead of hiring exclusively in a few cities, you can now stop hiring in expensive cities and hire everywhere else.

Wait till they realize there are high-quality devs in SE Asia, South America and India. That remote job can be done by anyone, anywhere. Literally. Some industries may have regulatory protection, but I don’t think it’ll be long before others start mass-outsourcing the kinds of jobs people thought were safe.

Some already realized that. For USA companies, the problem with Asia, India, and even East Europe is timezones.

I used to work at a US company that had offices here in Mexico and had a GREAT QA team in India (despite the hatred they get here in HN, Indian techies are GOOD! ) .

The TZ problem is what ended up fracturing the relationship between the teams . Us/Mexico teams synergy was just great, while Indians were generally disconnected.

But yeah, US and Canada companies that turn to LatAm do get an "unfair advantage". I'm slowly but steadily trying to help this happen. Sorry?

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