The workers have spoken: They're staying home • Hacker News Board

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#241

Post by johnnyanmac » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 6:47 AM UTC

jmyeet wrote: post #103

aantix wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. With savings comes extra cash. And extra cash can only sit on the sidelines for so long. Until company’s are lured once again in to making bigger, larger, scalable bets. You need engineers to explore new hypotheses, to drive growth, to explore these new possible markets. Greed always returns. Idle money, stagnant growth helps no one. You don’t scale a company with savings. You scale up by spending.

This is what I call Blind Faith in the Free Market. First, there's no such thing as a "free" market. Any robust market requires strong regulation and thus a strong government. So for a labor market, you need things like workers rights for the entire thing to work, even for the companies. Second, companies collude to dilute labor power. Years ago in tech it was the Steve Jobs anti-poaching collusion case [1]. Now, eve…

>First, there's no such thing as a "free" market.

Sure, economic theory is just that. There's no true free market and no true socialism.

But I think a more charitable interpretation of GP's comment is "the market is free enough that customers can make a product successful if it makes their lives easier". Regulation in tech aren't so high that a few people can't make the next Whatsapp, if the market resonates with that.

>Second, companies collude to dilute labor power.

Yes, but ultimately new companies make sure they can't ever truly control the market. In some ways that is another sign of a "free (enough) market". There are more than 6 compnaies with money to throw at a good idea, and the current publishing mechanisms make it easy to ship.

>Notice how pretty much every company decided to start doing that at about the same time? You ever wonder why?

external stimulus. Money isn't free, R&D costs aren't easy to write off for taxes. investors are pulling out and putting money into savings. It's the perfect time for layoffs when you need to do a pseudo paycut, especially when it's hard right now for a new company to start scaling up (due to said investors pulling out).

From there, sure. There's a lot of trend chasing. Google does something and they know their stuff, clearly our much different company must follow suit!

>Lastly, it has long been observed that the tendency is for profits to decrease over time

sure, tech stabilizes and customers won't stay and spend forever. Very few products can grow year on year on their own merit.

Companies in the 2010s were indeed in "grow market mode", which is why they were hiring for every blue sky idea they had under the sun. That's obviously stopped, but doesn't prevent leaner startups from trying.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#242

Post by johnnyanmac » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 6:54 AM UTC

asah wrote: post #44

betaby wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And at the same time people struggle to pay rent. Official inflation numbers doesn't correlate how 'median' earner spends its salary.

The rent-strugglers have the loudest voices... (and they're not "wrong" just skewing the media)

lies, damn lies, and statistics.

It's an oft-mentioned point in the last few yearss to focus on raw income and not on spending power. if you get 50% more pay but rent doubles, the vast majority of people would have less spending power. same with job numbers. "Unemployment is historically low!". meanwhile, gig and part time worked soard while full time jobs dipped.

In addition, you look further and realize how people who "gave up" after 2-3 months without an interview are not counted as "unemployed" and you realize there's a lot to break down, that no one is breaking down

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#243

Post by johnnyanmac » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 6:58 AM UTC

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #210

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My apologies, home ownership costs are not included in inflation measures. But I was wrong and you're correct: rents are. Which actually makes my point even more clearly: yes, there are a lot of anecdotes about not being able to make the rent, but these are not supported by the statistics for inflation and median income. Doesn't mean that they are wrong, but makes it more likely that there are other reasons for the p…

> home ownership costs are not included in inflation measures They are, as one of the inputs to imputed rent for owner-occupied housing. > lot of anecdotes about not being able to make the rent A lot is explained by regional variation. For example, real mean wages in San Francisco are back where they were in 2017 [1]. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MWACL06075

>A lot is explained by regional variation.

but no one is digging in to talk about the regional variation. SF going back to being "still one of the highest CoL post genrification" instead of "unbearable for all but the elite" isn't exactly comforting.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#244

Post by pmlnr » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 7:09 AM UTC

It's interesting to read the comments complaining about all the zoom/teams calls, not questioning or addressing why on earth we need that many zoom/teams calls.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#245

Post by MitziWunder » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 8:19 AM UTC

BenFranklin100 wrote: post #213

aantix wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why the move?

Restrictive US immigration policy. Our chief architect was forced to return to India. We decided to keep him on at his US salary under a wholly owned Indian subsidiary and have been adding hand-picked Indian nationals to the team. It’s working out well.

Do they have diversity hire quotas in india?

I guessed so

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#246

Post by ImPostingOnHN » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 8:30 AM UTC

johnnyanmac wrote: post #237

ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My problem is that I quite like working with other people. It’s really hard to build relationships with other human beings when not in the same physical location- sharing jokes, lunches, walks and just shouting across the room about the weird code change I am a remote worker, and I quite like working with other people, too, which is why I do it. Walking and shouting don't really factor into it, but we do share plen…

>To me, that behavior is tantamount to asserting that what you have to say is more important than everything everyone else is doing. If there's a fire, maybe it is. depends on your workplace. There were dedicated quiet rooms workers would go in when they really needed to focus. Meanwhile, being in the lounge was a sign for a more lax work period. You don't really get that social messaging, especially since some peopl…

> You don't really get that social messaging, especially since some people never update their status, or worse yet are eternally "do not disturb".

My experience is, the "social messaging" isn't necessary there: you can just send a message via slack or what not, and wait for the recipient to reply. If they have notifications disabled, you can wait for them to come to a stopping point enough to check their messages and reply. After all, such a configuration is generally implemented to avoid the in-person or digital version of someone shouting for immediate attention.

> Only thing harder than befriending remote coworkers is trying to keep up with flaky meetup members you see once and never again

Having coworkers on friendly terms is nice, but it sounds like you might be falling into the trap I mentioned, of seeking deep friendship there, rather than outside of work. This misaligns incentives: whereas someone might want an RTO just so they can more easily befriend people (a captive audience, no less), coworkers might just want an amicable, effective working relationship, which can be had in-person or remotely. The latter is more important for a company to consider.

> if you could solve this conundrum (I've tried for some 6 years now)

Sure, I've solved it and don't mind helping you do the same! I don't know what all you've tried, so this list may duplicate some of your efforts:

- Go to one meetup consistently? It's unlikely that all of them have so much churn that you never see a single person twice after going several times.

- When you meet someone at a meetup, ask them questions that show you are genuinely interested in them as a person. If you want further friendship, ask them to hang out sometime later that week (yes, a play date). Take down their phone number, reach out.

- Ask them to hang out again, after you have hung out previously. Repeat this process.

- Repeat this process for many potential friends.

- Try Bumble BFF? The message here is that friendship is dating anyways, and you have to show someone you want to have the kind of relationship that you genuinely seek, and always be closing, and consider it a numbers game, because not everyone wants to be in a relationship.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#247

Post by ThinkBeat » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 9:36 AM UTC

SR2Z wrote: post #220

ThinkBeat wrote: post #130

Quite a lot of companies are thinning the herd for the past months and it is set to continue for I have no idea how long. I might stop tomorrow but I highly doubt it. The more places get rid of workers the more the pendulum swings giving more power to the companies over their employees and who they hire. A lot of tech worker primadonnas who have not seen the ugly politics of downsizing, right sizing, and outsourcing…

> The tech worker primadonnas vastly overestimats their own value to the company. Lots of people have been saying this forever, but the truth is much more nuanced: tech workers are incredibly valuable IF interest rates are low. Look at the revenue per employee figures of most tech companies. The difficulty is that the value of tech workers tends to be speculative until they've delivered something, and the low rates g…

What you are arguing is provably false.

Just look at the Twitter example. There are many others. Facebook has been thinning resources as well.

There is consensus that major tech companies had hired resources they did not need.

Then there is the sad fact that some tech workers (as in any field) are shit at their jobs and provide negative value to companies. More are mediocre. (again as in every field)

There are also a lot of techworkers who are good at their jobs and some that are excptional at it.

So no. The statement: "Tech workers are incredibly valuable" is far too broad and generic.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#248

Post by moffkalast » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 10:57 AM UTC

machomaster wrote: post #221

moffkalast wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People seriously overestimate how sweaty you get if you use a tiny bit of antiperspirant and don't drive like a maniac.

You are seriously underestimating the amount of sweating a normal, healthy man does if he trained consistently for some time and his body learned to quickly adapt to minimal physical stress (heck, I sweat profusely even if I merely slowly walk). Let alone if there are any kinds of hills.

TIL, I've looked it up and apparently you're right. The more fit someone is, the more they sweat. That's so counterintuitive tbh, I would've thought that it would be the opposite since you don't need to strain as much, but I guess there must be some baseline energy use and more muscle mass equals more heating, plus a faster learned cooling response.

Ironically that makes cycling a much better choice for people who aren't fit. Finally something where being lazy gives you an advantage.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#249

Post by andrepd » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 11:40 AM UTC

johnnyanmac wrote: post #231

andrepd wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're looking at it wrong. The mere fact that you have to chauffer your kids around everywhere until they're old enough to drive is a consequence of the fact that everything revolves around the car , as is the fact that you have to shop on a big box 10 miles away instead of walking 5mins to the store. In the Netherlands kids bike everywhere with their friends, because it's safe and comfortable to do so. If they want…

glad the Netherlands are nice like that. I'm in Los Angeles and it's dangerous living downtown with kids. Even if things are walkable I would never let my theoretical kids walk around on the streets. There's a lot more than urban planning that needs to be fixed before a walkable city becomes a reality here.

Agreed on that point, but very few places in the US—safe or unsafe—are walkable. Even the safest upper middle class suburb is totally untraversable without a car. So the problem clearly isn't just crime.

Re: The workers have spoken: They're staying home

#250

Post by SebFender » Tue, Jul 23, 2024, 11:51 AM UTC

Working for the past 30 years, I've had the chance - like many others - to live the closed office times, then the open space extravaganza to finally the "work from home" era.

I've seen companies spend tens of millions in open space offices in the past decades and this was by far the greatest work killer of all time.

Many, if not most companies, self created this ridiculous situation to finally realize it was a complete failure at so many levels, all that was left was to justify it. From awful diners and mini restaurants to ridiculous spaces no one really uses unless they need to make a phone call - open concepts don't work and never will.

Now days the only thing I see are noise cancelling headsets, people leaving early and a complete lack of interaction.

For many, working from home just works. My setup here is now years ahead of what the office may offer...