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37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

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Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#131

Post by markus_zhang »

mwattsun wrote: post #67

5 of us wrote Microsoft Works for the Macintosh while working at home from 1984 to 1992. Without the internet, we got together as needed to merge code, usually once a month, but sometimes once a week. We talked on the phone. We went to Microsoft once in awhile. It was ideal and worked very well. Maybe it was just our personalities that made it work, but I am astonished that any programmer would rather go into the off…

With a kid at home I'm very inclined to work in office whenever it allows. I'm also much more productive in office when everything from coffee to food are taken care of.

Nowadays I believe WFH is kinda the norm in IT as long as company policy allows. I love the hybrid mode: two days in office to relax, three days at home to help wifie with kid.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#132

Post by Clubber »

Bluecobra wrote: post #90
mwattsun wrote: post #67

5 of us wrote Microsoft Works for the Macintosh while working at home from 1984 to 1992. Without the internet, we got together as needed to merge code, usually once a month, but sometimes once a week. We talked on the phone. We went to Microsoft once in awhile. It was ideal and worked very well. Maybe it was just our personalities that made it work, but I am astonished that any programmer would rather go into the off…

Didn't Microsoft give everyone their own dedicated office in those days? I thought I read/heard somewhere that is what spawned development of Outlook/Exchange. I agree about the distractions, it's extremely bad with the open office model and hard to get anything done for me. I would much prefer cubicles or dedicated offices.

I remember hearing that too. Having an office with a door or at least a shared office would make it tolerable, but still the commute always put me in a sour mood to start and end the day. Now a days, the fad is open office, which is a dumpster fire for development. I can't believe Apple fell for that with their new mothership.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#133

Post by achenet »

tharne wrote: post #119

I really hope American businesses don't bring this headline to its logical conclusion... "37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home...by people in India or Eastern Europe for much less money"

not if those jobs entail good written or even oral communication skills. Native English speakers have a huge leg up on Indians and Eastern Europeans in this regard.

For example, I imagine Coca-Cola is willing to pay more to have the person writing their ad copy be someone who has been immersed in American culture from birth.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#134

Post by eminence32 »

Bluecobra wrote: post #109
eminence32 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In addition to all of the social reasons others have listed, I'll list 2 technical reasons why an office is a more comfortable place for me to work: I have 2 large monitors at my office desk (so when you include my laptop's screen, I have a total of 3 monitors; lots of screen space). Compared to no external monitors at home. At the office, I have a gigabit connection to the LAN and file servers. At home, I have a VPN…

These seem like easily solvable problems though. I have three monitors at home and 1Gb AT&T Fiber Internet.

Hmm. Yes, they are solvable. But are they "easily solvable"?

I could buy extra monitors for my work laptop, but then I'd also have to buy or build an entirely new desk for them, and find a place in my home for this desk to live.

My ISP also offers 1GB I think, but even if I upgrade, that doesn't mean that my work VPN can keep up. It also doesn't help improve latency

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#135

Post by Mountain_Skies »

mwattsun wrote: post #67

5 of us wrote Microsoft Works for the Macintosh while working at home from 1984 to 1992. Without the internet, we got together as needed to merge code, usually once a month, but sometimes once a week. We talked on the phone. We went to Microsoft once in awhile. It was ideal and worked very well. Maybe it was just our personalities that made it work, but I am astonished that any programmer would rather go into the off…

High speed internet and video conferencing might bring many of those distractions into your home office in a way that you didn't have to deal with during the old days.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#136

Post by Clubber »

cecilpl2 wrote: post #88
mwattsun wrote: post #67

5 of us wrote Microsoft Works for the Macintosh while working at home from 1984 to 1992. Without the internet, we got together as needed to merge code, usually once a month, but sometimes once a week. We talked on the phone. We went to Microsoft once in awhile. It was ideal and worked very well. Maybe it was just our personalities that made it work, but I am astonished that any programmer would rather go into the off…

This is fascinating to me! How did you manage to merge code in the 80s? What tools were available? Did you have three-way merge tools or did you do it more manually? Or rather did you talk frequently and ensure that you weren't stepping in each other's files? How did you make changes to shared APIs?

There were always tools to diff two codebases and make a intermediate file that had all the changes. We did it back in the BBS days. You could always take the diff file and type the changes in manually. That's how "mods" worked. It would be something like this

  SomeFile.pas
  14: - If Variable = 1
  14: + If Variable = 2

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#137

Post by manuelabeledo »

tharne wrote: post #119

I really hope American businesses don't bring this headline to its logical conclusion... "37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home...by people in India or Eastern Europe for much less money"

Companies have been doing this for decades already.

The current situation is not going to shift even more jobs to India. Reasons being, good engineers from India are already moving to the US in sheer numbers, and good talent is unlikely to remain at Indian IT consultancy companies.

Anecdotally, I have worked along with very clever engineers who happened to be Indian nationals living in the US, but I have yet to find an above average engineer working at an Indian IT shop and based in India.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#138

Post by spookthesunset »

pc86 wrote: post #111
Cederfjard wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people also don’t have living conditions at home that are conducive to being productive. Not everyone can afford the space to have a proper home office, for example.

Absolutely correct. Any everyone's situation is different, but let's be real - the vast majority of software engineers can afford a great home office space.

> the vast majority of software engineers can afford a great home office space

Maybe, maybe not. In high cost of living areas even high salary employees with single incomes have to compete with couples pulling in the big bucks.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#139

Post by FpUser »

mwattsun wrote: post #67

5 of us wrote Microsoft Works for the Macintosh while working at home from 1984 to 1992. Without the internet, we got together as needed to merge code, usually once a month, but sometimes once a week. We talked on the phone. We went to Microsoft once in awhile. It was ideal and worked very well. Maybe it was just our personalities that made it work, but I am astonished that any programmer would rather go into the off…

>"I assume that some people are just very lonely and need face to face"

This. We have managed to completely fuck up life style of the segment of the population to the point that they have no life outside of the office. This is sick.

Re: 37% of jobs in the United States can be performed entirely at home

#140

Post by dimitrios1 »

WYepQ4dNnG wrote: post #122
Adraghast wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I assume that some people are just very lonely and need face to face Anecdata from Hacker News suggests this is true. A lot of lonely young men here freely admit their coworkers are the only people they regularly interact with in-person, and remote work takes that away from them.

That's true, but also very sad. I am lucky enough to have a lovely wife, kids and just enough good friends. And that's all I care about. I don't really miss at all the office, let alone my co-workers. Working remote is just what I need, and I am way more productive.

I have all those too. But even when you are fully remote, and have a healthy outside social support system away from work, you cannot ignore the reality that is you spend the majority of your waking hours working alongside these people, often for the same goals and deadlines. It's a basic desire to connect with others we share our time with.

Unless you are one of the rare people where you truly are a solo shop (even then you have people requesting the work from you), I want to meet, converse, and get to know the people that I spend a bulk of my waking hours with, and depend on together to do a good job because I feel like that's showing those other people basic dignity.

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