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Why is remote work seen as a gift?

cdoyle.me

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Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#131

Post by mcv »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #127
mcv wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you leave young kids at home unsupervised? I really don't understand this argument.

The comment I replied to: > It’s like trying to work in an emergency room So… nothing about unsupervised. Either the working parent is doing that as per their comment, or a daycare as per mine. In reality if the kid is home the parent is not getting much work done.

If the kid is home then either office work was never an option, or there's another parent present. Just make sure you've got a separate room as your home office. (Admittedly not always possible with smaller apartments; this is the real additional cost of working from home.)

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#132

Post by burmanm »

hzay wrote: post #105
burmanm wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In which world? I started working remotely in 2014, when my youngest one hadn't even born yet (I only had 2 back then, and they were small). Yet, there was more peace and ability to concentrate at home than there was at my previous office. Less interrupts, no time wasted to driving. And my kids weren't at the kindergarten. The remote possibility even gave me enough energy to finalize my MSc finally (at evenings), som…

What setup enabled all this productivity? I hope I'm wrong but this comment reads like it came straight out of this piece of satire - http://www.columbia.edu/~sss31/rainbow/wife.html

I don't think there's any "weird setup", other than having a separate room for work/computer. It's pretty good insulator for all the interruptions. And of course, better coffee.

The additional productivity probably came from the added time per day and reduced fatigue from lower amount of noise (office room vs. open office floor). I don't think there's anything weird about it, I at least found working at the office very tiring since concentration was difficult and required energy.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#133

Post by roenxi »

MrGilbert wrote: post #25

I find it kind of amusing (and annoying) that employers like to play the salaray game as it fits their needs. I got interviewed a few times, and some stated that they cannot pay the salary I was asking, because i don't live in a high-density, high-cost-for-living area, while others argued that they have to respect their local salaries, which are below what I would expect in my area. I'm yet to meet the employer that…

This is underselling the value of economic clustering. Even if everyone works from home, there are advantages to drawing from local talent pools (people know people and can vouch for their work, cultural norms make it easier to work together, there are less labour law difficulties, there is less geopolitical risk of parts of your team being sanctioned because you hired Chinese or Russian programmers, etc, etc).

All else being equal, the only reason to hire a distant programmer is to pay them less. From the firms perspective they can't easily tell if a distant programmer is more effective than a local programmer so it is a struggle (market-for-lemons style) to justify paying the same amount. If the costs are equal, may as well hire local.

It starts to make sense when you realise salaries are driven by the cost to replace an employee (including the risk of a bad hire), not the value they provide. Companies can't measure the value individual programmers provide anyway.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#134

Post by blitzar »

MrGilbert wrote: post #25

I find it kind of amusing (and annoying) that employers like to play the salaray game as it fits their needs. I got interviewed a few times, and some stated that they cannot pay the salary I was asking, because i don't live in a high-density, high-cost-for-living area, while others argued that they have to respect their local salaries, which are below what I would expect in my area. I'm yet to meet the employer that…

> It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live.

Tell that to the kid getting paid 14 cents an hour on the other side of the planet to make your $1,500 iPhone.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#135

Post by m000 »

givemeethekeys wrote: post #107
MrGilbert wrote: post #25

I find it kind of amusing (and annoying) that employers like to play the salaray game as it fits their needs. I got interviewed a few times, and some stated that they cannot pay the salary I was asking, because i don't live in a high-density, high-cost-for-living area, while others argued that they have to respect their local salaries, which are below what I would expect in my area. I'm yet to meet the employer that…

> companies out there stating that remote is "complicated" It's complicated because a large number of managers haven't figured out how to manage a remote team.

I think it is complicated because a large number of management jobs are "bullshit" (see [1]). I.e. they could be eliminated, and productivity would not be affected, or it could even be improved.

Remote work does an exposé on the usefulness of these roles. And of course, those holding them, would be eager for everyone to return to the office work theater.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#136

Post by dontlaugh »

randunel wrote: post #120
dontlaugh wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn’t the price of goods be the cost of producing them?

There's also risk in producing "them" (goods, services, research), not just cost. If you want the price of your producing work to be the price of goods derived from your work, then be a shareholder, not an employee.

Risk is also just a cost.

Being a shareholder requires capital, which the vast majority of people don't have.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#137

Post by lunarhustler »

toyg wrote: post #49
MrGilbert wrote: post #25

I find it kind of amusing (and annoying) that employers like to play the salaray game as it fits their needs. I got interviewed a few times, and some stated that they cannot pay the salary I was asking, because i don't live in a high-density, high-cost-for-living area, while others argued that they have to respect their local salaries, which are below what I would expect in my area. I'm yet to meet the employer that…

> It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live. That's like saying the price of goods and services should be about the cost of producing them. No no no: the price is about what buyers will bear. In the same way, salaries are about what the worker will bear. If there is an arbitrage lever to maximize profit, any business will use it.

Except the market ain't going to bear it, not for a long time anyway.

If I am a CEO of a remote-first company and it truly doesn't matter for me where the employees are located it makes no sense to overpay for labor in high cost of living area.

So if there's a company A that pays $X in high COL area, and $X/3 in a low COL area. And then there's a company B that pays $X/2 everywhere. Then people from the low COL area would go to the company B, and people from the high COL area would go to the company A. As a result, company B gets the same results 2 times cheaper.

Repeat this process enough times and the salaries will be equalized. Of course it's not immediate, there are companies rigidly set in their ways; there are people who won't move no matter what; there is limited supply of both companies and workers; etc, etc. But eventually the market forces will do their thing.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#138

Post by dontlaugh »

komali2 wrote: post #112
dontlaugh wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn’t the price of goods be the cost of producing them?

Because that's labor theory of value which is Marxism and marx is just some guy. Arguments against will be that value "is" what people are willing to pay for them, which is some combination of supply and demand, but I find this just too simple. Technically it's true that the "value" of something is the price someone last paid for it, but then we get situations where we say a Bitcoin is worth 40k usd or whatever tf th…

Have you actually read Marx? If you haven't, I recommend you start with https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price.... It'll clarify much of your confusion on basic economics.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#139

Post by sokoloff »

mcv wrote: post #129
sokoloff wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a market. Employers and consumers will pay what they have to be satiated. If they can’t afford that, they’ll have to make do with less. If something is priced too high and there are viable alternatives, they’ll consider those alternatives.

And so should employees, of course. We have options too.

Absolutely! Everyone is free to select among their options the one that they most prefer.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#140

Post by siva7 »

silveraxe93 wrote: post #58
re-thc wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be in another job? Still cannot leave. It's the equivalent of changing prison cells.

Of course. Having a job is comparable to being in prison. By those standards every single human to ever live has been in prison. Humanity will only be free once we're in a post-scarcity society.

GTP will free us finally. I'm serious about that.
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