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Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

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Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#151

Post by DoingIsLearning »

recvonline wrote: post #27

I was looking for new work this year and found a company which hired me for +40% salary increase and remote/timezone free. Personally I have young kids and therefore prefer flexible times, fully remote etc. Being in Europe, I think fully remote is getting embraced. It‘s the third company where I get US level salary plus all the benefits (30 days vacation, unlimited sick leave etc). I see a strong trend from young fam…

> Being in Europe, I think fully remote is getting embraced. It‘s the third company where I get US level salary plus all the benefits.

But this is as an actual employee not as a contractor? Most of the US roles I've seen, that would consider EU ppl, the expect contractor arrangements where you deal with your own taxes.

Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#152

Post by biomcgary »

chasd00 wrote: post #125
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've worked remote for a long time. It's very common to see people working from their home bedrooms. First-time remote workers will often overthink their office, but seasoned remote workers don't really care. It's worth taking a minute to tidy up the room in your background, but nobody is going to be judging you for not having a dedicated home office. > I'm also a manager. My workspace needs for desk layout, equipmen…

Also, most video chat apps have filters where you can make your background look like a couple of different options. A standard, clean, organized home office being one.

Although filters have gotten better (more precise, faster responding to movement), I still don't like them for cutting off hands or things I hold up for the camera to see. So, I hang a curtain behind me, since I don't have a wall.

Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#153

Post by jokethrowaway »

_fat_santa wrote: post #3
pram wrote: post #2

I'm in the interview loop with two places atm (one is Google) and they're both remote. Last time I was frantically looking hard in 2019 I couldn't find any remote positions, so it's still a lot easier from my pov. Also I've found that submitting job applications through LinkedIn's 'easy apply' thing is rarely successful. It doesn't seem like recruiters often check that. I've had the most replies from going through th…

Personally I never use easy apply or go through websites, I always talk to a recruiter on LinkedIn. Usually I'll get 1-2 messages per week from recruiters about a position, I'll politely decline but tell them I would like to keep in touch. Whenever I go looking for another gig, all those recruiters are hit up. IMO, having a recruiter helps you cut through a ton of BS like filling out job applications, recruiter takes…

Internal recruiters are pretty useful.

External recruiters are generally pretty bad and will never get you the best rate you can get. Also you'll be able to negotiate more if your client doesn't have to pay 20% of your annual salary to the recruiter as a finder fee.

Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#154

Post by xur17 »

biomcgary wrote: post #152
chasd00 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, most video chat apps have filters where you can make your background look like a couple of different options. A standard, clean, organized home office being one.

Although filters have gotten better (more precise, faster responding to movement), I still don't like them for cutting off hands or things I hold up for the camera to see. So, I hang a curtain behind me, since I don't have a wall.

Yeah, I tend to agree. And tbh I kind of like the glimpse into a person's life that a non-filtered background gives (in much the same way that idle chit chat helps me "connect" with a coworker).

Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#156

Post by KennyBlanken »

waylandsmithers wrote: post #43
jelling wrote: post #37

For some hard data, in San Francisco and NYC, the mass transit agencies are starting to plan for never getting back to full ridership again. And by plan, I mean starting to ask for federal funding to keep the systems alive (which I think they should) because the fare revenue is never going to return to pre-pandemic levels but the physical plant remains just as expensive to operate. Keep in mind: these are two of the…

Boston too is switching some lines permanently onto weekend schedules with less frequent trains

The MBTA did so because the FRA ordered them to after multiple incidents, including at least one death.

They haven't been hiring dispatchers, and overworking the ones they do.

Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#157

Post by drakonka »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #151
recvonline wrote: post #27

I was looking for new work this year and found a company which hired me for +40% salary increase and remote/timezone free. Personally I have young kids and therefore prefer flexible times, fully remote etc. Being in Europe, I think fully remote is getting embraced. It‘s the third company where I get US level salary plus all the benefits (30 days vacation, unlimited sick leave etc). I see a strong trend from young fam…

> Being in Europe, I think fully remote is getting embraced. It‘s the third company where I get US level salary plus all the benefits. But this is as an actual employee not as a contractor? Most of the US roles I've seen, that would consider EU ppl, the expect contractor arrangements where you deal with your own taxes.

Some places provide the opportunity to choose between being a contractor and an employee through a third party local company. In my country, my accountant and financial advisor strongly recommended I stay a contractor through my own company for tax reasons, so that's what I'm doing, but the other option also sounds very nice.

Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#158

Post by jokethrowaway »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #30
lefstathiou wrote: post #24

Early on (during Covid) I made the decision that remote work was not for our company (SAAS for financial services) and two years in have zero regrets about it. We are clear about our expectations so there are no surprises to employees and new hires (or we filter out people that want it). Most of our clients in financial services have reached the same conclusion. One of my clients at a large bulge bracket said “if the…

I always see this attitude as a management failure. For a couple of reasons: 1. as a manager, I need to be able to manage people when I can't see them. I need to look at what they're outputting, what results they get, not just whether they're moistening a chair for enough hours in the day. 2. people aren't fungible. Or rather, if they are, then I've recruited the wrong people. If I could outsource the job for a tenth…

Most of the tech world is 2 though. Our entire category lives because management is too dumb or power hungry to realise that.

Sure, you probably shouldn't outsource to the cheapest places who barely speak English (eg. India, South East Asia, Russia, Eastern Europe), you'll have tons of communication problems.

If you outsource from the States to the UK or Western Europe (and test the language knowledge in advance) you'll save tons of money and get engineers who can communicate with you.

If the language is not a problem (eg. your staff speaks the language of the subcontractor) I've seen amazing deals work out without a hitch; eg. Russian founders hiring engineers for hundreds per month in Russia, Indian founders hiring cheap resources in India.

Outsourcing didn't work out 20 years ago because we didn't have tools to work remotely effectively (zoom scalable video codec and better broadband have been a game changer) and because people went to the cheapest countries.

There is a middle ground of productive engineers living far away, happy to earn less and who don't want to live among the homeless in an expensive SF flat.

Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#159

Post by mathverse »

avgDev wrote: post #25
mathverse wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope i applied through their sites. Did 2-4h long take home assignments and went through 3-4 rounds and then never heard again from them.

Yes, please name them. This is terrible and you could save some readers time.

I am not really comfortable doing that. Others may have a different experience than me. You never know which team / hr person you are going to interact with.

Re: Ask HN: How is the remote vs in-person trend looking?

#160

Post by jokethrowaway »

y-c-o-m-b wrote: post #59
lefstathiou wrote: post #24

Early on (during Covid) I made the decision that remote work was not for our company (SAAS for financial services) and two years in have zero regrets about it. We are clear about our expectations so there are no surprises to employees and new hires (or we filter out people that want it). Most of our clients in financial services have reached the same conclusion. One of my clients at a large bulge bracket said “if the…

> if these people insist on not being in the office we may just outsource the job for a tenth of the comp Hah, they can go ahead and do that. In fact I encourage it because it makes me more money in the end. When the software falls apart due to shoddy practices, they'll learn a very hard lesson when coming back to reality and end up paying people like me double (at best) what they would've originally paid to fix the…

Why would you assume people in a remote country will write worse software than you?

There is plenty of foreign talent.

Sure, companies are not great at picking outsourcing firms, I think corruption and/or picking your mate's consultancy firms plays a role in that.

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