Remote work means anyone can take your job • Hacker News Board

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#171

Post by alexandercrohde » Thu, May 28, 2020, 4:06 PM UTC

anacleto wrote: post #166

gregkerzhner wrote: post #132

Real time, remote communication through tools like zoom, slack, and lucidchart (in my humble opinion) has been solved. It might take some getting used to, but in the right environment a group of properly motivated individuals can achieve the same productivity as their peers in a conference room. Asynchronous communication across timezones has not been solved, and I struggle to see how it would be. A lot of collaborat…

> Asynchronous communication across timezones has not been solved, and I struggle to see how it would be. By focusing on excellent written communication. Great written comms is hard, and (like coding) requires lots of deliberate practice and training. Most people and companies gloss over this, but it makes a world of difference if you're operating across time zones. Great internal writing is what separate the great c…

No. Not even for a second.

Suppose you have two engineers, one in America, one in India. PRs cannot be merged without an approval. Suppose the average PR requires 3 back-and-forth comments before it gets merged.

In the same timezone this gets merged in an hour. In a different timezones its days.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#172

Post by Raidion » Thu, May 28, 2020, 4:07 PM UTC

wolco wrote: post #151

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Real time, remote communication through tools like zoom, slack, and lucidchart (in my humble opinion) has been solved. It might take some getting used to, but in the right environment a group of properly motivated individuals can achieve the same productivity as their peers in a conference room. What is not solved, of course, is how a remote-only employee can build trust and relationships with peers. In my opinion…

Through projects? I'm working remotely and it's the same as in person. First few months is about everyone feeling each other out once you understand more you give people more trust in those areas.

First few months is often the duration of a project, especially for those working on a contract basis.

Remote and in person can reach the same level of trust and productivity, but I do believe that people reach that level faster in person as opposed to oddly forced zoom happy hours.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#173

Post by josho » Thu, May 28, 2020, 4:07 PM UTC

ReticentVole wrote: post #24

popotamonga wrote: post #2

It also means i can take someone else's job. It balances out.

You drive a car, I use a bus. You eat meat, I eat potatoes. You fly to Disneyworld, I take the train to the seaside. You live in a big house, I live in a small apartment. You pay American income taxes, I don't. You demand clean air and water, I tolerate pollution. There are some fundamental factors which make labour in other parts of the world much cheaper, and people willing to accept a much lower quality of life an…

In addition, there are a couple concerns when branching out to other countries:

Currency exchange means some can work at a discount compared to USD

Government subsidies hoping to diversify their economy may even pay partial salaries

Strong social safety net in other countries means companies may not need to pay for health benefits for remote workers

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#174

Post by imiric » Thu, May 28, 2020, 4:08 PM UTC

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #136

gregkerzhner wrote: post #132

Real time, remote communication through tools like zoom, slack, and lucidchart (in my humble opinion) has been solved. It might take some getting used to, but in the right environment a group of properly motivated individuals can achieve the same productivity as their peers in a conference room. Asynchronous communication across timezones has not been solved, and I struggle to see how it would be. A lot of collaborat…

> Real time, remote communication through tools like zoom, slack, and lucidchart (in my humble opinion) has been solved. It might take some getting used to, but in the right environment a group of properly motivated individuals can achieve the same productivity as their peers in a conference room. What is not solved, of course, is how a remote-only employee can build trust and relationships with peers. In my opinion…

> What is not solved, of course, is how a remote-only employee can build trust and relationships with peers.

You're saying that trust can't be built virtually? I think there are online communities whose members would say they trust each other, and can collaborate and work together just fine. A lot of open source communities certainly work on this basis.

Besides, working remote-only doesn't mean occasional meetups or virtual events (gaming, etc.) couldn't be held to bring the team more socially together, but I don't think this is a requirement.

Of course, trust is subjective, so others will feel differently about what it takes to establish it for all involved, but that applies for physical communication as well.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#175

Post by gexla » Thu, May 28, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

gregkerzhner wrote: post #132

Real time, remote communication through tools like zoom, slack, and lucidchart (in my humble opinion) has been solved. It might take some getting used to, but in the right environment a group of properly motivated individuals can achieve the same productivity as their peers in a conference room. Asynchronous communication across timezones has not been solved, and I struggle to see how it would be. A lot of collaborat…

> someone has to be the "top dog" attracting the top talent

As I said in my comment, this is the big shift I would be looking for. The shift in the top dogs. The top dog could become a Chinese company snagging US expertise rather than the other way around. That could then create effects where US workers are applying to jobs abroad.

The real competition might not be positioning yourself as the talent. The real competition of the future might be attracting the talent. Once you get _that_ shift, then this conversation takes a totally different turn.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#176

Post by BubRoss » Thu, May 28, 2020, 4:09 PM UTC

jedberg wrote: post #107

rb808 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Anyone can already take your job, as long as they are willing to relocate, This where immigration restrictions make a difference. A Brazilian developer has trouble working in SV, but no trouble working remote.

You vastly underestimate the tax and legal implications of an American company hiring and paying a Brazilian in Brazil.

Interesting, what are they?

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#177

Post by imsofuture » Thu, May 28, 2020, 4:10 PM UTC

bachmeier wrote: post #168

> Now, you can either hire someone from San Francisco and subsidize their obscene rent, or you can hire someone from Omaha. You can get the same work done, but cheaper. What would you choose? This depends on the assumption that there's a big supply of workers in Omaha that are able to step in and do the job. I'm an outsider, but I'd guess that the people worth $600,000 Facebook salaries are already living there and w…

> I'm an outsider, but I'd guess that the people worth $600,000 Facebook salaries are already living there.

Myopic

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#178

Post by knorker » Thu, May 28, 2020, 4:10 PM UTC

… and you can take anyone's job.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#179

Post by MiroF » Thu, May 28, 2020, 4:10 PM UTC

Spooky23 wrote: post #77

beager wrote: post #19

The implication from this litter of thinkpieces on HN is that proximity to a tech hub (SV/NY) is your only competitive advantage as a knowledge worker—your butt is close to their chair. This runs counter to the other prevailing wisdom about SV/NY, which is that those areas are hubs—and essential to the tech industry—because the world's top talent is drawn to it. So which is it?

Things that don't make sense tend to get adjusted during bad economic times. I've worked with alot of companies as a customer, and at end of the day, none of the stakeholders are getting bang for the buck. Companies set money on fire, employees are mostly living a middle class lifestyle at an insane level of compensation. I live out in the provinces, and we pay 20-30% of the rate for SV talent. My lifestyle in SV wou…

> NYC is more of a real place and is probably less inflated, alot of the premium there is really about domain expertise.

We'll see. I'm betting you're wrong - NYC has nothing on SF in tech expertise and the rest of the country (especially outside of the West coast) doesn't have much on it either.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#180

Post by gregkerzhner » Thu, May 28, 2020, 4:11 PM UTC

blululu wrote: post #162

gregkerzhner wrote: post #132

Real time, remote communication through tools like zoom, slack, and lucidchart (in my humble opinion) has been solved. It might take some getting used to, but in the right environment a group of properly motivated individuals can achieve the same productivity as their peers in a conference room. Asynchronous communication across timezones has not been solved, and I struggle to see how it would be. A lot of collaborat…

I don't think that 'Tennessee' is the correct spelling for Shenzhen. The low cost of living states in the US are still expensive compared to low cost of living countries. There is engineering talent around the world, and I don't see how the rural parts of the US are going to compete with more urban populations in other well educated parts of the world.

Anectodal, but I spent a year on a recent project collaborating with a group of firmware engineers in Shenzhen, and it was an absolute nightmare. Apart from the timezones, the code quality was horrendous and basically never worked correctly. They also ignored all common standards, and made assumptions about things like ordering of fields in JSON. None of their engineers spoke english, so code communication had to go though the project manager who wasn't technical.

I can see how english fluent Mexican, South American and Canadian employees will be in competition - this is already happening, but I think that China might be one of the last places I would higher a developer due to the huge time difference and their poor english speaking ability.