171–180 of 216 posts
All we will find in this thread is a bunch of remote workers trying as hard as they can to dismiss any finding that remote work might have downsides. Those damn managers only caring about butts in seats!
Oh but what about the socializing! It's so hard!
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I really feel this. I've been working remotely for a few years, and will probably continue doing so for the foreseeable future, but there is no such thing as informal conversation in that setting. My company encourages everybody to set up "salon" meetings with random people to just chat, but these conversations end up being awkward and forced (though that could just be me). The result of this is that I feel completel…
This is something I don’t understand. People have been having informal conversations with their friends, family and even colleagues over the phone for a hundred years. I almost feel like it’s a generational thing. People who came of age before widespread text messaging spent countless hours chit-chatting with their friends on the phone. It might be that late Millenials and Gen Z are less suited to remote work compare…
The key thing is here: > over the first six months of 2020 Those first six months were pretty rough. The large majority of people had little to no experience working remotely, so many folks didn't have a good home office environment, and there was a general sense of being unsure if this would just be temporary or if employees should settle in for the long haul. Many orgs didn't have good practices set up for remote w…
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That’s a very Silicon Valley tech influenced meme.
I don't believe so. It's the only way to get a proper pay increase in corporate America. Internal promotion in most corporations comes with at best a 10% pay increase most of the time and includes increased workload. If I leave my company and go to another I can pretty easily get 15-20% increase and stay in the same basic job I'm currently at. Most companies don't offer any benefits that increase based on loyalty so…
Sure the interview process should surface these problems, but applicants can make a "bad hire" as easily as companies, especially as both are showing their best front, and this is more likely if you are enticed by a fatter paycheck.
It wasn't remote, but the communication with the guy after you needed to be so clear that they wouldn't bother you one your day off.
It worked extremely well. Our communications were mostly done through a common email inbox.
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I think the hardest thing remote work has to replicate is just random small talk between smart people that can lead to great ideas. This speech from Richard Hamming about Bell Labs sticks in my mind, especially the segment about open vs closed office doors. I'd say remote work is objectively better for pure productivity in terms of getting things done, but you run the risk of limiting innovation I think https://www.c…
>random small talk between smart people that can lead to great ideas. Outside of maybe a very innovative R&D department I don't really see these "brilliant ideas that only smalltalk could achieve" in your typical run of the mill company.
I’ve had no problems chatting and calling with people whom I have actual business with. And here I’ve had the most success with planned meetings and agendas.
My job is not to invent the next big thing.
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I really feel this. I've been working remotely for a few years, and will probably continue doing so for the foreseeable future, but there is no such thing as informal conversation in that setting. My company encourages everybody to set up "salon" meetings with random people to just chat, but these conversations end up being awkward and forced (though that could just be me). The result of this is that I feel completel…
This is something I don’t understand. People have been having informal conversations with their friends, family and even colleagues over the phone for a hundred years. I almost feel like it’s a generational thing. People who came of age before widespread text messaging spent countless hours chit-chatting with their friends on the phone. It might be that late Millenials and Gen Z are less suited to remote work compare…
This is something which happens in real life, too. But it's a lot easier to alleviate without lag and strong eye contact and other body queues.
The result is, that virtual discussions are moderated by a single participant and natural conversations are simply not possible that way.
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I don't believe so. It's the only way to get a proper pay increase in corporate America. Internal promotion in most corporations comes with at best a 10% pay increase most of the time and includes increased workload. If I leave my company and go to another I can pretty easily get 15-20% increase and stay in the same basic job I'm currently at. Most companies don't offer any benefits that increase based on loyalty so…
Moving jobs entails significant risk, which is one reason why offers are high. Maybe you won't get on with your new manager or team-mates. Maybe the codebase is a tech-debt spaghetti nightmare. You can't carry over the reputation and clout you had built up in your old job and you have to prove yourself all over again, and you have less say in how things are done. Sure the interview process should surface these proble…
Yes - but so does not moving jobs. I have several friends who played the big company game, got to a senior level and then got ditched. Their problem? Well - they got shafted and emptied out at peak expense time; mortgage, kids, divorces etc, they got emptied when they were still 15 years short of thier retirement target, and their CV's are mono-corporate.
This made finding work very challenging.
In olden days you could say confidently that if you got to director level in a big company in the UK you were set. There was a job for life at a very nice salary if you wanted it.
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I don't believe so. It's the only way to get a proper pay increase in corporate America. Internal promotion in most corporations comes with at best a 10% pay increase most of the time and includes increased workload. If I leave my company and go to another I can pretty easily get 15-20% increase and stay in the same basic job I'm currently at. Most companies don't offer any benefits that increase based on loyalty so…
Moving jobs entails significant risk, which is one reason why offers are high. Maybe you won't get on with your new manager or team-mates. Maybe the codebase is a tech-debt spaghetti nightmare. You can't carry over the reputation and clout you had built up in your old job and you have to prove yourself all over again, and you have less say in how things are done. Sure the interview process should surface these proble…
> Maybe you won't get on with your new manager
Manager turnaround (one per year) because they leave or get promoted is pretty common. In fact the better the manager the quicker they seem to move on to some other team or higher up that has more potential for impact.
> or team-mates
Engineers don't have that much influence on hiring decisions. And even then, it sometimes turns out they may need more hand holding than expected or maybe that you don't get along on a personal level. So the risk is here even if you stay at a company.
> Maybe the codebase is a tech-debt spaghetti nightmare.
Let's be honest, it almost always is like that even where one works right now. But I agree it can be worse than what you are dealing with at the moment.
I think the difference is in attitude to address the issue as well. This is indeed really hard to assess ahead of time. In my last job I thought we had a good attitude towards recognizing tech debt for the first few months, then realized it's not the case and all plans to address it soon appeared to be just empty talk.
> You can't carry over the reputation and clout
Yeah, definitely. Unless you have built a public reputation in the industry.
In the general case you will indeed have to build new reputation in the new place. But often that's also an opportunity for those who failed to succeed at that in their current environment. So it's only a risk if you have something to hold on to.
I believe the risks of moving jobs are likely outweighed by the higher pay check and experience to gain in the new place. A few companies even allow you to come back (given available headcount) if you actually are someone with clout and a record of high impact work. So the risk for those folks is likely not that significant.
I think the bottom line is still that folks don't leave "just for the money". There needs to be some promise of the new job providing something you are not getting now. For successful long timers it's often just "got bored with being in the same place".
The risk of not getting experience at some places is also not to be ignored. It's a balance of course but if you have a few 3 year stints at good companies with some tangible output wrt impact to talk about it's usually better than spending 12 years at one place. Eventually you might end up having to move, and then you'll not have as much salary to expect (or the confidence to ask for it) compared to those who played the job change game.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Moving jobs entails significant risk, which is one reason why offers are high. Maybe you won't get on with your new manager or team-mates. Maybe the codebase is a tech-debt spaghetti nightmare. You can't carry over the reputation and clout you had built up in your old job and you have to prove yourself all over again, and you have less say in how things are done. Sure the interview process should surface these proble…
>Moving jobs entails significant risk. Yes - but so does not moving jobs. I have several friends who played the big company game, got to a senior level and then got ditched. Their problem? Well - they got shafted and emptied out at peak expense time; mortgage, kids, divorces etc, they got emptied when they were still 15 years short of thier retirement target, and their CV's are mono-corporate. This made finding work…
In any case, you have to weigh the pros and cons, but jumping ship just for the lure of a fatter paycheck is not necessarily going to make you happier or do your long-term career any favours.