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Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

economist.com

211–220 of 487 posts

Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> SpaceX, Tesla, Intel, AMD, defense contractors One of those things is not like the other things (it's the one where you build things that are explicitly designed to kill human beings). Not sure if you were calling that the coolest work, I certainly wouldn't call it that.

I think it's pretty cool. And I think that kind of work needs people who think it's cool, or else it'll only attract evil people. There's nothing wrong with building weapons for defense. It's arguably the entire purpose of nukes at this point. Even for offense, other countries are working hard to build out their arsenals. I'm personally fine with building AI weapons, for example. If a contract opportunity appears, I…

It's arguably the entire purpose of nukes at this point.

That is absolutely not true. There are people in the governments of every nuclear power would use their weapons aggressively given the chance. That's why policies of disarmament are so necessary. As long as humans have nuclear weapons the probability of practically annihilating our species and leaving any survivors living in the stone age again remains higher than zero.

Nuclear war is the single biggest existential threat humanity faces. We can deal with pretty much anything else.

Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#212
post #210

> ... There is a more intriguing possibility, however. Work that is largely done remotely may be more efficient compared with an office-first model. I don't think in-person real-time communication is always effective. No, I personally think it's one of the least method of communication that can happen in an office environment when the topic gets slightly complex (that is, if the topic is complex enough for you to wri…

If the other people in the room are also knowledgeable, you will come to an even better conclusion much faster face-to-face.

In my experience, having "group reasoning" is faster and with better results.

Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#213
post #94

I see four main tiers: 1 - 9-5 in office (business as usual), 2 - semi-remote (part of week in the office), 3 - fully remote with fixed hours, 4 - fully remote outcomes-based (no fixed hours but may also be 'on call'). The title of this article perhaps indicates a move from 1 to 3 or 4 but its content discusses 2. All the information I've seen is that business are definitely moving more to 2 than 3 or 4, though some…

Going from any of these items to 4 requires an extra special leap of faith. I personally see anything short of a full 4 as essentially being office work theater. Our company operates as a 4 tier and I've been here for going on 7 years now. We still have to get on a daily standup call at a fixed time every day, and I still have to participate in other scheduled obligations (mainly tech calls with customers), but the r…

Are you really worried about a co-worker drinking beer and dicking around instead of helping with a busted merge? Did you make a bad hire? That's the kind of hyperbole managers use to rein everyone in.

Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#214

Not mentioned enough on this topic: not all engineers are software engineers and not all software engineers never need to touch hardware. If you plan to work on/with web frameworks, advertisements, data science, or pure CS topics for your whole career, then there's probably no excuse to force you to come into the office 5 days a week. But good luck doing that as a software engineer at a company like SpaceX, Tesla, In…

> company like SpaceX, Tesla, Intel, AMD I think you are overestimating the requirement to touch the hardware by few order of magnitude for a software engineer there. Just yesterday I was reading a linkedin post from some senior electrical engineer in Apple M1 division and how they achieved everything remotely. For a fabless company, I don't think most of the engineers would need to touch the chip. Similarly for Tesl…

I worked on flight software for cargo dragon, and one time I got an email asking for my help inside one of the capsules. I had to ask where the capsule was, and everybody lol'ed.

It was a fun day; I got to wear a bunny suit and a headset and climb around inside a space ship.

Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#215

Not mentioned enough on this topic: not all engineers are software engineers and not all software engineers never need to touch hardware. If you plan to work on/with web frameworks, advertisements, data science, or pure CS topics for your whole career, then there's probably no excuse to force you to come into the office 5 days a week. But good luck doing that as a software engineer at a company like SpaceX, Tesla, In…

Yes, but not all non-software engineers need to _touch_ hardware.

Eg if you are a civil engineer, lots of your work is spent doing calculations and designing things. When you do touch hardware, it's usually 'on site' and not at the office.

Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#216
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Yep. I've said it many times here and basically anywhere I can: Clamoring for remote-only work, maximum-introvert, never fly somewhere, don't value in-person communication/meetings/etc is a dangerous game to be playing. What's interesting is that I flew in for a meeting with my company recently, the first I've had since I've been hired. This took hours upon hours of my time. Time I could have spent working. We spen…

Since I was forced to work remotely due to Covid lockdowns I "waste" much more of my time in meetings now then I did when I was working on site in an office. When there was friction involved in organizing a meeting (Needing to gather participants all in one place, book conference room, get projector working etc.) people were reluctant to call trivial meetings. Now it feels like everyone has discovered Microsoft Teams…

You can decline a meeting, try it :)

Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a software engineer who just spent the past week in an airgapped lab debugging hardware issues, I can still do most of my work from home. 90% of the software I write works just fine in an emulator. We don't even have nearly enough hardware to give every engineer access.

> 90% of the software I write works just fine in an emulator As it should be. Investing some effort in my development environment has paid back every time.

If it has paid back every time, perhaps you are not investing enough effort?

(Only slightly tongue in cheek. At the margin, some of your efforts should fail.)

Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#218

I see four main tiers: 1 - 9-5 in office (business as usual), 2 - semi-remote (part of week in the office), 3 - fully remote with fixed hours, 4 - fully remote outcomes-based (no fixed hours but may also be 'on call'). The title of this article perhaps indicates a move from 1 to 3 or 4 but its content discusses 2. All the information I've seen is that business are definitely moving more to 2 than 3 or 4, though some…

Define fixed hours? Fixed hours sucks when people live in 4 or more different timezones. I'm trying to figure out if my current remote job is fixed hours. Nobody has ever asked me or said anything about the hours I work, but I am expected to be present for meetings, which usually occur in the middle of the day for me. Is that tier 3 or 4?

In my view of the world that's closer to tier 4 than 3, but I acknowledge there's a lot of grey area between. Maybe 3 and a half. At the start of the tier 3 side (maybe I should call it 3.0) there are solid 9-5 workers who log timesheets with 8 hours per day, are expected to answer the phone between 9 and 5 but not outside, etc.

Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#219
post #177

You guys are missing it. This leads straight to outsourcing.

Funny enough, as a guy hiring in house developers deliberately and regularly, I got the impression that salaries in previously "cheap" countries are normalising to what folks earn in US/Europe - which could make offshoring less viable over time. Employees from the same country OTOH have some tactical advantages: Same culture/language and time zone (I noticed a lot of folks care), less legal/accounting hassle, easier/…

I think an Indian makes 1/10th an American engineer. A Romanian 1/5. Still a lot of normalizing before we can say things are equal. However since their cost of living is so low maybe the gap isn't that big.

Re: Remote-first work is taking over the rich world – research hints at why

#220
post #194

What I find offensive is the notion that workers consider a 10-25% increase in hours as commensurate with a 5% pay cut. End commuting. It's unpaid labor.

Yes, commuting is the number one reason to work from home for me. I don't like to spend 1-2 hours a day driving back and forth just to have my ass in a chair at the office.
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