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The Winners of Remote Work

nytimes.com

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Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#251

Post by ArtDev »

tellersid wrote: post #203
eric4smith wrote: post #3

The only winners of remote work will be those who are self disciplined enough to get work done without outside supervision or motivation. That goes for every single field that does remote work - learning, teaching, Knowledge work etc. But let’s be honest - some people need the motivation of a workplace — and that’s ok! We are all different. Im somewhere in the middle… love working from home but it’s easy to get distr…

I have been going into the office when I could work remote. I don't feel like it is a motivation thing. I was just sick of being home all the time. I think many people on my team are not doing well mental health wise from being at home so much. The most miserable people I know are a few software engineers that have been working remote for years making great money. One guy I know works at night because he can. Sleeps…

I thought I wanted a non-renote job until I tried it for 6 months. Not for me.

Working from home means living at work. I like my work so mos tlu5fine.

I really enjoy coworking spaces. I don't even if my old one is running anymore but I really want to go back.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#252

Post by PeterisP »

ThalesX wrote: post #118
joelbluminator wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Law and accountancy is much harder to outsource than programming. You usually have to be U.S certified so thats pretty much protected.

You have the Ubers and AirBnBs circumventing laws around the world and you think it's hard to optimize for a remote law and accountancy practice? Just have offshore remoters do the bulk of work and have it signed by a certified local lawyer / accountant.

The problem with law and accounting is that the skills are country-specific. You can outsource software or radiology because computers and bodies are pretty much the same across the world, but a Chilean lawyer does not know USA law (and vice versa), nor does an Albanian accountant know USA tax law. So you can't "reuse" the existing specialists, you have to train them for a weird niche that will be usable only for outsourcing, since they can't serve local customers with knowledge about USA principles, which are different.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#253

Post by ThalesX »

PeterisP wrote: post #252
ThalesX wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have the Ubers and AirBnBs circumventing laws around the world and you think it's hard to optimize for a remote law and accountancy practice? Just have offshore remoters do the bulk of work and have it signed by a certified local lawyer / accountant.

The problem with law and accounting is that the skills are country-specific. You can outsource software or radiology because computers and bodies are pretty much the same across the world, but a Chilean lawyer does not know USA law (and vice versa), nor does an Albanian accountant know USA tax law. So you can't "reuse" the existing specialists, you have to train them for a weird niche that will be usable only for out…

While I agree that you need to retrain, I think the economic incentives might push some people to say, "instead of training for my Chilean law practice, I'd rather learn the ins and outs of the USA law so that I may outsource for double or triple the money I would make". Of course this is just wild speculation, but I feel like the dollar's power has the ability to alter career choices.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#254

Post by odessacubbage »

ghaff wrote: post #33
schnevets wrote: post #15

The article describes gains made by "superstars", who can be seen as self-motivated and capable of making a big impact. I am extremely concerned about how we cultivate superstars in the remote work world. I have been working remote for over 5 years now, but I wouldn't have survived without a lot of luck and years of experience as an intern/entry level employee at an office with some brilliant mentors. I have tried me…

I entered the workforce in a very different time with very different tools which makes it hard for me to think through the counterfactual: "What if I had had to be remote when I first started working?" But I think it would have been very difficult and I might have been less successful as a result. Even today, I feel like I'm cruising a bit on existing in-person relationships. (I was large remote pre-COVID but I still…

those kinds of relationships don't go away even if they aren't in-person. being able to hire anyone from anywhere also comes with the risks of hiring anyone from anywhere. [smart] clients can recognize a good thing when they have it so you can still cultivate enough of those relationships to cruise, you just might use different means to do so.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#255

Post by roflc0ptic »

socialist_coder wrote: post #244
roflc0ptic wrote: post #5

This article really isn't about remote work writ large, it's about websites/organizations that provide platforms for individuals to sell services to consumers. The fact that you can make popular workout videos from your home is orthogonal to the behavior of consumers on the Peloton platform. It's an interesting and important observation that good communicators win disproportionately as telecommunications get better -…

The article specifically mentions programmers as well... Lower floor because a global workforce increases supply of programmers available to the western market. Higher ceiling because every company is now competing for the top people, who are in limited supply and know how to get top compensation. So yes, I do think this applies to remote work in general.

It mentions programmers without making any particular claims about it; they don’t actually demonstrate any losers. Outsourcing to India has been a thing for many years, and US companies appear to have every incentive to take advantage of it, but somehow they keep paying pleasantly high wages to Americans.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#256

Post by odessacubbage »

tellersid wrote: post #203
eric4smith wrote: post #3

The only winners of remote work will be those who are self disciplined enough to get work done without outside supervision or motivation. That goes for every single field that does remote work - learning, teaching, Knowledge work etc. But let’s be honest - some people need the motivation of a workplace — and that’s ok! We are all different. Im somewhere in the middle… love working from home but it’s easy to get distr…

I have been going into the office when I could work remote. I don't feel like it is a motivation thing. I was just sick of being home all the time. I think many people on my team are not doing well mental health wise from being at home so much. The most miserable people I know are a few software engineers that have been working remote for years making great money. One guy I know works at night because he can. Sleeps…

imo one of the most important things to learn for longterm survival doing remote work is that you don't have to work from home. i can just as readily work out of the back of my car at a skate spot or do emails and marketing on the chairlift. in the long term i'd like to build a truly portable workspace for backpacking and be able to go fully remote. co-working spaces or the library are good options for many people but really anything that gives you some semblance of normalcy and routine is good enough. hikkimoding is comfy to be sure but the social strain from doing it for an extended period, especially during crunch can be pretty hard mentally, that experience has been pretty universal among the freelancers i've known over the years.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#257

Post by CryptoPunk »

The answer to fewer people being able to serve a larger market is greater specialization.

It's the flip side of facing greater competition due to producers having greater reach; whereas in the past a highly specialized provider, like a yoga-kung-fu fusion aerobics instructor, could only find, let's say, three customers, due to the addressable market being limited to people living in their city, remote service could allow them to find the several hundred potential clients for this service scattered across the world.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#258

Post by diego_moita »

hatmatrix wrote: post #216
roflc0ptic wrote: post #5

This article really isn't about remote work writ large, it's about websites/organizations that provide platforms for individuals to sell services to consumers. The fact that you can make popular workout videos from your home is orthogonal to the behavior of consumers on the Peloton platform. It's an interesting and important observation that good communicators win disproportionately as telecommunications get better -…

The winners of remote work are those whose services are scalable, and those who excel at it. The content and conclusion was also not what I was expecting, but you can see that it's a completely valid title if you allow yourself to see it from a different perspective.

> are those whose services are scalable

Exactly! I am surprised so few people here see that.

It is a pattern that happened with other technologies before. Music recording allowed some pop stars to become millionaires while most musicians lost income. Movies allowed some actors to get rich while most actors lost public. Industrial manufacturing (e.g. woodworking, textiles, tanning) made some industries big while millions of artisans lost market. Franchised merchant stores (e.g: Tower Records, Toys'R Us, WallMart) destroyed thousands of small merchants.

The economist J. Schumpeter had a name for this: "creative destruction".

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#259

Post by iainctduncan »

Clubber wrote: post #66
iainctduncan wrote: post #38

I have done remote work for a long time (because ...Canada), and the real issue is that it requires management to have their shit together. I also assess companies for acquisitions now so I talk every month to companies about what's working and what isn't. I've seen some very successful companies with partially remote or even 100% remote teams. And... they have their shit together. Managers have to actually know what…

>Workers have to be lined up in their swim lanes and the whole thing has to be orchestrated... you know, like actual agile instead of the reactive pfaffery that everyone passes off as "hybrid agile" (boy do I hear that phrase a lot in diligence!) Swim lanes isn't agile per se, it's just business communicating their priorities and assigning it to development. I remember when agile came out, it was great from the devel…

Agreed. I'm using it as a loose metaphor here, I just mean in general, they need to be a lot more organized and proactive. I've seen many varieties of agile and not-so-agile work well.... if they have their shit together. And even the most well though out agile process can be a gong show if they don't.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#260

Post by roflc0ptic »

closeparen wrote: post #149
ghaff wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced a lot of these trends stick post-COVID. A lot of people like the in-person part of the spin class and probably would prefer it to the highly-paid video pro. That said, behaviors will have changed for a lot of things over the course of a couple of years. People have developed new habits. Not all of that--including going into an office five days a week in many cases--are going to just reset.

What reason do we have to believe that there will be a point in the future with less COVID risk than there is today? By what mechanism will that arise?

Mass vaccination and exposure. The hope is that our immune systems will collectively get used to it, and its evolution will be constrained enough that, while it will continue to mutate, our immune systems will continue to have a "good enough" answer to it that we avoid the cytokine storm problem that's killing people.
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