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

economist.com

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

#291

Post by blablabla123 »

EliRivers wrote: post #278
quadrifoliate wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One reason I have found real-time communication ineffective is that it favors the narcissists and egoists in the conversation who are comfortable talking over everyone else. Guess what happens in this situation – Bob spends 40 minutes talking out of the hour's meeting about how his way is right, interrupts everyone, and by the end of the hour meeting the boss is saying “Well, why don't we do a proof of concept with B…

it puts an element of asynchronous communication when you have to think of the agenda ahead of time. Oh, the difficultly of getting people to think about things in advance. The number of meetings where it's clear that basically nobody has actually put any thought in, done any research, even read the entire meeting invitation. Meetings become a way to force people to spend time on a topic, and the act of being there w…

Also sometimes there is a situation where several people are involved and then it's necessary to forward the arguments back and forth. Better to get those people who don't talk to one another synchronously in a meeting agree/disagree on something without getting all the flak as the intermediate hop.

Meetings are bad but no meetings are even worse...

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

#292

Post by sokoloff »

jliptzin wrote: post #142
EMM_386 wrote: post #19

Everyone should keep in mind that water seeks its own level. And think of this on a global scale. I've been working remotely for almost a decade as a senior software engineer. Now, post-Covid, almost everyone realizes they can do the same. Salaries are going to drop in the "rich world", and it's not just because people are now fleeing places like SF/SV to lower cost of living areas. We are also beginning to compete g…

I have worked with remote developers from Poland, Romania, and Portugal, each making approx $20-50/hr, producing code of far higher quality than stuff I’ve seen from $500k/year software engineers here. Also, their English was almost indecipherable from a native speaker.

I normally wouldn’t nitpick wording, but did you mean “indistinguishable” in your last sentence, which means nearly the opposite in context?

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

#293

Post by quadrifoliate »

fps_doug wrote: post #286
quadrifoliate wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One reason I have found real-time communication ineffective is that it favors the narcissists and egoists in the conversation who are comfortable talking over everyone else. Guess what happens in this situation – Bob spends 40 minutes talking out of the hour's meeting about how his way is right, interrupts everyone, and by the end of the hour meeting the boss is saying “Well, why don't we do a proof of concept with B…

It sounds like it's a workaround for dealing with bad co-workers? You can still have these in async communication and others will just give up eventually. And then the guy who gets asked something but doesn't reply until at least two others pester him via phone repeatedly. Assuming you have a well-working team, real-time still seems more efficient to me, at least at my current job.

Great point! I think I briefly mentioned it in my post, but I think that maybe there's three separate categories that I'm talking about.

- Real-time communication in person (face-to-face)

- Real-time communication remotely

- Asynchronous communication remotely

The scenario you mention "gets asked something but doesn't reply until at least two others pester him via phone repeatedly” seems to be in the category "Real-time communication remotely" (phone is real time, but remote). I think that area is problematic too, as my post points out.

Overall, I guess my experience has been that asynchronous communication remotely and real-time communication in person are both better than real-time communication remotely (aka "endless Zoom calls"). Real-time in person seems to have more feedback loops where someone who is badly behaved faces social consequences (e.g. not invited to lunch, etc.); and asynchronous remote seems to prevent it a little by giving everyone an equal amount of space to express their thoughts.

But overall, yep, I think all of these are assuming less-than-ideal coworkers. But...that's reality, isn't it? With perfectly behaved coworkers, all three options can work perfectly.

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

#294

Post by foxfluff »

lend000 wrote: post #169

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…

Yeah sometimes you do need to touch things that you can't bring home.

But there are people like me, people who do touch hardware.. at home. My desk is full of hardware. Behind me there's another desk with an oscilloscope, lab psu, dmm, electric load, a pile of probes, a soldering station..

It's not like we get new hardware every day, and when we do, it's not a big deal to wait a day or two for the courier to bring a prototype to my home.

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

#295

Post by nottorp »

nootropicat wrote: post #275
siva7 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize that what you are describing could have happened any time in the last years or decades for the same reasons but didn’t? The conditions also didn’t really change to make this more true.

Decades? Bandwidth for global scale videoconferencing didn't exist even 10 years ago, especially in poorer parts of the world. Speeds like 8Mbps/1Mbps or even 8/512kbps over ADSL were common. People also had much weaker hardware. I think the switch to remote work started to really happen just as it actually became practical for a sufficient percentage of people, which is basically now. https://www.submarinenetworks.c…

> Decades? Bandwidth for global scale videoconferencing didn't exist even 10 years ago, especially in poorer parts of the world.

We used icq and private irc servers. What's now sold as Slack. Starting 22 years ago.

By poorer parts of the world you mean the suburban US? :) I hear they can't get the bandwidth I can get for 10 eur/month at any price.

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

#296

Post by koonsolo »

saimiam wrote: post #270
koonsolo wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You want high and fast bandwidth between the different brains. Me writing something in my cocoon for 15 minutes, then someone reading that and replying what is wrong with that is not very efficient. Just throwing some thoughts in the open air and others responding to that, crystallizes much faster. Same with giving feedback about user interfaces. It's so much easier to just walk to someone's desk and point at what yo…

What crystallizes may have been reached quickly but there is no guarantee it is the best possible choice given all the known and unknown unknowns that the experts may have not considered. Then there is also the hierarchy of expert advice to consider where a room of experts some who are more senior (or louder or more convinced about their rightness) might push you towards a worse outcome than a well thought through op…

> a decision taken “live” with the help of experts

Maybe we are talking past each other, because in that case I might agree.

I'm talking about the case with only experts present. I know about A but not so much about B, the other person knows about B but not so much about A. We sit together and try to come up with the best technical solution.

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

#297

Post by llampx »

pjerem wrote: post #189
ramesh31 wrote: post #8

Just got approved for permanate remote last week. The thought of going back to a multi-hour commute and having my physical location dictated by a job just sounds absurd at this point. Never again.

I think it depends on what your commute is. I find that very few people choose their location by taking commuting pleasure (and not only time) into account. Before the pandemic, I chose to live in the countryside but at walking distance from a train station. Coworkers always seem surprised I’m living « that far ». But now I’m equally happy to work from home or to take my refreshing 25min train trip through the countr…

You're lucky, or chose well. For me, I would have to commute 50 minutes, 35 minutes of which is by train, and I have to change once. The rest is walking and waiting time. And 50 minutes is the best case scenario. Add rain, snow and other delays and we're looking at upwards of an hour just so I can get into work.

On the other hand I have my desk at home with the coffee machine in the kitchen. I do enjoy going to the office but being forced to do it wouldn't sit well with me.

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

#298

Post by llampx »

elevenoh wrote: post #192
extr wrote: post #17

I always see a lot of hemming and hawing in these threads but it's impossible to underscore just what a HUGE boon remote work is for people who don't want to or can't live in Tier 1 cities like SF or NYC. My career has taken on an entirely new trajectory. Prior to the pandemic I worked at two different companies over 6 years. Since the start of the pandemic I've changed jobs 3 times and my TC has almost tripled. Ther…

'Tier' 1 by what metric?

Probably population, population density and/or economic output per square mile.

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

#299

Post by d3ckard »

koonsolo wrote: post #251
istarial wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had mixed results. I've felt like "group reasoning" in person is more like getting people on the same page to execute on an idea, which doesn't equate with the merit of that idea. Once that discussion kicks off in a large-ish group, I've found it hard to pivot the direction of that conversation - if you think there's a better, independent solution that's not aligned with the group train of thought.

I can see your point. I think it works best when there needs to be a solution where no single expert knows enough to come up with the best idea. So a group of complementary experts where the solution is more important than individual ego's :). But when it's kind of decided already, so more 1 way, written communication works better. I was in some situations where there was long emailing back and forth between people.…

It's very likely that meeting resolves the issue in 15 minutes precisely because of the back and forth before. The back and forth syncs ideas, so the meeting can be used for the decision process.

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

#300

Post by mellavora »

SturgeonsLaw wrote: post #199
lend000 wrote: post #169

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…

> 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.

Tesla? or SpaceX??
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