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Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

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Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#301

Post by flappyeagle »

Klinky wrote: post #298
flappyeagle wrote: post #195

The era of remote work is not over. It’s just arrived. We overshot the equilibrium point by a lot during the pandemic height and that will regress back to something closer to long term trend. No matter how much the HN crowd vociferously defends remote work, it’s simply an inferior mode of operation for many creative jobs. People are not machines. We’re evolved to congregate and share space, to read body language, sha…

>I can and have hired quality developers in EU, GB, and South America at heavily discounted rates because without an office, what’s the difference? Great, you've confirmed remote work works and can produce high quality results without an office. You've failed to bring up the other challenges beyond timezone of hiring outside your country of incorporation, it's not just timezones that creates challenges, but even time…

Maybe I wasn’t clear. Let me be more terse:

If you’re remote anyways, you won’t get the in person advantages so you might as well pay less.

In many cases, I would be happy to pay more for in person.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#302

Post by Klinky »

flappyeagle wrote: post #301
Klinky wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I can and have hired quality developers in EU, GB, and South America at heavily discounted rates because without an office, what’s the difference? Great, you've confirmed remote work works and can produce high quality results without an office. You've failed to bring up the other challenges beyond timezone of hiring outside your country of incorporation, it's not just timezones that creates challenges, but even time…

Maybe I wasn’t clear. Let me be more terse: If you’re remote anyways, you won’t get the in person advantages so you might as well pay less. In many cases, I would be happy to pay more for in person.

>If you’re remote anyways, you won’t get the in person advantages so you might as well pay less.

You are still ignoring that a remote-in-country employee is different than a remote-out-of-country employee from a legal, HR & logistical perspective. Hiring someone in Kentucky is not the same lift as hiring someone in Poland or India. There's going to be extra expense and overhead to manage out-of-country employees & the logistics of operations between different countries. Many companies aren't setup to do this. You can't just look at the pay rate.

Additionally you can't just look at the pay rate of an in-office employee. In office requires a commitment to pay for the office, pay for the staff to manage the office, accept a reduced talent pool in some areas, and if you're in an area with a large talent pool, it's probably a high-cost-of-living area, so your rate will not just need to be "a little more", but "a lot more" to be competitive.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#305

Post by twelve40 »

Klinky wrote: post #291
twelve40 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

fwiw my personal take is if 100% remote actually worked for the mainstream companies, all of us would have been outsourced to Kenya or Pakistan at 1/10th the cost instead of taking leisurely dog walks between the zoom meetings in Austin, but this simple thought seems to not have crossed the advocates' minds.

That would assume timezone, language, legal, cultural, governmental, and infrastructural differences don't exist between countries. Outsourcing outside your country of incorporation is a completely different challenge compared to remote work within your country of incorporation.

as someone who has personally hired and worked with for several years teams overseas (e.g. an individual in Spain or a team in Eastern Europe), I'm not really seeing that challenge. If our small startup managed to pull it off, then those logistical problems are not quite as bad as they may seem.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#306

Post by DougN7 »

Klinky wrote: post #299
judge2020 wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not super convinced most people will do more work on-site either, I'm just pointing out the immoral position you put yourself in by working two full-time jobs at once.

I agree that one should not deceive their employer. At the same time, if their employer does not notice a drop in productivity/performance from the employee, what's that say about that company's ability to actually measure employee performance? I think a lot of companies have poor project management & employee performance measurements, so half the time, people only have half the picture or don't know what the heck pe…

So people like the guy with two jobs should be fired if management was better. And more employee surveillance is needed to help managers do their jobs better. The other option is integrity and trust.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#308

Post by AnthonyMouse »

fleetwoodsnack wrote: post #242
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are no bad products, only bad prices. Subletting for 30% of what you're paying is more than 0% too.

No there are definitely bad products.

Nevermind that we're talking about real estate, which is certainly a useful product.

Name something that can't be used at all by anyone for any purpose.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#309

Post by o_nate »

throwaway02sfv wrote: post #120

If every organization feels like for improving org outcomes bringing workers to the office is absolutely crucial, then that org should bear the cost as well. The org should pay for gases, pay for time in commute, pay for car and cover it's insurance. For people who moved to colocate with the org, org should pay for their rents too. After all, it's the orgs decision to call workers for it's own profits, why should a w…

I guess the market will reach an equilibrium. Over time, if workers prefer WFH, they will demand a premium to work in person, so employers will end up paying.

Re: Sam Altman says era of remote work is over

#310

Post by Klinky »

DougN7 wrote: post #306
Klinky wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that one should not deceive their employer. At the same time, if their employer does not notice a drop in productivity/performance from the employee, what's that say about that company's ability to actually measure employee performance? I think a lot of companies have poor project management & employee performance measurements, so half the time, people only have half the picture or don't know what the heck pe…

So people like the guy with two jobs should be fired if management was better. And more employee surveillance is needed to help managers do their jobs better. The other option is integrity and trust.

I agree on the latter, measure deliverables & people's contributions to the deliverables. Having paranoia that someone is working two jobs, so you need people in office or you need to install aggressive spyware is extreme.
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