Remote work means anyone can take your job • Hacker News Board

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#361

Post by joncrane » Thu, May 28, 2020, 7:08 PM UTC

MiroF wrote: post #249

TACIXAT wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If by tech expertise you mean knowledge of cloud and large scale web applications, then yes. For security though, and I'm sure this is true for other industries, the Bay Area has very little on the defense industry in Maryland.

Security is a small part of the overall tech industry. I live near Bethesda and I would hardly call the region a tech hub on par with any of the ones in the West coast.

While I agree that DC is not on the standard with SF or Seattle (what are the other West Coast tech hubs), DC is definitely a tech hub in it's own right.

The problem with DC is that the talent pool is extremely diluted by disillusioned, rent-seeking government contractors who get a certification, claim a bunch of stuff on their resume, and get bid as part of a 20-person team on a contract that really only requires 5-6 committed (for the sake of argument, "SV caliber") people.

The problem is, hardly anyone that is "SV caliber" wants to work on pokey gov't contracts, but enough people on that team care enough about the mission, the project, or their company to allow the freeloaders to get away with it.

There's no incentive to firing them because a) the client understands that govt work is extremely inefficient so they tolerate it b) the freeloaders are very good at not pissing anyone off (they are very friendly and dress well, etc) and c) their employer literally loses money if they are removed.

So the cycle continues.

Having said all that, in amongst the chaff there is a significant kernel of wheat in the DC area, both in the contracting as well as private sector space.

Capital One has a really good engineering culture and hires a lot of very smart kids straight out of school and trains them very well. Many of them don't stay in DC, however, and go on to work at GOOG, MSFT, AMZN, etc for big salaries after their 2-year stint at COF is over.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#362

Post by danans » Thu, May 28, 2020, 7:09 PM UTC

The article title is intentionally click-baity.

The extent to which it's true entirely depends on what "your job" is. Routine, non-creative work that can be performed asynchronously, with limited contact with others - the tech equivalent of craft piecework - sure, that can usually be done from anywhere: things like answering (simple) tech support requests, maintaining a static codebase with no new requirements, or implementing a feature for which the requirements and technical design have already been specified by others.

Having myself worked on teams that located such tasks in lower-cost-of-labor regions, I can attest that most of those cost savings have already been realized.

But creative work, like proposing the problems to solve in the first place, facilitating the discussion of how to solve them, and designing the technical and human solution - especially for problems at the intersection of technology and culture - those are not easily shifted to remote work. If the outsourced/remote worker is competent enough to work in that kind of capacity remotely, they will cost as much the non-remote worker.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#363

Post by esoterica » Thu, May 28, 2020, 7:13 PM UTC

Avicebron wrote: post #360

esoterica wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who is the "our" here? My identified in-group is rootless cosmopolitans, so I am happy to see globalists of any nationality take jobs away from protectionist xenophobes.

Do you recognize that your in-group is not widely represented? It's not xenophobia, you're trying to dog whistle something about my character that is untrue. Can you acknowledge that you're being protectionist of your privileged class?

You're suggesting that we should erect artificial barriers to prevent certain groups from accessing lucrative jobs to protect certain privileged classes from competition. It's morally equivalent to (although more socially acceptable than), e.g., banning the hiring of non-white people or women so that white males can make more money. If you can discriminate on the basis of nationality then why not race and gender and religion also?

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#364

Post by esoterica » Thu, May 28, 2020, 7:14 PM UTC

booleandilemma wrote: post #228

Communitivity wrote: post #38

True, but... Anyone can already take your job, as long as they are willing to relocate, or your company opens a new office near them. It is more important than ever to differentiate yourself. To do that you need to find something to do that you love, and then find (or more often make) a niche in that that that you become one of the top ten people in within your context. By context I mean you don't need to be the best…

...and then find (or more often make) a niche in that that that (sic) you become one of the top ten people in within your context Whatever happened to just getting a normal job and putting in an honest day’s labor? Now we’re expected to become “one of the top ten”... what exactly? How is that supposed to work? What about those of us with families for goodness sake. We can’t all be super Linus Torvalds ninja hackers p…

You can put in a normal amount of effort if you want, but then you don't have the right to demand a more than a normal amount of compensation (~$50k/household in the US). I don't think it's unreasonable to demand extra effort for a FAANG salary.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#365

Post by luckylion » Thu, May 28, 2020, 7:16 PM UTC

tluyben2 wrote: post #64

As someone who basically never worked in an office since I began working as a dev in the early 90s; you have to protect yourself and carve out niches and knowledge that takes actual time and elbow grease to catch up to. Sure many people anywhere in the world can do what I do, but with the deep knowledge I have about some subjects (banking/payments/insurances backends & production firmware), it is not very likely to g…

100% agree that experience and good communication skills are key. People will happily pay more for somebody that understands them the first time they explain something, that comes back with questions about things they hadn't thought about and has already dealt with similar issues before and can provide guidance. If you're also able to at least manage yourself on the project, you will be loved.

Imho, freelancing on smaller projects is great for learning those skills, because you will either learn them quickly or you will sink like a stone.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#366

Post by ipnon » Thu, May 28, 2020, 7:18 PM UTC

booleandilemma wrote: post #228

Communitivity wrote: post #38

True, but... Anyone can already take your job, as long as they are willing to relocate, or your company opens a new office near them. It is more important than ever to differentiate yourself. To do that you need to find something to do that you love, and then find (or more often make) a niche in that that that you become one of the top ten people in within your context. By context I mean you don't need to be the best…

...and then find (or more often make) a niche in that that that (sic) you become one of the top ten people in within your context Whatever happened to just getting a normal job and putting in an honest day’s labor? Now we’re expected to become “one of the top ten”... what exactly? How is that supposed to work? What about those of us with families for goodness sake. We can’t all be super Linus Torvalds ninja hackers p…

An honest day's labor only existed in the middle of the 20th century. Before the New Deal you had to work hard on a farm or a factory to make ends meet. After the Great Stagnation in the 1970s, the economy cannot sustain widespread growth in prosperity for all classes of American society. The Post-World War II economic expansion was a 1 time miracle enabled by the picking of several low hanging fruits.

"These figurative "low-hanging fruit" from the title include the cultivation of much free, previously unused land; the application and spread of technological breakthroughs, particularly during the period 1880–1940, including transport, refrigeration, electricity, mass communications, and sanitation; and the education of large numbers of smart people who previously received none."[0]

The party is over. Americans are at the top but they aren't getting any higher, and everyone else in the world is catching up. That means Americans have to compete with the rest of global middle class.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Stagnation

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#367

Post by crazygringo » Thu, May 28, 2020, 7:18 PM UTC

gregkerzhner wrote: post #343

crazygringo wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Real time, remote communication through tools like zoom, slack, and lucidchart (in my humble opinion) has been solved. Unfortunately, that's not the case. Remote meetings can be far more frustrating and inefficient because of latency, total lack of turn-taking cues, inability to read emotional expressions of concern or worry on one person or to "read the room", emotional fatigue from lack of cues, and so on. And th…

My hunch though is that virtual meetings don't necessarily add new types of problems to real meetings, they just highlight the problems which already exist. If you have a meeting with 12 people, and most of them are not engaged, the problem isn't necessarily the video call, its more like the majority of those people shouldn't be in the meeting at all, and would just benefit from a written summary. If you have a meeti…

Yes, 1-1 or 1-1-1 remote meetings are not too bad, especially for 1-1-1 if you can view both other participants simultaneously and latency is not too bad (e.g. New York to SF, not New York to Japan.)

But my comments are assuming, say, a 12-person meeting that has to happen. For reviews/approvals of a project with 10 stakeholders, it simply has to happen. And I never said anyone wasn't engaged -- participants usually are.

And 4 people having an opinion is the norm, absolutely not too many cooks. Just think -- a small feature idea is presented for approval in order to start work, a designer sees a potential problem, the user researcher realizes a use case was left out, the engineer is worried about feature creep, and marketing doesn't know if it'll be easy to explain. All of these have to be addressed.

So I'm highlighting that even when everything about the meeting is necessary and otherwise awesome and productive, the limitations of remote participation can add substantial difficulties to running it effectively. And that in this sense remote meetings are in no way "solved" yet.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#368

Post by subhobroto » Thu, May 28, 2020, 7:19 PM UTC

Avicebron wrote: post #352

subhobroto wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So in short what you're saying is yay globalism globalization is happening whether we want it to or not. > we shouldn't protect our interests I made no comments either way. ... but, sure, let's think about this. If you were to pass rules and regulations to stop globalization from happening, what would the top 3 be?

Well I won't claim to be the thought leader on this, however I'm happy to look at some hypothetical ideas. To be clear I'm not looking to reverse globalization completely or stop it. Rule 1: International trade deals forbid offshoring of manufacturing. Example, cars from Ford can't be made in Mexico for 1/10th the price. This is universal and enforceable by dissolution of companies that don't comply. Rule 2: Stringen…

> cars from Ford can't be made in Mexico for 1/10th the price

Sure, but then the buyers of said cars from Ford has to pay the premium.

The heavy growth of Amazon, Walmart has proven that the U.S. customer does not care about well paid workers, their benefits or their health - why would they agree to pay more for cars?

> but take advantage of US infrastructure for the rest of their business.

Fair enough. This point is basically Ford gaming the system by taking more out (take advantage of US infrastructure) than what they put in (taxes, local worker compensation)

> Companies reaching a monopoly size will be broken up into relatively equal sized companies

You and I can do this already.

You and I can get together today and force Google or Amazon to be broken up.

However, a broken up Google or Amazon is more powerful than Google or Amazon itself.

There's a practical limit to how expensive a share can get before majority can't afford it anymore. "NYSE: BRK.A" is not the norm, it's an exception. If BRK split itself up, they would, overnight, become way more valuable.

Google has already broken itself up because of this.

The only reason Bezos has not broken Amazon up is because its tremendously profitable AWS and Amazon's North American retail operations allows it to fund and offset the not so profitable (yet) international retail businesses.

Once those are profitable, Bezos will happily break them up before you or I get to it.

Regulations never help.

It cannot. It can, at best, move issues around.

The day we regulated minimum wage, we removed the only tool an unemployed, untrained but happy-to-be-employed-if-possible person had to entice an employer.

When given a choice between an unemployed, but trained person vs. an unemployed, untrained person both at minimum wage, I know who to choose every time. The unemployed, untrained person cannot even get on unemployment!

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#369

Post by gregmac » Thu, May 28, 2020, 7:19 PM UTC

booleandilemma wrote: post #228

Communitivity wrote: post #38

True, but... Anyone can already take your job, as long as they are willing to relocate, or your company opens a new office near them. It is more important than ever to differentiate yourself. To do that you need to find something to do that you love, and then find (or more often make) a niche in that that that you become one of the top ten people in within your context. By context I mean you don't need to be the best…

...and then find (or more often make) a niche in that that that (sic) you become one of the top ten people in within your context Whatever happened to just getting a normal job and putting in an honest day’s labor? Now we’re expected to become “one of the top ten”... what exactly? How is that supposed to work? What about those of us with families for goodness sake. We can’t all be super Linus Torvalds ninja hackers p…

I'd argue you don't need to truly be top ten, you need to be sufficiently good that finding someone better isn't worth the marginal cost (hiring is really expensive!)

Another way of thinking of this: can you be considered top 10 within a pool of 100 applicants?

Also, who is "top ten" is extremely subjective, based on the company, who is evaluating, and niche. I would guess that within a 100 developer cohort there's not a lot of overlap between the top ten embedded c++ developers and the top ten react developers, and even the top ten that can do both c++ AND react.

Re: Remote work means anyone can take your job

#370

Post by pashamur » Thu, May 28, 2020, 7:21 PM UTC

josho wrote: post #203

one2know wrote: post #119

More like anyone can rip off employers. When you are dealing internationally, you are out of the bounds of US law. There is no guarantee that your code won't simply be stolen. You have no recourse except travel twelve time zones to a place you have no power in. No one need worry about outsourcing. It's been proven that the only work going to outsourcing is low risk service labor like phone support.

As a counter example IP laws in Canada are aligned with US and is the same timezone, yet with currency exchange salaries are discounted by 30%.

Canada is only ~10% of the U.S. population. I'm not sure in terms of developer numbers, but if percentages are comparable, that's a pretty small effect on the overall market.