451–460 of 461 posts
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I know I didn't tell you what you want to hear. Independence will help you. God forbid there is a cataclysmic event, you will have thanked me for putting the boot up your ass.
Sure. You can keep telling that to yourself if it makes you life less miserable.
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The value you produce is just the theoretical upper limit of how much you could get paid. If you could measure this value accurately, then it would make no sense to pay you more than that. It has little bearing on how much you actually get paid, that's based on the market rate. They pay you less, because presumably by going remote you're changing the market in which you're based and your value in this new market is l…
I see the argument that developers should be paid more because the company has some profit per employee that is a multiple of the employee’s wage. From an employee perspective I understand how there would be room and desire to receive more money. However, I have a difficult time understanding why a company would want to pay more. Perhaps I’m a sucker, but in our engineering economics course we went over costs associa…
2. I think you’re making the mistake of only measuring the things youth at are easiest to measure. If a company can bring “non-adversarial working agreement” to the bargaining table, that’s worth something to most people. In other words, a company which offers you frequent good raises without you having to fight for them is actually offering you good money PLUS giving you back all the time and effort you used to spend fighting political battles inside the company and keeping active on LinkedIn. Also as a result, you’re going to stay working there longer. Which also means they can amortize the cost of your ramp-up over a longer period of time. And look at that: the non-adversarial wages just “paid for themselves” from the company’s point of view.
But really: no employee wants their employer to be their adversary. And employers likewise gain from stable relationships with their employees, and even more so by crafting an environment that lets the employee focus on work instead of other concerns (like money or “fairness” or politics).
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That's why you're supposed to be a contractor at that pay level.
In lot of cases that is illegal. Of course does not mean people do not do it.
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That's why you're supposed to be a contractor at that pay level.
What's the difference with being a contractor? You still have to pay taxes, right?
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Why do we imagine that in person communication is somehow mystical? I guess science doesn’t work because papers are not presented in person? I guess we are not engaged by films because the actors are not physically present? It’s superstition.
So you would be fine with keeping all your platonic relationships strictly digital? If not, why?
As preferable as WFH is for many and as productive as many people can be while working remote, at the end of the day, you can't change human nature. There is a reason why companies like Google are doubling down in Silicon Valley real estate. They believe that the best, most innovative type of work are the results of organic discussions and unscheduled, unplanned, casual human interactions. So many cool ideas and new…
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> evolved for millions of years for this exact type of communication A great many people identify themselves as introverts or antisocial, and would feel much better being excluded from all these neuron triggers. > The information bandwidth of in-person communication is absolutely unparalleled Yes, but that bandwidth is not all used productively but wasted on irrelevant bits which do not matter and likely distract fro…
>Such things are usually unnecessary to the task at hand, and often detrimental Have you considered the mere possibility that many people's work have different types of tasks than yours? It's so hard not to make stereotypical jokes about engineers when reading comments like this XD
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A huge portion of an engineer’s job (especially senior level engineers) aren’t strictly technical. This seems to be something people miss.
> an engineer’s job (especially senior level engineers) aren’t strictly technical. Text is able to convey information that is not entirely technical as well... This seems to be something people miss. Have you ever read a novel?
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> What casual lunch discussion, random hallway chats, water cooler talks and after-hours beer have all in common is, people involved are slacking off. > I find it ironic that companies want everyone to do spontaneous R&D work, but they rely on it happening spontaneously due to inefficiencies of office environment. I don’t think those conversations and lunches are slacking off. Connecting with people goes a long way t…
I feel you understand what I meant, so let's not get hung up on the exact word. I called this "slacking off" because it connotes "slack" as in a good thing to have in any system, and because if you (as a lowly IC) were trying to explicitly set up "hallway conversations" with your remote co-workers, your boss would tell you to stop the bullshit and get back to work. But yes, you can view this as mental hygiene or mora…
“Lowly IC” - I don’t think you and I are on the same page, so let me stop you right there. None of the companies I’ve worked at treated people as being “lowly” or ICs as being lowly or inferior.
I don’t work in an organization where my manager tries to micromanage me. Nor does anyone here micromanage even the most junior employees.
People are responsible for meeting goals, driving initiatives forward, and delivering value. As long as you’re doing that, we don’t really care if you spend half your day on Twitter or watching Netflix — so long as you’re not actively distracting people. And by distracting, I mean intentionally interfering where it’s unwelcome by the other person.
Your argument seems to be that managers are trying to squeeze the most value by forcing people to be heads down working.
Maybe that formula works at Burger King or where you’re working with your hands - every second or minute lost might mean you produce less “widgets”.
This isn’t true in technology jobs, and if that’s how your organization is run, I recommend you start applying elsewhere.
This is all tangential to the main topic - some of the best innovative conversations do happen in hallway chats, over lunch, or while people are sitting near each other at their desks. And I recognize you disagree with that but to be clear, the culture you describe isn’t remotely close to my experience. We’re comparing apples and oranges - our experiences are not comparable at all.