A recent poll of employees who are working remotely • Hacker News Board

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#81

Post by anewaccount2021 » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 7:25 PM UTC

majormajor wrote: post #66

geoelectric wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Equilibrium is what I expect. That may have a more sharp effect than the math would suggest, though. Bay Area SWE salaries inflated via competition in a way I suspect completely deflates with area pressure off. The cross-effects of a limited pool tend to be multiplicative, not additive. The fact that the people doing the hiring probably enjoy those salaries too is maybe the biggest counterargument I'd have to my own…

> Bay Area SWE salaries inflated via competition in a way I suspect completely deflates with area pressure off. It will be very interesting to see just how big the pool of people who can pass the interviews[0] but weren't willing to relocate is. The demographics (and housing prices!) in the tech hubs reflect a big influx of highly-paid developers. If only 10% of the folks who could pass those interviews and get those…

> The demographics (and housing prices!) in the tech hubs reflect a big influx of highly-paid developers

How? For at least the last decade, your typical developer in the Bay Area has been a renter...long since priced-out of a single-family home. Even FAANG developers are priced out of the better suburbs.

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#82

Post by nitrogen » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 7:26 PM UTC

bluedino wrote: post #62

geoelectric wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, exactly. Back in the 90s-2000s, though, it was easier to deal with an office-based outsource hub that had its own line manager, etc, mostly because things were so damned slow to send back and forth that you wanted to chunk project coordination. Those were comparatively rarer in the US, since anywhere you could put one together had enough tech industry to make the costs there prohibitive. Nowadays, you could jus…

>> you could just hire from the flyover states, find all the good techies that didn't make the pilgrimage to one of the traditional hotspots How many are there, though, really? And what happens when you now have to compete with _every_other_company_ that also wants to hire them? They'll make more money, good for them. But the majority of companies will just have to settle for hiring C-level talent.

One of the first ever desktop app stores had its desktop app developed entirely by a flyover state team in 2002. So the devs exist, if you can find them.

Also, there's plenty of C-level talent in the bay. You can pay the same and get B+ or better in an inland state.

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#83

Post by throwarayes » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 7:26 PM UTC

I worry at the long term implications of remote work:

- I hear of Bay Area tech companies throwing stupid high salaries at senior devs in smaller local firms -> more consolidation in tech

- how non people centric will work become? I feel being 100% remote I have even less of a relationship with anyone at home. I’m a commodity doing work. Maybe there’s more of a temptation to get that commodity cheaper elsewhere

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#84

Post by formercoder » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 7:27 PM UTC

ska wrote: post #7

I suspect a lot of the "we're all going to be remote from now on" sentiment is overblown. It seems to me more likely that there will be a few more remote friendly companies, and a very few more remote-only companies after the dust settles, but the real shift will be for most "office based" workers will be the expectation of partially working from home. There is a big difference between "never going to an office again…

My guess is the following will take place: companies will generally be more open to WFH. Those who spend more time in the office will develop stronger networks and relationships, will be able to advocate for themselves more easily, and thus will be more successful. People will snowball back into the office as they see this happening. Keep in mind I’m generalizing, I’m fully aware that you can create a culture that doesn’t disadvantage those that are remote, I’m just not convinced that broadly will happen.

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#85

Post by anewaccount2021 » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 7:29 PM UTC

wjamesg wrote: post #64

mabbo wrote: post #26

Simply put, if my employer told me I needed to be in the office more than 5 days per month, I would find a new employer. I'm more productive than ever. I'm happier than ever. I'm eating healthier. I sleep better. My marriage is stronger. My finances are kicking ass. I won't give this up.

You are quite privileged

Why are you working if not to earn privilege?

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#86

Post by alextheparrot » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 7:29 PM UTC

sharkweek wrote: post #73

My partner works in operations for [fairly large company]. Her job is to min/max space use, organize for hiring pushes, keep the office space humming, revamp existing space as needed, plan out new space... etc. etc. etc. It's an interesting job, she's probably the person you're pissed at when your desk gets seemingly randomly moved to another floor. Right before COVID, she was managing a HUGE densification project to…

This really is the worst of both worlds for the employees. Employees are still bound to a physical location, but you also have to maintain a home office and heterogenous communications stack [0]. Also, coordinating who is in the office when is a nightmare and can often lead to oversubscribed days.

The only utility I can see is if you need to run for appointments that are easier to do when working from home, but this is less about remote work and more about flexible working hours.

[0] Having worked in a team with distributed offices, a fairly large company like your partner's can definitely solve this.

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#87

Post by walshemj » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 7:30 PM UTC

j0ba wrote: post #51

kodah wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some people who cannot work from home. These people have been especially vocal. Sometimes they include people who have kids, other times they include people who get their social interaction in at work. I think the office should accommodate them as well as remote workers. The biggest challenge I've faced being on a remote team (read: not necessarily WFH) is that people who are at the primary physical locatio…

That's fine. They can just take a salary cut if they need their employer to provide them an officespace.

So workers have to pay for the costs of the office now -did you think that through

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#88

Post by chrisco255 » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 7:30 PM UTC

geoelectric wrote: post #71

bluedino wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> you could just hire from the flyover states, find all the good techies that didn't make the pilgrimage to one of the traditional hotspots How many are there, though, really? And what happens when you now have to compete with _every_other_company_ that also wants to hire them? They'll make more money, good for them. But the majority of companies will just have to settle for hiring C-level talent.

Why not hire C level talent from the flyover states? Speaking specifically of my own lane, tech, I think you might underestimate how many people--particularly people of color--never make it into the "industry pipeline" because of lack of local opportunities. Those of us who came into the tech industry from the side in the 90s know the school doesn't make much difference at all in most jobs, it's just a predictor of w…

This is an important point, so much of the so-called diversity problem with Silicon Valley is driven by the enforced colocation of techies into a small geographical area in central CA. You also lose out on people that are more family oriented and not apt to move far from where they grew up. There's plenty of smart and talented people that are hard workers who need that kind of proximity to their loved ones and they can't just pack up their whole extended family and move to SV.

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#89

Post by vp8989 » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 7:30 PM UTC

vineyardmike wrote: post #27

vp8989 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think all or nothing is not realistic for most companies unless the CEOs are very progressive and just deeply believe in it. A decent workaround is to have entirely remote teams and entirely in-office teams. That way people can be on teams where they feel like being remote is not a detriment to their careers (because ALL discussion takes place online) and people who prefer working in-person don't have to force ever…

At my company we’ve always had teams that appeared “all remote”. They just were teams not stationed in the HQ and they were clearly less important (or that was the vibe) and they were usually in a low COL country instead. The mix definitely will make a cohort of “second class citizens”

Ye I totally get what you mean and I have observed this a lot too.

I think for some people though, this might be an acceptable trade off (even temporarily) where they favor being able to WFH and not need to be tethered to train lines / highways for commuting over being "close to the action".

If companies offered this trade off across the board it would be a good way to retain employees over the long term as your life situation changes (kids etc ...) you can kind still find a place at the same company that can accomodate the lifestyle you desire at that point in time.

Re: A recent poll of employees who are working remotely

#90

Post by bvirb » Thu, Jan 28, 2021, 7:30 PM UTC

kodah wrote: post #46

ska wrote: post #7

I suspect a lot of the "we're all going to be remote from now on" sentiment is overblown. It seems to me more likely that there will be a few more remote friendly companies, and a very few more remote-only companies after the dust settles, but the real shift will be for most "office based" workers will be the expectation of partially working from home. There is a big difference between "never going to an office again…

There are some people who cannot work from home. These people have been especially vocal. Sometimes they include people who have kids, other times they include people who get their social interaction in at work. I think the office should accommodate them as well as remote workers. The biggest challenge I've faced being on a remote team (read: not necessarily WFH) is that people who are at the primary physical locatio…

My (small) company didn't skip a beat moving from entirely in office to entirely remote. In retrospect we were already having all of our conversations on Slack when we were in the office.

The key was we were always listening to music in our headphones.