81–88 of 88 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you not have any personal arrangements more complex than 'pressing a button'? Investments? Correspondence with people? Reviewing agreements and portfolios? Do not you do things like budget? What about hobbies that require desk-work and making calls? Volunteering and work with charities? What room do you do these things in?
All those things don't require an office. You can do all that from a sofa... Come on...
I'm of two minds. I don't think most office work can be done from home all the time, but I think a lot of it can be done efficiently from home. On the other hand I also value the social aspect as well as the easy onboarding in-person. For GS, if their competitors are offering better working conditions, their top employees may switch over, leaving them with the ones who don't have a choice. Maybe he would better under…
I think it will be more complicated and subtle than this. A few things to consider:
* What's theoretically efficient may never actually materialize. For example, India has ~70 million English-speaking college graduates - that's close to the US in absolute numbers. They can be paid (probably) an order of magnitude less per person. We've had the internet and teleconferencing for decades, yet outsourcing did hit quite a hard limit at some point, and counterintuitively companies before 2020 still hired in the most expensive areas in the world (e.g. SF & Menlo) for fairly routine web programming, and paid $500k comp for what in theory could have been done remotely with English speakers for 1/10th of that. (What happens now? We'll find out)
* Hype of the day - companies making waves extending remote arrangements or conversely bringing everyone back, we'll see how that plays out.
* Social aspects - but of a slightly different kind than some refreshing friendly banter - if you want to get promoted, you need to show your face and be on top of your boss's mind, which is best achieved with regular physical presence and that's an unfair advantage that the onsite people will have.
In pure meritocracy that wouldn't matter of course, but how many places are run as pure meritocracy? At Uber a few years back people bitterly fought for promotions (top 20% would get X times the stock and bonuses) and back then, the rare remote people had to either put up a major extra effort to remotely fight for themselves, or get left out (and eventually let go, I've seen remote people let go mostly because they did not have a major presence in the office). I think it's a bit different now obviously with everyone remote for the time being, but in fiercely competitive environments whoever is closer to the boss wins.
I think this goes for most companies, I enjoy working from home but I miss the office and the culture during and after work. I will be doing a hybrid.
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It's probably a better indicator for class divide these days than the classic 'bookshelf'. But.. bills ? As in receiving letters to find out how much I'm supposed to pay and then somehow manually paying them? No, I'm young enough that I've never had to operate like that, but I can barely remember my parents doing so either, certainly not in the last 20 years. Your profile indicates also UK - don't you just pay by DD?…
> But.. bills? As in receiving letters to find out how much I'm supposed to pay and then somehow manually paying them? No obviously not literally 'paying a bill'. I mean managing your personal life. Investments, preparing data for your accountant, budgeting, that kind of thing. Do you not have any hobbies that involve managing things or focused reading and writing? Any volunteering that involves managing an organisat…
So yes I already had and used that space for 'personal stuff', (well actually I mostly worked from home anyway there too) but I do understand there's still an argument that it's nice to have a physical divide between work (employed work) and other. I definitely sit there working longer (or going back to work later) than intended sometimes.
When I want to be doing something else, but work's still on my mind or have some sudden realisation, and all work stuff is right there too so it's too easy to 'just quickly' do.
I don't know, there's no perfect answer, sometimes it really is quick and I'd rather get it done and off my mind (easily, because again, it's all right there) than it be harder or tomorrow.
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I don’t understand - don’t people already have home offices for at least doing their bills and things?
It's probably a better indicator for class divide these days than the classic 'bookshelf'. But.. bills ? As in receiving letters to find out how much I'm supposed to pay and then somehow manually paying them? No, I'm young enough that I've never had to operate like that, but I can barely remember my parents doing so either, certainly not in the last 20 years. Your profile indicates also UK - don't you just pay by DD?…
There’s a reason people sit down, review bills and their accounts, and actively keep track of things, and it’s not because they are just old and doing things the old way. It’s because if you are not really paying attention, companies will try to screw you. And no, having some central system that shows you pretty graphs of your spending doesn’t help with this either unless you are really spending time studying the report at least every few weeks.
I'm of two minds. I don't think most office work can be done from home all the time, but I think a lot of it can be done efficiently from home. On the other hand I also value the social aspect as well as the easy onboarding in-person. For GS, if their competitors are offering better working conditions, their top employees may switch over, leaving them with the ones who don't have a choice. Maybe he would better under…
I think you are kind of conflating what's theoretically efficient, what you personally seem to value, and what you think top performing employees will be able to dictate to the company based on what the competition offers. I think it will be more complicated and subtle than this. A few things to consider: * What's theoretically efficient may never actually materialize. For example, India has ~70 million English-speak…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think you are kind of conflating what's theoretically efficient, what you personally seem to value, and what you think top performing employees will be able to dictate to the company based on what the competition offers. I think it will be more complicated and subtle than this. A few things to consider: * What's theoretically efficient may never actually materialize. For example, India has ~70 million English-speak…
Regarding your first point, U.S. companies still hire expensive domestic employees because the quality of education in India isn't comparable to the U.S. I think anyone on HN who has utilized Indian outsourcing understands they produce substandard work when compared to domestic standards. Those who are at the level of a U.S. developer are generally brought over to the U.S.
Neither of these exist in a relatively local WFH setup. People still have the same weather, sports and other interests which allow for better cohesion. Hell, I'd often zoom into a meeting rather than walk to the conf room pre-covid anyway because I'd gain 5m to/from and I had back to back meetings.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's probably a better indicator for class divide these days than the classic 'bookshelf'. But.. bills ? As in receiving letters to find out how much I'm supposed to pay and then somehow manually paying them? No, I'm young enough that I've never had to operate like that, but I can barely remember my parents doing so either, certainly not in the last 20 years. Your profile indicates also UK - don't you just pay by DD?…
This is a dangerous line of thinking and eventually most young people who think this way will get burned. So you have everything setup as autopay, and then you have no idea what you’re spending on anything. And then there are incorrect or fraudulent charges on your account and you never notice them, or maybe you do but you can’t dispute it because you didn’t notice them for past 6 months and since you paid them previ…