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The Winners of Remote Work

nytimes.com

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Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#91

Post by mlac »

Clubber wrote: post #67
ghaff wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm skeptical that executives in commercial real estate have that much leverage over major corporations. I expect things like a bias towards the status quo, sunk cost fallacies, concerns about long-term culture/productivity, and so forth are more than enough to make companies hesitant to go mostly/fully remote.

It depends if said corporations own the building / land or not.

Even if they don’t directly own the land, at some point organizations likely service companies that would be impacted by a drop.

And once an organization gets to a certain size it just makes sense to run and buy your own properties.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#92

Post by 908B64B197 »

ThePadawan wrote: post #44
pvm3 wrote: post #22

The Winners of Remote Work don't live in the United States. The pandemic has accelerated globalization.

Only if you consider Remote Global Work. As a European, it is very disheartening to see how many companies espouse "we are now embracing remote work company-wide", which on closer inspection means "California hours +-2h time difference".

Just go work for an European Unicorn.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#93

Post by ghaff »

ThePadawan wrote: post #85
handrous wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In addition to the obvious time zone constraints, I think payroll taxes and such are a major regulatory boundary that you need to cross in addition to having "all your shit together" as one of the top comments puts it. This can be annoying even across state boundaries, let alone internationally, for smaller companies that aren't already operating in several states. Consider also things like group health insurance,…

Right? It boggles the mind that the biggest companies on Earth are the likes of Instagram instead of a huge company called "Adapt" which takes care of all that between employee and employer as a third party.

I have no personal experience but I have been told that even if you farm a lot of things out there is a certain amount of paperwork (and cost) that you have to handle in-house.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#94

Post by shreddit »

astockwell wrote: post #84
iainctduncan wrote: post #38

I have done remote work for a long time (because ...Canada), and the real issue is that it requires management to have their shit together. I also assess companies for acquisitions now so I talk every month to companies about what's working and what isn't. I've seen some very successful companies with partially remote or even 100% remote teams. And... they have their shit together. Managers have to actually know what…

The #1 question I wish I could get answered for any prospective company (as an interviewee): "Do you have your shit together?" Seriously. This could avoid so much heartache.

Since most companies employ humans, i'd say most of them don't.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#95

Post by ohazi »

papito wrote: post #10
slickrick216 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are totally right about the self motivation part. I’d wonder though is it just that people who aren’t motivated are easier to see in a remote work setting vs the office as you judge people by their tangible outputs alone. In the office setting this is obscured but the same cohort aren’t actually doing anything more or less.

I can be as unproductive at work as I can be at home, but coasting in the office is so exhausting, I'd rather do work.

I can even recall a handful of times when I was trying to solve a fiddly problem, and couldn't concentrate because our (open floor plan) office was a zoo.

I would tell my boss I needed some quiet, would go home, would sit down and solve the problem, and would come back the next day feeling much less frustrated.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#96

Post by mumblemumble »

Clubber wrote: post #66
iainctduncan wrote: post #38

I have done remote work for a long time (because ...Canada), and the real issue is that it requires management to have their shit together. I also assess companies for acquisitions now so I talk every month to companies about what's working and what isn't. I've seen some very successful companies with partially remote or even 100% remote teams. And... they have their shit together. Managers have to actually know what…

>Workers have to be lined up in their swim lanes and the whole thing has to be orchestrated... you know, like actual agile instead of the reactive pfaffery that everyone passes off as "hybrid agile" (boy do I hear that phrase a lot in diligence!) Swim lanes isn't agile per se, it's just business communicating their priorities and assigning it to development. I remember when agile came out, it was great from the devel…

The Agile Manifesto is not gospel.

For starters, I would argue that, "The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation," has proven, in the fullness of time, to be an oversimplification.

More importantly, the Agile Manifesto not saying something two decades ago does not mean that it has no place in contemporary agile software development. We've had 20 years' worth of time to learn since then. It would be a shame if we hadn't.

To that end, I do think that active orchestration - and, for that matter, written communication - is critical to being really agile at any sort of scale. It doesn't necessarily need to be done using swim lanes, but they do happen to be a nice mental model (and visual mnemonic) for keeping track of real-world phenomena such as varying quality of service obligations.

But I also think that it makes sense to leave them out of any concrete definition of what it means to be agile. Not only is there more than one way to satisfy that need, there's also no guarantee that every team will have that need.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#97

Post by ohazi »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #59
avnigo wrote: post #53

> Google [...] would reduce the pay of those who choose to work remotely or move farther from the office. Avoiding the office saves employees money — in commuting costs, for example I don't understand the reasoning behind this, and I've seen it being used again and again. Employees are compensated on the work they provide during work hours, and only rarely do companies provide compensation to specifically accommodate…

>I don't understand the reasoning behind this, and I've seen it being used again and again. They do it because if you won't accept a 20% cut to work out in the sticks then there are plenty of other good people who will. It's got nothing to do with the length of your commute or the cost of unused offices or even the value you provide (as long as that covers your wages). They can do this for exactly the same reason the…

> They do it because if you won't accept a 20% cut to work out in the sticks then there are plenty of other good people who will.

So the options are:

1. Convince all of the other good people that they can and should demand more.

2. Convince your bosses that you are indispensable.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#98

Post by Clubber »

mlac wrote: post #91
Clubber wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It depends if said corporations own the building / land or not.

Even if they don’t directly own the land, at some point organizations likely service companies that would be impacted by a drop. And once an organization gets to a certain size it just makes sense to run and buy your own properties.

I think there is also a lot of commercial real estate tied up in derivatives.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#99

Post by Sevii »

gringoDan wrote: post #82

This makes complete sense – just another example of power law dynamics of the internet. Short-term, we're going to see companies pursue a remote model in order to attract talent. This will be great for employees; live in Colorado, go on hikes and have a great lifestyle while commanding a SF salary! Longer-term, companies are going to realize that (except for the top ~10% of performers, who will always command a high…

The focus on programmers as the vanguard of the remote work trend distracts from what could be the real change the outsourcing of white collar work.

Why do we need our lawyers, accountants, human resources and other back office employees to be American when Chilean workers will do those jobs for half or a quarter the pay?

What outsourcing did to manufacturing jobs, remote work may do to white collar jobs.

Re: The Winners of Remote Work

#100

Post by wintermutestwin »

handrous wrote: post #74
wintermutestwin wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As someone who grew up on construction sites before escaping to cushy office work, I can tell you that there are a lot of negatives that many don't consider when romanticizing the trades. Physical work means physical risks: From injuries to long term issues with knees, backs and shoulders. From constant exposure to toxic materials to the ever enjoyable dust boogers. There's a reason that tradespeople get paid what th…

From what I've seen, the smart ones with good business sense are the ones who make real money in the trades, and they're mostly doing sales, supervision, training, and maybe personally handling some limited amount of the trickier bits of the actual labor (or cases where they have to come back to fix things, if they really care about customer service), by some time in their 30s. They may acquire some minor, persistent…

Quite correct, but I would add that a necessary skill is also in being able to herd cats with a high turnover workforce that is made up with a high percentage of semi-functional addicts and/or flakes.
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