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The cost savings to employers is so extraordinary ($0 per square foot in office space, $0 on HVAC, electricity, $0 on corporate wifi and the building's ethernet

The cost savings to employers is so extraordinary ($0 per square foot in office space, $0 on HVAC, electricity, $0 on corporate wifi and the building's ethernet, $0 on cleaning bills, $0 on toilet paper, ink, toner, desks, etc etc - the employer literally is happy to buy all of the above), and to employees a free 5-20% reduction of work hours due to the total loss of mandatory unpaid commute, plus all transportation costs, that I can't help but think something must be missing. Any employer that could leverage remote workers could have the equivalent of a $1 trillion headquarters employing 1 billion people, tomorrow: at a cost of exactly $0. So it stands to reason that there is SOMETHING keeping remote-only workplaces from eating their competitors for lunch. Something turns off that growth or ruins the economics. What is that something?

eckza 7y ago
Here's my hot take: In places that I've worked, WFH is usually reserved for divisions that are expected to be intrinsically-motivated high performers. Some companies can afford to be staffed with nothing but these types of people; other companies are not so lucky. WFH only works if the people that are W-ingFH are motivated enough by their work to do it without being supervised. And for some job roles in some organizations, the savings from not having to hold an office for a role, are more than offset by the lost productivity from having that role as a remote hire. I'm not trying to say that all HN-ers are magical special large-brained unicorn employees; but I've worked at several places where certain key roles are staffed by people that couldn't figure out how to effectively work remotely if their lives depended on it.
- donretag 7y ago
  > I've worked at several places where certain key roles are staffed by people that couldn't figure out how to effectively work remotely if their lives depended on it. For me it was the opposite: I was highly productive, but the onsite managers did not know how to work effectively (if at all honestly)
blamestross 7y ago
Plenty of new smaller software companies (startups especially) are totally remote and distributed. "9-5 in an office" culture has been deeply ingrained. The managers with the practice and skills with managing remote teams don't exist in enough number to fill a large company. The investors, the workers, and everybody in involved would have to learn new skills and ways to function. The thing that ruins the growth and economics is that nobody knows how to do it yet and trying is either risky (you fail) or expensive to train/experiment until you figure it out.

eckza 7y ago

Here's my hot take: In places that I've worked, WFH is usually reserved for divisions that are expected to be intrinsically-motivated high performers. Some companies can afford to be staffed with nothing but these types of people; other companies are not so lucky. WFH only works if the people that are W-ingFH are motivated enough by their work to do it without being supervised. And for some job roles in some organizations, the savings from not having to hold an office for a role, are more than offset by the lost productivity from having that role as a remote hire. I'm not trying to say that all HN-ers are magical special large-brained unicorn employees; but I've worked at several places where certain key roles are staffed by people that couldn't figure out how to effectively work remotely if their lives depended on it.

donretag 7y ago
> I've worked at several places where certain key roles are staffed by people that couldn't figure out how to effectively work remotely if their lives depended on it. For me it was the opposite: I was highly productive, but the onsite managers did not know how to work effectively (if at all honestly)

blamestross 7y ago

Plenty of new smaller software companies (startups especially) are totally remote and distributed. "9-5 in an office" culture has been deeply ingrained. The managers with the practice and skills with managing remote teams don't exist in enough number to fill a large company. The investors, the workers, and everybody in involved would have to learn new skills and ways to function. The thing that ruins the growth and economics is that nobody knows how to do it yet and trying is either risky (you fail) or expensive to train/experiment until you figure it out.