9 ms·

Working remotely crossed the chasm today

122 points by AlexeyMK 6y ago

ForHackernews 6y ago
> It’ll retain a “city emeritus” status, like London, Philadelphia or Palo Alto. Unless this means London, Ontario, it's unintentionally hilarious that this guy considers Europe's largest city and financial capital to be a has-been 'city emeritus'. It goes along with the idea that because some microblogging website is allowing remote work, that suddenly the idea is mainstream. For an industry that claims to think big, the tech startup world is surprisingly small and insular.
- Nasrudith 6y ago
  London is still big in finance post Brexit? I thought the arrangements were already made on the continent because of it.
  - tialaramex 6y ago
    Ha, "post Brexit". Despite all the celebrations by idiots there are still months and most likely years more Brexit to go. For now nothing actually changes, British citizens are still EU citizens, a London bank is still an EU bank. In principle the country is "rapidly" negotiating a long term arrangement on everything for completing by the end of the year. This hypothetical "deal" would set up the relationship from 2021 onwards. In practice there are two schools of thought. Maybe the intent is to get to the end of the year and accuse the EU of having somehow failed to achieve a deal (even though the EU was always clear that would take much more than a year) then break off with no relationship and suffer a huge economic down turn as a result. Maybe somehow that works politically? It's hard to see how, but it's not as though Brexit made sense anyway. Or maybe the idea is to build up the tension and then announce we've belatedly discovered that it isn't possible to finish the deal immediately and so we'd like an extra say, two years to finish making a deal, kicking the can down the road. Who knows.
    - joshuahughes 6y ago
      > British citizens are still EU citizens The UK actually left the EU on January 31st, 2020. We're still 'Europeans' (inhabitants of the continent of Europe) but no longer EU citizens.
      - tialaramex 6y ago
        My mistake. You're correct, British citizens are no longer EU citizens (though there are court cases that dispute this) but all the freedoms they had as EU citizens continue until transition ends (currently supposedly at the end of 2020).
  - ForHackernews 6y ago
    Nobody knows what will happen, really, but so far yes. I just think it's amusing the idea that London has weathered the Fall of the Roman Empire, the Black Plague, the Blitz, and the Brexit vote, but what will finally dim its star is Twitter sanctioning WFH.
rorykoehler 6y ago
I feel like we crossed the chasm in the past and regressed back over it.
- cableshaft 6y ago
  If we didn't cross it, we got pretty close. Thanks, Marissa Mayer for resetting the clock on that one. /s
  - sokoloff 6y ago
    It’s not like Yahoo was killing it and she somehow snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. They were being comically left behind and at one point I believe their investment in Alibaba was worth more than the entirety of Yahoo (meaning the company itself had a negative intrinsic value).
gotocode20 6y ago
I think the increasing openness towards remote work is certainly encouraging, but it still seems a bit too early to conclude that these companies will consider going fully remote to be sustainable in the long run. As the author notes, once companies figure out a streamlined and scalable way of onboarding and supporting a remote-first workforce, we should see much greater adoption of this approach.
- myspy 6y ago
  The hard part is doing everything written down instead of talking about it over the desk. And a lot of people hate writing. Also chat tools are causing huge distractions and work needs to be better organised than that.
joelbluminator 6y ago
Hmm a decade or two? IDK, could be way sooner. If Corona comes back at the fall (this time accompanied by regular influenza) there's just not much choice I think. When this is all over all companies will have experience in running things remote for a year or two. It could be there'll still be an office but 50% of the personnel is remote. We'll see what happens, but I don't think this is gonna take 20 years.
- AlexeyMK 6y ago
  Agreed that tech companies will make the switch a lot sooner. What about a GE-types, though? Also, I'm generally bearish on remote-friendly or half-remote. Either the culture is set up for it, or it isn't. You can't be just a little bit pregnant.
  - znpy 6y ago
    > What about a GE-types, though? They'll either adapt or have a bad time finding office workers.
  - joelbluminator 6y ago
    > Also, I'm generally bearish on remote-friendly or half-remote I don't see why. I actually think half remote is the way to go to preserve the advantages of both worlds. It's a big question how the post corona world will look - are we just gonna forget it ever happened or are we going to try not to pack people in very small places? I don't have an answer to that question yet. It really depends on what's gonna happen in coming autumn / winter. A second and third wave of this thing will probably change things for good.
    - cmdshiftf4 6y ago
      >I actually think half remote is the way to go to preserve the advantages of both worlds It's also a way to preserve the disadvantages of both worlds. For the company, it means having to retain an office in an attractive location and design it with an estimated capacity based on the whims of the people employed there. For the employees, it means having to both retain housing near an office in an expensive location, which usually comes with not insignificant sacrifices, _and_ set up some sort of office for yourself at home, which may not be possible due to those sacrifices. It also means employees, when some but not all are remote, are going to be put in the position of having to juggle onsite/remote meetings which are very difficult to get right unless you mandate it to being remote-first, which doesn't gel well with open office spaces.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
zaphirplane 6y ago
Suxs to be weWork
- znpy 6y ago
  Yeah, it's been a while since somebody named wework..
- zhte415 6y ago
  It does suck to be WeWork, but perhaps not for co-working spaces. Reasoning: Acceptance of remote working, or at least not coming to the office, is boosted. But not everyone can work comfortably at home: Distractions, discipline. So a local co-working place nearby becomes attractive. There's no WeWork where I live but there is a local library and (before lockdowns) it's packed throughout the day with people studying or on their laptops. Upside: Free. Downside: No possibility for calls or video. I'm pretty confident that ultra-local co-location working facilities could take advantage of demand for people that don't want to work at home but also don't want a commute. It could be as simple as a house in a neighbourhood with solid internet, a few extra tables, the kitchen's already there, and a few bedrooms converted to private areas for video conference. Perhaps a good franchise model. I'd be on-board as a user. Ten other people in a 2000sqft house would fund it pretty easily: Zoning and an SLA on the internet connection seem to be the only hurdles. Edit: Thinking about it, I have friends that do this already informally by renting a cheap apartment.
zuhayeer 6y ago
I always felt that remote work would eventually come. I've seen it in how my friends would slowly converge to 2-3 days wfh a few months after graduating and starting a job. It seems like adoption has just been accelerated by circumstance now. People are realizing that they can do everything they need to do at home within 2-3 hours. The most attractive part of the office are the water cooler conversations and social activities completely unrelated to work. And that's why I still think there's a place for shared workspaces. Companies will shrink their large centralized headquarters and start building satellite presences. No need to fit everyone into one big mega-campus.
supernintendo 6y ago
> Techies have been leaving San Francisco for cities like Portland, Austin, Denver and Seattle (PADS) for over a decade. We seek a place to settle down and improve cost-to-quality-of-life ratio. As someone born in a small North Carolina town into poverty who has lived in Portland for close to a decade, this is both hilarious and depressing. Bay Area tech folks are really suffering from some sort of economic Stockholm Syndrome. I’d love to see what would happen if one were to move from San Francisco to a city like Chiang Mai, Thailand. It can’t be much different than winning the lottery.
- AlexeyMK 6y ago
  We did that for about a month in 2015; made it for Songkran. It was pretty great. Frustrating with time zones and car pollution, but otherwise solid. Ristr8to remains a favorite.
  - supernintendo 6y ago
    As far as I know the air pollution in Thailand is largely attributed to forest fires rather than vehicle emissions [0]. Funny enough, this also seems to be the case for Portland, Oregon [1]. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/05/07/northern-thailand-was-once-paradise-now-forest-fires-have-made-air-worse-than-beijings/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/05/07/northern-tha... [1] https://www.kgw.com/mobile/article/weather/air-quality/portlands-air-quality-second-worst-among-major-cities-worldwide/283-586223379 https://www.kgw.com/mobile/article/weather/air-quality/portl...
    - CalRobert 6y ago
      "Car Pollution" may be a term for encompassing all the negative externalities caused by cars near people. Crash risk, reduced walkability and cyclability, noise pollution, increased sedentism, higher housing costs (due to parking minimums, car-friendly zoning,) etc. For instance, I'd love to let my kid ride a bike to school. I don't because of cars (well, drivers, really). That's a form of pollution, in a sense.
mattlondon 6y ago
> Presentation Final Final [2].pdf Alexey - please make sure to use 'Copy of Presentation Final Final [2] (Matt's version) (Copy).pdf' going forward. Presentation Final Final [2].pdf is out of date. Thx.
- C1sc0cat 6y ago
  ROTFL - I think a lot of younger workers especially in the marketing side might have a rude shock if they had to face an ISO 9000 / BS5750 Audit. Joking aside WFH makes these sort of problems even worse I have considered suggesting we make all documents source controlled and use git to handle check in and out.
  - rorykoehler 6y ago
    You don't you collaborative tools like drive or office365?
    - C1sc0cat 6y ago
      Doesn't solve the "Copy of Presentation Final Final [2] (Matt's version) (Copy).pdf" problem though. And trying to get people to use office 365's scs is going to be hard and if all your technical docs are in git makes sense to use on scs
      - rorykoehler 6y ago
        How doesn't it solve that problem? It's 100% solved it where I work.
- palsir 6y ago
  And there are solutions to this. From what I understand (which isn't very much), the SolidWorks (a 3d CAD tool) team has their own version control system, called PDM, which works with the Microsoft office suite. next is organizations getting over the hurdle of educating people how to use version control. Also - I think the current generation of office stores everything in XML, which can then be processed through git, svn, etc.
will_raw 6y ago
> From Github to DuckDuckGo, remote-first successful businesses are no longer rare. Github or Gitlab?
- AlexeyMK 6y ago
  Both? Github, originally, Gitlab, more recently.
- myspy 6y ago
  Both I think. Met a Github guy at a conference once and he told me he worked remote.
yosito 6y ago
I've been working remotely as a programmer for 7 years, but I still find that even in the current situation, a lot of companies insist that once the current crisis is over, they NEED people on-site. I'm still waiting, and hoping, for the fabled "remote work is the norm".
- vladvasiliu 6y ago
  I think the problem with those companies is that they used to think they "NEEDED" the people on site, so they never bothered to setup a culture of written and asynchronous communication. So when the current crisis pushed them to WFH they were completely unprepared for it. Of course when this will be over they'll want people back on site: "See how terrible WFH was? We need to have people on-site working face to face"
  - eequah9L 6y ago
    Curiously this "must be on site" mentality seems to be ripe even in some companies that have many offices, and people are de facto remote relative to each other anyway. Getting a "you know, I'm not sure this remote thing can work" from an architect that spends about half of his time on the phone just makes you go "what?" Dude's so busy calling everywhere that he's difficult to get hold of, but "remote can't work"? My experience has been that few people drive to the other side of the campus for a run of the mill chat or some random presentation. Unless it's in the same building, and unless it's something important, you just call, mail, chat, send office365 links, do skype presentations... you know, the remote stuff. So above a certain size, it's in the company's best interest to embrace remoteness anyway.
solidasparagus 6y ago
I'm unconvinced. The current WFH environment is not representative. It's only been a couple of months so the effects aren't fully understood and we are still in the honeymoon period. More importantly everyone has to work from home so there is no comparison between people who are WFH and those in the office - when WFH goes back to being a choice, I think we'll remember all of the frustrations remote workers had at non-fully remote companies.
- techsupporter 6y ago
  > when WFH goes back to being a choice, I think we'll remember all of the frustrations remote workers had at non-fully remote companies Yep, this is what I think happens. When the boss goes back to the office and is annoyed that no one is around for meetings or when enough people on a team or group decide that it’s just easier to “optionally” be back at work to have hallway conversations... Even saying “just come in on Thursdays for meetings” means the bulk of the work-anywhere dream many of the threads on HN have on the front page simply don’t materialize.
  - iso947 6y ago
    My 2nd level boss is delighted she’s getting 120 people in a weekly catch up meeting to explain what’s going on across the department. Normally the meeting is every month and only fits 50 people in the largest meeting room At the top they are concerned - the main office is at 10% capacity (some things can’t be done from home - at least without 40g connections and large custom workstations), and after 10 years of cramming more people in they’ve realised offices cost money. They are looking to extend wfh significantly.
    - sq_ 6y ago
      Do you think that the bigger meeting correlates with actual increased value for everyone involved? Such a large meeting, especially via Zoom or something similar, seems like it would become disorganized fast.
      - 6y ago
tanilama 6y ago
I would not predict future for that far. I am imagining a world where coming to office everyday isn't a requirement. And it is probably going to be true. However, I am not sure WFH will become the NORM. I definitely feels that my co-workers close to their manager gets more attention and thus their career tracks faster. All need to be put under perspective.
- phillc73 6y ago
  I've been having similar thoughts. The company I work for already had a general policy that working remotely one day a week was fine, provided permission was granted by the relevant line manager. This day was primarily to be used for focusing on writing papers (company is positioned in the grey ground between commercial and academic worlds). However, over the last three months with everyone remote, all the time, it's worked generally well, apart from when access to the labs or R&D plant was required. I've been missing some of the face to face interactions, and meeting in person can move some discussions forward quicker. My volume of email has dramatically increased. In the future, I can see two or three days per week remote working being completely plausible and healthy for productive work. A couple of days per week in the office will still be useful for access to specialist equipment, personal networking and team building.
rewoi 6y ago
WFH is now mainstream. In past everyone had to love noisy open plane office, and sacrifice two weeks of holiday to flu every year. Now there is a solid argument for alternative.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- dbancajas 6y ago
  aren't sick days separate from paid holidays?
amaajemyfren 6y ago
I think another interesting data point demonstrating progress in this is the fact that the US Supreme Court can now receive requests, vote to listen to them, receive pleadings and also listening to oral arguments remotely. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBrzxt7l7q4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBrzxt7l7q4
jerzyt 6y ago
I don't think you can institutionalize remote work. The team has to gel. I've worked with extremely efficient and motivated team, where we basically communicated through Skype and chat. We met at the office once a week. Best job I've ever had. And I've also worked on a completely disjointed and disfunctional remote team. Only the team can make it work, not any mandate from above.
- mpweiher 6y ago
  You can have dysfunctional/well-functioning remote/in-office teams. And you're right it is the team that has to gel and make things work. It just applies just as much to in-office as remote.
rofws 6y ago
I had read a comment(that I completely agree with) from someone here on HN (sorry I forgot the username), that the current WFH is working because EVERYONE is working from home. The moment half of the work force starts working from the office again, the dynamics are going to change. Those offtopic, face to face chitchats you have with your colleagues or boss hugely help your career growth. The WFH people are going to miss out on that. One positive that this crisis has created though, is all businesses and institutions will take remote work seriously, and take the steps required to make it possible, especially as another wave of COVID19 is expected.
- nottorp 6y ago
  Yep. As someone who has worked from home for most of the past 20 years (pandemic? what pandemic, i'm still available)... if the company isn't 100% remote you'll be left behind. So apply to Twitter now :)
  - mikekchar 6y ago
    Got to agree here. It only takes one manager in your upstream that doesn't like remote to cut you out of the loop. It's not certain that it will happen, but over a long career it approaches certainty. It's not necessarily the end of the world, but advancement is companies is very tricky when you are a minority remote worker. BTW, slightly off topic, but that picture of working on the beach? Too bright. Can't work. One day I hope I will finally be able to get an e-ink based laptop. I live within walking distance of the beach ;-) Perhaps sacrificing upward mobility isn't so bad...
- ornornor 6y ago
  > Those offtopic, face to face chitchats you have with your colleagues or boss hugely help your career growth. The WFH people are going to miss out on that. I suspect there is a non-trivial amount of people who don't care about that. I've been writing software for a while now. I don't want to become team lead or manager. I don't care for the drama. I just want to do my job, get paid, and go home. In that case, WFH is perfect.
dougmwne 6y ago
I understand the impulse to believe this is all temporary and that the extroverts who lead our companies will get us all back into the open office as soon as they can. Consider a financial reality. There is likely to be a terrible recession over the next few years. There will be layoffs and bankruptcies. Office space is hugely expensive. Some competitors are going to choose not to renew office space or to downsize their offices as this crisis drags on. And your company will have to compete with those companies who have cut costs without loosing efficiency. We are living through a black swan event, so it's a healthy exercise to forget everything you think you know about how the world works. I don't know how this is going to play out.
- rubber_duck 6y ago
  >Office space is hugely expensive. Not in a recession
  - mynegation 6y ago
    It is expensive to _someone_ all the time. If not to the tenant then to the owner: taxes, heating, HVAC, preventive maintenance, cleaning, security need to continue - filled or empty.
    - orderambien 6y ago
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  - oblio 6y ago
    You've reminded me of something. Office gear will become massively cheaper the following period. Especially second hand gear.
- eequah9L 6y ago
  The US unemployment is currently about 15%, up from some 3-4% that it was in the previous months. I wonder if there will be an effects on office space demand, and thus its price. Maybe it will become not as hugely expensive?
AzzieElbab 6y ago
There are tones of office buildings companies use to refinance themselves. There will be consequences when these buildings decline in value
rcpt 6y ago
Outside of The Bay are people really excited about leaving? It sucks here with the NIMBYs, the boring endless sprawl, the high taxes and bad public services, and the insane housing costs. But I've always thought people were generally happy about living in NYC, Seattle, Boulder, and Austin. (Though of those cities I've only lived in New York)
- credit_guy 6y ago
  > generally happy about living in NYC NYC has insane housing costs too. And high taxes. The public schools are hit and miss. Some are really good, but most not.
  - rcpt 6y ago
    NYC is much more affordable if you're willing to commute from Queens - you can get a two bedroom near Jackson Heights for under $300k and still take the train to work in Manhattan. If you want to live in Manhattan you pay a lot but it at least feels like you're getting something in return by being walking distance to the cultural, financial, and media capital of the world. The Bay is nearly as expensive as Manhattan but for the most part it's indistinguishable from any random suburb in Florida or Texas or wherever. Lawns, Costcos, car dealerships - really not worth $4k a month.
bluedays 6y ago
This honestly sounds like my worst nightmare.
purplezooey 6y ago
Techies have been leaving San Francisco for cities ... for over a decade. Not so much true if you look at the numbers. It's more just additional growth in the other areas.

122 points by AlexeyMK 6y ago

> It’ll retain a “city emeritus” status, like London, Philadelphia or Palo Alto. Unless this means London, Ontario, it's unintentionally hilarious that this guy considers Europe's largest city and financial capital to be a has-been 'city emeritus'. It goes along with the idea that because some microblogging website is allowing remote work, that suddenly the idea is mainstream. For an industry that claims to think big, the tech startup world is surprisingly small and insular.

Nasrudith 6y ago
London is still big in finance post Brexit? I thought the arrangements were already made on the continent because of it.
- tialaramex 6y ago
  Ha, "post Brexit". Despite all the celebrations by idiots there are still months and most likely years more Brexit to go. For now nothing actually changes, British citizens are still EU citizens, a London bank is still an EU bank. In principle the country is "rapidly" negotiating a long term arrangement on everything for completing by the end of the year. This hypothetical "deal" would set up the relationship from 2021 onwards. In practice there are two schools of thought. Maybe the intent is to get to the end of the year and accuse the EU of having somehow failed to achieve a deal (even though the EU was always clear that would take much more than a year) then break off with no relationship and suffer a huge economic down turn as a result. Maybe somehow that works politically? It's hard to see how, but it's not as though Brexit made sense anyway. Or maybe the idea is to build up the tension and then announce we've belatedly discovered that it isn't possible to finish the deal immediately and so we'd like an extra say, two years to finish making a deal, kicking the can down the road. Who knows.
  - joshuahughes 6y ago
    > British citizens are still EU citizens The UK actually left the EU on January 31st, 2020. We're still 'Europeans' (inhabitants of the continent of Europe) but no longer EU citizens.
    - tialaramex 6y ago
      My mistake. You're correct, British citizens are no longer EU citizens (though there are court cases that dispute this) but all the freedoms they had as EU citizens continue until transition ends (currently supposedly at the end of 2020).
- ForHackernews 6y ago
  Nobody knows what will happen, really, but so far yes. I just think it's amusing the idea that London has weathered the Fall of the Roman Empire, the Black Plague, the Blitz, and the Brexit vote, but what will finally dim its star is Twitter sanctioning WFH.

rorykoehler 6y ago

I feel like we crossed the chasm in the past and regressed back over it.

cableshaft 6y ago
If we didn't cross it, we got pretty close. Thanks, Marissa Mayer for resetting the clock on that one. /s
- sokoloff 6y ago
  It’s not like Yahoo was killing it and she somehow snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. They were being comically left behind and at one point I believe their investment in Alibaba was worth more than the entirety of Yahoo (meaning the company itself had a negative intrinsic value).

gotocode20 6y ago

I think the increasing openness towards remote work is certainly encouraging, but it still seems a bit too early to conclude that these companies will consider going fully remote to be sustainable in the long run. As the author notes, once companies figure out a streamlined and scalable way of onboarding and supporting a remote-first workforce, we should see much greater adoption of this approach.

myspy 6y ago
The hard part is doing everything written down instead of talking about it over the desk. And a lot of people hate writing. Also chat tools are causing huge distractions and work needs to be better organised than that.

joelbluminator 6y ago

Hmm a decade or two? IDK, could be way sooner. If Corona comes back at the fall (this time accompanied by regular influenza) there's just not much choice I think. When this is all over all companies will have experience in running things remote for a year or two. It could be there'll still be an office but 50% of the personnel is remote. We'll see what happens, but I don't think this is gonna take 20 years.

AlexeyMK 6y ago
Agreed that tech companies will make the switch a lot sooner. What about a GE-types, though? Also, I'm generally bearish on remote-friendly or half-remote. Either the culture is set up for it, or it isn't. You can't be just a little bit pregnant.
- znpy 6y ago
  > What about a GE-types, though? They'll either adapt or have a bad time finding office workers.
- joelbluminator 6y ago
  > Also, I'm generally bearish on remote-friendly or half-remote I don't see why. I actually think half remote is the way to go to preserve the advantages of both worlds. It's a big question how the post corona world will look - are we just gonna forget it ever happened or are we going to try not to pack people in very small places? I don't have an answer to that question yet. It really depends on what's gonna happen in coming autumn / winter. A second and third wave of this thing will probably change things for good.
  - cmdshiftf4 6y ago
    >I actually think half remote is the way to go to preserve the advantages of both worlds It's also a way to preserve the disadvantages of both worlds. For the company, it means having to retain an office in an attractive location and design it with an estimated capacity based on the whims of the people employed there. For the employees, it means having to both retain housing near an office in an expensive location, which usually comes with not insignificant sacrifices, _and_ set up some sort of office for yourself at home, which may not be possible due to those sacrifices. It also means employees, when some but not all are remote, are going to be put in the position of having to juggle onsite/remote meetings which are very difficult to get right unless you mandate it to being remote-first, which doesn't gel well with open office spaces.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

zaphirplane 6y ago

Suxs to be weWork

znpy 6y ago
Yeah, it's been a while since somebody named wework..
zhte415 6y ago
It does suck to be WeWork, but perhaps not for co-working spaces. Reasoning: Acceptance of remote working, or at least not coming to the office, is boosted. But not everyone can work comfortably at home: Distractions, discipline. So a local co-working place nearby becomes attractive. There's no WeWork where I live but there is a local library and (before lockdowns) it's packed throughout the day with people studying or on their laptops. Upside: Free. Downside: No possibility for calls or video. I'm pretty confident that ultra-local co-location working facilities could take advantage of demand for people that don't want to work at home but also don't want a commute. It could be as simple as a house in a neighbourhood with solid internet, a few extra tables, the kitchen's already there, and a few bedrooms converted to private areas for video conference. Perhaps a good franchise model. I'd be on-board as a user. Ten other people in a 2000sqft house would fund it pretty easily: Zoning and an SLA on the internet connection seem to be the only hurdles. Edit: Thinking about it, I have friends that do this already informally by renting a cheap apartment.

zuhayeer 6y ago

I always felt that remote work would eventually come. I've seen it in how my friends would slowly converge to 2-3 days wfh a few months after graduating and starting a job. It seems like adoption has just been accelerated by circumstance now. People are realizing that they can do everything they need to do at home within 2-3 hours. The most attractive part of the office are the water cooler conversations and social activities completely unrelated to work. And that's why I still think there's a place for shared workspaces. Companies will shrink their large centralized headquarters and start building satellite presences. No need to fit everyone into one big mega-campus.

supernintendo 6y ago

> Techies have been leaving San Francisco for cities like Portland, Austin, Denver and Seattle (PADS) for over a decade. We seek a place to settle down and improve cost-to-quality-of-life ratio. As someone born in a small North Carolina town into poverty who has lived in Portland for close to a decade, this is both hilarious and depressing. Bay Area tech folks are really suffering from some sort of economic Stockholm Syndrome. I’d love to see what would happen if one were to move from San Francisco to a city like Chiang Mai, Thailand. It can’t be much different than winning the lottery.

AlexeyMK 6y ago
We did that for about a month in 2015; made it for Songkran. It was pretty great. Frustrating with time zones and car pollution, but otherwise solid. Ristr8to remains a favorite.
- supernintendo 6y ago
  As far as I know the air pollution in Thailand is largely attributed to forest fires rather than vehicle emissions [0]. Funny enough, this also seems to be the case for Portland, Oregon [1]. [0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/05/07/northern-thailand-was-once-paradise-now-forest-fires-have-made-air-worse-than-beijings/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/05/07/northern-tha... [1] https://www.kgw.com/mobile/article/weather/air-quality/portlands-air-quality-second-worst-among-major-cities-worldwide/283-586223379 https://www.kgw.com/mobile/article/weather/air-quality/portl...
  - CalRobert 6y ago
    "Car Pollution" may be a term for encompassing all the negative externalities caused by cars near people. Crash risk, reduced walkability and cyclability, noise pollution, increased sedentism, higher housing costs (due to parking minimums, car-friendly zoning,) etc. For instance, I'd love to let my kid ride a bike to school. I don't because of cars (well, drivers, really). That's a form of pollution, in a sense.

mattlondon 6y ago

> Presentation Final Final [2].pdf Alexey - please make sure to use 'Copy of Presentation Final Final [2] (Matt's version) (Copy).pdf' going forward. Presentation Final Final [2].pdf is out of date. Thx.

C1sc0cat 6y ago
ROTFL - I think a lot of younger workers especially in the marketing side might have a rude shock if they had to face an ISO 9000 / BS5750 Audit. Joking aside WFH makes these sort of problems even worse I have considered suggesting we make all documents source controlled and use git to handle check in and out.
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  You don't you collaborative tools like drive or office365?
  - C1sc0cat 6y ago
    Doesn't solve the "Copy of Presentation Final Final [2] (Matt's version) (Copy).pdf" problem though. And trying to get people to use office 365's scs is going to be hard and if all your technical docs are in git makes sense to use on scs
    - rorykoehler 6y ago
      How doesn't it solve that problem? It's 100% solved it where I work.
palsir 6y ago
And there are solutions to this. From what I understand (which isn't very much), the SolidWorks (a 3d CAD tool) team has their own version control system, called PDM, which works with the Microsoft office suite. next is organizations getting over the hurdle of educating people how to use version control. Also - I think the current generation of office stores everything in XML, which can then be processed through git, svn, etc.

will_raw 6y ago

> From Github to DuckDuckGo, remote-first successful businesses are no longer rare. Github or Gitlab?

AlexeyMK 6y ago
Both? Github, originally, Gitlab, more recently.
myspy 6y ago
Both I think. Met a Github guy at a conference once and he told me he worked remote.

yosito 6y ago

I've been working remotely as a programmer for 7 years, but I still find that even in the current situation, a lot of companies insist that once the current crisis is over, they NEED people on-site. I'm still waiting, and hoping, for the fabled "remote work is the norm".

vladvasiliu 6y ago
I think the problem with those companies is that they used to think they "NEEDED" the people on site, so they never bothered to setup a culture of written and asynchronous communication. So when the current crisis pushed them to WFH they were completely unprepared for it. Of course when this will be over they'll want people back on site: "See how terrible WFH was? We need to have people on-site working face to face"
- eequah9L 6y ago
  Curiously this "must be on site" mentality seems to be ripe even in some companies that have many offices, and people are de facto remote relative to each other anyway. Getting a "you know, I'm not sure this remote thing can work" from an architect that spends about half of his time on the phone just makes you go "what?" Dude's so busy calling everywhere that he's difficult to get hold of, but "remote can't work"? My experience has been that few people drive to the other side of the campus for a run of the mill chat or some random presentation. Unless it's in the same building, and unless it's something important, you just call, mail, chat, send office365 links, do skype presentations... you know, the remote stuff. So above a certain size, it's in the company's best interest to embrace remoteness anyway.

solidasparagus 6y ago

I'm unconvinced. The current WFH environment is not representative. It's only been a couple of months so the effects aren't fully understood and we are still in the honeymoon period. More importantly everyone has to work from home so there is no comparison between people who are WFH and those in the office - when WFH goes back to being a choice, I think we'll remember all of the frustrations remote workers had at non-fully remote companies.

techsupporter 6y ago
> when WFH goes back to being a choice, I think we'll remember all of the frustrations remote workers had at non-fully remote companies Yep, this is what I think happens. When the boss goes back to the office and is annoyed that no one is around for meetings or when enough people on a team or group decide that it’s just easier to “optionally” be back at work to have hallway conversations... Even saying “just come in on Thursdays for meetings” means the bulk of the work-anywhere dream many of the threads on HN have on the front page simply don’t materialize.
- iso947 6y ago
  My 2nd level boss is delighted she’s getting 120 people in a weekly catch up meeting to explain what’s going on across the department. Normally the meeting is every month and only fits 50 people in the largest meeting room At the top they are concerned - the main office is at 10% capacity (some things can’t be done from home - at least without 40g connections and large custom workstations), and after 10 years of cramming more people in they’ve realised offices cost money. They are looking to extend wfh significantly.
  - sq_ 6y ago
    Do you think that the bigger meeting correlates with actual increased value for everyone involved? Such a large meeting, especially via Zoom or something similar, seems like it would become disorganized fast.
    - 6y ago

tanilama 6y ago

I would not predict future for that far. I am imagining a world where coming to office everyday isn't a requirement. And it is probably going to be true. However, I am not sure WFH will become the NORM. I definitely feels that my co-workers close to their manager gets more attention and thus their career tracks faster. All need to be put under perspective.

phillc73 6y ago
I've been having similar thoughts. The company I work for already had a general policy that working remotely one day a week was fine, provided permission was granted by the relevant line manager. This day was primarily to be used for focusing on writing papers (company is positioned in the grey ground between commercial and academic worlds). However, over the last three months with everyone remote, all the time, it's worked generally well, apart from when access to the labs or R&D plant was required. I've been missing some of the face to face interactions, and meeting in person can move some discussions forward quicker. My volume of email has dramatically increased. In the future, I can see two or three days per week remote working being completely plausible and healthy for productive work. A couple of days per week in the office will still be useful for access to specialist equipment, personal networking and team building.

rewoi 6y ago

WFH is now mainstream. In past everyone had to love noisy open plane office, and sacrifice two weeks of holiday to flu every year. Now there is a solid argument for alternative.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
dbancajas 6y ago
aren't sick days separate from paid holidays?

amaajemyfren 6y ago

I think another interesting data point demonstrating progress in this is the fact that the US Supreme Court can now receive requests, vote to listen to them, receive pleadings and also listening to oral arguments remotely. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBrzxt7l7q4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBrzxt7l7q4

jerzyt 6y ago

I don't think you can institutionalize remote work. The team has to gel. I've worked with extremely efficient and motivated team, where we basically communicated through Skype and chat. We met at the office once a week. Best job I've ever had. And I've also worked on a completely disjointed and disfunctional remote team. Only the team can make it work, not any mandate from above.

mpweiher 6y ago
You can have dysfunctional/well-functioning remote/in-office teams. And you're right it is the team that has to gel and make things work. It just applies just as much to in-office as remote.

rofws 6y ago

I had read a comment(that I completely agree with) from someone here on HN (sorry I forgot the username), that the current WFH is working because EVERYONE is working from home. The moment half of the work force starts working from the office again, the dynamics are going to change. Those offtopic, face to face chitchats you have with your colleagues or boss hugely help your career growth. The WFH people are going to miss out on that. One positive that this crisis has created though, is all businesses and institutions will take remote work seriously, and take the steps required to make it possible, especially as another wave of COVID19 is expected.

nottorp 6y ago
Yep. As someone who has worked from home for most of the past 20 years (pandemic? what pandemic, i'm still available)... if the company isn't 100% remote you'll be left behind. So apply to Twitter now :)
- mikekchar 6y ago
  Got to agree here. It only takes one manager in your upstream that doesn't like remote to cut you out of the loop. It's not certain that it will happen, but over a long career it approaches certainty. It's not necessarily the end of the world, but advancement is companies is very tricky when you are a minority remote worker. BTW, slightly off topic, but that picture of working on the beach? Too bright. Can't work. One day I hope I will finally be able to get an e-ink based laptop. I live within walking distance of the beach ;-) Perhaps sacrificing upward mobility isn't so bad...
ornornor 6y ago
> Those offtopic, face to face chitchats you have with your colleagues or boss hugely help your career growth. The WFH people are going to miss out on that. I suspect there is a non-trivial amount of people who don't care about that. I've been writing software for a while now. I don't want to become team lead or manager. I don't care for the drama. I just want to do my job, get paid, and go home. In that case, WFH is perfect.

dougmwne 6y ago

I understand the impulse to believe this is all temporary and that the extroverts who lead our companies will get us all back into the open office as soon as they can. Consider a financial reality. There is likely to be a terrible recession over the next few years. There will be layoffs and bankruptcies. Office space is hugely expensive. Some competitors are going to choose not to renew office space or to downsize their offices as this crisis drags on. And your company will have to compete with those companies who have cut costs without loosing efficiency. We are living through a black swan event, so it's a healthy exercise to forget everything you think you know about how the world works. I don't know how this is going to play out.

rubber_duck 6y ago
>Office space is hugely expensive. Not in a recession
- mynegation 6y ago
  It is expensive to _someone_ all the time. If not to the tenant then to the owner: taxes, heating, HVAC, preventive maintenance, cleaning, security need to continue - filled or empty.
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- oblio 6y ago
  You've reminded me of something. Office gear will become massively cheaper the following period. Especially second hand gear.
eequah9L 6y ago
The US unemployment is currently about 15%, up from some 3-4% that it was in the previous months. I wonder if there will be an effects on office space demand, and thus its price. Maybe it will become not as hugely expensive?

AzzieElbab 6y ago

There are tones of office buildings companies use to refinance themselves. There will be consequences when these buildings decline in value

rcpt 6y ago

Outside of The Bay are people really excited about leaving? It sucks here with the NIMBYs, the boring endless sprawl, the high taxes and bad public services, and the insane housing costs. But I've always thought people were generally happy about living in NYC, Seattle, Boulder, and Austin. (Though of those cities I've only lived in New York)

credit_guy 6y ago
> generally happy about living in NYC NYC has insane housing costs too. And high taxes. The public schools are hit and miss. Some are really good, but most not.
- rcpt 6y ago
  NYC is much more affordable if you're willing to commute from Queens - you can get a two bedroom near Jackson Heights for under $300k and still take the train to work in Manhattan. If you want to live in Manhattan you pay a lot but it at least feels like you're getting something in return by being walking distance to the cultural, financial, and media capital of the world. The Bay is nearly as expensive as Manhattan but for the most part it's indistinguishable from any random suburb in Florida or Texas or wherever. Lawns, Costcos, car dealerships - really not worth $4k a month.

bluedays 6y ago

This honestly sounds like my worst nightmare.

purplezooey 6y ago

Techies have been leaving San Francisco for cities ... for over a decade. Not so much true if you look at the numbers. It's more just additional growth in the other areas.