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One thing that is not often mentioned is these threads is how this is particularly beneficial for European workers. They live in cities that are already small a
by cblconfederate 6y ago
One thing that is not often mentioned is these threads is how this is particularly beneficial for European workers. They live in cities that are already small and dense, generally don't depend on the office for their socialization, internet speeds are good (due to density probably) and family life is balanced. Plus a lot of them are already accustomed to working remotely. They 'll probably be able to compete for a lot more jobs now.
- contrarianmop 6y agoDang! They’ll take are jobs now and move them over to their low density, high speed internet cities.
- rtweetr 6y agoDang! They’ll take are jobs and move them over to there low density high speed internet cities.
- ghaff 6y agoTimezones are challenging between US West Coast and Europe. But, at my company, we do a lot of collaboration between US East Coast and Central Europe--which seems manageable synchronously but is probably approaching the limit where it's fairly straightforward (on a frequent basis).
- caymanjim 6y agoI'm US east coast working for a US west coast client, and that's complicated enough. I've got a few hours before and after work to myself, which is nice, but the workday is smack in the middle. On the upside, I can sleep in and stay up late if I want. On the downside, I often miss family dinners (less of a concern with covid) and there's no long block of time for more than errands during the week. Overall, I like it. A bigger shift would be hard. I may move to Hawaii when the plague passes, and then my day would start at 6am. That'd be rough.
- ghaff 6y agoI actually know someone who is a one-woman PR agency in Hawaii with mostly (all?) West Coast clients. Yes, she gets up at like 5AM. I have a lot of calls that are mostly people in eastern time and central European time. It mostly works pretty well. We schedule calls typically between about 8:30 and 11 ET. Sometimes those of us in ET have a bit earlier calls than we prefer and the Europeans have calls a bit later than they'd prefer but it works pretty well. And we just don't expect Europeans to get back to us on the same day if we send them an email in the afternoon and they don't expect us to respond to emails in their morning. Of course, if you're contracting the client may well want a more synchronized schedule.
- thedufer 6y ago> I may move to Hawaii when the plague passes, and then my day would start at 6am. That'd be rough. I know someone who did this. If you're a morning person already, the 5am wake-up isn't terrible, and finishing work at 2pm means you get prime surfing time every day. Not a bad way to go.
- arbitrary_name 6y agoLiterally did this all the way through the bay areas SIP order. Was going to head back but things are worse in Hawaii now, they just shut down the beaches...
- vosper 6y ago> I may move to Hawaii when the plague passes, and then my day would start at 6am. That'd be rough I do this, but from New Zealand: 5am (in winter) is 10am in SF, so I wake up at 4:50am. I'm usually online by about 5:15am. I manage a software team, who are distributed across North and South America. It works fine. There's more than enough overlap between all our timezones (some of my South America team have adjusted towards SF time, too, though I haven't asked them to). Many of my colleagues don't even know what time it is for me, which is kind of the idea - it makes it easier if I just stick to west coast office hours, then no-one else has to think about it. The early starts do drag as winter goes on, but I have the first daylight savings coming up in about 6 weeks - that'll mean 6am starts - then another DST shift will make it 7am (but I'll probably do 6:30am). I am a morning person, and though I wouldn't usually wake up at 5am by choice, I wake up and become fully alert quickly enough that it's fine. Having a big contiguous block of time in the afternoon / evening is amazing. Even in the middle of winter I finish work at 1pm and I have ~4 hours of daylight left to do whatever. In summer I'll finish around 2pm and have 7 hours of daylight. It's like having a full day to do stuff, every day - provided I have the energy.
- cheerlessbog 6y agoWhat makes it truly hard (speaking from US location) is having a team in both directions. If you’re an Eastward team, or Westward team, but not attempting both, there is enough overlap that with some flexibility you can have meetings when everyone is awake.
- nimchimpsky 6y agoEh? Why are you singly out europe ? How do you think the rest of the world lives ?
- sverhagen 6y ago> don't depend on the office for their socialization Could you explain what you mean by this argument?
- 9nGQluzmnq3M 6y agoBy and large, Europe does not have Silicon Valley's culture of crazy overtime, living at the office, and spending your remaining free time with your colleagues.
- user5994461 6y agoEuropean companies don't have equally nice office, free snacks or pay as top American companies. Companies that hire young driven workers and have a good environment can get a similar amount of overtime and the work all the time attitude.
- strictfp 6y agoNot so sure about that. I know plenty offices in Stockholm with free food, drinks and entertainment for employees.
- user5994461 6y agoAnd they stay in office after 5pm to take advantage of the perks?
- rtweetr 6y agoSame in London, UK. And you need to overwork yourself to eat then.
- heyitsguay 6y agoThis is a total tangent, but I'm an American with a partner from Stockholm, and we're interested in maybe moving over there when that is possible again. Do you have any suggestions or resources for getting to understand the tech scene around Stockholm, especially AI/computer vision stuff? Thanks!
- ryanSrich 6y agoWhich is hilarious to me as someone that has hired devs from Europe for a while now. Why compete with FAANG trying to pay new grads $300k when you can pay an experienced developer from Europe $100k? I honestly never understood it.
- emddudley 6y agoThere are a lot of experienced developers in the U.S. you can hire for 100k too, outside the large metropolitan areas.
- scarface74 6y agoI can’t think of a single great developer that you could hire in the US for $100K. The few jobs in non metropolitan areas for software developers are going to be WordPress Developers. Everyone else is going to at least leave for the closest metropolitan area.
- war1025 6y agoAs someone in the Midwest, this seems pretty biased to me. I make right about $100k, which is pretty competitive for the area from what I can tell. It's possible I'm just getting completely fleeced, but I think that's unlikely. But then again, I guess you can just play the "No true Scotsman" game and argue that I don't count as a truly great developer.
- emddudley 6y agoI am in a similar boat and all these rich developers in the SV web bubble fill me with self doubt.
- scarface74 6y agoI’m not in Silicon Valley - I’m on the opposite coast. I’m not talking about the difference between small town and SV. I’m more referring to moving from SmallTown, Nebraska to Omaha Nebraska where experienced developers wouldn’t usually accept $100K. I moved from SmallTown southern United States four hours away to Metro City southern US for increased opportunities almost 25 years ago.
- m463 6y ago> internet speeds are good (due to density probably) ISPs and wireless carriers are the most profitable companies in the USA all with 60% gross profit margin if you look and any of the financials. When my friend was younger he worked for a cable company, where he did installs. He said the capital costs were usually covered in the first month of service, and everything was gravy after that. So. What if in another country instead of extracting the profit, they put 5% of it back into the infrastructure. I suspect you would have what a lot of europeans have - fast internet. And what if you didn't take as much profit? You would have the other thing europeans have, cheap internet. I mean, I like capitalism. It works! But I think there are some things that are out of whack.
- paulryanrogers 6y agoBecause much of the US doesn't have capitalism for ISPs. It's largely monopolies and oligopolies all around. And not the nonprofit, regulated utility type.
- mnm1 6y agoThat's exactly the end result of capitalism, at least in America, due to lack of proper regulations. There's nothing more capitalistic than a monopoly or duopoly. Oligopoly at worst. This is the goal every single capitalistic organization in the world strives for. From Google to Apple to drug dealers and slavers they all want monopoly or close to it. To claim that monopoly is not capitalistic is delusional. It's the most capitalistic situation possible and the most desired and sought after universally. It earns the winner the most capital. America has really perfected this system in its legal markets, although on the black market many other countries have too.
- paulryanrogers 6y agoTechnically you may be correct. I meant capitalism, small 'c', as understood in the post-Standard-Oil era. If there is no competition then it's not truly a free market. So perhaps I should have written free-market capitalism.
- majormajor 6y agoHiring and operating out of a whole new country (or several) is a bigger leap for a company to make than just "anywhere in the same country" - the places I've talked to are considering making the latter change permanent, but aren't looking at starting to hire internationally.
- twelvechairs 6y agoIts worth noting Atlassian's roots in Australia mean they have had a long history of working across borders. Both the founders just bought the two most expensive houses in Sydney adjacent to each other so presumably they don't want to be bound by geography in running their business either.
- noir_lord 6y agoMy company forced me back into a windowless massive open office back in June, I handed in my notice yesterday to take a better paid 100% remote position with a company that has been 100% remote for years before this crisis. That it also comes with a substantial pay rise, zero travel and the opportunity to work on stuff I actually find interesting is just a gigantic cherry on the cake. It was by far the largest factor in getting me to go look elsewhere though not the only one. I was frank (though polite) with my boss (since I'm a lead and I have zero intention of ever returning) about it - they are going to haemorrhage their senior developers and I know stuff he doesn't yet about others leaving.
- aliswe 6y agoHad to look this up, "haemorrhage" meaning blood loss.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- noir_lord 6y agoIt's a good word isn't it. In this context it means slowly bleed out developers from the teams until all the vital parts have left and you have a husk left. It's also commonly used when referring to money when an unexpected event has led to losing a lot of money unexpectedly.
- quickthrower2 6y agoWindowless is the worse! Good on ya. We are human dammit.
- sild 6y agoI once worked in an office with fake windows---just some blinds hung over a small recess in the wall. When our team first arrived in the office, a colleague walked over to them and said something along the lines of `let's get some sunlight in here' before opening them to reveal the deception.