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Why do people continue to push this myth? “ Kirsty Allsopp led the anti-remote work charge on Twitter, suggesting that if your job can be done from home, it ca

by xyst 6y ago

Why do people continue to push this myth? “ Kirsty Allsopp led the anti-remote work charge on Twitter, suggesting that if your job can be done from home, it can be done from anywhere in the world. Who would have thought that a couple of months of working in shorts and a T-Shirt has made us more susceptible to being replaced by less expensive folk in India, Myanmar and China?” It doesn’t matter if they are American or live halfway across the world. If you want amazing talent, you are going to have to pay them well. Talented people are usually well aware of the salary differences between American vs local companies of their region. The people that tend to take the low offer are usually not in the best position to do the best work compared to their counterpart. I have met and worked with amazing talent from all across the world. At the same time I have also worked with people that should have never been in the business and were the root cause of project delays caused by buggy features and constant rework. Whether they are American or not, the people in the latter group tended to be in a group that was not happy largely due to their pay. In the cases I probed for more information, I discovered amongst the contracting companies that placed bids, the company took the lowest bid that was offered. No fucking surprise that 8-12 months later that the project is behind by at least half a year. Moral of the story companies need to pay well - regardless of the location of the person - in order to get a quality product that is pushed to the masses in time and remain competitive.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ImaCake 6y ago
Maybe management keeps saying this to scare the operations people into working harder. Lots of arsehole managers think this is the way to hold onto staff and make them work harder. Of course it really doesn't work that way, but maybe some managers benefit from this shitty tactic in orthogonal ways.
onecommentman 6y ago
1. I do wonder why in the US we permit discrimination based on place of residence and place of birth. You can legally discriminate based on accent or other indicators of your place of birth or development, but not legally discriminate for race, gender, sexual orientation. And similarly we are also permitting employers to discriminate based on where you choose, or life exigencies compel you, to live, modulo objective work-related collocation requirements. Maybe a pivot by SJWs is in order. 2. The very largest US companies learned long ago about the importance of a significant geographic economic presence all over this great country aka USA. Alternatively 90+ Members of Congress explained the virtue via anti-trust actions and other targeted legislation. With telework, FANG and the like get the political benefit of constituencies across Congressional districts and States without the overhead of managing a lot of real estate for offices. 3. There are a lot of edge cases being thrown around in this thread. It’s good to hear those voices, but it can make it hard to gain a sense of how many people actually now experience telework as a good thing or a bad thing, especially if/when some fraction of infrastructure cost savings are directly shared with the employees. 4. To the question of the original post, businesses dependent on commuters (including those who own real estate in the commercial area) call up the Mayor, and the Mayor calls CEOs and begs/threatens/pleads/flatters/seduces/cajoles and it is easier to send the droids back to the grind than to hear the Mayor’s minions whine and complain, unless the droids push back hard. [Purely personal guess]
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  > And similarly we are also permitting employers to discriminate based on where you choose, or life exigencies compel you, to live Presumably this works both ways. Google does not pay 500K/year to developers in the Portland office. Why should SF developers get paid more? Nobody cared until engineers out of SF wanted to take advantage of remote work but keep the big paycheck.

by xyst 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ImaCake 6y ago

Maybe management keeps saying this to scare the operations people into working harder. Lots of arsehole managers think this is the way to hold onto staff and make them work harder. Of course it really doesn't work that way, but maybe some managers benefit from this shitty tactic in orthogonal ways.

onecommentman 6y ago

1. I do wonder why in the US we permit discrimination based on place of residence and place of birth. You can legally discriminate based on accent or other indicators of your place of birth or development, but not legally discriminate for race, gender, sexual orientation. And similarly we are also permitting employers to discriminate based on where you choose, or life exigencies compel you, to live, modulo objective work-related collocation requirements. Maybe a pivot by SJWs is in order. 2. The very largest US companies learned long ago about the importance of a significant geographic economic presence all over this great country aka USA. Alternatively 90+ Members of Congress explained the virtue via anti-trust actions and other targeted legislation. With telework, FANG and the like get the political benefit of constituencies across Congressional districts and States without the overhead of managing a lot of real estate for offices. 3. There are a lot of edge cases being thrown around in this thread. It’s good to hear those voices, but it can make it hard to gain a sense of how many people actually now experience telework as a good thing or a bad thing, especially if/when some fraction of infrastructure cost savings are directly shared with the employees. 4. To the question of the original post, businesses dependent on commuters (including those who own real estate in the commercial area) call up the Mayor, and the Mayor calls CEOs and begs/threatens/pleads/flatters/seduces/cajoles and it is easier to send the droids back to the grind than to hear the Mayor’s minions whine and complain, unless the droids push back hard. [Purely personal guess]

rootusrootus 6y ago
> And similarly we are also permitting employers to discriminate based on where you choose, or life exigencies compel you, to live Presumably this works both ways. Google does not pay 500K/year to developers in the Portland office. Why should SF developers get paid more? Nobody cared until engineers out of SF wanted to take advantage of remote work but keep the big paycheck.