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I would be in favor of a number of working arrangements, ranging from working in a Bay Area office full-time(least favorite) to working from home most-time in a

I would be in favor of a number of working arrangements, ranging from working in a Bay Area office full-time(least favorite) to working from home most-time in an area that provides me with the chance to buy a home and have a reasonable commute to a satellite office. I am absolutely, 100% against full-time WFH in an expensive, low-quality(no sound/thermal insulation) Bay Area apartment without a dedicated workspace. > if your job can be done from home, it can be done from anywhere in the world I will call anyone's bluff who says this. Do it. Good luck. If you haven't successfully done this already, there is a reason and you know it. One final point is that anyone looking to judge my WFH productivity better take into account the endless procession of major disasters taking place outside my window. WFH in a pandemic with looting and massive wildfires is not the same as WFH in a 'normal' year.

secondcoming 6y ago
> I will call anyone's bluff who says this. Do it. Good luck. If you haven't successfully done this already, there is a reason and you know it. It's fine. They can force the expensive employee to teach the new cheap person everything they need to know in the few weeks before departure! /s
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
  LOL, yeah, sure.
maneesh 6y ago
>> if your job can be done from home, it can be done from anywhere in the world > I will call anyone's bluff who says this. Do it. Good luck. If you haven't successfully done this already, there is a reason and you know it. Welp, I'm the CEO of a smart wearable device company (https://pavlok.com https://pavlok.com). We were based in Boston because everyone told me, and I believed you HAD to be in one place to build a startup, and DEFINITELY for a hardware startup. Then when I finally closed the Boston office and moved to Medellin, Colombia. Then budapest. Then Berlin. Then Bali. Then Mexico. All while doing the same for the team -- remote first, work anywhere. Only then did we begin to explode in productivity and success. I don't think it's true for EVERY job (tough to do janitorial cleanup from another country). But it is possible for a lot lot lot lot more than you think.
- aspaceman 6y ago
  I can’t even with this comment. Not everyone has the resources to make a working place anywhere viable. You seem to have the resources to make a hotel in Budapest or whatever work. Talking so causally about international travel already puts you beyond most Americans’ income. So yeah it is very, very easy for folks with a job like yours, and with the resources you’re afforded, to work anywhere. The issue isn’t proximity to resources, but the ability to complete work.
  - sunshinekitty 6y ago
    It seems to be implied with the closing of their Boston office that the whole staff is remote, not just this person.
    - grogenaut 6y ago
      also that they had already built a strong team
  - woodson 6y ago
    Staying at AirBnBs in the listed cities and working from there is quite likely cheaper than renting office space in Boston (probably even including airfare). So it’s not about “resources” as in money, it’s about being able to be productive working from all these places, especially when taking into account the time zone difference to other members of the team.
    - maigret 6y ago
      Yes, and... I’d be curious to see which digital nomads follow the local taxes regulations. It’s easy to get in trouble with working abroad.
      - woodson 6y ago
        Fully agreed, taxes and work permit/visa are topics that are likely being neglected by most. Often, there simply isn’t a visa category that allows individuals to work for foreign entities while residing in another country, as regular work visas are for employment with an entity based in the country.
an_opabinia 6y ago
It’s an interesting question. First it’s wrong to assume there cannot exist multiple sets of laws in the same physical place, which reduces to effectively the economics of offshoring. Amazon delivery contractors deploy undocumented workers or people with unlicensed driving skills, paying them $7/hr and charging Amazon $15/hr. It’s economically positive for sure. The drivers live here. Is it really the same country or the same laws? It’s also wrong to assume people have tried or will document the consequences of their try. Apple already earns more than $1m per retail employee. The gulf between Apple and BestBuy’s revenue per employee is much bigger than the savings due to offshoring anywhere in the world. I personally don’t think it’s obvious why Apple Retail stores are so successful, it is multifactorial and very difficult to reproduce, so even basic service jobs may never be worth trying to offshore (whatever that means) if there’s absolutely no way it could really matter. Another way of looking at it is that retail store bankruptcies occurring today were inevitable, the economics of what they were doing never made sense, so even if offshoring could save them money they were still doomed. This is a much harder conversation to have about IBM or Accenture, who have made offshoring a consistent economic positive for someone, we just can’t be sure it is for their clients or for them. However, it seems pretty obvious that a robot (or an abstraction thereof, like an automated warehouse) can do a lot of what retail workers do. So I still think it’s all about the mechanics of the job, and it’s definitely a signal if you can WFH.
ConcernedCoder 6y ago
Yeah, I don't know about working from "anywhere in the world"... I'm sure there's places without good internet, etc... that would make that difficult or impossible. I can say one thing about it after being 100% WFH for 2+ years now, I can set my alarm clock, to wake me up exactly 1 hour before my morning video conference "standup" meeting, and still have time to wash-up, make coffee, watch the markets open, be properly awake and caffinated to participate in the meeting, etc... Previously, depending on the total commute time, I would need to set that same alarm perhaps 2 hours or more in advance... the stress of the commute aside, I was getting less sleep on average, and in my line of work ( programming ) sleep is valuable to me, it helps me think better than when tired. I feel more rested, healthier, happier, less stressed, and I know my productivity has INCREASED over the alternative in-office scenarios...
- gerdesj 6y ago
  I'm an MD of a very small firm in the UK and I have had my mindset changed by events. A huge social experiment on homeworking has been done (and ongoing) and results are in. I will make my commuters into remote workers by default unless they either want to come in or have to. One of my guys is Polish in Poland and can do whatever the hell he wants! Most of my staff are a bit stressed over SARS-COV-2, as am I but we will crack on. I'm glad to hear you are thriving. You are one of the folks keeping your economy going (wherever that is) - take some pride in that.
  - solidasparagus 6y ago
    > A huge social experiment on homeworking has been done (and ongoing) and results are in. No they really aren't. It will be several years until we really understand the effect of remote work on areas like talent management, retention, idea generation, trust building, etc.
  - kelnos 6y ago
    > A huge social experiment on homeworking has been done (and ongoing) and results are in. Sort of? Unfortunately this experiment also has included forced isolation and social distancing, and for parents where schools and day care have closed, a further experiment in what happens when parents have to simultaneously do child care and get work done. I expect it's hard to look at what's going on now and really see what prevalent home-working looks like in normal times, when there isn't a global pandemic going on, people can still meet co-workers when necessary, and friends for normal social activities, and parents can still send their kids to school and get in a productive day of work without constant interruptions from their kids.
Izkata 6y ago
> > if your job can be done from home, it can be done from anywhere in the world > I will call anyone's bluff who says this. Do it. Good luck. If you haven't successfully done this already, there is a reason and you know it. I can give an example here: Back in March/April, we were told that if we wanted to "WFH" in another state, we had to get approval first due to laws around payments and taxes. Some states were pre-approved because of remote workers we already employed, but most had to be looked into and it wasn't a guarantee they'd be approved.
gerdesj 6y ago
My company (IT consultancy) is based in the SW of England. One of my employees is Polish and now lives in Poland. Mid 2019 he decided to return to Poland from here (got married, child born, look after ailing parents etc!) and we came to an agreement. He gets paid UK rates for a UK job and lives in Poland as a sub-contractor. He may do other stuff there as well but I don't care - I get my pound of flesh 8) Poland is an hour ahead of the UK so he generally gets to run the 0800 start which works nicely. Now this is not the new normal bollocks. It works for us and him. I can't ask him to go to Cardiff and roll out a few dozen new laptops but in general it doesn't matter that he is in a town in Poland that I can't possibly pronounce the name of, instead of Yeovil, when fixing a snag in Sherborne or Hull. I and my company are very lucky that we can still function effectively, regardless of location. I as MD am now much more disposed towards home working. We were already pretty flexible but now I am far keener on even more flexibility. There are loads of silly and not so silly things to work out eg "I did x but n doesn't seem to be pulling their weight" etc. We need to invent mechanisms to deal with this. We already do a weekly get together on Teams but that is not good enough.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
rootusrootus 6y ago
> I will call anyone's bluff who says this. Do it. Good luck. If you haven't successfully done this already, there is a reason and you know it. I tend to agree. At least as it relates to offshoring. My company has been doing a 50/50 split between the US and Hyderabad/Pune for years, and there is no real danger of us moving everything to India. Good developers there aren't really that much cheaper than good developers in the US. The 10-12 hour offset is a huge impediment to success. Some folks there will work really late to make up for it, but there's still a pretty big gap. Not a lot we can do to make it better other than move entire groups over there and minimize communication requirements. What I can see happening is more competition within the US. Having developers offset a couple hours is no big deal. Same culture, same language, and three hours ahead is just fine. We do that every day. So it may be that remote developers who used to work in expensive locations like SF will find that they can't command that salary when they are indistinguishable from any other remote developer in the continental US.
ip26 6y ago
if your job can be done from home, it can be done from anywhere in the world Anyone who says this has never tried to work closely with someone in a timezone ~12 hours away.
visarga 6y ago
> working from home most time in an area that provides me with the chance to buy a home and have a reasonable commute to a satellite office Companies will lower our salaries as we move to more affordable places to live. It already is dependent on location, people in the same team living in US and EU have different compensations.
erdos4d 6y ago
>> if your job can be done from home, it can be done from anywhere in the world > I will call anyone's bluff who says this. Do it. Good luck. If you haven't successfully done this already, there is a reason and you know it. I'm a dev and I say confidently that I can code from anywhere and produce the exact same output as in an office. In fact, not having to deal with the stress of office conditions will almost surely get you better code out of me. Maybe you do something non-technical, but for most any tech job, I can't understand why you say this.
bob1029 6y ago
This final point is so important. I have been full-time WFH for the last ~6 years, and 2020 is by far and above 10x worse than any prior year. My immediate environment has not changed much, but the disruptions elsewhere have added up to quite the psychological burden.

secondcoming 6y ago

> I will call anyone's bluff who says this. Do it. Good luck. If you haven't successfully done this already, there is a reason and you know it. It's fine. They can force the expensive employee to teach the new cheap person everything they need to know in the few weeks before departure! /s

WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
LOL, yeah, sure.

maneesh 6y ago

>> if your job can be done from home, it can be done from anywhere in the world > I will call anyone's bluff who says this. Do it. Good luck. If you haven't successfully done this already, there is a reason and you know it. Welp, I'm the CEO of a smart wearable device company (https://pavlok.com https://pavlok.com). We were based in Boston because everyone told me, and I believed you HAD to be in one place to build a startup, and DEFINITELY for a hardware startup. Then when I finally closed the Boston office and moved to Medellin, Colombia. Then budapest. Then Berlin. Then Bali. Then Mexico. All while doing the same for the team -- remote first, work anywhere. Only then did we begin to explode in productivity and success. I don't think it's true for EVERY job (tough to do janitorial cleanup from another country). But it is possible for a lot lot lot lot more than you think.

aspaceman 6y ago
I can’t even with this comment. Not everyone has the resources to make a working place anywhere viable. You seem to have the resources to make a hotel in Budapest or whatever work. Talking so causally about international travel already puts you beyond most Americans’ income. So yeah it is very, very easy for folks with a job like yours, and with the resources you’re afforded, to work anywhere. The issue isn’t proximity to resources, but the ability to complete work.
- sunshinekitty 6y ago
  It seems to be implied with the closing of their Boston office that the whole staff is remote, not just this person.
  - grogenaut 6y ago
    also that they had already built a strong team
- woodson 6y ago
  Staying at AirBnBs in the listed cities and working from there is quite likely cheaper than renting office space in Boston (probably even including airfare). So it’s not about “resources” as in money, it’s about being able to be productive working from all these places, especially when taking into account the time zone difference to other members of the team.
  - maigret 6y ago
    Yes, and... I’d be curious to see which digital nomads follow the local taxes regulations. It’s easy to get in trouble with working abroad.
    - woodson 6y ago
      Fully agreed, taxes and work permit/visa are topics that are likely being neglected by most. Often, there simply isn’t a visa category that allows individuals to work for foreign entities while residing in another country, as regular work visas are for employment with an entity based in the country.

an_opabinia 6y ago

It’s an interesting question. First it’s wrong to assume there cannot exist multiple sets of laws in the same physical place, which reduces to effectively the economics of offshoring. Amazon delivery contractors deploy undocumented workers or people with unlicensed driving skills, paying them $7/hr and charging Amazon $15/hr. It’s economically positive for sure. The drivers live here. Is it really the same country or the same laws? It’s also wrong to assume people have tried or will document the consequences of their try. Apple already earns more than $1m per retail employee. The gulf between Apple and BestBuy’s revenue per employee is much bigger than the savings due to offshoring anywhere in the world. I personally don’t think it’s obvious why Apple Retail stores are so successful, it is multifactorial and very difficult to reproduce, so even basic service jobs may never be worth trying to offshore (whatever that means) if there’s absolutely no way it could really matter. Another way of looking at it is that retail store bankruptcies occurring today were inevitable, the economics of what they were doing never made sense, so even if offshoring could save them money they were still doomed. This is a much harder conversation to have about IBM or Accenture, who have made offshoring a consistent economic positive for someone, we just can’t be sure it is for their clients or for them. However, it seems pretty obvious that a robot (or an abstraction thereof, like an automated warehouse) can do a lot of what retail workers do. So I still think it’s all about the mechanics of the job, and it’s definitely a signal if you can WFH.

ConcernedCoder 6y ago

Yeah, I don't know about working from "anywhere in the world"... I'm sure there's places without good internet, etc... that would make that difficult or impossible. I can say one thing about it after being 100% WFH for 2+ years now, I can set my alarm clock, to wake me up exactly 1 hour before my morning video conference "standup" meeting, and still have time to wash-up, make coffee, watch the markets open, be properly awake and caffinated to participate in the meeting, etc... Previously, depending on the total commute time, I would need to set that same alarm perhaps 2 hours or more in advance... the stress of the commute aside, I was getting less sleep on average, and in my line of work ( programming ) sleep is valuable to me, it helps me think better than when tired. I feel more rested, healthier, happier, less stressed, and I know my productivity has INCREASED over the alternative in-office scenarios...

gerdesj 6y ago
I'm an MD of a very small firm in the UK and I have had my mindset changed by events. A huge social experiment on homeworking has been done (and ongoing) and results are in. I will make my commuters into remote workers by default unless they either want to come in or have to. One of my guys is Polish in Poland and can do whatever the hell he wants! Most of my staff are a bit stressed over SARS-COV-2, as am I but we will crack on. I'm glad to hear you are thriving. You are one of the folks keeping your economy going (wherever that is) - take some pride in that.
- solidasparagus 6y ago
  > A huge social experiment on homeworking has been done (and ongoing) and results are in. No they really aren't. It will be several years until we really understand the effect of remote work on areas like talent management, retention, idea generation, trust building, etc.
- kelnos 6y ago
  > A huge social experiment on homeworking has been done (and ongoing) and results are in. Sort of? Unfortunately this experiment also has included forced isolation and social distancing, and for parents where schools and day care have closed, a further experiment in what happens when parents have to simultaneously do child care and get work done. I expect it's hard to look at what's going on now and really see what prevalent home-working looks like in normal times, when there isn't a global pandemic going on, people can still meet co-workers when necessary, and friends for normal social activities, and parents can still send their kids to school and get in a productive day of work without constant interruptions from their kids.

Izkata 6y ago

> > if your job can be done from home, it can be done from anywhere in the world > I will call anyone's bluff who says this. Do it. Good luck. If you haven't successfully done this already, there is a reason and you know it. I can give an example here: Back in March/April, we were told that if we wanted to "WFH" in another state, we had to get approval first due to laws around payments and taxes. Some states were pre-approved because of remote workers we already employed, but most had to be looked into and it wasn't a guarantee they'd be approved.

gerdesj 6y ago

My company (IT consultancy) is based in the SW of England. One of my employees is Polish and now lives in Poland. Mid 2019 he decided to return to Poland from here (got married, child born, look after ailing parents etc!) and we came to an agreement. He gets paid UK rates for a UK job and lives in Poland as a sub-contractor. He may do other stuff there as well but I don't care - I get my pound of flesh 8) Poland is an hour ahead of the UK so he generally gets to run the 0800 start which works nicely. Now this is not the new normal bollocks. It works for us and him. I can't ask him to go to Cardiff and roll out a few dozen new laptops but in general it doesn't matter that he is in a town in Poland that I can't possibly pronounce the name of, instead of Yeovil, when fixing a snag in Sherborne or Hull. I and my company are very lucky that we can still function effectively, regardless of location. I as MD am now much more disposed towards home working. We were already pretty flexible but now I am far keener on even more flexibility. There are loads of silly and not so silly things to work out eg "I did x but n doesn't seem to be pulling their weight" etc. We need to invent mechanisms to deal with this. We already do a weekly get together on Teams but that is not good enough.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

rootusrootus 6y ago

> I will call anyone's bluff who says this. Do it. Good luck. If you haven't successfully done this already, there is a reason and you know it. I tend to agree. At least as it relates to offshoring. My company has been doing a 50/50 split between the US and Hyderabad/Pune for years, and there is no real danger of us moving everything to India. Good developers there aren't really that much cheaper than good developers in the US. The 10-12 hour offset is a huge impediment to success. Some folks there will work really late to make up for it, but there's still a pretty big gap. Not a lot we can do to make it better other than move entire groups over there and minimize communication requirements. What I can see happening is more competition within the US. Having developers offset a couple hours is no big deal. Same culture, same language, and three hours ahead is just fine. We do that every day. So it may be that remote developers who used to work in expensive locations like SF will find that they can't command that salary when they are indistinguishable from any other remote developer in the continental US.

ip26 6y ago

if your job can be done from home, it can be done from anywhere in the world Anyone who says this has never tried to work closely with someone in a timezone ~12 hours away.

visarga 6y ago

> working from home most time in an area that provides me with the chance to buy a home and have a reasonable commute to a satellite office Companies will lower our salaries as we move to more affordable places to live. It already is dependent on location, people in the same team living in US and EU have different compensations.

erdos4d 6y ago

>> if your job can be done from home, it can be done from anywhere in the world > I will call anyone's bluff who says this. Do it. Good luck. If you haven't successfully done this already, there is a reason and you know it. I'm a dev and I say confidently that I can code from anywhere and produce the exact same output as in an office. In fact, not having to deal with the stress of office conditions will almost surely get you better code out of me. Maybe you do something non-technical, but for most any tech job, I can't understand why you say this.

bob1029 6y ago

This final point is so important. I have been full-time WFH for the last ~6 years, and 2020 is by far and above 10x worse than any prior year. My immediate environment has not changed much, but the disruptions elsewhere have added up to quite the psychological burden.