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At the end of the day, it is neither a matter of fairness or formula, it is a market, supply vs demand. If companies switch to remote working from any location,

by cm2187 6y ago

At the end of the day, it is neither a matter of fairness or formula, it is a market, supply vs demand. If companies switch to remote working from any location, it will be easier to find a cheaper workforce, the equilibrium will go down. If you don’t like the new rate, find an employer that will pay more. If there isn’t one, then the new rate is a fair rate. I am not sold on full remote working for most companies. I am not even convinced the little covid experiment demonstrated anything, as companies still benefit from employees knowing each others from before the lockdown. Long term the effects in term of productivity, employee morale or culture may be quite different. A compromise is having more local offices, but even then, everywhere I saw it before, it creates a “them” vs “us” between offices, people feel remote from the centres of decision, etc.

anticristi 6y ago
To me, the "little covid experiment" kind of validated the value of an office: Situational awareness. Previously, it was so easy to grab a coffee or lunch, and get an overall awareness of who is doing what. I'm still struggling to find a substitute for that.
- TravHatesMe 6y ago
  Not sure why you are downvoted. I observed this as well. One manager hired a few new grads during covid. I spoke with them over Zoom to introduce myself, seemed like really smart and passionate people. One later told me that they are really lonely, managers are rarely there to push them / give them work / check up on them. I bet they feel awkward .. they're barely working, they don't know anyone in the company, and no one really cares about them. Perhaps this is just a symptom of mismanagement but I bet they feel invisible, they're probably asking themselves "why am I here? oh well the paycheque is nice"
michaelmrose 6y ago
A good question is if a local workforce drawn from major hubs of civilization doesn't add value why are tech companies paying so much for it now?
foobiekr 6y ago
I actually agree with you that this is not actually a remote experiment. But -- and I feel like I'm alone in this -- my personal observation is that even for teams that knew each other before full time WFH I've noticed the teams _mostly_ are not doing new and challenging projects. There's a ton of work and small iterating possible in any company, but I notice all the challenging projects have been punted - or are moving very slowly. My personal conclusion is that remote work does not, in fact, work well, at least for some types of projects. I can totally see UI-heavy stuff working out, for example, but not embedded or high complexity projects.

by cm2187 6y ago

anticristi 6y ago

To me, the "little covid experiment" kind of validated the value of an office: Situational awareness. Previously, it was so easy to grab a coffee or lunch, and get an overall awareness of who is doing what. I'm still struggling to find a substitute for that.

TravHatesMe 6y ago
Not sure why you are downvoted. I observed this as well. One manager hired a few new grads during covid. I spoke with them over Zoom to introduce myself, seemed like really smart and passionate people. One later told me that they are really lonely, managers are rarely there to push them / give them work / check up on them. I bet they feel awkward .. they're barely working, they don't know anyone in the company, and no one really cares about them. Perhaps this is just a symptom of mismanagement but I bet they feel invisible, they're probably asking themselves "why am I here? oh well the paycheque is nice"

michaelmrose 6y ago

A good question is if a local workforce drawn from major hubs of civilization doesn't add value why are tech companies paying so much for it now?

foobiekr 6y ago

I actually agree with you that this is not actually a remote experiment. But -- and I feel like I'm alone in this -- my personal observation is that even for teams that knew each other before full time WFH I've noticed the teams _mostly_ are not doing new and challenging projects. There's a ton of work and small iterating possible in any company, but I notice all the challenging projects have been punted - or are moving very slowly. My personal conclusion is that remote work does not, in fact, work well, at least for some types of projects. I can totally see UI-heavy stuff working out, for example, but not embedded or high complexity projects.