4 ms·

Didn't read the article - no access, just some thoughts: the downward pressure on wages will probably become a norm for WFH. Google has already set a precedent.

by mojuba 5y ago

Didn't read the article - no access, just some thoughts: the downward pressure on wages will probably become a norm for WFH. Google has already set a precedent. However, unless it takes another unexpected turn, WFH is win-win-win: companies can save on office space and a bit on reduced salaries too; employees will have a healthier life and the freedom to live in cheaper locations; and finally WFH is good for the environment! Potentially yet another "win" for the companies: some of the unnecessary engineering manager jobs will be eliminated. My impression is that in fully remote companies the opportunities to prove your importance when there's little to none, are limited. The occasional video call situation as opposed to always-in-the-office one means everyone becomes more efficient in communicating things.

jmfldn 5y ago
Agree on most counts apart from the efficient communication angle. Purely anecdotal but I find that the number of meetings has grown significantly since constant WFH became the norm. In the past, most meetings required a meeting room whereas now, as long as the meeting organiser can see that most people have an open space in their calendar, a meeting can be arranged. Not an insurmountable problem but I find myself protesting about this regularly.
- mojuba 5y ago
  I know what you mean, but we can hope it's temporary. Remote work requires some adjustment in work culture. I just thought there's another interesting upside for workers: you are now more flexible in changing jobs since obviously you are no longer tied to the location. So eventually you might find an employer who is more WFH friendly and manages the communication better. And that should put pressure on your existing employer too!
- anothernewdude 5y ago
  Even in an office, if you want to get work done, you block out your own time.
- Accacin 5y ago
  We also noticed this. We have added a rule saying that almost all meetings are optional and there's no pressure to go to them (scrum meetings are not optional i.e. daily, refinement and retro). It's helped a lot and helped managers see which meetings weren't found to be helpful.
mbag 5y ago
Another win is for the local economy, where remote workers will spend their money.
- celticninja 5y ago
  But that's really a transfer from the local economy around the office to the local economy around their home.
  - nsonha 5y ago
    No it makes local economies possible where previously all the money was sucked into the nearest city
- woodpanel 5y ago
  Unless "Hygiene"-Restrictions force you to spend all on "un-local" orgs: - Clicking on an ad likely sends ad-spending to Google/Amazon/FB/Twitter - Using the web will increase cloud-costs, money goes to AWS - buying stuff online likely hapens on Amazon, maybe ebay, maybe etsy - buying stuff online likely makes your local merchants pay transaction fees to Amazon, PayPal, Visa or Mastercard In that case "Local economy" means more money goes to tech-hubs. Your rural plumber, baker, brewer, dentist etc. will be skimmed more not less.
  - mojuba 5y ago
    There's local groceries though, also local services that can't be remote or online. Groceries alone is a big part of my budget after rent. Clothes & stuff I have managed to bring to the minimum: one or two online purchases per month at most (some months even zero)
    - legerdemain 5y ago
      My local grocer is a Safeway (a nationwide American store chain). For most of the year, fruits and vegetables are imported from other states or countries, like cherries from South America and lettuce from California. And I doubt my Cheerios and Nutella are cooked locally. Pretty much the only local impact of grocery shopping is all the low-paying jobs they create, like shelf stockers and Instacart people.
bell-cot 5y ago
> Didn't read the article - no access With JS disabled, I can read it perfectly well (Firefox, Privacy Badger, and NoScript, from the U.S.A.).
- mojuba 5y ago
  Right, that means there must be an archive.is link for it and of course there is one: https://archive.is/qK9Mk https://archive.is/qK9Mk
  - test1235 5y ago
    OT, but how do archive sites work? I assume they don't have full subscriptions to everything, so how do they get around all the different paywalls?
    - mojuba 5y ago
      In this case the article is available apparently if you disable JavaScript in your browser. Many media web sites show the full text to the search engines but hide them with trivial HTML overlays once visited by a human. Sometimes your browser's Reader can show you the full text (though it's not the case with the Economist for example)
    - KronisLV 5y ago
      Maybe a different user agent or something? I'm sure that the companies writing these articles do want them to have good SEO and therefore allow crawling them for all sorts of bots, so that they'd show up on search engines.
dheera 5y ago
> Didn't read the article - no access https://outline.com/8pMDCv https://outline.com/8pMDCv Maybe HN should start banning paywall links. It greatly degrades the experience of HN if you can't access half the stuff on the front page by just clicking on it.
- celticninja 5y ago
  I think the preferred method is to link the paywall and add an archive link in the comments.
- dang 5y ago
  This has been settled for years. If there's a workaround, it's ok. Users usually post workarounds in the thread. This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's tons of explanation here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=paywalls%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989
cornel_io 5y ago
I've seen few unnecessary engineering manager positions, typically if anything companies have too few managers for the number of engineers. I constantly see those positions filled with people who may be great engineers but are trash managers, though. Companies can still get by, but they often don't even realize how much better they'd be if they prioritized management skill instead of mere years of experience (I'm looking at you, Google, I've never seen such a high percentage of completely clueless people managers anywhere else).
- TeMPOraL 5y ago
  Part of this is promotions. There's still no real parallel technical track for career advancement. Senior/Principal/Fellow track ended up being a management track in disguise, with all the managerial responsibilities and little of the authority.
- Foobar8568 5y ago
  I have seen way too many useless managers,the ones going from meetings to meetings, distilling incorrect information, gatekeeping a lot of things, creating unnecessary mess due to their lack of knowledge that I need to clean afterward, obviously without I/or the team getting any merits. Oddly enough, these managers don't know much technically and are blatantly toxic, as they drive people in mass, they just move up the ladder and promote their alike peers for another round of madness. I would love to live in these unicorn companies where everyone is marvelous, but I have never seen one in 20 different clients in Europe, from the small startup to largest 10 companies in the world, including NGOs (among the worst place to work). So one may have a great manager but you are 6months away from yet another reorganization that would kill any teams.
nicoburns 5y ago
> the downward pressure on wages will probably become a norm for WFH That depends on where you live. If you live a population center that currently has very high wages then yes. Otherwise you've just potentially gotten access to much higher paying jobs than you would've had access to before. So what we should see is a geographical evening of wages. Which I can only really see as a good thing.
jasonkester 5y ago
Pro tip. They can only cut your pay if you let them. Or, rather, if we collectively let them. Make it clear that you won’t accept a pay cut for the same work output. And keep negotiating your full rate for any new position you take, and this won’t affect you at all. Personally, I always bill out at my Bay Area rate regardless of where I’m physically located (and I’ve been located in some pretty strange places). It has never been an issue.
- midrus 5y ago
  Same salary despite where you are living is really unfair. I live in Italy and with a silicon valley salary here I'd be millionaire. It just won't work, companies would find equally qualified people for less money and long term we would all have to move to cheaper places.
  - gdaramouskas 5y ago
    I think that the salary should not be a percentage of your life cost rather of the value you create. Therefore the salary should stay the same wherever I am located.
    - midrus 5y ago
      Salaries are fine as they are...it is based by the value you provide to the company, multiplied by a factor depending on where you live. If we do what the egocentric people here want "pay me 250k a year because that's what I'm worth" then only USA based companies would do software and everyone else in the world would be growing tomatoes (as they seem to think). How would a company in India compete with that? If you are earning a silicon valley salary and pretend to move anywhere in the world and keep your salary because "that's what I'm worth" I have two news for you: 1) it won't happen, companies are not stupid. 2) you have a big ego problem.
  - jasonkester 5y ago
    Fair isn't what we're optimizing for. The goal is to have knowledge work cost the company the same regardless of where they source it. So yes, it's true that your cost of living in rural Italy is less than it would be were you to move to an apartment in Palo Alto, and that there will remain a surplus after you have accounted for those expenses. But I'd prefer a world where that surplus was captured by you rather than J. Random Software Company. After all, you're the one who has to tolerate all those walkable streets and good cheap wine day in, day out, to live there. Gotta balance that somehow... > companies would find equally qualified people for less money That's where you're mistaken. The software industry has spent the entire time between 1994 and today hiring every one of those people all over the world. There are only so many of them left who haven't figured out their true value. You certainly aren't going to build a Facebook off of the remaining people who are willing to work for $10/hr. Anybody who is any good will demand a market rate. And that market rate is set in the Bay.

by mojuba 5y ago

jmfldn 5y ago

Agree on most counts apart from the efficient communication angle. Purely anecdotal but I find that the number of meetings has grown significantly since constant WFH became the norm. In the past, most meetings required a meeting room whereas now, as long as the meeting organiser can see that most people have an open space in their calendar, a meeting can be arranged. Not an insurmountable problem but I find myself protesting about this regularly.

mojuba 5y ago
I know what you mean, but we can hope it's temporary. Remote work requires some adjustment in work culture. I just thought there's another interesting upside for workers: you are now more flexible in changing jobs since obviously you are no longer tied to the location. So eventually you might find an employer who is more WFH friendly and manages the communication better. And that should put pressure on your existing employer too!
anothernewdude 5y ago
Even in an office, if you want to get work done, you block out your own time.
Accacin 5y ago
We also noticed this. We have added a rule saying that almost all meetings are optional and there's no pressure to go to them (scrum meetings are not optional i.e. daily, refinement and retro). It's helped a lot and helped managers see which meetings weren't found to be helpful.

mbag 5y ago

Another win is for the local economy, where remote workers will spend their money.

celticninja 5y ago
But that's really a transfer from the local economy around the office to the local economy around their home.
- nsonha 5y ago
  No it makes local economies possible where previously all the money was sucked into the nearest city
woodpanel 5y ago
Unless "Hygiene"-Restrictions force you to spend all on "un-local" orgs: - Clicking on an ad likely sends ad-spending to Google/Amazon/FB/Twitter - Using the web will increase cloud-costs, money goes to AWS - buying stuff online likely hapens on Amazon, maybe ebay, maybe etsy - buying stuff online likely makes your local merchants pay transaction fees to Amazon, PayPal, Visa or Mastercard In that case "Local economy" means more money goes to tech-hubs. Your rural plumber, baker, brewer, dentist etc. will be skimmed more not less.
- mojuba 5y ago
  There's local groceries though, also local services that can't be remote or online. Groceries alone is a big part of my budget after rent. Clothes & stuff I have managed to bring to the minimum: one or two online purchases per month at most (some months even zero)
  - legerdemain 5y ago
    My local grocer is a Safeway (a nationwide American store chain). For most of the year, fruits and vegetables are imported from other states or countries, like cherries from South America and lettuce from California. And I doubt my Cheerios and Nutella are cooked locally. Pretty much the only local impact of grocery shopping is all the low-paying jobs they create, like shelf stockers and Instacart people.

bell-cot 5y ago

> Didn't read the article - no access With JS disabled, I can read it perfectly well (Firefox, Privacy Badger, and NoScript, from the U.S.A.).

mojuba 5y ago
Right, that means there must be an archive.is link for it and of course there is one: https://archive.is/qK9Mk https://archive.is/qK9Mk
- test1235 5y ago
  OT, but how do archive sites work? I assume they don't have full subscriptions to everything, so how do they get around all the different paywalls?
  - mojuba 5y ago
    In this case the article is available apparently if you disable JavaScript in your browser. Many media web sites show the full text to the search engines but hide them with trivial HTML overlays once visited by a human. Sometimes your browser's Reader can show you the full text (though it's not the case with the Economist for example)
  - KronisLV 5y ago
    Maybe a different user agent or something? I'm sure that the companies writing these articles do want them to have good SEO and therefore allow crawling them for all sorts of bots, so that they'd show up on search engines.

dheera 5y ago

> Didn't read the article - no access https://outline.com/8pMDCv https://outline.com/8pMDCv Maybe HN should start banning paywall links. It greatly degrades the experience of HN if you can't access half the stuff on the front page by just clicking on it.

celticninja 5y ago
I think the preferred method is to link the paywall and add an archive link in the comments.
dang 5y ago
This has been settled for years. If there's a workaround, it's ok. Users usually post workarounds in the thread. This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's tons of explanation here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=paywalls%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989

cornel_io 5y ago

I've seen few unnecessary engineering manager positions, typically if anything companies have too few managers for the number of engineers. I constantly see those positions filled with people who may be great engineers but are trash managers, though. Companies can still get by, but they often don't even realize how much better they'd be if they prioritized management skill instead of mere years of experience (I'm looking at you, Google, I've never seen such a high percentage of completely clueless people managers anywhere else).

TeMPOraL 5y ago
Part of this is promotions. There's still no real parallel technical track for career advancement. Senior/Principal/Fellow track ended up being a management track in disguise, with all the managerial responsibilities and little of the authority.
Foobar8568 5y ago
I have seen way too many useless managers,the ones going from meetings to meetings, distilling incorrect information, gatekeeping a lot of things, creating unnecessary mess due to their lack of knowledge that I need to clean afterward, obviously without I/or the team getting any merits. Oddly enough, these managers don't know much technically and are blatantly toxic, as they drive people in mass, they just move up the ladder and promote their alike peers for another round of madness. I would love to live in these unicorn companies where everyone is marvelous, but I have never seen one in 20 different clients in Europe, from the small startup to largest 10 companies in the world, including NGOs (among the worst place to work). So one may have a great manager but you are 6months away from yet another reorganization that would kill any teams.

nicoburns 5y ago

> the downward pressure on wages will probably become a norm for WFH That depends on where you live. If you live a population center that currently has very high wages then yes. Otherwise you've just potentially gotten access to much higher paying jobs than you would've had access to before. So what we should see is a geographical evening of wages. Which I can only really see as a good thing.

jasonkester 5y ago

Pro tip. They can only cut your pay if you let them. Or, rather, if we collectively let them. Make it clear that you won’t accept a pay cut for the same work output. And keep negotiating your full rate for any new position you take, and this won’t affect you at all. Personally, I always bill out at my Bay Area rate regardless of where I’m physically located (and I’ve been located in some pretty strange places). It has never been an issue.

midrus 5y ago
Same salary despite where you are living is really unfair. I live in Italy and with a silicon valley salary here I'd be millionaire. It just won't work, companies would find equally qualified people for less money and long term we would all have to move to cheaper places.
- gdaramouskas 5y ago
  I think that the salary should not be a percentage of your life cost rather of the value you create. Therefore the salary should stay the same wherever I am located.
  - midrus 5y ago
    Salaries are fine as they are...it is based by the value you provide to the company, multiplied by a factor depending on where you live. If we do what the egocentric people here want "pay me 250k a year because that's what I'm worth" then only USA based companies would do software and everyone else in the world would be growing tomatoes (as they seem to think). How would a company in India compete with that? If you are earning a silicon valley salary and pretend to move anywhere in the world and keep your salary because "that's what I'm worth" I have two news for you: 1) it won't happen, companies are not stupid. 2) you have a big ego problem.
- jasonkester 5y ago
  Fair isn't what we're optimizing for. The goal is to have knowledge work cost the company the same regardless of where they source it. So yes, it's true that your cost of living in rural Italy is less than it would be were you to move to an apartment in Palo Alto, and that there will remain a surplus after you have accounted for those expenses. But I'd prefer a world where that surplus was captured by you rather than J. Random Software Company. After all, you're the one who has to tolerate all those walkable streets and good cheap wine day in, day out, to live there. Gotta balance that somehow... > companies would find equally qualified people for less money That's where you're mistaken. The software industry has spent the entire time between 1994 and today hiring every one of those people all over the world. There are only so many of them left who haven't figured out their true value. You certainly aren't going to build a Facebook off of the remaining people who are willing to work for $10/hr. Anybody who is any good will demand a market rate. And that market rate is set in the Bay.