4 ms·

Don't get it. Even if remote is becoming more common, the vast majority of tech jobs out there are not 100% remote. Note: a lot of companies are advertising th

Don't get it. Even if remote is becoming more common, the vast majority of tech jobs out there are not 100% remote. Note: a lot of companies are advertising themselves as "100% remote while corona lasts" though.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago
Agreed. I think the OP might be reading too much into HN comments and headlines. Remote work is nowhere near as ubiquitous as HN likes to suggest.
chrsig 5y ago
> Note: a lot of companies are advertising themselves as "100% remote while corona lasts" though. This is the thing that gets me...Haven't people in tech figured out how exponential growth works? Covid isn't going away, ever.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Haven't people in tech figured out how exponential growth works? Mostly, it doesn't. Pretty much all initially-apparent exponential growth in things that aren't human-created abstractions is, at best, logistic if conditions are constant, and usually is just the net of a large number of Ransome events that averages to that growth curve, but features gambler’s ruin and collapse to zero eventually, or collapse to zero due to changing external conditions before it hits gambler’s ruin.
- rsynnott 5y ago
  I think you’re taking that a bit too literally. “While COVID is a massive office-closing problem” might be closer to the mark. Before Omicron showed up, a lot of places were moving to re-open everything mode. Omicron will slow that, but probably not by much.
  - chrsig 5y ago
    Conversely, I think others are taking it too loosely. There’s going to be a continual stream of new variants, and vaccines will always lag behind them. Reopening everything will always accelerate this. Gathering is always going to be a mortal risk for the rest of our lives. I just wish the world would accept that and adapt rather than resign to it and downplay it.
    - spookthesunset 5y ago
      I dunno how to put this but consider seeking therapy. 2 years of constant fear being cranked out by public health “experts” and the media have done a number on people. Fretting over Covid forever and trying to usher in some “new normal” is not rational thinking at all. I know plenty of smart people whose brains have been seriously messed up by all this Covid crap. Learning to live with Covid doesn’t mean accepting some crazy dystopian “new normal”. It means accepting the small risk of Covid and going back to 2019 living. The one where you didn’t spend all your brainpower on “slowing the spread” of other viral diseases like the flu or the common cold. We have vaccines for Covid now. It’s time to move on.
      - chrsig 5y ago
        > I dunno how to put this but consider seeking therapy. 2 years of constant fear being cranked out by public health “experts” and the media have done a number on people No, two years of half the population refusing to wear a fucking mask did a number on people. “Some crazy dystopian new normal” would actually be an improvement.
    - rsynnott 5y ago
      … Eh? No, that seems highly unlikely. Decent therapeutic drugs will be available from next year (in quantity; homeopathic quantities are already available but not to the point where they’re particularly useful). Increasingly few people are totally naive to the virus. Over the next period of time there’ll be precautions to keep the hospitals operating and the death rate down, but that will tend to get easier and easier. If you look at hospitalisation and death figures from heavily vaccinated countries, each wave has generally been less severe even as variants get nastier and restrictions are eased (you’re not seeing March 2020 restrictions pretty much anywhere today). It remains early for omicron, but initial signs show the same pattern. I do think that places with this kind of politico-cultural objection to vaccines (parts of the US and Eastern Europe, for instance) may struggle.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  > Haven't people in tech figured out how exponential growth works? What are you even taking about? We have marvelous vaccines that knock Covid to the level of a cold or mild flu for most people in the “office worker” demographic. Did you worry about “exponential growth” of the 2019 flu season? Because part of saying “Covid isn’t going away ever” means “get on with your damn life”. If Covid is here forever it becomes just another minor risk in your life like driving, swimming, or catching the cold.
  - chrsig 5y ago
    Do you understand the difference between a novel virus and the flu? > We have marvelous vaccines that knock Covid to the level of a cold or mild flu for most people in the “office worker” demographic. And now we have omicron, which is still quite infectious in spite of the vaccines. Thankfully it seems less dangerous than delta. Who knows what the next variant will bring. > Because part of saying “Covid isn’t going away ever” means “get on with your damn life”. Part of “getting on with your damn life” includes accepting that there’s a new endemic virus that the population has no natural immunity to, and changing behavior appropriately. Sorry, but time marches forward — 2019 is a thing of the past.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
tablespoonsruby 5y ago
I prefer office-based work but it's not the top thing on my list of priorities. I've found that a really high number of companies that otherwise have what I'm looking for are remote, so I've had to compromise.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

Agreed. I think the OP might be reading too much into HN comments and headlines. Remote work is nowhere near as ubiquitous as HN likes to suggest.

chrsig 5y ago

> Note: a lot of companies are advertising themselves as "100% remote while corona lasts" though. This is the thing that gets me...Haven't people in tech figured out how exponential growth works? Covid isn't going away, ever.

dragonwriter 5y ago
> Haven't people in tech figured out how exponential growth works? Mostly, it doesn't. Pretty much all initially-apparent exponential growth in things that aren't human-created abstractions is, at best, logistic if conditions are constant, and usually is just the net of a large number of Ransome events that averages to that growth curve, but features gambler’s ruin and collapse to zero eventually, or collapse to zero due to changing external conditions before it hits gambler’s ruin.
rsynnott 5y ago
I think you’re taking that a bit too literally. “While COVID is a massive office-closing problem” might be closer to the mark. Before Omicron showed up, a lot of places were moving to re-open everything mode. Omicron will slow that, but probably not by much.
- chrsig 5y ago
  Conversely, I think others are taking it too loosely. There’s going to be a continual stream of new variants, and vaccines will always lag behind them. Reopening everything will always accelerate this. Gathering is always going to be a mortal risk for the rest of our lives. I just wish the world would accept that and adapt rather than resign to it and downplay it.
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    I dunno how to put this but consider seeking therapy. 2 years of constant fear being cranked out by public health “experts” and the media have done a number on people. Fretting over Covid forever and trying to usher in some “new normal” is not rational thinking at all. I know plenty of smart people whose brains have been seriously messed up by all this Covid crap. Learning to live with Covid doesn’t mean accepting some crazy dystopian “new normal”. It means accepting the small risk of Covid and going back to 2019 living. The one where you didn’t spend all your brainpower on “slowing the spread” of other viral diseases like the flu or the common cold. We have vaccines for Covid now. It’s time to move on.
    - chrsig 5y ago
      > I dunno how to put this but consider seeking therapy. 2 years of constant fear being cranked out by public health “experts” and the media have done a number on people No, two years of half the population refusing to wear a fucking mask did a number on people. “Some crazy dystopian new normal” would actually be an improvement.
  - rsynnott 5y ago
    … Eh? No, that seems highly unlikely. Decent therapeutic drugs will be available from next year (in quantity; homeopathic quantities are already available but not to the point where they’re particularly useful). Increasingly few people are totally naive to the virus. Over the next period of time there’ll be precautions to keep the hospitals operating and the death rate down, but that will tend to get easier and easier. If you look at hospitalisation and death figures from heavily vaccinated countries, each wave has generally been less severe even as variants get nastier and restrictions are eased (you’re not seeing March 2020 restrictions pretty much anywhere today). It remains early for omicron, but initial signs show the same pattern. I do think that places with this kind of politico-cultural objection to vaccines (parts of the US and Eastern Europe, for instance) may struggle.
spookthesunset 5y ago
> Haven't people in tech figured out how exponential growth works? What are you even taking about? We have marvelous vaccines that knock Covid to the level of a cold or mild flu for most people in the “office worker” demographic. Did you worry about “exponential growth” of the 2019 flu season? Because part of saying “Covid isn’t going away ever” means “get on with your damn life”. If Covid is here forever it becomes just another minor risk in your life like driving, swimming, or catching the cold.
- chrsig 5y ago
  Do you understand the difference between a novel virus and the flu? > We have marvelous vaccines that knock Covid to the level of a cold or mild flu for most people in the “office worker” demographic. And now we have omicron, which is still quite infectious in spite of the vaccines. Thankfully it seems less dangerous than delta. Who knows what the next variant will bring. > Because part of saying “Covid isn’t going away ever” means “get on with your damn life”. Part of “getting on with your damn life” includes accepting that there’s a new endemic virus that the population has no natural immunity to, and changing behavior appropriately. Sorry, but time marches forward — 2019 is a thing of the past.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

tablespoonsruby 5y ago

I prefer office-based work but it's not the top thing on my list of priorities. I've found that a really high number of companies that otherwise have what I'm looking for are remote, so I've had to compromise.