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Remote Job Postings Are Declining

7 points by fairytalemtg 4y ago

djha-skin 4y ago
No one wants to hire remote employees. They're harder to manage, harder to build trust with. The entire discipline of managing people has been built around the panopticon for over a century. They've gotten better at that style of management for over 100 years. They don't have nearly so much momentum or nearly so many examples of success with running a remote company, they're still too new. The pandemic was an interesting study in how to deal with different difficult circumstances, but there's simply too much momentum in the discipline of managing people The old way. The pandemic was a flash in the pan, and while it did prove to everyone that remote does work, I guess those with money still prefer to give other people money when they can see them working.
- DarknessFalls 4y ago
  No one wants to work for those companies, either. In software engineering, the only metric needed to gauge performance is to track PRs and tickets. We have a bi-weekly sprint velocity that tells managers how we're performing. Only lousy workers are going to put up with having hours wasted on "cake day" and forced water cooler discussions.
  - PraetorianGourd 4y ago
    But that just is not true. A very small team with a very focused codebase perhaps. But when you are balancing 40 competing issues that are impacting a wide range of cusromers, where each issue has the potential for downstream impact on all of the other issues it isn’t just PRs and tickets. Combine this reality with the fact that your team not only needs to deliver bugfix X for customer Y, but also needs to work with the other team delivering feature Z for customer A, which shares code with bigfix X. Things quickly evolve beyond independent fiefdoms.
calvinomiguel 4y ago
@djha-skin I don't think it's true that remote employees are harder to manage. Otherwise the demand for remote jobs platforms wouldn't have risen as well. In Europe you have stuff like https://remotescout.ch https://remotescout.ch popping up and in the US https://remoteok.com https://remoteok.com or https://removite.com https://removite.com I think it's just that some companies adapted and others not. But long term the trend will continue.

7 points by fairytalemtg 4y ago

No one wants to hire remote employees. They're harder to manage, harder to build trust with. The entire discipline of managing people has been built around the panopticon for over a century. They've gotten better at that style of management for over 100 years. They don't have nearly so much momentum or nearly so many examples of success with running a remote company, they're still too new. The pandemic was an interesting study in how to deal with different difficult circumstances, but there's simply too much momentum in the discipline of managing people The old way. The pandemic was a flash in the pan, and while it did prove to everyone that remote does work, I guess those with money still prefer to give other people money when they can see them working.

DarknessFalls 4y ago
No one wants to work for those companies, either. In software engineering, the only metric needed to gauge performance is to track PRs and tickets. We have a bi-weekly sprint velocity that tells managers how we're performing. Only lousy workers are going to put up with having hours wasted on "cake day" and forced water cooler discussions.
- PraetorianGourd 4y ago
  But that just is not true. A very small team with a very focused codebase perhaps. But when you are balancing 40 competing issues that are impacting a wide range of cusromers, where each issue has the potential for downstream impact on all of the other issues it isn’t just PRs and tickets. Combine this reality with the fact that your team not only needs to deliver bugfix X for customer Y, but also needs to work with the other team delivering feature Z for customer A, which shares code with bigfix X. Things quickly evolve beyond independent fiefdoms.

calvinomiguel 4y ago

@djha-skin I don't think it's true that remote employees are harder to manage. Otherwise the demand for remote jobs platforms wouldn't have risen as well. In Europe you have stuff like https://remotescout.ch https://remotescout.ch popping up and in the US https://remoteok.com https://remoteok.com or https://removite.com https://removite.com I think it's just that some companies adapted and others not. But long term the trend will continue.