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There aren't enough remote jobs to go around
- Tade0 4y agoI wonder how those applications translate into applicants?
- DMell 4y ago>Indeed, as reported by The Washington Post, 50% of job applications on LinkedIn last month were for remote work positions, despite the fact that from-home postings made up just 15% of the listings on the site. This doesn't actually tell us anything nor did the source linked in the article clarify further.
- bombcar 4y agoAnd if you're looking for work, you apply to the in-person jobs near you or near where you'd be willing to live, and you can apply to every single remote job anywhere that looks decent.
- fullshark 4y agoRemote work seems like it would pull a lot more applications considering geography isn't a limitation.
- Ancalagon 4y agoYeah pretty subpar imho. Its basically an opinion piece.
- mike_d 4y agoThis is a bold claim made on a very shaky set of data. Most companies aren't going to explicitly post jobs for remote, just because a lot of talent management platforms don't really support it well. I think the goto is to post the job as available in every location the company has an office, and see what the applicant wants to do. Of course employers want people to come back. They have millions if not billions of dollars in real estate liabilities that are effectively useless. As an aside, I wonder if there is some clever way to get a tax write off for office space that went unused due to a global pandemic - or writing off an office entirely as a loss.
- mullingitover 4y ago> Of course employers want people to come back. They have millions if not billions of dollars in real estate liabilities that are effectively useless. If employers able to get productive work out of employees who aren't using that real estate, the real problem is getting the real estate costs off their books, not getting the butts back in seats in some arbitrary office location. This is a problem for landlords, not employers.
- birdyrooster 4y agoWhat about employers that are also landlords because they bought their real estate to become more efficient?
- SQueeeeeL 4y agoI have literally never worked for a non-billion dollar business who owns their real estate and has remote work. Businesses just kinda expect to rent. But also once the national real estate bubble collapses, a lot of people are going to be left "holding the bag"
- mullingitover 4y agoIs their real estate making them more competitive now? If not, they should offload that dead weight right away, before their competition does.
- shultays 4y agoThey should try to rent it to other suckers
- GoldenRacer 4y ago> I think the goto is to post the job as available in every location the company has an office, and see what the applicant wants to do. Yep. I started a job early this year and the job posting said it was in person but I'm the only one on my team in my state. My manager just didn't have company approval to post a remote position but the fact that there's an office near me gave her the ability to hire me. Now that I'm employed, it's a fairly easy process to switch to remote if I want. I personally just use the office space like a wework so haven't applied to be remote but it's definitely an option.
- musha68k 4y agoWhat is a “LinkedIn”?
- oregano 4y agoYours is an enviable existence. For real though if you aren’t aware- it’s a social media platform for work(ing ‘professionals’).
- bravetraveler 4y agoWhat a kind/just way to open, haha. I thought, 'how does one not know about this, but knows HN?'... in less kind terms. Seriously musha68k, steer clear - Facebook but with even weirder content A lot of things like 'I ignored my family for work' with applauding
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- PicassoCTs 4y agoSo a remote job will become a trophy? If you suck, you are in the office kindergarden panopticon, until you either get good or quit?
- whywhywhywhy 4y agoWhere’s the evidence you can deliver if it’s never been seen. Definitely people I trust no matter what their schedule. Definitely people who worked fine before pandemic and people I hired during the pandemic that are close to useless and just pretend to work if they’re not in the office.
- throwaway8689 4y agoI think this is what my current place had in mind when they wrote my contract. They have the option to bring me on site 'if the business needs' it. But they're happy with my work and only ask me to come in for specific meetings, which average one every 8 weeks.
- KerrAvon 4y agoThis is not a remote/in-office question, though. You can hire someone who can't perform in-person just as easily as a remote person who can't perform. You still have to actively evaluate the performance of your new employees and ensure they have proper guidance if they need it. The leadership techniques need a bit of refinement, but it can all be done remotely.
- xboxnolifes 4y agoIf one cannot tell if someone is being productive remotely, Its hard for me to believe they could actually tell if they were in office. Someone sitting at a desk is not evidence of productivity.
- kube-system 4y agoIt is not. But you do get some information about a person's work ethic from being in person, than you do being at home: * overhearing organic topics of conversation * walking by their desk and observing random 'snapshots' of tasks * observing general work patterns * observing any red flags of poor work ethic When someone is remote, you have to explicitly work to gather this information (many don't, and simply wait to judge output at a deadline), rather than the implicit gathering you'd get from being in physical proximity. It also helps when people are new in their career and/or come from different backgrounds, and don't fully understand productivity expectations. You can easily provide quick feedback, and you can set examples of expected behavior by doing it in front of them.
- throw903290 4y agoCompanies may ask, but usually people quit and productivity drops. For me return to office would be 60% pay cut. Good luck finding another developer :)
- syspec 4y agoEveryone thinks they're a special snowflake, but the reality is that 75% of devs are easily replaced
- ivalm 4y agoMaybe now with all the layoffs… but a year ago finding a good dev was very hard and expensive.
- shultays 4y agoIs it really? I feel like I can easily tell who is easy to replace or who is not in my team. If you can't tell if you are a special snowflake or not, you can check if your company behaves you like one. Getting promotions, extra RSUs or very high bonuses should be an indicator
- Daishiman 4y agoMost non-trivial software projects require at least 3 months of onboarding to be fully productive. Hiring takes even in the best of cases about as long. I would not consider that to be "easily" even for mid-tier devs.
- Tade0 4y agoI think it's more like: everyone is aware how lengthy a process it is to replace them. Everywhere I went companies had bold plans regarding hiring, but somehow never managed to realise them.
- safetybox 4y agoThis is like saying "There aren't enough high-paying jobs". Remote is one property of a job to select for. You may not value it high enough to compromise on other parameters. Sure, there aren't enough remote jobs for everyone to have one. But everyone doesn't want a remote job, just like everyone wants a high-paying job. (Sure, everyone wants money. But they want to work excessive hours, or work in a field they find questionable? Well, maybe high pay isn't always a good trade-off either.)
- ams92 4y agoIn my social circle, most of the people complaining about RTO work in big tech. They just want to keep their massive salaries without having to go into the office a set # of times per week. Others just want to GTFO of California but keep the same salary. There are endless startups that are hiring which are 100% remote, but they aren't handing out 500k comp packages for staff level engineers though. It's a pretty obvious case of wanting your cake and eating it at the same time.
- AntiRemoteWork 4y ago
- s3000 4y agoThere will be, once the competitors are founded that take away the best employees.
- danabrams 4y agoSo if your org can get excellent at remote work, you have a distinct competitive advantage in hiring...
- roland35 4y agoMy company is breaking big leases and even in the formerly overcrowded HQ it feels at most half full (or maybe half empty??). I don't think most people come in 5 days a week even if they're RTO (return to office). I personally think the remote work genie is out of the bottle and it's here to stay! Unless it's a very collaborative phase or (big) hardware related like automotive there will be plenty of remote jobs.
- asoneth 4y agoIf there is a mismatch then in-person offices will need to offer higher salaries and/or lower their standards to attract in-person workers. (Or put another way, remote positions will be able to attract comparable candidates while offering lower salaries.) Whether that salary difference is +10% or +90% I would expect it to show up in salary data eventually, and that might be a more accurate indication of the magnitude of the mismatch than job postings.
- karaterobot 4y ago> Indeed, as reported by The Washington Post, 50% of job applications on LinkedIn last month were for remote work positions, despite the fact that from-home postings made up just 15% of the listings on the site. Another explanation could be: High-paying tech industry jobs are more likely to offer WFH, and are more competitive than low-paying service-industry jobs. There are more service industry job postings, but more people applying for each tech job posting. Thus, 15% of postings offer WFH, but 50% of applications go to WFH positions. Though true, this is not evidence for the conclusion they're drawing. Not saying this is the explanation, I'm saying that they're picking out one element of a job posting and drawing conclusions from it.
- ghaff 4y agoTech is indeed something of a bubble from what I can tell. Rush hour traffic looks at least as bad as ever around where I live--though the driver who picked me up at the airport a few weeks ago told me Monday and Friday are appreciably lighter.
- up2isomorphism 4y agoRemote work for a lot of people simply does not work. It is not the interaction makes progress but the intensity of interactions makes progress. And for a large number of people remote communication does not give the necessary intensity. In my opinion very few jobs should be posted as remote but adjusted to remote if that does not hurt productivity.
- zxspectrum1982 4y agoWhat a horrid analysis! 50% of applications were asking for remote work in one of the positions that offered remote work (15% of the total LinkedIn openings). That's a 3:1 applications to jobs ratio. So what!? Saying "there aren't enough remote jobs" makes the assumption of a 1:1 match ratio: 1 job opening will be filled by 1 applicant. But that's never true. Forget about the remote jobs. What's the applications to job openings ratio for the ones that do not offer remote work?
- dgeiser13 4y agoAt this time.