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I'll contend that while I've been fully taken advantage of remote work (and probably want my next job to be remote too), I still fully believe it's a long term

• bart_spoon 4y ago
  > No more offices. No more weekly happy hours. Those sound like benefits to many. > They can now depress salaries even further because they have a wider pool from which to choose. This is only a negative for people who were already making absurdly high incomes in HCOL areas. For many people away from the coasts, salaries are now higher because they have access to the kinds of jobs and companies they didn’t before. > Don't need to bother with those pesky things called relationships because your boss from 500 miles away can lay off your ass without breaking a sweat. Has this every not been the case? Besides, there are only two kinds of layoffs. Massive ones that do not take performance into account, and rarely take input from your direct manager about who is going and who is staying. On the other hand, for layoffs in which performance is taken into account, I’m sure many prefer the criteria to be more about their work than how chummy they are with the boss and how well they politick. I can see how these might be disadvantages for a certain kind of worker, but for other kinds they are huge wins.
• ricardobeat 4y ago
  If that’s the case then why hasn’t the shift happened sooner?
  • bell-cot 4y ago
    Previous big waves of the shift were referred to as "outsourcing", "offshoring", etc.
    • Plasmoid 4y ago
      They were also 100% cost driven and not value driven. A lot of companies have opened offices in other countries and hired great people, but they focused exclusively on value. Most companies just looked at the direct cost and went with it. Of course they picked the absolute worst workers and so the whole scheme collapsed.
  • vlowther 4y ago
    Covid pandemic proved that most office jobs can be done remotely with little to no loss of productivity.
    • red-iron-pine 4y ago
      I would definitely argue a loss of productivity. But those costs are far outweighed by the benefits, such as less overhead, greater hiring radius, and flexibility. Plus a lot of the weaknesses are more managerial than technical, like synchronous vs async tasks and finding more effective ways to measure productivity.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • bambataa 4y ago
    I wonder about this too. The UK has lower salaries than west coast US and a large pool of suitable workers. Big tech has a presence but why haven’t they moved their main operations to the UK?
    • fidgewidge 4y ago
      Once you decide to go to "Europe" then the question becomes why the UK and not somewhere vastly cheaper like Romania or Poland. Wages in the UK are lower but wages in eastern Europe are much lower still.
      • rswail 4y ago
        Not as true now as it was even 2 years ago. Slovakian wages are reaching parity with the "West" of Europe, and Romania is climbing as well. Until the war, Ukraine was also climbing that same ladder. And when the war is over, they will soar. Their skills are at least the equivalent of any developer I've worked with, their language skills are impressive, and their analysis and design skills are as well.
• simplicio 4y ago
  Maybe, but that works both ways. Employees are often reluctant to leave jobs where they have a lot of personal relationships, or if getting a new job would entail moving to a new city/state/country, even if jumping ship would entail a sizable payraise or other improvement in working conditions. In an industry where remote work is the norm and changing jobs doesn't even require changing offices, people are much less likely to give up some pay to stay where they are.
  • hello_moto 4y ago
    Prior to Pandemic, hi-tech worker retention rate was 2.5 years in my area (this is not in Bay Area, Seattle, or New York). People switch jobs frequently is the norm anyway.
  • rlnorthcutt 4y ago
    That's a really good point. Humans generally don't like big changes, so removing friction to a big change makes it more likely. While remote work might make it a bit easier to fire someone, it totally makes it easier to leave. Factor in that with the boomers retiring, the workforce is much smaller, especially among those with more experience. Unemployment is expected to stay low for some time (in the US at least), which means workers have more power. This is especially true for work that requires more experience or education. Those roles will be harder to fill overall, and the expected outputs are higher. As a person working in a fully remote, global company... and as a hiring manager, I can attest to the challenges in hiring and maintaining a remote workforce. Hiring is tough, but keeping employees is also tough... because it is so easy to leave in a time of low unemployment.
  • johnnyanmac 4y ago
    >In an industry where remote work is the norm and changing jobs doesn't even require changing offices, people are much less likely to give up some pay to stay where they are. yea and I already feel those effects. had an office for one month and then they closed it in order to transfer elsewhere. Was already configured to WFH so no issue transitioning. Meanwhile I haven't seen a human face in 2 weeks and haven't interacted with someone my age in 3 months. I guess that is great for true hermits, but I liked SOME interaction. This also seems to have an indirect impact on my career aspects. Some of the best parts of office was the growth as you worked directly with experts in your domain and seeing how they tick and hearing their war stories. You can hear all that passively in a cafeteria as you're on break. That goes away and I now interact with maybe 5-6 people max per week, and I wonder if I am even growing anymore. Oh well at least the pay is good.
• vithlani 4y ago
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• cutenewt 4y ago
  > they have a wider pool from which to choose This goes both ways for employer and employee
  • andrewmutz 4y ago
    I think this is true: employees will be able to choose from far more options, and they will have more competition. The first phase of this is competing with anyone in the US, but soon enough companies will be hiring abroad for zoom-based jobs. If a foreign employee can work in a reasonable time-zone, and has great english language skills, what's the difference?
    • tempestn 4y ago
      I think you'll see increasing numbers of Canadians working for US companies (that's already happening). Of course that's little different than hiring from areas in the US outside the major hubs. Somewhat lower average salaries, but similar skills and work habits, same time zones, etc. Expanding further, it's already the case that if you're looking for an international employee with similar skills and capabilities to a domestic one, you're going to end up paying similar to what you would domestically. You're rarely going to find someone that you can pay meaningfully less than you'd pay someone in the US (again, outside of places like the Bay area) who has a similar level of skill and ability. You might find someone with 80% of the ability for 60% of the price, or 50% for 25%, and in some cases companies could save a lot that way. But obviously two 50% developers != one 100% developer in output. And just to reiterate, I'm not saying excellent developers don't exist in other countries; they of course do, but you can't generally expect to get them for a fraction of the price. Maybe a slight discount, which would obviously be worth companies pursuing, but not enough to suddenly put US developers out of work en masse. That's already mostly true, and will become entirely true as remote work becomes more the norm. So it will be somewhat good for developers outside the US, and for US companies; I just don't think the change there will be as massive as it might appear. I also expect on net it will be great for most domestic US developers as well; there may be added competition, but there will also be more flexibility. The one group that I guess will likely lose out are those who really want to live somewhere like San Francisco, as you'll still have the disadvantage of cost of living, but lose the advantage of privileged access to high-paying companies. (Though as a result, those property values will probably come down over time.)
• uncletammy 4y ago
  > I'll contend that while I've been fully taken advantage of remote work ... I think you meant " fully takING advantafe of remote work ". Not to nitpick. I just genuinely thought you meant you were taken advantage of by your employer.
  • ngc248 4y ago
    I took it as a double entendre. We took advantage of the WFH policy and the company also took advantage of us, coz more work got done, since we had nowhere to go.
• justsomehnguy 4y ago
  > because your boss from 500 miles away can lay off your ass without breaking a sweat. But.. that's actually great? With more companies accepting remote work as just your average way of doing business means what I can fire my boss too, without breaking a sweat. Because I would have ample opportunities to find another, similar, remote work just easily. Oh, I don't need to take the day off for the interview.
• scarface74 4y ago
  “Depress salaries” == “Now the person in the middle of Nebraska can make more than he could make before without moving to California”
  • ChuckNorris89 4y ago
    Maybe the HN fear of "depress salaries" isn't someone from Nebraska taking Cali tech jobs, but could be most likely a dog whistle for foreigners from abroad taking US tech jobs. I don't live there anymore but in my home county in Eastern Europe, the WFH boom from 2020 brought in thousands of well paying tech jobs from US companies which might have never arrived if not for Covid. Tech workers there are making bank now, relative to local CoL. Who knows, maybe this trend will accelerate now that the tap of zero interest money which enabled companie to out-bid each other for SV labor has dried out and many start-up and scale-ups need to actually be profitable for a change, they might look towards skilled remote workers abroad to fill their ranks till the next bull run. Interesting times ahead indeed.
    • robertcope 4y ago
      I 100% think this is the long term play. Once we figure out how to really have "remote only" companies, the "remote" part won't be "remote in the USA" but "remote in some cheap part of the world". We tried this with outsourcing but it failed because we didn't have the "remote" part down... now we do...
      • berkeleyjunk 4y ago
        Yes. Agree. The only thing preventing this going all the way is the friction in timezones and difficulty in co-ordination (i.e. still requires someone local to the remote people to manage their work).
        • scarface74 4y ago
          Well for my line of work (app dev/cloud consulting) there is lot of face time, video conferencing with clients, travel to client sites, etc. But also many of our contracts have data governance requirements where you have to be US based and other government contracts require you to be a US citizen.
• philistine 4y ago
  The workers will always lose out because the employer has more power. Accept that reality, and that the simple counter-balance is workers organizing.
  • wankle 4y ago
    [flagged]
    • waboremo 4y ago
      How does at will employment work without an organized mafia to negotiate those terms?
      • sokoloff 4y ago
        It seems like it works quite well for tech.
        • waboremo 4y ago
          In what ways?
          • DiggyJohnson 4y ago
            Compensation and strength of job market? (Yes, even with all these layoffs).
            • fsckboy 4y ago
              it works because high compensation and strength of job market, not "results in". these (high paid) workers have a lot of power individually which balances against the scale power of the organization. Not so for low skill workers. At will employment will not lead to higher wages for low skill workers. It will lead to fuller employment, more overall wages.
• astrange 4y ago
  > They can now depress salaries even further because they have a wider pool from which to choose. This appears to be the lump of labor fallacy. Other employers are now competing for those workers too!
• _hcuq 4y ago
  Twitter still makes all employees work at the office…. :)
• Shaggy2000 4y ago
  The World Economic Forum have stated in a white paper that Corporations and Governments will be expected as part of climate action to help move more people into cities. So that "15 minute cities" legislation can be implemented world wide. This appears to be nothing but a long term climate lockdown. I personally think that to have everyone working locally in these 15 minute zones in each major city and to have them never leave the zone would require that remote work is the norm beforehand. If people think that remote work equals freedom they are in for one hell of a shock.
  • rswail 4y ago
    This is nonsense. What they're saying is that we need to start designing habitation to be more localized and less dependent on commuting and endlessly expanding suburbia. Suburbs, particularly the US variety (and Australia) are terrible because of the lack of local facilities, hospitality and retail. Cities need to downsize but at the same time regionalize. Smaller cities with HSR and equivalent will work to reduce the need for individual vehicles, which saves on costs, environment, energy consumption, and people's overall health. Working in a local community is much better for everyone involved than people spending 1+ hours each way every day to get from their home to their work and back again. The same applies to retail, hospitality and most other service industries. Manufacturing (particularly heavy industry) is better to be localized to transport hubs (rail, river, sea ports) because of the tonnage that has to be moved in and out, as well as localizing the polluting and environmental degradation (no one really wants to live next to a steel mill). The latest CT is that the WEF is trying to somehow lock people into their suburb and restrict freedom of travel. That's complete and utter nonsense.
    • Shaggy2000 4y ago
      Everything you said is correct and I would agree with - but under the presumption that the climate emergency is genuine and that the individual contributors in the agencies responsible for the models and predictions have not been compromised, coerced, baited, led by funding into agreeing with corporate and governmental agendas, interests. Is it not odd that we have traditional liberal activists and corporate/government on the same side also? I agree wholly with you regarding how it is better for everything to be community based, with people working in a local community, that cities need to downsize, that manufacturing is better to be localized, all of these things move us closer to a much better world and I would even be happy if the government used its power to force the change on the population ... but if you study the groups behind this they are international socialists, the presentations they have given quite clearly outline malicious intentions when you look at other movements and ideas the same groups are lobbying for. Regarding the WEF point you made. I point you towards the case of Oxford City in the UK , which as of last month has already implemented a 15 minute city without any dialogue with its citizens. The communist china style tracking camera and permit system has been created in their city and it is likely by next year its citizens will start to be fined 70 pounds sterling whenever they go to a neighboring zone without a permit. It was reported this week 100 councils (local governmental planning agencies) have signed up to implement this in the UK in their jurisdictions own cities. This is without any dialogue or permission with their citizens. Does the speed of this being rolled out not frighten you enough to question what is going on? It is such a drastic change. Taking a trip in a car from one part of the city to another is such a small journey, such a small cost to the environment. It is not like a cross country trip, I understand the distances between points in the USA is larger but they are planning this for the cities in the USA too, not longer journeys, but god knows where this will end.