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I always feel that discussing remote work in the context of software dev (basically, discuss it on HN) is so heavily skewed to the point of being meaningless.
by Workaccount2 4y ago
I always feel that discussing remote work in the context of software dev (basically, discuss it on HN) is so heavily skewed to the point of being meaningless.
We're talking about an industry that has a heavy concentration of, for lack of a better word, shut-ins, who don't really like socializing and really excel at work when they are alone and not being bothered. Most of them self-taught to some degree, or entirely. Heavy technical knowledge and strong ability to deal with technical hurdle of remote work. Probably have a bad internet addiction too, and attribute most of their knowledge to it. The nature of the work also heavily lends itself to being remote, and why there were even people in the 90's(!) who were doing remote developer work.
But take another field, like say marketing, that has lots of extroverted types and lots of meetings with heavy emphasis on visual things, that no one was doing remote prior to 2020, and suddenly remote work becomes a much more grinding endeavor that can really chew up juniors. These people are not shut-in computer geeks and their work is not a fit for those types by a long shot. As much as they may hate the commute and insist that remote work is fine, the fact of the matter is that the type of work really doesn't lend itself to remote working.
TL;DR: These articles about remote work failing aren't really talking about software jobs, and your experience as someone who has worked remote dev work for 15 years isn't really relevant. You work a job that is almost tailor made for remote work.
- Mountain_Skies 4y agoMaybe the marketing people can do some market analysis and figure out that trying bully software developers back into the office so that marketing people can have a captive audience for their extroversion isn't a great path forward and instead is creating incredible amounts of resentment and even hostility. Maybe they should go hang out at the local Starbucks and make some real friends instead of trying to impose themselves and their preferences on others. Note that the WFH people don't give a shit if the extroverts with an addiction to endless external validation work in an office, at home, or in a deep sea trench but the converse isn't true with the extrovert trying with all their might to force their preferences on everyone else. You'd think marketers would understand people a bit better and realize that the outcome is going to be that they're going to get blasted each time they try to use their slimy sales tactics to force everyone to conform to their personal preferences.
- Workaccount2 4y agoI don't see how the working decisions of a markerting firm would have anything to do with software devs. The world doesn't revolve around software devs, which is kind of the whole point of my post. Devs can work from home, these articles aren't about them, and hence why its dumb to discuss them on HN.
- DangitBobby 4y agoThis article is literally about them.
- armatav 4y agoBro, you’re in-office because of your C-level, not the extroversion of an unrelated team. You don’t think they could just socialize amongst their immediate peers in-office without you?
- ncraig 4y agoI suspect you're correct more broadly, but this article is talking about software jobs: >The economists — Natalia Emanuel, Emma Harrington and Amanda Pallais — studied engineers at a large technology company. They found that remote work enhanced the productivity of senior engineers, but it also reduced the amount of feedback that junior engineers received (in the form of comments on their code), and some of the junior engineers were more likely to quit the firm. However, there are major problems with the research. From the research article: >Our data include peer code reviews of software engineers at a Fortune 500 firm be- tween August 2019 and December 2020. The study period includes the throes of the pandemic and ignores long-term adjustments.
- ElfinTrousers 4y agoIt's true: a lot of people in software are people who, at a very early age, decided that a life with many more machines and many fewer people in it would be best for them.