9 ms·

Wow, the pro-corp tone in some of the comments is surprising. Software jobs are one of the few remaining ones where we still hold the means of production -- and

Wow, the pro-corp tone in some of the comments is surprising. Software jobs are one of the few remaining ones where we still hold the means of production -- and can withhold them to our leverage. These folks are walking out for the right reasons -- big f-off to RTO, and even if a bit late, the layoffs.

chadcmulligan 3y ago
There are so many people that stand to lose if a fully remote work force came to pass. Building management, HR, middle managers, property investors, they're the ones you're hearing I'd guess. Pure software dev jobs are very easy to do remotely, it's not like we spend all day talking to people any way.
- charcircuit 3y ago
  Software developers lose due to increased competition. Instead of competing with just silicon valley you are competing with the entire world.
  - greesil 3y ago
    The cat's out of the bag already
    - mvdtnz 3y ago
      This article is partially about RTO, so, is it?
  - dijit 3y ago
    Surely that's a good thing though, if we're preaching meritocracy? Practically speaking it's not so different than how it is currently though (except maybe lower CoL areas in the same country), it's very difficult to have FTE's in foreign countries, I am in a position to feel this very much right now- either you have to do very complex accounting, become a multi-national or they have to be hired as contractors. There's still many barriers to it being off-shored, and the kinds of companies that would do that aggressively are looking to replace you anyway.
    - emilsedgh 3y ago
      Its not about meritocracy. Its about compensation.
      - nequo 3y ago
        Ironically, limiting access to high-compensation jobs by tying them to cities like SF that don’t have enough housing may harm even those who do get employed in SF because their cost of living is high and the economy overall is possibly a double-digit percentage smaller: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2693282 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2693282
    - DoingIsLearning 3y ago
      > I am in a position to feel this very much right now- either you have to do very complex accounting, become a multi-national or they have to be hired as contractors. Have you looked into other services such as "remote.com" to handle international accounting/legal? I am curious but from the employee's perspective.
      - dijit 3y ago
        Yes, its similar to tools like Deel. They make it a lot easier honestly, walking you through the various hoops, but you are still a contractor which means you must handle your own employee benefits (healthcare etc), social contributions, submit your own taxes (in countries where this is not commonly on the employee this is annoying) and ensure that you are set up as some form of business entity yourself. In my case that would mean either setting up a one man company or being a “sole trader” under Swedish law. for PnL purposes as an employer, you would be considered a contractor.
  - TheSoftwareGuy 3y ago
    But you also gain access to more employers
    - mc32 3y ago
      …if you’re willing to work for foreign wages…
      - tpxl 3y ago
        For a lot of people, me included, foreign wages may be much higher than local wages.
  - jvanderbot 3y ago
    Maybe. But language, culture, practices, and time zones can really throw cold water on that.
  - loeg 3y ago
    Maybe the entirety of the same time zone. There are real efficiencies to not having 12 hour cross-schedules.
  - davidw 3y ago
    This is already a thing, but it's also a good thing in many ways. How many people were all excited about a "random" guy in a small town in Sicily creating a key-value database a few weeks back? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35871462 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35871462 That's globalization, folks.
  - kkfdkerpoe 3y ago
    Software devs may always move somewhere with lower living costs. Good for lots of people who have been forced to move into places like Silicon Valley with crazy expensive housing, even though they would rather live elsewhere.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - CamperBob2 3y ago
    On the other hand, that "increased global competition" brought you much of the software you use every day, especially if you work in a Linux shop.
- ThrowawayR2 3y ago
  Amazon has a reputation of being frugal to the point of stupidity (e.g. https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employees-use-frupidity-mix-frugality-stupidy-2022-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employees-use-frupidi...) so that tired conspiracy theory especially doesn't hold water for them. Amazon wouldn't give a hoot about the opinions of "building management, HR, middle managers", etc. if anyone there could make a solid business case that increasing WFH would significantly improve their bottom line over the long term.
  - tessierashpool 3y ago
    do they rent any buildings?
  - chadcmulligan 3y ago
    Who are the people saying stop wfh? Who are the people who have fought to have a bunch of people under them? Who are the people who lose if they don't have stacks of people to organise and watch over. They are the same people afaics
    - ThrowawayR2 3y ago
      If these middle managers who want "stacks of people to organise and watch over" had any real power, they would have flexed their muscles to prevent layoffs in the first place. When it comes time to trim the fat, executive management isn't going to take any backtalk from mere middle managers trying to build empires.
      - chadcmulligan 3y ago
        Isn't it all the way up though? The VP's don't want to lose head count either, thats how they measure their empire.
        ThrowawayR2 3y ago
        High level management at FAANGs (aside from cost centers) are rewarded for their organization being profitable or on a quick trajectory to becoming profitable, not the size of their empire, mate. They will mercilessly cut headcount without losing a second of sleep to stay on the right side of profitability, particularly when times are tough.
- ajkjk 3y ago
  It's so annoying that the vocal commenters on here assume that every engineer agrees with them that working from home is preferable to having an office. Nothing against other people working from home but please keep in mind that people's can differ greatly from your own.
  - eastbound 3y ago
    As a software engineer, I needed to meet people for my growth in the start of my career, and I needed to meet people for character development. Old farts complain that younglings are not socially/emotionally independent and apt to talk to their computer all day, but that’s also a recipe for suicide.
    - pas 3y ago
      as a software engineer (and lately manager) my most toxic workplace was my first and only non-remote job - from 2010 to 2014/2015. and to my surprise my best job (in terms of org patterns, good tech and people management) was as a contractor. also, just to make sure it's clear to anybody reading about remote vs non-remote. remote doesn't mean no meatspace meeting ever allowed. remote team members are not under chess king rules. we did meet IRL. for some jobs it was just 1 week in 10 months. (thanks COVID) but otherwise it can be a lot more. (1 week every quarter kind of makes sense, but so does anything that members are up to - especially if they live close to each other.)
    - noahjk 3y ago
      While I believe the benefits of being remote outweigh the downfalls, I definitely feel that growth as a professional and as an engineer is stunted by being remote. I miss the days of being able to easily ask questions and collaborate, even with people on different projects or in different departments. That, to me, is the biggest downside
    - helij 3y ago
      Counterpoint: I didn't need any of that.
- RedShift1 3y ago
  I've already bought it, you don't need to sell it to me.
- lettergram 3y ago
  I managed a remote team and man is it harder than in person. One common remote work thought is “you get more heads down time” I’ve found almost the opposite. You have to be way more regular about engagement with each person. I would do 20 min meetings with every team member, every week. Team lunches over zoom twice a week, daily standup (1 min per person, plus breakout rooms for further discussions), Friday afternoon optional game days, etc. I always just hung out on a video conference, all day; similar to when people game. In an office I can walk around the block with you and chat. In a remote setting I have to schedule some time and keep you engaged. It’s a long distance relationship, takes more time, and effort… much harder to sustain
  - junofan 3y ago
    Yeah it’s crazy. Add in time zones and it’s no contest.
  - user_named 3y ago
    Sounds like helicopter management
    - jayd16 3y ago
      These comments are so reactionary and low effort. A daily standup, plus 20 minutes a week, plus putting in the effort to be available as the manager is helicopter management?
      - knifie_spoonie 3y ago
        > putting in the effort to be available as the manager Except that the parent commenter is expecting others to be available to them without regards to other people's working patterns.
      - osigurdson 3y ago
        I just sounds like the commenter doesn't have a good concept of "why". They are going through the motions, booking meetings etc. but are not really leading anything, just doing stuff.
- deanCommie 3y ago
  Here's my hot take that's not actually that hot, I'll start with an analogy every engineer should agree with: There is a sweet spot for "amount of process" that makes individuals and teams the most productive. Note, I didn't necessarily say happiest, and the productivity may not be sustainable indefinitely but we all know there is a certain sweet spot. Too much process kills productivity. "Can I just please leave this fucking meeting and start writing code?". No process also sucks. "Oh shit, you built that API? I thought I was supposed to be building that" But just the right amount unblocks everyone and lets teams build stuff efficiently. The trouble is "the right amount" is different by person, by team, and by project. So the most important thing of any process is to have it be constantly re-evaluated and adjusted as the team and work evolves. But I think we've all been there on a team when things just glide and try to recreate that for the rest of our careers. I think the same is true for remote work vs in-office work. Sure, on the right task working from home is positively ethereal compared to an office filled with interruptions. But on a long enough timeline, and especially if you are part of the creative process of engineering (ie not just "converting requirements into code" but helping define the requirements, and contributing to the full product, which good companies incentivize their engineers to do), then you do want to be in person with your teammates for at least part of the time. Juniors need access to Seniors to ask questions sitting next to each other or even pair programming. And there is nothing quite like iterating on a design with a peer at a whiteboard compared to a remote session. Balanced effectively by good teams, a mixture of in-person and remote work is probably the most efficient answer for most teams. The problem is: 1/ It doesn't happen automatically, much like refining a process, figuring out this balance is going to require much tuning and adaptation. And a top-down company-wide mandate for the same process is the opposite of empowering that for teams bottoms-up. 2/ It has meaningful consequences for people's lives - things like where they reside, and how they commute. Whatever improvements come with a hybrid work environment are probably lost by the candidates you lose who refuse to move, and the sacrifices people have to make in the rest of their lives.
- osigurdson 3y ago
  If these jobs need to go then so be it. It is a net positive to have people allocated to where they are needed.
- RestlessMind 3y ago
  > middle managers, If you think middle managers stand to lose due to remote work, you have no clue why middle managers exist in the first place. Remote work increases the importance of that role, in fact. > Pure software dev jobs are very easy to do remotely Have you actually done meaningful software development? For a specific example - designing a complex system is definitely hard to do remotely. Put 3-4 key people in that project in front of a whiteboard and you will get a much better outcome. I have been managing remote teams for >3 years now and have flown in my teams from all over the world to a single location on multiple occasions. Every single time, the feedback was that whiteboard sessions were awesome and helped move the project forward significantly.
  - _gabe_ 3y ago
    > Have you actually done meaningful software development? For a specific example - designing a complex system is definitely hard to do remotely. Have you actually done meaningful software development? I'm sorry for the tone, it's just that you're presenting a completely unqualified argument based on your own personal experience and then claiming OP hasn't done software development. I do hobby projects that delve into some complex low level techniques (because my day job is kind of boring tech and this scratches that itch for me). I've stumbled across a global community, meaning none of us have ever met face to face, and have had the best collaboration I've ever had with any other developers. It's especially better than the collaboration I get with my coworkers, who are all just doing their job with varying levels of enthusiasm (which is as it should be, it's just a job after all). The idea that you need a whiteboard and to see somebody's face to effectively collaborate is an antiquated ideology in the present day. We have: Zoom, Discord, Github, Figma, Slack, Teams, etc etc. These all allow effective collaboration with other people without ever needing to see their face. > Every single time, the feedback was that whiteboard sessions were awesome and helped move the project forward significantly. Great. And you can just as easily screen share over Zoom and draw on a tablet. There is no magical ability that a whiteboard and in person meetings have over meeting virtually. And all this to say, in person sessions can be great and collaborative too! But your conjecture: > For a specific example - designing a complex system is definitely hard to do remotely. Put 3-4 key people in that project in front of a whiteboard and you will get a much better outcome. Is not a tautology. Put 3-4 key people in that project in front of a whiteboard, and you may get a better outcome. The world we live in does not operate in absolutes, and the more I learn the more I realize that being dogmatic about any approaches or opinions is usually dumb. There's always an exception to the rule, and, in fact, there's usually several exceptions to "the rule".
monero-xmr 3y ago
[flagged]
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Or you unionize. It’s federally protected activity. Only takes 30% to petition the NLRB to hold a vote. I know, the horror of suggesting such an idea on a hyper capitalism forum. Most people aren’t business owners or shareholders, they are workers. The startup lottery is a lottery: you likely will see nothing as an employee. You might not even see market rate as an employee at an established business. And there is ample evidence a unionized business can still be successful. Workers deserve agency (I suppose this is the point we’re negotiating), and they have the means to acquire it and then defend it. Whether they do so is up to the suffering they’re willing to tolerate collectively. https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/what-we-do/conduct-elections https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/what-we-do/conduct-elections
  - monero-xmr 3y ago
    Just because it's legal, doesn't mean it's a good thing. It's up for debate. I think the right to own and carry concealed guns is a great thing, and totally legal in (most of) the USA, but many disagree with me. Legal != good.
    - toomuchtodo 3y ago
      Ahh, but that’s because you’re a business owner whose solution is “go work somewhere else if you don’t like the terms.” Workers have few options, so they must lean into those legally available to them. That’s democracy working.
dumpsterdiver 3y ago
> Software jobs are one of the few remaining ones where we still hold the means of production Typical software jobs absolutely do not "hold the means of production". The aforementioned "means of production" likely includes years of work from an entire sales team in order to land paying customers in the first place. What good are the "means of production" when no one is buying your product? Cool, you built a useful piece of software... are you ready to pay a cool million to your sales people to actually get it out the door? No? Well then you don't own the means of production. You own a pipe dream. How about paying for all of those cloud servers that your customers run on? When you write code does it also automatically pay your cloud server bills? Guess what, those servers are required to actually run the god-granted code that you put on this earth.
- petersellers 3y ago
  What are the software sales people going to sell if there are no software developers to build their product? In a way you're both right - software developers (usually) don't create/design/sell the entire product end-to-end, but they no doubt are a critical piece of the process. That gives them leverage.
  - dumpsterdiver 3y ago
    > What are the software sales people going to sell if there are no software developers to build their product? Uh, none. Just like no one would sell vacuum cleaners if there weren't companies that actually manufactured vacuum cleaners. As with any other product that is being massively manufactured though, you still need to sell it to someone when you actually have it. You might similarly ask, how are all of these plumbing companies going to stay in business without plumbers? Well, it's because plumbers typically work for plumbing businesses. Just the same as how software developers typically work for software companies.
  - petre 3y ago
    Everything else: cars, furniture, electronics, building materials, power tools, you name it.
  - deleted 3y ago
idlewords 3y ago
Walking out to protest multiple rounds of layoffs may not be the power move you imagine.
- mc32 3y ago
  To quote a somewhat polarizing politician, what difference, at this point, does it make? But yeah, not the greatest timing…
- lelanthran 3y ago
  > Walking out to protest multiple rounds of layoffs may not be the power move you imagine. Sure it is, if you're unionised! I've seen decades of comments, even here on HN, from devs who say that unions are not necessary for software development. Welcome to the future, I guess?
  - eastbound 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - the_only_law 3y ago
      Sounds like you’re perfectly qualified to start a union!
    - lelanthran 3y ago
      > Unionization of computer scientists will not happen. Unionization requires low IQ and low ability to separate bullshit or teasing from reality, and software engineers are too clever to be gullible to unions. I think you're proving the case for unions, not (as you appear to think) arguing against them.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      Despite all the ignorant ant-union talk on HN, this comment is easily taking the crown. It simultaniously fails to grasp what unions did for worker and employee rights and manages to insult all union memebers and, basically, most blue collar folks. Well done, now tell that opinion to your FAANG dirwctor and wait for the promotions to come your way.
nitinreddy88 3y ago
What many of you are missing is, its gonna hurt US in the long run. 1. If US people wouldnt want to RTO, these jobs will be moved out to India. You can get to hire 3 people for same pay and they are happy to work. Or you can definitely hire pretty good engineer with half cost and same output 2. Unlike labour work, you are not competing with local people or can benefit from unions. You are competing with world and there are lot of people who are ready to grab it with same business outcome
- the_only_law 3y ago
  > these jobs will be moved out to India. You mean just like the other thousand times people said this over the decades?
  - ditonal 3y ago
    A big part of the reason it failed for decades is because of the challenges of remote work. It can be difficult to onboard, you need higher documentation standards, more asynchronous communication processes. Now many people are gung ho on solving these problems to enable wfh. And I personally view that as indirectly solving a lot of the reasons that international offshoring failed. Even things like challenges with taxes and local labor laws - there are now brand new companies to address exactly that. In the end the only barriers will be timezones, and even that the aforementioned async flows seek to address. People keep saying “they tried outsourcing for decades and it failed, it’s a bluff” as if nothing has changed. Lots of stuff changed like improved video tooling. But perhaps the biggest change by far would be the remote first culture people are trying to build. Pre-Covid, every single FAANG company was office-centric to a degree. Bringing in international teams and integrating them would be effectively impossible. Remote first changes that. Hacker news has so many wfh zealots you won’t even see much discussion around it since people tire of getting downvoted. But worth noting in my experience talking to IC SWE it’s closer to 70/30 preference for remote but based on online convos you’d think it was 99/1. I personally quit a FAANG job with FAANG comp precisely because my org went remote first. The culture was alienating, the camaraderie was zero, incident management was a coordination nightmare , documentation for onboarding was a mess, and best of all, all my new teammates were Brazilian but since they were contractors they didn’t do on-call. Management absolutely plans to replace Americans with much cheaper foreigners but there’s still just so much friction with remote-first. The only reason this big outsourcing push might work this time is because of the number of Americans hellbent on overcoming the challenges of remote work and simplifying their own eventual redundancy.
osigurdson 3y ago
"Means of production" is a tribe signalling phrase imo.
- IntelMiner 3y ago
  Perhaps "Proletariat" might be better? Or "working class"
  - osigurdson 3y ago
    "Proletariat" is too head on. When you say "means of production", at least some percentage of people don't know what you are talking about so an effective tribe signal.
  - avereveard 3y ago
    Programmariat, overworked devs aren't famous for having large families

chadcmulligan 3y ago

There are so many people that stand to lose if a fully remote work force came to pass. Building management, HR, middle managers, property investors, they're the ones you're hearing I'd guess. Pure software dev jobs are very easy to do remotely, it's not like we spend all day talking to people any way.

charcircuit 3y ago
Software developers lose due to increased competition. Instead of competing with just silicon valley you are competing with the entire world.
- greesil 3y ago
  The cat's out of the bag already
  - mvdtnz 3y ago
    This article is partially about RTO, so, is it?
- dijit 3y ago
  Surely that's a good thing though, if we're preaching meritocracy? Practically speaking it's not so different than how it is currently though (except maybe lower CoL areas in the same country), it's very difficult to have FTE's in foreign countries, I am in a position to feel this very much right now- either you have to do very complex accounting, become a multi-national or they have to be hired as contractors. There's still many barriers to it being off-shored, and the kinds of companies that would do that aggressively are looking to replace you anyway.
  - emilsedgh 3y ago
    Its not about meritocracy. Its about compensation.
    - nequo 3y ago
      Ironically, limiting access to high-compensation jobs by tying them to cities like SF that don’t have enough housing may harm even those who do get employed in SF because their cost of living is high and the economy overall is possibly a double-digit percentage smaller: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2693282 https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2693282
  - DoingIsLearning 3y ago
    > I am in a position to feel this very much right now- either you have to do very complex accounting, become a multi-national or they have to be hired as contractors. Have you looked into other services such as "remote.com" to handle international accounting/legal? I am curious but from the employee's perspective.
    - dijit 3y ago
      Yes, its similar to tools like Deel. They make it a lot easier honestly, walking you through the various hoops, but you are still a contractor which means you must handle your own employee benefits (healthcare etc), social contributions, submit your own taxes (in countries where this is not commonly on the employee this is annoying) and ensure that you are set up as some form of business entity yourself. In my case that would mean either setting up a one man company or being a “sole trader” under Swedish law. for PnL purposes as an employer, you would be considered a contractor.
- TheSoftwareGuy 3y ago
  But you also gain access to more employers
  - mc32 3y ago
    …if you’re willing to work for foreign wages…
    - tpxl 3y ago
      For a lot of people, me included, foreign wages may be much higher than local wages.
- jvanderbot 3y ago
  Maybe. But language, culture, practices, and time zones can really throw cold water on that.
- loeg 3y ago
  Maybe the entirety of the same time zone. There are real efficiencies to not having 12 hour cross-schedules.
- davidw 3y ago
  This is already a thing, but it's also a good thing in many ways. How many people were all excited about a "random" guy in a small town in Sicily creating a key-value database a few weeks back? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35871462 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35871462 That's globalization, folks.
- kkfdkerpoe 3y ago
  Software devs may always move somewhere with lower living costs. Good for lots of people who have been forced to move into places like Silicon Valley with crazy expensive housing, even though they would rather live elsewhere.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- CamperBob2 3y ago
  On the other hand, that "increased global competition" brought you much of the software you use every day, especially if you work in a Linux shop.
ThrowawayR2 3y ago
Amazon has a reputation of being frugal to the point of stupidity (e.g. https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employees-use-frupidity-mix-frugality-stupidy-2022-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/amazon-employees-use-frupidi...) so that tired conspiracy theory especially doesn't hold water for them. Amazon wouldn't give a hoot about the opinions of "building management, HR, middle managers", etc. if anyone there could make a solid business case that increasing WFH would significantly improve their bottom line over the long term.
- tessierashpool 3y ago
  do they rent any buildings?
- chadcmulligan 3y ago
  Who are the people saying stop wfh? Who are the people who have fought to have a bunch of people under them? Who are the people who lose if they don't have stacks of people to organise and watch over. They are the same people afaics
  - ThrowawayR2 3y ago
    If these middle managers who want "stacks of people to organise and watch over" had any real power, they would have flexed their muscles to prevent layoffs in the first place. When it comes time to trim the fat, executive management isn't going to take any backtalk from mere middle managers trying to build empires.
    - chadcmulligan 3y ago
      Isn't it all the way up though? The VP's don't want to lose head count either, thats how they measure their empire.
      - ThrowawayR2 3y ago
        High level management at FAANGs (aside from cost centers) are rewarded for their organization being profitable or on a quick trajectory to becoming profitable, not the size of their empire, mate. They will mercilessly cut headcount without losing a second of sleep to stay on the right side of profitability, particularly when times are tough.
ajkjk 3y ago
It's so annoying that the vocal commenters on here assume that every engineer agrees with them that working from home is preferable to having an office. Nothing against other people working from home but please keep in mind that people's can differ greatly from your own.
- eastbound 3y ago
  As a software engineer, I needed to meet people for my growth in the start of my career, and I needed to meet people for character development. Old farts complain that younglings are not socially/emotionally independent and apt to talk to their computer all day, but that’s also a recipe for suicide.
  - pas 3y ago
    as a software engineer (and lately manager) my most toxic workplace was my first and only non-remote job - from 2010 to 2014/2015. and to my surprise my best job (in terms of org patterns, good tech and people management) was as a contractor. also, just to make sure it's clear to anybody reading about remote vs non-remote. remote doesn't mean no meatspace meeting ever allowed. remote team members are not under chess king rules. we did meet IRL. for some jobs it was just 1 week in 10 months. (thanks COVID) but otherwise it can be a lot more. (1 week every quarter kind of makes sense, but so does anything that members are up to - especially if they live close to each other.)
  - noahjk 3y ago
    While I believe the benefits of being remote outweigh the downfalls, I definitely feel that growth as a professional and as an engineer is stunted by being remote. I miss the days of being able to easily ask questions and collaborate, even with people on different projects or in different departments. That, to me, is the biggest downside
  - helij 3y ago
    Counterpoint: I didn't need any of that.
RedShift1 3y ago
I've already bought it, you don't need to sell it to me.
lettergram 3y ago
I managed a remote team and man is it harder than in person. One common remote work thought is “you get more heads down time” I’ve found almost the opposite. You have to be way more regular about engagement with each person. I would do 20 min meetings with every team member, every week. Team lunches over zoom twice a week, daily standup (1 min per person, plus breakout rooms for further discussions), Friday afternoon optional game days, etc. I always just hung out on a video conference, all day; similar to when people game. In an office I can walk around the block with you and chat. In a remote setting I have to schedule some time and keep you engaged. It’s a long distance relationship, takes more time, and effort… much harder to sustain
- junofan 3y ago
  Yeah it’s crazy. Add in time zones and it’s no contest.
- user_named 3y ago
  Sounds like helicopter management
  - jayd16 3y ago
    These comments are so reactionary and low effort. A daily standup, plus 20 minutes a week, plus putting in the effort to be available as the manager is helicopter management?
    - knifie_spoonie 3y ago
      > putting in the effort to be available as the manager Except that the parent commenter is expecting others to be available to them without regards to other people's working patterns.
    - osigurdson 3y ago
      I just sounds like the commenter doesn't have a good concept of "why". They are going through the motions, booking meetings etc. but are not really leading anything, just doing stuff.
deanCommie 3y ago
Here's my hot take that's not actually that hot, I'll start with an analogy every engineer should agree with: There is a sweet spot for "amount of process" that makes individuals and teams the most productive. Note, I didn't necessarily say happiest, and the productivity may not be sustainable indefinitely but we all know there is a certain sweet spot. Too much process kills productivity. "Can I just please leave this fucking meeting and start writing code?". No process also sucks. "Oh shit, you built that API? I thought I was supposed to be building that" But just the right amount unblocks everyone and lets teams build stuff efficiently. The trouble is "the right amount" is different by person, by team, and by project. So the most important thing of any process is to have it be constantly re-evaluated and adjusted as the team and work evolves. But I think we've all been there on a team when things just glide and try to recreate that for the rest of our careers. I think the same is true for remote work vs in-office work. Sure, on the right task working from home is positively ethereal compared to an office filled with interruptions. But on a long enough timeline, and especially if you are part of the creative process of engineering (ie not just "converting requirements into code" but helping define the requirements, and contributing to the full product, which good companies incentivize their engineers to do), then you do want to be in person with your teammates for at least part of the time. Juniors need access to Seniors to ask questions sitting next to each other or even pair programming. And there is nothing quite like iterating on a design with a peer at a whiteboard compared to a remote session. Balanced effectively by good teams, a mixture of in-person and remote work is probably the most efficient answer for most teams. The problem is: 1/ It doesn't happen automatically, much like refining a process, figuring out this balance is going to require much tuning and adaptation. And a top-down company-wide mandate for the same process is the opposite of empowering that for teams bottoms-up. 2/ It has meaningful consequences for people's lives - things like where they reside, and how they commute. Whatever improvements come with a hybrid work environment are probably lost by the candidates you lose who refuse to move, and the sacrifices people have to make in the rest of their lives.
osigurdson 3y ago
If these jobs need to go then so be it. It is a net positive to have people allocated to where they are needed.
RestlessMind 3y ago
> middle managers, If you think middle managers stand to lose due to remote work, you have no clue why middle managers exist in the first place. Remote work increases the importance of that role, in fact. > Pure software dev jobs are very easy to do remotely Have you actually done meaningful software development? For a specific example - designing a complex system is definitely hard to do remotely. Put 3-4 key people in that project in front of a whiteboard and you will get a much better outcome. I have been managing remote teams for >3 years now and have flown in my teams from all over the world to a single location on multiple occasions. Every single time, the feedback was that whiteboard sessions were awesome and helped move the project forward significantly.
- _gabe_ 3y ago
  > Have you actually done meaningful software development? For a specific example - designing a complex system is definitely hard to do remotely. Have you actually done meaningful software development? I'm sorry for the tone, it's just that you're presenting a completely unqualified argument based on your own personal experience and then claiming OP hasn't done software development. I do hobby projects that delve into some complex low level techniques (because my day job is kind of boring tech and this scratches that itch for me). I've stumbled across a global community, meaning none of us have ever met face to face, and have had the best collaboration I've ever had with any other developers. It's especially better than the collaboration I get with my coworkers, who are all just doing their job with varying levels of enthusiasm (which is as it should be, it's just a job after all). The idea that you need a whiteboard and to see somebody's face to effectively collaborate is an antiquated ideology in the present day. We have: Zoom, Discord, Github, Figma, Slack, Teams, etc etc. These all allow effective collaboration with other people without ever needing to see their face. > Every single time, the feedback was that whiteboard sessions were awesome and helped move the project forward significantly. Great. And you can just as easily screen share over Zoom and draw on a tablet. There is no magical ability that a whiteboard and in person meetings have over meeting virtually. And all this to say, in person sessions can be great and collaborative too! But your conjecture: > For a specific example - designing a complex system is definitely hard to do remotely. Put 3-4 key people in that project in front of a whiteboard and you will get a much better outcome. Is not a tautology. Put 3-4 key people in that project in front of a whiteboard, and you may get a better outcome. The world we live in does not operate in absolutes, and the more I learn the more I realize that being dogmatic about any approaches or opinions is usually dumb. There's always an exception to the rule, and, in fact, there's usually several exceptions to "the rule".

monero-xmr 3y ago

[flagged]

toomuchtodo 3y ago
Or you unionize. It’s federally protected activity. Only takes 30% to petition the NLRB to hold a vote. I know, the horror of suggesting such an idea on a hyper capitalism forum. Most people aren’t business owners or shareholders, they are workers. The startup lottery is a lottery: you likely will see nothing as an employee. You might not even see market rate as an employee at an established business. And there is ample evidence a unionized business can still be successful. Workers deserve agency (I suppose this is the point we’re negotiating), and they have the means to acquire it and then defend it. Whether they do so is up to the suffering they’re willing to tolerate collectively. https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/what-we-do/conduct-elections https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/what-we-do/conduct-elections
- monero-xmr 3y ago
  Just because it's legal, doesn't mean it's a good thing. It's up for debate. I think the right to own and carry concealed guns is a great thing, and totally legal in (most of) the USA, but many disagree with me. Legal != good.
  - toomuchtodo 3y ago
    Ahh, but that’s because you’re a business owner whose solution is “go work somewhere else if you don’t like the terms.” Workers have few options, so they must lean into those legally available to them. That’s democracy working.

dumpsterdiver 3y ago

> Software jobs are one of the few remaining ones where we still hold the means of production Typical software jobs absolutely do not "hold the means of production". The aforementioned "means of production" likely includes years of work from an entire sales team in order to land paying customers in the first place. What good are the "means of production" when no one is buying your product? Cool, you built a useful piece of software... are you ready to pay a cool million to your sales people to actually get it out the door? No? Well then you don't own the means of production. You own a pipe dream. How about paying for all of those cloud servers that your customers run on? When you write code does it also automatically pay your cloud server bills? Guess what, those servers are required to actually run the god-granted code that you put on this earth.

petersellers 3y ago
What are the software sales people going to sell if there are no software developers to build their product? In a way you're both right - software developers (usually) don't create/design/sell the entire product end-to-end, but they no doubt are a critical piece of the process. That gives them leverage.
- dumpsterdiver 3y ago
  > What are the software sales people going to sell if there are no software developers to build their product? Uh, none. Just like no one would sell vacuum cleaners if there weren't companies that actually manufactured vacuum cleaners. As with any other product that is being massively manufactured though, you still need to sell it to someone when you actually have it. You might similarly ask, how are all of these plumbing companies going to stay in business without plumbers? Well, it's because plumbers typically work for plumbing businesses. Just the same as how software developers typically work for software companies.
- petre 3y ago
  Everything else: cars, furniture, electronics, building materials, power tools, you name it.
- deleted 3y ago

idlewords 3y ago

Walking out to protest multiple rounds of layoffs may not be the power move you imagine.

mc32 3y ago
To quote a somewhat polarizing politician, what difference, at this point, does it make? But yeah, not the greatest timing…
lelanthran 3y ago
> Walking out to protest multiple rounds of layoffs may not be the power move you imagine. Sure it is, if you're unionised! I've seen decades of comments, even here on HN, from devs who say that unions are not necessary for software development. Welcome to the future, I guess?
- eastbound 3y ago
  [flagged]
  - the_only_law 3y ago
    Sounds like you’re perfectly qualified to start a union!
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    > Unionization of computer scientists will not happen. Unionization requires low IQ and low ability to separate bullshit or teasing from reality, and software engineers are too clever to be gullible to unions. I think you're proving the case for unions, not (as you appear to think) arguing against them.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    Despite all the ignorant ant-union talk on HN, this comment is easily taking the crown. It simultaniously fails to grasp what unions did for worker and employee rights and manages to insult all union memebers and, basically, most blue collar folks. Well done, now tell that opinion to your FAANG dirwctor and wait for the promotions to come your way.

nitinreddy88 3y ago

What many of you are missing is, its gonna hurt US in the long run. 1. If US people wouldnt want to RTO, these jobs will be moved out to India. You can get to hire 3 people for same pay and they are happy to work. Or you can definitely hire pretty good engineer with half cost and same output 2. Unlike labour work, you are not competing with local people or can benefit from unions. You are competing with world and there are lot of people who are ready to grab it with same business outcome

the_only_law 3y ago
> these jobs will be moved out to India. You mean just like the other thousand times people said this over the decades?
- ditonal 3y ago
  A big part of the reason it failed for decades is because of the challenges of remote work. It can be difficult to onboard, you need higher documentation standards, more asynchronous communication processes. Now many people are gung ho on solving these problems to enable wfh. And I personally view that as indirectly solving a lot of the reasons that international offshoring failed. Even things like challenges with taxes and local labor laws - there are now brand new companies to address exactly that. In the end the only barriers will be timezones, and even that the aforementioned async flows seek to address. People keep saying “they tried outsourcing for decades and it failed, it’s a bluff” as if nothing has changed. Lots of stuff changed like improved video tooling. But perhaps the biggest change by far would be the remote first culture people are trying to build. Pre-Covid, every single FAANG company was office-centric to a degree. Bringing in international teams and integrating them would be effectively impossible. Remote first changes that. Hacker news has so many wfh zealots you won’t even see much discussion around it since people tire of getting downvoted. But worth noting in my experience talking to IC SWE it’s closer to 70/30 preference for remote but based on online convos you’d think it was 99/1. I personally quit a FAANG job with FAANG comp precisely because my org went remote first. The culture was alienating, the camaraderie was zero, incident management was a coordination nightmare , documentation for onboarding was a mess, and best of all, all my new teammates were Brazilian but since they were contractors they didn’t do on-call. Management absolutely plans to replace Americans with much cheaper foreigners but there’s still just so much friction with remote-first. The only reason this big outsourcing push might work this time is because of the number of Americans hellbent on overcoming the challenges of remote work and simplifying their own eventual redundancy.

osigurdson 3y ago

"Means of production" is a tribe signalling phrase imo.

IntelMiner 3y ago
Perhaps "Proletariat" might be better? Or "working class"
- osigurdson 3y ago
  "Proletariat" is too head on. When you say "means of production", at least some percentage of people don't know what you are talking about so an effective tribe signal.
- avereveard 3y ago
  Programmariat, overworked devs aren't famous for having large families