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Remote work on HN: Who is hiring? – 69% jobs in 2023 are remote
- mydriasis 3y agoGood stuff! > Based on the analysis of the data provided, it is evident that remote work has gained significant popularity within the HackerNews community, particularly in the field of computer science and entrepreneurship. I'm hoping to continue working remote essentially eternally, and I'm glad to see the shift in this direction generally.
- AntiRemote 3y ago[dead]
- korpsey 3y agoI hope this trend is here to stay, I cannot even imagine of going to an office in a daily basis anymore
- gumby 3y agoTurns out to my surprise I like going into the office, but definitely not every day. Also I've only once had a commute longer than 20 minutes and it was such a burden (even though I carpooled) I gave that up after less than a year.
- ryandrake 3y agoYea, I really don't mind the office. It's the "going to" part that I'm unwilling to do ever again. It's kind of nice to get a little in-person time with colleagues. The open-office system kind of sucks, but nearly every company has that now. If I could snap my fingers and teleport myself there, I'd do it often: at least any time I had a bunch of meetings and didn't have to concentrate or have work that needed silence. But it's a 3 hour drive (each way) away, so nope.
- dbcurtis 3y ago> Turns out to my surprise I like going into the office, but definitely not every day. Bingo. There is relationship building and other interactions that are simply not possible in any other way that I have found. I go in 3 days most weeks, and that makes a huge difference in lifestyle and flexibility. Since I work in robotics, 100% remote is never going to be a thing for me. Zoom meeting and software days, remote. Wrench days, in the lab. Works for me.
- sillysaurusx 3y agoLucky you live anywhere close to any kind of interesting work.
- HDThoreaun 3y ago> Lucky Where you live is a choice, there's nothing lucky about it.
- progbits 3y agoSome people prefer not to abandon their family and friends, so there is indeed luck factor involved.
- Aurornis 3y ago> Turns out to my surprise I like going into the office, but definitely not every day. You're not alone. The internet likes to talk about remote work as the only acceptable arrangement, but that's mostly because it's biased toward people who like socializing via internet comment sections. The number of people who actually like going to the office (either part or full time) is far higher than you'd expect from reading Reddit and Hacker News.
- yodsanklai 3y agoThere are many people who like going to the office, but - don't like to commute - don't like to live in the city where the office is - don't want to pay insane rents to live in a studio Personally, I quite like the office and really miss socializing but it's a tradeoff and I chose full remote.
- ryanSrich 3y ago> The number of people who actually like going to the office (either part or full time) is far higher than you'd expect from reading Reddit and Hacker News. I think most people like an office setting. Even remote work proponents like myself enjoy the office every now and then. The problem is really two things. 1.) The commute is brutal. If you live in any decent sized city and have a family, it's likely that you are far enough away from the office that you have to drive 30+ minutes in pretty horrendous traffic. That's not only lost time that you could be spending with your family, or even doing work, but it's mentally exhausting. No one is refreshed in the office after a shitty commute. 2.) Often offices turn political. The dynamics of in person work can cause many issues that just don't happen when you work remote. Remote work, when done correctly, is mostly about contribution and output. In an office, low performers can outshine high performers simply by being present and seeming busy. Remote work mostly fixes this.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- warning26 3y ago> 1.) The commute is brutal. If you live in any decent sized city and have a family, it's likely that you are far enough away from the office that you have to drive 30+ minutes in pretty horrendous traffic. This is fundamentally a problem with urban design, not with in-office work.
- zer8k 3y agoI can't imagine going into an office again. I've been remote for 2/3 of my career (long before COVID). I would be happy to go to a meet up or something once a week after hours. I never want to have an open office arrangement where I am bothered CONSTANTLY again. Remote has been such a boon to my life and my productivity you'd have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.
- declan_roberts 3y agoSame! And what leverage do they truly have against us who moved away with eyes open? My mortgage is now $2k a month, about half of bay area rent. I'm more likely to try and get a $15/hr job with benefits here locally than haul my family back to the bay area.
- solarmist 3y agoSadly I'm feeling the same. I loved my coworkers and the Bay Area, but it's just too expensive to be worth it.
- aftergibson 3y agoSame, I like working in the office, but my quality of life and that of my family has drastically improved since moving to remote working.
- robotnikman 3y agoSame, I work much better from home. I have a tendency to talk out loud to myself when working on something and I feel like people would think I'm a bit annoying/crazy doing that in an open office environment.
- ryneandal 3y agoI've been working remotely for nearly seven years now. I've been able to enjoy all of the typical "firsts" for my youngest two, saved immense amounts of time with no commute, and have been able to pitch in more regarding domestic tasks. I understand and empathize with those that value face-to-face conversations in the office, but for those that don't, remote work is an incredible boon.
- dimitrios1 3y agoI have been working full time remote since Sept 2021 (correction, 2020, just before pandemic). It's not even that I don't value the face-to-face conversations and human interaction, I absolutely do. It just doesn't come close to the immense value I gain by WFH. A side benefit: I was able to move closer to my church community, so my "human interaction" need is being fulfilled richer than ever now. (One of the most frustrating things in all the WFH vs RTO discourse is that there is this false dichotomy being presented. It's either extroverted people who are energized by others, or introverts who'd rather be in the dark closet by themselves. I am as extroverted as they come, and I thrived in the office environment. Still wouldn't trade WFH for the world.)
- ceejayoz 3y ago> Sept 2021 (just before pandemic) Are you in Tonga or something?
- thebradbain 3y agoDo you mean Sept 2020? I believe everything shutdown (in most US states and European countries) in March 2020. Only wondering because ~3 years versus a little less than 2 years seems like a potentially big difference, so wondering if that feeling of fulfillment has is still going strong that long
- dimitrios1 3y agoYes! Good catch. The COVID years still all feel like 1 long year..
- GGO 3y agois this really fully remote work, or companies tagging hybrid (required to come to office at least once a week) as remote?
- pawelduda 3y agoBut they said we're all going back to offices? \s
- brianwawok 3y agoA lot of jobs are for sure. We are back to the trend where any job posted for remote gets 10-20x the resumes of a local job. For sure the balance has shifted a bit, but I don't think it is as dramatic as some say.
- MattGaiser 3y agoYou simply get so much of your life back not having to think about clothing or commuting and being able to throw in the laundry at lunch and get 5o work with a much broader selection of people.
- jacquesm 3y agoLots of work advertised as 'remote' ends up as several days in the office anyway. Also note that companies that are not 'full remote' may well revert their stance on this and go back to a butts-in-seats arrangement whenever they feel like. Some do this as a way to do lay-offs without announcing them as such. Companies that have a full-remote culture are usually much less likely to do this. A good way to gauge this is if the person that is hiring you is themselves remote during the hiring process.
- tsunamifury 3y agoThose who are being forced back are doing it to save their companies CRE utilization rate, and ensure loyalty through behavioral conditioning. I enjoy one or two days at the office when everyone goes in to there but beyond that there isn’t much “spontaneous” productivity.
- nine_zeros 3y agoFor smaller companies, it is a no brainer. Why spend so much renting multiple geographical offices when you can have just 1 HQ and workers available in all timezones. Save on rent, spend on eng and product. Profit?
- gbalduzzi 3y agoYou can also pay way less for engineers outside of the bay area
- nine_zeros 3y agoSome companies have come up with Pay zone bands where the metropolitan area decides the pay band. Sounds like a fair deal.
- thejosh 3y agoAlso, I would post to HN only when hiring remotely, because it's a great source to find remote workers? A better analysis would be job boards in general?
- dekervin 3y agoBut the relative variation might still carry some information , right ?
- philipwhiuk 3y agoDepends on the sample size.
- marcosdumay 3y agoThe variation on the absolute number of remote jobs carry some information, that is hard to link to any cause but is there. The variation on the ratio of remote to on-site jobs carry much less information and is still harder to link to a cause.
- synergy20 3y agoFrom my job searching experience in the last two months, that can not be possibly true, there are some remote positions but they're definitely not 60%, I would say it's about 15% at the best for software and engineering roles. just do a 'software developer' search on linkedin, it has 156000 jobs, then filter it via 'remote' it drops down to 24400, that's 15%.
- manfre 3y ago"on HN"
- synergy20 3y agojust curious, why the downvote? I like remote and I only do remote, that does not mean 60% is a fact, and fact matters.
- city41 3y agoI upvoted you to help balance a bit. But I think you're being downvoted because that isn't what's being discussed here. The title and article are specifically about HN.
- synergy20 3y agoThanks I was reading too fast indeed and since I am in the market now and I know the number does not match up so I wrote it fast, did not realize it's HN specific. Still a larger sample pool like linkedin might be helpful than HN's data.
- jedberg 3y agoThis article is about a specific job board. Your comment was actually interesting, but the way you worded it was both confrontational and made it off topic. It would have gone better if you said "That's interesting, in the wider job market I've found ..."
- lolinder 3y ago> that can not be possibly true, there are some remote positions but they're definitely not 60% Have you based your job search exclusively on HN's "Who is hiring"? If not, I'm not sure how you can make such strong assertions about the distribution of remote jobs on that specific job board. The article doesn't make any claims about the job market outside that data set.
- physicsguy 3y agoIt’s been pretty hard here in the U.K. to find a new fully remote role with an established company. Most big players seem to have moved back to in office.
- city41 3y agoI left the bay area to a fairly rural location thanks to being able to work remotely. I actually prefer the office or hybrid, but in the grand scheme of things, living here makes me the happiest. So I am very happy that remote is (hopefully) going to stick around.
- slily 3y agoI can relate to that. I moved out of a big city to the suburbs of a smaller one. Monthly expenses are roughly flat, but I own a house instead of pinching pennies in a small filthy apartment. I'd much rather work in person, but it doesn't feel possible to maintain a decent standard of living without scoring at least an average tech hub salary while working remotely from somewhere cheaper, at least not solo.
- ok_coo 3y agoI'd personally be OK with hybrid or (near) full-time back in the office if housing wasn't so expensive near cities. WFH has worked well for me but I can tell some of my coworkers really need to go back into the office now and then to help them focus. lol
- lizardking 3y agoI'm fine with my co-workers going back. I'm not going back, as long as I can avoid it. I'm certainly not doing so for their well being at the expense of my own.
- yboris 3y agoExciting news. Next frontier is 4DWW - Four Day Work Week! Achieve a work-life balance you never thought you could have ;)
- tayo42 3y agoI pitched this to a recruiter recently after they told me the max pay for a sr eng job was pretty low. She got pretty excited about the idea. No bites yet though on any company i brought it up with.
- kilroy123 3y agoThis is the way. I hope this becomes a thing in the United States.
- ZitchDog 3y agoDefinitely! AI will do your job on the 5th day. Try not to think further ahead than that.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- dontlaugh 3y agohttps://www.eurogamer.net/brink-studio-splash-damage-announces-shift-to-four-day-week https://www.eurogamer.net/brink-studio-splash-damage-announc...
- rcbdev 3y agoSome higher profile Austrian companies have been implementing this for a few years now.
- zer8k 3y ago> on HN The most important subtext. There are engineer friends of mine laid off from remote companies that, almost 5 months later, cannot get work. These aren't braindead seatwarmers either. The software engineer market has shifted under our feet DRAMATICALLY. Any software engineer with a position should try to keep it for as long as they possible can.
- Invictus0 3y agocannot get work... at the price they want. Plenty of low-paying remote jobs out there
- bamfly 3y ago> low-paying For high values of "low paying". $150-250k TC, instead of $300-500k.
- baristaGeek 3y agoExactly! It just makes the job market much more perfect. $500k at scale is an economic squander.
- bamfly 3y agoTo be clear, I'm not complaining about FAANG/finance comp rates. Anyone taking a bigger paycheck instead of that money going to capital is doing god's work (plus, building a foundation for future capital innovation, if you want the pro-capitalism slant on it—more people with investable capital and more people with cushion to try to build a business is very good). You should absolutely take every dollar you can wring out. They wanna spend stupid-money, see if they'll give you "stupid + $1". All day long. Just putting things in perspective. "Bad" developer pay is still really good. (of course, there's a worse tier of pay for developers and sysadmins under that one, but I don't think there's a lot of remote work in that tier that isn't also offshored work—in-person, though, yes)
- coryrc 3y ago
- dekervin 3y agoA related submission I made yesterday [0]: Ask HN: Should employers pay a fine for superfluous work-from-office policies? I think some single purpose poltical party or political action committee should take that issue and run with it. It's a worthy goal. [0]https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36852462 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36852462
- VHRanger 3y ago[flagged]
- lizardking 3y agoUnfortunately, I'm finding that this is increasingly not the case.
- kilbuz 3y agohaha found your comment with your recipe.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Decabytes 3y agoI enjoy working remotely. It allows me to live somewhere with a reasonable cost of living, and gives me an extra two hours back of my day. It also allows me to take the trash out if I forget and hear the truck, or throw a load of clothes in the laundry. I wouldn't mind working in a office again, but my stipulations would be a pay increase to account for having to live closer to work, and having to pay people to clean up the house a couple times a week
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- jstanthrschizo6 3y ago[flagged]
- bilsbie 3y agoI prefer in office but I don’t see how that’s possible with a family. How would you afford a large enough house in a city center? And otherwise how do you justify two hours of your day to commuting? It just seems like an extreme quality of life hit to be able to work in an office. Am I missing something?
- dharmab 3y agoA few people I worked with commuted by train and used most of their commute time to work.
- philipwhiuk 3y agoThe answer is you pick one of them. London's entire population distribution for years has been built upon people moving out when they got kids.
- acuozzo 3y ago> I prefer in office but I don’t see how that’s possible with a family. I don't see how WFH is possible with a family. My children (9, 6, and 4) spend nearly the whole day trying to guilt me into playing with them when I telework. > How would you afford a large enough house in a city center? Work in an industry which exists largely outside of the cities. Defense, for instance. > And otherwise how do you justify two hours of your day to commuting? 1 hour in total for me: 30 minutes there and back. Columbia, MD <-> College Park, MD
- cmehdy 3y agoI am not a SV-based or US-based employee, and unfortunately I have to consider myself pretty lucky to be working remotely, and am therefore more stuck in an otherwise terrible job simply because I can't give up remote work. Outside SV or some US hubs, a lot of average workplaces seem to try hard to get people to come back into the office, regardless of the requirements of the job itself. It might have started with banks and governments, but recent incentives and pushes from cities and the real-estate market can sometimes push people to go back into offices "to save businesses". The pandemic might have offered some profound shifts, but not fundamental ones unfortunately. So I stay at my workplace for the time being, trading away some mental health for the benefit of remote work - and I suspect that not only I am not alone in this, I am probably more privileged than many (most?) who didn't even have a choice.
- johnny99k 3y agoI've been working remotely since 2012. I even travelled around Asia for a year in 2013. This is all contracting/consulting work. I never told my client at the time that I was in Asia and had to work until 3am most nights. Back then, less than 1% of the jobs I found were remote. This is why I got into contracting in the first place.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ptero 3y agoThere is a fair amount of vitriol towards companies requiring some in office time, assuming anything from BS to evil intent. While I personally like being able to work from home I have seen many cases when bringing the team into the office, at least once or twice a week, removes blockers and helps people sketch out and try prototypes in a way that remote work does not. It is painful, when you are working with hardware in some restricted access lab and something breaks, to hear that the person who can fix it is remote and will come in next Monday. Maybe. So I am not surprised that some employers are pushing RTO from purely business reasons; no chicanery. And as this often carries various costs for employees, this will eventually, in a business cycle or two, get negotiated to a sane state, where both sides are slightly unhappy, but realize that they got a decent deal. My 2c.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- robswc 3y agoIt's weird. I feel like you can get more done at an office at times... but then there's also a lot of downtime. Also the commute is always killer. I honestly believe people work better when they get dressed and have some routine. No idea how people can work in their PJs, I'd feel so lazy, lol. However. The commute is killer. Even if you get it down to just 15 min. (which is hard unless you live right next to work) that's 30 min. a day. Prob adds up to well over 100 hrs a year just commuting. I know some ppl do public transport with an audio book or something but for me, that's still 100 hours commuting. If I could teleport to the office, I'd say in person 60/40 split. Since I have to commute, remote all the way except for important kick offs or brainstorming sessions.
- acuozzo 3y ago> Even if you get it down to just 15 min. (which is hard unless you live right next to work) that's 30 min. a day. Prob adds up to well over 100 hrs a year just commuting. I need my morning commute. It's a kind of forced meditation that I can't get at home with three young children. It would stress me out if I couldn't work a flexible schedule or if I had to deal with rush-hour, so I'm thankful that these stars aligned for me.
- robswc 3y agoThat's fair, honestly gives you an advantage that you enjoy it. For me, anytime I'm commuting I feel is time I could be doing almost literally _anything_ else. My secret to getting away (its not forced though, lol) is a mini sauna. I don't really sit in there sometimes but if I say I'm going to it's everyone's clue to leave me alone haha.
- acuozzo 3y ago> That's fair, honestly gives you an advantage that you enjoy it. I probably wouldn't if it were any longer, TBH. 30 minutes one-way is more-or-less my limit. It's also terrible for the environment. IDK, I have mixed feelings about the whole thing, but I do know that I need it to reset my brain before work. > My secret to getting away (its not forced though, lol) is a mini sauna. That's awesome! How mini are we talking? I've seen some tiny ones!
- KronisLV 3y agoThe Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2023 also had some data on this: https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#section-employment-work-environment https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#section-employment-wor... Hybrid (some remote, some in-person): 42.18% Remote: 41.41% In-person: 16.41% I personally hope that remote work won't die out due to it being a good work environment for me personally (office building value be damned), but that split seems reasonable. Hopefully with the hybrid setups being accommodating enough to allow for someone to be fully remote, or fully in-person, depending on life circumstances and preferences.
- thedangler 3y agoMy ideal remote work would be: Be available for meetings that may impact your work, if not work when ever you want but must meet project goals. For example, I'm most productive 10am - 3pm and 9pm - 2am. But I make do with "office hours" that have no bearing on my project dead lines.
- drones 3y agoDoes anyone else think that WeWork, as a concept, still has potential? WFH has a lot of benefits for the employee, but it's clear that many employers still desire some face-to-face contact. WeWork was already going downhill pre-pandemic, but had it survived I wonder if it may have been the primary service for small/hybrid companies. I am aware that WW had it's own business issues to deal with, but it's still salvageable, right?
- calvinmorrison 3y agoI think providing employees with office hubs to work at within 10-20 minutes of their house will be available as a perk or benefit - instead of paying for an office.
- pphysch 3y agoAt the start of the pandemic I looked at a new co-working space and it was like $200/mo membership fee for the open space or $500/mo for a tiny private office/closet. Meanwhile, my apartment (paid for), a large library (free), and several cafes (~$3 daily contract) are a block away. It just doesn't make economic sense at those rates.
- JambalayaJim 3y agoCo-working spaces are useful when an extra bedroom would cost you $500/mo (or much more) anyway. Libraries where I live have limited seating. Cafes can be really hit or miss in terms of power outlets, large enough desk space, and noise. Both don't have 24/7 access, nor do they allow you to set up a workstation with monitors. They are not worthwhile if you have ample space in your home and only desire to get out a few hours a week to a cafe.
- QuarterReptile 3y agoIf, by the concept, you mean coworking spaces, then yes, that concept can and does work. If you mean coworking spaces administered by people in SF making tech salaries and needing the growth and scale that VC demands, then it seems unlikely. In my hometown, the coworking space costs $140/mo right in downtown (220 with a dedicated desk). Anything that can operate locally is probably going to beat the dumb money that We Work represents.
- dspillett 3y agoObviously this can only count jobs that say they are remote, I've seen many complaints about remote jobs that turn out to require significant time in an office location. -- Personally I'd prefer not to WFH mostly. While it is very useful to be able to (I have for a day or two here & there for years, and over the last year for a few days at a time while looking after ill parents and a terminal pet) but I hate it full time. Partly it is because I don't have room for a dedicated office and I don't like my work and personal space to mix to readily, and partly it is the contact thing (I'm uncomfortable on phones and video calls, always have been, and some people don't seem to be willing to mail or IM me instead when that would be most efficient by far), and partly I find myself getting more and more distractable the longer I'm working away (this may be largely due to the matter of having no space for a dedicated office space). I'd rather leave tech than work full time remote, so you might find me stacking shelves in a few years! We are officially hybrid, but for two or three days of any given week there are only a few people in the office, often not people I'm working directly with, so I'm effectively remote just in an office not at home, so some of the bad parts of both options. I'm not sure if this is any better, and I'm seriously contemplating what my future options may be – those shelves that need stacking are looking oddly attractive, or more practically perhaps retraining as an accountant or something. Or maybe this is just the midlife crisis rambling! Or maybe, as I've been accused of a few times, I'm a corporate shill here to extol the virtues of office space.
- Aurornis 3y ago> Obviously this can only count jobs that say they are remote, I've seen many complaints about remote jobs that turn out to require significant time in an office location. This happened to me. The company wanted to fly people to offices any time something important or urgent came up. It led to ridiculous situations where something urgent broke, and instead of sitting at our computers and working on it we'd be scrambling through airports and sitting on airplanes for a day, getting rental cars, checking in to hotels, and then driving to an office the next morning for a meeting. Then we'd end up working the problem in transit anyway. Solving problems from a cramped airplane seat from spotty in-cabin WiFi instead of home with my big monitor, reliable internet, and camera for video conferencing. The company also had a mix of empty-nesters and young single people in charge of company events. They wanted to put together quarterly on-site meetups where everyone was supposed to travel and stay in hotels and do team-building exercises. I pointed out that having to travel 4 weeks out of the year was equivalent to a job with an 8% travel requirement, which they scoffed at because it was for "fun" activities. That job was "remote" but ended up having 20% travel time.
- EGreg 3y ago69 percent choosing to work at home and be able spend more quality time w their partners eh? Who says HN doesn’t have a sense of humor!
- Zetice 3y agoNot only do I despise remote working, I'm leaving the industry entirely as a direct result of working remotely, in favor of getting a law degree. I'm just beyond sick and tired of my default mode being, "Stare at screen to solve problems." I want to work with people, solve problems with people, help people. None of that is what most engineers in software prefer, and I'm tired of trying to force it on them for the apparently insignificant reason that it's highly effective.
- dimgl 3y agoDon't let the door hit you on the way out?
- deckard1 3y agoyou're really going to be in for a shock once you get your law degree. Good luck with that.
- Zetice 3y agoOpen to being shocked now! My family is mostly attorneys, I’m presently the black sheep for working in software.
- JambalayaJim 3y agoI'm sure this depends on your specialization; but much of the legal industry has become remote heavy as well. My partner is a lawyer in commercial litigation; the vast majority of her client meetings and court hearings are done remotely.
- esafak 3y agoBecome a consultant
- nsxwolf 3y agoI've been remote since 2005. Organizations that pioneered that kind of work didn't do it because they were forced to, so there is a whole different vibe in such companies. It's not seen as a "perk", and there's never anxiety about "RTO". It's never been exactly easy to find the opportunities, but I always managed to. I'm glad now that the baseline of available remote work seems to be permanently higher.
- romankolpak 3y agoI'm at my best at writing (code, text, everything) when I'm working remotely. The option to sit down and focus in the apartment all to myself has done wonders to my code and ability to solve problems. However I'm still a bit unsure how this affects my career. I feel like conventional corporate success depends more on your relationships and politics than the quality of your code and writing. It's really hard to build quality relationships and see the politics and status games people are playing in my company by being a remote worker. I met most of my current network by sitting in the same office with them. I wonder if this is everyone else's experience too, or maybe I'm just missing something obvious, like scheduling more face-to-face meetings with people.
- isykt 3y ago> I feel like conventional corporate success depends more on your relationships and politics than the quality of your code and writing. It's really hard to build quality relationships and see the politics and status games people are playing in my company by being a remote worker. Organizations and organizational decisions like promotions or project investments are made by people. People have biases. Those biases include familiarity and recency. One of the easiest way to be familiar with the people who make decisions is to be in their physical presence. This activates senses and experiences that virtual interactions lack. This includes body language, unstructured conversations about non-work topics, and shared non-work experiences. When LLMs can write code — and when you are using LLMs to help write code — how will you differentiate yourself from others?
- vbo 3y agoI don't mind working from home, but I find WFH-accommodating calls exhausting; it feels they take far longer than the equivalent in person discussion, in addition to losing the ad-hoc nature of office conversations. The context switch feels heavier on calls than it does in person. Also, the way daily calls tend to be scheduled (everyone at once, let's hash out everything for everyone so we can then get on with things) means I have to sit in on conversations that are irrelevant to me and for some reason having noise coming out of my headphones means I can't focus on anything else. On the opposite end, I'm now sat in the office while colleagues are having a meeting right next to me and I am able to focus on writing this reply (or maybe coding, if I wasn't procrastinating on HN). Maybe it's my audio setup, but I've tried multiple types of headphones to no avail. I feel the quality of my work (and life) would improve if I could cope better with calls, but despite my efforts, I can't do it. I've removed myself from calls with an adjacent team that mostly don't concern me, and asked them to ping me only if they need me. That saved 30m to 2 hours of my life and saved me from becoming exhausted before the day has properly begun. There's also a problem in that _some_ people prefer WFH because they can slack off more (or have multiple jobs); that means they're not always available and not fully committed, with whatever implications for the people who rely on them and the company/product. Maybe it's down to the pace of the work. Startups, I feel, benefit from in office huddling. Corporations with ample time on their hands could be better suited to WFH.
- ryanSrich 3y ago> but I find WFH-accommodating calls exhausting How many of these are truly necessary?
- dv_dt 3y agoIt sounds to me like you're WFH in a culture that doesn't do async coordination well. I don't know how large an org you're in, but some targeted team process refresh goals/training for better async coord would seem like it could improve your working environment. (edit: this could be a suggestion put to your team leads/managers with the objective of improving culture & efficiency) Some of that is explicitly writing up short coordinating docs/memos instead of real-time hashing it out, and comes with some of the attendant advantages of writing and thinking often discussed in HN posts.
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoMeta: I want us to appreciate that total number of job postings on HN have been steadily falling since 2018 [1] with what appears to be an outlier jump in 2021 (post-pandemic bubble). That seems pretty important... Am I missing some big piece of context here that would make my analysis wrong? https://twitter.com/AndrewKemendo/status/1683877057959272449 https://twitter.com/AndrewKemendo/status/1683877057959272449
- MoSattler 3y agoAnecdotally, I've heard from HR professionals that posting on Hacker News isn't a particularly effective method for attracting candidates. Perhaps this could be the reason.
- rjbwork 3y agoYeah my company has posted a couple of times and despite saying US only, we only got people from SEA and Eastern Europe...so we stopped posting.
- solarmist 3y agoDoes the location it's posted really affect that significantly? Isn't it similar to any job board?
- rjbwork 3y agoNot quite sure quite what you're asking. But I think, yes it affects it, we can't hire people outside of the US and given we got no candidates we could feasibly employ, it doesn't make sense to continue posting.
- jonasdegendt 3y agoHe’s suggesting that when posting the same job listing in places such as LinkedIn, you still get the same people from SEA applying anyway. The few times I’ve had LinkedIn Premium and had a look at where other applicants were from, I’d notice the majority was from SEA or Africa, even though the posting clearly required EU residency/work permit.
- roland35 3y agoNice! I recently interviewed for a job which was a 45 minute commute - after driving out for the interview I just felt sad about potentially driving for 6+ hours a week after working remote for 4 years.
- shoulderfake 3y ago[dead]
- cj 3y agoSide note to the remote founders/employers out there: Have you been plagued by applicant fraud? We've found for all of our remote engineering roles, we get 100's of amazing applicants who are all fake (clearly not actually in the US) once you get them on a screening call. They're often reading from a script, broken english, and say strange things like they're born and raised in Texas, yet can't speak fluent English or have a heavy accent. My best guess is it's dev shops overseas who are using an English-speaking "front" person who then delegates the work to other people with the "front" person being the one who joins company meetings, etc. Really frustrating because it's making us have to do silly things like require photo ID verification over video on the first screening call (which I would rather not inconvenience applicants with, but there are just SO many candidates lying about residing in the US). With our most recent role, about 60-70% of applicants were fake ("fake" = candidates who lie about living/residing in the US)
- esafak 3y agoSomeone wrote about this in a previous discussion. The grift is to bilk you until you realize the charade. Even one American paycheck is golden in the developing world.
- saasxyz 3y agodo you clearly mention that the role is only for US candidates? what platforms do you use to source the candidates?
- baristaGeek 3y agoAccent aside (if they can't be understood at all they're obviously not qualified): What's the difference between a foreigner with an accent in your onsite team VS a foreigner that's remote in US timezones (LatAm)? Why just open the job for US-remote? Compliance? Deel/Remote can help you with that. Security? It applies if you're working on defense software, but other than that...?
- michaelbuckbee 3y agoIf you can imagine the difference between hiring one single developer to work on your application vs. hiring dozens of different developers each to handle some small part of it...and it's still worse than that. Typically the person "hired" is the senior and the person doing the work is _extremely_ green.
- goliathDown 3y agoI wish the editor (or team) did a better job in proofreading their article. The multiple spelling mistakes and grammar mistakes makes me question the credibility of their ability to report.
- nonethewiser 3y agoPeople love to cite ad-hoc conversations and overhearing conversations to build context as in office advantages. These are true but they also include downsides. Constant distractions and interruptions.
- tacocataco 3y agoPeople should get paid for their commute. With compensation for gas and wear and tear on the car. Support for return to the office would vaporize instantly. Less pollution, less traffic, less wear on the roads, lives saved and injuries avoided. You want people to come into the office? Pay for the privilege.
- ApolloFortyNine 3y agoIn a way I found they do, the highest pay companies tend to require in office for most of their employees (FAANG for instance). Some get full remote, but its largely pushed that they come into the office at least a few days a week.
- horns4lyfe 3y agoEngineers need to stand up for it. The commute is part of your work day, so leave at an appropriate time. Tacking on an extra hour to your work day is ridiculous, leave earlier and get in later.
- baristaGeek 3y agoThis statistic makes a lot of sense, and can only expect it will keep going up. Pre-pandemic companies suffered a lot from the lack of talent/talent war in their geography. Now they can hire the best person in the world for a given role, or at least in their timezone (I believe in the power of synchronous work to a certain extent). If this is happening in the middle of a VC downturn, imagine how it's going to be once we're back to good times.
- deafpolygon 3y agoAny sysadmin remote roles here? I'm in Europe.
- renewiltord 3y agoI think it's pretty cool that there's more alignment here between what many people wanted and what's available. I think especially for places with long commutes this is a huge efficiency. Personally, I live a short bike ride in SF from work and we're all in-office and I prefer that. And it's really helped with democratization, too. With Turing and Deel and so on, you can hire internationally once you're ready to work with remote folk. It has been interesting to me that I've heard more about Eastern Europe, Africa, and India for this rather than South America. South America has a massive timezone advantage, but why so few remote workers from there?
- zactato 3y agoI don't understand the smugness of Software Engineers' belief that pure remote is the only option. It seems short-sighted. If everything is remote then companies don't care where they hire from. Whats the difference between you and an engineer from South America? Maybe you're a better engineer and maybe you are a better communicator in English. How much better? When do the scales tip? Why hire an engineer for over 200k who's remote in Wisconsin when you can hire one who's remote in Peru for $75k? It might be better for you right now, but what about in 3 years or 10 years?
- biohax2015 3y agoYep. Not to mention LLMs bringing down language / cultural barriers. We're digging our own graves here.
- no_wizard 3y agoThis is always been a threat, even before WFH was common. How many jobs were offshored in the early - mid 2000s before the trend started to reverse? (and it never reversed completely, mind you) Or so-called "in-sourcing" practices by abusing the H1B system to higher engineers at a lower rate. This is always a threat, office or not
- eldaisfish 3y agothis is a tired argument and is easily dismissed - quality and local info. As you stack requirements, your chances of finding someone outside the country drop dramatically. Does your person in Peru have experience with US labour law? US Taxes? You see where this is going.
- biohax2015 3y ago> Does your person in Peru have experience with US labour law? US Taxes? Why would, say, a Ruby developer need to know any of these things? I don't think most US developers are familiar with them, other than during tax season. Ironically it's technology that's shortening the gaps between offshore / onshore resources.
- jiveturkey 3y agoReads like it was aided by AI (LLM) in the writing. No description of how the analysis was done. So I have to imagine that jobs are extremely simply counted, not deduped. So a job listed in-office or in-city, but also listed as remote, would be 2 jobs and this would result in 50% remote jobs available. Whereas this is actually 100% remote. So I imagine the 69% is an undercount, if going by my assumption of simplistic counting.
- indymike 3y agoI've been interviewing for a two dev positions, and from the employer side here is what I'm seeing: 1. 31% of applicants are dev shop / staffing co lead generation / fraudulent applications. This is pretty normal. I'm sure the that this works enough to make it work for the people selling contract developers. 2. 17% of applicants cannot work in the US. We disclose you must be legal to work in the US and what visas are acceptable. 3. 19% can pass code test on senior developer on the first try, 28% pass if given a re-do. Code test is part q&a and part write a function from requirements. 4. 22% of junior devs can pass code test on the first try and just 23% pass if given a a re-do. Code test is part q&a and part write a function from requirements. 5. 87% junior devs are willing to relocate to work in the office. 95% of senior devs want remote. 6. Of the developers who pass the test, 76.4% end up passing the tech interview, which means the decision is really about what additional skills, experiences and abilities they bring with them. Takeways: about 50% fraud/non employable. 20% can actually pass a very simple code test.
- horns4lyfe 3y agoThe Sr vs Jr makes sense. To me, the entire discussion can be distilled down to people with families that want remote, and younger single people that don’t realize that they’ll eventually want remote and will regret it.
- moneywoes 3y agoHow big of a pain point is 50% fraud, would you consider paying for vetted, verified applicants to streamline your funnel?
- indymike 3y agoWe sell a solution for that problem and use it in our hiring funnel, so yes people will pay for it, and it has great value.
- fab13n 3y agoRemote software engineer in the EU here. Remote has been fantastic, to extend our pool of potential customers/employers. Not working in an open space, not being disturbed by pointless red-tapers and middle managers is a productivity boost. Not losing time and energy in commutes as well. I can see one serious drawback with pure remote: it's a cumbersome way to mentor junior developpers. In big companies which maintain a balance of junior/senior staff, and try to make the former grow, it's a legitimate issue. In start-ups, which expect you to hit the ground running, and don't have an army of managers to keep busy, remote should be the norm.
- cyrialize 3y agoI love working remotely! I also feel like finding a place to work remotely requires luck, patience, and due diligence. The first hurdle is figuring out if you like remote work or not. Covid was a great way for me to try out remote work and realize I love it. I'm not sure what to do outside of that. I imagine it must be awful to prepare for an interview and get a remote job only to realize that working remotely just isn't for you and now you have to do the whole process over again. After that, it's finding a good place to work out of. I'm fortunate enough to have a home office that is set up the exact way I want it to be. I can control the height of my desk, my lighting, and my temperature. I don't think there's any office I'd prefer over my home office, but I also know that not everyone is able to have that same experience. Finally, there's the company, it's culture, and the team you are on. Is your company remote first? Is your team remote first? How do you work together? How do you have "water cooler" chats? I think the place you work for can really make or break your remote working experience.
- TesterVetter 3y ago[dead]
- 71a54xd 3y agoStill really hard to get callbacks for technical PM and / or technical PM roles in general even with 4-5yrs of prior exp. Maybe my resume sucks but I've been surviving off of a few consulting gigs. Really hoping things improve within a year.
- nfriedly 3y agoThat's an awesome statistic! I've been working remotely from Ohio for most of the last 15 years. (I did one year on site in the Bay area in the middle - I'm glad I did it, but I was also happy to move back home.) For a little while, after my daughter was born, I rented a private office and biked to it most days. That was absolutely fantastic. But, we've since moved into a bigger house and I'm back to working from a home office. Some occasional interruptions from family, but overall it's pretty good. For a long time, wanting to stay remote just meant that I couldn't apply to the vast majority of jobs. Not so much any more. Fortunately I don't see myself looking for a new job anytime soon - I'm now at a company that was aiming for "remote equal" even before the pandemic, and my current team is fully remote - but it makes me happy that if I did need to find a new role today, there would be a lot a lot more options than any other job search I've ever done in the past.
- dshdsh 3y agoHi, I was working remote from 2007 till 2021 for an US company as an independent international contractor. Now I'm in EU and I'm trying to find a remote US job during 2022 and this year. No luck. It looks like a dead end. Looks like nobody in US needs an experienced remote developer. Something is really changed a lot. It's so sad.