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There is one element ( elephant ) of remote working that I don't see being much discussed. If the job can be done remotely and async - it potentially can be do

There is one element ( elephant ) of remote working that I don't see being much discussed. If the job can be done remotely and async - it potentially can be done from anywhere. Potentially this means you are competing globally for that job. And I suspect for most of the people on these boards there are lots of places which have both the talent and much lower costs. So in a completely free market you might find that choosing where you live is no longer an advantage of remote working - to compete you'll need to move to a country that has lower costs.... So there is an element of being careful what you wish for.

dalyons 3y ago
its discussed literally every time a remote work/rto post comes up on this site. And then the usual responses about how international offshoring has been tried before various times and it mostly doesnt work for XYZ reasons etc etc
- DrScientist 3y ago
  So the interesting question is - are those reasons XYZ - also reasons against remote working per se?
  - dalyons 3y ago
    Sort of - the outsourcing problems are usually described as in descending order: cultural differences, timezone differences, language challenges, general communication overhead and talent availability. All those could be true with remote, but that’s probably why most companies limit remote to same culture (eg nth am) , close timezone, same language. You’re left with “just” general communication overhead in that case.
    - DrScientist 3y ago
      You could collapse all those to communication - apart from talent availability. So remote working increases talent availability and increases communication overhead ( through one mechanism or another - language, timezone, shared culture ). So the right balance then depends on how important communication is for the particular role versus talent, factored by how good the talent is at communicating. One of the things I've heard about remote working is it helps people stay focused on task and hence be productive. These people like the reduction in communication ( noise ). The other side I've heard is that it atomises the organisation to those headline tasks, but loses the element of the sum being greater than the whole - the stuff that happens off task. If you truly believe in remote working, then you could argue that companies shouldn't exist in terms of perm employees - you contract everything out on a per task basis. The idea of minimising communication overhead being central to the existence of companies comes from the work of Ronald Coase. eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_of_Social_Cost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_of_Social_Cost

dalyons 3y ago

its discussed literally every time a remote work/rto post comes up on this site. And then the usual responses about how international offshoring has been tried before various times and it mostly doesnt work for XYZ reasons etc etc

DrScientist 3y ago
So the interesting question is - are those reasons XYZ - also reasons against remote working per se?
- dalyons 3y ago
  Sort of - the outsourcing problems are usually described as in descending order: cultural differences, timezone differences, language challenges, general communication overhead and talent availability. All those could be true with remote, but that’s probably why most companies limit remote to same culture (eg nth am) , close timezone, same language. You’re left with “just” general communication overhead in that case.
  - DrScientist 3y ago
    You could collapse all those to communication - apart from talent availability. So remote working increases talent availability and increases communication overhead ( through one mechanism or another - language, timezone, shared culture ). So the right balance then depends on how important communication is for the particular role versus talent, factored by how good the talent is at communicating. One of the things I've heard about remote working is it helps people stay focused on task and hence be productive. These people like the reduction in communication ( noise ). The other side I've heard is that it atomises the organisation to those headline tasks, but loses the element of the sum being greater than the whole - the stuff that happens off task. If you truly believe in remote working, then you could argue that companies shouldn't exist in terms of perm employees - you contract everything out on a per task basis. The idea of minimising communication overhead being central to the existence of companies comes from the work of Ronald Coase. eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_of_Social_Cost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Problem_of_Social_Cost