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Remote work morphs into elite status symbol for wealthy, college-educated
- spking 3y agohttps://archive.ph/osPFP https://archive.ph/osPFP
- ambyra 3y agoThanks!
- ajsnigrutin 3y agoSo... people who do intellectual work and only need a desk, chair and a computer? I mean... it would be pretty hard for a plumber, electrician, construction worker, etc. to work from home.
- aeonik 3y agoHonestly, I think there's a market for a professional trades phone support. There are so many cases were I just wish I could video chat and ask some basic questions from a professional plumber or electrician while I'm doing some DIY work. My pet insurance provides something similar, where I will call a veterinarian outside of office hours that can help my triage potential emergency issues.
- MattGaiser 3y agoThis was a complaint during the pandemic too, so I am not sure much has changed. Only knowledge jobs generally can work remotely. Robotic avatars are a long ways away for the other jobs.
- lloydatkinson 3y agoNo it does not. This is another hit piece from the elites worried about office space and buildings.
- flir 3y agoThere's an argument that anyone with a pension should be worried about commerical real estate[1]. UK-specific, but for political reasons our local government tier has been investing in commercial real estate for the last 15 years or so[2]. I've no intention of going back, of course. Someone else can take one for the team. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/pension-funds-feeling-pain-commercial-real-estate-woes-2023-4?r=US&IR=T https://www.businessinsider.com/pension-funds-feeling-pain-c... [2] https://www.nao.org.uk/reports/local-authority-investment-in-commercial-property/ https://www.nao.org.uk/reports/local-authority-investment-in...
- 082349872349872 3y ago> anyone with a pension should be worried about commerical real estate I'd find it more likely that anyone with a rationally-managed pension would find they are (and always have been) diversified enough that things which benefit the wider economy (ie WFH) bring them more gains overall than sporadic losses concentrated in specific sectors.
- walthamstow 3y ago> Just a few years after most knowledge workers shifted to remote work, it’s now mostly wealthy, college-educated employees who are still being allowed to work from home What job does a poor, uneducated knowledge worker do?
- glitchc 3y agoCustomer/employee service, executive assistant, front-line IT support...
- MattGaiser 3y agoExcept for really frontline customer service, those jobs seem to require a degree nowadays or at least have everywhere I have worked.
- dangus 3y agoOn top of that, in what universe is the typical remote knowledge worker “wealthy?” Making a 50-70% higher salary than the median isn’t “wealthy.” That’s just “upper quartile middle class.” That’s a wage employee who depends on a regular paycheck and couldn’t remain unemployed for an extended period of time. The word “wealthy” doesn’t meant that at all. “Wealthy” means you fly first class. “Wealthy” means you pay for luxury cars with cash. “Wealthy” means you own more than one home. The median software engineering salary is now at the bottom cutoff for being approved for a mortgage on a basic home. I bet most of the “wealthy” software engineers who worked in-office in 2018 and are remote now make less today after adjusting for inflation.
- XorNot 3y agoI mean this is just another entry in the various hit pieces being sponsored by anyone who's long on downtown corporate real estate.
- alisonatwork 3y agoBy definition upper quartile means being in the top 25%. I think most people would understand "middle class" to mean exactly what it sounds like it means: the 50% of people clustered around the middle. I know some wealthy people like to imagine they aren't wealthy because there are always other people around even wealthier than they are, but that doesn't mean they're not wealthy compared to the average.
- yardie 3y agoRemote work is ... a bargaining tool for people who prefer to work remotely, and it doesn't matter what socioeconomic class you're in. CRE funds are so determined to get employees back into the office (while their asset class implodes) that they'll sponsor any piece of journalism that will help toe the line. Since last year it's been a steady drumbeat of articles claiming remote work is over or is "bad" for morale. And the data doesn't seem to line up.
- dandy23 3y agoBut it will and should increase the salaries for employees in fields where they cannot work from home. Salaries for blue collar jobs will go up and for white collar jobs down.
- pyrale 3y ago> Salaries for blue collar jobs will go up and for white collar jobs down. Not really, because there's a lock-in due to job specialization. If the job you're proficient at requires you on the line, you won't see a dime more for being there, because there's no alternative. Which means, if any raise happens, it will go to lines of work where remote is an option - white collars jobs mostly.
- dandy23 3y agoIt goes both ways. Companies can hire remote workers from anywhere in the world. If there are not enough engineers willing to come in and use the expensive spectrum analyzers or working in a clean room or whatever then you have to pay them more.
- otteromkram 3y agoHow so? Blue-collar workers are limited to a viable commuting distance. If employees don't like the rate of pay, they have limited options, which is why many in those fields have formed unions. White-collar workers who don't like the rate of pay can look elsewhere around the globe. I would note that WFH is beneficial to all parties (except commercial real estate). There's not only fewer cars on the road at key times, but remote workers can run errands at odd hours, allowing workers with less flexibility to complete their errands faster as there's less traffic to contend with during "rush hour" time blocks. Also, WFH isn't for everyone: * As much as people love their family, being around them 24/7 takes a toll * Some people like the social aspects of office work. * Remote workers are less likely to move up the food chain unless a company is 100% distributed (pure speculation). I really don't understand why WFH is being touted as evil or elitist. The evil doers are the execs cutting those workers, forcing life changes, and making people miserable, all for financial gain atop already padded compensation packages.
- pavlov 3y agoRemote work always was a luxury for those with enough status in the workplace to feel confident not being seen at the office.
- ajmurmann 3y agoIMO being seen as important or competent enough to be certain to get consulted for decisions you care about also plays a role when we are taking about hybrid. I've seen it so often that a conversation arises organically, people overhear it pull up their chairs and half an hour later some problem was solved a certain way. Next day at stand-up or when the PR hits might be the first time the remote employee hears about it who now has to be caught up and sometimes the decision now gets unmade or we are that the alternative is only marginally better and not worse redoing the work for. The little bit of barrier to call someone in is just sometimes too much to interrupt the discussion and even add a very senior person who is remote. One of many reasons I think hybrid is super hard and likely worse than full remote, full local or remote with set days in the office for everyone (my personal favorite).
- crotchfire 3y agoThis is going to shock people, but remote work was very common for blue-collar workers in the 1800s: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putting-out_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Putting-out_system
- dandy23 3y agoI think in this setting (WFH) blue collar job also means hospital jobs, restaurant, r&d lab workers, teachers, sales etc, i.e. any kind of job where one cannot physically work from home.
- XorNot 3y agoYes imagine if the physical requirements of those jobs were rewarded with some type of additional monetary compensation, given the demands placed upon the workers...
- SauciestGNU 3y agoWhen covid first hit I was working with a lot of laboratory scientists in R&D. I can promise you that even the most gifted scientists weren't making a substantial monetary premium, except for the handful who were individually responsible for breakthroughs that led to commercially successful pharmaceutical products. The market for laboratory scientists is fairly saturated and the wages are much lower than you might expect, given the relative importance of the work to society.
- soneca 3y agoNot “shock” precisely, but definitely an interesting surprise to me. Thanks for posting this
- legitster 3y agoThis is still common in many places. I remember reading somewhere that some items in IKEA were essentially home made in places like India or Vietnam. Things like brooms and rugs.
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- allium 3y agoThis is just an attempt to pit workers against other workers, both to make lower-proles hate WFH upper-proles (“middle class”) and to pit the upper-proles on notice that RTO will come for them if they don’t shape up. Do not fall for it. The real enemy is up top and always has been. Anyway, RTO is more about fucking over people with disabilities—for unclear reason, because accommodated disabled people are, in my experience, the best people to work with, because they’ve seen real shit—and this attempt to create intra-proletarian dissension is just a distraction, at the end of the day.
- ttt11199907 3y agoI read this the same way. Any divide will be exploited to keep us from getting mad over all time high corporate profits unaccompanied by any benefit to the workers, the actual value creators.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago"Ahh, cool, you want me to help blue collar workers unionize to get more leverage and agency against low empathy high status demanding usually elderly (55+) management. You got it boss."
- JoshGG 3y agoSo true thanks for posting. Minions must return to office and support CRE valuations!
- mg 3y agoYesterday, in Microsofts earnings report, a number that stood out to me was their quarterly Linkedin revenue of $4B. That revenue probably mostly comes from the old school hiring process where employer and employee get to know each other and then jump into a long term contract, right? I'm surprised Upwork and Fiverr are still so small in comparison. Their model of letting people quickly band and disband on projects seems so much more natural to me in the times of remote work.
- organsnyder 3y ago> Their model of letting people quickly band and disband on projects seems so much more natural to me in the times of remote work. For certain tasks, sure. But every position I've held required gathering quite a bit of context before I was able to really be effective. It's not just the tech stack and existing systems, either: it's learning the business to a level where I can better know that I'm meeting the actual business need (rather than just the text on the JIRA ticket).
- mikepurvis 3y agoAgree. Indeed we often specifically flag those tickets which require so little context that they might make a good "onboarding issue" or "intern issue".
- pjc50 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nature_of_the_Firm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Nature_of_the_Firm : "quickly band and disband on projects" has overheads which can be prohibitive. Especially in knowledge work. This is partly why offshore outsourcing wasn't a success.
- marricks 3y agoA friend who does clerical work and makes less than half of my programmer wage is getting forced into office by a boss who reads trash like this. After the dust settles from this I bet there will be studies showing lower wage workers were forced into the office just as much if not more than higher paid counter parts. While she’s fighting to stay remote my job has absolutely no risk of that, same with my coworkers companies we work with.
- bryanlarsen 3y agoHer job is probably even more suited for remote work than yours is. She likely has some sort of output statistic that provides a good measure of productivity, unlike most programming jobs.
- marricks 3y agoRight… and her direct boss (who doesn’t care about remote) is, by nature of job, not in office. Its fucked.
- lucidguppy 3y agoIs this supposed to make remoters feel guilty? Go away... If corporate wanted to reduce the desire for remote - they would have smaller satellite campuses outside the great automobile slums of America. The wealthy don't care about efficiency, they aren't being rational about this. They go into the office - see an empty building and say "this is wrong". But they put the cart before the horse - they should say "why is my company operating just fine without office space?" - that should say something about how horrible open offices are for productivity. The intangibles that come with in-office work could be addressed by augmented reality meetings (a headset costs a lot less than a year of gasoline). The ONLY problem I see that isn't addressed with remote work is junior development. This again could be addressed by much smaller campuses and augmented reality.
- mettamage 3y agoJunior development can be addressed with things like tuple.app and recorded screens when pair programming. That's how I learned a lot. Also, screen recordings of pair programming sessions are an advantage. The seniors I worked with would often go on tangents that I wouldn't remember, rewatching those sessions made me understand the tangents and have a much more complete context of what was said. Remote work is a competitive advantage when it comes to programming.
- xangel 3y agoYou know, "operating just fine" is pretty relative. It the company lacked high-performance culture in the first place - yeah, it would continue to operate/decline just fine. Just a personal opinion.
- Clubber 3y agoI would guess this article is paid propaganda. So many articles about RTO/WFH in the last few years, it's obviously trying to manipulate people. If you consider news today as a paid propaganda machine for the wealthy, articles like this make more sense. The premise on it's face is wrong. A lot of big tech companies are forcing their employees to RTO, including Apple, Amazon and Google. If they aren't elite, I don't know who is. I suspect this article is designed to introduce class division into the RTO/WFH argument. Sadly, it will probably sway some people on that basis alone. Return-to-office mandates in select tech companies worldwide 2024, by number of days. As of January 2024, several major technology companies, including Google, Amazon, Meta, and Apple, have implemented return-to-office mandates requiring employees to be in the office at least three days per week.
- bloqs 3y agoThis is not new. Being away from the office AFTER establishing your presence at critical stages and making your face known reads as "busy and productive".
- 082349872349872 3y ago"college-educated", in the US context, is a long way from "elite" "Some college" is now ~60% of the population (closer to 2/3 in recent generations), so a similar characterisation on the wealth axis would be households with USD 100k or more in (pre-tax!) assets; holding the equivalent of a few cars or a small condo also does not strike me as being very "elite". (in short, it would appear that "elite" in US discourse has become as meaning-free as "middle-class")
- pizzafeelsright 3y agoI love working from home. So blessed. Quit my good job to go 30% less money just so I could stay remote. It is elite because I don't have to commute. I'm wealthy now in time and proximity.
- antipaul 3y agoMaybe companies should lift a finger to create work spaces that, well, work?
- T3RMINATED 3y ago[dead]
- borplk 3y ago"elite status symbol for wealthy" don't work! :))
- glimshe 3y agoLet me have my status symbol, it's at least more earth-friendly than driving a F-150 or Mercedes around town.
- spacecadet 3y agogross thinking! a huge chunk of the workforce has always been "remote" or does not/never did report directly to a corporate overlord and their pit...
- legitster 3y agoI mean, they are not wrong! I moved out into the country into a more blue collar area. On the coast, I was a nobody. But out here my income alone sets me apart. I inhabit many of the same social spaces in town as the doctors and lawyers. And even they don't get to work from home! Even amongst the elite its a luxury. It's awesome - I'm not going to go back into an office anytime soon. But I am completely clear-eyed that it is a unique privilege. It's hard to act entitled about it knowing there is absolutely no one in my circle who would give me a shoulder to cry on.
- 5350-uiop-1130 3y agowhat remote jobs.... > "One thing appears to become clear: The chasm between the sectors in the workforce is likely to only get wider." thats the real subtext here. and i agree.
- goalieca 3y agoThe office used to also be a status symbol. Ever seen a waterfront tech office with glass walls and ping-pong tables?
- SauciestGNU 3y agoThe office, both at a group level (works for company in fancy building) and at an individual level (has a large or corner office, works on a higher floor) have long been and I would argue continue to be status symbols. I think both can be true, certainly there are people still who prefer to or must work in a facility. I won't voluntarily work in an office again.
- nicomeemes 3y agoLol - this from Fortune magazine. I swear I see a steady stream of these hit pieces from Fortune, WSJ, etc. Go away!
- lawgimenez 3y agoIt seems like the author has run out of topics to write.
- schuyler2d 3y agoAs a programmer, when I was on the job market two years ago, even though I'd actually prefer to be local in-person so I could hang out with colleagues, I realized it would be a red flag for any software dev team that wasn't remote by now. What kind of brain-dead culturally frozen and fragile org, post-covid, would resist or be incapable of managing a remote team at this point?
- Uptrenda 3y agoYep, here's some awesome perks of being remote too: 1. never knowing anyone on a personal level in the company (no matter how long you've been there) 2. being perceived as a sub-human disposable 'resource' 3. never being promoted 4. often hired as contractors without same benefits as employees offering people remote jobs is done as much for cutting costs as it is to access more talent. you don't have to spend as much money when they provide everything themselves.
- surgical_fire 3y agoI unironically upvoted you: > 1. never knowing anyone on a personal level in the company (no matter how long you've been there) Good. My relationship with my colleagues should be based on respect and professionalism. I don't need to know them on a personal level, nor do I want to. > 2. being perceived as a sub-human disposable 'resource' I worked for 15 years prior to the pandemic in office. All companies perceive you as "sub human disposable resource". Just wait for a market downturn, and you will see that I am right. The only answer to this is treat your employer as "disposable employment that you need to pay bills" > 3. never being promoted Being promoted is for fools. You get more money by job hopping into a higher salary every couple of years, more or less. > 4. often hired as contractors without same benefits as employees Never happened to me as a remote worker. But the daily rates for some contractors I know give me pause, and I wonder if I should pursue this instead.
- AnimalMuppet 3y agoRe 1: I'm a human, not just a worker. I don't need to go out for beers every week after work, but knowing my coworkers as humans is a nice bit of human contact... if they're not jerks or too messed up. (Otherwise, knowing my coworkers personally is a bit of human contact, but it's not nice...) Re 3: This works... for maybe the first 10 or 15 years. After that, switching too often can be a red flag, limiting your ability to land the better jobs.
- ubermonkey 3y agoAll this is so weird to me -- or, rather, it points out how weird my career has been. I'm 53. I've worked at home since 2001, but it happened kinda accidentally. The dot-com-era software consultancy/internet studio I worked for in the late 90s cratered in the fall of 2001, so I hung out my shingle and went back to doing hands-on technical work. This was catch-as-catch-can for a while, but I kept the lights on -- and at no point did I consider renting an office to do it. Then I joined a startup that didn't really take off, and we BRIEFLY had an office before realizing it was dumb and giving it up (so, like, 4-6 months?). We were traveling all the time anyway. Then I went back to consulting and worked at home or on the road. Then I joined my current employer, which has NEVER had an office anywhere, and as such had employees spread nationwide. We used to be cagey about it with customers (who are generally large traditional companies), but since COVID normalized WFH we've been much more open about it. I miss very few things about an office. When I think about it, what I actually miss isn't the office, but the few moments in my early career where the office was also a place generally full of people whose company I enjoyed even external to the working relationship. That's an unusual thing, and (I bet) something you're more likely to experience in your 20s than your 50s. I would like to see my boss more often. It's been a couple years now. I haven't seen our VP of SW in person in probably 10 years. But my home office comes with cats, a better coffee machine than any in-person office has, a kitchen I can cook lunch in, and a couch if I want to catch a short nap.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago> But my home office comes with cats... Getting paid for time when you have a cat on your lap is one of the best things in life.
- shrimp_emoji 3y agoSo college degrees were worth it after all. ;D
- 303uru 3y agoHappily Elite here then. I love that we've all been gaslit into thinking Elite is something to be ashamed of. Real be proud to be average vibes. I'm surprised no one is calling remote work Woke yet.
- tennisflyi 3y agoAlways has