For programmers, remote working is becoming the norm

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/08/11/for-programmers-remote-working-is-becoming-the-norm

by helsinkiandrew • 5 years ago

351 434 5 years ago

economist.com

helsinkiandrew• 5 years ago

Hacker News in the News!

https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2021/08/11/for-prog...

the_cramer• 5 years ago

I think that some of HN people don't like this. The more popular it gets the less quality (or more mod work) will HN comments have.

But since the article is paywalled... maybe it's protecting HN :)

DoingIsLearning3• 5 years ago

Indeed I don't want to sound like a 'get out of my lawn' kind of person but I am increasingly noticing an overlap between submissions on HN and posts on r/worldnews.

Again I think for the most part the moderators are doing an amazing work but there is definitely a risk of just becoming another frontpage of the internet instead of sticking to the original ethos of submissions about 'anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity'.

jimbob45• 5 years ago

I don’t think this is going to last forever but I am trying to take advantage of this remote Pax Romana as long as possible by cramming my big life events in now while my stress and job time commitments are low.

I’m certain that either wages will be depressed for remote workers, the jobs will be sent offshore, or companies will recall everyone but there’s a window to be taken advantage of right now. I’ll certainly point my kid toward a less volatile industry at any rate.

adrianN4• 5 years ago

What are less volatile industries with well paying jobs?

runawaybottle• 5 years ago

Dentist. The Medical people seem to pay their blood up front and have the rest of their life set.

Am I wrong about this? We seem to not have to pay anything up front, but at the cost of a life long rat race.

If you want to talk flexibility, some of these doctors show up to the office like three times a week in the long run.

busterarm5• 5 years ago

Plumbing. Electrical. HVAC. Roofing.

The average age of trade workers is over 50. Carpentry is in extreme demand but the pay hasn't caught up yet -- eventually it will.

Demand already far exceeds supply.

Edit: I like how I gave a perfectly truthful answer to the question and I'm being downvoted to oblivion. A lot of contempt for tradespeople, I guess. I went to high school with people who became electricians and they were all debt-free millionaires with their own businesses (usually several) by 40.

noisy_boy• 5 years ago

Specialization in cooling/coolant related industries. With mad global warming that is just getting started, we are bound to need efficiencies in those industries and those who have the know-how will be in high demand. Also, I'm not aware of any engineer in those industries reading about a new framework every six months and having to do agile stand-ups.

MattGaiser• 5 years ago

Same. I am planning to jam in a lot of travel and seeing family while we are still in a quasi remote (I am technically back hybrid) state.

flexie• 5 years ago

Perhaps jobs posted on HN are not representative of IT jobs in general, but the tendency is clear.

rualca2• 5 years ago

It may not be about representing IT jobs in general, but representing how new IT job openings in general are being presented to prospective applicants to entice them.

Those who are stuck in their old job don't tend to have a lot of flexibility to negotiate these changes other than quitting and finding a new job, which nowadays is predominantly remote because that's what IT pros want.

jbigelow762• 5 years ago

I'd say the more removed your job as a programmer is from those "posted on HN" or in the FAANGM realm and is more solid enterprisey "Line of Business" type work the GREATER leverage you have in telling an employer to go pound sand if they want to get back to a butts in seats world. We've been full remote for 18 months with only tentative plans to go to a 3/2 office/remote sitch by next year (with team options to go even less in office) and have still had multiple devs leave for 100% guaranteed full time remote roles.

vladvasiliu3• 5 years ago

I don't share your optimism.

From what I see in France, there's a ton of competition in "consulting". Not freelance, mind, but body shops renting out developers. The end clients have a tendency to think of those devs as completely interchangeable (that's the main reason they give when asked why they don't hire directly).

I have a hard time seeing how telling them to pound sand can have a serious effect, especially since your employer (entity signing your paycheck) is not the same as the entity for whom you actually work. So aggravating a few too many clients might start having adverse effects with your actual employer.

chrismorgan• 5 years ago

Share of Hacker News job postings mentioning “remote” and “onsite”

I’d be interested in another chart considering all postings, not just ones that mention “remote” or “onsite”. I expect the trend would still be visible, but not quite so significant.

BrissyCoder2• 5 years ago

Tend to agree. I'm not looking to move but for what it's worth whenever a recruiter HR messages me on LinkedIn I make it very clear that I won't consider jobs that aren't fully remote - just putting that energy out into the universe.

ram_rar• 5 years ago

Right now companies havent figured out how to handle this situation and are playing along. I'm sure, sooner or later tides will turn and either you'll be roped into coming to office or take a pay cut for working remotely. So enjoy while it last!!

BrissyCoder2• 5 years ago

I don't get your reasoning on why you expect that people will have to take a pay cut for working remotely. Would have thought it would be the opposite. Office space, hardware and energy cost a bit.

willio58• 5 years ago

This will only happen at companies that required people to live in extremely expensive areas like silicone valley. I’m not in that situation, but I’d quit immediately and go somewhere else. For example Google is doing this, there is no reason Google needs to save money on these developers. None at all.

hiddencache5• 5 years ago

Managers cite efficiency losses in terms of communication, team building, training new staff, and idea generation in general.

Not my arguments, just what I've seen written...

code_duck• 5 years ago

It sounded unfair and summer opportunistic to me at first too, since like you say, employers could be saving a lot of money by having you use your house as an office.

The rationale that Google is citing is that they pay based on location. They say remote workers will make the same as office workers in the same city, which sounds reasonable.

oblio6• 5 years ago

Ah, that's easy.

The negotiating power of a company, which is practically a group of people, is much higher than that of employees, which are just 1 person. A big company loses what? 0.00001% of its revenue if it doesn't hire the right person for a specific position? An employee loses 100% of their revenue if they don't get hired or get fired.

So companies can pretty much do what they want (up to a point where they cause uproar and those individuals to bunch up into a group fighting the company).

mytailorisrich4• 5 years ago

How much employers may save is not really relevant. What's relevant is what employees want and are willing to accept.

If people prefer remote work and that also saves them time and money then they will probably be willing to accept a lower salary than they will for the same job on-site.

IMHO that's the logic of companies that are suggesting pay cuts for employees that won't come back to the office.

kube-system2• 5 years ago

Wages are more determined by supply/demand of labor and less so by the value generated.

You’ll make comparatively less working remotely because the pool of workers willing to work remote are higher in supply. Office jobs will be forced to offer higher wages because their supply of candidates has shrunk.

hiddencache5• 5 years ago

Google is already looking at this...

https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2021/08/11/remo...

oblio6• 5 years ago

It's started already: https://www.reuters.com/world/the-great-reboot/pay-cut-googl...

peakaboo3• 5 years ago

That's a proper slave mentality right there. I suggest you instead think like this "what will I do to continue working remotely? Which company will I pick?".

kube-system2• 5 years ago

“More pay” and “less pay” are relative. Once things equalize, jobs that require people to commute will have to pay more. Just like jobs that required you to be on a plane every week paid more in 2018.

nextlevelwizard17• 5 years ago

And what if the only remote working option is to get paid less? Is that still "slave mentality"?

vnorilo• 5 years ago

It certainly looks like companies are desperate to hire qualified people and the dev job market is pretty hot right now. That should certainly give devs some leverage.

hiddencache5• 5 years ago

This article probably originated as someone from The Economist looking for a way out of journalism and stumbling across a story...

LAC-Tech2• 5 years ago

I'd hate to go back to working in an office. I live in the countryside now and it's great.

However I realise it may not always be so easy. So:

- I'm self employed. Foreign companies aren't going to set up a branch office just to employ me. Purchasing my services however is easy.

- I've niched down to a business vertical, and I'm starting to niche down more technically as well. No more "I'm a full stack developer with a track record of delivering results across multiple industries".

- I write software for the agricultural sector. It's not an industry that tends to cluster as much in big cities. A lot of companies are based in regional areas, and it's not realistic for them to source all the talent they need locally. People are open to networking online.

It's not a raging success yet but it's a lot better than working in an office everyday in the city was for me.

YMMV if you live in a US tech hub.

DoingIsLearning3• 5 years ago

write software for the agricultural sector.

Could you go into more detail? Enterprise software, embedded software, industrial PLC's? Agro is one industry that I would expect quite difficult to work remotely since there is usually some form of physical system that you deploy on a farm. I would be really curious to know more about your gig?

LAC-Tech2• 5 years ago

Web Apps mostly.

There's a lot of IOT systems that capture data from farms & food. Fruit ripeness, water levels, livestock location, livestock weights. So plenty of frontend work required.

brtkdotse2• 5 years ago

Point 1 and 2 are right on the money.

Being self employed makes it easier for companies abroad to hire you - international invoicing is orders of magnitude easier than international hiring and usually comes from a different budget post.

Choosing a business vertical and running with it is the secret sauce to getting ahead. I’ve focused on insurance and pensions and being able to speak the same lingo as the business people on day one has been a game changer.

thirdlamp• 5 years ago

deel‘s employer of record program has been expanding to more countries quickly. Maybe check them out.

birdyrooster5• 5 years ago

it's a lot better than working in an office everyday

Fuckin' A

robertwt7• 5 years ago

How long will it last though after the pandemic is open?

Would be good to have a company where we can still socialise with colleague like half a week, then I would just travel around while working. Flexibility all the way!

alfiedotwtf2• 5 years ago

Regardless of jobs containing "onsite" or "remote", the metric that really matters is - how many people are actually applying...

Companies can advertise "onsite" all they want, but from all the stories I've heard about how hard it is to find good developers, and how developers are leaving their work-from-home jobs as soon as they're told to come into the office, you have to draw the conclusion that it's a buyer's market and employers are either going to have to fold to devs, or have their vacant roles stay open for longer than usual.

lordnacho• 5 years ago

This is exactly right. It's not just that the firms can choose among all the world's remote devs, the reverse is also true.

I've been turned down when offering remote jobs to devs who found something more attractive, it happens and the market is a two way negotiation.

mech4222• 5 years ago

Yeah - I've stopped in the middle of the interview process when I found out the 'remote' position required 25% (or more travel).

Now I just pick up the phone "not interested unless it's 100% WFH"...Doesn't seem to have slowed down the recruiting calls.

alfiedotwtf2• 5 years ago

Also take into account the network effect...

Every recruiter that calls me, I'll only pass onto friends if it's remote because I know nobody will even consider onsite. There's a hidden filter effect happening right now that's not being considered.

arwhatever• 5 years ago

I found plenty of remote opportunities for several years prior to the pandemic just by sticking to my guns, passing and passing and passing on all non-remote opportunities.

mech4222• 5 years ago

Ditto - I've been 100% remote/WFH for 20 years now...

It just gets easier and easier. Especially if you work with tech that's in high demand.

phil-martin• 5 years ago

This is unfortunately not the experience I have had in Australia.

I looked into a few jobs earlier in the year, and spoke with a few recruiters. Despite the initial remote-friendly job description, it ended up being full time or more, with 1 day work from home a week.

I look forward to when remote working is common, with internal processes and culture adapted to suit multiple modes of working.

InvertedRhodium• 5 years ago

That's interesting - I've always found Australia to be more welcoming to remote work than other countries like the US. Both my wife and I have lived in Christchurch, NZ, for the past 6 years now and worked 100% remotely for multiple companies based out of Sydney.

MrGilbert• 5 years ago

ah yeah... Here in Germany, I got offered one day per month.

iblaine2• 5 years ago

Here's a related graph [1] supporting this conclusion, that remote work has recently increased. This graph shows the frequency of "remote" in HN Who's Hiring posts over time.

[1] https://iblaine.github.io/assets/images/projects/graph-remot...

dan-robertson5• 5 years ago

But:

- the count of any word probably increases over time. Need proportion instead. But maybe I misunderstood your graph

- “the job is currently remote but you will be expected to work from our office in X in the near future”

iblaine2• 5 years ago

Valid point, that was some hand wavy analysis on my part. Here's a new graph [1] showing the frequency with a denominator. "remote" seems to show up in every post these days, could be something like "no remote" throws this off...

[1] https://github.com/iblaine/hn-whoshiring-analysis/blob/main/...

phreeza3• 5 years ago

The arguments in this comment section have been rehashed so many times on HN now it is becoming hilarious. Who would have thought that office vs remote is the emacs vs vim of the 2020s.

adouzzy• 5 years ago

We need a evil mode

dan-robertson5• 5 years ago

Work from the office but closed off in a meeting room/private office and never talk to anyone in person? Or work remotely but you have to do it from a noisy coffee shop and the company provides a card to buy snacks?

jacksonkmarley• 5 years ago

The ideas may have been covered before, but at least this thread (so far) seems more constructive than some others on this topic that are just alternating chains of 'I like remote', 'but I like the office, so you're wrong', 'but I like remote, so YOU'RE wrong'.

jstx1• 5 years ago

I had my own little but-I-like-the-office rant cached and ready to go as soon as I read the title. Had to stop myself from posting because it really feels like treading water at this point.

Accacin2• 5 years ago

Well it's new for a lot of people. I always wanted to work remotely, and overall I do like it but there are certain things I miss that I didn't think I'd miss.

People have been given a taste of remote working, and now certain companies are trying to get us back into the office. I can see how that'd spark discussion.

xaduha2• 5 years ago

What people lack in these threads is workers' solidarity. It's not like offices are going away or anyone would be forced to WFH when pandemic is over.

What does average Joe get by opposing it? A pat on the head when this is all done? There is collective leverage here, use it to get more for everyone.

mojuba5• 5 years ago

Didn't read the article - no access, just some thoughts: the downward pressure on wages will probably become a norm for WFH. Google has already set a precedent. However, unless it takes another unexpected turn, WFH is win-win-win: companies can save on office space and a bit on reduced salaries too; employees will have a healthier life and the freedom to live in cheaper locations; and finally WFH is good for the environment!

Potentially yet another "win" for the companies: some of the unnecessary engineering manager jobs will be eliminated. My impression is that in fully remote companies the opportunities to prove your importance when there's little to none, are limited. The occasional video call situation as opposed to always-in-the-office one means everyone becomes more efficient in communicating things.

jmfldn• 5 years ago

Agree on most counts apart from the efficient communication angle. Purely anecdotal but I find that the number of meetings has grown significantly since constant WFH became the norm. In the past, most meetings required a meeting room whereas now, as long as the meeting organiser can see that most people have an open space in their calendar, a meeting can be arranged.

Not an insurmountable problem but I find myself protesting about this regularly.

mojuba5• 5 years ago

I know what you mean, but we can hope it's temporary. Remote work requires some adjustment in work culture.

I just thought there's another interesting upside for workers: you are now more flexible in changing jobs since obviously you are no longer tied to the location. So eventually you might find an employer who is more WFH friendly and manages the communication better. And that should put pressure on your existing employer too!

anothernewdude• 5 years ago

Even in an office, if you want to get work done, you block out your own time.

Accacin2• 5 years ago

We also noticed this. We have added a rule saying that almost all meetings are optional and there's no pressure to go to them (scrum meetings are not optional i.e. daily, refinement and retro). It's helped a lot and helped managers see which meetings weren't found to be helpful.

mbag• 5 years ago

Another win is for the local economy, where remote workers will spend their money.

celticninja2• 5 years ago

But that's really a transfer from the local economy around the office to the local economy around their home.

woodpanel• 5 years ago

Unless "Hygiene"-Restrictions force you to spend all on "un-local" orgs:

- Clicking on an ad likely sends ad-spending to Google/Amazon/FB/Twitter

- Using the web will increase cloud-costs, money goes to AWS

- buying stuff online likely hapens on Amazon, maybe ebay, maybe etsy

- buying stuff online likely makes your local merchants pay transaction fees to Amazon, PayPal, Visa or Mastercard

In that case "Local economy" means more money goes to tech-hubs. Your rural plumber, baker, brewer, dentist etc. will be skimmed more not less.

bell-cot• 5 years ago

Didn't read the article - no access

With JS disabled, I can read it perfectly well (Firefox, Privacy Badger, and NoScript, from the U.S.A.).

mojuba5• 5 years ago

Right, that means there must be an archive.is link for it and of course there is one: https://archive.is/qK9Mk

dheera3• 5 years ago

Didn't read the article - no access

https://outline.com/8pMDCv

Maybe HN should start banning paywall links. It greatly degrades the experience of HN if you can't access half the stuff on the front page by just clicking on it.

celticninja2• 5 years ago

I think the preferred method is to link the paywall and add an archive link in the comments.

dang5• 5 years ago

This has been settled for years. If there's a workaround, it's ok. Users usually post workarounds in the thread.

This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's tons of explanation here:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989

cornel_io• 5 years ago

I've seen few unnecessary engineering manager positions, typically if anything companies have too few managers for the number of engineers.

I constantly see those positions filled with people who may be great engineers but are trash managers, though. Companies can still get by, but they often don't even realize how much better they'd be if they prioritized management skill instead of mere years of experience (I'm looking at you, Google, I've never seen such a high percentage of completely clueless people managers anywhere else).

TeMPOraL4• 5 years ago

Part of this is promotions. There's still no real parallel technical track for career advancement. Senior/Principal/Fellow track ended up being a management track in disguise, with all the managerial responsibilities and little of the authority.

Foobar8568• 5 years ago

I have seen way too many useless managers,the ones going from meetings to meetings, distilling incorrect information, gatekeeping a lot of things, creating unnecessary mess due to their lack of knowledge that I need to clean afterward, obviously without I/or the team getting any merits.

Oddly enough, these managers don't know much technically and are blatantly toxic, as they drive people in mass, they just move up the ladder and promote their alike peers for another round of madness.

I would love to live in these unicorn companies where everyone is marvelous, but I have never seen one in 20 different clients in Europe, from the small startup to largest 10 companies in the world, including NGOs (among the worst place to work).

So one may have a great manager but you are 6months away from yet another reorganization that would kill any teams.

nicoburns• 5 years ago

the downward pressure on wages will probably become a norm for WFH

That depends on where you live. If you live a population center that currently has very high wages then yes. Otherwise you've just potentially gotten access to much higher paying jobs than you would've had access to before.

So what we should see is a geographical evening of wages. Which I can only really see as a good thing.

jasonkester2• 5 years ago

Pro tip. They can only cut your pay if you let them. Or, rather, if we collectively let them.

Make it clear that you won’t accept a pay cut for the same work output. And keep negotiating your full rate for any new position you take, and this won’t affect you at all.

Personally, I always bill out at my Bay Area rate regardless of where I’m physically located (and I’ve been located in some pretty strange places). It has never been an issue.

midrus10• 5 years ago

Same salary despite where you are living is really unfair. I live in Italy and with a silicon valley salary here I'd be millionaire. It just won't work, companies would find equally qualified people for less money and long term we would all have to move to cheaper places.

golergka• 5 years ago

Pro tip. They can only cut your pay if you let them. Or, rather, if we collectively let them.

There's no "we" here. I live in Moscow, Russia, and I just got a remote job from an American company that pays 4 times more than my last one did, but still less than FAANG level. There are a LOT of developers all around the world that would be glad to "let them" pay less that what they used to when they were hiring only locally. Because for us it would still be a lot.

I don't think that American developers understand it yet, but remote work, in terms of it's influence of supply and demand of labour is not a good thing for you guys.

Cookingboy24• 5 years ago

As preferable as WFH is for many and as productive as many people can be while working remote, at the end of the day, you can't change human nature.

There is a reason why companies like Google are doubling down in Silicon Valley real estate. They believe that the best, most innovative type of work are the results of organic discussions and unscheduled, unplanned, casual human interactions. So many cool ideas and new projects were the results of a casual lunch discussion even just random hallway chats. You can't duplicate that with Slack messages or scheduled Zoom meetings. The reason for that isn't because of process or infrastructure deficiency with remote working, it has to do with simple human nature.

Even as recently as this summer I've personally seen entire teams get sidelined for important projects because their engineering leadership didn't bother to physically attend an optionally in-person offsite. Guess what, all the most important conversations took place after the Zoom camera was shut off. An entire major initiative came into idea during a casual walk to grab coffee.

As long as companies are run by human there will be politics, off the record discussions, darkroom decisions, favoritism, subjective impressions, subconscious biases, and "out of sight, out of mind" selective memories.

Again, that's just human nature. A C suite executive at a top tier tech company is driven by the same human nature as a caveman. You can't engineer human nature away with process and you sure as hell can't undo them with technology.

Obviously you don't have to care about any of that and there is nothing wrong to focus on other things in life other than work (and many people should), but the inevitable end result will be there will be two categories of workers, even within the same company, if they allow optional remote work.

All the best, shiniest projects will be local right under exec’s noses. The "A-team" will be kept close, or just as likely, the ones who stay close/in office will be recognized as the "A-team". I believe there will be a lot of jobs that will be fully remote at first, then companies will lower comp for those jobs and start giving them less sexy/boring/keep the lights on type of work, and then eventually they will be outsourced out or automated away, yes, even for highly paid FAANG software engineers.

Edit: Some people have brought up the unique benefits of Slack messages like them being async, and by definition clearer and with better record keeping, etc. By people going back to the office 1 or 2 days a week we aren't going to be dumping Slack or Zoom. They will still serve as nice complements.

Edit: Haha I really ruffed some feathers here. I get it, many on HN believe anyone who derive value from in-person interaction are sub-par employees who aren't actually productive. I also do believe that you can have life-long relationships with people without ever hearing their voices or seeing their faces. But I'd just like to remind people that HN is a relative unique group of individuals (even among engineers) that probably prefers dealing with code than dealing with fellow human beings. But the very fact that all of our communication based technology has been progressing to mimic in-person meetings as much as possible (text -> voice -> video -> telepresence -> VR?) says a lot on this subject.

cblconfederate2• 5 years ago

I think you just gave an example why they shouldnt have held that meeting physically

Cookingboy24• 5 years ago

Or rather that demonstrates the absolute value of physical meetings.

If all day long Zoom calls and Slack messages could have led to spontaneous discussions/new initiatives like that they already would have, but they didn't, I saw more sparks flying in one afternoon of social event than 3 months of planned video calls.

I firmly believe if Silicon Valley goes fully remote, then it will no longer stay the innovation engine of the entire tech industry. Startups in China will eat us alive. You simply can't replicate the energy of Haidian District or Shenzhen with group messages.

DoreenMichele• 5 years ago

As long as companies are run by human there will be politics, favoritism, subjective impressions, subjective biases, and "out of sight, out of mind" selective memories.

This paragraph kind of falls under "Never attribute to malice what is readily explained by stupidity."

Those organic conversations may not happen in Slack but they can happen online. Most people don't actively foster them and many people may not know how.

Not knowing how isn't proof it can't be done. Lots of things are currently happening in the world that were just science fiction not that long ago.

Cookingboy24• 5 years ago

Not knowing how isn't proof it can't be done.

Human interaction skills falls into the category of things that knowledge doesn't even remotely guarantee outcome.

You can teach a group of socially awkward and introvert people an entire 4 years course of how to be a charismatic socialite and most of them still won't become one.

Lots of things are currently happening in the world that were just science fiction not that long ago.

And lots of things are still happening in the exact same way it has happened for thousands of years. Technology can very often amplify human instincts, but it will very rarely undo them.

prashantsengar• 5 years ago

Not knowing how

How? Genuinely want to know

velcii8• 5 years ago

then companies will lower comp for those jobs and start giving them less sexy/boring/keep the lights on type of work

I was under the impression that comps have the practice of giving work to people that might produce good results with that kind of work, and trust me, people who might produce good results will want the freedom WFH makes possible.

But on the other hand, people who have to depend on politics and ass kissing to keep their job and get promoted, will absolutely want to be around and near managers as much as possible, so that they can maximise their ass kissing, so your A-team, will soon end up exclusively with that kind..

Cookingboy24• 5 years ago

I was under the impression that comps have the practice of giving work to people that might produce good results with that kind of work, and trust me, people who might produce good results will want the freedom WFH makes possible.

Just because companies were only giving WFH opportunity to high performers doesn't mean all high performers prefer WFH opportunities.

Have you considered the possibility that some people actually are more productive when they have some physical interaction with their coworkers once in a while? In fact I'd argue that's most people.

Even for the best employee who do the most amazing kind of work, being in person and take advantage of politics and "ass kissing" would only help, not hurt. For two employees who accomplish the exact same amount of work, the one who has better person skills and being able to take advantage of that will go further in career.

But on the other hand, people who have to depend on politics and ass kissing to keep their job and get promoted

It seems like you are under this very strong impression of people who derive value for in-person work only do so because they are sub-par employees.

brtkdotse2• 5 years ago

They believe that the best, most innovative type of work are the results of organic discussions and unscheduled, unplanned, casual human interactions.

I’d wager that a vast majority of programming being done is internal LOB CRUD apps. Sure, management will gush over how “innovative” those CRUD apps are, but most programming jobs is just finding out where data resides, where it’s going and what Bootstrap template to show it in. No need for creative ballpit meetings for that.

nostrademons2• 5 years ago

Most of the profit is in the areas of programming that are not LOB CRUD apps. For the simple reason that profit accrues to firms that are differentiated, and if you can lump a bunch of work into a category, it is by definition not differentiated. Liquidity and compensation are inversely proportional: you make the most money in markets where it's hard to find people who do what you do.

Corollary: if you want to make money, you should seek to be in areas other than where the vast majority of programming is being done.

xaduha2• 5 years ago

It's corporate speak, many are so immersed in it they don't realize it. Some people like power just as much as they like money and they don't like losing it.

ahoka• 5 years ago

Maybe Google has inadequate communication channels and badly set-up meetings, but that doesn't mean that physical meetings are somehow ultimately required for high quality software development work. It just means that the their processes are not good enough, so people work around them.

hkt2• 5 years ago

I look back at my youth and I wonder about the drawbacks of WFH: I managed to talk exclusively via textual media (IRC, forums) and developed deep lifelong friendships, carried out group projects successfully, and gained an education more robust than the glorified introductions service many people seem to aim for. I've known some of the people I met for twenty years now, been best man at one's wedding, but others I've never met in person.

With that in mind, I wonder why people can't succeed in the same way while WFH, and I conclude it is other people which wreck it.

I'm prepping a side project for launch at the moment, and if I ever hire, it will be for a company whose internal communications are all text based. I strongly suspect this will prevent me from ever relying on old world extroverts whose MO amounts to nepotism.

Teever2• 5 years ago

There is a reason why companies like Google are doubling down in Silicon Valley real estate.

As a person who lives in a geologically stable region I have to chuckle because it is entirely possible that this comment will age as terribly as that 'which country is best equipped to deal with a pandemic (2019) post that we saw recently.

I don't deny the part of your comment about in person interactions being the foundation of creative output but all that is overridden by the notion that this must take place in Silicon Valley.

With rising sea levels and the fault lines in the region I'm aghast that so many of America's eggs are in one precarious basket. Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon are all based in this region, it just seems so utterly short-sighted.

What the hell is America going to do if there is a cataclysmic event that takes out this region?

Cookingboy24• 5 years ago

all that is overridden by the notion that this must take place in Silicon Valley.

No you are missing the point. I never said it has to be in Silicon Valley. It's already happening in many places in the world. Google has offices in Silicon Valley and many other parts of the world, and the value the bring is the same: bring people who work together physically together.

dheera3• 5 years ago

What the hell is America going to do if there is a cataclysmic event that takes out this region?

The east coast isn't much better off either. If a tsunami hits the Pacific, there are enough hills and mountains between the coast and say, Palo Alto or Mountain View, that not that much will happen. Half of SF is probably safe from tsunamis too just because of the high hills. Corporate offices are probably built earthquake-proof already. Houses, not so much, but hey, the corporations will be around.

The east coast, not so much. Boston and NYC are flat, at sea level, and would be gone if an asteroid were to crash into the Atlantic. Nuclear power stations in Newark would become the next Fukushima disaster.

Most ancient cities were not built on the coast, for good reasons. It seems to be a relatively recent fad around the world. Take China for example, because it's an ancient civilization. Shanghai and Shenzhen, are on the coast, but are cities built extremely recently. The historical population capitals of China (Beijing, Nanjing, Xi'an, etc.) were never on the coast.

Likewise, Rome, Madrid, Cairo, Paris, London, Kyoto -- none of these cities are on the coast.

The USA, on the other hand, is a relatively new kid on the block in the grand scheme of civilization, has yet to learn, and put all of its eggs on the coast. :-/ That's the bigger problem IMO.

axiolite3• 5 years ago

With rising sea levels and the fault lines in the region I'm aghast that so many of America's eggs are in one precarious basket

Earthquakes don't kill people, buildings kill people... Building codes in California are strict for just this reason. Most people will get through with minor injuries, and some inconveniences from utility and transit outages. The Bay Area will likely fare better than Los Angeles, which is likely to lose access to its water supplies..

As for flooding, check the history of Sacramento. Over a few years they systematically raised the street level and most of the buildings in the city. Now it's one of the highest areas and least affected by floods in the region. Why this tact wasn't taken in New Orleans after Katrina is beyond me.

nostrademons2• 5 years ago

The thing about natural cataclysms is that the most deadly ones are the ones you don't expect, because you can prepare for the ones you do expect.

CA has been preparing for a large earthquake since the 1989 Loma Prieta and 1994 Northridge quakes. Building codes here are pretty strict; anything built or retrofitted since about 1980 should do fine. Lots of money has been spent retrofitting older soft-story apartments, and infrastructure has been shored up since Loma Prieta. Cities are starting to discourage and then ban natural gas in new construction to reduce the risk of fire; when they can't, gas lines are being upgraded to make them more robust. Most families keep an earthquake kit of canned food, campstoves, and potable water. Google at least runs annual drills that simulate all of their Bay Area offices being taken offline (and their employees presumed dead) to ensure business continuity; it'd surprise me if other Silicon Valley companies don't.

This is when the two recent M6.8 earthquakes [1][2] killed about 60 people each, and a worst-case scenario [3] predicts about 800 dead. Significantly more people have died from COVID.

The natural disasters you really have to worry about are black swans that you'd never expect, like frost in Houston or heat waves in Seattle. If the Bay Area got a blizzard it'd be a disaster, but we've basically got earthquakes covered.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1989_Loma_Prieta_earthquake

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1994_Northridge_earthquake

[3] https://www.usgs.gov/media/videos/haywired-scenario-movie

acituan2• 5 years ago

There is a reason why companies like Google are doubling down in Silicon Valley real estate. They believe that the best, most innovative type of work are the results of organic discussions and unscheduled, unplanned, casual human interactions. So many cool ideas and new projects were the results of a casual lunch discussion even just random hallway chats

When was the last time you've used a big corp product that sounded like a water-cooler idea? Serendipitous innovation myth doesn't apply for these huge, hard-to-steer, profit-to-assets maximizing, financialized mega corps anymore. Nor creating 10 different messaging apps or torturing decade old products with growth hacking is innovation, it is cancerous growth born out of promotion-hacking. Water cooler schmoozing helps more with building the clout for that promotion than enhancing the productivity of the world.

They will make you work from office because they can, because that is easier on the managers and execs. They are doubling down on real estate because they have sunken costs, execs themselves probably have serious personal real estate positions and companies have a sizable chunk of h1b-captive employees that has to stick around anyway.

If anything, WFH had a positive impact on cutting through the bullshit. When speaking has more friction, the actual work has to do the talking, and that is a positive thing. You don't have to deeply enact a state of belief in other people's self-importance, as you get to say "oh fuck off" out loud when the meeting is off.

Going to the office is like going to the church of whatever objective function a company holds dear. You're surrounded by it for hours, and can't blaspheme around true believers and kool aid drinkers around that water cooler. At home, you're homed in a space that reminds who you are, your ultimate sovereignty and all the objective functions of your life, work being but one.

systemvoltage2• 5 years ago

They will make you work from office because they can, because that is easier on the managers and execs.

I think there are 1980's style regimented companies such as GE, Bayer and IBM that like to monitor their employees. There is a wide range of company cultures, what I call office-barracks; a soulless, unending array of employees with 8 digit ID numbers. Some even get corner offices. And then there are companies where people get together in physical space and kick ass.

I think you're not addressing the latter.

timkam• 5 years ago

Agreed. One (anecdotal) observation I've made is that bullshit meetings are harder to bear and to defend when everyone's online because people can protect themselves. It's easier to not join if nobody can approach you physically. It's easier to disengage. IMHO, if the culture is reasonably good, the organization and most of its employees profit from WFH. But if there are serious culture issues, it's probably really hard to recover.

Cookingboy24• 5 years ago

They are doubling down on real estate because they have sunken costs,

I'm pretty sure a company like Google that has no problem killing unsuccessful products after multi-billion dollar investments, knows how not to fall for the sunken cost fallacy.

execs themselves probably have serious personal real estate positions and

As opposed to move to a different state, buy a house 3x the size for the same money, and save 10% on state income tax? Hmm....

companies have a sizable chunk of h1b-captive employees that has to stick around anyway.

The very fact companies sponsors H1b instead of having them working remotely from China or India is precisely because they believe in the value of everyone physically together.

commandlinefan• 5 years ago

> They believe that the best, most innovative type of work are the results of organic discussions and unscheduled, unplanned, casual human interactions
When was the last time you've used a big corp product that sounded like a water-cooler idea?

Just because something doesn't work doesn't mean MBAs don't keep insisting that it does.

systemvoltage2• 5 years ago

Our company's productivity has plummetted after the pandemic, specifically right after the lockdowns in Bay Area started in March 2020, details: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28111095

I personally love WFH but people that deny the benefits of in-person work are deluded or intentionally playing it down.

eyelidlessness• 5 years ago

Weird. My non FAANG company that’s all open source and all remote and distributed all over doesn’t seem to be having any trouble.

ridaj4• 5 years ago

I think it's too early to tell what's going to happen with silicon valley companies. The chips are still way up in the air. They profess a return to office, and many people can't wait to go back. But there's also a lot of people who don't want to go back, from the coder at the bottom who discovers they can be as productive from home, see their family more, and shave hours of commute every day, to the exec who's been going to the office only to sit in a videoconference room all day anyways, so might as well do it all from a posh home in New Zealand (https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/technology/2021/07/new-zealan...)

It's going to kill the spirit of the place. It's going to come with challenges of how to enable productive conversations. Maybe people will get together physically on occasion. But I don't know if the genie of personal mobility can be put back into the bottle and right now there seems to be a lot of employee reshuffling based on work arrangement preferences.

As for that mythical hallway chat that sparks a brilliant insight at the root of a massively disruptive business win, in my experience, it's that — a myth. I feel like I've personally had much more insightful casual conversations and professional relationship building via interest-dedicated chatrooms and regular video calls in the past year than in the past decade of striking conversations around the coffee machine.

unwind• 5 years ago

That link was not available to my region, so I guesss it's the NZWW nowadays. Gaaah.

TeMPOraL4• 5 years ago

So many cool ideas and new projects were the results of a casual lunch discussion even just random hallway chats. You can't duplicate that with Slack messages or scheduled Zoom meetings.

Of course you can. You just have to allow it.

Here's where "human nature" bites most management in the ass. What casual lunch discussion, random hallway chats, water cooler talks and after-hours beer have all in common is, people involved are slacking off. Those are the brief moments where employees are not being judged for not being glued to their screens. They're not being judged for interrupting other people, perhaps from unrelated departments.

A remote environment doesn't provide such opportunities for unofficially approved, cross-team slacking off. So you have to compensate. Give people greater visibility into who's doing who, and give explicit permission to engage in casual chats. Reduce pressure, particularly around deadlines. Give people their slack back.

I find it ironic that companies want everyone to do spontaneous R&D work, but they rely on it happening spontaneously due to inefficiencies of office environment. Want people to do R&D work? Treat them as R&D employees. Start paying them for doing random crap on company time and resources, no strings attached. Then you'll have innovation.

ozzythecat2• 5 years ago

What casual lunch discussion, random hallway chats, water cooler talks and after-hours beer have all in common is, people involved are slacking off.
I find it ironic that companies want everyone to do spontaneous R&D work, but they rely on it happening spontaneously due to inefficiencies of office environment.

I don’t think those conversations and lunches are slacking off. Connecting with people goes a long way towards my own mental health, building relationships, learning about other projects and initiatives, and earning trust. If your employer defines that as slacking off, it’s maybe time for a new company.

My company has an expectation that I deliver X, help Y program move forward, mentor and teach, and generally disambiguate and solve hard problems.

Slacking off is if I repeatedly fail to perform those roles, and it’s only slacking off even then if it’s carelessness on my part.

OhNoMyqueen• 5 years ago

I believe that face-to-face physical interaction is a way more determinant criteria than slacking off for making those moments productive.

nickjj2• 5 years ago

Treat them as R&D employees. Start paying them for doing random crap on company time and resources, no strings attached. Then you'll have innovation.

I think this is really important and it's often overlooked by a lot of companies. It's also one major component of what keeps me being a freelance worker.

Most of my decent ideas come while I'm walking around, maybe 3 miles away from my workstation and I also learn a ton of job related things while not directly working "on the job" with random self guided R&D and other activities that I like doing around tech (writing blog posts, podcast host, etc.).

But most companies don't see it that way. IMO it's unreasonable to expect a salary worker to put in 9 hour days (no paid lunch), be on-call 365/24/7 for emergencies (also not compensated for) and then be expected to do continuous learning and other "this is work related but not directly related to work" activities after hours without compensation. This is exactly how you end up with burnt out employees even if the person enjoys tech. The critical component is the no strings attached. R&D needs to be no strings attached otherwise it feels forced or you're fighting the system by having to cram it in after hours since you can't do it on company time but then you're also left feeling like you're being taken advantage of because it's not compensated for.

onion2k• 5 years ago

30 years ago people said it was human nature to socialize face-to-face, and that chatting on the Internet or playing video games with people remotely would never really catch on.

Cookingboy24• 5 years ago

But guess what, chatting online and video calls augmented our communication, instead of replacing face to face.

The fact that even in this day and age, we still hold major online videogame tournaments in person shows you how important meatspace is. The International, the videogame tournament with the largest prize pool, was canceled last year when the entire game (Dota 2) was an online game. When it's held each year the tickets are always sold out and the arena is always full. You can watch everything online but it never stopped a fully packed arena.

So yeah, my point of face-to-face socialization will never be fully replaced actually gets even stronger support when you bring up videogames.

arcturus174• 5 years ago

I've thought deeply about at lot of the points you lay out, but at the end of the day I don't think the answers are so clear-cut.

I think about these issues a lot because I run my own consultancy - I'm currently hiring freelancers 100% remotely, but as the moment to hire my first few full-time employees looms, I'm having to think very deeply about my hiring model.

I've had very positive experiences with remote work thus far, but none of the work has required outstanding creativity, it's mostly been execution. I will however need a full-time designer and a technical project manager as "captains" who pull their weight creatively and in terms of leadership, and I don't know if going 100% remote would work in this scenario.

There is another area in which I feel in-person meetings are better, and that is business development. I find I'm much more effective carrying out commercial activities - whether it's a speculative prospect meeting or a business pitch - in person that via video call.

On the other hand there are plenty of counter-examples of organizations that carry out creative, high-performance work at a decent scale: Basecamp, GitLab, Buffer, etc. I suspect we haven't seen yet a 100% remote company deliver results at hyper-scale and from scratch because the trend is novel. But large corporations - tech, banks, etc. - have had exceptional results in the last year while working remotely which suggests that it's possible to at least continue ongoing work at a very high level.

Regarding traditionally people-oriented activities, we've also seen in the last year people who have adopted remote workflows for areas like business development or fund-raising. I remember an article a few weeks back interviewing VCs and founders who claimed they were much more efficient at closing deals remotely, given the productivity gains of not having to be on the road as often.

So at the very least there is good evidence that, up to a certain scale and timeframe, 100% remote work can produce really good results.

Whether in-person work is more likely to produce ground-breaking, truly disruptive, innovations, as you claim, remains to be seen. The fact that, as of today, the vast majority of disruptive innovations have come from in-person environments does not prove that producing them remotely is not possible. And I understand why a company like Apple would not take the risk in this regard, but again, this does not prove anything.

I think the question will only be answered in time.

Cookingboy24• 5 years ago

I don't have much to add and I don't disagree with much of what you wrote, just wanna say thanks for the write up.

komali22• 5 years ago

Couldn't this be an example of naturalist fallacy? Or also false dichotomy? Let alone that I'm not sure I agree that what you're defining as "human nature" is even "human nature," but perhaps just some aspect of the interaction of some kinds of people in some cultures.

Taiwan's on a soft lockdown right now, and through g0v we've had a couple online hackathons via gather.town that went swell in my opinion, with lots of discussions and cool ideas popping around. And, a vibrant and highly active community across a huge volume of projects is maintained on the g0v slack. Off the top of my head, through online conversation only, the idea of scraping all Taiwanese hospital websites for vaccination registration information, through implementation of said app, was completed successfully. We also have the advantage of instantaneous response at nearly full capacity. That is to say, we don't need to wait until we can all get together physically to begin brainstorming and solution implementation around a given issue, such as when our COVID breakout happened and a lot of solutions arose quickly, such as translations of information, easy ways for businesses to register and print out QR code posters for our contact tracing system, and the sharing of COVID data.

I wonder if that's because there's no physical interaction whatsoever. I admit that when teams are mixed physical/non-physical, there can be information shared between physical people that the non-physical miss out on, but as others are saying, while that might seem faster, I'm not sure the added sloppiness is necessarily an advantage. In any case it seems like a very difficult thing to measure, especially when right now companies are trying to measure their productivity changes due to shifts to remote during an immensely psychologically traumatic time for everyone on earth.

Elsewhere I'm seeing further naturalist fallacy arguments, like we've "evolved" this way. I think that's a good counter to the "rugged individualistic" types that think humans would be better off living alone in the woods with a crate of beer and a shotgun or whatever, but in the far more complex social web of civilization, where you can still have social interaction but modulated to your needs, I don't think we can say "in person is better because we didn't have computers for the first 200,000 years of humanity. I'm sure one can see what else I can apply here: we also didn't have, I dunno, vaccines? Actually, better yet: we didn't have spoken language for a very, very long time, and we interacted "just fine" without it insomuch as our entire ancestral history for a couple hundred million years survived to the point where homo sapiens could finally branch off and eventually figure out complex language. Same goes for writing. So, that's kind of the problem with naturalist arguments.

Cookingboy24• 5 years ago

It's interesting how you used Taiwan and hackathons as example.

Despite their successes, I'll bet a decent amount of money that after Covid is over, many hackathons will resume to be in-person events.

In fact, think of this the other way, would people in Taiwan be happy if they hear they will be locked down forever? Of course not right? So people obviously derive some value from human interaction. And that value, as little as it is for some people, will very often translate over to working relationship.

we didn't have spoken language for a very, very long time, and we interacted "just fine" without it insomuch as our entire ancestral history for a couple hundred million years survived to the point where homo sapiens could finally branch off and eventually figure out complex language. Same goes for writing. So, that's kind of the problem with naturalist arguments.

A simple counter-argument to all your examples: when something new comes along, they rarely fully replace what's there before, but merely augmented it or expanding the horizon. We didn't replace gestures and body languages with spoken language, and we didn't replace spoken language with written text. Technology will no doubt expand our interaction paradigm with new methods, but it won't fully eliminate the benefit of old ones.

causehealth1012• 5 years ago

You're absolutely right. People do NOT want to hear it, but this is the reality in most cases.

grawprog2• 5 years ago

I dunno, for a group of people who seem to believe you're worth a ridiculous amount of money per hour, think of what your time is worth. You folks that make a living programming off exceedingly decent wages.

You don't break your bodies every day, you're not forced to spend all day moving wood and metal, filling bags full of garbage, hauling shit that weighs 50+ lbs all day every day.

You just gotta sit and think and come up with solutions to problems.

Having done both, I'd fucking far rather receive large amounts of money to sit in front of a computer all day than break myself for $20-$30 an hour.

If there's one thing I have to say about computer programmers and their entitlement.

Suck it up, take a pay cut and take your free time, you're already overpaid for shit that's not going to kill you and now you get the option to sit at home and work for slightly less money, still more than someone who kills themself every day for a pay cheque.

BrandonM• 5 years ago

I’ve done both, too. Both the treatment and the pay is better in office jobs. When I worked labor, though, I could think about whatever I wanted to during the day. White collar employers own our thoughts for 8 hours a day and often beyond. The wages are exceedingly decent, but that doesn’t preclude us from demanding more from our employers, who are making even more than that off our thoughts and creative output.

I’m not making any particular argument here, just adding color to your fair points. My dad worked labor his whole working life until it broke his body at about 50 (now on disability). Now I’m working in part to send him money every month, but also building toward my own early semi-retirement. I’m happy I got into programming, but I’ll be happier to have my thoughts back.

whitepaint2• 5 years ago

for a group of people who seem to believe you're worth a ridiculous amount of money per hour
I have to say about computer programmers and their entitlement
you're already overpaid for shit that's not going to kill you

Why overpaid? Programmers create huge amount of value and they are paid accordingly.

cblconfederate2• 5 years ago

revenue is not value

arcturus174• 5 years ago

you're already overpaid

Assuming that:

a) A market such as the dev labor market is fairly efficient, and increasingly so

b) Agents on both the supply and demand sides transact freely and uncoerced

c) Individual feelings regarding the value of the work being carried out are meaningless

There is no thing such as "overpaid".

phreeza3• 5 years ago

I would say over and underpaid both do exist in scenarios where one party has undue/extortive power over the other. They don't exist in a well-functioning labor market.

jimsimmons4• 5 years ago

Eat your veggies, kids are dying in Africa

thealig• 5 years ago

I lost it while reading your comment...

Honestly, I get how the sentiment of "suck it up, you are privileged" is sometimes annoying.

apetrov• 5 years ago

I won't debate the fairness/difficulty point but instead focus on the premise that you don't break your bodies while working as a programmer. That's exactly what you're doing while sitting. i.e. https://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/adult-health/ex...

Yes, there are workarounds on how to mitigate some effects but in general, the human body was designed (by environment for millions of years) to move all day long, often with a weight.

throwaway6734• 5 years ago

you're already overpaid for shit that's not going to kill you

Software developers are not overpaid. Many are still relatively underpaid relative to the value they provide.

Joeboy• 5 years ago

Also done both, and agree that being a software dev is considerably easier, more pleasant and better paid than the kind of factory / admin work I did in my 20s.

I suppose whether I'm worth the money and whether I deserve the money are separate questions. Hopefully the answer to the former is yes, but I don't think I'm any more deserving of money than I was in my 20s, when I got paid a small fraction of what I make now.

Zandikar• 5 years ago

Ah yes, The trades are underpaid and undervalued and as such everyone else that gets paid more is entitled and not deserving of a living wage and should just "suck it up". This sort of thinking just drags everyone down, and improves nothing for anyone. It's how we got to where we are, instead of "the good ol' days" where a single income near a minimum wage exceeded the skilled trades wages relative purchasing power of today.

How about instead of complaining about the color of the grass in others yards, we advocate for a living for all, and dare I suggest it, a thriving wage for the skilled, risky, or difficult jobs; irregarddles of whether they're performed at a desk or with a sweat. Alternatively/additionally, we should address the corruption and cost overruns present in many industries today (looking at you health insurance racket) that also reduce the relative purchasing power of any given wage.

efficax• 5 years ago

The company i work for makes absurd profits and has hundreds of millions of dollars of just cash on hand, even after reinvestment. I helped create that value (and frankly a large amount of it actually). Why shouldn't i get compensated accordingly? I also think the laborer should be paid better, btw

linspace• 5 years ago

People sometimes complain about how much elite sport athletes make and I usually answer that it's great and a model to follow because workers capture a good part of the value of their work. We should not regulate to make their salaries go down (apart from taxing appropriately).

silicon24012• 5 years ago

In my experience, this is mostly the attitude of people who criticizes a world they're not part of. Not being aggressive about self-benefit only hurts you and helps everybody else. The fact that somebody gets paid 1/100 what I do for 100x the effort I exert isn't my problem, my problem is whether I can get an even better cost/benefit ratio than I have today

aeoleonn• 5 years ago

If i's so easy, why aren't you one?

"On his first day in Japan, Cook met with the 84-year-old Masako Wakamiya, the world's oldest app developer who released her first iPhone app in 2017, and 13-year-old Jun Takano, who's believed to be the youngest in her profession."

https://observer.com/2019/12/apple-ceo-tim-cook-visit-japan-...

You cannot equate being a tradesman to a software engineer:

Being a software engineer requires highly intense focus for hours on end, unpacking and repacking equations in different languages, which you must continuously teach yourself while using them to build things.

Also, here's no reason you cannot become one.

Unless of course, you're not willing to do what it takes. And guess what amigo: It takes time, effort, and the ability to simply sit and focus at a desk for 4-8 hours per day and teach yourself several related languages, and client (browser) & server (such as 100% free, open source, Linux) configuration methodologies.

Can you do that?

So don't blame anyone but yourself for your choice not to go to google right now and search for "Roadmap to becoming Full Stack Web App Developer" or "Roadmap to becoming a Mobile App Developer".

mixmastamyk• 5 years ago

"Won't someone think of the insurance company execs?"

Leadership bonuses are just not cutting it this year... amirite?

dang5• 5 years ago

Please don't post flamewar comments to HN. It leads to repetitive, nasty discussions, and worse. We're trying to go the other way here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

grawprog2• 5 years ago

I apologize for my comment. I posted thoughtlessly while in a bad mood after a rough day. I wasn't trying to start a flame war. I really didn't mean to start such a huge thing. I felt fairly ashamed seeing all the responses it generated. It wasn't productive and isn't accurate and doesn't even really reflect my beliefs.

If anyone who was offended by my attitude and comment reads this I apologize. Anyone who works hard for someone else should be valued, whether you work with your mind or body.

My comment was ignorant and just not true.

can16358p• 5 years ago

I don't understand why it is NOT the norm already and we still need to have a global crisis like a pandemic to "force" this.

makach• 5 years ago

Different problems require different solutions. Working from home is here to stay and will probably be much more accepted moving into the future. If it is going to eliminate working in the office, I don't think so. If it will, it will be gradually over many years - and if it does disappear (working in the office) I hope that new devs will find new ways to collaborate that has equal or better benefits. Future is bright!

quanticle• 5 years ago

The entire article is based off scrapes of HN "Who is Hiring" threads. Why do we think that they're a sufficiently representative sample of the overall software job market?

higeorge134• 5 years ago

Most HN posts always compare with FAANG jobs and salaries, while there is a whole different world out there.

For instance, in Europe and especially low-paid countries in the south or eastern Europe, i foresee zero chance that top talent will stay in their countries to be given low salaries for jobs with local/low impact. These people are already working or looking to work remotely to companies in richer countries (e.g. UK, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland) and are already profiting for this. I personally switched to a remote-only job and got the biggest raise of my career, with a salary that no local company can match unless we are talking C-level manager position.

ca01an• 5 years ago

I'm curious, what sort of salary range would there be for engineers in your country?

_wolfie_2• 5 years ago

For Czech republic, based on seniority and skill level I would say between ~$2.5k and ~$7k salary per month before tax. But you lose like a half to the various taxes.

higeorge134• 5 years ago

Gross salaries for juniors is usually in the range of 20k annually, in certain companies or software (slave) houses even less. For seniors it should be around 40k. For lead or principals, even managers, around 60k. Consider that net salaries might reach 60% of gross for certain amounts and above (e.g. 60 gross is 36 net). And of course, these are anecdotal data, probably covering 99% of local companies.

My current salary which is close to 6 figures for a tech lead job would be an instant disqualification in probably every local company. To be honest, a few years back it would be a dream for me, unless i had to relocate somewhere. But now and for the next few years, i really cannot see how i can work onsite again in my country.

V-2• 5 years ago

The rates in Poland have really risen as of recent (so has the inflation, but that's a different story).

There's a lot of offers in the 120-150 PLN/h (26-33 EUR or 31-38 USD) range; not long ago I had three offers from the top of this range to choose from, and I eventually stayed at my current place since they equalled this rate.

And yes this is wage per hour, because self-employment/B2B is highly popular in IT, for financial and fiscal reasons. After all the deductions, you'd pocket roughly 70% of it.

Once you factor the living cost in: eg. "you would need around 2,827.20€ in Warsaw to maintain the same standard of life that you can have with 5,670.18€ in London (assuming you rent in both cities)" (according to Numbeo), it becomes pretty clear how living and working in Poland can be an attractive deal.

sbacic2• 5 years ago

What's happening here is disintermediation - the employees in SEE and EE have realized that they can cut out the middleman (their local employer) and work directly with foreign clients. This makes the lower cost of living the employee's, rather than the employer's, competitive advantage. It also means that these local employers now have to compete on two fronts - for labor with their foreign competitors who have greater purchasing power and for gigs with their former employees who can offer the same services but with lower overhead.

The next step will be that these newly minted freelancers will realize they can charge more and raise their rates. Lower CoL is a huge advantage here - you can wait for months for the right gig to come along while your competitor in NYC can't. In the end, I think the rates in the WE and the US will drop all around the board while simultaneously rising in cheaper areas until an equilibrium is reached.

portpecos• 5 years ago

Sounds like a giant sucking sound of programming jobs departing to lower waged labors. Then higher waged laborers will need to lower their wages to compete.

Economists call that a comparative advantage and a net win.

If you’re claiming an equilibrium point will be reached, then I think the equilibrium point will be $40/hr for Senior, $30/hr for Mid, $20/hr for Junior.

lytefm2• 5 years ago

I doubt that a large amount of programming jobs will be outsourced to cheaper countries. Having a good understanding of the problem domain in the same language and time zone as the employer is extremely valuable.

I guess that local extremes for wages in areas with high living costs like in silicon valley will drop when it's possible to work remotely. But I don't see why rates would drop across the board as long as demand stays high.

nextlevelwizard17• 5 years ago

I can't wait to get back to the office.

I don't have dedicated remote work space and that really eats into my productivity. Also being home and having no external pressure to keep working I can already see any breaks people tend to take are way longer than what they would take at the office. (Now someone is going to tell me that this just shows that people need more breaks, but I don't believe that)

It also helps with my physical fitness. Now it is super hard to go to the gym in the morning just to come back home. When I commuted to work the gym was just on the way and it was easy to get out of the bed and go work out.

Food is also big draw. Now I have to worry about what I eat every day and make my food. That's extra stress and cognitive pressure that is completely avoided when I get to just eat lunch from office's cafeteria.

And of course other social aspects i.e. since I am already outside it is easier to do other stuff, but when I'm still in my underpants at home after work it is way harder to dress up and go do stuff.

ceilingcorner2• 5 years ago

Just rent an office space or coworking desk. Problem solved.

dagw• 5 years ago

Using a significant chunk of my own salary each month to pay for something I used to get for free (and that my employer should provide) hardly seems like the ideal solution.

midrus10• 5 years ago

Nah, better to force everyone to go back to the office so I get free food and I can look busy all day.

nextlevelwizard17• 5 years ago

I mean it might be a temporary solution at best, but there aren't many places that rent less than a floor around me.

peakaboo3• 5 years ago

I can't wait to get back to the office.
I don't have dedicated remote work space and that really eats into my productivity. Also being home and having no external pressure to keep working I can already see any breaks people tend to take are way longer than what they would take at the office. (Now someone is going to tell me that this just shows that people need more breaks, but I don't believe that)
It also helps with my physical fitness. Now it is super hard to go to the gym in the morning just to come back home. When I commuted to work the gym was just on the way and it was easy to get out of the bed and go work out.
Food is also big draw. Now I have to worry about what I eat every day and make my food. That's extra stress and cognitive pressure that is completely avoided when I get to just eat lunch from office's cafeteria.
And of course other social aspects i.e. since I am already outside it is easier to do other stuff, but when I'm still in my underpants at home after work it is way harder to dress up and go do stuff.

These are the typical reasons I see for going to the office and they all boils down to you not wanting to make your own food, not having the self discipline to work out at home, and getting started in the morning.

I mean, it's fine, but I think it's helpful if we realize what going to the office is just making some people like yourself more comfortable, and others less comfortable.

Because to me, that commute is killing me, and getting interrupted in the office is wiping out any energy I have at all to commit to working. At home I have food I selected myself to eat and I have a nice twin monitor setup with a comfortable chair and silence to focus. My workout routine is body weight exercises right before lunch, and I have time to relax and have a shower as well since there is no pressure.

Chilinot• 5 years ago

I'm the same. Working from home means i no longer have to spend 2-3 hours commuting each day (add many hours to that for times when the trains breaks down, which is annoyingly often in Sweden).

I have also noticed that my own productivity has skyrocketed now that im working from home and dont have the regular office distractions. I can put on music that i like myself, sit in silence while drinking coffee and think about what im currently doing and how to solve a current issue.

However! It should be noted that i do miss the office from time to time, i havent been there in 1,5 years now. And will probably visit a couple times a month in the future when things start to clear up. But i will never go back to full-time-office-work.

P.S. it should be noted that i do have a dedicated "office" room in my house which is a luxury not many have. This helps alot with working from home. Had i had to do this from my living room or my kitchen i would have not survived this mentally.

nextlevelwizard17• 5 years ago

I could pick part your routine/things as well, but that would be as silly as what you did. Your routine works for you, you can keep it. My routine suites me and I am going to keep it. I see no actual argument here.

j7ake• 5 years ago

Making own food that is the same quality as the hot foods at cafeteria is easily 1 hour a day extra.

Not being around colleagues affects more than just self-discipline, you lose the random encounters with colleagues that often leads to new ideas and collaborations.

These differences are real. And even if productivity is not affected, the new ideas that normally sparked from random interactions are diminished.

3grdlurker• 5 years ago

You see it as OC making excuses or not having discipline, I see it as you wasting valuable time by taking it upon yourself to do things you can ask or pay others to do for you. You might as well reprehend OP for working smart because you work unnecessarily hard.

I mean, the attack is so deeply personal yet you don’t know anything about OC’s circumstances. Maybe OC knows how to cook a little but he really sucks at it? Or he’s just not interested? Or he doesn’t have as much free space at home as you do? There are so many possibilities and you’re very quick to blame it on discipline, lol.

atregir• 5 years ago

I have the opposite problem working from home: I take almost no breaks, sometimes it happened I even had lunch from my desk and worked longer hours than in the office. This sucked at first, until I realized I couldn't do this for long and started being more conscious about my working hours. In the office I feel I take so many breaks, short coffee chats, water cooler chats etc. I think what you say that "any breaks people take are way longer than in the office" is not extremely accurate.

midrus10• 5 years ago

Food is also big draw. Now I have to worry about what I eat every day and make my food

LOL

TeMPOraL4• 5 years ago

That does indeed sound like a trivial problem to solve. Pick a local restaurant and treat it as your new cafeteria. Come lunch time, go there. Ideally, your employer would compensate you for the office benefit you're missing (at least when talking about pandemic-induced forced WFH), but WFH is likely already saving you more money, so you can probably afford it anyway.

birdyrooster5• 5 years ago

No Machine Learning cookies?! I can't handle all of these decisions!

makeitdouble2• 5 years ago

I am all in for WFH, but deeply agree with your points.

Having a dedicated working space is not trivial; and it's not just isolating the space, there is all the "office management" part, having well fitted furnitures, lighting, drinks, noise management etc. Basically what was someone else's job is now each employee's responsibility. I'm fine with it, but it should be noted.

Physical fitness was already in that realm I think, though we were forced to have at least some exercise to move to the office. My hardest impact on that respect is that my calm neighborhood is less fancy than where the downtown office was, and it's less fun to just go walk for 20 ~ 30 mins and stop by nice coffee shops or museums. I could move to a more crowded place, but it's just a different tradeoff. Buying a better bike was the best investment on that front.

nick0garvey• 5 years ago

I also prefer working in the office but this feels a bit over the top.

Is it really way harder to get dressed at the end of the day instead of the start? Is it that much cognitive pressure to feed yourself? Working in the office has its benefits, but working from home is not a crushing experience for a programmer compared to most workers.

closeparen3• 5 years ago

Think about why the NEET / basement gamer stereotype attracts such disgust, derision, and pity.

The only thing different about being a remote worker is that what's on your computer screen is on average less engaging than a video game.

littlecranky674• 5 years ago

Your reasons are mostly individual and to some extent based on a lifestyle that you got used to because working remote wasn't an option. I often hear "i don't have a workspace/desk at my home" as a pro-commute argument. But the reason you don't have that desk is because when you moved into your flat, you didn't think of this. But if more and more employers allow to work remotely, people will make different choices on their rentals / housing construction.

I personally worked remote numerous times before the pandemic (self-employed contractor but very often onsite) and made arrangements that WFH is a pleasant experience. That also included getting a coworking desk for limited periods of time, because socializing with other people is an important part of your wellbeing. The benefit of a coworking desk is, that if you go out for lunch with your collegues, you don't talk about work during lunch.

stackbutterflow2• 5 years ago

Exactly. Our societies/cities were built for in-office workers. The fact that despite that there are many people who still prefer remote work shows how much potential there is for a remote lifestyle.

Every house has a bathroom. Now imagine we lived in a world were the norm was to shower at the office. Then suddenly a bunch of people starts to question whether we really should shower at the office or if we could do it at home. There would be tons of people saying 'But I don't have a bathroom, I have to shower in the sink, that's stupid and impractical!'. Well, that's exactly the situation we're in right now. Most people don't have a spare room for working at home in good condition, because buildings and cities weren't built to accommodate WFH.

nextlevelwizard17• 5 years ago

I don't want to pay more for larger apartment just so I can have dedicated office room and exact same argument goes both ways. I live 20minutes away from my office, that is by choice. I was even considering moving closer (so I could ditch car to a bike or maybe even walk) here I read that every one has 2-3 hour commute, that is on YOU and YOUR poor choices.

idnefju• 5 years ago

This whole post sounds like you don’t have control of your life. Why do you need to find an excuse to do things you want to do?

Commit to a workout routine, commit to getting food or learning to cook to save money, commit to some mindful exercises to have more focus

birdyrooster5• 5 years ago

because the weed, it makes it hard to hold it all together

Edit: okay fine the stoners just want to stay WFH and blaze up during the day

enriquto• 5 years ago

The whole argument against people who prefer not to WFH seems to be that they are "deeply flawed individuals that do not have control over their own life". This is ridiculous, working in situ is a legitimate preference of many people, for whatever reasons, and we need not be judged about it.

nextlevelwizard17• 5 years ago

Commit to a workout routine, commit to getting food or learning to cook to save money, commit to some mindful exercises to have more focus

You can do that. I can just go back to office.

null_object• 5 years ago

I can't wait to get back to the office.
being home and having no external pressure to keep working
it was easy to get out of the bed and go work out
I get to just eat lunch from office's cafeteria
still in my underpants at home after work it is way harder to dress up and go do stuff

The paradox in this situation, is that some employers are considering cutting the pay [0] of people who have the self-discipline, drive and focus to not need the artificial crutch of going into an arbitrary office-space to find the motivation to do their work.

[0]https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/aug/12/google-st...

rytis2• 5 years ago

Intuitively, I'd think, it should be the opposite - no need to pay for the office space, money saved, can give that to the employees. But no, instead - save money on the office, and then save even more on the salaries. Just wow.

kartikarti• 5 years ago

I fully agree with the social aspects, but the gym and food argument feels like a lack of self-discipline. Don't start your work if you are still in your underpants !

Food is also big draw. Now I have to worry about what I eat every day and make my food. That's extra stress and cognitive pressure that is completely avoided when I get to just eat lunch from office's cafeteria.

Just use money saved on the commute and spend it at the local restaurant or order a catering.

tomcooks• 5 years ago

Hot take: learn to cook

angarg12• 5 years ago

You've tried remote and it doesn't work for you. Great, more power to you! However your comment about other people is out of place.

Is other people taking longer breaks affecting your productivity? If so, have you brought this up to them? Otherwise it shouldn't matter to you.

Personally I find remote a bliss, and I'm one of those. Almost every day I take 1 or 1:30 hours to cook some homemade meal and eat with my wife. When I feel extremely sleepy or tired in the early afternoon, I can take a quick nap and go back to work fresh and full of energy. I also take a break for exercising before my meetings in the late afternoon.

To a casual observer it might look like I'm taking breaks and working less, but actually I end up doing overtime many days. I just found a flexible schedule that works for me. Butting into other people's schedules is not so different from micromanagement.

nextlevelwizard17• 5 years ago

but actually I end up doing overtime many days

I am not american, so working overtime for no reason is not the norm. In fact most of the team are contractors who can not work overtime even if they wanted to.

You shouldn't take my post as personal attack

hughrr2• 5 years ago

Conversely I do less work but generate more ROI at home.

I rather like worrying about food. I made myself jerk chicken and rice for lunch yesterday by taking ten minutes out to pop the chicken in the oven and then an hour out for lunch to do the rest.

During the chicken prep time I thought through a problem and solved it in half the time while the chicken was in.

This is a much better way to live than being time sliced into a corporate convenient canteen.

formerly_proven• 5 years ago

Frankly, this sounds like you are an actual manchild.

I can already see any breaks people tend to take are way longer than what they would take at the office

Just because you don't have any self discipline or work ethics doesn't mean everyone else has the same problem.

Just because you have no control in your life and need the structure of an office work day to get stuff done both at work and privately doesn't mean this is normal, or that it's a good - or even any kind - of argument to force everyone into the office.

nextlevelwizard17• 5 years ago

Calling names makes you the mature one for sure

einherjae• 5 years ago

No need for being nasty about it, the comment flags clear things about cognitive load of choices, and you hand waive these away. Yet, actively choosing to not take these choices is a valid choice that may free up energy for other activities.

I don’t see how the comment actively argues for forcing everyone into the office. Sure there’s a point about taking pauses, but that’s it.

iovrthoughtthis• 5 years ago

it's good to know what you need so you can select for environments / help create environments that support you :).

i personally want local offices so i can have somewhere that isnt home to work without a commute. like a library for work. id hope i get to finally integrate into the local community a little better then too.

globular-toast4• 5 years ago

Maybe you do benefit from going to the office then. But here's the thing, I don't mind if you go to the office. You can even take your free lunch, I don't mind. Just don't expect me to come in every day to make you feel bad about how long your breaks are.

nextlevelwizard17• 5 years ago

I don't understand why everyone commenting takes my comment as some kind of personal attack. I don't give a flying fuck what you guys do. I, personally, can't wait to get back to office.

KronisLV2• 5 years ago

I can't wait to get back to the office.

That is a valid point, since different people work better in different settings. I am personally in the opposite group.

I don't have dedicated remote work space and that really eats into my productivity. Also being home and having no external pressure to keep working I can already see any breaks people tend to take are way longer than what they would take at the office. (Now someone is going to tell me that this just shows that people need more breaks, but I don't believe that)

Overall, i get way more done at home, because of my 4 monitor setup, privacy, peace and the ability to take walks to clear my head and breathe some fresh air while i consider how to solve technical problems. I cannot do that at an office setting and my mental health has improved bunches. Also, no commute has done wonders for my sleep schedule and productivity. I no longer waste 10% of my life in public transportation.

It also helps with my physical fitness. Now it is super hard to go to the gym in the morning just to come back home. When I commuted to work the gym was just on the way and it was easy to get out of the bed and go work out.

My physical fitness has gotten way better since i started working remotely - i've lost about 12 kg in 2 months, since now i exercise for 1-2 hours every single day in the countryside. No anxiety about how i look while working out. No shame about not living up to anyone's expectations. Just me, nature and listening to a podcast while i jog for 5 km and do sit ups, push ups, pull ups and whatever else i want.

Food is also big draw. Now I have to worry about what I eat every day and make my food. That's extra stress and cognitive pressure that is completely avoided when I get to just eat lunch from office's cafeteria.

I think that people should always make their own food, since it's both economically more responsible and on average also more healthy. I now enjoy a primarily veggie based diet and communities like /r/MealPrep have been fun to explore! Plus, my cooking skills have gotten way better.

And of course other social aspects i.e. since I am already outside it is easier to do other stuff, but when I'm still in my underpants at home after work it is way harder to dress up and go do stuff.

I get to chat more with my friends remotely on my down time. I no longer worry about how i look. I no longer have to worry about someone dropping by and just making me lose the mental model of the code that i have in my head. Meetings are properly scheduled ahead of time. Noone makes assumptions about me based on my gender, age, looks or anything else.

Frankly, it's great. It won't be that way for extroverted people, or those that prefer in person collaboration for any reason. It also won't be that way for people who live in the city, at least sometimes. But, living in the countryside, it's absolutely great! Also, no overpriced real estate or rent to take care of.

goldenkey3• 5 years ago

So basically, you lack the self-discipline to be satisfied with your choices, and prefer to be enlisted in some type of nanny service? Cool, I'll opt out and instead focus on bettering my defecits so I don't need to outsource my mental fortitude.

ijidak• 5 years ago

Food is also big draw. Now I have to worry about what I eat every day and make my food

Haha. Not sure which country you're from, but this definitely sounds like a first world problem.

Your statement tells me that you could afford to only eat food others prepared for you in the past. (Not sure if that was a free office cafeteria)

For many that is expensive and could even be an unhealthy way of life.

I've never really thought of going into an office because pre-prepared food is easier to get. That's a new one.

ajuc• 5 years ago

TBH if you're a programmer in a 3rd world country you probably earn 3-5 times the median wage where you live and you can afford as much services at local prices as programmers in 1st world. Possibly more when it comes to things like food.

devoutsalsa• 5 years ago

When I was up to my eyeballs in debt, I'd eat at the office because it was a way to save money. I consumed a lot of cereal, milk, bananas, snacky things, etc. Often for dinner I'd simply eat 200g of little cheeses.

nextlevelwizard17• 5 years ago

Food at work caffeteria costs 6€/meal. That's 120€/month. The food is "home style", so just normal food with salads, bread, and desert. Any food I make at home is going to cost around same. I mean you can go down obviously (just buy bag of rice and can of beans), but I don't get why this would be valid argument when we are talking about tech sallaries.

PaywallBuster• 5 years ago

fitness:

office: go to an office, sit in a chair 8h a day with barely any breaks.

home: get up any time you want, walk around, lay in bed, go outside buy something, no one looking or making comments.

productivity:

office: too many people moving around and talking, use headphones to isolate yourself

home: no one around you, play music in the background, relax

food:

I think it very much depends on the company you working for. Many companies don't offer lunch, and you're going outside. What's the difference from doing it from home?

Agree with the low productivity and social, but that's temporary because covid. You're forced to stay home and unable to have any fun and social times.

birdyrooster5• 5 years ago

My biggest asset as an employee is my ability to befriend and network with boomer middle managers. That is my real job. The software is just a part of the larger game. If I am remote, I will make less money as a result. The only reason I want to go into the office is to leverage my social capital because I want to bring home the most money for my family.

mjbeswick2• 5 years ago

I've been working from home since last February, and since then I have been more productive and worked more hours than when I was in the office.

Open plan office are an absolute productivity killer for me, as they are noisy and distracting and really the worst environment possible for development! Working from home there are no distractions, so I'm able to concentrate far longer. For me it's pointless to commute three hours a day just to sit in an office and not speak to anyone, when I could use that time for other things (plus saving £3,500 a year on travel).

As someone who trains at the gym two hours a day most days, working from home allows me to train more and eat better. It absolutely great being able to cook and eat proper food in my own kitchen!

peterkelly• 5 years ago

https://archive.is/qK9Mk

stepbeek• 5 years ago

I've worked remotely for four years now and I think the primary advantage for me was being able to have my own - quiet - office.

I found working in an open office to be incredibly distracting and the productivity uplift in working in a private home office was significant. I would be more willing to work in an office again if I could be given either a personal office or one shared only with a small number of colleagues.

cwp2• 5 years ago

Once all the furor has subsided and the pandemic ebbs, I think it's safe to say that many companies will got back to in-person collaboration and others will remain remote. It's clear that remote work is feasible, but not everyone enjoys it.

Rather than argue the pros and cons, I'm more interested in seeing how distributed organizations will evolve. Slack and Zoom are getting the job done, but they are wearying. Organizations that aren't deliberate in designing their collaboration process will probably spin their wheels a lot.

Software development does have more focussed tools for collaboration, like GitHub, GitLab, Jira, Basecamp, Trello, StackOverflow, Figma and so on. So what are remote-first companies doing to improve productivity and minimize coordination overhead? Is it about finding the right modes of communication? Is it about distributing work differently? Is it building shared context to make communication more efficient?

I'm aware of (at least some of) the things that companies like GitLab and Automattic have written about their practices. Who else is thinking and writing about this?

ProZsolt• 5 years ago

Zapier wrote an entire book on the subject: https://cdn.zapier.com/storage/learn_ebooks/e4fbeb81f76c0c13...

cwp2• 5 years ago

This is great, thanks.

I've only read a bit of it, but what leaps out at me is that it's clearly written prepandemic. It assumes its audience only knows in-person work, and remote work is this weird radical thing that only a few companies do. Understandable, as that was true 18 months ago, but wow have things changed!

Oddly, I bet it'll be hard or impossible for Zapier to write an updated edition, as they don't know what the pandemic has been like for the rest of us. Heck, I bet the experience of pandemic remote work varies widely.

blazespin2• 5 years ago

WFH works OK, but the majority of staff needs to be WFH. When it's the other way around, I find it just becomes a political nightmare. Office workers band together and it's rather trivial for them to sideline WFH. (eg, lunch / hallway / watercool, etc)

Also, it takes awhile for the DNA of company to become WFH. Just sending office drones home rarely works. Ideally it would start out WFH.

Likely these big time ceos that talk about going back to the office understand all this and would prefer not to kill their company by completely changing how work is done. No doubt the pandemic was largely a set back in terms of innovation and real (ie, money making) productivity.

That said, starting up new teams as purely WFH with new hires and WFH culture is a good way to stick their toes in the water.

Don't expect immediate success, however, unless you have some senior / veteran WFH managers with a track record of excellence.

It's really a different biz. Even trickier, the products you build will likely reflect the organization and therefore seem alien compared to what you're used to.

But it's all good! Everyone is remote (one way or another) these days, so why not have a workforce that reflects that? And, after all, the probability of finding the smartest people in your timezone(+/-) within X miles of your office isn't that great, even in SV / Seattle.

rightbyte• 5 years ago

Office workers band together and it's rather trivial for them to sideline WFH. (eg, lunch / hallway / watercool, etc)

What? I mean it is way easier to sideline in a WFH environment. Just send a mail, DM or do a call. WFH does not solve sidelining if that is a problem.

blazespin2• 5 years ago

Well, majority rules. But also working from an office has definite benefits. Whiteboards, people can generally talk / use body language to communicate much faster than chat.

Where WFH is superior is a much broader labor pool to pull upon as well as reducing the astronomical amounts of time wastage than can occur in commuting.

Also, WFH really benefits companies building distributed projects. I always find it hilarious how people who do this in office don't actually use their own products.

SjorsVG• 5 years ago

I don't live alone. Having multiple people in the house all joining calls for different jobs around the same time is really impractical. Also I don't have an ergonomic workspace at home. I miss my coworkers and actually leaving the house.

rajeshmr• 5 years ago

I am pro remote working as i do not see a need for physical presence in office for software professionals. The commute kills my soul, and the pointless dressing up for office chores do not excite me at all. And i have observed that am far more effective / productive working from home than i am working from office and the commute time which got freed up, i can spend with family which is great for me. But i can understand if some would like to work out of office. I guess it is individual preference and i hope in the near future both choices are available to employees with no disparities in pay between remote and office workers since value shouldn’t be determined by location.

DrBazza• 5 years ago

In London, at least, there's probably two categories of programmers, those with families and modest-to-large houses in the suburbs or further out in the home counties, with long commutes, and those that are without families, living in flats (apartments) in London. The former want to stay remote, the latter, want to go into the office.

I'm sure it's an xkcd/meme Venn diagram, but in broad strokes, that's my impression of how the cards have fallen in the UK from speaking to friends and colleagues.

There's further overlap with age, too. As home ownership increases with age. So it's the 20-30s want to be back in the office, and the 30+ don't. Again, broad strokes, but that's what I understand from friends, family, even sites like this.

antisol• 5 years ago

I really wish people would stop posting links to paywalls on HN. You should at least have to mark it as a paywall in the subject so that I don't waste my time accidentally clicking on it.

woutr_be3• 5 years ago

My company (a large multinational bank) (about 100K employees) introduce their "future way of working" back in April. This came after most of our offices in different regions working from home due to covid.

Much to my surprise, this was actually pretty well thought out. This new way, would give people the flexibility to choose wether they work from the office or work from home, or even combine both. (They also offered the flexibility to pick your own schedule) Obviously this is all based on the team that you're in. I opted to work from home 5 days per week (since it really made no difference to me anyway), instantly got approved, and received a US$750 one-time payment to buy some home equipment.

I feel like this was a great way to handle it, give people the choice what they want to do. Some jobs require being in the office, so those people only got 1 or 2 days working from home. Also everyone who was approved for working from home (even just one day), received that one-time payment of US$750.

fuzzylama2• 5 years ago

What is that 750 USD supposed to cover? - Monitor - PC/ laptop - desk - chair ... either one of those things can cost as much as that

nickjj2• 5 years ago

What is that 750 USD supposed to cover? - Monitor - PC/ laptop - desk - chair ... either one of those things can cost as much as that

If I were to guess it's maybe all of those things except the PC / laptop because chances are the company would issue that separately with a $750 budget.

My sample size is only 3 based on people I know who have similar deals:

    - One of them got $2,000 to buy whatever work supplies they wanted but no company computer was included.
    - Another got $1,000 to buy whatever work supplies they wanted but the company issued a laptop separately (~$2k).
    - The last one can request any computer related items within reason as long as it's not abused.

For the last one that translated to 2 laptops and a few monitors over 7 years but things like a desk and chair aren't included.

I'd be curious to see what others have gotten for home office supplies. There's other ancillary things too like internet and phone bills. Companies that go all-in with remote workers often partially help pay those bills too.

woutr_be3• 5 years ago

You already have a company laptop, computer accessories can be bought through the company. So it’s mostly for desk and chairs.

benhurmarcel• 5 years ago

That’s still $750 more than most companies.

silicon24012• 5 years ago

If I were your employer I'd expect you to foot the bill if you want to spend $750 on a monitor or desk alone when there are much cheaper options

legerdemain3• 5 years ago

I used to walk to the office. Now, I need to buy office furniture and use up space in my own apartment, which my partner and I used for something else before. Either that, or rent a desk at a co-working space that I will need to drive to. (I don't own a car yet, but probably will need to buy one soon anyway to pick up groceries and restaurant meals.)

I used to eat almost all my meals at work. Meals were subsidized by my company, and they were a lot healthier than restaurant food or takeout. That's several thousand dollars per year of compensation that I'm not getting anymore, not to mention time I didn't use to spend on cooking. Not to mention compensation for gym membership and fitness classes that I'm not getting anymore.

The work gym has closed, and I don't have space to set up a decent home gym. After all, I now have to use up space on a home office!

Working from home for me has meant losing space in my home, losing free healthy meals daily, and losing my shape. I admire y'all who can stay buff with one left kettlebell and practice breast stroke on the carpet, but I can't, and even if I could, this is a lot worse than what I used to enjoy.

option_greek• 5 years ago

Not directed at you and not a popular opinion but in a way this is good.

Companies like FAANG wants to run adult daycares where all the employee needs are taken care of. At some point in life, employees will have to face these issues when they no longer have a job/retired/have kids. This forced WHF has shown people there is life outside of work and work is a way to earn money to keep life flourishing with things that people want to do not the goal in it self. Its like removing VR goggles from someone after long play - a different perspective is forced on everyone.

legerdemain3• 5 years ago

Being forced to lose income and benefits is good...? And up is down, no doubt.

brainless• 5 years ago

Remote work is not for everyone. I am saying this as a remote software engineer for a decade. I don't like offices, I don't like those little gossip corners, I don't like commute.

I love to travel, have a small corner at a cafe where no one knows me, put on headphones and work. In the last 14 years I have moved 12 times. It says something about me I had not realized for a while.

I build my own small routines, like walking, cleaning the house, cooking, daily grocery. Currently I live in a small Himalayan village and I am starting to build engineering for a super early stage US based startup. Met the founder through On Deck. I love my routine, and I love staying outside socially busy places. I have anxiety issues.

Living in a village, people assume I must be a less productive person. My US founder worked with me for a couple weeks and decided it is in best interest if I lead all engineering. She/he is ex Uber, really high caliber person. There are people like me, I have met them, I know them. They all want to live away from busy places and do not like offices.

genezeta3• 5 years ago

I'm doing interviews now and, naturally, the question comes up. Am I looking for a remote position? Would I mind that the position is only partially so? Or that it is fully on-site?

Obviously it's just anecdotal data, and I'm in Europe. So take this with a grain of salt, but I'd say:

* There has undoubtedly been a big rise in remote positions, but not a huge one. Many of these seem to come from companies willing to hire people living in other cities/countries, given how they write the ads.

* A lot do mention that they are most certainly going back to the office soon or soon-ish, or that they have already started going back at least partially.

* Many have taken the option of partial remote. Most of these have stricter "2 days per week" or "Mondays on-site, rest of the week at home" rules, but some are still experimenting and are more flexible.

* Very few offer the option for the employee to choose, whatever their decision is.

higeorge134• 5 years ago

I am from Europe as well, and did similar searching a few months back. These are not remote jobs. If you are looking for such, you should change your job filter or check websites offering strictly such jobs. Then there is another obstacle: timezone. There are a few remote-only jobs which require you to be on the same country or a couple timezones away (e.g. US-only). Then you need to adapt your scope to your preferred region.

genezeta3• 5 years ago

These are not remote jobs. If you are looking for such, you should change your job filter or check websites offering strictly such jobs.

The point was how jobs in general are becoming or not becoming remote. If I limit my search to remote jobs, then sure, all I will see is remote jobs everywhere.

littlecranky674• 5 years ago

I can confirm the anecdotal observation, companies are becoming more open to work from home, but most still have a "at least X/days week in the office" rule, which kind of defeats the main benefit for me as I still have to live close to the office (instead of moving to cheaper parts of the country or event world).

hackflip• 5 years ago

If I need to come in every day, I want to be a 30 minute walk away. If I need to come in once a month, I'm fine being a 1-2 hour drive away.

aix13• 5 years ago

I'm curious about the practicalities of the employer being based in one country and the employee, another. Furthermore, let's say they're not both in the EU as that would simplify things.

What are the practicalities in terms of employment law, taxation etc.

I understand that every situation is unique and am looking for personal experiences/anecdotes rather than generalisations.

xtracto3• 5 years ago

This is alreasy solved by PEOs (professional employment orgs) who take care of all the employment bureaucracy for you. They are a booming business like Globalization Partners, Via.work among several others.

They are good for the company because they streamline hiring people in other countries and they are good for the employee because they provide all employnent requirements by law in their country.

genezeta3• 5 years ago

If one of the parts is outside the EU, things get more complicated. This is a reason why some work as freelancers/contractors. It simplifies things. The company may offer some help with the bureaucracy, but the people I know all have ended using a local third-party service to manage all that, anyway.

Also, consider something else. Many companies, even if they are outside the EU, may already have an EU-based subsidiary. Once they have that, contracting in all the EU will go through that and simplify things a lot since it will effectively be a contract within the EU again. This is the case for a couple of friends I know.

I can't tell you anything for the case where the employee is the one outside the EU, sorry.

whitepaint2• 5 years ago

Power naps, workouts, travelling / working from different places almost whenever I want. For me, it's just really really much better working remotely. I don't think I'll ever come back from this. And I hope my circumstances will allow me to continue having this luxury.

neonate• 5 years ago

https://archive.is/qK9Mk

aussieguy1234• 5 years ago

Since working remotely, I've been able to take on more challenging projects because the energy saved from the commutes and dealing with office distractions can be put to productive use elsewhere.

I moved to Tasmania to work remotely. Weekends are alot more interesting compared to Sydney and that helps with recharging. I've been able to afford a 3 bedroom house for the same as I was paying for a 2 bedroom apartment back in Sydney, with its own dedicated office.

yodsanklai3• 5 years ago

I'm surprised so many people are so angry about the pay cut.

Using my company's simulator, the pay cut seems to be at most 15% of the base salary and most likely less than that. In my case, considering cost of living, it would certainly be most advantageous to work remotely. I would save more money and live in a much nicer place.

rytis2• 5 years ago

It's not about the actual numbers. It's the WHY. How come the company was ok to pay X when the employee was coming to the office, but now that the same employee is WFH (and thus may be saving some dosh) they are only entitled to 0.85*X? Presumably the said employee was producing a value of Y (where Y may have been > X). Has Y changed? If yes, then it's fair to do the reduction, but I doubt that is the case. It might be ok to lower the salaries of the new hires, but why punish the current employees?

hdjjhhvvhga• 5 years ago

It depends on your POV. They could say when you were coming to the office they were paying you for the time lost for commuting, for having to pay higher rent, for having to deal with incompetent managers and constant interruptions in the open-plan office. Now that you don't have to deal with all these, they take away that bonus.

In any case, no matter what they say, the ability to WFH, either completely or partially, it's one of the very few good things that the pandemic brought. We need to protect this advancement in spite of the efforts of CEOs wondering why they bought monstrous campuses and how they are going to explain the sunk cost to the shareholders (hints: it's their problem, not ours).

Clewza313• 5 years ago

Playing the devil's advocate here, why is it OK to pay a developer in India $3000/year when they could command $300,000/year in Silicon Valley?

Also, unless they joined within the last year, the current employees signed contracts obliging them to come to work 5 days a week. If they wish to permanently move to working from home in their pajamas for 5 days a week instead, the company is basically saying "Sure, but that will be a 15% paycut because we feel that makes you less valuable to us". You're welcome to disagree with the company's view, but it's not particularly "unfair" to me.

Leherenn• 5 years ago

The value you produce is just the theoretical upper limit of how much you could get paid. If you could measure this value accurately, then it would make no sense to pay you more than that. It has little bearing on how much you actually get paid, that's based on the market rate.

They pay you less, because presumably by going remote you're changing the market in which you're based and your value in this new market is lower. They had to pay you, say, $200k before because otherwise they would never hire anyone if the other companies offered 200k. If you move remote, and your local companies/other remote options only pay 100k, they would be stupid to keep paying 200k. They can pay you 150k instead and still keep you. What are you going to do? Rage quit and join the 100k company in protest? Most people are not going to do that.

sangnoir• 5 years ago

Employee salaries are mostly driven by market forces, and are barely affected by "value produced" alone. Companies will pay as low as employees will bear

yodsanklai3• 5 years ago

WFH isn't why gives you a pay cut. It's working from a cheaper location. Should you work from home within commute distance of your office, your pay wouldn't be affected. In that sense current employees aren't punished. They are taking a pay cut in exchange of a new option that wasn't present in their initial contract.

xtracto3• 5 years ago

I used to work in an office. Commuting for a total of 1.5hr a day to/from work. I was paid about $50 usd per hour ($8000 a month). When we went WFH bc of covid I saved about $200 a month in gas, $150 in food and $1500 (1.5x20x$50) in my time.

That was $1750 of $8000 which is more than 20%. My lifestyle changed way too much for the better. Once the CEO decided to get back to the office I searched for a new (remote) job and not only did I find it. They even gave me a raise

thiht• 5 years ago

In my company working from home results in a small pay raise (2€ per day worked from home, it’s a small contribution to the home fees).

A pay cut is absolutely ridiculous, you can’t defend that. And 15%? That’s fucking outrageous. You need unions.

lexapro3• 5 years ago

So everyone living in a city should have to move to a cheaper area because their pay was cut for no reason? If anything the company should be paying more, because they save money on office space which now the employee is covering.

yodsanklai3• 5 years ago

That would happen if there's no pay cut. Why would I live in NYC, Hong Kong or London if I can get the same salary and live like a king in a cheaper country?

The pay cut will not apply to people working remotely in an expensive city (at least it doesn't in my company)

mytailorisrich4• 5 years ago

I'm surprised so many people are so angry about the pay cut.

I think that's because many people think (rightly so, IMHO) that this is just exploitation by companies that sense they can squeeze a bit more out of employees because employees will likely accept (partly for the reason you mention).

CalRobert• 5 years ago

A pay cut makes a lot of sense. Without it you're less competitive. I currently work for a decent size US company from Ballynowhere in the middle of Ireland and I'm a lot more competitive in part because my cost of living is roughly €0. Meanwhile someone in SF needs $150k just to keep the lights on.

jxidjhdhdhdhfhf3• 5 years ago

There's also the commute time factor and prepping for work (dressing, shaving, prepping work lunch, etc). If commuting + prepping takes 1.5 hours each day, then eliminating that would save you ~375 hours per year, equivalent to ~18% of your hours worked.

I wish my employer would give me the option of remote, even if it did come with a paycut.

globular-toast4• 5 years ago

For me it always was the norm, and it's been great to return to that. I learnt programming in my room on my own. I went to uni, and that was great, but all the cementing of that knowledge was done alone. No distractions. No commute. No special clothes.

When I started working I remember being told I was now entering the "real world". Well, after several years of being in the "real world" I now know that it's crap. Returning to work from home reminded me what it's like to actually be productive.

Concentration is so important. Not even just for programming. I was speaking to a guy who runs a mobile clutch repair business. He does one clutch a day on people's driveways. He works about 5-6 hours a day, including travel time (so really only 3-4 hours on the job). If you go to a regular garage they'll tell you how big of a job a clutch is and they'll sometimes take multiple days to complete the work. It's because they aren't concentrating. They are chatting with each other, being pulled this way and that into helping with other tasks etc. This is exactly what being in the office was like. For years I was never able to get into the zone.

jimsimmons4• 5 years ago

What bothers me more is that these tech companies aren’t even trying to have a conversation with their employees. If they did a survey and collected opinions from their employees the decision would be pretty trivial. But the managerial gang knows that and they want to side step it.

The companies want to pretend they care about the employees. They claim to be giving them perks. In reality, these perks are just gamification to make the employee spend more time in the office.

The managerial gang gamified CS careers with silly interviews and performance reviews. They gamified apps and information dispersal. Entire democracies were at stake and nothing changed.

WFH won’t ever happen. These managers have to maintain appearances, name drop names and pretend to be “in the know”. Every engineer knows that 90% of these people are like language models regurgitating what they’ve heard. They can’t do that effectively via video.

To me this is the most blatant admission of their inability to measure developer productivity.

digbert• 5 years ago

If they did a survey and collected opinions from their employees the decision would be pretty trivial.

I'm not so sure about that. My company recently announced that our offices wouldn't be reopening until at least November, and there was a lot of quite angry pushback from people who are desperate to get back.

jimsimmons4• 5 years ago

I’d be more comfortable with a mandate in such cases, either way. It’s at least evidence based. And like I said, I’d feel part of the conversation. Right now I’m like “I/We need to be back because <blanks out> … “

caskstrength4• 5 years ago

The survey should include "team decides how to work" option, which would probably get majority of votes.

spdionis• 5 years ago

All managers I'm sure! /s

Clubber• 5 years ago

What bothers me more is that these tech companies aren’t even trying to have a conversation with their employees.

I would wager most if not all tech execs today have never experienced a walkout, a strike, or a simultaneous mass exodus of any sort before. I'm not saying that will happen, but it's more likely today than any time I can remember.

They also have golden parachutes generously granted by the shareholders, so if the company implodes, no real skin off their back.

McWobbleston• 5 years ago

WFH will happen because firms practicing will be saving significantly on expensive office space that can be used to hire developers, especially in COL areas, and with remote not being the norm they are able to attract talent they would not have otherwise. It will take time but I will be surprised if full time onsite is still the overwhelming norm it was in 10 years

wittycardio• 5 years ago

HN has a bias towards WFH but that's definitely not true in my circles. Developer productivity is notoriously hard to measure but by most measures it is lower at home. I'd rather fewer hours of more focused productive work than a low level anxiety about work all day, which is functionally what wfh has become

Cookingboy24• 5 years ago

If they did a survey and collected opinions from their employees the decision would be pretty trivial.

There are surveys at Facebook, Google, etc. The vast majority of people do not want full remote only. Most of them prefer a hybrid approach.

lytefm2• 5 years ago

WFH won’t ever happen. These managers have to maintain appearances, name drop names and pretend to be “in the know”.

There are many smaller companies who can't afford having these kind of managers and work culture - else they'd have a hard time hiring and retaining developers.

throwaway8689• 5 years ago

I spend quite a lot of time discussing requirements and changes with end users. Because we work across multiple sites it used to take time to organise a meeting needed people could attend. Now we can have shorter, more focussed and timely meetings over video. People who don't need or want to be at a site can join from home.

The org already had video conferencing between larger meeting rooms but few people could use it efficiently and there were no support staff on hand.

jillesvangurp• 5 years ago

There are advantages to having people on site; particularly with juniors. So, I expect a lot of companies will go back to defaulting to mostly on site engineering teams. However, nearly two years of everybody defaulting to remote work has taught companies a few valuable lessons that are changing the industry:

- Remote work is not the end of the world. Most software teams found a way to function during the pandemic. That's a lesson both companies and developers learned.

- The relevance of on site, in person meetings is still important but not required 100% of the time. Being flexible here enables casting a wider net when hiring. Especially with specialist skills, this is important as convincing people to move to where your office is is hard. People now regard on site, in person meetings as quality time. It's something you put in your calendar because it doesn't happen every day and needs coordinating.

- Freelancers can work remotely or on site. However, you pay more for on site as it involves travel and inconveniencing them. The flip side is that if you go with remote freelancers, you are not restricted to your local area and you can engage specialists wherever they are. This was already a thing before covid. All my projects in the last five years we had at least some remote workers and I've been remote myself most of the last eight years.

- Having remote people in daily standups (in so far people still bother with those) on a video call has been the default for quite a while in all the places I've worked on site. This being awkward and annoying has made standups less popular over the last five years. We do weekly company wide video calls and lots of video only meetings (1 on 1, or small groups). It's rare for any of that to involve meeting rooms, projection screens, etc. The only proper standups I've attended were while doing the occasional onsite freelancing project. The last of those was a few years ago.

- Development processes are adapting. Post-its are no longer part of meetings because remote participants can't read those. All that stuff has long transitioned to issue trackers. Either it's tracked there or it didn't happen. With standups gone as well, that's two nails into the waterfall masquerading as agile style of Scrum that was the sad reality across our industry until Covid. Likewise bull shit bingo with Fibbonacci cards (aka estimation meetings) is no longer a thing. Nor are retrospectives with rooms full of upset people screaming at each other (we've all been there). Scrum was heavily dependent on on-site meetings and juggling lots of bits of paper. The remote/digital forms of all this exists of course but was always a bit awkward. Remotely doing these meetings just leads to remote people muting themselves, turning off their video, and reading HN or doing whatever while people go through the moves of doing everything "by the book". Scrum is just not optimal with remote people involved. What is increasingly replacing scrum is more Kanban like in nature and decouples planning and release (i.e. continuous deployments) heart beats. We plan in sprints but develop and release every day and use asynchronous tools to coordinate. Remote optimized forms of Agile processes look very different than Scrum and a lot more like what big OSS projects have been practicing for decades where scrum was never a thing.

- Having remote people is convenient for both companies in highly competitive markets (e.g. the Valley) where talent is scarce and charging very premium rates and companies in remote/rural areas where talent is locally non existent and convincing people to move to you is nearly impossible. These companies now have access to a global pool of workers willing to work remotely. Better still, you pay for the skills and not their on site presence. They might prefer on site but it's simply not an option for many companies. Now that companies have learned they can work with remote people, many of them grudgingly do.

w_t_payne• 5 years ago

Everyone is different. I've spent three or four years working remotely, and I'd say I do better in an office. I like the routine that it gives me, and I like the human face-to-face contact. I especially like the energetic creative discussions clustered around whiteboards that you never seem to get so much when working from home.

Having said that, without endless meetings and distractions, working from home can definitely be a lot more productive ... it's just that after a while (a year or so) I start to feel hollowed out without human company.

vimy• 5 years ago

When we have VR/AR tech that will make it possible for realistic avatars of people, body language and all, to “appear” in your living room, that’s when WFH will really take off.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 5 years ago

Off-topic, but I have a dilemma: I worked in defense until recently so I've never worked from home. How do I not look like a fool in video interviews when everyone else has had time to build a WFH setup?

adingus• 5 years ago

You wont look like a fool. I'm pretty sure most of my coworkers WFH setup consists of their laptop and a mouse.

magneticnorth• 5 years ago

I've just been using the video camera and mic on my Macbook Pro laptop the whole pandemic and I think a lot of my coworkers are the same way. I've certainly interviewed plenty of people on not-high-quality gear and it's no problem, so long as they can clearly hear the questions I ask.

Make sure the background of your space is neat, neutral, and not distracting, or use a zoom background.

Do you have any friends who can run a mock interview over Zoom for you and provide feedback?

wyclif• 5 years ago

I have been working remote for five years. I'm an American but I'm living in SE Asia with my wife and two kids, plus extended family. I work for a publishing company that is transitioning to online and I take care of all that for them.

Most of the time I deal with PHP/Perl and maintaining news sites. Also, AWS EC2, NGINX, Jenkins, and other issues.

throwaway14356• 5 years ago

4 years my manager never shows himself, never calls and never sends messages to anyone. I cant tell if he aced it or simply doesnt care to do work. He might be dead for all i know.

jxidjhdhdhdhfhf3• 5 years ago

Sounds like the perfect job. I've always wanted a job that requires no effort or time.

For programmers, remote working is becoming the norm

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