These remote-vs-office discussions where nobody discusses the actual work involved are fairly pointless. Disregarding the obvious scenarios of presence-required in order to work (i.e. manufacturing), the question applies: what is most productive for "information work"?
In my personal experience, I've found collaboration conducted face-to-face far more effective than doing so in a distributed/online way. There is a high level of context in these situations: the topic of discussion, the interactions among attendees, etc.
On the flip side, standard administrative operations that require nothing more than a terminal/shell? That's not collaborative, don't make those colleagues commute to a remote workstation.
But those employers who "feel their employees aren't so productive" when they aren't in-house -- huge signal they don't know how to really measure productivity.
What I've heard from other colleagues in management roles: the concern with remote work isn't about productivity, it's about _dedicated_ productivity coupled with zero trust. In other words, how do we (the employer) ensure our employees aren't moonlighting on our team and only giving the minimum level of effort with us?
100% agree that these general statements comparing in-person to remote are not helpful.
Even within a single project of a single team, the remote vs in-office balance can change as the project evolves.
Early days of a project, where everyone is figuring out what to do, white boarding, imagining what is possible ... in-person is hard to beat. Later stages where it's implementation, iteration, and more deep work (like coding) ... remote is probably more productive.
Companies that aren't thinking about this in a more nuanced way and designing a more flexible culture are doing themselves a disservice
> In other words, how do we (the employer) ensure our employees aren't moonlighting on our team and only giving the minimum level of effort with us?
The tools for properly determining this are no different remote vs in an office at least for IT work. Most dev teams work in sprints and each sprint comes with a commitment from each developer. It is very noticeable even in remote work if a developer is either:
- Not making a reasonably sized commitment.
- consistently failing to complete their work.
- frequently turning in terrible code (don’t worry the reviewers will let you know).
Whether on-site or remote you can end up with the same situation of a high skill employee putting in minimal effort but still being more valuable than multiple other developers.
This isn't a logically-evaluate-output scenario. It's low-trust between employee and employer.
The bullet points listed are highlighting situations where someone isn't delivering. What do you do if they ARE delivering, but not delivering as much as they could be? The "Not making a reasonably sized commitment" is implicitly an assessment of trust in someone. (I'm trying to paraphrase what I understand others are doing -- I certainly don't subscribe to this thought process.)
> a high skill employee putting in minimal effort but still being more valuable than multiple other developers
You're correct in evaluating value - "Hey, at least that individual is better than the others..." , Unfortunately not everyone sees it that way.
If the employer's expectation is that you are DEDICATED to your role, then all of your energy goes to that role -- not another one. All this gets into nuance and legality about what you're working on, if you have more than one W-2, etc. In one company I know of, your work agreement stipulates you may not hold another full-time position in such-and-such capacity.
> What do you do if they ARE delivering, but not delivering as much as they could be?
Isn't this the role of line-managers? Employees are happy to do more when adequately motivated (money, prestige, opportunity or being acknowledged). The problem is that employers want to maximize on employee potential without giving anything in return.
I’ve worked in 6 companies over 20 years, across many teams. In none of them did devs have to commit to work in sprints. Sure, some did sprints but work rolling over was more a conversation point about priorities and scope of the work rather than a point on which to judge output.
Obviously, there are companies that do this but it’s not as universal as you’re portraying it.
Does anyone give more than the minimum effort when they find themselves with a 2% to 4% raise, if any, in their yearly reviews, even if they are in the office?
Anyone who actually believes this should for the good of everyone else, leave their careers now. I mean, it's fun to read about completely arbitrarily made up characters at 'Dunder Mifflin' used as the basis some kind of deep metaphor, but then to find that people actually believe this stuff? 'Believing' this piece says more about the reader, because the piece itself doesn't say anything, it's a kind of Rorschach test.
There's no believing in metaphorical realities here. It's the real life.
Being an employee is a bad bargain. You sacrifice a massive chunk of the returns from your work to your employer in the form of profits in favor of a small form of stability (or you did in the past anyways). That's just how capitalism works.
Naturally if you go above and beyond sacrificing yourself for this bad bargain, you are losing even more than you would by only doing the necessary to stay employed. Again, this is a fact, not some theory.
The made up characters are just there for the metaphor, but the underlying discussion is not made up.
I've been a Clueless for the majority of my life. I have the equivalent output of 3-4 engineers at the same level and I never got paid 3-4x the salary, even after I got promoted. It's the sad reality of capitalism.
> The piece itself doesn't say anything
Sorry but that must be a bad faith argument. Even if you disagree with the overall theory of how Sociopaths exploit Clueless and Losers to get rich, the individual pieces are more often than not 100% correct. In my view, it's spot on since it's simply a visualization of capitalism.
>Oh yes you are 4 times better than everyone else but treated just the same.
I never said that. It's clear you're not arguing in good faith so this will be my last reply. Not to mention that completely misses the point.
Even if you have to work 1.5x more than everyone else to get promoted, only to get a 10% salary increase, that's already a bad bargain.
>The person who wrote the article is making the ‘bad faith’ argument passing on cynical stupid delusions.
Sorry but that's not an argument. You're saying it's wrong without saying why. If I were to guess you identified as a Clueless and you're angry at it. It's okay. It's normal.
>This idea that most orgs promote willy nilly is ridiculously wrong. It’s a contradiction of reality.
Yes, most orgs promote the people that double down on bad bargains. Of course, as with anything, there are exceptions.
As an example, it's extremely common to promote people that do unpaid overtime. It doesn't matter the quality of that work or that it's clearly exploitative. What matters is that it signals to the company that you can take advantage of that person. They demonstrate willingness to take on more work, responsibilities and/or bad conditions for a small increase in pay (sometimes just a bit more power). That's the most profitable bargain the company can get so it absolutely makes logical sense.
Maybe you've experienced exceptional companies where only the people that deserve get promoted and they do so without having to get exploited for it. But that's not always the case and I've seen that multiple times in my career.
"Sorry but that's not an argument. You're saying it's wrong without saying why."
No - it's not my job to disprove totally made up fantasy.
The delusional author and his naive followers are the group perpetuating completely unsubstantiated theories about the workplace, which have zero scientific backing whatsoever.
The author did not even attempt to 'prove' anything (because he can't) - there is zero worked required to undo that.
Here is the source of the problem with your argument:
You have not defended his thesis at all, rather you keep bringing up arguments about how 'companies can be bad actors' and 'people can be duped'.
Yes - of course, we know that.
What the author is doing is constructing a deluded, fantastical bit of structured that plays into your view that 'companies can do bad things'.
Imagine you 'Trust Trump' so much that you are willing to believe his lie that the 'Election Was Stolen'. If you start from that premise, it's extremely easy for him to make up a set of ridiculous fantasies about how the gov. is broken, evil and 'out to get him'.
As it turns out, the 'election steal' is a lie.
By saying to someone 'But there are election irregularities! Look over here!' - only proves that they occur, which we know, but not at some scale and by some nefarious pattern of election stealing.
So yes - welcome to adulthood - companies and orgs of all kinds sometimes do nefarious things, and there are 'deluded corporate warriors' who on some level don't recognize that. It's fun to point that out.
However - the vast, vast majority of work and corporations are not that. In fact, orgs can do 'life saving' things at the same time they are 'bad'. Best example are drug companies who sometimes charge more than they could get away with, and FYI sometimes it's an inherent moral dilemma.
The second point of emotional leverage that the author is using (i.e. not just against our derision of sneaky corps) - is the fact we live in a political workplace and most of do not like being told what to do. 'Effective Managers' are not necessarily liked, or respected, and that's just reality. A lot of people lack the maturity and self awareness / objectivity to evaluate their position. By far the most common thing among workers is a total lack of understanding of how hard managing is, and the nuances of it. Having been a manager of people myself, I have a completely different set of criteria by which I tend to evaluate managers.
In short: the author is a conspiratorial nihilist populist.
In reality, most systems are 'crudely meritocratic'. Usually, better people are promoted, but you first have to understand that 'better' in your mind may not be 'better' in the mind of the people making the decision.
Yes, people at the top have a few more psychopathic character traits than the rest of the population, but that's actually just a function of the system. Usually, they are not idiots.
Finally - there is no such thing as a 'great team' as a matter of perception, but if you step back and see how things actually work, and that if the company 'did not exist' how it would be bad for a lot of people, then you recognize the funny, imperfect way in which social systems work and respect that they are never going to 'seem' perfect.
People who 'believe' in the ridiculous 'principles' (completely unscientific and unsubstantiated) put forth by the author, have been duped, unfortunately.
It seems from your answer that you have a self-image as a "professional" and that motivates you to work hard even though it may have minimal impact on your compensation. Have you considered the economic rationality of that stance?
'Nothing good' happens by 'self-oriented individuals doing the least', in fact I would go further and say 'almost nothing' happens at all.
If you've ever been on a 'decent team' you'll see that there are many 'in between' elements of an operating situation that have to be accommodated, and it takes a bit of extra focus and goodwill by everyone if it's going to work out.
This applies not only to tight-knit groups, but large teams, and also to contractors, and can be extended to the system overall, aka companies working with each other, individuals, public servants etc.
We generally have to keep our chins up, and 'try to do our jobs as we can' not the 'minimum we can get away with', knowing full well that it's not going to work out all the time, that some situations are better than others, and that there will be a lot of variables for which your 'expected bonus of 4%' or whatever is only one small part.
This doesn't mean we 'die on a hill for someone else's cause' or work ourselves in a grind for no reason, nor does it mean accepting negative behaviour on the part of employers, and definitely 'some days are better than others' - but 'life is long' and 'consistency over time' does matter.
It doesn't even mean fake emotional posture (you know those people who are always in a good mood!), but rather just 'doing it'.
In most corporate situations, the bar for 'minimum' is actually fairly low and so pragmatically, if we want to be 'trusted' as individuals, there has to be a general expectation that we will do 'it' not the 'minimum' or it just won't work.
Obviously, things will be uneven in so many ways - some people's 'minimum' will be better than other's 'best effort', but that's life - that's all part of it.
It's an issue of productivity, but arguably, morality as well.
It's actually a bit troubling that people would even need to ask the question, I hope this level of selfish orientation is a niche mentality and not some kind of new, secular social trend.
It's also hard to even grasp that people could be so cynical - I feel sorry for people in that posture, because either they've literally never 'been on a team' and have no internalization of those dynamics, or a are just depressed or have a negative life outlook. I'm not very athletic myself, but over the years I've gravitated towards people who do play sports, especially team sports, as having more of an innate sense for those things. Even 'toxic' people are more often than not just misfits, at least they are interesting.
It's a sad kind of organizational problem as well - the people who are overtly bad or toxic are easy to let go of, but the pernicious malignancy of 'do the least' is worse.
'Doing the thing' it usually doesn't cost any more material time, just focus. If you're going to do it, then do it.
I think that actually the one that might have a wrong perception of what "being a professional" means might actually be you, no offense intended, i'll explain my point:
First a couple questions: when you go to you grocer and order and pay 5 apples, do you get exactly 5 apples or do you get 6, or even 7?
When you call a professional plumber to fix your sink do they charge you less at the end of the work, or do they charge exactly what their job entailed(or even more)?
Being a professional means exchanging skills and time for money, then why is it that we have developed a company culture in which if you "just" do your job you are seen as a slacker and a terrible employee/person?
This is complete nonsense obviously, and this also one of the tricks that the elites are using since time immemorial to get exponentially richer by exploiting the workers, everyday we are giving away our time and money to enrich the someone else, but at least there needs to be some fairness, it maybe was there in the 1990s but clearly not anymore.
Not every situation is the same, but company dynamics are widely studied and understood by many now, and i suppose we can all agree that getting a 2% raise after pouring many hours of good work everyday is just a complete joke.
Please stop defending practices that just favour the rich and powerful and start taking pride in our value as persons, as opposed to the value that HR attributes us.
Thanks for bringing up the plumber, because it's something we think of as 'transactional' but in reality it is not.
Plumbing is artisinal, Carpentry, even more so. There are no two situations the same, and it'd be easy to a builder, carpenter, plumber, electrician to 'cheat' (aka the minimum) and do less than a great job - and - get away with it.
In fact, I have family members who are Carpenters, and this is probably where I get this from because it's more tangible.
'Crap work' is either a function of 'lack of skill' (quite common), but otherwise just poor professionalism and it's bad.
If you want to see the true character of an electrician, look behind the drywall to see the quality of the work.
By the way - there are some carpenters/plubmers/builders who take it way to far on the quality side and build something that could withstand a nuclear war which is not necessary - but this is something else.
The community only works if people are doing 'good work' - not 'the minimum'.
And by the way, sometimes these things are enforced with regulations, but even just conventions, ethos, professional standards.
You can see this if you visit a 'not rich nation', like Mexico. Go to that country and look at the construction - you will see not 'a cut corner' - but a 'million little things' that contribute to the building being shit. Or go look at those 'China Housing' videos on YouTube.
You can see here that there is a 'broader picture' - one that transcends even the mores of a singular project or company.
Let's use the notion of a sports team:
You, as 'guard' are not in a 'transactional relationship' with the 'centre' of the team - it's a 'team effort', which is what is meant by 'trust' and 'got your back', expectations of 'goodwill'. In the military, you're 100% sure that the Medic will do everything possible to save your life, without that trust it would fall apart.
Corporate organizations are obviously not the same, but very similar. People are there to work as a team to do something, 'profit' to shareholders are just one of the factors involved, the other forces are value to supplies, customers and other team members.
As a side note consider that most of the value created by corporations does not even go to shareholders - it goes to customers, suppliers and staff. (If a drug company stopped making a drug, the 'harm' would be felt far more buy customers than investors, similarly for most company formations, private or ngo)
Finally, the 2%. Yes, 'comp' is a part of the equation, obviously, if someone is not getting paid what they want or expect, that's not good - of course a company cannot pay $5/hour for something that would normally cost $50/hr - but - those are the terms of work, not the terms of 'how well we work' (for the most part). A raise of 2% is just 'comp'. That's not 'evil' or even 'bad' - it's just how the comp structure works.
And for reference your notion that '2% is not enough' in some objective way, is not true at all. It's definitely less than inflation, but the sad reality is it's entirely possible the workforce is overpaid right now. Much like the French Pres. having to raise retirement from 62 to 64 and people putting up a fuss, unwilling to accept that reality, the 'inflation' reality is 1) we print money during COVID to keep the patient alive and 2) there are still supply chain problems 3) 'de-globalization' is happening and 4) we're heading into higher interest rates and 5) for many years there was very low inflation, but wages rose a lot. That means we're going to contract a bit relative to where we were, and it's going to happen throughout the system. To be clear, that's only a factor driving 'only 2%' there are obviously others, and to add a final bit of nuance, the FED actually does target 2% inflation - that is their goal on average, which is probably where the 2% standard wage increase comes from.
So again 'my pay' is just part of comp, one part of the much bigger picture. Inn the end, if it's not working out well, then you can move on - that's to be expected and that's what keeps prices working well, churn is normal and healthy - but none of that means you 'do the minimum' where you are, or where you go in the future.
Just and end remark: "minimum" does not mean bad work, minimum means what it's written on the contract, companies just call normal good work "minimum", because like this if you are not in your office form 8 AM to 10 PM you are just doing "minimum work", which is passed as being "bad work", and now we can give you a bed performance review and don't give you a raise.
I still can do "minimum" work and be a good worker.
It is not immoral to not give 120% to an amoral organization that 1) will only reward the extra work with more work and 2) considers you a replaceable cog.
It is a business transaction. You should treat it as such.
The company is not your family and your colleagues are not your brothers. You are one mass layoff away from learning that. And no, your "extra productivity" won't save you from it, but bootlicking just might.
It's not about how hard you work, but how your work is perceived. You're far more likely to go up in the ladder from becoming buddies with your manager than you are by being the guy that gets his hands dirty and fixes everything when the project catches fire.
It is to the company's detriment to promote such a person.
When greenfielding something, or doing product research and design, I found in person much, much better.
But after that, it feels like you get a bit pigeon holed working onto said product for months or years, where the distractions of the office are a detriment.
I personally feel the best method is maintain a small office or offices for those that want it. Everyone can be remote by default, but must be able and available to travel to said offices as business needs see fit.
I actually worked that way before COVID and everyone else seemed to go remote, and I liked it better than this full remote stuff. I usually was onsite for 6 to 8 weeks out of the year.
Why should employers care about whether or not an employee is giving their all or their minimum? As long as the work is getting done, should it matter?
Also, if an employee is giving their best effort and their work is at the level it needs to be, maybe it is time to move that employee, or find a better position in the company for them? (Hard worker/high morale, but mismatched skillset to task)
If an employee is just underperforming because they are unmotivated or lazy...same deal...
> In other words, how do we (the employer) ensure our employees aren't moonlighting on our team and only giving the minimum level of effort with us?
..by evaluating their performance? Do you not regularly evaluate the performance of your employees? Or perhaps your performance evaluation process has implicitly relied on the sacred ritual of magical hallway conversations?
Anyways, I find this to be a tired, capitalist argument. The anti-remote argument often boils down to squeezing every ounce of productivity out of “human resources” (PC term for cogs). Let’s not get into how butts in seats never actually correlated with productivity.
I figure there must just be a personality difference that explains this stuff.
I can't fathom it. I do better in the office not at home, I do better in the gym not in my home gym, I do better cycling if I'm with others, I push harder doing basically anything if I'm competing, if I'm in a team, if someone is watching. Particularly if they're attractive, respectable, etc.
There's an effect from the setting. My home gym just isn't the same as a proper place with music blazing and guys/girls supporting each other. And the physical - the travel and the location - reinforce in my mind that this is serious time.
Every now and then I like to do stuff alone sure. But too much of it and it feels like playing with toys on your own. Family don't understand the work you do in the same way.
To me it's about as obvious as the sun rising. But not everyone feels this way, it seems.
It depends on the commuting time though. I used to live 15 mins away from my office and I feel the same way as you. But now, having to commute an hour each way is detrimental to me so working from home is far better.
For me, if I spend too much time at home, I rapidly lose interest in everything.
I've had 1.5 hour commutes and they sucked. Far less than WFH does for me, or worse, going into the office to then see people doing Zoom calls from their bedrooms. Literally even just seeing that makes me feel down.
I think you probably meant to object to off-shoring (same company doing the work with employees in different country) rather than out-sourcing (different company doing the work). Out-sourcing from other countries has been happening at scale for decades.
I agree that remote work pulls all of us (rather quickly) towards globalization. Overall, I think this is a good thing, even though people (like me) who temporarily benefited from the prior inefficiencies will not enjoy those same temporary benefits, at least not to the same extent.
Good catch. I wasn’t aware of the difference in terminology.
From a neoliberal globalist perspective, I am happy with more globalization. I just think it’s strange that people tout remote work as shifting power toward employees and away from management, when in reality it’s the opposite.
It's the biggest cognitive dissonance of the generation.
I'm empathetic to rising costs etc. but this remote work thing ... means instantly competing with an audience 10x bigger, many of whom are in remote place with a fraction of cost of living and therefore supply cost, really don't understand how this does not sink in for most people.
The next few years are going to be transformative.
Thar FUD was tired even before the pandemic, let alone when is being used as an illogical back-to-the-office prod. My attitude towards outsourcing at this point is put up or shut up. Nobody would be doing any threatening if there was anything actually there. We already have heard all of the tales of disastrous failed outsourcing attempts and mediocrity in "success".
I'm in Australia and the company I work at has been moving away from hiring in the US and focusing on Australia. Management put out a possibly poorly phrased but informative statement that they found that the Australian developers were just as talented and productive, but "The exchange rate is very favorable".
The culture, language skills, etc are all mostly similar enough that it's not like some random code sweatshop in India.
the key trick is that once you outsource enough of your key competitive advantage - the question arises - what is the company and who creates value - contractors or company management?
why shouldn't these contractors open their own company, do the same work and capture entire value they produce, instead of working for fixed salary?
what is exactly IP in software world?
Your backend app written in Spring with postgres schema like thousands other CRUD apps?
or cookie cutter front-end in React with Tailwind?
I don't think wide moats in form of IP ever existed in software world
A topic that rarely comes up when talking about remote work is where workers are in their career. I can’t imagine being at the start of my career and having to figure out, via Slack, who my mentors are going to be. Or how to get ad hoc advice from someone more senior without feeling like I was “bothering” them. I’ve been remote for the majority of my career now, but definitely got a lot out of in-person interactions when I was younger.
You don't need to go to the building to use their internet to code stuff for machines that are on the internet or behind a VPN or ZeroTrust gateway that is also on the internet, if you have internet.
I worked at an internet-native company a bit over a decade ago, they got more done in two sprints than the "enterprise" places would get done in 3-6 months.
Let's not forget that the Airbnb CEO has vested interest in expansion of remote work. This means more digital nomads and folks who travel to work from anywhere, which benefits the Airbnb Network.
At least they put their money where their mouth is. I for one have seen a lot of the productivity hits dissipate with the advent of remote work. It's at the expense of basic human psychology though. You really can't hire jerks, management cannot be "game players", and meetings need to be minimal and ad hoc. Remote work companies avoiding those 3 things eat in person companies lunch every day of the week as far as hours in and product out.
that's right you pay this regardless, it's the quasi-discretionary things like not doing the laundry or turning on the dishwasher that get dinged for extra, just like a hotel.
Better to have a new world order than going to someone's building to use the internet. We have the internet now so yeah. Doing a team meet up every quarter is great. Don't need to do it like every Mon-Fri tho that's just not productive.
precisely, every single one of these reports is PR to pump Airbnb
> Long-term stays, or stays for 28 nights or longer, were 18% of total gross nights booked, a decline from the previous quarter, when they accounted for 21% of total nights booked.
Is this proven (it probably can't be proven given the huge variety of commutes, office spaces, heating sources etc.)? It would be my default assumption but I feel like heating one office with 100 people in it is much more efficient than heating 100 homes in winter. And if people are in a location where publish transport is the norm then it might be better in terms of carbon impact to be in office.
When I’m on-site, my house is set to a significantly lower temperature during the day. Scheduled thermostats have been around long enough that I assume that’s the norm.
But then you need a surge in power to put it back from lo_temp to hi_temp when you get back home, I honestly don't know if it costs more or less than just maintaining it at hi_temp, and what are the orders of magnitude involved.
The first order approximation is that the heat loss between the inside and outside is linear with the temperature difference (delta-T) between them. So, if the delta-T is 10°C when occupied and allowed to rise to 14°C when unoccupied for 8 hours, there is a small savings. When the heating system is then commanded to recover the temperature, it will generally do a longer, single run (which for fossil fuel equipment is more efficient than a series of small runs, but for heat pumps is not significantly different [unless it engages emergency backup, which is far worse])
Overall, it's a small win, partially offset in the heating season by the heat gain from human occupancy and activity. It's almost surely not enough of a win to sum up to pay for the conditioning of an entire office building that would otherwise not be heated beyond "don't freeze the plumbing".
Presumably a 15 degree F or whatever lower temp (and reduced use of electricity for other purposes) during the day does reduce costs somewhat. However, for most people, commuting is almost certainly a significantly larger expense.
Obviously this is highly dependent on where you live…which gets back to my original point that there are so many variables it probably isn’t possible to declare one option better for the environment. Fwiw, in the UK I actively turn heat on and off depending on when it’s needed. It would never, ever, be on when I’m out, unless I was going out of town for a while and had to consider things like frozen pipes.
In a place like the Bay Area where the weather is pleasant and the commutes are primarily by privately owned vehicles I think it should be the case.
If you live in NYC, Boston, or Chicago, and used to take the train, maybe it’s different
However I think the biggest environmental issue with remote work is encouraging nationwide suburban and exurban sprawl. Still, that can only be the nations failure for not incentivizing construction of desirable urban properties so Americans feel like they need a big house and tons of land to escape their tiny urban apartment
There's nothing inherent about dense cities that make them more desirable to live in especially absent convenience to offices--no matter how carefully planned. There are tradeoffs. I could absolutely live in a pretty nice city and choose not to do so.
For a (weak) counterpoint, there's an interesting article in Bloomberg today about how day-time recreational drug habits are increasing due to remote work.
>> Drug recovery firm Sierra Tucson concluded from a November 2021 survey that about 20% of US workers admitted to using recreational drugs while working remotely, and also to being under the influence during virtual meetings.
I once bought a hotdog from a street vendor in Copenhagen that was seriously high on some downers in 2:00 in the morning, so clearly hotdog vendors are more likely to do drugs.
100 businesses are responsible for 70% of fossil fuel use. doing what you can is great, but it won't make a difference unless businesses change as well.
I have heard that stat before and it turns out those business are basically shipping and freight companies, car manufacturers etc.
if you somehow told the companies to stop burning oil and carbon most world trade would stop, and they would have to take peoples cars a
away
Yes we could reduce the impact (burn cleaner diesel on ships, avoid contrails) but this is not 100 evil companies that need to be taught a lesson - this is all of us, billions of humans and our default lifestyle
The problem with that framing is that those big companies aren't just responding to consumer demand but have also actively lobbied for policies that create said demand. For instance shipping companies pay a much lower corporate tax rate than other companies and car companies have lobbied against everything from efficiency and clear air regulation to creating alternatives to a car-first transportation system. Oil companies are in a league of themselves and we're only starting to see shenanigans they've done to stall dealing with climate change.
Those businesses are big because they’re the abstraction layer over the fact that what they produce is something a lot of people want. If they were destroyed overnight an awful lot of people would die and then their economic function would be reconstituted, probably more carbon intensive because it’s more robust to supply chain disruption.
a lot of people would be inconvenienced. if they are unable to farm and support themselves in case of an emergency it's due to environmental collapse. they should move somewhere less damaged. the alternative is to keep spreading the damage
I can no more complain about Exxon-Mobil creating emissions relating to the fuel that I buy than I can the local farmer killing a cow to make the beef that I buy.
Yes, I can. I never wanted to buy the fuel in the first place. It's just that everything was designed in such a way that I must burn it to survive. I go out of my way not to whenever possible but my economic constraints don't allow freedom from it.
Even if I manage to find somewhere that I don't need it, a ridiculous amount will be used behind the scenes for everything else I need. Or there will be 100 others who can't get into that situation.
I'm not living a lavish life where I can just cut back much either. I'm living a barebones one and still cutting it close financially despite being a developer.
Unfortunately, it does not seem to. Others have mentioned how heating and cooling a private residence is more energy intensive per person, but even vehicle miles traveled aren’t reduced. It turns out people just drive to more places that aren’t work and move to more auto dependent communities where they overall drive more.
During the beginning of COVID, there was a big drop in carbon as more worked from home but it was mostly because people weren’t going anywhere.
I had great coworkers but they were not my friends. Saving 1-2 hour per day of commuting and using my breaks to do chores frees up time to see the people I chose to see.
I have many lifelong friends who are effectively 'kin' aka almost extended family and I don't drop friends because sometimes they might grind a bit, or as we age we see some things (very) differently. Frankly, some of them are a bit odd and have very few friends of their own - they're not going to be 'ejected' because they are not always in support of my sanity.
I don't keep 'fairweather friends' who suit my current lifestyle, mood and social status.
I enjoy the company of my work colleagues a lot, it's friendly without having to be too intense, and we can talk about 'work stuff' which I enjoy.
So you might also want to contemplate a different definition of 'friendship'.
I know I came off very cheeky but your statement "forced to behave", indicates that some people in your life do not behave well around you. I think it'd behoove you to consider whether those "friends" are using you, in a nefarious manner, or whether they perhaps do not deserve your attention.
Just responding only to open positions mentionning remote work or stating that you want remote only to the thousands of head hunters in linkedin is enough.
What does "in your area" really mean when looking for remote work?
Are you referring to speciality or geographic area? For some specialities, if the specialty doesn't have remote work (say it's robotics or biotech or something else with a heavy lab component), you might be out of luck. If it's geographic, well, find headhunters in another geography.
>What does "in your area" really mean when looking for remote work?
Due to employment, tax and labor laws in my country, remote work still has to be done for a company that has a presence in my country. I can't have an employment contract with a company not based here, only B-2-B.
So remote basically limits me to local companies, which don't usually offer 100% remote work posibilities.
That's what B-2-B is, which is what I said. And it sucks because then you loose the employment perks of being an employee: sick leave, parental leve, included healthcare, paid time off, etc.
You can negociate some of those in the term of your b2b contract. And in the case of healthcare, the company supposedly doesn't have to pay for it so they can pay that additionnal amount to you directly.
There's no wide mandated EU stance on this. Hugely depends on your country.
I work in Austria and most companies have mandatory office days due to outdated employment and insurance laws that discourage WFH, and micromanaging asshole company bosses who think that because they can't see you sitting at your desk then you must be slacking off at home on their dime, so they bullshit you and brainwash youngsters with "WFH destroys team spirit and cooperation so we 'choose' to spend 2h/day commuting to the office to be more efficient, but don't worry, because our office has free coffee and fresh fruits, ping-pong and foosball tables to de-stress and build team bonds" FUD.
100% WFH is incredibly rare privilege here. One of my friends broke his leg skiing and couldn't drive to the office anymore so the company instead of letting him WFH, they paid 40 Euros per day for taxis to pick him up from home and drive him to the office every day for almost 2 months. Absolutely mental.
No, not really. Austrian labor laws says if you work with an employment contract, then your employer must have a legal presence in Austria to pay Austrian employer taxes and conform to Austrian labor laws, and no company wants to do that. There are some middle-men companies to interface this but they take a deep cut and not everyone want to deal with that hassle.
So your other option is a B-2-B contract but then you could end up paying higher taxes and now you don't even get the included healthcare and pension contributions, and don't get any of the perks an employee gets like mandatory 25 vacation days, paid sick leave, paid parental leave, etc. You're on your own, just you and your money having to pay for everything privately even after you paid a bunch in taxes.
And fully EU remote companies get huge amounts of applications, hundreds per open position, that it's nearly impossible to stand out if you're not an experienced senior as you're competing with people from lower CoL areas with much lower B-2-B taxes, making it not worth it for you if you live here and don't cash in over six figures to cover your loss.
EU-wide employment is still not a thing, as you're still locked-in and tied to the tax and legal system of your country of residence and its employment laws.
>But majority of companies use deel, remote.com and so many mediators to hire remotely.
They do take a seizable cut though. After taxes on top you're not left with much than just working for a local company that doesn't have 200 applicants for one position and a crazy interview process.
>B2b in other eu countries has way less taxes than being employee.
Yeah, emphasis on "other countries", but I don't live in one of those "other countries" so it doesn't help me.
Remote work isn't a wild west level playing filed for everyone like HN thinks. You're still tied to the tax rules of your country of residence. If those are brutal in your country then you're at a disadvantage compared to the candidates in low CoL, low tax countries. If you live in a country with low tax, low CoL where you can play fast and loose with the tax authorities, then you're in the perfect place to be a remote candidate.
The EU is quite vast, and this is untrue at least for France, Netherlands, Bulgaria and from what I can tell Spain and Italy. Even very old school companies (think flag airlines and banks) have at least hybrid with more time remote than not.
More useful == cheaper. Centralize your profits to a major metropolitan area (where your executives and maybe board live) then use global labor markets to suppress the wages of your employees.
If I live in a lower COL area, I get a significantly higher wage than expected in my area, my employer saves money, and I get full remote work that I like, I call that a “win-win”.
Indeed, but people in countries with lower cost of living are still workers, right?
It irritates me when people say things like "suppress worker wages" when they actually mean "pay less money to American workers living in San Francisco"
The people being hired in Bangladesh are not having their wages suppressed. On the contrary, they are making more and enjoying a higher quality of life than ever before.
That’s an interesting combination of WeWork and Airbnb. It makes sense; people go to WeWork to not be alone, and remote work forces people to use their spare rooms to create home offices. So now they can’t rent out the spare room in Airbnb but they could rent a shared desk for work.
I've been wondering quite a lot about that while nomading, but I think essentially the numbers don't add up while massively increasing operational overhead.
It's too big of a risk at the moment, which is why these quotes from him keep coming - I think he's trying to create the demand side because it's not big enough yet, but if it becomes "the norm" they can capitalize on it.
I do think they missed an opportunity during covid to move it towards "the norm" by testing a subsidized "airbnb for work" but who knows.
Why do you think it would be cheaper for any organization to do this on the side, vs. a dedicated specialist like WeWork? The unit economics with fully loaded costs are not very good, and for a company with a little extra capacity it's a huge distraction. They couldn't run it like the residential side where hosts shift huge costs onto thir surrounding ecosystem, or just take big risks with no mitigation.
- People who work from home have more time, maybe an entire 10 hours a week for some people, measured from when you are able to start work. In high autonomy roles, you feel some ownership over your work and you are happy to share some of that 10 hours with work.
- If you are set up to work from home, you can finish off bits and pieces when you find the time. So you're also happy to share some of the other hours with work, eg if something breaks.
- With high autonomy, you can also decide to "share" some of the official work hours. What's the big deal if I have my shower after dropping off the kids? Most people wouldn't take the piss but I guess some people do. These are the ones the bosses are scared of having on their team.
- Bosses are also aware if their job is low-autonomy, low ownership. It's hard to get someone to just do whatever is needed in these roles, so the boss feels he needs to be able to oversee everyone in the office. Of course there are ways to skive off while sitting in the office too, but the budget is already planned according to that kind of loss. This new kind of loss from someone skiving off completely at home is not something he wants to embarrass him.
- There's a distinction between jobs where the output is linearly related to the input and those where it isn't. If you're stacking shelves, being there another hour gets another hour's worth of shelves stacked. If you're writing a complicated program, hanging around an extra hour might do nothing at all to shorten the time to finish it. At the same time a good hour spent coding could reduce the remaining time by 10 hours, weirdly. If you have a linear-output job, your boss wants you on your butt working constantly. If you have a fluctuating output job, he wants you to work just the productive hours.
To the point about having more choice vs having everyone in one place:
- Once you specify a few skills, it becomes quite rare to find a person with the skills who is open to being hired. How many people in London can do you your average Django stack, with a bit of SQL + React, are currently free, have seen your advert, will pass your silly test, and want to work for you rather than your competitor? Even a pretty broad spec like that does not actually give you a huge number of people. Let people work from home and you gather up several times the number.
- Having everyone in one place is more important for socializing than for working. It's actually easy to discuss technical things online. There's a bunch of tools for it, like GitHub, Slack, Zoom, and so on. It's not hard to get across a technical point. "Code doesn't work in this case, let's debug..."
- What's harder is getting a rapport with people on an emotional level. Something about being able to see the whole person's body language, being able to eat a meal with them, talk to them about non-work stuff, makes you feel more connected. But think about it, you are not doing this most of the time in the office. You might do drinks once a week, or you might have the occasional teambuilding. You might as well rent a smaller office and fly people in to do your paintballing or whatever.
We went remote starting in mid-March 2020 for some reason. I expected to hate it and while it definitely took some adjustment, I absolutely love it now. I don't think my overall time spent on work has changed much, but what has changed is that I spread it out much more and take advantage of the ebbs and flows of motivation to do certain kinds of work. If I have some tedious drudgery to take care of (think expense report or similar paperwork tedium), I can grind that out in a mindless fashion while I also do some laundry and prepare myself a lunch. If inspiration or a good idea strikes me early in the morning or on a weekend, I can sit down and do 15-60 minutes of work and then close it up and immediately be back in my house and on to whatever I want to do. If I need to attend a parent-teacher conference or my kids' sporting events at the school, I'm a 10 minute walk away instead of a 30+ minute drive away. That means a parent-teacher conference might take 45 minutes out of my day, including 2 nice 10-minute walks instead of being something that I have to battle the other parents to get the coveted 7:00 or 7:30 AM slot and then drive into the office.
I do think there are downsides in terms of building a sense of team and belonging and some tasks simply work better in-person, but overall it's been a huge win personally to go remote and roughly a push for the company.
My company has been remote even before COVID. They had twice a year gatherings that became once a year as they got bigger.
Everyone spent most of the time socializing. It was cool to get to know your online coworkers face to face and you didn't see them everyday so you spent a lot of time socializing. You want tu make the most of it.
IMO it works quite well to strike a balance.
There is a reasonable difference between anywhere and everywhere. Setting up shop in every state can be a big legal pain, especially if you don't expect many employees there or the particular state has more difficult rules to comply with. Doing so is in no way a requirement for what they are talking about, which is not hiring for having people come in to the office.
On the flipside I've been able to convince companies to add a state before. I imagine it gets more difficult the larger the company is though, otherwise someone would have already added your state by that point.
Except the guy touts the merits of hiring from anywhere. He seems to think he’s somehow better than all the others he criticises (I, personally, favour remote work. Just not holier-than-thou hypocrites).
All while his very own company hires from anywhere. Except outside the US. Except in one state out of ten.
If hiring people "from anywhere" is so great, and if even Basecamp can surmount the legal hurdles of hiring people from anywhere, what’s Airbnb’s excuse?
I'm still not sure I follow what said hypocrisy is supposed to be. The article is about how they have the ability to hire anywhere, which is true regardless if they currently hire everywhere or not. Similarly the quotes about traveling for the summer are not invalidated, you don't change residency if you go to e.g. Alabama for 2 months so it's not a problem it's on the list.
While I agree places that allow anywhere without question are even better "pssh, this guy is saying they did something well and it's just good not even the best possible way!" is not really hypocrisy. Maybe there is more I missed in the article though
> “Are you more productive having people physically in an office together and then constraining who you hire to a 30-mile or a 60-mile commuting radius to the office? Or by allowing your team to be able to hire people from anywhere?” he asked.
From the linked "Airbnb CEO says the pandemic was the group’s ‘most productive’ two years ever, so now he’s making remote work permanent" [^1] (linked under "Airbnb made its “work from anywhere” policy permanent in April last year."):
> Today, we’re announcing that Airbnb employees can live and work anywhere.
Again, you can allow your team to hire from anywhere without mandating they hire from everywhere and the remote work change is indeed permanent, rather flexible (you can still go to the office if you prefer).
Regarding the last quote - the actual source, Twitter, contains more context with the following text of the same tweet saying there are 5 components for that, of which #3 is "You have the flexibility to live and work in 170 countries for up to 90 days a year in each location".
If you read the article to throw stones at the guy I'm sure you'll be able to find stones to throw. If you read it to find what he was saying I'm still not sure how this thread relates to what he said beyond you wish he had said even more.
> Airbnb, Inc. can hire employees in states where we have registered entities. Currently, employees cannot be located/live in: Alaska, Nebraska, North Dakota, Wisconsin, Alabama, Mississippi, and Delaware.
It seems entirely reasonable to create state entities in a late-binding fashion, only after you find an employee or other reason requiring the creation of an entity and all the recurring paperwork/expense associated. (I am sightly surprised to see Delaware on the list given that I'm pretty sure they're originally registered as a Delaware corp.)
Time zones and expected levels of education are still significant factors.
You generally don't want to be hiring people from regions with a substandard education system - and if they're in another time zone they can spend all night ruining your day before you even start work.
> they can spend all night ruining your day before you even start work.
Or they can be saving your service in emergency while you stay in bed. I'm not sure why you'd expect a different time zone to mean lower skills than yours.
Yep. When I was working with a very geographically distributed team, I loved being able to file a bug in the end of the workday, and have a fix ready for deployment by the time I opened my laptop next morning.
I'm not - I'm saying that when it's a factor it's a big problem.
I've dealt with entire offices of people that were problematic - you could tell when they came in, because builds broke universally in the next half an hour.
And that was right at the end of the day.
From half four 'till half five I spent my time fucking about rolling back commits and sending emails around the world to tell people to sort their shit out.
Yes, there're regions where that's not a problem - the guys in our Poland office had their shit together, but it's not universal.
That sounds like a management issue. You've got people being counterproductive who were hired, given tasks/permissions at inappropriate skill level and are not being dealt with appropriately. That's really not related to time zone in any way.
Sure, it impacts your situation temporarily, but you could experience the same thing from local people working night shift. Let's keep in mind where the responsibility for solving the situation long-term really is.
You can communicate across distance, you cannot communicate across time.
> It's the employee's education (& skill, experience, etc.) that matters, not the region's.
The quality of educational systems is regionally defined, yes the other aspects are individual, and there's variation in what each individual can get out of the given educational context - but to claim that there's no degree of consistency in the calibre of candidates that come from given regions is ridiculous.
There're always exceptions to generalisations - but you seldom want to pick up a single regional employee (except for the smallest of projects), because timely communication is always vital.
If the individual is of such an extraordinary calibre that they become a vital hire, it often involves relocation.
Canada is a smaller California (population-wise) stretched over 5 timezones.
Something you have to keep in mind is that there are two parallel markets over there: SV caliber developers and the rest. The former won't have any issue getting a job in the US (takes maybe a week for a talented engineer to get one). Therefore, comp has to be priced appropriately. The later can't -and likely won't ever be able to- secure a US visa, mostly due to skills (there's a reason they immigrated to Canada, it's way easier and the quotas are close to 10x per capita compared to the US). Some companies leverage this and have floors of international devs they park in Canada for a fraction of their US counterpart through a subsidiary.
> Finland
The country is a little bit smaller, population-wise, than Minnesota. Great education system, but only produces so many engineers.
Assuming it's possible for a given function/role/company's product, which is quite common in world of software development, I find the whole trend of moving people back into the office at least a little perplexing and, frankly, short-sighted much of the time.
In 2001, I began switching my schedule to full-time remote[0]. I was working for a bankrupt telecom doing about three times the work a person could reasonably be asked to do (while what was being asked for was equally unreasonable given my salary). I had a great boss who -- while recognizing he couldn't do much about my salary -- was willing to do everything else and being at a bankrupt company, there was little in the way of "Corporate Handbook" policy that could get in the way any longer[1].
Over 17 years, about half or more of the company began working from home regularly, many full-time. This happened shortly after we deployed OCS 2008 R2 (what is now "MS Teams") which we did partly because "Cisco license renewal is expensive" and partly because most teams had members in more than one state -- in IT, we had members is several countries. We had these wonderful meeting rooms in every office, and people would take every meeting from their cubicles because "there's only 2 people from my 10-person team here, anyway".
If we had a role that could be done from anywhere, we'd routinely hire from a far-flung office. Literally no staff was available to research "what we should pay for this person if they live in Nowhere, Wisconsin." We don't even trust what what we pay current staff in the area because we just assume we underpay all existing staff. And the ones that set those rates often live in expensive places. So we'd make an offer at 30% above the going rate, get these amazing hires that -- maybe they really want to do the work, but they really want to do it if they can drive in to the office in the new car they can now afford. Meanwhile, they're among the lowest paid for the role, so HR thinks we got a deal!
Having "distributed teams", necessarily, adds friction to collaboration. Learning to address/be proactive with that friction is something that can bring it back to "the right level of collaboration." I love this assumption that "well, for certain highly collaborative roles", being face-to-face is necessary. Later you'll find that one of these roles involves software developers ... probably deploying to servers they don't have physical access to. I am deeply skeptical of this. What I suspect is happening is that there are a small number of people on the team who are highly-collaborative, a lot who benefit from it, but for whom "a little less talk and a little more heads-down writing code" would be helpful. I've been on highly-collaborative projects, totally remotely -- I literally sat on camera all day/into the evening a few nights in a row on one occasion (with five other people) -- it was equivalent to "coding in a conference room re-labeled 'WAR ROOM'" and taking sleep-breaks under your desk in the early 00s -- except I could cover the camera/nap in my own bed.
The list of "difficulties with remote teams" is filled with "reasons" that all have countless examples of "companies that are remote but aren't struggling with that problem." It sounds like a lot of it comes down to combinations of "organizational inertia" -- unwillingness to find/utilize tools which help reduce the friction of being fully remote[4]. Invest in researching the myriad of pros/cons -- the quality-of-life on the employee side means attracting a lot of talent that is missing their COVID-temporary remote status. Being able to hire outside of the difficult urban marketplaces, alone, should be enough of a savings -- even if you stayed "in-state" -- to make it worth the costs of providing high-end laptops/improving VPN gateways/subscribing to a few SaaS tools/cost of more frequent team-building and intentional team "remote shoot-the-sh_t" meetings.
Prior to COVID, I worked at a place that was a "no offices/no phones on desks" kind of "in-person" (ironically listing "remote friendly" on their job posting). There were a small number of remote employees, but they were due to extreme circumstances (and the fact that the owners were, honestly, great people), and they were relatively impossible to collaborate with if you were in the office, so they were "on project X or Y" always. We had offices in Seattle, Germany, NY, and India and most of us never talked to any of them. Their projects were almost all geographically near their office. We wrote software! (and, a lot of it, more than once for more than one person, without realizing it).
Somehow fates collided and we'd deployed Teams a month before COVID shut-down -- replacing Slack. Two weeks into COVID, all of us remote, and a few things happened. Work, basically, continued about as fervently as it did before. Development started having "informal" weekly meetings and we discovered all of the developers at other offices! Over two months, most projects consisted of teams across time zones (shock of all shocks -- "need" matches up more evenly with "developer availability" when the latter is widely spread out -- we had 4 people knowledgeable in Voice in Seattle doing one small project while we had 4 waiting for "the one voice guy" at our office).
It would be impossible for that company to justify to me, today, why I'd have to return to the office. By the time I left, we were doing more business, completing more work, and filling long-open positions more easily. As far as I know, they left the extremely expensive, but incredible office (that attracted me to accept returning to a daily commute in 2016). The company went from "minimally remote" to the point of not even integrating between offices well to "fully remote because the government said so" ... we had an "all employee" call, HR made some rapid adjustments and a lot of good choices and business improved. As an employee, we all just went to IM/Teams and adjusted ... it just meant having more time due to the loss of the commute.
Sure, it won't work for every kind of work to be done, but companies who's product is software that is deployed on hardware they no longer maintain -- the vast majority of roles, if not all of them, can be done remotely as effectively as in-person. We all watched it happen in real-time for a year -- some struggled ... we sure didn't -- among my friends, I can't think of one developer/IT/other who's company has requested them back into the office (either flex or full time). Among them, "getting new-hires up to speed" is the biggest stress point, but "it's been a couple of years, now" ... most have figured that out[5].
[0] By 2005, I still had a cubicle, but I came in, at most once a month.
[1] By the time I left, I hadn't seen my desk in over a year. At the time, working remotely at my company "officially" required written approval from a C-Level executive, keeping a daily work journal sent to HR and a number of other "we really don't trust you/want you to do this but there will be that one reason some day..."
[2] It didn't rank nearly as high with attracting customers -- it was the thing you didn't know you needed until you had it and we didn't know how to market it, apparently.
[3] I can't remember the history, but I know the application was designed there -- I think we acquired the company that developed it, originally, and integrated it into everything, but the original reason for hiring in WI was "that's where the team was". Over years, much of that staff was working on projects that had no presence in WI.
[4] Actually, it sounds more like companies are interested in tools that allow them to spy on remote workers. My attitude is "these are problems shared by every distributed team, whether those people are in an office or not" so if you wouldn't install that on a desktop in the office, it doesn't go on my work laptop in my home.
[5] Usually the "brute force" method is used: get a few people to the same place/derelict office for a two-week boot camp "here's the code, here's how things work, here's the obnoxious process, the time tracking tool, the 5 things we do once a year and can't remember how (and how to get to the page where they're all documented), and what's expected in what meetings" Fully remote doesn't mean you forbid face-to-face; I'd argue it's always optional -- I've done these things fully remote and seen it done well.
