Remote Work - life implications

[Seppia]

This twitter post from Go Curry Cracker made me think again about the implications of remote work (a topic that's been on my mind for a while).

My view in a nutshell:
Pre pandemic, companies were stupidly clinging to physical presence, the pandemic made them realise that in the age of wifi working from home will not summon the Four Horsemen*, but the pendulum has swung too far.

Some random points (sorry for the inorganic post):

I believe that working remote is a huge boon for people who have a well paying job (or are well off financially) and are already established in their careers.
I also believe it is generally bad for low paid employees and young people in certain job fields.
Some examples of what going full remote does:

1/ it pushes a lot of costs onto the employee. Ie you need more space at home, a more comfortable chair, you are paying the wifi, electricity, water, etc. In most of Europe companies kind of subsidise lunch (for example at our HQs I can have a full meal for 3euros, and many even buy extra stuff that they bring home for dinner).

2/ it makes it harder to evaluate/mentor younger employees. If you are a coder, your location, social skills, personal hygiene all have exactly 0% impact on the quality of your work. But if you work in sales, all these things matter and not being able to evaluate them FTF is a problem for a manager.
By consequence, if you're a young salesperson, you will probably find it harder to climb the ladder VS the more connected older person who performs worse than you (but still good enough): most managers are risk adverse and will go with the known "good enough" VS the unknown with higher potential.

3/ in the aggregate, I think it's bad for companies as well. In today's short term/finance department-dominated corporate world** all they think is WOW SAVINGS, but past the "lets stick together and beat this pandemic" that actually saw a bump in productivity, I believe many, many employees are working a lot less. This is based on anecdotal experience, but I would think it makes sense: in the aggregate, those who are more productive at home will tend to work less and get the same amount of things done than before, but then there's those who take advantage of the lack of control to actually DO less than they did before.

Bottom line: as with everything, I think the optimum with remote work is somewhere in the middle.
It doesn't make sense to require people to come and congregate every single day to do tasks they could do from home, but we cannot ignore that humans are social animals that benefit from interaction.


*not Metallica, the other ones
**cutting costs is easier than growing the top line profitably, so most companies go that route with eventual disastrous results (when you keep cutting the fat, past a certain point you cut the muscle as well - see Kraft Heintz for a textbook example of this)

[white belt]

1/ it pushes a lot of costs onto the employee. Ie you need more space at home, a more comfortable chair, you are paying the wifi, electricity, water, etc. In most of Europe companies kind of subsidise lunch (for example at our HQs I can have a full meal for 3euros, and many even buy extra stuff that they bring home for dinner).

I actually disagree with this, at least based on what I've seen in the USA. In the US, commuting and working in an office pushes a lot of costs onto the employee. You need to pay for transportation expenses (a car in most regions). You need to pay with time by commuting. You need to live close to your place of work, which can be expensive depending on the area. Obviously the tradeoff most people traditionally make is longer commute to get cheaper housing. You need to have a rotating wardrobe of office clothes which are often more formal, wear out more frequently, and sometimes require expert (dry) cleaning. If you have children, you need to pay for someone to watch them while you are at work. If you have pets you may need to arrange for someone to come let them out during the day. If you have meal breaks, there is much less you can accomplish stuck in the office compared to at home (e.g. at home you could spend 20 min of a lunch break eating, and the other 10-30 min doing chores around the house). If your work requires solitary focus, then an office you are constantly contending with noisy coworkers and interruptions.

Of course it depends on the job, but if we are talking about knowledge workers then usually the only work space you really need is a small desk with an internet connection. This is achievable just using an existing desk in a bedroom (maybe less feasible in Europe since my guess is sqft per person is higher in the US). I understand the situation may be different for families with young children, but I'm fairly certain monthly childcare costs are much higher than renting a place with an additional bedroom.

I largely agree with your assessment that not all jobs can be done remotely. I suspect in the future we will see in-person corporate jobs offering higher salaries compared to remote jobs. Anecdotally, almost all of my friends would take a pay cut to be able to continue working remotely indefinitely (a few have said they will find new jobs if their employers make them come back in the office 5 days a week).

Edit: Clearly this is a divided topic: https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus- ... 718527ecce

[Seppia]

Fair point on the costs, I am seeing this from a European/asian perspective:

1/ Most people commute via public transport, so the cost is inconsequential compared to US long car commutes.
2/ Apartments are smaller, a typical apartment for a family of 2 + 1 child is 750-850sqf in Europe (can be MUCH smaller in Asia, ie here in HK it's 350-400sqf)
3/ Childcare is either cheap (Europe) or outsourced to grandparents (Europe, Asia)
So I'm generalising of course but yeah, considering the above differences, remote could be a money saver in the US.

The point remains valid on the productivity side though: how is it affected by child-caring at home? We have a 1.5yo boy and it would be impossible for both my wife and I to be even close to productive

[Lemur]

I've managed with a 5 year old but not without the help of my Spouse. Spouse is work from home as well (self-employed) but is flexible. Life will even get easier once he goes to school in a few months. Younger toddler /baby could be tougher.

Productivity - all time high...I even started a new project while remote. Not only do I have much more energy (3 hour round-trip commute eliminated), I also check emails at night...sometimes work in the evenings and even on Saturday/Sunday when I have to catch up.

in terms of productivity, this depends on temperament and job/project dependent. When I was remote last year (on my previous contract), I was much more of a box checker then a lead developer. Yeah...my work/life balance was so great it was boring. I had the vast majority of my work automated. I wasn't "challenged" enough but I have been in the corporate world long enough to never ever.....EVER say you've capacity to do more. Last thing you want to do is give more power to a manager that is already feeling somewhat powerless in this new environment.

Being young and new and having not met anyone face-to-face - that could be harder. I think you need a certain temperament. For me, my collogues are not my friends, I'm naturally very introverted, and I just don't have much social need for the small talk stuff.

I made a post or a thread last year...I stated I loved remote work and wish I could be doing this all along. I don't think I can go back to "norm" anymore. I still love this arrangement. but my current project is sucking the life out of me.

[oldbeyond]

In terms of space your typical European scenario describes our situation perfectly. Our daughter is only a year old so there’s room for a desk in the spare bedroom. But I can make out computer monitors in my neighbours kitchens and living rooms, so it seems to be more of a challenge for a lot of people.

My productivity has improved markedly at home. Fewer interruptions and disturbances, but also the fact that the physical dispersion has forced us to better structure our interactions. We’ve found ways to avoid IM hell (which in the office took the form of showing up at people’s desks all the time). But I had worked a lot on my focus even before, and I know that some of my colleagues struggle more with this, making up wasted days in the evenings. And I long for having meetings face to face again.

My wife has been on maternity leave, so I’ve been happy to work at home, being close to her and my daughter, getting to spend lunch and coffee breaks with them. My commute is only 15 minutes by bike, but that’s still half an hour a day I’ve reclaimed, along with the opportunity to integrate chores in my day.

I guess I’m the demographic most favoured by the pandemic. Established in my career, white collar professional, relatively spacious housing, a family but no obligations to balance work and caretaking during the day (as my wife was on parental leave), a bit of an introvert. From a societal perspective there are a lot of people not checking these boxes and they are the ones getting hurt.

[zbigi]

If you are a coder, your location, social skills, personal hygiene all have exactly 0% impact on the quality of your work.

(A tangent) It's not true that social skills are not important for coders. Modern coding is a highly collaborative process, with lots of interactions with people. That's BTW the reason why Google, Facebook etc., who hire mostly coders, are insisting on keeping them on-site (in most expensive cities in the world) and are prohibiting remote work. In large companies such as big tech or most other multinational corporations, a coder can spend 10 hours per week in meetings - discussing code, requirements, product, planned order of tasks etc. So, social skills may not be as important as they are in sales, but a coder with bad social skills will not go too far in many companies.

[fiby41]

I know of companies that withhold the Transport Allowance component of salary if WingFH.

[Dream of Freedom]

They can't always see the work you put in only the results which is fine if your productivity is easily measurable and the quality of the work isn't particularly subjective, but that isn't always the case. It's also hard to see what your coworkers are doing. So it's hard to copy good ideas or know how your work quality and quantity compares to others

There will likely be more competition for those jobs since if they don't have to live close people from other regions will apply. For the same reason it will be good for people from rural areas and third world countries.

[Campitor]

1/ it pushes a lot of costs onto the employee.

And eliminates other costs such as gas, food (if you don't bring lunch to the office), clothing, cost of parking, etc.). In my area the cost of Wi-Fi is a fixed monthly cost - you pay for it regardless how little or how much it's used.

2/ it makes it harder to evaluate/mentor younger employees. If you are a coder, your location, social skills, personal hygiene all have exactly 0% impact on the quality of your work. But if you work in sales, all these things matter and not being able to evaluate them FTF is a problem for a manager.
By consequence, if you're a young salesperson, you will probably find it harder to climb the ladder VS the more connected older person who performs worse than you (but still good enough): most managers are risk adverse and will go with the known "good enough" VS the unknown with higher potential.

Not all jobs are suitable for remote work but that doesn't mean NO jobs are suitable for remote work; a company can have a hybrid policy. And there are multi-state/multi-country organizations with coordinated sales divisions - there are productivity tools that allows you to interface with your coworkers seamlessly via video and chat software. And building connections can be done via in-person quarterly or bimonthly meetings. If MMOORPGs and ERE can build strong communities (ERE meetups, etc.) how is that a professional labor force is unable to do so?

3/ ...in the aggregate, those who are more productive at home will tend to work less and get the same amount of things done than before, but then there's those who take advantage of the lack of control to actually DO less than they did before.

This is true regardless if they are on site or at home - see Pareto's principle or Price's Law. Personally my entire division saw a 30% increase (per the CIO) in productivity as a result of reduced meetings and the drive-by interruptions for things that could have waited or been done via email/phone. And there are tools that help monitor worker performance. There's monitoring software that records when you log in/log out, what you're accessing, and how much time was spent idle (no keyboard input), etc.

Any industry that can work successfully with offsite consultants and/or cloud services can also get the same level of productivity and value from its own employees. And there's nothing preventing the people who like to be onsite from commuting to work or sponsoring LAN parties at their own home or at a coffee shop.

[Ego]

Pre pandemic, companies were stupidly clinging to physical presence, the pandemic made them realise that in the age of wifi working from home will not summon the Four Horsemen*, but the pendulum has swung too far.

I have two strange observations.

- Quite a few people were going nuts working remotely. Literally. Not just mild quirks. Full blown breakdowns. They finally began to settled down in the spring and are now going nuts again with the return to the office. The pendulum swing is hard on humans.

- Many of the people who were struggling psychologically with being alone decided that the best thing they could do for their mental wellbeing was to get a dog. Puppies were popular. Emotional support animals. Those puppies spent their first year showered with attention 24/7. Suddenly they are home alone. Havoc. Ask me how I know. The pendulum swing is hard on dogs.

In California, dogs fill shelters as pandemic lockdowns ease
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/califo ... 021-07-08/

[henrik]

My experience is that I've seen a noticeable increase in the number of meetings. I think it's because the barrier to having one is much lower - just blast out a Skype/Teams/Zoom link, no need to consider where anyone is or whether it's possible for them to relocate to talk to you. That's the only downside of all this that I can think of right now:)

And there are tools that help monitor worker performance. There's monitoring software that records when you log in/log out, what you're accessing, and how much time was spent idle (no keyboard input), etc.

That's just... I don't know.. creepy? Sounds way worse than keeping track of office hours.

[Lemur]

@henrik

There are products out there that physically move your mouse around continuously (while you do other things) so you're always 'active' lol.

Example: https://www.amazon.com/Stageek-Simulate ... NrPXRydWU=
Look at comments for dystopian stories of why some deem these necessary.

[henrik]

There are products out there

Very clever. I guess both the sellers and users of these things can feel proud of keeping the economy going.
I just hope at last some of those who come to realise they need something like that are also smart enough to figure out it's time to go out and do something else for a living.

[Campitor]

@henrik

There are products out there that physically move your mouse around continuously (while you do other things) so you're always 'active' lol.

Data inputs will create database activity (read/write activity). Moving a mouse around will not create database transactions. The software does track keystrokes versus database read/write activity which is how they catch people goofing off - something that was being done way before COVID hit in 2020. Good tracking software isn't going to be fooled by the "moving mouse" trick.

[Seppia]

People should deploy homer’s typing bird

[Campitor]

That's just... I don't know.. creepy? Sounds way worse than keeping track of office hours.

IT is one of the biggest expenses for an organization so all kinds of tracking software was created so companies could identify resource bottlenecks or surpluses and flag suspicious user activity; you can configure automatic alerts that are triggered by any desired scenario. It just so happens that this software is also superb at detecting if someone is goofing off or just jostling a mouse pointer to simulate activity or employing a macro that simulates keyboard activity.

And thanks to centralized logging software, user activity can be tracked across the entire network through every switch, hub, server, share, computer, etc. Windows comes with a built-in activity monitor - lots of IT organizations have this running on their employees computer without their employees' knowledge; they extract the data at night when no one is working (less of a network burden); the data is then imported into the centralized logging database and compressed to save space. This is why the argument about goofing off remotely (or in the office) doesn't hold water.

A user activity report can be generated within seconds with some amazing graphs that show your peak activity and how busy you've really been. No one is fooling their organization about their actual productivity unless the organization doesn't care to track it.

[WFJ]

"Be careful what you wish for" is the saying that comes to mind. GCC is a US citizen and let's assume a skill level in the top 90% of the US. This means one would be in the top 30,000,000 skilled individuals in the US and enjoy a relatively comfortable income of around $120k... With full remote work possibilities, opening up the entire world, a person in the US who is only in the top 10% of world skill level would suddenly find themselves in a pool of 700,000,000 equally or higher talented people, greatly diminishing one's earning power. While there are 30,000,000 positions available for high level skills when opportunities are restricted by location and visas for US citizens, it is highly unlikely there are 700,000,000 opportunities available when all barriers are removed. One in the top 10th percentile of world income would be making $14,000 a year, an almost 90% reduction in earning power after full remote work is implemented worldwide.

Now, if one is in the top 1% of the US aptitude/skills, or even higher, the opening up of remote opportunities will be incredible. But for most, even among the highest abilities in the US, remote work will result in a major reduction of earning power.

Remote work and the use of technology will further leverage those with talent and only further increase the wealth gap or other measures of inequality. Only labor from the top percentages (maybe 1%-3%) will be valuable after technology has fully matured, while capital will provide ever higher returns for individuals and corporations who are able to deploy this leverage. The benefits of remote work will be extremely lumpy, concentrated to the talented and unfair for those with marginable or static talents/skills.

[ZAFCorrection]

@WFJ

You cover the thermodynamics pretty well but an additional factor is the kinetics. Software excluded, most of the "good" jobs require a lot of class, education, and location-based signalling and biases.

Go to a random school the hiring manager has never heard of and you go down the list. Act a little too working class in the interview and you go down the list. Currently a permanent resident of a developing country? Probably should be talking to our local contractor instead of us.

All that will surely evolve with remote work, but I don't see it going away. And people just don't have the bandwidth to set up these signalling pipelines with every country on earth, even if everyone can get Teams installed on their computer.

[Campitor]

@WFJ

There are certain tasks, for security reasons, that will never be farmed out overseas. And their is also a language barrier to overcome with countries that aren't primarily English speaking. I routinely have to deal with foreign tech support and depending who you get on the phone, their accents are so thick that even when speaking proper English they can't be understood.

Any remote work that doesn't face the security/language barrier will eventually be outsourced to a cheaper country or state regardless. And many tech jobs will be going away as automation replaces it or the technology transitions to GUI based interfaces where you can click a button to execute a task that typically required a technically savvy person.

And no CIO is going to completely outsource his entire staff unless he's looking to eliminate his own job. They outsource just enough to keep the CEO happy.

So with aforementioned in mind I'd rather work remotely; if my job is ripe for outsourcing they will do it anyways. Better to spend the final months at home working in shorts with zero commute time than having to head in every day and and deal with all the interruptions and unnecessary meetings.

[WFJ]

ZAF.

Yes, signaling (Ivy League degree, MS, PhD) was used heavily in recruiting in the past, but now most major corporations give some kind of high school level Math entrance exam to screen all new hires (a shockingly high proportion of Ivy League grads will fail). This was probably 20 years ago and not sure if it's still true, but the Series 6,7 and 63 pass rates in the Philippines was higher than the US at 1/5 the costs of a rep. I have not progressed through the corporate hiring labyrinth in some time but assume and have heard stories these entrance tests are more common. Once someone has made it through the initial screening, tests scores and other objective measures are the only data used in the hiring process. Expanding the pool of applicants will benefit the top at the cost of the middle and bottom in the US.

Campitor

Yes, CIO and these top 1%^n level professionals, along with the best capitalized corporations, will greatly benefit any work from home situation. A CIO will, instead of managing 10 local accountants making an average of $100,000/yr, will manage two or three groups of 7-10 more talented foreign professionals (all doing the same books for accuracy and robustness) making $20,000 for a savings of $500k/yr and a better end product with a free robustness check. Corporations will retain $250k more profit, CIO will enjoy a $250k bonus and 10 more former US professionals will either be talented enough develop a more specialized skill, joining the top 1% or be driving for Uber or Amazon. US productivity will go up as only the most productive workers will find jobs in the US, corporate profits will increase and the big will get bigger.

Individuals with highly effective and malleable intellectual talents will be able to pivot from opportunity to opportunity leaving behind those with less talent or less flexible intellectual abilities. This is and will drive income inequality for a long time regardless of what AOC, Bernie, Biden, Harris can do.

Other positive externalities are less HR nightmares, less harassment claims from employees 10,000 miles away (See Google HR cases over the past 5 years for example) and high level professionals will enjoy higher returns for their labor with profits concentrating in fewer and fewer hands. It's a vicious/fortuitous cycle, depending on your perspective and not sure how it will progress for the next 20 years or if/when it will end.

I interact with corporations who farm out all kinds of programming and IT work all over the world and have had a wide range of experiences. Good experiences result in more business, bad experiences result in less business all done by contract. Higher one bad employee (See Google again) can result in loss of millions in costs and unlimited loss in productivity. WFH has some very powerful positive benefits beyond cost savings and one will not find these in the annual reports.