My company has an interesting strategy. We’re mainly hiring people local to our office (closed the others), but no one is required to go in. Hell, I’ve been told a few times, “You ordered $thing and no one was there to receive it. Can you check from now on?”
This way, if we want to pull a team together for a minute, we can. Most folks know each other, if even from a brief visit, and that works out better. Lemmy bags on in-person relationships, psychology be damned. 🤷🏻♂️
But if we ever mandated a return to the office? LOL no. Our top talent would walk and we’d be left with the dregs who can’t find a better job.
Our top talent would walk and we’d be left with the dregs who can’t find a better job.
Yuuuuuuup. This is exactly what’s happening at my job right now, after they mandated at least three in-office days per week. Only the top people are leaving, too; the chaff and the bums love it, because they no longer have to produce, rather they just have to be seen.
That’s sounds like a great model. I’ve been working remotely for about a decade. One of the reasons is because I can tap into a larger job market than if I stuck to just local companies.
While I would love to have a job where I could meet up in person with coworkers for the day, there are just so many more opportunities with remote companies.
You really found a great sweet spot between remote and in-person!
My job was in person until the pandemic hit. I was sure I’d hate remote working, but it turns out that I love it and I’m way more productive than I was in the office. (No coworkers stopping by to chat for one thing.) My job has now moved to the parent company which is about 10 hours away from me so I now permanently work from home. No expectation that I ever come into the office. (There’s no way I’d do that commute!)
A few times, I was unsure of my job’s future stability and looked around. Being a web developer shifting technologies while at 48 can feel really unstable. You’re too old for many people. You don’t have deep experience with specific technologies. It’s frightening to think that I could age out of my job two decades before retirement.
My local job market isn’t great, but work from home means that I can look nationwide (or further if I want) if need be. It gives me a lot more options and doesn’t mean I have to uproot my family and travel halfway around the country just to have a job. (Something that I couldn’t do for various reasons.)
My job was in person until the pandemic hit. I was sure I’d hate remote working, but it turns out that I love it and I’m way more productive than I was in the office. (No coworkers stopping by to chat for one thing.) My job has now moved to the parent company which is about 10 hours away from me so I now permanently work from home. No expectation that I ever come into the office. (There’s no way I’d do that commute!)
A few times, I was unsure of my job’s future stability and looked around. Being a web developer shifting technologies while at 48 can feel really unstable. You’re too old for many people. You don’t have deep experience with specific technologies. It’s frightening to think that I could age out of my job two decades before retirement.
My local job market isn’t great, but work from home means that I can look nationwide (or further if I want) if need be. It gives me a lot more options and doesn’t mean I have to uproot my family and travel halfway around the country just to have a job. (Something that I couldn’t do for various reasons.)
I just started a gig at a company that doesn’t really know how to do remote work well, but that basically told me that they were having trouble finding candidates so they had to start looking for remote.
I recently left a gig that sold their offices off so even employees in the area don’t have an office to go to anymore and everyone is remote. They’ve lost some Product/Manager people over the decision, but have otherwise seen an uptick in productivity and morale.
Only if enough companies offer fair remote work. If 90% of them stick to work from office culture war, what are you going to do? Not work?
I can quit my job and have a new one by the end of the day. I would still struggle to find remote work in a reasonable time frame. I’m not willing to blow my savings on it so I stick with job O enjoy that offers hybrid.
I’m ok with the current status quote. The problem with fully remote work is there’s always someone cheaper, whether by skill, experience, desperation, or cost of living. It will be another race to the bottom, like the first few decades of outsourcing, and high cost of living cities would be hardest hit
Because I’m partly remote and have to be located near an office, I still get the pay structure of where that office is. I still enjoy my Boston area high cost of living pay. If we were fully remote, would they really pay that? What happens to high cost of living cities, much less any city? While I like to think I have excellent skills that are worth the extra pay, there’s no way I can claim to be worth, say two similar guys in Austin, or four in Alabama. There’s no way I can live where i do if I were paid like a lower cost of living area …. And that’s before you even consider the rest of the world.
This is what I don’t hear discussed as often as I’d expected. When you make a solid case for 100% remote, bargaining power is lost - or at least the COLA is harder to defend.
Because everyone on Reddit thinks they’re hot shit. Locally in the county I might be the best available candidate, but nationally? There could be a thousand like me. And if you open the flood gates to other countries… The race to the bottom no longer ends at minimum wage.
It depends. Full remote means that companies could recruit nationwide, but that cuts both ways. There’s a few hiccups in having employees in multiple states that opens a company up to employment rules in many states, so some companies may want to avoid certain states until they are big enough to handle the complexity. It also means every company has to compete for employees with all the other big companies, not just whoever is within about 50 miles of them.
Maybe. Going international is another big step in bureaucracy for a company. Time zones also become a problem, you can’t really have a team made of people farther than about 4 timezones, you need separate teams at that point, which adds complexity. Language barriers also start to become an issue as you expand, even English speaking countries have vast differences, and English as a second language adds more difficulty.
I think it also depends on your amount of experience and if you have a unique skillset. If you have truly rare skills that a company needs, it’s hard for them to not give into your demands.
Also, with the older style managers and CEOs retiring, dying off, etc, I think remote work will continue being more common than you’d expect.
With that said, it always helps to have some bargaining power.
I want it to be true but I also see the world. In my line of work in my country (science and not exactly commercial) the consensus seems to be “remote work was a disaster, let’s not” up to explicitly forbidding remote/hybrid seminars.
Any company that thinks remote work isn’t the future is going to suffer dramatically over the next decade unless they adapt.
My company has an interesting strategy. We’re mainly hiring people local to our office (closed the others), but no one is required to go in. Hell, I’ve been told a few times, “You ordered $thing and no one was there to receive it. Can you check from now on?”
This way, if we want to pull a team together for a minute, we can. Most folks know each other, if even from a brief visit, and that works out better. Lemmy bags on in-person relationships, psychology be damned. 🤷🏻♂️
But if we ever mandated a return to the office? LOL no. Our top talent would walk and we’d be left with the dregs who can’t find a better job.
Co-located but remote does sound like a good combination
Kind of how I thought wework would be a good model with remote work.
Yuuuuuuup. This is exactly what’s happening at my job right now, after they mandated at least three in-office days per week. Only the top people are leaving, too; the chaff and the bums love it, because they no longer have to produce, rather they just have to be seen.
That’s sounds like a great model. I’ve been working remotely for about a decade. One of the reasons is because I can tap into a larger job market than if I stuck to just local companies.
While I would love to have a job where I could meet up in person with coworkers for the day, there are just so many more opportunities with remote companies.
You really found a great sweet spot between remote and in-person!
My job was in person until the pandemic hit. I was sure I’d hate remote working, but it turns out that I love it and I’m way more productive than I was in the office. (No coworkers stopping by to chat for one thing.) My job has now moved to the parent company which is about 10 hours away from me so I now permanently work from home. No expectation that I ever come into the office. (There’s no way I’d do that commute!)
A few times, I was unsure of my job’s future stability and looked around. Being a web developer shifting technologies while at 48 can feel really unstable. You’re too old for many people. You don’t have deep experience with specific technologies. It’s frightening to think that I could age out of my job two decades before retirement.
My local job market isn’t great, but work from home means that I can look nationwide (or further if I want) if need be. It gives me a lot more options and doesn’t mean I have to uproot my family and travel halfway around the country just to have a job. (Something that I couldn’t do for various reasons.)
My job was in person until the pandemic hit. I was sure I’d hate remote working, but it turns out that I love it and I’m way more productive than I was in the office. (No coworkers stopping by to chat for one thing.) My job has now moved to the parent company which is about 10 hours away from me so I now permanently work from home. No expectation that I ever come into the office. (There’s no way I’d do that commute!)
A few times, I was unsure of my job’s future stability and looked around. Being a web developer shifting technologies while at 48 can feel really unstable. You’re too old for many people. You don’t have deep experience with specific technologies. It’s frightening to think that I could age out of my job two decades before retirement.
My local job market isn’t great, but work from home means that I can look nationwide (or further if I want) if need be. It gives me a lot more options and doesn’t mean I have to uproot my family and travel halfway around the country just to have a job. (Something that I couldn’t do for various reasons.)
I just started a gig at a company that doesn’t really know how to do remote work well, but that basically told me that they were having trouble finding candidates so they had to start looking for remote.
I recently left a gig that sold their offices off so even employees in the area don’t have an office to go to anymore and everyone is remote. They’ve lost some Product/Manager people over the decision, but have otherwise seen an uptick in productivity and morale.
Only if enough companies offer fair remote work. If 90% of them stick to work from office culture war, what are you going to do? Not work? I can quit my job and have a new one by the end of the day. I would still struggle to find remote work in a reasonable time frame. I’m not willing to blow my savings on it so I stick with job O enjoy that offers hybrid.
I’m ok with the current status quote. The problem with fully remote work is there’s always someone cheaper, whether by skill, experience, desperation, or cost of living. It will be another race to the bottom, like the first few decades of outsourcing, and high cost of living cities would be hardest hit
Because I’m partly remote and have to be located near an office, I still get the pay structure of where that office is. I still enjoy my Boston area high cost of living pay. If we were fully remote, would they really pay that? What happens to high cost of living cities, much less any city? While I like to think I have excellent skills that are worth the extra pay, there’s no way I can claim to be worth, say two similar guys in Austin, or four in Alabama. There’s no way I can live where i do if I were paid like a lower cost of living area …. And that’s before you even consider the rest of the world.
This is what I don’t hear discussed as often as I’d expected. When you make a solid case for 100% remote, bargaining power is lost - or at least the COLA is harder to defend.
Because everyone on Reddit thinks they’re hot shit. Locally in the county I might be the best available candidate, but nationally? There could be a thousand like me. And if you open the flood gates to other countries… The race to the bottom no longer ends at minimum wage.
It depends. Full remote means that companies could recruit nationwide, but that cuts both ways. There’s a few hiccups in having employees in multiple states that opens a company up to employment rules in many states, so some companies may want to avoid certain states until they are big enough to handle the complexity. It also means every company has to compete for employees with all the other big companies, not just whoever is within about 50 miles of them.
Depending on the industry and ROI, I’d submit it’s worldwide.
Maybe. Going international is another big step in bureaucracy for a company. Time zones also become a problem, you can’t really have a team made of people farther than about 4 timezones, you need separate teams at that point, which adds complexity. Language barriers also start to become an issue as you expand, even English speaking countries have vast differences, and English as a second language adds more difficulty.
You look for remote work while currently employed. That’s ideally how you switch jobs in general.
I think it also depends on your amount of experience and if you have a unique skillset. If you have truly rare skills that a company needs, it’s hard for them to not give into your demands.
Also, with the older style managers and CEOs retiring, dying off, etc, I think remote work will continue being more common than you’d expect.
With that said, it always helps to have some bargaining power.
I want it to be true but I also see the world. In my line of work in my country (science and not exactly commercial) the consensus seems to be “remote work was a disaster, let’s not” up to explicitly forbidding remote/hybrid seminars.