Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by say-vagnes 2161 days ago
> It’s baffling to me that American workers would cheer an acceleration of this trend that would place downward pressure on their wages.

I see shades of this in a lot of discourse - is it an alien idea to be for progress even if it means potentially more strife on your part?

Further, I'd say, not necessarily. People think that working from home is this grand new frontier, but cultures and subcultures have existed on the web for ages. It isn't going to be a wide open playing field. You're still going to have networks and self-selection into subgroups.

And finally, there's still a ton of money to be made by the few who are actually good at this. I hope everyone here is or has worked with someone of this type - where something they ship quickly actually leaves you speechless.

--

As to the rest of this article, it really doesn't resonate. A lot of the problems listed are problems even in the office. The long and short of it is that the world is changing, and so while we can cherry-pick examples of how companies are failing to adapt, rest assured there are organizations out there that are adapting.

I'd say - keep an open mind, and find ways to get what you need - the most important mental shift you can make right now is to be your own advocate, and be proactive.

3 comments

People have been raising the bogeyman of "off-shoring" engineering jobs since the 90s. The reality is that it's always going to be incredibly hard to do collaborative work in an asynchronous fashion, and timezones are an immutable reality.

More remote work is much more likely to cause a diaspora of workers from large cities, causing downward pressure on salaries in major metros but lifting salaries elsewhere. Unless demand for software engineers stalls -- which seems awfully unlikely for the foreseeable future -- it seems more likely that the median salary for American engineers will increase.

In the late 90s my state moved from local property taxes funding local schools to paying into 1 state fund and paying back out per student, along with base funding for each district and what the district could levy in their county. It was a massive boost for most districts but a major loss for my district. We went from 2 art teachers, 2 music teachers, 2 PE teachers, and a guy who did ceramics across schools to 1 art teacher and 1 PE teacher. Since then, more cuts have dropped quality even further.

This is a warning as much as a boon. When re-allocating funding more equitably, be sure to not let the process stop there and call it success. Monitor and respond to outcomes like boosting funding to equip all schools with the right set of arts and opportunities for their students even if 1 school in town is artsy and the other technical but students can go to either. Be prepared (and have a community that is up) for raising taxes to cover these costs. Recognize that well educated and employed kids today will be paying your medicare and social security (if you or those programs make it far enough). When these kids are growing the stocks your retirement is invested into you'll want them to have had the opportunities your tax dollars can provide.

I like paying for schools because I don't like living in a national of stupid people and the more smart people out there able to leverage their talent and abilities via remote or on site work the better we will all be. Maybe that means the FAANG employee living in Iowa needs to make 95% of their downtown Seattle counterpart, maybe not. There is a balance to be found to increase opportunity without depressing existing and future talent too.

Requiring all work to be in person is no better. It causes brain drain from most places and real estate hyperinflation where the jobs are. "No jobs, unaffordable housing, pick one."