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Comment by sime2009 | Hacker News Reader

sime2009

The problem I have with this kind of happy rainbows and unicorns kind of reporting is that focuses on the companies and people where remote work is a success and completely ignores those who tried and failed. There is very little investigation into which situations can support remote work/teams and which ones don't.

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Agreed. Feels like it's giving a lot of power to employees, employer less being able to know what's going on. I have a developer friend who's working two jobs at the same time for example. The distinction between independent freelancer and employee becomes very thin

If the work is being done, why does the employer need to know more than what is absolutely necessary?

What if both companies have a production outage at the same time? The employee would have an obligation to give 100% focus to both of his employers.

On top of that the employee is probably providing microfriction in day to day life: asking to reschedule meetings when double booked, having a longer than necessary delay in email/Slack responses.

If the person is a contractor it's a valid thing to do, but going to work for a w2 implies that job will be your primary commitment outside of family.

A lot of the issues people see with remote work or in this case multiple jobs, I've already seen solved at IBM. IBM is something like 70% remote work for its 350,000 employees. Every problem anyone has seen with remote work, IBM has probably already seen it and solved it.

In this case, my group at IBM is a consulting group and we work with multiple clients at the same time. I've had two (sometimes three) clients with production down issues at the same time. It's a solved problem, and we solved it by eliminating single points of failure. Every project we have a lead and a backup, and some bigger projects we have multiple backups. We also keep good documentation for projects in a standard template, so even if the person knows nothing about the project, they can step in, spend five minutes reading the docs, and then jump straight in.

Same thing with scheduling. We have to do a scheduling dance when we're putting out meetings because clients can't see our calendars and we can't see theirs, but it works. Is it perfect? No. But it's not a show-stopper either. Business still gets done. Work gets done. The only friction is the mindset of "that job will be your primary commitment". That is the only thing that's holding it back.

But like you said, it can be easily overcome by just saying you're a contract employee instead of a full time employee.

many people hold down two jobs. You don't owe the employer any more then what's in your contract.

I'm wondering the same. I like the whole remote thing because it removes a lot of B.S. in the relation you have with your employer : you are in an exchange and the boss needs to give you the work. If he doesn't manage you well, then it's his fault.

On the other hand, there are a lot of psychological / social mechanism which makes it so that more trust is built between coworkers / managers when they all gather everyday in the same place (what if an employee has life issues, how to handle that with the work they need to perform ? a good talk with a manager you trust could lead to solutions based on trust and face to face talks). By reading stuff about remote companies online, it seems like they are handling that by having annual or bi annual company-wide meetings / conferences / gathering. Which is great ! I just keep thinking about the differences between remote freelancers and remote employees, especially for computer science where there is a great lack of good developers around (so good ones have a lot of lever)

If she is paid based on deliverables it’s perfect. If he is paid by the hour, and the employers don’t know about the double job, value can be eroded and it’s hard to keep it fair. If someone hires you on a per hour basis they expect best effort, and if you have 2 jobs it’s clearly not best effort.

Your friend might be forced to work for two companies by the tax office; in many EU countries freelancers have to show at least two sources of income or they are forced to become employees/register themselves as a full business with all the necessary bureaucracy.

Really? What countries for example? How would that work out with companies that don't have an established subsidiary in the country of the freelancer?

Doesn't matter if a company is outside a country of tax residence of a freelancer. Within EU there is "reverse charge", with US there is W8 form, allowing freelancer to work for anyone in EU/US. But EU tax offices don't like freelancers in general, so they try to impose more difficult conditions to minimize their number.

For freelancers yes, but for employees... ? (which is the point of the discussion, force the change of status from freelancer to employee)

Employees are often prevented by the same tax office to have two comparable jobs at the same time; the only way that it could work is to become a freelancer.

It's actually good intentions. If you only have one customer, they push you in the direction of full employment to make sure you're not being exploited. Employment (in Germany) has health insurance included and your employer pays into your retirement fund. And of course minimum wage! Although that shouldn't be an issue in anything IT related.

It doesn't change much. You can make more money being a freelancer and pay separately for your healthcare and retirement fund; There's no free lunch

I get the argument this was done for low-paid jobs to prevent worker's exploitation. However, it complicates life of highly paid consultants that e.g. work remotely as they are traveling around the world or get quick short-term highly paid gigs from all over the world (imagine Deep Learning freelancers). Legislation doesn't like that as regular payment to retirement funds has a priority (i.e. paying off current retired persons instead of saving money for one's advanced age).

> employer less being able to know what's going on

My question is always how is this any different than when someone is sitting in the office? Unless the employer is literally standing over the persons shoulder all day, work and play look exactly alike. If the person is actually working another job, then it looks even more same.

I think that is covered in the last section, although they didn't tie the points together. If you give your remote workforce clear instructions, it works. If you do not give clear instructions, it fails.

You could expand upon that by getting into all the different communication tools and channels that are needed, as well as the product management maturity that is needed, and the individual communication skills. But at the end of the day, remote working lives or dies based on good communications and instructions.

Remote work can be an interesting forcing function though- the things you need to make remote work succeed will make you a better company anyways, so why not try to work towards a remote friendly culture?

It's very likely that if a company can't support remote work that they have other major structural problems. It's really not hard to have remote developers. Any competent management structure should have no issue with it.

You need to switch all of your IT and meetings fully online. Doesn't sound easy if you didn't start from zero with that in mind

Eh. Even if the company is a single office, I’m pretty sure people need to travel and need to be able to get online and have meetings when they’re not in the office.

It's not so trivial. If you have only one remote worker, you need to adjust the mindset of all their colleagues.

A frequent example of this is having remote attendees in a voice/video meeting not being recognized, forgotten or just spoken over. Learning how to integrate remote employees and behaviors takes time to learn for any organization, even competent ones.

I have to admit that I consider that a fairly trivial problem. I will say that the bar for quality has to be higher for fully remote employees. They must be somewhat self driven and mature enough to speak up and be heard when the time comes. Mediocre people can "hide in plain sight" when they're in the office every day. The lack of output or formal collaboration comes out more when they're remote and can't pretend to work/chat with colleagues all day long.

I think that is a good point. For those reasons many have come to the conclusion that fully remote workforces using appropriate communication paradigms (usually written) are more feasible than partially remote.

I work in a fully remote enabled team, and one thing we do to even the playing field is always join calls in separate rooms even if we're in the same building.

Works well!

> There is very little investigation into which situations can support remote work/teams and which ones don't.

One possibility for the lack of visibility is that the companies don't want to be known for failing at their support for remote work. This comes off poorly for the employer in multiple ways.

In my personal experience, most companies that try and fail at remote work didn't set themselves up for success and the motivations were lacking. They weren't prepared to make the right trade-offs and commitments, so it was obvious it wasn't going to work.

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