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Comment by sb52191 | Hacker News Reader

I've read a few of these work from home related articles here on HN and I have to say, I'm super surprised by how many people are both vehemently against the idea of remote and generally pessimistic for what it would mean for society.

Maybe I'm in the minority here, but my main hobby outside of work is outdoors related. I consistently spend my Friday nights driving 3+ hours to the mountains. The idea of being able to up and move to a mountain town, save the hours I'd be commuting to work AND commuting to the mountains, is so exciting to me. And that's on top of just the happiness I'd get being able to look out my window and see (what I consider) nature vs the cookie cutter buildings of suburbia Silicon Valley. Where are the cyclists, the surfers, the skiiers/snowboarders, dirt bikers, rock climbers, etc etc in these threads? I really can't believe there are that few of us...

But on top of just hobbies, I'd be so excited to see what society could look like in a much more remote world. I think a lot of people would spread out and leave Silicon Valley (but not everyone obviously). I think you'd see more small/medium sized towns pop up across the US that would develop their own uniqueness and character. Traffic deaths would likely go down because people would drive less. Maybe general physical fitness/health would go up because people aren't sitting in their cars and have time to exercise? People working minimum wage jobs would likely have better access to housing as demand spreads and isn't as concentrated. We could see a maaassssive change in the lives of the population, and I'm optimistic it would be for the better.

Note: I'm not saying everyone should be fully remote, or that working remote works for everyone, but the general lack of any real optimism about what life COULD be like in these threads is surprising to me.

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I think it’s much more likely that, rather than empowering employees to live rich and fulfilling lives outside of work, a massive shift to remote will drive down wages everywhere to the level of the cheapest locations where talent can be found - so instead of living on an SF salary in Coer d’Alene you’ll be living on a Lagos or Jakarta salary - while obliterating the distinction between “work life” and “home life” and massively sharpening the knife of competition hanging over every engineer’s head

This may be different in firms where the workers actually have a say in the management of the company, but god knows there aren’t too many of those

You said this much better than I could. I'd expect the power of management to increase over individual ICs, too.

"I think it’s much more likely that, rather than empowering employees to live rich and fulfilling lives outside of work, a massive shift to remote will drive down wages everywhere to the level of the cheapest locations where talent can be found - so instead of living on an SF salary in Coer d’Alene you’ll be living on a Lagos or Jakarta salary"

I disagree. If companies felt they could readily get the same level of talent outside the US, why wouldn't they do that currently? Just set up their business in a foreign country and recruit internationally? And if they're still hiring domestically, why are you so sure they're going to dramatically reduce salaries? They still have to attract talent. If an employee wants to move from the bay area to Wyoming, and their employer says their pay will be cut 50%, what's to stop them from applying to Twitter or another company allowing full remote with (I'm assuming, I haven't checked) a much more competitive salary?

"while obliterating the distinction between “work life” and “home life”"

I've seen far too many emails sent by people at 11:30 PM and followed up with another email at 6 AM for me to believe this hasn't already happened. Not to mention the self imposed aspect of it (neither of those emails NEEDED to be sent at those times).

Last couple of companies I worked at, they are already outsourcing "average" work. We had a QA manager in the bay area, and then he had a team of six people in SE asia doing QA/QA automation. On the engineering side we had a team of 20 engineers in eastern Europe working for less than 30k/year usd working on bug fixes and test coverage, UI fixes, modifying legacy code from the original monolith that didn't change a whole lot etc

In the bay area we only had five engineers, mostly focuses on architecture, R&D, new products etc, and even then they only came in two-three days a week mostly for face to face meetings. The VP had a lake house in tahoe and would work remote for 2 months every summer.

I can see a bunch of legacy code maintenance/qa work moving offshore further, but there will always be a core group of five to ten engineers who meet at the central office a couple times a month. Remote will increase but humans still need face to face contact periodically.

Yeah I know a bunch of QA companies in Vietnam. How did your company find them? I am Vietnamese American myself and have spent a lot of time in the region. It is an amazing place w/ a hungry yet educated youth population, great food, beautiful beaches and quite fast internet. Surprised not many American companies heading there to recruit.

We initially hired the QA manager as our first QA hire, then he built the team in his country. After a couple of years we paid for his visa and he lives in the US now and has been with the company for over five years.

We went through Vietnam including Nha-trang on a tourist trip two years ago, of which I think Nha-trang is sort of their tech capital, I was really impressed with the level of development there and how modern it was, although I didn't talk with anyone directly in the industry while I was there. It definitely had an international modern vibe compared to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

I would replace Nhatrang with Danang. Danang is the next big coastal tech hub now.

How is that "outsourcing"? Everyone is still from the same company but instead of just different cities, it's different countries as well.

You are correct, this is technically offshoring, not outsourcing since they are on the company payroll.

>> If companies felt they could readily get the same level of talent outside the US, why wouldn't they do that currently?

Well, by the same logic, why didn’t FB have a remote forward strategy before now? Presumably the pandemic has changed firms assumptions about the relative value of remote and in person work.

Executive changes? One of the engineering leaders, Jay Parikh recently left. He was not a fan of remote workers.

Because it's hard to drive change if there isn't a "need". Going into the office is the status quo, and there wasn't any real pressing drive to change/innovate there.

Now that companies have been forced to go remote, I think they're seeing some benefits from it, and there's a lot less inertia to fight against.

Yes, my point is that this is the same mechanism that will reduce the inertia for "move half of our engineers to low-wage countries and squeeze the wages of the ones that are left"

I think the point is not hiring in Lagos or Jarkarta, but hiring closer to that salary level. Facebook has already indicated salary cuts may be forthcoming for those who relocate out of the Bay Area, and we're still in the very early stages here.

> Lagos or Jakarta salary

This is fear mongering to say the least. Nobody is stopping those companies hiring from the said regions today. And it is super unlikely western engineers would want to relocate to the said regions given the choice.

Let's all admit outsourcing is a thing and it has been for more than 20 years. The reason outsourcing is dialed back is much more interesting to understand, and offers insight from perspective other than costs.

The high CoL in Bay Area is not sustainable. Software engineering is already democratized in a way, Bay Area no longer holds monopoly.

The high salary here is a reflection of prosperity of past decade of internet bloom, but there is no momentum to keep it that way as the party will end never-the-less eventually.

If anything, I see those remote working as a welcoming trend, to redistribute tech talents and money across US/Canada. Yes, the salary will go down, but it probably reflect better the reality we are already living.

The bay area is unique in that it has two major research universities where a lot of computer science was developed.

Berkeley and Stanford will continue to drive innovation.

And yet the collegiate programming contests includes high performing computer science schools from every region. You can raise an incredible programmer from Wisconsin, Colorado, Texas, Virginia, and Ohio just fine.

Innovation is not generally about hiring people who are really good at programming contests.

Does it have to come from schools that are known for what they did 40 years ago?

Ohio and vietnam and russia and bulgaria. Let's add to the list. People who have moved to costlier cities have done it at a significant cost and sacrificies. Making it all decentralized can potentially cause large harm to those individuals.

It'll boil down to completing with countries that have large human capital. Clearly USA is not a winner there. Talk about jobs being taken by people living in Bangladesh/pakistan/Indonesia and other highly populated countries.

Well, I have had Russian coworkers and coworkers from South East Asia, so it would seem I already have competed with them.

edit: I see you've modified your post, I'll update mine, too:

> People who have moved to costlier cities have done it at a significant cost and sacrificies

They're all welcome to return to the places they want to be. We often encourage people in dying towns to move elsewhere to find work or sustainable living. The people that have made 250k+ a year can do that, too.

> Talk about jobs being taken by people living in Bangladesh/pakistan/Indonesia and other highly populated countries.

I see the argument here; but, I don't expect it will be nearly as bad as is said. The platform may certainly change; but, there are still reasonably-sized development teams in countries that do their own thing. Further, a deep understanding of a given culture is very useful when developing software for them, or working with them as a team. We will become more global, certainly; but, there will still be advantages for US companies to pay for US developers: culture. Also, working hours. I had enough struggle on a team with a 3 hour difference in working hours. Having a team with members in Europe (7-8 hour difference from Pacific Time Zone) or India (13 hour difference) has a real impact on productivity that shouldn't be overlooked, unless the whole operation is moved elsewhere

But if the whole operation is moved elsewhere, what are all the developers in the United States and similar going to do? They'll probably start their own companies (yes, probably at diminished wages) and produce their own products; and, recognizing the job losses they've seen to skilled, overseas competitors, they may choose to prefer to hire relatively local employees, and the whole cycle may start again.

I believe the assumption that it will fully swing to 100% of development being out of the country is misguided.

Microsoft might not hire Silicon Valley or other US engineers; and, Facebook might not; but Stellar Games Interactive and the next "YNAB" or FreshBooks might.

Agreed it might end up being the way you mentioned but it might end up being very extreme. We both don't know yet which way it'll end up being.

-> but, there will still be advantages for US companies to pay for US developers: culture

I disagree here. My company has moved completed teams to India with no loss in productivity. Company today survives because of some projects that happened in India. Had the projects not moved to India some American folk would have been working on it and gathering accolodes and feeling proud of their work.

-> People will start companies here and hire people in other countries to code for them.

I don't know. People don't want to work for other people if they can start companies. How many chinese work for US organizations. They have their own companies and people to work for.

There are lot of points I want to bring forth but I fear they might hurt someone. In the beginning it'll help people people living in Texas or Nevada. But that benefit will be short lived. People in USA are still super expensive compared to people in other countries.

Same argument hold for H1B. You get some selected very smart people ( only smart not the abuse that Infosys has been upto ). They train 10 people. Start companies hire americans. Economy and people here in general benefit. You stop them from coming here. They can do their work sitting in their 10 by 10 room in some other country.

See guys California's/New york's loss will soon boil down to USA's loss. Maybe it'll take 10 years. But USA is still one country. Taxes people pay in california is still used for the developement of the country.

Don't think of a 4 year picture here. 20 year picture in WFH situation will not settle well for USA's dominiance.

It'll work well for China's dominance. They don't let their innovations leave their country :).

> -> People will start companies here and hire people in other countries to code for them.

This is not what I said. I said:

> They'll probably start their own companies (yes, probably at diminished wages) and produce their own products; and, recognizing the job losses they've seen to skilled, overseas competitors, they may choose to prefer to hire relatively local employees, and the whole cycle may start again.

That is: they may hire local devs.

Actively refusing to hire local or even in-nation devs and hiring only international devs is either something for a company so small they can't have a coworker; or, if they're hiring teams, some kind of money lover that wouldn't have hired local in the first place.

Those engineers are already available in cheaper international locations, and they have yet to drive down engineering salaries down to subsistence level in the US.

Because company policies were not as open to remote talent. It took us over a year of lackluster local talent interviews in SF to convince our CTO that we have to go for remote talent.

By the time the pandemic hit, we were ready to be our most effective as a geo distributed team.

Do you hire in Jakarta?

And yet there seem to be many companies that are fine with lackluster?

Seems to be very much a reflection of how engineering is managed at a company.

There are multiple sibling comments dismissing this argument because it could have happened already, but consider this:

Few companies were very accepting and open about remote work or had the structure to support it with any kind of scale (hiring, HR, legal, team structure, meetings vs async communication, ...)

If companies adapt their processes and workflows to include remote workers as first class employees, it suddenly becomes a lot easier to seamlessly integrate team members not only across the country, but across the globe.

This avoids the usual cost of outsourcing (communication and coordination overhead, lack of integration, etc), while still opening up a large, much cheaper labor pool.

This doesn't have to be primarily negative, but it very much has the potential to put a lot of downward pressure on salaries and should be considered.

I would like to offer a more nuanced position. People bring many attributes/abilities to work which have value. These include knowledge, integrity, communication, personality, etc. In the past, being willing/able to live in a place like the Bay Area was one of those attributes. Now that one attribute is less valuable. But the rest of the value proposition hasn't changed.

I understand why a person who REALLY wants to live in the Bay Area would be concerned about that. But for most of us in the world, not much is changing. In fact, salaries for the rest of us might go up because demand for our labor will go up.

Or in other words, people in Lagos and Jakarta will now have access to higher salaries (not as high as SF ones, but higher than their alternatives) because they can now work for Facebook and similar companies, rather than being discriminated because they happened to be born in Africa.

That's great for them, but it means the current employees day-dreaming about leaving their luxuriously appointed home office in their palatial Mountain West exurban home for a Wednesday afternoon skiing trip are going to need to seriously readjust their expectations towards "splitting an apartment in Sacramento instead of SF"

>will drive down wages everywhere to the level of the cheapest locations where talent can be found

god forbid we earn the same as everyone else with our skills instead of an arbitrarily inflated quantity thanks to luck of the draw wrt lat/lon we were born near.

I totally agree with you. The general negativity towards remote work seems, to me, to reflect a lack of imagination about how our lives, and our societies, could be organized in a world with more remote work.

The potential reduction in housing cost alone(one of the largest inhibitors to developing wealth for most Americans) should be a massive cause for celebration. We can stop orienting our lives and our cities around commuting (and therefore cars) and start focusing on people.

People complain about the loss of the workplace as a social environment. What about the opportunities to create new social environments that aren't centered around work?

I wrote more about this here, if you're interested https://manyfoxgiven.com/2020/01/21/remote-work-promise/

That all implies that people won’t be working more - while it’s true commute times being cut is a huge benefit, I’m concerned about employer demands and culture leaning more into people working more, especially across time zones. When there is more competition for roles those who are willing to work more and longer will advance.

That said, I also hold out great hope for this development. I’m already looking at places I’d like to live because I’d like to live there, not because there are jobs.

That would probably require changes in laws around the 40 hour work week and overtime, don’t you think? If enough engineers are making less, they’ll probably request the ‘exempt’ status be removed and suddenly they get overtime for those extra hours.

Did people that live in company towns tend to work 70* hours a week?

Most of what people talk about is going on a snowboarding trip while getting paid to "WFH" not the day to day reality of it.

I agree, but I'll note that I did exactly what you're talking about (went on a snowboarding trip while getting paid to "WFH"). I was in Europe, so I was on the mountains until midafternoon, and then worked the rest of the afternoon / evening. Worked great - I got a lot of work done, spent a ton of time on the mountains, and my employer never complained about my output (I spent a good 6-8 hours working each day, and easily got my normal workload done).

Yeah... what you describe isn’t lying about working from home. It’s changing where ‘home’ is. I was considering doing that this summer for some hiking trips, too.

It is hard to imagine things being different for people that have been going to an office for the last 5 or 10 years.

Reality is crumbling now that the pandemic proved that we can be as productive without an office. Some people are lying to themselves to justify why they have lost so many hours of their life in an office.

>Some people are lying to themselves to justify why they have lost so many hours of their life in an office.

Sounds needlessly aggressive, just straight up dismissing any valid points the other side could have.

Do I like working from home? Yes. Does it give me more flexibility when it comes to my personal life? Absolutely. Would I want to work from home every day? Definitely no.

In a perfect world, I would love to work 3 days a week from home, with the remaining 2 days in the office (not necessarily back to back, e.g., I would prefer working from office on mondays and wednesdays.

> Sounds needlessly aggressive, just straight up dismissing any valid points the other side could have.

I'm not saying this is the case for everyone (I'm using some here) but myself and a couple of my friends have definitely been in that category before realizing that we actually don't like going to an office.

I’ve worked in an office essentially every weekday since 2007.

I can’t wait to get back to one. For me, working from home is awful. For you, it’s not. Different people are different.

Mostly it’s the isolation that gets to me. I’m used to working with people.

Out of curiosity which office did you work in between 2007 and 2018 when you started working for stripe? How is your teams WFH experience within stripe?

When I shifted to working from home I started exercising a lot less. My office had an onsite gym. I would go in early and start every day with exercise.

I don't have all the equipment at home, so I only go to the gym once a week (well before lockdown, now I go 0 times but did end up getting some equipment).

Also the food. The office had free healthy food. Now I have to make my own lunch, which is often cheap easy crap and late in the day.

Also I miss socializing with adults that aren't my spouse. She's great and all, but we've already heard all of each other's stories. :)

I very much value all the extra time I get to spend with my family, and I also value the fact that when we wanted to spend a week in the mountains I could just up and go and work from there.

But there are definitely tradeoffs.

As a founder who works from home, I noticed that some days my step count was under 1,000. That is terrible. I started going for walks (before it was covid-cool) most days. I try to take my calls while walking, and I find that my most creative ideas come while I'm walking.

Some of these thoughts are wishful thinking though. The majority of people will not explore the mountains, travel, visit more their family and friends, exercise and improve their wellbeing, but will probably spend even more time at home, stuck on their smartphones and social media all day, making them miserable and lonelier. I might sound pessimistic but it was already happening before covid19 with all these social media nonsense.

I'd wager a guess and say that this was exacerbated by the fact that people had to move and live in cities far away from loved ones and away from places where they could spend time outside. The opportunity cost of "driving three hours to a nice hike location" Vs. "I'll just look at my screen to recover from mindless work" was too high.

At least they wouldn't deal with the extra stress of commuting, or traffic from other commuters.

If I can really rearrange my life around remote, be sure my couch will not be my first choice :D I've seen social media make enough people miserable and sad, but there might come a time of reckoning that will change that and have people focus more on what happens locally. Hopefully, when the crisis settles, attending offline events will be the new cool for a while and the world will be better off.

I replied much the same to someone on twitter. They were complaining that their coworkers were good friends and they thought remote meant they would no longer have friends.

No! You'll now be able to make friends outside of tech! Imagine being able to work from the diner, or a coffee shop, or a bookstore, or a another country entirely! You're going to be able to make friends with so many different people. It would be a wonderful thing for the world.

Maybe I'm overly optimistic, but I think it would go a long ways toward breaking humans out of the bubbles they tend to stay in. Maybe people would start to empathize and understand one another better.

We live in a society experiencing a crisis of loneliness. Stripping away yet another built-in opportunity for in-person socialization and community building is going to make that worse, not better.

There are endless other "built-in opportunities" out there for socialization, and remote work gives the freedom to choose them for yourself rather than being forced into an arbitrary office for the majority of your life.

Choosing is part of the issue, and at that point it is not longer "built-in". People make friends with those physically around on a regular basis–I can only think of three environments where making friends is "built-in": school, work, and church. You never have all three, but at least we always have just one.

I get that all it takes is to find a meet up of like minded individuals that meet up regularly, but sometimes even that is hard to find.

>I can only think of three environments where making friends is "built-in": school, work, and church

You left out the military, but those are merely the few institutional walls that society has most oppressively forced upon us. There are countless other sports teams, game clubs, hobby communities, activist groups, charities/service organizations, hacker/maker spaces, martial arts gyms, etc. etc which we are more free to choose from, and are often more likely to enjoy. With the internet, such groups have never been easier to find.

Choosing is only an issue because we are so unused to having such agency over our own lives.

Sorry, but these opportunities exist today, even when people work from office (pre pandemic). Which is just to say: the existence of opportunities does not help the argument.

Coworkers offer a great pool of like minded individuals that can relate to people. You have to interact with them, and relationships are inevitably built. This is fantastic!

On a personal note: the office is a social environment distinct from my personal life. I enjoy both: hanging out with coworkers after work talking about a hairy problem, working together with coworkers to fix on call issues, and then hanging out with personal friends on weekends.

To be clear: I have mixed feelings about remote work. I can see the benefits it offers but I love to be around human coworkers. I’m not sure how invested I would feel.

If people can work remote and don't have to commute, that's quite a bit of time saved that could be used getting involved in your local community. I couldn't disagree more that this would lead to a worse loneliness outcome and not a better one.

There are plenty of opportunities already for these people. It's just hard to force yourself to go to them. This is an incredibly optimistic view, it is far too easy to become complacent and not leave your house. Especially for young people, who for the last 16 years were basically forced to go to class and interact with peers. I'm a new(ish) grad and I really enjoyed getting to know some of my younger coworkers, and we hangout outside the office. I would have never reached this level of friendship if we only knew each other via slack and skype calls

A lot of relationships are forged through consistent meetings. Hobby circles generally form friendships for this reason. I don't think getting involved in my local community or working from a coffee shop will really provide the same sort of rich interactions that I get from a forced periodic meeting.

I love the outdoors, so your comment really speaks to me. But speaking as someone who has worked remotely for the last 15+ years I'm skeptical that the model will become even close to dominant.

* Not everyone is equally productive when working remotely. For a variety of reasons some people just work better in offices.

* Mixed office/remote teams are unstable. People will be drawn to offices if only for career reasons, which makes it harder for the remote works, hence makes the office more attractive, etc.

* Some jobs are just better done in person. Auto repair is not a remote job. Same for manufacturing.

What I hope for is that companies will realize they don't need everyone to commute to the office every damn day. I freed up about 3 hours of transit time and reduced my annual carbon emissions by about a ton just by commuting one day less in the Bay Area. There's no reason why most white collar jobs can't work from home a couple of days a week. This would already be a huge improvement.

I think the reality is that you never get the best of both worlds. Companies will not spend on expensive real estate and amenities for people only in the office 2-3 days per week. Either there will have to be big sacrifices (open offices with no reserved desks/seating/equipment, like how consulting does this), or there will be no office offered at all.

>Not everyone is equally productive when working remotely. For a variety of reasons some people just work better in offices.

It's probably a bit bleak to say, but those people will likely be replaced by others who are productive working remotely given the new, wider talent pool a fully remote company will have access to.

I don't understand this thinking that remote work will lead to hiring all over the world. I've worked on a bunch of teams split across timezones and I have never seen a team successfully function as a single team with more than a 3 hour timezone difference.

Oh, I'm not one with such beliefs. I think the work being spread over certain timezones is the likely direction it'll go in, which still vastly broadens the talent pool for the companies involved.

An example being Shopify's announcement today was followed with them switching previously Canadian, or Toronto/Ottawa specific roles to being remote and available within the Americas.

I'm an outdoors enthusiast like yourself and feel similarly, but I would wager that the average tech employee is not an outdoorsman/adventurist/athlete, and might not have any hobbies at all aside from spending time with family, watching TV, playing video games, infinitely scrolling on their phones, etc. Also, a lot of these SF headquarters are really nice office spaces with all of the perks (free food mostly) versus the average home office. I have to imagine a lot of people enjoy their offices simply because it's nicer than the space they live in.

I only have a limited selection bias based on where I work, but it seems like there is disproportionately more athletes in these highly competitive companies in the bay area than I've seen elsewhere.

This person was division I MIT crew, this person runs 200mi ultra-marathons, many coworkers have done an Ironman or two, many are cycling 100+mi/wk, many are running marathons or 10mi a day at sub six-minute pace.

Where I grew up the number for any of these things would be zero, but here it feels common. I'd guess partly highly selective entry from top schools biases towards people that are also athletes, or that there's some positive correlation with competitive/ambitious people and making sure to exercise. I suspect the normal no-exercise indoorsy stereotype is actually wrong when compared to other people on average.

This is my experience as well, atleast among younger employees. Presumably the older employees that have kids don't have as much time for hobbies/passions like that.

Fitness and being fit—especially the right fitness activities—has become a major status/class thing. Lots of articles about it over the last, oh, decade or so, which might pass for documentation of the phenomenon, plus what you can see if you've just been looking around and paying attention to trends, media, and marketing.

Yeah I think there’s definitely a class element.

You don’t see people bulking up and lifting heavy, it’s all time intensive endurance sports that make you thin.

Sports and physical activity (especially competitive ones) have always been a component of upper class education. Soundness of body and mind, less fear of standing out and clashing, greater status, more attractive image.

I agree wholeheartedly, I've had the pleasure to work remotely for the majority of my career and it has been nothing but bliss to be able to focus on the living part of life and not just the working part of it. There's nothing I enjoy more than having deep technical talks with very smart people, but I'm not really interested in living within that tech bubble 100% of the time.

How many times can you have the same conversation with someone complaining about <outdated software library> and being underpaid at <six figure salary>? It's amazing to me how few people in this industry have exposure to the world of experiences outside of the pinhole purview of techworld concerns. Going remote means you actually get to choose your day to day friends, experiences, social life, and culture instead of having them forced upon you! Craft your life the way you want to live it.

> I've read a few of these work from home related articles here on HN and I have to say, I'm super surprised by how many people are both vehemently against the idea of remote and generally pessimistic for what it would mean for society.

I can think of one big reason why HN readership is suddenly worried about the prospect of universal WFH: they realise that the supply in the labour market is going to suddenly double. No longer will companies be able to justify paying them huge amounts of money because people from all over the world are just as good and able to work for much less.

Remember a lot of people here are now addicted to money. They don't much else in life besides that.

My own workplace is remaining remote for the time being. We moved out of our office prior to eventually maybe moving into one. We might not all be asked to move back in permanently.

I had looked in the past for remote work for precisely the reasons you mentioned. On top of that my partner would love to move back to Vancouver Island for a spell. Also Toronto is bloody expensive.

We've discussed all kinds of different options... but one of the core motivators would be affording a house, with some land. Being closer to family—mine or hers—and spending more time outdoors.

Also not having to commute 1+ hour each way—yes, please.

There are just multiple opinions on remote work. Simple answer is that there is no right or wrong - it just depends on each individual case.

There are people that would benefit from remote work - they might like living close to the mountains, no commute and they can still stay very productive while fully remote.

There are also people who don't care about mountains, live close to work and are more productive while working in the office among other people.

Both groups are right in what they value most, and as long as there is no detrimental effects to the business/employer - both seem like good options.

I'm working from home in just such a mountain town right now.

If you're willing to go far enough up the mountain, real estate is still quite affordable.

And I think you'd be welcomed if you actually live in a small town full-time (as opposed to keeping a vacation home) and get involved with the local community. Many of these places -- the ones just out of organic-grocery-store range -- have been losing population for decades.

Of course, in California, you have to make your peace with living in the Red State within the Blue State, in case that's a thing for you.

I see most negativity around WFH is from some form of fear.

Competition. Some believe that once orgs and managers get comfortable with a fully remote team, whats to stop them from replacing or supplementing office-only team with a cheaper remote-first one. That increases employer options and shifts market power over to them.

Work/life. Some like the hard separation between work and home. They are just not comfortable losing that wall.

Social setup. Some are scared shitless when they realize they will lose their only social setup: office, and will have to start fresh and actually talk to people who don't share their view of the world.

Family. For a lot of people, office is a convenient escape from family that does not get questioned. Take that out and it will drive them nuts to be around family all the time.

Income. Some believe that more competition will lead to lower salaries lesser opportunities, forcing a move to a lower income area leading to lower income and that sounds bad.

I think people are rightfully wary about massive employment changes that could have significant negative consequences. I see a slow shift from treating ICs like people with differentiated skillsets to undifferentiated drones. I think that rarely works out for the employee.

"I see a slow shift from treating ICs like people with differentiated skillsets to undifferentiated drones. I think that rarely works out for the employee."

I see it as the opposite. If an employer goes from mandating everyone be in office all the time, to allowing ICs to have a choice, doesn't that treat them less like an undifferentiated drone and acknowledge that some people work better WFH and others don't, or that for some projects you might want to be away from the office for extended periods of time?

> to allowing ICs to have a choice, doesn't that treat them less like an undifferentiated drone...?

No, on aggregate it will be the opposite, I think. Each dev will be treated more like an API--requirements go in and products come out. When the entire country is your labor pool rather than a select population close to your office, that's easier.

Whose writing the design docs and the requirements then?

What’s so bad about being treated as an interchangeable ‘drone’? Let’s face it, for most of us, it’s true. If we weren’t there doing that particular jira, someone else would be. Similarly, the company I work at is pretty interchangeable for me. If I wasn’t at x company, I’d be at y company doing almost identical work. As long as you work to live, not live to work, it’s not really that threatening being ‘a cog in the machine’. In fact it’s pretty relaxing, predictable and an easy way to earn money.

Ahh, I once worked for Google too.

Yeah, I think as employees this is key. The ability to go to office makes you stand out as a human being and not as a commodity remote black box problem solver. Fuck, just look at investment bankers why do you think they fly and see their customers face to face even at this lockdown times? Their financial models and ideas are the same but the human element of trust and communication. I'm an early career stage software engineer and things like this shift to remote work make me uneasy about the viability of software as a career for me. In other fields, the more experience you get the less of a commodity you're treated as, here it sometimes feels as if relevance if pretty much out of our control, the more experience you have in a focused area the more you are seen as a tool for a particular job I'd say instead of a generalist.

Well since you're in early stage in your career, if being a black box, a replacable commodity makes you feel uneasy, you'd be better off exploring alternative satisfying career path while not getting too invested in tech, time wise. Futher down the road you'll see yourself be more a commodity, more burn out, more kids replacing your job with newer skillset at lower salaries.

If the human touch is important to you, there are a lot of careers that you will thrive at, especially with your tech skills that you can apply almost anywhere.

I don't really like working from home, primarily because I like the social aspect of a workplace and also because I have a very hard time separating work from home life. But if places transitioned to something like 3 days a week wfh, with the option to come in anyway but not the expectation. I'd totally love that because I do a lot of outdoors stuff too and I like sleeping in lol, which commuting prevents, but I don't need this everyday (though others might, especially those with kids). But I really think communication simply when not in person is sub par, but that could be a failing on my part or those in my company.

I'm with you, but I think this post also highlights the need for protected land. I'd really hate to see any National Forest land go away because everyone who wants to live somewhere with a view now can.

More people/better infrastructure in Gunnison, CO would be great. Maroon Bells getting a housing development and a golf course? Not so great. I'm worried that more people in small mountain towns near national forests has the potential to slowly eat away the national forest.

I love working fully remote, but in the past month my job has become my entire life. Maybe that's because I can't leave the house, but I do fear that could stick. With employers expecting employees to be available constantly. Even more so than now/5 months ago.

Yeah, it was a real struggle for a while to just respond "No" to random 7pm or 8am meetings...

Hear hear! Work and what I consider “real” life are two completely different things for me.

> Where are the cyclists, the surfers, the skiiers/snowboarders, dirt bikers, rock climbers, etc etc in these threads?

I'd say they are out there riding bikes, skiing or climbing, not discussing WFH arrangements for the third time this week :D

I'm with you, that is how I feel. I have been working full-time remote since ... well, for most of my career.

My wife and I decided to be in a major metropolitan area because of our kids and schools... but back before, we were living in more rural, mountain areas with a lot of access to outdoors.

At some point, we're going to get a small trailer for my use as an office, or an office trailer. It's something I would want anyways.

I think one good compromise with this is having a remote-first company pay for either a home office, or the membership fees for a coworking space. Some people really enjoy the interpersonal interaction. Me? I get enough of it via Slack and Zoom, and the occasional in-person conferences and on-sites.

One of the positives I can see us moving towards is greater interpersonal interaction with the local neighbors, and greater mixed-use spaces like it used to be. You work from home some of the days, and then walk down the street for the coffee and bagals. You talk with the neighborhood grocers. You can hang out at the community gardens. You make your living with things that could be done remote, but there is a much better sense of community where you live. When you spend money, it would be within the local community, so it helps distribute the wealth to people who you live side by side.

And ok, maybe if you don't like to cook, instead of using one of those apps to get some food from across town, you support your neighbors who love to cook.

In other words, instead of bonding primarily with the people you work with, your main community is the one you live in. I think that's generally a good thing.

There's a project called the Urban Farming Guys. They do a lot of hard work for developing food resilency, and transformed one of the worst neighborhoods in Kansas City into something that is great. Imagine living there, because you cared about the work they did. You work the remote job by day, and then walk over to their makerspace to teach the neighborhood kids about coding. When they ask for donations, you could spread some of the wealth from working with a remote tech job. You would have a choice to live with the people who share the same values that you do.

Here's the thing. I think a lot of people feel that they will be disconnected from people if they work remote. But I think if they were able to choose where they live, they might find that they are even _more_ connected with the people they live with, in the neighborhood they live with. I think there is a modern malaise of disconnection and brokenness, and that won't really be solved without reconnecting to your local community. The interpersonal camaderie at work is an imperfect substitute for what I think most people crave without realizing they crave it.

> My wife and I decided to be in a major metropolitan area because of our kids and schools... but back before, we were living in more rural, mountain areas with a lot of access to outdoors.

The schools are the main thing preventing us from moving to a small town in nature. Most of them have really bad schools. If they don't it's because they're a rich-people enclave and housing's very expensive.

The US is really big. There are many, many small towns out there and by pure random chance there will be over a 100 schools in small towns that are in the 95th percentile nationally for whatever metric you want to use. And if you move to a less populated state your chances of going to a prestige uni go way up because they like to say they have students from all 50 states.

Even if the schools are terrible in every rural school district you can get individual tuition for your children for very cheap compared to the difference in costs of real estate in urban versus rural areas. The average adjunct instructor at a college makes $3,000 per class. So for $24K your child could get individual college level instruction for 8 AP tests, as an upper bound. Cheap compared to the difference between a house in Boston and one two hours away.

Well, environmentally, the preference is that humans live in dense cities & leave as much untouched nature as possible.

Remote work may have as devastating an environmental impact as the automobile (if not more).

Just wait until 250,000 of your fellow outdoor enthusiasts move to Wyoming...

Are you trolling? The environmental impact of reduced traffic is far more significant- and currently observable during this quarantine- than a hypothetical horde of hikers.

Cities centralize services and make them more efficient. Groceries, trash, hospitals, etc. By spreading all of these things out you make them less efficient. It seems you're overlooking everything else and focusing strictly on commuting's negative effects.

Perhaps, but those images of clouds of smog over LA or Beijing- though admittedly they might be largely produced industrial activity rather than transportation- certainly elicit a visceral response.

Wyoming would still be empty. People would still not commute. But - they would still want to visit family and old friends, so not be too far from an airport or a highway, and they still need a good internet connection. Also, living somewhere cheaper is nice, but most still want access to concerts, culture, museums, libraries and so on. I agree there are many questions, but the last twenty years have unproportionally favourited a few megacities (and areas) where people are still miserable because the costs are even higher than the high incomes. Also, it would be great to bring more college graduates into the country, that would help against the political divide we have currently. Who knows how it will turn out, right? But a try it is definitely worth.

I travelled across countrty over the course of 4 weeks while working remote. I stopped by Wyoming for a week to visit a friend. Was using a crappy internet, working from a hotel. Got altitude sickness the first day I was there. But I got to see things I didn't.

There are two broadband, Low Earth Orbit satallite internet projects that will be a game changer. These are supposed to have low latency to market towards high-frequency traders. If the cost is accessible for individuals, then yeah, you could live at the edges of the grid. Would still need some way to get electrical power.

My wife and I had been thinking about doing that with an RV, and just tooling around for a bit.

Another commenter from another article about permanent telecommuting - most likely this will happen between metro areas in the same/similar timezones.

You can still have culture, transport and internet in smaller metros. Timezone is key - it's the main reason why offshoring leads to problems.

Well, with the population of Wyoming being 578K, 250K would be enough to turn the tide politically and pass some much needed environmental legislation there. :)

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