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Comment by DantesKite | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious whether remote work will have a tangible effect on global poverty and if so, how it could be measured.

Remote work requires an investment in space and equipment that can be quite expensive. Someone can be a great candidate, but can't afford the computer, tablet and space they need to interview or get work done, and they'll be skipped over for someone who can afford it.

Someone who can apply and perform a remote job will most likely be able to get access to a computer for the purpose of an interview. The problem is more acute for someone so poor they do not have access to a computer in a first place to acquire the necessary skills needed later to lift them out of poverty.

One can buy a cheap laptop for the interviewing process, or borrow it. I personally did the latter, with a great success.

Meet, then take meeting with your family in the background and internet infrastructure that blows.

People usually understand circumstances like these.

Also, if that interview is really important to you, talk to the family. Move your seat. Talk from a coworking space, or from a park or similar public place provided that you have a headset; I did talk form a park, worked well.

To say nothing of these neat features of Zoom, Meet, etc that allow to put a virtual background, given enough CPU power.

Would you have coworking spaces and Wi-Fi in the park (or indeed a park) in non-major cities in Nigeria (the country the article is talking about)?

> with your family in the background

Many conferencing programs allow you to set the background. Use a photo of a bookshelf and you're good to go!

Given two scenarios:

A: An affluent individual with a dedicated home working space, high-speed and reliable broadband provider, and high-quality computer, video, and audio gear

B: A poor individual in a multigenerational household sharing working space with other household members on an ongoing basis and connectivity over flaky mobile service using a cheap Android device.

Which do you suppose might have an inherent advantage?

Would an on-prem working arrangement with employer-provided workspace, networking, and computing equipment increase or decrease any such advantage?

I was responding to:

"your family in the background"

It's an easily resolved problem. I do it myself, as my office is a mess. I've used a photo of a bookshelf, too :-)

I've also had many business zoom meetings with people with their kid in their lap, or their pets demanding attention, etc. It's not a problem.

What you responded to is a small subset of the original framing: "Remote work requires an investment in space and equipment that can be quite expensive."

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29698736

I quoted what I was responding to. That's why I quoted it. It's the point of quoting. And my response was clearly to what I quoted.

Be that as it is, it remains a minimisation of a rather larger and more complex problem, and a minimisation which largely begins with your own contribution to this thread.

Which you still seem to be striving to neither acknowledge nor address.

I'll address what I please.

And I'll note what is or isn't addressed. As I please.

I don't think it will except for maybe a trickle down effect from making rich people in their countries slightly richer. People who are working remotely aren't poor or living in poverty.

Most work done by people in poverty can't be done remotely. You can do mechanical turk type shit, but that doesn't seem be sustainable. As a person, myself, living in poverty in America, my best hope would probably be some kind of virtual assistant work? Not really sure how that would go, but I don't know if that's for everyone. And that's basically just white collar (read: not-poverty-orienty / blue collar) work.

Considering things like what the article describes as the Black Tax, it doesn’t seem like it would help.

Only if companies stop relying on "cost of labor" type metrics to set remote pay adjustments.

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