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Comment by squokko | Hacker News Reader

The burden of proof is much higher on remote work. The entire history of civilization from hunter-gatherers to 2019 was built largely with in-person work. If companies are going to make a permanent change to the way work is done, they will need affirmative proof that the new way works better than the old way, otherwise the much more tried-and-true old way is a much safer bet.

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Why does it need to be better? Here's my PoV: I want it, and frankly rely on it at this point, and employers want to hire me. If someone was really worth less working remotely, it could be factored into salary. Lo and behold though, I accomplish the same, or possibly more now than, as I ever did, and my salary has not plummeted. Quite the opposite.

Again, I want to reiterate: if it really made workers worth less, it could be factored into salary. It's not about that. It's about something else that has to do with management and control.

Don't get me wrong, I am not doubting for a minute that remote work has challenges, but that's the thing. We had to work those out. Security, compliance, VPNs, beyond corp, whatever... We already HAD to do it. The only reason now to discard that would be sabotage.

Sure, I don't have any opposition to companies offering it, or employees demanding it -- supply and demand will take care of that. I'm talking about whether I believe we should be making an effort as a society to push the market in one direction or the other.

Oh, well I'd agree with that position.

I think an assumption that I have is that the balance of supply/demand may be prejudiced against remote work, because it takes time for people to accept or be open to new ways of doing things.

Well, in the entire history of civilization most people used to work at home, and not at some other place. Offices aren't part of human nature.

For most of human history people worked together in person, as tribes! (I think this is at least part of the reason companies so heavily push the "we are your family" meme, trying to artificially create that original level of collectivism and aligned incentives.)

This is empirical, but I have yet to hear the cause for failure of a company to be “we worked remotely”. Otoh, hearing that operating expenses were too high, no product market fit, tech debt, etc are the usual culprits across remote and in office companies.

It's a fallacy to not having any data to back up the incumbent method. "People have drunk alcohol since prehistoric times, so why should people stop now and be sober?". Both sides need to have ample proof.

> The entire history of civilization from hunter-gatherers to 2019 was built largely with in-person work

Not surprising, given remote work didn't exist for 99% of that time period.

> they will need affirmative proof that the new way works better than the old way

If they couldn't find enough evidence during the last few years they have bigger problems than the choice between remote and office work.

I think the burden of proof is not that high.

I agree that status quo and stability have at least some non-zero probative value, but you have to acknowledge that the status quo only exists because the dinosaurs didn't document their prehistoric internet well enough, so our ancestors had to rediscover the concept of a zoom meeting.

(Edit: obviously I wrote this in jest, but in all seriousness, when considering the value of "how it's always been done" it's extremely important to consider how we happened to stumble upon the status quo, with a holistic and historical bird's eye view. This is consequential to the analysis.)

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