Remote workers more likely to start their own business
theregister.com
theregister.com
I appreciate what this is trying to say is - workers weren't doing their jobs and were instead setting up business. Except this could also quite easily show that if you get rid of peoples long commutes, and they have a space in their home they consider 'work' space - they might have the time and space to start their own biz.
And as this seems to be only people who left to do so, it rather suggests people were doing their jobs. Might not be doing 'their hours', but the argument against remote work rarely seems to be 'we can't allow remote work because its so effective people complete their jobs much faster'
A healthy relationship is one in which managers don't monitor and don't micromanage and don't rely on Jira or commit logs to lazily monitor employees. A manager isn't there to lord over employees. He is there to support employees and help them do their jobs. But to do that, you need to know what they're doing.
Talk to them. Listen. Hold 1-on-1s on a regular basis. Assume they're doing their jobs instead of defaulting to a defensive and adversarial posture. If you treat employees like adversaries, they'll behave like adversaries. Grant them reasonable trust and they will take initiative and view the relationship as one that is cooperative. They will be less likely to want to risk losing the reasonable trust they have been gratuitously given; if you default to suspicion, then employees have little to lose. You already think poorly of them, so who cares.
If someone is genuinely slacking or not well-suited, that will come out sooner or later. 1-on-1s, individually and taken in aggregate, will give the manager an idea of what is really happening, especially if the manager is competent and knowledgeable of the domain, which he should be. 360 EOY reviews can also help here, not as an adversarial tactic, but as a way to share feedback. A competent manager can read the tea leaves.
It's like leaving your bicycle on a street, in Japan you don't need a lock, in San Francisco a lock wouldn't help. Even when 99% people are honest and responsible.
The main purpose of the tracking of the “edge cases” is basically insurance in the event of a law suit.
Yes, it irritates the folks with good intentions, but a good manager will keep the tracking tax as light as possible for the folks who are actually working.
The amount of headache it saves when the lawsuit or threat of a lawsuit comes around is quite a bit.
I would argue that excessive worrying about edge cases like that is destructive. It shifts all energy and focus on the pathological and shapes policy and attitudes around the pathological case instead of the normal case. The perfect is the enemy of the good.
In large organizations, you will always have abusers. That just needs to be accepted. One should not assume an inquisitorial stance that seeks to extirpate every last evil from the organization. You will corrupt the norm that way. Pathological cases ought to be handled when they surface. A pervasive attitude of suspicion creates toxic relationships that harm the organization far more than the occasional abuser.
And well, for reporting I kinda agree, we don't do that many reporting as others. I would say other managers need advanced tracking and reporting to automate their own reporting to higher management.
I job-hopped mercilessly to a better paycheck in my career, and I would keep doing it had I not found myself in a company I happen to enjoy working at. My manager does not micromanage me but is always very aware of what I am doing, mostly because he is a very competent developer himself. I get treated as a responsible adult - I can work remote without any suspicion that I am not doing my job, and in response I act as an adult, putting some effort to match the freedom I am given.
From time to time I get reached out by recruiters, and I can't find motivation to job hop again because, well, I might not find an environment that treats me as an adult, especially as I keep reading how so many managers are insecure as hell about their employees.
Never thought I'd say that, but in the end there is a bit more to work than the cash that trickles to my bank account by the end of the month.
Also the boss: claims to hold five jobs at five different organizations.
(I don't even mean Elon, I mean the median "founder" type, but him too I guess, except that I think he's up to more than five)
It's not the boss saying that. It's the contract you voluntarily signed.
Why don't people who can avoid these clauses embrace them anyway, since the justification is that the company needs and deserves your undivided attention to the greatest legally allowed degree, when they have far more power over the company and are being rewarded far more for their effort? The same reasoning applies far more to them! Because it's very undesirable to be restricted in that way, of course, so damn the company's best interests.
If it's very undesirable to be restrained by these, and the benefit to the employer is evidently not so large that it's necessary to restrict those for whom the reasoning applies 1,000x more than for some lowly peon, why do normal workers accept those clauses approximately 100% of the time they're demanded? Because they don't feel they have a choice.
"Voluntary" isn't binary.
At the extreme end, "slavery or death" may be an individual choice, but it's not the kind we want to celebrate or encourage.
___
> "I should not agree with your young [socialistic] friends," said Marcus curtly, "I am so old-fashioned as to believe in free contract."
> "I, being older, perhaps believe in it even more," answered M. Louis smiling. "But surely it is a very old principle of law that a leonine contract is not a free contract. And it is hypocrisy to pretend that a bargain between a starving man and a man with all the food is anything but a leonine contract." He glanced up at the fire-escape, a ladder leading up to the balcony of a very high attic above. "I live in that garret; or rather on that balcony. If I fell off the balcony and hung on a spike, so far from the steps that somebody with a ladder could offer to rescue me if I gave him a hundred million francs, I should be quite morally justified in using his ladder and then telling him to go to hell for his hundred million. Hell, indeed, is not out of the picture; for it is a sin of injustice to force an advantage against the desperate. Well, all those poor men are desperate; they all hang starving on spikes. If they must not bargain collectively, they cannot bargain at all. You are not supporting contract; you are opposing all contract; for yours cannot be a real contract at all."
-- The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond by GK Chesterton [https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0500421h.html]
No, there are loads of people who work as independent contractors, who are then allowed to work for other clients.
> Why? Because this is a matter of class, and the worker isn't of the right social class to be afforded such liberty, while others are.
Then moving social class is merely a matter of becoming an independent contractor.
At worst, it's a fire-able offense.
If you do have that arrangement, it's because you signed a contract to agree to those terms. The CEO that is the CEO of multiple companies (rare, but it definitely happens) signed a contract to agree to those terms, and is no doubt bound by other terms.
> Capitalists hate capitalism. They don’t want to be exposed to the risks entailed by competition, and feel the goad of that insecurity. They want monopolies, or platforms, or monopoly platforms. They want assets, not businesses.
> They want to be able to fire employees at will – but they want those same employees to be bound to them just as surely as serfs were bound to their lords’ land.
[0] https://locusmag.com/2024/03/cory-doctorow-capitalists-hate-...
Living your life the way you want presumably doesn't include you wanting other people breaking their obligations to you. Why do you want to do it to them?
It's a win for the workers and the economy at large, but a loss for employers.
However, it might very well be a win-win.
While the employer might lose a worker to an entrepreneurial venture, isn't this the sort of self-selection out that leads to a more engaged workforce overall?
Retaining those employees, who would really be doing something else, by introducing more friction through an in-office policy seems like a recipe for low engagement and mediocre business impact.
Mmmm..
I don't know man?
Be careful with this line of reasoning.
Someone, say, an employer, might be forgiven for concluding from your line of reasoning, that not allowing for remote work in the first place then leads to a more engaged workforce overall. Since remote workers are more entrepreneurial, they'd self-select out by not taking the job.
Back to pits.
Little things like a functional work environment with good screens and peripherals that isn't inundated with noise and fairly constant interruption.
Big things like a long commute (and at roughly half an hour mine was better than most) and not having to work alongside, sitting under the gaze of, someone who just emotionally abused me.
Those were simply solved and I could just fix other major problems myself.
Examples include the obvious fixes of the above issues but also include my option to increase the amount of vacation I take, adopt a 4-day week, and other things that have greatly improved my productivity and far more greatly improved my quality of life. Fuck the endless "always more" and "but what have you done for me lately?" even when I'm outperforming everyone else and have become the "go to".
Most impactfully, I have created an emotionally safe and deeply honest environment for myself and my cofounder where we can express our humanity and support each other in our struggles and joys. It is "unprofessional" and completely glorious and loving. Or work had become something that is part of our thriving rather than something that erodes our well-being.
Of cause one can deliver more per hour when working 8h/d instead of 12h/d. But the output of a 12h day will still be massively more than from a 8h day.
Please edit out swipes, as the site guidelines ask: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
(Your comment would be fine without that first bit)
[edit: perhaps "There's been a fair bit of research on that topic. Largely the studies I have read have found that especially...]
Edit: I of course believe you that you didn't mean it as a swipe. The trouble is that these things can all too easily land that way anyhow, since intent isn't directly readable. Past posts about this in case of interest: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
When I push past my mental capacity, stress, drain circling, anger, all that starts to seep in and it destroys my ability to think through hard problems, complexities, details and so on.
I’ll end up banging my head against the wall for hours, stressed and exhausted from some misguided sense that my worth is in my output and all of it will plummet for several days afterward.
I’ve studied myself. When I work extra hard when I can’t think anymore, even if it’s just to “get over this one hump”, my productivity is near zero and my agitation is up for 1-3 days of work after, *even with a weekend break*.
But with stable, consistent work that works out to 4-8 real work hours a day, usually around 6 or 7 but sometimes only 3, rarely 9-10, I have made huge amounts of progress on projects and done things more complex and complicated than I have ever done before. And it’s almost felt easy.
I would say that there is a productivity advantage of having extra time and extra energy. That's when you have the peace needed to make more profound improvements of the work being done. And these improvements have exponential effects.
Disagreeing is not bullying.
And if downvoting incorrect statements is wrong, what's the point of the vote at all?
When people with this guy's mentality get into power, they are awful to work for.
Do you want to work 12/h a day for the same pay? No, right? Okay, then everyone is on the same page. I don't think we need to advocate against ourselves in search of some principle or some type of moral high ground. It's not a virtue to be self-destructive.
Many pilot programs have found that 4 day weeks are at least equally productive compared to 5 day weeks.
Sounds like a benefit to society to me. When people do not waste time on commutes, they spend it either with their families and friends or thinking about solving problems, which occasionally turn into new businesses. Without such time freed up, these business ideas would never have come to fruition.
I also don't see why how employees spend their time off (as almost no employer counts commuting as work time) should factor into remote policies.
"WAIT NOT LIKE THAT"
* companies offering flexibility will attract the best talent
* 47% of businesses noticed increased productivity levels amongst employees who work remotely (tech.co)
* in an inflation-affected economy remote work means lower office-related utilities' costs for companies (16% of companies operate fully remote, without a physical office - Forbes 2024; this gives them a competitive advantage over their competition)
More relevant, interesting stats re: remote jobs, are available here:
https://www.workbeyond.io/remote_work_advantages/
https://www.workbeyond.io/remote_jobs_market_stats/
The stats on workbeyond.io are based on a sizable remote jobs dataset.
“What if I train my people and they leave?”
“What if you don’t train them and they stay!”
> analyzed IP address data in conjunction with LinkedIn data to cross-reference those working from home with those who formed new businesses. ... a title change and employment change on LinkedIn indicating a shift from being an employee to a founder.
Is this more likely to tell us something about the people and roles selected to work remotely, or an outcome of working remotely? At this scale the influences of each are absolutely inseparable. Do cohorts robustly account for education, experience, skillsets, tenure, etc.? The same values which improve one's ability to start a business strongly overlap with the considerations for employing someone remotely. I'm not saying they're comparing a "remote" cohort including developers to a "not remote" cohort including construction workers, but it's important to confirm.
Bosses don't lose 2 minutes a year worrying that Drone #685 might leave to begin a startup.
They DO worry the drone isn't working; isn't working efficiently (if it's a good boss); isn't working at their highest quality (if it's a great boss).
Working from home means you don't have to commute which saves you hours a week. Of course it will increase the chance that you can start up a business.
I'm a bit surprised that I haven't seen more employers offer to pay people a bit more so that they can work during the hours they would normally commute... That seems like it would be a win-win, and would probably drop the number of people doing startups if they so desired.
But for anyone in between, we're shocked-SHOCKED that they'd do such a disloyal and underhanded thing. As though their work is theft outside of the confines of a single employer
Utter nonsense. Work and get paid. The end.
Some people see salary jobs as exchanging a fixed amount of money for 40 hrs/week average. If you're spending 10-20 of those hours moonlighting for company B, those people would say you're depriving company A of what they're paying for.
If you instead see salary work as producing a certain amount of work regardless of the hours worked, then again there's no issue here. This is inconsistently applied to executives far more than rank and file office workers, since no one really expects (or wants) board member Bob to provide 40 hrs/week to each of the 6 companies he's involved with.
If I assign 20 hours of work and it takes 40 hours, I should not be surprised the employee does something else with the 20 remaining hours.
If I assign 40 hours of work and it takes 40 hours, and is of the expected quality, I really don't care if the employee take a part-time job elsewhere (assuming that doesn't conflict with expected online hours, etc).
My boss has no idea what I'm working on, day by day. My assignments take as long as they take; he makes WAGs at the project start, and I get informed if I am burning more hours than he expected.
But at the end of the project, a "40-hour" project may take me 10, or 100 hours. Or, rarely, 40.
But overall, I think I have a feel for how hard my employees are working and whether they're completing things in a time I consider reasonable. Maybe I'm being played. I dunno.
I've found most employers want to rely on the vague bounds of salary. Finished when the work is? Well, surprise: the work is poorly defined.
Theoreticals aside, the only thing that matters is if you get the job done.
If this research prompts more businesses to RTO or non-WFH -- for the reason of reducing employees leaving to do a startup, or doing a potentially competing startup after termination -- is this effectively leveraging surveillance capitalism to suppress labor (and innovation, as we say)?
I'm wielding two contracts and two retainers all while building software I sell for myself. It feels absolutely crazy to send someone an invoice and they send me money, as if I've unlocked some secret ability. This month is the first month I'm making more than I was as a corper.
Don't let the game tell you how to play anymore. The tools are out there and are better than ever.
The article also uses COVID-19 as the catalyst. If you consider that most people were fearing losing their jobs or were under threat to lose their jobs (and RTO mandates were occurring even in the early days of the pandemic!), it makes sense that an increase in entrepreneur activities would have happened.
> "It's good that we have people creating new firms, new jobs, and new innovation. This is presumably better reallocation, because essentially remote work allows you to better explore outside options in entrepreneurship."
Maybe don't put a rage-bait spin on the title of the article?
For example the types of jobs that are easiest to do remotely may correlate with employees likely to start their own business?
That just means, this is non-reproducible. So this is not science. Actually, there is a another paper, reproducible, it's non conclusive.
The social explanation of the phenomena (if there is any) are clearly politically oriented.
So yeah, maybe bosses were out to screw themselves. Is that paranoia?
If you have to pay people more to keep them, you have to pay people more to keep them. People picking the best option isn't exploitation. They don't owe you or anyone else anything.
Wait, that above comment sounds like a disgruntle 'boss' who is lashing out. So, no answer will be adequate. That poisonous attitude is typical of why programmers were leaving.
People can be paid better, given better hours, more flexibility, more responsibilities, less responsibilities, better benefits, etc.
If lots of people don’t want to do a job, and that job has trouble keeping quality employees, it’s the job that’s broken, not the people.
Plenty of people were treated great when WFH, but it’s not a universal truth that everyone was.
So concretely, what more could they give? How much is the comp that wouldn't get abused?
When eggs went up from 4 dollars to 8, nobody expected them to taste twice as good. That's just what they cost now. But when developers go from 80,000 to 160,000 on average or something (arbitrary numbers), people do expect them to work twice as hard. Otherwise, they're abusing their employer. As if employers even could be abused.