Ask HN: For a job in tech, are you only interested in remote only jobs?
It doesn't matter which role, I mean any job that could be done with internet connection and a laptop.
I read an article during the weekend that 1/3 of applicants are not willing to work in an office and that are not interested in any non remote positions, even if the salary is good.
I know there is a trend of remote work because I am building a job boards aggregator and by far the most selected filter is [Remote Jobs]
But so many folks declining non remote jobs was a bit surprising.
What do you think?
84 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 160 ms ] threadRemote, you don't have that restriction.
Problem is, so does everyone else. So you would have much more competition.
I can be really productive but only if uninterrupted and left to do actual work.
I worked remotely for 10 years, we never had any Zoom calls or phone calls. Only contact was via email, and all the work was done 100% asynchronously.
I'm interested in working remotely, but only if the company is working asynchronously, letting workers choose their own hours, etc. Not if they regard remote work as a way to save on rent & office equipment while keeping the same synchronous micromanaging behaviors.
All scheduled meetings were required to be remote, even if the other people you were meeting with were in the same building, because we didn't want to discriminate against those meeting participants that were on the other side of the country or the world. People would horse-trade meetings, as in, "who else is on this meeting? Just the two of us? I'll cancel my meeting due to a conflict or personal errand, you want to go grab coffee and just casually chat about work?"
And then at the end of my work day, I'd hang around until the wee hours of the morning at my office desk, so I could have a remote meeting with the team in Taiwan because corporate required that all meetings are required to go through their network infrastructure for security.
There were other reasons I quit, but I was so demotivated by this corporate stupidity. I lasted a grand total of 90 calendar days. I still to this day do not know if I was being screwed with, but everyone I spoke with said "yep, that's how we do things around here, and nobody can get it changed even though we've tried."
I am open to do full time in-office, would prefer not though because frequent commuting kinda gives me the waking up dread after a bit. Tends to be less productive for both me and the company.
Convenient but long term unhealthy.
But more importantly, you are correct - socialization is critical for some people. But that doesn't mean it has to come from your office. The people I know who need that interaction and do not get enough from family or housemates solve it by gathering in groups in their local town and putting together their own working space.
Personally, I find it odd if not downright disturbing that you equate going to an office with long-term health. Most of us find the opposite. We're all different people with different needs, of course, but you really might want to consider all possible options for getting your personal needs met.
This argument is always made by people who like WFH. I don't want another hobby. I want to spend my time building cool shit with cool people. That's just a personal preference. I absolutely must spend a large portion of my day working. To me, it just makes sense to work somewhere that I can be friends with my co-workers. I don't really want to dedicate a lot of extra time to going out and finding friends. This is just a personal preference. There isn't a right answer. Stop trying to tell others how to live.
> Personally, I find it odd if not downright disturbing
Personally, I find it disturbing that you find the GP's very reasonable personal opinion disturbing.
What happens outside of those hours is not relevant. You may as well smoke and pretend it's fine because you eat salad for lunch.
Everyone I know who's a Zoom lover is fairly obviously broken as a person, like all of the social media doomscrollers. They've replaced life with life simulator.
Never say never, there might be stuff that's interesting enough to get me to the office occasionally, but if it's up to me, I'll never be in an office five days a week again.
One of the benefits of working from home is control over my work environment. For me that means a private office with a big standing desk, multiple monitors, room to move around behind the desk with a VR headset on, a Kinesis Advantage 2 ergonomic keyboard, good quality webcam, microphone and lighting for video calls, etc.
None of that was easily obtainable in most non-remote jobs I've worked at. There are other advantages to remote obviously like no commute and living where I like rather than close to my employer's office, eating my own choice of food, etc.
I think in tech circles remote is often conflated with the digital nomad lifestyle which wouldn't suit me at all and as a result many of the aspects that make remote work appealing to me are under emphasized. I would hate having to work on a laptop from a coffee shop on a regular basis and that is not why I would prefer to only work remote jobs. I would hate hot desking in an open office with a laptop just as much.
I dislike working on a laptop for extended periods of time, the screen is too close and the keyboards no match for my preferred mechanical keyboard. If you attach a screen and keyboard, then what's the point? You might as well have a system you can upgrade and fix and typically costs no more.
I love high quality, home made food and it was always a struggle to eat out at the office or bring something to reheat, never loved either to much and it can get unhealthy quick.
Also being older now, having the option for a quick 15 min nap at home is much easier to execute on than in an office.
Also I have birds. It's a lot easier to interact with them as much as they need when working from home than it is when working from an office.
I wouldn’t mind going to the office once / week for workshops or team building, if the commute would be like 10-15 minutes. But this is almost impossible to have.
IMO - work that can be done from home should be done from home, while workshops (or the like) are better in person.
I'm currently doing in-office 2 days per week, which isn't great, but it's less draining than fully remote at least.
I'm hoping that over the next few years things will normalise into some companies being fully remote and some fully on-site, rather than everywhere being "hybrid" (ie. bad for everyone) now. If it stays as it is I can't see myself working in tech much longer.
As a side note, I've found many job boards that have a "remote" filter, but not many that allow you to filter for "no remote".
Obviously forcing people that want to work remotely to come in isn't great either though. That's why I'm hoping that companies will choose one path or the other, and people can self-select into companies with their preferred working arrangement
For new or small companies there are definite advantages to being fully remote (no office expenses, bigger talent pool to draw from) or fully in person (able to get any benefits from everyone being on site and able to more easily hire from the pool of people who prefer 100% on site). If we start to see companies make a clear choice then long term we might see one or the other model win out if the benefits are big enough or maybe they can both coexist as the benefits are context dependent.
Thanks :)
However, I would be much happier with a lot more money without the hassle of moving across country or to a different country, which is only possible via remote
I have zero desire to go back to ab office.
I live in 2 places, have no driver's license. Remote is the only option.
I don't want to waste 2-4 hours a day just traveling with public transportation then spend 8-10 at work to come home with no time left for my life.
Remote only option also gives me ro opportunity to work for non-local companies.
For me it's 100% remote or nothing.
If I commute for 1 hour a day (being optimistic), that's (22*10) almost 10 full days wasted per year.
Time is my most valuable asset, and I'd rather waste it doing things I like
I do miss the socialization though, but having work be our main source of IRL human interaction is toxic and a lock-in factor.
My solution is going to be starting a hackerspace by me I can pop into whenever.
What would the downsides be?
I have a name for this forthcoming hackerspace: The Echo Chamber.
The showers aren't as nice as mine, and i sometime want to cook myself and don't want to bike twenty minutes.
My favorite physical spot would be a "coworking space in walking distance". A few colleagues would be better than alone. (I have a toddler how did you guess?!)
OTOH, when I WFH, I can work in really comfortable conditions with nobody disturbing me, and I make break when I want and need, not when some random guy approaches me and breaks my flow, sitting on an old chair etc. It simply doesn't make sense. I don't believe we will ever go back to the old ways.
If you want to be competitive these days, you have two things to offer: a good salary and full remote (for those who wont it). If you don't offer the latter, your competitiveness falls dramatically and you will never get a lot of valuable talent.
I agree, companies that don't adapt will be loosing talents.