Coronavirus

My company has been strangely resistant to letting people work from home in the past. At the onset of the pandemic in early March, they announced everyone was 100% work from home. We're a software company, so I think our productivity actually increased. Lots of young developers don't mind coding all day or at strange hours.

However, when employees started suggesting things like working remotely in different locations, that old mentality came back and the execs tried imposing some rule that you had to work from "home," not just anywhere that had wifi. It's a really weird position to take, and hard to defend, in my opinion. I'm sure that once they decide to open the office again (who knows when) there will be a lot of people who would rather just stay home. It will be interesting to see how that develops.

Gregarius wrote: However, when employees started suggesting things like working remotely in different locations, that old mentality came back and the execs tried imposing some rule that you had to work from "home," not just anywhere that had wifi. It's a really weird position to take, and hard to defend, in my opinion.

During this pandemic, in theory, the advantage of having people work from home is that they can properly socially distance and be less likely to catch and spread the virus. Working from just anywhere that has wifi would seem to be the opposite of socially distancing and completely defeat the point. Now if we weren't in a pandemic, it seems perfectly reasonable that an employee could work remotely from anywhere that had wifi, aside from potential security concerns, ranging from getting hacked through an insecure wifi connection to somebody looking over your shoulder and seeing confidential information.

Company attitude towards WFH will certainly vary. In some cases, it will allow them a wide talent pool and at lower wages. I'm not talking about offshoring, but a tech company based in say the Bay area can pay someone less if they WFH in say Asheville NC vs the cost of living where that company is based driving a higher salary.

One thing already happening is that real estate prices in rural resort areas, already high, are going even higher due to people fleeing the city and WFH there, like ski condos etc. Makes it an already tougher housing market even worse for the locals.

On the other hand, I am sure some companies are counting down the days til they can reconvene people in the office . My old company is probably in this bucket as the CEO is a control freak who wants to keep an eye on people.

Facebook had some official policy pinning pay to remote work COL during the pandemic iirc.

Gary Sax wrote: Facebook had some official policy pinning pay to remote work COL during the pandemic iirc.

Not quite. Facebook offered employees/new hires who opted for permanent remote contracts COL adjustments. No such adjustments were made for non-remote workers who are currently working away from their home offices.

www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/0...rmanent-remote-work/

My employer has been good about WFH, and I think will carry this forward. It doesn't work for everyone, but it can work for some and why not allow it? If the work gets done, who gives a shit?

I think offshoring is coming back, at least it is at where I work. They laid off a couple hundred workers here in the States, for "rebalancing". They will be replaced with close to the same personnel expense's worth of offshore workers (mostly India, some from Vietnam and Mexico). The notion is that one $100K+ US developer can be replaced with four offshore developers. My company is on the auction block, and from what we were told, possible purchasers thought that for the line of products we license/sell. we were too US-worker heavy. So this "rebalancing" wasn't even the result of some Gartner Group study or some MBA hire's idea; this was the brainchild of some C-level fuckass who thought he was embarrassed in a sales meeting by some other C-level fuckass who got this idea from watching TV.

All of the Indian developers that I've worked with are good at their jobs, and these are permanent hires, not contractors. C++ developers (raises hand) are thin on the ground overseas, but Java developers aren't. You can also easily find workers overseas that will work 4pm-12am to overlap US timezones.

And now I'm permanently working from home. In my particular case, Covid might have merely accelerated a process that was already happening. And I like it, even though I miss my friends and coworkers (most of whom got laid off anyway). But I think this is writing on the wall for a lot of people who can work from home - if I can replace someone with their opposite number in Pune and save $20K, why wouldn't I do it?

Literally, a First World problem.

My company has a full offshore site in India with full time employees, and it's a bit of a struggle. We have two offshore resources on my team (10 non offshore), and their productivity is rather poor. It's not work ethic, but skill seems lower and the complete lack of business knowledge in our systems is killer.

I could see someone uptop making a decision to gut our local workforce, but it would be disasterous for them.

There are several Indians on my team (around half have citizenship) and the differences in culture are interesting and shocking.

I've heard some appalling stories surrounding sexism and poor treatment of pets/animals.

We had a woman who had never driven back home and had somehow gotten a car. She got it work but couldn't park it (not parallel park, just park in a regular spot), so my boss had to go outside and help her.

Although, I think a lot of Indian males don't drive there either. It takes hours to travel very short distances due to virtually no traffic laws and insane congestion.

I've had a lot of interesting conversations around arranged marriage as well. Six people on my team (out of 10, counting me), had an arranged marriage and never met their spouse beforehand.

Pretty wild.

Apologies for derailing the thread. Slow day at work.

ubarose wrote: It wasn't about people doing their work at Starbucks. It was about people wanting to work from somewhere beyond commuting distance - like singles wanting to bubble up with friends or relatives at a home out of state so they wouldn't be living in complete isolation for months, or people wanting to go stay with elderly or disabled relatives to care for them so they wouldn't have to be exposed to outside help. Some employers where dicks about it because, OMG, what if we need you to come into the office immediately and you are two days drive away, but it was mostly just because employers have control issues.

I totally saw this when I was still in Ballston near DC. The skyscraper I was in catered to young single professionals. As soon as their lease agreements expired none of them renewed it and moved in with family remotely. It was a bonanza for us since they just left their furniture in the trash/loading dock as they left. A coworker and friend from another agency had to stay in DC but ended up moving to their family estate up North when school closed doors. We just stored all the good pieces in their apartment until we closed on our house. The previously full skyscraper was relatively empty when we left in the summer.

We see the same thing with IT contractors here in the State Department and those are US citizens who have security clearances. The help desk is filled with young newly graduated kids who lack experience. After three years they all jump ship and move to other positions so it is a never ending parade of folks who at best kinda know what to do. For us IT professionals overseas who often do not have permissions to do certain things, but know exactly what needs to be done it is a utterly frustrating experience especially as tickets bounce from one office to the next when in the opening request we told them exactly where to assign the ticket. I do everything in my power to avoid that help desk.

For my saga, it looks like the Chinese government is constantly changing their entry rules. Now I can no longer get my pre-flight blood test and nasal swab here in VA, but have to do it in LA since that is where the flight departs the US. And in a lab pre-chosen by the Chinese Consulate there. So I am changing the flight to LA to be sooner and will be in a hotel in LA for three days. Seems to me that doing that increases the opportunities to be infected in one of the hardest hit states at the moment. Since I am on mandatory leave all the additional costs are covered, but some of my peers left on "personal" travel so they are going to have to eat a bunch of costs. By personal I mean visiting parents who are likely to die before they see them again after being literally trapped in China for ten months.

As for our time in the woods of VA things are going great. The gaming table is done (5 foot by 7 foot) and the inaugural game was an Imperial Assault campaign that we were able to leave out for a whole week. (I have pictures don't know where to upload them). Made snowmen, chopped wood and cleared land that I plan to plant a few fruit trees in the future, installed a mud room sink that someone was throwing out, hard wired every device that can take it in the house (two TV's, XBOX, Rokus, etc), built a ping pong paddle/ball rack and mounted it on the wall, played ping pong daily, a bunch of game pass games, exercised a bunch, and generally having the best vacation of my life. I think what I really enjoy about this place is I have the opportunity to be creative and do constructive things. Whereas city living in major cities just feels like an empty life of consumption. Watching TV, reading books, buying things all created by others. Sitting in the same living room with my wife and two kids every night. Here I often don't know exactly where they are at all times. They might be reading in their rooms, out playing with sticks, playing ping pong, in the game room playing IA skirmish. It's FANTASTIC!!! I am so ready for retirement so I can hobby farm, but I have until summer 2022 when I can take DC assignments for six years until I hit the minimum age.

Edit: add pictures?
Table
Building table with proper foot wear
Snowman (one of three)
Ping pong holder
Playing with an ax

Table looks great!

Gary Sax wrote: Table looks great!

Agreed. I like how it has only a slight recess vs the overly deep ones in the ( now defunct) Geek Chic tables.