Slashdot Mirror
Are Remote Offices Becoming The New Normal? (backchannel.com)
"As companies tighten their purse strings, they're spreading out their hires -- this year, and for years to come," reports Backchannel, citing interviews with executives and other workplace analysts. mirandakatz writes:
Once a cost-cutting strategy, remote offices are becoming the new normal: from GitHub to Mozilla and Wordpress, more and more companies are eschewing the physical office in favor of systems that allow employees to live out their wanderlust. As workplaces increasingly go remote, they're adopting tools to keep employees connected and socially fulfilled -- as Mozilla Chief of Staff David Slater tells Backchannel, "The wiki becomes the water cooler."
The article describes budget-conscious startups realizing they can cut their overhead and choose from talent located anywhere in the world. And one group of analysts calculated that the number of telecommuting workers doubled between 2005 and 2014, reporting that now "75% of employees who work from home earn over $65,000 per year, putting them in the upper 80th percentile of all employees, home or office-based." Are Slashdot's readers seeing a surge in telecommuting? And does anybody have any good stories about the digital nomad lifestyle?
The article describes budget-conscious startups realizing they can cut their overhead and choose from talent located anywhere in the world. And one group of analysts calculated that the number of telecommuting workers doubled between 2005 and 2014, reporting that now "75% of employees who work from home earn over $65,000 per year, putting them in the upper 80th percentile of all employees, home or office-based." Are Slashdot's readers seeing a surge in telecommuting? And does anybody have any good stories about the digital nomad lifestyle?
More likely they tend to produce what you ask for. India has turned out a lot of people with IT credentials who are not very competent. But so has the US. I remember during the .com era working with a lot of people who made a big salary and weren't contributing very much. There are great people to hire in India. There are terrible people to hire. The difference is that, usually, in the US, we higher employees directly and screen them carefully because we're going to invest in them. In India, US companies say they need ten people and get ten bodies. If they don't work out, you can sever ties at no great loss, so the vetting isn't as good. I work with great people from India who are full-time employees. If you hire a random outsourcing sweat-labor shop, you'll get what you pay for. Of course a guy in India still costs 1/5 what I do, so I can't blame anybody for wanting to get the lower price. Especially if they can do the same work.
Much of the problem is not because of culture, but because of ... telecommuting. I have worked for several companies that had many of their employees working remotely, and they were all dysfunctional. Whether those remote employees were in India or somewhere else in America, didn't really matter. Telecommuting for just one or two days a week can work okay, be even then it depends on the employee. Many people treat their "work-from-home-day" as a day off. My neighbor works for Yahoo, and used to work from home every Friday. He would usually start mowing his lawn by 8am, so I was happy when Marissa cancelled telecommuting.