Side note to the remote founders/employers out there:<p>Have you been plagued by applicant fraud? We've found for all of our remote engineering roles, we get 100's of amazing applicants who are all fake (clearly not actually in the US) once you get them on a screening call. They're often reading from a script, broken english, and say strange things like they're born and raised in Texas, yet can't speak fluent English or have a heavy accent.<p>My best guess is it's dev shops overseas who are using an English-speaking "front" person who then delegates the work to other people with the "front" person being the one who joins company meetings, etc.<p>Really frustrating because it's making us have to do silly things like require photo ID verification over video on the first screening call (which I would rather not inconvenience applicants with, but there are just SO many candidates lying about residing in the US).<p>With our most recent role, about 60-70% of applicants were fake ("fake" = candidates who lie about living/residing in the US)
> on HN<p>The most important subtext. There are engineer friends of mine laid off from remote companies that, almost 5 months later, cannot get work. These aren't braindead seatwarmers either. The software engineer market has shifted under our feet DRAMATICALLY. Any software engineer with a position should try to keep it for as long as they possible can.
I've been working remotely for nearly seven years now. I've been able to enjoy all of the typical "firsts" for my youngest two, saved immense amounts of time with no commute, and have been able to pitch in more regarding domestic tasks.<p>I understand and empathize with those that value face-to-face conversations in the office, but for those that don't, remote work is an incredible boon.
Meta: I want us to appreciate that total number of job postings on HN have been steadily falling since 2018 [1] with what appears to be an outlier jump in 2021 (post-pandemic bubble). That seems pretty important...<p>Am I missing some big piece of context here that would make my analysis wrong?<p><a href="https://twitter.com/AndrewKemendo/status/1683877057959272449" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://twitter.com/AndrewKemendo/status/1683877057959272449</a>
It's weird. I feel like you can get more done at an office at times... but then there's also a lot of downtime. Also the commute is always killer.<p>I honestly believe people work better when they get dressed and have some routine. No idea how people can work in their PJs, I'd feel so lazy, lol.<p>However. The commute is killer. Even if you get it down to just 15 min. (which is hard unless you live right next to work) that's 30 min. a day. Prob adds up to well over 100 hrs a year just commuting. I know some ppl do public transport with an audio book or something but for me, that's still 100 hours commuting.<p>If I could teleport to the office, I'd say in person 60/40 split. Since I have to commute, remote all the way except for important kick offs or brainstorming sessions.
Lots of work advertised as 'remote' ends up as several days in the office anyway. Also note that companies that are not 'full remote' may well revert their stance on this and go back to a butts-in-seats arrangement whenever they feel like. Some do this as a way to do lay-offs without announcing them as such. Companies that have a full-remote culture are usually much less likely to do this. A good way to gauge this is if the person that is hiring you is themselves remote during the hiring process.
I left the bay area to a fairly rural location thanks to being able to work remotely. I actually prefer the office or hybrid, but in the grand scheme of things, living here makes me the happiest. So I am very happy that remote is (hopefully) going to stick around.
I don't mind working from home, but I find WFH-accommodating calls exhausting; it feels they take far longer than the equivalent in person discussion, in addition to losing the ad-hoc nature of office conversations. The context switch feels heavier on calls than it does in person. Also, the way daily calls tend to be scheduled (everyone at once, let's hash out everything for everyone so we can then get on with things) means I have to sit in on conversations that are irrelevant to me and for some reason having noise coming out of my headphones means I can't focus on anything else. On the opposite end, I'm now sat in the office while colleagues are having a meeting right next to me and I am able to focus on writing this reply (or maybe coding, if I wasn't procrastinating on HN).<p>Maybe it's my audio setup, but I've tried multiple types of headphones to no avail. I feel the quality of my work (and life) would improve if I could cope better with calls, but despite my efforts, I can't do it. I've removed myself from calls with an adjacent team that mostly don't concern me, and asked them to ping me only if they need me. That saved 30m to 2 hours of my life and saved me from becoming exhausted before the day has properly begun.<p>There's also a problem in that _some_ people prefer WFH because they can slack off more (or have multiple jobs); that means they're not always available and not fully committed, with whatever implications for the people who rely on them and the company/product.<p>Maybe it's down to the pace of the work. Startups, I feel, benefit from in office huddling. Corporations with ample time on their hands could be better suited to WFH.
I enjoy working remotely. It allows me to live somewhere with a reasonable cost of living, and gives me an extra two hours back of my day. It also allows me to take the trash out if I forget and hear the truck, or throw a load of clothes in the laundry.<p>I wouldn't mind working in a office again, but my stipulations would be a pay increase to account for having to live closer to work, and having to pay people to clean up the house a couple times a week
I prefer in office but I don’t see how that’s possible with a family.<p>How would you afford a large enough house in a city center? And otherwise how do you justify two hours of your day to commuting?<p>It just seems like an extreme quality of life hit to be able to work in an office.<p>Am I missing something?
From my job searching experience in the last two months, that can not be possibly true, there are some remote positions but they're definitely not 60%, I would say it's about 15% at the best for software and engineering roles.<p>just do a 'software developer' search on linkedin, it has 156000 jobs, then filter it via 'remote' it drops down to 24400, that's 15%.
Good stuff!<p>> Based on the analysis of the data provided, it is evident that remote work has gained significant popularity within the HackerNews community, particularly in the field of computer science and entrepreneurship.<p>I'm hoping to continue working remote essentially eternally, and I'm glad to see the shift in this direction generally.
There is a fair amount of vitriol towards companies requiring some in office time, assuming anything from BS to evil intent.<p>While I personally like being able to work from home I have seen many cases when bringing the team into the office, at least once or twice a week, removes blockers and helps people sketch out and try prototypes in a way that remote work does not. It is painful, when you are working with hardware in some restricted access lab and something breaks, to hear that the person who can fix it is remote and will come in next Monday. Maybe.<p>So I am not surprised that some employers are pushing RTO from purely business reasons; no chicanery. And as this often carries various costs for employees, this will eventually, in a business cycle or two, get negotiated to a sane state, where both sides are slightly unhappy, but realize that they got a decent deal. My 2c.
I've been remote since 2005. Organizations that pioneered that kind of work didn't do it because they were forced to, so there is a whole different vibe in such companies. It's not seen as a "perk", and there's never anxiety about "RTO".<p>It's never been exactly easy to find the opportunities, but I always managed to. I'm glad now that the baseline of available remote work seems to be permanently higher.
You simply get so much of your life back not having to think about clothing or commuting and being able to throw in the laundry at lunch and get 5o work with a much broader selection of people.
Also, I would post to HN only when hiring remotely, because it's a great source to find remote workers?<p>A better analysis would be job boards in general?
Those who are being forced back are doing it to save their companies CRE utilization rate, and ensure loyalty through behavioral conditioning.<p>I enjoy one or two days at the office when everyone goes in to there but beyond that there isn’t much “spontaneous” productivity.
It’s been pretty hard here in the U.K. to find a new fully remote role with an established company. Most big players seem to have moved back to in office.
Obviously this can only count jobs that <i>say</i> they are remote, I've seen many complaints about remote jobs that turn out to require significant time in an office location.<p>--<p>Personally I'd prefer not to WFH mostly. While it is very useful to be able to (I have for a day or two here & there for years, and over the last year for a few days at a time while looking after ill parents and a terminal pet) but I hate it full time. Partly it is because I don't have room for a dedicated office and I don't like my work and personal space to mix to readily, and partly it is the contact thing (I'm uncomfortable on phones and video calls, always have been, and some people don't seem to be willing to mail or IM me instead when that would be most efficient by far), and partly I find myself getting more and more distractable the longer I'm working away (this may be largely due to the matter of having no space for a dedicated office space).<p>I'd rather leave tech than work full time remote, so you might find me stacking shelves in a few years!<p>We are officially hybrid, but for two or three days of any given week there are only a few people in the office, often not people I'm working directly with, so I'm effectively remote just in an office not at home, so some of the bad parts of both options. I'm not sure if this is any better, and I'm seriously contemplating what my future options may be – those shelves that need stacking are looking oddly attractive, or more practically perhaps retraining as an accountant or something.<p>Or maybe this is just the midlife crisis rambling!<p>Or maybe, as I've been accused of a few times, I'm a corporate shill here to extol the virtues of office space.
I think it's pretty cool that there's more alignment here between what many people wanted and what's available. I think especially for places with long commutes this is a huge efficiency. Personally, I live a short bike ride in SF from work and we're all in-office and I prefer that.<p>And it's really helped with democratization, too. With Turing and Deel and so on, you can hire internationally once you're ready to work with remote folk. It has been interesting to me that I've heard more about Eastern Europe, Africa, and India for this rather than South America.<p>South America has a massive timezone advantage, but why so few remote workers from there?
The Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2023 also had some data on this: <a href="https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#section-employment-work-environment" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#section-employment-wor...</a><p>Hybrid (some remote, some in-person): 42.18%<p>Remote: 41.41%<p>In-person: 16.41%<p>I personally hope that remote work won't die out due to it being a good work environment for me personally (office building value be damned), but that split seems reasonable. Hopefully with the hybrid setups being accommodating enough to allow for someone to be fully remote, or fully in-person, depending on life circumstances and preferences.
For smaller companies, it is a no brainer. Why spend so much renting multiple geographical offices when you can have just 1 HQ and workers available in all timezones.<p>Save on rent, spend on eng and product. Profit?
Not only do I despise remote working, I'm leaving the industry entirely as a direct result of working remotely, in favor of getting a law degree.<p>I'm just beyond sick and tired of my default mode being, "Stare at screen to solve problems."<p>I want to work with people, solve problems with people, help people. None of that is what most engineers in software prefer, and I'm tired of trying to force it on them for the apparently insignificant reason that it's highly effective.
Does anyone else think that WeWork, as a concept, still has potential? WFH has a lot of benefits for the employee, but it's clear that many employers still desire some face-to-face contact. WeWork was already going downhill pre-pandemic, but had it survived I wonder if it may have been the primary service for small/hybrid companies.<p>I am aware that WW had it's own business issues to deal with, but it's still salvageable, right?
I love working remotely!<p>I also feel like finding a place to work remotely requires luck, patience, and due diligence.<p>The first hurdle is figuring out if you like remote work or not. Covid was a great way for me to try out remote work and realize I love it. I'm not sure what to do outside of that. I imagine it must be awful to prepare for an interview and get a remote job only to realize that working remotely just isn't for you and now you have to do the whole process over again.<p>After that, it's finding a good place to work out of. I'm fortunate enough to have a home office that is set up the exact way I want it to be. I can control the height of my desk, my lighting, and my temperature. I don't think there's any office I'd prefer over my home office, but I also know that not everyone is able to have that same experience.<p>Finally, there's the company, it's culture, and the team you are on. Is your company remote first? Is your team remote first? How do you work together? How do you have "water cooler" chats? I think the place you work for can really make or break your remote working experience.
I've been interviewing for a two dev positions, and from the employer side here is what I'm seeing:<p>1. 31% of applicants are dev shop / staffing co lead generation / fraudulent applications. This is pretty normal. I'm sure the that this works enough to make it work for the people selling contract developers.<p>2. 17% of applicants cannot work in the US. We disclose you must be legal to work in the US and what visas are acceptable.<p>3. 19% can pass code test on senior developer on the first try, 28% pass if given a re-do. Code test is part q&a and part write a function from requirements.<p>4. 22% of junior devs can pass code test on the first try and just 23% pass if given a a re-do. Code test is part q&a and part write a function from requirements.<p>5. 87% junior devs are willing to relocate to work in the office. 95% of senior devs want remote.<p>6. Of the developers who pass the test, 76.4% end up passing the tech interview, which means the decision is really about what additional skills, experiences and abilities they bring with them.<p>Takeways: about 50% fraud/non employable. 20% can actually pass a very simple code test.
That's an awesome statistic!<p>I've been working remotely from Ohio for most of the last 15 years. (I did one year on site in the Bay area in the middle - I'm glad I did it, but I was also happy to move back home.)<p>For a little while, after my daughter was born, I rented a private office and biked to it most days. That was absolutely fantastic. But, we've since moved into a bigger house and I'm back to working from a home office. Some occasional interruptions from family, but overall it's pretty good.<p>For a long time, wanting to stay remote just meant that I couldn't apply to the vast majority of jobs. Not so much any more.<p>Fortunately I don't see myself looking for a new job anytime soon - I'm now at a company that was aiming for "remote equal" even before the pandemic, and my current team is fully remote - but it makes me happy that if I did need to find a new role today, there would be a lot a lot more options than any other job search I've ever done in the past.
I am not a SV-based or US-based employee, and unfortunately I have to consider myself pretty lucky to be working remotely, and am therefore more stuck in an otherwise terrible job simply because I can't give up remote work.<p>Outside SV or some US hubs, a lot of average workplaces seem to try hard to get people to come back into the office, regardless of the requirements of the job itself. It might have started with banks and governments, but recent incentives and pushes from cities and the real-estate market can sometimes push people to go back into offices "to save businesses".<p>The pandemic might have offered some profound shifts, but not fundamental ones unfortunately. So I stay at my workplace for the time being, trading away some mental health for the benefit of remote work - and I suspect that not only I am not alone in this, I am probably more privileged than many (most?) who didn't even have a choice.
I'm at my best at writing (code, text, everything) when I'm working remotely. The option to sit down and focus in the apartment all to myself has done wonders to my code and ability to solve problems.<p>However I'm still a bit unsure how this affects my career. I feel like conventional corporate success depends more on your relationships and politics than the quality of your code and writing. It's really hard to build quality relationships and see the politics and status games people are playing in my company by being a remote worker. I met most of my current network by sitting in the same office with them.<p>I wonder if this is everyone else's experience too, or maybe I'm just missing something obvious, like scheduling more face-to-face meetings with people.
Remote software engineer in the EU here.<p>Remote has been fantastic, to extend our pool of potential customers/employers. Not working in an open space, not being disturbed by pointless red-tapers and middle managers is a productivity boost. Not losing time and energy in commutes as well.<p>I can see one serious drawback with pure remote: it's a cumbersome way to mentor junior developpers. In big companies which maintain a balance of junior/senior staff, and try to make the former grow, it's a legitimate issue. In start-ups, which expect you to hit the ground running, and don't have an army of managers to keep busy, remote should be the norm.
People love to cite ad-hoc conversations and overhearing conversations to build context as in office advantages. These are true but they also include downsides. Constant distractions and interruptions.
Nice! I recently interviewed for a job which was a 45 minute commute - after driving out for the interview I just felt sad about potentially driving for 6+ hours a week after working remote for 4 years.
This statistic makes a lot of sense, and can only expect it will keep going up. Pre-pandemic companies suffered a lot from the lack of talent/talent war in their geography. Now they can hire the best person in the world for a given role, or at least in their timezone (I believe in the power of synchronous work to a certain extent).<p>If this is happening in the middle of a VC downturn, imagine how it's going to be once we're back to good times.
Reads like it was aided by AI (LLM) in the writing.<p>No description of how the analysis was done. So I have to imagine that jobs are extremely simply counted, not deduped. So a job listed in-office or in-city, but also listed as remote, would be 2 jobs and this would result in 50% remote jobs available. Whereas this is actually 100% remote. So I imagine the 69% is an undercount, if going by my assumption of simplistic counting.
A related submission I made yesterday [0]:
<i>Ask HN: Should employers pay a fine for superfluous work-from-office policies?</i><p>I think some single purpose poltical party or political action committee should take that issue and run with it. It's a worthy goal.<p>[0]<a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36852462">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36852462</a>
Hi,<p>I was working remote from 2007 till 2021 for an US company as an independent international contractor. Now I'm in EU and I'm trying to find a remote US job during 2022 and this year. No luck. It looks like a dead end. Looks like nobody in US needs an experienced remote developer. Something is really changed a lot. It's so sad.
I've been working remotely since 2012. I even travelled around Asia for a year in 2013. This is all contracting/consulting work. I never told my client at the time that I was in Asia and had to work until 3am most nights.<p>Back then, less than 1% of the jobs I found were remote. This is why I got into contracting in the first place.
My ideal remote work would be:
Be available for meetings that may impact your work, if not work when ever you want but must meet project goals. For example, I'm most productive 10am - 3pm and 9pm - 2am. But I make do with "office hours" that have no bearing on my project dead lines.
People should get paid for their commute. With compensation for gas and wear and tear on the car.<p>Support for return to the office would vaporize instantly.<p>Less pollution, less traffic, less wear on the roads, lives saved and injuries avoided.<p>You want people to come into the office? Pay for the privilege.
I'd personally be OK with hybrid or (near) full-time back in the office if housing wasn't so expensive near cities.<p>WFH has worked well for me but I can tell some of my coworkers really need to go back into the office now and then to help them focus. lol
Still really hard to get callbacks for technical PM and / or technical PM roles in general even with 4-5yrs of prior exp.<p>Maybe my resume sucks but I've been surviving off of a few consulting gigs. Really hoping things improve within a year.
I wish the editor (or team) did a better job in proofreading their article. The multiple spelling mistakes and grammar mistakes makes me question the credibility of their ability to report.
I don't understand the smugness of Software Engineers' belief that pure remote is the only option. It seems short-sighted.<p>If everything is remote then companies don't care where they hire from. Whats the difference between you and an engineer from South America? Maybe you're a better engineer and maybe you are a better communicator in English. How much better? When do the scales tip? Why hire an engineer for over 200k who's remote in Wisconsin when you can hire one who's remote in Peru for $75k?<p>It might be better for you right now, but what about in 3 years or 10 years?