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Brussels, Belgium
Work
UX Engineer, Product Manager, sometimes Designer at Self
I had several recruiters tell me that they're doing remote until pandemic is over and then it's mandatory office attendance. Which seems bonkers to me.
Yeah, I turned down a LinkedIn recruiter for this.
It'd be an Uber or a bus and then a walk along a busy road with no sidewalks each way to be in office. Saying that COVID might make them more apt to accept a remote worker or remote 3 days a week doesn't fix that all the other staff is in office, they have no culture of remote work outside of pandemic panic, and getting to the office would be expensive or get me hit by a car.
you have to understand that many managerial jobs exists because of human bodies are in the office, is also not the same to say that someone manage 10 physical workers that 10 "virtual" ones; many times also clients pay according to how many devs are made available to them, physical ones. So "virtual" devs may do the same or more but you'll have to convince many layers of people to it, and many of them have no idea about tech let alone programming. When everything go remote, a bunch of managerial jobs will be or be seen as irrelevant and disappear, those people will fight against remote work as is to be expected. We have to consider also that some dev jobs HAVE to be in person, are you gonna add their extra pay to make those jobs more desirable? or will you cut the remote salaries?, is not that simple
The jobs that require in-person attendance at all times should be the exception. If they're the exceptions, their salary calculations should be different. Same as with jobs that require odd hours, weekend work, etc.
At least, that's my view on it.
I think remote managers are still super important but the nature of their work changes in remote environments. Idk if we'll see managers disappear as a result of moving to remote but I do think their job will change
that's my point in the before-time if you had 30 physical devs with salary X, and now you only have 10 physical and 20 remote you have 2 choices: raise the salary of those 10, having a higher net cost or lower those 20, lowering it. Specially now that the job market is depressed the employers have better leverage (of course it depends on the specific market, it may vary, but as a overall view), so is no wonder why companies would chose the later. I think, in time, physical employments will become a premium and will get the extra payment but until remote is the norm and the economy bounces back, I don't see that happening.
And of course some remote managers are important, but you are talking about a perfect world, without bureaucracy, without redundant job positions and useless jobs and employees, I have to tell, those do exists, and often they are the ones that define things, and sometimes for reasons like having more employees to be in charge of, keep high the budget of certain department to not lose "power" in the organization. We would like it to be always about engineering and technical reasons but more often than not egos and politics are more influential. Just ask yourself how many 8hr jobs actually need to be 8hr jobs, no matter how long it takes to do the actual work many have to just stay en the job to make the hours, in some places they are starting to realize that is not necessary and changing accordingly but not as fast as it should and definitely not without opposition.
Oddly enough my company seems to be going the other way. Before the lockdown there was absolutely no remote work unless it was just you putting in a bunch of overtime. But now at least a few of our middle management folks are pushing for a remote friendly policy. Partially because they might be able to put off building a multi-million dollar addition to our campus. Which is the crazy thing to me. I would think the executives would love that idea.
Full-time freelancer; CTO Inertialbox --
Over 10 years in software engineering; Background in Robotics; Rails/Node JS & DevOps/SaaS/PaaS Architect; open for consulting and freelance opportunities.
Education
EEE & MSc (Dist) Mechatronics King's College London, UK
My rule of thumb is not to take any remote roles for less than £70,000/- and if any recruiters/etc respond with such a tardy attitude, I'll mention it and look for something else. I've committed well over 20 years to my craft and I feel I'm being paid for the experience I bring to any role.
Simply make sure to look for the right opportunities and you can get there. Having said that, whilst base-pay is not everything, there are those at FANG earning well into the £250k territory if not more. Those are bay-area rates though, so to be expected.
This lockdown has given me sometime to revisit my love of dangling-pointers by taking a serious look at Rust, and here's something I'm tinkering on github.com/bsodmike/sentinel-rust
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I've been turning down more offers in this past month than ever before 🤷♂️
Obviously all remote, with one really funny episode where I was told "If you want remote you'll have to accept a pay cut though". Big lol.
I had several recruiters tell me that they're doing remote until pandemic is over and then it's mandatory office attendance. Which seems bonkers to me.
Yeah, I turned down a LinkedIn recruiter for this.
It'd be an Uber or a bus and then a walk along a busy road with no sidewalks each way to be in office. Saying that COVID might make them more apt to accept a remote worker or remote 3 days a week doesn't fix that all the other staff is in office, they have no culture of remote work outside of pandemic panic, and getting to the office would be expensive or get me hit by a car.
you have to understand that many managerial jobs exists because of human bodies are in the office, is also not the same to say that someone manage 10 physical workers that 10 "virtual" ones; many times also clients pay according to how many devs are made available to them, physical ones. So "virtual" devs may do the same or more but you'll have to convince many layers of people to it, and many of them have no idea about tech let alone programming. When everything go remote, a bunch of managerial jobs will be or be seen as irrelevant and disappear, those people will fight against remote work as is to be expected. We have to consider also that some dev jobs HAVE to be in person, are you gonna add their extra pay to make those jobs more desirable? or will you cut the remote salaries?, is not that simple
The jobs that require in-person attendance at all times should be the exception. If they're the exceptions, their salary calculations should be different. Same as with jobs that require odd hours, weekend work, etc.
At least, that's my view on it.
I think remote managers are still super important but the nature of their work changes in remote environments. Idk if we'll see managers disappear as a result of moving to remote but I do think their job will change
that's my point in the before-time if you had 30 physical devs with salary X, and now you only have 10 physical and 20 remote you have 2 choices: raise the salary of those 10, having a higher net cost or lower those 20, lowering it. Specially now that the job market is depressed the employers have better leverage (of course it depends on the specific market, it may vary, but as a overall view), so is no wonder why companies would chose the later. I think, in time, physical employments will become a premium and will get the extra payment but until remote is the norm and the economy bounces back, I don't see that happening.
And of course some remote managers are important, but you are talking about a perfect world, without bureaucracy, without redundant job positions and useless jobs and employees, I have to tell, those do exists, and often they are the ones that define things, and sometimes for reasons like having more employees to be in charge of, keep high the budget of certain department to not lose "power" in the organization. We would like it to be always about engineering and technical reasons but more often than not egos and politics are more influential. Just ask yourself how many 8hr jobs actually need to be 8hr jobs, no matter how long it takes to do the actual work many have to just stay en the job to make the hours, in some places they are starting to realize that is not necessary and changing accordingly but not as fast as it should and definitely not without opposition.
Oddly enough my company seems to be going the other way. Before the lockdown there was absolutely no remote work unless it was just you putting in a bunch of overtime. But now at least a few of our middle management folks are pushing for a remote friendly policy. Partially because they might be able to put off building a multi-million dollar addition to our campus. Which is the crazy thing to me. I would think the executives would love that idea.
My rule of thumb is not to take any remote roles for less than £70,000/- and if any recruiters/etc respond with such a tardy attitude, I'll mention it and look for something else. I've committed well over 20 years to my craft and I feel I'm being paid for the experience I bring to any role.
Simply make sure to look for the right opportunities and you can get there. Having said that, whilst base-pay is not everything, there are those at FANG earning well into the £250k territory if not more. Those are bay-area rates though, so to be expected.
This lockdown has given me sometime to revisit my love of dangling-pointers by taking a serious look at Rust, and here's something I'm tinkering on github.com/bsodmike/sentinel-rust