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Comment by anovikov | Hacker News Reader

Why people don't tell the definite and super obvious reason for that: people will scam their employers! I know many people who work fully remote. All of them have 3-4 "full time" jobs, and just do the minimum necessary on all of them to not get fired, or outsource work. Making a good Valley salary in a place where rent is $400 a month. Good? For them yes, but a company that allows remote work is just making a mistake: it WILL be scammed by the vast majority of people who work there.

High-level employees need collaboration and frequent meetings making remote work impossible (execs), low-level ones can't be trusted because they have nothing to lose.

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Are you saying that on-site employees don't "scam" their employers? This is non-sense and is the exact reason why remote work is viewed so negatively. Remote workers (just like on-site) have goals and expectations. They are also likely on company chats, answering phone calls, video meetings, etc. If the expected quantity of work is not getting done, I think this is a problem with this employee and should be looked into. Don't cast a blanket statement over every remote working because this is not the norm.

If they meet expectations, how is that a scam? "Full time job" is a weird idea for salaried workers, anyway. They're paid $X to produce $(X + Y) value. Hours spent producing that value shouldn't mean much to the employer.

As a manager, it's extremely difficult to figure out how much work can be reasonably and sustainably achieved by a particular person/role. Performing this estimation and planning is part of the inherent transaction costs in working with contractors.

The perceived benefit of hiring a full-time employee is that they will strive to be as effective as they can be in achieving the firm's goals filling the entire work-day. Obviously this is not quite as easy as that, but if you hire good people who share your vision and treat them well, then it gets quite close. And this is equally true for remote employees.

Very very few people do this. If people are unproductive, they'll be just as unproductive in the office as they would be at home.

No they are very productive. Just work for several people at once and eventually turn from 1 super productive person into 3-4 barely acceptable ones. They also gain job security this way. And get paid way more.

Kind of curious here -- do you mean they're making valley level salaries doing remote work and basically "available" to all four companies at the same time and just juggle tasks as they come in? What happens if they double book a meeting? What do they do at standup?

Not double booking meetings. Minimize communication. Try being as obscure as possible. And yes, ofc individual salaries are not Valley level. It's more like 3-4x$4000 a month. In a poor place where average salary is $500 and average coder salary about $2500 maybe. And where girls pay a lot of money for courses "how to get a relationship with a coder" (no joking!)

Sorry, I mean what happens if there two mandatory meetings (one from each company) that the employee has no control over?

A-choo! "I choo"se to attend one, and sick out of the other.

> No they are very productive.

Then what's the problem? There are tons of "barely acceptable" people in offices everywhere. As long as they are not bad enough to be fired, the company benefits from them.

Figuring out which employees are bad enough that they should be let go is quite costly, as is the resulting churn. You'd rather not hire those people in the first place, but once you've hired them you may be stuck with them for quite a while. So it can be a legitimate concern.

one of the virtues of remote work is that workers can switch work instantly - if the law allows it , of course

So they are either incredibly productive and meeting the expectations of employer, or they aren't and they will be let go? If you're superhuman and can do that much work and don't have any legal obligations against it, that doesn't seem like an issue. Though these people are clearly very special, or their employer doesn't expect much, but if the employer is happy, I guess that's on them.

There are programmers who can easily replace 3-4 and even more average programmers. How they structure their time is not your concern. As an employer you should have reasonable expectations in regards to what you should get from particular employee / contractor and if those expectations are met then the rest is not your business. If they're not met then the employee should be shown virtual door out.

If however the employer can not see whether they get what they pay for without employee sitting in the office then said employer has bigger problems. And these employers will be scammed / fallen victims of their management incompetence anyways disregarding of in office / out of office style.

Myself, I am both Employer and subcontractor since 2000. There was not a single time for me when I was in doubt as an employer whether I am getting my money worth. And as subcontractor I value my reputation and more then happy to present whoever hires me with stellar real references.

As a subcontractor I normally develop rather large pieces upon which we agree upfront and there is rarely need for me to report daily details / progress. 2 weeks to 1 month cycles are more normal.

If your rent is $400 a month why would you bother to have 3 jobs paying Silicon Valley salary? It doesn't make sense at all.

If rent is $400 and you are making 120k a year, most certainly your salary is over 5 average salaries. Why would you work all day to get 15-20 average salaries? You can work 2-3 hours and already afford all the stuff you want.

You need to work on improving your social relationship. Seriously. What you're saying is not even close to common.

And if you see it every day among the people you know, you really need to find better associations.

Those people are losers, they are not the norm, and you should close contact with them.

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