It seems like every day there is a new article on Business Insider or Forbes or Fortune about how remote workers are the scourge of all things workplace related. Almost feels like a semi coordinated push from executives (especially those with commercial real estate interests in one form or another) to pay to have stories in these outlets to shift the hive mind in a direction that favors them.
I have a conspiracy theory that collusion is exactly what's going on here, and not just with the "back to the office" push, but also with how kafkaesque the hiring process has gotten.
With remote work, an employee can work multiple jobs simultaneously, and they're unbeholden to any one employer, what with how easy it is to apply and switch to a new one. So how do companies combat this? They introduce friction at the very start of the pipeline - hiring. Multiple rounds of oral exams, take-home exams, leetcode questions that can only be answered with weeks or months of deliberate studying (something an already-employed person has little time for) - flaming hoops galore. They'll still compete with one another, sure, but they've found it's in their best interests if they all agree to hire in this kind of fraudulent manner.
Or, it could jsut be that middle managers are extroverted and extremely desperate for social engagement, like in meetings because they have no life outside of work. Harsh, I know. but, several friends i have that are managers admitted to me that they felt the covid lock downs were hard on them because they couldn't see or interact with anyone in person.
It is plausible, but at least the medium and small fish in the pond seem to be doing it out of typical human stupidity rather than a conscious effort. Or worse, they try to imitate the big fish.
I’m all for hiring employees without interviews. Most of them will quit their job, work for me one day, then stress out because they didn’t match.
So, out of respect, I do perform tests.
But some employees who seem perfectly good during tests come into the company with plenty of grammar mistakes, then I notice that they only master the surface of everything and they get fired.
I should charge employees for passing my exams, since it lowers the risk of misadventures. I’m so tired of this “Employers are evil” trope often suffixed with “because going to a coding interview is like working for free.”
I should do lengthy tests just to filter out stingy employees. (and I talk as someone who gave a 78% raise to one employee who’s been here 10 months, and 30% to the other).
Or you could very well hire them for a few days (on holidays at their ob or on unpaid leave for contractors), see how it goes and take it from there.
I don't think employers are evil, they don't get value out of the interview process. I would say both employer and prospect employee gets a similar value out of it (the chance of hiring / being hired).
I think employers (or better, their middle managers in charge or recruitment) are mostly stupid and inefficient.
Working together for a bit is the only way of actually checking if someone will be fine doing the job or not.
Demonstrating some random knowledge is not a good predictor of success. I worked with people who passed leetcoding and were trash and people who didn't who were amazing.
I found out about their qualities only after a few weeks of work (not even full time, even just on and off).
As someone who does hiring, I can say that (at least my organization) has not conspired with any other company. I suspect what you're seeing is the result of what I'm seeing: it is extremely challenging to assess a candidate remotely.
I'm not saying all of the things you mentioned are a good solution to that problem, but I do believe they are how some organizations are (poorly) attempting to solve it.
We have now hired 3 (that we know of) people who turned out to be different from the person we interviewed. I suspect one other, and one of my colleagues suspects a fifth. The is a problem for several reasons.
We have talked about many of the ideas that you mentioned, and tried some, but ultimately decided that they are too burdensome. So, now we only hire remote people in cities where a long term employee already works and they can attend the interview in person to verify the person being interviewed in not cheating or getting assistance in any way. Our solution isn't perfect, but it's what we're doing until we can find a better solution.
I don't, but I wouldn't judge someone for it unless they were violating a legally enforceable contract. People work multiple in-person jobs all the time to survive. Nothing in my mind is different just because some people do it with remote jobs.
> people work multiple in-person jobs all the time to survive.
but the difference here is the concurrency. In-person jobs require the person, so you cannot do two at the same time.
But a remote job, where the employer assumes you have their job at full attention, might be short-changed if you were to work two remote jobs at the same time. That is, of course, unless you work remote for two employers, in two different time zones (so basically the same as the two in-person jobs).
I don't see the issue as long as they get the work done right. If they don't and aren't fired, the company has bigger issues than people working multiple jobs. If they do the work well, then practicing arbitrage between the employer's expectations and the realistic time requirements with automation is just doing what the employer does from the other direction. I'm sure the employer has used technology and outsourcing to get rid of at least as many jobs as multi-jobbing employees take using the same technology.
Not everyone just accepts the promise of automation to free us from tedium is lost to ever-growing corporate balance sheets.
I have done the concurrent remote job thing for 15 years now. I'm open about it and nobody seems to really care. I expect they would prefer my full attention, but they also know I have another job right there, so they're pressured to work with my needs so long as they want to benefit from the value I provide in kind.
I do think like you, but working in many places at the same time would not be possible in many countries, just because of tax declaration.
But yes, I think it cannot be coincidence all those articles pushing the back to the office, when (at least what I have seen) the productivity has undoubtedly raised.
A company could see you are working at multiple places, but the tax authorities could say you can't work multiple full time jobs maybe? In the us I bet you could just do it. You'd have opt out of those horrible places where companies want to share your salary info. I really can't believe that is actually legal still, even though I know it is since my own salary history was mostly there. Little companies like startups I have worked in didn't do that.
In Australia employees provide a form to their employer which is basically "set aside tax from my pay as though this is my only source of income" vs "tax me at a higher rate".
IIRC the wording on the form is simplified to make it seem like the question is "do you have another source of income?"
That makes sense. In the USA, we can just specify additional withholding without any justification. This can be the result of other income (stocks included), but also due to people having a working spouse.
Marketwatch is a subsidiary of Dow Jones which is a subsidiary of News Corp, which also owns Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and Investor's Business Daily, among others.
I wonder. It seems as though historically commercial real estate is a gigantic industry with strong relationships to other industries. Anecdotally it seems as though companies that lease their real estate have been much more inclined towards wfh.
No, they're writing what gets clicks or shifts papers. Saying WFH is bad pleases a (large) subset of managers and enrages a lot of the rank and file, but they all click. So that's what they write.
It is not just commercial real estate. If you think about it, there are several market segments that benefit from people commuting. Transportation infrastructure companies, car manufactures, office supplies, oil companies, etc.
It's pretty obvious when you look at who is quoted in these articles that someone is paying for at least one PR push related to this. PG wrote about how this works in one of his older essays, in fact: http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html
This is so insightful, thank you so much for posting it as I have never seen the article yet it clarifies so much I have always hypothesized. I’m curious if there is any level of transparency (anywhere, not simply the US) as to what PR firms work with specific groups of publishers. Of course I highly doubt this, but I’d love to trace the origins of a lot of these coordinated narratives.
Absolutely agree. They are doing it to change the narrative and make people think that being back in the office is what the majority want. These executives are the ones that have access to mainstream media to get their propaganda out there. The average person does not.
