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Me too but for a different reason. They're basically firing me. I work for the military but live in a deeply red and Trumpian state rather than DC. I'm close to some of the companies we contract with to build our stuff and I'm the point man going into their facilities and working with them. If I can even keep the same job, we'll just have to live in DC and I'll fly here and work here not quite constantly but a whole bunch. A good chunk of my life will be separated from my family.
My wife makes more money than me because private sector over government but I was willing to try to help our military. We can't make her quit her job and try to survive DC cost of living on my salary alone. I don't want to uproot everything and move away from family. I don't want to leave Trump country for the cess pool. I can't imagine having to send our kids to DC schools.
I hear @jeroboam saying:
Would he tell me, "If only
StalinTrump knew..."? He's forcing Reds to either subject themselves to local Blue rule or quit his government. Purging his own allies. There's so much to like about him taking control back. I saw that he's getting rid of DEI, affirmative action, Schedule F'ing the resistance, and even detransing the active duty. Makes me want to stay and help. But I just can't see doing it. I can't send my kids to DC schools.Bluntly, I didn't consider this downside. I still think the inevitable dilution of entitled incompetents may be worth it.... but I can see this changing the algebra there.
I think it's much more likely to increase the concentration of incompetent workers. WFH or hybrid schedules are going to be worth tens of thousands of dollars a year to your typical professional type. This is effectively being told you're all taking a huge pay cut and the only people either publicly or privately who would endure such a thing are the ones who don't think they can do better in the private sector or they are in their position for non-monetary reasons like ideology.
Blanket RTO orders are great for temporarily juicing stock at a company but they are cutting labor costs by removing your most competitive workers.
This is fun to think about, but while this only applies to software engineering, the gist of the most recent and comprehensive study I've seen is that:
We'll see how it pans out, but if any industry is ripe for WFH fraud it absolutely has to be the government.
The crux of such a study would be in how you're defining output or productivity. Is that lines of code and is more lines good? What is the equivalent in other fields, how is it being measured, etc.
The twitter thread shows the methodology. Please actually read it.
It's my industry, so I think it's as good as it can reasonably be.
Twitter is so useless these days. Why lock threads behind an account?
How well do you think it translates to other jobs?
Sorry, I did not consider that you didn't have an account. I personally think it's worth having one to lurk. It's still a great source of info.
Here's the image describing it but to summarize, the methodology uses an AI model trained by experts about "meaningful" commits. In other words, not Lines of Code, which I agree is an imperfect metric at best.
Probably well, on the balance. First, it's probably the profession best positioned to be analyzed in terms of measuring output. Second, if any job can be effectively executed in a WFH context, it has to be software. There's no other industry with more capabilities to deliver value remotely. This is probably the absolute best case for WFH advocacy. Even the sub-disciplines near software engineering like product ownership are even more hilariously ripe for grift.
As I mentioned in another comment, I am a big WFH advocate. It's made my life measurably better, and the company I work for deals with its benefits and drawbacks very well.
But I think most places are not, and very few (no?) frontline workers are interested in being honest about the downsides.
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It might not be as bad as the study suggests -- working from home might turn those -1x engineers (who would be measured as "productive") into 0.1x engineers.
That would make the study's conclusions even "worse" in terms of proving that WFH is bad for most software shops.
It's pretty intuitive and not that complicated. The best engineers have an enormous amount of leverage. They can demand the best and most flexible jobs, and can be so effective in less time that they can take the most advantage of WFH while still providing high value.
The grifters who benefit from low accountability will also gravitate to those positions.
I work for a high-performing organization that is extremely WFH friendly. We have many elite engineers and have built our culture around it. Even so, we have to fire grifters every once in a while.
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