29MdM0001 in  
Data Science Manager  

Remote work on the decline or what?

Layoffs. Pay cuts. Canceled bonuses. Recessions always provide us with plenty to worry about. But this time around, as a new downturn approaches, millions of Americans fear losing their freedom to work from home. On the face of it, that idea makes sense. People can be indoors and gather, management is tired of anxiously thinking about how productive their workforce is, and you can easily build the culture of the company with people face2face.


If times get tougher though, I think employers should look to remote work as another way to cut costs. While I'm not saying offshore whole teams, if the price to figure out taxes in another country means you'll have new talent and ideas that can grow the business, why wouldn't you make that investment? There's a ton of talent in countries all over the world and you don't have to pay them ridiculous salaries to account for the col like you do here. 2 for the price of 1.

11
2021
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randomguy123Software Engineer  
There are a few problems with the offshoring model and some issues with this logic.

1. Offshoring looks horrible and heartless to consumers, the company will definitely suffer reputational damage.

2. "Why not offshore all the remote jobs if they don't need to be performed in an office?" is a logical lapsus. Either the person saying this is bluffing and they won't offshore the jobs, or they do offshore them and in doing so tacitly admit that remote work is perfectly fine and office work was not necessary.

3. The number of jobs able to be done remotely is vast in number. It is not just software engineers or anyone in tech alone. Joe Schmoe who works with spreadsheets and Microsoft Word (in, say, the beef industry or something) all day is just as, if not more due to lower barrier of entry to such a position, offshorable relative to a software engineer. Not to mention, there are more Joe Schmoes than software engineers in most companies so they likely cost more in aggregate.

4 (anecdotal). The trend looking forward, particularly with younger generations, seems to be viewing work as a source of a paycheck that is not interwoven with their life. Company culture will become of decreasing importance. Not to mention it ultimately doesn't generate much (if any) money, so company culture is of indefinite value. Its importance is dubious by consequence.
5
randomguy123Software Engineer  
tl;dr remote work is going nowhere and companies fighting it are fighting an uphill losing battle, RTO orders are a fools errand (unless hemorrhaging competence is the company's mission).
5

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