Now you can move somewhere with a bigger apartment with cheap Internet. In-person networking is definitely convenient but, as the other poster says, there are significant virtual communities for software especially that are far better than going to some meetups. Github, Slack & Discord groups, etc.

I like the area I live. Plus I don't want to "move" or need more space. Remote work only offloads the cost of a workplace on the employee.

Buy a larger desk? Check. Buy a better chair? Check. Spend more time working since there is no psychological difference between relax and work time? Check.

I have empathy for your situation, but this argument ignores that I like the area where I live, too. Changing to remote work has a cost/pressure to you, but keeping the status quo has a cost/pressure to me.

Without remote work, there is significant pressure on people like me to move into the city. I live where the mortgage on my 2500 sqft home with a dedicated workspace ($850/mo) probably costs me less than your 400 sqft apartment's rent. I understand that many people who live in downtown apartments don't want to move; pre-COVID, some vacations to New York and to Chicago made me seriously consider moving somewhere downtown to enjoy the energy and opportunity provided by living downtown. But while quarantine with grocery deliveries was probably hellish for you, it was among my favorite seasons of the past few years of my life.

Without remote work, there was significant offloaded cost onto me the employee, to commute to the central workplace, not only financial but also in time. The cost of a very nice office chair is nothing compared to the cost of a driver's seat in a car, and has no comparison to the hours wasted each week on the road.

I have a physical and psychological difference because I have a home office, which I understand is a luxury that a 400 sqft studio doesn't afford. A home office is psychologically better for me than a central office, because my desk at the office was a combination space for my focus work, video/audio conference calls, eating lunch, and relaxing with coworkers.

While working remote, I spend a little more time working, and that more efficiently, but that's because I don't have to waste time on a commute and because I can maintain focus on a task without too many external interruptions when needed.

Like it or not, I think cost of living is about to experience a significant swing over the next few decades. House prices out here are (were) strongly correlated to distance to the highway and from there to the city. Apartment rents in downtown areas are (were) correlated not only to people's desire to live in the big city but also to the cost savings of not needing to own a car and proximity to high-paying jobs. Eventually, things will even out.

This is a very reasonable argument. My point focuses on remote absolutism versus a socially accepted blended model.

Unfortunately, to a large extent, remote work works best in absolution. When companies and teams try to do a blended model, it’s not remote-first, and is almost always worse than absolution one way or the other.

I hope that when governments around the world realise that WFH is going to become the norm for a large number of people they will adjust tax laws to allow write-offs where applicable.

Since April this year in the UK we can get up to £6 per week written off business expenses incurred as a result of WFH.

Of course, they may go the opposite direction to encourage people back into offices so coffee/sandwich shops etc. get more footfall.

I would like my government to discourage urban sprawl and encourage density, even in a world where WFH becomes a larger norm.

I get your predicament, some people like the opportunity to go into the office. Where I have problems with alot of tech companies pre-pandemic is you have a position(engineer etc) that is able to be fully remote, and you are not giving employees the choice to be remote. Forcing people to live in the most expensive area on the planet(silicon valley) for a position that can be done anywhere is inefficient(wasted time commuting) and bad for psyche/environment(stress from commuting, pollution from commuting, stress from high cost of living). The one positive thing from this pandemic is we now get a choice in where we work as tech companies CEO's have had their eyes opened due to being forced to have everyone wfh for over 6 months now.

Oh no you had to buy a chair!

I disagree with this sentiment, depending on where you live not commuting for a few weeks has already paid for all these things. And for many who haven't had to pay rent in the Bay Area for the last 6 months the gains are even more pronounced.

>Spend more time working since there is no psychological difference between relax and work time?

I agree that's an issue but can certainly be mitigated by building good habits around "work" and "not work" time.

> Spend more time working since there is no psychological difference between relax and work time? Check.

Yes. This is unfortunately happening to me now

You're ignoring that most people spend much more money on commuting, clothes for work, and lunch near work then they would spend doing a one time upgrade of their desk and probably eating lunch at home most of the time in t-shirts.

Ironically, commuting to work pushes a lot more of the costs you complain about onto the employee.

I grew up in a city, I have no desire to live in the burbs in the next decade of my life. I suspect that most 20 somethings view it the same way.

Don't worry, that "Those damn kids need to slow down!" mentality will hit you long before you realize you turned into an old fart causing traffic jams during rush hour.

In much of the world, everyone doesn't just move to the suburbs when they age. Look at Japan where the trend has been towards urbanization with immense benefits for society and the environment.

I've been working in the industry for 20 years. I've literally never gotten a job based on someone I knew. I'm sure there's plenty of others who have a different experience, but don't let this get you down.

The demographics of the industry has shifted enormously in the last 20 yeas, with the median years of experience going way down. In an environment flooded with beginners and people who are not established it helps a lot to know people when you are getting started. Also as this dynamic has progressed even further you now see teams of new people being led by people with insufficient experience to really make good hiring decisions. This also makes referrals a bit more important than before.

> I've literally never gotten a job based on someone I knew

The industry is changing for new entrants, and it is considerably different today.

I've never known anyone who got a job on my team because they had a reference, and I am generally doing the hiring. The closest is someone did an internal transfer because of a reference. Never once for an outside hire.

Many tech companies in SF/SV you won't get an interview without a referral as a new grad at least.

Poor job prospects and nightly riots. Avoid these places like the plague.

> Poor job prospects and nightly riots

I hope you don't actually believe that's what's happening in American cities.

These articles are spread across several months. What do you believe is happening?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/dozens-of-arrests-in-san-f...

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Free-for-all-as-...

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/05/30/george-floyd-protests...

So over the span of several months, in a region of approximately 8 million, there have been "dozens of arrests."

There were dozens of arrests on that particular day that the article was written about. There's been several months of such days of fires in the streets and violent protests. I just picked the first 3 articles that came up in a search.

I mean, I live here. That's not true - months of fires in the street?

Plenty of valid reasons to not want to move here. The idea that riots and people setting things on fire is like a serious problem for your day-to-day life? Absurd.

Oh, well as long as it's not impacting you, then I guess it's not a big deal.

I hope this is satire. SF/SV clearly have some of the best paying jobs in the country. And I haven't seen a riot anywhere around here all year.

If you can't get a job without a reference, and you don't have a reference, there's not good job prospects. It doesn't matter how much the jobs pay if they're impossible to get.

50% or more of my company hires people based on reference.

We both got anecdotes going either way.

I appreciate your wisdom. Outlook is bleak for soon to be new-grads so some of my feelings may be a projection of my interview discouragement. Stats still seem to have me worried... "Referrals account for between 30 and 50% of hires in the US...referrals only made up about 6% of total applications, they resulted in more than a quarter of hires. That’s more than the number hired via online job boards, even though those job hunters accounted for 60% of applications and 40% of interviews." [1]

[1] https://outline.com/5L3ezF

Also hitting the 20yr mark and also never got a job via a referral but I imagine at some point in your career it’s no longer necessary and your resume speaks for itself. Nowadays as a fresh entrant I get the impression it’s pretty competitive and a referral can make a huge difference.

I would say it tends to be the opposite.

If you're hiring a twenty-something Java developer, you're sort of hiring a commodity. Sure, you may care about schools, grades, interview, etc. but a lot of your decision is going to be based on their paper. They may not have worked anywhere, so they may not have much of a work record.

However, over time most people acquire a more unique toolbox of skills. In my case, since my first job out of grad school, I've basically been directly hired either by a referral or directly by the owner or a senior exec. My current job didn't even have a job posting for it.

> They may not have worked anywhere, so they may not have much of a work record.

Large tech companies often just don't take chances on people like this anymore.

I've been on the hiring team for the last 15 out of that 20 years. I've literally never had someone join my team who even had a reference. This includes juniors.

20 year as well. Only once did I get a job because I knew someone.

half and half for me. But most programming jobs I've gotten on my own merit.

Here's a fun fact the "It's not what you know, it's who you know" crowd don't understand. You earned those references based on your merit too. Nobody wants to work with a slackass.

Pretty much. It's the high school, non-career jobs I've gotten mainly by connections cause it's mainly labour or service industry. Those jobs don't require a lot of skill. Just show up on time, do the job.

>Remote work is not a catchall. I live in a 400 sq/ft apartment.

But if you work remote, can't you get a bigger apartment (or even a house) out in the suburbs (or other CoL area)?

Many people enjoy living in cities and do not want to move to the suburbs.

Most younger people I know (obviously a biased sample) are strongly anti-suburb

That sucks. I'm sorry.

The only semi-constructive thing I can say is "This too shall pass."

In 1998, at 18 years old, I was literally the boy in the bubble, living in forced isolation for over a year. Atypically, I was also very extroverted.

I was extremely fortunate to have access to dial up modems. So between CompuServe, and starting my own BBS network, I cobbled together a social life and some income publishing my own shareware.

It sucked. But it was also awesome.

Those online relationships were just about the best I've ever had. More like penpals than drinking buddies.

Alas, nothing is permanent, and I was eager to return to the real world.

As for the environmental noise, I'm sure you've investigated noise canceling headphones, white noise machines, and maybe even noise dampening acoustic foam on the walls.

Noise pollution is terrible. Especially if you're sensitive, like my sweetie. I hope you can find a corner in the basement, or open area on the roof, or something. The noise in our prior condo was terrible, driving my sweetie insane. Our neighborhood had gotten popular. So much new construction, new roof top open bar across the street, 3:00am deliveries in alley below our bedroom window, etc. There was literally was no peace.

If you're working remote any way, maybe you can peace out somewhere else. Anywhere with broadband and strong coffee.

Quite the entry into the field I'd say! I appreciate the sentiment. Probably need to stay away from Blind and other headline generator websites.

Depends on what you’re doing I guess. I would not be so defeatist if you’re working in technology.

IRC/Slack/Discord communities are far better than even the best in-person networking event.

There are even job channels on some chat communities. Though the age of the forum is dead.

I have to disagree. IRC/Slack/Discord only add to potential distractions. I have to have my phone near me for two factor auth but plagued by notifications from these communities. Hackathons have been a huge point of my community engagement; however, online hackathons are only a shadow of their in-person counterparts. Not arguing there is not technological enhancement. Think about how many services have had to deploy fully online services that were holdouts from the internet age. My school's club has been able to invite interesting hosts from around the globe because we are already meeting digitally. Remote/online has its strong-suits I just hate how much absolutism there is in these discussions.

Obviously I disagree, but since you got to say your bit- I’d like to rebut.

I run an IRC network, I’ve hired people from my IRC network, you choose your own level of involvement.

(And your own level of notification. I know the default in slack and discord is aggressive and designed to push more engagement but it is configurable)

As it stands there are many people who are absolutely not “distracted” by it, most do not get notifications at all, but usually if you did get a notification it would be because someone said your name explicitly.

Most people tend to read up when they feel like it and respond when they feel like it.

I also don’t like absolutism but the OP sounds absolutely defeated and for no reason other than they seem unaware that these communities exist and in my experience have given me better experiences than in person “networking” meetings.

Unless I’m already friends, meeting people at conferences is often not as valuable as meeting them on IRC.

What you are saying has some truth. Maybe I am not involved in the right communities. I will see what communities are out there and where to find them.

Maybe start your own clubs. I've always been more Groucho Marx than not, eg wouldn't be a member of a club that would have me as a member.

A more positive phrasing: Find your own tribe.

I started a design patterns book study group +25 yo that's still going.

When I was doing activism, I had a hard time fitting in. Politics (and people) suck. So I started a new group.

I've participated in many other groups that were technical, volunteering, political. There's often at least one person that I connect with, making the effort worthwhile.

I think the age of the forum has simply evolved into two extremes. As I see it, forums as basically just a public-facing venue for having threaded discussions.

In that broader sense, we have macro forums on the scale of Reddit, and even Twitter, thought its content format/ui drifts much further way from traditional forums than something like Reddit.

Then on the micro scale we have forums like individual users' Facebook and Facebook communities.

So as with most things internet over the last 15 years, its evolved from having many many small scale offerings, to a very few massive corporations that ate everything else.

> My ISP charges 250 a month for gigabyte speeds

I don't even have the option for "gigabyte speeds" - consider yourself lucky.

Ahh I love oligopolies.

Does your remote work require you to be uploading/downloading very large files?

I am on a 30 mbit connection and both my wife and I remote work. She is on Zoom calls all day long and I stream music and youtube without an issue, while maintaining a latency free remote connection to my desktop in the office.

> all those networking opportunities which help you find your next job have been debilitated.

Well, not all of them. Do your job well while being someone fun to work with. People will remember that, especially the ones in your age group. The people I worked with when I was younger are now in positions where they can let me know about jobs and recommend me for them, and I am in that position too for them.

This situation is not great, but keep moving forward as best as you can.

> Do your job well while being someone fun to work with

“It is not enough that you do your job well, you also need to spend energy to put out an entertaining persona.” is such an Americanism that creates a game theoretic layer of duplicitous characters on top.

There is a difference between being fun to work with and being entertaining. Maybe I should have worded it, “be a joy to work with.” Some people are a pleasure to work with, even if they are quiet and shy.

Still sounds like some servile function to evoke positive emotions in others is required. Why doing our jobs is not enough? If everyone is doing their jobs, wouldn’t that be “fun” enough? If not, shouldn’t that be a problem with the job description?

This is important because whenever the boundaries are poorly defined, there is room for narcissistic abuse, even if self-inflicted. “Be a joy to work with” could have so many failure modes; the guy who brings up inconvenient truths could be penalized, the useless people pleasers can get ahead. The idea could work to Marie Kondo one’s clothes, but I feel like standards should be different for humans.

I think you are reading way too much into this. There are ways to bring up inconvenient truths without being an asshole, and there are ways to be a pleasure to work with without pandering. People who don't see this are actually the ones that people don't enjoy working with.

Well you’ve suggested this ideal of “being fun to work with” and you’re challenged to clarify your position, no need to get defensive. “There are ways to be a pleasure to work with without pandering” I’m sure of that but work by nature includes competitive or opponent processes too (eg code reviews, design reviews, performance reviews), how does the nice guy handle those? To me it sounds like your ideal of being nice could end up causing not getting what one wants or not having one’s job properly (eg not pushing back sufficiently in a code review).

Niceness is a tricky metric to go by in a work environment, adults disagree, and work is not always fun.

Honestly, people who view reviews as competition are exactly the people I don't enjoy working with. Those people are always the ones who view any criticism as a slight rather than an opportunity to improve, and it will always show in their work.

On the flip side, if the critic can't express their criticisms without being an asshole, well then of course people aren't going to like working with them.

I agree that reviews being seen as a competition is a problem, but it is nonetheless the same problem if you don't see it that way while people around you do. Promotions, compensation etc they are not exactly zero-sum games but they do approximate zero-sum dynamics, so they are a competition whether we like it or not.

I think the asshole persona is a useful device to think through this problem, but I think you are overemphasizing it and ignoring other personas. You can express criticisms with perfect tact and you still will encounter people that has a problem with being challenged (it is rather common with newly promoted technical leads or managers), or like I said a healthy code review will require saying "no" at times, with no fault of the reviewer, will still generate adversarial dynamics.

And let's be realistic, performance reviews are highly biased towards positive feedback because criticisms look harsher on that format than they are so people hold back therefore I don't see "asshole" dynamics as frequent as you are focusing, if anything "niceness" dynamics is incentivizing dishonesty in peer feedback.

I don't know how far you are into your career, but think about the people you have worked with that you would like to work with again. Then, think about the people you would avoid working with again at all costs.

Now, think about the people you would hire to work for you, and the people you wouldn't even give an interview to.

The people you don't enjoy working with - what side of the equation do they fall on? Some of them will be because they are incompetent, and some of them will be because they are terrible people.

Now what about about the people you did enjoy working with? What side of the equation are they on? Some of them will be because they were great at their jobs and some of them will be cause they are great people. I'm willing to bet that the vast majority are both competent and people that you enjoy being around. I'm also willing to bet that the people you would be happy to work with again, are genuine in the way they treat other people. The "Fake Niceness" is easy to sniff out.

As always, YMMV.

I'm sure most companies will be some degree of hybrid and keep their offices. That said, I expect you'll see a lot more flexibility with people coming in just some of the time, probably a lot of hot-desking, and probably less general reliance on always getting together physically.

Something like remote work is guaranteed to be both good and bad for different people. If this is genuinely the direction we're going, there will be casualties. Lots of them.

I fully expect there will be companies that go back to mostly in-office. And most companies will continue to have an office that people at least can go into.

But, what's also almost certainly true, is that different companies and different teams within companies will have vastly different emphasis on in person vs. remote. If you're someone who can't wait to go back into an office pretty much full-time and want to work with others who feel similarly, a lot of companies may not be right for you going forward--given that a mix of remote and in-person pretty much needs to work as if everyone were remote.

Compared to non-essential fields that are in-person, we are incredibly lucky that computational tasks can be done remotely. It may stink that remote lacks in-person networking, but at least our jobs and salaries continue coming in, unlike dozens of other professions. A lot of "essential" in-person professions never got any hazard pay either, they just took on more inefficiency and more risk for the same pay.