I like remote working, and I've done it on and off for more than 2 decades. It suits me.
In my experience, mentoring junior devs and new hires on my projects is much harder for everyone involved when you're not in the same office. Sometimes you're lucky and get someone who'll speak up and ask questions when they get stuck, but often (especially with juniors) people will just try to figure things out on their own in order to not look bad at their job or incompetent or something. Some devs would rather spend a whole day on a problem and only bring it up in the following day's stand up than show they can't solve it alone. That is really bad for a project. I find I have to poke the quieter juniors regularly on Slack just to make sure they're OK, but then people get annoyed about being micromanaged. This is something I really want to solve...
One thing you can do is let people flounder and fail on irrelevant small tasks for a week or two early, to help them learn the lesson that they don't know what they're doing.
The best way to make someone appreciate guidance, is to have them fall on their face, receive guidance and notice the difference.
One suggestion I had was, if you're stuck for more than 30 minutes, ping me. Juniors will almost always be stuck with something trivial you can answer within a few minutes. It gives you a break and it is something they really appreciate. If you communicate to them that they're not expected to know anything and that the first few years on the job is their real world education and a chance to ask questions without raising eyebrows, they'll be far more likely to do it.
Juniors are nice in my experience, you can mold them into something half-decent if they've got a bit of a brain and their mistakes are ones of innocence, not cunning or apathy. It's the 'senior' devs who don't know shit that you have to put up with that's almost always a disaster. They'll be well versed in lying and politics, wasting everybody's time.
I find that a balance can be managed if people are nudged to at the owner of the specific component they need help with, i.e. @guild-frontend or @owner-fooservice
Exactly the same here for exactly 20 years. I make my own products and make products for other companies as consultant.
No real problems when I need to hire subcontractor though. Being an old fart I know many very experienced people who would never pass an opportunity to make some dosh.
As someone from a "cheaper country", a crazy amount of these jobs dries out when they figure that they'll need to deal with your tax/labor law employment situation.
There's still plenty of remote work, just make sure you don't go into this completely blind.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_employer_organiza...
If remote work holds up I expect to see San Fran's real estate market, at least it's rental market collapse
1. Population decline. 2. A very large amount of good housing stock. Chicago's completely flat with solid public transit reaching out to the suburbs. 3. Lower proportion of tech and startups. Similar to how tech has driven up the CoL in many cities, the relative lack of tech in Chicago has kept CoL down.
Winter is rough in Chicago, but the CoL in Boston has skyrocketed which invalidates that as being the _only_ reason.
Your dollars go further in Tennessee, Florida, or Texas (all of which have no state income tax).
San Francisco's climate, walkable hoods, having a ton of things to do will probably make it come back from the dead even if the tech industry were to actually leave.
Events and opportunities to socialize.
Even if I have a family one day, I still would want my kids to take language classes , etc.
I hate driving ( particularly when commuting), so a town wouldn't really work.
Why not make your laws more friendly?
Frequently the issue isn't so much that compliance is extraordinary difficult, it is that there is no section in the HR manual for handling it, and they don't want to deal with it. Most of the time it would take two days of labor at most, and a small percentage of the employee salary to make it kosher. In Canada it is so common that there is an entire industry that will arrange legal employment of Canadians by foreign corporations with no local presence. Most US companies don't even want to hear about how easy it is to comply.
I guess the existing rent-seekers wouldn't like it however.
I ran out of cream for my coffee at 3AM in Amsterdam. But of course there's a 24/7 nitrous oxide delivery company in Amsterdam:
I'm not a customer, but I would only consider it if they'd actually deliver fresh cream without any nitrous oxide at 3AM, to keep up the pretense that the N2O was actually intended for making late-night whipped cream.
But no, they brashly deliver incriminating accessories like balloons and "Slagroomspuit" dispensers. But no cream! Fuck that.
https://amsterdamlachgas.com/lachgas-toebehoren/
Somebody should start a 24/7 milk and cream delivery service. DeliverMOO!
I think you could make a killing delivering 24/7 fresh milk, cream, and dairy accessories like breakfast cereal and chocolate mix.
I definitely could see the government creating incentives to get people back to work. The big issue of people no longer commuting, is millions of people working auxiliary industries which are getting screwed right now. The guy who works at the cafe next to your office, the landlords who own buildings, even car mechanics.
I suspect by the end of 2021, we'll see more 50% work from home, particularly for new engineers.