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Politicians and economists lament that certain alpha regions — SF, LA, NYC, Boston, Toronto, London, Paris — attract all the best jobs while becoming repellently expensive, reducing economic mobility and contributing to further bifurcation between haves and have-nots. But why don't the best jobs move elsewhere?
Of course, many of them can't. The average financier in NYC or London (until Brexit annihilates London's banking industry, of course...) would be laughed out of the office, and not invited back, if they told their boss they wanted to henceforth work from Chiang Mai.
But this isn't true of (much of) the software field. The average web/app developer might have such a request declined; but they would not be laughed at, or fired. The demand for good developers greatly outstrips supply, and in this era of Skype and Slack, there's nothing about software development that requires meatspace interactions.
[...]Some people will tell you that remote teams are inherently less effective and productive than localized ones, or that "serendipitous collisions" are so important that every employee must be forced to the same physical location every day so that these collisions can be manufactured. These people are wrong, as long as the team in question is small — on the order of handfuls, dozens or scores, rather than hundreds or thousands — and flexible.
Because the feedlot isn't hiring for Ruby?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05 2017, @02:22AM (3 children)
Remember that "interesting tech companies" isn't just pure-software places. If anything, those places are less interesting.
Software gets interesting when it operates equipment that can kill people, intentionally or not. This means everything from medical implants to ICBMs. Bugs that cause funny-looking text on a web site are not interesting. Bugs that cause funny-looking injuries are interesting. Everything is more meaningful when people can die.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Wednesday April 05 2017, @02:52AM (2 children)
Somehow I suspect the people writing software for things that kill people really don't like the idea of remote work. Security with all the work in a physically secure building is hard enough, security with some guy in a remote city working from a home where God only knows who is wandering in/out and could gain access is a nightmare. How many people (not named Clinton) have a SCIF in their home? Then there is the link.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05 2017, @05:06AM (1 child)
It took me hours to realize that you were assuming that these jobs would either be in the well-known tech spots (and you'd be rural) or that you'd stay in a well-known tech spot and work remotely.
These life-and-death jobs are often outside the tech spots, and you are expected to move.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 05 2017, @09:08PM
Hours? Um...do you need something better to do?