The most sought-after talent want ultimate flexibility:
Who calls the shots on how many days you end up working in the office? It has gradually dawned on bosses that it isn't them. The real power holders? The elusive "top talent" that every firm is trying to attract.
Raj Choudhury, an economist from Harvard Business School, argues that throughout history it's been the most sought-after job candidates who end up shaping what our jobs look like. For instance, in the early '90s, using email on our phones was a luxury exclusive to CEOs. Soon, however, top talent in companies started demanding it and, as a result, we now can't escape email.
Today, Choudhury's spidey-sense is tingling over the demand for extreme flexibility: Top talent doesn't just want hybrid work, they want to work from wherever they want. "There are two kinds of companies," Choudhury explains. "One is going to embrace work-from-anywhere, and the second is in denial—I feel those companies will lose their workforce." He argues that the "companies that are trying to drag back time will lose some of their best talent, and that dynamic will force these companies to catch up."
(Score: 4, Informative) by Tokolosh on Sunday January 01, @02:51AM (4 children)
Cruise ship developers are seeing the opportunity, and marketing accordingly: https://www.storylines.com/blog/working-aboard [storylines.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01, @04:06AM
Each to their own I guess, but to me that sounds like hell...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01, @05:17AM
Don't eat the tapioca...
(Score: 2) by looorg on Sunday January 01, @02:46PM (1 child)
Perhaps it's just me but living on a cruise ships seems to be very VERY expensive to live in something the size of a slightly larger and (much) better furnished prison cell. But I'm sure some people will find it nice to sit there and in some shared office space onboard as they cruise the Caribbean (or wherever they go). I think I would feel trapped even tho I love the ocean and the sea and couldn't be without it.
This 3-2 thing does indeed appear to have become the norm for a lot of office work but it's really stupid. Cause you pretty much still have to live in the same city as the office or you'll be killed in the commute, certainly so if you can't pick which 3/2 days are spent here or there. Just during the last year I got a multitude of such offers, I guess I'm not totally top talent any longer or yet so I can't make ridiculous and outrageous demands, but they are all denied cause it all turns out that you are basically supposed to travel at your own time and expense and show up at their office those days and the days are never consecutive days but spread out over the week. Still I guess I'm doing fine since I now have it down to just two office days per month, I can be there more if I like but I don't have to. But back to this 3-2 thing, it's nice for people that already live in the town etc but it's not really remote work as they like to claim it to be. So in some regard I guess it have become the new minimum standard for a lot of office type work.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 02, @03:53AM
Slightly larger and (much) better furnished than a cubical office, right? And what happens when you aren't in the office? Cruise ships are about the sweet public space and ports of call, not the tiny living quarters.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by krishnoid on Sunday January 01, @03:58AM
As war-from-anywhere begins, is it working?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Kell on Sunday January 01, @04:24AM (7 children)
Just because the in-demand workers can demand it doesn't mean that you can. In the end, companies want to lord over their peons and they don't trust their workers to work 100% if they can't see them. They would prefer 60% productivity on-campus instead of 100% productivity they can't see. If you aren't possessed of in-demand (and transportable) skills, then you are and shall remain one of the chain-gang. You aren't going anywhere.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 2) by helel on Sunday January 01, @04:32AM (6 children)
The entire premise seems suspect. I don't recall anyone, "top talent" or otherwise, who ever demanded their boss have more access to them 20/7. The technology became cheeper and it was forced on everyone because companies could afford to do so.
Republican Patriotism [youtube.com]
(Score: 2) by Ox0000 on Sunday January 01, @04:41AM (4 children)
I think the premise of the article is "Top Talent" (meaning, 'others', whom we shan't, nay, can't name - because they don't exist) is going to define how you work and if that's "from anywhere", that'll be it. But lo... this mysterious top talent will probably be all "we gotta be in the office" and managers, ever the good listeners and guardians of their workforce's health will obviously follow suit and reply with "well, top talent says we gotta be in the office, so... butts in seats, y'all, butts in seats".
After all, that 'top talent' probably has stock in commercial real estate and we wouldn't want top talent to be unhappy now, would we?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Opportunist on Sunday January 01, @09:49AM (3 children)
I don't know if I'm "top talent", but I get 2-3 calls from headhunters a week, so I'd guess I'm kinda in demand.
And you can drag me back to the office if you offer to furnish it as my home and I get to lock you out of it if I so please. I.e. if I can move in there and own it.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 01, @02:31PM
It's a give and take negotiation situation, but as more teams are seeing their colleagues in desirable working conditions, more team members are going to seek that out for themselves, either internally or by moving to an employer willing to do it.
My team was somewhat afraid to make the transition, there was basically no precedent for it, and with most people in the office it was more challenging to work from home. Post COVID we are now 100% WFH at least 3 days per week and 80% of us are in office less than one day per month. The ones that go in are management types interfacing with functions that inherently can't WFH, and even when they go in they are rarely there more than 3 or 4 hours.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01, @06:07PM (1 child)
I heard there are some furnished bedrooms that some employer has set up in their main office building to entice workers like you.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Opportunist on Tuesday January 03, @03:35PM
Works for me. I don't really care too much where I park my cadaver, what I hate is the waste of time and resources to transplant it twice every day for no reason whatsoever.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01, @11:45AM
I'm glad we are putting "top talent" in quotes. Looking back at history, the ones who we now regard as "top talent" were very often spurned, rejected and eliminated by contemporary society's "top talent".
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01, @04:59AM (1 child)
How about we finish the ones we're in first?
How's that war on illiteracy going, what about the war on poverty, oh wait, what about the one on homelessness, or the one on whatever else we've 'declared war on'.
Usage of the verbiage along the lines of 'a war on X' does not instill much confidence; neither for completion of said 'war', nor - and this is much more serious - what it means to actually wage war and what it requires, but then again, I don't expect those who use such phrasing to actually know anything about war.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Opportunist on Sunday January 01, @09:53AM
I declare WAR! [youtube.com]
And the reaction around is pretty much how everyone feels about it. Apathy is the theme of the party, come at ... who gives a fuck.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by maxwell demon on Sunday January 01, @07:51AM (9 children)
How will the top surgeons work from home? Will the best chefs cook at the beach and then have the food delivered to their restaurant? Will the top conductors conduct the orchestra through video call?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday January 01, @11:08AM
Isn't that why they invented Deliveroo and Just Eat?
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Opportunist on Sunday January 01, @11:54AM (5 children)
Yes, you just found out what everyone else already knew, that certain services have to be provided on the spot, and certain goods have to be produced in a production environment that cannot easily be transferred out of a factory.
Why exactly should those that can be moved out of office spaces not be moved out of office spaces because of that?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 03, @02:03AM (4 children)
Meanwhile in the real world:
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-risks-causing-new-year-it-worker-flight-with-remote-working-law-2023-01-02/ [reuters.com]
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Tuesday January 03, @03:39PM (3 children)
In other words, Russia is about to lose a lot of IT workers while we get a treasure trove of skilled IT personnel for rather cheap.
I can deal with that.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 03, @04:59PM (2 children)
Seems like...
It's one thing to have people walk out of your country with just the clothes on their backs because you're such an asshole government that uprooting and starting over is a better choice.
It's another thing when your above-average service industry employees have freedom of movement to live and work where they like, globally, and when you start up regressive B.S. like a military draft they can just say: "No thanks, not coming back, maybe you'd like to hire me for a re-negotiated rate?"
Do you think Putin knows better than to go for Iron Curtain 2?
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Saturday January 07, @11:33AM (1 child)
Putin, at this point, is probably more concerned with staying alive. He knows that his days are numbered the moment he loses that war, so he'll throw as many warm bodies between him and the inevitable as he can get away with.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday January 07, @02:51PM
I would much rather see Putin live a long long life in a Siberian resort, far from civilization with an abundance of the oatmeal and rancid butter so famous in Russian literature for him to wish he could eat, but be doled out to him at a rate of 1600 calories per day in his luxury suite kept at a toasty warm 5C, for his health.
24 hour "Putin cam" streaming on YouTube for aspiring dictators everywhere to see where their dreams will take them.
A 3 hour AMA on Reddit once a year to mark his generous Orthodox Christmas cease fire offer.
In other words the soldiers and civilians killed on both sides of the war he started deserve a better fate than he does, killing him would be too generous.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 01, @03:45PM (1 child)
No, of course. Our facility has manufacturing, shipping and product service functions and they all come in every day, two shifts for many of them, and when we need to interface with them, about 20% of the time it involves driving in to see them.
In my particular job function, since January of 2020 - so 3 full years now - I have had to see somebody in manufacturing face to face a total of 3 times. At 11 miles each way to-from the office, that's 66 miles driven in 3 years, as opposed to 14850 miles that would have been driven under the old way of doing things. I think I have also been in for other reasons maybe 7 times in those 3 years, so my total commute mileage has been 220 - a savings of 14630 miles or $9582 according to the IRS.
When I buy a $300 creature comfort widget for my home office, I remind myself about that $9K+ in travel savings.
I never have to remind myself about the luxury of schedule: savings of over 600 hours in commute time, ability to shower and dress whenever and however I want instead of before loading into the car for the day, the socks I no longer have to wear or buy...
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 02, @04:01AM
> ...so 3 full years now
Newbie!
Our tiny company has everyone working from home, since it was started in 1976. Mostly they have lived in the area and meetings would be called when there was a real need, otherwise a phone call (now Zoom) would suffice.
Covid wasn't even a bump in the road for us, we had plenty of practice with remote work. The lucky bit was that our main customer kept on going with only a small change in scope (a bit less income for us) in 2020.
(Score: 2) by Rich on Sunday January 01, @12:02PM (1 child)
In the IT realm, "top talent" that is able to organize itself works as remote contractors anyway, because the social structure of corporations is unable to monetarily value the tangible output difference of 1000:1 between best (Fabrice Bellard) and worst (that guy down the hallway who is too stupid to even copypaste from StackOverflow) developer. I think such a valuation only happens with players in pro sports. (Adrian Newey probably is the only person from engineering who is counted as a "player" here...).
On the other hand, I've seen a trio that "fused" to be top talent. A greedy salesman boss who'd sell home insurance to disabled homeless veterans, one guy from far in the spectrum, technically brilliant, but unable to communicate to normal people, and another guy with reasonable clue of the matter who was able to translate between boss, spectrum guy, and the customer. I don't think "Work at home" would work well for them.
But, if the talent is held in cubicles and the salary is an insult, a corporation might get even away with that salary if they are willing to drop the cubicle part and make the talent pay for its own office. (Not that this applies to "top" talent, see the "contractor" part above).
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 01, @07:16PM
I think boss man and deep spectrum (Spectre?) agent could probably WFH and facetime or whatever with sales monkey. Bossman is best kept in reserve for "special occasions" where the client needs to be shown how much the company cares (i.e. NOT with the homeless clients...) Deep spectrum is probably best kept out of direct personal contact with investors and clients alike, better to refer to him as the "secret weapon brain trust who makes all the magic happen..."
>make the talent pay for its own office.
With the money I am saving in commute mileage and other "present in the office" expenses, I pay for the marina slip and basic maintenance on a 30' sailboat - which I do use as office space on occasion. The boat itself was an outright purchase around $17K, but even that is in range of many peoples' cost of commuting for 5-10 years. The marina is a nice quiet place to work, and a welcome change from the home-schooling environment where my home office is.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 01, @03:21PM (5 children)
The top talent might be able to call the shots[1]. But I see far more people who aren't top talents.
If you're some mediocre or worse IT worker in the USA who is stupid enough to prove to your bosses that your job can 100% be done at home then perhaps your job should be done in India, China[2], Malaysia or Vietnam for less than half the cost.
As for me, my story is going to be that 99% of what I do can be done at home, but there's that 1% which can't and makes it trickier to send my job to Vietnam.
I'm pretty happy that the expensive but mediocre workers in the USA, etc are insisting their jobs can be 100% WFH. One day I might even be taking one or more of their jobs. At worst I spell and think better.
[1] http://www.ericharshbarger.org/lego/desk.html [ericharshbarger.org]
[2] https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/01/16/169528579/outsourced-employee-sends-own-job-to-china-surfs-web [npr.org]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 01, @07:25PM (1 child)
>If you're some mediocre or worse IT worker in the USA who is stupid enough to prove to your bosses that your job can 100% be done at home then perhaps your job should be done in India, China[2], Malaysia or Vietnam for less than half the cost.
That's a risk, and if you're insecure about it then maybe you should keep that facetime going with your paycheck signers.
Our department has had counterparts in India and China for the past 5-10 years, we e-mail back and forth regularly, some of them stay up late to attend our scrum Zoom calls and similar, and in all that time we haven't downsized our U.S. team one bit. Matter of fact, since about 20 of us moved to WFH, we've been filling the empty cube seats with junior hires. My office is now shared with another senior engineer, who is also never in office, because his cube was needed for a junior hire. The office has space for two desks and two chairs, but we're still configured with one chair and a big U shaped workspace because: we're never ever there at the same time, and if we were we probably wouldn't need to be in that office anyway. He's got about 5x as much hardware prototypes to tinker with as I do, so that's mostly what moved into "my" office when his official address changed: all his prototypes that aren't important enough for him to bring home to work on.
We do actively push whatever work we can to our India and China teams, and they are contributing significant value, but not really at any higher cost-benefit ratio than our U.S. team members.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 01, @07:30PM
>but not really at any higher cost-benefit ratio than our U.S. team members.
Perhaps better stated: yes, they're cheaper per man-month, but their TCO vs productive output is more or less on par with the US team, nowhere near attractive enough to expand them while shrinking the US team, and I'm secure enough to say something like the Outsourced movie / TV series doesn't seem to be any kind of possibility in my field. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'll retire early, but... my 72 year old coworker who moved 500 miles away and is still retained on payroll with as many hours as he wants seems to indicate: experience has value.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Nobuddy on Monday January 02, @02:35AM (1 child)
wait till you learn they already outsource the jobs.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday January 03, @02:10AM
Even when they don't want to:
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-risks-causing-new-year-it-worker-flight-with-remote-working-law-2023-01-02/ [reuters.com]
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Wednesday January 04, @12:03PM
Go ahead. Outsource your IT security to India or, even better, China.
I dare you!