Nearly 40% of software engineers will only work remotely (2023)

I suspect that 40% drops quite a bit after 6 months of unemployment in the current market. Boom times are over. We're back to falling in line with the rest of the working class, as the capitalists have captured enough of the market to force our hands. It was nice to feel special for a while, though.

Nice try :)

But I'm afraid the glorious past for employers is not coming back.

We've all seen with our own eyes that working remotely is fine most of the time, there's no way to unsee it.

About time too.

Interest rates are dropping. Jobs are appearing and new ideas are forming. There will probably be fewer silly startups. Hopefully we will see some new technology that has a meaningful impact.

The first two sentences are in opposition to the third sentence.

But that's only because the proletariat does not collectively own the means of production -- yet.

I think that misreads the market. From what I can tell, the RTO efforts reduce headcount without layoffs and the costs with those. It's not as if these companies are hiring to replace the people not moving. RTO is about financials, IMHO.

I've been talking with people in the tech sector and getting hired is hard for far too many people. Remote or in-person.

I can neither deny nor resist market forces, but I abhor RTO. There is a staggering amount of signaling and ritual utterly divested from delivering outcomes.

To be honest I think perhaps more than 50% of “work” need not be done. It’s a game theory dilema and tragedy that we put each other up for these charades.

As far as software goes, the proletariat is the means of production, which explains the focus on getting LLM's to write code.

I agree, people's creativity in grabbing cash from VCs has no limits. You'd think you've lived long enough to see enough and the next day you get another surprise.

But maybe that's the way it should be - a lot of rubbish and among them one good idea that gets developed and actually make some positive change.

For what it's worth, it was 41% [1] in our sample as of a blog we posted this morning, and a good chunk of those people have been out of work for that long.

[1] https://framerusercontent.com/images/5R1ZfThrPbROdkJ8pHw8qvD...

With bosses doing stupid shit and increasing efforts to treat engineers as replaceable cogs, I think we're in a great moment to work towards unionizing larger swathes of tech.

Unions are a way to collectively make sure that we (as workers) get what we need from our jobs, like optional remote work, lay-offs structured to minimize disruption (eg, volunteers-first, ensuring options for internal moves), and so on. Things we'll be hard pressed to argue individually, especially as the McKinsey increasingly colors us as replaceable components.

Even the VCs will tell you that is the case.

There's been a concerted effort to reset salary for tech workers in the past year or so, ever since Elon Musk kicked things off with the mass layoffs at Twitter. The default of Silicon Valley Bank didn't help, and neither did the VC money pulling back for all but AI.

One of the hidden chilling effect is Section 174. I don't know why it is such a big blind spot among tech workers. (Section 174 ruling means US companies can no longer expense software development, and must amortize it. That creates a significantly higher tax burden. It is driving companies to shed all but their best engineers, and drive AI adoption. I don't even know how startups are going to start up without enough capital to cover the higher taxes).

The problem with that is that pushes towards collective action come when people feel weak - which is exactly the time at which they have the least leverage. Good bargaining power comes from a place of strength, like what SWEs had 5 years ago. But in that environment, it's easy to think of your boss in non-adversarial terms, because they're incentivized to keep you happy because they know someone else could poach you. Tech workers, and SWEs in particular, mistook their market power for virtue on their employers' part.

When it's a sunny June day, it's too easy to blow off why anyone would ever want a jacket.

I dont think that is a contradiction to the parent post.

It certainly seems like there is a shift in supply and demand. When getting hired is hard and you have mortgage payments due, how many people are willing or able to turn down offers because they are "WFH" only.