My two cents: I recently moved to India for work and have been flabbergasted by the amount of people having two, sometimes three different jobs. I'd say somewhere around 90% of people are doing this. And how do I know? Because I talk to them while they are playing their third hour of ping pong in any given day.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of employers are being taken advantage of by their remote employees, and western companies are often too non-confrontational to chat about underperformance or even fire their employees. "It's okay - my bosses are quite chill so I don't have many deadlines," they tell me.
I also spent a few months in Europe last year and can tell you the problem there is similar except, instead of working multiple jobs, most of my European friends work only a couple of hours a day and take the rest of the day to chill / go to the beach / etc.
Yes, their rates may be much lower than their american counterparts, but their producitivty reflects this.
I have seen similar things with Indian coworkers, both those located in India and those in the USA on visas. Remote work in general leaves the door open for that sort of shenanigan, especially in IT jobs where you are not really expected to respond to things immediately or solve tickets quickly, etc. If the bar for “doing enough to not get fired” is pretty low it is pretty easy to coast along with multiple jobs.
The time zone issue is really underrated. If your team is centered in California, for example, and you hire a remote worker in Australia or Germany, it's going to be hard to find a time to meet. You're off by 8+ hours so there aren't any "normal working hours" that overlap. What inevitably results is that it takes longer to have simple back-and-forth discussions, and so projects that are split between these time zones are slowed down.
A three hour difference on the other hand isn't too bad. You can separate so that California mornings / NYC afternoons are the times for meetings and discussions, and the other times are for individual work.
The other underrated issue is specifically for management. It's especially hard to mentor and give guidance to a struggling employee when you're remote. So remote teams work better with a culture of quickly firing the underperformers, rather than trying to coach and work with them to improve their skills. The flip side is that earlier in your career you can often learn a lot more in person.
Yep, here in Tel Aviv (UTC+2) the tech scene seems to have settled on 5-6 PM as the time window for syncing with the American teams, which is awful both for locals who barely get back home by dinner time and, I assume, for Californians who just woke up to join a meeting at 7 AM (although the latter are clearly much better at hiding their discontent with this arrangement).
Would it be illegal under Israeli law to stipulate a workday shifted by a couple of hours forward? Would let the workers take their kids to school in the morning and avoid both the morning and evening rush hours.
Don't think there's a legal issue but most people don't want to live like that. When I was younger I used to work 11 to 20 because it was convenient, I could sleep late and went straight from work to going out with friends. But with kids it doesn't work well, you have to take them from kindergarten/preschool, make dinner, put them to sleep etc.
It still surprises me that at least *some* companies outsourcing to Israel don't want to try it. I would be surprised if less than 30% of the relevant workpool would object to that.
All crap. With teleconferencing (anyone here ever use Zoom or MS Teams?), there IS no more "remote." At any time, you're in the room with the exact people you need. So, stay out of our country. We're only interested in your work product—we don't want or need your body, family, language, food, or culture here.
Simple, their "workplace" should remain in Bangalore with remote tools used to link the worker with the "hiring" organization in the USA.
The root issue is that we don't want them spawning in the USA, changing the racial, cultural, and political core of our country. You CAN have a multi-racial society, you CANNOT have a multicultural one (that will last). So, look at average IQs of immigrant source nations, keeping regression to the mean in mind. This, along with racial and cultural considerations, should govern the immigration policy of the USA, NOT the (perfectly understandable) drive for maximizing profits by American business interests.
Why can't you be in top cognitive shape if you sleep 8 hours during the day? Yes, most people don't do it, but that doesn't mean it's particularly challenging for the body. As long as you get your full 8 hours, this is fine (speaking from personal experience).
Overall the article unfortunately fails to address the core dilemma of the topic in a persuasive way.
There's a whole body of research on the health risks associated with night shift work (it messes with circadian rhythms) and its impact on things like the quality of cognition, particularly as you get older. There are probably many people like you who adapt perfectly to it, but as a general rule it is a downside.
I would be surprised if this research managed to control for the obvious confounders here given that a lot of people working at night will also lack an air conditioned, quiet space to sleep in during the day.
That being said, if at least 50% can perform well at night, it makes sense for corporations to force strict adherence to their HQ work hours.
I never understood why companies don't just hire remote workers who don't mind working inverted hours instead of having a reduced sync time window. Lots of things actually become more convenient if you work from 12am to 8am (for example)
Yep and plenty of Americans do too (see: every 24/7 enterprise) but I don't understand why "we hire only if you work our exact time zone hours" isn't considered the default.
My two cents: I recently moved to India for work and have been flabbergasted by the amount of people having two, sometimes three different jobs. I'd say somewhere around 90% of people are doing this. And how do I know? Because I talk to them while they are playing their third hour of ping pong in any given day.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of employers are being taken advantage of by their remote employees, and western companies are often too non-confrontational to chat about underperformance or even fire their employees. "It's okay - my bosses are quite chill so I don't have many deadlines," they tell me.
I also spent a few months in Europe last year and can tell you the problem there is similar except, instead of working multiple jobs, most of my European friends work only a couple of hours a day and take the rest of the day to chill / go to the beach / etc.
Yes, their rates may be much lower than their american counterparts, but their producitivty reflects this.
So, caveat emptor.
I have seen similar things with Indian coworkers, both those located in India and those in the USA on visas. Remote work in general leaves the door open for that sort of shenanigan, especially in IT jobs where you are not really expected to respond to things immediately or solve tickets quickly, etc. If the bar for “doing enough to not get fired” is pretty low it is pretty easy to coast along with multiple jobs.
The time zone issue is really underrated. If your team is centered in California, for example, and you hire a remote worker in Australia or Germany, it's going to be hard to find a time to meet. You're off by 8+ hours so there aren't any "normal working hours" that overlap. What inevitably results is that it takes longer to have simple back-and-forth discussions, and so projects that are split between these time zones are slowed down.
A three hour difference on the other hand isn't too bad. You can separate so that California mornings / NYC afternoons are the times for meetings and discussions, and the other times are for individual work.
The other underrated issue is specifically for management. It's especially hard to mentor and give guidance to a struggling employee when you're remote. So remote teams work better with a culture of quickly firing the underperformers, rather than trying to coach and work with them to improve their skills. The flip side is that earlier in your career you can often learn a lot more in person.
Yep, here in Tel Aviv (UTC+2) the tech scene seems to have settled on 5-6 PM as the time window for syncing with the American teams, which is awful both for locals who barely get back home by dinner time and, I assume, for Californians who just woke up to join a meeting at 7 AM (although the latter are clearly much better at hiding their discontent with this arrangement).
Would it be illegal under Israeli law to stipulate a workday shifted by a couple of hours forward? Would let the workers take their kids to school in the morning and avoid both the morning and evening rush hours.
Don't think there's a legal issue but most people don't want to live like that. When I was younger I used to work 11 to 20 because it was convenient, I could sleep late and went straight from work to going out with friends. But with kids it doesn't work well, you have to take them from kindergarten/preschool, make dinner, put them to sleep etc.
It still surprises me that at least *some* companies outsourcing to Israel don't want to try it. I would be surprised if less than 30% of the relevant workpool would object to that.
The worst is finding a time when Australia, California, *and* Germany can attend....
All crap. With teleconferencing (anyone here ever use Zoom or MS Teams?), there IS no more "remote." At any time, you're in the room with the exact people you need. So, stay out of our country. We're only interested in your work product—we don't want or need your body, family, language, food, or culture here.
Is that the rudest and most ignorant comment you could think of, or do you have more?
You ask that of a man named “Bicker” :)
Nominative Determinism strikes again!
Lots more...
If you're what our culture has to offer then I'll take Vipul's body, family, language, food and culture over you everyday.
If someone is useful enough to hire, why shouldn't they be able to rent or buy from any willing landlord relatively near their workplace?
Simple, their "workplace" should remain in Bangalore with remote tools used to link the worker with the "hiring" organization in the USA.
The root issue is that we don't want them spawning in the USA, changing the racial, cultural, and political core of our country. You CAN have a multi-racial society, you CANNOT have a multicultural one (that will last). So, look at average IQs of immigrant source nations, keeping regression to the mean in mind. This, along with racial and cultural considerations, should govern the immigration policy of the USA, NOT the (perfectly understandable) drive for maximizing profits by American business interests.
Free market is always better than centralized control.
Why can't you be in top cognitive shape if you sleep 8 hours during the day? Yes, most people don't do it, but that doesn't mean it's particularly challenging for the body. As long as you get your full 8 hours, this is fine (speaking from personal experience).
Overall the article unfortunately fails to address the core dilemma of the topic in a persuasive way.
There's a whole body of research on the health risks associated with night shift work (it messes with circadian rhythms) and its impact on things like the quality of cognition, particularly as you get older. There are probably many people like you who adapt perfectly to it, but as a general rule it is a downside.
I would be surprised if this research managed to control for the obvious confounders here given that a lot of people working at night will also lack an air conditioned, quiet space to sleep in during the day.
That being said, if at least 50% can perform well at night, it makes sense for corporations to force strict adherence to their HQ work hours.
I never understood why companies don't just hire remote workers who don't mind working inverted hours instead of having a reduced sync time window. Lots of things actually become more convenient if you work from 12am to 8am (for example)
Plenty of Indians do work night hours.
Yep and plenty of Americans do too (see: every 24/7 enterprise) but I don't understand why "we hire only if you work our exact time zone hours" isn't considered the default.
I meant plenty of Indians who remotely work for US companies already work US hours,