Remote workers more likely to start their own business
theregister.com53 points by rntn a day ago
53 points by rntn a day ago
Were bosses being paranoid that workers were setting up their own businesses though? I thought they were more concerned workers wern't working? This rather suggests workers can actually work very well at home - well enough to set up their own business anyway.
I appreciate what this is trying to say is - workers weren't doing their jobs and were instead setting up business. Except this could also quite easily show that if you get rid of peoples long commutes, and they have a space in their home they consider 'work' space - they might have the time and space to start their own biz.
And as this seems to be only people who left to do so, it rather suggests people were doing their jobs. Might not be doing 'their hours', but the argument against remote work rarely seems to be 'we can't allow remote work because its so effective people complete their jobs much faster'
What it shows is managerial insecurity. Despite the obsession with monitoring "productivity", managers really haven't the faintest idea of what they're doing.
A healthy relationship is one in which managers don't monitor and don't micromanage and don't rely on Jira or commit logs to lazily monitor employees. A manager isn't there to lord over employees. He is there to support employees and help them do their jobs. But to do that, you need to know what they're doing.
Talk to them. Listen. Hold 1-on-1s on a regular basis. Assume they're doing their jobs instead of defaulting to a defensive and adversarial posture. If you treat employees like adversaries, they'll behave like adversaries. Grant them reasonable trust and they will take initiative and view the relationship as one that is cooperative. They will be less likely to want to risk losing the reasonable trust they have been gratuitously given; if you default to suspicion, then employees have little to lose. You already think poorly of them, so who cares.
If someone is genuinely slacking or not well-suited, that will come out sooner or later. 1-on-1s, individually and taken in aggregate, will give the manager an idea of what is really happening, especially if the manager is competent and knowledgeable of the domain, which he should be. 360 EOY reviews can also help here, not as an adversarial tactic, but as a way to share feedback. A competent manager can read the tea leaves.
As someone that sees the employee-employer relationship as inherently adversarial, you are correct. I normally say that I am never loyal to corporations, but I can be loyal to people when they earn my loyalty.
I job-hopped mercilessly to a better paycheck in my career, and I would keep doing it had I not found myself in a company I happen to enjoy working at. My manager does not micromanage me but is always very aware of what I am doing, mostly because he is a very competent developer himself. I get treated as a responsible adult - I can work remote without any suspicion that I am not doing my job, and in response I act as an adult, putting some effort to match the freedom I am given.
From time to time I get reached out by recruiters, and I can't find motivation to job hop again because, well, I might not find an environment that treats me as an adult, especially as I keep reading how so many managers are insecure as hell about their employees.
Never thought I'd say that, but in the end there is a bit more to work than the cash that trickles to my bank account by the end of the month.
I was also thinking the same and advocated with pretty much the same words. Until became a manager, and noticed that yes, most of the employees are like that, but there are some that will screw you over. And just that minority is why we cannot have nice things. Hell, we wouldn't even need written contracts if everyone behaved responsibly.
It's like leaving your bicycle on a street, in Japan you don't need a lock, in San Francisco a lock wouldn't help. Even when 99% people are honest and responsible.
It's worth noting that for those edge cases all the productivity monitoring in the world won't make that employee any more effective, and you won't need those tools to see that they're not cutting it (assuming you're engaged with your team as the other commenter describes). You'll likely lose more in annoying the rest of your team and burning your own cycles with surveillance than you'll gain from it.
> It's worth noting that for those edge cases all the productivity monitoring in the world won't make that employee any more effective, and you won't need those tools to see that they're not cutting it (assuming you're engaged with your team as the other commenter describes).
The main purpose of the tracking of the “edge cases” is basically insurance in the event of a law suit.
Yes, it irritates the folks with good intentions, but a good manager will keep the tracking tax as light as possible for the folks who are actually working.
The amount of headache it saves when the lawsuit or threat of a lawsuit comes around is quite a bit.
Wait what? Why are you putting yourself and your team in a position where your reports can screw you over? And if one or two people are doing whatever that is, why aren’t you firing them or managing them out?
I don't have magician or telepathy skills, I don't immediately see the problems. Even on 1:1s I can be persuaded and believe lies.
And well, for reporting I kinda agree, we don't do that many reporting as others. I would say other managers need advanced tracking and reporting to automate their own reporting to higher management.
Not wasting 2+ hours a day on commuting and being able to do little chores to help you think every time you would have wandered to the watering hole to help you avoid work really does give you a lot more time to self-actualize, yes.
Don’t have to waste time working either. Just mute yourself on calls and work on your own business.
The boss: you must work for me, and only for me.
Also the boss: claims to hold five jobs at five different organizations.
(I don't even mean Elon, I mean the median "founder" type, but him too I guess, except that I think he's up to more than five)
> The boss: you must work for me, and only for me.
It's not the boss saying that. It's the contract you voluntarily signed.
How many workers would succeed at so-restricting the people at the top of the company, in that contract? Pretty much none, right? Probably you're thinking it'd be absurd for them to even ask such a thing. Why? Because this is a matter of class, and the worker isn't of the right social class to be afforded such liberty, while others are. And the worker can't force such a clause despite that resistance. Why? Because they're by-far the weaker party in the negotiation. If these weren't true, it wouldn't seem so immediately absurd to even suggest such a thing.
Why don't people who can avoid these clauses embrace them anyway, since the justification is that the company needs and deserves your undivided attention to the greatest legally allowed degree, when they have far more power over the company and are being rewarded far more for their effort? The same reasoning applies far more to them! Because it's very undesirable to be restricted in that way, of course, so damn the company's best interests.
If it's very undesirable to be restrained by these, and the benefit to the employer is evidently not so large that it's necessary to restrict those for whom the reasoning applies 1,000x more than for some lowly peon, why do normal workers accept those clauses approximately 100% of the time they're demanded? Because they don't feel they have a choice.
"Voluntary" isn't binary.
> Probably you're thinking it'd be absurd for them to even ask such a thing.
No, there are loads of people who work as independent contractors, who are then allowed to work for other clients.
> Why? Because this is a matter of class, and the worker isn't of the right social class to be afforded such liberty, while others are.
Then moving social class is merely a matter of becoming an independent contractor.
Right, there are many cases where an adversarial power dynamic gets disguised, dressed-up as just the voluntary freedom of the majestic unbound human spirit etc.
At the extreme end, "slavery or death" may be an individual choice, but it's not the kind we want to celebrate or encourage.
___
> "I should not agree with your young [socialistic] friends," said Marcus curtly, "I am so old-fashioned as to believe in free contract."
> "I, being older, perhaps believe in it even more," answered M. Louis smiling. "But surely it is a very old principle of law that a leonine contract is not a free contract. And it is hypocrisy to pretend that a bargain between a starving man and a man with all the food is anything but a leonine contract." He glanced up at the fire-escape, a ladder leading up to the balcony of a very high attic above. "I live in that garret; or rather on that balcony. If I fell off the balcony and hung on a spike, so far from the steps that somebody with a ladder could offer to rescue me if I gave him a hundred million francs, I should be quite morally justified in using his ladder and then telling him to go to hell for his hundred million. Hell, indeed, is not out of the picture; for it is a sin of injustice to force an advantage against the desperate. Well, all those poor men are desperate; they all hang starving on spikes. If they must not bargain collectively, they cannot bargain at all. You are not supporting contract; you are opposing all contract; for yours cannot be a real contract at all."
-- The Paradoxes of Mr. Pond by GK Chesterton [https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks05/0500421h.html]
Haha, nice, the Dover edition of that book's my current in-an-outdoor-setting-while-the-kids-play read, though that season's only just started so I'm not far in yet. Love me some Chesterton.
I'm no contract lawyer but I don't think you can get in legal trouble for this if you're a salary employee. Work is work and your salary is your salary - it's not like you're stealing time, regardless of how much our corporate overlords would like us to believe. You're paid in salary.
At worst, it's a fire-able offense.
I'm not saying it's a crime. I'm saying it's not your boss demanding you work only for them.
If you do have that arrangement, it's because you signed a contract to agree to those terms. The CEO that is the CEO of multiple companies (rare, but it definitely happens) signed a contract to agree to those terms, and is no doubt bound by other terms.
That reference to one-sided exclusivity via contract law reminds me of a recent Doctorow piece [0]:
> Capitalists hate capitalism. They don’t want to be exposed to the risks entailed by competition, and feel the goad of that insecurity. They want monopolies, or platforms, or monopoly platforms. They want assets, not businesses.
> They want to be able to fire employees at will – but they want those same employees to be bound to them just as surely as serfs were bound to their lords’ land.
[0] https://locusmag.com/2024/03/cory-doctorow-capitalists-hate-...
Holy shit I can't imagine being so anti-human that I would worship a piece of paper. Pray to your contract Gods bud, I'll live my life the way I want
No one's worshipping anything in this scenario. The company is "worshipping" the document by paying you on time the amount agreed, and abiding by everything else it says, and the employee is "worshipping" the document by doing the same.
Living your life the way you want presumably doesn't include you wanting other people breaking their obligations to you. Why do you want to do it to them?
My employment contract has a non-compete clause, not demands for absolute loyalty. Who lied/gave you a fake copy? /s
DOGE, xAI, Tesla, SpaceX, Musk Foundation, and somehow he also finds time to tweet 16 hours a day. He's just more efficient than we can imagine. (/s)
This article suggests that this is a win-lose scenario.
It's a win for the workers and the economy at large, but a loss for employers.
However, it might very well be a win-win.
While the employer might lose a worker to an entrepreneurial venture, isn't this the sort of self-selection out that leads to a more engaged workforce overall?
Retaining those employees, who would really be doing something else, by introducing more friction through an in-office policy seems like a recipe for low engagement and mediocre business impact.
I was thinking the same thing. Plus, treat people well enough (salary, benefits, work you assign, etc) that they want to stay. IE, as a manager, part of my job is to ensure my employees feel challenged/stimulated, satisfied with their comp plan, etc. If they aren't they'll go elsewhere (start their own, or jump to CapOne/Amazon/some other big tech company in DC).
We only want billionaires to create jobs. Not you peasants!
Back to pits.
While the employer might lose a worker to an entrepreneurial venture, isn't this the sort of self-selection out that leads to a more engaged workforce overall?
Mmmm..
I don't know man?
Be careful with this line of reasoning.
Someone, say, an employer, might be forgiven for concluding from your line of reasoning, that not allowing for remote work in the first place then leads to a more engaged workforce overall. Since remote workers are more entrepreneurial, they'd self-select out by not taking the job.
The pandemic really exposed how much I had accepted being stuck in a slave mentality, taking only what was offered.
Little things like a functional work environment with good screens and peripherals that isn't inundated with noise and fairly constant interruption.
Big things like a long commute (and at roughly half an hour mine was better than most) and not having to work alongside, sitting under the gaze of, someone who just emotionally abused me.
Those were simply solved and I could just fix other major problems myself.
Examples include the obvious fixes of the above issues but also include my option to increase the amount of vacation I take, adopt a 4-day week, and other things that have greatly improved my productivity and far more greatly improved my quality of life. Fuck the endless "always more" and "but what have you done for me lately?" even when I'm outperforming everyone else and have become the "go to".
Most impactfully, I have created an emotionally safe and deeply honest environment for myself and my cofounder where we can express our humanity and support each other in our struggles and joys. It is "unprofessional" and completely glorious and loving. Or work had become something that is part of our thriving rather than something that erodes our well-being.
Have those measures like taking more vacations and adopting a 4-day week really increased your productivity? How have you measured that?
Of cause one can deliver more per hour when working 8h/d instead of 12h/d. But the output of a 12h day will still be massively more than from a 8h day.
There's been a fair bit of research on that topic. Largely the studies I have read have found that especially in creative intellectual labor (perhaps some programming could be excluded), overwork leads to negative productivity, compoundingly so in the long term.
> You need to do some research.
Please edit out swipes, as the site guidelines ask: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
(Your comment would be fine without that first bit)
Unfortunately, the edit window has passed. I didn't mean it as a swipe but I can see it being read that way too easily, sorry dang and everyone else. You would be welcome to remove or edit that sentence.
[edit: perhaps "There's been a fair bit of research on that topic. Largely the studies I have read have found that especially...]
That's a great change which totally solves the problem. I've merged it in your comment above. Thanks!
Edit: I of course believe you that you didn't mean it as a swipe. The trouble is that these things can all too easily land that way anyhow, since intent isn't directly readable. Past posts about this in case of interest: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Anecdotally, yes. 100% yes.
When I push past my mental capacity, stress, drain circling, anger, all that starts to seep in and it destroys my ability to think through hard problems, complexities, details and so on.
I’ll end up banging my head against the wall for hours, stressed and exhausted from some misguided sense that my worth is in my output and all of it will plummet for several days afterward.
I’ve studied myself. When I work extra hard when I can’t think anymore, even if it’s just to “get over this one hump”, my productivity is near zero and my agitation is up for 1-3 days of work after, *even with a weekend break*.
But with stable, consistent work that works out to 4-8 real work hours a day, usually around 6 or 7 but sometimes only 3, rarely 9-10, I have made huge amounts of progress on projects and done things more complex and complicated than I have ever done before. And it’s almost felt easy.
Not really, at best its linear if your job is like an assembly line. Office work rarely benefits from longer hours. 8h days already have diminishing returns after 4-6h on average.
Many pilot programs have found that 4 day weeks are at least equally productive compared to 5 day weeks.
Your comment is reasonable and hackers shouldn't down vote it or try to bully you like they did.
I would say that there is a productivity advantage of having extra time and extra energy. That's when you have the peace needed to make more profound improvements of the work being done. And these improvements have exponential effects.
Exactly how are they being bullied? The premise is being countered with study results and counter-examples.
Disagreeing is not bullying.
And if downvoting incorrect statements is wrong, what's the point of the vote at all?
See the comment that reads: "You sound like a wonderful person to work for. Sign me up! /s"
I wouldn't even considering that bullying, it's just an observation.
When people with this guy's mentality get into power, they are awful to work for.
Do you want to work 12/h a day for the same pay? No, right? Okay, then everyone is on the same page. I don't think we need to advocate against ourselves in search of some principle or some type of moral high ground. It's not a virtue to be self-destructive.
If they only studied remote work around the time of COVID, I'm not sure if findings will generalize. I think the pandemic caused a lot of people to reassess their lives and careers, and I don't know if increases in new venture creation can be entirely attributed to remote work.
The Register should have mentioned that the article has not been peer reviewed.
> The authors cite various other studies on remote work showing how it frees up time by reducing commuting, increases productivity, offers more flexible hours, and reduces employee monitoring.
Sounds like a benefit to society to me. When people do not waste time on commutes, they spend it either with their families and friends or thinking about solving problems, which occasionally turn into new businesses. Without such time freed up, these business ideas would never have come to fruition.
I also don't see why how employees spend their time off (as almost no employer counts commuting as work time) should factor into remote policies.
"I need you to generate more shareholder value."
"WAIT NOT LIKE THAT"
Reading summaries like this requires great skepticism. It's exceptionally difficult in this particular case to avoid directing results to arbitrary conclusions through cohort selection and grouping.
> analyzed IP address data in conjunction with LinkedIn data to cross-reference those working from home with those who formed new businesses. ... a title change and employment change on LinkedIn indicating a shift from being an employee to a founder.
Is this more likely to tell us something about the people and roles selected to work remotely, or an outcome of working remotely? At this scale the influences of each are absolutely inseparable. Do cohorts robustly account for education, experience, skillsets, tenure, etc.? The same values which improve one's ability to start a business strongly overlap with the considerations for employing someone remotely. I'm not saying they're comparing a "remote" cohort including developers to a "not remote" cohort including construction workers, but it's important to confirm.
This reminds of;
“What if I train my people and they leave?”
“What if you don’t train them and they stay!”
Considering that the research paper states that the new businesses were started post-pandemic, I wonder how many of these remote workers were encouraged to start their own business due to not wanting to deal with return to office.
Isn't it to be expected that anyone with more free time is more likely to have time to start a business?
Working from home means you don't have to commute which saves you hours a week. Of course it will increase the chance that you can start up a business.
I'm a bit surprised that I haven't seen more employers offer to pay people a bit more so that they can work during the hours they would normally commute... That seems like it would be a win-win, and would probably drop the number of people doing startups if they so desired.
In my experience, the only risk and proven danger are sales people. I've seen and met many former sales people whom developed relationships with their customers and then one day just quit their job and went into business of their own, with a lot of their former employer's clients as their new customers. I doubt there is anything anyone can do about it as this is about personal relations and the only defence could be to never allow one customer to be handled by a single account manager so there cannot be personal relationship developed. But on the other hand, will such customer feel good doing business with such a company? It might just be one of those things that just is what it is and will never change.
It should be pointed out that we glorify blue collar workers for having multiple jobs (see: single mom working 2 jobs trope), and we fully accept C-level people working multiple roles and advisories
But for anyone in between, we're shocked-SHOCKED that they'd do such a disloyal and underhanded thing. As though their work is theft outside of the confines of a single employer
Utter nonsense. Work and get paid. The end.
Blue collar workers are almost always paid hourly (or some other unit where time = money). They're being paid in proportion to the amount they work, and the only common reason to take a second job is that the first won't give you enough hours/work to meet your financial needs.
Some people see salary jobs as exchanging a fixed amount of money for 40 hrs/week average. If you're spending 10-20 of those hours moonlighting for company B, those people would say you're depriving company A of what they're paying for.
If you instead see salary work as producing a certain amount of work regardless of the hours worked, then again there's no issue here. This is inconsistently applied to executives far more than rank and file office workers, since no one really expects (or wants) board member Bob to provide 40 hrs/week to each of the 6 companies he's involved with.
Terms like 'moonlighting' get a bit loaded. If I'm not competing and happen to turn my model train hobby into a profit-making venture, who is my employer to say what I do in my time off?
I've found most employers want to rely on the vague bounds of salary. Finished when the work is? Well, surprise: the work is poorly defined.
A manager should have at least a vague notion of how long a given set of tasks should take an employee.
If I assign 20 hours of work and it takes 40 hours, I should not be surprised the employee does something else with the 20 remaining hours.
If I assign 40 hours of work and it takes 40 hours, and is of the expected quality, I really don't care if the employee take a part-time job elsewhere (assuming that doesn't conflict with expected online hours, etc).
You are either managing factory workers, or living in a dream world.
My boss has no idea what I'm working on, day by day. My assignments take as long as they take; he makes WAGs at the project start, and I get informed if I am burning more hours than he expected.
But at the end of the project, a "40-hour" project may take me 10, or 100 hours. Or, rarely, 40.
For a single task, sure that's true.
But overall, I think I have a feel for how hard my employees are working and whether they're completing things in a time I consider reasonable. Maybe I'm being played. I dunno.
So then what do we call work over 40 hours on salary? Employer theft? (Oh wait...)
Theoreticals aside, the only thing that matters is if you get the job done.
With the ever-increasing scope of responsibilities as an IC, I might as well fucking own the place
> The IP address information came from an unidentified "data partner" that uses first- and third-party cookies to create user profiles and ultimately infer their place of employment. The LinkedIn data – user profiles and resumes – came from Revelio Labs, and was supplemented with US census data and corporate data from Aberdeen CiTDB and People Data Labs.
If this research prompts more businesses to RTO or non-WFH -- for the reason of reducing employees leaving to do a startup, or doing a potentially competing startup after termination -- is this effectively leveraging surveillance capitalism to suppress labor (and innovation, as we say)?
This is a good thing for the economy at large
Oh no, the horror of the slaves exercising their free will.
The question of "do you really need them" does creep in easier if they cant drum the row galley of self importance that is cooperate hierarchy
When I worked in Big Tech, there were Slack channels for discussing real estate investment and one of my coworkers routinely fielded calls about the maid service he ran. I imagine it's much easier, and more appropriate, to do such things when working remotely and not having normal office etiquette as part of your job responsibilities.
The number of wfh workers starting their own business is tiny. This is more anti-wfh propaganda. Don't fall for it.
Agreed; the article is a complete red herring.
Bosses don't lose 2 minutes a year worrying that Drone #685 might leave to begin a startup.
They DO worry the drone isn't working; isn't working efficiently (if it's a good boss); isn't working at their highest quality (if it's a great boss).
What about confounding variables?
For example the types of jobs that are easiest to do remotely may correlate with employees likely to start their own business?
Objectively, this article is bullshit. What is the source ? An unidentified "data partner".
That just means, this is non-reproducible. So this is not science. Actually, there is a another paper, reproducible, it's non conclusive.
The social explanation of the phenomena (if there is any) are clearly politically oriented.
Why is the headline written like another remote work hit-piece? They go on to state overwhelming positive traits of remote work policies in the actual content. WTF?
The article also uses COVID-19 as the catalyst. If you consider that most people were fearing losing their jobs or were under threat to lose their jobs (and RTO mandates were occurring even in the early days of the pandemic!), it makes sense that an increase in entrepreneur activities would have happened.
> "It's good that we have people creating new firms, new jobs, and new innovation. This is presumably better reallocation, because essentially remote work allows you to better explore outside options in entrepreneurship."
Maybe don't put a rage-bait spin on the title of the article?
Alternate title: "employees weren't being paranoid: RTO was about control, not teamwork"
So what you're telling me, is that remote workers tend to be the most innovative and industrious. Got it.
which is really good for the economy
I'm not sure what is wrong with this - other than the wrong kind of employers wanting employees not to grow.
They weren't paranoid because nobody was out to get them. They could keep employees by treating them better. Employees leaving was only a reflection of their own inadequacies.
So yeah, maybe bosses were out to screw themselves. Is that paranoia?
There hasn't been a more pampered worker than a programmer during COVID. What else could the employers have done to "treat them better" during that time to avoid having workers exploit it?
They paid my CEO tens of millions to keep them. Apparently that's reasonable.
If you have to pay people more to keep them, you have to pay people more to keep them. People picking the best option isn't exploitation. They don't owe you or anyone else anything.
That's a bold statement. How about pay them commensurate with their value to the product? Have reasonable work hours? Whatever made them leave, fix that. For instance.
Wait, that above comment sounds like a disgruntle 'boss' who is lashing out. So, no answer will be adequate. That poisonous attitude is typical of why programmers were leaving.
Nobody wants to work anymore /s
People can be paid better, given better hours, more flexibility, more responsibilities, less responsibilities, better benefits, etc.
If lots of people don’t want to do a job, and that job has trouble keeping quality employees, it’s the job that’s broken, not the people.
Plenty of people were treated great when WFH, but it’s not a universal truth that everyone was.
During COVID, developers were among the highest comped individuals in US, could work from home, could work flexible hours.
So concretely, what more could they give? How much is the comp that wouldn't get abused?
What does it mean to "abuse" compensation?
There's this strange belief that work (labor) isn't like other types of goods and that a good pay should result in above-and-beyond performance. Rather than that pay simply just being the cost of labor.
When eggs went up from 4 dollars to 8, nobody expected them to taste twice as good. That's just what they cost now. But when developers go from 80,000 to 160,000 on average or something (arbitrary numbers), people do expect them to work twice as hard. Otherwise, they're abusing their employer. As if employers even could be abused.
People ran their own businesses or worked multiple jobs in time they were paid for by the employer. As in - took the money and didn't do the job.
It's a good time to be small, never been a better time to do your own thing. After 15y~ of doing megacorps, I was terrified to be on my own, but I got out there and talked to friends about what they were doing and how I can help.
I'm wielding two contracts and two retainers all while building software I sell for myself. It feels absolutely crazy to send someone an invoice and they send me money, as if I've unlocked some secret ability. This month is the first month I'm making more than I was as a corper.
Don't let the game tell you how to play anymore. The tools are out there and are better than ever.
"bosses": ah, good. i shall demoralize and imprison my employees to prevent them from doing this. this will be good for productivity
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