Coronavirus in Massachusetts (coupons, postal, how much)

[OutdoorLover]

Originally Posted by BostonMike7

My sister is an ICU nurse who's worked with Covid patients and watched countless die from it. From her perspective, all she see is the worst of it and see's how it is a terrible way to die. She does take extra precautions that I don't think I even take, but then again i haven't seen what she has. Describing it to me doesn't really have the same effect i guess, much like it doesn't seem to convince anyone who takes the perspective that this is all just a little cold.

While the odds are in my favor, i certainly do not want to get it. It just doesn't look like a fun time if you are one of the unlucky ones. One coworker about my age really got it bad and struggled with it at home for 3-4 weeks before he was well enough to resume work. Still speaks about how it was the worst illness he's ever had, and he was a healthy guy who lived at a gym and was constantly working out. Once he could get vaccinated, he did and said he would rather have side effects from the vaccine vs ever going through that again.

I read a lot of papers - some were epidemiological, describing cases in aggregate and extracting statistical correlations, or they looked at the molecular biology of presumed mechanisms of pathology. What really made an impact on me though, were the detailed, individual case studies of severe case patients who had died, the observations of ICU staff, and of surgeons who operated on them to try to save them, along with some of the pathology images from their dissected corpses, which had sustained spectacular damage. This left quite an impression on me - not something to play with!

[FarmCoastLocal]

Originally Posted by GeoffD

I’ve made that point several times in this thread. Personally, working remotely due to COVID-19 put me out of business. I can be replaced by an Asian engineer for pennies on the dollar. None of the Asian vendors are losing any business over it.

This guy gets it. Anyone who has been able to do their job well remotely the past year, should absolutely be aiming to come back into the office. Because unless there are legal protections necessitating that your job be done domestically (e.g. think public sector jobs) there is someone somewhere internationally who will do your job as well or better for a fraction of the cost.

The pandemic accelerated the future and the future is more outsourcing. Don't think for a millisecond companies aren't looking at all this remote work and at the balance sheet at oftentimes their biggest expense.

Oftentimes the worry is automation replacing people's jobs, but more efficient outsourcing is what will really happen.

Only half of India has access to the internet. Think about that. Double the US population. Subharan Africa's population is booming and infrastructure is improving. What do you think will happen when all of those folks get online?

People who don't want to return to the office don't see the bigger picture. They place too much value on their own work. Someone out there wants your job way more. Would work way harder. Be more grateful for it. Cause less problems, and be better for the bottom line. I've seen it with my own eyes.

[OutdoorLover]

Originally Posted by GeoffD

I’ve made that point several times in this thread. Personally, working remotely due to COVID-19 put me out of business. I can be replaced by an Asian engineer for pennies on the dollar. None of the Asian vendors are losing any business over it.

Sorry to learn of your trouble. I hadn't really thought about that, and while I don't think it's as simple as remote work = expendability, if the *decision-maker* views it as that simple, then that's all that really matters. I guess this remote work can be a double-edged sword indeed.

[msRB311]

Many companies already have gone the outsourcing route and it doesn't necessarily work out. I worked at a company that had customer support workers in Pakistan and they didn't do a great job and none of the managers here wanted to take the time to train them. One manager after left because of them.

We already are competing globally for jobs.

No one is saying the want to be completely remote either. They just don't want to go back 5 days a week.

[GeoffD]

Originally Posted by OutdoorLover

Sorry to learn of your trouble. I hadn't really thought about that, and while I don't think it's as simple as remote work = expendability, if the *decision-maker* views it as that simple, then that's all that really matters. I guess this remote work can be a double-edged sword indeed.

It’s not expendability. It’s labor mobility and the ability to shift labor to lower cost places in the world. I spent a decade coaching Asian companies through turning cable modem reference designs into products. It was expensive to send an Engineer from Taiwan or South Korea to a Comcast lab in metro Philly or a Charter lab in Denver. Cox/Atlanta. Cablevision on Long Island. I had a bunch of subject matter expertise and lots of personal relationships from previous cable-oriented things I’d done in a metro Boston startup. When it all shifted to 100% remote, they could hire a cheap in-country tech and tunnel into the cable operator labs from Asia. Nothing technical was done in-person so that could be worked via conference calls/videoconferencing from Asia. There’s this hubris about US engineering superiority that may have been true 25 years ago but isn’t the case now. I worked with some really talented engineers over the last decade+.

I retired a few years earlier than I was expecting but wasn’t a catastrophe. Personally, I wouldn’t want to be 40 and telecommuting from a million dollar metro Boston home expecting to get paid Boston wages forever. If you’re doing work that requires face-to-face time, sure. Employers have to pay the premium to locate in a place with critical mass of talent. That’s not most jobs. If I’m the CFO, I’m asking why I have to pay $300k fully burdened cost for someone working remotely from Boston when I can pay half as much elsewhere. We used to push standalone projects like test automation to Quebec. There was a provincial subsidy for R&D jobs. We didn’t have to pay healthcare. The wages were lower. We could get ex-Nortel engineers to work over the river in Hull for $100k. Same time zone. English-fluent. Very capable people. There’s nothing sacred about Boston as soon as the work can be done remotely.

[msRB311]

If I was a CFO I'd probably wonder why someone was making 300k regardless of what their location is or how often they show up to the office. I get the sense that a lot of people in Boston are overpaid for what they're doing. But if that's what companies are willing to pay people then good for them. But yes many people would be willing to work for less than a 300k salary.

[GeoffD]

Originally Posted by msRB311

If I was a CFO I'd probably wonder why someone was making 300k regardless of what their location is or how often they show up to the office. I get the sense that a lot of people in Boston are overpaid for what they're doing. But if that's what companies are willing to pay people then good for them. But yes many people would be willing to work for less than a 300k salary.

You obviously don’t know what “fully burdened cost” means.

[mdovell]

Right but contract laws also play into this. When Dan Gilbert looked at Quicken loans Detroit was only 15% more expensive than Brazil. Outsourcing usually tries to minimize the most controllable costs (ie labor and Bennie a) but you might maximize the uncontrollable costs. Foreign currency values, foreign interest rates, foreign energy prices (China is state controlled. Prices went up 8% overnight when I was there), time zone differences, translation problems all add up. Let's not forget holidays and festivals and other labor practices. The Phillipines has the best English outside of Hong Kong but they also have 13th month pay. Will you end up on court if you don't pay? No but word spreads and few will want to work for you. So a 50k job that is 24k is now 26k.

[id77]

Originally Posted by mdovell

Right but contract laws also play into this. When Dan Gilbert looked at Quicken loans Detroit was only 15% more expensive than Brazil. Outsourcing usually tries to minimize the most controllable costs (ie labor and Bennie a) but you might maximize the uncontrollable costs. Foreign currency values, foreign interest rates, foreign energy prices (China is state controlled. Prices went up 8% overnight when I was there), time zone differences, translation problems all add up. Let's not forget holidays and festivals and other labor practices. The Phillipines has the best English outside of Hong Kong but they also have 13th month pay. Will you end up on court if you don't pay? No but word spreads and few will want to work for you. So a 50k job that is 24k is now 26k.

Direct hiring of people in say China is a gauntlet of procedure and you're required by Chinese law to have a legal presence, in China, staff by Chinese people. Hiring in a place like France is an exercise in frustration as it takes an act of two gods simultaneously to terminate someone.

The simplest way to nip these and all of your issues in the bud is third party outsourcing. That's why there's companies that do things like payroll and HR for you and they deal with these logistical issues for a fixed price. In other words, many (smaller) companies don't go running overseas to fill headcount; they pay a third party to do the job that headcount would do and make filling that headcount the third party's problem. Larger multinationals will set up legal presences in multiple nations and hire 'direct', though some also skirt problems by going the contractor route in those nations (where legal).

There may be a small premium paid to these outsourcing companies, but it also takes most or all of the uncontrolled costs out of the equation.

[mdovell]

Right. Basically what I'm getting at is some think that major work of significant projects can be outsourced overnight by some small company. It can't. I've been to China back years ago (2008) and dealt with oems there (2018-2020). There still quite a bit of bad qa. Documentation with bad translation. There's a strong difference between translation and interpretation. Branding is an issue as local brands there have serious seo and sem issues.

I have to wonder when things really get better if companies might opt back from outsourcing to visa sponsorship again. Without contract laws you can't really do business anywhere.