Seems to me like the actual problem is staring you right in the face, though: you are not in a tech cluster and you don't want to countenance remote working. That instantaneously removes 90% of the pool - or rather 99%, since no city on Earth has 75m people in commuting distance. No wonder you struggle to find people, particularly for a hard skill like assembler.
Somewhat yes. It depends on where you draw the line for "tech cluster", both for the size and for the industry.
Austin and the DC area sort of count. No, they aren't the Bay Area, but nothing else is.
Specifically for low-level security work, there are a number of competitors both large and small in Melbourne, FL. There is also embedded work related mainly to aerospace.
> there are a number of competitors both large and small in Melbourne, FL
And they are all competing for the services of assembler programmers living in Melbourne FL, population 80,000.
Wouldn't it be smart to widen that pool?
EDIT: obviously you have security constraints, I appreciate that - but most businesses in similar circumstances won't, and still won't consider remote, to then bitch about skill shortages.
I did a lot of research as I just moved here myself. Melbourne is not physically a large city. The county that Melbourne is in has nearly 600K people. If you count people within say, 45 minutes, that number grows to probably over a million as that gets you to Orlando outskirts.
I did remote work for a while, but honestly, I prefer going into an office.
Even with a home office, my family or dogs and up demanding a lot of my attention through the day, and it's difficult/frustrating since it takes me out of my mental zone/thought process.
That was a while ago.. now, as a manager, I could try some remote employees, but I honestly prefer having face time with my employees... Most remote workers never want to use webcams (in my experience with 5 remote working peers over my career), which severely impact my communication capabilities (I can't get facial ques or body language from the interaction).
I also delt with a supervisor that hid a work impacting personal problem in his remote working... Over 2 years he did less work and supervising, was hard to reach most of the time, and would (eventually) only communicate by email. If he came into the office, people might have seen that HR needed to provide assistance sooner.
So I think issues like these make the idea of remote work scary to employers... What interview questions can you ask to very "dedicated remote workers" from "easy paycheck remote workers"? How to you improve performance in remote workers if they consistently perform much slower than in office workers?
That's a failure of upper management to demand accountability from him. A lot of people hide a lot of stuff even when they are at the office.
> What interview questions can you ask to very "dedicated remote workers" from "easy paycheck remote workers"?
The same you ask to discern between "dedicated office worker" and "minesweeper-champion office worker"?
> How to you improve performance in remote workers
Promote accountability based on deliverables and targets. Establish always-on communication channels and systems, keeping remotes involved in the decision-making rather than being recipients of orders. Have periodic reviews, particularly if things are slower than expected. And at the end of the day, don't be scared to let people go if they are not meeting expectations, or to put your foot down on things like webcam usage if you really need it.
It's a shame you're not open to remote. I didn't post in that thread, but matching on "assembly", "assembler", and "embedded" is right up my alley. Unless you happen to be anywhere near Regina, SK :)
Let's avoid judging -- remote is awesome if it works, but a lot of people aren't open to remote precisely because they're in a field or industry where it's incredibly logistically difficult. For example if you're a hardware company it's often pretty hard to do work without the actual hardware in front of you.
100% agree, which is why I'd want hardware delivered :). Not as easy for e.g. an electric vehicle, but pretty straightforward for smaller electronics. I come pre-equipped with a decently stocked lab: nice 'scope/logic analyzer, ok spectrum analyzer, nice soldering setup for SMD, hordes of JTAG adapters and dev boards, 3D printer, etc. I've been doing remote hardware work for a while now; there are definitely a few challenges, but it's generally worked just fine.
Edit: I looked at their profile and saw the citizenship requirement, and more of a description of the kinds of stuff they work on. I get why remote might not be encouraged for it :). The point still stands generally though; remote hardware work is possible and not a huge burden for most situations.
You're not wrong, but for an awful lot of combinations of hardware and remote locations, it's reasonable to ship gear as needed. I do firmware work remotely, and think of occasional fast shipping (or more rarely, work trips) as a cost of doing business.
Again, typically not easy if you are doing industrial hardware that weighs 100 pounds, has fragile components, still in a phase where various hardware components need to be regularly tweaked or replaced by their respective experts on the team, needs to be on-site to function at all, and depends on other infrastructure.
If you're doing consumer hardware, different story.
I've done remote embedded (and instrument control) work. It's not impossible. I mean, who is really into electronics and doesn't have a bench setup already? Also most test equipment these days has network connectivity, so you can even work with that remotely in some cases.
Why aren't you open to remote work? I've been at NodeSource for the last four years. We are all remote. I honestly don't understand why anyone would go to an office to write code in 2019.
It's mainly about security. We keep our stuff off of computers that can reach the internet. I get two computers at my desk, one for random internet junk and one for real work.
I happen to like the side-effect on work-life balance. Nobody will ever expect me to do a bit more work at home. When I go home, I'm totally off work. I also get paid overtime, so I'm not getting cheated at the office either.
It's also somewhat about physical hardware. Remote use of screw drivers and soldering irons is difficult.
> I happen to like the side-effect on work-life balance.
There's no problem with work-life balance while working remote. You can even have better work-life balance as you don't need to take half a day off from work to attend to a 10-minute chore that can't be rescheduled. It needs maturity and trust on the part of the employers and the employees. You're almost boasting about calling a bug a feature.
Depending on what you mean by "a day", each commute direction is 2 to 3 hours. (or I suppose 6) You have a very long distance, or severe traffic, or something else unusual. It sounds like you would be driving over the mountains to reach a place like LA or SF.
I've been a software developer at 5 different work locations in 2 different states, but I have never commuted more than 20 minutes. Currently it is almost that if I walk, or 3 minutes if I drive.
This is because I choose small cities with affordable housing and low traffic. Big urban tech hubs are popular, but they mean you probably won't get a large property right near work.
I have no commute as I’ve been fully remote for the last 8 years.
But traffic is insanely bad in places like Bangalore and people just can’t choose to live in smaller places because 99% of the jobs in India are in places like Bangalore. The half-a-day case is much more the norm than the living-closer-to-work case in my experience.
Depends on the industry. I work in robotics and remote work is difficult. Almost every engineer needs to work with actual physical things that move and break. Motor controllers dying, cameras lenses getting smacked out of alignment, wires getting pulled, test circuits going up in smoke, these aren't things that are easy to deal with from a distance.
In general, it's also embedded systems that are (a) most difficult to remotely flash and test and (b) most easy to irreversibly damage if you're not in front of them during the testing process.
Huh, why do you say that? I’d assume not because of the hardware constraint, etc. I’d imagine web devs are best suited to remote. Usually low sensitivity to the code or data and no hardware and the product itself is accessible everywhere.
Compilers/assembly/embedded systems/demo scene people have been coordinating on mailing lists since the 90's, sending patch files to each other on their slow clunky machines on their slow clunky 56k internet connections. This demographic imo is going to be way better at remote work than some brogrammer, which is what the OP is looking for perhaps inadvertently. And I say that as someone not at all of the noble compilers/assembly/embedded systems demographic. With these people, you don't need to worry about the ops and management impact of low face-to-face time, because they need zero of it. Could be a stereotype, but it definitely tracks with the people I know.
I get that. But it's not that there's nobody. (Available / with the right skills) There are no people matching your non-technical requirements, which is very different.
So, I'm not really looking at the moment, but this post struck me because I just moved to Melbourne, and venturing to do more low level work. If you have any resources/suggestions, or just want to say hi, feel free to reach out.
> -no. That doesn't mean we don't offer WFH (in fact, I'm working from home 3 out of 5 days a week), but remote only is not an option. I think the maximum WFH days per week for other people is around 2.
Souprock! you still have austin office right? not looking for work right now but is the sec clearance still a requirement?
Yes, and sort of. Most sites don't require an existing clearance, but you'd have to be eligible. The main reasons for rejection seem to be foreign connections and debt you can't handle. After that I think it is addictions and fraud. Stuff you did many years ago is less of a problem than recent stuff.
1. I already asked. He wants Rust and probably won't leave Albuquerque. Bummer. He'd be perfect.
2. Argentina... nope.
3. Barcelona... nope.
4. One might work. I probably already asked, but don't remember.
5. Remote only... nope.
6. Lisbon... nope.
7. Paris... nope.
8. I already asked. He won't leave southwest Florida, even for Tampa or Melbourne. Bummer.
9. Bay Area and won't relocate... nope.
10. He's hesitant to relocate. Hmmm, I could try.
11. Paris... nope.
So that is the situation as of now, with 155 comments 7 hours after the post. I can email a couple of them.