How Linus Torvalds Invented Today's Work From Home Paradigm In 1991

[steven36]

 from the way-of-the-penguin dept

 

 

Working from home is beginning to move from being a necessary but temporary way of achieving social distancing in offices, to a radical shift in how many companies will operate. Until now, most of the evidence of that change has been anecdotal. But a Twitter thread by Chris Herd, who is CEO of FirstbaseHQ, which "lets you supply, finance and manage all the physical equipment your remote teams need to do great work at home", provides some fascinating statistics on the scale of the shift to working from home. Herd says he has talked to around 1000 companies over the last six months about their plans for remote work. One trend is that corporate headquarters are "finished", he says: companies will cut their commercial office space by 40 to 60%, with people working from home for two to four days each week. Some 30% of the companies Herd talked to say that they intend to get rid of offices completely, and move fully to remote working.

 

Some of the reasons for this shift are obvious. Things like increasing worker satisfaction by avoiding stressful daily commuting, and enabling them to participate in family life during the entire day through flexible working patterns. Slashing office costs is a major factor for the companies, but also cited is the reduction in the pollution generated by traditional office working. However, the main driver for a shift to remote working may be surprising:

The first reason they are going remote-first is simple -- it lets them hire more talented people

Rather than hiring the best person in a 30-mile radius of the office, they can hire the best person in the world for every role

Traditional ways of running a company have made it hard to bring about this change. But there is one sphere whose stunning success is built on this very shift. The world of free software and open source has embraced distributed teams working at home for nearly 30 years. This has allowed projects to select people on the basis of their skills, rather on their availability for a local office. It also means that people can work on what they are best at, and most interested in, rather than on what their local team needs them to do. As a result, open source software has gone from a bit of coding fun in the bedroom of a Finnish student, Linus Torvalds, to the dominant form of software in every field, with the lone exception of the desktop. Its success has also inspired a range of related movements, such as open access, open data, open science and many more.

 

What's remarkable is that Linus did not set out to create this new kind of global, distributed software development methodology. It simply evolved from the time he placed his first, rough version of the Linux kernel on an FTP server in Finland, and invited people to download it freely. The crucial step was his willingness to accept suggestions to improve the code from anyone, provided they were good ones. That encouraged people to join the project, because they knew that there was no traditional business hierarchy based on seniority, just a meritocracy, where their suggestions would be accepted if their work was demonstrably better than the existing code. The companies that will thrive most from today's epochal shift to working from home will be those that are willing to implement similar ideas to those of Linus from 30 years ago, transposed to a general business context.

 

Source

[Hannity]

"Rather than hiring the best person in a 30-mile radius of the office, they can hire the best person in the world for every role"

so you are supposed to be excited about big tech being able to outsource jobs to tripukistan and screw you up

 

[steven36]

3 hours ago, Hannity said:

so you are supposed to be excited about big tech being able to outsource jobs to tripukistan and screw you up

They already  sent all the manufacturing jobs overseas in my country in the 2000s  . So you think i care about somebody who works for Google? What comes around goes around finally they figured out a way to get rid of the IT jobs as well.  Welcome  to our  world  now maybe  they may have get off there  and do some manual  labor and and get blisters on there pretty little soft hands Boo-hoo .  In my part of the world people been struggling to find jobs since the 2000s  . 

 

If they don't qualify for the job  means they should of never had it to start out with,  they was hired because they had no one else to chose from  so they need to go back to Collage and find a job that has real job security like in medical , law enforcement , Government   or anything they need hands on workers .  When   manufacturing left from around here  you know how many people had to change careers almost everybody  so why would i fell sorry for someone who sets behind a desk all day? 

 

If they send everything overseas then they have a bigger problem nobody has jobs  to buy there junk  and thats already  happening .Tech is blinded to the fact  like 47% of the USA lost there jobs  and as soon as money gets tight people are only going to buy what they need  if they send more jobs overseas like you claim  how is  tech going to sell all this stuff they say they are to work at home ? If you dont have a job to work at home  why would you buy it? 

 

But they will  still be jobs  just maybe not the one  you want . When all the jobs left around here that been here since the  early 1900s  life went on without them  now that stuff is made in China like everything else is . 

 

Companies   can't be trusted  it don't matter if you make the parts that go in computers  or you code  software  if they can pay someone less they will. The pandemic just gave them the leverage needed  to do it.  Free trade agreements in the  late 1990s   gave them the  leverage they needed to move the guy making the hardware job overseas   .

 

That like Apple they hiring   like crazy in China right now  to make iPhone 12  and  there a USA company   meanwhile  back at home  they millions  out of work!! People need to wake up to the fact  a Big Tech Company  is just like  any other Big company that  put money before they do peoples lives.