You say:

>> Judging someone for their internet problems doesn’t make any sense to me

but also:

>> sometimes have to drop from calls because it lags and stutters.

That sounds insanely unfair to people you work with. If you're in a role where meetings are infrequent and unimportant, maybe this flies. But if you work with/for me and you constantly drop calls so the entire group has to wait for you while you freeze, can't hear what you're saying, etc etc etc - that's not a dynamic I want to inflict on my organization.

There's some inherent tradeoff between how you want to live and what jobs you can take on. Back in the work-from-the-office days, you had to limit your housing options by where you can reach the office daily in a reasonable time. With WFH, your ability to connect to the internet is analogous to your ability to get to the office.

If your choice of living on a houseboat means that you can't reliably connect to key meetings, it means you're not able to take on jobs where meetings are key. It's as simple as that and is a totally reasonable tradeoff to make, as long as you're making it consciously.

I just don’t understand why you’re taking such a crazy harsh tone with this.

“Insanely unfair” to your coworkers to sometimes have a problem that causes you to drop from a meeting? Chill out man, life happens. The job gets done.

Coworkers living on land in various neighborhoods across Seattle have their power go out multiple times a year. It’s not “insanely unfair” to me when that happens. It happens. So what, you deal with it.

And since I’m sure you’d expect them to all get generators (based on the other thread), I sure as shit wouldn’t bother if it was just 2-3 times a year, myself.

Yeah. I mean "It's hit or miss whether Joe will drop on a given call" is one thing. "Joe seems to have a day where his Internet is glitchy every month or two" is something else.

Same thing with power, which is more reliable than my Internet. I might have a power outage every year or so and a more extended one significantly less often. I've actually thought about getting a generator but it hardly seems worth it. Only thing that makes me consider it is I live where it gets cold in the winter.

Also can't agree enough. I have someone on my team who lives on a farm in a remote part of India. His area has power outages 1-2 times a week. Does he just let video calls end when the power goes out? No, he got a generator.

It's his choice to live in that area. The amount of money he saves by not being in a major city more than enough covers the cost of a generator.

As an IC it seems like a small inconvenience, but as a manager having other team members and other departments complain about so-and-so for being unresponsive and cutting out of calls constantly is just one more problem I have to deal with.

Yeah, and look no surprise from your profile that you lead an org. It's so funny to me that people are arguing in this thread what should be tolerated from candidates without considering for a second what is actually needed to get the work done and have the team function.

There's such a thing as reasonable accommodation. When we all went to WFH when Covid hit, it was totally understandable that people had bad setups, family complexities, etc. and all companies (that I am familiar with) were totally cool with that, and supported employees through it - eg provided equipment or WFH stipends.

But now it's like a year down the road, and it's basic competency of a professional to ensure that they are able to work productively. Mid 2021, there's no excuse for having consistently bad video meetings if video meetings are at all central to your job. It basically means a combination of you not caring about your productivity, not caring about your colleagues, and not being able to solve problems - which for any medium-seniority and above role is frankly not a good sign.

Your point about the Indian dude with a generator is a good one. I bet he also keeps weird hours so he can overlap with the team (assuming the rest of the team is based outside of India.) It's basic stuff, if you want flexibility of remote work from wherever you want, you also have the responsibility of making it feasible.

Infrastructure isn't something that individuals have the option to fix on their own. Housing across the US, let alone in Seattle, is at absolute crisis levels. And the rise of internet-based voice comms is a recent development (< 5 years) relative to housing and infrastructure development cycles.

There are multiple extant comms technologies which are well established, widely distributed, and work quite well at vastly lower bandwidth than IP telephone or videoconferencing. Look inward to see those who are rejecting the use of technologies which are equitably available, distributed, and adequate to task.

I hear you and if we were talking about poor people interviewing for retail and warehouse jobs I'd agree with you completely.

However we are talking about tech jobs which pay several hundred thousand dollars per year in many cases, and these jobs require a certain level of connectivity, not out of gatekeeping but out of practicality.

Are you hiring programmers or IT tech support personnel?

It’s like naming someone that doesn’t know anything about cars who hears some strange noises coming from the car as “unresourceful” because they don’t magically know what to Google to figure out their problem. Even that person makes $500k/year does not magically give them all the background knowledge needed to start troubleshooting.

Flawed analogy. If I am reliant on my car for a living (eg limo driver) then I can't let my car not work. Doesn't mean I need to fix it myself, does mean I need to find a mechanic, trade it in, whatever. Resolve the problem in some way.

No, it’s analogous to your car making this weird sound but it seems to largely work so you haven’t figured it out yet but you’re still driving people around.

Poor people don't interview for tech jobs?

Yeah, I would be hard pressed to come up with something that I wouldn't be more than happy to accommodate if a candidate emailed ahead of time to let me know.