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.
