[HN Gopher] After embracing remote work in 2020 companies face c...
___________________________________________________________________
After embracing remote work in 2020 companies face conflicts making
it permanent
Author : alexrustic
Score : 90 points
Date : 2021-01-01 17:30 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (venturebeat.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (venturebeat.com)
| gnicholas wrote:
| > _remote working also benefits the environment, something that
| became abundantly clear early in the global lockdown. NASA
| satellite images revealed an initial decline in pollution in
| China, but as the country gradually resumed normal operations,
| pollution levels increased accordingly_
|
| This may have been the case in China, where many factories were
| idled, but there was no sizable benefit here in the US.
|
| > _Air pollution levels in the U.S. have not decreased
| significantly during the pandemic, despite the concurrent
| increase in remote work and decrease in travel._
|
| https://news.gsu.edu/2020/10/01/current-air-pollution-tied-t...
| nitrogen wrote:
| _there was no sizable benefit here in the US._
|
| There was a _huge_ benefit where I have been waiting out the
| pandemic. I hiked a peak in April, and because almost nobody
| was driving and work was significantly reduced, visibility was
| the best it has ever been in my lifetime. I saw very distant
| mountain ranges I didn 't even know would be visible from that
| peak. The views of the intervening valleys were absolutely
| stunning, once in a lifetime clarity.
| almost_usual wrote:
| The pay cut discussion is annoying, no one who works in SV makes
| most of their pay by salary.
|
| If you've already locked in a Bay Area RSU grant you're set to
| work remote in a no income tax state. That alone could make up
| the salary difference.
| lambda_obrien wrote:
| What's SV to you? Most people I know in the greater Bay Area
| don't have the huge options or rsu grants. I think you FAANG
| folks forget you're in the minority with those huge stock
| grants that are worth something. My current company is going
| public and I will get about 25k per year (~100k vested over 4
| years) from my options once they vest and that's basically it.
| almost_usual wrote:
| Not to get your hopes up but there's no reason your options
| won't grow. You might be surprised what your total comp is in
| a few years.
| Thrymr wrote:
| They also might not grow! There is a wide range of
| outcomes, even for options when you appear to be headed for
| an IPO.
| neuland wrote:
| I pulled the trigger on remote years ago and took a about a 5%
| salary cut. The state I moved to has an income tax. However
| after adjusting for lower income tax, cost of living [0], and
| my RSU's being unaffected, I ended up slightly ahead.
|
| After a couple years, the company did start adjusting RSU
| refreshes to reduce grants to people outside of top cities.
| Even with that though, I'm still breaking even or ahead.
|
| Just another voice saying that you need to do the math and
| think about your company's policies. You can only account for
| changing policies so much.
|
| I got in at a time when the deal was very good. Today, my
| salary reduction would be much higher (2-3x the reduction) and
| all other comp has caught up to being location adjusted. But,
| the deal at my company can still be good as long as you check
| the math.
|
| Another gotcha to watch out for is benefits. Make sure the
| company health care plan(s) have doctors in-network where you
| are moving. Since health care networks are very regional, this
| is not always the case. I had to switch plans.
|
| Also, you won't be able to use a lot of the other tech company
| perks that people don't price in a lot: free
| food/snacks/drinks, gym, spa, health center, daycare, etc.
| Though some company's will give you money to get a gym
| membership, but probably not the other things.
|
| [0] The cost of living savings mostly came from housing. But
| nearly everything local (grocery's, restaurants, gas, etc) is
| 30% to 50% cheaper where I'm at, which adds up quick too.
| ignoramous wrote:
| Move to HQ, toil for the promotion there and those nice grants
| that come along with it. Return back to the home country/city.
|
| This was a common strategy at a FAANG I was at. People wiped
| off _generational_ debts with this strategy because strong
| dollar and bull market.
| coffeefirst wrote:
| It's also bizarre to watch Silicon Valley engineers complain
| about taking a 10% salary cut with their 35% cost of living
| cut.
|
| The right way to do this, for what it's worth, is to have
| standard base salaries and regional CoL increases for the most
| expensive cities.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Yep, it's a bit precious, annoying too for us people who work
| for a FAANG but not at the Bay Area HQ. Our salaries have
| already been adjusted for local conditions for years. If you
| transfer from, say, Google Mountain View out to Pittsburgh or
| Waterloo your compensation will be adjusted accordingly,
| including your RSUs. None of this is new or novel so it's
| weird to see people complain.
|
| In all likelihood these companies will continue to compensate
| generously relative to everyone else. It's their MO.
|
| It's pretty hard to complain as I watch working class people
| around me struggle to get by, or get sick working in
| "essential" industries. Friend of mine got COVID (likely)
| from work, carpenter at a petroleum plant. Mid 50s, but very
| healthy and fit, no health issues. Had to be rushed to
| hospital to get oxygen, was on his ass for weeks. Luckily a
| unionized job, but others not nearly as lucky.
|
| Personally I can't wait to be able to go back into the
| office, at least a couple days a week. Nice that my chronic
| back pain has improved a lot since I haven't been driving my
| commute daily though.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| > It's pretty hard to complain as I watch working class
| people around me struggle to get by, or get sick working in
| "essential" industries.
|
| Now think about the places in the world where a developer
| gets paid 40k/y or 20, or 10.
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Why not simply improve their skill and join better
| companies?
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| > If you transfer from, say, Google Mountain View out to
| Pittsburgh or Waterloo your compensation will be adjusted
| accordingly, including your RSUs. None of this is new or
| novel so it's weird to see people complain.
|
| In the case of international locations (Waterloo) there's
| often a skill gap as well. Not everyone there would qualify
| to relocate to Mountain View.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| ? There's no skill gap at all.
|
| Any employee at my office in Waterloo could transfer to
| Mountain View without any problem at all. Google would be
| very happy to make it happen. The only limitation would
| be the US immigration system.
|
| If anything the skill gap would be the other way around.
| The hiring bar is high at Google Waterloo.
| driverdan wrote:
| The right way to do this is pay people based on their value
| to the company and not care where they live.
| jbay808 wrote:
| > complain about taking a 10% salary cut with their 35% cost
| of living cut
|
| Where do you draw the line? Do you think a 35% salary cut
| would be reasonable to complain about?
|
| At some point, in moving from Seattle to Winnipeg, if your
| salary gets adjusted from being able to afford a small
| apartment in downtown Seattle to being able to afford a small
| apartment in downtown Winnipeg... At some point that becomes
| a bad deal, right?
| coffeefirst wrote:
| Of course, there's a way to do it that would be outrageous
| if you assume the worst. And perhaps the anxiety around
| this is really because they didn't publish hard numbers.
|
| But in a lot of cases, the average FAANG engineer who takes
| this route will be leaving their small apartment for
| somewhere they can buy a house.
| eeZah7Ux wrote:
| > It's also bizarre to watch Silicon Valley engineers
| complain about taking a 10% salary cut with their 35% cost of
| living cut.
|
| Greed is irrational. If you consider the time saved by not
| having to go to work and all the benefits of being able to
| work from any location, the difference is even bigger.
| nitrogen wrote:
| The greed is on the part of the company. If they are
| getting the same amount of work, then they should pay
| everyone the same regardless of where they live.
| mech422 wrote:
| I've not found remote to be an issue salary wise. If you work
| in stuff that's hot, people don't care where you live and will
| pay to get scarce talent.
|
| I've been remote only now for 20 years, and being fully remote
| just gets easier all the time.
| liquidify wrote:
| Hybrid approach worked great at Anthem. 2 or 3 days a week in
| office on days that the team chose together, and the rest of the
| week at home. Some heavy coding weeks, you could skip the in
| office if the team agreed. But Friday's usually included lunch
| and learn's and were a pretty light day for the team as we spend
| a lot of time in meetings and talking about what we accomplished
| and intended to accomplish.
|
| Those kinds of days were a great part of the week and boosted
| productivity as well as enhanced our cohesion.
| redisman wrote:
| That has some good (team can still hang out) but cuts out any
| true remote options out. ie. you're still forced to live in the
| metro area. It's what we do for our core tech team in one of
| our locations and it's pretty good.
| disgruntledphd2 wrote:
| I think in some ways, much of the benefits of the pandemic
| will be captured by distributed, rather than remote teams.
|
| I kinda like Stripe's idea that remote people are attached to
| a hub, because it's important that people have some ownership
| around projects and a cultural context within the company.
|
| To be honest though, a lot of the benefits of offices are
| through social connections of weak-ties, and I have a hard
| time seeing that replicated in a remote fashion. I think it
| would be great, I'm just not sure how to manage it.
| quaffapint wrote:
| I feel guilty thinking it, but 2020 was good for me because it
| allowed me to work remotely.
|
| I enjoy my job, but the office is open layout and very social
| especially with people that have been there awhile, unlike
| myself. So it's headphones on most of the time. Now with all
| communications online through slack it's been so much better. I
| now know what's going on in my larger team and we have a much
| better 'synergy'.
|
| Unfortunately we will be going back and I'll be back to the 90
| minute commute, open layout and my headphones on. I really think
| a hybrid is the what to go. They already own the buildings and
| they are tight on space. So it works for them and for us it let's
| us get together and plan things out and then go do the work
| remotely without the distractions.
| 32gbsd wrote:
| People who work remote are pretty much put out to pasture when it
| comes to benefits.
| irq wrote:
| I've been full time remote since 2011 across multiple employers
| and I've always received the exact same benefits as office
| workers. Sure their might be other problems with remote work
| but having a separate benefits tier for remote workers is
| something I've never seen.
|
| Now, for permanent work vs contractor work, there can be
| separate tiers but... that's not what we're talking about here.
| mech422 wrote:
| I can second this - I've always gotten the same benefits as
| on-site staff. Closest thing to a difference I've run across
| is usually not all of the insurance companies/plans are
| viable in AZ, as opposed to the say 5-6 options for CA (eg
| Kaiser)
| almost_usual wrote:
| Which benefits?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| What benefits do you need?
|
| You mean they don't get healthcare if they're in the US?
| chucky_z wrote:
| A good friend and co-worker of mine went remote several
| months ago, and no, he does not get healthcare anymore. I am
| not aware of what his full healthcare situation is but I
| cannot imagine it's cheap.
| someonehere wrote:
| What works for me as a manager overseeing a few direct reports:
|
| - Stand ups for 15-30 minutes in the morning.
|
| - I screen share a Google form I made that asks three questions
| and I fill out for the team to see what each response is.
|
| - What did you do yesterday? What are you doing today? Anything
| blocking you?
|
| - The answers get put into a spreadsheet that myself or upper
| management can review progress on performance and services.
|
| - If I'm unavailable to hold the daily check in, my team fills
| out the form on their own. If they don't fill it out for the day,
| there's a record they didn't spend the five minutes to fill it
| out.
|
| - I have weekly 1 to 1 meetings with the individuals to check in
| on how they're doing with work, career development, anything they
| want to talk about, and how personal life is going.
|
| It's working out well for me. I also schedule a once a week
| meeting on Jira tickets to see where status is at on any
| lingering issues the team can't address.
|
| Overall I put enough in front of my team that I can track
| progress and ensure they're doing their part while working from
| home. This way I avoid needing to be on zoom all day. I do leave
| the option open for my team to Zoom me if they urgently need me
| to help.
| antihero wrote:
| I started my current job remotely, during the pandemic. If they
| seek to get me to spend two hours a day stuck on the tube, they
| have another thing coming to be honest.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| The biggest problem companies face in adapting to remote work is
| failure to embrace async. The rest is details.
| sunsetSamurai wrote:
| I don't think most companies embraced remote work, they just
| didn't have any other choice. I'm pretty sure there's tons of
| managers out there that can't wait to get back to the office so
| they can keep having stupid meetings and micromanage their
| subordinates.
| uncledave wrote:
| They've worked out how to do that from home. I've grown
| particularly good at popping their balloons. Zoom meetings are
| far more visible as they can be recorded and if they aren't
| productive I make sure that is known.
| hn_asker wrote:
| Can you share tips on how to pop their balloons?
| uncledave wrote:
| Accountability, agenda, actions in that order.
|
| So start with asking for the meeting to be recorded. Refuse
| to attend unless it is using the excuse that you may want
| to review bits of it later. They can't refuse for
| accountability reasons.
|
| Agenda means they need to set a time window and agenda for
| the meeting up front. That keeps it in writing and the
| scope well defined. If there isn't one there's no reason to
| attend so carry on your normal duties. This becomes a virus
| quickly which trashes junk meetings. If you're complained
| at for not attending, there was no agenda. If you don't
| attend people see the person's meetings as not mandatory
| and this disempowers them slowly.
|
| Actions. Make sure recordable actions come from the meeting
| and make sure they are accountable for tracking them and
| that they are delivering business value. If they aren't
| then they don't need to exist. Escalate that. Even as a
| junior a long time ago I asked for concrete actions at the
| end of a meeting and managed to cause a company wide shit
| storm :)
|
| After doing this a few times, organisers who rule or even
| just exist in the chaos and distraction are marginalised or
| made to conform to order and the good of the team.
|
| Edit: warning this doesn't scale down to small companies.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Note that recording conversations without consent of all
| parties involved is a felony in quite a few jurisdictions.
| pensatoio wrote:
| Zoom notifies everyone when a recording starts.
| uncledave wrote:
| Good point.
|
| If it's a corporate zoom account then it can likely be
| included in the IT AUP however.
|
| But I usually ask for it to be done.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| wow. that's going nuclear. Getting ideas or sure.
|
| hat tip to you sir.
| thrower123 wrote:
| I'm hoping that this will have gone on long enough that the
| useless managers will have been exposed...
| kodah wrote:
| Asking someone who Silicon Valleys geo-recruiting model worked
| for what they will want to do in the future yields the expected
| response. That was unsurprising.
|
| To everyone else who has to contend with tight pools of talent
| that are often fielding multiple offers and using them against
| each other, the desire for change is much stronger. Many more
| companies fit this bill.
|
| There are some challenges though:
|
| Remote workers have historically not worked on premier projects
| and products at hybrid companies. Effort will have to be made to
| ensure that remote workers are included in the kind of reports
| that indicate work distribution.
|
| Remote workers get payed less. I can't prescriptively say how
| much less, but many companies in tech participate in geo-based
| compensation models while not being geographically locked in
| sales. I've long told people I would understand if I'm a welder
| and my product is only sold in one state why you may lazily geo-
| lock my pay. That stops making sense when my part is sold
| nationally or internationally. Then I really want my income to
| reflect what my position contributes to the business. This is why
| I think RSUs are so great. The compensation model for remote
| cannot just be padding margins for a business, especially if I'm
| going from SV to Texas for instance.
|
| I'm looking forward to a more remote future, but without these
| problems sorted out remote work will only create an underclass of
| developers.
| mech422 wrote:
| >>Remote workers get payed less. I can't prescriptively say how
| much less, but many companies in tech participate in geo-based
| compensation models while not being geographically locked in
| sales.
|
| And many companies do NOT participate in geo-based
| compensation. The first half of you statement sounds like an
| absolute ("Remote workers get paid less") and the second half
| walks it back...
|
| It's quite possible to work remotely, and not take a paycut.
| Its also possible to work remotely and make "FAANG money" if
| you're in the right tech.
| redisman wrote:
| > To everyone else who has to contend with tight pools of
| talent that are often fielding multiple offers
|
| This is a very vocal small minority of all engineers. Companies
| have just grown accustomed to being able to have a huge false
| negative rate in their interviews.
|
| As the remote culture gets propagated through the industry,
| I've so far seen mainly good outcomes. Pretty much every team
| I've worked on in the last 7 or so years has had some remote
| component. I think the most difficult one is the stereotypical
| Fortune 500 company where only some employees work from home
| and the middle manager shakes their head while watching their
| empty desks.
| pdimitar wrote:
| I feel like most managers and shareholders had this illusion of
| having tight control. And that remote / async work proved that
| illusion to be untrue. This misalignment with reality comes with
| a cognitive shock and many deal with it the worst way possible --
| f.ex. insisting on a very micro time tracking software.
|
| I agree it was nice to chat with colleagues face to face. But all
| said and done -- it's work, not your family's house. I dealt with
| it quite fine back when I moved to remote work 10 years ago. I
| miss it sometimes still. But the perks of working from home far
| outweigh this drawback.
|
| Plus, remote work encourages you to have an actual social life
| outside of work, which I view as a very good thing.
| didibus wrote:
| Coming from a tech background, I think some of the resistance
| I've seen is caused by a mismatch in roles. As a developer (non
| game), work from home works well, you save yourself a commute but
| lose out on launch with your co-workers. The rest is pretty much
| the same.
|
| As a manager, director or exec though, where your role is to
| review the work of developers, and plan their next move, you feel
| an added challenge from work from home. The distance makes it
| harder to have a grasp on what work is being done and how
| well/fast, and what impact. You can't as easily come in and
| check-in when you need too, you need to formally setup meetings
| or reviews. And it's not as engaging or easy for you to
| understand and ask questions in those meetings either. Also it's
| unpleasant to be on Zoom all day long, and since your job is just
| meetings all day, that's your new reality.
|
| This becomes truer and truer the higher up the chain. So a dev
| manager might still enjoy the freedom of work from home, less
| commute time, able to do home chors while they work and all. But
| a VP will feel less benefits, since they already have a lot of
| luxuries, maybe they have a Nani, a nice home closer to work,
| etc. And a CEO will feel even less, maybe they have a helicopter,
| a chef, and they already chose where the office was based on
| where they want to live.
| Volundr wrote:
| > The distance makes it harder to have a grasp on what work is
| being done and how well/fast, and what impact.
|
| I don't think this is true though. I can review code or a
| product just as effectively remotely as I can sitting in an
| office chair. What I can't do is walk the cubes and see who is
| sitting in front of their computer at the moment, and at least
| in my experience running IT for a moderately sized
| organization, this is what managers seem to have a problem
| with. Over the past several months I've had to fend off
| requests to pull reports on how many e-mails people have sent,
| setup mail forwards to their managers, line up VPN times to
| timecards, or find monitoring software for PCs, all in the name
| of making sure employees are "working enough".
|
| Fortunately so far I've been able to fend these off by pointing
| out that none of these are real metrics for what's being
| actually being accomplished and that's what's really being
| exposed here is that the manager doesn't know how to tell if an
| employee is doing a good job and/or pulling their weight, and
| is trying to use butt-in-seat time as a proxy rather than
| figuring out what actually matters.
|
| > You can't as easily come in and check-in when you need too,
| you need to formally setup meetings or reviews.
|
| I can hit the call button on teams at any time. Sure it "feels"
| disruptive in a way walking into their cube didn't, but in
| actuality I think their about equally disruptive. Managers tend
| to underestimate the impact of "just swinging by".
|
| > Also it's unpleasant to be on Zoom all day long, and since
| your job is just meetings all day, that's your new reality.
|
| I suspect most people would agree with you on preferring in-
| person meetings to Zoom. If we'e doing cameras I agree with you
| too, but... just don't. I spent most of my meetings this summer
| out on my front lawn with a notepad watching the bees work the
| clover. Made them infinitely more tolerable than being stuck in
| a conference room.
| pdimitar wrote:
| > _The distance makes it harder to have a grasp on what work is
| being done and how well /fast, and what impact._
|
| How so? Tapping techies on the shoulder and asking "what's up
| with your task?" is a widely disliked management technique. Or
| you meant something else?
|
| > _You can 't as easily come in and check-in when you need too,
| you need to formally setup meetings or reviews._
|
| Good. I am glad there is more tension for you when doing that
| now. Most meetings are disruptive for the creators so the
| increased barrier to entry for setting them up is a welcome
| correction and a reality-check mechanism. You do rely on those
| people to produce artifacts that lead to the company's bottom
| line and it is known that creators utilize flow state for their
| best productivity, thus their time shouldn't be sliced and
| diced so easily. Bureaucracy is not an universal virtue, let's
| all acknowledge that.
|
| > _And it 's not as engaging or easy for you to understand and
| ask questions in those meetings either._
|
| What do you mean by "engaging"? That you felt an informal bond
| with your underlings while having status meetings in person? If
| so, fair enough alright but how is it stopping you having it
| now during virtual meets?
|
| > _Also it 's unpleasant to be on Zoom all day long, and since
| your job is just meetings all day, that's your new reality._
|
| Also good. Should hint you to do less of those then. Find other
| formats: collaborative editing of documents / spreadsheets, to-
| do lists, milestone calendars, email + ticket tracker hooks,
| all of it. There's basically tooling for every need out there
| and most is leagues cheaper than JIRA. Use managers-only Slack
| channels or internal forums. There is a plethora of viable
| alternatives.
|
| > _This becomes truer and truer the higher up the chain. [sic]
| ..._
|
| This might sound a bit cold and I apologize if it's taken this
| way but... that's really not my problem as the techie and the
| creator. At all. You need my services, I need the pay, we both
| agreed to the terms, and we are so far both happy with the
| transaction. If you decide to start changing the deal due to
| factors I cannot fully appreciate or sympathize with then that
| new situation now becomes your problem, the VP's problem, the
| various CxO people's problem.
|
| They do, after all is said and done, get their money's worth
| out of the employees, no? Why should I be worried that they
| rented or bought a mega-expensive office somewhere?
|
| ---
|
| I suppose the gist of what I am saying is: the current full
| remote work situation highlights problems with the previous
| process that were always there but were never seriously
| challenged.
|
| I view that as a good thing. Old processes need refreshing
| every now and then.
|
| What do you think?
| wernercd wrote:
| > As a developer (non game), work from home works well, you
| save yourself a commute but lose out on launch with your co-
| workers. The rest is pretty much the same.
|
| This pretty much. I have a long commute as a programmer and
| working at home with a triple monitor standing desk is so much
| better... but "water cooler" chats and a meeting room pow-wow
| is something sorely missing. Some things communicate better
| face too face with white boards.
|
| Everything else I think is true... face to face vs zoom to zoom
| has to be a hell of a change and, if I was in those shoes (Zero
| interest in management) I'd push for people back in the office.
|
| Personally... I'd love a 3 home, 2 in office routine. Would
| really afford the best of both.
| [deleted]
| divbzero wrote:
| This is probably stating the obvious but I think we're still in
| the early stages of creating an effective remote conversation
| experience. Zoom might be something akin to the IBM PC
| Convertible [1], a long way from the laptops we have today.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PC_Convertible
| pyrophane wrote:
| Looking forward to seeing where most tech companies land, as in-
| person and remote both have benefits. Face-to-face collaboration
| is easier, especially at fast-changing companies, but remote work
| is more cost-efficient and helps with hiring.
|
| I could see many companies ending up with a hybrid model where
| core teams are geographically together and in a shared space most
| of the time (although less than the pre-pandemic M-F 10-6), and
| other teams are distributed.
| wjossey wrote:
| I've started to approach the remote/in-person discussion with the
| same thought process I use for planning/management, which is to
| say that it's best to structure the process around the team,
| rather the team around the process.
|
| What I mean by that is that for sufficiently large organizations,
| you can have options for folks. Some teams can be remote, hybrid,
| or in person. But make sure the teams understand what their
| structure is and have them build their processes and tools around
| that as appropriate. Then if you have an employee that wants to
| go remote, have them join one of the remote or hybrid teams. Have
| someone who wants to go to the office every day? Great, you can
| still be on a remote team, or here are the in person teams
| available to you as well (although realistically in person is
| preferred so you aren't using up teleconference rooms
| unnecessarily).
|
| For smaller companies, and as someone who started a remote first
| company in '17, it really needs to be an all or nothing. Being
| mixed creates weird dynamics on small teams, and it takes a lot
| of diligence to include the remote team members on off the cuff
| conversations.
|
| I, for one, don't plan on ever going back to an office full time.
| My wife and I just purchased our first home, and we bought a
| large enough place for two offices so we could both stay remote.
| We do multi generational living with my mom providing child care
| during the day, and a one year old running around like a banshee.
| It's a really wonderful setup and I'm thankful to see so much of
| my son each day during these early years. No in person meetings
| come even remotely close to being as valuable as the time I get
| with him.
|
| But, as with all things, these are just my $0.02. I get why there
| are varied opinions on this, and don't begrudge companies that
| are going to ask everyone to go back in.
| mathattack wrote:
| I think you're very right. One offs don't work well, and the
| smaller the org, the more you need to be "All In" otherwise
| things done get documented and people get left out.
|
| The multigenerational thing looks like it will work well for
| all involved too.
| maest wrote:
| Sounds like you should be willing to take a pay cut for the
| lifestyle you're enjoying
| kilolima wrote:
| Why should he take a pay cut? His employer no longer has to
| spend money for his use of office space. The costs associated
| with having an office have been externalized onto the
| employee. If anything, he should be paid more for saving his
| employer those costs.
| the-dude wrote:
| What if the employer still has a multi-year lease?
| 908B64B197 wrote:
| Honestly if he's worried about that he's not making good
| enough margins.
|
| Just look at the profits per engineer at Facebook.
| morlockabove wrote:
| Then when the lease expires, they can downsize. Or if
| they're growing, they can not lease additional space when
| they otherwise would have.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| Should has nothing to do with it. Jobs that have non-
| monetary benefits, all other things held equal, have lower
| market clearing rates of pay. That could be job security,
| working with famous people, prestige, or in this case
| geographic flexibility.
| abnercoimbre wrote:
| What is the idea behind getting paid less when working
| with famous people, or in a job that has prestige? That
| you can cash out on the side?
| bradleyjg wrote:
| People just like those things, or at least enough do.
| There are lots of lawyers that want to wear a black robe,
| get called "your honor", make decisions, being deferred
| to, and so on. So even though judges don't make much
| money, comparatively speaking, there's no shortage of
| people that want the job.
| pdimitar wrote:
| What an extremely insensitive comment.
|
| I get money in return of delivering value, not to suffer.
| tomrod wrote:
| The employer shouldn't care what an employee does with their
| money. They should only care that they get the services
| rendered and requested.
| bradleyjg wrote:
| By that logic the employee shouldn't care about anything
| other than the market rate, which is less for remote.
| pdimitar wrote:
| The statement that remote workers get paid less hasn't
| been true for me in the last 10 years.
| mech422 wrote:
| My last 3 remote gigs (2 of which were pre-covid) have
| all been at higher rates (over each other, and over prior
| on-site work). The 'you have to take less for remote'
| thing is by no means universal...
| [deleted]
| lucidone wrote:
| Sure, and then I'll get a new job. Cuts both ways.
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