[HN Gopher] Airbnb's design to live and work anywhere
___________________________________________________________________
Airbnb's design to live and work anywhere
Author : mji
Score : 891 points
Date : 2022-04-29 02:20 UTC (20 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.airbnb.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.airbnb.com)
| ultimoo wrote:
| >Most companies don't do this because of the mountain of
| complexities with taxes, payroll, and time zone availability, but
| I hope we can open-source a solution so other companies can offer
| this flexibility as well.
|
| I think this is a genius growth play for Airbnb. Make it easier
| for _other_ companies to operate in a similar way so that _their_
| employees can travel and live in an... Airbnb! Next, they should
| lobby to get US and EU to make short-term "tourism + wfh" visas
| more accessible so that this becomes even more popular. I think
| everyone wins here.
| cush wrote:
| Everyone wins except people who can't afford a home to live in.
| wcarron wrote:
| It is, in my opinion, a massive and near total loss for all the
| renters, first-time homebuyers, existing families, and the
| sense of community in areas affected by AirBnB's cancerous
| growth.
| dcgudeman wrote:
| Why?
| namecheapTA wrote:
| Imagine living in a nice forest home near Tahoe. 20 years
| ago you had neighbors you talked to and could borrow a tool
| from. Now you have a never ending flow of new tourists
| visiting Tahoe staying at the Airbnb next to your house.
| bko wrote:
| You have no right to control who comes into your
| neighborhood. This idea has deep ugly roots (e.g.
| redlining).
| dwaltrip wrote:
| You are comparing the limiting of tourists to blatant
| racial discrimination...?
| CityOfThrowaway wrote:
| You have no right to control who comes into your home.
| This idea has deep ugly roots (e.g. mass incarceration).
| kimbernator wrote:
| The issue isn't who is staying there, it's the fact that
| they are just random people that don't have any stake in
| the surrounding community except for their 2-night stay
| there.
|
| Comparing this to redlining is absurd.
| gongdzhauh wrote:
| The idea that a neighborhood's character needs to be
| preserved is exactly the kind of logic used to justify
| redlining.
|
| "Random" people should be able to buy property and use it
| in the same way that existing owners can.
| kimbernator wrote:
| > The idea that a neighborhood's character needs to be
| preserved is exactly the kind of logic used to justify
| redlining.
|
| Who is talking about preserving a neighborhood's
| "character"? We're talking about preserving the concept
| of a residential area as opposed to abundance of homes
| being used as commercial hotel-like spaces.
|
| > "Random" people should be able to buy property and use
| it in the same way that existing owners can.
|
| Sorry, but is it not clear that this is my point?
| bko wrote:
| They're not "random people". They're human beings.
|
| What's optimal time of stay? Maybe ban students or
| renters as well. Might stay longer than 2 nights but
| certainly they dont have a "stake in the surrounding
| community". Might as well ban hotels while you're at it.
|
| Again, trying to engineer who lives in your community is
| wrong IMO
| munificent wrote:
| I'm sorry, but given the unwarranted extreme language
| you're using, this is clearly a trigger issue for you
| independent of what the parent comment was saying.
|
| No one is talking about "rights", "control", "redlining",
| or dehumanization.
|
| All they are doing is observing that _people like to live
| next to human beings they can form longer-term
| relationships with._ This is the fundamental fabric of
| human society and there is nothing wrong with people
| desiring that. That doesn 't necessarily mean they have
| any "right" to "control" or "engineer" it. But people who
| want to have deeper ties to a community (which has been
| shown time and time again to be critical for
| psychological health and societal success) have every
| reason to try to influence their neighborhood to enable
| that.
| bko wrote:
| If you're trying to "control" who I can allow stay at my
| house and for how long, you're infringing on what I deem
| to be my "rights". I don't get how its not about these
| things?
|
| > All they are doing is observing that people like to
| live next to human beings they can form longer-term
| relationships with.
|
| Maybe we should ban renters as well. Higher home
| ownership rates has been shown time and time again to be
| critical for psychological health and societal success.
| So why not nudge out renters? Curious where you draw the
| line and why.
| kimbernator wrote:
| > If you're trying to "control" who I can allow stay at
| my house and for how long, you're infringing on what I
| deem to be my "rights". I don't get how its not about
| these things?
|
| If you were to demolish your house and build a 3-story
| building in its place with a number of identical units
| within it and then ran it as a hotel, you would be in
| violation of zoning laws and would be required to stop.
| Would the enforcement of that law be an infringement on
| your rights? Should this behavior be allowed? If not,
| what is the fundamental difference between doing this and
| running an airbnb with a rotating door of extremely
| short-term visitors?
|
| > Maybe we should ban renters as well. Higher home
| ownership rates has been shown time and time again to be
| critical for psychological health and societal success.
| So why not nudge out renters?
|
| Don't blame the renters. Blame the landlords that hoard
| homes and make it impossible for renters to afford to
| make the transition to home ownership.
| kimbernator wrote:
| Honestly this feels a bit odd to read - I think the point
| is clear that communities benefit from having long-term
| residents, regardless of who they are.
|
| If my neighbor makes too much noise, I can go talk to
| them and we will have an understanding. If an airbnb
| makes too much noise, I can tell the current residents to
| quiet down but there will be new ones in a few days. The
| residents don't stand to face any meaningful consequences
| for being a disturbance to the neighbors, and the owner
| of the house likely doesn't live in the community either
| so if I talk to them, there's no incentive for them to
| try and reduce the disturbances. Airbnbs around my house
| are known for this being a big problem. This is the
| reason that zoning laws put hotels in commercial space
| instead of residential.
|
| I am not trying to "engineer who lives in my community",
| I am trying to engineer a community.
| hardtke wrote:
| I assume you are being facetious. Tahoe has always been
| primarily second home owners. 20 years ago you rented
| through an agency, craigslist, or word of mouth if you
| were doing short term rentals. AirBnb just means it is
| easier to fill them so they rent more frequently which
| makes renting long term financially unattractive.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| Not who you were asking, but I can take a stab at this.
|
| Short Term rentals of homes or condo units can erode a
| sense of community in an area where that's a common
| behavior. AirBnB renters aren't going to be around long so
| they have no incentive to be respectful to common areas, or
| respectful of noise levels or whatever else.
|
| Imagine buying a condo and all of the units around you are
| AirBnBs, or otherwise short term rentals. I think you would
| want to eventually get to know your neighbors a bit, but in
| this case they are constantly cycling in and out instead.
|
| I think weakening communities is something we're already
| seeing a lot of. Maybe it's a problem, maybe not, but I
| think AirBnB could potentially be contributing to this and
| it is worth considering the impact that might have.
| jen20 wrote:
| > Imagine buying a condo and all of the units around you
| are AirBnBs
|
| All of my recent research into condos showed any building
| where this could be an issue has explicit prohibition on
| short term rentals as part of the HOA. The more egregious
| HOAs even have prohibition on long-term rentals without a
| permit which can be denied by the HOA.
| munificent wrote:
| I think you are reinforcing their point.
|
| The idea is to _imagine_ what that would be like. The
| reality is so obviously undesirable that HOAs outright
| prohibit it.
| wombatpm wrote:
| I refer to this as the Singapore solution. Singapore is
| nice, but you can't buy chewing gum and caning is
| acceptable punishment for minor infractions. Many HOA's
| are similar
| hirvi74 wrote:
| My city is the apparently the "Bachelorette Party
| Capital" of the world. So, of course, AirBnB would not
| pass up such a golden opportunity.
|
| According to a recent bit of data from AirBnB, approx.
| 65% of hosts on AirBnB own two or more short-term rentals
| [1]. Such ownership has strongly impacted our housing
| market, albeit it is not the only factor, but still a
| major contributor to the erosion of our housing market.
|
| Many of the anecdotal complaints I have heard are things
| like:
|
| 1. Obnoxiously loud and large parties/gatherings at
| inconsiderate times of day.
|
| 2. Unfamiliar cars and strangers in your community e.g.
| if the house next to yours is listed on AirBnB who knows
| what type of people are staying next to you -- they could
| be upstanding citizens or violent/non-violent thieves
| scouting out your neighborhood. People renting the unit
| are not always the _only_ ones to stay there, and who are
| the police going to question when they have no idea who
| was there or when they up and left to return back home?
|
| 3. Vandalism and/or littering of surrounding properties.
|
| 4. Lack of community like the OP posted above.
|
| It also appears as of recently, that AirBnB's are being
| targeted for crime [2]. If one chooses to burglarize an
| AirBnB in my city, you have a pretty high chance of
| preying upon an n > 1 group of unsuspecting, young,
| unarmed women in an unfamiliar city who are more than
| likely not in the rental most of the time i.e. the
| perfect target for thieves.
|
| There are allegations that thieves are working with
| Uber/Lyft drivers to find out which addresses are AirBnBs
| or not and which ones the renters are currently away
| from. Such actions are absolutely horrible, but honestly
| rather clever. Think of it this way -- it's easy as being
| a driver for Uber/Lyft, picking the group of renters up,
| text your buddy the address, and boom -- a thief's dream
| come true. Neighbors won't call the cops because so many
| people are in/out of the rentals, they can't keep track
| of what is normal or suspicious activity.
|
| [1] http://insideairbnb.com/nashville/
|
| [2] https://fox17.com/news/local/nashville-bachelorette-
| party-bu...
| 0xB31B1B wrote:
| because supply and demand matter, and units that are
| AirBnB'ed are taken off the market for long term rentals,
| leading to rents for locals rising higher than trend. Even
| given that in the perfect economy construction would keep
| up with demand, there is a ~5-10 year lag between demand
| signal and correction in construction (prices rise, new
| construction breaks ground, new construction opens, new
| constructions absorbs marginal demand, filtering from less
| expensive units to more expensive units, rent prices
| stabilize/decrease). 5-10 years is a sizeable chunk of my
| life and I would strongly prefer to not have a 5-10 year
| chunk of my life with elevated rents due to airbnb
| listings.
| myohmy wrote:
| You're missing the forest for the trees here. AirBnB only
| makes problems because we're all forced to work in
| designated commercial zones, and they "subverted" zoning
| laws.
|
| Now we're "subverting" zoning laws by allowing people to
| work from rural areas or wherever. People can then use
| market pressures to live wherever is cheapest and has the
| amenities they want! That will decrease demand for hot
| cities and should make it easier to live in them.
|
| Of course, that is presuming that our current demand
| craze has anything to do with residency at all, and isn't
| being driven by corporations like Blackstone buying up
| properties as investments, and Russian/Chinese oligarchs
| buying properties as wealth shelters. Funny how the
| Canadian market has suddenly chilled a little since the
| government banned foreign buyers. Must be a coincidence.
| bko wrote:
| Apply this logic of maintaining the status quo
| historically. Imagine someone creates something to do (Y)
| with good X. Price of good X goes up due to increase
| demand. Consumers of good X lobby that this is bad and
| there should be laws to prevent good X to be used for Y.
|
| Also why are you optimizing for lower rents (as long as
| they are not AirBNB short term rentals)? What about the
| homeowners who benefit from having more things they can
| do with their property? Or the people that are coming to
| stay short term?
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> Also why are you optimizing for lower rents... What
| about the homeowners who benefit from having more things
| they can do with their property?_
|
| Because basic shelter is WAY lower on the hierarchy of
| needs than rental income, and shelter is not a need that
| the US is adequately meeting even for its middle class.
| bko wrote:
| If you think the US should be doing more the shelter
| people without adequate shelter it should do so directly.
| Creating market distortions that purposely reduces the
| value of property and discourages production of the good
| is not the way to go. That would be like banning
| expensive restaurants because they're running up rent on
| inexpensive restaurants and soup kitchens. After all,
| desert is way lower on the hierarchy of needs than basic
| sustenance and food is not a need that the US is
| adequately meeting even for its middle class
| throwawaygh wrote:
| _> Creating market distortions that purposely reduces the
| value of property and discourages production of the good
| is not the way to go._
|
| Zoning laws already create market distortions. A zoning
| law that prevents building denser residential property is
| no more or less distortionary than a policy that
| prohibits short-term rentals.
|
| Also, reducing the future expected value of property does
| not discourage builders; they only care about the sale
| price today (or, today + build time).
|
| _> That would be like banning expensive restaurants
| because they 're running up rent on inexpensive
| restaurants and soup kitchens._
|
| Restaurants are _also_ far higher on the hierarchy of
| needs than shelter.
|
| We _do_ distort the market in favor of soup kitchens --
| they have substantial tax benefits and in many places
| they can operate out of differently zoned property.
| gongdzhauh wrote:
| What kind of actions are you considering that do not
| affect the market? Government housing affects the market
| by creating artificial supply. Regulations affect the
| market. just about anything that the government does will
| affect the market.
|
| If you believe that housing is a basic right and everyone
| should be housed, then relying on supply and demand is
| not going to work. There's nothing inherent about a
| market that would house everyone, if anything, a market
| would reach an equilibrium where supply meets demand at
| some point where some people are not able to afford the
| supply and suppliers do not have an incentive/are unable
| to meet the price point of the remaining demand.
| sobren wrote:
| It's bad for the people living there for the same reason
| city councils don't allow hotels to be built anywhere.
|
| Short term rentals aren't a bad thing in of itself, but the
| purpose of zoning is that different locations serve
| different needs better. When you live in a neighborhood you
| expect there to be elementary schools near your house, and
| that there's quiet hours so that you can sleep during the
| night. ect.
|
| Hotels and by extension air bnb's disrupt this balance. If
| the five condo towers surrounding the school suddenly
| become short term rentals overnight, either the school
| needs to move or kids have to travel farther. And no amount
| of police presence is going to make tourists not party
| during 1 am. You tell one group to stop, well the next is
| coming in 3 days.
|
| And it goes the other way too. Having night life
| congregated together makes it easier for public services to
| their job. You can have more paramedics prepared for
| overdoses - enhanced police presence because drunk people
| are stupid, ect.
|
| Even if air bnb's aren't a net negative on the economy,
| skirting of local regulations have qualitative effects on
| the the city that shouldn't be discounted.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| I'm not an immigration/tax lawyer and could be completely wrong
| but if you're from EU/US/UK/AUS etc I'm fairly sure you can
| work in another one of those countries for up to 90 days (and
| sometimes upto 183) without paying tax there or getting a work
| visa - as long as you're still resident and being paid in your
| home country under the Visa Waiver program.
|
| I've worked in NY offices and got paid in UK (admittedly a
| while ago and for less than 90 days) - but can't see why
| working in an Airbnb would be different.
|
| Has anyone experience of this recently?
| te_chris wrote:
| As far as I know this is incorrect. In most countries working
| is entirely different to touristing and 'doing business'
| (i.e. selling). Just ask musicians - they have to get
| performance work visas for every country.
|
| As far as their tax authorities are concerned, yeah, you
| normally have 90 days or so where they don't care about your
| income, but immigration? Almost never. Most digital nomads
| just get away with it because it doesn't matter in the grand
| scheme of things that customs and immigration authorities
| have to care about - witness the Thai visa tours etc.
| JWlrCk9PkipFTDq wrote:
| I don't think is true for the Schengen zone/Schengen
| adjacent countries.
|
| I'm a musician and have toured Western Europe a couple of
| times (and know a lot of others who have). Apart from the
| UK noone I know ever gets working visas, and this is never
| a problem crossing borders honestly saying to immigration
| that we're there on tour in a van full of music equipment
| and merchandise.
| hocuspocus wrote:
| Schengen has nothing to do with freedom of movement for
| workers.
| bkor wrote:
| > we're there on tour in a van full of music equipment
| and merchandise
|
| There are separate arrangements for touring groups.
| However, if you're not from the EU then good luck. You'll
| notice that there are huge complications after brexit.
| That said, likely nobody will check, care or notice.
| JWlrCk9PkipFTDq wrote:
| Sorry should have clarified, I'm not from the EU. This is
| on an Australian passport on the visa waiver program, and
| American friends have had the same experience (including
| some biggish bands who tour Europe a couple of times a
| year).
|
| Maybe it's a "noone cares" thing, but this includes some
| American friends who were caught with weed in their tour
| van at the Norwegian border and still didn't have any
| visa issues (and somehow still managed to get into the
| country!)
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _That said, likely nobody will check, care or notice._
|
| Even if noone cared, relying on the apathy of others
| seems like a poor part of a business model.
| Unfortunately, they do seem to care at the US-Canadian
| border entering the US. There have been a few Canadian
| professional wrestlers, like Mike Bailey and Super Smash
| Bros., who were barred entry to the US entirely for 5 yrs
| because they were caught trying to work in the US without
| a visa.
|
| More on the topic of musicians:
| https://www.huffpost.com/archive/ca/entry/us-border-
| canadian...
|
| I think this is all silly, of course, especially because
| American acts have seemingly no trouble working in
| Canada. I shouldn't take for granted when I saw the
| Canadian band badbadnotgood in the US last month...
| ghaff wrote:
| >trying to work in the US without a visa.
|
| Yes, but that is a case where they're getting paid in the
| US to work.
|
| The one conference horror story I recall from a few years
| back was someone was going to speak at some small UK(?)
| conference and they were getting an honorarium or
| something like that. And they told immigration and I
| think were denied entry for that reason. But I've spoken
| at dozens of events for free and it's never been an
| issue.
| akvadrako wrote:
| This is not correct. There is probably a special deal between
| the UK and USA, but there isn't anything similar for
| Americans working in most EU countries, and the rules are per
| country.
| pvtmert wrote:
| This only works if you are holder of passport of the origin
| country. As a third world country national, I cannot legally
| work anywhere except the country I got my work visa.
|
| PS: Even if company is multinational corporation.
| renewiltord wrote:
| No one's gonna know if you are a tourist in Japan for 90 d
| and you work there remotely. Literally no one. No one will
| know.
| ycombinator_acc wrote:
| Border control and ice will know.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| I do not know about Japan specifically, but some
| developed countries do quietly monitor people that spend
| significant amounts of time in their country for
| violations that would require a proper work visa. It is
| not safe to assume no one will know -- I know of cases
| like this where people were flagged.
| umutseven92 wrote:
| The next time you try to enter or leave Japan after
| staying for 90 days, they would ask you how you are able
| to stay 3 months without working. If you cannot show
| significant savings, then you would get deported and
| banned for 10 years. Happens all the time.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| Say that you're using PTO?
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Lie to immigration? People in this thread are insane.
| Going to get yourselves banned from counties.
| notch656a wrote:
| I've been to many nations including for months and
| including illegally overstaying. No one gave one fuck to
| ask whether I was working not. The only people that have
| ever grilled me like this is my own country, the USA,
| where returning as a citizen the last time I entered I
| was forcibly taken to a hospital to be anally probed
| (with even a warrant, although after 16 hours they could
| not find a doctor to execute it) based on a wild and
| false accusation they thought I was a drug smuggler. Only
| the USA and a few other insane nations are dumb enough to
| pull these kind of stunts.
|
| Somewhere like Brazil/Paraguay/Mexico/Philippines/Iraq no
| one is gonna ask you if you worked remotely while on your
| way out. No one. Half the time they don't even bother to
| ask what you're doing while entering, they just stamp
| your passport and you're on your way. Japan may be
| different, but there is no way they're gonna deport you
| on your way out.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Same experience, sans probing. I have also,
| interestingly, overstayed in the West including using a
| residence permit to enter that was no longer valid. Japan
| they checked my baggage, same smuggler thing, but I only
| had my host of bootleg (not really, I just like being
| equipped so I just get them from generics factories)
| antibiotics + pharma and they don't really care about
| those personal quantities.
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Every non-European country I visit very specifically asks
| me 'are you going to be working' every time I visit.
|
| I think they do this for the quite clever reason that
| then if you work they can get you for lying to an
| official rather just for working.
| notch656a wrote:
| I'm sure some ask. The risk of being deported or caught
| seems incredibly low, especially if you pick a country in
| South America or southeast Asia. I cannot think of a
| nation there that ever asked me if I was working. When I
| was caught overstaying in Iraq they immigration guy was
| visibly pissed but he couldn't speak English so I juts
| handed him <fine for overstay>, and went on my way.
| kjksf wrote:
| Does it really happen all the time?
|
| Any references to this happening all the time?
|
| Because to me it seems like border patrol doesn't have
| the authority to check your bank account or demand that
| you "show significant savings".
|
| Sure they can refuse to let you in but does it really
| happen all the time?
| Symbiote wrote:
| I've seen a student required to show a bank balance and
| withdraw sufficient money before being granted a tourist
| visa for a different country. (He was in front of me in
| the queue.)
|
| The UK requires some visitors to show bank statements
| when applying for a visa.
| el-salvador wrote:
| Germany for example, requires a "Blocked Bank Account"
| for certain type of student, work and other kinds of
| visas.
|
| This account is opened remotely from the students' home
| country in a German bank, before the visa applicstion.
| And savings cannot be withdrawn for a period of time.
|
| I had an acquaintance that studied in Germany that had a
| visa problem for withdrawing more money than allowed from
| his "Blocked bank account".
|
| https://www.fintiba.com/moving-to-
| germany/studying/requireme...
| notch656a wrote:
| Lol they're not gonna deport you on your way out. I'd
| like to see one example of deportation orders for someone
| already at the airport to leave the country, purely based
| on accusation of having worked remotely in Japan.
| digianarchist wrote:
| As long as we are acknowledging that this isn't allowed.
|
| I know a lot of countries turn a blind eye to enforcing
| immigration and labor laws. Thailand being one of them.
|
| Even Pieter Levels works out of Thailand and I'm pretty
| sure he doesn't have a Thai work permit.
| michaelt wrote:
| Ah, but consider if you're a multinational corporation,
| and your employee asks for _permission_ to work remotely
| from Japan for 90 days.
|
| Will your policies allow you to give permission for
| something illegal?
| kjksf wrote:
| Why should they care? The liability is with the person,
| not the company.
| bkor wrote:
| > The liability is with the person, not the company.
|
| Why would the liability be solely with the person?
| Especially if that company has a representation in the
| other country I highly doubt this.
|
| In e.g. NL the company has to "take care" of the
| employee. A company cannot just ignore such a question,
| or take it as "not my problem".
| refurb wrote:
| Of course not. Employers have regulations as well. If you
| are paying someone working in Japan your employer should
| follow Japan laws on employer regulations.
| krzyk wrote:
| Laws are still written for those doing manual labor.
|
| What's the difference if I do some work in the evening at
| home or during my holiday in e.g. Greece?
|
| The only added cost in given country is energy. Problems
| start to appear if I get sick, but that should be on myself
| - and in most cases (for EU citizen) it is most appropriate
| to return home to cure/hospitalize (unless it is something
| needing immediate help).
| CorrectHorseBat wrote:
| There are also other issues.
|
| What with labor laws? Should you follow the laws from the
| country from where you work or where the company is
| located? Companies would just get a post box in the
| country with the weakest labour laws.
|
| The simplest solution stays that the laws where you
| physically are apply.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This already happens, that's why every company is
| incorporated in Delaware.
| frederikvs wrote:
| Tangent, but it turns out terms like "third world" are no
| longer accurate. If memory serves, this is explained in the
| book Factfulness. A highly recommended read, by the way.
|
| A few decades ago, there was a group of wealthy countries,
| a group of poor countries, and a large gap between them.
| Back then it made sense to see them as 2 separate groups,
| first world and third. Right now however, they're no longer
| separate groups - there's a continuous spectrum. A growing
| number of countries have been crawling out of poverty.
|
| Some countries are rich, some are poor, and some are in
| between. They're no longer separate groups.
|
| (This of course does not mean that there isn't a poverty
| problem in the world. Just that "third world" no longer
| accurately describes the situation.)
| strangeattractr wrote:
| Weren't the terms used to connote alliance with the US
| (first world) or the USSR (second world) and third world
| meant non-aligned?
| frederikvs wrote:
| I stand corrected, thank you!
|
| To clarify, I misremembered Factfulness. The book
| actually talks about "developed" versus "developing". In
| my memory I jumbled that up with "third world".
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| so, the poster is wrong on the specifics but correct on
| the general idea that the term third world no longer
| makes much sense.
| helge9210 wrote:
| First world -- NATO member states
|
| Second world -- Warsaw Pact member states
|
| Third world -- all other states
| bbarnett wrote:
| Some dude coined these terms, and they caught on for a
| while during the cold war. Third world typically being of
| little interest to first and second, and often poor.
|
| So eventually "third world" came to just mean "poor
| countries". After all, there has now been as much time,
| post WWII, without the cold war, as there was with one!
| [deleted]
| jdenning wrote:
| I think you're wrong about this -- as I understood it,
| the term is a relic of the cold war. "First World"
| nations were aligned with the US, "Second World" were
| communist or communist-aligned, and "Third World" were
| not associated with either.
|
| After the collapse of the USSR "Third World" became
| primarily associated with impoverished nations.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| And Trump was trying to convert the US into a "second
| world" nation.
| umutseven92 wrote:
| Nope, unless your country has a special arrangement with the
| country you are visiting, you cannot work with a tourist
| visa, at all. Does not matter if the company is local or not.
| No work visa = no work.
| oxfordmale wrote:
| This is a legal loophole for digital nomads. If I am
| connected to my work via a VPN, I am technically still
| working in the country of employment. I am not producing
| any commercial output in the country I am staying that I or
| my employer benefits from beneficially. I am 100% confident
| this has been reviewed by well paid lawyers at AirBnb who
| have zero sense of adventure, and that this is all water
| tight.
| bkor wrote:
| > I am 100% confident this has been reviewed by well paid
| lawyers at AirBnb who have zero sense of adventure, and
| that this is all water tight.
|
| I hope you're being sarcastic here, no?
| JCharante wrote:
| absolutely not that gets people in trouble if you get
| attention from the cops (source: been in south east asia
| for a while)
| afavour wrote:
| > If I am connected to my work via a VPN, I am
| technically still working in the country of employment.
|
| I hope this is sarcasm. A VPN is a technical detail that
| would never stand up, legally. The only situation where I
| can see a VPN being useful is within your own company: if
| they don't want you working remotely a VPN might help
| cover up the fact that you are. But aside from that it
| won't help you.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Law is all technical details and abstractions though.
|
| Where are you working if you are flying above various
| states and countries while VPNd?
| refurb wrote:
| No, that's not how it works at all.
|
| There are several ways tax codes can categorize income:
|
| - the country the person was hired in (e.g. US)
|
| - the country for whom the work is complete for (say if
| US employee delivered code for a Canadian office)
|
| - the country the company who hired the person is located
| in
|
| - the country the company paying the employee is located
| in
|
| - the country the person was originally hired in (same as
| #2)
|
| - the country where the work is actually done
|
| A lot of countries just look at the last one. Doesn't
| matter if you were hired in the US, paid in the US
| dollars and US taxes are taken from your pay check. If
| you complete your work in country X, country X wants
| their taxes according to their laws.
|
| There is a separate aspect for the company. You as an
| employee might comply with all tax regulations - hired in
| the US, US taxes deducted, but you file your taxes in a
| separate country and pay taxes owed.
|
| But your employer may be out of compliance as well - they
| may need to be registered in the that country, have
| obligations for employer tax and social security
| payments, etc.
|
| It's mostly their own obligations companies are worried
| about. If the employee pisses off and breaks tax law in
| another country, well that's on them.
| bombcar wrote:
| The reality of what the law _says_ and what countries and
| companies _do_ in this case are often very disconnected.
|
| But when it's a big or noticeable deal, then things come
| into play. US baseball players have to file Canadian
| taxes when they play in Canada, and if an exposition game
| occurs in Japan or London, taxes are filed there, too.
|
| If you're not _trying_ to evade taxes, and aren 't making
| much anyway, most places don't actually _do_ anything,
| but if they decided they wanted to they could.
| maxlamb wrote:
| I believe that's not what government laws says (for any
| country). Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but pretty
| much all countries/states consider you working there if
| you are physically present there. Your VPN or where your
| "commercial output" is, is not considered a factor at all
| by governments.
| oxfordmale wrote:
| Most countries only care if you are taking a job that a
| local could have done. That is clearly not the case if
| you work remotely. If anything you are increasing local
| jobs by paying for your accomodation and food.
|
| Once again this has been reviewed by laywers at different
| companies who have deemed this risk to be acceptable.
|
| There might be countries that will arrest you if you read
| your corporate mail while on holidays, however, these
| generally not on the green list of safe countries to
| travel too.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> deemed this risk to be acceptable_
|
| Acceptable to the company. That doesn't necessarily mean
| that it's acceptable to you, especially if penalties
| would primarily fall on you for illegally claiming the
| wrong immigration status.
| maxlamb wrote:
| I understand that it would make sense for governments to
| not care since it's money coming in and not displacing
| local workers. _But_ the laws are still there, saying
| it's illegal. If they weren't, governments wouldn't come
| up with special "digital nomad visas" for that specific
| situation.
| digianarchist wrote:
| Mexico is one of the few countries that legally allows
| remote work on tourist visas and a common complaint is
| that remote workers are driving up rents.
|
| Allowing unrestricted access to your country by remote
| workers will have economic impact.
| hervature wrote:
| Many others have chimed in, but this is very important to
| highlight. Meeting with clients, going to conference, having
| important meetings, these are things we consider work.
| However, from the eyes of the law, these are temporary things
| that need to be done in person for business that has already
| occurred. That is, if you come to a conference, meet a
| potential client, and then set up a sales meeting before you
| leave, you have conducted new business in the US and violated
| your B1 visa. See [1] for the actual exemptions. Technically,
| if you check your email while on B1, this could be construed
| that you are conducting unauthorized business in the US. Of
| course, these laws never foresaw technological progress and
| so the world governments look the other way because they do
| not know how/what to enforce.
|
| I'm going to put it here as this is what an immigration
| person put it to me, just ask yourself "where are my feet?"
| That is the country/entity you should be paying your taxes to
| by default unless there is an explicit reciprocity agreement
| that may apply to you. So, if you're traveling Europe as an
| American while working remotely, you are violating tax law in
| every single country. From the law's point of view, there is
| no difference than as if you had contracted out your work to
| someone in each one of those countries. Don't worry, no one
| is going to come after you for those 10 hours but just know
| you are intentionally (or grossly negligent) making use of
| the inaction of enforcement.
|
| [1] - https://www.uscis.gov/working-in-the-united-
| states/temporary...
| schrodinger wrote:
| There must be some exception to this. I am a US citizen
| working for a London company and a few times a year I go
| over, explicitly telling the immigration officer it's for
| "business meetings," and that's explicitly allowed. I
| couldn't just go work for the hell of it but as a manager
| of a team it makes sense I make special occasion trips.
| Technically they could ask me to produce a letter from my
| employer explicitly confirming the reason for my travel but
| I've never had any friction at all. But my company was very
| explicit that I explain it's for "business meetings" and
| not regular work.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| There are exceptions of some sort for meetings and
| conferences.
| hervature wrote:
| Yes, business meetings (and the things in this spirit)
| are the exceptions. However, you certainly cannot say "I
| feel like doing my normal job in London this week". Now,
| let's say you go to London for one important meeting and
| spend the rest of the day working as you don't want to
| waste your time, ok, no one is going to ask questions.
| But, if you go to London for one meeting and work there
| for the rest of the month, you are in clear violation. Is
| anyone going to hunt you down? Probably not. Are you
| breaking the intent of business visas? Definitely.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > ...Of course, these laws never foresaw technological
| progress and so the world governments look the other way
| because they do not know how/what to enforce...
|
| Other than the current _scale_ of activity, the law has no
| "never foresaw technolo..." excuse for failing to cover
| such things. _Centuries_ ago, it was perfectly normal for
| authors, composers, painters, etc. to travel to and work in
| other countries - "for their health" as they worked on
| their next masterpiece, or for inspiration, or to give paid
| lectures, or to perform or conduct music, or to paint
| portraits of locals, or several of those things.
|
| It'd be rather interesting if a lawyer or few (who were
| fond of dusty tomes) did some real research on how those
| activities were handled back in the day, the old case law,
| etc.
| hervature wrote:
| I'm not sure I agree. With computers, people can
| literally teleport around the world which would have been
| ridiculed even 50 years ago. Probably something like
| "Haha, you think one day you'll be able to reach into the
| telephone and fix the thing on the other side, haha". I
| think it is an open question whether or not a sysadmin
| working on servers around the world is any different than
| paying the sysadmin to travel to each server and work
| locally while continuing to work on the global servers.
| The former is fine whereas the latter would legally
| require work authorization in each country.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Let's say it's 1937, and I'm a successful author enjoying
| life at a hotel in Italy. And writing my latest novel.
| Mailing chapter-by-chapter draft copies of that back and
| forth with my literary agent in London. Occasionally
| calling that agent on the (then-expensive) telephone with
| both questions, and instructions for him to execute on my
| behalf. Occasionally calling editors at various
| publishers (perhaps in several countries) to discuss
| business. Or to argue about how they destroyed the
| beautiful cadence of my dialog in Chapter 8 of my prior
| novel. Maybe I send telegrams to another agent I employ
| in New York, asking questions and giving instruction.
|
| The modern, computerized version of this is faster,
| cooler, and sexier - but (IANAL) I see little basis for
| saying that there's a legal difference in kind.
| hervature wrote:
| The example you give is a clear violation, both in the
| past and the present. The author's feet are clearly in
| Italy and hence subject to Italian taxation (unless
| reciprocity agreement). That's not up for debate. This
| corresponds to the "latter" option I proposed before
| where the sysadmin travels around. This we are definitely
| aligned.
|
| Upon reflection, I should not have said "an open
| question". Rather, I should have said that many feel that
| the spirit and intent of the law should be revisited. For
| many, the feet test is about resources utilization. Using
| electricity, internet, housing, etc. In the author
| example, the author is clearly making a choice to live at
| that hotel. Back when the law was written, I think this
| would have covered most cases. However, now, the modal
| case are "digital nomads" where the normal thing is to
| not spend more than 1 week - 1 month in a single place.
| Oftentimes, the destination doesn't matter, but the
| journey. In the extreme, imagine spending 2 days in every
| country in the world, in perpetual motion. This has
| always been a possibility and the law covers this case
| (as we both know) but I think people are beginning to
| question if it makes sense given the new distribution
| brought by the internet. To come back to the sysadmin
| example, the point was that the sysadmin is utilizing the
| same global resources except for maybe an additional
| epsilon as they move around to the different localities.
| Many feel that the locality does not provide anything in
| return for the right to tax the income.
| bombcar wrote:
| That's an interesting case - if you write a book on
| holiday, but not on contract, and then sell it later when
| you return, where did the work occur? Where did the
| taxable event occur?
| bell-cot wrote:
| For that specific case, it is tempting to look to
| securities law, and the "when did something clearly
| become valuable?" concept.
|
| If you're a well-established author of (say) steamy
| romances, writing yet another steamy romance - then the
| value is created (work is done) when you write the book.
|
| If you're a nobody, dreaming of success as an author -
| then the work is done when you somehow convince a
| publisher to take a risk and buy your manuscript.
|
| (And in between those cases it would get messy:)
| bombcar wrote:
| I bet the only industry that has some guidance on this is
| the movie/tv industry - and even then I bet a lot of it
| falls on the incomes of the employees actually filming on
| location, etc.
|
| It would be interesting to watch California try to claim
| income tax on book royalties that were first started in
| CA but then the author moves elsewhere.
| hocuspocus wrote:
| In the EU and FoM countries you're still supposed to pay
| social contributions where you work. There are many complex
| rules for people who are regularly on the road (like truck
| drivers, artists on tour) and dispatched workers, but as the
| average tech worker you can definitely get your employer in
| trouble if you work more than 20% outside the country of
| employment. That's why cross-border commuters can't work from
| home more than one day of the week, technically.
| bitschubser_ wrote:
| The 20% rule only applies to Switzerland and the
| "Doppelbesteuerungsabkommen" with the neighbor countries or
| EU. This was the reason I quit my job in switzerland and
| moved back to germany (without taking a huge pay cut ;),
| more vacation days and only 35hour/week), now the 183day
| rule for social contributions and tax apply as long as I
| live in germany. So now I can work from portugal during
| winter :)
| ChuckNorris89 wrote:
| _> without taking a huge pay cut ;), more vacation days
| and only 35hour/week_
|
| Would you mind sharing in which area) industry one can
| get such a good deal in Germany? All i found was
| 40h/week, some with overtime.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Not a day goes by where someone fails to mention
| Doppelbesteuerungsabkommen!
| hocuspocus wrote:
| Not only Switzerland, no, see Luxembourg.
|
| Most employers won't allow what you're doing.
|
| There's no EU-wide 183 day rule for social contributions.
| If you stay more than 3 months in a country you need to
| be registered as a posted worker, and there are some
| legal implications.
| bitschubser_ wrote:
| you're right, depending on the country/company there are
| some additional implications, in my case it helps that we
| have a subsidiary in most EU countries, so it can work
| via an "entsendung". I really hope that these things will
| change (social and tax wise) in the future within EU to
| make it easier for work setups like this.
| joshvm wrote:
| You can visit for 90 days but what you're allowed to do is
| restricted to tourism and "temporary business".
|
| The US substantial presence test is actually something like
| 31 days in the current year, and ~180 calculated as a
| weighted sum of presence over all visits in the preceeding
| few years. That's just to determine if you should pay tax,
| and note that vacations to the US contribute. Whether you can
| legally work in the US is another matter. I had to get a a J1
| visa for a two week stay in the US because I was being paid
| remotely by a US organisation. So in this case I was working
| but paying taxes elsewhere.
|
| Most Europeans have access to things like cross border
| permits e.g. Switzerland/Germany and within the EU freedom of
| movement means it doesn't really matter much. You just
| register with the City Hall or wherever in your target
| country.
|
| It comes down to how honest you are. Lots of digital nomads
| illegally claim they're on holiday, and who's checking? I'm
| sure a lot of people would be happy to pay a fee for a
| temporary work permit though.
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| I propose people start reconsidering this imposed situation
| that exists between the people who do the work and the
| government, i.e. the parasitic ruling class. And to
| clarify, I say that as someone who is not at all "leftist"
| oriented, even though it may seem so at first glance of
| reading that to some.
|
| This situation we currently essentially globally have, at
| least in the west, is quite an abusive system that is
| really just the bait and switch type pivot off what most
| people know as slavery, into a differently structured model
| of the same fundamental thing, one which really just
| spreads the total amount of enslavement across more people
| rather than getting rid of it altogether.
|
| The parasitism of the ruling class that is far more obvious
| through slavery, is far harder to recognize in todays world
| because rather than taking, for argument's sake, ~70% of
| 10% of people's labor to support and enrich the ruling
| class; the shift/pivot off the slavery model was to
| introduce taking ~40% of the labor from 90% of the
| population and therefore enrich and empower the ruling
| parasitic class even more.
|
| It's precisely why a certain segment of the ruling class
| were all for "ending slavery", because they knew "ending
| it", i.e. spreading it over most people, would be far more
| lucrative and profitable. Life tip: Always be extremely
| leery of what the ruling class is promoting, and even more
| so re-examine things if they start supporting what you
| support.
|
| The point is, we need to all start coming to a realization
| that the income tax and the whole tax system of fractional
| slavery enforcement needs to end. I do not claim to know
| the right answer, but I and any other rational and sane
| person know that this bait and switch slavery that exists
| needs to stop. What else do you call it, e.g. when hedge
| fund managers make billions per year and pay next to zero
| taxes, but some middle class person has huge sums of the
| value of their labor taken/ stolen to supply the hedge fund
| manager's lifestyle?
|
| Some have proposed things like the Fairfax.org, essentially
| a consumption tax through sales tax that captures taxes on
| illegal/harmful activities and ill begotten wealth, e.g.,
| drug dealers buying their flashy things, while at the same
| time also taxing polluting activities in a direct
| correlation, e.g., buying new shiny-object over keeping
| something maintained and repaired. This would be a radical
| and arguably positive impact for all of humanity ... except
| the parasitic ruling class which very much likes and has
| been working hard to expand its parasitism. See currency
| inflation at the press of a button for reference, which
| defrauds workers and savers through the worst tax, fraud.
| cyberlurker wrote:
| I'm all for talking about tax policy but stop comparing
| our modern workforces to slavery (unless you are
| referring to the actual slaves of today). Slavery was/is
| barbaric and nothing even close to the relative bliss
| that is the modern workforce. I happily pay taxes, after
| stuffing every penny I have into tax advantaged investing
| accounts. At the end of the day I see a lot of government
| waste, but I also see the necessity of government. We can
| reign in government spending and taxation but don't give
| me this garbage about how I'm in slavery.
|
| If you want a perspective on how bad slavery was, search
| for this: Hardcore History Ep68 - Human Resources
|
| Also, I knew immediately you were some libertarian/right,
| red pill person because I see this kind of talk all the
| time from old friends. Ya ya, the ruling class is so bad.
| Why are you preaching your gospel on HN? Do you want some
| ruling class VC money for your startup or not?
| pedrosorio wrote:
| People work because they need money to survive (pay
| bills, rent, food, etc.), not because "the ruling class
| is imposing taxes through government".
|
| A consumption tax will do nothing to reduce the power of
| the "ruling class" since their consumption is a much
| smaller fraction of their income compared to the working
| man.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Consumption as a fraction may be smaller but as a number
| it's much larger. Wealthy people own larger homes (often
| more than one), more and more expensive cars, boats,
| private aircraft, any number of other toys. They spend
| more on clothes, entertainment, virtually every other
| category of spending is higher if you are wealthy. Maybe
| they spend about the same amount on toilet paper.
| pedrosorio wrote:
| > Consumption as a fraction may be smaller but as a
| number it's much larger.
|
| The current status is one with progressive tax rates
| where people with higher incomes pay a higher percentage
| of their income in taxes. This is still not enough due to
| loopholes, etc.
|
| The person I replied to complains about "ruling class"
| and proposes (presumably as a way to mitigate the ruling
| class' accumulation of wealth) tax on consumption.
|
| Since the fraction of income used for consumption
| decreases with income, a consumption tax corresponds to a
| regressive income tax (higher income -> lower tax rate).
| This is much worse, penalizes the poorest and leads to
| much worse wealth inequality than the existing system.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| > that exists between the people who do the work and the
| government, i.e. the parasitic ruling class. And to
| clarify, I say that as someone who is not at all
| "leftist" oriented, even though it may seem so at first
| glance of reading that to some
|
| I definitely wouldn't say that criticising big
| inefficient government is a leftist talking point at all.
| illiac786 wrote:
| 100% agree. reading "parasitic ruling class" makes me
| think of a Trumpist rather than a socialist, for sure.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| That would also be wrong (or disastrously incomplete).
| cto_of_antifa wrote:
| muaytimbo wrote:
| I get the analogy many others here intentionally miss.
| Usurping the value of your labor by force. Most of us in
| America work >4 months a year with all that value stolen
| by the parasite class. How many months will we accept
| until, instead of theft, we call it slavery?
| la6472 wrote:
| Using tax to build roads , fund schools , maintain
| community parks , allocating to providing care for the
| poor and defense funding is not "slavery" and there is no
| "ruling class". You can be a burecrat or become a
| politician if you want. The system may not be perfect but
| certainly better that half assed solutions that makes no
| sense.
| notch656a wrote:
| >You can be a burecrat or become a politician if you
| want.
|
| You can become those things if you manage to navigate a
| social and possibly economic process and succeed in
| entering those positions. By using your own definition, a
| slave wasn't a slave because people like William Ellison
| [0] who were once slaves went on to become a slaveholder.
| A slave can become a slaveholder -- that doesn't cancel
| out them taking part in a system of slavery.
|
| >there is no "ruling class".
|
| A couple weeks ago when I entered the US I was forcibly
| shackled and cuffed without being even 'arrested' nor
| formally charged with a crime and held for 16 hours while
| taken to hospitals against my will on the most flimsiest
| accusation of being suspected as a "drug mule." Do you
| really think a common armed citizen could have held me
| like that against my will without repercussion? There is
| most definitely a 'ruling class' who can get away with
| things others can't. The border patrol in fact is
| 'allowed' to violate the constitution within 100 miles of
| the 'border' (which debatably is either actual border or
| even just international airports) and stop people without
| probable cause of having committed a crime.
|
| Perhaps 'debt bondage' is a better word to describe what
| the government imposes on its citizens (especially noted
| in the high percentage of black men thrown in debtor's
| jail for merely owing money a la child support
| enforcement). Debt bondage is considered a form of
| slavery by some, although distinct and perhaps less
| egregious from chattel slavery.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Ellison
| kingaillas wrote:
| >What else do you call it
|
| Something other than slavery, which is humans literally
| owned and treated as property. Maybe what it actually is,
| a skewed taxation system.
| helsinkiandrew wrote:
| Sales taxes predominantly tax the lower paid more - who
| spend more of their earnings.
|
| I'm not sure how this would make hedge fund managers
| who's net worth and amount invested might go up billions
| in a year but don't get paid or spend that amount.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FairTax#Distribution_of_tax
| _bu...
| oxfordmale wrote:
| 90 days is the number agreed upon by company lawyers.
| Company lawyers do not have a sense of adventure, so this
| is a relatively watertight figure for most countries in the
| world and not dependent on your honesty.
| ericmay wrote:
| I'm not sure when this 90-day rule was written, but I
| imagine it was written in a time before now with high-
| performance laptops, video conferencing, common jet
| travel, and people wanting to work 30 days here, 90 days
| there, 120 days over there, etc.
|
| This should be revisited. Also I think this is a good
| example of the need to have expiration dates on new laws
| and regulations. This should be something that expires
| and has to be changed to reflect how people live _today_.
| MikeTheGreat wrote:
| > the need to have expiration dates on new laws and
| regulations.
|
| This is a terrible idea. Here in the US the ever more
| hyper-partisan political environment makes it hard to do
| _anything_, even once. The idea that our Congress
| critters are going to re-pass all legislation for
| everything every (say) 5 years is ridiculous.
|
| Those of us who like knowing that our food is safe to
| eat, our cars aren't firebomb death traps waiting to
| explode, that planes won't fall out of the sky onto our
| houses that aren't going to spontaneously collapse /
| flood from shitty plumbing / burn down from an electrical
| fire will disagree that all legislation should be
| repealed (either directly or via repeal-by-expiration),
| but please - let's be honest about what the effects of an
| 'expiration date' on legislation would actually
| accomplish.
| JusticeJuice wrote:
| 90 days is the standard tourist visa length for most
| countries, so it would be to match that.
| ericmay wrote:
| No need to match
| rat9988 wrote:
| It needs to matchs.Otherwise you'd need a work visa.
| kieloo wrote:
| But isn't it illegal to work on a tourist visa anyway?
| Retric wrote:
| Most countries have many exceptions. A UK "tourist visa"
| is called a "Standard Visitor visa."
|
| _https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/upl
| oads/...
|
| Remote working
|
| Visitors are permitted to undertake activities relating
| to their employment overseas remotely whilst they are in
| the UK, such as responding to emails or answering phone
| calls. However, you should check that the applicant's
| main purpose of coming to the UK is to undertake a
| permitted activity, rather than specifically to work
| remotely from the UK. Where the applicant indicates that
| they intend to spend a large proportion of their time in
| the UK and will be doing some remote working, you should
| ensure that they are genuinely employed overseas and are
| not seeking to work in the UK._
|
| PS: Actual rules are here:
| https://www.gov.uk/guidance/immigration-rules but the
| general intent seems to be if your there to do something
| very temporary like compete in a sports tournament or do
| something for someone outside the UK that requires you to
| briefly visit the UK it's fine.
| dheera wrote:
| Personally I'm curious about how they have rights to even
| know where you are at any given time.
|
| If you're an in-office employee, your responsibilities
| are (a) show up at the expected work hours (b) get your
| tasks done.
|
| If you're defined as a fully remote employee, your
| responsibilities are (a) be online and available at the
| expected work hours (b) get your tasks done.
|
| Besides that you're just an amorphous black box, a person
| that has been placed in the cloud, much like a website
| placed on Cloudflare, where the input is money and the
| output is work. They don't need to know where you are,
| and I'd say they shouldn't even have a _right_ to know --
| that would be quite stalkerish, IMO. All that 's really
| important is that this black box gets tasks done.
| jacobr1 wrote:
| Because the black box for legal purposes still presumes
| you are in-office. When you are remote, you are
| structured as working from your "home office" not
| anywhere.
| dheera wrote:
| Hm. What if my home office was a van, or a private jet?
|
| Couldn't one just structure it as a consultancy? I mean,
| if I hire a consultant to do something for me, I could
| just pay them through PayPal or Venmo or even Ethereum
| and wouldn't need to know where their office is. Onus is
| on them to be legally able to work and pay their taxes.
| wombatpm wrote:
| That works because it's a 1099 situation. But FICA, tax
| withholding and health care benefits are all tied up in
| your place of residence. Assuming you have a driver's
| license and a voters registration, there is someplace you
| call home otherwise you are just a hobo
| dheera wrote:
| Hm. So what legal framework do "hobos" use?
|
| Surely it's not illegal to be homeless with a lot of
| money and skills.
|
| (a) Let's say you spend 1 week in each state for 50 weeks
| of the year. Where do you file your taxes?
|
| (b) Let's say you spend 1 week in each of 50 countries
| and work for AirBNB. You have no house, and no lease on a
| residence. Let's say it's mutual, e.g. you want to do
| this, and from their perspective, it's helping them
| because you're dogfooding their product. How do you deal
| with the legal side of it?
| notch656a wrote:
| The government generally doesn't recognize having no
| fixed address whatsoever. I was caught 20 miles from the
| nearest road once 'illegally existing' in a wilderness
| area in Oregon 'without a permit.' The officer of course
| had nowhere to take me because there was no prison or way
| to extract me out, we literally randomly found each other
| on a mountain. When I told him I had no address he
| literally had no way to enter that on his form. He told
| me it was impossible and he had to put _something_. I'm
| not sure what he ultimately wrote. Of course he let me
| go, because what the hell are you going to do someone 20
| miles from the nearest road short of calling a
| helicopter.
|
| Having no address makes the government's brain explode.
| ghaff wrote:
| wrt a.
|
| My understanding is that it's not illegal but it
| basically makes it impossible to get government-issued
| ID, file taxes (which are legally required), open a bank
| account, get a credit card, etc.
|
| So as a practical matter you probably get some traveling
| mailbox type service--in a state with no income tax
| presumably.
|
| wrt b.
|
| You're already a citizen somewhere. You'll still need an
| address there. See above. Then it's up to you and,
| perhaps to some degree, your employer to get appropriate
| visas. That said, for one week stays, an Airbnb stay
| during which you work an unknown amount of time remotely
| as opposed to being a tourist seems pretty doable so long
| as you keep a low profile and the company is cool with
| it.
| ghaff wrote:
| And your home address is going to determine your default
| state/local tax situation in the US. (Though above
| certain thresholds you may be supposed to file multiple
| state taxes that are reconciled with each other. This
| mostly comes into play with business travel which
| companies are tracking.)
| schrodinger wrote:
| You can't just legally avoid taxes by not letting your
| employer know. Sure, they prob won't know and you'll get
| away with it, but you're technically breaking the law and
| an employer won't knowingly condone that.
|
| So it's not that they have a right to know where you are,
| it's that if they do notice and not act on it that's a
| legal risk to them as well since they're enabling it.
| (IANAL but this feels common sense.)
| throwawayboise wrote:
| The simple answer is to do away with the notion that
| earning income should be taxable. Tax on the consumption
| side, it's easier to enforce and harder to avoid.
| phantomathkg wrote:
| That would be simple if AirBnB wrote the law. But sadly,
| they aren't.
| techdmn wrote:
| The problem with taxing consumption is that it's pretty
| regressive. Not to say that there aren't solutions, but
| the existing sales tax, gas tax, etc aren't it.
| darioush wrote:
| Taxing income is also regressive because most rich people
| have trust funds (and pay a flat 15% tax) or push luxury
| purchases under the guise of business expenses (and pay
| no tax).
| notch656a wrote:
| Taxing consumption instead of investments and savings
| seems like it would guide society more towards saving and
| investment instead of short-term consumption, though, no?
| Personally I'd rather not have taxes at all, but if you
| forced me to pick on of the three I'd pick consumption
| every time.
| dheera wrote:
| I wasn't saying avoid taxes -- mostly just that the "90
| day" thing is nonsense, because if you're a remote
| employee, you're effectively just a really intelligent
| amoeba on the face of the Earth without a well-defined
| location.
|
| Pay your taxes, but if you say 153 days in Thailand or
| wherever you can get a long enough tourist visa, and use
| a VPN to the US and _get your work done_ , I'm not sure
| why anyone would, should, or even has a right to care.
| schrodinger wrote:
| Thailand has a right to care. You're earning money and
| not paying taxes to their roads, police, fire department,
| etc--all the things govt provides. When you're a true
| tourist, you are likely making up for this by boosting
| the local economy.
| dheera wrote:
| Usually by being someone with money and spending it on
| rent, food, etc. you're already making up for this.
|
| Countries with tourist visa stay limits are usually just
| to make sure you have the funds to leave. In general, if
| you come back the next day on another flight, with the
| intention of continuing to stay and spend money, they'll
| generally have no problem with it.
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| > Most Europeans have access to things like cross border
| permits e.g. Switzerland/Germany and within the EU freedom
| of movement means it doesn't really matter much. You just
| register with the City Hall or wherever in your target
| country.
|
| This isn't as easy as it seems, even inside the EU. There
| are talks going on about laws regarding what constitutes
| "local hiring".
|
| Basically, the issue is that some companies hire people
| from Eastern Europe, and pay them EE salaries there. But
| those people are then physically working from Western
| Europe, where they are "visiting workers" (don't know the
| exact term). This allows the companies to, among others, 1.
| pay lower salaries than the local going rate and 2. avoid
| paying payroll taxes locally.
|
| I don't know how this works when applied to freelancing or
| remote working, but, as others have said, it's probably
| best to ask a lawyer or two.
| skocznymroczny wrote:
| > "visiting workers" (don't know the exact term)
|
| the term is 'posted workers'
| moonchrome wrote:
| I don't see a problem with this if the visiting workers
| are there less time than it takes to be considered a tax
| resident, eg. you have 3 months on-site onboarding and
| then proceed to work remotely.
|
| After some time you're considered a resident so it
| doesn't make a difference compared to a local hire ?
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| That's the thing, I don't think there's a clear duration
| after which you're automatically considered a tax
| resident.
|
| The thing with these employees was that they never became
| local hires. So they would get their salary through their
| home country branch, with taxes paid over there, etc. The
| whole point is that these companies were trying to dance
| around the limits of employment law. What they were doing
| was technically legal, hence the will of the government
| to change the law.
| ptsneves wrote:
| In Poland you are a tax citizen automatically if you have
| been there more than 183 days[1]. The exact same 183 in
| Portugal[2]. It is an automatic thing so quite simple.
|
| [1]
| https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/poland/individual/residence
| [2] https://taxsummaries.pwc.com/portugal/individual/resi
| dence
| vladvasiliu wrote:
| I beg to differ. Those look like the "default" rules. For
| the example of Poland (picked one of your two examples)
| it's not so simple.
|
| The "default" rules for tax residency are superseded by a
| convention between the two countries, and there are a
| bunch of them, with many countries, on the site of the
| French government. There are specific conventions with
| Germany, Belgium and Switzerland, for example, that apply
| only to people living close to the border and working in
| the other country. If you take the train from Paris to
| work in Geneva, it doesn't apply.
|
| Basically, it can be debated. It says that if you have a
| "permanent home" in both countries, you're a resident of
| the country "with which you have the most attachments".
| So for the hypothetical Polish worker who's "detached" in
| France, it could be argued that the "attachment" is to
| Poland, because their family is likely there, among other
| things. In the case of a freelance moving from country to
| country, who is likely unattached, this can probably be
| easily argued (though I'm not a lawyer).
|
| Concerning remote-working freelance: For "independent
| workers", you're taxed in the country where you do
| business, except if you have a "fixed base" in the other
| country, from which you conduct your business. In that
| case, you're taxed in the country where the base is, but
| only for the part of income that is attributable to the
| work done from that base.
|
| Source, in French: https://www.impots.gouv.fr/sites/defau
| lt/files/media/10_conv...
|
| Conventions directory: https://www.impots.gouv.fr/les-
| conventions-internationales
| nivenkos wrote:
| > I've worked in NY offices and got paid in UK (
|
| If you're doing ordinary work I think that violates the terms
| of the B-1/B-2 visa - even if under 90 days.
| trash3 wrote:
| My understanding is, for an American in a EU country, is they
| can go and work remotely there for the 90 days as long as
| they are not conducting business in said country. This means
| face to face business meetings with clients. When you log in
| remotely to your job based in the USA and not interacting
| with people directly during the tourist stay, you're in the
| clear... I think?
| bkor wrote:
| > My understanding is, for an American in a EU country, is
| they can go and work remotely there for the 90 days as long
| as they are not conducting business in said country.
|
| That's not legal. To work in the EU you need a work visa.
| Though they ignore the business trips. What's legal and
| what's checked are different things.
|
| E.g. new foreign colleagues need to get a tax id in The
| Netherlands before they do any work. Doesn't matter if they
| came from the US.
| ghaff wrote:
| I (from US) can't speak to the actual laws. But with
| respect to "what's checked," I've been asked the purpose
| of my visit at immigration in countless countries around
| the world and I'm always completely open about attending
| conferences and meeting with customers and _no one_ over
| decades has batted an eye. (Of course in the handful of
| countries I did explicitly need business visas--like
| China--I got one.)
|
| Of course, there are a lot of unenforced laws on the
| books, but I'm a little skeptical that the millions and
| millions of people who travel cross-border on business
| trips every year are all mostly breaking immigration
| laws.
|
| To be fair, my experiences are all on relatively short
| trips--a few weeks at most and usually less. Perhaps
| there would be more issues if I were staying 90 days and
| was open about workationing the whole time.
| el-salvador wrote:
| > I'm always completely open about attending conferences
| and meeting with customers and no one over decades has
| batted an eye.
|
| Attending conferences is usually ok, but it's a
| complicated topic because it depends on the traveller's
| passport, the visited country and how strict rules are
| enforced.
|
| As a foreign national, for example a U.S. B1 visa allows
| attending conferences and close business deals. But it
| doesn't explicitly allow working remotely for a non-US
| company.
| ghaff wrote:
| Of course, even a B1 isn't a tourist visa. A B2 (US
| tourist visa) specifically doesn't include non-social
| events.
|
| In any case, in most countries whether explicit or
| implicit that distinction is probably the right one. Of
| course, no one is going to care or know if you check some
| emails and do some work--just like no one cared if you
| made some phone calls and did some work years ago.
|
| But, in most places, you probably shouldn't show up and
| say you'll be spending the next 90 days working remotely.
| nivenkos wrote:
| No, if you're performing paid work like that it's still
| violating the visa.
|
| Just that normally no-one ever checks or cares.
|
| It could be a problem if you later try to become a resident
| in the same country though.
| lovemenot wrote:
| >> I think this is a genius move for Airbnb. Make it easier for
| _other_ companies to operate in a similar way so that _their_
| employees can travel and live in an... Airbnb!
|
| Yes. Like the story of Ford doubling the wages it paid to
| factory workers in 1920s. So that those workers could afford a
| car, and the whole economy eventually followed suit.
| Kbelicius wrote:
| That story isn't true. The reason why wages/bonuses were
| raised/introduced by Ford is because of turnover.
| gowld wrote:
| What's the difference?
| bbrks wrote:
| Many young European countries reliant on tourism, like Croatia,
| introduced digital nomad/remote working visas mid-COVID to
| encourage people to stimulate their local economies when
| tourism suffered the most.
| mvkel wrote:
| It's trivial to do this with Gusto and companies like CorpNet.
| We have employees in 13 states and it's all automated.
| sha_burn wrote:
| They don't have the pull to change immigration laws but they
| can set and prove the standard to execute with excellence with
| this model.
|
| To the other comments, it is an expense-less raise.
|
| To the California tax base, it is yet another wakeup call.
| mantas wrote:
| No need for immigration laws change for work/travel,
| especially when it's capped to 90 days.
| wildmanx wrote:
| > I think everyone wins here.
|
| The airline industry surely will. The environment likely won't.
| (But who cares about a few polar bears if you can just work
| from Shanghai for a few weeks, right? /s)
| XenophileJKO wrote:
| Does the environment really lose? Along with this comes the
| reduction of commuting. Curious to see how the math works out
| on that one.
| saalweachter wrote:
| You could probably formulate a migratory plan based on
| where you can live to minimize heating and cooling costs.
| lultimouomo wrote:
| > I think everyone wins here.
|
| Everyone except the cities that have already lost a quantity of
| apartments and offices that have been repurposed as AirBnBs...
| dannyw wrote:
| Build more apartments.
| ethanbond wrote:
| This is an underutilized solution in general, but is
| actually not even close to one at this point in time.
| Construction is incredibly hard at the moment (at least in
| the US) due to supply and labor shortages. It's actually
| not clear when or even _if_ these will be alleviated.
| lultimouomo wrote:
| Building more apartments has a huge environmental impact.
| Also it can severely impact the beauty of a city.
|
| Building them if there is an actual housing shortage? Sure!
| Building them so people from the silicon valley can be
| digital nomads? Hell no.
| matchbok wrote:
| Are you a housing planner? Do you have a degree in
| economics/market studies?
|
| Also, building apartments has a huge environmental
| impact? Ok?.... So does rural sprawl? So does...
| everything? There is nothing inherently more damaging
| about those.
|
| Beauty of a city? Cities are cities because of
| apartments. And you want.. fewer of them? Perhaps you
| would enjoy the suburbs more?
| Gud wrote:
| Why are the cities the losers? I travel a lot for work(300
| days/year) and I don't have an apartment, so when I'm not
| working I'm pretty much also traveling. Occasionally I use
| Airbnb and I think it's a much nicer option than hotels.
| dimitrisnl wrote:
| Not the city, but the locals who are not in tech.
| lultimouomo wrote:
| The whole city suffers in the long run, as business get
| torn up to make a quick buck with rents, and the city
| becomes an empty fun park for tourists.
|
| The problem obviously exists beyond AirBnB, but AirBnB
| massively escalated the problem.
| maxthegeek1 wrote:
| If you want to enrich locals at the expense of tourists,
| the straightforward way to do that is just raise
| property/sales taxes and payout the revenue to locals.
| lultimouomo wrote:
| That doesn't solve the problem, you get a Dutch disease.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_disease
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| That's fine if you want to punish people who manages to
| get out of rent slavery.
| berkes wrote:
| Indeed, the entire city. In e.g. Amsterdam (a relatively
| tiny area, high tourism density) or Venice, in areas
| things have been pushed over. It's a spiral. E.g.
| something simple as "pharmacies" or "supermarkets". They
| leave/close because of less demand. Which decreases
| liveability, causing more locals to move out, causing
| more such businesses to close etc. These effects come
| next to "increasing house prices".
|
| It really is so problematic that cities like Berlin,
| Amsterdam (and I believe Venice) and many more crack down
| on AirBnBs. Hard. You are allowed to rent out the
| apartment where you live, but for limited time and with
| high fines or even extradiction on renting out beyond the
| limits (e.g. 90 days per year). You are certainly no
| longer allowed to have AirBnBs for the sole purpose of
| renting out to AirBnb.
|
| Edit: and in e.g. Berlin, AirBnB does not hand over the
| data of their users/renters (which Is good, I presume).
| So they have people scanning the renting-websites,
| visting homes and even posting outside to find evidence
| something is rented out beyond the allowed duration.
| imiric wrote:
| > You are certainly no longer allowed to have AirBnBs for
| the sole purpose of renting out to AirBnb.
|
| That's a ridiculous requirement. Owning real estate for
| the sole purpose of renting has been an income source for
| ever. Just because Airbnb exploded this practice in
| popularity doesn't give governments the right to say what
| purpose owners can use their property for. If Airbnb is
| causing issues, then address those specifically, not ban
| the practice of owning property exclusively used for
| renting.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| AirBnB is causing issues and the government is adressing
| it. I bet that many residents are asking for an outright
| ban of it. If I were in Madrid or Barcelona, I bet I'd
| do.
| michaelt wrote:
| Governments tell people what their property can be used
| for all the time.
|
| Even laissez faire countries like America use things like
| 'zoning' and 'setbacks' to control what you're allowed to
| do on your own property.
| imiric wrote:
| Well, sure, but you bought property in those areas
| depending on if you wanted to run a business or use it as
| a residence. Maybe there should be a separate residence-
| as-business zone used for Airbnbs.
|
| Banning short-term rental properties feels like a quick
| bandaid to gain political points, not a solution to a
| market with a large demand.
| bkor wrote:
| > Banning short-term rental properties feels like a quick
| bandaid to gain political points, not a solution to a
| market with a large demand.
|
| Seems more that you want government to facilitate running
| a business where it's not in the interest of that
| government, nor in the interest of the locals. Airbnb's
| aren't beneficial, plus they aren't checked as properly
| as a hotel.
|
| Usually it isn't banned, what they're after is that it is
| limited (days/year), plus the AirBnB income is properly
| taxed.
| disiplus wrote:
| they are addressing those issues in limiting short rent
| rentals. long term rentals are allowed and regulated.
| bombcar wrote:
| The main thing that is being handled is how to correctly
| handle/account for it - a long term rental and a house
| are basically identical from the purposes of what the
| government provides, both may have families with children
| going to school, need stores, etc.
|
| But short-term rentals are basically identical with
| _hotels_ which are _commercial_ properties and have
| substantially different requirements - the people staying
| there will _not_ frequent supermarkets, etc as much as
| they will restaurants, etc. They will _not_ be sending
| their children to the local school, and so on.
|
| Mixed use property can be (and should be!) encouraged,
| but it does have externalities that have to be handled
| and accounted for.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > doesn't give governments the right to say what purpose
| owners can use their property for.
|
| of course the government is gonna govern.
|
| quoting you here
|
| "governments told what purpose owners can use their
| property for, for ever"
| varnaud wrote:
| That's a great requirement imo. For short term stay, we
| already have hotels, hostels and regular BnBs. Apartments
| and houses should be reserved for long term stay and
| regulated accordingly.
|
| The original idea of AirBnB was to easily rent your couch
| or guest room for a few nights and I think regulations
| should be made to keep it this way.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Just because Airbnb exploded this practice in
| popularity doesn't give governments the right to say what
| purpose owners can use their property for.
|
| That's true.
|
| The power of government to govern does not originate with
| AirBnB, but predates it considerably.
|
| The particular use of the power may be responsive to
| situations created by AirBnB, though.
| devmor wrote:
| Because it's almost impossible to purchase a house if you
| live and work in a large city now.
|
| Airbnb "hosts" use their ever growing stream of reverse
| mortgages to purchase more and more single family homes at
| cash offers over what others can afford.
| dan-robertson wrote:
| It seems like Airbnb is an easy scapegoat to use for the
| actual problem of not enough houses existing/being built.
| Another scapegoat is 'foreign investors' but I think this
| also isn't true. In the US I think the people willing to
| make cash offers for houses in expensive cities are often
| the rich people who live there. There are also companies
| that will advance you the cash so that you can make a
| cash offer before going through the whole mortgage
| process, which seems a bit silly but if these companies
| exist then some people making cash offers must also be
| regularish wealthy home buyers who will use regular
| mortgages.
| fartcannon wrote:
| It's a symptom of viewing homes as investment properties.
| Building more just dilutes the value of their
| investments. Heavily tax or ban owning mulitple homes and
| watch as cities suddenly become affordable again.
| Hedepig wrote:
| Do you think this is an primarily caused by Airbnb?
| lultimouomo wrote:
| I live in a city that is a major tourist destination
| worldwide. Tourism has always been a blessing and a
| curse; shops always suffered a pressure to become tourist
| oriented; some big buildings were converted to hotels.
|
| With AirBnB the problem has expanded massively. I cannot
| find a 3-room office that is not miles away from the city
| center because everything that size is an AirBnB. An
| employee I just hired that moved here from a different
| city has been forced to live for months in an AirBnB
| because there are _no long term rentals_ in the city
| (ah!).
|
| Since every wall-confined space can be an AirBnB, every
| wall-confined space becomes one. The lack of regulation
| makes a real difference, compared to shop and hotels.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Yep, i live in a country with massive housing issues in
| our cities (well... like most other countries), and
| banning airbnb is mentioned a couple of times a week now
| in mainstream media.
|
| And if the large cities are a problem, there still are
| some new building projects done here, if you want to
| massively overpay an apartment,... the rural areas near
| tourist areas are even worse... 20km from the mountains
| and 20km from the seaside, almost nothing new is being
| built ("preserving the heritage" ... after being a
| communust country for 50 years, and most of the
| "heritage" was built in the 1970s in 80s), and anything
| already built being sold is massively overpriced
| (literally not worth it unless you're lending it out via
| airbnb).
|
| I'm usually against banning stuff, but if airbnb was
| banned, it would be a good thing. Tourist belong in
| hotels, hostels, etc. and apartment buildings are for
| people who actually live there. And lets not forget the
| additional problems airbnb brings to an otherwise
| residential apartment building (parties (=noise), drunk
| tourists, destroyed shared property, etc.).
| illiac786 wrote:
| I think banning airbnb outright is not a good idea. They
| should limit the number of days per year a place can be
| rented, simple. Then you only rent if it's really your
| home and you're not there, because otherwise it's not
| worth it. Might be a pain to control across multiple
| renting platforms, but it's possible and if you catch a
| couple of persons and condemn them to high fines, this
| will make the rounds and other short term renters will
| stop.
| jonny_eh wrote:
| > They should limit the number of days per year a place
| can be rented, simple. Then you only rent if it's really
| your home and you're not there...
|
| This! As a user of Airbnb when traveling, I've found that
| renting "real" homes has been a superior experience. They
| actually have sensible furniture and decorations. They
| also tend to have common-sense items available, like
| plungers next to toilets.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Never heard of a landlord who'd rather have a string of
| short term rentals than one continuous long term rental
| unless there's some renter protection law that makes you
| an effective permanent tenant. Just rent through Airbnb
| and then talk to the guy about a normal lease.
|
| If you want, text me where you are, I'll put up $10k for
| a bet and then if I can find you a 3 room office, you
| give me $10k. If I can't, I'll give you $10k. Gotta be
| anglophone, though and none of this long-term rent
| controlled shit because no one wants to get locked into
| that. My French is atrocious and my German worse and I
| can't speak anything else.
|
| EDIT: Fine, fuck it, give me a year to learn the Spanish
| and up the bet to $100k and I'll do it. I find very often
| that things that are impossible for others are easy for
| me. But list your conditions up front here. I think I
| could manage anyhow.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| In cities like NY, you can easily make more in a week of
| renting out your apartment via AirBnb than you would in a
| month via a traditional lease.
|
| I've seen entire floors of apartment buildings being
| converted into AirBnb flop houses. People will convert
| every room, besides bathrooms, in a 1 or 2 bedroom
| apartment into separate AirBnb rooms. Instead of renting
| an entire 1 bedroom apartment to one person, you can
| easily stick 3+ people in there as an AirBnb setup.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| You never heard of it, but there are plenty in Spain. I
| don't live in a tourist city but I go ofter to Madrid and
| Barcelona and it's a serious problem there.
|
| It's not the primary source of the housing problem, but
| it definitey contributes to it.
| prmoustache wrote:
| Here in a coastal south spain city, the rule is pretty
| much this:
|
| weekly short term rental price in summer = monthly rental
| price for long term resident.
|
| So if you rent for 12 weeks between late may and end of
| september you already make as much money than having a
| rental resident, and can still rent more expensively than
| a short term resident. For example owners typically rent
| a lot to tourists during the hottest months and in
| autumn/winter/fall a lot of digital nomad are filling the
| gap. They also usually have done the math and can swallow
| the higher rent than a local would.
|
| Having said that, I don't want to be an owner here.
| Administration is horrible but basically everyone you
| will meet are either lazy or want to defraud you in some
| way and they have absolutely no sense of quality work. A
| friend of mine is renovating a small house all by himself
| because he got fed up by the locals. Maybe the end result
| won't be , but here the pros won't give you professionnal
| quality job anyway so at least he won't feel screwed.
| bombcar wrote:
| Short term rentals can have _significant_ advantages over
| long term - for example, it 's painless to "evict" a
| short term renter in almost every jurisdiction, but once
| it passes 30 or 90 days in some areas it becomes a multi-
| month process.
| rglullis wrote:
| Oh, boy... go take a look at Greece more touristy spots.
| It's more profitable to keep the house closed for 8
| months in the year and only rent in the season. It's much
| harder to avoid reporting income from normal lease, while
| with AirBNB you can just "forget" to report it, or even
| easier, just offer a small discount if they pay cash.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >Never heard of a landlord who'd rather have a string of
| short term rentals than one continuous long term rental
| unless there's some renter protection law that makes you
| an effective permanent tenant.
|
| or unless you can make significantly more money as a
| short term rental. Also if you can theoretically hide
| your earnings (although I guess you can't most places
| anymore)
|
| also, I believe most EU countries have some form of
| renter protection laws.
| gampleman wrote:
| For illustration, where I am you can make up 1 month of
| long term rent in about 5 nights of Airbnb. The rest of
| the month is just pure profit.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Well, at that point, it's that old HN adage: there's no
| shortage; you just refuse to pay enough. There's also a
| shortage of $15/mo Manhattan Beach rentals.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| well that adage is normally applied to employees under
| the naive assumption that you can pass the costs onto
| your customer (assumption generally made because you are
| looking for an employee because you have projects to
| finish with customers that pay for those projects), but
| when finding a place to live if you are middle class and
| not able to afford to live in the area it does not follow
| that a reasonable solution would be that you pay money
| that you do not possess and what, pass it on to your boss
| in the morning by saying 'guess what, you gotta give me a
| raise now!'
|
| >There's also a shortage of $15/mo Manhattan Beach
| rentals.
|
| oh yeah, right the cost under discussion is $15 a month,
| forgot about that. I thought it was that the cost to rent
| an apartment in lots of areas took up such an exorbitant
| amount of a monthly income that natives to the area could
| not afford to do it.
| the_lonely_road wrote:
| This isn't a Vegas poker table. Making prop bets for more
| money than a lot of people here can make in a year is
| rather uncouth.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the claims are overstated so I'd want
| some skin in the game. I'd have to go learn
| conversational Spanish / able to read local cultural cues
| / travel there so that's going to cost me time.
|
| Reading it back, it does sound kind of gauche, but I'm
| pretty sure the stated issue is a non-problem. Like I
| said, people have lots of trouble getting things done and
| I find that the things are not that hard.
| devmor wrote:
| No, property management companies already did this to a
| limited extent - but airbnb has made it easy enough that
| it has reached a critical mass level resulting in home
| prices spiraling out of control to the point that homes
| are now relisted 6 months later at even 100% markup or
| greater.
|
| The problem here in Atlanta is so bad that the core city
| has now banned airbnb without an explicit permit. We are
| hoping that gets adopted across the metro area.
| lifeformed wrote:
| It's not the only cause but a significant one.
| corford wrote:
| In tourist heavy cities like Barcelona and Lisbon, yes.
| I've seen it first hand.
| comprev wrote:
| It will be interesting to see what happens in Amsterdam
| over the next few years since they clamped down hard on
| AirBnB.
|
| Hosts now have to be officially registered with the city.
| AirBnB lost something like 90% of their hosts overnight!
| Gareth321 wrote:
| Many major cities are clamping down hard. Mayors and
| politicians are under much more pressure from locals to
| stop their cities turning into, well, Amsterdam. Tourism
| is fine, but it has increasingly come at the cost of
| locals.
| jfk13 wrote:
| > Tourism is fine
|
| Well... a moderate amount of tourism is fine, even
| beneficial; but excessive tourism in any given location
| becomes a blight. Airbnb has contributed to that, by
| facilitating short-term profits for "hosts" and the
| company and ignoring the negative impact.
| bombcar wrote:
| Tourism that overwhelms the location turns it into a
| tourist trap; whatever it had before becomes a veneer
| over the main industry, which will be tourism.
|
| In some places this is incredibly visible (think Las
| Vegas Strip vs Las Vegas) but you can also see it in many
| famous tourist destinations.
|
| Of course, large cities like Tokyo are quite resistant to
| tourism, just because of how big they are - certain areas
| and attractions may be tourist heavy but the city is
| still Tokyo.
| JCharante wrote:
| That's just if you live in a city with bad zoning
| policies or in cultures that hate high rises.
| oxfordmale wrote:
| 90 days is safe limit as advised by lawyers. In some countries
| you can stay much longer without incurring any tax
| implications, however, as a company you want to avoid your
| staff getting into legal difficulties if they stay overstay by
| one day for whatever reason (oversight, delayed flight, etc).
|
| Very few staff tend to take 90 days in one chunk. It is often
| used for 4-6 weeks to either visit family, or have a working
| holiday in a tropical holiday location. Timezones can be an
| issue for some job roles, however, you can ask staff to mostly
| keep working according their original timezone if there is a
| time critical element to their job role. However, in most cases
| it is actually great to have someone working either earlier or
| later than the rest of your staff. It reduces the window for
| out of hours support.
| timmg wrote:
| > I think everyone wins here.
|
| One theory I have (and it may be wrong): is that part of the
| rise we've seen in housing prices is due to WFH and AirBnB.
|
| Lots of people I've worked with who were WFH in the pandemic
| would spend a week (or a month) in a rental while they work,
| here and there. And during that time, their house/apartment
| would be empty.
|
| Imagine everyone does that for (say) 3 weeks a year. That's a
| 6% increase in "housing usage". A 6% shock to the housing
| market is significant when supplies can't react quickly to the
| rise in demand.
| sjs7007 wrote:
| What about the reduction in office space usage that will have
| to be repurposed into something else?
| isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote:
| Office buildings are typically not suitable for conversion
| into apartments, there are no provisions for things like
| individual bathrooms or kitchens.
| bombcar wrote:
| Even if they could be converted (and most buildings after
| a certain height are basically the same except for the
| interior) they'd likely be torn down and rebuilt; if they
| even can be due to zoning.
|
| People love to hate on zoning but there _are_ reasons for
| it, even if the way it 's done isn't perfect by a long
| shot.
| delecti wrote:
| Commercial leases can't be repurposed that quickly, and I
| suspect a lot of companies are holding off on doing
| anything different with their office space. If the past two
| years have resulted in permanent change, then some office
| space will likely get repurposed, but it's too early to
| tell whether it's permanent, and nobody wants to jump the
| gun and get it wrong.
| boh wrote:
| It's funny how this is meant to be interpreted as a work/life
| benefit for employees when it is clearly a removal of labor
| restrictions for the company. If you can hire anyone from
| anywhere your cost of labor will decrease overall. Yes "you can
| move anywhere in the country you work in and your compensation
| won't change", so future salaries don't have to reflect local
| expenditures. You can offer flat rates that encourages people
| to move out of high cost cities and decrease your overall labor
| costs. The idea that this is a win/win is seductive but it
| won't be. Increasing the labor pool chips away the leverage an
| employee has at the negotiation table.
| gowld wrote:
| Employee doesn't _need_ leverage if their income isn 't going
| to pay a landlord.
| noduerme wrote:
| Yeah, eventually everyone will be staying in AirBnb's hotel and
| paying all the mortgage/upkeep on their own property to rent it
| to AirBnb. "It's like Uber for real estate".
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > I think everyone wins here.
|
| except for the cities flooded by tech workers that do not
| belong to the community.
|
| Like it's happening to Barcelona.
| ErneX wrote:
| Which community is that?
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| Ever heard of locals?
|
| You can't imagine how much better Rome has been in these
| last two years without Americans coming to colonize our
| historical districts.
|
| It's not entirely Americans fault, they do not belong here,
| don't know the language, the traditions, but they gather
| together all in the same place and suddenly it's not Rome
| anymore and obviously prices skyrocket up to the point that
| locals can't afford to live there anymore, after
| generations many have been forced to leave their family
| houses.
| chronofar wrote:
| Big cities are by nature cosmopolitan, it's very strange
| to say only some people "belong" and others don't. Would
| you prefer the world isolate into pockets of belonging
| based on generational inheritance as it has been and we
| crank back globalization? Certainly there are growing
| pains, but I would view more globalization as the
| direction we want to go.
| bombcar wrote:
| The problem is that people _move to Rome_ because it is
| Rome and not LA, and then proceed to turn it into LA.
|
| Even a hundred years ago traveling somewhere brought you
| to a _very different_ world, now it 's hard to tell the
| difference between some cities since they're all covered
| in McDonald's and Starbucks anyway.
|
| And it's not just the companies, either.
|
| Part of the problem is our American way-of-life covers
| everything in a think blanket; you can easily move to
| anywhere in the world and remain an American as long as
| you want, the pressures that would bring you more in-line
| with those who live there are almost entirely gone.
| chronofar wrote:
| I too lament some of the homogeneity of culture brought
| about by globalization. But I think the benefits are well
| worth it. Indeed in the future I would expect (or hope)
| for people to feel as though they are world citizens, and
| never feel too far from home wherever they go. The world
| gets smaller as we integrate it, and though we'll lose
| remnants of the past I think it is the only way we can
| hope to have a future.
| boredumb wrote:
| It's only bad if it's Americans moving abroad, it's
| actually racist and/or fascist and/or xenophobic if
| Americans complain about foreigners moving to their
| cities legally or otherwise and not adapting culturally.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| It's bad when the power imbalance favours foreigners over
| locals.
|
| There's nothing bad with Americans coming here, I love
| them, but there's a particular kind of people that don't
| integrate and think that having much more money than the
| average puts them in charge.
|
| I've made some example about tech workers from USA
| because they are the larger and richer group I know of
| and it's crystal clear that most of them aren't here to
| make the city better or become citizens.
|
| Also they are the ones who send their kids to "study
| abroad", but here you can drink when you are 16 or older,
| you can imagine what happens when you put young people
| with a lot of money in their pickets in a place where the
| rules of their country do not apply and the police is
| friendly (meaning they usually do not carry guns with
| them and don't arrest you for being drunk).
|
| But it's not only them, of course and I'm sorry if I made
| it look like that.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > Big cities are by nature cosmopolitan
|
| but most rich tech workers, especially from US,
| especially from SV, are not.
|
| It's time to accept it.
|
| We don't want them.
|
| Not at this rate, not at these (their) conditions.
|
| They only bring problems.
|
| One thing is immigrants coming to work, another thing
| entirely is people that go somewhere because "it's cheap"
| or "it's beautiful" but work and pay taxes elsewhere.
|
| They also have the habit of paying more than the average
| prices, so housing becomes more expensive, activities
| have to pay higher rents to survive or adapt to the kind
| of entertainment that the "new people" like, which is
| more often than not not what they wanted to do, people
| that used to live near their workplace had to move
| elsewhere because they could not afford to live in the
| district anymore, they end up closing shops and move
| their activities elsewhere (people like to have a life,
| besides work and commute) disrupting the life of many
| other that used to go there. So when these people start
| buying drugs, dealers compete for their money and
| criminality rate increase.
|
| Last but not least, not being part of the community makes
| them detached.
|
| This[1] had never happened before Americans invaded
| Trastevere.
|
| Of course this is in general, individually people are
| perfectly fine, but this trend is killing the fabric of
| cities with centuries of history, for nothing.
|
| Cosmpolitan it's not synonym for "colony".
|
| [1] https://www.thelocal.it/20220210/us-tourists-serving-
| life-fo...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Cosmpolitan it's not synonym for "colony".
|
| Cosmopolitanism is historically largely a consequence of
| colonialism, and the draw of labor (both cheap mass and
| elite skilled) from the peripheries to the core.
| gowld wrote:
| > pay taxes elsewhere
|
| That's only because your community refuses to tax the
| visitors.
|
| > They also have the habit of paying more than the
| average prices
|
| then they are in fact paying taxes (or paying locals --
| skipping the government middle-person) to the community.
|
| > This[1] had never happened before Americans invaded
| Trastevere.
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/07/travel/taking-a-bite-
| out-...
|
| "Earlier this year, a report by the president of Rome's
| Appeals Court, Giorgio Santacroce, found that criminal
| organizations essentially have divided up the capital
| into areas under their control."
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/International/trial-
| opens-2016-death-...
|
| > Trial opens in 2016 death of US student Beau Solomon
| found dead in Rome > An Italian homeless man is accused
| of killing the 19-year-old student.
|
| > Prior to his death, Solomon was allegedly robbed and
| assaulted, just hours after arriving in Rome for a study-
| abroad semester.
| chronofar wrote:
| > Cosmpolitan it's not synonym for "colony".
|
| Of course it's not, but characterizing tech workers in
| foreign cities as "colonizing" makes little sense, even
| if the various problems you're pointing to can be laid
| entirely at their feet (which, without knowing enough
| about Rome to have a high degree of confidence, I would
| suspect is inaccurate, you could just as easily be
| describing general gentrification which has good and bad
| components).
|
| All in all this attitude seems to me to be more or less
| typical NIMBY-ism, just with a focus on tech workers
| likely due to your purview (we're on hackernews after
| all). And to be sure NIMBY-ism is not usually without
| good reason, it's absolutely a worthwhile and reasonable
| goal to preserve culture you hold as valuable, and indeed
| in the case of Rome there is some very special culture
| there worth preserving. But it should be noted that
| change is inevitable, and cultural isolation is not a
| reasonable way to accomplish this goal conducive to the
| kind of world we want to have (or I should say I want to
| have, highly mobile and integrated so your origins have
| little bearing on your potential trajectories, much more
| unified than it is today as a species rather than
| provincial squabbling).
|
| Rather we want solutions wherein people can move freely
| and be accepted wherever they go, while also preserving
| cultures and spreading economic benefits in a more
| efficient way. For instance better taxation so nomads pay
| taxes where they are not where they're from.
| ErneX wrote:
| But this isn't something you can just blame on tech
| workers. Big cities go through this constantly not only
| from tech expats but also from better paid local workers.
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| > Big cities go through this constantly
|
| No, they don't.
|
| Ask someone from Rome, Barcelona, Madrid even Warsaw, if
| they are happy of this airbnb-ization of their cities.
| [1]
|
| Anyway, _citi_ es are for _citi_ zens, not for
| freeloaders. [2]
|
| [1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/31
| /airbnb...
|
| [2] _The word city and the related civilization come from
| the Latin root civitas, originally meaning 'citizenship'
| or 'community member'_
| gowld wrote:
| Ask someone from NYC if they are happy with the
| Italianization of their city...
| peoplefromibiza wrote:
| I don't believe NY is being "italianized", Italians have
| been there for so long that the idea if Italians in NY
| it's almost a meme nowadays, even in Italy we mock them.
|
| Anyway, it's not about where people come from, but how.
|
| Italians didn't go to NY through Airbnb, profiting of
| their much higher salaries.
|
| They went there to work and lived at "the bottom of the
| ladder" level (my grand-grand father is one of them, he
| left Italy soon after the first World war).
|
| NY is also the most no-one-true-identity city I've ever
| lived in.
|
| First time I wenr there more than 20 years ago my biggest
| cultural shock was going to visit the Brooklyn zoo,
| catching a bus and being the only white person on the bus
| (well almost, I look more like a Northern African, but
| still).
|
| But I'm sure many in NY too aren't happy of the process
| that's going on.
| manuelabeledo wrote:
| I'm curious to know if short term rentals are an actual
| problem, compared to the much bigger, largely proven, and
| much less publicised, issue of hedge and investment funds
| buying out entire blocks of buildings.
|
| I myself lived in Madrid for 5-6 years, and what seemed
| to drive the cost of living up weren't the people owning
| one or two rental apartments, but corporations and banks
| buying entire buildings up. At least in Spain, there has
| been a connection between banks not making large chunks
| of their real estate stock available, and investment
| funds buying on the scarcity.
|
| > Anyway, cities are for citizens, not for freeloaders.
|
| This feels like a bit narrow sighted.
|
| While these workers you are talking about don't pay
| income taxes in these cities, they do pay other taxes
| (utilities, consumer products, etc.), and other than
| public infrastructure, they usually do not have free
| access to most services without paying (education, most
| healthcare).
|
| So who's "freeloading" here? I would admit that they pay
| less taxes, but that doesn't mean that they pay _zero_
| taxes.
|
| And another question arises. I myself am a Spaniard
| residing in the US. Would I be considered a "freeloader"
| if I go back to Spain and work for my employer in the US
| for a month or two? Do nationals get that consideration?
| dheera wrote:
| > tourism + wfh
|
| Can't you do that on a normal tourist visa? As long as you're
| not getting paid by a US company or to a US bank account,
| you're not employed in the US, so as long as your company
| allows you to be remote, I don't see an issue with it.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| > While you'll be responsible for getting proper work
| authorization, we're actively partnering with local governments
| to make it easier for more people to travel and work around the
| world. Today, 20+ countries offer remote work visas, and more are
| in the works. While working from different locations isn't
| possible for everyone, I hope everyone can benefit from this
| flexibility when the time is right.
|
| I think currently this is a big caveat. Getting a work permit in
| other countries is not that easy, even for Americans or other
| countries with more prestigious passports. Maybe with AirBnB
| clout it is easier than without but I'd say it's still quite an
| issue.
|
| That being said, I'm really excited for what the future could
| provide with AirBnB focusing on this. Maybe it will be easier not
| just for Americans and the like to work in other countries but I
| really hope it will be easier for others from places such as
| Africa and Latin America to work in Europe and the US as well.
| tfehring wrote:
| I think a couple dozen countries offer digital nomad visas now,
| the ones I've looked into in detail just require you to be
| employed remotely by a company outside the country and earn at
| least a couple thousand USD per month.
| hirako2000 wrote:
| I do wonder which country would in effet cause troubles to
| travellers on a tourist visa, contributing to the local
| economy by renting a temporary home and other living expenses
| but happen to be working on their laptop every day of their
| 90 days trip.
| jdrc wrote:
| they would cause trouble to the company though. And the
| company would have troubles with the country where they are
| tax residents
| seer wrote:
| I don't think they even try to get work visas. A lot of
| countries have tourist visas up to 90 days. And if you go to a
| country to work there, but are not paid by a local company, you
| are basically a tourist.
|
| I think this is what AirBnB are doing. A lot of countries have
| a requirement for you to reside in it for at least half the
| year to be able to be taxed there and be considered an
| employee. A lot of countries allow people to visit for limited
| time, as long as you don't interfere with the local job market
| - e.g being a tourist. Those two are not in conflict and you
| can do what AirBnB are doing right now, without much more
| accounting difficulties. Though I'm not an accountant and take
| my words with a grain of salt.
| umutseven92 wrote:
| Nope, unless your country has a special arrangement with the
| country you are visiting, you cannot work with a tourist
| visa, at all. Does not matter if the company is local or not.
| No work visa = no work.
| eldenwrong wrote:
| Makes sense. So everyone that works while traveling is
| doing so illegally
|
| Oh wait
| verve_rat wrote:
| Yes, unless they have the correct visa. No work visa, no
| working. It really is that simple.
| eldenwrong wrote:
| Almost all countries don't even have policies covering a
| lot of those scenarios and you'd probably win in court
| anyway
|
| So you can't open your work laptop while on vacation?
|
| You cannot always take the law literally....
| verve_rat wrote:
| What the law says and what you can get away with are
| different, yes.
| fnordian_slip wrote:
| Maybe someone with more knowledge of the law could chime in,
| but
|
| >And if you go to a country to work there, but are not paid
| by a local company, you are basically a tourist.
|
| seems wrong to me. If I work in another country I'm still
| working, which means I need to pay taxes in my host country
| after a certain time (in Norway it's the first day afaik, in
| some European countries it's after a few months).
|
| It's annoying, of course, but I'm using the resources of the
| host country while earning money, so it feels understandable.
| JCharante wrote:
| > I don't think they even try to get work visas. A lot of
| countries have tourist visas up to 90 days. And if you go to
| a country to work there, but are not paid by a local company,
| you are basically a tourist.
|
| this has been discussed to death on DN forums. Basically yes
| you're breaking the law but if you don't get caught no one
| will know. Some people don't like taking this risk while some
| don't mind.
| seer wrote:
| Well traveling within the EU should be simple enough.
| Haven't done it outside but I have a few questions.
|
| If I'm on paid leave, I'm still earning money, and I go to
| Asia - am I breaking the law? I'm still "doing" the
| activity that's earning me money.
|
| If I'm on my paid leave, and fiddle with my blog, which
| gets ad revenue - am I earning money and thus doing illegal
| economic activity?
|
| Not a lawyer so would love a more rigorous definition of
| "doing work" that is applied in Asia so I know if I'm
| overstepping. Maybe you can point me to some of those
| discussions?
| eldaisfish wrote:
| to test your theory, i invite you to present this exact
| scenario to border officials anywhere in the world. This
| is not meant as a snarky comment but a very literal
| statement. If you are turned around and refused entry,
| what you plan to do is illegal.
|
| As already mentioned, "Asia" is not a legal or political
| entity.
| bpodgursky wrote:
| > If you are turned around and refused entry, what you
| plan to do is illegal
|
| That's... an overstatement. Asking weird questions that
| indicate a _risk_ of tourist visa overstays which nobody
| else bothers to ask (even if it is perfectly legal) will
| put you at risk of rejection, whether or not the law
| allows what you 're trying to do.
| verve_rat wrote:
| Maybe start with recognising that "Asia" is not a legal
| jurisdiction.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I find it hard to imagine any country actually cares, and even
| if they do, I find it hard to imagine they could reasonably
| check whether anyone is there for tourism, or just to work.
| mellavora wrote:
| Self-imposed limits on imagination do not restrict the
| possibilities and imagination of government agencies, nor
| restrict what other people think is "fair and reasonable"
|
| Like you, I also wish the world worked in the way I like to
| imagine it should.
| umutseven92 wrote:
| They don't care if you are visiting for a week, but for 90+
| day stays they definitely care.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Is there any country that gives out 90+ day tourist visa?
| Obviously you still have to follow the rest of immigration
| law (so no overstaying your welcome).
| Ekaros wrote:
| They do. Actually the amount of taxes in some countries if
| you end up messing up and staying over 180 days is
| significant. And then there is health care. Maybe not an
| issue in those third world countries with private one, but
| with public systems real question for them.
| mrep wrote:
| Is health care really an issue? They'd really only need to
| cover emergency issues? Everything longer term I would
| assume you'd have to go back to your home country to get
| covered.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| Healthcare tourism is real. People come to Spain for
| that.
| mrep wrote:
| For lower prices, not free so why would the government
| care since the government wouldn't be the ones footing
| the bill.
| digianarchist wrote:
| _Caveat emptor_ indeed.
|
| Most folks will end up working on tourist visas which is
| explicitly not allowed around most of the world.
|
| I work at a remote first company and HR have given a nod and a
| wink to this, but with the requirement that you maintain a
| permanent address and pay taxes in a country where they have an
| office.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Haha yes, exactly. However, AirBnB figured out how to change
| culture (and law?) to rent our homes out to strangers, maybe
| they'll lead the way here as well.
| basisword wrote:
| >> Most folks will end up working on tourist visas which is
| explicitly not allowed around most of the world.
|
| Are you sure this is the case? You're not allowed to get
| hired locally but I believe you can work online for a company
| based in your country of residence provided you don't stay
| long enough to become a resident of the new country (which
| you can't on a tourist visa). I visited Canada for 6 months
| on a tourist visa. I had a full immigration interview at the
| airport when I arrived and they were perfectly happy with me
| working freelance/online for those 6 months. They were just
| clear I couldn't become an employee of a Canadian company.
| umutseven92 wrote:
| Nope, unless your country has a special arrangement with
| the country you are visiting, you cannot work with a
| tourist visa, at all. Does not matter if the company is
| local or not. No work visa = no work.
| lostcolony wrote:
| Yeah; I'm pretty sure that isn't the case. They don't care
| if you do work online while visiting, just that you're not
| looking to stay or to take a local job (that they'd prefer
| to go to a resident). The legal language may be a little
| fuzzy since I bet it was written before remote work
| (telecommuting if it even existed at the time :P) was as
| much a thing, but I'd challenge anyone to find a case of
| someone penalized for working for doing their job remotely
| from another country.
|
| That said, if you're working for a multinational company,
| you may want to be careful. Being hired in country A, for a
| company that has presence in both A and B, and then flying
| and working for a few months in B, could conceivably raise
| all sorts of flags if noticed.
| kibibyte wrote:
| > Being hired in country A, for a company that has
| presence in both A and B, and then flying and working for
| a few months in B, could conceivably raise all sorts of
| flags if noticed.
|
| My employer adopted a similar policy (just not as
| publicly announced as Airbnb's), and the way they work
| around this problem is by, assuming you reside in A,
| allowing you to travel and work in B but explicitly
| disallowing you from entering an office location in B.
| digianarchist wrote:
| Canada is one of the exceptions. If I as a Canadian tried
| to approach CBP with that intention then I wouldn't be
| admitted.
| wackget wrote:
| "You can move anywhere in the country you work in and your
| compensation won't change"
|
| But if you move to a different country, suddenly the work you do
| is worth less to the company?
|
| Roles should be paid for the skill and work required, not the
| location of the employee.
| tfandango wrote:
| This is the thing that stood out to me as well. It sounds like
| they are moving to a single pay tier and if you are currently
| below that, you will receive an increase. I think that implies
| the single tier is the same as the current max salary since
| they did not mention a decrease. I'm interested to see how this
| plays out since it could indirectly effect me as I live in a
| low COL location and my company currently adjusts salary
| depending on your location.
| yalogin wrote:
| Wow, Airbnb really knocked it out of the park. I really like the
| whole plan. I hope other companies follow.
| yao420 wrote:
| Glad they are doing this. I got a great offer from Airbnb last
| year but I turned it down because they required an SF presence.
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| > Everyone will still need a permanent address for tax and
| payroll purposes
|
| I spent a lot of time outside US while waiting for my wife's visa
| to process and quickly wrote some advice on maintaining US
| domicile & "permanent address" while abroad:
|
| https://www.kylehotchkiss.com/blog/domicile
|
| Sorry about the misspellings and slightly ugly personal site but
| I hope that this helps somebody who may be considering working or
| staying from abroad for a bit!
| hnburnsy wrote:
| Like full time RV'ers you could pick a domicile state and a
| mail forwarding service in that state. Texas, Nevada, Florida,
| and South Dakota are popular for tax, insurance, and legal
| reasons.
| scoofy wrote:
| If this is the future, salaries will come down, and people will
| move to smaller cities.
| DevKoala wrote:
| Isn't that good? High concentration of capital in specific
| geo's isn't that great either.
| bradlys wrote:
| None of it really matters tbh. Without proper taxation and
| building policy - it's all moot. Small town with a bunch of
| millionaires is just as bad as a big city with them.
|
| Policy is what will dictate whether or not this is good and
| that's not within the hands of any company. That's up to the
| federal, state, and local governments. (Of which are all
| fucked - of course)
| DevKoala wrote:
| From my experience, it is usually the non millionaires that
| are moving out of the expensive areas.
| Solvitieg wrote:
| salaries for people in smaller cities will increase
| tjr225 wrote:
| So will housing costs. The problems facing SF, Seattle, LA
| will spread to smaller towns. SF, Seattle, LA, will continue
| to be expensive because people spend $$$$$$ to live there for
| reasons other than tech jobs. Be careful what you wish for. I
| live in the Seattle metro, and would live nowhere else in the
| country, for what its worth.
|
| You already see this happening in rural communities outside
| of big cities. "Tech-bro" approved towns such as Asheville,
| Knoxville, Ann Arbor, Twin Cities, etc, etc are getting so
| expensive the locals can't move. Where I am from in Southwest
| Michigan has been facing a worsening housing crisis for
| years.
|
| Luckily for most of the country, the weather isn't as nice as
| it is on the west coast, so homelessness will probably not
| explode as much as it has here. On the other hand, you have
| to deal with shitty weather ;)
|
| I think the reality is that our housing costs and our fuel
| costs will catch up with Europe's. In this case it sucks
| because never built out the public transportation
| capabilities that could facilitate this being as "pleasant"
| as it is in Europe. So now if you want to visit the rest of
| your country you're going to have to pony up for fuel.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > In this case it sucks because never built out the public
| transportation capabilities that could facilitate this
| being as "pleasant" as it is in Europe.
|
| Or the publicly subsidized healthcare and higher education!
| kerbs wrote:
| The Twin Cities are tech bro approved?
| tjr225 wrote:
| Erm, yeah. Pretty much anywhere with 100k+ people is at
| this point.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Your logic doesn't really track. People move from HCOL to
| LCOL, so LCOL becomes more expensive. Yet the HCOL areas
| continue to go up too?
|
| Also why does public transit matter in a WFH/remote world?
| Seems to obviate it to a large degree, e.g. subway in NYC,
| which while used for many things, was majority used for
| commuting. It was losing large amounts of money even before
| the pandemic hit
| tjr225 wrote:
| People in hcol cities still need to move around. People
| from outside of the country move to hcol cities because
| of their reputation. Rich people live in hcol places
| because they can.
|
| My logic doesn't really need to track with whatever you
| are talking about- look at the cost of housing in high
| cost of living places; has it gone down during the last
| two years of pandemic? Has literally -everyone- becoming
| a remote worker driven down the cost of housing? No; it
| has made it worse.
|
| Is it cheaper to live anywhere on the planet now than it
| was 2,5,10 years ago?
|
| Take for instance where I am from- Kalamazoo, Michigan.
| This is a great town I love with all of my heart but have
| no wish to live there. Houses are difficult and expensive
| to buy there! And compared to Seattle it is pennies.
| Wages aren't rising in Kalamazoo to match the money
| coming in: but houses aren't getting cheaper in Seattle
| either.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| It just defies basic logic. The reason most central areas
| became so expensive was the need to cluster close to them
| for work. And in some areas, leisure, but that's the
| exception.
|
| Residential real estate prices skyrocketing has more to
| do with government interventions. I fully expect ex tech
| hubs such as the Bay Area to trend down in prices in real
| terms over many years
|
| Foreclosure moratorium, eviction moratorium, stimulus
| checks that allowed new households to form (kids moving
| out) as well as preventing the normal level of
| foreclosures, Fed buying trillions in MBS pushing rates
| artificially low, massive amounts of cash out refis to
| use in ad hoc projects that sucked up labor and resources
| for new builds.
|
| Yes migration from HCOL to LCOL will drive pricing up
| too, but to say HCOL will go higher because remote work
| is here does not track logically at all. Sure, leisure
| areas will go up in value, work areas should logically
| decline. e.g. Manhattan, Chicago, SF, Seattle
| tjr225 wrote:
| What you don't seem to understand is that people move to
| hcol areas for leisure. There is a fundamental reason
| they are expensive in the first place. Seattle for
| instance is surrounded by ocean, national parks,
| mountains. Same thing with the Bay Area. It's not gonna
| get cheaper.
|
| Nebraska is not going to magically spring up natural
| beauty and culture.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Yes, every city has a work component and a leisure
| component. The work component of a given city was largely
| irreplaceable, while leisure can be substituted by many
| cities.
|
| If you worked in tech, SF was the pinnacle location to
| live for your career. If you were in Finance, it was NYC.
| There was no exception to this. You can live in any of
| dozens of cities and still get an enjoyable life/leisure.
| It's not equivalent at all.
|
| So in this new world, an SF home will be worth $4m while
| an equivalent San Diego one $2m? No way. The disparity in
| amenities between the two is not big enough to justify
| that kind of spread, once you remove the work component.
| The entire reason SF became so expensive was relocations
| to work for big tech and the concentration of VC money.
| Not because it was unambiguously the most desirable city
| in the US or even CA.
|
| So you take away the component that made it expensive to
| begin with and ??? it goes higher still ???
| tjr225 wrote:
| I have two points I think: there are more components than
| you are giving high COL areas credit for, and that even
| if high COL see some sort of exodus, this is not good for
| low cost of living areas.
|
| I have been working remote for startups since 2019 and
| for whatever reasons, you could attribute this to low
| interest rates I suppose in your favor, things have
| gotten INSANELY more expensive. NYC, Boston, DC, Seattle,
| SF, LA, Miami I don't think they are getting any cheaper.
| These are Americas Elite Cities and thats going to
| command a demand that might seem to defy logic.
|
| However I think people genuinely love living in these big
| HCOL cities. Otherwise it would defy all reason why they
| have been population centers for hundreds and hundreds of
| years. Take for instance Amsterdam; has Amsterdam gotten
| cheaper in the last 500 years?
|
| To my second point, even if we are lucky and the money
| gets spread around a little bit what happens to the
| person working for 7$ an hour at the Hyvee in the Ozarks
| just because a small flurry of people from San Francisco
| and Seattle decided to settle there? What happens when he
| can't afford the property taxes on his paid off home
| anymore because a a random demand driven spike has
| increase the value of the properties around him to a
| point where he can't afford his property taxes anymore?
|
| What happens when he can't afford his medical bills
| because of this? I've seen what happens and its a hunched
| over old dude outside of a tent on the streets of
| Seattle.
|
| This isn't really the tech workers fault or the locals
| fault, but the fault of our government to account for
| inequality. Just something I've been thinking about. I
| just don't think that remote work is going to make life
| easier for anyone in the short term, except for the
| already spoiled white collar worker.
| adam_arthur wrote:
| Certainly people will continue to enjoy living in
| specific cities and near to things. I don't dispute that.
| I dispute that real estate will rise in real terms
| nationally.
|
| Now that the constraint of working in a specific location
| is gone, yes, people will migrate to areas for
| desirability of living, not because they're forced to for
| work. However, price is an aspect of desirability. It's
| very hard to imagine how the Bay Area could maintain
| residential real estate pricing if all big tech went full
| remote. People like SF, but not enough to pay such a
| spread over arguably equivalently nice places that are
| much cheaper.
|
| So yes, HCOL -> LCOL drives LCOL to be more expensive.
|
| Also the reason cities existed in the past was because
| people needed to gather together to work/exchange goods.
| With remote work/internet that goes away, aside from
| education/leisure.
|
| You seem to be implying Amsterdam exists because people
| like it, and not because it was a job center. I can
| assure you there were very few people hundreds of years
| ago picking cities primarily for leisure. The need to
| densify/build vertically lessens when there's no
| concentration of a downtown for work.
| Apocryphon wrote:
| > It's very hard to imagine how the Bay Area could
| maintain residential real estate pricing if all big tech
| went full remote.
|
| Plenty of people want to live in the Bay Area beyond
| those working in big tech. This isn't Detroit; there are
| plenty of other industries that hire people here. Not to
| mention all of the working class people who are commuting
| in from Richmond, Vallejo, and other LCOL areas. People
| want to move there for the Mediterranean climate. For the
| political climate. Not to mention the children of locals
| who have been living at home for extended amounts of
| time. Long-time renters. Remote work will not bring down
| real estate prices as much as you believe. Especially
| since housing scarcity props up the prices.
|
| The real estate market, like all markets of the modern
| era, can remain irrational for longer than you can remain
| solvent.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| CoL will come down in California too. You won't have the rich
| highly concentrated around the best job centers anymore and
| that will pull down the CoL in those places.
| cellis wrote:
| I don't think this will happen as fast as you'd like. There
| are tons of things in cities tons of people just don't want
| to give up, chief among them a stronger network. It's like
| the difference between remote learning and being on campus,
| at an Ivy League school.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| No one with experience who currently makes top dollar would
| take jobs that pay them significantly less, especially as cost
| of living all over the country is skyrocketing. Companies will
| need to compete for those developers, and they'll have to
| compete on wages, as well.
|
| I used to work with developers in Eastern Europe who made the
| same amount of money as their peers in SF made, despite living
| in countries with median salaries of ~$8,000 USD a year.
|
| People with skills can and do command high compensation
| packages that are independent of where they do their work from.
| Market rates for talent already factor in domestic and global
| markets.
| majormajor wrote:
| In the short term, with tons of well-funded or high-revenue
| companies struggling to hire, remote is a way to make your
| existing comp more attractive by opening it up to a new set of
| people and out-bidding their local employers.
|
| In the long term salaries will likely equalize a bit, but maybe
| not that much. Even in today's tech hubs, the existing range of
| salaries is VERY wide. Not every dev in SF is making 300k+, and
| yet the FANG companies have been in an increasing comp arms
| race for several years.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| That's because even remote jobs are US/Canada only.
| majormajor wrote:
| It'll take a long time (likely never, for small companies)
| for more companies to be international-friendly, for
| communications reasons for non-English-native-languages
| nearby countries, for HR/tax/legal compliance overhead
| reasons even for Canada, and for those plus time zone
| headaches for others.
|
| If you really want to do it with less paperwork as a US
| company, you can get around the tax headaches even today,
| hiring through some outsourcing staffing firms. Lots of
| those in Latin America now. Quite a bit cheaper. Still a
| bit of a communication hassle. But that hard barrier of not
| being employed directly keeps things at arms length in
| terms of affecting the overall salary market.
| a_bonobo wrote:
| Really cool system.
|
| >If you move, your compensation won't change. Starting in June,
| we'll have single pay tiers by country for both salary and
| equity.
|
| I wonder how that will look like in practice, countries differ
| enormously in required pay for a decent living, especially within
| the US. Wouldn't states/regions for a few countries work better?
| bigtones wrote:
| What they are saying is if you move to a different country,
| your salary will absolutely change.
| hotpotamus wrote:
| This is the part of universal WFH I just don't get. If you
| can work from anywhere, then why does the value of your work
| change depending on what country you're in?
| dymk wrote:
| Immigration law is the moat you're looking for
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| You don't get 100% of the value you produce, unless you
| work alone with only your equipment. You get the cost of
| retaining you, which depends on how many other employers
| would make you a better offer.
| eweise wrote:
| "wo decades ago, Silicon Valley startups popularized the idea of
| open floor plans and on-site perks, which were soon adopted by
| companies all around the world. Similarly, today's startups have
| embraced remote work and flexibility"
|
| You bosses adopted open floor plan to save money, no matter how
| miserable it made your employees. Now you're "embracing" remote
| work only because you can't hire anyone to work in your miserable
| offices.
| [deleted]
| drakonka wrote:
| This makes me happy to read. It's not perfect (location-based
| pay), but it seems like a really great setup overall. Over the
| pandemic I have learned that I _love_ remote work and now work
| remotely full time. It's been a game changer in terms of my
| overall life satisfaction, happiness, and productivity. It
| doesn't work for everyone, but it does for me. I'm very glad
| there are more opportunities to work like this now.
| adg001 wrote:
| """ If we limited our talent pool to a commuting radius around
| our offices, we would be at a significant disadvantage. The best
| people live everywhere, not concentrated in one area. And by
| recruiting from a diverse set of communities, we will become a
| more diverse company. """
| outcoldman wrote:
| I know some people are very excited about that, and some think
| that is going to be a new norm. I have not worked for the corps
| for at least 4-5 years, but before that I always assumed there
| are only small amount of people who can really work for company
| remotely.
|
| I definitely saw people calling that they are going to work from
| home, but saw very little work to be done that day. Which
| probably means that people used that as excuse, as they had some
| business to do outside work, and they did not want to take PTO.
|
| I have very little believe that a majority of people can work
| from home, especially when travel. You are at new place, you
| going to work like 4-6 hours instead of 8-9 hours. So I do
| understand why airbnb is telling their employees to do so, but
| curious how long it is going to last, and curious how real it is
| going to be (considering that it could be up to management
| approval as well). But I doubt that other companies will follow
| that.
| PragmaticPulp wrote:
| > I definitely saw people calling that they are going to work
| from home, but saw very little work to be done that day. Which
| probably means that people used that as excuse, as they had
| some business to do outside work, and they did not want to take
| PTO.
|
| Remote manager here. This is definitely a huge problem with
| people new to remote work.
|
| I actually don't care at all if people are doing something else
| during the day and getting their work done at night or whatever
| they want to do. However, a significant number of people really
| struggle to get work done at all when they first go remote and
| lack a repeatable schedule and the feeling of social pressure
| to be working like their peers. It takes a lot of coaching and
| mentoring to get these people back on track with their remote-
| ready peers.
|
| Many other people have no problems working remote, though. IMO,
| the key to success of a remote team is to coach and mentor all
| new remote workers very intensely in the first months or year,
| but then also to be willing to remove people from the team if
| they just can't get work done remotely. You absolutely don't
| want a few bad apples to ruin remote work for everyone else.
| cwilkes wrote:
| "I saw very little work being done"
|
| That's an incentive problem not a "be in the office" problem.
| Or you've hired lazy bums. Or the work isn't interesting
| enough.
|
| If the people are screwing around then fire them. More than
| likely the job is dull or not challenging or not rewarding
| enough. That's a call for the company to step up their game and
| bring in A level talent.
|
| Or don't and keep on getting the C team that's only doing busy
| work as a boss is looking over their shoulder.
| mdoms wrote:
| > If the people are screwing around then fire them
|
| You try firing someone in markets like NZ, Aus, lots of parts
| of Europe etc. Some people have for sure identified remote
| work as a meal ticket for life, it's frustrating.
| Aeolun wrote:
| I don't think this necessarily true. I can work just fine
| remote for weeks on end, but after a month of that I need a
| day in the office to recalibrate my focus.
| xtracto wrote:
| >You are at new place, you going to work like 4-6 hours instead
| of 8-9 hours.
|
| I remember some studies mentioning that the real productive
| time in a daily 8 hr shiFt was 4-6 hours. If that's so, then
| it's completely doable.
|
| Hopefully someone has a fresh link to one of those studies.
| presentation wrote:
| If anything I've been seeing lots of articles lately saying
| that because there are fewer boundaries between life and work
| when you're remote lots of people are working far more than
| they did when they were in person. Idk the numbers but that's
| definitely what happened to me.
| missedthecue wrote:
| I think it's less that people do 4-6 hours of work per day,
| and more that people spend ~50% of the workday productively.
|
| In other words, a 4-6 hour workday means 2-3 hours of work
| getting done.
| outcoldman wrote:
| Just to clarify the hours of productivity. I meant the person
| will allocate only 4-6 hours instead of 8-9 hours, and most
| of the time will be on FB, reading news, and spending time in
| chats. And whatever is left going to use for some work :)
| throwanem wrote:
| Just a heads up, I think you may have typoed "shift"...
| xtracto wrote:
| Haha thanks, gives a whole different meaning.
| throwanem wrote:
| Thanks for the chuckle!
| DonHopkins wrote:
| >the real productive time in a daily 8 hr shit
|
| I used to take my PowerBook into the bathroom stall at
| work when I needed some alone time to concentrate, but it
| was embarrassing to get busted when it crashed and made
| that reboot sound so everybody else in the bathroom knew
| what I was up to.
| quadcore wrote:
| Pretty sure 6 hours is even more productive, at least for
| experienced people.
| swah wrote:
| I also think this is easier to test and the more realistic
| change. You can be available to clients/meetings from
| monday to friday....
|
| And that would allow me to see the sunset the whole year.
| Would try to go to the park with my kid at 4pm every day.
| closeparen wrote:
| Oh, 4-6 hours is the Zoom meetings. Anything productive is in
| addition to that.
| tayo42 wrote:
| I've done some work-cation. Like instead of 1week off I'll
| take 2 and work the second. If I'm in a different time zone,
| I've felt even more productive. Work with out distraction for
| a few hours show up for a meeting or answer slack when people
| start working. My mood might even be better because I'm doing
| something cool on vacation before or after work.
|
| The only people doing 8 hours of "work" are the people
| scheduling back to back meetings all day
| dinvlad wrote:
| I think even that is probably an over-estimation. I suspect
| most folks can work productively (as in, being intensely
| focused on an activity) only for 2-4 hours a day, and the
| rest of the time is just "fluff" (which may or may not be
| necessary for staying productive). From that perspective,
| regular 9-5 in an office really "steals" our time, because we
| can't use it on more productive things.
| na85 wrote:
| >You are at new place, you going to work like 4-6 hours instead
| of 8-9 hours.
|
| Literally nobody is productive for 9 hours straight. You end up
| doing low-value make-work projects because in a culture that
| values "time in seat" the work expands to fill the available
| time.
| jcims wrote:
| When does the definition of talent extend beyond developers and
| system architects and product delivery? Airbnb's support
| organization, particularly with respect to guest advocacy, is
| abhorrent.
|
| I was just recently in a situation where a host rejected the
| rental price _after_ booking, and convinced the support team that
| i agreed to the adjusted price, which was then charged against my
| card. (To be fair there was some messaging back-and-forth between
| myself and the host prior to the booking that gave credence to
| this, but nothing official.) When i rejected the new price the
| host agreed to cancel, then again convinced airbnb to execute a
| guest cancellation, forfeiting all but $613 of a now $4400
| booking.
|
| It took me roughly a week with those funds tied up before i found
| someone in their support team (O.G. Lou G, i love you man) to
| actually _listen_ to me and reverse everything.
|
| This on the heels of renting a condo with hammer drills running
| upstairs 8 hours a day for the last three days of my trip and
| zero consideration or recompense from the host or airbnb.
|
| https://youtu.be/3raZyaHhiyU
|
| (TV max volume from six feet away for relative comparison)
| rdtwo wrote:
| I think more people need to be aware of how much they suck as a
| company
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| AirBNB is pretty awful to use as a customer. It's so shady
| and packed with hidden fees, at least speaking as someone
| who's only used it a few times.
|
| Unfortunately, hotels have been massively deteriorating in
| quality these last few years.. the hotels I've stayed in over
| the last few months weren't cleaning rooms more than once a
| week (and doing a half-assed job then), the front desk,
| kitchen, and room service were all massively understaffed,
| and they were more expensive than ever while still having the
| same awful internet/TV setups.
|
| If AirBNB eliminates the ruinously large cleaning fees, I'll
| probably just stop staying in hotels for good
| seattle_spring wrote:
| I've had nothing but excellent experiences, going on 70+
| distinct trips now. Many of them wouldn't even have been
| possible without Airbnb. Sorry it hasn't worked out so well
| for you
| jcims wrote:
| I keep going back, even with the bs that I've experienced,
| because the good outcones are so much better than what the
| traditional hospitality industry provides it's worth the
| risk (to me). That said i bring my own linens and a thermal
| camera to look for electronic shenanigans.
|
| I just think it's important to recognize that the _hosts_
| are completely carrying the company's brand.
| xtracto wrote:
| Something similar happened to me this last February: I had a 5
| week rental in Baja Sur (Mexico). Due to a serious medical
| emergency (covid booster vaccine gave me ischemic lacunar
| stroke) I was hospitalized 2 days before my trip and hence had
| to cancel it. You can imagine, in the middle of the hospital
| brain fog and all, I just cancelled through the standard
| process without thinking twice.
|
| Days later after I was stable and out of the hospital, I found
| out that the cancellation gave me back I think $200 usd of the
| around $2000 I had paid....
|
| At some level I kind of felt it as abusive. But I'm sure there
| are enough small prints somewhere to which I agreed to that
| explain why it's OK. And given my health issue I decided not to
| worry about that (puts things in perspective haha). I was more
| sad that I had to cancel the vacation/trip my wife and I
| planned, due to that emergency.
| virtualwhys wrote:
| That's a bargain, $2k for 5 weeks in Baja Sur?
|
| I've been near Todos Santos since January and the prices on
| Airbnb are, frankly, ludicrous for monthly rentals.
|
| But then again that's the new normal, sky high rents
| everywhere.
|
| Hopefully the infection hasn't spread to India, Thailand,
| Vietnam, etc.
| muglug wrote:
| If this becomes the norm then it's the end of SF as a tech hub. A
| big move for a company paying the sorts of salaries it does.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > it's the end of SF as a tech hub
|
| People love to predict this, they seek it. Perhaps it feels
| like pushing against some establishment (when it's serving
| another establishment). It's trendy now, which affects people
| who follow trends, but trends change fast. Talented people want
| to be around other talented people; smart, intellectually
| curious people want to live where there are great restaurants,
| arts, beauty, sophisticated people, etc. I don't think that
| will change.
| LesZedCB wrote:
| oh yeah, i forgot you can't get any of those cultural
| artifacts in _any other city_
| mwcampbell wrote:
| > Perhaps it feels like pushing against some establishment
| (when it's serving another establishment).
|
| What establishment do you think it's serving? To me, a return
| to the smaller cities where many of us grew up, or better
| yet, never leaving in the first place, feels like
| decentralization, which many of us think is a good thing.
|
| > intellectually curious people want to live where there are
| great restaurants, arts, beauty, sophisticated people, etc.
|
| This strikes me as elitist, especially the mention of
| "sophisticated people". Now that I've returned to my home
| city, in what Americans often call flyover country, I
| appreciate hanging out with ordinary people. True, when I do
| karaoke, I hope the other singers will be good (speaking of
| arts and beauty), but there are good karaoke singers
| everywhere.
| peyton wrote:
| It's gotten pretty ridiculous in some neighborhoods. I don't
| feel like a trend follower by leaving, and I don't think
| random internet chatter influenced my decision.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| I agree. But some people will totally leave, which will be
| great for those of us that like it here, since the prices
| should go down.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Be careful: Perception is reality, and becomes reality.
| It's self-fulfilling.
| peanuty1 wrote:
| It's not going to be the norm for a while. MAGA aka The Big 4
| have all announced RTO plans for the majority of their
| workforce.
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Amazon is absolutely not going back to office in a
| significant capacity. I thought Meta had a bifurcated work
| force where anyone could be remote?
|
| And G employees won't tolerate the forcing to be in office
| even if a ton like it. It seems they're the ones always
| demanding more from the employer (someone has to!).
| dmode wrote:
| My wife works in Amazon. Their org is going back next month
| ttul wrote:
| Add to this the fact that SF has deteriorated a great deal as a
| city since the start of the pandemic. The loss of downtown
| office worker revenue has decimated local shops and
| restaurants. It will take time for things to adjust to the new
| reality that workers just aren't going back to how things were.
| eric4smith wrote:
| More and more companies will follow and this is exciting news!
|
| Our travel company will be preparing complete packages for these
| kind of 90 day work experiences in Thailand, Bali and Vietnam.
|
| Anyone interested hit me up in my profile!
| pkdpic wrote:
| Ive worked for a coding bootcamp since before covid. We used to
| be in person only and Ive gotten to see the ups and downs of the
| full-remote transition for at this point hundreds of jr devs
| entering the field.
|
| Long story short everything I thought would get negative blowback
| or go up in flames didnt. I keep waiting for the other shoe to
| drop and it never does.
|
| Our students work through around 1000 hours of computer science
| fundamentals remotely, build a portfolio of fullstack
| applications remotely, get hired at FAANG companies and startups
| remotely, make their employers happy remotely and get more of our
| graduates hired remotely.
|
| As someone who used to work in and believe in traditional
| academia I still can't believe there's no catch. But increasingly
| it's becoming clear that there's not.
|
| Except that the students can't hook up with eachother and there's
| no free bad coffee.
|
| Also society could still totally collapse at any moment I guess.
|
| ----------
|
| PS I love the green futurism manifesto vibe of airbnbs statement,
| I wana work there now
| roflulz wrote:
| I know someone who became mentally ill when the bootcamp
| switched from in-person to remote and had enough stress to
| develop schizophrenia from the stresses of trying to apply for
| jobs remotely and alone in 2020.
| JCharante wrote:
| There's downsides to both. When schools switched to remote I
| was able to travel home and study next to my partner, instead
| of being in a depressed state on-campus.
| munificent wrote:
| I think the general rule is that going remote _increases
| variance_.
|
| That can be good when it lets people tailor their environment
| to their own peculiar interests. And it can be bad for people
| where the normalizing environment of a shared social space
| helps them drag some deficient attribute back up to a healthy
| level.
| paulcole wrote:
| > I still can't believe there's no catch
|
| Do you believe that remote work is a net gain for society but
| is a net negative for many individuals?
| pkdpic wrote:
| definitely, my best friend cant stand it and another engineer
| mentor friend has suffered really legitimately from it, but
| honestly its a good reminder, and a privilege check on being
| in a relationship and living in a walkable mixed-zoning area
| zdragnar wrote:
| I think this depends largely on whether you live alone. I
| would never go back to an office, even part time. One of my
| best friends lives by himself and struggled _hard_ during the
| covid-induced requirement to work from home.
|
| Much like schools double as a day care for children, work
| often doubles as a social club for adults.
| lostcolony wrote:
| Even then, I think remote work can be a gain...but
| companies should be providing stipends/reimbursement for
| coworking spaces rather than investing in offices. Then the
| org still has to learn to function remotely, but enables
| people to connect with others through the social construct
| of 'work', without most of the downsides, a bunch of new
| upsides,and missing few of the upsides of being in an
| office with your actual colleagues.
| paulcole wrote:
| > Much like schools double as a day care for children, work
| often doubles as a social club for adults.
|
| So what? 2 birds with one stone and all.
| zdragnar wrote:
| I didn't mean to imply a value judgement either way; the
| concept seems to be somewhat underappreciated by people
| who haven't worked remote before. There's a massive
| dropoff in interpersonal relationship building, largely
| owing to the watercooler type conversations, overhearing
| a conversation in a hallway and chiming in, or (if you're
| a smoker) standing around outside with the other smokers
| musing over work issues or after work plans.
| noirbot wrote:
| I've lived by myself for years now and haven't had a huge
| problem with the working from home part of things, but I
| also had a fairly healthy online/non-work social life
| beforehand.
|
| What full remote has done is made it harder for me to
| consider moving. Sure, I could move anywhere, but I'll show
| up there knowing essentially no one and have to just go out
| and meet people by force of will. There's no group of
| people at my new office I could connect with and at minimum
| get some recommendations of places to go. Even if you don't
| become friends with your coworkers, having some amount of
| in-person social contact is important for most folks, and
| knowing you have to build that yourself is daunting.
| pkdpic wrote:
| well put for sure
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| I think it will be worse for people who uses their work as
| main source of connections with other people. I guess society
| should take loneliness seriously for once, as it has a very
| negative impact on people's health.
| dominotw wrote:
| > I still can't believe there's no catch
|
| mountain towns would like to have a word here.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Which boot camp do you work for?
| pkdpic wrote:
| the best one ;^)
| jdrc wrote:
| i think academia's future is remote. school too - especially if
| people want to travel nomadically.
|
| Academia has actually had this model for a long time - people
| moving with their families for postdocs every few years and
| keeping in touch remotely with old colleagues
| eldaisfish wrote:
| while this sentiment may be popular here, there are numerous,
| well-understood and well-documented benefits of human
| interaction that are not possible via a screen.
| gigglesupstairs wrote:
| Right. Are there any faliure stories since they seemingly never
| get highlighted?
| bprasanna wrote:
| Companies rely on memory of people to overcome the bad PR they
| had. It's been just 3 weeks this post
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30926834 made headlines in
| HN. Now we will see Airbnb as a company making meaningful change,
| invalidating the claims from ex-employee's post.
| jitl wrote:
| > You can move anywhere in the country you work in and your
| compensation won't change. Starting in June, we'll have single
| pay tiers by country for both salary and equity. If your pay was
| set using a lower location-based pay tier, you'll receive an
| increase in June.
|
| I wonder how this will change things for companies like Figma,
| which allow full remote, but pay remote workers less.
| ttul wrote:
| Eventually - and it might take a recession - the downside of
| "work from anywhere" will be that companies can "hire from
| anywhere". That means the Bay Area salary you previously
| enjoyed may be knocked down through greater wage competition.
| aaomidi wrote:
| And then another company will pop up and pay more.
|
| The thing is, we're used to the high pay now. Cut that and
| you're gonna cut efficiency. It's going to be hard to justify
| it.
|
| Create bad will with your money makers good luck getting
| anywhere realistically.
| cheriot wrote:
| The engineers in less expensive locales are not used to the
| high pay. Even without remote, my team is pushed to hire in
| the offices outside the Bay Area because engineers demand
| less money and retention is higher.
| [deleted]
| NotACop182 wrote:
| Don't take for granted the power of someone to undercut you
| at every turn. IT thought they weren't replaceable. But
| oversea workers on visas and outsourcing to other countries
| began taking their jobs and pay
| ttul wrote:
| As an engineer I do hope that the global compensation level
| for good talent rises with all of this remote working. It
| seems to be already happening. Even in humble Vancouver, I
| hear of mobile developers being offered $320K. That was
| absolutely unheard of in 2019.
| majormajor wrote:
| It happened before, in living memory, it's hardly
| impossible. It gets easy to justify by employers when
| enough people lost their job that every job opening is
| flooded with candidates.
|
| There are basically two schools of thought: the "software
| is eating the world" one says that requirements will
| continue to be more and more specialized, for every advance
| in tooling there will be advances in complexity we can
| tackle, and the size of the overall dev market will
| continue to grow in a way that makes it less likely to be
| as affected by another single thing like the dot-com
| bubble.
|
| The other is that today's salaries are driven in large part
| by "fake money" (e.g. VC investment or internal speculative
| spending more than by revenue from paying customers) and
| that there will be a nasty correction when that stream
| dries up.
|
| I don't know which is right.
| pm90 wrote:
| Both these views are incorrect.
|
| Software is one of the only professions in the US where
| non executives have managed to enjoy _a sliver_ of the
| increase in compensation that executives do in most other
| sectors of the economy. The spectacular rise in
| productivity has generally been funneled to the top;
| except in specialized fields like software, which
| requires highly specialized skills to be effective.
|
| The "crazy VC money" hypothesis is especially easy to
| prove wrong since the highest compensation is currently
| offered by Big Tech (public companies). While people that
| work on startups do luck out sometimes, there aren't
| enough of those unicorns to move the market for most;
| thats almost exclusively being fueled by competition
| among Big Tech.
| majormajor wrote:
| Your second paragraph sounds like the same thing I meant,
| essentially "specialization and skill will continue to be
| required as software continues to be highly influential
| all over the place."
|
| For the latter, I think stuff like Facebook's whole
| "metaverse" money-loser, Google's random-other-non-ads-
| project stuff, a bunch of Netflix efforts beyond "just
| show the damn video," would be at risk in a major
| recession. Couple that with an implosion of a bunch of
| "growth" companies and it would hardly surprise me to see
| hiring get a lot easier for the money-making Big Tech
| projects.
|
| (I don't actually believe that, I lean to the former, but
| I think it's a much more credible idea than you do. I've
| had a lot of coworkers the last decade who've _never
| worked at a profitable company_ but passed FANG-style
| interviews and were making near-FANG money.)
| nell wrote:
| The reverse is also true. At the beginning Airbnb employees
| will be making SF level salaries. As Airbnb continues to hire
| and churn employees, average salaries will come down since they
| won't be paying SF salaries for new positions. They might pay
| better than other companies, but won't keep SF as baseline.
| foota wrote:
| I doubt this will be the case, unless they're willing to
| substantially shrink their labor pool by not competing with
| large tech hubs.
| subpixel wrote:
| I am happy for you if you can play a FAANG salary against
| another offer, and many on HN can, but for the vast
| majority of tech employees _and_ employers, those numbers
| are nothing like a baseline.
| runako wrote:
| This _might_ be a plausible outcome, except for two factors:
|
| - Big Tech has been expanding out of CA for over a decade
| (e.g. Amazon HQ2, Microsoft Atlanta HQ, etc.)
|
| - Tech compensation is highly weighted toward equity
| (RSUs/etc.).
|
| Taken together, these mean that more regions have at least
| one big tech player that's paying significantly in equity.
| This means that even if the salary portion of compensation is
| reduced for employees living outside SF, their overall
| compensation will likely still be very competitive.
|
| At the same time, regional markets are heating up as non-tech
| companies increasingly are staffing up with the same React &
| Swift programmers needed in SF. Why leave family & move to SF
| for $180k base when you can make $150k base in Atlanta or
| Raleigh, where the cost of living is a fraction of SF?
|
| (Given recent actions in the public markets, it's also worth
| nothing that equity-based compensation frequently is topped
| up to some extent when stock values remain depressed. It's
| been a number of years since this broadly happened, but we
| can generally expect the $100B+ club (at least) to issue
| meaningful retention grants if stocks stay down while the
| labor market remains tight.)
| subpixel wrote:
| I've said as much on other threads. Employers are playing a
| longer game, and thinking about the salaries of the person
| who replaces you. So go ahead, move to Colombia but save up.
|
| When there's zero friction and in fact a couple years
| successful track record involved in managing W2 staff in any
| country, the salary for new hires will reflect that.
|
| No company will ignore this, because the potential savings
| are just monumental and there is no stigma attached.
| walrus01 wrote:
| I wonder how this will change for the calculations of Ligma and
| the DN ratio.
| hattmall wrote:
| They will probably be more like fromunda.
| anm89 wrote:
| Recently booked a 3 month stay in an airbnb in Denver. 5000$ a
| month which was a big sacrifice but I wanted to stay somewhere
| where I would be comfortable . I get to the place and it's
| nothing like the pictures. I tried really hard to evaluate this
| possibility but still couldn't catch it, they had done some
| really creative photography. The appliances are disgusting, the
| place smells like cigarettes and some kind of industrial cleaner
| that was used to try to cover up the cigarettes.
|
| So I ask the owner If i can leave, with the offer that I won't
| leave any type of review just so he won't be scared of that
| outcome. He rejects my offer and basically laughs at me for
| falling for his listing.
|
| After all this airbnb then takes down my review because "I had
| tried to manipulate the owner by offering not to leave a review
| if he let me leave"
|
| Now I understand why places like this have good reviews. It's
| unbelievably easy to get negative reviews taken down.
| imperialdrive wrote:
| Pretty sure the unspoken rule for years was to book the minimum
| then make contact for the rest at a good discount. Airbnb knows
| this which is why they charge such a high fee and don't give
| rats butt about most clients.
| carlivar wrote:
| I like that he specifically mentioned open floor plans. This is
| the number one reason why I don't want to return to the office. I
| kinda do want to go back. But I need my privacy and some quiet. I
| can't do the open floor plan ever again.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| I went to this office one day a week. But guys in the
| neighboring cubicles were playing soccer. Not all day but
| during times of the day. They seriously had a soccer-ball they
| played with. I didn't know if I should laugh or cry but it was
| definitely a detriment to productivity. Collaboration. Soccer
| yeah
| sateesh wrote:
| You could request them to not to play and be quiet, right.
| hdjjhhvvhga wrote:
| I'm not sure if you're being serious or not. The kind of
| people who play soccer at work will definitely listen to
| you when you ask them not to do that.
| dazc wrote:
| Or maybe he already knows that the only thing worse than
| annoying co-workers are co-workers you have asked to keep
| quiet?
|
| I once shared a space with a girl who played dance music
| quite loudly. I asked her to turn it down a bit and from
| her reaction you would think I had just kicked her new
| puppy to death.
|
| The following few weeks were frosty, to say the least, and
| I ended up moving elsewhere.
| galaxyLogic wrote:
| Right in general you don't want people to hate you. You
| want to be polite. You don't want enemies. But if they
| behave that way to begin with it's not like a simple plea
| will change their behavior much except for a little while
| perhaps.
|
| Soon they'll be back to their antics playing maybe
| baseball (just kidding, sounds crazy right but so does
| playing soccer in the office). They're just not concerned
| about other people's productivity. The general point is
| that open-office floor-plan easily leads to distractions
| like these and can even lead to animosity between co-
| workers.
| toraway1234 wrote:
| psyclobe wrote:
| I hate open floor plans! Give me a proper cube, yes SPEND the
| money on your workers, don't just cheap out and throw in a
| picnic table in a big room and call it 'Collaboration', BS!
| throwaway1777 wrote:
| If you've ever been to AirBnb's office you'd know it's
| nothing like that. The AirBnb office is fairly open but it's
| way nicer than most people's homes.
| michaelt wrote:
| Eh, I'll admit [1] looks very architect-designed but it
| seems more about looks than practicality.
|
| Where are the external monitors? The laptop chargers? The
| plants? The photos of family? The screens in meeting rooms?
| The whiteboards?
|
| They're missing all of those, there's a guy trying to work
| on a laptop while in a hammock?
|
| I'll stick with my home office, thanks.
|
| [1] https://officesnapshots.com/2019/01/29/airbnb-
| headquarters-s...
| tootie wrote:
| On The Media did a great segment about remote work and office
| design last week:
| https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/otm/segments/promise-an...
|
| I'm in a situation right now where my office is near by and
| open, but attendance is mostly optional and ad hoc. I find that
| days when I have lots of meetings are the best days to WFH
| because it's so much easier to talk over Zoom and not have to
| rush back and forth to meeting rooms. Having a chat window
| secondary to the out loud talking is also invaluable. The in-
| person situation is most valuable when I'm working on some
| tactical problem (ie coding) and want a second set of eyes or
| just to complain for a minute. It can be done over Slack, but
| it's less natural.
| rob74 wrote:
| My company reduced floor space in 2020, so the open-floor
| office I was sitting in previously doesn't exist anymore, but
| after working from home for some time, you notice just how
| _noisy_ an office building really is - even when you are alone
| in a smaller room, you can hear people talking in the hallway,
| in the office next to you etc. etc. So that needs some getting
| used to too...
| abledon wrote:
| you don't like doing PDD? Panopticon-driven-development?
| throwanem wrote:
| They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. If so,
| you should be flattered indeed, because I'm stealing the
| _hell_ out of this.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Oh yes, the boss can sit in the center and see everyone, and
| everyone can see the boss, but nobody can see each other.
| This is perfect.
| cube00 wrote:
| It always annoyed me that they couldn't even be honest and say
| it was save rent, they had to make it seem like open floor plan
| was a positive thing because it "increases collaboration"
|
| It's not enough you want to be cheap but you want to make it
| seem like you're doing it for our benefit.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| Announcing that it's "for our benefit" over our screaming
| about how much we hate it and how harmful it is to comfort,
| productivity and deep work.
|
| It is beyond insulting.
| fsloth wrote:
| Amen.
|
| Nobody has ever proved any benefits to open plan _offices_.
| Their pathologies however are well documented e.g. https://ro
| yalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2017.023...
|
| Teams can thrive in same room. High cadence communication
| needs same room (NASA flight control). If the work is not
| actually about a team delivering value together - concretely,
| and the only rationale for open space is "hypothetically it
| would be nice if they collaborated more" open office will
| create negative multipliers to everything (except facility
| costs).
|
| The pathology is statistical. On average open offices are
| bad. _Individuals_ can love and thrive in open offices. I
| suppose that 's why it's so hard to kill them - you can
| always find a few persons who claim honestly it's the best
| place for them.
| sokoloff wrote:
| The benefit of open floor plan is very well established:
| you can get far more employees into a given amount of space
| (and therefore rent) than you can with cubes or offices.
| raldi wrote:
| You're telling me that the reason sweatshops were designed
| around open floor plans had nothing to do with facilitating
| serendipitous interactions?! :O
| wollsmoth wrote:
| Man I'd love a return to cubicles at the least. With enough
| space open floor plans can feel less terrible but sound just
| carries across these big open rooms.
| me_me_mu_mu wrote:
| Pretty sure the open office was a response to the cubicle
| hell that was prevalent in so many offices. As a child my dad
| took me to his bring your kid to work day. We sat in his
| cubicle all day and I felt like I was in prison.
|
| I feel bad that my dad had to deal with that BS. He went full
| remote as soon as he was able.
| vmception wrote:
| I think a lot of founders and their friends are using the
| office as a replacement for a healthier separate social
| circle and social life that they lack (a lot of people lack
| that, and they do too), so for them they're really just
| hanging out and like the potential for "increased
| collaboration" for that reason
| hindsightbias wrote:
| Whatever people think of Myers-Briggs, the three I've been
| involved with the managers were always the extroverts.
|
| So your choice is WFH micromanaging or keeping that seat in
| the cube warm.
| sdoering wrote:
| I don't understand the dichiotomy you're setting up here.
|
| > So your choice is WFH micromanaging or keeping that
| seat in the cube warm.
|
| Can't WFH work without micromanagement?
|
| At least I can say that I never felt more free than
| during the work from home phase in the pandemic.
| PeterisP wrote:
| I guess the point of that post is that the same type of
| managers who want to keep the cube seat warm are the same
| type of managers who'll want to micromanage WFH;
| switching to remote won't change their desires and
| expectations.
| cipheredStones wrote:
| Introversion/extroversion isn't a distinctive feature of
| Myers-Briggs - it shows up in more scientifically-
| respectable personality measures, like the five-factor
| (OCEAN) model.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Isn't it the very first letter?!
| cipheredStones wrote:
| Yes, it features prominently in the MBTI, but my point is
| that "Whatever people think of Myers-Briggs [my
| experience is that extroversion is important]" doesn't
| make a lot of sense because introversion/extroversion is
| a widely-accepted concept that the MBTI uses, not a
| concept that comes from the MBTI.
| dudeman13 wrote:
| I mean, Myers-Briggs is bollocks anyway so we shouldn't
| be using it for anything but funsies.
|
| I have a dream that one day we will shit hard on that
| sort of stuff instead of validating it. See also "alpha
| male".
| asiachick wrote:
| (1) Healthiest = great social circle at work that bleeds
| into social circle out of work
|
| (2) Less healthy = great social circle at work, separate
| great social circle outside of work
|
| (3) Even less healthy = no social circle at work (just a
| job), great social circle outside work
|
| (4) Worse = great social circle at work, no social circle
| outside of work (I never seen this situation. If you have a
| great social circle at work it's practically inevitable
| you'll do things outside of work)
|
| (5) No social circle anywhere
|
| This being HN I know lots of people will rebel against (1)
| but there are tons of stories about friends starting
| companies together and you can be sure they loved spending
| time together both at work and outside of work.
|
| Just to make it more concrete I can't personally imagine
| The Beatles just calling their music "a job" and not
| getting close to their fellow band members. Sure that's a
| band but it's not really different from other famous
| business friend founders. I'm pretty confident Larry and
| Sergei socialized with each other outside of work. Hewlett
| and Packard. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were certainly
| friends when starting Apple and socialized outside work.
| sdoering wrote:
| Do you have any sources for these claims? Especially
| regarding (1). And why (2) is less healthy?
| noduerme wrote:
| This entire list would only make sense to people who
| actually work in offices.
|
| (1) Healthiest - Doing my morning work at a place where I
| know a few other coders who like to chat but don't bug me
|
| (2) Less healthy - Same thing, but in the afternoon with
| beer.
| geraldwhen wrote:
| I have nothing in common with most of my coworkers. We're
| all at different ages with different cultural
| backgrounds, and a split of men and women.
|
| Work is not a place to make friends.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >(1) Healthiest = great social circle at work that bleeds
| into social circle out of work
|
| seems like it would lead to dating and that could be
| problematic for various well known reasons.
| sateesh wrote:
| I would put your choice (2) to be the healthiest. In my
| experience when you change jobs the social circle from
| work gradually atrophies.
| lostcolony wrote:
| 100%. I've had...three people in my life who I stayed
| close to after changing jobs. Two of them I worked with
| in two different workplaces, which I think is a large
| reason why (the relationship necessarily was > a single
| workplace), but even then, I'm not working with them,
| have in fact moved across the country from them, and so
| the relationships have atrophied some (though we still
| talk periodically).
|
| The third I married.
| mstipetic wrote:
| This is horrible advice
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| Your rankings make no sense to me. I don't understand why
| you deem someone who has separate social circles inside
| and outside of work as "less healthy".
| c0nducktr wrote:
| Agreed. This appears to be the most best, and also most
| resilient option.
|
| God forbid you run into issues with your outside social
| circle, you've still got your work circle, and the other
| way around.
|
| I've only had option #1 happen once, and it was when I
| encouraged a few friends to apply at my company, and even
| then, it didn't really merge the social circles, I just
| had some people which were in both. I wouldn't do it
| again, either.
|
| It's great to have multiple groups of friends, they don't
| all need to be related through work.
| lostcolony wrote:
| Yeah; the few times I've suggested friends apply for jobs
| where I work, it's always been with the understanding "in
| a department different than mine". It's "hey, the
| culture, comp, and work here is pretty good, you might
| like it", not "let's work together".
| bchanudet wrote:
| I think what they suggested is actually the reverse:
| coworkers becoming friends, not friends becoming
| coworkers.
|
| It makes sense in a way, when you spend 7+ hours a day
| with those people, you're bound to find some common
| interests that could bring you closer. What's hard is
| maintaining those friendships once they're no longer
| coworkers, as usually those "common interests" are mostly
| about the company's.
| lostcolony wrote:
| The comment I was responding to listed "and it was when I
| encouraged a few friends to apply at my company" as the
| only time they had #1 happen. I was responding to that.
| idontpost wrote:
| I'll be #5 no matter what. At least WFH I can see my
| daughter when I'm not working.
| asiachick wrote:
| You're not in situation (5), you're in (3).
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| So 5 is basically "the hole" in prison?
| vincentmarle wrote:
| > (1) Healthiest = great social circle at work that
| bleeds into social circle out of work
|
| Lol, in my experience mixing groups of friends has rarely
| been a good idea.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| I couldnt disagree more. Maybe if your goal is to start a
| company with the people you work with this might be
| true...
|
| But work friends should not be your main friends. It's
| like saying your main friends should be a group of
| bowlers but at any moment on any day your local bowling
| alley could decide you are banned or that if you decide
| another bowling alley is better you dont get to bring
| your new friends to it.
|
| Having a social group at work is great but having
| boundaries between work and personal is much healthier.
| jltsiren wrote:
| (4) is common among people who move internationally more
| than once or twice. Making friends as an adult is already
| difficult, and knowing that you will move on after a
| couple of years makes it even more difficult. You have a
| reason to socialize with your coworkers, so they will
| become the center of your new social life. If you moved
| to a popular expat destination, you may be able to find
| other expats who are similarly disconnected from normal
| life. Beyond that, making friends requires crossing
| cultural barriers, which takes a lot of effort and
| extraversion.
| dinvlad wrote:
| This seems a little too idealistic, I'm afraid. It'd be
| amazing to have friends from work with whom one could
| start companies outside etc. But most folks perceive a
| job as just "a source of income", nothing more. And that
| is healthy on its own, otherwise we're in a perpetual
| servitude of the employers, because we link our personal
| happiness to "the job".
| r_c_a_d wrote:
| Are you under 40? I think when I was in my 20s and early
| 30s I would agree on (1). But when I got married and had
| kids case (2) became optimal, because my social circle
| filled up with people who had kids of the same age / went
| to the same school.
|
| The pandemic then pushed me between (2) and (3) - good
| social circle at work etc.
| lljk_kennedy wrote:
| (4) is me, as I have a wife and young son. I have great
| friendships and relationships in work, but my non-work
| time is with my family. Not as rare as you'd think.
| [deleted]
| renewiltord wrote:
| ITT fish speculating about why birds fly and concluding
| that it's because they don't know how to swim.
| akhmatova wrote:
| Actually I think they were sufficiently self-deluded to
| believe that "increases collaboration" rap all along.
| wardedVibe wrote:
| the easiest way to lie to others is to lie to yourself and
| not look to critically at your reasoning.
| mirntyfirty wrote:
| Hard to tell sometimes. Every now and again I meet some or
| that seems genuinely sincere while being corporate
| akhmatova wrote:
| Agreed. It's like they don't really know what they
| believe.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| Honestly I started doing push ups and pull ups and squats at
| home during the pandemic. Not a ton. 6 sets of 8-12 during the
| day. A set takes me a minute or two. At this point I rarely
| break a sweat and just do them during the day whenever I get up
| for water or the bathroom.
|
| My health is significantly better overall because of this. I
| would feel very odd doing this in an office. I have lots of
| other reasons why I don't like going into an office (mostly
| losing 1-2 hours a day to commuting) but this is at the top of
| the list of why I wont go back.
| jollybean wrote:
| Make it known to your employer/s.
|
| This is a hugely stupid move that companies made.
|
| It was done because the benefits are tangible and immediate,
| and the costs are soft and indirect. CFO wins over HR.
|
| People should recognize what a big deal this is.
|
| I won't do it either.
| jethro_tell wrote:
| lol, HR doesn't give a fuck.
| jollybean wrote:
| Yes, the HR 'org' does not care, I just mean the 'notion'
| of it.
| dinvlad wrote:
| Can't agree more. Privacy of a small room but having people
| around when you _need_ them is the best of both worlds.
| nevermindiguess wrote:
| Start your own company. Get your "boss" office, and roam the
| staff shared office when you want. Problem solved. Don't ask
| your employer to fulfill your capricious dreams.
| dinvlad wrote:
| Exactly my thoughts, thanks for noting it! The only thing I
| don't agree on is that these dreams are somehow
| "capricious" (esp. given they were the norm just a little
| over 10 years ago or so; in that respect, "open office" is
| the capricious dream of the "modern" management) ;)
| Tao332 wrote:
| brynjolf wrote:
| I don't owe my employer anything. They pay for my services
| and that is it. If I don't get enough back in terms of pay
| and comfort I go somewhere else.
|
| Dreams? You are stuck in some weird emotional place.
| Aeolun wrote:
| It must be possible for all the remote workers to gather
| together and actually rent/make an office like this right
| (with like, 10 people in, 10 small offices and a shared
| lunchroom/kitchen)? If you're not looking for a bunch of
| profit the rent would sort of remain bearable too.
| dinvlad wrote:
| Depends on the company, I think. Some companies are
| geographically remote, so that's not quite possible. For
| others yes, things like WeWork exist although might be a
| little pricey (but probably worth it!). Or just a
| warehouse-type location equipped with temporary walls that
| could be rented too :-)
| wccrawford wrote:
| Every picture I've ever seen of a place like WeWork has
| shown an open floor plan. They might have offices, but
| they're going to be extra expensive.
|
| And since there's no such thing as "your desk" there, you
| will never feel at ease. Every day might bring someone
| that's incredibly annoying, and collaborating with your
| coworkers would mean either annoying others or booking a
| conference room.
|
| In the end, it's easier to collaborate with them via
| video from home.
|
| I think there are advantages to having an office, but I
| don't think collab work places have those advantages.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Yeah. My point in organizing it between the remote
| workers themselves was kind of so you could bypass places
| like WeWork.
|
| The idea is to have a building/location with actual
| private offices after all.
| dinvlad wrote:
| On their front-page, they advertise "Private, move-in
| ready offices" for "1-20+" people as one of the options,
| which is why I mentioned them. Of course, that could just
| mean "open-office space private to a particular company",
| and that's what makes it a bit confusing. But yes, other
| options are clearly just open-office space.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| These days I've found the office is so empty that none of the
| normal downsides apply. It seems like an unstable equilibrium
| because why would they keep paying rent for this giant office
| but I'm enjoying it while it lasts.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Obligatory reminder that this stance isn't universal and some
| people do like open floor plans (such as myself).
| psyclobe wrote:
| Thats called the break room
| ajkjk wrote:
| It is really strange to me that anti-open-office people
| (and in general anti-office people) often don't understand
| (or don't believe?) that other people just have radically
| different preferences to them.
| closeparen wrote:
| A "closed" office design includes private inner sanctums,
| small group common areas, and large group common areas.
| Think academia: my grad student friends have shared or
| sometimes private offices in little clusters of 5 that
| surround a small conference room or lounge. Then down the
| hall is the big department lounge. A much greater range
| of preferences are satisfiable with this layout. The same
| people are also allowed to have varying preferences
| depending on the time of day or phase of project, and to
| wander with their laptops.
| ajkjk wrote:
| I'm not arguing that offices shouldn't have closed
| spaces, I'm arguing that there exist people who like open
| offices, despite the weird remarks in this thread from
| people who think that, like, only managers would.
| missedthecue wrote:
| I do too. I think a lot of people who spend work hours
| browsing the web don't like them.
| dinvlad wrote:
| Who said that browsing HN or other tech sources on-your-own
| is less productive than regular "work"? :P
| carlivar wrote:
| Found the management.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Cynical comment, don't you think? I like open offices and
| I'm a dev. It's not that inconceivable that people have
| different preferences, right?
| toomanyrichies wrote:
| The person to whom you're responding probably made that
| comment because of GP's statement "I think a lot of
| people who spend work hours browsing the web don't like
| them." Which in itself is pretty cynical.
|
| As a fellow dev, I dislike open office plans, but not
| because I spend my day browsing the web. I dislike them
| because I'm rather noise-sensitive, and it's hard for me
| to tune out the sound of ping-pong balls being batted
| back and forth. I can't just put on headphones, because
| my team pair-programs extensively. With WFH, I can pair
| program and not deal with that or the myriad of other
| aural distractions.
|
| That said, I appreciate your comments on this post and
| yes, I wholeheartedly agree that the preferences of folks
| who prefer WFO are just as valid as those of us who
| prefer WHF. Plenty of room for both in the world. :-)
|
| And with that, I'm off to play today's Wordle while half-
| listening to a Zoom meeting.
| dinvlad wrote:
| For sure - although it's always interesting to hear what
| people like or not about it, and how they work around issues
| like distractions/attention scatter and the pure "don't watch
| over my shoulder when I need to check HN". Maybe it all
| depends on personal sensitivity to such things and the
| ability to focus/zone in to the music, but that still feels
| like a coping mechanism rather than something that naturally
| comes to most (and I'm saying that despite being able to
| hyper-focus myself, after many years in an open environment).
| ajkjk wrote:
| I think it depends a lot on your emotional approach to
| work. For me, I'm a decently good engineer, but at my heart
| I'm quite extroverted and the thing I like most about
| working is being around smart people and making friends and
| stuff. The engineering itself is not the core of my
| existence, it's getting to live the role of the engineer. I
| guess I also don't mind putting headphones on and focusing,
| and I really like getting distracted out of that because,
| well, I like human interaction and helping people and
| stuff.
| dinvlad wrote:
| That's a good way to put it, thanks for sharing! Agreed
| that it may not be the same for extroverts vs introverts.
| I think it doesn't have to be "either-or" - both open-
| office and private-office plans need to co-exist, the
| trouble starts when everyone is bound to the same
| requirements.
| [deleted]
| alkonaut wrote:
| I have been blessed to have a private office for the first 10
| years of my career and wfh the last 10. Neither is perfect and
| I'd really like to work from an office 1-2 days per week. If I
| did, I wouldn't mind open plan tbh. The whole reason to come in
| one day per week would be to be interrupted and interrupt
| others. And meetings. I still have 4 days for focus work, it
| would be ok. Going to be office to sit alone used to feel
| great, now it seems pointless. I'd plan for zero peace and
| quiet and zero privacy at the office but I'd see it as the
| whole point of going there.
| chuckSu wrote:
| This is how I'm working currently. I go into the office 0-2
| times a week depending on work load. When deadlines are
| really tight I work from home completely for focus when it's
| more relaxed i go into the office once or twice a week which
| I enjoy because I get to spend time with my colleagues e.g
| having lunch together, shooting the breeze or even
| collaborating on work stuff.
| gringoDan wrote:
| I've been working like this for the past year and a half. I'll
| never go back to a "normal" office environment.
|
| Winners in this new paradigm: Owners of real estate in lifestyle
| towns like Boise, Boulder, etc. I also think borders between the
| US and Latin America (same/similar time zones) will become a lot
| more fluid. Why not work in Mexico City or Buenos Aires during
| the winters, for a fraction of the cost of living in the US?
| carlivar wrote:
| Boulder real estate has been a huge winner for a decade
| already, and had a big in person tech scene for a while.
|
| I agree though about Boise. And all of Florida... etc.
| bradlys wrote:
| Friends, family, kids, not having all your stuff, cultural and
| language barriers, etc...
|
| It's pretty obvious why this doesn't work for a large portion
| of people. I am glad for the child free and those who have
| little need for stuff - but it's just not... realistic for the
| rest of us (who are the overwhelming majority of the
| population). It's good for that niche 22-28 crowd.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| tdfx wrote:
| It's actually pretty economical to have a second home in
| Latin America, with copies of all your creature comforts
| there. Kids get multicultural friends, new language, and much
| wider perspective on the world.
| jraby3 wrote:
| What about school?
|
| It's nice for summer break but it's really hard to take
| kids out of school or to switch schools mid year.
| tdfx wrote:
| When the kids are younger, they don't really need to
| stick with a specific curriculum throughout the year. As
| they get older, I imagine the need to dictate your
| schedule around school increases. And if they're at a
| boarding school, that really frees up your planning.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| Why bother having children if you're just going to shove
| them into boarding school?
| Infinitesimus wrote:
| That's a different conversation entirely about what you
| think of boarding schools and your reasons for having
| children.
|
| Hopefully your reasons for having a child are compatible
| with the child spending time away from you cos that's
| going to happen eventually. Your comment suggests you're
| making a lot it assumptions about what it means for
| someone to be in a boarding school...
| smackeyacky wrote:
| No, I don't think so. The parent offered boarding school
| as an option if a couple were planning to spend time in
| different households in different countries.
|
| The implication is that the kids will be sent to boarding
| school because they are inconvenient for these plans.
| bredren wrote:
| > And if they're at a boarding school, that really frees
| up your planning.
|
| From the language you're using, it sounds like you are
| saying this is a possible way for this snow bird to LA
| lifestyle to work for a family.
|
| But that you have not tried it yourself. Is that right?
| mellavora wrote:
| Sounds ideal. Have you checked the laws in your country of
| (legal) residence about taking your kids out of school?
|
| Also, I'm not sure how the children would integrate with
| their classmates if they are only in the class 1/2 the
| year. Even worse if you are in the other country for the
| winter, i.e you child gets 2 months in the US school, is
| gone for 4, then back for 2.
| bradlys wrote:
| Are you speaking from experience or just making shit up? I
| can't imagine this going well for some of the kids I know
| personally. (And kids that I do know who have done this
| have been "problematic" during these things)
| JCharante wrote:
| I've studied abroad in SEA and I've met plenty of
| families with kids. A good friend is an American who grew
| up in Shenzhen. International schools have awesome
| communities of expat families or private schools to also
| interact with locals.
| Dave3of5 wrote:
| This will get a lot of comments because it's AirBnB not because
| of the actual content.
| Tepix wrote:
| Digital nomads aren't new. Someone must have figured out what is
| the most lucrative place to have official residency - _assuming
| you 're not from the US_ - US citizens have to pay taxes in the
| US (and sometimes twice) as far as i know.
| 8organicbits wrote:
| The Foreign Earned Income Exclusion can reduce US tax burden
| for US citizens abroad.
|
| https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/fore...
| refurb wrote:
| AirBnB has to do this just to recruit employees since there are
| plenty of other companies with the same or better comp (and
| equity not on the downhill).
| ardit33 wrote:
| Airnbnb is not in the downhill. Why the hate? They had a very
| tough 2020, but after that it is all been looking better and
| better for them.
| refurb wrote:
| City after city is either severely restricting or eliminating
| AirBnB entirely. It's golden days are behind it. It's trying
| new approaches, but nothing unique there.
|
| Why work for AirBnB? You could work for another big tech
| company that actually has room to grow and produce some solid
| equity returns.
| jitl wrote:
| I'm happy with my Airbnb equity returns :^)
| smeej wrote:
| Coordinating in Pacific _Standard_ Time is really weird. Right
| now, the Pacific Time zone is on Daylight time, so they 'd need
| to calculate a one-hour offset for everything, even in the main
| office.
|
| Coordinating on _Pacific Time_ would be less weird.
|
| But, as I learned working at a company that's truly
| international, coordinating on UTC is better. Each employee only
| has to know the offset between their own time and UTC. They know
| when any local Daylight Saving laws shift them relative to UTC,
| and it's extremely easy to look it up if they forget. It's also
| extremely easy to look up the UTC offset anywhere you may travel.
|
| Picking Pacific Time, and specifically Pacific _Standard_ Time,
| is a weird choice.
| rmk wrote:
| Work from anywhere is truly advantageous for people without
| families, or people who have much older children (maybe). Also,
| if collaboration is centered around Pacific Time, then it
| effectively rules out many of the 170 countries. Add in 4 1-week
| onsites per year, and the logistical challenges become mind-
| boggling, never mind the other more subtle aspects. How will this
| work in practice?
| teleforce wrote:
| This is a newly released book, Effective Remote Work: For
| Yourself, Your Team, and Your Company by James Stanier, now with
| 50% discount:
|
| https://www.pragprog.com/titles/jsrw/effective-remote-work/
| truth_seeker wrote:
| Pretty cool. More companies should get inspired by this,
| especially the big corporate boys.
| baskethead wrote:
| I work at a fully remote company. To be honest, I don't like it
| very much. I like that I don't have to commute, but I pay for it
| in lost productivity waiting to hear back from my coworkers when
| I have questions. What would normally be a 5 mins conversation
| turns into pinging on chat, setting up a meeting, and then
| chatting at a further time. Collaboration is much harder and the
| rate of doing work is much slower.
|
| If companies are okay with this, then it's the "new normal" I
| suppose, but I can understand why Apple and Google want people
| face to face. If I knew I could go into work twice a week and
| meet with my team, I would enjoy that, but my team is global so
| it will never happen. It's definitely a weird experience.
| kccqzy wrote:
| Exactly. Just today in the office there was a coworker who was
| unfamiliar with a particular internal tool. He asked me, I
| walked to his desk, and pointed out the couple of buttons he
| needed to click in that internal tool. The whole exchange
| finished in one minute. After that minute I went back to
| coding. I stayed in my flow.
|
| But if this request for help arrived via group chat, I wouldn't
| have bothered to help. It was simply too much effort to either
| do screen sharing, or open the internal tool on my computer,
| replicate the state of that UI, and then describe the buttons
| the coworker needed. The one-minute interruption would be a
| ten-minute interruption. I wouldn't stay in my flow.
| zeroego wrote:
| What software do you all use for screen sharing? That seems
| like something that could be done in a fairly trivial manner
| in teams. Teammate calls you (1 click), shares screen (1
| click), and then you tell him where the couple of buttons he
| needs to click are.
|
| Personally I've worked remotely and in person, and I'm much
| more productive at home than in the office. There's a
| plethora of tools that enable us to get as much done if not
| even more without all of the distractions that exist in the
| office. This has been true in my former career working in
| sales and marketing, and is true now in my career as a
| software developer.
| talldan wrote:
| Sounds like something that could be solved by better
| documentation.
|
| I work for a fully remote company, and better documentation
| is definitely something I've noticed here compared to on-site
| roles.
| TheGigaChad wrote:
| jraph wrote:
| I joined a company remotely for the first time in March.
|
| I've been able to avoid stalling by anticipating questions I
| could have and ask them ahead of time. That might be a
| (partial) solution to this problem.
| chrischen wrote:
| Have laws caught up for this new way to work yet? Last ai checked
| there are non-insignificant legal and tax issues for small
| businesses to have employees in other states.
| tdfx wrote:
| There are companies like TriNet that hire your workers directly
| on W2 and administer all the payroll and benefits for you. You
| then just pay TriNet directly instead of doing payroll
| yourself.
| formerkrogemp wrote:
| Yep all of those sweet, sweet nexus events cramping would be
| remote employers' and e-commerce tycoons' style will keep tax
| professionals highly paid for years and years.
| gbear605 wrote:
| Judging by my employer, small businesses are able to have their
| payroll companies take care of all that hassle without much
| cost, so it's not really a problem.
| chrischen wrote:
| I am the employer, and it is a problem even after using a
| PEO. Plus, having an employee somewhere creates a nexus which
| is another whole set of problems.
| pc86 wrote:
| It depends on scale. I moved during my last job, post-COVID,
| and the HR department has to make sure the state I was moving
| to was approved. If not, I was going to have to switch to
| contracting (fewer hours, fewer employer/employee type rules,
| more rigidly defined tasks, etc.) because the cost of setting
| up payroll and taxation in another state was too onerous for
| just one person, even at the higher levels of the development
| staff.
| tdfx wrote:
| That's just HR being lazy. The process for handling it is
| an afternoon of filling out some state forms and handing
| them off to the payroll company.
| [deleted]
| aaomidi wrote:
| Your company could've solved this with using a solution
| from ADP, gusto, rippling, and the shit ton of other
| companies to do this.
| pc86 wrote:
| They used ADP for payroll. I have to believe if it was as
| simple as checking a box they would have just done it.
| refurb wrote:
| No, laws haven't yet caught up.
|
| A good example is working remotely in another country. The US
| does not allow foreigners on a visitor visa to work remotely.
| It's a bit of a gray zone, since if you fly into the US for a
| business meeting, that's not regarded as "working in the US".
| But flying in for 1 month and working remote the entire time
| is.
|
| Same with California income. Working in Nevada and then decide
| to work remote from California? That's CA income and taxable by
| CA. But of course people rarely even mention they're working in
| another state and rarely pay taxes owed.
| pc86 wrote:
| The short answer is no, they haven't. Payroll for something
| like this is a huge pain in the ass if you're not at this kind
| of scale. You end up just hiring people as contractors, which
| has its own set of problems (namely the fact that you can't
| just do that because it's easier, they have to actually be
| contractors and not employees).
| aaomidi wrote:
| Or you literally just use a PEO and let them handle it for
| you. It's not that hard.
| hattmall wrote:
| Seriously, Office depot will handle it for you for $6 an
| employee per compensation period.
| mfkp wrote:
| Do you have a link for more information on this? I'm
| curious and would like to look into it.
| hattmall wrote:
| https://officedepot.company.com/payroll
|
| Not sure the pricing structure, but I remember office
| depot having an advertisement, it was probably like "As
| Low as $6" per pay period. Ths site says $70 a month but
| that's probably the minimum for the whole company. Then
| per check fees.
| paulcole wrote:
| In the US, the tricky/potentially expensive part is
| understanding what labor laws you need to adhere to and
| what taxation issues you might be creating when you hire
| someone in a new jurisdiction.
| chrischen wrote:
| I actually use a PEO, but there are still random things to
| take care of for random states so it doesn't solve
| everything.
| potatochup wrote:
| I'm surprised no one has mentioned corporate tax yet. A worker
| in a foreign country (potentially) exposes the home company to
| corporate tax by the foreign company. Ianatl and there are
| probably a million caveats, but I've had multiple companies and
| tax people warn me about this.
|
| Imagine Apple USA being taxed by New Zealand, for example.
| That's the main reason Apple employees are employed by Apple NZ
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| Add to that health insurance in the US.
| bradlys wrote:
| Sounds nice in some ways. The stickler here is the focus on
| working in PST still. You're not gonna get to travel to the EU
| and work async it sounds like. Which - while making sense - isn't
| going to make a good portion of people who want this particularly
| happy.
|
| After all - remote but stuck in one time zone for working hours
| isn't really a huge win. It's dangling a carrot.
|
| In other news - sounds like comp is going down at Airbnb. Not a
| surprise.
| ezfe wrote:
| Some people don't care about the local timezone, even without a
| need to stay up odd hours.
|
| And for western Europe, you don't even need to work ridiculous
| hours. If my current core hours (9am - 3pm) were in PST and I
| worked in Paris, I could finish my workday at 11pm in Paris.
| HALtheWise wrote:
| I wonder if we could see areas of major cities cropping up that
| operate on a different timezone's schedule, similar to how
| "chinatowns" formed in many cities. For example, having a
| neighborhood in a major European city that operates on Pacific
| time (restaurants, streetlights, noise complaints, etc) could
| make it easier for anyone that's working remotely in the target
| timezone.
| sircastor wrote:
| I used to work for a company in the UK and live in the west
| coast. It's mildly challenging but my experience was if you
| were competent to plan out your day's work you'd be fine.
|
| If you ran into a show-stopper, capture it and being it up in
| your morning standup. They were all still in the office for at
| least a couple of hours when we got in.
| spaetzleesser wrote:
| "After all - remote but stuck in one time zone for working
| hours isn't really a huge win. It's dangling a carrot."
|
| that's a pretty realistic approach in my opinion. My company
| has people in India and Europe and it sucks royally to set up
| meetings with them. Either they have to work at night or the US
| people have to. If I had to decide, I would mandate at least a
| 4 hour overlap in working times.
| bradlys wrote:
| I never said it wasn't practical or realistic. It's still
| dangling a carrot though for the people that really care
| about this though.
| pc86 wrote:
| Working remotely and working _asynchronously_ are two very
| different things. COVID didn 't necessitate asynchronous work
| by any stretch, so I think it will take some time for even the
| tech industry to move toward that. If for no other reason
| because it required much better communication skills than
| probably 80% of people have. A lot of developers, regardless of
| skill level, would not do very well in a truly asynchronous
| environment.
| tayo42 wrote:
| I really liked working from Hawaii. I kept pt hours. I woke up
| at 6 with the roosters crowing. I felt a like code farmer. Then
| I'd be done by 2 and felt like I had a whole day to enjoy. It
| was awesome. I'm actually a night owl in my pacific tz non
| traveling life
| JCharante wrote:
| I've been considering this. I like to get up early anyways,
| so being up and it immediately being core hours sounds good.
| Get to enjoy the afternoon at the beach etc.
| [deleted]
| distrohopper wrote:
| isn't airbnb gigawoke?
|
| they recently banned the spouse (!) of some right-wing
| personality because they feared the banned guy might use his
| spouses name to book a room. Guilt by association. Of course no
| crazy leftist ever has been banned from airbnb. I am no longer
| using airbnb since I'm not woke.
| testbjjl wrote:
| The company that scraped Craigslist and made "every" home in my
| favorite local places a speculative opportunity for out of state
| investors (and funds), moving the workforce into their inventory
| to create a competitive hiring advantage against other tech
| companies by letting me work at my (or any) kitchen table. Sounds
| like this won't be sustainable. Should it become an acquisition
| target and the remote workforce is an impediment to their
| valuation, it will cost very little to send email demanding a
| return to the office.
|
| The only way to pull off the whole, employee independence thing
| is to not concentrate resources in the hands of so few. You can
| work from your home, sure, but the CEO and board, for their risk
| receives outsized compensation and offers little control. It
| works because we a technologist breathing entrepreneurial air
| feel, one day I too will have millions in reserve so I won't
| begrudge the few who are now.
|
| I think a better response it to coordinate and not show up in the
| office or on zoom until...(I don't know I am a contractor and
| have been working from home the past 12 years and really don't
| have workplace complaints)
| mdoms wrote:
| It's hard to imagine a better handling of the situation. If I was
| in USA Airbnb would be at the top of my "to work" list. Bravo.
| giorgioz wrote:
| https://www.remote.com/ is a proxy company with subsidiaries in
| all countries allowing you to hire employees legally in any
| country. I discover it the other day, it's a game changer for
| remote international teams.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| There are plenty of competitors in this space.
| 4ad wrote:
| Beware, I can't speak for this exact one, but in my (pretty
| significant) experience these companies take a 35-45% cut of
| your gross income.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| Their fee is some hundred dollars, and on top of that they
| need to pay local taxes.
| 4ad wrote:
| I will check it out, but to be honest, I am extremely
| skeptical. I have been using companies providing similar
| services for over a decade. Not only they have consistently
| all been very expensive (35%-45% cut)+, but they all
| required MASSIVE amounts of paperwork, both from the
| contracting company and from the "employee". Employee
| enrolment took at least a month, and this was when the
| employee was already a resident, and when we already had
| other employees in the same country. Otherwise it took
| _much_ longer because specific contracts in the local
| language had to be written and approved.
|
| Employee resignation took months, and relocation also took
| months.
|
| This all sounds too good to be true.
|
| This is with US parent companies and EU employees.
|
| + The least I've seen was 20%, and it was a horror show so
| bad that it was worth it to switch to a 40% competitor.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| That sounds bad, but I have to tell you that I know a
| bunch of devs here in Spain working through this setup.
| librish wrote:
| This is super cool and I'm glad someone's trying it. The digital
| nomad lifestyle is really fun and worth trying for a lot of
| people, at least for a few years.
|
| I'm skeptical this will work out for Airbnb though. My personal
| experience is that people who self-select into this type of
| lifestyle are not going to be as productive. There's too much to
| do and see in a new city, people to meet, foods to try, parties
| to go to, coupled with much less oversight.
|
| A critical component for remote work productivity is having a
| routine that somewhat mimics the routine of going in to the
| office. That said, it can be really hard to detect low
| performers, and the market is really tight right now so this
| might be around for a while.
| dazc wrote:
| > A critical component for remote work productivity is having a
| routine that somewhat mimics the routine of going in to the
| office.
|
| This is what I found, ended up renting an office because there
| are far too many distractions and random annoyances. For
| example, a lot of vacation locations have building work going
| on constantly and, in many Mediterranean countries, leaving a
| barking dog out on your balcony all day and night is considered
| normal and neighbourly.
|
| Also finding a location with a decent internet connection,
| reliable electric & plumbing, and decent furniture seems to be
| expecting too much?
| tatoalo wrote:
| My employer (FAANG-like Fintech) settled on a really similar
| policy just a couple of days ago, really glad they did it.
|
| > Starting in September, you can live and work in over 170
| countries for up to 90 days a year in each location.
|
| This looks particularly great, currently for my company is "just"
| 20 days, but this seems fantastic!
| hugg wrote:
| Our company (500+ employees) "tried" this, meaning we announced
| it and then it turned out it was legal hell and it was silently
| abandoned
| noduerme wrote:
| Sooo.. w/o getting into my history too deeply, my ex and I left
| the US in 2006 and worked freelance/remote. Wired did an article
| about us in 2008 living in a solar van when that was, like,
| unheard of. It seems like every few years a new batch of people
| want to try this approach, and it's always popular with the press
| to write about it. Sometimes it works out. I think it's a great
| way to live, and it teaches you a lot about yourself.
|
| We used to just find vacation rentals. One of the key tricks I
| used when AirBnb came out was figuring out who the owner was and
| contacting them directly with a cash offer for 3 months rent with
| ~25% (sometimes 50%) knocked off if I pay in USD up front. So I'd
| say most of the places I lived from 2009 on (about 20 places?) I
| found on AirBnb, thanks guys, and then paid cash to the owner.
| Only once or twice, for a couple days at most, have I ever
| actually used AirBnb to run a transaction for me.
|
| Not for nothing, I now live in a house I own in Portland with an
| AirBnb right next to me whose owners are off living in some other
| AirBnb out of the country, and I'm pissed as fuck that I'm living
| next to what's turned into a goddamn motel. But it's _wonderful_
| that the AirBnb staff now get the same in-system privileges that
| unionized airline employees have had for decades. It would be
| better if it wasn 't literally gutting every city from Amsterdam
| to Bangkok in the process and turning them into hipster slums.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Haha, another in the genre of "the cut-off is exactly what I
| did - any less / any more and you're worse":
|
| - I moved in to this place back in X. All the people after me
| are transplants and ruining the place.
|
| - I stayed for X months. All these people who stay less than X
| are terrible.
|
| - I drive a car of size X. All these people who drive a car of
| size > X are terrible.
| jkukul wrote:
| > and I'm pissed as fuck that I'm living next to what's turned
| into a goddamn motel.
|
| Is your anger directed at Airbnb or at the tourists? Both
| parties just do what's in their best interest. It's a typical
| economical transaction which makes both sides better-off.
|
| The problem is that the Airbnb situation creates externalities.
| In your case it's annoying neighbours and, in the broader
| sense, it's e.g. the gentrification.
|
| Local governments are the ones to blame here and the ones who
| should be responsible to manage the externalities. There must
| be some clever policies to mitigate the problems.
| amelius wrote:
| Solar van sounds nice, except if you're well over 6ft tall :/
| noduerme wrote:
| Actually the guy we bought the van from before we added the
| solar panels was this suuuper tall Swiss guy, like 6'4 at
| least, and somehow he fit in there with his girlfriend and a
| whole six boxes of survival kit, maps, cooking equipment and
| such, neatly stacked under the bed platform. I always
| wondered how he handled it, but you can do a lot of things
| for love ;)
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| In my experience having gone on vacation in a caravan,
| generally you don't live inside the van for very long; it's
| where you sleep or take shelter from the weather, the rest
| of the time you're outside, or (in the case of a caravan)
| in a tent attached to the front that's usually 2.5-3 meters
| high up.
| noduerme wrote:
| Yeah, it was a bit like that. We lived in/out of it for a
| year, it was a little Mitsubishi box van from the 1980s;
| and pretty much we lived outside it with tarps and tent-
| poles, set up camp out the side and slept inside. It was
| in Australia, so you wouldn't want to sleep on the
| ground, and occasionally kangaroos would come through and
| tear down the tent..(I got into a stand-off with one that
| knocked over our table in the middle of the night once,
| thought someone was going through our stuff, jumped out
| bare naked in the desert with a samurai katana I kept
| under the bed - but I was drunk enough I saw the beast
| and retreated into the van and let the thing be)
| randomsearch wrote:
| I guess you did consider the possibility that by using Airbnb
| to find accommodation you were nonetheless perpetuating the
| system by which they have turned cities into "hipster slums"?
|
| The three months doesn't make much difference. I might be a
| responsible tenant when I use airbnb, whether in lots of short
| stays or one big one, but that doesn't stop other guests being
| awful.
|
| Your three months just incentivised the owners to keep it as a
| short-term let.
|
| Full disclosure: I have used Airbnb in the past.
| carabiner wrote:
| What?
| noduerme wrote:
| Which part?
| entropy_ wrote:
| As far as I can understand it:
|
| 1 - I'm proud of having cheated Airbnb out of their
| commission when helping me find housing so I could live like
| a hipster
|
| 2 - I hate living next to Airbnb hipsters
|
| Needless to say: not a lot of coherent thought in that
| comment...
| noduerme wrote:
| Eh, no. Airbnb rentals don't go for 3-6 months. (So what I
| was doing wouldn't have even been possible via their
| website). I wasn't "living like a hipster", I wasn't on a
| work-vacation. There was no "cheating" involved, since all
| the people who post on Airbnb also post on other websites,
| local and international. Airbnb just had a nicer map.
|
| It ain't cheating Airbnb if the landlord is happy to cut
| out the middleman. And when I stay in a place I learn the
| language and live there and try to integrate into society.
| I'm not there to party for a weekend. What I'm referring to
| with the hollowing out of city centers like Lisbon, Prague,
| Amsterdam... people like me renting there for 3-6 months
| are not a threat to people who live and work there, because
| I'm negotiating close-to standard price for a furnished
| apartment (and the owner knows that the stability of being
| paid up front makes up for the extra they might make if
| their Airbnb were booked every day). So no, I wouldn't be
| treating the place as a tourist destination or undermining
| the locals, or partying and reducing their quality of life
| in their own places next door.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| I'm currently living in a 3 month airbnb rental and have
| a 6 month airbnb rental lined up next...
| ErneX wrote:
| 3-6 months rentals are not what people usually lease for,
| at least here it's 3 to 5 years contracts and then keep
| extending for one year periods. Any flat here rented for
| 3 to 6 months is a holiday rental and besides being more
| expensive it's one flat less available for the people
| that actually want to live in the city.
| noduerme wrote:
| Typically I was only paying about 20% more than
| unfurnished neighboring apartments per month, which is
| fair since utilities were included. There will always be
| furnished apartments with shorter leases for business
| travelers. I think I provided a good case for why it's
| better to accept a reasonable, lower rate to have long-
| term, stable tenants. I'm not saying people shouldn't be
| allowed to freely travel, but hotels are for weekends and
| vacations. "Holiday apartment" is somewhere in the
| middle. Those will always exist, too. It's fine as long
| as they don't eviscerate the city. There is a balance.
|
| One of the most successful pushes against Airbnb taking
| over whole neighborhoods has been in cities which set a
| floor on the minimum number of nights. This at least
| changes the economic calculus enough to persuade
| landlords to consider long term local renters a little
| bit more.
| personlurking wrote:
| I agree with some of the criticism towards you and also
| with some of your rebuttals, but one thing your above
| comment doesn't take into account is that you effectively
| are part of the problem still.
|
| I've been a nomad for over a dozen years and usually find
| ways to rent medium-term, ex. 6-12 months (and in some
| cases, long-term). I do as you do, and integrate into
| society, speak the local language, etc. But even so, I am
| participating in taking local housing from locals because
| in some cases I know I'm paying an increased rate (vs
| local rate), or I'm using what otherwise would be used as
| an Airbnb for living.
|
| I spent 5 yrs in Lisbon, while renting at local rates, as
| the city went from ungentrified to gentrified, so I
| considered it my home and loved the city. But I sat there
| and watched as it was ruined by tourism and the hoards of
| short-term visitors. That quality of life I loved so much
| was destroyed in front of my eyes. I even went back a few
| years later to try living there again and it was even
| worse than when I left. All I mean to say is that there
| is no winning as a nomad, either I'm greatly affected by
| short-term housing, tourism and gentrification or I'm
| helping it along.
| noduerme wrote:
| That's valid - and Lisbon is an extreme, and
| heartbreaking example. It's been a victim of its own
| beauty. It's also extremely compact, making all the
| central real estate wildly more expensive. There's an
| unavoidable truth to the fact that when everyone wants to
| go to a place - often because of its local charm and
| reputation as a "real" living, walkable city (an
| anachronism in America) - prices go up, local people are
| displaced, and the place turns into a gentrified theme
| park, a shadow of what it once was. It's happening here
| in Portland. I saw it in Granada. Prague is a desperate
| example. I don't have an answer for it. I personally draw
| the line at allowing normal apartment units to be used as
| one- or two-night hotel rooms. Prior to Airbnb, short
| term furnished rentals existed but generally had to be
| sought through local property management companies, and
| the incentives for landlords still favored finding
| tenants who would stay as long as possible, if only
| because the scheduling and turnover system was so much
| less efficient.
|
| Bottom line: I don't think it's necessarily destructive
| for people to go live in a foreign place, get to know the
| culture and try it out for the mid- to long-term. But I
| think that's in a wholly different category from tourists
| who use airbnb in lieu of hotels. And the tourist
| contingent is orders of magnitude larger and more
| disruptive to cities than long-term nomads who tend to
| spread out.
|
| Just for instance; when we lived in Saigon, we lived way
| out in District 5. In Bangkok we lived in On Nut, at that
| time the end of the sky train. In both places we were the
| only farang we would normally see unless we went to the
| tourist areas for some reason. And in Europe, we lived
| mainly in villages of a few thousand people, not in
| cities. When staying somewhere for a few nights or even a
| few weeks, we stayed in hotels, not airbnb (I'm
| personally not comfortable with staying in airbnb's
| short-term because I don't like being in someone's
| private space, don't trust the quality, don't want to
| deal with individual landlords' rules and quirks, am wary
| of hidden cameras, etc., but that's just me).
|
| There's no winning as a nomad, it's true. But I think
| most of us are keenly aware that we don't want to
| contribute to the destruction of the places we visit and
| live, and in fact tend not to cluster in the touristic
| town centers where housing is already scarce.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| I mean, AirBnb helped destroy housing for citizens where I
| live. It's now almost impossible for a local to find decent
| housing in my city. I know this is also fault of the
| administration and the landlords themselves, but I won't
| certainly ever feel any pity for this multinational.
|
| AirBnb is basically another mean of accruing wealth in the
| hands of landowners, while people who don't own anything
| are now in an even harder situation, so I'm happy someone
| is stealing something from AirBnb, they negatively
| "disrupted" the lives of milions in order to create their
| market.
|
| If you only have positive opinions about AirBnb,
| congratulations, you live in a bubble.
| noduerme wrote:
| It's not just your city. It's happening everywhere. I'm a
| homeowner and I absolutely hate it. It destroys daily
| life and livability. I would never rent my house on it -
| or, frankly, to anyone who wasn't like me and wanted to
| stay a long time and live there and respect the place.
| People see a quick buck and take it, and don't give a
| shit, but they're driving their own property values down.
|
| [edit] What I mean is, I don't see it as really accruing
| value for landowners either. I see a lot of short-sighted
| landowners making money from a system that is going to
| drive them to ruin in the long term when there is no
| functional city left in the place they own their
| property... ultimately the only people who profit from
| flipping the geography of a city into a hotel are airbnb
| investors and absentee landlords in the short run.
| pastacacioepepe wrote:
| I see yes, in the long term it might even be harmful for
| landlords.
| noduerme wrote:
| Here at least in Portland, we sort of differentiate
| between people who live in the houses they own, versus
| people or companies who own property for speculation/rent
| collection. Most of the homeowners I know are simply
| happy to finally own a place they live in and stop paying
| rent.
|
| It's still somewhat possible here; for example, last
| month, a friend who's a 42 year old bartender and just
| had a baby finally bought a house only about 30 blocks
| east (east is cheaper); if he'd had enough money for a
| down payment 5 years ago we would be living on the same
| block. I make about twice as much as he does. I _want_
| him to be living on my block. That 's the kind of city
| that I want to live in, that's why people want to live in
| Portland in the first place. That's why I decided to buy
| my house here.
|
| Airbnb is extremely corrosive to a "working city"
| environment where people of different social / income
| classes are able to live and work in the same
| neighborhoods, because it encourages petit homeowners
| like me to take a paycheck to abandon our properties so
| the hoteliers extract rent. Yet it's _exactly_ the
| mixture of working class life which made Airbnb 's most
| attractive tourist cities like Madrid and Lisbon,
| Portland and Amsterdam so popular with tourists.
|
| IMHO Airbnb is a blight for landlords and renters and
| there's a very good argument to be made that no property
| outside a city-bonded hotel should be rented for less
| than 3-6 months. I said this about taxis not being driven
| by civilians back when I was a cab driver and Uber showed
| up, so, I can see I'm on the wrong side of history...
| nojito wrote:
| >but they're driving their own property values down.
|
| Property values don't matter when I get a return of 2-4x
| my mortage by using AirBnB.
|
| The income you are able to generate through AirBnB is
| very enticing.
| jkukul wrote:
| > AirBnb is basically another mean of accruing wealth in
| the hands of landowners, while people who don't own
| anything are now in an even harder situation, so I'm
| happy someone is stealing something from AirBnb, they
| negatively "disrupted" the lives of milions in order to
| create their market.
|
| Wait, in whose pockets did tourists's money end up before
| Airbnb? In the pockets of non-landowners? No, in the
| pockets of hoteliers, so still landowners.
|
| Airbnb took a chunk of hoteliers' market (so good,
| right?) but also created a new market. A new market in
| which people who previously couldn't rent (because not
| enough capital to be a hotelier) can now do it and thus
| new market for tourists who previously couldn't travel
| (because less competition and possibilities).
| mdoms wrote:
| > It would be better if it wasn't literally gutting every city
| from Amsterdam to Bangkok in the process and turning them into
| hipster slums.
|
| Do you not recognise that you were the exact kind of person
| ruining cities the world over?
| noduerme wrote:
| No, I don't think that's fair at all, since I didn't live in
| central cities for one thing (more often villages and small
| towns, or suburbs where I would be the only foreigner), but
| also because like I said above, the small number of long-term
| nomads who move to a place to live and work is absolutely
| dwarfed by the vast number of tourists who are now using up
| to 50% of apartments in places like Lisbon as if they were
| hotel rooms. I think there are sustainable forms of travel
| that don't place undue stress on local housing markets and
| economies. Your assumption is incorrect.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| I mean, this is the way; I don't believe people actually want
| to go through companies like AirBnB, Uber and Uber Eats, all
| those in between parties if they can help it; if they can skip
| the fees, and especially if they can get long term tenants,
| then great. And if by paying with cash you can avoid taxes as
| well, great.
|
| The only thing there is that it's a risk, e.g. what if they
| thrash the place, but airbnb may not even give a shit about
| that and accuse you (the owner) of fraud. That risk is also
| mitigated by paying up front like you said.
| noduerme wrote:
| Well as the renter in these situations, at least with cash
| you can see the place first. If you pre-pay into a dirty
| airbnb, good luck getting your money back.
| post_break wrote:
| If you're a renter this is squatter bait. You better know the
| squatter rules before ever considering doing rentals off the
| books like that.
| rcpt wrote:
| I don't follow
| [deleted]
| dominotw wrote:
| legal system makes it next to impossible to kickout a
| squatter. Someone can live rent free for years.
| wmeredith wrote:
| Doing rentals to tenants without a paper trail would allow
| them to claim squatter's rights, which are a nightmare for
| landlords.
| gowld wrote:
| How does a paper trail prevent that? A paper trails gives
| the squatter far _more_ rights, since they have proof of
| their right to live there.
| albedoa wrote:
| The paper trail provides proof of the _start_ of the
| occupancy. It provides proof that the occupier does _not_
| live there.
| Aperocky wrote:
| OP was doing it outside of US so I'd imagine such cases
| would have been settled very differently.
| notch656a wrote:
| Precisely, try that shit in Brazil or something. The
| government isn't going to give two fucks about your
| "squatters rights" and you can bet if you tried that on
| the wrong landlord that landlord is going to send out the
| pipe-hitters. Not advised.
| [deleted]
| noduerme wrote:
| To clarify, the landlords always gave me a receipt for
| payment, and in most cases had me sign a rental agreement.
| There are some countries that come to mind where squatters'
| rights are particularly strong (Spain, for instance).
|
| In general, most of these places were already vacation
| rentals before Airbnb came along, and the landlords were well
| prepared to rent them independently of the platform.
| wingerlang wrote:
| Did you have any thoughts about the home owners around you
| while you were doing the same thing?
| noduerme wrote:
| Yes, I did. The whole point is that I wasn't just a one-or-
| two-day ghost. I _lived_ in these places for as I said 3-6
| months (in one case almost a year). So I knew my neighbors,
| and treated them as I would neighbors in any other apartment
| I rented as a regular tenant.
|
| [edit] I should just add that I'm as embarrassed to make
| noise or screw with anyone's living space as a homeowner as I
| was as a tenant. I could make $400/nt renting my own house on
| Airbnb and go live in Morocco or Chile and just live off the
| fat of the land (read: being an American with access to
| credit). I frankly would never do it. I'd rent it to long-
| term tenants, or I'd sell it, before I'd subject my neighbors
| on the other side to what the airbnb jerks have subjected me
| to. And as a tenant, even with a piano that's calling me to
| play at 2am, I'm not going to wake anyone up.
| gnfargbl wrote:
| What it is that leads you to believe the 3-6 months thing
| is _so_ significant? There are (a very small proportion of)
| AirBnB guests who are awful. There are (a very small
| proportion of) longer-term tenants who are awful. At least
| with AirBnB, the awful guests are gone after a couple of
| nights.
|
| I know some AirBnBs are used as party destinations, and
| that's different -- but it's a problem with those hosts,
| not with the platform. AirBnB make it pretty easy to
| telegraph that your property is completely unsuitable for
| loud gatherings, and anyone who puts a piano in a short-
| term rental is an idiot.
| noduerme wrote:
| I think the fact that the 3-6 months was negotiated
| directly with the landlord is more significant than the
| length of time itself. They essentially had to take their
| listing off Airbnb and rent it as a regular furnished
| apartment. This enforces a mutual sense of responsibility
| and respect on myself and them which is perhaps even more
| than would exist in a typical lease agreement, because
| it's done under "special circumstances". Whether you
| blame the hosts or the platform or the guests, that sort
| of respect for a place and a host just is not possible
| when everything is done through a giant corporate medium;
| and it's also not possible if it's only done for a short
| period of time, since there's limited accountability.
|
| 3-6 months isn't _so_ important, but it 's about where
| things start to be serious. Water pipes leak.
| Refrigerators break. You get to know people.
| jcbrand wrote:
| _that sort of respect for a place and a host just is not
| possible when everything is done through a giant
| corporate medium_
|
| I find the claim that you can't respect someone else's
| property just because you rent it through an
| intermediary... strange.
|
| Whenever I'm in an AirBnB, I'm well aware that this is
| someone else's stuff and that (at least) common decency
| requires me to treat it with care and respect.
| CPLX wrote:
| If you've ever lived next to an active Airbnb I don't
| think you'd ask this question. The issues with an endless
| stream of short term guests are like in your face
| obvious.
|
| You're getting people who are in a leisure situation
| basically 100% of the time. Your normal neighbors aren't
| like this.
|
| Even just the transitions are disruptive. Picture a
| European couple unable to figure out how to open the door
| with 4 suitcases completely blocking the entrance to your
| building and making it impossible to go in and out _every
| single_ time you come home, for one highly specific
| example plucked from the real world.
| balfirevic wrote:
| Where I live, many (perhaps even majority of) buildings
| have apartments that are rented as short-term tourist
| rentals, and I've lived in many such buildings. I never
| perceived any issues with short term guests.
| noduerme wrote:
| Exactly. It's not even that the people mean to be
| disrespectful, they just don't understand that they're
| talking loudly 6" from your bedroom window, and this
| happens every day. Sometimes I _used to live in motels_
| where I would wake up every morning to people dragging
| their luggage out. I used to rent apartments. Finally I
| bought a house. And now... it 's like I'm back in the
| motel.
| bombcar wrote:
| Even simple examples can come to light - someone who
| lives next door for 3 months is unlikely to be able to
| perpetually party every single night; but an AirBNB on
| the coast could see a party each night.
|
| Another huge thing is people learn to live with
| consistent annoyances; if your neighbor runs a leaf
| blower at 8 AM every Saturday, you may hate it but you
| learn to live around it. If instead, he were to run a
| leaf blower _randomly_ at different times it would get
| really annoying.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I think for me it's less about how well the renter
| behaves and more about the turnover rate: how often will
| I, as a neighbor, see a new face next door?
|
| At 3-6 months, not often. At 1-7 days, quite often, which
| may give the feel of it being a hotel.
| metacritic12 wrote:
| There's no magical cutoff at 3-6 months, but the game
| theory is that the longer the relationship, the more of a
| repeated game there is, and the less socially destructive
| things you'll likely do.
|
| If I'm going to live with a neighbor for ten years, in
| addition to purely friendly reasons, I'm going to say hi
| to her and get to know her. Whereas at a hotel I'm
| overnighting at, if I'm not in a chatty mood, I don't see
| the reason to oblige a neighbor's request for a 20 minute
| chat.
| rcpt wrote:
| There are awful homeowners to. Based on Nextdoor I'd
| wager the fraction of them is higher than the other
| groups
| FunnyLookinHat wrote:
| Can you tell me more about what you mean by "airbnb jerks
| have subjected me to" ?
|
| Honestly, my family and I use airbnb pretty frequently, and
| I would like to think that we're considerate guests... but,
| maybe there's something we're missing? What makes the
| guests next-door to you bad ones (or great ones) ?
| noduerme wrote:
| I was referring more to the owners than to the guests.
| Most of the guests are polite and quiet, although it's
| impossible for them not to wake me up when they're
| leaving with their luggage, which is 3-4 times per week.
| This simply wouldn't happen with longer-term tenants. But
| it's also due to the way the neighboring property owner
| set up their Airbnb. Essentially, they spent 2 years
| building a tall, narrow cottage directly up to the
| property line, using every available inch of their yard,
| which blocked off my terrace from the sun. This is
| allowed here under loosened building restrictions because
| of the acute housing shortage, but the intent of the
| scheme was to provide more housing for local working
| families, not additional airbnb income for absentee
| landlords. So after they put me through a couple years of
| construction and loss of the sun, they rented their main
| house to long-term tenants, posted the cottage up through
| a management company for $300/night and f*cked off to
| Europe. And now I wake up to people leaving, and again to
| someone knocking and saying "housekeeping" every weekend.
| 4ad wrote:
| > So I knew my neighbors, and treated them as I would
| neighbors in any other apartment I rented as a regular
| tenant.
|
| Tangential, but I have lived for 10 years in the same
| apartment and I have never interacted with my neighbours.
| Not even once.
| noduerme wrote:
| Elevators. I talk a lot and only about 50% of people seem
| to mind.
| 4ad wrote:
| The etiquette seems to be that if someone is waiting for
| the very small elevator, the other person takes the
| stairs.
| da39a3ee wrote:
| For companies like this that profess to care about their
| employees (and I believe them), what's the justification for
| paying less in e.g. London than USA given London is just as
| expensive? Will progressive companies start adjusting pay
| according to cost of living rather than the local labor market?
| pc86 wrote:
| > what's the justification for paying less in e.g. London than
| USA
|
| You mention it in the next sentence - the local labor market.
| UK developers earn a fraction of what US developers do. We can
| debate the root causes but it seems irrelevant _why_ it 's
| true, only whether or not it is true.
|
| I'm not sure why cost of living should factor into comp at all.
| I can have a much higher COL than you, but if you bring more
| value to the company, and you can get better offers than I can,
| you should make more than me.
| da39a3ee wrote:
| Of course, I'm talking about comparing equally skilled and
| experienced employees. Can you rephrase your answer without
| conflating employee aptitude and CoL/local Labor market?
| pc86 wrote:
| They're linked, intrinsically. If the someone's "market"
| (whether that's local, or global, or front-end, or full
| stack, or whatever) prices then at $80k/yr a business is
| going to try to pay them that much or less. Whether you
| want to admit it or not, locality plays a role in that.
| da39a3ee wrote:
| I'm still not sure I'm understanding you. What I'm asking
| about is the question of compensation _conditional_ on
| experience and skill being identical. So by definition, I
| 'm taking experience/skill differences out of the
| picture. So we have Alice: backend
| engineer in London, able to get $120K from UK companies
| Alicia: backend engineer in NYC, able to get $250K from
| US companies
|
| with identical skill/experience. And we say for the sake
| of argument that cost of living is identical in London
| and NYC.
|
| Now suppose Alicia's company wants to hire Alice.
|
| Certainly, I agree that it makes perfect sense in a free
| labor market for the US company to try to get Alice for
| $120K.
|
| But the company I work for (a well-known US tech company)
| makes many claims about how "fair" its compensation
| program is. So what I'm inviting you to discuss is
| whether or not that company would have a hard time making
| an argument that adjusting according to the local labor
| market is actually "fair".
|
| Essentially, Alice is being penalized for happening to be
| in a locality where her skills are valued less. But that
| is out of her control. Would it not be "fairer" for a
| company to adjust compensation as follows:
|
| 1. Firstly, according to skill / experience
|
| And then, either
|
| 2a. That's it, end of story: skill / experience only.
|
| or
|
| 2b. By local cost of living, within equivalent skill
| levels.
| stu2b50 wrote:
| The article explicitly says they're paying everyone the same
| pay across localities now.
|
| But for the many company's that don't, the justification is
| simply that the cost of Human resources is not based around
| output but around market dynamics like other resources. Fresh
| fruit in Japan costs more than it does in California not
| because the Japanese fruit is better per se, but because the
| cost of production is higher.
| da39a3ee wrote:
| It says they're paying the same within countries, not
| between.
|
| In what sense is the cost of production of a programmer
| higher in the USA than in the UK?
| pc86 wrote:
| I don't accept the premise, but student loans and
| healthcare are high costs that US folks bear that UK folks
| don't.
|
| You keep trying to pretend that the local labor market is
| irrelevant. Until you accept that it isn't, or at the _very
| least_ accept that companies don 't think it is, you're
| going to keep talking past everyone here.
| refurb wrote:
| _For companies like this that profess to care about their
| employees (and I believe them)_
|
| That's your problem right there - you believe them.
| Traster wrote:
| >Most companies don't do this because of the mountain of
| complexities with taxes, payroll, and time zone availability, but
| I hope we can open-source a solution so other companies can offer
| this flexibility as well.
|
| I had a little chortle at this. This is going to be like building
| an application that handles timezones for you, but instead of
| getting timezones wrong, you're committing tax evasion.
|
| Let's say you move to the UK to work for 50 days. Whether you're
| resident in the UK and therefore have to pay tax will involve
| myriad complexities including whether your partner is resident in
| the UK. It's just going to be such a faff, and it depends far
| more on the individuals circumstances than the company.
| dinvlad wrote:
| For another interesting take on this: https://levels.io/async/
| hestefisk wrote:
| If I could I would apply with Airbnb tomorrow. Please other
| corps, follow suit.
| Caitin_Chen wrote:
| nabaraz wrote:
| How does tax laws work in this case? When I was working from
| Mexico, I had to come back every six months to avoid local income
| tax.
| aaomidi wrote:
| You pay the taxes from where you work.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| This is incredible, and everything that any remote worker has
| asked for. I hope others will follow their lead.
| dealmeidaleon wrote:
| It is, and it's pretty much what Shopify has announced more
| than a year ago. Nice to see other big names joining this
| trend.
| User23 wrote:
| Including the 90 day almost anywhere thing. Except for
| notable exceptions like North Korea, Iran, California, and
| New York.
|
| The latter two are for tax reasons of course. Still made me
| chuckle though.
| pharmakom wrote:
| Phenomenal. Good job Airbnb.
|
| Aside from being a friendly policy to staff, I think this shows
| just how tight the labour market is right now.
| H1Supreme wrote:
| > Most of you should expect to gather in person every quarter for
| about a week at a time.
|
| No thanks. Couple this with the two or three trips I take per
| year with my girlfriend, I'm going to be getting on an airplane
| every other month at a minimum. That is way too much travel for
| me.
| smeej wrote:
| I was thinking this too. It would be one thing if the
| expectation were that you would come into the office you
| previously worked out of, because that would give you the
| option not to have to travel as long as you didn't move away,
| but suddenly adding a travel requirement for those people would
| suck.
|
| It does make more sense to me if that _stays_ an option, and it
| 's only the people who do move away who would have to travel.
| That way people could choose the perk of living elsewhere,
| knowing they would have the downside of traveling quarterly.
|
| But for people who were hired on to an office job with no
| travel requirement shouldn't suddenly have a travel requirement
| so that their coworkers who move away have it more convenient.
| It might even be enough of a change in working conditions for
| someone to quit _and_ be eligible to draw unemployment
| benefits. (I used to adjudicate claims, and a significant
| change in working conditions is one of the ways you might be
| eligible for benefits even if you quit instead of being laid
| off.)
| all_usernames wrote:
| > Most of you should expect to gather in person every quarter for
| about a week at a time.
|
| Yikes. That's a lot of travel.
| dang wrote:
| Related ongoing thread:
|
| _Airbnb employees can live and work anywhere_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31199833
| devmor wrote:
| I guess they had to let their employees live anywhere since
| people have bought up all the single family housing in large
| cities to be de-facto landlords through airbnb.
| jdrc wrote:
| The gist here should be that there needs to be worldwide
| coordination for taxation base of workers. Remote work visas are
| a start but there needs to be a clear global standard. Maybe
| airbnb could push for this
| belter wrote:
| Everybody seems to be praising Airbnb but a couple of things need
| to be stated about doing remote work. Just because some rules are
| difficult to enforce or monitor, the spread of these practices
| will invite increased scrutiny by local authorities.
|
| 1) None of the usual 90 days Visas allow you to perform working
| activities. Neither when issued in the US or in European
| countries. Even when you are still a resident and employed in
| your country of residence. See for example the allowed activities
| for a B-1 or a B-2 Visa.
|
| https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/tourism-...
|
| 2) You also can't do it on a Schengen Visa for Tourism or
| Business.
|
| Business Schengen Visa - Traveling to Europe for Business
| Purposes: https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/business-schengen-
| visa/
|
| 3) Some professions like Airline crews, Military personal,
| Athletes and Musicians have specific provisions on the law that
| allow for their remote work.
|
| 4) For Europe the only way this might work could be with the
| relatively new Digital Nomad Visa:
| https://www.etiasvisa.com/etias-news/digital-nomad-visas-eu-...
|
| 5) Each case will be different, subject to a long and complex
| process. The company announcement mentions:
| "Starting in September, you can live and work in over 170
| countries for up to 90 days a year in each location."
|
| On a first analysis, seems Airbnb applying again the grow
| patterns they used before: Flout the rules, push ambiguous legal
| scenarios, then pay fines or ask for forgiveness before asking
| for permission.
| jlmorton wrote:
| > None of the usual 90 days Visas allow you to perform working
| activities.
|
| They don't allow you to perform work within the jurisdiction.
| But no one cares if you're working remotely, and I'm not aware
| of any tourism visas that preclude it.
|
| Digital nomad visas are not about legalizing an otherwise-
| illegal arrangement, they are intended to expand and promote it
| with longer visa terms that traditional tourism visas allow.
| It's about increasing the length of the visa, not legalizing
| it. But neither a tourism visa, or a digital nomad visa allow
| you to work in the jurisdiction.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > They don't allow you to perform work within the
| jurisdiction. But no one cares if you're working remotely,
| and I'm not aware of any tourism visas that preclude it.
|
| Working in the jurisdiction is working in the jurisdiction no
| matter where the person paying you or your _usual_ place of
| work (if such thing even exists) is.
|
| If you are in the jurisdiction, doing labor for pay
| (regardless of where the pay comes from), you are working in
| the jurisdiction.
| belter wrote:
| They don't care as long as this does not become the norm. If
| you look at some of the references I provided, they explicit
| state the type of activities you are allowed to do.
| the_svd_doctor wrote:
| Just because no one cares does not mean it's allowed. Try
| going through the US border on a B1 (tourist) VISA (or visa-
| exempt) and mentioning that you're staying 90 days to work
| for your <other country> company. I doubt that will work.
| purpleidea wrote:
| > anywhere!
|
| ...in the same country. Sort of defeats the point for many.
| somethoughts wrote:
| I'm kinda of curious how this works if you are remote:
|
| "Most of you should expect to gather in person every quarter for
| about a week at a time. Some roles, especially senior roles, will
| be expected to gather more often. We'll do our best to define
| windows when most large team off-sites will occur and give you
| plenty of notice so you can make it work with personal and family
| plans."
|
| Is this like just plan to be in the SF office during normal 9-5
| work hours for a week every 13 weeks or is this like plan on a
| week long 24-7 corporate retreat away from your family every 13
| weeks.
|
| If its the former, then that seems sort of like hybrid work just
| 1 week per 13 week versus 2-3 day per 5 day where you should
| probably stick to within 1-2 hour commute of your local AirBNB
| office.
|
| If its the latter then that seems like it might be a non-starter
| for people with families.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| >If its the former, then that seems sort of like hybrid work
| just 1 week per 13 week versus 2-3 day per 5 day where you
| should probably stick to within 1-2 hour commute of your local
| AirBNB office.
|
| >If its the latter then that seems like it might be a non-
| starter for people with families.
|
| And that's okay! If people don't like it or can't make it work
| with their lifestyle, they don't have to work there
| madeofpalk wrote:
| On the other hand, normally you want to try and broaden the
| pool you hire from, not narrow it.
| jobs_throwaway wrote:
| Plenty of people with families are able to make
| arrangements like this work, so I don't think it narrows it
| nearly as much as you seem to imply. Plus, this setup
| allows new pools of people to work for Airbnb who were
| originally unable. If I had to bet, I'd say this move is a
| net increase in available hiring pool.
| ghaff wrote:
| A week of travel a quarter is not at all unusual for a _lot_ of
| professional jobs including people with families. In fact, for
| a fair number of jobs, that would be considered not a lot of
| travel.
| almost_usual wrote:
| I used to travel every 6 weeks in my 20s for work and it was
| fine. I won't travel at all now and it's also fine. People
| will figure out what works for them, there will continue to
| be high paying jobs that are flexible.
| ghaff wrote:
| Absolutely. There are consultants who pretty much live on
| the road and there are people who basically don't travel at
| all. Personally, I hit being away about 50% of the year at
| peak (including vacation). I doubt if I'll ever hit that
| again.
|
| If they can, people should find something that works for
| them because they'll probably hate it otherwise.
| 2rsf wrote:
| It is also not clear who will pay for travelling, if you can
| work from anywhere but must be in a very specific place and
| time then travel cost can be significant. Assume I want to work
| from a small town in North Sweden where housing is really
| affordable while internet is still fast how will I get to SF?
| almost_usual wrote:
| WOW airlines used to have a round trip $300 flight from
| Stockholm to SFO. No food, no water.
| izacus wrote:
| The company covering all costs, including flight, lodging and
| food, is a normal standard pretty much everywhere for these
| events.
|
| It is business travel after all.
| mdoms wrote:
| > If its the latter then that seems like it might be a non-
| starter for people with families.
|
| If you can't make the time to spend a few days a quarter with
| your workmates in exchange for the most generous and fair
| remote working package then perhaps you're not a good fit for
| Airbnb. Which is totally fair. But they're not exactly taking
| the piss here. For many (many) people a week long retreat is a
| perk not a burden.
| somethoughts wrote:
| Haha - I hear you - its a treat if you are single or a DINK
| (dual income no kids) and need some solo social time.
| Especially if Monday and Friday are travel days.
|
| But if you have a family you actually like/love - then a full
| week away really is a non-starter. Especially if its Sunday
| night and Saturday morning travel. School plays and parent
| teacher conferences don't get planned based on the AirBNB
| week long retreat schedule.
|
| And if you are in a dual income family with the stereotypical
| two kids - if both of you guys are in similar work situations
| - then on your "on" week - you're gonna be the one doing 2
| school pickups and all after school driving.
| izacus wrote:
| I worked with plenty of family people (and been the family
| person) who could find two weeks per year in exchange of
| complete WFH flexibility the rest of 50 weeks of the year.
| Especially since steps were taken to accomodate them and
| not schedule things in the middle of "parent-teacher
| conferences" and "school plays".
|
| I also did notice that there are plenty of parents who will
| blame their children for things they themselves don't want
| to do and not be honest about it. It's not the children
| that are at fault there though.
|
| In the end, there are plenty of WFH jobs that don't need
| on-site time at all so you can pick and choose. It's a
| great market for an engineer to be in now.
| Nimitz14 wrote:
| You don't seem to realize there are many jobs that parents
| do which require more travel than 1 week per quarter.
| mdoms wrote:
| I definitely feel you on the Sun/Sat travel and I'd push
| back against that.
| ghaff wrote:
| Although there are sometimes reasons for it (e.g.
| community-related conferences that tend to span a weekday
| and a weekend day), for the most part I sorta resent
| conferences that force weekend travel. Sometimes I _want_
| to take the weekend for myself, but I want it to be my
| choice.
| Aeolun wrote:
| > If its the latter then that seems like it might be a non-
| starter for people with families.
|
| Another new and perfectly legal way to discriminate!
| poslathian wrote:
| Are you suggesting it would be better if jobs requiring
| travel were illegal because they represent a loophole to
| discriminate against people with families?
| noahtallen wrote:
| I work at Automattic (no proper offices, fully remote), which
| (pre-pandemic) does meetups once or twice per year per team,
| plus one for the whole company. Meetups are typically a week
| long. I've had the chance to visit Lisbon, Hawaii, and soon
| Cancun on the company's dime, so I can't see a world where I am
| upset about "having" to attend these trips :)
|
| I recognize that kids makes it difficult. And there are also
| folks who find it hard to travel much at all. But I've found I
| have the opposite problem: remote work can be extremely
| challenging from a energy and social point of view without
| meetups. I've never met most people on my current team, and
| don't have strong social relationships with them. Those are
| really only possible to build in person. I come away from
| meetups with a sense of camaraderie, energy, and vision that's
| difficult or impossible to replicate over Zoom.
|
| So for me, I have found remote work more difficult during covid
| without meetups. I burn out more frequently, and struggle to
| find as much energy as I've had in the past.
|
| True remote work -- not 4/5 days, or in close proximity to an
| office where most work -- would be less viable for me without
| meetups. Just as remote work is less viable for some _with_
| meetups. And working in the office has huge drawbacks as well
| for plenty of people. So it's all a balancing game, and I
| wouldn't say that meetups should be ditched because of this.
|
| I do want to note that when I think of a meetup, a lot of it is
| social and having a good time. While "real work" obviously
| happens too, it's not like these trips are consumed by it.
| Getting paid to go to a pleasant location of your choice with
| nice lodging and a decent food/drink budget is super nice. If
| it was just going to a soulless office at a minimal budget with
| no expectation of having a good time, I probably wouldn't be so
| much in favor of them :) But with a nice mix of meaningful
| conversations, socialization, brainstorming, and fun, they have
| a positive impact on my work/life balance. And I'm more
| productive as well. So it's a huge win all around for me, and I
| hope most.
| spaniard89277 wrote:
| That seems like a great way to do it. I wouldn't mind a
| couple of meetups a year.
| somethoughts wrote:
| I think the sweet spot would be quarterly weekly meet-ups for
| culture building which occurs during normal hours from
| 9am-5pm and occur at the local office versus some "get away"
| all inclusive conference center where there is a packed
| schedule of 24/7 culture building (aka drinking, etc.) from
| 8am-11pm.
|
| If its during normal work hours - employees with kids can
| live within 1-2 hours can suffer the commute for a week every
| quarter and socialize but still be home in time for dinner
| with the kids/wife.
|
| Conversely - the single folks/DINKs can go out and paint the
| town from 5pm-11pm and experience the actual local nightlife.
| ggm wrote:
| Somewhere in between a pay grade based on scarcity, and S.F.
| norms, and a pay grade based on Ross Perot's IBM model of "feed
| 'em peanuts and sack at will" is a happy medium.
|
| I don't personally think that US pay for work done in Bali as a
| non-dom is sustainable, but paying Indonesian rate for work
| towards US profit is just as unviable.
|
| Whats the happy medium?
| wfme wrote:
| Why is it any less sustainable than paying the same person
| living in the US?
| ggm wrote:
| Because there typically is a cost/price function in this. If
| the cost of living isn't as high, then the company can sell
| more by reducing the price. To reduce the price they have to
| reduce the cost inputs. The risk for them, is somebody else
| working out the same brain awesome can be found cheaper, and
| removing the market under their feet.
|
| I work in IT, and I know it would suck to be told "you're
| worth less because you pay less rent" but this actually is
| normal: The majors are already telling SF residents "take
| $10,000 to move to Austin but we pay you less" And the majors
| are already saying "stay in India and we'll hire you and pay
| you less" -So it is not like there isn't already real world
| downward pressure on pay.
|
| (the context here is that I am paid way above local average
| for Australia and way below FAANG in the US, working in a not
| for profit)
|
| I strongly believe in unions. Even with a union, pay isn't
| going to be uniform across a nation, or between nations to do
| the same role.
|
| Musk is making Tesla in the US, Germany and China. I ask,
| non-rhetorically, which country do you think will wind up in
| the long term making more of the cars, and why? And, also
| non-rhetorically, why do you think "knowledge work" (which is
| what software is) is any different?
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Very good decision and hopefully more companies will follow the
| new way of working. It's not a "one size fits all" situation, for
| some WFH (or from anywhere) is great and they're more productive,
| for others being in the office with their colleagues works best.
| Companies should allow people to choose and see what works best
| (with proper management, training, support...).
|
| One other important aspect is the ability to work from any
| country/city which will greatly help certain locations to attract
| WFH people or tech-nomads. Speaking for my country, Greece, there
| are already some islands and municipalities advertising their
| offerings to attract new people. This is going to be a win-win
| for all and help with counterurbanization. Sure there are many
| technicalities still to be sorted out but this is the way to go,
| this is the way of the future.
| Stevvo wrote:
| One thing is certain; employees are not going to be working out
| of AirBnbs, because they so rarely have a quality desk + chair!
| vmception wrote:
| > The best people live everywhere, not concentrated in one area.
|
| Meaning that the best people are nomadic because its such a
| common choice amongst the best people, and would be a common
| choice among people with a choice. This is the experience they
| have with recruiting, and the CEO then pretends its because of a
| diverse pool of people that happen to live in a variety of towns
| where they stay all the time.
|
| Just helping someone read between the lines!
| teirce wrote:
| Okay, sure. Since we're sharing takes, here is how I read that
| statement:
|
| Smart people exist outside of the SFBA. (Or Seattle. Or NYC. Or
| London. Or ...)
|
| As someone who is intimately familiar with geographic
| discrimination, this was nice to read. I grew up and went to
| school in the US bible belt. When sending out resumes, the only
| companies I ever heard back from (even a 'no thanks'!) were
| local, or cosmic luck (hired an adjacent person and reached out
| to me.)
| vmception wrote:
| My point is that its supposed to feel good but that verbatim
| reading isn't really whats happening.
|
| Over the past two years lots of people left the SFBA,
| Seattle, NYC etc. They didn't move to the US Bible Belt they
| went to islands, Miami, Austin, Southern California....
|
| so to keep talent and get some of the other talent back, they
| released this statement. about nomads.
|
| It's not about people with feeble parents and health issues
| that get them stuck in the midwest, or those really there by
| even easier choice. Maybe it will never be about them.
|
| Its not charity, its a reaction to their own workforce.
| teirce wrote:
| Of course it is in the company's interest. That's why they
| are doing it.
|
| I used my life in the bible belt as an anecdotal example,
| but it can apply to many places.
|
| Disparaging a company's move just because - acktualllly it
| benefits them - will have you hating every business on the
| planet.
|
| My point here is they didn't _have_ to do this. Places like
| Google and Apple are all but telling remote workers to kick
| rocks. Others like Facebook say 'be remote but we are doing
| CoLA.' ABNB's policy here is the most fair (and generous)
| out of the ones I've seen. If that attracts workers, good
| for them.
| vmception wrote:
| I'm not disparaging it, I'm saying you're reading it
| wrong, following my supposition that it is easy to read
| this wrong.
| devy wrote:
| > 2. You can move anywhere in the country you work in and your
| compensation won't change
|
| > ... Starting in June, we'll have single pay tiers by country
| for both salary and equity. If your pay was set using a lower
| location-based pay tier, you'll receive an increase in June.
|
| I wonder if an Airbnb employee's pay was set using a higher
| location-based pay tier, would that be down adjusted, conversely?
| A single pay tier in U.S. means there are wide pay gaps between
| San Francisco, California vs. Billings, Montana for the same
| skill set/job role to be reconciled, correct? It only makes sense
| to me that they aren't adjusting everyone to the Silicon Valley
| pay rate in June.
|
| Can someone share lights on how that single pay tier for a
| country would work?
| actuator wrote:
| Good that the compensation is not changing in the country, but
| why not bring compensation parity with other countries as well.
| If they are going towards compensation determined by role not
| market location, they should do this.
| WYepQ4dNnG wrote:
| Will Apple finally make up their mind? Most of the big tech are
| getting more and more work remote friendly. If they want to
| retain talents ... they must align with them. Otherwise they will
| continue to bleed engineers to FB, Google, etc ...
| zengineer wrote:
| I hope they add a "remote working approved" tag and filter, just
| like the "superhost".
|
| I have been working remotely since almost a year now in several
| European countries and to filter out AirBnBs, which offer a
| decent desk and have stable internet takes hours. The
| "workstation" filter can not be trusted and neither the "has
| Wifi", which doesn't say anything about the quality.
|
| An internet speed test should be required to be done by the host.
| This way I can avoid having to ask about the internet every time
| before booking - which takes sometimes half a day for getting a
| response.
| gongdzhauh wrote:
| I don't think I'd ever book a place that didn't explicitly list
| Internet speed if I were to work there and I hate that AirBnB
| doesn't easily provide this information. The last time I booked
| a place like that they claimed to have "professional grade"
| Internet which ended up being a 15mbps down/ 4mbps up
| connection. Surprisingly (to me at least) that was enough for
| most video calls.
| Nextgrid wrote:
| The problem is that in a lot of Western Europe, an actually-
| good Internet connection is a very rare commodity - DSL is
| still a thing _in 2022_.
| hocuspocus wrote:
| There are a few countries where broadband is unjustifiably
| bad (Germany and Belgium come to mind) but I wouldn't
| generalize to the entire Western Europe. For instance many
| rural departments of France have extensive FTTH coverage.
|
| Also DSL isn't necessarily so bad, G.fast allows for speeds
| that are close to what you can do with modern Docsis
| deployments.
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