Some tech firms want workers back at their desks, but expectations have shifted.
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As Apple postpones office return, workers say they value flexibility over money
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That would be considered fraud, if you aren't on a call everyday during your commute.
As someone who had to work with someone who insisted on using their cell phone for every project call, I have to say that doing that sucks. Their connection was always terrible, always noisy. They couldn't take notes or look things up to provide instant answers. This person was the project manager and scheduled the meetings specifically to cover his commute home. Fortunately, he only lasted a year before they fired him. I never got the details.
Plus there was the safety issue - them driving on a very busy road, hopefully, thinking about the project meeting they were running.
In private conversations about that selfish person, we had a nickname for him. It wasn't very nice. Started with "a".
I would bill for travel time when I was not going to my "desk" in the normal work location, but that was acceptable in the corporate policy. Remember a 1st class flight on a commuter plane was denied, so I had to sit in SLC for 6 hours to get a coach seat. My billing for 6 hours cost the company 3x more.
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Yes, if I were to have the same kind of workstation (desk, screens etc) I have at the office I would have to move to a bigger house or make the kids share a room.
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The work you do isn't worth less just because the costs (for both you and the company) go down. Those things are unrelated.
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Dropping into a lower tax bracket does nothing for you. Less money is less money.
(There are some government assistance cliffs where making even $1 more than a certain threshold makes you worse off - but taxes is not one of them.)
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The more I see articles like this and work with folks on projects who haven't seen an office for seventeen months and counting, the more surreal it's gotten. I'm a tech worker, but I work at a factory. There have been some incentives associated with the work it took to get through this at a place where people operate in pretty close quarters with a difficult PPE situation. The pandemic proved just how important it is to have someone physically present, even at the height of the lockdowns, and the distance between my experience and those formerly office-bound coworkers grows every week. It'll be interesting to see what happens over the next few months.
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Seems like now coming to the office should command hazard pay in addition to the existing salary. Pay cut? Not in todays market.
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I can totally see why some people would say this. The financial and personal impact could be immense for some people.
* No commute. Imagine spending an hour or more commuting every day and spending thousands of dollars in gas every year. Then going to not doing either. Free time and more budget dollars.
* Some parents no longer have to pay for day care while working from home.
* Less stress due to coworkers/bosses due to work environment.
* Pandemic safety is better.
Yeah. Adding it up, I totally can see why some would be willing to get paid a little less in exchange for all those things.
* No commute. Imagine spending an hour or more commuting every day and spending thousands of dollars in gas every year. Then going to not doing either. Free time and more budget dollars.
* Some parents no longer have to pay for day care while working from home.
* Less stress due to coworkers/bosses due to work environment.
* Pandemic safety is better.
Yeah. Adding it up, I totally can see why some would be willing to get paid a little less in exchange for all those things.
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During the lockdowns last year, they took away the coffee for those of us who remained. That deserved hazard pay, if nothing else. Or an extra payment to make up for all of the personal pots we smuggled in.
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My company added a hundred bucks to everyone's pay when we went remote last year, to "help cover for electricity, home snacks, and extra flushing"
I like the people I work for.
I like the people I work for.
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And this warrants getting paid less for the same work how, exactly?
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If you have kids around when you are supposed to be working you are definitely doing a worser job than when someone else is taking care of them.
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Guys,
for me the only big problem about WFH is that i have gained weight. Now I cannot even fit in my business casual clothes. Before working downtown was forcing me to do 3-6 K steps a day. Now i have to make a conscious effort. Again , I have created the issue myself. The collaboration and small chats are nice but not as nice as 5 minutes commute (time to log-in) .
for me the only big problem about WFH is that i have gained weight. Now I cannot even fit in my business casual clothes. Before working downtown was forcing me to do 3-6 K steps a day. Now i have to make a conscious effort. Again , I have created the issue myself. The collaboration and small chats are nice but not as nice as 5 minutes commute (time to log-in) .
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I didn't say it was right, only that it plays into why people may choose to stay home. And... not all kids are super needy and can play independently. Also... sadly... TV.
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I was dragged against my will to a management retreat because my boss was recovering from back surgery.
I think the rank and file would be alarmed by what the lessons of work from home as perceived by management would be.
The consensus was if a position is to be made remote the person in that position today might not be a most suitable candidate for that position going forward and I think a lot of people would be blindsided if they realized they were in the cross-hairs.
The senior management was not impressed by how often IT had to visit people in their homes to address very minor connectivity issues.
I think the rank and file would be alarmed by what the lessons of work from home as perceived by management would be.
The consensus was if a position is to be made remote the person in that position today might not be a most suitable candidate for that position going forward and I think a lot of people would be blindsided if they realized they were in the cross-hairs.
The senior management was not impressed by how often IT had to visit people in their homes to address very minor connectivity issues.
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Some people may find the trade off worth it. Say someone used to commute 1.5 hours daily. Now they end work and are at home. What is the value of that time to them and their family? Not to mention the gas money saved.
Not everything is about pay. Sometimes quality of life is a big deal too.
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For 20K/y you can find a lot of screens and foldable furniture. You can have murphy bed convertible to an office
Of course if you permanently WFH you will inevitably move to a bigger place
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So why is your work worth less if you decide to have a better quality of life? And if it’s not worth less, why are you getting paid less?
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it is not worth less. It is just cheaper from the job markets' POV . Of course an employer might have some perceived (and not necessarily true) benefits of you being around. Or living in geographical proximity with the jurisdiction they are used to. But the biggest factor here is how many workers will be willing to take the paycut. If by accepting a paycut of 20K pretax money but you save 20K after tax all else being more or less equal (medical, benefits, promotion prospects ) then what would you chose ?
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OrangeCream
Ars Legatus Legionis
Let's try it from a different angle.
Say you live in California and pay $4.70/g for gas.
You move to Arkansas where the same gas is now $2.30/g; do you expect two identical gallons of gas to be two different prices in different states?
To an employer, the employee is a product they purchase, lease, or rent. An employee in California costs more than an employee in Arkansas, despite being the same employee.
In other words, if I was born an identical twin, and my twin grew up in Arkansas while I grew up in California, and we did online school, got the same grades, got the same degree, and applied for the same minimum wage jobs at the same company, my Arkansas twin would expect to be paid less than I would expect based on where we live.
That fundamentally scales up even with remote work. You're working for a California company, but you're working in Arkansas.
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Are you or are you not paid to work? If you take a pay cut to WFH, you are saying you are not working as well/as much from home, plus the employer gets the added benefit of not having to pay for your physical presence in the office. I mean, if you want to admit that you are paying your employer some of your salary to work from home, then that's another thing entirely, but I don't think that's the case you think you're making.
Counter example: My sister-in-law is a super extrovert, and she hates working from home because she doesn't see her teams actual physical faces every day - I don't get it, but that's besides the point. Her quality of life is made higher by going into the office. By your logic, she should take a pay cut & lose benefits if she comes into the office every day to work because she enjoys her work and QoL more when she's in the office. Does that make any sense??
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Others apply the opposite approach. WFH folks get
- extra small allowance to cover for increased energy use (electricity, heating)
- have all the perks that come with the office place - laptop, extra screen, adjustable chair...
We only have one condition - show up in the office once in a while (1-2 a month would do)
- extra small allowance to cover for increased energy use (electricity, heating)
- have all the perks that come with the office place - laptop, extra screen, adjustable chair...
We only have one condition - show up in the office once in a while (1-2 a month would do)
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Does that make any sense?? yes it does. At least in the marginal case. If you sister enjoys working from the office and she has two job offers one where WFH has marginally higher salary or working from the office where she will be making less (not mentioning restos, commute, parking, office attire and such , say she lives in walking distance so for her that all doesn't apply). For her it would be a perfectly rational decision to go for the lower paying job if her overall quality of live is better. . So an opposite scenario, if somebody is miserable going to the office and can calculate a monetary cost to it then choosing a similar job with lesser pay might be rational too.
And at the end of the day compensation is shaped by market forces. If you insist somebody to show up in the office in SF downtown you have to pay them living expenses or nobody would accept since they cannot do it. So you have to pay more. If you are willing to accommodate WFH you could hire somebody cheaper doing similar work but who doesn't have to commute or live in your expensive area. Now what about your current expensive employees which receive x% higher than the national average ? If you can replace them with cheaper WFH alternatives eventually you will. If you cannot and there not enough qualified professionals even if you do international sourcing then salaries will be high, or even higher.
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This will probably get buried (and someone may have already made this comment)
I fully support working from home or in a partial office/home setup as long as there is a good work/life balance.
I do not believe they should lose money/benefits/holidays over it.
There are a couple issues that need to be remembered though.
-If physical presence "no longer matters", now you are competing with EVERYONE and not just those in a smaller geographical area for jobs
-Take the above to the next level. Now you are competing with the entire world. If the company can get the same work done/get the same skills, do you really think they aren't going to go with someone from a place that they can pay significantly less for?
I fully support working from home or in a partial office/home setup as long as there is a good work/life balance.
I do not believe they should lose money/benefits/holidays over it.
There are a couple issues that need to be remembered though.
-If physical presence "no longer matters", now you are competing with EVERYONE and not just those in a smaller geographical area for jobs
-Take the above to the next level. Now you are competing with the entire world. If the company can get the same work done/get the same skills, do you really think they aren't going to go with someone from a place that they can pay significantly less for?
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What rot. While I don't doubt that many would be willing to accept less compensation for more flexibility on working from home, the idea that you would give up substantial benefits or salary to work from home should be balanced against the money that your employer saves by not needing to maintain office space for a full in-person workforce. The 'wins' of employers and employees should be roughly matched - employees shouldn't allow employers to win both lower compensation costs *and* lower office space costs.
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Statistical
Ars Legatus Legionis
It isn't like outsourcing in the tech world hasn't been a thing for 20+ years now. Companies have largely learned (mostly through getting burned) you get what you pay for.
However generally speaking I agree. The higher paid someone is and the less value they are delivering for an employer the more danger WFH is for them both from lower cost of living US workers and also international workers.
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Yea I expect gasoline to be much cheaper anywhere else in the US other than California.
Twisting this on you. Why do cell phones and wireless charges cost the same throughout the US? Is quality of service going to be the same in the middle of either Montana or West Virginia versus New York City or the major cities of California? I went to Lake George, NY not that long ago, and I was barely able to make a call while data didn't work. This in a tourist area where many people live year round, as well as visit.
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it is not only being cheap, which of course, happens comically often. it is also a question of team and corporate culture and skills to correctly split work and incentives for distributed teams. If you have a remote-first setup you already have to solve the second part anyway. So there will be much less barriers to global competition. It seems, however, that some sectors have pushed the global salaries up. For now we seem to be safe, but who knows what will happen in 10 years
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OrangeCream
Ars Legatus Legionis
Right, that's one factor that's already being/been explored. You do indeed get what you pay for.
But statistically speaking, there should be just as much talent, percent wise, in Bangalore as in Cupertino, as in Arkansas.
The difference is that there are 8.4 million people in Bangalore, 7.7 million people in SFBA, and 3 million people in Arkansas.
There are more than 100k people with software proficiency in Santa Clara, and that expands to a quarter million when you include SF, and Sacramento. In other words, 3% of the population, though admittedly a bunch of the population moved here from all over the world. If we take a conservative number and say 1% of the population is suited to be a developer of one stripe or another, then that's 84k people in Bangalore and 33k in Arkansas.
Expanding out to the rest of the US that means, once a solid WFH infrastructure is in place, that there are 3 million potential job applicants for any QA, developer, lead, or other tech related job in the US.
My point is that even if exporting to Bangalore is untenable due to time zone and language and skillset differences, exporting to Arizona, Nevada, Illinois, Pennsylvania, etc isn't nearly as impossible or insurmountable, and people living there will accept a lower salary than people living in California.
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I think it just depends on the age. If the kids are of an age where they are self sufficient for the most part, but technically can't be home without a guardian, it is completely fine. I agree if we are talking babies and preschool kids.
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OrangeCream
Ars Legatus Legionis
You're asking a bad question. You're asking why a nationwide service costs the same nationwide.
But since you asked, I'll answer. It's a nationwide service, insofar as major carriers offer service across multiple state lines and don't charge you different rates when you cross them. MVNO resell service from a major carrier like AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile, but fundamentally your plan will roam to another carrier when you are out of network and you could pay roaming fees.
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Unrelated, but your note of a poll gave me a chuckle. Also work in a state agency on the west coast. Management where I work decided to do a similar poll about the return to office, but the questions were framed such that voting "no, I don't want to return to the office" was never an option. It was always like, "how very badly do you want to return to the office, amirite?" A) I miss everyone! B) I can't wait to see all those faces again C) We need to return asap for collaboration D) I'm less productive at home. No options for custom entry, and no option that allowed you to hint at wanting to stay home.
Most of us were stunned, because like you none of us had any desire to expedite the return to the office. The inner circle of management here is dominated by extroverts, and they just decided for themselves that everyone else couldn't possibly be any different deep down inside. And they wanted hard evidence to show their superiors to justify a hasty return.
And to our dismay, they won. We've been almost fully back in the office for almost two months. Delta be damned. Meanwhile the other parts of the building we occupy are totally dark, because well, you know, there's a pandemic.
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While I agree with the sentiment, seems like we walked away from that standard a while back. New standard is that employees should not be compensated based on their worth, but based on arbitrary constantly evolving socio-economic principles.
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Statistical
Ars Legatus Legionis
For sure. Those in the highest cost of living areas who are largely getting top dollar for middle of the road effort have the most to lose if WFH becomes an integrated part of corporate culture.
Of course as geo-remote work becomes more common salaries would rise in low cost areas and if not fall at least stagnate in higher costs areas. That closes the gains to be made by companies.
I have a feeling this would already been in full swing if upper management was dominated by older workers ("this is how we have always done things") and by people who like the office. It is part of their identity part of their day.
The longer it goes on though the more entrenched WFH becomes, the more companies need to make it part of the workplans, the more employees will get use to it and demand it. It will happen just might take a decade.
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Great point, in the hotter markets (which is practically everywhere in the US) the sq/ft price is probably a lot higher for residential vs commercial.
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I don't think that's accurate. You're losing money, but reducing your expenditures. End result is you may be taking a smaller pay cut than intended. However, that's still a pay cut.
I'd propose an alternative. Let me work from home, and don't give me a raise for one year. Let work from home, and the savings from that, be my raise. Totally worth it, and in certain circumstances, doing that could be a bigger raise than what I would've been expecting anyways.
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OrangeCream
Ars Legatus Legionis
Supply and demand means salaries in expensive regions will fall while salaries in less expensive regions will rise.
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Should people who have roommates or working partners take a pay cut? After all, they're exploiting the cost of living.
Full listing of all residents of your home and their contributions to rent and utilities now required as part of salary negotiations!
Full listing of all residents of your home and their contributions to rent and utilities now required as part of salary negotiations!
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Wow this one hit a nerve. This is my 2 cents on this subject I have a strong opinion on. As I have gotten older and have recently changed jobs because of commute time as one factor of many here we go. Total drive time for me before was a hour and half each way so total 3 hours plus for traffic and people who forgot how to fuckin drive as I worked all through the pandemic supporting 2 hospitals and was going into patient rooms with covid getting fully suited up to get to the workstation's the nurses/docs use to enter patient data and other stuff on and no they do not come out of the rooms per protocol unless they are dead machines for replacement. On top of that I was on call every 3 weeks because we lost half the team as they could not cut it straight out, to each their own.
So the msp I worked for upper management was absolute shit and fired as many US based workers and outsourced to 4 different countries to level one techs so that recipe right their I was putting in 60 plus hour weeks between down switches, and any other core equipment that supported hospital infrastructure that was beyond end of life like circa 2011 no even kidding people replacing at 2am. I to sleep in spare bedroom on those weeks in the end because of keeping a happy marriage lol.
So here it is my personal time at home is more valuable than any dollar amount and those upper managers who have always had the perk sure as shit know that long before I was ever on this planet. I agree with posters who say yes pay me what I am worth but their needs to be a balance to attain that money and what I was doing the balance was shifted to the company and for once in my generation we have this power finally over those upper managers and I swear we need to keep it that way going forward forever so you never hear that "hey you need to work this shift this weekend to be a team player or it might affect your job here" as one example of the shit spewed at the common worker when we are the ones actually making the company money and not upper managers sitting on conference calls and sending out useless emails that don't actually contribute anything to getting the job done or improve something. So I say screw them and if you can accomplish your job at home with whatever resources to 100% completion then enjoy your time and mow that lawn so you can have weekend to yourself he he..
So the msp I worked for upper management was absolute shit and fired as many US based workers and outsourced to 4 different countries to level one techs so that recipe right their I was putting in 60 plus hour weeks between down switches, and any other core equipment that supported hospital infrastructure that was beyond end of life like circa 2011 no even kidding people replacing at 2am. I to sleep in spare bedroom on those weeks in the end because of keeping a happy marriage lol.
So here it is my personal time at home is more valuable than any dollar amount and those upper managers who have always had the perk sure as shit know that long before I was ever on this planet. I agree with posters who say yes pay me what I am worth but their needs to be a balance to attain that money and what I was doing the balance was shifted to the company and for once in my generation we have this power finally over those upper managers and I swear we need to keep it that way going forward forever so you never hear that "hey you need to work this shift this weekend to be a team player or it might affect your job here" as one example of the shit spewed at the common worker when we are the ones actually making the company money and not upper managers sitting on conference calls and sending out useless emails that don't actually contribute anything to getting the job done or improve something. So I say screw them and if you can accomplish your job at home with whatever resources to 100% completion then enjoy your time and mow that lawn so you can have weekend to yourself he he..
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