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There's been some recent speculation about the effects working from home will have on various parts of the economy, particularly the commercial real estate market. If companies can figure out how to keep employees productive, coupled with the desire for some to relocate to more rural areas (and consequently, farther away from the office), it's possible some companies may reconsider continuing to carry all the overhead associated with having an office.
Which leads to the question: should remote workers accept a pay cut for working remotely?
A recent survey of 600 U.S. adults found 66 percent willing to take a pay cut for the flexibility of working remotely.
To what degree varied, however.
- Fourteen percent would take a one to four percent cut;
- Twenty-nine percent would take a five-to-14 percent cut;
- Seventeen percent would take a 15-to-24 percent cut;
- Seven percent would take a 25 percent or more cut;
- Thirty-four percent would not take a lower salary for flexible remote work.
The survey, taken from July 5 through 7 from Fast, a start-up specializing in online checkout, found COVID-19 safety concerns part of the current appeal of remote working. Thirty-nine percent were less comfortable returning to their physical office compared to 30 days before. However, 65 percent preferred a workplace that gives employees the flexibility to choose where and when they work remotely.
[...] The concept of "localized compensation" or paying someone less for the same work because of where they live is being hotly debated in human resources circles. In May, Facebook drew some backlash after announcing that employees choosing to permanently work remotely will receive salary cuts if they move to less expensive areas.
Originally spotted on The Eponymous Pickle.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by RedGreen on Monday July 27 2020, @04:25AM (35 children)
you save them a pile of money on expenses, in reality it should be a pay raise in the amount saved per employee. But in the world of parasite corporations only the CEO and their cronies get the benefits of screwing the workers over and of course the shareholders..
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Monday July 27 2020, @04:39AM (20 children)
I was with you until the very last word.
It's unimaginable to me you think that shareholders and CEOs are enemies of any kind.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @04:56AM
how's the tastes of those boots?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @05:16AM (5 children)
it really is golden rain trickling down your back. keep on telling yourself that.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @07:49AM (4 children)
To be fair many capitalist enterprises are not as completely fucked and the CEO and shareholders actually run a pretty good show.
Sadly unfettered capitalism steadily normalizes the greed and urinary arrangement.
The real problem is that propaganda has made Capitalism synonymous with competition and efficiency. In reality it costs a LOT to break into most markets so the vaunted competition == efficiency become a lie. Pair that with collusion between "competitors" without a strong government to police and regulate and you end up with feudalism.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Monday July 27 2020, @02:17PM (3 children)
>In reality it costs a LOT to break into most markets so the vaunted competition == efficiency become a lie.
I think you mean capitalism=efficiency has become a lie. Competition promotes efficiency, but competition is an enemy of profits, and capitalism will eliminate it wherever possible.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @10:09PM (2 children)
Maybe psuedocapitalism. IP law and the stricture of its enforcement is a substantive problem insofar as the global market is concerned, it is the singular mote most duopolies (or to be fair monopolies) are constructed on. It can take decades to usurp competition in certain domains, consider INTC v. AMD, and even that wasn't a guaranteed outcome, but rather fortune erring on the side of AMD.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday July 27 2020, @11:19PM (1 child)
"IP" (there is no such thing - no *property* is involved) is just one of many tools. Vertical and horizontal monopolies. Collusion. Regulatory capture. That's what capitalism *is* - the wielding of capital for profit, NOT for efficiency. Efficiency is just a side effect when competition can't be avoided.
Its proponents however are very successful at improving its image by equating it with its fictional cousin, "free market capitalism", which is (supposedly) far more honest and efficient, and distributes wealth far more equitably, but requires (even in theory) that all markets are sufficiently large that no individual actor (or conglomerate) is responsible for more than a percent or two of the total production or consumption of any given good or service.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2020, @01:04AM
You couldn't possibly evidence any other system that produces any fewer decremental divergence of outcomes, though. Ultimately it stems from stagnation, and to that end you must correct it by inducing fluidity in the underlying systems, specifically the civic platforms that enhance the conglomeration and concentration of power into the artificially cultivated conglomerates formed therein. By what means do we achieve that end? That's the golden ticket.
(Score: 2) by RedGreen on Monday July 27 2020, @07:38AM (2 children)
"It's unimaginable to me you think that shareholders and CEOs are enemies of any kind."
Yes they are such kind loving people know for magnificent generosity to workers and their needs. How could I have overlooked that????
"I modded down, down, down, and the flames went higher." -- Sven Olsen
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @01:39PM
I checked their twitter profile that had a black image with white text saying they are for good things. Why would they lie about being for good thing?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Immerman on Monday July 27 2020, @02:19PM
I think they may have meant that CEOs and shareholders are not enemies *of each other* - the comment they replied to could easily be read that CEOs are the enemies of both employees and shareholders.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 27 2020, @01:01PM (3 children)
That depends entirely upon the corporation... smallish struggling companies (say: less than $1B in annual revenues) make all sorts of Faustian bargains to gain access to larger markets. Often, a smallish company will accept a CEO who might open doors for them - paying a high price for the chance to grow. As these relationships grow, they grow ever more adversarial between the shareholders who no longer benefit from the CEO's connections and the CEO who is milking the relationship for as much personal gain as possible before hitting the golden parachute. The CEO will pack the board and C-level executive offices with allies to extend the ride on the gravy train, this cadre of parasites usually leaves the company reeling for years after they finally exit and the shareholders - well aware of the poison pills - accept the bitter relationship for fear of collapse on the parasites' exit.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @01:49PM (2 children)
Not just CEOs, this sounds exactly like a couple of places I worked. There's a honeymoon period at the beginning where you're getting fucked and enjoy being the most productive guy on the team, then you realize nobody is doing anything for you in return. Now you're just being fucked.
You enter the mid-stage where you "get" why everyone is so unproductive and nobody talks to eachother. You find the chirpy new hires are _the_ most annoying people as they remind you of your hopes when you started this shit job.
It's misery - this can last for the rest of your career if you choose. Or you can use the experience to feel very precisely exactly it is that causes that misery and work around it in the future. Work in progress - e.g. how to pick out an abusive narcissist from a short interview.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday July 27 2020, @10:53PM (1 child)
I wish I could have done that when I was in my twenties. I would not have wasted years working for a couple those sorts.
I have learned however, and if the top person at the company I am interviewing with came out of the finance department I don't take the job.
If the person my manager reports to is the company accountant, I don't take the job.
I explained that once to a very nice HR lady when I said "thanks, but no thanks" and she didn't sound surprised at all.
Oh, also, if the boss is the offspring of the founder, be careful. If the boss is the grandchild of the founder, don't bother.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday July 28 2020, @02:07AM
I took a job working for Napoleon incarnate - short, Jesuit educated - spoke 6 languages, rich (in the 10s of millions net worth class) and rubbed elbows with richer. I put in an app on the website and he personally phoned me 4 hours later, spent all of Friday interviewing with him and the team, mostly him, 70 miles from where I lived. Maybe 40 employees total, over half of the 10 person R&D department was getting emigration benefits in lieu of competitive pay. I knew what I was getting into, but wanted a job in the bigger town and had nothing going where I was - we found a house over the weekend and I accepted the job on Monday.
6 months later he had a really bad day with the sales guys, came over to R&D and took it out on us - strutting, threatening firing, shouting about how much we cost him and how little we did for him, etc. Coincidentally, a lead for a WFH position fell in my lap later that night: sign from God if ever there was one. The bad day blew over and he was "normal" again - during the 6 months he would normally keep his nose out of R&D, meet with us every 3 to 6 weeks, listen to what I had to say, dump on everything I suggested, then run around behind my back and order 9/10 things that he dumped on in the meetings to be done by his Ops guys. Once I showed up at 10am (driving from 70 miles away, I normally got there around 8:30, but had a couple of unavoidable errands...) and he made a point of calling me into his office and explicitly trashing everything I had suggested over the past 2 months - I reminded him we had an arrangement that I would be coming in late on Mondays... he completely denied that it had anything to do with that... yeah.
So, it was with extreme glee that I crafted the two weeks written notice with claim to all of my unused PTO accrued to-date, particularly the extra week off I negotiated with him at the start. In the exit interviews I made it clear: this opportunity came to me the day after his little hissy fit - I can take the heat, but the other offer is better than he ever will come through with and why should anyone put up with that? He pitched a lame stock plan, going public, offering shares to the employees - how could I turn that down? Well, sir, first you would have to tell me that's coming in order for me to value it, wouldn't you? Maybe you want to tell your other employees about it? He did, the next day. Within 3 months, the place I moved to handed out bonuses all around - 15% of annual salary in my case - and within 6 months more, they were bought out by a big company and another 6 months pay bonus came my way. Zero regrets.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @01:07PM (2 children)
Then you must not be aware of the principal-agent problem, and shouldn't be investing in stocks.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday July 27 2020, @01:53PM (1 child)
Yeah, that's a real problem in a country where less than half of anyone owns any stock at all.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @02:34PM
That's why we need a capital gains tax holiday. Only applies to stock held outside retirement accounts BTW. So let's modify that "less than half" to "less than 1%" of people that benefit.
https://www.salon.com/2020/05/30/about-75-of-trumps-proposed-coronavirus-capital-gains-tax-cut-would-go-to-the-top-1-of-earners/ [salon.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @03:03PM
CEOs do not care about the employees. If they did, they would be finding ways to keep them employed instead of doing layoffs to meet that quarterly 1 cent below expectations number. You don't see a C-suite saying "we should cut salaries and expenses at the C-suite level". The priority goes C-suite > parasitic investors > shareholders > institutional shareholders > customers > employees.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bussdriver on Monday July 27 2020, @04:03PM (1 child)
I suggest you learn the concept behind "Little Eichmanns". Furthermore look into experiments such as the Milgram experiment.
Basic truth of human behavior, the more you remove a human from the consequences of their actions the more you can get them to do that they wouldn't do (or even think of doing) directly.
The CEO positions STRONGLY attract sociopaths; who often lack insight into their workers or customers' lives but the investors are almost totally clueless by comparison.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 28 2020, @05:01AM
Which is why we have regulations. The tool could work better and is not as strongly enforced as it should be, but that is stuff we can fix. Which brings up the obvious question: what is the point of the pop psychology?
(Score: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday July 27 2020, @04:46AM (3 children)
I would actually expect an allowance for equipment (like 4k display) and office chair/desk.
With the WFH arrangement with the current employer, on top of the office-issued laptop, we did get reimbursements for the part of the cost of monitor/chairs ($500 limit for both of them)
(even more, we're now starting to receive face masks paid by employer and sent by courier. Well made and branded - if they're meant to be used in public, why waste an ad opportunity?)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @05:15AM (2 children)
It's kinda like Uber, where you use your own car, your own (non-commercial liability) insurance, and your own health insurance and your own clothes and grooming products, but you only get paid some pathetic flat rate. If it were me, and my Heartless Corp(tm) were to want to move me permanent work from home, I would need: Office space rent, at going rates per square foot; Infrastructure, including computers, routers, scanners, internet access and Cable TV (because, bundled, cheaper for them!), and coffee maker; Heating, cooling, home cooking expenses, per diem costs of domestic companionship, costs of sanitary services (toilet), security services (from cams to fencing to actual personnel); and serverance pay, equivalent to 10 years salary, in the event of a termination on ethical grounds. That ought to cover it!
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 27 2020, @06:24AM (1 child)
Not for me, not gonna stay with them in such conditions.
No office rent, it's called work from home.
All the remaining in the list above are:
1. tax deductible in Australia, based on the percentage you are using for work
2. starting July, my employer included monthly allowances to pay for comms - Internet and phone ($250/mo)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 3, Informative) by gawdonblue on Monday July 27 2020, @08:14AM
ATO allows a flat $0.80/hr work-at-home during COVID-19 tax deduction. Just keep a journal.
https://www.ato.gov.au/Media-centre/Media-releases/New-working-from-home-shortcut/ [ato.gov.au]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @09:15AM (1 child)
I think you mistake that CEOs are working for shareholders. They are working to make money based on fake targets they set themselves to achieve. Pump and dump is the invention of the CEO class. No one thinks what is good for shareholders 10 or 20 years down the road. Sell assets and lease them back so your ROA is better - a target you set to maximize number of vested options. Company health long term? Fuck that!
Describes about 90% of the S&P 500 CEOs.
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday July 27 2020, @11:58AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Monday July 27 2020, @02:26PM (4 children)
At the risk of having a Marie Antoinette* moment I have to ask...If the shareholders are the gilded class, why don't we all become shareholders?
* - "The peasants have no bread, let them eat cake" ... she didn't actually say this, but it's one of the more infamous quotes attributed to her.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday July 27 2020, @09:45PM (3 children)
1. A strong majority don't have spare cash for *any* expense. As in, if someone gets a speeding ticket, that may screw them over financially, permanently.
2. Trading isn't happening at a slow-enough pace to where a shareholder with any kind of day job can compete.
3. Insider trading, while illegal, is extremely common.
4. If everyone puts their entire wealth into the markets, they still will be outvoted by about 10 billionaires on any corporate election.
So, for a large percentage of people, getting into the stock market is a recipe for losing money they can't afford to lose.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday July 27 2020, @10:49PM
Don't forget the insurance rate increase for being caught driving at a reasonable speed. That's also very helpful in keeping the poor as poor as possible. Also late to work. Or out of work.
Fact: Once you're near the bottom, for the vast majority, it becomes more and more difficult to climb. This is not an accident, IMO.
--
When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a thumb
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2020, @03:35AM (1 child)
Most people are shareholders, even if they don't know it.
401K? Unless you have it in an all cash setup, it's invested in stocks, even if indirectly, through a mutual fund for example.
Pension plan? Definitely invested in stocks, though often conservatively.
Employee-owned or profit sharing company? Same as stocks, except you can't sell them. These are almost always union jobs.
Sure, there are some people who work at very low wage, non-union jobs. Excluding the ones who don't really need to care about wealth accumulation (students, for example), you have a small fraction of the population. Not zero, but hardly a "strong majority." Most people are middle class, and middle class people have at least some disposable income available.
Insider trading and high frequency trading don't really affect the small time investor much. High frequency trading probably actually helps, so long as you invest your money for long term and aren't trying to be a day trader. And voting control doesn't really make any difference to whether you make money or not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 01 2020, @09:06PM
Most people are middle class only by the definition used for levying taxes.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Monday July 27 2020, @04:40PM
If working from home saves the company $X, then how about we split the savings, and I get a raise of $X / 2?
The thing about landline phones is that they never get lost. No air tag necessary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @07:23PM
Exactly what I came in here to say. People are willing to take a pay cut to help their employer save money?
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday July 27 2020, @09:59PM
The obvious reasons workers are considering pay cuts in exchange for not being an office:
1. Commuting to work isn't free. It can easily cost 1-2 hours per day, plus either gasoline and wear-and-tear on a vehicle, or fares on public transit. It's also not risk-free: Every day, commuters wind up injured for life or dead because somebody was being stupid on the road. Oh, and this is reflected in your car insurance rate.
2. You're far less monitored at home, so that gives you more options for what to do when you aren't being productive. In the office, people are still unproductive, but have to work harder at looking busy whenever a boss comes by.
3. You can easily step away to handle things that you previously had to take time off to handle, e.g. someone coming to your house to fix something.
4. If you have kids, you no longer have to pay for someone else to be home with them while you and any other parent they may have are at work. Ditto for any elderly parent you may be caring for at home.
5. If your office has a culture of going out to a restaurant for lunch, or employees paying for food to be delivered, eating food from your own kitchen is much cheaper.
Or, to summarize, the employees' expenses are going down, not just the employer's expenses.
And also relevant here is that you're being naive if you think that salaries have ever had much to do with rational evaluation of costs and productivity. There are lots of businesses where useless employees make a lot more money than useful ones.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @04:26AM (5 children)
And I cannot think of a single thing that is good for anybody about paying people less depending on where they live.
Even for the greedy, employee-abusing corporations that thought it up, it's a false savings.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @01:55PM
I agree about false savings. If you feel you are being gypped at work, all of sudden as if by magic you lower the quality of your work.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Monday July 27 2020, @02:14PM (3 children)
As a counter argument, what if a small business wants to break into the Bay Area market? If you agree to relocate from Des Moines to San Jose, you would expect a cost of living raise.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @04:03PM (1 child)
Yep, it certainly works this way (COL raise), so why shouldn't it work the other way too? As long as things are negotiated fairly, it should be roughly a wash for the employee.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @05:49PM
Because where does it end? Housing is expected to be 30% of expenses, so should I have my pay docked 15% if I get a roommate who cuts that in half or 30% if I move in with my parents? It's only fair, Bob has rent to pay and I don't... right?
You're paying for my skills and on a macro level yes cost of living goes into their valuation. But, on a micro level, no. Whether I choose to spend that value on a mortgage, rent, hookers and blow or nothing at all is none of the business of the business.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2020, @02:31AM
Completely reasonable counter-argument, but it only applies to physical businesses. Once the work becomes remote, every employee lives in the Internet.
If someone really wants to live in a particular place - and I have heard people say things like "I'd rather die in New York than live anywhere else" - then that's just how they choose to spend their money. Others might want to put it toward things like their children's education, retirement savings, paying off debt, nice vacations, a boat, a fancy car, or whatever else they want to do with their money. Only landlords benefit if they spend it on rent. Businesses saying they will pay you less for remote work depending on where you live are just saying "We will subsidize some of your lifestyle choices, but not others."
What's worse, the lifestyle choice they're subsidizing isn't really a good one. We don't really need to encourage people to live in major cities. They're overcrowded, while rural areas are suffering from population depletion. And moving more white-collar workers into less urban areas would help with our political polarization problems. Environmentally, cities suffer from air pollution, homelessness due to overcrowding and high rent, displacement of minorities due to gentrification (and the people who work in the sort of jobs that can be made remote have major overlap with the people who cause gentrification) and all manner of overcrowding-related problems. People living in cities tend to drive less and use public transit more, but remote workers need to travel much less in general, and living in cities is strongly associated with higher consumption, use of disposable items, and general consumerism than living in rural areas - not to mention greater health problems from pollution exposure.
Remote work has the potential to reverse, or at least stop, the rapid urbanization we've seen over the last few decades. The people who like dense urban living don't see it as a problem - but excess urbanization is not a good thing, and the last thing businesses should be doing is contributing to it just for its own sake.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Subsentient on Monday July 27 2020, @04:37AM (11 children)
This is another disgusting artifact of end-stage capitalism. Raise bloody fucking murder if they try this on you.
It doesn't matter if working from home is worth it for you, if you let them get away with this, soon it will drive already unlivable wages even lower.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday July 27 2020, @04:53AM (10 children)
Pssst... tell ya a sicrit... if the job can be done in a WFH way, chances are it will be done from the home of someone in India.
Even easier this way, no more fuss with H1B visas.
Why do you hate (end-stage) capitalism? (grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday July 27 2020, @06:58AM (7 children)
I'm fairly certain that my job cannot be outsourced to India.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by c0lo on Monday July 27 2020, @07:21AM (3 children)
Ok, how about losing it to a young and hungry SJW, who just recently relocated herself in the potato capital of USA, Boise/ID?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @08:00AM
Sounds like market competition, only out of touch commie boomers would be angry about that!
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday July 27 2020, @10:15AM (1 child)
Also very unlikely, I'm not in the US and I dare say that handing my job to anyone outside the country is close to impossible. Plus, it's something that's not dependent on wokeness or other trendy bullshit, our customers tend to have their interests in reality.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 27 2020, @10:17AM
You'll be fine then.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @02:59PM (2 children)
Ah, a proctologist in the house!
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday July 27 2020, @03:29PM (1 child)
Nope. IT Security for a VERY conservative financial service company.
You think they'd trust some (insert very, very racist slur here) to keep their money safe?
Yeah, I profit from people being racist, ignorant bastards. My user name is not a coincidence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @05:59PM
In fairness, most service jobs could be described in those terms.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 27 2020, @01:10PM (1 child)
There are whole industries that have been offshored already, and a huge reflected wave of "jobs that came back home" because offshoring didn't work for one or more of a thousand potential reasons. Some have stayed overseas: if you need warm bodies to read troubleshooting flowcharts in English, India can do that, although the cost of living in North Dakota is competitive...
If majority WFH becomes permanent, new skillsets will come into play defining who is a valuable employee and who isn't. I'm hopeful that 30 years of in-office experience, coupled with 5 years of prior WFH experience have left me in a good position to continue riding this particular wave - I'm damn tired of the pickup work game, it's too much like dating.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2020, @02:53AM
One very open question is whether Americans working remotely will experience some of the same problems that offshore workers do.
My personal experience, from working at $major_tech_company, is that there was definitely something about the physical location that made a difference. Like so many large tech companies, we had Indians working in India, Indians working in America, and Americans working in America. Developers in India did by far the worst job. It wasn't the race, or even the education. Indians in America did work that was on par with the native Americans. Not, you know, Native Americans, by which I could also say Indians, but, uh, never mind. Anyway, in many cases it was the actual same people. A developer would move from India to America and magically get better, or from America to India and magically get worse. Eventually we sent one of our best development managers, who was also a native of India, over there to, not to put too fine a point on it, straighten the Indians out. And she had an impact. But the developers in India still did worse than the ones in America. (Maybe someone at Boeing working on the Starliner project has a similar experience).
So, was it physically being in the American office that made the difference? If so, maybe remote work isn't going to work out long term. But if it was something about the Indian office - who knows what, maybe just the time zone difference - then it won't matter too much. I don't know the answer, but it's definitely a question that needs an answer if there's going to be a major shift to remote work.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Monday July 27 2020, @04:50AM (4 children)
People are willing to take a pay cut. And 66%, that's sick!
Start the pay cuts at the top
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Monday July 27 2020, @06:13AM
Not if it's for 34% of the original amount of work...
Then we won't be able to cross the street for all the people the dancing.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 27 2020, @01:12PM (1 child)
There's the secret: those at the top aren't willing to take pay cuts, so they don't get them.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @01:59PM
It takes balls to cut other people's salaries and risk them walking away. That's why I deserve a pay raise motherfucker.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Tuesday July 28 2020, @10:19AM
Cuts at the top are a good thing. I wouldn't cut the pay, though, that is more a side effect of where I'd put the cut.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday July 27 2020, @04:58AM (1 child)
I see... I see... I see an entire FB dept shared-renting a very expensive apartment for "salary purposes", then working from home and sub-letting the apartment on AirBnB.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @02:01PM
Let me guess.... Indians?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by https on Monday July 27 2020, @05:14AM (4 children)
Because for this, a more dismissive and absolute answer than 'no' is needed.
Working "from home" is working AT HOME. You have to transform part of your home into a workplace, which has both financial and psychological expense, not least of which is removing a part of your home from your personal use. At the same time, the company's expenses are reduced.
Anyone thinking I should agree to less money than before is actively huffing glue.
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 27 2020, @06:11AM (3 children)
You're going a bit overboard with the glue huffing.
The fact is, people who have never actually "worked" from home, don't understand the costs involved. Anyone going into a new business situation/environment needs to do some research, to figure out what the costs really are.
For me, making a home office would be pretty cheap and easy. Some lumber, a bit of concrete, run a little wiring, and I'm pretty well done. People living in cities with strict zoning control might have six months of headaches before they can actually sign a contract for someone else to start construction. Other people will fit somewhere inside that spectrum.
No matter how you look at it, unless you physically separate your home office from the rest of the domicile, then work will invade into your home life. That is a cost that almost no one figures in.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @09:04PM (1 child)
Forget the concrete etc. Just buy a shipping container and wire up a 50Amp subpanel
DONE ...
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday July 27 2020, @10:30PM
Yeah, that will work. A refrigerated container. Damn if I want to sit inside a metal box with the sun beating down. Start with a refrigerated container, and then build a bit of a roof over it, to keep it in the shade all day. But, I can build something a lot better looking than a shipping container, without even trying.
Ever been inside a refrigerated rail car? Those things are very well insulated. I knew a preacher man who put two of those together, side by side, separated by about 8 or 10 feet, and made a home inside. Best of all, it actually looked pretty nice - quaint is probably the proper word to use.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2020, @03:22AM
One factor here is that many people are already effectively on-call 24/7. If work is already interrupting your home life, being set up to do the work efficiently lets you get back to whatever you would rather be doing more quickly, or at least with less frustration. Sure, working from home with a laptop shoehorned onto the kitchen counter while your toddler pulls your hair isn't a great working environment, but anybody who's actually planning on doing remote work rather than getting suddenly forced into it by a plague is just naturally going to make some kind of accomodation for it. I think most people probably don't need to actually build a separate structure. Convert an extra bedroom, attic or basement space, or temperature-controlled garage into a home office and tell the kids that if they open the door, someone better be dead because if not they're going to be. If you don't have kids, just set aside a corner of the living room and turn off the TV. Of course, once the pandemic is over, they can just go to school or day care while you work, and the living room corner is good enough for anybody.
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Monday July 27 2020, @05:15AM (4 children)
It's a "nationwide" survey, which makes it completely useless. Are you in Silicon Valley, earning 200k+, and you could continue your job from home after moving to Outer Bumfuck? Or are you already working in Flyover Country for a salary of maybe half what Silicon Valley pays? The first person might well take a pay cut and still earn more money. The second person, not so much.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @06:13AM
And, what if you are in Zurich? Your Republican economic theory will be of no avail in the EU, or anywhere else, Heir Professor of Microsoft Excell!
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 27 2020, @01:17PM (2 children)
Half? Try again. Silicon valley pays $400K+ for the same skillset that employers in a small town near a big university refused to budge above $45K for. I accidentally stepped into that town with a startup at $115K, and everyone acknowledged that I was well worth the money, but also could never bring themselves to give me a raise - since they had all these other employees at $45K and down...
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ElizabethGreene on Monday July 27 2020, @02:16PM (1 child)
I found myself in this situation early in my career. I moved to rural Virginia for a startup (60k/year) and when they exploded I couldn't find anything in the local job market for even half of that. It took me six months of looking for a job to realize it wasn't going to work. I moved back to a major metro and was working in two weeks.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 27 2020, @03:09PM
The problem with the University town was that everybody was running on grant money. When it came to getting things that they wanted to happen, me at $115K was easily worth three of (most of) their $45K hires, but when it came to writing grants, my headcount of 1 couldn't bring in $115K of funding.
The startup I moved to town for didn't die, but it moved to Ohio (no thanks), I found three other employers and they all "paid my rate" but none of them lasted even 3 years. During one of my searches, I bumped into a manager when I was dropping off a resume cold call style - he gave me an interview on the spot, after a few minutes he said "o.k. you can stop, I want you here, but I have to ask: what was your salary?" I told him, he nodded, "yeah, I thought so... that's twice what I make, and I'm the highest paid guy here... there's just no way I can hire you for anything near that."
Another thing I ran into was these sweatshops that had an average of 3 month turnover didn't even want to hire me at their lower rates... I think they're used to "a certain type of employee" and don't like the idea of somebody different coming through.
I started my career in Miami at an unusual startup, that job ran for 12 years, and when it imploded I searched for work ANYWHERE in Florida for 4 months, nothing. Opened the search nationwide and had my new position (in Houston) within 2 weeks. This was post-911, all of Florida was suffering financially, especially my industry - but... the Bush's backyard was still booming, go figure.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @06:28AM (25 children)
How much does office space cost to rent, typically much more per square than residential. Consider that your employer has commandeered part of your house to run their business, why on earth should you be paid less?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 27 2020, @06:39AM (24 children)
Because now you're competing in a larger pool of workers (world village and whatnot).
True, the employer downscaling its office space is one off advantage, will positively reflect on the reports of 1 or 2 quarters.
The cost of employing you at a higher wage is ongoing. It won't take long until you will accept their deal, or else... (they're gonna take one in the flyover country or go straight to India).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Opportunist on Monday July 27 2020, @06:54AM (19 children)
Yeah. Because outsourcing to India has worked so great before, let's do it again!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Monday July 27 2020, @07:14AM (1 child)
Doen't have to work long term, just long enough to deploy the golden parachute.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Tuesday July 28 2020, @10:14AM
If they at least used it to jump off their top-floor offices, I'd be willing to give them some.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by c0lo on Monday July 27 2020, @07:16AM (16 children)
The executives has a memory spanning one quarter, by evolutionary pressure. The moment they develop a longer memory, competition guarantee that hungry beta managers will contest and eat the alpha one in the next financial year.
If India doesn't work, the flyover country will. Be it only because the ones that have difficulties finding a job will find attractive the idea of downscaling their life-style and relocating into cheaper towns/states. Not only they have a lower cost of life, but they can get employed faster for cheaper wages.
Now, that will be the death of red states voting base. And TMB will start noticing hordes of pink/green haired SJW, together with their progressive kid (to remind him he's living with a roomie) invading his fishing spots - large grin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday July 27 2020, @01:00PM (12 children)
That would be poetic justice: the greedy fucking GOP and their policies forcing mass interstate immigration of, y'know, THE PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY PRODUCE REAL VALUE AND PRODUCTIVE WORK into their territories and staining the map deep blue.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday July 27 2020, @01:54PM (11 children)
I'm sorry to sorta disagree with you, but the way I see the things, roughly "THE PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY PRODUCE REAL VALUE" are those:
1. who put food on your table
2. who make sure your power grid delivers energy
3. some of those who help you keeping healthy (gyms, supplements and life-style gurus excluded)
4. (in the near future) who make sure you can telecommute
All the others mostly are delivering a mixture between various levels of potential values (researchers) and making money (finance, entertainment, etc) with various levels of makework.
A pity most in the first 2 categories are in the red states and the divisive politicking in US drove a thick separation wedge between the two.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @02:08PM
Your 1-4 are all micro optimizations.
Only the last unnumbered item will meaningfully improve quality of life. See, for example, clean tap water. You may be able to find other examples.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Monday July 27 2020, @03:27PM (3 children)
The first 2 categories are in the red states only because tariffs keep cheap grub from abroad off our tables. If you think you can produce any kind of farm product in the US at competitive rates you're delusional.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Monday July 27 2020, @03:37PM (2 children)
Yeah, China was making a favor to US by buying $23.8B/y (17% of U.S. total agricultural exports) [state.mn.us] worth of food at inflated prices, right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @04:21PM
Yeah, it kinda was [cnbc.com].
That's why the Phase 1 trade deal required China to buy even more from us. [agriculture.com]
But there's real questions that China will meet those goals, instead of looking elsewhere as it has to. [forbes.com]
Because "America First" doesn't work so well as a strategy when there are other players who will sell for less, and a pandemic happens. Why else do you think Trump has upped his invectives against China to include the racist slur of the, "China Virus"? Answer... his trade deal is imploding and he needs the average citizen to hate China now so it's not his fault.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Tuesday July 28 2020, @10:16AM
Your tax dollar at work. Or why do you think China buys that from the US? Because US pork is cheaper than some from Vietnam? Dream on.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday July 27 2020, @04:55PM (5 children)
Boring Business software has real value.
Can you imagine converting a modern business accounting system back to manual? Do you have any idea how many people would need to be employed in order to do this work done by a computer?
I won't get into how much human labor (that would be done by a fleet of workers) is saved by a modern payroll system -- especially across multiple states.
Inventory control systems. Point of sail systems. City or Utility billing systems (water meters, natural gas, trash pickup). Think of how many legal secretaries are no longer needed due to modern legal office software for our valuable lawyers.
This may not be among the items you mentioned, like food, power, transportation, health, but most of these, and other industries require software in the modern age. (Or require a whole log more workers.)
I heard it estimated that in the mid to late 1960's the Bank of America, without computers, would have needed to employ more accounting clerks than the entire population of the US. (I have not looked for a source for that.)
I do know that in the early 1980's, the type of offices that my company's product serves, were amazed at how much labor they could save for the one or two persons who did the specific type of accounting work that the product does. (Those people often have other tasks to do. They still have to run the computers, key in data, run reports, etc.)
The thing about landline phones is that they never get lost. No air tag necessary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @06:21PM (4 children)
For some values of real
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday July 27 2020, @07:13PM (3 children)
Since 64-bit float already can hold all possible values of real, there is no need for a 128 bit floating point format.
But wait, now the new 128 bit floating point format can definitely hold all possible values of real. Really. For sure! This time!
Next up, a 256 bit wide floating point format, so it can really, really, for real hold all possible values of real.
Then next, 512 bit . . .
The thing about landline phones is that they never get lost. No air tag necessary.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Monday July 27 2020, @11:45PM (2 children)
Nonsense - any mathematician can tell you that The Real Numbers is an infinite set, and thus arbitrary specific values *cannot* be represented by any finite-length encoding.
And any even middling decent computer scientist or programmer can tell you that floating point numbers categorically do NOT represent Reals, and exactly why you should never treat them as though they do.
The more bits you add, the better the approximation you can achieve, but since an accurate representation would require infinite bits, no matter how many bits you add you'll always be infinitely far away from achieving true accuracy.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday July 28 2020, @02:36PM
Since real numbers are an infinite set, that is why anyone arguing that a fixed size float (or even limited only by available memory size) float will have to keep moving to a higher and higher bit width.
Moving from float 64, to float 128, to float 256, etc is the first of an infinite process.
The thing about landline phones is that they never get lost. No air tag necessary.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday July 28 2020, @02:37PM
Or maybe you don't get the joke.
The thing about landline phones is that they never get lost. No air tag necessary.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 27 2020, @01:19PM (2 children)
When enough people earning triple or more of the previous local median wage move into a small town, the cost of living in the town starts to rise...
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 27 2020, @01:22PM (1 child)
Yes, I know what gentrification means.
Whoever:
1. take a while, somewhere around 10 years
2. first movers have a big advantage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 27 2020, @01:35PM
I agree, it takes about 10 years, but part of the advantage that first movers enjoy is living in the town before it has decent shopping, higher level services supports, anything resembling culture, etc.
The game in Florida used to be: move out in the country, outside a growing town, and then hope the town grows over you so you get a bump in property values. While you're living out there, you're commuting long distances on dangerous 2 lane highways to get to ANYTHING, from haircuts, to groceries, to work, etc. Relative lack of police, fire and ambulance service, etc. It's not too rough, as pioneer lifestyles go, but... do it for 10+ years and the costs add up, as do the risks.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @08:47AM (1 child)
I'll wait patiently for them to come back and then charge them double to fix the screw ups caused by their false economy. That is if I am not too busy with more lucrative work by the time they realise what a stupid mistake they've made
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @09:10AM
Thus spoke the delusional optimist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2020, @10:01AM (1 child)
Not true. There are recurring costs associated with this. It comes in the form of either rent or building maintenance. If the employer has lower rent or maintenance costs, those are not just realized once.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday July 27 2020, @10:16AM
Technically correct, but it will show in the balance sheet once.
Now that I think of it, you are right. Replacing a high wage employee with a low wage one will also show in the balance sheet once (or so the executives hope. Actually, the experience shows this rarely happens, the income is most likely going down on an ongoing basis too).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 5, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Monday July 27 2020, @06:32AM (3 children)
Your employer does not pay you for covering your private expenses, your employer pays you for the work you do. Will the work you do be worth less if you are working from home? If not, then why should your employer pay you less?
Will the employer pay me more if I choose to live in an expensive penthouse instead of a normal flat? No? Then why should the employer pay me less if I chose a cheaper home?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by corey on Monday July 27 2020, @11:30AM
I came here to say this. Nothing else to add, well said.
I have engineers reporting to me; what they contribute each day, is entirely what we pay them for. I don't care where they work. Most travel over an hour to work each way so it saves them a lot of time and energy, I know they are happy to bear a bit of tax exempt cost to buy office furniture for home. Though a lot are still borrowing monitors and chairs from the office.
This scheme sounds like a brain fart from a boardroom.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday July 27 2020, @01:22PM
The Facebook policy is idiotic, but... there is value (to the company) in living close to the office, at least for some positions.
Prior to COVID-19, about half my department worked from home half the time or more, coming in "as needed" - it was working well, saving commutes and giving more protected (protected from work colleagues) time for development work.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday July 27 2020, @05:03PM
My employer invests in a nice, quiet, well lit office in order to maximize the efficiency and quality of the work product.
A nice meeting room has much higher bandwidth (face to face) than any of Teams, Skype, or God forbid . . . Zoom. Projection, or whiteboard if you like.
Convenient "let's all go take an extended lunch and discuss this" that doesn't work so nicely from home.
Of course, now, it is a nice quiet well lit office, with almost nobody. Remote meetings were somewhat common across offices (scattered over US and Canada) but now you remote meet with everyone.
The thing about landline phones is that they never get lost. No air tag necessary.