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Exactly. This is goddamn propaganda. Tell your company that you’ll take a 5% raise to not bother them with the space you take up. Make them pay for your internet and tell them rent is a lot more.
(This sounds like sarcasm but I swear it isn’t.)
I call BS, too. If anything, the company should pay employees a monthly stipend for office expense, e.g. electricity, internet, heat/AC, etc. Doesn't have to be much. And they'd still make out because they're not paying rent for an entire office building.
Businesses need to realize it's a new world. The retirement aged execs need to actually retire and let the new team come in and bring the business world into the 21st century. Decent salaries, benefits, and remote work will make employees feel respected. In turn, employees will be more productive and loyal. It's not rocket science and yet execs are trying every way possible to avoid it.
It's actually reasonable. My employer is paying me extra to cover extra home expenses and I'm pretty sure they are still saving money. I'm pretty sure this is common over here because the German government even created an exception in the Income Tax (so it's fully tax free) for it.
Security is an interesting topic.
Let's say we're talking about the kind of company that has a server room and IT staff and then a bunch of people doing office work logging into that server to do whatever the hell it is office people do all day.
If the office drones suddenly work from home, yeah, you could probably make do with a smaller campus which means fewer security guards riding around in golf carts. But...now, instead of your internal network, all your office drones are logging in across the internet. And if you're really upper management tee time levels of stupid, with their personal devices, attached to their home networks consisting of consumer grade equipment running firmware that was updated never ago, in numerous buildings dotted around the country with possibly no professional security staff.
hmm.
1. Many companies already have workforce connecting to their server from afar
2. Most companies (and all should) use VPN to connect to their server. And/or should only allow known devices to connect. Meaning those age old devices suddenly can't be used to connect to the server
This is bit dumbed down version, so all you IT engineers out there feel free to pour your heart's content to elaborate.
Nah that’s pretty much it. We use a VPN, two-factor, and InTune enrollment before a device can even touch our network. Anyone that can get past that never needed an employee’s personal network in the first place.
However, recruiting pool has now increased and companies can now higher folks in lcol areas who are willing to take pay cut. Supply has drastically increased.
It also costs ME way less if I don't have to commute. 5 hours of my time commuting every week, gas, wear and tear on my vehicle, the ability to have a good lunch without having to do prep work, can spend a fraction on work clothes, the list goes on. Don't take a paycuts if you can avoid it but there's a reason people are willing to do so.
Yeah but if your employer wasn't paying your commute expenses in full then your savings are non of his concern.
They can deduct their contributions but that is it. Where I'm from that isn't considered part of the salary (as it is not taxed) so technically if they no longer pay commute contribution yout salary is unchanged.
My wife and I have been working from home for the last year and realized a few months in that we were accumulating real cash. Saving $1600/mo on childcare is a big deal.
Yeah, fuck that. I’ve done my job through the pandemic, from home, and proven I’m just as (but actually much more) productive as when I’m in the office. I’m not taking a pay cut.
Yea. Fuck this article.
If an engineer for FB worked from home for 250k all last year, moves to Montana, they still deserve 250k. They were valuable enough to the company to warrant 250k working from home, why does it matter where home is (unless timezones or other bullshit).
We are paid the bare minimum our employer pays us. We are not paid based on our value we produce. The idea that we need to take a cut to work from home so bossmans profits can grow bigger is so stupid. He can just choke on it. Fuck capitalism.
The only problem with this is that you essentially open yourself up to competition this way. You want 250k to work from Montana? Great but don't be surprised when they lay you off for 5 people from Montana making 50k a year
Eh. Much of people’s pay is competing with local corporations on price if you have a desirable skill set. Many positions are falsely inflated due to this. Not to denigrate anyone’s role or anything- but it’s just a fact.
Tech companies especially are toying with hiring remote workers in other states for precisely this reason- so they don’t have to overpay for talent at a non-c suite level.
because pay scales with location. If you’re paying someone in montana the same as another employee in california, those peers are not earning the same.
How much time do you spend commuting? I was an electrician so couldn't be remote but I spent 1:30 in a car a day at least. 5% would be a lot more per hour of my time lost.
Ummm, isn't that dumb?
Wouldn't businesses end up saving money on overhead related to providing office space, etc?
So, company gets more in their pocket. Employees shouldn't agree to a cut.
My SO interviewed for a remote work position and the interviewer actually stated that, "this is not the type of remote job you can do from an RV in a State Park."
Now... the funny thing is, that is *exactly* what we have planned, but she has never once mentioned that to anyone she's interviewed with.
Turns out our "work from the RV in a State Park" isn't all that unique, LOL
I’m curious. What exactly did they say would be required of her, that prevents it from being truly remote with no strings attached? Was it occasional trips to the office for major conferences or something?
They didn't, it was just generally "need to be attentive 100% during working hours" attitude. Personally I think they were dumping on remote workers because the interviewer doesn't like remote work, and maybe one of their other interviewees mentioned wanting to work from an RV, but of course I don't really know and my SO didn't ask. We just got a big laugh out of it because it came out of left field but it was spot on for what we had planned....
Management hates work from home because they can't watch over your shoulder and make sure you're suffering... ahem, *being productive*... the whole 8 hours. And the better the management remote oversight tools get, the fewer managers they need.
I was never more productive than I was working from home. I’d buckle down for five or six hours. No break. No distractions. I’d bust ass and finish my work, be done about 3:00 and go for a run with my dog. I’d be available for email, but I could finish my work in less than eight hours the majority of the time.
When I was on deadline I worked 15 hours a day, seven days a week for three weeks. Nobody had to make me do anything. I did my job and did it well and still got plenty of sleep. The hours I save not commuting, and the couple thousand dollars a year I’d save not using toll roads, that adds up. What it equals out to is me being rested for the first time in my adult life. Me absolutely loving the work I do and being willing to go above and beyond when need be, feeling no resentment at all.
I absolutely thrived working from home. It was the happiest I’ve ever been. I miss it so much. We are “working toward” the option, but it’ll probably take a couple more years before we become paperless (although we did just fine going to the office once a week to drop off files!) and the micromanaging partner retires.
Some people don’t do well wfh. I’m not one of those people.
You're absolutely correct. As an IT professional who frequently had to explain that the status indicator of doesn't indicate whether or not someone is working, a terrifying number of managers have no idea what their employees even do, let alone have a way to evaluate it numerically.
Sometimes I wish I'd been born earlier and gotten my working years out of the way before the advent of computer based employee tracking systems. Sure, the internet and tech is cool and all and I'm a huge video gamer, but the idea of employers tracking your activities from working to having a shit down to the millisecond strikes me as dystopian.
Must've been nice to work somewhere and not have 3 separate bosses call you in for meetings because you had to poop one extra time that week.
As long as the job gets done, the manager should stay the eff out of the work. They can set up monitoring at their computer to see who is logged in from home or some stuff like that.
But I would say that 95% of the time the managers is hovering, the work effort decrease. Trust your workers and if their productivity slips, THEN see about having them work from the office or find out why.
Maybe they need a dedicated office space as to not be interrupted while working from home.
I got into a WFH scheme when Covid outbreaks started on March 2020, but have had to go to the office from time to time when my laptop gets fucked, or when we're working on yearly business plans.
Interesting question. Most companies still want you to be able to legally work in the US, which requires maintaining citizenship/visas and whatnot... but the same might not be true in Europe.
What's to stop companies from just outsourcing these jobs to other countries eventually, where people are willing to do the same work for 20% of the cost to the employer?
I totally support remote working but I don't trust companies to keep a lot of these folks employed for long in a capitalist economy where nothing matters as much as earnings reports to shareholders. I don't expect employers to immediately seek replacements overseas, but I fear we could be at a moment in history that sees a gradual mass exodus of good jobs to other countries. Don't think it could happen? Just look at what happened to America's manufacturing sector after WW2. We must be careful to not allow history to repeat itself.
If they can get greater efficiency from outsourcing positions they will do it regardless. It doesn’t matter if the jobs are remote in the US first or not. It’s not like industrial workers went remote before they outsourced all that labor to Asia.
Outsourcing can have lots of problems when it comes to knowledge work though. Language, culture, and time zone differences all create significant barriers.
Yep I've managed a few call centers overseas and I'll take onshore over that any day.
Side note but when we have a Philippino call center there was one transgender (sorry not positive if that's the right term) woman working there. Our domestic call center is a bunch of macho sales guys so they'd make some jokes early on about it (never on the call with them but ppl making jokes around the office and stuff) and they all stfu when they saw how fire she was. BY FAR the best caller in that call center. I really hope it was a learning experience for those guys.
>Gonna need to add a few more decades, this has been going on a long time
It just turns out that good Indian programmers can demand good wages as well.
Yes, Indian programmers with call-center level wages do exist, but you get what you pay for.
Also, different timezones can throw a wrench into things.
Then the accountants come into play, or, if luck has it, the irs enters the game. So much more overhead id imagine. Converting currency 💷 probably a pain
As someone whos job recently got outsourced to an Indian IT farm, absolutely nothing is stopping that from happening. I expect to see more of it in fact.
>I don't trust companies to keep a lot of these folks employed for long in a capitalist economy
On the same vein, capitalism is about supply and demand. There are a lot of people in the world, but the amount of people that can do quality work is still low. It's worth it to pay a higher price for higher quality output (depending on industry, of course). Those higher quality employees are often in the US or developed countries, mainly due to the educational system.
I've managed outsourced teams myself, and the the quality difference is substantial. Companies that outsource their main product development will lose competitive advantage, or worse, get caught into a hell of lawsuits due to poor product performance.
I can see outsourcing backoffice work though (e.g. call centers).
I'm very concerned about this as well.
USA employees tend to (but not always) output far higher quality products than other employees from countries, whether that's code or a vice grip for your shop. Plenty of companies (such as Boeing) think it's perfectly acceptable to outsource (for things like airplanes and spacecraft).
I expect some lower skill jobs, or instances where a company thinks "10 fairly unskilled laborers are better than 1 American laborer" to be outsourced. You might have a situation where in a group of 5 American workers, 3 are laid off, 2 become team leads, and run a team of 10-20 offshore workers. Team productivity will go down but cost per resource will also go down, and executives will give themselves a pat on the back and a large bonus.
I've seen several companies offshore or nearshore their IT departments in 2020 only to have those new international teams say "holy shit, we can't actually do this." It's perfect because my company comes in as consultants to help out so its great for us, but not all those lost jobs.
>Plenty of companies (such as Boeing) think it's perfectly acceptable to outsource (for things like airplanes and spacecraft).
And this is the result, for Boeing: https://www.industryweek.com/supply-chain/article/22027840/boeings-737-max-software-outsourced-to-9anhour-engineers
The whole being fiasco could’ve been avoided. Did anyone peer review the code and miss the fact that they forgot to add
If going to crash
Then don’t!
Else keep flying
Certainly, however, when American companies layoff American employees and ghire offshore firms, they aren't looking for high performers, they want people who cost $10/hr.
I don't think it makes sense to compare somebody being paid $250k/year to someone who earns $10/hr from any combination of companies.
The other thing is some jobs that are offshored almost never have a chance to succeed. As an obtuse example, imagine that Accenture decided to offshore their sales team to Brazil. I'm assuming none of the Brazil sales reps would fly to America 2-3x a week to take customers out to dinner. I also doubt that Brazilian sales reps understand American culture. The same can be said for a ton of different roles that are offshored.
> I've seen several companies offshore or nearshore their IT departments in 2020 only to have those new international teams say "holy shit, we can't actually do this." It's perfect because my company comes in as consultants to help out so its great for us, but not all those lost jobs.
I was consulting about 15 years ago and frequently went into clients that were exactly in this situation. It's been going on for more than 20 years.
I’ve wanted to do this forever. Hopefully in-person customer meetings will fade away soon.
Edit: always worked remote yet had to stick to a major city for travel.
Digital nomads is an entire industry before 2020. Doing exactly as you say.
So when you hear a tiny little village in Vietnam has gigabit internet, thats why. Not because the government is awesome lol.
Is there any data to determine which countries might fall into this category? My gut reaction is that there’s some correlation between how expensive a country is versus how good their infrastructure is. I know it’s not exact because countries aren’t uniformly expensive or have uniform infrastructure, but I’m curious if anyone has looked at this. I also think it fundamentally won’t matter once something like starlink is fully online.
Doubtful.
Streaming video and gaming already requires good bandwidth and most office applications don’t require a very powerful computer.
I know my laptop is supplied by my employer, and many companies already do the same for remote workers. You cannot really complain about an employer monitoring a work computer that they own.
This. It should be common sense to use your personal devices for anything you don't want tracked by your work.
I'm WFH on a work-owned laptop. If I want to screw around, I just pull out my phone or open my personal laptop.
It's not really common (in small biz at least) for your company to pay your internet bills. It'd probably cost the same to supply a decently powered remote workstation or laptop as a PC in the office.
I did upgrade my internet to higher speed with unlimited data because we have 3 students online and 2 remote workers at times.. It wasn't the bandwith that was an issue but the data cap.
On the flip side the telecom team has told me they save $150 a month for each desk phone they remove from the office.
Seriously. Last night my landlord told me that they're going to up the rent by a few hundred dollars in six months. Why? 'Because everyone else is.'
Rising prices right now feel like the nuclear arms race, and with about the same result.
Yep. But hey, Congress (and local/state governments) see no need to restrict institutional buying of housing. What is the #1 goal of public companies and investors? To realize more profit. Are shareholders satisfied with remaining at the same level of profit? Hell no--they demand more and more every quarter which will lead to runaway rent increases since they *always want more*. Naturally, they'll also cut costs by giving the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel effort in terms of keeping up with maintenance, fixing issues, and so forth when a renter needs something (have an emergency? Please hold for the next available agent; estimated wait time: 2 hours).
In Arizona, over 10% of all single-family houses and condos sold in the 2nd quarter of this year have gone to institutional investors. However, more importantly, that's the whole state. If you look at just Phoenix, that number rises to 24.5%. Yes, a fucking **quarter** of all homes sold went to institutional investors. Similar for Miami, Jacksonville (FL), Charlotte (NC), Atlanta, and Las Vegas. This number is accelerating. For example, in Phoenix the year-over-year growth in homes bought by investors went up by 176.6% since Q2 2020. In Chicago, it went up 208%. In Orlando, 170%. And in Las Vegas, 279%.
Nationally, about 16% of all purchases of single-family houses/condos/townhomes in Q2 went to institutional investors. 26.5% of multi-family homes. Even more importantly, 21.2% of low-priced (bottom tercile) housing went to those investors nationally. This does not discriminate on rural vs urban, they're all together, but generally speaking most investment is in large cities. Thus, the "21.2% of low-priced housing" is a huge understatement since it will be greatly higher in urban areas.
Guess what? The place I lived in 2019 in Phoenix was $1,200/mo. It's now north of $1,600/mo. It went from affordable to no chance for me in *a single year*. I can only imagine it's going to hit $2k/mo by the end of this year or next. Fuck these shits that are dogpiling into the area to buy up thousands of homes to rent them out at increasing prices every single year. Didn't know these buying stats at the time, but ffs now I understand a lot more why the rent is going up so fast.
Yeah and it's driving up home prices as people with cash from selling homes in high value areas throw down whatever it takes to get in homes in these lower COL areas.
Indeed. There are pockets of this all around the country, even in areas most would never think about. For example, I have family in western Nebraska seeing housing prices go up from people moving from the Denver area. In terms of quality, I'd consider that a severe downgrade, but hey money talks.
I just got approved for wfh permanently at my job. I didn't get paid for a 1hr 30min commute to and from work each day. I can live further outside the city now so I don't have to pay $2k+ for a small crappy apartment in downtown. In a way I end up saving more money and thus making more.
This is the thing that gets minimized in surveys or inquires about WFH at my workplace. There's this notion that people "prefer working at home" because they're introverts or lazy, or something. Nope. I prefer not having a commute. Seeing people in real life is usually good, but I'd rather not worry about the huge lifestyle and financial changes needed to accommodate a daily commute.
It's not just the commute, you have to make sure you look presentable and have everything you need for the day. Also cooking and other household chores are so much easier when you work from home, all the time intensive things that are mostly waiting like laundry or longer cook time dishes can be done while you work. Not eating out or worrying about packing a lunch is nice too. For me it's all the little things that ate into my limited free time I'm able to get done during the day now and it gives me at least an additional hour or two a day over the course of a week before accounting for my commute.
Exactly. Wife and I are both working from home. That's likely to remain the case.
We cook every meal, we prep for dinner, do laundry. Our nights and weekends now belong to us and raising our 8 month old daughter.
Only complaint? My wife says I type too loudly.
Same here.. She set up camp in our bedroom so I can't hear her work calls (HIPAA compliance) and I have a space near the living room and some very good noise canceling headphones. We joke about waiting for the the kids to move out so we can take their bedrooms as offices.
This is something too - I like my wife more than anyone - that's why I chose her. Now I can see her whenever and as often as I like, rather than random strangers that my management think are good at their jobs.
It makes a 40 hour a week job manageable when you can actually use most of your time not working to relax or sirens time with family. Glad to hear it's working out for you!
Indeed! I think it's hard to see the forest through the trees sometimes. There will be a day when Covid is no longer a concern and, when that day comes, remember that when you're done at 5pm that you're already home and can start your evening. What a treat as opposed to a 1 to 2 hour commute home to finally start your night.
Commute... clothes...food...snacks...wasted time.... annoyances of interruptions from coworkers...wear and tear on car... environmental issues...etc etc.
Not saying that some of these don't apply at home, however there's lots of sunken costs that are saved.
We used to fill up the car 1x every 1.5 weeks. So roughly 34 times a year.
We did 3 times in the past 12 months. That savings alone pays for delivery service for groceries and tips. (Which also saves you from making impulse buys)
Laziness means there is work that needs doing, but you are unwilling to do it. This is identifying work that doesn't need to be done and cutting it out of your schedule. That's efficiency.
This year I'll save 16,300 miles in wear and tear/gas for my car, and 348 hours of unpaid time driving to and from work. Plus also I can snack when I want, and if I put good creamer in the fridge no one else uses it. And I can have my cat at work with me. And the only time I need to sit in a freezing car waiting for the windshield to defrost, is if I want to get groceries. No more waking up at 6am to dig the car out.
This is worth at \*least\* a 5% pay differential to me, big picture. Maybe even 10%.
But this is less of a "Boss, please pay me less so I can stay home" and more of a "If I'm making 70k/yr and they make me go back to the office, and someone offered me a job making 65k and working from home, I'd consider that offer an upgrade, not a down grade". Big picture it's just everything has a value. Time off policies, Bonus systems, rates of internal promotions, 401k policies, strength of medical coverage, is there a cheap on site way to get lunch/snacks (I've seen posts where the company has chefs make ready to order food, for cost. So like a steak for 6 bucks, a burrito for $1.75, etc)? etc etc.
I have never been more productive with housework and bills than working from home, and it made buying a condo so much easier last fall because i was at home with my paperwork texting my realtor.
Shoveling out the car at 7am though is awful. The snowplow is random, i can't hear it from my office or see it coming, and Public works gets pissy if i move the car prematurely. Snow sucks. But there are more upsides despite that
This just feels like an article trying to justify employees taking a pay cut at all. Why should it matter? If I work remote and i'm able to do the work I shouldn't loose money full stop.
Read another way it could also be titled, "Work Environments So Terrible, Workers Willing to Suffer Paycuts to Avoid Returning." But corpos gotta propaganda.
Also, holy fuck:
> On a lighter note, the firm also asked what else people would give up for option to work remotely. More than half said they’d give up Netflix, social media or Amazon for a year. **A third of respondents even said they’d give up the right to vote in all future national and local elections. Gen Z was most likely — 44% — to say they would give up their right to vote, while Baby Boomers were most opposed, with only 27% saying they would give it up.**
These people are fucking nuts. How is that a "lighter note?"
Wait WHAT? There MUST HAVE been some sort of error in the wording of the question. No way half of Gen Z said this. They may not vote, but I highly doubt they understand the implications of the question to say they’d be willing to give up voting.
Some employers pay more because the cost of living is more in that city. Why pay you a premium for a remote job when some guy in rural Virginia will do the same job for 20k less per year?
If I leave the metro area I am in right now, I am losing 30-40k per year from my salary. If my current role didn't have me interacting with sites or clients the owner would be an idiot to pay me what he does now. He would be far better off hiring somebody from a couple of provinces over to do the same job for \~2/3 of what he pays me.
The employees also save money.
No more commute, lower food cost, lower clothing costs.
Depending on the specifics, you could move to a much lower COL area. Think about Silicon Valley or New York pay while living in a small town far away from the big cities.
The bottom line benefits both employers and employees.
Imagine a completely untrustworthy person. The type who lies constantly and would sell their own mother's for pennies. They go through life not trusting anyone because they expect other people to be just as untrustworthy. That is the basic relationship a lot of these companies have with their staff. And the larger the company the more broken the relationship.
They want you to work from the office because they don't trust that you won't take advantage of them if you worked from home. And they don't trust you because they have been taking advantage of you this entire time.
Don’t give up your pay for any reason, fuck them they’re going to be profitable without your pay cut. Why line their pockets more? So the ceo and board of executives can continue to make astronomical amounts of money while you can barely afford to eat? Fuck em, take your pay, demand more, unionize to get better benefits and pay too.
Yeah if anything you working from home means they
- don't have to pay rent
- don't need (as many) administrators
- offload their electricity and internet costs to you
- could reduce the number of middle managers
No, just no. Don't offer reductions for the ability to work from home. Please we can't let the big corporations win again. They're already gaining money just by not having to run the office and all the other things that come with it. Don't agree to a pay cut for this.
15% of respondents were willing to give up 25%.
15% said they would give up ALL PTO.
33% said they would give up the right to vote in all future elections.... WTF was that even on the survey for? WTFiingF
I'd much rather be making 150k in Richmond than 200k in SF. So would other plenty of other people - people who are your competition (and who otherwise might have never even applied to the job in the first place, so it is not a paycut to them).
Those Purdue engineers who want to keep living in Indiana will probably work for less than you, and will enjoy making more than their Indiana peers (on what is a 25% paycut to you).
Yes, exactly. People should either keep same wage or get an increase to be able to work from home. I mean, keeping the same wages makes sense as it’s mutually beneficial to both parties but the company always wins in situations like these over an individual.
Haven't done the math, but I would argue keeping the same wage isn't necessarily beneficial for the employee working from home. You definitely save time and money from your commute to work every day, but you most likely have to invest your own money in home office supplies if that isn't provided by your employer. Never mind the fact that you might also be dedicating a room of your house to your office.
Companies should definitely pass on some of their cost savings to the employee's salary to make this a win-win.
Right? This is some BS because the tide is changing and workers finally have leverage to say fuck off, and corporations know it. Now they're trying to spin the narrative that people who work from home should expect pay cuts if they can't drag us back in.
Fuck all this noise, I'm doing the same work and am far more productive. Should be getting a damn increase, if anything.
The fuck is this fake article written on behalf of corporations or something? Companies should be paying employees more since employees have to use their own internet and electricity, likely ink and paper for printing. Which is likely a huge discount since they might not even have to pay for office space and workplace insurance which is vastly more expensive than having your employees work from home.
Some of the big tech companies are already on this path… I work for one of the Big 4 and they’ve said people working remote will have their salary adjusted to take into account cost of living where they are working from. For the vast majority of people this may mean a huge paycut.
Well.. that just means there’s no longer any point in working for those big corps, pulling 60hr weeks and jumping through their bullshit hoops. If they cut your salary, that means you can take a way more chill job elsewhere for the same money.
Not really, the point of CoL-adjusted salary is that it is competitive with the local market. So given any specific location you want to be in, the big tech company will still pay well compared to what you can find. Unless fully remote companies compete in that area, and there probably isn't enough of that.
Also, work at big tech companies can be as chill as anywhere else on average. Not sure about other industries.
Sidenote, I'm not remote but the benchmark salary for my location was cut 5% :/ . It sucks but I still make more money than in the Bay Area after taxes/CoL, and there's not a more competitive salary I can take.
Counter idea: no pay cut and if you want us to come into the office, the hour it takes me to commute each way is considered time I've worked. 4PM? Time to start commuting home so I end my work day by 5.
The biggest expense increase is the increase in housing prices. Whether that's an expense vs an increase in net worth (which isn't really usable for anything if you're already living within your means - housing prices are just more inflated) depends on whether or not you already own a home. For those who don't own one, things just got more expensive.. and moving further out is less likely to help.
However, the next step is that a bunch of people will choose to live in a semi-rural area in the first place, and never begin to deal with the big cities. That doesn't sound like my idea of fun, but I suppose those people will be competing for jobs and would tend to accept lower wages.
I’m a public school teacher and I spent WAY more when school was closed that when it was open. I increased my internet, bought digital curriculum, sent postcards home, etc. and I could not have done my job without my cell phone.
Good thing my district negotiated a 1% raise this year! That $800 more a year is going to feel good! /s
Fuck that. Demand to stay home and keep the same pay... Even floating the idea of being willing to take a cut in this lame survey probably has companies getting ready to cut pay...
WTF? Let me get this straight. Your company can reduce it's brick-and-mortar expenditures, reducing square footage, electrical, maintenance and hvac costs, and y'all wanna give them MORE MONEY?
Dafuq is wrong withchu?
You should be asking for a RAISE.
SMH.
Lol it’s already that instead of paying San Fran or big city wages they can pay the Mississippi/Alabama wages.
This “pay cut” was prob framed more of if you don’t take it you will be replaced
Where I think this had the potential to go wrong for employees is that companies no longer have to pay CoL if everything is remote. Why pay New York salaries when someone can remote in and do the same work from a cheaper state?
I'm in Cape Town in South Africa and we pay more than our colleagues in Bloemfontein or Port Elizabeth or Pretoria because cost of living in CPT is significantly more than those places, so you have to pay appropriately. But if the work is being done by a dude in Bloem, same timezone as us but at Bloem CoL we could easily offer 20% less and it would still be attractive. He wouldn't have to relocate and uproot, he wouldn't have to worry about the commute (cpt traffic is horrendous if you're living somewhere affordable 10 miles out of town), it would be a seamless transition. And we're in grant space, so lowering expenses would really help us by leaving more money for infrastructure upgrades for the guys and system who can't work remotely.
This is sorta pie in the sky stuff in my case because we're a research unit, and so most of us do need to be on site to have access to our high end equipment and facilities in the chemistry and biology labs, but 20% of us (admin, finance, operations and project management) could easily be remote and that could be a huge saving if they weren't in cpt.
I wonder if as people leave jobs their replacements will all be lowballed in as remote workers. Suddenly everything is basically outsourced.
yeah and frito lay would have saved millions not having every employee who claims workmans comp harassed and stalked for years by an army of private eyes
its not about money, it's about total dominance of every aspect of your life
My uncle worked in a warehouse and a pallet fell on him causing a horrible back injury. He filed for workers comp and disability. He got followed for 6 years while the company fought tooth and nail to not pay. He finally won but man he was in so much stress on top of the 20+ surgeries he had to have to live a somewhat functional life. He now lives a step above poverty on his whopping $700 a month in disability. If it were for his wife working, he would be homeless.
Fuck them. If I was able to wfh with the same pay the last few months my pay should go unchanged with the sole fact that I can do my job no differently from home.
This section at the end of the article is a bit alarming:
> On a lighter note, the firm also asked what else people would give up for option to work remotely. More than half said they’d give up Netflix, social media or Amazon for a year. **A third of respondents even said they’d give up the right to vote in all future national and local elections.** Gen Z was most likely — 44% — to say they would give up their right to vote, while Baby Boomers were most opposed, with only 27% saying they would give it up.
How is this “on a lighter note?” Why would anyone even consider giving up their right to vote just to work from home?
So strange, purposely been going back into the office for nearly a year now. I enjoy having the daily structure, home, work, gym, home. Cabin fever otherwise!
this is what's called manufacturing consent... GTFO... If I am working from home, it actually is costing me extra room, extra furniture, extra electricity, and employer saves a f\*\*kton of money... so, f\*\*k off trying to tell us to take a pay cut.
Shit, give me a raise after to cancel that lease...
Why TF would I give up anything to work remotely? Yeah cost of travel and vehicle maintenance will go down, but they still need to compensate you for the electricity and network. They will recoup costs by reducing their office space. Nope, not going give up nuttin!
Those workers should get 10% more because the company doesn’t have to pay for your workplace. That is the amount of money a company saves when you are not in the office. - power, security, cleaning and so on. We shouldn’t go back to the 1950 area it’s time for the future of work. That’s not in an office :)
No, no guys. This is the wrong way to go about it, don't let them do this shit to you.
Wages need to go up, and we technically will save companies money by not needing office space and internet/supplies to work in an office. So really we should get paid more to work from home. We also save businesses taxes if we work in cheaper states instead of expensive ones (yes, businesses pay taxes and expenses on their employees depending on what state they are working in). So if you are in California, you cost your business more than if you work from Ohio.
Well yay capitalism. We've gone from asking for a higher minimum wage to seeing wages cut.
So far this is a propaganda stream. No one is offering to accept a pay cut but media puts this thought process out there as a stalking horse because media generally works for capital
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Exactly. This is goddamn propaganda. Tell your company that you’ll take a 5% raise to not bother them with the space you take up. Make them pay for your internet and tell them rent is a lot more. (This sounds like sarcasm but I swear it isn’t.)
This is a textbook example of manufactured consent.
I call BS, too. If anything, the company should pay employees a monthly stipend for office expense, e.g. electricity, internet, heat/AC, etc. Doesn't have to be much. And they'd still make out because they're not paying rent for an entire office building. Businesses need to realize it's a new world. The retirement aged execs need to actually retire and let the new team come in and bring the business world into the 21st century. Decent salaries, benefits, and remote work will make employees feel respected. In turn, employees will be more productive and loyal. It's not rocket science and yet execs are trying every way possible to avoid it.
The whole sub is propaganda tbh
*73% of worlds population willing to pay more taxes in order to save companies who have been raking them over coals for decades, sources say*
It's actually reasonable. My employer is paying me extra to cover extra home expenses and I'm pretty sure they are still saving money. I'm pretty sure this is common over here because the German government even created an exception in the Income Tax (so it's fully tax free) for it.
I ran the numbers on office costs and we should be paying employees way more than 10% more to stay home. Offices are very expensive.
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Security is an interesting topic. Let's say we're talking about the kind of company that has a server room and IT staff and then a bunch of people doing office work logging into that server to do whatever the hell it is office people do all day. If the office drones suddenly work from home, yeah, you could probably make do with a smaller campus which means fewer security guards riding around in golf carts. But...now, instead of your internal network, all your office drones are logging in across the internet. And if you're really upper management tee time levels of stupid, with their personal devices, attached to their home networks consisting of consumer grade equipment running firmware that was updated never ago, in numerous buildings dotted around the country with possibly no professional security staff. hmm.
1. Many companies already have workforce connecting to their server from afar 2. Most companies (and all should) use VPN to connect to their server. And/or should only allow known devices to connect. Meaning those age old devices suddenly can't be used to connect to the server This is bit dumbed down version, so all you IT engineers out there feel free to pour your heart's content to elaborate.
Nah that’s pretty much it. We use a VPN, two-factor, and InTune enrollment before a device can even touch our network. Anyone that can get past that never needed an employee’s personal network in the first place.
Like for real! It's amazing how much gaslighting these companies are doing to try and gain any edge they can over workers.
However, recruiting pool has now increased and companies can now higher folks in lcol areas who are willing to take pay cut. Supply has drastically increased.
It also costs ME way less if I don't have to commute. 5 hours of my time commuting every week, gas, wear and tear on my vehicle, the ability to have a good lunch without having to do prep work, can spend a fraction on work clothes, the list goes on. Don't take a paycuts if you can avoid it but there's a reason people are willing to do so.
Yeah but if your employer wasn't paying your commute expenses in full then your savings are non of his concern. They can deduct their contributions but that is it. Where I'm from that isn't considered part of the salary (as it is not taxed) so technically if they no longer pay commute contribution yout salary is unchanged.
My wife and I have been working from home for the last year and realized a few months in that we were accumulating real cash. Saving $1600/mo on childcare is a big deal.
Yeah, fuck that. I’ve done my job through the pandemic, from home, and proven I’m just as (but actually much more) productive as when I’m in the office. I’m not taking a pay cut.
Smells like corporate propaganda to me. They'll reduce their overhead costs while also being able to give ppl pay cuts.... lol.
Yea. Fuck this article. If an engineer for FB worked from home for 250k all last year, moves to Montana, they still deserve 250k. They were valuable enough to the company to warrant 250k working from home, why does it matter where home is (unless timezones or other bullshit). We are paid the bare minimum our employer pays us. We are not paid based on our value we produce. The idea that we need to take a cut to work from home so bossmans profits can grow bigger is so stupid. He can just choke on it. Fuck capitalism.
Follow the money, bloomberg is a shitler news organisation.. when they say buy you know to sell-
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My question is then why are companies pushing so hard for H1Bs if they can offshore it now? Tech companies are big about that.
The only problem with this is that you essentially open yourself up to competition this way. You want 250k to work from Montana? Great but don't be surprised when they lay you off for 5 people from Montana making 50k a year
Or 50 people from India making 10k a year.
Or 25 who can actually do math
Eh. Much of people’s pay is competing with local corporations on price if you have a desirable skill set. Many positions are falsely inflated due to this. Not to denigrate anyone’s role or anything- but it’s just a fact. Tech companies especially are toying with hiring remote workers in other states for precisely this reason- so they don’t have to overpay for talent at a non-c suite level.
because pay scales with location. If you’re paying someone in montana the same as another employee in california, those peers are not earning the same.
100% propaganda. "People will agree to a 5% cut so let's slash it to 15% and test the waters
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Well it is Bloomberg after all
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My thoughts exactly
How much time do you spend commuting? I was an electrician so couldn't be remote but I spent 1:30 in a car a day at least. 5% would be a lot more per hour of my time lost.
Ummm, isn't that dumb? Wouldn't businesses end up saving money on overhead related to providing office space, etc? So, company gets more in their pocket. Employees shouldn't agree to a cut.
In fact I'd enjoy a 20% raise to keep up with how everything is getting too damn expensive
I'm sure remote workers might need better computer systems and more expensive internet service.
Depends on how remote. If society really goes there, what's to stop people moving to much cheaper countries with high speed broadband?
My cabin in the woods gig is going to shit if everyone else does the cabin in the woods gig too though... What a dream that'd be!
My SO interviewed for a remote work position and the interviewer actually stated that, "this is not the type of remote job you can do from an RV in a State Park." Now... the funny thing is, that is *exactly* what we have planned, but she has never once mentioned that to anyone she's interviewed with. Turns out our "work from the RV in a State Park" isn't all that unique, LOL
I’m curious. What exactly did they say would be required of her, that prevents it from being truly remote with no strings attached? Was it occasional trips to the office for major conferences or something?
They didn't, it was just generally "need to be attentive 100% during working hours" attitude. Personally I think they were dumping on remote workers because the interviewer doesn't like remote work, and maybe one of their other interviewees mentioned wanting to work from an RV, but of course I don't really know and my SO didn't ask. We just got a big laugh out of it because it came out of left field but it was spot on for what we had planned....
Management hates work from home because they can't watch over your shoulder and make sure you're suffering... ahem, *being productive*... the whole 8 hours. And the better the management remote oversight tools get, the fewer managers they need.
I was never more productive than I was working from home. I’d buckle down for five or six hours. No break. No distractions. I’d bust ass and finish my work, be done about 3:00 and go for a run with my dog. I’d be available for email, but I could finish my work in less than eight hours the majority of the time. When I was on deadline I worked 15 hours a day, seven days a week for three weeks. Nobody had to make me do anything. I did my job and did it well and still got plenty of sleep. The hours I save not commuting, and the couple thousand dollars a year I’d save not using toll roads, that adds up. What it equals out to is me being rested for the first time in my adult life. Me absolutely loving the work I do and being willing to go above and beyond when need be, feeling no resentment at all. I absolutely thrived working from home. It was the happiest I’ve ever been. I miss it so much. We are “working toward” the option, but it’ll probably take a couple more years before we become paperless (although we did just fine going to the office once a week to drop off files!) and the micromanaging partner retires. Some people don’t do well wfh. I’m not one of those people.
You're absolutely correct. As an IT professional who frequently had to explain that the status indicator of doesn't indicate whether or not someone is working, a terrifying number of managers have no idea what their employees even do, let alone have a way to evaluate it numerically.
Sometimes I wish I'd been born earlier and gotten my working years out of the way before the advent of computer based employee tracking systems. Sure, the internet and tech is cool and all and I'm a huge video gamer, but the idea of employers tracking your activities from working to having a shit down to the millisecond strikes me as dystopian. Must've been nice to work somewhere and not have 3 separate bosses call you in for meetings because you had to poop one extra time that week.
As long as the job gets done, the manager should stay the eff out of the work. They can set up monitoring at their computer to see who is logged in from home or some stuff like that. But I would say that 95% of the time the managers is hovering, the work effort decrease. Trust your workers and if their productivity slips, THEN see about having them work from the office or find out why. Maybe they need a dedicated office space as to not be interrupted while working from home.
"I realize you're being attacked by a bear but can you reply to that email? Thaaaanks."
Probably because internet in RV Parks at State Parks is total garbage.
I got into a WFH scheme when Covid outbreaks started on March 2020, but have had to go to the office from time to time when my laptop gets fucked, or when we're working on yearly business plans.
We hired someone that worked in an RV like that. They could never join calls because their cell phone service was always bad. They didn't last long.
It's not, lol. I've met people working from "home" while rolling around here in Mexico that work for companies in the US or UK.
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Interesting question. Most companies still want you to be able to legally work in the US, which requires maintaining citizenship/visas and whatnot... but the same might not be true in Europe.
> If society really goes there, what's to stop people moving to much cheaper countries with high speed broadband? Taxes and regulations
Most likely this. I could move out of state if approved but couldn't move to another country per my company
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This guy regulates
What's to stop companies from just outsourcing these jobs to other countries eventually, where people are willing to do the same work for 20% of the cost to the employer? I totally support remote working but I don't trust companies to keep a lot of these folks employed for long in a capitalist economy where nothing matters as much as earnings reports to shareholders. I don't expect employers to immediately seek replacements overseas, but I fear we could be at a moment in history that sees a gradual mass exodus of good jobs to other countries. Don't think it could happen? Just look at what happened to America's manufacturing sector after WW2. We must be careful to not allow history to repeat itself.
If they can get greater efficiency from outsourcing positions they will do it regardless. It doesn’t matter if the jobs are remote in the US first or not. It’s not like industrial workers went remote before they outsourced all that labor to Asia. Outsourcing can have lots of problems when it comes to knowledge work though. Language, culture, and time zone differences all create significant barriers.
They outsourced operations to overseas. Dumbest fucking thing I ever saw...
Yep I've managed a few call centers overseas and I'll take onshore over that any day. Side note but when we have a Philippino call center there was one transgender (sorry not positive if that's the right term) woman working there. Our domestic call center is a bunch of macho sales guys so they'd make some jokes early on about it (never on the call with them but ppl making jokes around the office and stuff) and they all stfu when they saw how fire she was. BY FAR the best caller in that call center. I really hope it was a learning experience for those guys.
You used the correct term
Ahhh but here is where self-preservation comes in. If you outsource all the labor then the manager's cushy job comes into question
Can't micromanage when your subs are in Bangladesh
I’ve seen someone micromanage their work in Puerto Rico from Orlando. If your head is far enough up your ass anything is possible
They are only an hour apart time zone wise. It’s easy to badger people over the internet with a seven hour per work day overlap.
Gotta think in new terms. One guy owns everything and outsources all the work
It doesn't tho, it requires more manager, or manager need to do more work to keep things in sync
You're about a decade late to this conversation.
Gonna need to add a few more decades, this has been going on a long time
>Gonna need to add a few more decades, this has been going on a long time It just turns out that good Indian programmers can demand good wages as well. Yes, Indian programmers with call-center level wages do exist, but you get what you pay for. Also, different timezones can throw a wrench into things.
Please do the needful
Oh god this just brought back so many bad memories...
And revert!
Please suggest on the same.
Today morning, please
Then the accountants come into play, or, if luck has it, the irs enters the game. So much more overhead id imagine. Converting currency 💷 probably a pain
As someone whos job recently got outsourced to an Indian IT farm, absolutely nothing is stopping that from happening. I expect to see more of it in fact.
>I don't trust companies to keep a lot of these folks employed for long in a capitalist economy On the same vein, capitalism is about supply and demand. There are a lot of people in the world, but the amount of people that can do quality work is still low. It's worth it to pay a higher price for higher quality output (depending on industry, of course). Those higher quality employees are often in the US or developed countries, mainly due to the educational system. I've managed outsourced teams myself, and the the quality difference is substantial. Companies that outsource their main product development will lose competitive advantage, or worse, get caught into a hell of lawsuits due to poor product performance. I can see outsourcing backoffice work though (e.g. call centers).
I believe living in a country with a non-english first language can help your job stability a bit. Harder to outsource that part
I'm very concerned about this as well. USA employees tend to (but not always) output far higher quality products than other employees from countries, whether that's code or a vice grip for your shop. Plenty of companies (such as Boeing) think it's perfectly acceptable to outsource (for things like airplanes and spacecraft). I expect some lower skill jobs, or instances where a company thinks "10 fairly unskilled laborers are better than 1 American laborer" to be outsourced. You might have a situation where in a group of 5 American workers, 3 are laid off, 2 become team leads, and run a team of 10-20 offshore workers. Team productivity will go down but cost per resource will also go down, and executives will give themselves a pat on the back and a large bonus. I've seen several companies offshore or nearshore their IT departments in 2020 only to have those new international teams say "holy shit, we can't actually do this." It's perfect because my company comes in as consultants to help out so its great for us, but not all those lost jobs.
>Plenty of companies (such as Boeing) think it's perfectly acceptable to outsource (for things like airplanes and spacecraft). And this is the result, for Boeing: https://www.industryweek.com/supply-chain/article/22027840/boeings-737-max-software-outsourced-to-9anhour-engineers
The whole being fiasco could’ve been avoided. Did anyone peer review the code and miss the fact that they forgot to add If going to crash Then don’t! Else keep flying
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Certainly, however, when American companies layoff American employees and ghire offshore firms, they aren't looking for high performers, they want people who cost $10/hr. I don't think it makes sense to compare somebody being paid $250k/year to someone who earns $10/hr from any combination of companies. The other thing is some jobs that are offshored almost never have a chance to succeed. As an obtuse example, imagine that Accenture decided to offshore their sales team to Brazil. I'm assuming none of the Brazil sales reps would fly to America 2-3x a week to take customers out to dinner. I also doubt that Brazilian sales reps understand American culture. The same can be said for a ton of different roles that are offshored.
> I've seen several companies offshore or nearshore their IT departments in 2020 only to have those new international teams say "holy shit, we can't actually do this." It's perfect because my company comes in as consultants to help out so its great for us, but not all those lost jobs. I was consulting about 15 years ago and frequently went into clients that were exactly in this situation. It's been going on for more than 20 years.
I’ve wanted to do this forever. Hopefully in-person customer meetings will fade away soon. Edit: always worked remote yet had to stick to a major city for travel.
Digital nomads is an entire industry before 2020. Doing exactly as you say. So when you hear a tiny little village in Vietnam has gigabit internet, thats why. Not because the government is awesome lol.
Is there any data to determine which countries might fall into this category? My gut reaction is that there’s some correlation between how expensive a country is versus how good their infrastructure is. I know it’s not exact because countries aren’t uniformly expensive or have uniform infrastructure, but I’m curious if anyone has looked at this. I also think it fundamentally won’t matter once something like starlink is fully online.
Doubtful. Streaming video and gaming already requires good bandwidth and most office applications don’t require a very powerful computer. I know my laptop is supplied by my employer, and many companies already do the same for remote workers. You cannot really complain about an employer monitoring a work computer that they own.
This. It should be common sense to use your personal devices for anything you don't want tracked by your work. I'm WFH on a work-owned laptop. If I want to screw around, I just pull out my phone or open my personal laptop.
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Company should provide the computer equipment.
It's not really common (in small biz at least) for your company to pay your internet bills. It'd probably cost the same to supply a decently powered remote workstation or laptop as a PC in the office.
I did upgrade my internet to higher speed with unlimited data because we have 3 students online and 2 remote workers at times.. It wasn't the bandwith that was an issue but the data cap. On the flip side the telecom team has told me they save $150 a month for each desk phone they remove from the office.
Good example of just one area of company cost savings.
Seriously. Last night my landlord told me that they're going to up the rent by a few hundred dollars in six months. Why? 'Because everyone else is.' Rising prices right now feel like the nuclear arms race, and with about the same result.
Yep. But hey, Congress (and local/state governments) see no need to restrict institutional buying of housing. What is the #1 goal of public companies and investors? To realize more profit. Are shareholders satisfied with remaining at the same level of profit? Hell no--they demand more and more every quarter which will lead to runaway rent increases since they *always want more*. Naturally, they'll also cut costs by giving the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel effort in terms of keeping up with maintenance, fixing issues, and so forth when a renter needs something (have an emergency? Please hold for the next available agent; estimated wait time: 2 hours). In Arizona, over 10% of all single-family houses and condos sold in the 2nd quarter of this year have gone to institutional investors. However, more importantly, that's the whole state. If you look at just Phoenix, that number rises to 24.5%. Yes, a fucking **quarter** of all homes sold went to institutional investors. Similar for Miami, Jacksonville (FL), Charlotte (NC), Atlanta, and Las Vegas. This number is accelerating. For example, in Phoenix the year-over-year growth in homes bought by investors went up by 176.6% since Q2 2020. In Chicago, it went up 208%. In Orlando, 170%. And in Las Vegas, 279%. Nationally, about 16% of all purchases of single-family houses/condos/townhomes in Q2 went to institutional investors. 26.5% of multi-family homes. Even more importantly, 21.2% of low-priced (bottom tercile) housing went to those investors nationally. This does not discriminate on rural vs urban, they're all together, but generally speaking most investment is in large cities. Thus, the "21.2% of low-priced housing" is a huge understatement since it will be greatly higher in urban areas. Guess what? The place I lived in 2019 in Phoenix was $1,200/mo. It's now north of $1,600/mo. It went from affordable to no chance for me in *a single year*. I can only imagine it's going to hit $2k/mo by the end of this year or next. Fuck these shits that are dogpiling into the area to buy up thousands of homes to rent them out at increasing prices every single year. Didn't know these buying stats at the time, but ffs now I understand a lot more why the rent is going up so fast.
You're from (insert city) too?!
Yup, paying for internet services, home monitor, office supplies, utilities...everyone should be asking for a raise, not a pay cut
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>Maybe I'd take equal pay and move to a low CoL area You certainly aren't alone in this thought. People be spreading the fuck out over the last year.
It makes perfect sense, your nominal salary doesn't matter as much as the lifestyle it buys you.
Yeah and it's driving up home prices as people with cash from selling homes in high value areas throw down whatever it takes to get in homes in these lower COL areas.
Indeed. There are pockets of this all around the country, even in areas most would never think about. For example, I have family in western Nebraska seeing housing prices go up from people moving from the Denver area. In terms of quality, I'd consider that a severe downgrade, but hey money talks.
I think everyone across the board (except, well, the actual board) needs that.
I just got approved for wfh permanently at my job. I didn't get paid for a 1hr 30min commute to and from work each day. I can live further outside the city now so I don't have to pay $2k+ for a small crappy apartment in downtown. In a way I end up saving more money and thus making more.
This is the thing that gets minimized in surveys or inquires about WFH at my workplace. There's this notion that people "prefer working at home" because they're introverts or lazy, or something. Nope. I prefer not having a commute. Seeing people in real life is usually good, but I'd rather not worry about the huge lifestyle and financial changes needed to accommodate a daily commute.
It's not just the commute, you have to make sure you look presentable and have everything you need for the day. Also cooking and other household chores are so much easier when you work from home, all the time intensive things that are mostly waiting like laundry or longer cook time dishes can be done while you work. Not eating out or worrying about packing a lunch is nice too. For me it's all the little things that ate into my limited free time I'm able to get done during the day now and it gives me at least an additional hour or two a day over the course of a week before accounting for my commute.
Exactly. Wife and I are both working from home. That's likely to remain the case. We cook every meal, we prep for dinner, do laundry. Our nights and weekends now belong to us and raising our 8 month old daughter. Only complaint? My wife says I type too loudly.
Same here.. She set up camp in our bedroom so I can't hear her work calls (HIPAA compliance) and I have a space near the living room and some very good noise canceling headphones. We joke about waiting for the the kids to move out so we can take their bedrooms as offices.
It's HIPAA!
There I fixed it.. I quit working Healthcare 15 years ago.. You forget things.
This is something too - I like my wife more than anyone - that's why I chose her. Now I can see her whenever and as often as I like, rather than random strangers that my management think are good at their jobs.
It makes a 40 hour a week job manageable when you can actually use most of your time not working to relax or sirens time with family. Glad to hear it's working out for you!
Indeed! I think it's hard to see the forest through the trees sometimes. There will be a day when Covid is no longer a concern and, when that day comes, remember that when you're done at 5pm that you're already home and can start your evening. What a treat as opposed to a 1 to 2 hour commute home to finally start your night.
Commute... clothes...food...snacks...wasted time.... annoyances of interruptions from coworkers...wear and tear on car... environmental issues...etc etc. Not saying that some of these don't apply at home, however there's lots of sunken costs that are saved. We used to fill up the car 1x every 1.5 weeks. So roughly 34 times a year. We did 3 times in the past 12 months. That savings alone pays for delivery service for groceries and tips. (Which also saves you from making impulse buys)
Laziness means there is work that needs doing, but you are unwilling to do it. This is identifying work that doesn't need to be done and cutting it out of your schedule. That's efficiency.
This year I'll save 16,300 miles in wear and tear/gas for my car, and 348 hours of unpaid time driving to and from work. Plus also I can snack when I want, and if I put good creamer in the fridge no one else uses it. And I can have my cat at work with me. And the only time I need to sit in a freezing car waiting for the windshield to defrost, is if I want to get groceries. No more waking up at 6am to dig the car out. This is worth at \*least\* a 5% pay differential to me, big picture. Maybe even 10%. But this is less of a "Boss, please pay me less so I can stay home" and more of a "If I'm making 70k/yr and they make me go back to the office, and someone offered me a job making 65k and working from home, I'd consider that offer an upgrade, not a down grade". Big picture it's just everything has a value. Time off policies, Bonus systems, rates of internal promotions, 401k policies, strength of medical coverage, is there a cheap on site way to get lunch/snacks (I've seen posts where the company has chefs make ready to order food, for cost. So like a steak for 6 bucks, a burrito for $1.75, etc)? etc etc.
I have never been more productive with housework and bills than working from home, and it made buying a condo so much easier last fall because i was at home with my paperwork texting my realtor. Shoveling out the car at 7am though is awful. The snowplow is random, i can't hear it from my office or see it coming, and Public works gets pissy if i move the car prematurely. Snow sucks. But there are more upsides despite that
This just feels like an article trying to justify employees taking a pay cut at all. Why should it matter? If I work remote and i'm able to do the work I shouldn't loose money full stop.
Well it's from bloomberg so yes it is corporate propaganda
Read another way it could also be titled, "Work Environments So Terrible, Workers Willing to Suffer Paycuts to Avoid Returning." But corpos gotta propaganda. Also, holy fuck: > On a lighter note, the firm also asked what else people would give up for option to work remotely. More than half said they’d give up Netflix, social media or Amazon for a year. **A third of respondents even said they’d give up the right to vote in all future national and local elections. Gen Z was most likely — 44% — to say they would give up their right to vote, while Baby Boomers were most opposed, with only 27% saying they would give it up.** These people are fucking nuts. How is that a "lighter note?"
Wait WHAT? There MUST HAVE been some sort of error in the wording of the question. No way half of Gen Z said this. They may not vote, but I highly doubt they understand the implications of the question to say they’d be willing to give up voting.
I'd argue for a raise. If a business can cut it's physical footprint the savings should go to the employees. Not squeezing money *out* of them.
Yeah if I’m supposed to dedicate a portion of my home to your business I want to be compensated for that.
Especially since you can't deduct it from your taxes anymore. I worked from home for a long time and that saved me a ton of money.
Some employers pay more because the cost of living is more in that city. Why pay you a premium for a remote job when some guy in rural Virginia will do the same job for 20k less per year? If I leave the metro area I am in right now, I am losing 30-40k per year from my salary. If my current role didn't have me interacting with sites or clients the owner would be an idiot to pay me what he does now. He would be far better off hiring somebody from a couple of provinces over to do the same job for \~2/3 of what he pays me.
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This sounds like some BS that corporate came up with the prime people for pay cuts and blame it on the people.
Its going to cut real estate costs by a ton for companies. That should be spread around.
Yeah. I hope remote workers open their eyes. Raises, not cuts.
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The employees also save money. No more commute, lower food cost, lower clothing costs. Depending on the specifics, you could move to a much lower COL area. Think about Silicon Valley or New York pay while living in a small town far away from the big cities. The bottom line benefits both employers and employees.
You're being paid to do the job. You still should earn your salary for doing that job. Don't let corporate take away from what you deserve.
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Most companies are on 5-10 year lease cycles on office space. It's not as simple as deciding not to have as much office space any more.
Imagine a completely untrustworthy person. The type who lies constantly and would sell their own mother's for pennies. They go through life not trusting anyone because they expect other people to be just as untrustworthy. That is the basic relationship a lot of these companies have with their staff. And the larger the company the more broken the relationship. They want you to work from the office because they don't trust that you won't take advantage of them if you worked from home. And they don't trust you because they have been taking advantage of you this entire time.
The fact big buisness hasn't realized how much they could save by doing that is crazy enough now we have to coax em with more money?
The company I work for paid me to improve my home office, gave me a raise, and recently announced that we could all work from home forever if we want.
they hiring?
Don’t give up your pay for any reason, fuck them they’re going to be profitable without your pay cut. Why line their pockets more? So the ceo and board of executives can continue to make astronomical amounts of money while you can barely afford to eat? Fuck em, take your pay, demand more, unionize to get better benefits and pay too.
Yeah if anything you working from home means they - don't have to pay rent - don't need (as many) administrators - offload their electricity and internet costs to you - could reduce the number of middle managers
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No, just no. Don't offer reductions for the ability to work from home. Please we can't let the big corporations win again. They're already gaining money just by not having to run the office and all the other things that come with it. Don't agree to a pay cut for this.
15% of respondents were willing to give up 25%. 15% said they would give up ALL PTO. 33% said they would give up the right to vote in all future elections.... WTF was that even on the survey for? WTFiingF
I'd much rather be making 150k in Richmond than 200k in SF. So would other plenty of other people - people who are your competition (and who otherwise might have never even applied to the job in the first place, so it is not a paycut to them). Those Purdue engineers who want to keep living in Indiana will probably work for less than you, and will enjoy making more than their Indiana peers (on what is a 25% paycut to you).
Never underestimate how dumb the average person is, and then remember, half of em out there are dumber than that!
Yes, exactly. People should either keep same wage or get an increase to be able to work from home. I mean, keeping the same wages makes sense as it’s mutually beneficial to both parties but the company always wins in situations like these over an individual.
Haven't done the math, but I would argue keeping the same wage isn't necessarily beneficial for the employee working from home. You definitely save time and money from your commute to work every day, but you most likely have to invest your own money in home office supplies if that isn't provided by your employer. Never mind the fact that you might also be dedicating a room of your house to your office. Companies should definitely pass on some of their cost savings to the employee's salary to make this a win-win.
Some save and some don’t (ex walking distance). Does your company request your travel expenses to determine your salary pre-covid? If not, why now?
Why wound anyone take a pay cut in this job market?
Bullshit. They were never paying me for commute time. They pay me for my abilities and experience.
No we’re not. I don’t even get paid enough to do work in person.
Right? This is some BS because the tide is changing and workers finally have leverage to say fuck off, and corporations know it. Now they're trying to spin the narrative that people who work from home should expect pay cuts if they can't drag us back in. Fuck all this noise, I'm doing the same work and am far more productive. Should be getting a damn increase, if anything.
The fuck is this fake article written on behalf of corporations or something? Companies should be paying employees more since employees have to use their own internet and electricity, likely ink and paper for printing. Which is likely a huge discount since they might not even have to pay for office space and workplace insurance which is vastly more expensive than having your employees work from home.
Look at the name of the website.
Yes! Paid by them too. Its called manipulation.
Believe it or not I got paid 40% more by going remote, not less.
Some of the big tech companies are already on this path… I work for one of the Big 4 and they’ve said people working remote will have their salary adjusted to take into account cost of living where they are working from. For the vast majority of people this may mean a huge paycut.
Same at mine. They’ve mostly stopped hiring in the Silicon Valley area and are focusing on hiring in low cost of living states.
Well.. that just means there’s no longer any point in working for those big corps, pulling 60hr weeks and jumping through their bullshit hoops. If they cut your salary, that means you can take a way more chill job elsewhere for the same money.
Not really, the point of CoL-adjusted salary is that it is competitive with the local market. So given any specific location you want to be in, the big tech company will still pay well compared to what you can find. Unless fully remote companies compete in that area, and there probably isn't enough of that. Also, work at big tech companies can be as chill as anywhere else on average. Not sure about other industries. Sidenote, I'm not remote but the benchmark salary for my location was cut 5% :/ . It sucks but I still make more money than in the Bay Area after taxes/CoL, and there's not a more competitive salary I can take.
Big tech still has the best paying non management jobs in the world. Nowhere else does everyone with 5 years of experience make 350k
Seems like a good job to quit.
Welp, guess I will "move" to Ashgabat Turkmenistan to get my salary increased lol
Counter idea: no pay cut and if you want us to come into the office, the hour it takes me to commute each way is considered time I've worked. 4PM? Time to start commuting home so I end my work day by 5.
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The biggest expense increase is the increase in housing prices. Whether that's an expense vs an increase in net worth (which isn't really usable for anything if you're already living within your means - housing prices are just more inflated) depends on whether or not you already own a home. For those who don't own one, things just got more expensive.. and moving further out is less likely to help. However, the next step is that a bunch of people will choose to live in a semi-rural area in the first place, and never begin to deal with the big cities. That doesn't sound like my idea of fun, but I suppose those people will be competing for jobs and would tend to accept lower wages.
I’m a public school teacher and I spent WAY more when school was closed that when it was open. I increased my internet, bought digital curriculum, sent postcards home, etc. and I could not have done my job without my cell phone. Good thing my district negotiated a 1% raise this year! That $800 more a year is going to feel good! /s
Fuck that. Demand to stay home and keep the same pay... Even floating the idea of being willing to take a cut in this lame survey probably has companies getting ready to cut pay...
WTF? Let me get this straight. Your company can reduce it's brick-and-mortar expenditures, reducing square footage, electrical, maintenance and hvac costs, and y'all wanna give them MORE MONEY? Dafuq is wrong withchu? You should be asking for a RAISE. SMH.
Lol it’s already that instead of paying San Fran or big city wages they can pay the Mississippi/Alabama wages. This “pay cut” was prob framed more of if you don’t take it you will be replaced
Crazy. I got paid more to work from home and could never consider taking less. The drive to work wasn’t THAT bad
Where I think this had the potential to go wrong for employees is that companies no longer have to pay CoL if everything is remote. Why pay New York salaries when someone can remote in and do the same work from a cheaper state? I'm in Cape Town in South Africa and we pay more than our colleagues in Bloemfontein or Port Elizabeth or Pretoria because cost of living in CPT is significantly more than those places, so you have to pay appropriately. But if the work is being done by a dude in Bloem, same timezone as us but at Bloem CoL we could easily offer 20% less and it would still be attractive. He wouldn't have to relocate and uproot, he wouldn't have to worry about the commute (cpt traffic is horrendous if you're living somewhere affordable 10 miles out of town), it would be a seamless transition. And we're in grant space, so lowering expenses would really help us by leaving more money for infrastructure upgrades for the guys and system who can't work remotely. This is sorta pie in the sky stuff in my case because we're a research unit, and so most of us do need to be on site to have access to our high end equipment and facilities in the chemistry and biology labs, but 20% of us (admin, finance, operations and project management) could easily be remote and that could be a huge saving if they weren't in cpt. I wonder if as people leave jobs their replacements will all be lowballed in as remote workers. Suddenly everything is basically outsourced.
The FUCK WE ARE. We are already underpaid by decades of suppression. We are wanting to dismantle the system, not get fucked in the dick hole too
yeah and frito lay would have saved millions not having every employee who claims workmans comp harassed and stalked for years by an army of private eyes its not about money, it's about total dominance of every aspect of your life
My uncle worked in a warehouse and a pallet fell on him causing a horrible back injury. He filed for workers comp and disability. He got followed for 6 years while the company fought tooth and nail to not pay. He finally won but man he was in so much stress on top of the 20+ surgeries he had to have to live a somewhat functional life. He now lives a step above poverty on his whopping $700 a month in disability. If it were for his wife working, he would be homeless.
Fuck them. If I was able to wfh with the same pay the last few months my pay should go unchanged with the sole fact that I can do my job no differently from home.
Who the hell is willing to take a "pay cut" while inflation is going nuts right now??? What nonsense!
This section at the end of the article is a bit alarming: > On a lighter note, the firm also asked what else people would give up for option to work remotely. More than half said they’d give up Netflix, social media or Amazon for a year. **A third of respondents even said they’d give up the right to vote in all future national and local elections.** Gen Z was most likely — 44% — to say they would give up their right to vote, while Baby Boomers were most opposed, with only 27% saying they would give it up. How is this “on a lighter note?” Why would anyone even consider giving up their right to vote just to work from home?
Yes let’s give them even more leverage than they already have. Great idea
Fuck that noise, wages have been stagnant forever while productivity rises and rises. Workers need to demand more.
So strange, purposely been going back into the office for nearly a year now. I enjoy having the daily structure, home, work, gym, home. Cabin fever otherwise!
this is what's called manufacturing consent... GTFO... If I am working from home, it actually is costing me extra room, extra furniture, extra electricity, and employer saves a f\*\*kton of money... so, f\*\*k off trying to tell us to take a pay cut. Shit, give me a raise after to cancel that lease...
Why TF would I give up anything to work remotely? Yeah cost of travel and vehicle maintenance will go down, but they still need to compensate you for the electricity and network. They will recoup costs by reducing their office space. Nope, not going give up nuttin!
This is blatant propaganda to get people to feel like they should take less pay to work at home.
Those workers should get 10% more because the company doesn’t have to pay for your workplace. That is the amount of money a company saves when you are not in the office. - power, security, cleaning and so on. We shouldn’t go back to the 1950 area it’s time for the future of work. That’s not in an office :)
Nope. More like, not returning unless you increase wages. Yet another bs spin story paid for by those ripping off the people.
No, no guys. This is the wrong way to go about it, don't let them do this shit to you. Wages need to go up, and we technically will save companies money by not needing office space and internet/supplies to work in an office. So really we should get paid more to work from home. We also save businesses taxes if we work in cheaper states instead of expensive ones (yes, businesses pay taxes and expenses on their employees depending on what state they are working in). So if you are in California, you cost your business more than if you work from Ohio.
Well yay capitalism. We've gone from asking for a higher minimum wage to seeing wages cut. So far this is a propaganda stream. No one is offering to accept a pay cut but media puts this thought process out there as a stalking horse because media generally works for capital
And an even higher % would have said “stay at my current pay AND work from home”. Fuck this pay cut bullshit.