Square announces permanent work-from-home policy | Hacker News Reader

Square announces permanent work-from-home policy

theverge.com

56 pointscaution12 comments

Not surprising given that they share a CEO with Twitter who also announced the same last week.

I always have the same questions now when I hear this policy: (1) Do they intend to adjust compensation based on where you work from? (2) Do they expect employees (squares) to show up to an office every quarter/year/etc.?

If they were adjusting salary based on where you are living, I think I'd be getting a mailbox service or a good friend in either NYC or SF and live somewhere low cost.

Exactly! Why would a company do these adjustments when its easy enough to game? Or will there be other checks to keep people honest?

Or, with the additional state taxes (pay in CA and pay where you actually live) not anyways worth the drop in salary?

Depends. You could probably file in CA and show your proof that you actually live and pay taxes in another state without anything getting back to your employer. Also, due to the progressive taxes in states like CA, you can actually end up paying less taxes on lower incomes.

They need to define the boundaries. Is it just taxing? Some places have uniform taxes over the whole state basically (Washington state, except for B&O taxes). People already lived 30 or 40 miles away from Seattle and faced long daily commutes. They were working in the office. Now they work from home, would that be different for facebook? What if I have a vacation home that I'm living in for a month or a rental or whatever. Does that change anything about a companies wfh?

I don't have to change anything about taxes or drivers license or domicile and I can stay in my theoretical second house for a long time in wa state, 400 miles away. Probably fb would say that's not living in seattle. What if I commuted to a shared aprt in seattle for 3 days a week, is that living there?

1. I know Twitter adjusts salary based on location, and this practice is more common that not for US employees. So I'm leaning towards Yes.

2. This is the big question. In my opinion, they will soon add fine print to this "Permanent Remote" policy depending on how essential employee is (e.g. DevOps more likely to work FT remote versus Lead Engineers on core company product). My bet is that, when the panic calms down, it'll become a flexible hybrid policy for most workers. But I'm speculating and just generally think it's way too early to be declaring anything "permanent."

I wonder if any other companies will follow suit.

How interesting that they refer to their employees as Squares.

That sounds like a very qute name for 'employees'.

Perhaps Sir Dorsey considers them his squires

BTW, does Twitter calls its employees twits?

They are tweeps

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