Going back to work? No, thank you
dsebastien.medium.com
dsebastien.medium.com
The smarter of the anti-remote companies have realized this and are in a perpetual denial/paralysis phase. It would be easier if they just gave up and stopped trying to bring people back.
And companies are already reducing pay based on distance of employees’ homes if they choose to work from home.
I think the market will automatically balance itself out in a few years.
Sex/gender: I need my commute time to take care of my children.
Health/medical condition/genetics: commuting increases my blood pressure, triggers anxiety and panic, and reduces my overall mental and physical health and quality of life.
Wife’s company makes explicit comp adjustments if an employer moved. Mine does not, but it does impact future adjustments.
1. A base amount that is based solely on the job to be done and the level of skill and experience required. The base pay is the same no matter where you live and is the same regardless of whether the work is done remotely or at one of their offices.
2a. If the company requires you to do the work at a particular location, or lets you work at home part of the time but requires you to come to a particular location often enough that you have to live in the general area of that location, they can pay an additional amount based on the cost of living in that area.
2b. If the company imposes geographical constraints on remote employees, such as requiring them to live in specific countries, states, or timezones, they can pay an additional amount based on the cost of living in those countries, states, or timezones.
The key is to only have pay depend on location to the extent that the company constrains the worker's location. That should be very unlikely to run afoul of discrimination law.
When the worker has agency to chose remote vs in office, tying pay to physical location seems like coercion though. Doesn't that constrain the worker? "Live in this specific area and come to the office and we will maintain your current pay. Else, you have to take a pay cut for the same role and work output"
Maybe this is a reason why some companies are hesitant to have it both ways and are inclined to force people back to the office. Could they be reducing legal exposure to equal pay lawsuits?
I suppose the higher pay reflects the employer's expectation of a higher return on productivity, creativity, from that employee.
Or, put another way, they are docking the pay of the remote worker expecting that they are probably not clocking in a "full days work" or will fail to deliver on the fruits of collaboration....
I do expect we'll see some equalizing of salary bands at remote heavy companies. If I don't care if you're in the Bay Area or not, your decision to live there is a personal choice just like living in Aspen would be.
Not necessarily higher productivity, but different. An employee that is present at the physical office when most people don't, is providing a peculiar (and rare) kind of value besides their actual productivity in their role, _if_ the company values something about their physical offices. There may be many reasons why the company would, but exploring that is a different topic.
Companies ask for this shit for obedience, not to reduce costs...
Profit per employee sets salary ceiling. Market sets salary.
That is the side that is always focused on.
The other side is people who already lived in San Antonio but can't relocate, for one reason or another. Their spouse has a career and doesn't want to leave. Their kids are in school and don't want to leave. They're disabled or have family in the area that depends on them. Those people can suddenly go work for the company in San Francisco that is no longer requiring you to relocate, and might make less than employees based in San Francisco, but more than anyone was offering in San Antonio.
This is the side that never seems to get brought up.
It's not at all clear that, when the dust settles, the balance of those who had to take pay cuts versus those who saw pay raises to work remotely is going to work out with more seeing pay cuts. Short run that will be the case just because most companies had a lot more pre-existing employees in March 2020 than they have hired since. But that won't remain the case forever.
Fast food companies might do this (just because they can get away with anything), but companies that dare pull this shit in any sector which favors employees should be shut down immediately...
People are paid for their work, not for their distance from the office. If they want to try to reduce pay for that, how about adding the commute to working hours?
Suppose your office were next door. Then, you could have a 1-minute commute and enjoy some degree of socialization and the amenities of the office. You could have lunch at home, and you wouldn't need dedicated workspace there.
The fact that many would prefer this setup to WFH suggests that the problem is not the office itself but the commute. There is a distance that, for most folks, commuting doesn't present much of a problem.
For example, my commute by bicycle is about 9 minutes, bus 15 minutes, car 20 minutes. I think the trade-off is worth it here, but I can imagine a point where it wouldn't be.
There are only a few places in the world with transit of that caliber (Tokyo, London, NYC, etc. ). Even most medium or large cities aren't good enough for that experience. Public transit in Seattle is a disgrace (in most areas you're lucky if you can get one bus per half hour, and that bus is stuck in the same traffic as cars, and those buses never go from where you are to where you want - you have to go downtown and transfer from there, and the buses stop running long before the bars close). BART isn't exactly holding up well either.
I didn't read the parent as arguing for living near work. Rather I read it as him saying that the commute is what tips the scales towards WFH most days for many people. Which I think is absolutely true.
I'm just for freedom of choice.
I'm also on a very distributed team so it's not unusual if I do go into the office to meet with someone, I often don't run into anyone else I know.
That's why I tried to remain careful with the statements I made in my article. I've described my specific situation (family, both working in IT, two children, living far away from the office, etc), and didn't want to speak for everyone.
also when you have little kids its such a privilege to be home all day, being able to take a 5 min break to go give them a hug and kiss and wrestle around with them a little bit.
im super comfortable and productive working from home, i love it.
https://carrothealth.com/crowded-house-the-surprising-benefi...
I lived in a city, had a short commute to work. That was nice. But I hated living there except for that. I moved to an outlying area where I could have a house and a garden and a workshop in the garage. The commute went way up, which sucked, but when I was home I was so much more relaxed and happier it was worth it.
I'm the author of the article. My wife and I don't want to live in a city. We grew and always lived in small villages. The land is more affordable, there's much less pollution, we have more than enough space, a vegetable garden, hens, etc. We don't want to change any of that.
Of course every situation is different. Many colleagues live close to the office and are glad to be able to go there regularly. They enjoy it, and there's nothing wrong with that.
We initially found work in the capital because it's where the best opportunities are. All the big financial & European institutions have their headquarters in Brussels. Salaries are also much more interesting.
One of the points I wanted to convey in the article is that we've now proved that we can achieve the same work remotely, so there's no point in forcing us to go back to the office. It's about freedom of choice more than anything.
Heck, I could THINK.
Those things are way too scarce in an open office. So no, even for a short commute, I don't want to go to the office.
I'm a software developer. I don't enjoy socialization with other software developers. Not at all. Not ever. I write code for money, it's called "compensation" for a reason.
People do not seem to be getting the message. I don't want any degree of socialization. None. Zero. Honest question, how can I possibly make this clearer to people like you?
I met with my work team in person last week - at the beach, not the office - and it was great to see their faces after 18 months. I can see the benefits of working face to face from time to time. Once a month ought to be more than enough, if not once a quarter.
But I am never giving up the 30 second commute.
TBH I don't mind going to the office from time to time. It is indeed nice to see colleagues face to face. What I'm against is organizations forcing people to be present in the office every X out of fear that people won't feel "connected" to the organization.
Chronic isolation massively accelerated the burnout I had from my startup. While I had worked from home for several years, I went out most nights of the week to see friends. The lockdown eliminated that.
I had to make a serious change in direction for my own mental health. So earlier this year I put the startup on indefinite hold and did the unthinkable: I got a job.
I feel tons better now than I did a year ago. I still prefer working from home, but now I have people I can talk to on a daily basis.
It’s not devastating for me. I’m happy for people to get what they need, but the broad brush in these declarations, at this stage of the conversation, is unhelpful.
Those who are less skilled likely have less ‘power’ as you define it. But isn’t that exactly what we should expect?
Actually, the current labor shortage has given even those unskilled workers some temporary power. At least until the govt transfer payments dry up, student loan payments restart and people are forced back to into the workforce in droves.
While one could argue that commuting into work before the pandemic was each day running into the next, I think I would have to disagree. The random conversation and exchange with coworkers, talking about life plans over lunch ... it's missing over WebEx/Zoom.
No doubt some prefer to work remotely but I am beginning to think the idea of offices and collaboration between coworkers is neither an antiquated system that's long past due for the trash heap not is it a nefarious plot among corporate to enslave its workers. I'm beginning to think it evolved out of a necessity for the majority of workers to feel a sense of worker-community and camaraderie.
Respectfully? Bollocks.
We didn't have any other alternative besides offices until a few decades ago, and we all know how much inertia society has.
It couldn't have started as the alternative because sending a letter to ask your colleague something wouldn't work to begin with.
Also, distrust of employees.
You might be surprised. At my first engineering job, we basically sent letters to people at job locations with questions. (OK, the secretary typed a memo up and it went up to the comms room who transmitted a Telex but, yes, basically a letter.)
But it looks like you bought that myth about “when you are not working your competitors are, so work ALL the time” instead. And you end up closing the startup anyway.
This is true of both people I work with at my company and industry peers. And I've heard the same argument from many people with respect to attending industry events and the like where many value the hallway track which has been pretty much dismal with online events.
(To be clear, I obviously don't mean the whole company at a large company. But I do think it important for teams and people who otherwise work together.)
The people I employ are on "my" team just as I am on "their" team. It's not a question of ownership.
I decided to set us up as a work from anywhere business at the start of the pandemic because that's best for my team and for the business overall.
Having said that I still need face to face meetings from time to time, as do our clients... notwithstanding I'll always consider the impact of those requests on my individual team members.
I have no issues with retention and my employee NPS scores are consistently over 50 percent.
There are countless companies and organizations doing business across the entire world, having never met the other party "face to face".
So is it “back to work” or “back to the panopticon of the modern office and radar scope of the management class”?
I cynically think it’s the latter, and it’s become a specific topic that I ask about in interviews.
Remote-refusant companies: pass, remote-only companies: a bit better, remote optional or hybrid companies: let’s talk. I’d rather work for a place that treats me, the professional like a professional and gives me the choice and say in the matter.
If my employer does not believe we have been working this past 18 months I wish someone would have told me so I could have hiked the Pacific Crest Trail or taken up gardening full time.
It seems ludicrous to me that some people are able to get this much done in an hour. If I'm able to exercise AND shower in that amount of time I'm doing good.
Californians were already one of the most hated groups west of the Rockies and now they're moving out in droves, acting just as entitled as people already assumed they were.
In fact, what you specifically mean is "Silicon Valley tech workers," given that pay and CoL are much, much lower in most of America, including for tech workers.