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Comment by endisneigh | Hacker News Reader

I'm very curious if WFH can survive a recession. My gut tells me no, but who knows. Though I enjoy the flexibility of hybrid, I can't help but feel it's the worse of both worlds. Still gotta live close and commute, but don't have the consistency (colleagues will have different schedules) so you often end up in the office and video chatting anyway.

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I left the US when Covid struck. No way was I sitting around there during all of this.

I took a 50% pay cut to move back to my home country, while producing the same output (and value)... the company directly benefited from that.

Now, if my company forced me back into an office I'd say no. I'd be on the market only for a remote role, still at a steep discount on US engineers. Why wouldn't a smart company take that offer?

WFH is not going away, but I suspect the FAANG will move away from it and the startups will capture the opportunity.

> I predict the FAANG will move away from it and the startups will capture the opportunity.

I've took the liberty to correct it for you, so your comment can appear at Hacker News Predictions [1]. I like your prediction, btw.

[1] https://hnpredictions.github.io/

Why did you choose to take a 50% pay cut permanently? That seems pretty steep, especially now the pandemic is more-or-less over.

Because he lives somewhere cheap and can.

I see people all the time complaining about salaries being different based on location and how it’s wrong. I actually don’t mind it. I live in a LCOL area and work for a Bay Area company. I don’t get paid as much as my SF colleagues but I make so much more than anyone around here that it doesn’t matter.

At some level I wonder if people in SF are worried about people like me and the above poster because we’re stealing jobs by being cheap.

Anyways, I’ll always be remote. There is no other option. I’m damn sure not moving to California.

100%

Too many people discuss salary without discussing buying power.

When I did freelance work I loved picking up work from the coasts (NYC, LA, etc). They thought of me as cheap, I thought of them as a gravy train. Both sides benefitted from it.

100k in a rural, LCOL area probably has the buying power of 150-200k in NYC. I don't know the exact numbers, it's the idea that I'm trying to express here.

> Too many people discuss salary without discussing buying power.

In capitalism that is not important. If I have the negotiation capability to get a higher salary why should I accept a lower one just because I live cheaper?

Most people would accept a lower salary to WFH, or to have flexibility in their schedule to ensure they can attend to their child's lives.

The mistake "capitalists" make is thinking money is the only factor, or even the most important one.

But really, that wasn't even the point. The point is your salary isn't what grants you a good life, it's buying power. And having that buying power gives you a stronger negotiating stance anyway.

Depends on the recession, right?

Five percent unemployment? You've still got some leverage. Nine-and-a-half percent (the peak during the Great Recession), and a lot of folks behind you in line will happily come into the office.

Well that is kinda accurate

Not sure if count tech specifically, the recession might already start?

Only Amazon seems to hire aggressively at this point...

Plenty of WFH jobs at Amazon. Looking at a couple myself. Apple just removed themselves from my list. Actually said this was coming and they were already off my list.

If its a recession why are you spending money on overhead like an office when you have plenty of potential employees happy to work from their home, an office you the employer are basically are getting for free?

Because it's much easier to squeeze in-person employees harder.

I'm being facetious, but I don't think it's entirely a bad thing. I'm not sure if you've even worked in a fast-paced environment where everyone is absolutely buzzing, but it's quite exciting and I'm not convinced there's a remote equivalent.

Alternatively, WFH employees have way fewer benefits (no in-office coffee or food, potentially no internet or equipment support beyond a laptop, no electricity, HVAC, refrigerators, badges, security, commuter benefits, etc) and don't waste 1-3 hours per day commuting to and from the office + parking costs + 1 hour just to get too and from crappy unhealthy lunch spots.

Their hours are much more flexible -- if the desk is right in your house, it's not crazy to hop on the computer quick before bed to finish up a report or send an email or review a PR. So when "crunch time" actually happens, WFH employees can spend more time working than in-office employees, and work less afterward to avoid burnout.

The flexibility has additional benefits for coordination across time zones: I work from home, and I can get up at 6 AM to meet with folks in Australia from my home office. Or I can take off early and come back at 8PM to meet with folks in India. Not an option for in-office work. If you try, you'll be taking the meeting from your couch or some other suboptimal spot, not a home office.

If your company is upwards of 5,000 employees, you probably have multiple offices. This means most of your meetings are in conference rooms with a video call anyway. Effectively no different from WFH meetings, except for crappier volume control, microphone gain, and visibility.

Seems like for giant companies, WFH is a no-brainer for coordination purposes across multiple time zones and physical locations. And for small companies, WFH is a no-brainer because there's a ton of static-cost overhead that comes with physical offices.

See, the problem is you used logic here, unlike senior management.

Companies that fail to adapt to a changing world will be the ones unlikely to survive a recession.

Employees that fail to adapt to a changing world will be the ones unlikely to survive a recession.

We're already seeing WFH positions get "retconned" into hybrid positions as tech hiring stumbles a bit.

Not only that, but I think those companies that are not burdened with enormous costs related to having an office will be more likely to reward / retain / hire employees.

It seems absurd that some WFH-only companies will basically give some "crazy" amount (like $10k) to new-hires to deck-out their home office, but that is probably less than the amortized office-space cost of hiring that person on site each year.

There’s an argument that remote work minimizes a recession because it lowers the barrier to a new job.

It depends if a company’s desire for butts in seats exceeds its money-saving on utilities and rental. That doesn’t apply to Apple, probably because they’re just paying the loans for their new campus, but small companies, or companies that have satellite offices might be saving a bundle by letting their employees wfh. They just have to wade though all the middle-management that loses a lot of its value when there’s no one to lord over.

Loans for campus? They do have some debt but have ~$100B net of their debt

Yes. One of the funny things about having a lot of money is that it makes a lot more sense to borrow someone else’s money than spend your own. I can’t speak to the specifics, but I’m willing to bet Apple took out some very large loans to build Apple Campus.

Hybrid done right can’t be so flexible that people come in 1-2 days per week and discover no one else did. Has to be e.g “do 2 days a week in the office and one of them should be Tuesday”.

Otherwise as you say people just commute to empty offices.

Apple’s solution (mandating Tuesday and Thursday) solves the consistency issue.

I think it can. Enough big companies have gone all in on it that backing out will be hard. If some try to squeeze employees into offices, employees will migrate to places more friendly to it. Eg: if a hypothetical company "bookface" is more friendly to WFH than a hypothetical company "pear", they pay similarly, and both have similar jobs for someone, said someone might just sign Bookface's offer and leave Pear if Pear attempts to force WFH.

Not only that, but when the promotions, raises and choice projects all go to the people who actually show up in the office, you’ll see things change.

Sure, lots of people will say “i don’t care about those things” which is fine.

But my prediction is that for most roles, slowly but surely work will return to the office.

I honestly don’t know how people thought otherwise. The idea that all this is gonna be permanent just seemed silly to me.

Yes some companies will remain fully remote. Good luck to them. I’ll be curious to see where they land after five years.

Trying to organize a 10,000 person company fully remote seems like a pipe dream. Sure it might work for a few years while there is enough old timers in the mix but after long enough the corporate culture that made the company successful will slowly fracture as all the new hires never get exposed to it.

I dunno man… this all feels like a fad. Any time somebody says “XYZ is here to stay” it almost always means it isn’t gonna stay. Way too hype. Lots of dismissal or outright ignoring all the very real cons. It all just sounds way too good to be true.

>the corporate culture that made the company successful will slowly fracture as all the new hires never get exposed to it.

What about all the companies that have this happen to them without any remote workers to blame it on?

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