So the question on a lot of employees minds is: Do we try to relocate in time for the May 1st RTO and risk getting fired - or do we wait to see if we're part of the layoffs and then try to relocate with the remaining 2 weeks we have left.
If you have a family to look after, you cannot casually have your partner quit their job, your kids to switch schools in the middle of the year, break your lease/ mortgage and move states overnight.
There are real transaction costs for employees that do not allow for proper free market function
But remote work showed how high they would have to pay to retain talent in a real free market environment.
So unsurprisingly everyone forced a return to office policy.
AI is coming for those roles before they end up in India or PI.
Speaking of NAFTA, that's one of the reasons we're seeing Mexico City as an offshore hub. Better timezone overlap, can usually trust that their credentials are legitimate, and it's not hard to find a (Mexican accented) Spanish speaker in much of the US.
Plus the NAFTA TN visa means if they're good you can easily bring them across the border with no H1B headaches. Cheaper flights, too.
The skilled on-shore would be paid more, the fungible would be paid less.
But again offshoring is not always the cheapest answer due to the inefficiency that time difference introduces.
I've been hearing this sort of doom and gloom since the 90s, yet here I am making bank in the USA still
Things that can be resolved in 5 minutes have to wait for a day.
If remote work would "drive wages down", it would already do so -- since that's an option available to employeers now
I know you don't mean it this way, but it should right? It's fundamentally cheaper - no commute on the employee part, no office space on the employer side. Greatly enhanced flexibility all round. Both sides should definitely splitting the dividends.
I'm fine with it if that is how it works.
This also means the worker can live where the cost of living is lower, and be willing to work for less--thus pushing down wages. Arguably the worker still comes out ahead though if she can live where she wants to...assuming she likes working remotely from a low cost-of-living place. If she'd rather live in NYC and go to the office, she might not be happy to see her wage go down.
yep - in the short term there will be some discontinuities like this. But longer term - more staff working remotely is going to take pressure off real estate prices in cities, so it will actually be justifiable even there that salaries can fall. Unfortunately since so many office space leases are long term, and rezoning of land use even slower, this can take a very long time to flow through.
> real free market environment
I'm hoping you're just kidding.
The tech labor market would not exist as it does today without substantial very specific regulations of various parties' behavior; e.g., stopping me from:
1. copying my employer's codebase, or
2. exfiltrating my employer's customer and pricing lists, or
3. holding two jobs at competing companies at the same time, or
4. shorting my employer's stock then actively sabotaging the company.
To say nothing of the even more basic stuff like squatting in my employer's office or even just using force to take what I want from the company or its executives/sharholders, for example.
Labor markets can't exist without lots of strong legal guardrails, and in the case of tech those property rights and contractual obligations are highly fictional and extremely unnatural. Intellectual property, non-competes, non-disclosures, securities regulations on insider trading, laws about industrial espionage and sabotage, the list goes on. All of it highly fictional and unnatural.
Modern markets are, definitionally, just a dynamical process playing out that is governed by an enormous collection of state-backed rules. Nothing like what you might consider a "natural" market, such as early civilized man bartering at the bazaar.
The amount of propaganda/brainwashing required to believe that something like a modern equity or labor market is a naturally occurring phenomenon... oof.
This is hilarious
Would you have thought a few weeks ago that California and the federal government could apply enough pressure to the largest pharma companies to set the price of insulin at $35? Me neither, but here we are. Come out swinging, we have nowhere to go but up.
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/01/1160339792/eli-lilly-insulin-...
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/sanofi-insulin-pr...
Edit: Looks like California has gone so far as to contract to have it manufactured and set the price at $30, even better. Thesis is “change is possible.” Please excuse the length this example took to demonstrate the point.
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/3907583-california-mov...
Housing crisis, traffic crisis, transportation infrastructure crisis, environmental crisis.
Covid showed how many jobs can be conducted fully remotely.
Alternatively, Covid showed how little people were working in the office too.
You forgot freedom of assembly.
Positing a cartel in employment wages doesn't explain RTO.
So why in the world would I want to hire an overpriced ex-rest-and-vester when I can instead hire someone hungry with a track record of making a difference at small to medium companies?
I also don’t think people generally have a problem with interviews. You have to be assessed somehow, obviously, and people at top companies still get interviewed when jumping to other top companies. I’ve really only seen serious complaints (that is, beyond mild grumbling) when interviewing is a huge time sink for a specific company, especially when that company’s compensation is lower and/or the communication process is poor (e.g. ghosting).
Why in the world would anyone interview with you if your company offers less than top tech for equal or harder interviews? (Spinning your rhetoric back at you for added effect. I don’t know what your hiring is like.)
People who need job will apply. Its not like some one is forced to apply when otherwise they could get million dollar a year job to develop deep machine learning AI at Google.
If that attitude persists, it doesn't matter how good they are, their toxicity will override that skill and they'll be out before long.
I'm saying this as someone who came here from FAANG companies and put in a lot of personal effort to not become the FAANG brat.
Your organization does drug tests, and you think this guy is the toxic one?
But.. where do you go as an overpaid FAANG employee? Amazon, Google, Microsoft etc all have layoffs
As others have mentioned, you might not be able to find a $300k-$500k/year job, but you should be able to find something.
Eats out frequently, goes out for drinks occasionally, travels a few times a year, owns a new mid-range car, lives in a modern apartment complex or small home/condo near a downtown area (with a < 30 minute commute). New electronics, big TV, minimal but high quality furniture.
Pairing back on those choices you can begin to save every month, but not at a pace to buy a home in a reasonable time frame.
On dual income assuming consistent earnings YoY you can start to buy a house in a cheaper neighborhood later in life, around the time many are starting to have kids.
I have to imagine kids can put a 5-10 year delay on buying a house without various kinds of assistance.
That’s what I’m saying.
> On dual income assuming consistent earnings YoY you can start to buy a house in a cheaper neighborhood later in life, around the time many are starting to have kids.
Dual tech income folks are in a great spot, but with gender ratios as they are, there can’t be very many such couples. Also this could be a function of social circle but I find many women (even in tech) expect a husband to provide for them while the kids are young.
Point being whats luxury living for one could be basic, minimum living standard for others. And I am talking about people doing roughly same IT type jobs.
So that below living wage of 150K in bay area is from that school of thought where having single family home, 2 car garage, a bit of front/backyard and 30 min leisurely commute by personal car is basic minimum standard of living.
To be clear my spouse would also consider this as basic things despite spending far fewer years than me in US. And after decade and half in US I still think these facilities/perks are matter of great fortune that I ended up with and not just oh everyone has it type.
I think the parent commenter might be eating a lot of garlic since his move. :)
What city has 1/4 acre lots? (11000 sq ft (1020 m^2))
It is all a matter of tradeoffs and the level of urbanization you want. I cant walk to a bar or music venue, but I can still walk to a grocery store and a smaller number of restraints.
Interest rates are up, but property prices are down quite a bit (my house is down about 15%). While last year may have been better, I think is a still a decent market if you have a few 100k saved from a 150k salary, better if you saved more.
If you don't have a down payment and cant save one, you are in for a bad time everywhere.
https://sfist.com/2022/05/24/sf-still-the-most-childless-cit...
This is a case of lifestyle inflation and then complaining about lifestyle inflation. Public school is good enough, your kids aren't better than the rest of the people in SF.
The different experience is that you make more than your parents did at your age and thus have lifestyle inflation.
Obviously Bay Area amenities are worth something. Are they worth descending an entire social class? Maybe to some. But I think most rational people will go fix the computers at that car dealership, and put their kids on the travel team. You are not obliged to live an austere life just because someone offered you a (locally) mediocre job in the Bay Area.
Nobody's "descending a social class" by sending their kids to public school or having them do normal stuff, this is hysterical.
Not in the bay area, though.
maybe it's time to swing back a little.
You don't have to actually be good to find a well-paying job in this industry. You should be looking regardless.
Imagine working there right now, that uncertainty must be so stressful, it would be for me.
Why are companies so interested in RTO, when the data seems to show that remote work is more productive? It seems like traditional management needs new training to sustain remote productivity gains, not that remote work should be discontinued to increase managers' trust in their employees.
I have found these people to generally be bad managers who use this to compensate for their lack of effective management skills, but that’s why.
Now your manager can no longer approve it, and even if your manager did previously approve it you might need to request approval from a higher authorisation level.
Otherwise if you have a family and are settled somewhere, I'd wait to find out before moving, then either commute during the week or get a temp spot once you know if you are RTO until kids are out of school where you are and you can plan a move more fully.