Should those who work from home be paid less? | Hacker News Reader

Should those who work from home be paid less?

thetimes.co.uk

4 pointspg_123410 comments

“Firstly, you are contributing less to the economy by not supporting local restaurants, sandwich bars and coffee houses in the vicinity of the office and spending less on transport. This means you are of less economic “value”, which may sound brutal but it is a fact.”

What does this have to do with how much someone should be paid by an unrelated company? I’m still going to be buying food from wherever I’m working, regardless of it being near the office or not.

This whole article seems to have been written from the viewpoint of CEOs (which isn’t surprising, given the newspaper).

By this metric, anyone who brings their homemade lunch to the office is of less economic value. Anyone who brews their own cup of tea is of less economic value. Anyone who who has a shorter commute is of less economic value than someone else with a longer commute.

They should be paid more because they cost the company less.

That's not how it works at all. People are paid as little as the company can get away with and as much as the employee is able to convince them to pay. It's a balance. Working from home saves both parties money, but most importantly it lowers the cost of living for employees so they are willing to work for less.

So home workers salaries will be lower in general.

Pay for results, not butt-in-seat.

If it's a job that requires physical presence, then that's how it is. It's hard to prune a tree or lay a pipe as WFH.

If the job doesn't require physical presence, then it doesn't, and office or WFH is irrelevant. Call center jobs, or lots of IT support.

Some jobs are in the middle: you need face-to-face sometimes, but not every day, in order to be effective. Teaching, or requirements engineering.

All the sole trader company's in the world that operate from home, show working from home has been practiced for many decades.

Some need to do site visits, some dont, their job dictates that.

The sole trader shows the world some people are more motivated about working, increasing their earning potential than someone who works for a bigger company.

So does working from home, show greater or less productivity, or does it highlight the slave driving nature of the managers?

Here is my take:

Businesses should:

- give equal pay for equal work

- encourage remote work

- let workers choose where to live

...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37290009

And a related challenge:

Ask HN: global rate or local cost of living

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36981745

Let’s see. I did 46 hours this week (most of it productive with perhaps up to 6 hours may have been semi distracted hours) - a week that included a holiday.

I was enabled by the fact I can wake up, and almost instantly go downstairs and within one quick thumb scan on my Mac, get a couple of hours in before breakfast, and my end of day is equally as blurred as I leave the Mac up and unlocked allowing me to get right back in to it.

If I were an office body I’d not do either as the packing and unpacking of the laptop would be just enough inertia to prevent most of that.

Do companies even dare to breathe a word about how much overhead they will save as they downsize offices and infrastructure? They are offloading all those externalities onto individual workers now.

I pay rent and insurance on my apartment. I'm provided water, electric, A/C, and consumer-grade Internet service. I have a kitchen stocked with appliances, supplies, and food and drink. I have a workspace, a desk and furniture, and of course my essential BYOD devices. There's my bathroom facilities, toilet and sink, soap and paper out of pocket. I have upkeep and cleaning costs for all this (I actually hire maids to do a deep clean).

I should be sending my employer a goddamn bill for this every month. Pay me less. Crazy talk.

Nevertheless, there's a valid rationale for reducing WFH wages. It's the ultimate offshoring. Companies don't have to care about employees working in HCOL centers anymore, so they can pay us "Rural Kentucky Wages" or "Inner-City Mumbai Slum Wages" or "Haiti We've Got No Infrastructure Left Wages" and we'll thank them for it.

https://archive.ph/CVFvx

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