11–20 of 87 posts
Ultimately, you decide if the offer is what you wanted.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where I work, "working from home" is code for "checking email a few times during the day so it appears I'm at least somewhat engaged, while really doing very little at all yet not using a PTO day." Too hard to get anything done when others you need to collaborate with are not there.
Yes, it only works (from the employers point of view) if the following are true: 1. the employee either genuinely enjoys the work or genuinely cares about the company 2. the employee has not become cynical about the company, even if (1) was originally true. In most lines of work these are unlikely to be true for most people. However, software engineering can, if you're lucky, have an addictive quality and be intellec…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Commuting cost time also. If your rate is $80/hour, that really adds up if you have a one hour commute each way with traffic.
I live in Los Angeles. If the company is in New York, does that mean I should take out the price of plane tickets for each way?
If you live in Hollywood and the job you want is in Santa Monica, then you would add some time for that. If the remote ob is just as good, you could save some time and not go to Santa Monica.
If your ideal job is already down the street from where you live, then remote doesn't offer much commute advantage.
It's a perk in the sense that you're not paying bay area rents. If you're in a high CoL area and want to say, applying to remote positions is an uphill battle, as the chief reason most companies want to look remote is to expand their recruiting reach without raising wages, and hoping to lower them.
Sometimes when people negotiate they say "can you do x because y" where y is just a plausible way to ask for x.
It is often more graceful than just saying "we don't want to pay that much."
The only good reason for an employer to require you to be at a specific place is if there are some levers or buttons there that needs to be pulled or pushed.
In some situations it would be said you are being too literal? Sometimes when people negotiate they say "can you do x because y" where y is just a plausible way to ask for x. It is often more graceful than just saying "we don't want to pay that much."
[Use of the term "telecommuting" seems like another common giveaway, where and when it appears.]
The teams I've worked with have never had difficulty with communicating and collaborating, meeting deadlines and "innovating," and I highly doubt that we're all ninjas (because surely I am not).
Typical was my last position: I never clocked in from 9-5, usually from the early morning hours until late at night, to provide time zone coverage and purely out of interest and the desire to be a contributing member of the team, with several breaks included for meals, exercise, etc. Flexibility meant I was more likely to contribute, rather than less. (So many entities fail to understand this basic human dynamic. Instead create a prison, and watch how the inmates adapt and behave.)
I'm mostly able to control my environment, which means a quiet space in which to work, free from the distractions of my cube-dwelling days (though at least those had walls).
It's simply natural to work together remotely at this point, and I frequently notice how it provides companies with other tangible benefits, which I think some fail to consider.
I'd say some are trapped in a twentieth century mindset, but perhaps we're stuck here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factory_system.