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Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

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Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#231

Post by nogabebop23 »

mikeappell wrote: post #184
Ididntdothis wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes sense. In my team it’s the same: the young guys like going out together after work and also often don’t have the space at home to set up a good workplace. They also need the most handholding. I remember some discussions a while ago where the conclusion was that it’s hard to onboard juniors remotely and remote is more suitable for experienced people.

This was my experience as well. When I started as a developer, my team was fully remote (I was the only developer in NYC, most of the rest were in Portugal or elsewhere in the US.) I found it very difficult to ask questions remotely for several reasons: I never knew if I was intruding on somebody else's time, and explaining things over Slack isn't as effective (in retrospect, I should have made more use of video and…

I'm sure people will respond with the obvious need for an onboarding guide or helper, but even this is harder to do remote. When I onboard in-person I can watch the new hire, judge their mental state or know if they're busy, check in with them often - at the right time and get to know them personally. All do-able remote but much harder.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#232

Post by mjayhn »

the_gipsy wrote: post #225
mjayhn wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wfh and I won't work for a company that bases my pay on my zipcode (Gitlab). I want complete flexibility on where I live. There are plenty of remote companies that don't do that, especially now post-covid. I wish more people would reject zip code COL so that companies starting to WFH don't just take Gitlabs idea of it.

Wait, so you can move to a super expensive place and the company will subsidize your mortgage investment?

My company generates revenue and my talent directly affects the revenue. The salary that you give me is correlated to that revenue that I help to generate. The company figured out my value when they made me an offer.

My location during any of this transaction bears absolutely zero significance. If I'm worth $300k to generate $5mill for you don't worry about whether I'm living in NYC or on a ranch in Wyoming.

If you're willing to take $60k for a remote job you can make $160k at because that's the actual global market value you're doing all of us in the field a disservice by working for the low COL wage. It's bad enough salaries have barely risen for other fields since the 70s. Our field can work anywhere but we need to make sure we don't let our salaries slide by letting the Gitlab style take hold.

Often on hn I see people thinking they need to take a pay cut to work remotely. You don't! Same thing.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#233

Post by ghaff »

lhorie wrote: post #215
throwaway713 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I could keep my current compensation and move to the low cost of living area where my family is located, I would reach financial independence 10-15 years ahead of my current trajectory with Bay Area rents/costs. I'll settle for the minor inconveniences of WFH any day in order to get a decade of my life to spend with family or to work on my own projects.

My understanding is that this has big tax implications (since presumably said low cost of living areas are outside of California). I would love to understand better what sorts of complications WFH bring to the table for those cases (and how they can be mitigated).

The company needs to do payroll in a different state and you, as an individual, now pay taxes in your state of residence which isn't where company HQ is.

From a tax perspective it's mostly no different than if they had a small office in that state.

For big companies, in particular, it's not that big a deal as they're probably using a payroll service like ADP anyway. There may be some paperwork--and certainly more so if other countries are involved.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#234

Post by cvlasdkv »

clarry wrote: post #151
pmiller2 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bingo! I often talk about how you can rent a 3BR apartment in my home town (Nowhere, Michigan) for like $900. This is true -- I've verified it recently. The drawback is that you have to live in my home town. I can certainly see companies wanting to pay less based on CoL simply to make the bottom line better. Given the way capitalism works, I'd say this is a near inevitability. The end result will probably be that the…

> I can't see this being good for employees... ... that want to live in NYC or SF. For everyone else, who doesn't want to live in places like that, this is awesome. (And that's a word I never use)

Is it awesome? It raises the cost of everything everywhere else (because for the majority of young, educated people there aren't _that_ many desirable cities). We are already seeing that in places like Austin or Colorado.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#235

Post by Aeolun »

0xEFF wrote: post #132
cynicalreason wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is exactly the reason I prefer the office .. I have 2 kids, 5 & 2, and if I'm home they are very much used to me being around them or doing something together, working from home is not ideal

A door helps tremendously.

As a free instrument for them to bang on while screaming ‘Papa!’ At the top of their lungs?

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#236

Post by Consultant32452 »

2bitencryption wrote: post #114

It's odd how HN does not reflect the reality I see. I'm at a big (Google/Microsoft/Amazon) workplace and WFH has always been a last-resort thing. I can't even imagine my team moving toward this. Every day I do too many things in the office that are face-to-face. Drop by the architect to get an opinion about XYZ, drop by a PM to ask about their functional spec, drop by a coworker to ask about some comments they left o…

I work at an old fashioned, conservative, fortune 500 finance company. Our CEO recently had a town hall in which he said he'd done a complete 180 on remote workers. Before, he thought it didn't work, and that those workers weren't as effective, but that being forced into the situation proved to him that he had been wrong all along. He stopped plans to purchase new real estate and was expanding remote opportunities for the foreseeable future, covid or no covid. That's just one anecdata, but it's definitely not just tech bros.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#237

Post by nogabebop23 »

lhorie wrote: post #203
dddbbb wrote: post #137

I work at a large tech company on a young team (average age is late twenties). In my experience many don't view working from home regularly as a benefit. I understand that must change drastically when you're middle aged, have a family to live around and a spacious house in the suburbs. But most younger people want to live in the middle of the city (i.e. small, often shared apartments but a short commute) and have no…

As I understand, you're allowed to (but not required to) work from home. So it seems like a win-win for both groups?

The tools and processes for remote work are completely different than co-located though. This will force the in-office folks to essentially adopt all of the remote protocols.

IME blended teams are by far the hardest to make work.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#238

Post by _ea1k »

itsmefaz wrote: post #176

This is a really bad idea.. Firstly, home is not an effective place of work. I come home mostly to be with my family and not take my problems from work to home.. Aren't there many studies done on the same, why work shouldn't be brought to home and stuff.. Secondly, if the employer provides all the required setup (monitors, webcams, speakers) and support for electricity backups and stuff then I might be willing. The p…

[begin tongue in cheek rant] As someone who has worked from home for years, I'm really intrigued by your reasoning behind making blanket statements like this. I had no idea that my company should be providing free backup electricity for me. Should they provide free snacks and coffee too? [end rant]

Seriously, working from home is a great privilege for some and a tremendous burden for others. It is wonderful that companies are realizing that there are tremendous benefits to giving employees freedom and choices.

One size (or approach) does not fit all.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#239

Post by filleokus »

I think the biggest argument for me against near 100% WFH is the space cost of a dedicated home office. Ideally I would need another room for it to be long term sustainable. Right now I live in a small 400 sq. feet (≈ 35 m²) studio apartment in city center, walking distance to everything (including the office in normal times). Property prices here are at around 1k USD / sq. feet (10 k USD / m²). An apartment with dedicated space for my home office would cost me like 100k USD extra.

The only viable option would be to move out from the city, but then I loose all the other benefits from living here.

(Of course the total cost is the same or higher today, but it's taken by the employer. It's not compleeetley unthinkable that the employer would compensate me for it, but it get's really tricky really fast. I would probably have to pay taxes for the extra salary, and how much "rent" would they pay? Are new grads supposed to work from their kitchen table, or far away just to afford an extra room?)

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#240

Post by Ididntdothis »

freepor wrote: post #217
Ididntdothis wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This makes sense. In my team it’s the same: the young guys like going out together after work and also often don’t have the space at home to set up a good workplace. They also need the most handholding. I remember some discussions a while ago where the conclusion was that it’s hard to onboard juniors remotely and remote is more suitable for experienced people.

If the seniors are remote who will onboard the juniors in person?

Good question that as far as I know nobody has solved so far.
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