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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

#301

Post by mattlondon »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #54
chrisseaton wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand why? Salaries are high because you're competing for the same small group of talented people. They aren't high due to the location.

I'm pretty sure the salaries are heavily dependent on location related cost of living requirements. Aren't salaries different in different locations? (ie. same company with offices in Vancouver Canada vs Seattle vs SF?) I've heard they are... If pay was purely about talent, everyone would be paid the same.

Usually the salaries are based on "market rates" and explicitly do not consider cost of living.

This is why London jobs are not paid more than SF - the "market rate" in London is lower despite living costs being the same or more than SF (especially when in London none of the FAANGs offer free transport to and from work and property prices are so much higher near transport hubs).

Market rates are murky - I guess it is based on competition and who employs in the area. There is some sort of shared database that loads of companies use from what I understand, but they are flawed since they don't include a lot of high-paying employers in finance et al.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#302

Post by dntrkv »

LanceJones wrote: post #130
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 wonder how those other folks feel about their own productivity with teammates always "dropping by". :-)

I don't mind when people drop by to discuss things. I may take a small productivity hit in the short term, but I gain a lot of insight into what others are working on, and get a chance to point someone in the right direction before they file a PR that I then have to review and ask them to re-implement things in a different way, which is way more frustrating than just having a quick in-person conversation.

The added friction of having someone jump on a call vs sending a slack message and stopping by my desk has resulted in a lot more tedious PR reviews where you end up having to explain your approach with a wall of text and then still having to jump on a call and re-explain the same things in more depth.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#303

Post by freepor »

CodeSheikh wrote: post #273
Vysero wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't agree more. If I could work from home permanently I would move far far away from where I am currently living. I would get myself a nice condo or small house, and settle in. Currently, where I live, despite the fact that I make almost 30k/year more than the medium average income I still can only just afford a one bedroom apartment spending the suggested 30% of my income. Imagine being able to buy a house!!!…

What's the guarantee that say your San Francisco/NYC employer will keep paying you city rates when you are living in a small town in mid-west. At some point they will catch up and start saving money this way. Everyone at a tech company is not a crucial employee. Don't get me wrong, I am all in for getting paid SF rates while living in a cheap Texas suburb.

They don’t need to pay SF rates. 100K in Indianapolis buys you a way better standard of living than 200K in SF.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#304

Post by hinkley »

tick_tock_tick wrote: post #219
VectorLock wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I just don't think we have the communication tools to support productive collaboration between people who hardly ever meet. How do Open Source projects achieve it?

No real deadlines and mostly one or two developers max on any given improvement.

And you work on things that you want to work on. If something is a hassle you punt and if people complain, what do you expect from free code?

How often does free software - and I mean no paid positions - compete with commercial software? OSS puts companies out of business (because it turns out people think some things should just be $0) but the projects that actually compete are a very small fraction, aren’t they?

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#305

Post by darepublic »

Vysero wrote: post #229
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.

I couldn't agree more. If I could work from home permanently I would move far far away from where I am currently living. I would get myself a nice condo or small house, and settle in. Currently, where I live, despite the fact that I make almost 30k/year more than the medium average income I still can only just afford a one bedroom apartment spending the suggested 30% of my income. Imagine being able to buy a house!!!…

Culture embracing remote work would help disperse the wealth geographically. It would hurt some property owners in urban meccas I suppose

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#306

Post by notyourday »

throwaway713 wrote: post #182
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…

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.

Largely the compensation in SV and NYC was high because those were the cultural centers, it is expensive to live there but "everyone" wanted to be there.

Make no mistake - work from home means the salaries are going to regress to the midwest level of pay.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#307

Post by vinniejames »

throwaway713 wrote: post #182
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…

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.

Companies don't do this. They will adjust your salary down based on your city of residence. Square is one example of this. You're not compensated for the value you provide, you're compensated for the cost of living near the office.

You're also now competing against a national talent pool vs locals only

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#308

Post by machiaweliczny »

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 am architect and preferr slack/video - yeah it's more demanding for people like you who would like to jump in and break my focus anytime.

I encourage even stupid questions but in written form. Myself when writing questions half of then doesn't make sense (I find answer when formulating question). From other ones at least whole team learns.

To make remote/async work one needs to discourage priv communication but encourage threads.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#309

Post by lukevp »

CodeSheikh wrote: post #273
Vysero wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't agree more. If I could work from home permanently I would move far far away from where I am currently living. I would get myself a nice condo or small house, and settle in. Currently, where I live, despite the fact that I make almost 30k/year more than the medium average income I still can only just afford a one bedroom apartment spending the suggested 30% of my income. Imagine being able to buy a house!!!…

What's the guarantee that say your San Francisco/NYC employer will keep paying you city rates when you are living in a small town in mid-west. At some point they will catch up and start saving money this way. Everyone at a tech company is not a crucial employee. Don't get me wrong, I am all in for getting paid SF rates while living in a cheap Texas suburb.

Hey, as someone from a cheap Texas suburb... why did we get singled out for this example specifically?

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#310

Post by ravenstine »

joncrane wrote: post #189
ravenstine wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm an ardent supporter of remote work, and I wouldn't go back to non-remote work without a hefty pay raise, but I think I probably would have considered office jobs during my last search if the offices I'd worked in previously had actually been pleasant. Open office plans, low cubicle walls, cubicle sharing, frequent noise and disrespect of focus, flimsy banged up office chairs and equipment, no budget for standing…

> disrespect of focus This right here is my beef in a nutshell. My attention should be under my control. For example, I can't believe that leaving audible cell phone notifications on is becoming normalized.

Yeah, that's the worst thing for me. Whenever I've brought this issue up to employers, I usually get a blank stare. To me, it's just self evident that I can get more done with fewer distractions, but a lot of people seem unwilling to imagine a workplace without chaos.

Granted, remote work isn't free from distraction. Far from it, in fact. At least I can control the noise level and close Slack and email, if need be.

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