Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#341

Post by benkaiser » Tue, May 12, 2020, 6:48 PM UTC

sylens wrote: post #146

Ididntdothis wrote: post #9

It would be good if more tech companies embraced this. I bet if they need tools for themselves we’ll see a lot of progress in remote collaboration tools. To make this work I wonder how executives will adapt. In my company the higher you go up the chain, the more they want face to face communication. I guess most top executives are people persons so not seeing things like body language or using body language takes awa…

I would love for more companies to embrace this just to open up the candidate pool for positions. There are so many positions at Microsoft, for example, that I would have loved to apply for, but they require you to be in Redmond, and I'm just not in a position to relocate.

Just so you're aware, it is possible in Microsoft to some extent, just not very publicly visible (the careers site doesn't help you find these jobs).

I started working in one team and switched to another team internally because they are pro-remote and I plan on moving back to Australia. Broadly across Microsoft there are also about ~30 other engineers already working from Australia for Redmond-based teams.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#342

Post by metajack » Tue, May 12, 2020, 6:48 PM UTC

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.

At a certain point people will move to the bay area for the higher paycheck, so that keeps it adjusted pretty high. Companies are not competing against local-to-the-employee employers, they are competing with all employers globally.

Even with regional adjustments, the math usually works out in your favor to not be in the bay area.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

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Post by nathan_long » Tue, May 12, 2020, 6:49 PM UTC

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…

> 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

Yes, and there is some correlation between age and seniority. If companies are so eager to hire senior developers, they might consider the preferences of candidates who have been working long enough to fit that description.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

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Post by ksec » Tue, May 12, 2020, 6:51 PM UTC

enjo wrote: post #248

Ididntdothis wrote: post #9

It would be good if more tech companies embraced this. I bet if they need tools for themselves we’ll see a lot of progress in remote collaboration tools. To make this work I wonder how executives will adapt. In my company the higher you go up the chain, the more they want face to face communication. I guess most top executives are people persons so not seeing things like body language or using body language takes awa…

As an executive (Product and Technology specifically) at a mostly work from home company: I find that engineers can do a pretty good job of effectively collaborating thanks to PR's, Slack, JIRA, and a host of other asynchronous tools. It's on the product side that things are tougher. Great product work is often about finding meaningful insights in the data available to you, and that often involves long conversations…

Yes, Engineering especially coding could work whether you it is Remote, WFH or anything else.

Product and Design so far doesn't seems work well without close face to face collaboration.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

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Post by ElysianEagle » Tue, May 12, 2020, 6:51 PM UTC

dubcanada wrote: post #241

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…

Have you told them (or have they been told) that they can work from somewhere besides there home? Obviously there is an exception right now, but normally "working from home" means you can work from anywhere you want (different country, parents cottage, coffee shop, outside, where ever). I work for a tech company and we have people who regularly go to Europe/other places for months and work from there just getting up/…

Exactly this! I'm not sure why people assume WFH must mean you're literally confined to your home/apartment for the entire duration of the work day. Unless you have to frequently get on calls requiring a quiet space, you should be fine working from cafes, co-working spaces and yes - even other countries if you so choose to (for short periods of time at least). I've been doing this at my current workplace as have a number of others I know.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

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Post by ken47 » Tue, May 12, 2020, 6:51 PM UTC

I want to see the text of Dorsey's email itself. It would have been nice if the text was included in the article at some point.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

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Post by pdovy » Tue, May 12, 2020, 6:51 PM UTC

Great move by Twitter. It's a big lift to move from mostly in-office to 100% work from home, so if you've done it successfully it seems like a no-brainer to retain that option as a perk post-pandemic.

Personally cutting out ~90 minutes of daily commuting has been fantastic. The lack of childcare .. not so much, but when that inevitably resolves I don't see myself going back 5 days a week in the office.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

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Post by beefalo » Tue, May 12, 2020, 6:51 PM UTC

tlbsofware wrote: post #242

Why is everyone here so dogmatic about this? Work from home is a choice here and just because you really like your choice and think it’s the best choice that’s ever been chosen, does not mean it’s the best for everyone else and that you should aggressively impose your choice onto others. This is how holy wars happen

Our company did a recent survey that asked if people wanted to be able to wfh permanently. I'm really interested in seeing how small the loud minority of "everyone should wfh" crowd is

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

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Post by cameronbrown » Tue, May 12, 2020, 6:52 PM UTC

CodeCube wrote: post #193

nsnick wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that a lot of tech companies are out in the suburbs...

lol, imagine wanting to have a 2 hour public transit commute (one way) from SF to the googleplex

I did that journey twice. Was the first time I ever saw San Francisco so I didn't mind how long it took, but I'd hate doing that daily.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

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Post by daenz » Tue, May 12, 2020, 6:52 PM UTC

option wrote: post #322

daenz wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had a related thought: is it ethical to pay a person less based purely on where they live? I understand that there are different cost of living factors for different places, but that's on the employee's side and should be none of the employer's business. If they employer can pay $200k/yr for a remote employee, it shouldn't matter where they live, and so scaling that value seems discriminatory to me. Anyone have…

the pay is based (as it should be) on market conditions, regulations and contractual obligations. Should not be based on ethics - those can vary in surprising ways.

I would be inclined to agree with you if your residence wasn't information you were required to give to your employer. It takes the normal market negotiations out of the equation.

It's like if your rent was information you were required to give to your employer. They could then make lower offers to people with lower rent, because the market conditions are now warped in favor of the employer.