Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

buzzfeednews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

351–360 of 1001 posts

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#351

Post by amateurdev »

BryantD wrote: post #28
poulsbohemian wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The interesting question is, why now? I mean on the surface sure - because we have a pandemic and state ordered quarantine. But the more interesting question is - why is this finally provoking companies and why do we think they will continue the trend in the future post-quarantine? I've been a remote worker since 2006. It's been obvious to me for a long time that companies could go all remote or some version of remot…

I don't think all of them will -- it's probably significant that Twitter was already thinking about this. However, I know my CEO never would have run this experiment without the pandemic. Now, he has data he didn't have before, and he's publicly said that this changed his mind. The trigger event was the forced experiment. Studies convinced me, but I don't have to take responsibility for the health of a whole company…

Oh I agree with you. I work for a company making software for utilities. Our company policy doesn't allow working remotely at all! Engineers (not developers) need to work on systems that are isolated and staged in our campus. There's no chance that they can work remotely. Rules for other teams are slightly relaxed, it depends on the managers to let their teams work remotely for some time. Since the pandemic started, the company has had to adapt and make a mechanism for these engineers to work remotely. The engineers aren't as productive (from what some colleagues told me), but they can manage. On the other hand, our VP has been reporting that there's been 0 effect on software development teams and are happy to consider bringing us back to office much later.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#352

Post by wlll »

fermienrico wrote: post #85

Then why pay $200k for a software engineer in the valley when the same talent can live outside of the bay area and can do with 1/3rd of the salary? The question I have is what portion of the $200k salary is 1) due to the raw talent of the individual 2) because they live in the bay area.

I work for places that pay me for what I'm worth, I don't work for places that pay me based on where I live.

I'm not cranking out code that is somehow less effective while living in the NW England, and so to pay me less than someone else is downright insulting.

I also, to be clear, don't have any hard feelings about people who live in even cheaper[0] places than me, it's their choice. I used to work with a guy in the Phillipines who was on the same as me. Good for him!

[0] It's not that cheap in the NW England. It's clearly not SF, NY or London, but it's not cheap.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#353

Post by tayo42 »

fermienrico wrote: post #85

Then why pay $200k for a software engineer in the valley when the same talent can live outside of the bay area and can do with 1/3rd of the salary? The question I have is what portion of the $200k salary is 1) due to the raw talent of the individual 2) because they live in the bay area.

If i can work remote at facebook for 200k or work remote at google for 210k who would I pick? Salaries I expect would dip slightly as the pool of engineers grows then go back up as it gets more competitive. Salaries would only go down if the supply of jobs goes down. I don't think that happens in the short term.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#354

Post by edmundsauto »

daenz wrote: post #247
fermienrico wrote: post #85

Then why pay $200k for a software engineer in the valley when the same talent can live outside of the bay area and can do with 1/3rd of the salary? The question I have is what portion of the $200k salary is 1) due to the raw talent of the individual 2) because they live in the bay area.

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 US Government, normally a very conservative org, has cost of living increases for federal workers and (I think) military service members. Based on that, I think it's pretty well accepted (perhaps incorrectly!) that it is ethical.

Or maybe practical beats ethical.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#355

Post by xenocyon »

daenz wrote: post #247
fermienrico wrote: post #85

Then why pay $200k for a software engineer in the valley when the same talent can live outside of the bay area and can do with 1/3rd of the salary? The question I have is what portion of the $200k salary is 1) due to the raw talent of the individual 2) because they live in the bay area.

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…

> If they employer can pay $200k/yr for a remote employee

It's interesting that folks envisioning a globally uniform payscale tend to posit SF salaries in Hanoi rather than Hanoi salaries in SF.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#356

Post by gregkerzhner »

I think if you work with a brilliant group of coworkers that you love to hangout out with, then you are lucky and I can see how you miss being in the office. But, thats not the case for many of us. The crux of work relationships is that they are not voluntary. You might get lucky and have ones you love, or you might get some that are distracting, or at worse, you dislike. Either way though you are stuck with them.

I think people get stuck in the mental construct of "office = socializing" therefore "no office = antisocial". But thats not the case. If you could eliminate the 1 hour of wasted time daily on small talk and office distractions, as well as the 1 hour daily on commuting, that leaves you two extra hours a day of your life to focus on whatever you chose.

You can join a club, pick a new hobby, learn a new language, volunteer or even start a revolution. Be as social or not social as you want, but the beauty of it is that thats time you have complete freedom over. I choose that over contrived interactions with a random set of people who happened to do enough Leetcode problems to get in the same room as you.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#357

Post by novok »

moneil971 wrote: post #10
taurath wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Time zone is gonna be tougher. Going from sync to async requires a big shift and most big companies have enough trouble with communication. One other benefit to companies - maybe they won’t pay a premium anymore for people who live in expensive areas.

Twitter and other global companies have been managing the time zone factor and using online chat, video calls, etc. for some time now.

It turns into early hour / late hour meetings that your dread and don't want to do. I bet as a result people silently start not working with those big time zone difference teams and it become bifurcated.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#358

Post by 0xffff2 »

allenu wrote: post #190
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but it would also be good if more (tech) companies offered a decent working environment. That's coming from personal experience btw, where most jobs / assignments I've had, it was usually open plan, flexible seat arrangements. I have a new job now where I have a fixed desk with a set of drawers. It's a breath of fresh air and honestly it sounds so stupid and trivial. But employers don't have their employees' b…

My even more cynical take is that companies are finding employees are way more productive working from home. I think part of it could be that with COVID-19, a lot of us are looking for an outlet for our energies, and so are working harder than normal.

Maybe it's different for me because my organization is one of the last holdouts where everyone at least has there own assigned cubicle and many have full offices, but every single person in my team has complained about getting far less done than normal. Most of us had a tremendous amount of time and money invested in making our workspace productive, and it's very hard to replicate that at home.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#359

Post by someonehere »

Honestly, the tools to remotely onboard employees from anywhere in the world is possible now.

Virtual machines that live in the cloud. Apple DEP. Microsoft InTune. All of these tools allow companies to drop ship computers to employees from a warehouse or reseller to the employees doorstep. Turn it on and the IT tools take over and set the machine up.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#360

Post by paulie_a »

gregkerzhner wrote: post #356

I think if you work with a brilliant group of coworkers that you love to hangout out with, then you are lucky and I can see how you miss being in the office. But, thats not the case for many of us. The crux of work relationships is that they are not voluntary. You might get lucky and have ones you love, or you might get some that are distracting, or at worse, you dislike. Either way though you are stuck with them. I…

The office distractions and chitchat are never going to go away regardless of format
Post reply on HN