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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

#361

Post by jedberg »

This is great. I've always been an advocate for companies to set themselves up as remote first, even if they have an office, so that people who are remote can still be just as involved.

One thing I predict happening if this becomes widespread is a reversion to the mean on salaries. I think the pay for people outside the Bay Area will go up and inside the Bay Area it will go down, as being in the Bay Area will no longer be nearly as essential.

This will have a nice second order effect on Bay Area real estate prices, bringing them closer in line to reality (but we will still have all the problems of massive undersupply, because it's just a nice place to live, tech employee or not).

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#362

Post by RangerScience »

AlwaysBCoding wrote: post #333
saurik wrote: post #299

What is Twitter even doing? Like I realize they likely have an infinite number of people working for them, but are any of them doing anything important at all? This is not like the usual "I just don't see how a company needs that many people" laments: this is specific to Twitter, as they seem to have at most one engineer working on new features... it took like five years for them to implement "increase size of Tweet…

I've hung out a bunch at Twitter's offices (in both SF and NYC). It's pretty eye-opening and a good lens into why Twitter the company is so fucked up. The vibe that comes off is more of a social hangout club than a serious tech company. You meet your friend for lunch and there's professional chefs cooking gourmet meals, you hang out in the social area while the celebrity of the day comes into the office and everyone…

> Anyone with right of center political views is casually censored

I've been having very productive conversations with someone on twitter whom I'm pretty sure is a Catholic fundamentalist. I'm specifically following a few other accounts because the provide outside-filter-bubble views, and they're all rather further than "right of center." Haven't heard a peep from any of them about Twitter censorship.

TL;DR: Not sure what you're talking about here.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#363

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

nathan_long wrote: post #334
vinniejames wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So you're considering Candidate A, who lives in SF, and B, who lives in a small town. You decide that B has to compete with A on talent, but A doesn't have to compete with B on price. Does that make strategic sense?

Yes. Stripe and Gitlab follow that model for their remote workforce.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#364

Post by hota_mazi »

wlll wrote: post #352
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…

> 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.

That is very short sighted. Your dollar value is highly dependent on where you live, that's just reality.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#365

Post by johannes1234321 »

VectorLock wrote: post #94
johannes1234321 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's lots of communication which is hard to do remote. The water cooler is o e thing. But even in a meeting when presenting something the feedback is limited. When sitting in a room it's simpler to see whether people are following and one should go faster or iterate on a point. Also one can simpler intercept with a question or comment. The text based back channel is limited for that. (I WFH exclusively for 10+ yea…

Presentations always seemed to me like one of those things that can be done without a meeting at all.

If it's unidirectional, true. If it's supposed to be a discussion it's different.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#366

Post by itslikeroar »

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…

Yeah employers should pay employees for the value of their work, which does not depend on their physical location.

Also, employers always pay employees less than the value of their work and pocket the rest. This is called profit.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#367

Post by RangerScience »

roosterdawn wrote: post #133
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.

> when the same talent can live outside of the bay area and can do with 1/3rd of the salary What makes you think this is true and not just a post-hoc rationalization? Let me put it this way: offer that salary worldwide and you will still have difficulty finding top-tier talent, as many remote-first companies are finding out the hard way. Having been a hiring manager in such a position before, I will tell you that you…

The current gig I've got, if they'd had a senior engineer - even as an advisor - from the outset, basically the last ~8 mo of work split between myself and a different senior engineer would have been unnecessary.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#368

Post by danjac »

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…

Let me introduce you to Slack...

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#369

Post by esoterica »

ryandvm wrote: post #340

So... does this mean Twitter is going to transition to a globally dispersed workforce? Or are they still going to hire mostly Bay Area folks? The latter would seem insane if they are going to allow teams to be 100% remote. Why pay SF rates if you're getting a WFH employee?

You have to pay SF rates if you want to hire SF level talent, even if you are hiring outside of SF. The average engineer is cheaper outside of SF because the average engineer is worse, not because you are getting the same quality of employee for the less money. Most of the good engineers move to SF to get access to better career opportunities.

I'm not saying all engineers outside SF are mediocre, but if you want the ones that aren't mediocre you have to pay them the same salaries the SF engineers are getting, so you're not saving any money.

If the average engineer in a non tech hub was just as competent as the average SF engineer at half the price, no one would bother paying through the nose to operate an SF office (but clearly many companies feel the compensation premium is worth the access to better talent).

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#370

Post by 101404 »

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…

Socializing is just as easily possible when working from home. Just meet for a coffee in Zoom or Skype or Whereby and "video chat" for an hour or so. Those are usually my most productive meetings.
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