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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

#641

Post by massysett »

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 am middle aged, have a family to be around, and a long commute (60 mins morning, 40 mins evening). I have a spacious house and room for a separate office. Yet even I do not like work from home. I don’t like assigning space in my home for my employer’s use. I don’t like having work in my house. It’s probably actually more bearable due to current circumstance-I watch my daughter in mornings, and my wife is here too. If this were normal circumstances and I were here alone all day and connected only through phone and video, I would like this even less. No way I want to keep doing this if I don’t have to.

And some of my staff can’t even do phone calls if their roommate has one at the same time because they have small apartments. I don’t even have that problem.

Not interested in providing rent-free space to my employer.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#642

Post by andreshb »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #634
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes they restrict remote work to America for work that was done previously in the states. If this picks up, and there are no legal restrictions on what country a remote employee must be in, then the low end might just go much lower than what it currently is in small cities.

Yes, though work gets less efficient +/- 3 time zones or so.

If you hire in the Americas, you keep the same time zone. There's a whole world of English speaking programmers, core contributors to node, to ruby, ML engineers, data engineers south of the border. All the same time zone.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#643

Post by ryanwaggoner »

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…

If this were true, remote positions would pay just as well as the highest paid places in the US, but they generally don’t, because they don’t have to.

It’s only difficult to hire developers anywhere because you don’t want to pay what it would cost to get a yes.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#644

Post by SirZimzim »

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

Yes, it's considered a want because you want to live in SF while working somewhere far. What is stopping you from finding a job in SF or moving down?

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#645

Post by [deleted] »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #629
_nckn wrote: post #620

I think this is the hugest news yet. It suddenly opens the pool of candidates to all across the country. I expect other tech giants will follow suit. Those who previously can't afford or don't want to live in big cities like NYC/Seattle/SF because they are older, have families, or various other reasons now are included in the candidate pool. This can go two ways: either the local software business will have to compet…

That assumes they restrict remote work to America for work that was done previously in the states. If this picks up, and there are no legal restrictions on what country a remote employee must be in, then the low end might just go much lower than what it currently is in small cities.

[deleted]

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#646

Post by christiansakai »

peteretep wrote: post #640
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes they restrict remote work to America for work that was done previously in the states. If this picks up, and there are no legal restrictions on what country a remote employee must be in, then the low end might just go much lower than what it currently is in small cities.

And just to make your point explicit, if everyone moves to local-remote, then the move to hiring cheap and top-notch Bulgarian or Romanian programmers is even easier.

This is further in the future, and labor laws will likely stifle this first, especially in today's climate.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#647

Post by smsm42 »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #629
_nckn wrote: post #620

I think this is the hugest news yet. It suddenly opens the pool of candidates to all across the country. I expect other tech giants will follow suit. Those who previously can't afford or don't want to live in big cities like NYC/Seattle/SF because they are older, have families, or various other reasons now are included in the candidate pool. This can go two ways: either the local software business will have to compet…

That assumes they restrict remote work to America for work that was done previously in the states. If this picks up, and there are no legal restrictions on what country a remote employee must be in, then the low end might just go much lower than what it currently is in small cities.

> there are no legal restrictions on what country a remote employee must be in

Working remotely from another country is easy. Paying somebody in another country is not easy at all. Even with specialized providers it is a substantial hassle. Without it you pretty much better give up - the chances you get all the payments, taxes and paperwork right is minimal, and that country's tax/regulatory authorities would be more than happy to fine you and/or your workers if you don't. In the best case, in worse case they might just seize your money intended for payroll and keep it until you figure things out.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#648

Post by squnch »

ilaksh wrote: post #421
enjo wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It sounds like the product people are sitting in long meetings. Have you considered the idea that people were already disengaged in those meetings, they were just putting up a better front because they could tell everyone was watching them closely in person? And now that they are at home, they are not trying as hard to pretend they are listening closely, and since they are more comfortable, they are staying in the me…

There's some kind of work that's best done by individuals (writing a novel). There's some kind of work that's best done by teams (planning an invasion). The work that's best done by teams is currently much better performed in meatspace than over any kind of digital communications channel.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#649

Post by mixmastamyk »

dntbnmpls wrote: post #627
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 cynical take on this move is that the company doesn't have to pay as much for office space + worker transport anymore. Don't forget it removes the work/home barrier. Now you are at work 24/7 and on call at all hours. Work and productivity has consumed most of modern life. The last bastion of freedom from work/productivity was the home. Now people are celebrating the loss of that precious personal space. Strange.

If you’re working enough extra hours to overcome commute and prep time, you’re doing it wrong. :D Step away when shift over.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#650

Post by ranci »

dumbfoundded wrote: post #139
jeffbee wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do I need either of those things? If I'm going to work from home permanently then whatever computers I need can come with me. Face-to-face meetings are a justification for middle management to exist; remote work due to pandemic is going to lay bare the stupidity of managers and their ranks will be greatly reduced. I predict that the written word is going to make a big comeback.

I actually think the ranks of middle managers will increase as more people work from home. Especially on the engineering side. The whole point of managers is to facilitate communication between people and teams. WFH certainly doesn't help communication problems. HR should pretty much drop to 0 though.

How exactly does it help to pass communications through a person (the manager) that, for the most part, does not understand the technical details of which they are speaking? We literally pay for slack for communication. No one needs an arbitrary human to act as a gatekeeping communication conduit.
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