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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

#651

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not often. I’m Pacific and work for a company in the Eastern timezone. At 2pm I can no longer get answers until the next day.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#652
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…

But what about hanging around the water cooler so I can colab on some random ideas I overheard!!! my whole go to market and product strategy depends on this!!!! - Some anti-WFH person, probably

Losing those serendipitous meetings is frequently mentioned by people bullish about working from home as one of the things they find difficult.

There are downsides to working from home, it's silly to dismiss them as mindlessness from the other camp.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what about hanging around the water cooler so I can colab on some random ideas I overheard!!! my whole go to market and product strategy depends on this!!!! - Some anti-WFH person, probably

Losing those serendipitous meetings is frequently mentioned by people bullish about working from home as one of the things they find difficult. There are downsides to working from home, it's silly to dismiss them as mindlessness from the other camp.

> Losing those serendipitous meetings

In a remote-first culture, those meetings still happen, even though it needs some more effort to facilitate those situations. It's when the team is split between onsite and remote that remote contributors have a disadvantage and might even miss out on important things going on.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#654
post #647

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.

> 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…

This is one of the reasons why, in my somewhat radical opinion, all taxes should be some form of sales tax. No income tax, etc. If you live in a country, you spend money in that country, and so you pay taxes in that country. No workarounds, no loopholes, no tax returns, no cognitive load, just extremely simple tax law.

(I know it's not quite that simple, but I think it's interesting to think about.)

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#655
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.

Language and time zone barriers still may be a problem though.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#658
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…

Maybe it's the other way around: due to increased supply, total package of FAANG engineers will drop. That's not necessarily a bad thing though. We've been enjoying unprecedented packages for many years. It may be a good time to distribute some of the wealth to other parts of the country.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#659
post #647

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.

> 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…

While some hassle of paying someone in another country is real, this level of pain seems to be pretty extreme. I am sure it depends on the country (good luck hiring in North Korea :) ), but for most countries there are enough options, from the employer opening a subsidiary to hiring employee as a contractor and everything in between (e.g., a local organization handling paperwork for a small salary cut which is a lot less than US recruiters would charge). My 2c.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#660
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.

What with the virus and how it played out in nyc I wouldn't be surprised to see a large migration out of cities in the coming years.
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