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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

#751

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would people fitting this description not prefer the flexibility of working remotely? As an aside -- I prefer not to use the term "work from home", as the ideal (for me) is the ability to work from anywhere at my option. Also, for what it's worth, co-working spaces can be a workable alternative to a traditional office.

The workplace is one of the last places where you're forced to interact face-to-face with a diverse range of people multiple times, on a regular basis. If you're young, and from out of town, you get a lot from that. Certainly, there are different clubs and groups out there, but the people they attract are fairly homogenous, and monofocused on their topic of interest. There are coffee-houses and bars, but you'd be luc…

Churches vary greatly, but one of the largest associations of evangelical congregations in Austin was birthed from young adults, grew from young adults, and plants from young adults.

Our congregation (not part of that network) is one of the rare places where I interact deeply across generations, economic classes, and social classes from professor to auto mechanic. I couldn’t reliably predict someone’s politics. No congregation is perfect, but a common mission crosses a lot of divides.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#752
post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are overestimating the size of the eligible labor supply increase. Just for Google, for 2017-2019 the number of H1B workers sponsored was 22k. For the same period the increase in number of full time employees was 40k (couldn’t find the figure for US only but fair to assume majority is US-based). So more than half of the new employers are supplied internationally. Does the geo-unlocked US supply pose a sub…

What's stopping someone from moving to SF for higher comp on hiring, then getting a P.O. box or friend's mailing address in SF and moving back to work from lower cost area after some time? Is your employer really going to decrease your salary after the fact? Can you file taxes in your lower cost of living state after you lock in your high SF comp package and never notify your employer but still pay your taxes in the…

Location should not affect salary since when it comes to remote work it is completely irrelevant.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#753

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The value of the valley has always been the hallway chat. You can't easily replicate that with a zoom culture.

> The value of the valley has always been the hallway chat. Is it, really? I always hear and read this, but I see very few anecdotes. In thinking through my own interactions, I'm not sure anything that happened in the hallway, break room, or at lunch table actually contributed much more to the bottom line than conversations I've had over VC and Slack.

If you're not networking you're not moving ahead.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#754
post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are overestimating the size of the eligible labor supply increase. Just for Google, for 2017-2019 the number of H1B workers sponsored was 22k. For the same period the increase in number of full time employees was 40k (couldn’t find the figure for US only but fair to assume majority is US-based). So more than half of the new employers are supplied internationally. Does the geo-unlocked US supply pose a sub…

What's stopping someone from moving to SF for higher comp on hiring, then getting a P.O. box or friend's mailing address in SF and moving back to work from lower cost area after some time? Is your employer really going to decrease your salary after the fact? Can you file taxes in your lower cost of living state after you lock in your high SF comp package and never notify your employer but still pay your taxes in the…

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Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#755
post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's stopping someone from moving to SF for higher comp on hiring, then getting a P.O. box or friend's mailing address in SF and moving back to work from lower cost area after some time? Is your employer really going to decrease your salary after the fact? Can you file taxes in your lower cost of living state after you lock in your high SF comp package and never notify your employer but still pay your taxes in the…

Location should not affect salary since when it comes to remote work it is completely irrelevant.

Until you and a remote candidate in Idaho are equally qualified but the Idaho candidate is willing to take 2/3 of the pay and live like royalty.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#756

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just want to point out that there's no rational basis for this argument unless the employee in SF is much more productive. To put it another way, do you currently see pay adjustments based on housing costs for employees living in SF? Have you ever heard of differences across employees simply because one of them has a more expensive house?

"Cost of Living" adjustments are a red herring, what they really are is really "competition density". There are plenty of tech companies paying great salaries in the bay because they have to, otherwise they would just go work for someone else. On the other hand, if you lived in Oklahoma you aren't going to say no to $LOCAL_OFFER+10k just because bay area salaries are $LOCAL_OFFER+90k. As long as this disparity exists…

If you're working remotely, then you just tell you live in NYC/SF. If they still offer a subpar salary, then you get an offer at and bid them against each other. Salary negotiation is a two-way street. Companies that hire remote workers care more about results, which has nothing to do with the cost of living in your location.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#757
post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are overestimating the size of the eligible labor supply increase. Just for Google, for 2017-2019 the number of H1B workers sponsored was 22k. For the same period the increase in number of full time employees was 40k (couldn’t find the figure for US only but fair to assume majority is US-based). So more than half of the new employers are supplied internationally. Does the geo-unlocked US supply pose a sub…

What's stopping someone from moving to SF for higher comp on hiring, then getting a P.O. box or friend's mailing address in SF and moving back to work from lower cost area after some time? Is your employer really going to decrease your salary after the fact? Can you file taxes in your lower cost of living state after you lock in your high SF comp package and never notify your employer but still pay your taxes in the…

You and your employer need to know where you actually live to pay state and local income taxes.

Falsifying this, to my knowledge, is not only a bad idea, but could easily be a termination-level offense and could be illegal.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#758
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…

FAANG companies have already been trying to hire in US cities outside of Silicon Valley and Seattle in order to cut costs. Austin in particular comes to mind.

It turns out to be fairly difficult to recruit engineering talent in the United States outside of major metropolitan areas. It also turns out that when tech companies start to hire people in a new city, the cost of living in that city rises substantially -- again, Austin in particular comes to mind.

In the end, if tech compensation decreases substantially I don't think it will be because of remote work, but rather because the recession will kill a lot of startups and the same amount of engineering talent will be chasing a smaller number of jobs, thereby giving employers more leverage.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#759

I work in FAANG and I am really not convinced this is the start of a trend. First Twitter was already moving towards permanent WFH before the pandemic, it only accelerated their plans. I highly doubt (m)any other companies were also seriously considering that move before the pandemic. Second, working in a remote only team is very different from working in an office, or even from occasionally working from home. I have…

Yeah, calling this a trend would be stretching this a bit. From what I have seen myself and heard from friends in other FAANG or other medium/big tech companies, a lot of employees prefer to work from office and are not liking the current WFH situation. I know of one survey inside a big company where majority of the people voted for being in the office for at least a few days of the week once the situation is better.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#760
post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are overestimating the size of the eligible labor supply increase. Just for Google, for 2017-2019 the number of H1B workers sponsored was 22k. For the same period the increase in number of full time employees was 40k (couldn’t find the figure for US only but fair to assume majority is US-based). So more than half of the new employers are supplied internationally. Does the geo-unlocked US supply pose a sub…

What's stopping someone from moving to SF for higher comp on hiring, then getting a P.O. box or friend's mailing address in SF and moving back to work from lower cost area after some time? Is your employer really going to decrease your salary after the fact? Can you file taxes in your lower cost of living state after you lock in your high SF comp package and never notify your employer but still pay your taxes in the…

If your employer thinks you're in California, they'll tell the California tax authorities that you are. CA will use that as evidence that you owe them a big chunk of your income. If you don't pay, you'll have to fight. To win, you'll probably have to prove that you misled your employer, which will probably result in your getting fired for it. If you lose, CA can force your employer to take the tax out of your salary, so you'll pay California anyway plus you'll probably have to pay the place you actually live if you've done anything to establish residence. Along the way, any number of other unpredictable problems can arise (bad credit rating, legal threats, ongoing disputes with entities that don't understand or care that you've surrendered, etc.)

Good luck with all of that.

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