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Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

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Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#41

Post by martinald »

popotamonga wrote: post #17
ahelwer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're single and willing to pay over $500/month you can get some pretty okay health insurance. Families throw a huge wrench in that plan though. Currently I'm just using COBRA. Nothing crystalizes support for medicare-for-all faster than ten seconds looking at the public health insurance marketplace.

How come its so expensive? The top top insurance in my european country is $100 and a pretty good is 30.

Most European private health insurance isn't actually 100% private, as well. Often you will have some state provided healthcare in there (especially for major trauma in ER).

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#42

Post by ghaff »

tuna-piano wrote: post #32
popotamonga wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come its so expensive? The top top insurance in my european country is $100 and a pretty good is 30.

Well for many reasons (good and bad) healthcare is more expensive in the US than any other country. But why is healthcare bought individually more expensive than healthcare an employer buys for all their employees? One is real and one is hidden. The hidden price difference is that most employees think they pay $200 per month in health insurance, but actually their employer is paying $600 and chips in $400 so the empl…

Or, at least, the young healthy people buy the cheapest insurance they can find while people who know they'll have a lot of expenses will tend to buy the gold-plated offerings.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#43

Post by dsr_ »

popotamonga wrote: post #17
ahelwer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're single and willing to pay over $500/month you can get some pretty okay health insurance. Families throw a huge wrench in that plan though. Currently I'm just using COBRA. Nothing crystalizes support for medicare-for-all faster than ten seconds looking at the public health insurance marketplace.

How come its so expensive? The top top insurance in my european country is $100 and a pretty good is 30.

Because the USA has a fundamentally broken healthcare system, which it propagandizes as the best in the world despite actual evidence that it is not.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#44

Post by raxxorrax »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #4

IMHO companies need to either embrace WFH fully or not at all. This current "we're kinda mostly WFH but not really sometimes" is the worst, as you have archaic processes still in place from pre WFH days that are still enforced, and most importantly, if management is in the office and you're not, over time, the colleagues who will be in the office will seem to get really lucky in regards to promotions and opportunitie…

I don't think that rents are the motivation behind this and instead I believe they want to get new heads and make work at Microsoft more attractive.

I get what you mean with either/or, currently you just don't know who is available on a day to day basis, which can ruin any planning.

One the other hand I would like to see mixed models like having 2 WFH days per week where I can work without the usual office distractions. For productivity purposes it would probably be best if those day are synchronized for development work of course.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#45

Post by ChuckNorris89 »

znpy wrote: post #22
ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #4

IMHO companies need to either embrace WFH fully or not at all. This current "we're kinda mostly WFH but not really sometimes" is the worst, as you have archaic processes still in place from pre WFH days that are still enforced, and most importantly, if management is in the office and you're not, over time, the colleagues who will be in the office will seem to get really lucky in regards to promotions and opportunitie…

Yes and no. My current employer and the previous one had more than one branch, geographically located in different areas (and nations). To me all the colleagues from other branches were "remote". As far as I can tell, it made no difference to me if they were in their office or at home, I still interacted with them via tickets, instant messaging, video calls etc. And yet we all worked together.

You missed my point. I didn't say remote doesn't work, I said remote will disadvantage remote employees if not done right.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#46

Post by fooblat »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #28
popotamonga wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come its so expensive? The top top insurance in my european country is $100 and a pretty good is 30.

a) Costs/prices in the US are inflated in the entire industry for a bunch of reasons that basically boil down to half a century of lack of incentive to control costs b) Your cost isn't actually $100. Your cost at the point of service is $100 but you're paying more taxes which subsidize your healthcare (among other things). edit: And before some snarky jerk tries to score some cheap virtue points by saying something t…

I don't think difference in taxes is as much as people think.

I have lived and worked in many cities in the US as well as a couple of central European countries. Once you get into a high salary range the taxes aren't much different. The exception being if you have a bunch of kids then you will pay lower taxes in the US. However, you will also have increased costs including medical for the kids.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#47

Post by satya71 »

popotamonga wrote: post #17
ahelwer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're single and willing to pay over $500/month you can get some pretty okay health insurance. Families throw a huge wrench in that plan though. Currently I'm just using COBRA. Nothing crystalizes support for medicare-for-all faster than ten seconds looking at the public health insurance marketplace.

How come its so expensive? The top top insurance in my european country is $100 and a pretty good is 30.

Many many reasons. Health care in the US is very expensive because providers have monopolies in most markets. Pharmaceuticals are also the most expensive in the world. The govt spends a lot of money, but in a way that makes market efficiencies impossible to achieve. Ultimately, that results in very high prices.

Essentially, no participant in the market has an interest in reducing costs.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#48

Post by mc32 »

shock wrote: post #38
mc32 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remote work is possible, but it’s not for everyone. Some people are good at it; they adapt well and remain productive. But... as Marissa Meier found out, some people are utterly bad at it, or some take advantage of the privilege of self management and milk the system. So they will have to measure and gauge to see the balance of benefits and detriments of permanent change.

> or some take advantage of the privilege of self management and milk the system. People milk the system in the office too. It's human nature to expend as little energy as possible for maximum rewards.

Of course. That’s understood. We know at max, your best workers are productive doing things 40 to 50%. Slackers at the office much less. Slackers at home even worse.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#49

Post by jgalt212 »

ahelwer wrote: post #3

The really interesting thing here is the possibility of part-time work. I recently switched from full-time work to independent contracting, and have a single part-time contract while looking for a second. Honestly, part-time contracting work is really, really nice. The pay is more than enough to live on and I have a ton of free time which I am devoting to rock climbing, finally writing a bunch of blog posts, and lear…

> The really interesting thing here is the possibility of part-time work.

Part-time work at a big shop, for many returning to work new moms, can be more accurately described as squeeze 5 days of work into 3 days. I'm not saying that Microsoft cannot pull it off, but many other big shops (and even those that rate highly on such magazine prizes for working moms) have been extremely disingenuous with such claims. That being said, the full time benefits for part time work has been a real thing.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#50

Post by ma2rten »

popotamonga wrote: post #17
ahelwer wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're single and willing to pay over $500/month you can get some pretty okay health insurance. Families throw a huge wrench in that plan though. Currently I'm just using COBRA. Nothing crystalizes support for medicare-for-all faster than ten seconds looking at the public health insurance marketplace.

How come its so expensive? The top top insurance in my european country is $100 and a pretty good is 30.

I think there are two parts to the answer. Firstly, health care in the US is extremely expensive. There are long articles written about this but IMO a main reason is market failure. The US, especially republicans, place a lot of value on free markets but people are willing to pay almost anything not to die.

The second part of the story is that the US is richer than Europe. I moved to the US from Western Europe. Before I moved here I didn't expect how much more everything is more expensive here, but at the same time salaries are also higher. The US's GDP per capita is $62k, Germany's is $47k. But that doesn't tell full story. In the US there is a big difference between low paying and high paying jobs, rural and urban areas.

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