Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#111

Post by MattGaiser » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 2:08 PM UTC

gghhjj wrote: post #15

A lot of info is missed here as well. Sales orgs (quite a large part of Microsoft) must still work from the office (with exceptions) and cannot relocate as they need to meet customers - including the technical sales. Even though they've worked fine from home and were in fact MORE productive. So a lot of nuance is missed, and the application of this isn't as broad as it is suggested.

I recently had to deal with some Azure stuff and a Microsoft sales guy. He is based in North Dakota of all places.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#112

Post by MattGaiser » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 2:09 PM UTC

I have a nefarious theory. Geopay will act like as an assumed filter. Top go getter types who are the future leaders will (in theory) come to the office and get the high pay. The less ambitious but still capable workers will move to cheaper places and earn less and be more easily replaceable.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#113

Post by whywhywhywhy » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 2:12 PM UTC

everdrive wrote: post #84

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…

>the colleagues who will be in the office will seem to get really lucky in regards to promotions and opportunities for some reason and you'll be left out because you'll miss the coffee/water cooler/cigarette chit-chat where future projects/directions are discussed casually and off the record without you The reality is that merit is only one of many reasons that promotions happen. And often not the primary reason.

Not sure about other peoples experiences but all the best and smoothest projects of my career were done with groups who had good social cohesion, got on with each other, supported each other and most importantly socialized with each other.

There is close to zero opportunity for free creative brainstorming in the workplace and all the true innovation we made came out of discussions outside of work at the pub.

Definitely know there's benefits for working at home, especially for the first few years of your kids lives. But career wise if you reduce your presence to a name in a slack sidebar and an occasional face on a videocall, don't be shocked if you're treated like a name in a sidebar because just like any relationships in life presence makes a difference.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#114

Post by reincarnate0x14 » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 2:12 PM UTC

hnaccy wrote: post #96

reincarnate0x14 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"pretty okay" is unfortunately about the best you'll find, and even that can be iffy depending on where you are. If someone's work is truly all-remote I'd seriously recommend looking into residency visas to places with functioning governments and healthcare. I'm currently working remotely at a US client from several locations in the Pacific. I just had a complete auditory workup to diagnose some recent hearing change…

What countries are good for this?

Well it's more limited right now but under normal circumstances most of southern Europe, Pacific Asia, New Zealand, European-associated Caribbean islands, Costa Rica, Belize, etc, are all decent options.

I spent several months working from the Canary Islands and other than my difficulties in mastering the local Spanish it was great.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#115

Post by mgkimsal » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 2:12 PM UTC

ghthor wrote: post #61

ma2rten wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Befor…

No offense meant but, before Obamacare was enacted I had an excellent healthcare premium of $77 per month. Now comparable care is $400 per month. However Obamacare changed the scene, I dont support it.

You're also now 10 years older. Health insurance pricing never goes down as you get older, only up. That $77 might have been $150-200+ for someone your age now 10 years ago.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#116

Post by tomcat27 » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 2:16 PM UTC

I read few months ago after pandemic started, Microsoft studied productivity of its employees. Wonder this policy is a logical conclusion from the results of that study or they simply want to attract talent like few other ones or both

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#117

Post by nugget » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 2:16 PM UTC

Sytten wrote: post #74

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…

I agree with this so much. I have been working part time for almost a year now to rebuild a house and it has been very nice. It always seemed weird to me that people make such high salaries in tech but just don't value time as the main commodity of our lives. The reality is that if you move to a low CoL area and work part-time you will almost certainly be happier. But this doesn't mean you are idle the rest of the ti…

People in tech do seem to value time which may explain why they are disproportionately drawn to the "Financial Independence, Retire Early" (FIRE) movement. The tech industry continues to be much more supportive of 80 hour weeks until you strike it rich and "retire" early, than it is of steady part-time work over many decades of steady-state work-life balance. But the motivation may be the same for many.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#118

Post by baq » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 2:18 PM UTC

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…

...and changing the situation will make pension funds very unhappy because they invest in a guaranteed recurring income that medical services provide.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#119

Post by koheripbal » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 2:20 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #78

kethinov wrote: post #67

Buried in the article they also talk about cutting the pay of people who move away from big cities based on their "geopay" scale, a new trend that I have a hard time seeing as anything other than corporate greed we should vigorously oppose. I understand not every company can afford to do Basecamp's "pay everyone SF wages" thing, but any company can afford to set uniform pay grades at some level and one would think th…

The problem is that if (even just keeping the discussion to the US) a company pays, say, Chicago wages everywhere, that means they effectively probably can't hire anyone in the Bay Area for example. Of course, a lot of companies already basically don't try to salary match the hire who has an offer from Facebook or Google in SV and wants to work there.

The ultimate outcome, no matter what companies do, is that tech workers just won't live in big cities any longer.

If remote work is an option, then paying high rents just doesn't make sense.

Moreover, as this trend continues, the ultimate outcome is not US workers moving to low-cost locations, it is foreign workers supplanting US workers in extremely low cost locations.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#120

Post by brainbag » Fri, Oct 09, 2020, 2:23 PM UTC

luxurytent wrote: post #99

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…

I’d love to get into this but I’ve found the results for contracts or part time roles on job pages is quite minimal. Can you recommend how to get started?

I've done a lot of IC dev work in my career of 20+ years, and I've moved cities often, so I had to frequently "start over" with reputation and networking.

What I found to work best was that any time I entered a new market, I would find a local contractor organization (that already has a lot of contacts), and do short-term high-skill jobs for them for 3-6 months (for example, spending two weeks at a bank helping optimize one of their new internal services). Contractor organizations tend to work more with mid tier developers, but they get frequent requests for high skill jobs that they don't have the people resources for. This allowed me to build up a group of very happy local references which can then be leveraged for longer, better pay contracts.

Once I had some references and a budding reputation, I'd go to networking events 2-3 times a week and talk to as many people as possible about the kind of work they do and I do. It's not uncommon to have two or three potential contract leads out of every event. After doing that for a month or two, my availability and rep would spread by word-of-mouth, and people would start contacting me directly for work, and I could be more selective about the jobs.