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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

#191

Post by deegles »

davidf560 wrote: post #131
ghaff wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe this is overly simplistic, but won't this all work itself out over time? More companies refuse to pay inflated SV salaries (note: most companies in the world already do not employ people there anyway), so some of the concentrated SV talent leaves for other places like Chicago where they can still get a sufficient wage relative to the cost of living. This continues for a while and eventually the COL in SV will s…

It's a big assumption that SV wages are inflated given the value that sector has generated for the economy. Facebook made around $600k in profits per employee.

I will agree that they are inflated relative to other professions, but that just means for them the earnings gap is even greater. (https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/01/21/if-worker-pay-...)

https://insights.dice.com/2019/07/10/how-much-tech-companies...

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#192

Post by brational »

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…

do you have a write-up on how to make such a transition / do you have one or more that you read to learn about it? Mostly wondering about the nitty gritty like how to register as a business, tax considerations, simple contract stuff, etc. Seems to me that info is rarely in one place.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#193

Post by apexalpha »

torben-friis wrote: post #186
apexalpha wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Netherlands it's the law that you're always allowed to reduce your hours, while keeping the same (hourly) salary and benefits. If your employer disagrees the burden of proof is on THEM to proof that your job would not be doable part-time. This (and to be honest also fiscal policy) has resulted in the largest part-time workforce in the world. In Dutch e-mail it's very common to find the days people work in the…

That sounds awesome. Does the reduction have to be in blocks of days? or can you just work, say, 5 hours a day instead of 8 ?

It's definitely most common to either work 14, 24 or 32 hours: so taking full days off in stead of less hours per day.

It's also very common to stack hours. A lot of people will work 36 hours. But since 'half days' means you have to commute anyway people usually just take every other Friday off. The only exception to this is Wednesday, when some people work half days because Dutch primary schools are often half-day as well on Wednesday.

But I don't think that's the law, just what people prefer.

I know very few people who reduce theirs hours per day but still choose to commute 5 days a week.

But I guess that might very well change now that a lot of people don't have a commute anymore.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#194

Post by apexalpha »

nsgi wrote: post #184
apexalpha wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the Netherlands it's the law that you're always allowed to reduce your hours, while keeping the same (hourly) salary and benefits. If your employer disagrees the burden of proof is on THEM to proof that your job would not be doable part-time. This (and to be honest also fiscal policy) has resulted in the largest part-time workforce in the world. In Dutch e-mail it's very common to find the days people work in the…

That gender gap sounds rather concerning

You're getting downvoted, but you're right.

Traditional family values still resonate in these numbers and many people blame women working part-time for a gender imbalance at the top of companies.

So that gender imbalance is definitely on the agenda. Whether you think these numbers are concerning depends on your political stance.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#196

Post by lastofthemojito »

netcan wrote: post #104

The geopay stuff seems unstable as a norm... if that's the way we're going. It makes sense atm, maybe, for tech companies. The tech companies, currently, are extremely flush with cash. They don't need to be all that ruthless. This takes off a lot of pressure. But as things go on, "geopay" is going to become an optimizable cost structure. There will be uncomfortable conversations as people move to higher geopay places…

I think we'll see a lot of people try to game it:

* Not updating their address with their company after moving to a new, lower-cost location

* Using the address of family or friends in a higher-cost area

* Renting a PO Box or cheap room or studio in a high-cost area, but spending most time elsewhere

I'd imagine we'll see companies pop up offering address verification services - physically and/or digitally tailing employees to find address mismatches. They'll probably sell themselves to large tech employers by saying that the geopay savings incurred more than pay for their services. Maybe this already exists?

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#198

Post by jarjoura »

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #113
everdrive wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Definite…

This has been my experience as well. One thing I'm missing right now are the crazy random ideas that people say jokingly but then someone takes seriously and turns into a product feature.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#199

Post by _qulr »

michaelt wrote: post #181
_qulr wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's some data from the Stack Overflow 2020 developer survey: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2020#developer-pro... Only 17% of professional developers surveyed were age 40+. That vastly disproportionate with the age demographics of the overall human population.

I don't deny there's age discrimination, but that survey also says JavaScript is 2x as popular as Java, and 3.4x as popular as C++ Whereas [1] says among job board postings, C++ is about as popular as JS, and Java is 1.7x more popular than JS. Perhaps the holders of StackOverflow accounts aren't representative of the profession as a whole? I could certainly believe people who were programming professionally before SO…

> Whereas [1] says among job board postings, C++ is about as popular as JS, and Java is 1.7x more popular than JS.

I think it's questionable whether job posting are more representative of working programmers. Arguably they're less representative. Job postings are unfilled jobs, so technically they represent exactly zero programmers. And many job postings are never filled.

> Perhaps the holders of StackOverflow accounts aren't representative of the profession as a whole?

Agreed, but unfortunately I can't think of a better source of data offhand.

> I could certainly believe people who were programming professionally before SO existed, and who have decades of experience, would have gotten good at solving problems without asking for help.

I don't agree with the assumptions here. As an experienced developer, I ask for help all the time. I'm not an expert on every possible subject, and anyway, tech changes. Also, not everyone on Stack Overflow is asking for help. Some have to be offering help, otherwise nobody would go there.

Re: Microsoft is letting employees work from home permanently

#200

Post by screye »

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…

Not really, it works really well in my team.

Usually Mondays and Fridays are no-meeting focus days, so they are easiest to wfh on. The "team-building and fun" events are all crammed on the same days when you have meetings for which you'd usually come into the office anyway.

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