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The cost of commuting on the environment is extremely high. We should be offering incentives to companies to switch to remote work. If 20% of jobs permanently switched to remote, the impact on carbon emissions would be immediate, and extremely positive.
The cost of commuting on the environment is extremely high. We should be offering incentives to companies to switch to remote work. If 20% of jobs permanently switched to remote, the impact on carbon emissions would be immediate, and extremely positive.
Sources please. Edit: The OP makes an extraordinary claim about remote work and reduction in CO2. I would assume members of HN would be intellectually curious enough to want to dig deeper.
https://www.eia.gov/totalenergy/data/browser/?tbl=T02.01#/?f...
Granted an unknown portion of the reduced transportation was decreased economic activity, so presumably the affect of permanent remote work would be smaller.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If Googlers had any collective bargaining power, they wouldn't be getting salary reductions: they would be getting extra expense money for desks, chairs, and ISP upgrades. Since Google already pays the most, where do you threaten to leave to while bargaining?
Not everyone picks jobs based on top salary. I wouldn't work for Google even if they doubled my salary.
So? I don't really like this kind of non-response response. It's like the guy who joins every conversation to point out that they don't, in fact, own a TV (Onion article, look it up).
I mean, sure, there are people who have enough that they won't take a new job for double the money, but they are so few and far between that it doesn't make sense to structure the argument around them.
You may not want double your salary, but for every one of you there are a few thousand others who want a nicer house, or better schools for their kids, or nice vacations, or an earlier retirement.
When you say you won't even consider doubling your salary because you don't want to work for a perfectly legal company, in reality you are saying that a) you have no one who depends on you and your income for success, and b) you don't care to retire early to do your own thing.
You are NOT saying anything about your principles, even though you think you are.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly. When I left California I fully expected my pay to get reduced, I’m not going to blind myself and think that it wouldn’t happen because of my move to a lower cost of living area. I’m lucky that that wasn’t the case but it was a pleasant surprise more than something I expected and demanded.
I still think everyone should fight against it if they think it's going to happen, whether they've come to terms with it or not. I heard about an employee who moved to Canada, got her manager to agree to no pay cut, but HR went over the manager's head. Certainly a rage-quit moment if it had been me, though of course international concerns were a factor. Admittedly it's easier to fight if your move is domestic. "Cost…
I live internationally, and the cost of moving between countries on a regular basis pretty much negates the savings of the cheaper locales vs the more expensive ones.
On the one hand, I don’t expect my employer to pay me more because I live this way, but on the other hand my salary expectations are not calibrated to the cheapest locale in the mix because that would be insane.
My hunch is the “WFH == pay cut” thing is just a cover for redistributing money to the employees with leverage, because they are (perceived to be) more valuable.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because employees in the office are more productive.
Of course its different for everybody, but for a recent study of "IT professionals", productivity goes down but the amount of work goes up: https://bfi.uchicago.edu/working-paper/2021-56/ This was early on in the COVID lockdown, presumably better remote centered management/tools would increase productivity.
Sounds kind of hypocritical to me.
It's weird how directly the incentive is to increase your carbon footprint. They'll essentially pay you more for contributing to congestion and pollution.
They'll essentially pay you more for being more productive. There are very few people that are more productive out of the office. Google/Facebook/Apple have the stats ... if they want you back in the office it's because they've seen productivity go down.
Further, working remotely from Idaho and working remotely from just outside NYC would presumably have the same productivity hit, but they lead to very different pay rates.
The cost of commuting on the environment is extremely high. We should be offering incentives to companies to switch to remote work. If 20% of jobs permanently switched to remote, the impact on carbon emissions would be immediate, and extremely positive.
Yes but that isn't typically how the value-cost balance between employee and employer works, unless there is regulation in play. Working from home is a benefit which many people would be willing to trade X% salary for. This is just market forces at work. I've been curious how the market for remote work would play out - I'm especially interested in knowing what X ends up being.
No need for regulation in this regard: greed will do the work.
Of course, if the cost to companies is positive, things are less clear cut.
If you want any regulation here, the boring standard econ answer applies: a carbon tax.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sources please. Edit: The OP makes an extraordinary claim about remote work and reduction in CO2. I would assume members of HN would be intellectually curious enough to want to dig deeper.
You really need sources to decide that reducing commuting is a good idea for the environment?
The cost of commuting on the environment is extremely high. We should be offering incentives to companies to switch to remote work. If 20% of jobs permanently switched to remote, the impact on carbon emissions would be immediate, and extremely positive.
I'm used to the conversation in here being extremely US-centric, but realize that this is much less true for European cities with good public transportation. I haven't ever used a car to go to work in my life. I'm also very concerned about this better world where people stay home to save the planet. The common level of social interactions in the modern world is already low enough in my opinion. EDIT: It rarely happen…
Public transportation has a higher environment cost than staying at home to work. That should be fairly obvious.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is a good thing, it's not healthy to have all your wealth in one small region of a country.
Finding cheaper labor elsewhere further concentrates wealth. The only way to spread out the wealth would be to mandate the same salary across regions.