Google employees who work from home could lose money • Hacker News Board

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#221

Post by chitowneats » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:32 PM UTC

ashtonkem wrote: post #185

mumblemumble wrote: post #156

> One Google employee, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, typically commutes to the Seattle office from a nearby county and would likely see their pay cut by about 10% by working from home full-time, according estimates by the company's Work Location Tool launched in June. > The employee was considering remote work but decided to keep going to the office - despite the two-hour commute. This seems…

It’s also awful timing. After what, 18 months of productive WFH now they want to cut salary?

If Google felt that WFH had no negative effect on productivity, they could go the route of Twitter and others. The C-level clearly disagrees that this arrangement is ideal for the company, and are disincentivizing it with pay cuts.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#222

Post by mytailorisrich » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:32 PM UTC

Raphael_Amiard wrote: post #140

boplicity wrote: post #99

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…

The majority of people do need a car even in Europe.

In France, unless you live in central Paris you do. In the UK, unless you live in central London yo do. Now, if you live around Paris or London you may be able to commute to work by public transport, and many people do, indeed, but many also commute by car, and the vast majority do outside of these areas. I'm sure the same applies to many other countries.

Edit: By the way I am French and living in England, so I know full well from experience how important cars are for the majority despite small islands of some town centres where people can do without.

> you live in an individual house

On the other hand, living in an individual house with a garden is much nicer than living in a flat and many people (including in Europe) either do that or aspire to that.

I'm usually getting a lot of flack here for saying this, but if preserving the environment means severe constraints on people's lives (housing, diet, transport, etc) then perhaps the way forward is to reduce the global population to a point where that everyone can enjoy life while still preserving the environment.

My vision of an ideal future is everyone able to live in nature, in a house with a large garden, rather than in tower blocks, in pods, only eating what's allowed.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#223

Post by rexreed » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:32 PM UTC

diogofranco wrote: post #100

rexreed wrote: post #71

Does this mean employee agreements are up for renegotiating? Salary / compensation for work is the key element to an employee agreement. If employers can change compensation at will without employee consent then the employee agreement is truly meaningless and simply a tool for the employer to wield against the employee. I'd imagine a few employee lawsuits on breach of contract that will test that.

Location is in the contract, you sign a new offer in order to move

If Location is in the contract, and location should be considered an aspect of compensation, then its value should be int he contract and location itself should be an element of compensation.

Base pay: $X

Location pay: $Y

Benefits: $

Options: $

This way you can see what the company is valuing you as an employee and valuing the location as compensation.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#224

Post by yholio » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:33 PM UTC

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #167

ekianjo wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> good public transportation. Public transportation has a higher environment cost than staying at home to work. That should be fairly obvious.

Heating and cooling lots of individual homes isn't as efficient as office buildings. I'd love to see math on which one is better for the environment.

Buildings generally lose or gain heat throughout the day, proportional to the indoor-outdoor temperature differential. So a building that maintains livable temperatures for say, 12h a day, will still have those energy leaks when the owner is out, and they would have to compensate in the evening the exact amount of energy lost or gained to get back to comfortable temperatures.

So unless your home has such ridiculously bad insulation that it quickly approaches outside temperature after turning off heating/cooling, you won't see significant energy savings by going outside of the house half the time. Never mind multiple occupants, kids and the elderly, pets, diverging working hours etc.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#225

Post by swiley » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:33 PM UTC

boplicity wrote: post #99

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 to yourself is extremely high: 1-2 hours of unpaid time driving, requirement that you buy a house (or rent) in extremely high CoL areas, car maintenance/insurance. It probably all ads up to over 20% of your salary over the year.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#226

Post by sdevonoes » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:33 PM UTC

ashtonkem wrote: post #185

mumblemumble wrote: post #156

> One Google employee, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, typically commutes to the Seattle office from a nearby county and would likely see their pay cut by about 10% by working from home full-time, according estimates by the company's Work Location Tool launched in June. > The employee was considering remote work but decided to keep going to the office - despite the two-hour commute. This seems…

It’s also awful timing. After what, 18 months of productive WFH now they want to cut salary?

Why wouldn't they? Any "sane" company out there will cut your salary as soon as they find a good excuse to do so. Working from home VS working from the office is the perfect excuse. Productivity doesn't matter because if you go below the minimum bar, you are lay off.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#227

Post by jefftk » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:33 PM UTC

2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #117

pc86 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The planet is always on fire in a couple dozen places. This is about as useful as saying "The planet is actually underwater, right now, as you read this." Of course it is. That's sort of how it works. Whether or not someone rides the train isn't going to change anything.

But it’ll change if you get significant portions of the behave differently. During the beginning of the pandemic there were loads of stories of wildlife coming back to certain areas, pollution disappearing. So everyone WFH will in fact have an impact. I took a bit of a pay cut during the pandemic too. All this staring at my screen for longer hours was really taking a toll. Maybe this is a good time to think about wha…

> During the beginning of the pandemic there were loads of stories of wildlife coming back to certain areas, pollution disappearing.

Most of that was fake: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dolphins-swans-italy-lockd...

"The dolphins shown in the video, it turns out, were not swimming in the iconic canals of Venice, but off the coast of Sardinia, an Italian island in the Mediterranean Sea. Dolphin sightings in that area are not a new phenomenon, as a 2017 video demonstrates.

National Geographic pointed out that the swan sightings were real, but not described accurately. “The swans in the viral posts regularly appear in the canals of Burano, a small island in the greater Venice metropolitan area, where the photos were taken,” National Geographic reported."

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#228

Post by eru » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:34 PM UTC

kristopolous wrote: post #57

nostrebored wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because employees in the office are more productive.

The planet is actually on fire, right now, as you read this. So fuck productivity. We can manage. We must sacrifice the inconvenience of wasting our time commuting because of some arbitrary productivity definition to stop the surface of the planet from being engulfed in flames. There's also a pandemic that's killed 4.3 million people because productivity is apparently more important than containing the outbreak of a…

> So fuck productivity. We can manage.

Higher productivity is the way out of this mess.

> There's also a pandemic that's killed 4.3 million people because productivity is apparently more important than containing the outbreak of a deadly disease.

No. See eg the covid sections in https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/adumbrations-of-aducan...

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#229

Post by mojuba » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:34 PM UTC

mumblemumble wrote: post #156

> One Google employee, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, typically commutes to the Seattle office from a nearby county and would likely see their pay cut by about 10% by working from home full-time, according estimates by the company's Work Location Tool launched in June. > The employee was considering remote work but decided to keep going to the office - despite the two-hour commute. This seems…

> a 25% increase in the amount of their time that's committed to work

I think you mean committed to life rather than work? Remember, people normally commute outside of work hours.

Therefore your math doesn't add up. 2hr commute against 8 hours of work is not a 25% increase.

But I think your point is still valid. Personally I'd "buy" my extra 2 hours of daily life for a 10% decrease in salary. Given that I'm awake for 17 hours, 2 hours saved is 11% of my waking time. Not a bad deal if you value your free time, or say you work on a side project.

Edit: see the correction below. It's still 25%, I was wrong.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#230

Post by tener » Tue, Aug 10, 2021, 1:35 PM UTC

Raphael_Amiard wrote: post #140

boplicity wrote: post #99

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…

While good public transport helps to cut the carbon emissions, it also isn't free and can only be established above certain population density. This creates pressure for people to live in a big cities and that causes a lot of problems.