Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google employees who work from home could lose money

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 699 posts

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#241

Post by lordnacho »

MartinMcGirk wrote: post #37

I can see why you’d pay a remote staff member differently from an on-prem staff member. As others have said if you’re hiring remote then your talent pool is effectively the whole world, so price competition is fiercer. But if everyone is remote or everyone is on-prem, then location-dependent pricing is complete nonsense. The employees are all still providing the same value to the company. Claiming that you can’t pay…

Not obviously one way. There's more staff globally but there's also more places they can work.

This seems like it will turn out in favour of employers with the world being the way it is, with a lot of people in poor places.

But I've been a remote hiring manager before, and it happens that people turn down an offer in favour of another remote firm.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#242

Post by echelon »

chitowneats wrote: post #221
ashtonkem wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Really ironic given how Google isn't innovating anymore (relative to their market cap).

I'd argue the company itself isn't very productive and is just treading water with its ridiculously profitable cash cow and moat.

That's a C-suite bug.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#243

Post by jffry »

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.

Barring specific states or specific circumstances (e.g. negotiated terms with a union), yes that is the way it works in most of the US.

Your employer cannot retroactively change your compensation for work already performed, but they can, at any time, tell you that your compensation is changing and all future work will be paid at a new (usually lower) rate.

Depending on jurisdiction, if you were to quit in the face of a significant enough pay cut, you might still qualify for unemployment. It's very fact dependent, your former employer will likely contest it (requiring an appeal on your part), and you should talk to an employment lawyer.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#244

Post by bennyp101 »

ghaff wrote: post #218
bennyp101 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess in a purely commuting way, perhaps. But if 100 employees are all at home and are heating/cooling their houses all with different levels of insulation and efficiency, how does that compare to an office building that is controlled and built to be efficient? Or the amount of electric they use to power their home workstation and radio, rather than a shared office radio? Or lower power machines. Or the more shoppi…

If people own a house anyway, working in it during the day doesn't really add much in the energy use. Maybe there's a few degrees more heating or cooling at the margins. Maybe there are more trips to a store--on the other hand, restaurants and cafeterias aren't necessarily super-efficient.

Perhaps, but anecdotally my electricity and gas bills have been much higher since I've been working at home - YMMV of course

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#245

Post by bigbillheck »

eru wrote: post #212
gmadsen wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wait till the even wider proliferation of offshoring of remote technical roles. The wealth will be even more concentrated, except only the executives, while the workers will have even less

Why would the company splurge on executives, and not drive down their wages, too, if that's so easy? Executive cost money, too. They are also employees.

Who do you think decides executive wages?

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#246

Post by barrenko »

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…

This is also narrowminded as much of Europe (even just EU for that matter) does not live in such idealized environment. We don't all live in Amsterdam.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#247

Post by norov »

eru wrote: post #210
UncleMeat wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it makes it plain to see that we need collective action. All the people who say "I bring a ton of value to a company and therefore can negotiate to capture that value" are fooling themselves, because no company willingly pays people based on the value they provide.

Huh? I don't see how the need for collective action follows? Why would I or should I sabotage a trend that spreads wealth to poorer parts of the world? > ..., because no company willingly pays people based on the value they provide. That's what competition is for.

The rest of the world does not necessarily have decent labor laws. What if you end up cheering on a terrible employment standard & reward anti-worker countries and economies?

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#248

Post by bogomipz »

dsr_ wrote: post #44

Class A office space in Manhattan is about $70/sqft, and the average office employee gets 150 sqft allocated (desk, hallway, conference room, supply closets...) Google is probably 170. That's $11900 annually that they save by not having an employee take up office space. No, it's not fungible on a small scale, but it's certainly fungible on a large scale: reduce your office needs by 100 people and you can rearrange de…

I'm not sure that calculus is correct as Google bought all 3 of the buildings they have in Chelsea in NYC. The most famous of which is the old Port Authority which is 3 million square feet and takes up an entire city block.[1][2][3] I'm not sure they're saving anything with empty office space. They kicked all previous non-Google tenants years ago. Further there is now a current glut of NYC office space with a vacancy rate of almost 19%.[4]

[1]https://www.wired.com/2010/12/google-nyc/

[2] https://techcrunch.com/2018/03/20/google-bought-manhattans-c...

[3] https://therealdeal.com/2019/05/22/google-scoops-up-another-...

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/01/nyregion/manhattan-vacant...

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#249

Post by barrenko »

boplicity wrote: post #175
Raphael_Amiard wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 European vision of living in dense, walkable neighborhoods, with easy access to quality amenities without the need to drive makes sense, to me at least, as the answer to this problem. I'm not advocating for staying home; I'm advocating for less driving. It may not make as much of a difference in the E.U., but if we're aiming to be carbon neutral, less driving will be necessary, or, at least, extremely helpful in…

EU vision is never EU reality.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#250

Post by Retric »

bennyp101 wrote: post #186
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 guess in a purely commuting way, perhaps. But if 100 employees are all at home and are heating/cooling their houses all with different levels of insulation and efficiency, how does that compare to an office building that is controlled and built to be efficient? Or the amount of electric they use to power their home workstation and radio, rather than a shared office radio? Or lower power machines. Or the more shoppi…

Home temperature is fairly consistent over the day. Not having an office to heat or cool more than compensates for the difference.

Commuting costs completely dominate in terms of energy costs. As to getting delivery for lunch, that’s well outside of most peoples price range. The vast majority of people are going to simply buy more food on their normal shopping trips.

The running the same computer hardware at home or the office is meaningless for the environment, but you will notice the difference in your personal electric bill.

Radio’s use minimal electricity ~25w depending on volume, which is why you can find hand crank models etc.

Post reply on HN