371–380 of 699 posts
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> 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?
Google pays well, but not the most. (Unless things have changed recently.)
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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…
A home that has AC running half of the day will use a lot less energy in total than one running all day long. There are substantial efficiency losses from heat leaking in, which will be exacerbated by trying to maintain a larger temperature delta 24 hours of each day. A house is not a perfect temperature battery on the scale of hours, far from it.
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Some individuals have routines built into the commute that aren’t necessarily swapped when working from home. I read my email/catch-up on slack/read the newspaper during my 45 minute commute in the morning. While wfh I spend the time doing something pretty similar.
That sounds like the commute is really mostly work time then, right? Do you get to clock in/out 45 minutes late/early?
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2-hour commute? I'll take the pay cut anytime, like is too short... (and maybe start looking for another job, easier to do with all that "extra" time)
Some individuals have routines built into the commute that aren’t necessarily swapped when working from home. I read my email/catch-up on slack/read the newspaper during my 45 minute commute in the morning. While wfh I spend the time doing something pretty similar.
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Google does not already pay the most. In recent years, they've been known to even 'lowball' SWE candidates with no leverage. Source: https://www.levels.fyi/?compare=Google,Facebook,Microsoft&tr...
Anacdata: My personal comp is on the lower half of the spectrum for my level. Took a small pay cut from the startup I came from. Left for Google because I was tired of proposing changes, having someone else in the org disagree, and then having someone high up say "I talked to my friend at Google and he likes my way better so it's better than yours". Now I'm going to be the Googler and never have to worry about that a…
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Some companies don’t want attrition, particularly considering that there is a “shortage of qualified engineers” which is a political way of saying the software industry is underpaid already.
> there is a "shortage of qualified engineers" Do we still believe this is true? I mean, if that were true, then why Google (probably the IT company in need of the most talented engineers out there) is thinking about applying a measure that will scare away their most talented engineers? It doesn't hold. If there were a "shortage of qualified engineers", Google would have already said "all of our engineers can work fr…
No, hence the rest of the sentence:
> which is a political way of saying the software industry is underpaid already
To be clear, it's FAANG who are saying there is a shortage of qualified engineers in their campaign to procure more foreign labor, but really this means they don't want to have to pay domestic engineers what they're worth (they want more H1-B visas to increase the supply and thus decrease the unit cost of engineers--with the nice bonus that H1-B holders are more easily abused because the employer has the power to effectively have these holders deported).
> is thinking about applying a measure that will scare away their most talented engineers? It doesn't hold.
A couple of possibilities:
1. Google is fallible
2. Google may be exceptional in the software industry (e.g., they may be okay with some attrition because they're playing a longer game than others in the industry, or perhaps because they already pay top-tier salaries and don't believe attrition will affect them)
> 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…
An online survey found that 65% of American workers who said their jobs could be done entirely remotely were willing to take a pay cut of 5% — which could represent several years of annual raises — to stay at home. [1]
There's no question that there's a reasonable bargain to be struck, the question is the terms.
When the work is just as productive, both employer and employee can gain time. The employer can reduce their office space expense, which benefits should be shard by the employer, at least to the extent of helping outfit the home offices (e.g., they'd have to buy workstations & chairs anyway). OTOH, the employee gets huge benefits of time avoiding commuting, and reduced automobile expenses...
It'll be interesting to see how the new bargain shakes out.
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-03/return-to...
I have been working remotely for more than 2 years and I can't imagine going back to an office every day. The open-plan layout, the noise, the struggle to find a room to have a call, the slow internet connection(Australian internet is already slow, but at least at home it's just me using it).
I also heard that some people absolutely detest WFH, but they have kids or rent a studio apartment. A hybrid model seems to be the best solution going forward.
> Screenshots of Google's internal salary calculator seen by Reuters show that an employee living in Stamford, Connecticut - an hour from New York City by train - would be paid 15% less if she worked from home, while a colleague from the same office living in New York City would see no cut from working from home. Screenshots showed 5% and 10% differences in the Seattle, Boston and San Francisco areas. This makes no s…
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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?