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Google employees who work from home could lose money

reuters.com

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Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#451

Post by ajmurmann »

deanclatworthy wrote: post #338
ajmurmann wrote: post #235

Despite the headlines, this has little to do with companies taking advantage of remote workers to safe cost and more with companies using pre-pandemic comp mechanisms in a post-pandemic. Comp in the vast majority of companies is based on cost of labor in the market the employee is located at. Software developers are cheaper in Alaska than in SF and even cheaper in Costa Rica, Ukraine or India. And yes, also cheaper i…

There’s no way Google is going to pay a “world class” developer the same salary in SV as in Ukraine. Not unless everyone in SV takes giant pay cuts.

Definitely not right now. Let's see how things look in 5 years

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#452

Post by shagie »

throwaway0a5e wrote: post #174
judge2020 wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t... . > A typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year. > This assumes the average gasoline vehicle on the road today has a fuel economy of about 22.0 miles per gallon and drives around 11,500 miles per year.

22mpg sounds like fleet average. I don't think the average commuter who could work from home is getting 22mpg, probably close to 30 average. I don't think the frequency of trucks and vans relative to cars and crossovers is not high enough within those demographics to drag down the average that far. I'd pad the estimate for carbon saved and say like 3.5ton/yr per work from home employee.

In a different thread, I found https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=40076 as a useful way of looking at CO2. That's got the Honda Fit as that's the one that was in discussion previously. Its a 33mpg car and the 'energy and environment' tab puts it at 4.4 tons/year. I've got a 2009 Honda Insight.

> Fuel cost estimates assume national average fuel prices and assume you drive 15,000 miles each year, 45% under highway driving conditions (steady speeds with little or no stopping) and 55% in city driving (low speeds with lots of stopping).

Noting that I'm not the typical home worker, but I went from an average of 600 miles/month (7200 miles/year) to 30 miles/month over the past year and a half. This took my carbon footprint for driving from 1.7 T/y to 0.1 T/y.

The flip side of this number is (for me) that I went from heating the house only a few hours a day in the winter to heating or cooling one room to comfortable. I don't have good numbers on my electrical footprint change. This would again be different with different life circumstances (number of other people in the house, size of house / apartment, etc...)

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#453

Post by TrackerFF »

scollet wrote: post #69
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #56

> One Google employee ..would likely see their pay cut by about 10% by working from home full-time > The employee was considering remote work but decided to keep going to the office - despite the two-hour commute. 10% paycut in place of 10 hours of commute seems a good deal to me.

It's not a trade. The worker just loses.

I see the point that someone views this as a direct (almost arbitrary) loss for the worker. Why should they simply get less for working from home? But realistically speaking, let's assume 261 working days in a year, which comes out to 522 hours of commute. That's 522 hours of unpaid travel, every year. That's 65 8-hour working days.

How much is your time worth? For me, it's far more than the 10% pay cut. And I haven't even included the direct cost of travel (gas, wear and tear on vehicle, etc.), just hours lost.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#454

Post by arsome »

mumblemumble wrote: post #182
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…

In the case of the USA, people staying home to work might have a positive impact on social interaction in the long run. I'm pretty sure a large part of the reason why Americans are so lonely compared to the rest of the world is that the suburban bedroom community model physically divides us and makes it much more difficult to get to know one's neighbors. By the time you get home from work at 6:30 in the evening, it's…

Interesting, the opposite has been my experience, friends keep talking about how they can now move farther out of town and not have to deal with neighbours anymore. I'm considering similar.

Ultimately, people are more of a pain to deal with than a pleasure until you really get to know them. I suspect this is the same reason suburbs seem to be more appealing and costly than condos.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#455

Post by ghaff »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #434
tzs wrote: post #201

> 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…

> Hence the company should have one uniform rate for full time work at home employees, high enough so that they can get fill all their openings. There’s a common misconception that engineers are paid for the value they provide or according to how expensive their cost of living is. It’s not true, though. We’re paid market rate, which is a balance of supply and demand that determines whether or not someone is incentivi…

Even within the US, if a large company were to have uniform pay scales everywhere, they'd probably be pegged to somewhere like Chicago rather than SF. Effectively, that already happens to some degree today. If you want to work at Google or Facebook and land a job in the Bay Area, there are a lot of tech employers who probably won't salary match.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#456

Post by silicon2401 »

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?

Companies are finally accepting that covid is here to stay and they're adjusting their game plan accordingly. The laid-back attitude was a PR stunt to look cool and caring. With things still getting worse, it's clear that this isn't going to end soon, so companies are going to drop the nice guy act and revert to the usual expectation of "in-office, heads-down, do what it takes to make that happen"

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#457

Post by mytailorisrich »

tialaramex wrote: post #353
mytailorisrich wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's not just London. I live in a city on the UK's south coast, I can drive but I don't, and I have never owned a car. Many people I know here also don't own cars, some of them can't drive. I've worked for outfits in London, in Nottingham (visiting about once a fortnight, train, hotel, train back) and here in Southampton, not a problem. London is better because the Tories weren't able to abolish its public transport…

> I definitely think people who believe this should agree which of you will die so that the others can "enjoy life". Are you volunteering? Because if not you don't have an actual proposal here, just ordinary selfishness.

Why do people feel the need to always make this sort of ridiculous comment?

Population cannot keep growing forever but it is still seen as positive and needed. First step would be to remove all incentive to have more children and to prioritise education and family planning worldwide. Then, we can think of how to adapt society to the consequences (which are coming anyway because that's already starting to happen). I'm only suggesting that we should embrace the trend instead of trying to delay it.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#458

Post by jayd16 »

tzs wrote: post #201

> 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…

Even if Google et al go remote, not everyone will. The NY market will still be more competitive than a suburb. Prices might reflect that.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#459

Post by lotsofpulp »

UncleMeat wrote: post #137
jensensbutton wrote: post #43

Companies were never paying based on value provided. They pay market rate which, until recently, was artificially limited to a few expensive markets. With remote, these companies are now able to do what every other large labor driven industry has done and lower their costs by finding labor in cheaper markets.

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.

And no person pays their grocery store based on the “value” they provide.

People sell things for the highest price they can get paid, and people buy things for the lowest price they can pay. The buyer and seller agreeing on a number is the only factor in determining which price a transaction clears at.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#460

Post by dcolkitt »

lostcolony wrote: post #383
misnome wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, if they were paying him 10% more based on home location and commuting then there is a somewhat reasonable argument to be made. But of course, almost none of these companies are actually paying the people who live further away more, it's just management trying to enforce their will over the "peons". Our company is trying to force everyone back into the office 5 days a week. Their arguments for doing so were "p…

So the higher you climb in management the more strategic your role -should- be. Long time horizons, collecting enough data to make organizational decisions, set priorities and direction, etc. The problem is too many upper managers think their role should be tactical. They want frequent status reports to know if their long term vision is going to be met, and then any area it doesn't match up, rather than modify the vi…

I like to say that a lot of mediocre managers kludge through with "management-by-osmosis". They kinda just stand around their direct reports, occasionally making chit chat, and hope that's enough to get a sense of what's going on and convey upstream priorities downstream.
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