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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

#631

Post by agnosticmantis »

vitus wrote: post #391
agnosticmantis wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a public data set of these salary bands? Combining that with housing data would allow one to optimize the salary-to-expense ratio. I think that’d be a valuable service.

I'm not aware of any public datasets, unfortunately. There are many internal maps; in short the winner was "cheap housing in the Atlanta metro area". (I'm glad that Atlanta's finally seeing increased engineering investment! It always felt like a shame that our only tech presence in the area was for datacenter work, given the proximity to Georgia Tech. I guess Google Fiber too...)

That’s interesting, thanks for sharing.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#633

Post by Mikeb85 »

tzs wrote: post #574
Mikeb85 wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This makes no sense. It makes a ton of sense. Salaries are based on supply/demand, like any other marketplace. Workers in LCOL areas have less options for high pay so you can offer them less money and they'll likely accept it.

The point is that when it comes to full time remote work workers in LCOL areas and workers in HCOL areas are in the same marketplace selling the same product.

But wherever there's an arbritage opportunity, people take it.

If you're offering your services for $500k but you live in NY, I can move to say, Ukraine, and charge only $400k, undercutting you to get the job. There's no point holding out for more when I can accept less and give myself a better chance of getting the job.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#634

Post by bovine3dom »

vel0city wrote: post #630
bovine3dom wrote: post #620

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hah, I've actually looked at Dallas-Fort Worth before and been horrified at how so much of its residential green space is golf courses. Is most of the conurbation as well served by non-car transport or is your area a special case? It looks so low density that it's hard to imagine anything being economically viable. Then again, bike lanes and bike racks are so cheap that they're pretty much free. I do understand conso…

> Is most of the conurbation as well served by non-car transport or is your area a special case? I'm definitely in the more special case kind of area, by choice. There were many reasons why I picked the place where I live, and transit options were one of the key ones. > Maybe there's some spontaneity to buying stuff that I just don't have. I feel you on this idea. I'm not really a huge fan of these ridiculously giant…

I don't have anything against golf as such, it's more that from a distance they looked like really nice little parks that people could use to walk between neighbourhoods, socialise, walk dogs, picnic in etc. Then I zoomed in and realised it was probably only for people playing golf. Football pitches are less well camouflaged from satellite pictures, so they wouldn't be as disappointing. Golf courses are kind of inherently low density too - you can't really cram many more than five people onto each hole at once.

FWIW we do have golf clubs here - Cannes / Antibes in particular has loads - but that's unrepresentative of France as a whole.

Your park does sound nice. I'd heard stories of Americans in suburbs having to drive their dogs to places where they could be walked - maybe it was an exaggeration.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#635

Post by kristopolous »

deathgripsss wrote: post #110
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.

I think the fire is metaphorical

Not really. They have become way worse as a direct result of climate change because of the way we run our civilization. It's systemic things like this (a cultural affectation for working in an office) that influence this. It's a societal problem that can't be fixed with individual action. We've tried to neoliberal our way out of it for 40 years ever since the bottling industry made the crying indian ad to blame the individual and it hasn't helped.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#637

Post by dragonsngoblins »

panda888888 wrote: post #602
krferriter wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah no way I'm doing a 2 hr commute just for a 10% higher pay if there's another option available. That's months of life gone just on commuting that can be regained by paying 10% of pre-tax income? Seems like a no-brainer. Time is money.

It depends a lot on the mode of transportation. The Seattle employee referenced in the article may commute by ferry, which is about as relaxing of a commute as possible. The Seattle ferries are very nice; you can sit in a booth and eat breakfast and read the newspaper. Here's a photo of what it looks like: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/01/travel/vashon-island-near... . I'd totally be willing to do that for an hour…

But would you do it for 4?

I thought when people said they had an X hour commute they typically meant that they traveled for X hours to work and X hours from work

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#638

Post by vel0city »

bovine3dom wrote: post #634
vel0city wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is most of the conurbation as well served by non-car transport or is your area a special case? I'm definitely in the more special case kind of area, by choice. There were many reasons why I picked the place where I live, and transit options were one of the key ones. > Maybe there's some spontaneity to buying stuff that I just don't have. I feel you on this idea. I'm not really a huge fan of these ridiculously giant…

I don't have anything against golf as such, it's more that from a distance they looked like really nice little parks that people could use to walk between neighbourhoods, socialise, walk dogs, picnic in etc. Then I zoomed in and realised it was probably only for people playing golf. Football pitches are less well camouflaged from satellite pictures, so they wouldn't be as disappointing. Golf courses are kind of inher…

This would be very strange, maybe they meant take outside off a leash? I can take my dog to the park in my neighborhood but there are leash laws requiring him to be on-leash unless at a specified "dog park" fenced in space. There are a few dog parks that would be more in the driving kind of distance* which have separate fenced in areas depending on size. I mostly just take my dog around the park on his leash, or walk around the neighborhood, or just take advantage of the couple thousand square feet of yard I have in my backyard. After all, that's one of the many reasons why I have a yard, a nice safe place for my child and dog to play around in, a private place I can set up amateur radio antennas somewhat permanently, a private place I can grill and entertain at the private pool, etc. My dog can feel free to just leave to the backyard through a doggie door any time he wants and chase off the neighborhood cats, squirrels, rodents, etc.

At least when it comes to the municipal golf courses, those are usually open to the public during the day to walk all the trails around the courses. They're often also connected to the bike trails in the municipal area which are then usually connected to a lot of the other parks and nature preserves. There are over 80 miles of bike and walking trails in my small city that connect most of the parks and greenspaces. They are not bike lanes on a busy street; these are separate paths that cut through behind neighborhoods, down utility corridors, go under busy bridges, etc.

And I do acknowledge many French people love golf and there are golf courses around, but especially compared to DFW I can't imagine on average its as popular. I'd wager at least 20% of families have at least one full set of golf clubs, and a large percentage of them do some kind of golf event a few times a year. Dallas is the home of places like Top Golf, which is a massively popular evening outing. You wouldn't be able to even think about building something like this inside most urban areas of France, but DFW has four and they're always like a 30-40min wait.

https://topgolf.com/us/

* Its only a few miles on walking trails, but my dog would probably be halfway worn out just getting to the park and would be completely exhausted starting out the trip home.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#639

Post by dragonsngoblins »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #419
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.

> Companies were never paying based on value provided. They pay market rate Trying to negotiate salary based on value provided is one of the biggest misconceptions I see online and with in-person mentoring groups. Compensation is not about value provided. It’s only about market rate and convincing the person to stay at the company. I encounter a lot of people, especially juniors, who are disgruntled because they thin…

> "it would be dishonest to say that we wouldn’t perform better or faster if we were in-person in the same building. It may not be a popular opinion or what people want to hear, but in my direct experience with mixed WFH/remote teams it’s always true. In-person is just too efficient to replace with Zoom and Slack and e-mail."

So I agree with the above in that being in person definitely makes collaboration easier. But on the other hand I feel like I personally am more productive when working from home because I have more energy. I always found the commute in the morning draining and by the time I'd gotten dressed and showered, into a crowded train, to my desk, out of my coat, put my bag down, set up my workstation if I had to take my laptop home to have an out of hours work meeting where I might need to demo something, etc. I'm already feeling a little worn out.

Working from home I definitely have found myself stuck waiting to hear back from people and similar things, but... at the office if at the end of the day I feel close to solving a problem I have to weigh up whether or not to stay late and keep working or just spend more time the next day getting myself back to that headspace. I fairly often will just go home because I know that with commuting and everything how much I want to just be home will be higher by the time I get there, plus I'll have more things I need to do at home that I might have been able to do when I get home because I'm spending less time there everyday. Not to mention the amount of chores I can get done during the workday - I've hung laundry while making tea, or done stuff at lunch, etc. At the office I'd still be taking a lunch break or making that tea, but I'd not be getting other stuff done at the same time. I know that those extra house chores aren't productivity in the workplace, but having them done makes me feel more energetic and clearheaded at work

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#640

Post by usaar333 »

isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote: post #623
usaar333 wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a weird policy though. If I'm remote, why does my location matter to Google?

Because they no longer have to incentivize you to move to a very high cost of living location.

Exactly, so why have disparate pay by location? I'd expect all remote workers to get the same salary, perhaps a bit lower than onsite workers to account for productivity loss.
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