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

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#691

Post by runeks » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 7:43 AM UTC

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.

I’d go even further and say that nothing is paid for in terms of value provided.

Price is a negotiation between two parties, where production and use value form the floor and ceiling price, respectively.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#692

Post by mvanbaak » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 9:02 AM UTC

tener wrote: post #686

reidjs wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but not everyone lives close enough to work or is in physical shape to bike. Most people should, though :)

The bikes are nice idea, but hardly panacea. You need to design the city around it (costly, conflicts with other usages), isn't possible for variety of people (age, disability, distance). I used to drive 40km to work every day in single direction. Not gonna happen with a bike.

Electric bikes are a thing ;P

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#693

Post by ikerdanzel » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 9:59 AM UTC

Expect class action suit for Google. See how legal is that to cut salary without having that clause in the contract. And even if for some obscureness they manage to weasel in, expect mass resignation or defectiom with company secrets. On the bright side this is a fair move to give smaller companies the knowledge know-how that accumulated in Google. If I'm the CEO in charged, HR will be the first getting sack for making Google the scapegoat for being the first prominent company to do so. This is what you get when having less than capable HR team.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#694

Post by roguas » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 10:14 AM UTC

ashtonkem wrote: post #573

gmadsen wrote: post #541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the difference is the mass forced remote work has made companies do the necessary work to effectively do this

I disagree. It was already possible and cheap to setup satellite offices in foreign countries in order to exploit labor differences, and so far this effort has usually failed. There’s no reason to believe that Covid has knocked down the final barrier to offshoring more work. More frankly, I think that the cost savings in offshoring are a false promise. You can hire very cheap programmers in India and similar, and the…

Language? I know a lot of people more fluent than a typical US dev. Besides that, how much language do you actually need, some basic vocabulary and grammar to communicate.

Time zone? US has 2 continents + you typically need a maximum of 3 hours overlap a day. This is possible even in Europe-EastCoast setup, I typically wake up 11. In US that's 6am sure, but I end my day at 7pm which at US is 2pm.

Covid has knocked down a lot. The biggest wall to crush was the psychological ones. So its now, not only genius contractors who could negotiate reasonable flexibility. Also when 60% is WFH now, there is little point in fighting/readjusting. If this was 10% you could try and battle or continue to limit that.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#695

Post by swader999 » Thu, Aug 12, 2021, 6:24 PM UTC

inputvolch wrote: post #148

swader999 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really need sources to decide that reducing commuting is a good idea for the environment?

No, I'd imagine they need a source that the cost is "extremely high". Are you being purposely disingenuous by reframing the question?

I guess I just get my fur up about the "Sources" demand I see more and more these days. It feels like it is used to stop meaningful discussion on a topic.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#696

Post by RestlessMind » Fri, Aug 13, 2021, 4:54 PM UTC

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #665

RestlessMind wrote: post #582

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you come up with a way to spread that wealth in the different regions of a country, shareholders and execs will leverage that to get work done from even cheaper countries. A worker in Colombia or Mexico is much cheaper than someone in Kansas or Maryland. Btw, I am seeing this happening at my current workplace where a majority of the new headcount is for non-US countries. So be careful what you wish for. We have se…

>So be careful what you wish for. I see that as a good thing as well. If it is a problem to have all the wealth of a country in a few regions then it is equally bad to have the wealth of the world in a few countries. It might have been painful for some Americans but globalisation has been a success for most of the world.

Good for whom? Definitely not for American middle class. So if you are a middle class person in the US, do not root for WFH trend or globalization of Silicon Valley. It will only hurt you while benefiting poorer countries and the shareholders (aka top 1%-ers) in the US.

> globalization has been a success for most of the world

It has led to decimation of big industries in the US / Western Europe, fueling the rise of demagogues (Trump, Le Pen, AfD, ...). It has also given power to despot regimes like Chinese Communist Party.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#697

Post by lumost » Sat, Aug 14, 2021, 1:34 PM UTC

EspadaV9 wrote: post #662

lumost wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I usually leave at 9:15 arrive around 10 and leave around 5 or 6. As a software engineer my deadlines etc don’t lend themselves to a strict 9-5 approach.

That's not so bad then. I don't know many (any!?) places that would let their teams count that though, so glad to know some places do.

The big difference is that I’m visibly working during the commute. Given the nature of the train, the only activities I can’t do are coding and attending a meeting where I am an active participant.

The latter limitation will probably end soon with improved ML based background audio removal.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#698

Post by loco5niner » Mon, Aug 16, 2021, 6:46 PM UTC

paulcole wrote: post #654

loco5niner wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine they could find some way to make money with an extra 10 hours a week.

They already have! They earn that money while they’re driving to the office.

My company moved from Oregon to Washington. When this happened my commute increased by about 7 hours per week. They didn't suddenly start paying me for the extra time.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#699

Post by ashtonkem » Tue, Aug 17, 2021, 3:20 PM UTC

roguas wrote: post #694

ashtonkem wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree. It was already possible and cheap to setup satellite offices in foreign countries in order to exploit labor differences, and so far this effort has usually failed. There’s no reason to believe that Covid has knocked down the final barrier to offshoring more work. More frankly, I think that the cost savings in offshoring are a false promise. You can hire very cheap programmers in India and similar, and the…

Language? I know a lot of people more fluent than a typical US dev. Besides that, how much language do you actually need, some basic vocabulary and grammar to communicate. Time zone? US has 2 continents + you typically need a maximum of 3 hours overlap a day. This is possible even in Europe-EastCoast setup, I typically wake up 11. In US that's 6am sure, but I end my day at 7pm which at US is 2pm. Covid has knocked do…

Having led international teams, I can tell you that you’re completely wrong about all of this. You are drastically understating the difficulties of working with engineers abroad.

Time zones matter, a lot. Crossing America’s time zones isn’t fun, but it has nothing on Eastern Europe or India. 8pm meetings to interact with your international workers will burn you out quickly. As will suddenly remembering that most of the world doesn’t do DST, so your 8pm meeting just became a 9pm.

You also need to know a hell of a lot more than “some vocabulary” in order to communicate effectively with a boss (me, in this scenario) or a stakeholder. Some consultancies will have specialized personnel whose only job is to translate for engineering teams, but these people are extremely expensive for obvious reasons.

You can overcome these problems, yes. But often a lot of the supposed cost savings of international workers disappears or shrinks massively by the time you’ve found an arrangement that’s as productive as local engineers. Typically the most sustainable approach here is to use one of the larger contracting companies like EPAM or Globant, but that eats up your savings and the attrition rate from those companies is very high. I’ve personally lost contractors because they were tired of the contracting company, not me or my company.

I’ve worked with international teams, and I continue to work with international teams. But the idea that Covid has made replacing domestic teams with international teams does not hold water.