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Why is remote work seen as a gift?

cdoyle.me

151–160 of 564 posts

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#151
If I were given unlimited money, I wouldn't go to Office, but I would go to Home. Remote work allows me to spend more time in the place that I actually care about. Easy choice.

Many people point out that this makes team cohesion harder. I don't care, my economic output is meaningless in the context of greater life. I'd like to do the least amount of bullshit work and the most amount of important work possible, and the majority of the important work I do as a rich non-farming westerner takes place at my house or in my neighborhood. My coworkers at Office tolerate me, but my friends and family at Home love me.

I view remote work as a wonderful transaction heavily tilted in my favor. The company gets the same work they'd get out of me otherwise, and it gives up a monopolization on my physical being. I'll take a salary hit for that any day. People ought to start realizing that unless they're involved in the production of goods or services necessary for other people to physically remain alive, your job literally doesn't matter. You have X hours between when you wake up and when you go to sleep. The more of those you can spend practicing the art of civilization and the fewer of those you spend grinding out increases in shareholder value the richer society will be.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#152
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live. That's like saying the price of goods and services should be about the cost of producing them. No no no: the price is about what buyers will bear. In the same way, salaries are about what the worker will bear. If there is an arbitrage lever to maximize profit, any business will use it.

Why shouldn’t the price of goods be the cost of producing them?

Because it's stupid to go to a huge amount of effort to figure out your exact unit cost to reduce prices to when customers are prepared to pay more, and cost structure usually isn't linear enough to make this practical anyway.

It's like asking "why shouldn't workers work for subsistence income instead of asking for more money?": the obvious answer is "because the only reason they would consider doing so when they don't have a choice"

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#153
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live. That's like saying the price of goods and services should be about the cost of producing them. No no no: the price is about what buyers will bear. In the same way, salaries are about what the worker will bear. If there is an arbitrage lever to maximize profit, any business will use it.

Very much this. It makes the process of salary negotiation completely tied to perception rather than reality, which isn't necessarily bad for the employee. It just means that the justifications for a higher salary need to change from "your salary offer is too low because it shouldn't depend on where I live" to "your salary offer should be higher because I can improve your business in x, y and z"

> your salary offer should be higher because I can improve your business in x, y and z

I just don't think this is true for the overwhelming majority of employees, including developers.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#154
post #99

I find it kind of amusing (and annoying) that employers like to play the salaray game as it fits their needs. I got interviewed a few times, and some stated that they cannot pay the salary I was asking, because i don't live in a high-density, high-cost-for-living area, while others argued that they have to respect their local salaries, which are below what I would expect in my area. I'm yet to meet the employer that…

> It should be about the value I bring to the company, not where I live. What, no! It should be about what offers you can get from other places. If your offer is close to your local salaries, then that mean the company thinks you would have a hard time getting a better offer from somewhere else.

That depends entirely on how unique my value proposition is to the company making the offer. If I'm a commodity, yes, salary offers will trend to cost of living.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#155

Why is work seen as a gift? In german, they employer is the "Arbeitgeber", i.e. the "work giver", while the employee is the "Arbeitnehmer", the "work taker". Which is really wrong IMHO. The employee is giving his work to the employer.

If it's anything like in my language (Polish, where the expression is very similar), the meaning shifted over generations and was quite the opposite 150 years ago.

I suppose back when the demographic pyramid was still a pyramid, being offered a job, especially as a young person, was seen as somewhat of a favour.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#156

It's framed as a gift in order to manipulate the negotiating position. The fact is both employer and employee benefit from it, but if the employer can emphasize the benefits to the employee they can extract a bit of value from the relationship.

Although framing it as a gift isn’t implicitly an admission that going to the office sucks, and therefore sparing you from the dread should be seen as a negotiating value?

Less negotiating value, more table stakes. If every offer you're applying for is remote, no individual company benefits over any other by offering it.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that's labor theory of value which is Marxism and marx is just some guy. Arguments against will be that value "is" what people are willing to pay for them, which is some combination of supply and demand, but I find this just too simple. Technically it's true that the "value" of something is the price someone last paid for it, but then we get situations where we say a Bitcoin is worth 40k usd or whatever tf th…

Have you actually read Marx? If you haven't, I recommend you start with https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/value-price... . It'll clarify much of your confusion on basic economics.

IMO OP is right on the money with the labor theory of value. If the value is what offer and demand agree on, exploitation disappears, in Marx's theoretical model.

While I am not an expert, I remember reading about it on "The Classical School: The Turbulent Birth of Economics in Twenty Extraordinary Lives", by Callum Williams. It made sense to me.

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/49374783

While linking to the sources is useful, I would appreciate any argument correcting the above since, as I said, I am not an expert and it makes perfect sense to me.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#158
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so foreign to me, living in Europe. The salary here is in my experience based on where the company is located. Big city, big salary.

European here. This happened interviewing with companies that are located in rather well-payed areas, precisely southern germany. :)

Munich has spiralled out of control in this aspect.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#159
post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is so foreign to me, living in Europe. The salary here is in my experience based on where the company is located. Big city, big salary.

Yeah, but our "big salary" is still like half of what they'd pay in the USA. Perhaps the company doesn't see it worthwhile to argue over peanuts.

Paying a given salary in Germany is a lot more expensive for a company than paying the exact same salary in America. There are both more taxes on the employer side and more labor regulations that cost money to comply with. The number of hours worked tends to be different, too.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#160
I really hate working fully remote so much. I love going to the office and meeting people. It gives me energy and a sense of belonging. I would never want to work for a fully remote company.
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