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Why is remote work seen as a gift?

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Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#231

Post by ljf »

wolfium3 wrote: post #11

It strongly depends on your personality type. I'm much, much, much more productive WFH due to my ADHD. Also, noise cancelling earphones did NOT help while I was still in the office.

I used to find noise annoying in the pre-covid days, but I could cope with it.

Then I worked remotely, and while the silence was deafening for the first week or so, I grew to love it, and the focus it gives me.

Now I am back in the office some days a week, and it is worse than ever, in part as I've tasted what working in silence does for me. But mainly as non in post-covid times everyone takes their meetings at their desks.

Sitting near me today was a team of 5 people all on a call together from their desks, as one person was remote.

In the old days they would have grabbed a meeting room to run that call, but now everyone does it from their desks.

The noise is so annoying, and makes my remote days all the sweeter. Wearing noise cancelling headphones all day hurts my ears and head, plus gives me sweaty ears - which leads to more wax which leads to increased tinnitus for me. As someone with ADHD, tinnitus can really mess with my day.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#233

Post by ejb999 »

mcv wrote: post #90
toyg wrote: 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.

Employers are the buyers of labour. If food prices depend on what the consumer can bear, then labour prices should depend on what the employer can bear. And most of them can bear a lot more than they're currently paying.

it is not about what they 'can' bear, it's about what they are willing to bear - it is not the same thing - the company can decide what they are willing to bear, and the employee can decide what they are willing to work for. Doesn't sound like a problem that needs fixing.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#234

Post by eru »

knorker wrote: post #118
MrGilbert wrote: post #25

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…

Do you want to play that game? Because if location doesn't matter then there are a billion people in India who are willing to do your job for much much less. In salary per value to the company you are extremely overpaid, assuming you live in the west. I don't think you want to open that can of worms. Edit to add: All those people moving from India to the US for the money could then stay in India. You're not competing…

Yes, I want to play that game. I want people in India to be paid more, if possible. I want to open that 'can of worms'.

The big problem is that labour in India isn't all that productive. Offshoring isn't some magic bullet. Companies have tried that and are still trying.

Google, Microsoft etc have offices in India. They also keep their offices in the US and Europe not just out of imaginary obligation to westerners, but because it makes economic sense.

See also how Apple still does lots of the design work in the US, but manufactures in China. They would off-shore more off the design work as well, if they could. (And if Apple could but would not, someone else would do it and eat their lunch.)

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#235

Post by eru »

bsenftner wrote: post #215
eru wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Huh? What's your evidence for these kinds of claims? And who is 'us' in that comment?

Anyone not within the circle of a family with generation spanning wealth.

Not quite sure what you mean. Normal people in the western world are richer are better off than ever before. The same goes for people in South Korea or Singapore, countries which have recently joined the rich world.

Seems to be all going pretty well.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#236

Post by pydry »

ericmay wrote: post #220
franciscop wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it is true, the best you can do is vote with your feet. I have had the situation where I was offered "locally competitive salaries" (not in the USA though), and every time I've rejected it I had a 50%-100% better offer within few weeks . There ARE companies that will pay better and independently of your location, you do need to be good though (as in companies are proactively seeking you out) and keep searching.…

I’m really surprised that nobody has set up address as a service yet so that you can claim for example to live in New York by virtue of an address auto command “a New York salary”.

Why bother? If somebody wants to pay you less because you live in upstate NY rather than Manhattan just reject them and move on.

If the reason is bullshit, there's no need to bullshit back.

If the reason isn't bullshit (e.g. coz they want you in their Manhattan office on a moment's notice) then having a virtual address won't help.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#237

Post by cj »

lunarhustler wrote: post #137
toyg wrote: 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.

Except the market ain't going to bear it, not for a long time anyway. If I am a CEO of a remote-first company and it truly doesn't matter for me where the employees are located it makes no sense to overpay for labor in high cost of living area. So if there's a company A that pays $X in high COL area, and $X/3 in a low COL area. And then there's a company B that pays $X/2 everywhere. Then people from the low COL area…

I run a remote-first company, and this is basically how we do it.

We don't give people different offers based on where they say they live.

Rather, we have a salary range for a job, and we look for people who are attracted by that salary range. This usually means people in SF, NYC, and other high COL cities disqualify themselves, so we end up hiring many people outside of tech hubs.

In other words, if you simply stop hiring in the top 20% COL cities, you can hire talent at significantly less salary ranges simply because we're not competing with Google, Amazon, etc in Silicon Valley or NYC.

Which allows us to hire a greater quantity of people. E.g. 2 engineers at $150k instead of 1 engineer at $300k.

But the key to this is not making a salary decision based on location. Instead, just set a salary range and you'll find what parts of the country people are willing to work at that range.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#238

Post by burmanm »

hzay wrote: post #191
burmanm wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there's any "weird setup", other than having a separate room for work/computer. It's pretty good insulator for all the interruptions. And of course, better coffee. The additional productivity probably came from the added time per day and reduced fatigue from lower amount of noise (office room vs. open office floor). I don't think there's anything weird about it, I at least found working at the office ve…

Sorry, I meant what setup keeps the kids away from your productive time.

Mostly teaching them. "When dad works, don't bother him". And since I do come out of the room in any case often enough (coffee/toilet/eat/etc), they saw me enough often. But it's not like single productive period is a long time, rather it's a patches of smaller events during the day.

Of course now that they're bigger, everything is a bit different.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#239

Post by ejb999 »

interactivecode wrote: post #178
sokoloff wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absolutely! Everyone is free to select among their options the one that they most prefer.

though you have to admit in basically all situations the employer has more leverage than a single employee.

the employer has more leverage in who they choose to hire and what they choose to pay - but potential employees hold all the leverage about where they choose to work and the amount they are willing to accept.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#240

Post by danaris »

Kbelicius wrote: post #180
dorwi wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"As a result, company B gets the same results 2 times cheaper" - that's just an assumption. If I turn it around, it sounds - "people on average in high COL area do the same work two times faster than in low COL area".

What assumption is being made? What are you turning around?

The assumption they're claiming lunarhustler made is that engineers in Silicon Valley and engineers in (say) Utica, NY work at approximately the same speed and quality.

The assumption dorwi's asking you to make is that moving to Silicon Valley somehow makes you work twice as fast, or that only engineers who work twice as fast live there.

Basically, lunarhustler is making the assumption that humans who can program end up at roughly the same quality no matter where they live or how much you pay them, while dorwi is making the assumption that how much you are paid is directly related to your productive output.

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