Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why is remote work seen as a gift?

cdoyle.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 564 posts

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#241

Post by danaris »

eru wrote: post #235
bsenftner wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Two things can be true at the same time: both

"Normal people in the western world are better off than they were at any/nearly any given time in the past."

and

"There is a staggering amount of wealth inequality in the western world right now, and there are very concerning signs about what it is doing to our politics, economy, and culture."

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#242

Post by TehShrike »

autoexec wrote: post #226
brmgb wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 can truthfully deduct the cost-for-living from the compensation they are offering. It should be about the v…

> Refusing to pay you more is their way of telling you they don't believe you can get something better than what they offer where you are which is legitimate. Except when they collude to drive down wages or pay for laws to make it harder for workers to organize keeping them weak. Also "where you are" has been made irrelevant for many workers because they can get employment anywhere without going anywhere. That means…

Employees could collude too, saying "we refuse to work for anything less than X$".

Except that employees would do the same thing that employers do all the time and walk across the line as soon as someone offers them a compelling deal, even if it isn't at the "collusion" price.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#243

Post by pmoriarty »

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…

There are time zones issues, communication issues, and culture issues that are difficult if not impossible to cost-effectively overcome for offshoring to countries like India.. Otherwise all jobs would have been offshored already, whether local employees "wanted to play that game" or not. Employers aren't hiring locally out of the goodness of their hearts.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#244

Post by davidmurdoch »

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”.

I know someone that lived in Mexico but listed a friend's address in NYC on all work paperwork.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#245

Post by newaccount74 »

micahbule wrote: post #165
newaccount74 wrote: post #148

When you are in the office, the company has almost all your attention. There is almost nothing to distract you from work. When you are at home, there are a million things to distract you. There's laundry that needs to be done, the kitchen cleaned, kids that want to play, there's a full fridge with stuff to make a sandwich, a TV that you can turn on, etc. When you are forced to go to the office, you are forced to take…

I disagree employers don't have a win on the remote work setup. For one, they can reduce a lot of overhead for the upkeep of physical offices. There's also giving the idea of giving the employee more time for themselves, when in truth they really actually extended his work hours; just at the comfort of their homes and at their own pace. While it's not perfect for everyone, remote work has its perks for both employees…

More time often isn't really what the employer wants. I knew someone who put in a lot of hours, but always in the afternoon / evening -- when everyone else already went home. Which sucks for everyone who needs to coordinate with them, because you always need to wait a day for them to get back to your emails...

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#246

Post by ejb999 »

natymad wrote: post #183
herbst wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure why that would be an issue. I am 'just a coder' all I do is pushing and pulling things from git.

- You can easily steal code - if you were working on a company laptop with USB device protection (can't connect drives to transfer without approval) and heavy website moderation (can't send code to yourself), leaking code would prove way more difficult. Compare that to just copy+paste on your personal computer. (ofc it's possible to steal from company laptops too, but you'll leave a very visible trail). - You're a se…

Don't kid yourself, there is nothing you can do to prevent people from 'stealing' code they are working on if they are working from home or any other place where someone is not looking over their shoulder 100% of the time.

There are reasons to force people to work on a corporate machine, preventing them from stealing code is not one of them.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#247

Post by rkangel »

schnitzelstoat wrote: post #121
rizach8 wrote: 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.

This is true, and still true to some extent once you compensate you can't compare the two numbers. There are large costs associated with living in the US like health insurance that just don't exist in the UK where I live.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#248

Post by chii »

CalRobert wrote: post #229
Avicebron wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a lawyer, but this seems illegal on its face. Just from a tax perspective for the government, I feel like people would immediately start trying to game it for taxes.

I don't know if it matters but I have a limited company and am an employee of said company, which means I deal with taxes on my own and can perform work for (almost) any company in the world - I just invoice them like any supplier. Maybe this is the future? Though some companies would rather you were their employee I suppose.

> I have a limited company and am an employee of said company, which means I deal with taxes on my own and can perform work for (almost) any company in the world

which means you're a contractor, rather than an employee. I do think this is a better way tbh, as you can potentially own all of your healthcare costs, and optimize your taxes properly. And you can probably charge a lot more as a contractor, to make up for the lack of job security etc.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#249

Post by bluedino »

natymad wrote: post #183
herbst wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure why that would be an issue. I am 'just a coder' all I do is pushing and pulling things from git.

- You can easily steal code - if you were working on a company laptop with USB device protection (can't connect drives to transfer without approval) and heavy website moderation (can't send code to yourself), leaking code would prove way more difficult. Compare that to just copy+paste on your personal computer. (ofc it's possible to steal from company laptops too, but you'll leave a very visible trail). - You're a se…

I'm using the same laptop I was at the office with the same USB mass storage policies and same web filtering and DLP.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#250

Post by [deleted] »

andai wrote: post #77
manuelfcreis wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, in the entire history of civilization most people used to work at home, and not at some other place. Offices aren't part of human nature.

For most of human history people worked together in person, as tribes! (I think this is at least part of the reason companies so heavily push the "we are your family" meme, trying to artificially create that original level of collectivism and aligned incentives.)

[deleted]
Post reply on HN