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Why is remote work seen as a gift?

cdoyle.me

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Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#271

Post by Jcampuzano2 »

pjerem wrote: post #196
lordnacho wrote: post #8

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.

You can easily defuse the argument though. As a candidate, you can say that remote working is a trade off you are willing to accept because of your interest for the job. You don’t even have to lie but you can just act like you don’t care about working remotely or not (which, in my personal case, is just the truth).

To be honest, you can easily diffuse the argument even if you do care about working remotely.

Simply put, make it known immediately that you will reject the job offer if it is not full remote, no questions asked. On my end, no "extra" amount of money they'd be willing to offer for coming into the office will sway me and many others.

There simply is no argument, I will not work for you and will go with another option if working remotely is not possible. If my job changes from work remote to not after accepting, I will not come in, and will look for new opportunities.

I've seen a lot of places play the game of accepting remote workers but then the CEO or someone announces back to office which is why I put the additional point there as well.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#272

Post by Lio »

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…

I've heard this arugment before. What's daft is no company I've heard of only wants to sell locally.

They all want to sell nationally or internationally whilst paying based on what they think the local market value for labour should be.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#273

Post by Lio »

dontlaugh wrote: post #95
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.

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

Because the value of a Picasso doodle on a napkin is not in the cost of the pen, ink and napkin used to produce it.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#274

Post by red-iron-pine »

bathtub365 wrote: post #262
davidmurdoch wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

How did that go come tax time?

Having done this with VA and WA -- went fine w/ VA, went ugly w/ WA.

WA has no state income tax, but a beefier payroll tax, so it's cheaper for me but more expensive for the company.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#275

Post by kroltan »

mcv wrote: post #184
interactivecode wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That is the big fundamental problem of employer-employee relations. They hold more power and it's easier for them to organise with other employers without anyone being aware of it. The only way to balance that is for employees to also get organised. Or ban corporations, I suppose.

I think you're onto something on that last thought.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#276

Post by ericmay »

jsty wrote: post #228
ericmay wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”.

There’s plenty of virtual office / forwarding address services, but claiming you live at one when you don’t for a pay gain risks (1) fraud against your employer; and (2) tax fraud (if eg in a different city / state / country).

What’s the definition of where one lives? For example what if you wanted the NYC salary and you rented out a bunk bed for $50/month and traveled around the country while working remote?

Cities definitely don’t have the resources to track you down and I’m not sure employers especially larger ones have any mechanisms in place to keep track. I’m not advocating for this just surprised it’s not more well known. Though I suspect it’s common and just not talked about much for obvious reasons. Certainly there are also jobs that require you to physically work from a given state as well for example.

How do so called digital nomads handle it from a tax perspective? Do they maintain a residence for tax purposes? Is that any different?

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#277

Post by kitsunesoba »

nlnn wrote: post #109

I've worked either both fully remote and fully in the office over the past decade depending on job at the time, and noticed little difference in work productivity at home vs. the office. The major difference has been in the dead time around work. Time spent commuting, lunch breaks, coffee breaks, etc. When working in an office, nothing much is achieved during those (maybe some socialising or reading), and work takes…

Yeah, it’s nice to be able to say toss the laundry in the washer or get the dishwasher going during the breaks I’d be taking anyway so when the work day ends, I can immediately flip over to leisure/personal time activities. No commute helps with that too.

It’s taken a while to adjust to this and fully take advantage of it, but it’s enabled me to spend time on hobbies and work on my personal projects far more than would have ever been practical when I was working in an office. Back then I’d get in from work, feel too tired to do much of anything but scroll through social media or occasionally watch a TV show, with chores getting pushed off until the weekend. Once the weekend rolled around, by the time chores were out of the way and I felt like doing me things it was already halfway through Sunday and I needed to start thinking about Monday.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#278

Post by gardenhedge »

senttoschool wrote: post #150
tluyben2 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many managers are not very good and mostly believe managing means flogging the herd to work harder; that’s not really possible remotely.

Many individual contributors are not very good and mostly overrate their own ability to be productive while working from home.

The feedback loop is a lot quicker for an IC than a manager. It could take several quarters or longer to uncover that a manager is not performing.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#279

Post by nikau »

brigandish wrote: post #192
m000 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it is complicated because a large number of management jobs are "bullshit" (see [1]). I.e. they could be eliminated, and productivity would not be affected, or it could even be improved. Remote work does an exposé on the usefulness of these roles. And of course, those holding them, would be eager for everyone to return to the office work theater. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs

There certainly are bullshit jobs and people doing valuable roles in bullshit ways, but Graeber’s claim that more than half of societal work is bullshit is also clearly bullshit, and not just because I read some of the book and sighed heavily before putting it down, but also because of claims like this that I didn’t see in the book but are in the Wikipedia page: > duct tapers, who temporarily fix problems that could…

I've dealt with lots of code which could be fixed permanently - ie. put in proper error handling and rearchitect to be robust and maintenance free.

More so than ever with the push for MVP and agile ticket stat chasing.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#280

Post by Tangurena2 »

ejb999 wrote: post #254
CalRobert wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 think an awful lot of employers would prefer you were a contractor; in the USA at least, it is the IRS/government that prevents this from happening more by putting the fear into said employers that they will be fined and forced to pay back taxes for anyone improperly classifying people as contractors when they are in fact employees.

It was the tax reform act of 1986 that removed the "safe harbor" provision for engineers and computer professionals.

In the city where I currently live, lots of small businesses try to claim that their employees are contractors. Those businesses depend on the ignorance of their workers.

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