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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?

#311

Post by FartyMcFarter »

ericmay wrote: post #276
jsty wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

Whether something is illegal is different from whether it's easy to enforce. It's hard to say how likely they are to enforce this, but you're definitely taking a risk by pretending to live somewhere.

What makes it more problematic is that it's not just tax offices that would be interested in finding out. The company you work at may also get in trouble with the tax office as they pay employment taxes too, so they are probably interested in the fact that you're deceiving them. If your manager suspects you're not being truthful and follows up with HR this could easily get you in trouble. As remote work becomes more popular, it becomes more likely that companies will pay attention to this.

Knowing all of that, I'd find it quite hard to justify playing these games. It just seems like asking for trouble, with a pretty good chance of getting it.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#312

Post by bayesian_horse »

steve1977 wrote: post #111

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.

In german "geben/nehmen" itself has no implication of exchange or lack thereof and can mean one or the other or anything in beween, unlike the related English word "gift" which does somewhat come from "given" or "gegeben" but only means given without reciprocation.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#313

Post by monkeynotes »

brookst wrote: post #298
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…

The cost of living thing is a mess. I think it will get sorted out as it becomes clear remote workers can and do still get offers. The current thinking seems to be “if you live in a low cost area, that means there is no competition for you”. Which used to be true, and is not true. And there are tons of just dumb things in remote work policy today. My company does cost of living adjustment based on the state you’re in…

During the hiring process Gitlab literally reclassified my city based off of data from a free crowd sourced website with about 10 data points. They struck their original offer and reduced it by ~10k just as I'd passed the final round.

They refused to even talk about it, even as I protested they'd wasted so much of my time and I was about to sign. I walked away and found a much better paying job elsewhere.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#314

Post by lampshades »

I wish I had an office to go to. I never leave my house anymore and it is becoming very very old.

Before everyone says, “oh, go get some hobbies and live your life, work isn’t here for your social life,” understand that I have young children and no free time. I am nearing middle age in a city I moved to for work. I don’t have the base level of social interaction most people inherit by birth or school and no time to build one.

I miss asking my coworkers how their weekends went.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#315

Post by welshwelsh »

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 please. If companies could replace highly paid Americans with lower paid Indians without hurting the bottom line they should do so without hesitation.

Unfortunately it's not that simple. It usually turns out that these lower paid employees are significantly worse, and Indian nationals who are highly competent demand salaries similar to Americans.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#316

Post by antisthenes »

papito wrote: post #142
Tade0 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> From personal experience, I am MUCH happier getting out of the house a couple of times a week. You can still do that. My friend rented an office a five minute walk from his home - it costs him 3% of his salary.

Yes, I live near a large park. I walk/run there every day, but the point is, the routine of doing everything alone (walking, shopping, working, eating) starts grinding on you.

> I walk/run there every day, but the point is, the routine of doing everything alone (walking, shopping, working, eating) starts grinding on you.

That's a completely different issue from remote vs in-person work. You should learn to be comfortable being alone/by yourself, especially as a man.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#317

Post by boringg »

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…

Strategy only works for so long and for small companies. Then you will have to adjust. Salaries and the employment market are highly dynamic and competitive. No strategy works forever.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#318

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#319

Post by kitsunesoba »

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 don’t have ADHD as far as I’m aware, but in the office noise canceling headphones mostly worked with the caveat that everybody in eyeshot was sitting for the most part. Sometimes when there’d be a flurry of movement for some reason or another with people ping ponging between desks and such my focus would be torpedoed and I’d have to resign myself to being a fourth or fifth as effective as normal until people settled in again.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#320

Post by CatWChainsaw »

pmoriarty wrote: post #251
andai wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While "freedom from labor" might be just around the corner (AGI, basic income etc.), there's still a lot of wiggle room between "confined to a specific chair for 8 hours" and "can spend all day snoozing on the beach" ! To put it another way, there are ways to make money that spark more or less joy, and much of this variation is possible even for "regular folks" working "regular jobs". But most of that possibility spa…

> "freedom from labor" might be just around the corner (AGI, basic income etc.) What use will the wealthy and powerful have for the unproductive masses after robots can do all their work for them? Is more likely that strong AI and robots will be used to ever more effectively control and oppress most of humanity than help or free them.

No matter how many times this is repeated, it never seems to sink in. Talk about Intelligence and Wisdom stats being way unbalanced.
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