How to Pay Remote Workers
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Re: How to Pay Remote Workers
#2As a remote worker, I think there is an assumption of 'necessary common suffering' which continues to make remote work a 'privilege' rather than a simple logistical alternative. So long as there are on-location cubicle-dwellers who might get disgruntled to know that other employees are living some kind of fantasy high life from home (working in PJs, etc., all the tropes), then providing any remote working options becomes a potentially destabilizing force for a company.
Making a remote worker's income less attractive is one way to redress that balance of perception.
I'm not sure how much progress we are ever going to make towards remote working as core practice, since the last decade has re-built a collapsed economy on the basis of hyper-inflated urban property values in 19thC-style urban conurbations such as NYC, SF, Tokyo, London, etc (and, increasingly, smaller satellite cities that had not benefited in this way until recent years, but have now become super-distant commuter communities).
The net-enabled, 'dispersed' society is probably further away than it has ever been because of these factors.
Re: How to Pay Remote Workers
#3If anything remote workers should be paid more for being environmentally friendly
Re: How to Pay Remote Workers
#4Salaries based on cost of living are always a mistery to me. If the company wants to have an honest relationship with the worker, the salary should be based on the value the employee is bringing, and that does not depend on where they live. Tying the salary to the cost of living looks like a way to cheat a worker out of the value they generate.
Re: How to Pay Remote Workers
#5If anything remote workers should be paid more for being environmentally friendly
Where will the extra money come from ?
Re: How to Pay Remote Workers
#6If anything remote workers should be paid more for being environmentally friendly
Where will the extra money come from ?
Saved real estate cost for one less desk at the office, productivity gains [1].
That said, companies that are fully remote (e.g. Gitlab [2]) tend to actually adjust your wage for having similar purchasing power wherever you choose to live. This then encourages the company to hire from inexpensive countries, which has it's own pros and cons.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/abdullahimuhammed/2019/05/21/he...
[2] https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/people-operations/global-c...
Re: How to Pay Remote Workers
#7> Why on earth would it matter where your desk is?
It matters to product managers. Managing remote team is more difficult therefore PMs will always push against this.
Re: How to Pay Remote Workers
#8Salaries based on cost of living are always a mistery to me. If the company wants to have an honest relationship with the worker, the salary should be based on the value the employee is bringing, and that does not depend on where they live. Tying the salary to the cost of living looks like a way to cheat a worker out of the value they generate.
> Tying the salary to the cost of living looks like a way to cheat a worker out of the value they generate.
Seems like you solved your mistery after all! As abusiness you want to spend as little as possible.
Re: How to Pay Remote Workers
#9If anything remote workers should be paid more for being environmentally friendly
They are, in a way, given that they'll spend less on tax than their commuting colleagues - assuming that taxes are used as a method for government to incentivise behaviour.
Re: How to Pay Remote Workers
#10If anything remote workers should be paid more for being environmentally friendly
Where will the extra money come from ?
There are costs associated with working in an office - consider rent, cleaning, furniture, power, a receptionist, maybe an entire facilities management department, security and so on. These costs are split amongst the revenue earned per worker in that office. But homeworkers provide all those things for the company “for free”. And even more the homeworker might even provide the PC, the phone line, any tech support they need, all “for free” from the perspective of the company beancounters. In a fair world homeworkers would be paid this differential.