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Wall Street grudgingly allows remote work as bankers dig in

nytimes.com

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Re: Wall Street grudgingly allows remote work as bankers dig in

#11

Post by syshum »

mabbo wrote: post #5

Like all industries that can move to remote, I suspect we will soon see a split. Some companies will embrace it, some won't. And that's not to detract from either side of that choice. It's just a choice that has to be made. What's going to be more interesting is what this does to the market rate for labor compensation between these two pools. Simply put: if you want me to be in the city from 9-6 every day, while your…

I think the bigger effect is this will create I believe a new round of Off Shoring for a set of jobs that used to be considered immune or at least resistant to off shoring.

I could be wrong but your statement of "if you want me to be in the city from 9-6 every day, while your competitor says I can live anywhere and remote in, you'd better be paying me extra to cover my increased rent" will hold true for for the global workforce as well, and I am not just talking the traditional off shore to India or china, but it could be that EU companies find cheaper information workers in US Mid West, or US Companies finding cheaper employees in EU, or Australia , etc

The high salaries of NY, LA, Silicon Valley, etc I think will be the first losses in this battle, many companies have already told their employees that if you choose to go remote to a Lower cost of living state your salary will be adjusted to reflect that.

It will be interesting but the employees pushing for full time remote should be advised to be careful what they wish for, as they just might get it and not like the consequences

Re: Wall Street grudgingly allows remote work as bankers dig in

#12

Post by onion2k »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #8
onion2k wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As if anyone would believe this person was not fully aware of the tradeoffs they were making in exchange for the higher pay. In my experience working with highly motivated, highly paid people they often aren't particularly self-aware or introspective. In their mind it's not a tradeoff; they usually believe that every job in their industry is like theirs. I suspect this is due to the fact that they've worked long hour…

>they usually believe that every job in their industry is like theirs. It was, for the woman in the article. But no one forces them to be in that industry, other than their desire to earn high wages.

no one forces them to be in that industry, other than their desire to earn high wages

Changing career later in life is a risky thing to do, especially if you don't have much in the way of transferable skills. Wanting to avoid poverty isn't quite the same as a "desire to earn high wages". People might know they'd happy on low- or mid-level wages but fearful of ending up with no wages. That's a reasonable concern.

Re: Wall Street grudgingly allows remote work as bankers dig in

#13

Post by toss1 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #2

>She often woke up at 4:30 a.m. to drive from her home in New Jersey, catch a bus into Manhattan, hop on the subway, squeeze in a workout and get to Jefferies’ trading floor by 7:30 a.m. Work dinners ran late into the night, and redeye flights to London were common. >For Ms. Batchelor, Jefferies’s new policy means coming in to the office three days a week. Although she plans to travel to meetings when necessary, Ms.…

>>Sometimes I wonder if journalists compete to get the most eye rolling quotes.

They definitely select the most eye-catching/rolling quotes out of an interview, been there, done that, been astonished at the way the article turned out.

That said, however, this is NOT unusual. When I worked at IBM in Manhattan, my manager lived in Poughipse, and woke up at 4:30 every morning to catch the train, slept on the way in, and was in the office before I was, and I lived about 40 blocks away. And he most definitely did NOT make the big banking salary and bonuses.

A lot of people want the suburban quality of life for their kids, and were willing to sacrifice a lot for that. Now, seeing that it is unnecessary, they are pushing back. Which is a damn good thing.

Re: Wall Street grudgingly allows remote work as bankers dig in

#14

Post by throwvirtever »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #8
onion2k wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As if anyone would believe this person was not fully aware of the tradeoffs they were making in exchange for the higher pay. In my experience working with highly motivated, highly paid people they often aren't particularly self-aware or introspective. In their mind it's not a tradeoff; they usually believe that every job in their industry is like theirs. I suspect this is due to the fact that they've worked long hour…

>they usually believe that every job in their industry is like theirs. It was, for the woman in the article. But no one forces them to be in that industry, other than their desire to earn high wages.

> But no one forces them to be in that industry, other than their desire to earn high wages.

High wages are definitely a factor but being competitive and feeling energized by trades paying off count as well. It's a combination of high reward, betting excitement, and the pleasure of crushing your competition in a context where score is easily kept (in dollars).

If those are the things you enjoy, it's difficult to find all that in other industries.

Re: Wall Street grudgingly allows remote work as bankers dig in

#15

Post by murph-almighty »

macintux wrote: post #9
mabbo wrote: post #5

Like all industries that can move to remote, I suspect we will soon see a split. Some companies will embrace it, some won't. And that's not to detract from either side of that choice. It's just a choice that has to be made. What's going to be more interesting is what this does to the market rate for labor compensation between these two pools. Simply put: if you want me to be in the city from 9-6 every day, while your…

It will be interesting to see whether companies can make a hybrid model work reliably. I tend to think that combining remote with on-site leads to worse results, because it’s easy to leave the remote people out of the loop.

The one true hybrid work model for tech (in my opinion anyway) is to just have everyone meet in-person in some cadence for sprint planning/PI planning/whatever your cycle is. Everybody syncs up every so often, and then you leave everyone the fuck alone while they go work. Zoom can handle one-off meetings for pairing or other quick questions, but planning out work/carving out architecture solutions is something better done face to face.

Re: Wall Street grudgingly allows remote work as bankers dig in

#16

Post by jollybean »

mabbo wrote: post #5

Like all industries that can move to remote, I suspect we will soon see a split. Some companies will embrace it, some won't. And that's not to detract from either side of that choice. It's just a choice that has to be made. What's going to be more interesting is what this does to the market rate for labor compensation between these two pools. Simply put: if you want me to be in the city from 9-6 every day, while your…

"you'd better be paying me extra to cover my increased rent"

I have some sorry news for Americans thinking this way on this one: you just outsourced yourselves.

There are people 2x as smart and who will work 2x as hard for 1/2 the salary among remaining 7 Billion people on this planet and if the bank can hire them instead of you, eventually they will.

In some aspects, relationships do matter, so those have face-to-face types of interactions will be obviously harder to displace.

The US saw a giant outsourcing of manufacturing, and now that US Megacorps are globalized and not locally owned, they don't have any reason to care about local talent, the same will start to happen in services.

I do however think that communicating matters a lot, and people will just find themselves back at the office.

I don't think people realize how quickly this can happen.

Now that we can work 'remote' - everyone is thinking about all the projects they can do for x% the cost, they're looking to trim the budget, and there's a pile of solid applications from Canada, Taiwan, Poland, Brazil, Spain on their desks.

Re: Wall Street grudgingly allows remote work as bankers dig in

#17

Post by TrueGeek »

syshum wrote: post #11
mabbo wrote: post #5

Like all industries that can move to remote, I suspect we will soon see a split. Some companies will embrace it, some won't. And that's not to detract from either side of that choice. It's just a choice that has to be made. What's going to be more interesting is what this does to the market rate for labor compensation between these two pools. Simply put: if you want me to be in the city from 9-6 every day, while your…

I think the bigger effect is this will create I believe a new round of Off Shoring for a set of jobs that used to be considered immune or at least resistant to off shoring. I could be wrong but your statement of "if you want me to be in the city from 9-6 every day, while your competitor says I can live anywhere and remote in, you'd better be paying me extra to cover my increased rent" will hold true for for the globa…

The companies I've seen adjusting salaries are adjusting for "market rate" of salaries, not CoL. This can result in moving to an area with a higher cost of living and a lower salary.

Re: Wall Street grudgingly allows remote work as bankers dig in

#18

Post by greiskul »

syshum wrote: post #11
mabbo wrote: post #5

Like all industries that can move to remote, I suspect we will soon see a split. Some companies will embrace it, some won't. And that's not to detract from either side of that choice. It's just a choice that has to be made. What's going to be more interesting is what this does to the market rate for labor compensation between these two pools. Simply put: if you want me to be in the city from 9-6 every day, while your…

I think the bigger effect is this will create I believe a new round of Off Shoring for a set of jobs that used to be considered immune or at least resistant to off shoring. I could be wrong but your statement of "if you want me to be in the city from 9-6 every day, while your competitor says I can live anywhere and remote in, you'd better be paying me extra to cover my increased rent" will hold true for for the globa…

> many companies have already told their employees that if you choose to go remote to a Lower cost of living state your salary will be adjusted to reflect that.

But at the same time, that makes the company vulnerable to the employee seek another company that will allow the remote work with a better compensation. Unless the ceos get together and conspire to suppress wages like they have done in the past, it is really uncertain how the workforce landscape will shape itself in the near future.

Re: Wall Street grudgingly allows remote work as bankers dig in

#19

Post by lotsofpulp »

TrueGeek wrote: post #17
syshum wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the bigger effect is this will create I believe a new round of Off Shoring for a set of jobs that used to be considered immune or at least resistant to off shoring. I could be wrong but your statement of "if you want me to be in the city from 9-6 every day, while your competitor says I can live anywhere and remote in, you'd better be paying me extra to cover my increased rent" will hold true for for the globa…

The companies I've seen adjusting salaries are adjusting for "market rate" of salaries, not CoL. This can result in moving to an area with a higher cost of living and a lower salary.

“Cost of living” was always code for “employer bets you will accept lower pay because you will not have a better option “.

Re: Wall Street grudgingly allows remote work as bankers dig in

#20

Post by chadash »

While I do think that attitudes towards remote work have fundamentally changed, it'll be interesting to see how things shake out over the next 5-10 years. I suspect that as people start to go into the office more, there will be pressure to do so for your career to advance, in many fields. If your boss's boss works in the office, who is more likely to get a promotion, the person that works from home or the person who goes in and eats lunch with them once a week? In an ideal world, the answer would be "the one who does better work", but we don't live an ideal world.
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