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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

#101

Post by heavyset_go »

HideousKojima wrote: post #74
netizen-936824 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

'Nobody forced them into slavery, why didn't they just go somewhere else?'

Slavery, by its very definition, involves force. From Merriam-Webster's dictionary: Someone who is legally owned by another person and is forced to work for that person without pay

Slavery isn't just chattel slavery, it comes in many forms, including wage slavery.

The abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass had this to say on the subject[1]:

> [E]xperience demonstrates that there may be a slavery of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of wages must go down with the other

From Wikipedia[1]:

> Douglass went on to speak about these conditions as arising from the unequal bargaining power between the ownership/capitalist class and the non-ownership/laborer class within a compulsory monetary market: "No more crafty and effective devise for defrauding the southern laborers could be adopted than the one that substitutes orders upon shopkeepers for currency in payment of wages. It has the merit of a show of honesty, while it puts the laborer completely at the mercy of the land-owner and the shopkeeper"

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery#History

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

#102

Post by heavyset_go »

jollybean wrote: post #16
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-fa…

> 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.

I've worked with remote developers from Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia in US companies, and talent in those areas can command SV-level compensation.

Truth is, if you can compete with domestic US talent, you can command US-level compensation, either through immigration or the "outsourcing" you're trying to spook people with.

If the work being done doesn't require talent that commands US-level compensation, then that work was already outsourced 20 to 30+ years ago.

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

#103

Post by dillondoyle »

Animats wrote: post #96

Wall Street banks posted record profit and revenue during the pandemic, as government stimulus supported consumers stuck at home and companies sought to do deals, proving to bankers and traders that they have little need to work out of the office the way they used to. The attendance numbers are low. The financial industry employs 332,100 people in New York City. In October, only 27 percent of those people came in dai…

Economic sense for the big companies, but probably not for cities and local businesses.

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

#104

Post by HideousKojima »

netizen-936824 wrote: post #85
HideousKojima wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slavery, by its very definition, involves force. From Merriam-Webster's dictionary: Someone who is legally owned by another person and is forced to work for that person without pay

That's the point I was trying to make. Generally employees do not actually have much of a choice, if any. Especially if they have families to provide for so the distinction is rather moot

Employees can find another job. Or they can choose to have no job, and potentially starve to death etc. But the latter is the default of the human condition, and has little to do with the whims of corporations.

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

#105

Post by tdfx »

randallsquared wrote: post #99
jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what if you turn that around? If you are currently remote but considering an offer from a place that's in-office, wouldn't you want a higher wage to compensate you for the extra hassle of commuting? That's extra free time you're never getting back.

There are people who prefer to work in an office, and some who have that preference even if it puts them on a train for an hour or two a day. As long as we don't get legislation to force employers one way or another, I'd expect employees to self-select into those who like being around others all day, and those who prefer to work in a private office. It's a serendipitous solution we've been presented to all those open…

But shouldn't the employees that require extra subsidies (office space, commuting reimbursement, office utilities/supplies) receive the same overall compensation as those working from home with lower expense to the company? It seems to me that if being in the office is an optional preference for some, they should carry the cost of it.

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

#107

Post by hansvm »

tshaddox wrote: post #68
mabbo wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think some companies might do that. I think they'll wind up losing money as a result. If you're willing to pay more for identical work because your employee chose to live somewhere more expensive, you're encouraging your employees to live in the most expensive places. On the other hand, if you offer a fair wage for the work done regardless of location, your employees get better value by living somewhere inexpensive…

If the cost of living adjustment were “perfect” then it wouldn’t encourage employees to live in any particular place, right? Presumably the whole point is to give each employee the same “effective compensation” for their particular place of residence. Of course, it’s not so easy to agree on what the ideal method of cost of living adjustment would be.

A "perfect" CoL adjustment can't exist. If it's fairly applied across distinct individuals then it won't be perfect for some of them, and if it's applied consistently to a fixed individual that person has enough tweakable parameters to warp the situation to their advantage and actually prefer one location over another. E.g.:

(1) Bob is optimizing long-term savings, and Joe is optimizing purchasing power for nearby activities like bars and restaurants. After subtracting other comparable expenses, any salary surplus strategy which is a "perfect" cross-city CoL adjustment for Bob will when applied to Joe cause him to prefer a cheaper CoL location because his dollars will go further. Supposing the employer doesn't have power to discriminate based on such preferences, no fair CoL adjustment is perfect for both individuals.

(2) Bob is still optimizing long-term savings. MegaCorp chose a "perfect" CoL adjustment based on Bob's preferred standard of living, but the multiplicative nature of price increases in a high CoL city means that Bob can save a ton of money with a mild decrease in his standard of living. He's incentivized to live somewhere more expensive because doing so will maximize his potential savings with minimal impact elsewhere in his life. If the employer isn't discriminating based on what's paid for rent and other expenses, the CoL adjustment is gameable.

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

#108

Post by activitypea »

lekanwang wrote: post #44

I'm finding with the teams I'm working with that the junior employees are the ones most impacted by not working from an office, but they often don't realize what they're missing -- the less formal forms of mentorship, stronger community, interacting with more people that's not on their team and in their role, overhearing context, the ability to have a 3-min quick chat with a senior person without a scheduled meeting,…

Any ideas how we could fix this?

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

#109

Post by randallsquared »

tdfx wrote: post #105
randallsquared wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people who prefer to work in an office, and some who have that preference even if it puts them on a train for an hour or two a day. As long as we don't get legislation to force employers one way or another, I'd expect employees to self-select into those who like being around others all day, and those who prefer to work in a private office. It's a serendipitous solution we've been presented to all those open…

But shouldn't the employees that require extra subsidies (office space, commuting reimbursement, office utilities/supplies) receive the same overall compensation as those working from home with lower expense to the company? It seems to me that if being in the office is an optional preference for some, they should carry the cost of it.

Yes, that was my poorly-explained point: given that some people prefer to add the cost and time of commuting (possibly in order to rub elbows or attend happy hour), and others prefer to add the cost of a home office (possibly in order to retain focus or make lunch for the family), the costs might turn out similarly, and therefore I hope that remote working doesn't result in systematically lower salaries for those who prefer it.

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

#110

Post by 62951413 »

dymk wrote: post #28
jollybean wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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-fa…

Having worked for years with overseas contractors, I’m really not too concerned about my job security

In typical SFBA companies I meet mostly token Americans. So there's a huge foreign workforce with many years of local experience, a non-trivial proportion with already with citizenship. With the current trends in American politics I'd expect a large number of them to be open to going back home for only $100K or so. I would. Living 10-11 time zones from CA is a big deal though.
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