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Google employees who work from home could lose money

reuters.com

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Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#151

Post by eru »

purple_ferret wrote: post #141
boplicity wrote: post #99

The cost of commuting on the environment is extremely high. We should be offering incentives to companies to switch to remote work. If 20% of jobs permanently switched to remote, the impact on carbon emissions would be immediate, and extremely positive.

Would it? Remote work might incentive overall less density, which, on the whole, leads to a bigger carbon footprint per capita.

Depends on where people want to live and work.

But a big part of why lower density is bad is because it leads to lots of commuting.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#152

Post by system16 »

Lariscus wrote: post #18

Don't forget, to the CEO and their cronies you are all just peons. If they could pay you nothing at all they would absolutely do so.

What a bizarre statement. If you could just not pay your mortgage, or not make your car payments, or just walk out of a restaurant without paying and no repercussions, wouldn't you?

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#153

Post by UncleMeat »

rexreed wrote: post #71

Does this mean employee agreements are up for renegotiating? Salary / compensation for work is the key element to an employee agreement. If employers can change compensation at will without employee consent then the employee agreement is truly meaningless and simply a tool for the employer to wield against the employee. I'd imagine a few employee lawsuits on breach of contract that will test that.

Yes, in the sense that you can leave the company. You can always try to negotiate your salary. Google will just say "no" unless you've got enormous weight behind you, which is nearly impossible for most engineers without collective action.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#154

Post by schnable »

purple_ferret wrote: post #128
kristopolous wrote: post #23

It's weird how directly the incentive is to increase your carbon footprint. They'll essentially pay you more for contributing to congestion and pollution.

How's that? If you live in NYC, you get paid more. People who live in NYC have the amongst the lowest carbon footprint in the nation. If you live in a dense urban area, you generally will have a lower carbon footprint.

I wonder if that holds up for remote workers outside of dense metros who don't have to commute.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#156

Post by mumblemumble »

> One Google employee, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, typically commutes to the Seattle office from a nearby county and would likely see their pay cut by about 10% by working from home full-time, according estimates by the company's Work Location Tool launched in June.

> The employee was considering remote work but decided to keep going to the office - despite the two-hour commute.

This seems like a nice little meditation on the loss aversion heuristic. I doubt many people would accept a 25% increase in the amount of their time that's committed to work in exchange for a paltry 11% pay increase. But if you frame it as a 10% pay decrease in exchange for a 20% reduction in how much of your life is devoted to work, it suddenly becomes a lot less palatable.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#158

Post by pcthrowaway »

helsinkiandrew wrote: post #56

> One Google employee ..would likely see their pay cut by about 10% by working from home full-time > The employee was considering remote work but decided to keep going to the office - despite the two-hour commute. 10% paycut in place of 10 hours of commute seems a good deal to me.

I was thinking the same thing. If you can find a way to continue trading 10 hours of your work obligations for 10% of your salary, you end up getting 40-50% for doing nothing!

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#159

Post by diogofranco »

andrew_ wrote: post #134
diogofranco wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Location is in the contract, you sign a new offer in order to move

Unless it isn't, as is the case with every offer I've signed since 2009 when I went full time remote.

I meant for Google, where it is. Working from home or the office doesn't really affect compensation, location is the variable.

Re: Google employees who work from home could lose money

#160

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

Raphael_Amiard wrote: post #140
boplicity wrote: post #99

The cost of commuting on the environment is extremely high. We should be offering incentives to companies to switch to remote work. If 20% of jobs permanently switched to remote, the impact on carbon emissions would be immediate, and extremely positive.

I'm used to the conversation in here being extremely US-centric, but realize that this is much less true for European cities with good public transportation. I haven't ever used a car to go to work in my life. I'm also very concerned about this better world where people stay home to save the planet. The common level of social interactions in the modern world is already low enough in my opinion. EDIT: It rarely happen…

I'm a big fan of mass transit. I live in the US, but traveled regularly to Tokyo for over 20 years. Their mass transit system is awesome.

The social interaction thing is a big deal, but I don't think remote work will be the coffin nail, there. In fact, it could improve social interactions between neighbors.

There's a school of thought, that the air conditioner has been the true bane of social interaction, as everyone used to hang outside, and now, they don't.

That said, a whole lot of places are gonna have to get used to using air conditioners, and that won't be good for the environment.

I remember being in a town in Northern Germany, when a summer heat wave hit. It was awful. No one had air conditioning, and there were no fans to be found, in any stores.

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