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Wall Street grudgingly allows remote work as bankers dig in

nytimes.com

171–180 of 250 posts

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

#171
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…

I mean it's also been a ridiculous bull market completely irrespective of where people are working.

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

#172
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…

> Or put another way, your competitors can compensate me less and I'll consider it a better deal. It seems a lot of people disagree with you: > In an accompanying survey of more than 1,200 technology professionals, Hired found that 75% of employees would begin looking for a new job if their salary were to decrease, while 45% of candidates disagreed with using the cost of living of the employee's location as a baselin…

> Put another way, if I'm worth $Y to you sitting in an office, and I can accomplish the same work at home, from anywhere, just as effectively, why should I get paid any less?

There is something called Win-Win situation. Now you may call it management mumbo-jumbo. But what I see happening is if I save, say 15 hours of weekly commute and getting ready for work etc, I would be willing to take a cut that would seem reasonable based on my money/leisure need. If I keep looking at company's benefit and not mine (or maybe I have none) then of course pay cut seems insulting.

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

#173
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…

> Or put another way, your competitors can compensate me less and I'll consider it a better deal. It seems a lot of people disagree with you: > In an accompanying survey of more than 1,200 technology professionals, Hired found that 75% of employees would begin looking for a new job if their salary were to decrease, while 45% of candidates disagreed with using the cost of living of the employee's location as a baselin…

You haven't calculated the cost of living yet. If I need to be in an office, I have to live within x minutes of that office and any travel has to be on the weekends or paid time off.

This leads to the phenomenon of cities, where a million shmucks try to do the same thing at the same times and drive up their own real estate prices in the process.

Contrast this with moving to a holiday home or holiday destination, probably with a vastly lower cost of living, or going away for a "weekend" but during odd days and missing all the traffic. Sounds amazing to me.

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

#174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technology is not always the solution. If your employer asks you to affirm something, and you do that, and then cheat (because, let's say, cheating is technologically trivial), then you take a huge risk. A lot of people will not take that risk. It's enough to make example of 1 or 2 people who are caught, and the rest will fall in line in no time.

Is my opinion, the company is cheating the employee by paying them less for the same work just because they live somewhere else.

Not sure the courts will really care about your opinion when there was an employment contract in place?

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

#175
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.

Citation needed. My experience working with both proves the exact opposite. I think the Human Development Index of a person is more important in a knowledge economy than whether they're willing to work for 23 hours a day for 24 cents. And the first world countries absolutely dominate the world in this regard.

When I moved from the third to the first world, I was shocked by the high standard of personal "development" - for lack of a better term - of the average person, or even people lower down on the social ladder.

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

#176

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?

Don’t hire junior devs if you are a remote only company?

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

#177
post #33
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> while your competitor says I can live anywhere and remote in I think most companies still consider your location when determining your pay. Facebook does for instance, even going as far as tracking your IP to make sure you're being honest. If you choose to move to a lower cost city, they'll adjust your wage. Not sure about the other way around. That'll probably eventually change, but it could be a useful indicator.…

Any Facebook employee that wished to would surely find it trivial to use a VPS or something to mask their true location.

It's not just the company caring for their own purposes (although there's that as well), there are external requirements which depend on the employee location which force them to need to know. Such as which taxes and how much they are required to deduct and even which health plan choices are available.

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

#178
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

So being a 'contractor' and 'not connected' is a problem. But once they have the PM, designers, architect and devs. 'on staff' and all 'over there' - then you are the 'not connected' contractor. Moreover 'they' are getting better across the board. Japan made crap until they made the best cars in the world. China made crap but now they have the top 5G gear and all of the patents, and would wipe out a big chunk of West…

Japan made crap and then they made the best cars in the world. And then they also starting making some real good salaries. This was a great development all round.

If every third-world country follows the South Korea / Japan playbook, the world economy would absolutely explode with growth, and US workers would certainly benefit from this.

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

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the angle that's not fully communicated here is that the default expectation is 40 hours of work a week at 8 hours per day. At a company that expects you to be in the office for those 8 hours, many people actually spend more than 8 hours in service of the need to be in the office for 8 hours . That is, if it takes you 30 minutes of travel each way to satisfy a mandate to be in an office for 8 hours, you're re…

In that model, why wouldn’t the company insist that you move closer to work to minimize the commuting payment? You picked where you live and what company you applied to work at; they didn’t pick where you live. If that means that you want to only apply for remote positions, that’s certainly your choice; I don’t blame you in the least for it, but expecting a company to pay you as a result of where you chose to live se…

Many people have purchased a house that they intend to remain in, the friction to move houses is often larger than friction to change jobs. Also, there may be a spouse who just doesn't want to move house.

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

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the angle that's not fully communicated here is that the default expectation is 40 hours of work a week at 8 hours per day. At a company that expects you to be in the office for those 8 hours, many people actually spend more than 8 hours in service of the need to be in the office for 8 hours . That is, if it takes you 30 minutes of travel each way to satisfy a mandate to be in an office for 8 hours, you're re…

In that model, why wouldn’t the company insist that you move closer to work to minimize the commuting payment? You picked where you live and what company you applied to work at; they didn’t pick where you live. If that means that you want to only apply for remote positions, that’s certainly your choice; I don’t blame you in the least for it, but expecting a company to pay you as a result of where you chose to live se…

> why wouldn’t the company insist that you move closer to work to minimize the commuting payment

The closest homes to work are $1.15MM and $1.5MM. I’m not sure if the CEO is paid enough in cash to qualify for one of these homes on salary alone.

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