Wall Street grudgingly allows remote work as bankers dig in • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 3:12 AM UTC

sangnoir wrote: post #148

drunkpotato wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"A fraction?" How much less do you think they can pay? This sounds suspiciously like the myth of off-shoring, get the same work for a fraction of the cost, but from what I've heard the competent ones quickly command more pay and are certainly not "a fraction" of a SF salary.

> "A fraction?" How much less do you think they can pay? Half of Bay Area FAANG salaries is still more than a huge swathe of localities in the country - let alone the continent, where you'd likely plumb a quarter or an eighth and still be above local averages.

[deleted]

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

#202

Post by jjk166 » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 3:19 AM UTC

seedless-sensat wrote: post #198

isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is short sighted if you value your time at all. Spending an hour more a day commuting is directly decreasing the value of your life.

I cycle into my office every day, 1h round-trip. It certainly increases my quality of life and I'm glad I had the choice (not requirement) to return

If you didn't have to commute, you'd have an extra hour per day to cycle wherever you wanted instead of having to specifically bike that path. Hell you could still bike that path if that's what you like. In the absolute best case scenario, commuting is breakeven, but realistically you are objectively worse off for it.

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

#203

Post by ng12 » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 3:20 AM UTC

lvl100 wrote: post #166

snicker7 wrote: post #106

I work at a hedge fund. Despite a recent return-to-work mandate, literally no one in my team is in the office. Our job is super stressful and emotionally taxing. Not having wearing to pants makes it somewhat bearable.

Your job is “super stressful and emotionally taxing?” Why do Wall Streeters always grossly overestimate their jobs? Managing money is really not that hard especially in the past 10 years. Even monkeys can do it.

Why would anyone pay $500k+ a year for a job a monkey can do? Starting a private zoo is certainly cheaper.

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

#204

Post by satellite2 » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 3:27 AM UTC

aerosmile wrote: post #200

thwarted wrote: post #167

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…

It appears that most people are considering the following two scenarios: 1. most employers will pay the same regardless of where I live, and my job security will be the same as before. 2. most employers will pay a bit less if I work remotely, but that's worth it to me since I can pay less for rent and have a higher quality of life. And yes, my job security will be the same as before. It shocks me that people are not…

The point 3 is similar to the relocation scare of a few years ago to India or similar.

It hasn't happened.

Why? Probably because knowledge work is not at all zero sum. It grows with knowledge workers. So India's knowledge workers got jobs on top of existing ones.

Assuming the same happens now for rural America then it might be a net positive and might even revive some of the dying regions.

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

#205

Post by jjk166 » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 3:31 AM UTC

actually_a_dog wrote: post #139

isbvhodnvemrwvn wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you don't have a commute and can do stuff at home during work.

So? That doesn't net me money during salary negotiation.

Let's say you get paid $100/hr for 8 hours per day of work, or $800/day. Now let's say you have to commute an hour round trip to and from work. Since you need to commute to get paid, it takes you 9 hours to earn that $800. Thus your real hourly wage is $88.89/hr. The person who doesn't need to commute works no harder, but it only takes them 8 hours to earn the same wage. They effectively have an 11% higher wage than the commuter, all else being equal. They could work for $95/hr, making them the more attractive option for the employer, while still being better off than the commuter.

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

#206

Post by mint2 » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 3:35 AM UTC

actually_a_dog wrote: post #81

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…

> 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…

Office perks like almost free meals and stuff are fair game but wage differences are not going to fly assuming they want the same quality of labor remote.

There might be faster career progression for in office people though, and that will be a harder and longer thing to quantify.

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

#207

Post by mint2 » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 3:37 AM UTC

jjk166 wrote: post #202

seedless-sensat wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cycle into my office every day, 1h round-trip. It certainly increases my quality of life and I'm glad I had the choice (not requirement) to return

If you didn't have to commute, you'd have an extra hour per day to cycle wherever you wanted instead of having to specifically bike that path. Hell you could still bike that path if that's what you like. In the absolute best case scenario, commuting is breakeven, but realistically you are objectively worse off for it.

Except that’s not how it often works. sometimes one needs a little motivation to keep up a routine.

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

#208

Post by totalZero » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 4:20 AM UTC

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…

I'm willing to bet that trading desks can make more money in person than working from home, for a given market regime. An astonishing amount of real-time information flies around on a bank's trading floor. If I were a risk manager at one of those banks, I'd want to be as close to that information as possible.

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

#209

Post by thwarted » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 4:58 AM UTC

sokoloff wrote: post #169

thwarted wrote: post #167

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…

Expecting a company to pay you as a result of where you choose to live used to happen: if you moved to San Francisco from the midwest in order to work at a company in San Francisco, you would expect a cost-of-living-in-SF to be factored into what was being offered and what you'll accept as compensation; and if you didn't then you were underwater.

I don't have a clear cut way to interpret this interaction either in the past or going forward (everyone's motivations are different). But now physical location factors into the calculation on both sides differently than it did in the past. In the past "travel time to sit at a desk in a specific location" was always completely assumed to be a burden incurred solely by the employee (it had been the government who made allowances for pre-tax commuter costs in some cases). That is no longer the case.

When it comes down to it, getting paid for 8 hours of company time but 2 of them being travel time and 6 being productive is getting paid 33% more. The negotiation may be less directly about money: rather than "I want more money for that 40 hours" it could be "I'll work 32 hours for that money"

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

#210

Post by kristianc » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 5:23 AM UTC

EMM_386 wrote: post #182

actually_a_dog wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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? The problem is there are likely very competent engineers living in low cost of living areas who would gladly bid lower than your high "city salary" to maintain their preferred way of life. Given two comparable candidates, the company will go wi…

> The problem is there are likely very competent engineers living in low cost of living areas who would gladly bid lower than your high "city salary" to maintain their preferred way of life.

And there always have been. There’s always been a pool of labor either in the Midwest or Ukraine that companies could call on. Maybe trying to hire top talent while playing arbitrage on salaries either isn’t that easy, or isn’t worth the (relatively) small amount saved?