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

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

#221

Post by sumedh » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 12:02 PM UTC

halfmatthalfcat wrote: post #219

sumedh wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Well, I worked for “megabank” back in the 00s and they tried to outsource to India. It failed miserably, Your one anecdote is pretty meaningless, you just need to look at the revenue of Indian outsourcing companies, it keeps going up.

How is revenue tied at all to efficacy? Your analysis is too shallow to have any meaning.

Its not my analysis, those are the facts, their revenue keeps going up, their profits keep going up, their share price keeps going up, their clients keep going up. Now you do the math.

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

#222

Post by watwut » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 12:04 PM UTC

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.…

> As if anyone would believe this woman with 3 children was not fully aware of the tradeoffs they were making in exchange for the higher pay.

1.) The tradeoff now is different. It changed.

2.) People used to long commute say pretty much same things when they change job. I realized how much easier my life is when working from home during covid too. I can completely relate to "now realizing how much better it is when I save full hour a day and plus can organize my own day as I wish".

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

#223

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 12:21 PM UTC

mabbo wrote: post #47

bko wrote: 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.…

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…

> I think Facebook is simply creating more problems for themselves by bothering with this.

This was always the policy, they paid wages based on the market. They did, however, pay identically in all of their US offices (prior to Covid) which is perhaps why people are surprised about this (entirely normal and expected) practice.

Given that I don't live in the US, I don't like this policy, but it's been around forever basically, at all large tech companies.

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

#224

Post by disgruntledphd2 » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 12:22 PM UTC

erik_seaberg wrote: post #64

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…

Most of tech either isn’t remote or hasn’t been for very long, so strong candidates with large scale prod experience are still concentrated in markets where these skills are most valued and attainable. If you want those candidates, you have to compete with offers from local big tech.

> strong candidates with large scale prod experience are still concentrated in markets

As I keep asking when this comes up, if this is true then why are salaries for FAANG engineers so much lower in London? London, as you may know is 100% not cheap, and yet salaries there for FAANG tech people are approximately 50% of those in SF/US.

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

#225

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 12:40 PM UTC

noisy_boy wrote: post #199

lvl100 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 did you assume that the person is managing money? They could be a front office developer or support person - having been there, it is indeed stressful when the application is down and angry traders are shouting because they are losing money.

[deleted]

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

#226

Post by daniel-thompson » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 1:19 PM 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…

Government stimulus is the main reason there's been a bull market and that's why banks' profits have been through the roof. I'm pretty sure that whether or not bankers worked remotely had little to do with it.

When J Powell eventually turns off the money printer, the market is going to pull back, the banks are going to go through leaner times, and the old-school executives in charge of them are going to be in a much stronger position to argue for employees to come back to the office, regardless of the merits.

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

#227

Post by ilaksh » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 1:51 PM UTC

activitypea wrote: post #108

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?

It's just about applying the existing communication technology and having policies that support mentorship or these other things that are supposedly impossible to do without being in person.

I believe that most of these supposedly intractable problems can be solved with a Discord/Matrix/IRC whatever and just enforcing policies about communication. Have a bi-weekly required five minute voice chat and at least one hour of time per day where people need to have the chat open. If juniors are not asking questions or seniors are not replying within X hours or whatever follow-up sessions from the five minute intro discussions is appropriate, then they get warned, and if the lack of communication effort continues, fired. And you make that policy clear.

You can also look into various types of 'multiplayer' virtual presence. Several different browser based or 2d or 3d (even VR) options for this.

I feel like people just stop trying to communicate more than a weekly meeting or something a lot of times when they are remote. That in no way proves that different types of communication or mentorship or whatever require face-to-face. People just need to show up online to communicate.

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

#228

Post by aerosmile » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 3:04 PM UTC

satellite2 wrote: post #204

aerosmile wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

> It hasn't happened.

We think it hasn't happened. And yet, the likelihood of talking to a CX rep from a Fortune 500 company who is based in the US is very low. Did that somehow help the US-based CX reps?

Perhaps you're thinking that it will be different with knowledge workers. Consider the well-publicized fact that a lot of Boeing software is written in India. How many other corporations are following suit behind the scenes?

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

#229

Post by cercatrova » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 3:07 PM UTC

mint2 wrote: post #207

jjk166 wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sure but I don't need a commute to enforce a routine for me. And yours is a very specific example, you bike to work, which means you 1. Like biking, and 2. Your workplace is close enough to your house to allow you to bike. I for example like to weight lift and I live quite far from work. I keep a routine for myself which a commute would not be conducive to.

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

#230

Post by Hakashiro » Thu, Nov 25, 2021, 3:42 PM 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…

Aha. Interesting. So you're saying an Indian engineer should earn the same salary as a Californian engineer if they're both bringing in the same revenue?

Interesting.

But it won't happen.

Or... you're not suggesting Indian engineers are worse, are you? Because that would be kinda racist.

On the other hand, someone living anywhere in India on the same salary (per contract) as someone living anywhere in the US is earning a higher net paycheque because CoL in India is lower.

Oh my! What should we do to resolve this?