Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever • Hacker News Board

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

#421

Post by kubanczyk » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 12:21 PM UTC

mnm1 wrote: post #367

smoe wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So here is couple of things, not a complete list, I would expect working for an US company: - 5 weeks paid vacation per year(6-7 if we skip regional holidays) - 13th month salary (that is independent from other bonuses) - Paid overtime the minute it goes above the agreed upon working hours. 1.5x pay for night or weekend work. - Maximum hours per week the must not be exceeded. - Protection from the employer wanting to…

Wouldn't any company hiring workers in Europe need to provide the same benefits as any European company, roughly the ones listed above? Or can an American company just hire remotely and offer American benefits directly to employees (not talking about independent contractors of course)? It would seem like the former no? Or is there a possibility of the latter? Say I'm remote and would like to work in Europe. I think t…

I suspect that since the act of working happens physically in an European country, both the employee and the employer need to obey the labor law of that country.

Practically, the American companies usually employ Europeans through their European subsidiaries/branches (which to local government look exactly like local companies).

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

#422

Post by noir_lord » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 12:24 PM UTC

sild wrote: post #420

quickthrower2 wrote: post #404

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windowless is the worse! Good on ya. We are human dammit.

I once worked in an office with fake windows---just some blinds hung over a small recess in the wall. When our team first arrived in the office, a colleague walked over to them and said something along the lines of `let's get some sunlight in here' before opening them to reveal the deception.

Previous employer I was given the choice of been in the main open office or taking over an old out of the way (huge) meeting room that had no windows to myself.

Boss simply couldn't understand that someone would choose to sit in a quiet, miles away from anyone else on site, air conditioned office even without windows.

Honestly, never bothered me, lots of plants and replacing the strip lights with 5000K bright LED's for the overheads and some LED lamps dotted around it was only the same as working at night at home.

Hands down the best physical work environment I've had outside of work from home.

I joked at the time I'd program in a cave if it had good internet and was quiet.

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

#423

Post by tchaffee » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 12:25 PM UTC

alicemaz wrote: post #364

Tomis02 wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I was able to walk up to someone's desk and spend ten minutes to save multiple weeks of protocol and runaround. partly because it's easier to apply pressure, but also partly because communicating face-to-face is so much higher bandwidth Let's ignore how you interrupting someone cost them potentially hours of productivity. I agree face-to-face is higher bandwidth for easy/simple topics. "Bob, what's the mainframe pa…

I don't mean asking technical questions, which I agree is often easier to do over text, not least because you can cite line numbers and include code snippets etc. I mean getting favors, demanding concessions, strategizing, comparing notes, etc. especially if you're running a project (as I was) and need buy-in and deliverables from people in different reporting lines (I was eng with an asterisk, depending heavily on p…

It sounds like what you are saying is that it is easier to be either a bullying management type or a charismatic persusasive type. Both of which I have seen lead to some of the stupidest corporate decisions in my career. So while both of those types might have a much easier time in an office setting, I'm not convinced that is a competitive advantage for the company as a whole.

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

#424

Post by ghaff » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 12:27 PM UTC

mnm1 wrote: post #367

smoe wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So here is couple of things, not a complete list, I would expect working for an US company: - 5 weeks paid vacation per year(6-7 if we skip regional holidays) - 13th month salary (that is independent from other bonuses) - Paid overtime the minute it goes above the agreed upon working hours. 1.5x pay for night or weekend work. - Maximum hours per week the must not be exceeded. - Protection from the employer wanting to…

Wouldn't any company hiring workers in Europe need to provide the same benefits as any European company, roughly the ones listed above? Or can an American company just hire remotely and offer American benefits directly to employees (not talking about independent contractors of course)? It would seem like the former no? Or is there a possibility of the latter? Say I'm remote and would like to work in Europe. I think t…

At a minimum a company hiring in Europe (or anywhere else) needs to offer at least the legal minimum of benefits. And they may offer additional benefits to be locally competitive. Of course, salaries may be lower than in many US locations as well. And, yes, companies usually have to establish some sort of legal presence in a country. This is an obstacle for smaller firms, less so for larger ones.

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

#425

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 12:28 PM UTC

scarface74 wrote: post #299

emddudley wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am in a similar boat and all these rich developers in the SV web bubble fill me with self doubt.

I’m not in Silicon Valley - I’m on the opposite coast. I’m not talking about the difference between small town and SV. I’m more referring to moving from SmallTown, Nebraska to Omaha Nebraska where experienced developers wouldn’t usually accept $100K. I moved from SmallTown southern United States four hours away to Metro City southern US for increased opportunities almost 25 years ago.

[deleted]

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

#426

Post by noir_lord » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 12:30 PM UTC

aliswe wrote: post #403

noir_lord wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My company forced me back into a windowless massive open office back in June, I handed in my notice yesterday to take a better paid 100% remote position with a company that has been 100% remote for years before this crisis. That it also comes with a substantial pay rise, zero travel and the opportunity to work on stuff I actually find interesting is just a gigantic cherry on the cake. It was by far the largest factor…

Had to look this up, "haemorrhage" meaning blood loss.

It's a good word isn't it.

In this context it means slowly bleed out developers from the teams until all the vital parts have left and you have a husk left.

It's also commonly used when referring to money when an unexpected event has led to losing a lot of money unexpectedly.

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

#427

Post by benhurmarcel » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 12:38 PM UTC

0xy wrote: post #353

emddudley wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of experienced developers in the U.S. you can hire for 100k too, outside the large metropolitan areas.

The US is the recipient of all of the world's top talent. Why would any extremely experienced developer willingly choose to earn 1/6th of the money in the Europe or less unless forced to? Of course, top talent does exist in Europe but there's way less than the US.

> or less unless forced to?

Most are basically forced to. We're not US citizens, we don't have a right to work in the US.

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

#428

Post by ghaff » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 12:52 PM UTC

analog31 wrote: post #324

bargle0 wrote: post #258

I feel like permanent WFH is outsourcing real estate costs to the worker. This isn’t a big deal for some, since one may live alone or already have a home office, but it gets burdensome if there is more than one home worker in a household.

I suspect this is one of those cases where there are temporary winners and losers. In places where housing was less expensive, such as much of the Midwest, a lot of people over-bought, so we have space that we didn't really need anyway, and that was idle during the entire work / school day. I work in hardware development, and moved an entire lab to my house. I could think about what it's costing me to maintain this s…

I was almost entirely WFH before but, yes, if I were still commuting, this would be a big savings of both time and cost. And I don't even have a bad commute--about 30 mins each way. On the other side, I have a house with a dedicated office that would be well equipped whether I used it for a work office or not. I did have to replace my good home office chair after this started, but I would have wanted to do that anyway.

On the other hand, if you're in a studio city apartment, don't want to leave the city, and can normally walk to work, renting a co-working space or a larger apartment obviously isn't a great financial deal relative to going into an office. That said, I doubt many companies will eliminate their offices for people who want to go in. But it may be a while. And I know people moving out of the city--at least some permanently.

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

#429

Post by rightbyte » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 12:55 PM UTC

refurb wrote: post #239

daenz wrote: post #100

Anyone else suspect we are going to see a massive deflation of cities?

I wouldn't extrapolate what tech companies are doing across the entire economy. A slowing or stopping of growth in cities? Sure. Massive deflation? Tech workers make up a single digit percent of the population.

Well any office worker can work from home not just tech companies' office workers.

Re: Atlassian tells employees they can work from home forever

#430

Post by ghaff » Sat, Aug 08, 2020, 12:58 PM UTC

onion2k wrote: post #358

NoOneNew wrote: post #136

I have a feeling this is going to end up similar to the "open office" fad. Lots of companies are going to go 100% on "forever work from home". Then in a year it's going to be not so much. That being said, I do believe "work from home" will become more of an option and far less frowned upon by employers. Then again, this is a white-collar problem. Blue collar and a few other industries still have to go to work. But wh…

Why would companies keep their offices if no one comes in to work there? Why wouldn't they sell all the furniture? Get rid of the infrastructure? Etc, etc. This isn't a decision that could be rolled back easily or without significant capex. Companies that are doing this must be thinking it's a long term thing.

>Companies that are doing this must be thinking it's a long term thing.

Or they were thinking along these lines anyway and this was the push to get them over the line. Or they're putting real estate expansion plans on indefinite hold in the case of "you don't need to come back in the office but you can."

Similarly, I suspect that the people moving out of NYC aren't those with a mindset of "I could never live anyplace else on account of the opera." In many cases, they're probably people who were toying with idea already and this accelerated the process.