Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why is remote work seen as a gift?

cdoyle.me

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 564 posts

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#451

Post by scotty79 »

ghaff wrote: post #440
scotty79 wrote: post #433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great so Califonia has business in knowing if some worker lives in California. So they should be the one to ask. Employer doesn't have to know. Do you report and pay federal taxes and state taxes separately? Or do you just deal with IRS and they forward the docs and the money to the state you live in?

>Do you report and pay federal taxes and state taxes separately? Yes. They are separate sets of forms that you pay (or get refunded) independently. They're basically unrelated exxcept to the degree that deductions/refunds may come into play. The employer is making various deductions and payments, e.g. into unemployment, based on the state you live in. So your employer really does need to know your state of residence.

Wow. That's horrible. You should get this sorted out first at country level.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#452

Post by thiagoharry »

mejutoco wrote: post #434
claudiawerner wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If the value is what offer and demand agree on, exploitation disappears, in Marx's theoretical model. This is not true; Marx's model of exploitation (known to modern economists as the Profit-Exploitation Correspondence Model (PECP)) does not concern itself with what demand and offer agree on within a labor negotiation. Marx says that workers do not sell their labor, they sell their labor-time (e.g. X units of time/g…

Thanks, that is a clear explanation. > The discrepancy between the value of the time and the value produced I am thinking how can one value this time. If it is valued by the market (how much someone is willing to pay for it) we would end up with the same problem, no? It must be intrinsically valued, I am assuming.

No, what people will pay for the product in a market it's the price. Marx talks about the "value", which is different than price. The price is equal the value only in very limited and simplified models. Offer and demand will change the price, but not the value, for example.

What is the "value"? Well, the prices cannot be explained only in terms of offer and demand (a society with an offer of 100 pens and demand for 100 pens and offer of 100 planes and demand for 100 planes still would not sell pens and planes for the same price) nor entirely because of the price of raw materials (because this only postpones the explanation: from where came the price of the raw materials?). It also cannot be explained only based on subjectivity, because there exists a number, which is a very objective measure, representing the price if you balance offer, demand, assume competition and discard several perturbations. The "value" tries to explain this basis value that later will became the price and show objectively and numerically how the wealth is produced and distributed.

This "value" is measured by Marx as the quantity of labor socially necessary to produce the product. Given a car, the value represented by a car can be measured by the mean time necessary for the workers to produce that car in the industry plus the value transferred by the machines and tools used by those workers (whose value came from the workers that produced these machines and tools). Both manual and intellectual work need to be taken into account and you can also assume that some complex tasks or more intense work can produce more value than simple tasks in the same time.

Given this, you can compare the value produced by a worker with the value of the things that the worker can buy with its salary. This is how Marx measures these things and shows the exploitation in the society.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#453

Post by squokko »

jchw wrote: post #65
squokko wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The burden of proof is much higher on remote work. The entire history of civilization from hunter-gatherers to 2019 was built largely with in-person work. If companies are going to make a permanent change to the way work is done, they will need affirmative proof that the new way works better than the old way, otherwise the much more tried-and-true old way is a much safer bet.

Why does it need to be better? Here's my PoV: I want it, and frankly rely on it at this point, and employers want to hire me. If someone was really worth less working remotely, it could be factored into salary. Lo and behold though, I accomplish the same, or possibly more now than, as I ever did, and my salary has not plummeted. Quite the opposite. Again, I want to reiterate: if it really made workers worth less, it…

Sure, I don't have any opposition to companies offering it, or employees demanding it -- supply and demand will take care of that. I'm talking about whether I believe we should be making an effort as a society to push the market in one direction or the other.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#454

Post by scotty79 »

sokoloff wrote: post #444
scotty79 wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is, should it be like that? Shouldn't government handle the legal differences between states so that employers don't have to deal with that?

If you're going to have a republic of states, those states are going to be able to have different laws. The minimum wage in New Hampshire is $7.25/hr, while it's $15/hr in neighboring Massachusetts. If I'm an employer in New Hampshire hiring remote workers for $12/hr, that's legal if they work in NH, but not legal if they work in MA. NH has sovereignty to set their minimum wage (subject to the limit of the federal mi…

None. But the state or even preferably the country should take responsibility for establishing where employee lives and taxing the salary accordingly.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#455

Post by kerpotgh »

thinknubpad wrote: post #359
fleddr wrote: post #339

The "return to the office" move is largely management/extrovert bias. Managers collaborate all day long, it's what they do, whilst "workers" tend to be overwhelmed by the many meetings. Further, extroverts get energy out of being around people. Another factor is that some (many) managers frankly have no idea what their employees do. Physical presence management is the coping strategy. That being said, I do agree that…

>It's an open invitation to move your position to the lowest cost country that outputs quality that is acceptable. We tried that before, outsourcing was a huge trend maybe 20-30 years ago? The problem is the second part of your sentence. There's a reason that particular business practice settled into a niche of call centers. It turned out that good workers want to be paid what they are worth, regardless of location.…

Outsourcing is bigger than it’s ever been in all sectors of atleast technology.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#456

Post by komali2 »

MrPatan wrote: post #193
regularfry wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People go hungry and homeless. This is visible today. This is literally why one function of the state is to act as a non-market-participant so it can provide a safety net. There are some things markets can't and shouldn't try to do.

Yes! I can't wait for food production and distribution to be put in the hands of government officials. Access to food is going to be equalized so hard! The market has been taking care of it for too long, we're getting too fat, we need a few decades of food controlled by the police to get back into shape.

Being fat can be a sign of malnutrition. Americans aren't just fat because they eat too much, many are fat because they live in food deserts or have no time to cook and no access to affordable healthy food.

You're not helping your argument with this example imo.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#457

Post by DrThunder »

ryandrake wrote: post #445
DrThunder wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I was pretty on the side of the remote work until the pandemic. I don't think it's mentally healthy for most people. Long commutes aren't mentally healthy either though, so I understand people that want to leave that behind. I've got a less than 10 minute commute and I can easily bike that if I need to. Society is already too segregated with technology and I really do not think it's a good idea to move all of ou…

> Yes, I was pretty on the side of the remote work until the pandemic. I don't think it's mentally healthy for most people. I think we would need to somehow separate the mental unhealthiness of remote work from the mental unhealthiness of dealing with a worldwide deadly airborne pandemic. It could be that remote work in and of itself is great, but remote work with the additional mental/emotional toll of a pandemic is…

The pandemic was so bad for mental health due to he fact people were locked down and unable to socialize. If it wasn't for that, the majority of people wouldn't have been affected so badly.

It was the social impact and not the disease itself that caused so many problems.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#458

Post by mcv »

prewett wrote: post #431
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Market" is just another way of saying "Power differential." Most corporate cultures are inherently authoritarian, with money being used as a proxy for power. Empirically there is plenty of evidence that given a choice, many businesses would rather maintain the power differential and complain about "lack of applicants" than increase pay and suffer a corresponding diminution of authority. Stock is an even more specifi…

> "Market" is just another way of saying "Power differential." Oh come on. This is a cynical or Marxist take, but it's pretty obviously untrue. A flea market, farmers market, FB marketplace doesn't have a substantial power imbalance. A market may have a power imbalance, but it is not required. People can exchange goods/services at equal power, and routinely do so. And if I understand economics correctly, that's the p…

This is an important point: according to Adam Smith, a free market is a market without power imbalances, a market on which everybody can trade as equals, with transparency. He was fully aware that companies would try to dominate the market, make it less free, form cartels, and generally conspire against the interests of consumers, workers and other smaller players on the market. He even suggested that workers may have to get organised in order to counter the power imbalance posed by corporations.

It's only later laissez-faire and neoliberal capitalists that turned "free market" synonymous with a lack of regulation and a playground for the biggest and most powerful companies.

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#459

Post by sokoloff »

scotty79 wrote: post #454
sokoloff wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to have a republic of states, those states are going to be able to have different laws. The minimum wage in New Hampshire is $7.25/hr, while it's $15/hr in neighboring Massachusetts. If I'm an employer in New Hampshire hiring remote workers for $12/hr, that's legal if they work in NH, but not legal if they work in MA. NH has sovereignty to set their minimum wage (subject to the limit of the federal mi…

None. But the state or even preferably the country should take responsibility for establishing where employee lives and taxing the salary accordingly.

So if I'm in NH and scotty80 and scotty81 agree to work for me for $12/hr and I am structurally precluded from finding out where they live or work, what happens if it turns out that scotty80 is in NH (above minimum wage) and scotty81 is in MA (below minimum wage)? Is it legal?

Re: Why is remote work seen as a gift?

#460

Post by brightball »

MrGilbert wrote: post #25

I find it kind of amusing (and annoying) that employers like to play the salaray game as it fits their needs. I got interviewed a few times, and some stated that they cannot pay the salary I was asking, because i don't live in a high-density, high-cost-for-living area, while others argued that they have to respect their local salaries, which are below what I would expect in my area. I'm yet to meet the employer that…

Fwiw, about 6 years ago I was working for a company that addressed this is a really solid way.

They had a main office in South Carolina in an area with very low cost of living and salaries that matched. They had an office in Phoenix and an office in Seattle.

Ended up standardizing pay based on Phoenix since it was in the middle. This was actually a really big deal because the majority of the company was in South Carolina while only about 40 people were split between Seattle and Phoenix.

Post reply on HN