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Wall Street grudgingly allows remote work as bankers dig in

nytimes.com

61–70 of 250 posts

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

#61

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.

No one forces employees to accept the terms offered

edit: it's not cheating because the game is still of negotiation until it's in agreement, if you break an agreement, I see that as a cheat. No one made you accept the job or the pay.

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

#62
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.…

Practically, what does this look like? There's $3M beautiful coastal homes in my area, and a few miles inland, you can get what might be called a 'starter home' for $900k. Is my wage going to be based on the extremely expensive coastal area, or the marked up, but still comparatively affordable inland area? It's all the same 'location' if we're talking at the county level.

I would think they use a metro-area scheme similar to what the government uses for their employees https://www.federalpay.org/gs/locality

Because, I mean, waterfront property has a premium everywhere, and even in the same exact "starter home" location I'm sure you could teardown and fit a $3M home. Those choices aren't determined by the metro area.

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

#63
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can just have your official address be wherever and so long as the tax benefits make sense financially you'll make more money with a fake address in a state with no income tax while mostly living somewhere else. Do you not expect governments to use their powers to issue subpoenas to banks or get location history from mobile networks or license plate readers to figure out this fraud if their tax revenues suffer?…

> Do you not expect governments to use their powers to issue subpoenas to banks or get location history from mobile networks or license plate readers to figure out this fraud if their tax revenues suffer? Well let's not be so hasty to call this fraud. I don't know the legal details but lots of individuals and corporations do things for financial/tax reasons that undermine the spirit of law and we don't call it fraud.…

>Well let's not be so hasty to call this fraud.

I am going to refer to it as fraud, because that is the usual way the word is used in the context of the legal consequences one opens themselves up to making intentionally false claims about your residence in order to evade taxes. The law does not require anyone to pay taxes on unrealized gains of stocks, so no, it is not fraud if Buffett does not pay tax on unrealized gains of stocks.

>A couple things: > why can't we just regulate #of people in a house.

I never wrote this, so I am not sure who you are responding to.

>It seems like it's hard enough to go after corporations

It is not hard if they are evading taxes by committing clear fraud with no plausible deniability, such as claiming they were physically in one place when in reality they were in another place. The news articles you see are for cases where there is a lot of gray area in the law.

>The problem for the governments is ability to enforce

It is called freezing bank accounts. It is where much of the power of the US comes from, and many times why opposing entities who do not trust each other choose to do business in the US.

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

#64
post #47
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…

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.

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

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

No one forces employees to accept the terms offered edit: it's not cheating because the game is still of negotiation until it's in agreement, if you break an agreement, I see that as a cheat. No one made you accept the job or the pay.

'Nobody forced them into slavery, why didn't they just go somewhere else?'

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

#66
post #50
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The problem with overseas contractors is - you get what you pay for. There are still excellent contractors out there who charge more, but still less than what employees get paid here. The second problem is discoverability. It is difficult to find those excellent contractors from all the not-so-good ones out there.

[deleted]

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

#68
post #47
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…

If the cost of living adjustment were “perfect” then it wouldn’t encourage employees to live in any particular place, right? Presumably the whole point is to give each employee the same “effective compensation” for their particular place of residence. Of course, it’s not so easy to agree on what the ideal method of cost of living adjustment would be.

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

#70
post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you not expect governments to use their powers to issue subpoenas to banks or get location history from mobile networks or license plate readers to figure out this fraud if their tax revenues suffer? Well let's not be so hasty to call this fraud. I don't know the legal details but lots of individuals and corporations do things for financial/tax reasons that undermine the spirit of law and we don't call it fraud.…

>Well let's not be so hasty to call this fraud. I am going to refer to it as fraud, because that is the usual way the word is used in the context of the legal consequences one opens themselves up to making intentionally false claims about your residence in order to evade taxes. The law does not require anyone to pay taxes on unrealized gains of stocks, so no, it is not fraud if Buffett does not pay tax on unrealized…

> I am going to refer to it as fraud, because that is the usual way the word is used in the context of the legal consequences one opens themselves up to making intentionally false claims about your residence in order to evade taxes.

> The law does not require anyone to pay taxes on unrealized gains of stocks, so no, it is not fraud if Buffett does not pay tax on unrealized gains of stocks.

You're not violating the technical aspect of the law anymore than Buffet would be. Can you tell me the proper amount of time someone must live somewhere in order for them to truly live there? Pass a law? Those won't work. Already people are doing this - what do you think people who are living in vans do? They claim residence somewhere, maybe their parent's house and then they just live in the van or maybe they have some other place they stay. People do this with Florida to evade New York City taxes, etc.

> I never wrote this, so I am not sure who you are responding to.

Just pre-empting a response. Long story short the first answer many have is legislation but it is too burdensome to address any actual issues.

> It is not hard if they are evading taxes by committing clear fraud with no plausible deniability, such as claiming they were physically in one place when in reality they were in another place. The news articles you see are for cases where there is a lot of gray area in the law.

I think you're operating in the current model but not thinking about what can and is likely to happen in the future. The U.S. already can't go after many people who are outright breaking the law. Once this reaches a critical mass it's basically like trying to stop people from pirating songs. It's just not going to work. The lion and ant thing is really great here to help visualize.

Also, who is to say where you really live? Ok maybe you do live with 14 other people in bunkbeds in San Francisco. Is (insert company) going to fly/drive/walk someone out there and show up and check on you? It's impossible to enforce. So you can definitely draw a Bay Area salary and effectively live somewhere else. You can even do it in other countries. Plenty of digital nomads. Have you ever heard of one being prosecuted?

> It is called freezing bank accounts. It is where much of the power of the US comes from, and many times why opposing entities who do not trust each other choose to do business in the US.

The dysfunction and instability of the stability of the U.S. democracy is eroding power like this, for better or worse. You can't freeze a Bitcoin address, etc.

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