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Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

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Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#601

Post by Shivetya »

mjayhn wrote: post #59
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but it would also be good if more (tech) companies offered a decent working environment. That's coming from personal experience btw, where most jobs / assignments I've had, it was usually open plan, flexible seat arrangements. I have a new job now where I have a fixed desk with a set of drawers. It's a breath of fresh air and honestly it sounds so stupid and trivial. But employers don't have their employees' b…

I won't go near an open office after COVID19 and I doubt I'm alone, I think things will change greatly.

with an outlook like this why would you go anywhere? an office you have at least a chance of professionalism which is far different than what you can encounter in the open

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#602

Post by mercutio2 »

julianeon wrote: post #252
nsnick wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that a lot of tech companies are out in the suburbs...

Yeah, I have to be pretty skeptical of the above take, for this reason: 1) I live in San Francisco. A ton of residents here commute to Mountain View and environs for work. A ton. 2) Most of those residents are young. 3) One of the few things that has been reliably proven to improve your happiness - even more than a salary bump! - is reducing your commute time. 4) With WFH (work from home) everyone who commutes from S…

You mention this in passing at the end, but I think it’s worth emphasizing: Reducing commute time driving yourself to work has been well studied to have a very large marginal improvement in happiness.

Reducing time commuting on a comfy megacorporation’s arms-length-contracted-carriage-provider bus has been studied much less, and it’s not nearly as clear it improves people’s happiness that much.

Also, taking your commute time to zero isn’t obviously an improvement in happiness; there’s a lot of psychological benefit to having a separate space for work and home life. It’s possible for some people to prepare a home office that successfully feels separate, but it’s not automatic.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#603

Post by rightbyte »

0xffff2 wrote: post #358
allenu wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My even more cynical take is that companies are finding employees are way more productive working from home. I think part of it could be that with COVID-19, a lot of us are looking for an outlet for our energies, and so are working harder than normal.

Maybe it's different for me because my organization is one of the last holdouts where everyone at least has there own assigned cubicle and many have full offices, but every single person in my team has complained about getting far less done than normal. Most of us had a tremendous amount of time and money invested in making our workspace productive, and it's very hard to replicate that at home.

I think it is safe to say that a proper office is always best. It can be at home of course, but it need to be proper. (Desk, chair, shelf, door, flower).

If my office was 10 min walk away I would not want to work at home, but it is 1h by car ...

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#604

Post by Traster »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #9

It would be good if more tech companies embraced this. I bet if they need tools for themselves we’ll see a lot of progress in remote collaboration tools. To make this work I wonder how executives will adapt. In my company the higher you go up the chain, the more they want face to face communication. I guess most top executives are people persons so not seeing things like body language or using body language takes awa…

Frankly, I dread the situation where working from home is the norm and suddenly a core part of my job is building remote working relationships that I find easy to build in person.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#605

Post by esoterica »

newfeatureok wrote: post #434
esoterica wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to pay SF rates if you want to hire SF level talent, even if you are hiring outside of SF. The average engineer is cheaper outside of SF because the average engineer is worse, not because you are getting the same quality of employee for the less money. Most of the good engineers move to SF to get access to better career opportunities. I'm not saying all engineers outside SF are mediocre, but if you want the…

I'd be curious to see if you have any evidence at all to suggest that the average engineer outside of SF is more competent than the average engineer in SF. The simpler explanation is simply that Bay Area companies have more money to spend. There is a lot of evidence to suggest this, including the fact that Bay Area headquartered companies pay more in their remote offices compared to other companies.

> the fact that Bay Area headquartered companies pay more in their remote offices compared to other companies.

That just proves my point that companies pay a premium for Bay Area employees because that's where talented employees who can demand a premium congregate, and when they want to hire similarly talented employees in other areas they also have to pay a similar premium instead of downgrading their compensation packages to the local market rate.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#606

Post by caillancm »

kelnos wrote: post #330
allenu wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My even more cynical take is that companies are finding employees are way more productive working from home. I think part of it could be that with COVID-19, a lot of us are looking for an outlet for our energies, and so are working harder than normal.

With COVID-19 it depends on your family situation though. People without kids are probably working more, but people with kids (and who don't have a live-in nanny) are really struggling to juggle their work with child care. I imagine many people in that situation are less productive.

It doesn't depend only on your family situation. I am a PhD student working for the last 6 weeks from home without kids. And and also without a good income. I never expected my makeshift desk with the cheapest IKEA chair to become my work environment for 8+ hours per day, and I seriously worry about long-term injury resulting from this.

This isn't meant to diminish the difficulties of people who need to look after their children. But I work in a laboratory where the senior people blithely complain about how hard it is to manage shared child-raring duties in a well-equipped home office, while junior employees are more or less expected to magically have a productive home office in a shared flats, often in less-than-ideal environment (e.g. with noisy room-mates or building sites next door), with RSI staring us down.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#607

Post by makapuf »

Ididntdothis wrote: post #336
nlbrown wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A potential compromise I am hoping for would be an increased willingness of companies to open satellite or smaller offices in secondary or tertiary real estate markets.

That would be great and healthy for the whole country if things were more spread out.

Maybe even for the whole world. There surely is talent some places you dont expect, that cannot move to bay area but would love (and could do) a top it job and cannot move out. In ok countries, with few salary differences from USA, even.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#608

Post by alkibiades »

roosterdawn wrote: post #133
fermienrico wrote: post #85

Then why pay $200k for a software engineer in the valley when the same talent can live outside of the bay area and can do with 1/3rd of the salary? The question I have is what portion of the $200k salary is 1) due to the raw talent of the individual 2) because they live in the bay area.

> when the same talent can live outside of the bay area and can do with 1/3rd of the salary What makes you think this is true and not just a post-hoc rationalization? Let me put it this way: offer that salary worldwide and you will still have difficulty finding top-tier talent, as many remote-first companies are finding out the hard way. Having been a hiring manager in such a position before, I will tell you that you…

then how come the same engineer at google transferring to a europe or india office gets 1/5th the pay? they are just as skilled. it’s the same person

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#609

Post by bproven »

ravenstine wrote: post #127
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe, but it would also be good if more (tech) companies offered a decent working environment. That's coming from personal experience btw, where most jobs / assignments I've had, it was usually open plan, flexible seat arrangements. I have a new job now where I have a fixed desk with a set of drawers. It's a breath of fresh air and honestly it sounds so stupid and trivial. But employers don't have their employees' b…

I'm an ardent supporter of remote work, and I wouldn't go back to non-remote work without a hefty pay raise, but I think I probably would have considered office jobs during my last search if the offices I'd worked in previously had actually been pleasant. Open office plans, low cubicle walls, cubicle sharing, frequent noise and disrespect of focus, flimsy banged up office chairs and equipment, no budget for standing…

>Notice I mentioned nothing about free snacks, foosball tables, beer on tap, etc. I'd trade all of that for some semblance of serenity in the office.

Amen

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#610

Post by alkibiades »

esoterica wrote: post #369
ryandvm wrote: post #340

So... does this mean Twitter is going to transition to a globally dispersed workforce? Or are they still going to hire mostly Bay Area folks? The latter would seem insane if they are going to allow teams to be 100% remote. Why pay SF rates if you're getting a WFH employee?

You have to pay SF rates if you want to hire SF level talent, even if you are hiring outside of SF. The average engineer is cheaper outside of SF because the average engineer is worse, not because you are getting the same quality of employee for the less money. Most of the good engineers move to SF to get access to better career opportunities. I'm not saying all engineers outside SF are mediocre, but if you want the…

then how come the same engineer at google transferring to a europe or india office gets 1/5th the pay? they are just as skilled. it’s the same person
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