Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever • Hacker News Board

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#661

Post by kbenson » Wed, May 13, 2020, 1:01 AM UTC

_nckn wrote: post #620

I think this is the hugest news yet. It suddenly opens the pool of candidates to all across the country. I expect other tech giants will follow suit. Those who previously can't afford or don't want to live in big cities like NYC/Seattle/SF because they are older, have families, or various other reasons now are included in the candidate pool. This can go two ways: either the local software business will have to compet…

> This can go two ways: either the local software business will have to compete with FAANG salaries, or there will be jumps from senior developers, experienced developers, and many smarter/more capable developers from smaller software business to FAANG due to salary/perks attraction.

I think if it's widespread it would be a little of both with some extra effects to consider. Not only will FAANG organizations get a wider pool of applicants which will drive down salaries for FAANG orgs, AND other businesses will how have to deal with the fact that their technology workers are part of a much larger market than they were previously, which will drive up salaries for those workers remotes, but there could be some very interesting delayed effects. How many FAANG workers now would opt to move farther away and keep their position, which will depress (that is, realign with reality to some small degree) the real estate market in areas like Seattle and San Francisco? What does that do to salaries later (likely a much smaller effect, but maybe non-negligible)?

Telecommuting has been hailed as one aspect of saving the suburban and rural life for a long time. Maybe we'll actually see some of it now.

What happens if there's a net reduction in people living in San Francisco and surrounds over 10 years, say 10%? I mean, it sounds unlikely, but so didthe idea of so many people staying inside for months at a time, and everyone switching to telecommuting so fast. All these things are related, and with major changes in one, relatively rapid change in things that related to it can be expected. At this point I'm actually thinking it's possible we could shift to UBI of some sort, and just a few months ago I didn't see any way that could happen without a major economic disruption, but hey, we've already got that.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#662

Post by Splendor » Wed, May 13, 2020, 1:03 AM UTC

null0pointer wrote: post #654

smsm42 wrote: post #647

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there are no legal restrictions on what country a remote employee must be in Working remotely from another country is easy. Paying somebody in another country is not easy at all. Even with specialized providers it is a substantial hassle. Without it you pretty much better give up - the chances you get all the payments, taxes and paperwork right is minimal, and that country's tax/regulatory authorities would be more…

This is one of the reasons why, in my somewhat radical opinion, all taxes should be some form of sales tax. No income tax, etc. If you live in a country, you spend money in that country, and so you pay taxes in that country. No workarounds, no loopholes, no tax returns, no cognitive load, just extremely simple tax law. (I know it's not quite that simple, but I think it's interesting to think about.)

The unfortunate reality of only using sales tax is that it's entirely regressive.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#663

Post by nhumrich » Wed, May 13, 2020, 1:03 AM UTC

daenz wrote: post #247

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.

I've had a related thought: is it ethical to pay a person less based purely on where they live? I understand that there are different cost of living factors for different places, but that's on the employee's side and should be none of the employer's business. If they employer can pay $200k/yr for a remote employee, it shouldn't matter where they live, and so scaling that value seems discriminatory to me. Anyone have…

Just playing devils advocate: is it ethical to pay someone SF salary despite them living in a third world country where they are essentially richer than kings and can wreak havoc on the economy/culture if they themselves aren't ethical (paying off government, etc). Salary is not a number, its a "standard of living". But paying two engineers in two different zip codes the same number, you are technically paying the person in the cheaper location more. They have a much higher "standard of living".

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#664

Post by acituan » Wed, May 13, 2020, 1:05 AM UTC

_nckn wrote: post #620

I think this is the hugest news yet. It suddenly opens the pool of candidates to all across the country. I expect other tech giants will follow suit. Those who previously can't afford or don't want to live in big cities like NYC/Seattle/SF because they are older, have families, or various other reasons now are included in the candidate pool. This can go two ways: either the local software business will have to compet…

I think you are overestimating the size of the eligible labor supply increase. Just for Google, for 2017-2019 the number of H1B workers sponsored was 22k. For the same period the increase in number of full time employees was 40k (couldn’t find the figure for US only but fair to assume majority is US-based). So more than half of the new employers are supplied internationally. Does the geo-unlocked US supply pose a substantial competition to that? I don’t see how. FAANG salary is a pretty damn strong incentive to overcome that geo-friction to begin with.

If anything, if the twitter trend follows, FAANG salaries will lose heat. For the majority of the employees, a good chunk of the paycheck goes to housing costs. Wider WFH adoption will ease the overly localized housing demand, even with several days of WFO, longer commutes will be much more tolerable and the housing spread will increase. That would mean acceptance of lower salaries and lowering of housing costs over time.

One competing factor; as the seniority increases, the say on WFH policies increases, also the possibility of housing ownership increases (whether as primary residence or also with rental properties). That creates a perverse incentive to not let people go away in aggregate. Not saying individual managers will think this way explicitly, but might have an indirect influence.

Edit:

- Previously I stated 22k as H1B + green card numbers. In reality 22k was H1B only and 6k was green card. Source: https://www.myvisajobs.com/Visa-Sponsor/Google/225093.htm

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#665

Post by hintymad » Wed, May 13, 2020, 1:06 AM UTC

kbenson wrote: post #661

_nckn wrote: post #620

I think this is the hugest news yet. It suddenly opens the pool of candidates to all across the country. I expect other tech giants will follow suit. Those who previously can't afford or don't want to live in big cities like NYC/Seattle/SF because they are older, have families, or various other reasons now are included in the candidate pool. This can go two ways: either the local software business will have to compet…

> This can go two ways: either the local software business will have to compete with FAANG salaries, or there will be jumps from senior developers, experienced developers, and many smarter/more capable developers from smaller software business to FAANG due to salary/perks attraction. I think if it's widespread it would be a little of both with some extra effects to consider. Not only will FAANG organizations get a wi…

Personally I would not move away from west coast. Mediterranean weather is gift from god. Plus it's so close to many good ski resorts. Being able to enjoy outdoors throughout the year and being able to go out to ski every week is priceless.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#666

Post by MrSandman » Wed, May 13, 2020, 1:12 AM UTC

overgard wrote: post #655

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That assumes they restrict remote work to America for work that was done previously in the states. If this picks up, and there are no legal restrictions on what country a remote employee must be in, then the low end might just go much lower than what it currently is in small cities.

Language and time zone barriers still may be a problem though.

Time zones are a huge problem! I can't connect. It's so taxing to find a time that works!

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#667

Post by _jal » Wed, May 13, 2020, 1:14 AM UTC

wyattpeak wrote: post #652

youdonthavekids wrote: post #637

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what about hanging around the water cooler so I can colab on some random ideas I overheard!!! my whole go to market and product strategy depends on this!!!! - Some anti-WFH person, probably

Losing those serendipitous meetings is frequently mentioned by people bullish about working from home as one of the things they find difficult. There are downsides to working from home, it's silly to dismiss them as mindlessness from the other camp.

I'm having trouble finding it now, but there's a paper that studied white collar promotions as a factor of how physically close the promoted subordinate sat to their manager. It was pretty correlated.

I wonder how that effect virtualizes.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#668

Post by ptero » Wed, May 13, 2020, 1:14 AM UTC

_nckn wrote: post #620

I think this is the hugest news yet. It suddenly opens the pool of candidates to all across the country. I expect other tech giants will follow suit. Those who previously can't afford or don't want to live in big cities like NYC/Seattle/SF because they are older, have families, or various other reasons now are included in the candidate pool. This can go two ways: either the local software business will have to compet…

We will see how things play out, but WFH success is not guaranteed. Managing remote workers requires different skills which most managers today do not have.

For now, most big companies have enough cash and are primarily focusing on making sure workers are not going crazy rather than on turning out new software. Give it another 3-4 months though and those companies will have to pivot back to real development which may be harder than they expect if WFH is still practiced en masse. My 2c.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#669

Post by victor9000 » Wed, May 13, 2020, 1:19 AM UTC

davewritescode wrote: post #253

rosywoozlechan wrote: post #61

It's strange how we went from open offices to always work from home 100% remote teams. I like going to the office. As an engineer, I very much dislike open offices, they're noisy, hard to work in, the extra collaboration is mostly just unnecessary interruption that could have been brought up in Sack, and as we now know also a really great way transmit contagions around a team. I'd be happy if we just go back to offic…

I can't count the number of times, my team has run into a complex issue, be it a production issue or a coming up with a complicated algorithm design that would've been a lot more difficult to do remotely. My current team has 2 members that are remote only and one person who comes in once a week, or every other week depending on circumstances. I think there's a lot of day to day work that is more productive at home bu…

What makes you say that remote problem solving is more difficult? I've worked in places that were 100% distributed, and we were able to handle issues over conference calls without much issue.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#670

Post by kbenson » Wed, May 13, 2020, 1:23 AM UTC

hintymad wrote: post #665

kbenson wrote: post #661

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This can go two ways: either the local software business will have to compete with FAANG salaries, or there will be jumps from senior developers, experienced developers, and many smarter/more capable developers from smaller software business to FAANG due to salary/perks attraction. I think if it's widespread it would be a little of both with some extra effects to consider. Not only will FAANG organizations get a wi…

Personally I would not move away from west coast. Mediterranean weather is gift from god. Plus it's so close to many good ski resorts. Being able to enjoy outdoors throughout the year and being able to go out to ski every week is priceless.

There's a lot of area on the west coast a couple hours from the major metro areas that's much more affordable. I was born, raised, and have worked all my life in Sonoma county an hour north of SF, and even that is expensive. If I could move another hour away for significantly reduced cost of living while still having the security I enjoy now (where I know likely at worst I have to deal with a commute to SF for some other job if something happens to my current local job), that would be real tempting. I already live an hour away from SF, what's two hours, if all I'm doing is going there for special occasions? And that's still a very minor change compared to what this might allow.