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

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#71

Post by Endlessly » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:17 PM UTC

At some point, unless working onsite is (really) essential — employees & employers that have onsite unnecessary office space should have to pay tax to do so, otherwise, them having an office space just paid for by those who are willing not to have an office.

Having non-essential spaces for people is complete unnecessary — and it: contributes in less health eating habits, traffic, cars, HVAC related energy costs, wasted time commuting, rising real estate costs, economic lost during pandemics due to downtime, etc.

Same principle holds true for non-essential travel.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#72

Post by pmohun » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

PopeDotNinja wrote: post #32

qppo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd gladly take a 15-20% paycut to leave the area but keep my job. Love the company, love the people I work with, hate this place.

I did that. I dumped my SF job and started traveling the world last November. I just picked a helluva year to start :)

Would love to hear more about this. Documenting the experience anywhere?

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#73

Post by sequoia » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

AgileEconomics wrote: post #37

bfrog wrote: post #4

And so begins the bay area salary bubble pop

Please no, I've worked for a long time to finally put myself in a marketable position for FAANG and other west coast companies. It'd be hella disappointing to miss out now.

Don't worry, the salaries will still be platinum plated, they just might not be diamond encrusted.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#74

Post by tinyhouse » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

poulsbohemian wrote: post #12

amateurdev wrote: post #2

I have a feeling a lot of companies will follow suit. It saves up huge costs in real-estate by not having to provide seats to people. It also might just open up more companies to hire from any time zone.

The interesting question is, why now? I mean on the surface sure - because we have a pandemic and state ordered quarantine. But the more interesting question is - why is this finally provoking companies and why do we think they will continue the trend in the future post-quarantine? I've been a remote worker since 2006. It's been obvious to me for a long time that companies could go all remote or some version of remot…

Well, it's not happening now. It's been happening gradually for a long time. All my friends in tech including FAANG have been working remotely to a certain degree. Some only once a week, others twice or even fully remote. And even those in the office work mostly in "remote" mode since they need to collaborate with people in offices all over.

For big companies it's harder to work fully remote. There are too many people and teams and dependencies. Twitter is not small but also not big.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#75

Post by bradlys » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:18 PM UTC

the_watcher wrote: post #44

robbyking wrote: post #18

I work for a pretty well-known tech company, and my hypothesis is that we'll switch to a mostly at-home work week, where most people WFH 3 or 4 days a week with one day of the week being designated as a "meeting day" where everyone is in the office. I don't think this will happen because of people are worried about virus transmission, but instead because most people like working from home and we've proven we can be j…

I disagree that this is a likely outcome. For many people, this is a worst of both worlds - still requires all the costs of living within commuting distance of your employer (particularly for SFBA and NYC) and likely shrinks the average size/perks of the office you commute to. Partial remote doesn't seem to solve any problem in a way that is any better than the status quo.

I agree. I would quit. This basically forces employees to get another room as an office. If my employers pays for it, fine. But if they don’t, it’s bs that I’ll have to continue to work from my living room because we don’t have a dedicated office space. It’s driving both me and my SO crazy because we want separate spaces to do our work but we are in a studio/open 1-bedroom.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#76

Post by cynicalreason » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:19 PM UTC

caseyw wrote: post #26

I’ve worked from home for a number of years. It’s all about having a normal schedule. My family knows when I’m in the office, I am at work. There isn’t anyone popping over my shoulder, and general interruptions are almost nil in my case. I think a lot of people are going to be super surprised what a quiet room and your playlist of choice can do to increase productivity. Just my 2 cents.

this is exactly the reason I prefer the office .. I have 2 kids, 5 & 2, and if I'm home they are very much used to me being around them or doing something together, working from home is not ideal

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#77

Post by downerending » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:19 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #29

bfrog wrote: post #4

And so begins the bay area salary bubble pop

I don't understand why? Salaries are high because you're competing for the same small group of talented people. They aren't high due to the location.

A lot of us would disagree with that. Housing is so expensive that lots of talented people simply cannot afford to move to the BA.

Looked at another way, "talented people" are often smart enough to realize that if they do get the same salary, they net a lot more if they live elsewhere.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#78

Post by jekriro7 » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:19 PM UTC

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…

It would be good if AWS and GCE were leveraged by workers at home as generic data centers to store their private data

Working on a UI and server for just that. Plug an API key for a cloud provider into the UI which will help users move data from their laptop to a private bucket for example, or spinup basic infra, enable sharing with other users accounts for opt-in data collection

Sell or donate access to specific data in your account on your terms.

The web is dead. With the right tools anyone can leverage the cloud to regain a ton of privacy and control of their data. Maybe we can dismantle through free market effort, the technocracy middleman now that building such software is trivial

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#79

Post by neuland » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:19 PM UTC

qppo wrote: post #16

bfrog wrote: post #4

And so begins the bay area salary bubble pop

I'd gladly take a 15-20% paycut to leave the area but keep my job. Love the company, love the people I work with, hate this place.

I did this and after taxes and cost of living, I'm actually making slightly more on net.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#80

Post by seemslegit » Tue, May 12, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

A blurred distinction between the home and the workplace could also have legal implications for side projects, 'everything you make during employment period belongs to us' clauses can sometimes be punched through or voided but it's harder to do if you can't show a clear work time and resources vs. personal time and resources boundary.