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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

#791

Post by allthecybers »

dmode wrote: post #773

Just to add a perspective, I work for a FAANG and we have no plans to go remote and will very much be office based. In fact, most of the company is yearning to go back to work. But our office space is pretty nice as well. I personally am sick and tired of working from home and can’t wait to return to work. I am tired of poor ergonomics of my home office, tired of constantly having to schedule formal zoom calls for ev…

Fellow FAANG here. My WFH experience has been the opposite, but I do look forward to leaving the house for social activities of my choice outside of WFH.

Even before COVID I invested in a height adjustable desk, ergo chair, adjustable led lighting and a decent monitor for my home office. It’s made a huge difference.

I personally like that I can’t have hallway interruptions and can be intentional about my meeting cadence, frequency and focus time.

Sure I might put in a couple extra hours here and there but I’m also not spending those hours commuting anymore.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#792

Post by lultimouomo »

nathan_long wrote: post #334
vinniejames wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Companies don't do this. They will adjust your salary down based on your city of residence. Square is one example of this. You're not compensated for the value you provide, you're compensated for the cost of living near the office. You're also now competing against a national talent pool vs locals only

So you're considering Candidate A, who lives in SF, and B, who lives in a small town. You decide that B has to compete with A on talent, but A doesn't have to compete with B on price. Does that make strategic sense?

If you want to hire A, you have to compete with local SF company that pay high wages.

If you want to hire B, you have to compete with local small town companies which pay low wages, plus a very small number of remote companies which are in the same position as you from a game-theoretical perspective.

I think it's obvious that in the long term, if remote work becomes widespread, wages (and thus cost of living) will level out, but in the short term if few enough companies do it they can beat the prisoner's dilemma and keep remote wages lower than the ones in Silicon Valley.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#793

Post by john_minsk »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #776
sizzle wrote: post #704

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's stopping someone from moving to SF for higher comp on hiring, then getting a P.O. box or friend's mailing address in SF and moving back to work from lower cost area after some time? Is your employer really going to decrease your salary after the fact? Can you file taxes in your lower cost of living state after you lock in your high SF comp package and never notify your employer but still pay your taxes in the…

> Is your employer really going to decrease your salary after the fact? Yes. I have remote working friends who've been required to take a pay cut because they moved.

That's the most interesting part to me which will play the major role in how WFH situation will evolve. I 100% understand the logic in such situations, but:

1) If company like Twitter is saying: "From tomorrow our default is work from home, but you all get 20% salary cut". This will be essentially a salary cut, nothing more. If let's say Facebook says WFH=on-site developers from Twitter will be flowing to Facebook because of 20% salary cut

2) In order for everyone in FAANG to say simultaneously that we have to cut salaries 20% simply because it is WFH now - there should be a strong evidence that productivity in remote workers is 20% less and they will need to hire 20% more engineers to have the same amount of work done. If it is not correct then companies have incentive to drive this number down to 10% or 0%

3) FAANG and overall Valley residents must also consider the long term effect on their community. I doubt that Silicon Valley will survive going 100% virtual and concentration of innovation can be lost if people go 100% remote. So they might impose 10-20% cut on a premise that they want to create a community on-site. Not sure how C-suits evaluate such factor.

Overall I suppose if companies go WFH by default they will need to reevaluate their incentives structures to be competitive.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#795

Post by danhhieu910 »

shibeouya wrote: post #705

I work in FAANG and I am really not convinced this is the start of a trend. First Twitter was already moving towards permanent WFH before the pandemic, it only accelerated their plans. I highly doubt (m)any other companies were also seriously considering that move before the pandemic. Second, working in a remote only team is very different from working in an office, or even from occasionally working from home. I have…

Working is not just about work, we're spending a good amount of our time with our colleagues. I cannot imagine me sitting alone in a room, working every day 8 hours for 10-20 years and never meet anyone in my team. All the team building, get a smoke together, off-work activities... are gone. Sounds scary like a chapter in Black Mirror.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#796

Post by vecinu »

bradlys wrote: post #75
the_watcher wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I just thought it was funny that you said in a different post you hate your job and are already looking for a new one [1]

I don't think your problem with quitting has anything to do with WFH policies.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23157538

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#797

Post by sossles »

jjjensen90 wrote: post #781

I always thought I enjoyed remote work as an engineer/architect, I did it for 6 months by my own volition before coming back. I am extremely unhappy. I really miss being in the office with my coworkers and friends. I've struggled deeply with overwhelming sadness at the idea of not going back anytime soon. My work has suffered from a lack of dynamic interactions. I get lots of focus time, just like I did at the office…

I'm no social butterfly but I feel the same way. Working in an office gives me regular light social contact that would be very tiring to get otherwise.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#798

Post by austinheap »

product50 wrote: post #671
acituan wrote: post #664

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sub…

H1B and GC sponsorships come from the same pool. In other words, a Green Card application is sponsored for H1 candidates. You are double counting your numbers. I do agree that this expectation that one sitting in Ohio will command the same salary working for a FAANG company is just wrong. Very likely, the companies will adjust their salaries based on where the person is.

FAANG-tier companies have set ratios based on band and city. The notion that they're going to ditch these suddenly feels bizarre.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#799

Post by austinheap »

hintymad wrote: post #658
_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…

Maybe it's the other way around: due to increased supply, total package of FAANG engineers will drop. That's not necessarily a bad thing though. We've been enjoying unprecedented packages for many years. It may be a good time to distribute some of the wealth to other parts of the country.

FAANG total comp -- today -- is at a record high and well outpacing every other vertical.

Re: Twitter Will Allow Employees to Work at Home Forever

#800

Post by badpun »

shibeouya wrote: post #705

I work in FAANG and I am really not convinced this is the start of a trend. First Twitter was already moving towards permanent WFH before the pandemic, it only accelerated their plans. I highly doubt (m)any other companies were also seriously considering that move before the pandemic. Second, working in a remote only team is very different from working in an office, or even from occasionally working from home. I have…

Yep, I can see how FAANGs would be reluctant to adopt remote work. While it can be a fine solution in your run of the mill software team doing boring web or backend work, FAANGs are all about innovation and, often, very technically complex products. The f2f interactions could really foster creativity there (just imagine scientists trying to work out the Manhattan project remotely over Teams...).
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