19 ms·

Would You Take an 8% Pay Cut to Work from Home?

31 points by antouank 10y ago

EliRivers 10y ago
I drop about ten percent of my pay, after tax, to get to and from work. So this would be a pay rise. Yes please.
- plzbo 10y ago
  That seems a lot, how are you getting to work?
  - EliRivers 10y ago
    Train, about 50 minutes platform to platform. It's cheaper than living closer. They're expensive in the UK. It's not uncommon to see people spending four thousand pounds and up for their annual train ticket.
delphinius81 10y ago
8% less than a Bay Area market-rate salary to be able to work from wherever I want? Sounds great. There are co-working spaces all over the place now. Get a floating desk at one of them and you can still get that office atmosphere when you need it.
- mdip 10y ago
  This is the one area where I think a pay-cut might be warranted. If the cost of living is sufficiently different from the employer's location and my own, I'd expect a pay cut. However, the impression I get from the article is that people are willing to take the pay cut of the prevailing wage they'd expect to be paid for the same job in the area they currently live. I live in a suburb of Detroit. I'm employed full time for a US/UK/Australian company working for a team in the UK and am paid at around the market rate for the area I live in. I accepted this job with a pay increase from my previous employer who also paid me at around the market rate for where I live despite my working from home for several years. At no point did my previous employer ask me to take a pay cut when I started working from home, nor did they reduce the compensation increases/bonuses once I started working from home. My work from home arrangements at my previous employer were "semi-official". The company had a defined "work from home policy" and outside of myself and one other member of my team, it was expressly forbidden. I began working from home by using the "rockstar method" -- I became a critical member of not just my team, but the organization. I was given flexibility to conduct my work in whatever manner I required as long as my obligations were met (which they always were). I left that team, though, mainly because part of the agreement was that I keep quiet about working at home. I was located in an office that no other members of my team were in, so this meant not making it obvious during conference calls because management didn't want to receive grief from other high-performing team-members who were disallowed from working at home due to upper management disliking the practice (they routinely performed work-site walk-throughs to see how many empty desks there were). This "butts in chairs upper management" style spoke a lot to how the company was managed -- in general -- and was ultimately the reason I left. I'm still cautious of this if for no other reason than habit, but mostly because it is unprofessional to have children yelling or dogs barking in the background of a teleconference where people are already expecting you're only half-paying attention, anyway.
floopidydoopidy 10y ago
I would take an 8% paycut to be free of the nonsensical 9-5 schedule.
010a 10y ago
I would take an 8% raise. If I'm working from home, that is one less capital expense the company has to invest in me, in the form of office space and office perks. I would not volunteer to work from home if it had any chance of decreasing my productivity. As such, that is more money in the company's pocket that they should reinvest back into the employees so they have the option of replicating office perks back at home (equipment, coffee, snacks, things like that).
- js4 10y ago
  Really? You dont consider working from home a perk?
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Is it a perk to work in a company's office? Where you work should not modify your compensation.
    - acranox 10y ago
      My company probably spends millions to rent it's office. It also has a kitchen with a lot of free food and coffee available. So, they'd probably save a lot of money to have a smaller office with fewer people in it, and I'd spend more money on coffee if I worked from home. There are certainly pros and cons for both, and costs associated with those things.
      - toomuchtodo 10y ago
        I admit, I'm biased. My day job is fully remote (the entire company), and the company treats us extremely well. In return for saving them rent on an office space, we have no commute, the ability to work from anywhere with an internet connection, and so on (vacation time is easier to use when you're already living somewhere exotic versus having to travel from some major metro in the US). Saved office expenses are dollars that can go into growing the business or employee perks. I don't mind paying for the coffee; I'm still ahead thousands of dollars a year from not needing a car and commuting each day. To each their own of course!
ryanSrich 10y ago
What a strange short article. As a remote worker I'd suggest paying people their market rate and then some. Finding good remote workers is very difficult.
- antouank 10y ago
  By accepting remote work, they open the candidate pool to the whole world. You compete with people having potentially much lower living costs. Why would they pay "market rate" if they are in a city with high rates?
  - ianai 10y ago
    Because the opportunity for abuse is very high. You've got to hire motivated talent and that costs more.
    - raesene9 10y ago
      Personally I think a big factor is the kind of work involved. I'm a home-based security consultant and I'm pretty motivated to deliver as I know that each engagement is pretty short and there's a clear deliverable at the end of each one. More vague work can be trickier, but I still think home working can work for a lot of people...
  - ryanSrich 10y ago
    I actually have a fairly unpopular view on market rate. I tend to look at the U.S. as a whole for determining what constitutes fair compensation. This is strictly regarding developer and tech employee pay. I don't take location into account at all. If you want to save money and live in the middle of nowhere then go for it. You should have the exact same pay as the person in SF doing the exact same thing as you.
  - loeg 10y ago
    There are challenges and costs employing remote workers in significantly different timezones. So you mostly compete with other workers in nearby timezones.
interdrift 10y ago
I'd hate to work from home , I just don't find it as a benefit. Home is home. The office is where the work happens. I like to keep these things separated..
- blackguardx 10y ago
  Office space is cheaper per sq ft that residential in most US cities. If I was a long term remote worker, I would rent a small office somewhere. It is also easier to deduct off your taxes that way.
- girzel 10y ago
  I run my own small company (just a few of us, in different places), and after a couple of years of working from home, I had to rent a little office space. Too much rolling out of bed and sitting down to the computer. Too much realizing I was still in my bathrobe at 2pm. A tidy, quiet little office space felt like a godsend afterwards. Of course, it was still only me :)
- mdip 10y ago
  You're not an outlier. I know several software developers who feel exactly the same way. I would have probably been one of them but after doing it for ten years or so, I love working at home and have found ways to adjust to the things I don't like about it. But your attitude is shared by a lot of people, it's just not necessarily talked about all that often and it falls into the often ignored category of "there are real downsides to working from home" that seems to be pervasive in the world where "working at home" is seen by some as "not working at all" or as this article states "a job perk" rather than a set of trade-offs that have positives and negatives for both the employer and employee. Personally, I will probably never take a job that isn't work-at-home, again, if I have any say in the matter. While there were substantial down-sides (almost all of which I wasn't prepared for in the beginning) there's substanial up-sides. And I'm one of those folks who elects to ignore the "work-life" separation boundary entirely. I accept that as a work-from-home employee, I can basically be seen as someone "working all of the time" and I allow myself to work when inspiration hits even if it isn't during "normal business hours". On the flip-side of that, my kids will tell you that "Daddy's always here". I get to be here for my family at all times. My dad was a traveling sales-man and pilot when I was growing up. He was gone most of the time[0]. I can work 50 hours during the week and have it feel like 30 to my family and 40 to me. I can get in the middle of an emotional problem one of my daughters is facing when it happens because I'm in the home all day -- provided I'm not in a teleconference. I'm home to see my kids when school lets out. At the same time, I might be working at 8:00 or 9:00 PM when they're settling in for bed. Or taking a conference call with a group team on the other side of the world at 2:00 AM. There is no office where work happens for me and that can positively suck at times. [0] I deeply respect and look up to my dad -- he was there as much as he could be and had to work the hours he worked in order to provide for our family. He grew up in a two bedroom home with 6 siblings and never had a bedroom or even a bed to sleep on when he was a kid. He also "made it to all of the important things" and actually got his pilot license to reduce the amount of over-night travel he had to do.
fdim 10y ago
Working from home may sound good only to those who haven't done it for a longer period of time. Having flexible hours is good to have, but only when you really need it (e.g. family visit, some delivery, some time off). Cut itself makes no sense, at least here in Denmark (Lithuanian here) if you work at the office you don't have to worry about food and coffee - at home you would.
- NDizzle 10y ago
  I've worked from home for 6 years now. Maybe my situation is a little different - I have 3 kids and my wife is a stay at home mom. It's been great and I highly recommend it if at some point you realize you are a family man (or woman).
  - fdim 10y ago
    Good point. I am yet to reach that state though. Working at work involves more communication as well
  - mdip 10y ago
    It's kind of amazing what it does for your marriage. I've seen both sides of it, myself. In both cases, my wife was also stay-at-home. My first marriage was actually damaged by working at home. My wife was an introvert and I think having me around all the time hurt things (we were not particularly compatible to begin with which was exacerbated when I went from working 50-60 hours a week away to working most days at home). My current marriage is greatly helped by it. There's nobody I'd rather share my time with than my wife and she feels the same. A lot of people will say what I said in the last paragraph applies to them -- they'd hate their spouse if they had to spend every waking minute with them and couldn't get away from time to time, but her and I thrive in the situation. I think it helps that her dad and mom were both small business owners who ran things out of their home and worked together on everything. It helps me because my wife is non-technical and by being around while I'm working/talking on conference calls, she understands more about what I do and the things I struggle with at work so she can offer more support/understanding to me than if I had to explain it all to her (it also avoids me having to spend hours explaining things). My four children love that I'm at home at all times. Even though they're respectful of the fact that I have to work and try not to bother me while I'm busy, they know I'm there if something important comes up. This is especially important since two of my children are step-'s and we're blending a family. The complexity of emotions that kids go through is helped by the stability of the fact that I'm seen as "always present" in the moment and at the time.
jimmywanger 10y ago
I just took a fairly large pay cut (more than 8%) to work remotely. Is there a distinction between working remotely and working from home?
- elliotec 10y ago
  I think so, traveling and adventuring through the world while working seems more worth a pay cut than just not needing to drive to an office.
  - grecy 10y ago
    > traveling and adventuring through the world while working I have been trying to do this for years, and it's much harder than it sounds on the surface. I'm in West Africa now, for reference. When you work for a company (or even just take a contract of some form) the company wants you to be available on their schedule. So you have to live the hours of the country you're "working for". This gets really hard when you have travel days (or weeks), when you want to go someplace remote, have limited or no connectivity, want to do something with locals in the plae you're in, want a social life, etc. etc. Maybe you can do it if "traveling and adventuring through the world" means staying put in a large city in a more-or-less developed country, but otherwise, it's very hard.
  - clueless123 10y ago
    few people do it to travel the world.. most stay at home close to the kids.
  - jimmywanger 10y ago
    But how would they know? As long as you're in the same time zone (as another commenter has alluded to) and have decent internet, what's the difference between working from a suburb of Chicago and Mexico City?
- nathan_f77 10y ago
  Are you sure that the pay cut was necessary? As a freelancer, it's possible to make much more than a Bay Area salary if you are a good developer.
kowdermeister 10y ago
Sure, I would take an 8% cut of an average Silicon Valley developer salary as a remote worker :) Hint: I'm in the EU.
heisenbit 10y ago
Drawing conclusions from call center jobs (the article) to developer jobs is fraught with problems primarily as call center jobs are about delivered service time (availability for and handling of calls) and developer jobs are about delivered value (written and/or deleted lines of code).
Fifer82 10y ago
A lot of people travel 2 hours per day in a commute. If they take the train, it can be around 3900 a year in season ticket rail passes. No one pays you for it. What a bloody waste of time.
- fakename123 10y ago
  It's my understanding that the Caltrain charges $18,000/yr to give an unlimited number of employees a GoPass (unlimited travel). Pretty good deal if you are running a mid size or larger company in the bay area.
Koshkin 10y ago
I am sure many developers (and not only) enjoy coming to the office, having free coffee, socializing with their colleagues, doing pair programming, etc. On the other hand, for some, working from home gives them an opportunity to be much more productive. This is like working in a private office, with the door closed. That is, unless, of course, you have a lot of distraction, such as having to do chores or kids running around and making all kinds of noise. Many escape to the office for that exact reason.
- Tempest1981 10y ago
  How about working from home 2 days a week, where everyone agrees with those two days are? So you still have in-person collaboration on the other 3 days, say, Monday Wednesday Thursday.
  - softawre 10y ago
    Are you on my team? Indy? This is exactly what we do, down to the exact days. (Fun note: gitstats says that Tuesday is the most productive day and Friday the least)
  - briandear 10y ago
    Then I'm stuck living within commuting distance of the employer -- that means a position I could be perfect for would be ignored. That limits the talent pool to those that are willing to work in a particular location. That also means companies have to locate to insanely expensive locations just to be around talent -- which is less money that goes into growing the business. Face to face is overrated.
  - bigtex 10y ago
    We do that at my employer, we all come in once a week into the office.
  - mdip 10y ago
    I tend to be hesitant of this model, but I've seen it work. It depends on the team and the people. In the cases where it works the hallmark of success is a team that is highly engaged. If it's a start-up or a company where everyone has a vested interest -- financially -- for the company's success, the probability that it'll work is high. The probability that eliminating the formality and just letting everyone work from home all the time will work is also high, though. Maybe the schedule is useful because in-person collaboration is so deeply needed for the remaining days that it's worth keeping to a smaller schedule for work-at-home[0]. Where I've seen it fail was at a few larger employers where engagement was moderate/low. Many of the employees were working their exclusively to collect a paycheck and didn't have a lot of passion for the work they were doing. The "work at home" day was really "a day off". Management scheduled this day to occur two days after the weekly release cycle -- the one considered to have the least impact after a release where employees not being available on-site was going to be less of an issue. The problem with that thinking was that it further encouraged the mentality that it was really a day off not a work from home day. I'd hear stories from my friend about how he'd schedule all of his personal stuff on that day -- he'd take the kids places during the work day and otherwise do things that he would not "get away with" in the office. This policy stopped after about a year because enough employees abused it. Unfortunately, for those who didn't abuse it, they got punished. By making it "part time", you also have less pressures to put in place the tools necessary to make work-at-home successful. Highly motivated teams won't suffer because they'll naturally gravitate toward tools that make it possible to complete work -- getting the work done is the driving factor. Unmotivated teams will fail because that driving factor is missing and will be filled in with an attitude of "well, I can't do this because there's no way to get what I need to do my job, so I'll sit on it until I'm back in the office". There's also the issue of not having parity between the equipment in the office and the equipment at home. If you have 2 workstations at your desk in the office and a laptop -- you're probably using your workstations at work and rarely using the less powerful laptop. As a full time work-at-home employee, I have two servers with several virtuals, two laptops and a very high-end desktop ... at home. I'm full productivity all the time. Yes, you can probably remote into your workstation at the office. It's not the same -- I've tried it -- maybe it's the lack of three monitors in your home office or the network latency of the remote desktop, but something just makes it "less than". By making a schedule, you're also forcing employees who might not want to work from home to work at home. It sounds crazy, but over the years I've met several software developers who don't fit the stereotypes -- they'e extroverted and enjoy the office. They see the office as an extension of their college life where they had a bunch of friends who were forced to get together -- in person -- and get along and feel lonely working at home. I might have been one of these people -- I get lonely from time to time working at home full-time but have found ways to combat that. On the flip side, there's potentially a benefit to the forced schedule for introverted team members or folks who require intense focus to accomplish work. They'll most likely drop completely off the map when working at home because they can isolate themselves completely and pour into work. Keeping some in-office days helps those personalities get pulled into the larger team and can focus on the at-home days without interruption. We had a member of a team I was on a few years ago that worked at home two days a week and we knew when he'd return on Wednesday that he'd often come back having completed a mountain of work. We knew those days benefited him and the greatly benefited the team so if he asked to take another couple in a particular week, nobody ever questioned him. [0] I'd argue that 4 days at home working and one day dedicated to pure collaboration would fit better, but it depends on the work/team.
callesgg 10y ago
I would not want to work home even if i got a 8% raise. Working at home is boring, and unmotivational.
nathan_f77 10y ago
I've been working remotely for the last few years, and I don't miss the office at all. However, I wouldn't really mind driving to work or taking a train. You get some time to listen to podcasts, or think, or just do nothing and clear your head. I have to actively make time for that now that I work remotely. Sometimes I get too busy and forget to do nothing for a while. There's also something nice about traveling to and from work, where there's a separation between work and home. I've just moved into an apartment where I have one room as an office, so that should be nice. Another thing is that when you're freelancing as a software developer, sometimes you can turn that into a pay raise. It works especially well if your plan is to have long stretches of time without paid work, so you can work on your own side projects. There's also some clients who are happy for you to work 20 hour weeks, which is very easy to get used to. I find context switching to be really hard though, so I prefer to work two 10 hour days. And sometimes I enjoy going full-time on a project for a few months, and then taking a long break for a few months. But yes, I would still be prepared to take a pay cut in order to work from home. Well, if "home" includes anywhere in the world.
- mdip 10y ago
  I hear ya on the podcasts. When I had a 2-hour round-trip commute for several years, I listened to a few hundred audio books. Up to that point I had read probably two fiction books over the course of my entire life (outside of required reading for school)[0]. After a few years I could hold my own in conversations about literature and found myself really enjoying some of the classics. I find it almost impossible to listen to audio books when I'm not driving or doing some muscle-memory exercise like cutting the lawn/driving/riding a bike, so without that consistent drive time, I haven't gotten to enjoy a good book in several years. It's not even worth downloading them any longer because I know it'll take two years to finish one book and I'll forget where I left off between listens. [0] I'm a speed reader (skimming/scanning style, not the "gimmicky" speed reading that is advertised these days) and find it difficult to read fiction without using my training. Speed reading fiction is like turning to the back of the book to see how it ends before starting the book -- it ruins fiction -- so the only fiction reading I enjoy is narrated to me (by Scott Brick, if I'm lucky) on Audible.
mdip 10y ago
Absolutely not. I've advised everyone looking for remote work to never undercut their salary or treat the remote job as a "perk"[0]. There are downsides to working at home -- disconnection from the team (if the team is not entirely remote), additional pressure to be deliberate about social behavior, the elimination of the lines between "work" and "home" and having to keep yourself in check to make sure you don't end up just "working all of the time" and the perception that working from home isn't working at all which is often the case when an employer thinks that they can reduce a person's salary if they offer them the opportunity to work from home. The problem with accepting a lower salary is that you're opening yourself up to a working environment where the bosses believe they're doing you a favor and will expect more in return than just that salary. There's a risk that they will respect the work you do less or assume you're on a perpetual vacation because you're working from a home office rather than a building they've paid for. Your work and contribution should speak for itself and your management should understand that it takes a special skill (and valuable) skill set to work from home successfully. By treating it as a perk, these facts are ignored. After 7 years of working in an office, 4 of working split between home and office and 7 working exclusively from home, I can say from my own, anecdotal, experience that working from home makes me far more effective at the job I'm tasked with. To start, switching to working at home eliminated a 2-hour round-trip commute. That time didn't all get shifted to work, but at least half of it did. Because I work from home, I have the most effective tools for doing my job with me at all times. When I was in the office, I had two workstations that I did most of my work on and a laptop that I rarely used except when at home. Working in development, I tended to have moments of inspiration hit at non-work times (9:00 PM) and when that'd happen, I'd look at the laptop and run through in my mind all of the things I'd have to set up to be able to take advantage of that inspiration and would often think "yeah, I'll just wait until the morning". And by morning, that inspiration had expired. Because I do my entire job at home, I can take advantage of this inspiration without any friction, now. I'm currently employed by a team that is entirely located in the UK. One of the reasons I was hired was because I'm located in a time-zone that matches many of our customers. This benefits my employer which makes a pay-cut inappropriate. In the office, you've got an unofficial social pressure to keep the same schedule as your coworkers: 8-5 with a noonish lunch, usually. There are several "personal things" that can't be done over the internet still, today[1]. These places often have a day or two a week to accommodate day-job folks, but you'll be waiting in line with all of the others about five times longer than you would if you picked a more ideal time[2]. All of this equates to more time available to work and I probably work an average of 50 hours/week without even trying. The difference is that at home it feels like a 40-hour work week and sometimes it feels like far less than that. To my family it feels like a much shorter work-week because I'm home for them. I can sit in the living room and work while my kids play. I can be there when the little things come up. My kids will tell you "daddy's always there" because ... well ... I am! They can even sit in on a conference call and get to know what it's like to have a career. This is not to say that there aren't downsides for the employer. There's less collaboration[3] and collaboration intensive work may suffer as a result, especially if the work-from-home employees don't have the required skill set. It's also too easy to focus on those downsides. It's better to look at it as a trade-off. Less facilities costs, more work time, greater "focused time", and (probably) happier employees. Employee happiness can equate to better work product and there are few things that will have a bigger impact on employee happiness than work-time/location flexibility provided it's managed properly. Management has to be better, too. No longer can you rely on "butts-in-chairs" management where a person's contribution is determined solely on how frequently you peer in and see that person working. Effectiveness has to be measured by project completion and more concrete variables. [0] There's one case where this doesn't fit - cost of living. If you're taking a job in New York and you live in South Dakota, I wouldn't expect to be making the same amount of money as someone who is required to find a place to live in NYC and accept the accompanying expenses. This is one of the biggest perks to accepting remote employees -- the ability to hire in a cheaper part of the country from where "the office" resides and comes with much of the same benefits (and fewer of the downsides) of off-shoring to a cheaper-labour country. I also work in software development which I believe is one of the (many) jobs that can be done remotely with little sacrifice on the side of the employer and many benefits for both employer and employee. It probably doesn't fit similarly for many other jobs. [1] Some driver's license related things, dropping off equipment at Comcast/Verizon's hell-hole, almost anything to do with a mortgage, that missed package that needed to be signed for requiring you to go to the Post Office, UPS or FedEx, doctor's office or lab work needing to be done and on and on. [2] I've learned 1:45-2:30 is the sweet spot - the bank teller has no lines, the mortgage broker has nobody in their chairs, the salon will let you walk in without an appointment and see you immediately and even the DMV (Secretary of State in MI) will have about 5 people in front of you. Service is also better (particularly at the DMV) because the staff isn't stressed -- often having just returned from lunch. [3] It's hard to argue that you'd get the same level of collaboration having entirely remote staff than you do when there's a shared, common, office. But given the right tools, collaboration doesn't have to be a problem. There's also the issue of over-collaboration. There are times when I need to keep my head down and be able to work on complex code without interruption. When you have a shared office -- especially some of these "Agile-type" offices where there's no separation between employees -- the office culture can become one of interruptions.
bigtex 10y ago
I am taking an indirect pay cut staying with my current employer which allows for remote work rather than getting a much higher paying job that requires a daily commute. Working from home 4 days a week and then going into the office around 10 am after traffic settles is definitely a perk. A daily commute would probably require me to buy a newer vehicle which would definitely eat into any gains in salary anyways. My employer has struggled lately with layoffs so I am constantly evaluating my job prospects. So instead of commuting I am building up my consulting business.
- mdip 10y ago
  I've seen this play out a few times and I hesitate to offer advice only because I don't wish it to be taken negatively, so please accept this as respectfully as I can offer it. I worked at a company that performed layoffs about every 6 months of around 10% of the staff of the entire company for around 17 years. You're doing the right thing by constantly evaluating your job prospects. The risk you've taken, now, though is that you've made yourself less visible and easier to lay off. Your manager will feel less badly about letting you go because you're not around to be reminded of. By taking a 4-day work-week, you're also getting less done which will further make the case for "not needing you". The staff who is not working at home -- assuming they are not allowed to do so -- will also start to resent the fact that you've been treated specially and may start to sabotage you subtly/unconsciously (or if they're particularly nasty people -- intentionally). This will further make the case for why you should be the next to go. There is a large plus-side though, particularly if you're like many HN readers and are employed in software development -- you are in a good position to find a remote job elsewhere. Hiring good remote employees is difficult and makes employers uncomfortable because it's hard to know how someone will fare with a work-at-home position. One of the key factors looked for in any position is experience and you can now state on your resume/in an interview that you have experience working, successfully, remotely. That experience is further bolstered by the fact that you're employed by a struggling company who routinely lets people go and you're still employed there despite being a remote employee. I'd strongly advise updating your resume if you are not interested in consulting full time or putting enough energy into your consulting business to be able to transition to it full time.
shearnie 10y ago
I've been working remotely for the past 6 years. More and more I am having to compete with offshore, and with the boss's expectations that working "in the comfort of your own home" means you deserve a pay cut. I make it a policy of mine to visit the office once or twice a week for design and planning, so the social aspect keeps me sane. I find it a good balance. I've recently started looking for a job for the pay increase due to cost of living pressures and because of the culture prevailing of bosses needing to see butts in seats it will most likely be on-premises. We've been priced out of the market for housing, so we have to live further out. It would involve three hours commuting a day. The pay increase is almost negated by the erosion of your hourly rate when you factor in time and expense of the commute. Not to mention the time being in a car and train rather with my kids.
blakesterz 10y ago
I can say without a doubt YES, because I did exactly that 3 years ago. It ended up being about 10%, and bit drop in quality of insurance. After three years at home I can't imagine going back to working in an office again. I'd take another pay cut to stay working at home until the day I retire, or die (which may come first if I keep taking pay cuts to work from home). I save so much time and money working from home, but by far the best thing is being able to manage the kids and other assorted family stuff would just be impossible if I wasn't here.
Daviey 10y ago
I've been remote working for the past 10 years or so.. with a large part of it for a mostly remote company. However, When first got into remote working, I accepted a lower amount for the benefits outlined.. but then learned nobody else did... So I short-changed myself. I wouldn't now.. either I take the rate I need with WFH provision, or I don't take the gig.
madebysquares 10y ago
I took a 8% pay cut to work from home when I accepted a new position. The company said they couldn't match my currently salary but living in NY and being able to move to a lower priced housing and not having to pay for the commute more then made up for the loss in income. Not to mention the peace of mind and flexibility of working and not having to deal with the NYC commute, I think it's been well worth it personally.

31 points by antouank 10y ago

EliRivers 10y ago

I drop about ten percent of my pay, after tax, to get to and from work. So this would be a pay rise. Yes please.

plzbo 10y ago
That seems a lot, how are you getting to work?
- EliRivers 10y ago
  Train, about 50 minutes platform to platform. It's cheaper than living closer. They're expensive in the UK. It's not uncommon to see people spending four thousand pounds and up for their annual train ticket.

delphinius81 10y ago

8% less than a Bay Area market-rate salary to be able to work from wherever I want? Sounds great. There are co-working spaces all over the place now. Get a floating desk at one of them and you can still get that office atmosphere when you need it.

mdip 10y ago
This is the one area where I think a pay-cut might be warranted. If the cost of living is sufficiently different from the employer's location and my own, I'd expect a pay cut. However, the impression I get from the article is that people are willing to take the pay cut of the prevailing wage they'd expect to be paid for the same job in the area they currently live. I live in a suburb of Detroit. I'm employed full time for a US/UK/Australian company working for a team in the UK and am paid at around the market rate for the area I live in. I accepted this job with a pay increase from my previous employer who also paid me at around the market rate for where I live despite my working from home for several years. At no point did my previous employer ask me to take a pay cut when I started working from home, nor did they reduce the compensation increases/bonuses once I started working from home. My work from home arrangements at my previous employer were "semi-official". The company had a defined "work from home policy" and outside of myself and one other member of my team, it was expressly forbidden. I began working from home by using the "rockstar method" -- I became a critical member of not just my team, but the organization. I was given flexibility to conduct my work in whatever manner I required as long as my obligations were met (which they always were). I left that team, though, mainly because part of the agreement was that I keep quiet about working at home. I was located in an office that no other members of my team were in, so this meant not making it obvious during conference calls because management didn't want to receive grief from other high-performing team-members who were disallowed from working at home due to upper management disliking the practice (they routinely performed work-site walk-throughs to see how many empty desks there were). This "butts in chairs upper management" style spoke a lot to how the company was managed -- in general -- and was ultimately the reason I left. I'm still cautious of this if for no other reason than habit, but mostly because it is unprofessional to have children yelling or dogs barking in the background of a teleconference where people are already expecting you're only half-paying attention, anyway.

floopidydoopidy 10y ago

I would take an 8% paycut to be free of the nonsensical 9-5 schedule.

010a 10y ago

I would take an 8% raise. If I'm working from home, that is one less capital expense the company has to invest in me, in the form of office space and office perks. I would not volunteer to work from home if it had any chance of decreasing my productivity. As such, that is more money in the company's pocket that they should reinvest back into the employees so they have the option of replicating office perks back at home (equipment, coffee, snacks, things like that).

js4 10y ago
Really? You dont consider working from home a perk?
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Is it a perk to work in a company's office? Where you work should not modify your compensation.
  - acranox 10y ago
    My company probably spends millions to rent it's office. It also has a kitchen with a lot of free food and coffee available. So, they'd probably save a lot of money to have a smaller office with fewer people in it, and I'd spend more money on coffee if I worked from home. There are certainly pros and cons for both, and costs associated with those things.
    - toomuchtodo 10y ago
      I admit, I'm biased. My day job is fully remote (the entire company), and the company treats us extremely well. In return for saving them rent on an office space, we have no commute, the ability to work from anywhere with an internet connection, and so on (vacation time is easier to use when you're already living somewhere exotic versus having to travel from some major metro in the US). Saved office expenses are dollars that can go into growing the business or employee perks. I don't mind paying for the coffee; I'm still ahead thousands of dollars a year from not needing a car and commuting each day. To each their own of course!

ryanSrich 10y ago

What a strange short article. As a remote worker I'd suggest paying people their market rate and then some. Finding good remote workers is very difficult.

antouank 10y ago
By accepting remote work, they open the candidate pool to the whole world. You compete with people having potentially much lower living costs. Why would they pay "market rate" if they are in a city with high rates?
- ianai 10y ago
  Because the opportunity for abuse is very high. You've got to hire motivated talent and that costs more.
  - raesene9 10y ago
    Personally I think a big factor is the kind of work involved. I'm a home-based security consultant and I'm pretty motivated to deliver as I know that each engagement is pretty short and there's a clear deliverable at the end of each one. More vague work can be trickier, but I still think home working can work for a lot of people...
- ryanSrich 10y ago
  I actually have a fairly unpopular view on market rate. I tend to look at the U.S. as a whole for determining what constitutes fair compensation. This is strictly regarding developer and tech employee pay. I don't take location into account at all. If you want to save money and live in the middle of nowhere then go for it. You should have the exact same pay as the person in SF doing the exact same thing as you.
- loeg 10y ago
  There are challenges and costs employing remote workers in significantly different timezones. So you mostly compete with other workers in nearby timezones.

interdrift 10y ago

I'd hate to work from home , I just don't find it as a benefit. Home is home. The office is where the work happens. I like to keep these things separated..

blackguardx 10y ago
Office space is cheaper per sq ft that residential in most US cities. If I was a long term remote worker, I would rent a small office somewhere. It is also easier to deduct off your taxes that way.
girzel 10y ago
I run my own small company (just a few of us, in different places), and after a couple of years of working from home, I had to rent a little office space. Too much rolling out of bed and sitting down to the computer. Too much realizing I was still in my bathrobe at 2pm. A tidy, quiet little office space felt like a godsend afterwards. Of course, it was still only me :)
mdip 10y ago
You're not an outlier. I know several software developers who feel exactly the same way. I would have probably been one of them but after doing it for ten years or so, I love working at home and have found ways to adjust to the things I don't like about it. But your attitude is shared by a lot of people, it's just not necessarily talked about all that often and it falls into the often ignored category of "there are real downsides to working from home" that seems to be pervasive in the world where "working at home" is seen by some as "not working at all" or as this article states "a job perk" rather than a set of trade-offs that have positives and negatives for both the employer and employee. Personally, I will probably never take a job that isn't work-at-home, again, if I have any say in the matter. While there were substantial down-sides (almost all of which I wasn't prepared for in the beginning) there's substanial up-sides. And I'm one of those folks who elects to ignore the "work-life" separation boundary entirely. I accept that as a work-from-home employee, I can basically be seen as someone "working all of the time" and I allow myself to work when inspiration hits even if it isn't during "normal business hours". On the flip-side of that, my kids will tell you that "Daddy's always here". I get to be here for my family at all times. My dad was a traveling sales-man and pilot when I was growing up. He was gone most of the time[0]. I can work 50 hours during the week and have it feel like 30 to my family and 40 to me. I can get in the middle of an emotional problem one of my daughters is facing when it happens because I'm in the home all day -- provided I'm not in a teleconference. I'm home to see my kids when school lets out. At the same time, I might be working at 8:00 or 9:00 PM when they're settling in for bed. Or taking a conference call with a group team on the other side of the world at 2:00 AM. There is no office where work happens for me and that can positively suck at times. [0] I deeply respect and look up to my dad -- he was there as much as he could be and had to work the hours he worked in order to provide for our family. He grew up in a two bedroom home with 6 siblings and never had a bedroom or even a bed to sleep on when he was a kid. He also "made it to all of the important things" and actually got his pilot license to reduce the amount of over-night travel he had to do.

fdim 10y ago

Working from home may sound good only to those who haven't done it for a longer period of time. Having flexible hours is good to have, but only when you really need it (e.g. family visit, some delivery, some time off). Cut itself makes no sense, at least here in Denmark (Lithuanian here) if you work at the office you don't have to worry about food and coffee - at home you would.

NDizzle 10y ago
I've worked from home for 6 years now. Maybe my situation is a little different - I have 3 kids and my wife is a stay at home mom. It's been great and I highly recommend it if at some point you realize you are a family man (or woman).
- fdim 10y ago
  Good point. I am yet to reach that state though. Working at work involves more communication as well
- mdip 10y ago
  It's kind of amazing what it does for your marriage. I've seen both sides of it, myself. In both cases, my wife was also stay-at-home. My first marriage was actually damaged by working at home. My wife was an introvert and I think having me around all the time hurt things (we were not particularly compatible to begin with which was exacerbated when I went from working 50-60 hours a week away to working most days at home). My current marriage is greatly helped by it. There's nobody I'd rather share my time with than my wife and she feels the same. A lot of people will say what I said in the last paragraph applies to them -- they'd hate their spouse if they had to spend every waking minute with them and couldn't get away from time to time, but her and I thrive in the situation. I think it helps that her dad and mom were both small business owners who ran things out of their home and worked together on everything. It helps me because my wife is non-technical and by being around while I'm working/talking on conference calls, she understands more about what I do and the things I struggle with at work so she can offer more support/understanding to me than if I had to explain it all to her (it also avoids me having to spend hours explaining things). My four children love that I'm at home at all times. Even though they're respectful of the fact that I have to work and try not to bother me while I'm busy, they know I'm there if something important comes up. This is especially important since two of my children are step-'s and we're blending a family. The complexity of emotions that kids go through is helped by the stability of the fact that I'm seen as "always present" in the moment and at the time.

jimmywanger 10y ago

I just took a fairly large pay cut (more than 8%) to work remotely. Is there a distinction between working remotely and working from home?

elliotec 10y ago
I think so, traveling and adventuring through the world while working seems more worth a pay cut than just not needing to drive to an office.
- grecy 10y ago
  > traveling and adventuring through the world while working I have been trying to do this for years, and it's much harder than it sounds on the surface. I'm in West Africa now, for reference. When you work for a company (or even just take a contract of some form) the company wants you to be available on their schedule. So you have to live the hours of the country you're "working for". This gets really hard when you have travel days (or weeks), when you want to go someplace remote, have limited or no connectivity, want to do something with locals in the plae you're in, want a social life, etc. etc. Maybe you can do it if "traveling and adventuring through the world" means staying put in a large city in a more-or-less developed country, but otherwise, it's very hard.
- clueless123 10y ago
  few people do it to travel the world.. most stay at home close to the kids.
- jimmywanger 10y ago
  But how would they know? As long as you're in the same time zone (as another commenter has alluded to) and have decent internet, what's the difference between working from a suburb of Chicago and Mexico City?
nathan_f77 10y ago
Are you sure that the pay cut was necessary? As a freelancer, it's possible to make much more than a Bay Area salary if you are a good developer.

kowdermeister 10y ago

Sure, I would take an 8% cut of an average Silicon Valley developer salary as a remote worker :) Hint: I'm in the EU.

heisenbit 10y ago

Drawing conclusions from call center jobs (the article) to developer jobs is fraught with problems primarily as call center jobs are about delivered service time (availability for and handling of calls) and developer jobs are about delivered value (written and/or deleted lines of code).

Fifer82 10y ago

A lot of people travel 2 hours per day in a commute. If they take the train, it can be around 3900 a year in season ticket rail passes. No one pays you for it. What a bloody waste of time.

fakename123 10y ago
It's my understanding that the Caltrain charges $18,000/yr to give an unlimited number of employees a GoPass (unlimited travel). Pretty good deal if you are running a mid size or larger company in the bay area.

Koshkin 10y ago

I am sure many developers (and not only) enjoy coming to the office, having free coffee, socializing with their colleagues, doing pair programming, etc. On the other hand, for some, working from home gives them an opportunity to be much more productive. This is like working in a private office, with the door closed. That is, unless, of course, you have a lot of distraction, such as having to do chores or kids running around and making all kinds of noise. Many escape to the office for that exact reason.

Tempest1981 10y ago
How about working from home 2 days a week, where everyone agrees with those two days are? So you still have in-person collaboration on the other 3 days, say, Monday Wednesday Thursday.
- softawre 10y ago
  Are you on my team? Indy? This is exactly what we do, down to the exact days. (Fun note: gitstats says that Tuesday is the most productive day and Friday the least)
- briandear 10y ago
  Then I'm stuck living within commuting distance of the employer -- that means a position I could be perfect for would be ignored. That limits the talent pool to those that are willing to work in a particular location. That also means companies have to locate to insanely expensive locations just to be around talent -- which is less money that goes into growing the business. Face to face is overrated.
- bigtex 10y ago
  We do that at my employer, we all come in once a week into the office.
- mdip 10y ago
  I tend to be hesitant of this model, but I've seen it work. It depends on the team and the people. In the cases where it works the hallmark of success is a team that is highly engaged. If it's a start-up or a company where everyone has a vested interest -- financially -- for the company's success, the probability that it'll work is high. The probability that eliminating the formality and just letting everyone work from home all the time will work is also high, though. Maybe the schedule is useful because in-person collaboration is so deeply needed for the remaining days that it's worth keeping to a smaller schedule for work-at-home[0]. Where I've seen it fail was at a few larger employers where engagement was moderate/low. Many of the employees were working their exclusively to collect a paycheck and didn't have a lot of passion for the work they were doing. The "work at home" day was really "a day off". Management scheduled this day to occur two days after the weekly release cycle -- the one considered to have the least impact after a release where employees not being available on-site was going to be less of an issue. The problem with that thinking was that it further encouraged the mentality that it was really a day off not a work from home day. I'd hear stories from my friend about how he'd schedule all of his personal stuff on that day -- he'd take the kids places during the work day and otherwise do things that he would not "get away with" in the office. This policy stopped after about a year because enough employees abused it. Unfortunately, for those who didn't abuse it, they got punished. By making it "part time", you also have less pressures to put in place the tools necessary to make work-at-home successful. Highly motivated teams won't suffer because they'll naturally gravitate toward tools that make it possible to complete work -- getting the work done is the driving factor. Unmotivated teams will fail because that driving factor is missing and will be filled in with an attitude of "well, I can't do this because there's no way to get what I need to do my job, so I'll sit on it until I'm back in the office". There's also the issue of not having parity between the equipment in the office and the equipment at home. If you have 2 workstations at your desk in the office and a laptop -- you're probably using your workstations at work and rarely using the less powerful laptop. As a full time work-at-home employee, I have two servers with several virtuals, two laptops and a very high-end desktop ... at home. I'm full productivity all the time. Yes, you can probably remote into your workstation at the office. It's not the same -- I've tried it -- maybe it's the lack of three monitors in your home office or the network latency of the remote desktop, but something just makes it "less than". By making a schedule, you're also forcing employees who might not want to work from home to work at home. It sounds crazy, but over the years I've met several software developers who don't fit the stereotypes -- they'e extroverted and enjoy the office. They see the office as an extension of their college life where they had a bunch of friends who were forced to get together -- in person -- and get along and feel lonely working at home. I might have been one of these people -- I get lonely from time to time working at home full-time but have found ways to combat that. On the flip side, there's potentially a benefit to the forced schedule for introverted team members or folks who require intense focus to accomplish work. They'll most likely drop completely off the map when working at home because they can isolate themselves completely and pour into work. Keeping some in-office days helps those personalities get pulled into the larger team and can focus on the at-home days without interruption. We had a member of a team I was on a few years ago that worked at home two days a week and we knew when he'd return on Wednesday that he'd often come back having completed a mountain of work. We knew those days benefited him and the greatly benefited the team so if he asked to take another couple in a particular week, nobody ever questioned him. [0] I'd argue that 4 days at home working and one day dedicated to pure collaboration would fit better, but it depends on the work/team.

callesgg 10y ago

I would not want to work home even if i got a 8% raise. Working at home is boring, and unmotivational.

nathan_f77 10y ago

I've been working remotely for the last few years, and I don't miss the office at all. However, I wouldn't really mind driving to work or taking a train. You get some time to listen to podcasts, or think, or just do nothing and clear your head. I have to actively make time for that now that I work remotely. Sometimes I get too busy and forget to do nothing for a while. There's also something nice about traveling to and from work, where there's a separation between work and home. I've just moved into an apartment where I have one room as an office, so that should be nice. Another thing is that when you're freelancing as a software developer, sometimes you can turn that into a pay raise. It works especially well if your plan is to have long stretches of time without paid work, so you can work on your own side projects. There's also some clients who are happy for you to work 20 hour weeks, which is very easy to get used to. I find context switching to be really hard though, so I prefer to work two 10 hour days. And sometimes I enjoy going full-time on a project for a few months, and then taking a long break for a few months. But yes, I would still be prepared to take a pay cut in order to work from home. Well, if "home" includes anywhere in the world.

mdip 10y ago
I hear ya on the podcasts. When I had a 2-hour round-trip commute for several years, I listened to a few hundred audio books. Up to that point I had read probably two fiction books over the course of my entire life (outside of required reading for school)[0]. After a few years I could hold my own in conversations about literature and found myself really enjoying some of the classics. I find it almost impossible to listen to audio books when I'm not driving or doing some muscle-memory exercise like cutting the lawn/driving/riding a bike, so without that consistent drive time, I haven't gotten to enjoy a good book in several years. It's not even worth downloading them any longer because I know it'll take two years to finish one book and I'll forget where I left off between listens. [0] I'm a speed reader (skimming/scanning style, not the "gimmicky" speed reading that is advertised these days) and find it difficult to read fiction without using my training. Speed reading fiction is like turning to the back of the book to see how it ends before starting the book -- it ruins fiction -- so the only fiction reading I enjoy is narrated to me (by Scott Brick, if I'm lucky) on Audible.

mdip 10y ago

Absolutely not. I've advised everyone looking for remote work to never undercut their salary or treat the remote job as a "perk"[0]. There are downsides to working at home -- disconnection from the team (if the team is not entirely remote), additional pressure to be deliberate about social behavior, the elimination of the lines between "work" and "home" and having to keep yourself in check to make sure you don't end up just "working all of the time" and the perception that working from home isn't working at all which is often the case when an employer thinks that they can reduce a person's salary if they offer them the opportunity to work from home. The problem with accepting a lower salary is that you're opening yourself up to a working environment where the bosses believe they're doing you a favor and will expect more in return than just that salary. There's a risk that they will respect the work you do less or assume you're on a perpetual vacation because you're working from a home office rather than a building they've paid for. Your work and contribution should speak for itself and your management should understand that it takes a special skill (and valuable) skill set to work from home successfully. By treating it as a perk, these facts are ignored. After 7 years of working in an office, 4 of working split between home and office and 7 working exclusively from home, I can say from my own, anecdotal, experience that working from home makes me far more effective at the job I'm tasked with. To start, switching to working at home eliminated a 2-hour round-trip commute. That time didn't all get shifted to work, but at least half of it did. Because I work from home, I have the most effective tools for doing my job with me at all times. When I was in the office, I had two workstations that I did most of my work on and a laptop that I rarely used except when at home. Working in development, I tended to have moments of inspiration hit at non-work times (9:00 PM) and when that'd happen, I'd look at the laptop and run through in my mind all of the things I'd have to set up to be able to take advantage of that inspiration and would often think "yeah, I'll just wait until the morning". And by morning, that inspiration had expired. Because I do my entire job at home, I can take advantage of this inspiration without any friction, now. I'm currently employed by a team that is entirely located in the UK. One of the reasons I was hired was because I'm located in a time-zone that matches many of our customers. This benefits my employer which makes a pay-cut inappropriate. In the office, you've got an unofficial social pressure to keep the same schedule as your coworkers: 8-5 with a noonish lunch, usually. There are several "personal things" that can't be done over the internet still, today[1]. These places often have a day or two a week to accommodate day-job folks, but you'll be waiting in line with all of the others about five times longer than you would if you picked a more ideal time[2]. All of this equates to more time available to work and I probably work an average of 50 hours/week without even trying. The difference is that at home it feels like a 40-hour work week and sometimes it feels like far less than that. To my family it feels like a much shorter work-week because I'm home for them. I can sit in the living room and work while my kids play. I can be there when the little things come up. My kids will tell you "daddy's always there" because ... well ... I am! They can even sit in on a conference call and get to know what it's like to have a career. This is not to say that there aren't downsides for the employer. There's less collaboration[3] and collaboration intensive work may suffer as a result, especially if the work-from-home employees don't have the required skill set. It's also too easy to focus on those downsides. It's better to look at it as a trade-off. Less facilities costs, more work time, greater "focused time", and (probably) happier employees. Employee happiness can equate to better work product and there are few things that will have a bigger impact on employee happiness than work-time/location flexibility provided it's managed properly. Management has to be better, too. No longer can you rely on "butts-in-chairs" management where a person's contribution is determined solely on how frequently you peer in and see that person working. Effectiveness has to be measured by project completion and more concrete variables. [0] There's one case where this doesn't fit - cost of living. If you're taking a job in New York and you live in South Dakota, I wouldn't expect to be making the same amount of money as someone who is required to find a place to live in NYC and accept the accompanying expenses. This is one of the biggest perks to accepting remote employees -- the ability to hire in a cheaper part of the country from where "the office" resides and comes with much of the same benefits (and fewer of the downsides) of off-shoring to a cheaper-labour country. I also work in software development which I believe is one of the (many) jobs that can be done remotely with little sacrifice on the side of the employer and many benefits for both employer and employee. It probably doesn't fit similarly for many other jobs. [1] Some driver's license related things, dropping off equipment at Comcast/Verizon's hell-hole, almost anything to do with a mortgage, that missed package that needed to be signed for requiring you to go to the Post Office, UPS or FedEx, doctor's office or lab work needing to be done and on and on. [2] I've learned 1:45-2:30 is the sweet spot - the bank teller has no lines, the mortgage broker has nobody in their chairs, the salon will let you walk in without an appointment and see you immediately and even the DMV (Secretary of State in MI) will have about 5 people in front of you. Service is also better (particularly at the DMV) because the staff isn't stressed -- often having just returned from lunch. [3] It's hard to argue that you'd get the same level of collaboration having entirely remote staff than you do when there's a shared, common, office. But given the right tools, collaboration doesn't have to be a problem. There's also the issue of over-collaboration. There are times when I need to keep my head down and be able to work on complex code without interruption. When you have a shared office -- especially some of these "Agile-type" offices where there's no separation between employees -- the office culture can become one of interruptions.

bigtex 10y ago

I am taking an indirect pay cut staying with my current employer which allows for remote work rather than getting a much higher paying job that requires a daily commute. Working from home 4 days a week and then going into the office around 10 am after traffic settles is definitely a perk. A daily commute would probably require me to buy a newer vehicle which would definitely eat into any gains in salary anyways. My employer has struggled lately with layoffs so I am constantly evaluating my job prospects. So instead of commuting I am building up my consulting business.

mdip 10y ago
I've seen this play out a few times and I hesitate to offer advice only because I don't wish it to be taken negatively, so please accept this as respectfully as I can offer it. I worked at a company that performed layoffs about every 6 months of around 10% of the staff of the entire company for around 17 years. You're doing the right thing by constantly evaluating your job prospects. The risk you've taken, now, though is that you've made yourself less visible and easier to lay off. Your manager will feel less badly about letting you go because you're not around to be reminded of. By taking a 4-day work-week, you're also getting less done which will further make the case for "not needing you". The staff who is not working at home -- assuming they are not allowed to do so -- will also start to resent the fact that you've been treated specially and may start to sabotage you subtly/unconsciously (or if they're particularly nasty people -- intentionally). This will further make the case for why you should be the next to go. There is a large plus-side though, particularly if you're like many HN readers and are employed in software development -- you are in a good position to find a remote job elsewhere. Hiring good remote employees is difficult and makes employers uncomfortable because it's hard to know how someone will fare with a work-at-home position. One of the key factors looked for in any position is experience and you can now state on your resume/in an interview that you have experience working, successfully, remotely. That experience is further bolstered by the fact that you're employed by a struggling company who routinely lets people go and you're still employed there despite being a remote employee. I'd strongly advise updating your resume if you are not interested in consulting full time or putting enough energy into your consulting business to be able to transition to it full time.

shearnie 10y ago

I've been working remotely for the past 6 years. More and more I am having to compete with offshore, and with the boss's expectations that working "in the comfort of your own home" means you deserve a pay cut. I make it a policy of mine to visit the office once or twice a week for design and planning, so the social aspect keeps me sane. I find it a good balance. I've recently started looking for a job for the pay increase due to cost of living pressures and because of the culture prevailing of bosses needing to see butts in seats it will most likely be on-premises. We've been priced out of the market for housing, so we have to live further out. It would involve three hours commuting a day. The pay increase is almost negated by the erosion of your hourly rate when you factor in time and expense of the commute. Not to mention the time being in a car and train rather with my kids.

blakesterz 10y ago

I can say without a doubt YES, because I did exactly that 3 years ago. It ended up being about 10%, and bit drop in quality of insurance. After three years at home I can't imagine going back to working in an office again. I'd take another pay cut to stay working at home until the day I retire, or die (which may come first if I keep taking pay cuts to work from home). I save so much time and money working from home, but by far the best thing is being able to manage the kids and other assorted family stuff would just be impossible if I wasn't here.

Daviey 10y ago

I've been remote working for the past 10 years or so.. with a large part of it for a mostly remote company. However, When first got into remote working, I accepted a lower amount for the benefits outlined.. but then learned nobody else did... So I short-changed myself. I wouldn't now.. either I take the rate I need with WFH provision, or I don't take the gig.

madebysquares 10y ago

I took a 8% pay cut to work from home when I accepted a new position. The company said they couldn't match my currently salary but living in NY and being able to move to a lower priced housing and not having to pay for the commute more then made up for the loss in income. Not to mention the peace of mind and flexibility of working and not having to deal with the NYC commute, I think it's been well worth it personally.