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The idea to match salary to cost of living is economically ridiculous, but I want to share a couple of personal experiences and ideas. > As the article so nice
by conanbatt 9y ago
The idea to match salary to cost of living is economically ridiculous, but I want to share a couple of personal experiences and ideas.
> As the article so nicely points put, the work you're doing is exactly the same regardless of where you do it from. Charge accordingly.
First of all, a remote employee is not worth the same as one in the office. For 2 engineers of the same capacity, any employer or coworker would rather have the engineer physically near than physically afar. How much that discount is extremely hard to guess, but there should be one in the general case.
Also, being hired as a remote engineer from the get go is not the same commitment as being hired to be in the office. There is no personal or professional relationship yet. This means that being hired as a remote worker, you will generally be assigned remote work, and if they want collaborative, product and team roles, will hire someone to be in the office. The processes of hiring and working relationship are different.
Now, to my personal experiences: I worked remotely my first few years, and then as an in-office employee for a couple of years to a SF startup. After that, I left the US and worked remotely for the same company for 2 years. There was a minimal adjustment to salary: and then I had the incentive to study the finances of what was going on.
The company paid less payroll taxes, and I did not receive any benefits: no 401k matching, no free food, no snacking, no coffee expenditures, etc. The benefits lost my have compensated a chunk of the remote-ness productivity loss in the long run. But there was a cost to productivty and I could compare it solidly between my two periods: it took longer cycles to get some projects finished, and issues of importance sometimes had time-zone differences that made them more inconvenient to resolve.
But then I also saw why talk about cost of living. Working in the same company, I had seldom talked about salary with co-workers (and my personal policy is to disclose mine immediately, even if they dont disclose theirs). But after turning remote I got asked about my salary by a considerable amount of people, even from ex-coworkers!
I dont think people have a right to be upset about it, but they do feel upset about such a thing. They perceive it unfair, because the costs are there for them, and maybe their job or their manager wont allow them to be remote.
- tinbad 9y agoI don't agree with your premise of "remote workers being worth less (even if slightly) because there's less efficient collaboration". The last part is only true because most of today's organizations and processes are organized this way. Objectively, there's very little (outside of the individuals ability/willingness to work) that can't be optimized for remote work using modern technology. I've been working remote for many years now and even many large enterprises I have worked for recently have adopted tools needed for working remotely efficiently (easy video/chat/screen share, collaborative productivity tools etc.). At this point, my impression it's mostly mental barriers (managers!) that stall any progress in this area.
- Bartweiss 9y agoUntil the open plan office fad finally dies, I suspect some developers are more efficient working remotely. Collaboration is great, but it's better as a purposeful thing spaced between uninterrupted work. As two-minute interruptions several times an hour, it's a serious impediment to focused work. For me at least, my experience working remotely was that I was less integrated into the team, and struggled to contribute and keep up when planning involved ad hoc discussions. But I got more done per hour, and the conversations I did have with teammates were more structured and productive than they tend to be in person. We also had a better knowledge base and lower bus factor, because information was passed in text more than by word of mouth. Under ideal circumstances with experienced teams, in-person work probably has an edge. After all, you can interact like it's remote work in any case where that's a better system. But in the real world, I suspect remote work has clear advantages for some tasks.
- conanbatt 9y ago> The last part is only true because most of today's organizations and processes are organized this way. Objectively, there's very little (outside of the individuals ability/willingness to work) that can't be optimized for remote work using modern technology. Only the most important one: communication. Its like saying you dont need to meet someone in person before marrying them, because all you need to know can be asked on an email or a skype call.. > I've been working remote for many years now and even many large enterprises I have worked for recently have adopted tools needed for working remotely efficiently (easy video/chat/screen share, collaborative productivity tools etc.). At this point, my impression it's mostly mental barriers (managers!) that stall any progress in this area. I have been mostly a remote worker and I'm positively confident in-office working is more productive than remote, the same way going to the gym is more effective than working out at your home for the whole. There are exceptions and deviations, but the generality is true. Thats my model, but reality also matches with that idea: othterwise remote companies would be eating in-office companies, but they arent.
- imhoguy 9y agoI suppose you were working in not remote-first companies. Then indeed water-cooler talks keep remotees behind. But I can't agree on productivity and gym parts. Massive telecommuting is quite recent habit thanks to technology advancements and it still needs some paradigm shift especially on management level. Such shift had to happen in the past with introduction of computers in offices, on-line shopping, on-line banking, selling insurances etc.