6 ms·

Right now companies havent figured out how to handle this situation and are playing along. I'm sure, sooner or later tides will turn and either you'll be roped

Right now companies havent figured out how to handle this situation and are playing along. I'm sure, sooner or later tides will turn and either you'll be roped into coming to office or take a pay cut for working remotely. So enjoy while it last!!

BrissyCoder 5y ago
I don't get your reasoning on why you expect that people will have to take a pay cut for working remotely. Would have thought it would be the opposite. Office space, hardware and energy cost a bit.
- willio58 5y ago
  This will only happen at companies that required people to live in extremely expensive areas like silicone valley. I’m not in that situation, but I’d quit immediately and go somewhere else. For example Google is doing this, there is no reason Google needs to save money on these developers. None at all.
- hiddencache 5y ago
  Managers cite efficiency losses in terms of communication, team building, training new staff, and idea generation in general. Not my arguments, just what I've seen written...
  - Spare_account 5y ago
    The reasons you've cited ought to be reasons for an employer to require office attendance. If employees are less efficient when working from home, then they shouldn't be offered full-time wfh. As I understand it, the rationale behind offering pay-cuts to full time wfh employees is that the pay cut is relative to the employee's lower cost of living. The employer sees an opportunity to avoid including the cost-of-living salary-uplift that is required to attract people to San Francisco etc.
- code_duck 5y ago
  It sounded unfair and summer opportunistic to me at first too, since like you say, employers could be saving a lot of money by having you use your house as an office. The rationale that Google is citing is that they pay based on location. They say remote workers will make the same as office workers in the same city, which sounds reasonable.
- oblio 5y ago
  Ah, that's easy. The negotiating power of a company, which is practically a group of people, is much higher than that of employees, which are just 1 person. A big company loses what? 0.00001% of its revenue if it doesn't hire the right person for a specific position? An employee loses 100% of their revenue if they don't get hired or get fired. So companies can pretty much do what they want (up to a point where they cause uproar and those individuals to bunch up into a group fighting the company).
  - sillysaurusx 5y ago
    This is mistaken. Companies need good employees, and particularly skilled developers. If you're a skilled developer, I urge you to exercise your negotiation power. You have much more than you think. The problem is, most people aren't willing to walk from job offers. Walk. There are more.
    - Cookingboy 5y ago
      > and particularly skilled developers. skilled developers are much more common than people think. We get the impression of rarity precisely because we limit the search pool to local areas where very often many top companies are competing for the same talent pool. But at the end of the day there are a ton of super smart developers in EU, China, India, Japan, South America or even lower to mid COL areas in the U.S. who are more than happy to take 50% of Silicon Valley pay and just do as well of a job. At the very end of the day vast majority of software engineering is far from rocket science, and you don't need someone who can re-invent MapReduce out of thin air just to refactor that clusterfuck of Redux code.
      - joelbluminator 5y ago
        There's not much need to outsource as long as companies are swimming in cheap money. For most U.S companies dev money is barely an issue and in Europe they mostly don't earn that much to begin with. If this bubble bursts then yeah painful changes will likely come.
      - laszlojamf 5y ago
- mytailorisrich 5y ago
  How much employers may save is not really relevant. What's relevant is what employees want and are willing to accept. If people prefer remote work and that also saves them time and money then they will probably be willing to accept a lower salary than they will for the same job on-site. IMHO that's the logic of companies that are suggesting pay cuts for employees that won't come back to the office.
- kube-system 5y ago
  Wages are more determined by supply/demand of labor and less so by the value generated. You’ll make comparatively less working remotely because the pool of workers willing to work remote are higher in supply. Office jobs will be forced to offer higher wages because their supply of candidates has shrunk.
hiddencache 5y ago
Google is already looking at this... https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2021/08/11/remote-workers-google-jeopardy-pay-cuts-up-25/5556463001/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2021/08/11/remo...
oblio 5y ago
It's started already: https://www.reuters.com/world/the-great-reboot/pay-cut-google-employees-who-work-home-could-lose-money-2021-08-10/ https://www.reuters.com/world/the-great-reboot/pay-cut-googl...
peakaboo 5y ago
That's a proper slave mentality right there. I suggest you instead think like this "what will I do to continue working remotely? Which company will I pick?".
- kube-system 5y ago
  “More pay” and “less pay” are relative. Once things equalize, jobs that require people to commute will have to pay more. Just like jobs that required you to be on a plane every week paid more in 2018.
- nextlevelwizard 5y ago
  And what if the only remote working option is to get paid less? Is that still "slave mentality"?
  - peakaboo 5y ago
    Getting payed less is an idiotic thing. You use LESS resources working remotely. I suggest you use that statement as a screener for finding companies worth your time.
    - nextlevelwizard 5y ago
      How you figure that you are using less resources? Now people need to keep more taps on you/your work. The building is already built and furniture bought, there are no extra costs those have already been absorbed. Now they need to provide you with extra hardware, laptop, monitor, keyboard, chair, maybe even adjustable standing desk. On top of the fact that most people are less productive working from home. Everyone here seems to think that they are the work from home king who does 10x work when not at the office citing distractions (as if people aren't IM-ing you just as often), lack of commute (this doesn't actually count to your work hours anyway), less breaks (expect just like how you didn't remember what you forgot, you only remember the times when you worked whole day in the flow and didn't take breaks and forget the days when you mostly you browsed HackerNews and took that 45 minute coffee break and picked up your kid from the school and still quit at the normal office time)
vnorilo 5y ago
It certainly looks like companies are desperate to hire qualified people and the dev job market is pretty hot right now. That should certainly give devs some leverage.

BrissyCoder 5y ago

I don't get your reasoning on why you expect that people will have to take a pay cut for working remotely. Would have thought it would be the opposite. Office space, hardware and energy cost a bit.

willio58 5y ago
This will only happen at companies that required people to live in extremely expensive areas like silicone valley. I’m not in that situation, but I’d quit immediately and go somewhere else. For example Google is doing this, there is no reason Google needs to save money on these developers. None at all.
hiddencache 5y ago
Managers cite efficiency losses in terms of communication, team building, training new staff, and idea generation in general. Not my arguments, just what I've seen written...
- Spare_account 5y ago
  The reasons you've cited ought to be reasons for an employer to require office attendance. If employees are less efficient when working from home, then they shouldn't be offered full-time wfh. As I understand it, the rationale behind offering pay-cuts to full time wfh employees is that the pay cut is relative to the employee's lower cost of living. The employer sees an opportunity to avoid including the cost-of-living salary-uplift that is required to attract people to San Francisco etc.
code_duck 5y ago
It sounded unfair and summer opportunistic to me at first too, since like you say, employers could be saving a lot of money by having you use your house as an office. The rationale that Google is citing is that they pay based on location. They say remote workers will make the same as office workers in the same city, which sounds reasonable.
oblio 5y ago
Ah, that's easy. The negotiating power of a company, which is practically a group of people, is much higher than that of employees, which are just 1 person. A big company loses what? 0.00001% of its revenue if it doesn't hire the right person for a specific position? An employee loses 100% of their revenue if they don't get hired or get fired. So companies can pretty much do what they want (up to a point where they cause uproar and those individuals to bunch up into a group fighting the company).
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  This is mistaken. Companies need good employees, and particularly skilled developers. If you're a skilled developer, I urge you to exercise your negotiation power. You have much more than you think. The problem is, most people aren't willing to walk from job offers. Walk. There are more.
  - Cookingboy 5y ago
    > and particularly skilled developers. skilled developers are much more common than people think. We get the impression of rarity precisely because we limit the search pool to local areas where very often many top companies are competing for the same talent pool. But at the end of the day there are a ton of super smart developers in EU, China, India, Japan, South America or even lower to mid COL areas in the U.S. who are more than happy to take 50% of Silicon Valley pay and just do as well of a job. At the very end of the day vast majority of software engineering is far from rocket science, and you don't need someone who can re-invent MapReduce out of thin air just to refactor that clusterfuck of Redux code.
    - joelbluminator 5y ago
      There's not much need to outsource as long as companies are swimming in cheap money. For most U.S companies dev money is barely an issue and in Europe they mostly don't earn that much to begin with. If this bubble bursts then yeah painful changes will likely come.
    - laszlojamf 5y ago
mytailorisrich 5y ago
How much employers may save is not really relevant. What's relevant is what employees want and are willing to accept. If people prefer remote work and that also saves them time and money then they will probably be willing to accept a lower salary than they will for the same job on-site. IMHO that's the logic of companies that are suggesting pay cuts for employees that won't come back to the office.
kube-system 5y ago
Wages are more determined by supply/demand of labor and less so by the value generated. You’ll make comparatively less working remotely because the pool of workers willing to work remote are higher in supply. Office jobs will be forced to offer higher wages because their supply of candidates has shrunk.

hiddencache 5y ago

Google is already looking at this... https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2021/08/11/remote-workers-google-jeopardy-pay-cuts-up-25/5556463001/ https://eu.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2021/08/11/remo...

oblio 5y ago

It's started already: https://www.reuters.com/world/the-great-reboot/pay-cut-google-employees-who-work-home-could-lose-money-2021-08-10/ https://www.reuters.com/world/the-great-reboot/pay-cut-googl...

peakaboo 5y ago

That's a proper slave mentality right there. I suggest you instead think like this "what will I do to continue working remotely? Which company will I pick?".

kube-system 5y ago
“More pay” and “less pay” are relative. Once things equalize, jobs that require people to commute will have to pay more. Just like jobs that required you to be on a plane every week paid more in 2018.
nextlevelwizard 5y ago
And what if the only remote working option is to get paid less? Is that still "slave mentality"?
- peakaboo 5y ago
  Getting payed less is an idiotic thing. You use LESS resources working remotely. I suggest you use that statement as a screener for finding companies worth your time.
  - nextlevelwizard 5y ago
    How you figure that you are using less resources? Now people need to keep more taps on you/your work. The building is already built and furniture bought, there are no extra costs those have already been absorbed. Now they need to provide you with extra hardware, laptop, monitor, keyboard, chair, maybe even adjustable standing desk. On top of the fact that most people are less productive working from home. Everyone here seems to think that they are the work from home king who does 10x work when not at the office citing distractions (as if people aren't IM-ing you just as often), lack of commute (this doesn't actually count to your work hours anyway), less breaks (expect just like how you didn't remember what you forgot, you only remember the times when you worked whole day in the flow and didn't take breaks and forget the days when you mostly you browsed HackerNews and took that 45 minute coffee break and picked up your kid from the school and still quit at the normal office time)

vnorilo 5y ago

It certainly looks like companies are desperate to hire qualified people and the dev job market is pretty hot right now. That should certainly give devs some leverage.