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    Working from Home

    Facebook are planning to cut your wages if you’re not working in the Bay Area

    will they also pay to rent a workspace in your home?

    https://twitter.com/aidanskinner/status/1263534441462288384?s=21

    #2
    I think this is unfairly maligning them for approaching what is a very-fast moving shift in the work place.

    Over the past year I have been considering a move to another area of the US (so has a friend in Palo Alto). We are both well aware that such a move would result in lower compensation based on cost-of-living, just like London based jobs in the UK.

    Everyone would love NYC / Palo Alto wages in Florida, Texas on wherever. It is immediately tax efficient and suddenly you get a huge jump in standard of living. Your average facebook engineer could jump to a top 1% earner or higher simply by moving from the Bay Area.

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      #3
      But Facebook are already very profitable.

      why is it a problem that their engineers could be wealthy. I’m sure it doesn’t bother you that people in finance are paid ridiculous sums.

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        #4
        Originally posted by Nefertiti2 View Post
        But Facebook are already very profitable.
        Not necessarily in defense of Facebook, but you know that publicly traded companies have a fiduciary duty to maximize profit for their shareholders, right? So if they have an opportunity to cut costs, they pretty much have to. So 'very profitable' sounds great, but 'more profitable' is the goal.

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          #5
          Pedantic here but the fiduciary duty is to promote value. Maximising profit may not promote value - think Amazon and lots of other growth companies.

          I don't know how nef read dlgh's post as finance people deserve big money but engineers don't.

          A friend's partner earns an outsized package as she is attached to the New York office for reporting reasons yet is based in Dublin.

          Compensation packages are based on the demand in the local market. If local becomes regional then the package will change. It will be a fun ride and I'm sure lots of HR analytical packages will be sold on the back of this.

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            #6
            Originally posted by Nefertiti2 View Post
            But Facebook are already very profitable.

            why is it a problem that their engineers could be wealthy. I’m sure it doesn’t bother you that people in finance are paid ridiculous sums.
            If you see people leave NYC & San Francisco on their current wages it will cause a lot of problems across the Country. It could be beneficial, it could be disastrous, it will almost certainly be hostile (see Texans getting priced out of Texas as Cali money has rolled in).

            Would it be correct to basically rapidly gentrify large parts of the Country? It hasn't worked all that great in Jackson or any of the other West Coast Ski resorts where extreme wealth has forced out residents.

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              #7
              Originally posted by Ek weet nie View Post
              Pedantic here but the fiduciary duty is to promote value. Maximising profit may not promote value - think Amazon and lots of other growth companies.

              I don't know how nef read dlgh's post as finance people deserve big money but engineers don't.
              Because I work in Finance is why.

              Which is why you would think that me pointing out if I move out of the area I would accept a pay cut in the US might have already dealt with that, but ?\_(ツ)_/?

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                #8
                My company's founder, who was previously opposed to WFH in general as a concept, has been a convert during the quarantine and we're going to close the two small WeWork offices we had in SF and Seattle and everybody in those locations will be remote for the foreseeable future. We'll have to see what my wife's work does, having all four of us at home every day in our tiny California bungalow seems iffy (although I'm sure having said that that many people have made it work with less space).

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                  #9
                  I am relatively confident your WeWork won't exist at the end of this. $56 billion to zero in 12 months is rather impressive.

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                    #10
                    Originally posted by scratchmonkey View Post
                    having all four of us at home every day in our tiny California bungalow seems iffy (although I'm sure having said that that many people have made it work with less space).
                    I hear you. My apartment has only one room that is halfway suitable for working. I am sitting at the dinner table. My wife is sitting on the couch. If one of us has a video call, the other can't really concentrate. If both of us have a video call, both of us are in 1.5 meeting simultaneously. Not very productive.

                    And still, we're the lucky ones whose job is relatively painless to do from home. I do find myself having even less than unsual patience with twats who want to have a quick video chat instead of taking the time to accurately write out their thoughts in an email.

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                      #11
                      WeWork not being around sometime soon is probably a given, yeah. I do have one piece of mail coming to that location, so I hope they're around for another month or so (I'm guessing I may be able to just pick it up from the post office otherwise).

                      And Wouter, yes, it's a pain, both of our WFH setups are in the living room, about 10 feet apart and there's a fair bit of bleed-over on video calls that happen at the same time. I'd like to get one of us set up with a desk in our bedroom; I've been waffling on upgrading our wifi setup while the working situation has been up in the air (and it may be somewhat resolved if her work actually wants her to come back in).

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                        #12
                        Originally posted by Wouter D View Post

                        I do find myself having even less than unsual patience with twats who want to have a quick video chat instead of taking the time to accurately write out their thoughts in an email.
                        I may have to forward this to my project leader.

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                          #13
                          A relative's company has, over the past few years (at least until March) been steadily clamping down on working from home, and forcing employees to be physically on site more and more over time. It's software based, so there's really no need for anyone to come in very often - I think my relative's gone from being required to spend one day a fortnight to 3 a week, which has also been more of a problem as they have twice as many employees as desks, so he winds up deskless one day a week. We will see if this experience will change their attitude again.

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                            #14
                            That Facebook thing is bullshit. They’re just giving people a pay cut because they think most of them will have to accept it in this economy and/or they want more people on site to retroactively justify how much money they’ve blown on office space. If they really needed those people to return to the office, they’d just tell them they have to come back.

                            The business about “cost of living” is an obfuscation. The company is trying to maximize earnings any way it can and it’s not like the shareholders don’t factor in employees’ cost of living when deciding if Facebook has a good E/P ratio or whatever.

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                              #15
                              As this lockdown continues, I'm finding more and more that I'm losing interest in work. I think the reasons are two-fold:
                              1. There are a few people at the company who I'm finding extremely irritating. Unfortunately one of them is my boss. Somehow it was easier to ignore the irritation when I was actually at work than it has been working from home, maybe because they didn't feel compelled to fill my life with bullshit then.
                              2. There's been no new data generated for 2 months, so the project's essentially on hold and there's simply nothing new to engage with. This part at least will change soon, as some people are now going back in to the lab.

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                                #16
                                Ah man, that sucks. I feel for you. I hope it gets better.

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                                  #17
                                  I've considered moving to Nashville, to be closer to my mom. Even had a conversation with my boss about it and he thought it would be a good idea because the cost of living is lower (there was no mention of a pay cut). In the end, although Nashville is not a bad place, it's still in a red state and I just don't think I could live there.

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                                    #18
                                    Since when did my cost of living have a material effect on my employers profits? If I can do the work, I can do the work and the value of that work doesn't change.

                                    If a company, lets say Facebook, shifts its office locations to lower rental costs, it a) isn't passing that on to the customers and b) is considered to be smart for cutting its costs for delivering the same service. Yet if an employee does it, apparently it is fine to punish them for it.

                                    I also assume that salaries will go up as rental / living costs go up? Aha aha aha ha.

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                                      #19
                                      Exactly, nailed.

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                                        #20
                                        Originally posted by Snake Plissken View Post
                                        Since when did my cost of living have a material effect on my employers profits? If I can do the work, I can do the work and the value of that work doesn't change.

                                        If a company, lets say Facebook, shifts its office locations to lower rental costs, it a) isn't passing that on to the customers and b) is considered to be smart for cutting its costs for delivering the same service. Yet if an employee does it, apparently it is fine to punish them for it.

                                        I also assume that salaries will go up as rental / living costs go up? Aha aha aha ha.
                                        Ah but they have a fiduciary duty to fuck their employees apparently.

                                        Though clearly manufacturing companies have for a long time lived by this principle, through moving their production to places where it's cheaper and they can use sweatshops. It follows the same logic to an extent.

                                        Any company that cuts salary because their employee lives in a slightly cheaper place is fucked up. Why not take this to the logical conclusion and tell people who commute an hour because that's all they can afford that they have to have a salary cut too?

                                        (Happy to say that all of my employers don;t pay me less because I live in Romania)

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                                          #21
                                          I'm mostly with everyone else on this: if you're paid by your value to the company, your value to the company doesn't change depending on where you work. In fact, if you aren't taking up hyper-expensive office space in the Bay Area, your value to the company has increased. It seems broadly ridiculous.

                                          On the other hand, there always was "London weighting" in salaries in Britain; and the same logic applies to the Bay Area. You need to offer higher salaries to persuade people to move somewhere where the living costs are comically high. So, I can see the logic...

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                                            #22
                                            Is “London weighting” still a thing?

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                                              #23
                                              Originally posted by Snake Plissken View Post
                                              Since when did my cost of living have a material effect on my employers profits? If I can do the work, I can do the work and the value of that work doesn't change.
                                              Any 'cost of doing business' has a material effect on your employer's profits. It's why they set up factories in places with low land costs, low taxes and low wages instead of just outside New York City.

                                              If a company, lets say Facebook, shifts its office locations to lower rental costs, it a) isn't passing that on to the customers and b) is considered to be smart for cutting its costs for delivering the same service. Yet if an employee does it, apparently it is fine to punish them for it.
                                              Companies aren't obliged to pass on savings to customers. They're obliged to responsibly maximize profits for their shareholders. I know that sounds loathsome, but that's their role.

                                              I also assume that salaries will go up as rental / living costs go up? Aha aha aha ha.
                                              Well, usually, yeah. They're called raises, but they're usually just cost of living increases. And no, not everybody everywhere always, but typically.

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                                                #24
                                                Originally posted by San Bernardhinault View Post
                                                I'm mostly with everyone else on this: if you're paid by your value to the company, your value to the company doesn't change depending on where you work.
                                                You're being a bit fuzzy here. You're paid by your value to your company, but that's not inelastic. Your value is factored many ways. But a guy who moves boxes from point A to point B in Palo Alto needs to be paid more than a guy who does the same job in Springhill, Tennessee. His ability to move boxes is not the issue. It's all of the fringe that puts that man in that place on that day.

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                                                  #25
                                                  Originally posted by ad hoc View Post
                                                  Ah but they have a fiduciary duty to fuck their employees apparently.
                                                  Paying your employee the market rate on a given day is not fucking them. Rolling back wages to suit circumstance might seem like fucking them, but you're probably not materially disadvantaging them, so you're not in fact fucking them at all. It sure does look like it, I'll give you that.

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