Employees reveal Google has cut the pay of WFH staff

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m federal government and we decrease pay based on where you live remotely. Except I think you can’t make more than where your work is located. Like we get the DC pay scale and you can’t be paid the nyc scale even if you’re working in nyc because we don’t need you to be in nyc.

This is kind of the opposite of how it works. There is a base salary for your work. Then the government increases pay based on cost of living where your work is located. If it's an office in DC, you get DC locality pay on top of the "base." If you go remote to a lower cost area, then you get whatever the locality pay is for that area because that's your new work location. E.g. Atlanta gets a slightly smaller COL increase than DC, and rural northern PA gets just the base.

You are right that you can't opt to get higher pay than where your office is located, because that would be a net loss to the government of having you work remotely.

Honestly, none of this seems remotely unfair to me.

It does to me. If we apply locality pay, I think we should also pay single people less. After all, they don’t have a family to support. Or what about people who have a working spouse?

I think an employer should pay a salary commensurate with the job and job market - not the lifestyle of the employee.

So if I can outsource most of my functions to another country and pay 75% less, should I also give my US staff a 75% pay cut?

DP. Sweet pea, you are trying to operate way above your pay grade. Maybe take an intro to economics course.

Cool.

Wanna answer the question, or just want to insult?

If your company would still need some US-based employees, then you will need to pay a salary that will attract the necessary employees, even if it more than you would need to pay similar employees in another country. If you want to outsource the rest, that is your choice.

For those US-based employees, if you need them near your physical office in a high COL area, then you need to pay huge local rate for that job. If the job can be done remotely, you can cut costs by employing people from lower COL areas. This is pretty basic management.

I am an attorney, and have been amazed at the shortsightedness of our legal assistants and other support staff clamoring to work from home full-time. They seem to have zero appreciation that if they demonstrate the job can be done just as efficiently fully remotely, there is no reason for us to pay DC wages for local legal assistants when we can hire people in the Midwest for a fraction of the cost.

Because companies are inefficient and everyone knows this. Technically anyone who works on a computer could have their job replaced via outsourcing. Including your job. But the reality is that it doesn’t happen. There are a variety of challenges in outsourcing work - the language barrier, time zone, culture, expense of one of these outsource workers traveling the globe to reach the home office etc.

Technically most office workers just demonstrated for two years that their job could be done remotely. Why don’t you try to save your company some money and hire legal assistants in India?

No, what the pandemic has demonstrated for many employers is that people can work well enough remotely in a crisis, but it often comes at some significant costs, especially if you are responsible for planning beyond the immediate moment. Now employers are trying to balance employees’ understandable interest in working from home with the employers’ interest in recapturing what was lost during WFH.

I'm not disputing what you say here. I think it is likely true. I'm wondering whether you can elaborate though? What is missing is employers clearly articulating what was "lost." I myself am currently part of management issuing "hybrid" policies that require less onsite work than remote, and am still getting resistance. It is true that I have not been able to clearly articulate what was "lost". Can you?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

So if I can outsource most of my functions to another country and pay 75% less, should I also give my US staff a 75% pay cut?

Why wouldn't you? Or just get rid of them entirely and outsource everything. If you could achieve the same result for a lower price, you should do that. And a public company is legally obligated to do this if it is in the best interest of the shareholders.

I'll never understand the love of working at home on this forum. People are just demonstrating the ease with which their jobs can be outsourced. I worked at home for two years out of necessity and hated it. I like having work-life separation, and I'm a shy introvert who benefits from seeing actual people in person at work. I also made the choice to live downtown within walking distance of my job, so working at home cost me real money (lights, heat, etc., plus dedicating some of my apartment space to my employer without being paid for it.

If working at home works for you, that's great, but there are many of us who hated it. As soon as the pandemic was more-or-less over (February), I left that job and took an in-person job. It was one of my better decisions.

They really can’t be. The jobs that can be outsourced are low skill jobs that don’t require fluent English and require very little training. Think about it in simplistic terms. Let’s say you decide to save $50k and outsource someone who works for you. How would you go about doing this? What about the time difference? How will you train this person? What about cultural differences? How will you find this outsourced person to begin with? What about differences in legal protections?

Do you enjoy dealing with call centers in India? Think about the experience when you call a US company and are routed to someone in India who doesn’t know how to spell the name Thomas and can’t understand your problem. It’s frustrating. Do you want to have someone like this working for you?

I get that you dislike remote work and that it was a rough change for you. But this notion that most US office workers can now be easily outsourced is just not true. Salaries for fluent English speakers overseas isn’t even that much cheaper, especially when you have to factor in additional expenses for hiring across the globe.

[Anonymous]

The PP comparing Boston to Boise hasn’t been to Boise lately. It’s not cheap anymore

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m federal government and we decrease pay based on where you live remotely. Except I think you can’t make more than where your work is located. Like we get the DC pay scale and you can’t be paid the nyc scale even if you’re working in nyc because we don’t need you to be in nyc.

This is kind of the opposite of how it works. There is a base salary for your work. Then the government increases pay based on cost of living where your work is located. If it's an office in DC, you get DC locality pay on top of the "base." If you go remote to a lower cost area, then you get whatever the locality pay is for that area because that's your new work location. E.g. Atlanta gets a slightly smaller COL increase than DC, and rural northern PA gets just the base.

You are right that you can't opt to get higher pay than where your office is located, because that would be a net loss to the government of having you work remotely.

Honestly, none of this seems remotely unfair to me.

It does to me. If we apply locality pay, I think we should also pay single people less. After all, they don’t have a family to support. Or what about people who have a working spouse?

I think an employer should pay a salary commensurate with the job and job market - not the lifestyle of the employee.

So if I can outsource most of my functions to another country and pay 75% less, should I also give my US staff a 75% pay cut?

DP. Sweet pea, you are trying to operate way above your pay grade. Maybe take an intro to economics course.

Cool.

Wanna answer the question, or just want to insult?

If your company would still need some US-based employees, then you will need to pay a salary that will attract the necessary employees, even if it more than you would need to pay similar employees in another country. If you want to outsource the rest, that is your choice.

For those US-based employees, if you need them near your physical office in a high COL area, then you need to pay huge local rate for that job. If the job can be done remotely, you can cut costs by employing people from lower COL areas. This is pretty basic management.

I am an attorney, and have been amazed at the shortsightedness of our legal assistants and other support staff clamoring to work from home full-time. They seem to have zero appreciation that if they demonstrate the job can be done just as efficiently fully remotely, there is no reason for us to pay DC wages for local legal assistants when we can hire people in the Midwest for a fraction of the cost.

Because companies are inefficient and everyone knows this. Technically anyone who works on a computer could have their job replaced via outsourcing. Including your job. But the reality is that it doesn’t happen. There are a variety of challenges in outsourcing work - the language barrier, time zone, culture, expense of one of these outsource workers traveling the globe to reach the home office etc.

Technically most office workers just demonstrated for two years that their job could be done remotely. Why don’t you try to save your company some money and hire legal assistants in India?

No, what the pandemic has demonstrated for many employers is that people can work well enough remotely in a crisis, but it often comes at some significant costs, especially if you are responsible for planning beyond the immediate moment. Now employers are trying to balance employees’ understandable interest in working from home with the employers’ interest in recapturing what was lost during WFH.

I'm not disputing what you say here. I think it is likely true. I'm wondering whether you can elaborate though? What is missing is employers clearly articulating what was "lost." I myself am currently part of management issuing "hybrid" policies that require less onsite work than remote, and am still getting resistance. It is true that I have not been able to clearly articulate what was "lost". Can you?

Agree with this. I’d love to hear exactly what has been lost by workers working remotely. I simply think people have a hard time with change. There’s no difference in me working behind a computer from an office building versus an apartment building. I don’t think the anti-remote work group has compelling enough reasons as to why workers should be required to work from an office.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don’t think this practice can last for remote jobs. My last employer tried to cut my pay when I moved and I just quit and got a job with another company that wasn’t doing that. Why would I accept less pay just because I moved to a lower COL area? I’m doing the same job. It was particularly dumb on their part because they were already struggling to fill similar positions. Google may get away with it because they are paying above market, but even they are likely to find some of their competitors scooping up remote workers by offering to pay them SV wages in Idaho.

We are in a period of transition right now that won’t last. Once WFH policies shake out and get fully established, this won’t be controversial. If you live in Montana and are applying for remote work jobs in big tech, you will know your salary will be based in part of your location. If you work in the office in NYC but are considering moving back home to Cleveland, you will know as part of the calculus that it will come with an X% pay decrease due to locality. This is already a fact of life for many people who have coped just fine. The people who are upset now are the ones who thought they found a way to game the system and are upset they market caught up with them.

I don’t see how employers will be able to sustain that. There are already a bunch of tech companies that will pay remote workers in Boise at the same scale as SV. How is Google going to compete for those people while demanding they get paid 20% less just because COL is lower? The competitive pressure will ultimately be too much and they will have to cave.

Which employers?

Imaginary ones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m federal government and we decrease pay based on where you live remotely. Except I think you can’t make more than where your work is located. Like we get the DC pay scale and you can’t be paid the nyc scale even if you’re working in nyc because we don’t need you to be in nyc.

This is kind of the opposite of how it works. There is a base salary for your work. Then the government increases pay based on cost of living where your work is located. If it's an office in DC, you get DC locality pay on top of the "base." If you go remote to a lower cost area, then you get whatever the locality pay is for that area because that's your new work location. E.g. Atlanta gets a slightly smaller COL increase than DC, and rural northern PA gets just the base.

You are right that you can't opt to get higher pay than where your office is located, because that would be a net loss to the government of having you work remotely.

Honestly, none of this seems remotely unfair to me.

It does to me. If we apply locality pay, I think we should also pay single people less. After all, they don’t have a family to support. Or what about people who have a working spouse?

I think an employer should pay a salary commensurate with the job and job market - not the lifestyle of the employee.

So if I can outsource most of my functions to another country and pay 75% less, should I also give my US staff a 75% pay cut?

DP. Sweet pea, you are trying to operate way above your pay grade. Maybe take an intro to economics course.

Cool.

Wanna answer the question, or just want to insult?

If your company would still need some US-based employees, then you will need to pay a salary that will attract the necessary employees, even if it more than you would need to pay similar employees in another country. If you want to outsource the rest, that is your choice.

For those US-based employees, if you need them near your physical office in a high COL area, then you need to pay huge local rate for that job. If the job can be done remotely, you can cut costs by employing people from lower COL areas. This is pretty basic management.

I am an attorney, and have been amazed at the shortsightedness of our legal assistants and other support staff clamoring to work from home full-time. They seem to have zero appreciation that if they demonstrate the job can be done just as efficiently fully remotely, there is no reason for us to pay DC wages for local legal assistants when we can hire people in the Midwest for a fraction of the cost.

Hiring a legal assistant in the Midwest would likely NOT be a fraction of the cost. DC has relatively low wages considering the COL. You may save a bit, but it would likely be offset in any expenses related to the midwest employee occasionally visiting the home office for training, conferences etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

So if I can outsource most of my functions to another country and pay 75% less, should I also give my US staff a 75% pay cut?

Why wouldn't you? Or just get rid of them entirely and outsource everything. If you could achieve the same result for a lower price, you should do that. And a public company is legally obligated to do this if it is in the best interest of the shareholders.

I'll never understand the love of working at home on this forum. People are just demonstrating the ease with which their jobs can be outsourced. I worked at home for two years out of necessity and hated it. I like having work-life separation, and I'm a shy introvert who benefits from seeing actual people in person at work. I also made the choice to live downtown within walking distance of my job, so working at home cost me real money (lights, heat, etc., plus dedicating some of my apartment space to my employer without being paid for it.

If working at home works for you, that's great, but there are many of us who hated it. As soon as the pandemic was more-or-less over (February), I left that job and took an in-person job. It was one of my better decisions.

They really can’t be. The jobs that can be outsourced are low skill jobs that don’t require fluent English and require very little training. Think about it in simplistic terms. Let’s say you decide to save $50k and outsource someone who works for you. How would you go about doing this? What about the time difference? How will you train this person? What about cultural differences? How will you find this outsourced person to begin with? What about differences in legal protections?

Do you enjoy dealing with call centers in India? Think about the experience when you call a US company and are routed to someone in India who doesn’t know how to spell the name Thomas and can’t understand your problem. It’s frustrating. Do you want to have someone like this working for you?

I get that you dislike remote work and that it was a rough change for you. But this notion that most US office workers can now be easily outsourced is just not true. Salaries for fluent English speakers overseas isn’t even that much cheaper, especially when you have to factor in additional expenses for hiring across the globe.

What if by "outsource" we mean fire existing DC workers and hire workers in Pittsburgh and Cleveland and Charleston? Looking at OPM pay tables, looks like I can save roughly 8-10% per employee. This would take off the table many of the time zone/cultural difference issues you raise and starts to look a lot more appealing, notwithstanding the one time cost of managing turnover...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m federal government and we decrease pay based on where you live remotely. Except I think you can’t make more than where your work is located. Like we get the DC pay scale and you can’t be paid the nyc scale even if you’re working in nyc because we don’t need you to be in nyc.

This is kind of the opposite of how it works. There is a base salary for your work. Then the government increases pay based on cost of living where your work is located. If it's an office in DC, you get DC locality pay on top of the "base." If you go remote to a lower cost area, then you get whatever the locality pay is for that area because that's your new work location. E.g. Atlanta gets a slightly smaller COL increase than DC, and rural northern PA gets just the base.

You are right that you can't opt to get higher pay than where your office is located, because that would be a net loss to the government of having you work remotely.

Honestly, none of this seems remotely unfair to me.

It does to me. If we apply locality pay, I think we should also pay single people less. After all, they don’t have a family to support. Or what about people who have a working spouse?

I think an employer should pay a salary commensurate with the job and job market - not the lifestyle of the employee.

So if I can outsource most of my functions to another country and pay 75% less, should I also give my US staff a 75% pay cut?

DP. Sweet pea, you are trying to operate way above your pay grade. Maybe take an intro to economics course.

Cool.

Wanna answer the question, or just want to insult?

If your company would still need some US-based employees, then you will need to pay a salary that will attract the necessary employees, even if it more than you would need to pay similar employees in another country. If you want to outsource the rest, that is your choice.

For those US-based employees, if you need them near your physical office in a high COL area, then you need to pay huge local rate for that job. If the job can be done remotely, you can cut costs by employing people from lower COL areas. This is pretty basic management.

I am an attorney, and have been amazed at the shortsightedness of our legal assistants and other support staff clamoring to work from home full-time. They seem to have zero appreciation that if they demonstrate the job can be done just as efficiently fully remotely, there is no reason for us to pay DC wages for local legal assistants when we can hire people in the Midwest for a fraction of the cost.

Because companies are inefficient and everyone knows this. Technically anyone who works on a computer could have their job replaced via outsourcing. Including your job. But the reality is that it doesn’t happen. There are a variety of challenges in outsourcing work - the language barrier, time zone, culture, expense of one of these outsource workers traveling the globe to reach the home office etc.

Technically most office workers just demonstrated for two years that their job could be done remotely. Why don’t you try to save your company some money and hire legal assistants in India?

No, what the pandemic has demonstrated for many employers is that people can work well enough remotely in a crisis, but it often comes at some significant costs, especially if you are responsible for planning beyond the immediate moment. Now employers are trying to balance employees’ understandable interest in working from home with the employers’ interest in recapturing what was lost during WFH.

I'm not disputing what you say here. I think it is likely true. I'm wondering whether you can elaborate though? What is missing is employers clearly articulating what was "lost." I myself am currently part of management issuing "hybrid" policies that require less onsite work than remote, and am still getting resistance. It is true that I have not been able to clearly articulate what was "lost". Can you?

Agree with this. I’d love to hear exactly what has been lost by workers working remotely. I simply think people have a hard time with change. There’s no difference in me working behind a computer from an office building versus an apartment building. I don’t think the anti-remote work group has compelling enough reasons as to why workers should be required to work from an office.

PP you are quoting and just want to be clear this is not what I was saying. I DO think something is lost. And I do think that something roughly around a day a week onsite would benefit an organization. I just can't articulate it. I tend to think that we have never really seen the "middle ground" hybrid approach on a large scale. We have seen fully/primarily onsite and we have seen fully offsite. I think that we should try the middle ground hybrid for a while so we can fully evaluate all of the options...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The PP comparing Boston to Boise hasn’t been to Boise lately. It’s not cheap anymore

According to the OPM locality rates, there is a 10.3% difference in COL between Boston and Boise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m federal government and we decrease pay based on where you live remotely. Except I think you can’t make more than where your work is located. Like we get the DC pay scale and you can’t be paid the nyc scale even if you’re working in nyc because we don’t need you to be in nyc.

This is kind of the opposite of how it works. There is a base salary for your work. Then the government increases pay based on cost of living where your work is located. If it's an office in DC, you get DC locality pay on top of the "base." If you go remote to a lower cost area, then you get whatever the locality pay is for that area because that's your new work location. E.g. Atlanta gets a slightly smaller COL increase than DC, and rural northern PA gets just the base.

You are right that you can't opt to get higher pay than where your office is located, because that would be a net loss to the government of having you work remotely.

Honestly, none of this seems remotely unfair to me.

It does to me. If we apply locality pay, I think we should also pay single people less. After all, they don’t have a family to support. Or what about people who have a working spouse?

I think an employer should pay a salary commensurate with the job and job market - not the lifestyle of the employee.

So if I can outsource most of my functions to another country and pay 75% less, should I also give my US staff a 75% pay cut?

DP. Sweet pea, you are trying to operate way above your pay grade. Maybe take an intro to economics course.

Cool.

Wanna answer the question, or just want to insult?

If your company would still need some US-based employees, then you will need to pay a salary that will attract the necessary employees, even if it more than you would need to pay similar employees in another country. If you want to outsource the rest, that is your choice.

For those US-based employees, if you need them near your physical office in a high COL area, then you need to pay huge local rate for that job. If the job can be done remotely, you can cut costs by employing people from lower COL areas. This is pretty basic management.

I am an attorney, and have been amazed at the shortsightedness of our legal assistants and other support staff clamoring to work from home full-time. They seem to have zero appreciation that if they demonstrate the job can be done just as efficiently fully remotely, there is no reason for us to pay DC wages for local legal assistants when we can hire people in the Midwest for a fraction of the cost.

Because companies are inefficient and everyone knows this. Technically anyone who works on a computer could have their job replaced via outsourcing. Including your job. But the reality is that it doesn’t happen. There are a variety of challenges in outsourcing work - the language barrier, time zone, culture, expense of one of these outsource workers traveling the globe to reach the home office etc.

Technically most office workers just demonstrated for two years that their job could be done remotely. Why don’t you try to save your company some money and hire legal assistants in India?

No, what the pandemic has demonstrated for many employers is that people can work well enough remotely in a crisis, but it often comes at some significant costs, especially if you are responsible for planning beyond the immediate moment. Now employers are trying to balance employees’ understandable interest in working from home with the employers’ interest in recapturing what was lost during WFH.

I'm not disputing what you say here. I think it is likely true. I'm wondering whether you can elaborate though? What is missing is employers clearly articulating what was "lost." I myself am currently part of management issuing "hybrid" policies that require less onsite work than remote, and am still getting resistance. It is true that I have not been able to clearly articulate what was "lost". Can you?

Here are things that I (and many of my colleagues) feel have been lost:

1. Training and mentoring. Our junior hires from 2019 onward are not where they should be in their professional development. We have tried to train them remotely, but it just isn’t as effective. I’ve done a lot of trainings in-person and virtually, and people just don’t engage the same way in virtual trainings. Far fewer questions and discussions, even in the same presentation. And spontaneous lunches out to get to know each other done happen at all when people work remotely.

2. Productivity and efficiency are down. I work with billable hours, and have compared the current numbers to pre-pandemic. The same kinds of tasks seem to be taking people at least 10% more hours now than they did pre-pandemic. Clients notice this too and don’t want to pay for increased inefficiencies, so we are having to write off more time.

3. At the same time, burn out levels are up, and the level of burn out correlates with how much time people spend working from home rather than in the office. This isn’t just my observation, we have survey data to show it’s the case. Without a clear start and end to the work day, people seem to be having a harder time disengaging from work and relaxing when they have the opportunity.

4. Team building and inter-personal relationships had been negatively impacted significantly. People simply don’t know their co-workers as well, so communications aren’t as effective and people just aren’t as attuned to when someone is overloaded with work or doesn’t seem to quite grasp a project. People with years of experience working together pre-pandemic haven’t been experiencing this as much, but it’s been a significant issues for newer hires at all levels.

5. People who work remotely aren’t getting the same business development opportunities as those who work together in office. If I am putting together a team to host a client relations event, I am thinking about people in my group engage with each other, because I want to bring a team that will engage with each other well and make a good impression not just individually but also as a group. If someone hasn’t spent much time in the office, I can’t evaluate them for this purpose so they are more likely to be left out (and frankly, if I’ve never had a lunch with you to know if you have decent table manners, I am definitely not including you in a client dinner).

This is just off the top of my head. With a little time, I could probably come up with more.

[Anonymous]

If anything, people who work from home should actually get paid more, because it saves the company the cost of providing a workspace. WFH employees have to pay for their own internet and electricity and workspace.

High tech companies are sleazy. Remember when they all worked together to limit the salaries of silicon valley software engineers?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-Tech_Employee_Antitrust_Litigation

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m federal government and we decrease pay based on where you live remotely. Except I think you can’t make more than where your work is located. Like we get the DC pay scale and you can’t be paid the nyc scale even if you’re working in nyc because we don’t need you to be in nyc.

This is kind of the opposite of how it works. There is a base salary for your work. Then the government increases pay based on cost of living where your work is located. If it's an office in DC, you get DC locality pay on top of the "base." If you go remote to a lower cost area, then you get whatever the locality pay is for that area because that's your new work location. E.g. Atlanta gets a slightly smaller COL increase than DC, and rural northern PA gets just the base.

You are right that you can't opt to get higher pay than where your office is located, because that would be a net loss to the government of having you work remotely.

Honestly, none of this seems remotely unfair to me.

It does to me. If we apply locality pay, I think we should also pay single people less. After all, they don’t have a family to support. Or what about people who have a working spouse?

I think an employer should pay a salary commensurate with the job and job market - not the lifestyle of the employee.

So if I can outsource most of my functions to another country and pay 75% less, should I also give my US staff a 75% pay cut?

DP. Sweet pea, you are trying to operate way above your pay grade. Maybe take an intro to economics course.

Cool.

Wanna answer the question, or just want to insult?

If your company would still need some US-based employees, then you will need to pay a salary that will attract the necessary employees, even if it more than you would need to pay similar employees in another country. If you want to outsource the rest, that is your choice.

For those US-based employees, if you need them near your physical office in a high COL area, then you need to pay huge local rate for that job. If the job can be done remotely, you can cut costs by employing people from lower COL areas. This is pretty basic management.

I am an attorney, and have been amazed at the shortsightedness of our legal assistants and other support staff clamoring to work from home full-time. They seem to have zero appreciation that if they demonstrate the job can be done just as efficiently fully remotely, there is no reason for us to pay DC wages for local legal assistants when we can hire people in the Midwest for a fraction of the cost.

Because companies are inefficient and everyone knows this. Technically anyone who works on a computer could have their job replaced via outsourcing. Including your job. But the reality is that it doesn’t happen. There are a variety of challenges in outsourcing work - the language barrier, time zone, culture, expense of one of these outsource workers traveling the globe to reach the home office etc.

Technically most office workers just demonstrated for two years that their job could be done remotely. Why don’t you try to save your company some money and hire legal assistants in India?

No, what the pandemic has demonstrated for many employers is that people can work well enough remotely in a crisis, but it often comes at some significant costs, especially if you are responsible for planning beyond the immediate moment. Now employers are trying to balance employees’ understandable interest in working from home with the employers’ interest in recapturing what was lost during WFH.

I'm not disputing what you say here. I think it is likely true. I'm wondering whether you can elaborate though? What is missing is employers clearly articulating what was "lost." I myself am currently part of management issuing "hybrid" policies that require less onsite work than remote, and am still getting resistance. It is true that I have not been able to clearly articulate what was "lost". Can you?

Here are things that I (and many of my colleagues) feel have been lost:

1. Training and mentoring. Our junior hires from 2019 onward are not where they should be in their professional development. We have tried to train them remotely, but it just isn’t as effective. I’ve done a lot of trainings in-person and virtually, and people just don’t engage the same way in virtual trainings. Far fewer questions and discussions, even in the same presentation. And spontaneous lunches out to get to know each other done happen at all when people work remotely.

2. Productivity and efficiency are down. I work with billable hours, and have compared the current numbers to pre-pandemic. The same kinds of tasks seem to be taking people at least 10% more hours now than they did pre-pandemic. Clients notice this too and don’t want to pay for increased inefficiencies, so we are having to write off more time.

3. At the same time, burn out levels are up, and the level of burn out correlates with how much time people spend working from home rather than in the office. This isn’t just my observation, we have survey data to show it’s the case. Without a clear start and end to the work day, people seem to be having a harder time disengaging from work and relaxing when they have the opportunity.

4. Team building and inter-personal relationships had been negatively impacted significantly. People simply don’t know their co-workers as well, so communications aren’t as effective and people just aren’t as attuned to when someone is overloaded with work or doesn’t seem to quite grasp a project. People with years of experience working together pre-pandemic haven’t been experiencing this as much, but it’s been a significant issues for newer hires at all levels.

5. People who work remotely aren’t getting the same business development opportunities as those who work together in office. If I am putting together a team to host a client relations event, I am thinking about people in my group engage with each other, because I want to bring a team that will engage with each other well and make a good impression not just individually but also as a group. If someone hasn’t spent much time in the office, I can’t evaluate them for this purpose so they are more likely to be left out (and frankly, if I’ve never had a lunch with you to know if you have decent table manners, I am definitely not including you in a client dinner).

This is just off the top of my head. With a little time, I could probably come up with more.

This is an excellent list. I think every single poster who claims 100% WFH for most or all employees is likely not in management and is responsible for only their narrow slice of work. Big picture: dispersed teams and/or 100% telework is going to undermine the effectiveness of our workforce long-term. And we had hybrid before. We were already seeing the downside and drop in productivity pre-pandemic. No one does anything, though, because otherwise you are labeled retrograde and a micromanager. Instead, we’ve just watched the bottom line decline with all of us in the middle management seats either close to retirement, married to high earners, or trust fund holders.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m federal government and we decrease pay based on where you live remotely. Except I think you can’t make more than where your work is located. Like we get the DC pay scale and you can’t be paid the nyc scale even if you’re working in nyc because we don’t need you to be in nyc.

This is kind of the opposite of how it works. There is a base salary for your work. Then the government increases pay based on cost of living where your work is located. If it's an office in DC, you get DC locality pay on top of the "base." If you go remote to a lower cost area, then you get whatever the locality pay is for that area because that's your new work location. E.g. Atlanta gets a slightly smaller COL increase than DC, and rural northern PA gets just the base.

You are right that you can't opt to get higher pay than where your office is located, because that would be a net loss to the government of having you work remotely.

Honestly, none of this seems remotely unfair to me.

It does to me. If we apply locality pay, I think we should also pay single people less. After all, they don’t have a family to support. Or what about people who have a working spouse?

I think an employer should pay a salary commensurate with the job and job market - not the lifestyle of the employee.

So if I can outsource most of my functions to another country and pay 75% less, should I also give my US staff a 75% pay cut?

DP. Sweet pea, you are trying to operate way above your pay grade. Maybe take an intro to economics course.

Cool.

Wanna answer the question, or just want to insult?

If your company would still need some US-based employees, then you will need to pay a salary that will attract the necessary employees, even if it more than you would need to pay similar employees in another country. If you want to outsource the rest, that is your choice.

For those US-based employees, if you need them near your physical office in a high COL area, then you need to pay huge local rate for that job. If the job can be done remotely, you can cut costs by employing people from lower COL areas. This is pretty basic management.

I am an attorney, and have been amazed at the shortsightedness of our legal assistants and other support staff clamoring to work from home full-time. They seem to have zero appreciation that if they demonstrate the job can be done just as efficiently fully remotely, there is no reason for us to pay DC wages for local legal assistants when we can hire people in the Midwest for a fraction of the cost.

Because companies are inefficient and everyone knows this. Technically anyone who works on a computer could have their job replaced via outsourcing. Including your job. But the reality is that it doesn’t happen. There are a variety of challenges in outsourcing work - the language barrier, time zone, culture, expense of one of these outsource workers traveling the globe to reach the home office etc.

Technically most office workers just demonstrated for two years that their job could be done remotely. Why don’t you try to save your company some money and hire legal assistants in India?

No, what the pandemic has demonstrated for many employers is that people can work well enough remotely in a crisis, but it often comes at some significant costs, especially if you are responsible for planning beyond the immediate moment. Now employers are trying to balance employees’ understandable interest in working from home with the employers’ interest in recapturing what was lost during WFH.

I'm not disputing what you say here. I think it is likely true. I'm wondering whether you can elaborate though? What is missing is employers clearly articulating what was "lost." I myself am currently part of management issuing "hybrid" policies that require less onsite work than remote, and am still getting resistance. It is true that I have not been able to clearly articulate what was "lost". Can you?

Here are things that I (and many of my colleagues) feel have been lost:

1. Training and mentoring. Our junior hires from 2019 onward are not where they should be in their professional development. We have tried to train them remotely, but it just isn’t as effective. I’ve done a lot of trainings in-person and virtually, and people just don’t engage the same way in virtual trainings. Far fewer questions and discussions, even in the same presentation. And spontaneous lunches out to get to know each other done happen at all when people work remotely.

2. Productivity and efficiency are down. I work with billable hours, and have compared the current numbers to pre-pandemic. The same kinds of tasks seem to be taking people at least 10% more hours now than they did pre-pandemic. Clients notice this too and don’t want to pay for increased inefficiencies, so we are having to write off more time.

3. At the same time, burn out levels are up, and the level of burn out correlates with how much time people spend working from home rather than in the office. This isn’t just my observation, we have survey data to show it’s the case. Without a clear start and end to the work day, people seem to be having a harder time disengaging from work and relaxing when they have the opportunity.

4. Team building and inter-personal relationships had been negatively impacted significantly. People simply don’t know their co-workers as well, so communications aren’t as effective and people just aren’t as attuned to when someone is overloaded with work or doesn’t seem to quite grasp a project. People with years of experience working together pre-pandemic haven’t been experiencing this as much, but it’s been a significant issues for newer hires at all levels.

5. People who work remotely aren’t getting the same business development opportunities as those who work together in office. If I am putting together a team to host a client relations event, I am thinking about people in my group engage with each other, because I want to bring a team that will engage with each other well and make a good impression not just individually but also as a group. If someone hasn’t spent much time in the office, I can’t evaluate them for this purpose so they are more likely to be left out (and frankly, if I’ve never had a lunch with you to know if you have decent table manners, I am definitely not including you in a client dinner).

This is just off the top of my head. With a little time, I could probably come up with more.

I have several counterpoints to this post. This post feels very …boomerish.
1. Trainings and mentoring
- depends on the job. But even when we were in the office, some new hires would come in late, take long lunches, be texting and on their phones. You can’t really teach professional etiquette, you either adapt and do it or you get laid off.

2. Productivity and efficiency are down.
-This is just false. Many companies have said that they’ve had increased profits and productivity the last two years. Where are you getting this data?

3. burn out levels are up
- time management 101. take time for yourself. Schedule your time more efficiently. Take care of your mental health. Stop working until 9am-9pm. That’s impossible on a daily basis.

4. Team building and inter-personal relationships
-ugh why just why? If I’m getting the job done and on-time, why does this matter? A company isn’t your family. I’m not working to build relationships. That’s what my friends are for. No, Bob, I don’t need to drink a beer with you to hear about how your favorite sports team is doing. Just let me work and do my job so I can spend time with my real family.

5. People who work remotely aren’t getting the same business development opportunities as those who work together in office.
- again, says who? How can you measure this? They need to be in an office to be more professional and have proper business etiquette? Huh? So I need to be in a business to have proper lunch etiquette? Again, this is opinion based, not factual.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m federal government and we decrease pay based on where you live remotely. Except I think you can’t make more than where your work is located. Like we get the DC pay scale and you can’t be paid the nyc scale even if you’re working in nyc because we don’t need you to be in nyc.

This is kind of the opposite of how it works. There is a base salary for your work. Then the government increases pay based on cost of living where your work is located. If it's an office in DC, you get DC locality pay on top of the "base." If you go remote to a lower cost area, then you get whatever the locality pay is for that area because that's your new work location. E.g. Atlanta gets a slightly smaller COL increase than DC, and rural northern PA gets just the base.

You are right that you can't opt to get higher pay than where your office is located, because that would be a net loss to the government of having you work remotely.

Honestly, none of this seems remotely unfair to me.

It does to me. If we apply locality pay, I think we should also pay single people less. After all, they don’t have a family to support. Or what about people who have a working spouse?

I think an employer should pay a salary commensurate with the job and job market - not the lifestyle of the employee.

So if I can outsource most of my functions to another country and pay 75% less, should I also give my US staff a 75% pay cut?

DP. Sweet pea, you are trying to operate way above your pay grade. Maybe take an intro to economics course.

Cool.

Wanna answer the question, or just want to insult?

If your company would still need some US-based employees, then you will need to pay a salary that will attract the necessary employees, even if it more than you would need to pay similar employees in another country. If you want to outsource the rest, that is your choice.

For those US-based employees, if you need them near your physical office in a high COL area, then you need to pay huge local rate for that job. If the job can be done remotely, you can cut costs by employing people from lower COL areas. This is pretty basic management.

I am an attorney, and have been amazed at the shortsightedness of our legal assistants and other support staff clamoring to work from home full-time. They seem to have zero appreciation that if they demonstrate the job can be done just as efficiently fully remotely, there is no reason for us to pay DC wages for local legal assistants when we can hire people in the Midwest for a fraction of the cost.

Because companies are inefficient and everyone knows this. Technically anyone who works on a computer could have their job replaced via outsourcing. Including your job. But the reality is that it doesn’t happen. There are a variety of challenges in outsourcing work - the language barrier, time zone, culture, expense of one of these outsource workers traveling the globe to reach the home office etc.

Technically most office workers just demonstrated for two years that their job could be done remotely. Why don’t you try to save your company some money and hire legal assistants in India?

No, what the pandemic has demonstrated for many employers is that people can work well enough remotely in a crisis, but it often comes at some significant costs, especially if you are responsible for planning beyond the immediate moment. Now employers are trying to balance employees’ understandable interest in working from home with the employers’ interest in recapturing what was lost during WFH.

I'm not disputing what you say here. I think it is likely true. I'm wondering whether you can elaborate though? What is missing is employers clearly articulating what was "lost." I myself am currently part of management issuing "hybrid" policies that require less onsite work than remote, and am still getting resistance. It is true that I have not been able to clearly articulate what was "lost". Can you?

Here are things that I (and many of my colleagues) feel have been lost:

1. Training and mentoring. Our junior hires from 2019 onward are not where they should be in their professional development. We have tried to train them remotely, but it just isn’t as effective. I’ve done a lot of trainings in-person and virtually, and people just don’t engage the same way in virtual trainings. Far fewer questions and discussions, even in the same presentation. And spontaneous lunches out to get to know each other done happen at all when people work remotely.

2. Productivity and efficiency are down. I work with billable hours, and have compared the current numbers to pre-pandemic. The same kinds of tasks seem to be taking people at least 10% more hours now than they did pre-pandemic. Clients notice this too and don’t want to pay for increased inefficiencies, so we are having to write off more time.

3. At the same time, burn out levels are up, and the level of burn out correlates with how much time people spend working from home rather than in the office. This isn’t just my observation, we have survey data to show it’s the case. Without a clear start and end to the work day, people seem to be having a harder time disengaging from work and relaxing when they have the opportunity.

4. Team building and inter-personal relationships had been negatively impacted significantly. People simply don’t know their co-workers as well, so communications aren’t as effective and people just aren’t as attuned to when someone is overloaded with work or doesn’t seem to quite grasp a project. People with years of experience working together pre-pandemic haven’t been experiencing this as much, but it’s been a significant issues for newer hires at all levels.

5. People who work remotely aren’t getting the same business development opportunities as those who work together in office. If I am putting together a team to host a client relations event, I am thinking about people in my group engage with each other, because I want to bring a team that will engage with each other well and make a good impression not just individually but also as a group. If someone hasn’t spent much time in the office, I can’t evaluate them for this purpose so they are more likely to be left out (and frankly, if I’ve never had a lunch with you to know if you have decent table manners, I am definitely not including you in a client dinner).

This is just off the top of my head. With a little time, I could probably come up with more.

This is an excellent list. I think every single poster who claims 100% WFH for most or all employees is likely not in management and is responsible for only their narrow slice of work. Big picture: dispersed teams and/or 100% telework is going to undermine the effectiveness of our workforce long-term. And we had hybrid before. We were already seeing the downside and drop in productivity pre-pandemic. No one does anything, though, because otherwise you are labeled retrograde and a micromanager. Instead, we’ve just watched the bottom line decline with all of us in the middle management seats either close to retirement, married to high earners, or trust fund holders.

It’s showed that middle managers who stand around all day long like Bill Lumbergh in Office Space are useless and no longer needed in todays society.

[Anonymous]

You can easily tell the age range of people who think if you’re not in an office, you’re not really working. Such outdated thinking.