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.
This.
And that’s what your former employer hoped. They were doing you a favor.
They hoped they could have yet another opening they couldn’t fill? I kind of doubt that, but maybe. It’s just so odd to hear all these employers bellyaching about how they can’t hire enough people at the same time they are doing stupid things like cutting pay for people just because they moved. Whatever. If that’s what they want to do, have at it. I’m not playing.
Then they say they can't find workers and need to bring in cheap labor from out of country.
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.
I’m a millennial. Using “boomer” in a professional discussion makes you sound immature.
On #1, training is more than just knowing you should be at your desk during work hours and don’t chew gum while talking to someone else. People are not learning the hard skills they need to do the job effectively and without a lot of handholding.
On #2, I told you where I am getting my data. I am literally looking at hourly billables for my group. My colleagues and people I know in senior management levels are saying the same thing. When a task that should take 3-4 hours is now taking 5-6 hours, that’s a problem. My clients won’t pay for those extra hours, so we end up eating the costs. The record profits of 2020 and early 2021 weren’t due to efficiency, they were largely driven by people not taking PTO, so they worked more hours over the course of the year than they usually would. Now that people are getting back to their usual PTO usage, those record profits are disappearing.
On #3, I cannot control what my team does when they are outside the office, so your response is worthless. All I can tell you is that WFH isn’t really helping employee mental health on average and that impacts the workplace. Why would I continue a practice that is negatively affecting our work?
On #4, when you are working at a high level, having strong working relationships is critical. You don’t have to be my best friend, but people who have solid professional relationships simply produce better work. It matters that we communicate well. It matters that we understand each others’ work styles and comparative strengths. I am not saying no one could even build a strong working relationship while working fully remote, but it takes more time and effort to build it. If I’m picking someone to be my right hand person for a significant event, it’s going to be the person I have the most confidence in. If it takes longer to build that confidence with the remote employee than the in-person employee, the in-person employee will get those good opportunities earlier, and then I will naturally gravitate toward them in the future because they’ve already proven themselves.
On #5, I literally told you that this affects how I choose my team for business development opportunities. It is a literal fact that this is part of how I choose my teams. I am not going to have my first meal with you in front of the senior leadership of a major client. That opportunity will go to someone who has attended some in-person practice group lunches and demonstrated they meet a basic standard of manners.
I realize you don’t like my opinions because they don’t align with what you want to do, but to simply deny that any of this could be true is foolish. Go ahead and be fully remote. Some people at my firm have. I will work with them, but I am not going to contort myself to accommodate their location preferences when I have excellent alternatives sitting just down the hall.
Exactly. Anecdotally WFH types at our company are grunts, and don’t tend to move up in rank.
So companies where they’ve been fully remote in the last 2 years, you’re saying no one has moved up at all?
Even pre-Covid, I’ve worked in companies where remote workers easily got promoted over people who went in 5 days a week.
What exactly are remote workers not bringing that in person folks can? Are you sure it’s not work culture? Because I’m pro-office and your and the person who you quoted comments don’t make much sense in the real world. What you said isn’t reality.
Can you provide specific reasons why the five issues discussed by pp don’t make sense?
DP. Much of them relate to either poor management or hiring the wrong people. None of those directly relate to someone being in an office or not.
Okay, so you can’t respond with specifics.
NP. Because they’re just assertions of a particular person’s experience in a particular environment. I could “rebut” each of them by saying, no, that’s not what my environment is like - but what have we learned from that? That not all workplace cultures are the same, that some thrive with a large number of remote workers while others struggle to maintain their culture.
Possibly industry matters. I’m in IT and it’s been a complete non issue. Other industries may depend more on face-to-face interaction, or tend to employ people who aren’t comfortable with remote interactions.
Also, live instructor led training is a terrible way to learn. You may have fun teaching those courses but people aren’t retaining much from them. The wraps and brownies are nice, though.
Disagree.
Our office opts for in person followed by one on one training for slow learners. Dense online or remote trainings aren’t effective for most. Most people need Tim the tech guy standing next to them as they walk through the paces.
I bolded what you’re not understanding. That’s YOUR office. Honestly what you described is behind in the times. Many companies train online, especially in IT, just fine. This seems like a your company issue.
Online training is pretty limiting in the fields where the hard parts aren't learning basic rules and processes, its the 10% of the time that deviates from those. That's where you need the experienced person to talk to. But as long as the experienced person can make themselves available on phone or chat the way they would in person, it's not necessary to be in the same building.
Anonymous wrote:This is what many companies are doing. Its not an uncommon practice. PreCovid we had many threads about how much of a pay cut was worth a remote position. I took one and it worked well for me for many years! No surprises here
+1 There was a hug thread about this in late 2020 (I think) when Facebook announced this approach. Even with adjusting for cost of living differences, it’s not like these big tech companies are paying small company crap wages. Why should Google pay SV wages for the employees that opted to move to Idaho?
Because wages should be tied to the work and not the location.
You can believe that all you want, but employers disagree.
Can’t have it both ways, bro. Companies and the federal government have been providing cost of living adjustments to their employees living in HCOL areas forever.
For those arguing that companies should pay equal wages no matter where a job is done, they do!
What you’re missing is that while the skills component of your wage is consistent over geography, the cost of geography (living) is not. An employer wants your skills, not your geography.
The only way one gets paid mostly independent of geography is to have best-in-class skills. But, that’s not because the two-part compensation formula fails, but because the skill component dominates. For example, the average person might be paid 70% skill/30% geography. However, someone with best-in-class skills might be paid 99% skills/1% geography. Because the skills component dominates the pay of the experts, it looks like their wage is independent of geography, but it technically is not.
Anonymous wrote:For those arguing that companies should pay equal wages no matter where a job is done, they do!
What you’re missing is that while the skills component of your wage is consistent over geography, the cost of geography (living) is not. An employer wants your skills, not your geography.
The only way one gets paid mostly independent of geography is to have best-in-class skills. But, that’s not because the two-part compensation formula fails, but because the skill component dominates. For example, the average person might be paid 70% skill/30% geography. However, someone with best-in-class skills might be paid 99% skills/1% geography. Because the skills component dominates the pay of the experts, it looks like their wage is independent of geography, but it technically is not.
I think this is helpful, especially the last paragraph.
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