[HN Gopher] Wall Street grudgingly allows remote work as bankers...
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Wall Street grudgingly allows remote work as bankers dig in
 
Author : arcanus
Score  : 121 points
Date   : 2021-11-24 13:02 UTC (9 hours ago)
 
web link (www.nytimes.com)
w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
 
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.md/ujxAx
 
| mabbo wrote:
| Like all industries that can move to remote, I suspect we will
| soon see a split. Some companies will embrace it, some won't. And
| that's not to detract from either side of that choice. It's just
| a choice that has to be made.
| 
| What's going to be more interesting is what this does to the
| market rate for labor compensation between these two pools.
| Simply put: if you want me to be in the city from 9-6 every day,
| while your competitor says I can live anywhere and remote in,
| you'd better be paying me extra to cover my increased rent (in
| the city) or increased time (commuting). Or put another way, your
| competitors can compensate me less and I'll consider it a better
| deal.
| 
| If the advantage of face to face is actually significant, then
| we'll see the remote firms slowly die off. If it's not, then
| they're going to be here permanently. Or they might just take
| over.
 
  | actually_a_dog wrote:
  | > Or put another way, your competitors can compensate me less
  | and I'll consider it a better deal.
  | 
  | It seems a lot of people disagree with you:
  | 
  | > In an accompanying survey of more than 1,200 technology
  | professionals, Hired found that 75% of employees would begin
  | looking for a new job if their salary were to decrease, while
  | 45% of candidates disagreed with using the cost of living of
  | the employee's location as a baseline.
  | 
  | https://www.zdnet.com/article/tech-jobs-salaries-are-flatten...
  | 
  | I'm one of them. If my work is bringing in $X in revenue
  | whether I'm sitting in a chair in an office building you're
  | leasing or at home, I don't see why my share of that should be
  | any less.
  | 
  | Put another way, if I'm worth $Y to you sitting in an office,
  | and I can accomplish the same work at home, from anywhere, just
  | as effectively, why should I get paid any less?
 
    | jxidjhdhdhdhfhf wrote:
    | But what if you turn that around? If you are currently remote
    | but considering an offer from a place that's in-office,
    | wouldn't you want a higher wage to compensate you for the
    | extra hassle of commuting? That's extra free time you're
    | never getting back.
 
      | randallsquared wrote:
      | There are people who prefer to work in an office, and some
      | who have that preference even if it puts them on a train
      | for an hour or two a day. As long as we don't get
      | legislation to force employers one way or another, I'd
      | expect employees to self-select into those who like being
      | around others all day, and those who prefer to work in a
      | private office. It's a serendipitous solution we've been
      | presented to all those open plan offices that a certain set
      | hate: you can have your own private office with a view, but
      | you'll pay for it yourself.
 
        | tdfx wrote:
        | But shouldn't the employees that require extra subsidies
        | (office space, commuting reimbursement, office
        | utilities/supplies) receive the same overall compensation
        | as those working from home with lower expense to the
        | company? It seems to me that if being in the office is an
        | optional preference for some, they should carry the cost
        | of it.
 
        | randallsquared wrote:
        | Yes, that was my poorly-explained point: given that some
        | people prefer to add the cost and time of commuting
        | (possibly in order to rub elbows or attend happy hour),
        | and others prefer to add the cost of a home office
        | (possibly in order to retain focus or make lunch for the
        | family), the costs might turn out similarly, and
        | therefore I hope that remote working doesn't result in
        | systematically lower salaries for those who prefer it.
 
    | TrainedMonkey wrote:
    | Your compensation could change because of market forces,
    | modern salaries are a product of supply and demand.
    | Previously both supply and demand for high paying jobs was
    | restricted to relatively small geographic areas. Now that
    | remote working is in the supply can move out of high cost
    | areas. However, the converse is also true, the demand can
    | reach people who were not previously eligible. Some of those
    | people would be happy with a significantly lower compensation
    | package.
    | 
    | So to summarize, your compensation could decrease because
    | there are now a lot more people competing for your job. Or it
    | could increase because there are a lot more companies
    | competing for your services.
 
    | inherently_juxt wrote:
    | I'm on the other side of the coin. I view the associated
    | costs of working in an office as built into my salary. For
    | example, if I go to an office, I suddenly now have to buy
    | gas/repairs for my car, I have to buy office clothes, and I
    | have suddenly lost days per year to commutes. If I work from
    | home, I see myself as freed from those costs.
    | 
    | Put another way, I see my salary as the sum of the cost of
    | the work that I do PLUS the costs associated with me getting
    | the job done. Working from home is simply more economical
    | (and my work/life balance is significantly improved).
 
    | PragmaticPulp wrote:
    | Never underestimate the gap between what people _say_ they
    | will do and what they 'll _actually_ do.
    | 
    | If you poll employees about literally any topic where one
    | answer benefits them and the other answer doesn't, people are
    | going to respond with a preference for the answer that
    | benefits them.
    | 
    | But in the real world, they still have to go out and find
    | that better job that pays more and doesn't factor their
    | location into cost of living. They're out there, but there
    | far more rare than these articles suggest.
 
  | [deleted]
 
  | jimmytucson wrote:
  | > you'd better be paying me extra to cover my increased rent
  | 
  | The corollary of what you said is to pay remote employees with
  | the same title less, which they won't all accept... especially
  | the ones living in the same geo area due to the fact that they
  | were commuting before the pandemic or are still occasionally
  | commuting in and haven't moved to a lower COL area yet.
 
  | macintux wrote:
  | It will be interesting to see whether companies can make a
  | hybrid model work reliably. I tend to think that combining
  | remote with on-site leads to worse results, because it's easy
  | to leave the remote people out of the loop.
 
    | murph-almighty wrote:
    | The one true hybrid work model for tech (in my opinion
    | anyway) is to just have everyone meet in-person in some
    | cadence for sprint planning/PI planning/whatever your cycle
    | is. Everybody syncs up every so often, and then you leave
    | everyone the fuck alone while they go work. Zoom can handle
    | one-off meetings for pairing or other quick questions, but
    | planning out work/carving out architecture solutions is
    | something better done face to face.
 
      | krageon wrote:
      | The odds are overwhelming that you do not and will never
      | work on the kind of problems where such a minute advantage
      | (if it even exists, which I doubt) makes any kind of
      | difference to the bottom line. Most business related coding
      | is at the end of the day exceedingly trivial. Requiring any
      | sort of on-site time is a thought that belongs in the past.
 
        | pgwhalen wrote:
        | I agree most business related coding is trivial, but all
        | of the things that a software engineer does that surround
        | the coding are not trivial. All of the best software
        | engineers I know recognize this, and all of the less
        | effective ones depend on them to fill in these gaps.
        | 
        | I'm sure this varies by company.
 
  | paxys wrote:
  | Ultimately it's the employees that will make the choice, not
  | the company. My wife works for a large NYC-based bank which has
  | been trying to mandate 100% return to office since October
  | 2020. They keep pushing it back by a month or two at a time due
  | to employee backlash, and a year later still maintain that
  | things will be back to "normal" soon. It's become a running
  | joke among employees.
 
  | snicker7 wrote:
  | At a certain income threshold, rent becomes irrelevant. The
  | difference in top decile salaries between, say, NYC and
  | Pittsburgh is far more significant than the slight difference
  | in a rent.
 
  | syshum wrote:
  | I think the bigger effect is this will create I believe a new
  | round of Off Shoring for a set of jobs that used to be
  | considered immune or at least resistant to off shoring.
  | 
  | I could be wrong but your statement of "if you want me to be in
  | the city from 9-6 every day, while your competitor says I can
  | live anywhere and remote in, you'd better be paying me extra to
  | cover my increased rent" will hold true for for the global
  | workforce as well, and I am not just talking the traditional
  | off shore to India or china, but it could be that EU companies
  | find cheaper information workers in US Mid West, or US
  | Companies finding cheaper employees in EU, or Australia , etc
  | 
  | The high salaries of NY, LA, Silicon Valley, etc I think will
  | be the first losses in this battle, many companies have already
  | told their employees that if you choose to go remote to a Lower
  | cost of living state your salary will be adjusted to reflect
  | that.
  | 
  | It will be interesting but the employees pushing for full time
  | remote should be advised to be careful what they wish for, as
  | they just might get it and not like the consequences
 
    | TrueGeek wrote:
    | The companies I've seen adjusting salaries are adjusting for
    | "market rate" of salaries, not CoL. This can result in moving
    | to an area with a higher cost of living and a lower salary.
 
      | lotsofpulp wrote:
      | "Cost of living" was always code for "employer bets you
      | will accept lower pay because you will not have a better
      | option ".
 
      | mrep wrote:
      | Pay is usually max(COL, local market rate). You don't need
      | a super high COL if the local market is very competitive,
      | but COL can raise the pay because you still need to
      | convince people to move to your location and most people
      | won't do that if it has an abnormally higher cost of living
      | without a corresponding pay increase.
 
    | greiskul wrote:
    | > many companies have already told their employees that if
    | you choose to go remote to a Lower cost of living state your
    | salary will be adjusted to reflect that.
    | 
    | But at the same time, that makes the company vulnerable to
    | the employee seek another company that will allow the remote
    | work with a better compensation. Unless the ceos get together
    | and conspire to suppress wages like they have done in the
    | past, it is really uncertain how the workforce landscape will
    | shape itself in the near future.
 
      | ericmay wrote:
      | It's also going to give rise to a class of services to
      | undermine this. You can just have your official address be
      | wherever and so long as the tax benefits make sense
      | financially you'll make more money with a fake address in a
      | state with no income tax while mostly living somewhere
      | else.
      | 
      | I think this leads to stronger evidence for property tax as
      | the primary form of taxation. If you're paid in crypto and
      | not paying property tax on that PO box that like 18 other
      | people use for separate companies (address as a service or
      | AAAS lol) the company won't know, the state government
      | won't know either. Even if you're paid in cash it's hard to
      | really track down.
      | 
      | So we will continue to wind up with different types of tax
      | havens throughout the world. The long-term ramifications
      | IMO are that nice places to live are going to charge very
      | high property taxes and very high costs for obtaining
      | citizenship, and you'll pay that for safety and security
      | and for things that you enjoy (maybe it's walkable, maybe
      | there are lots of parks, maybe the security is strong,
      | maybe everybody looks like you or something).
      | 
      | I'm not arguing the ethics of this or anything, I'm not
      | sure where I stand or what makes sense - just an
      | observation.
 
        | [deleted]
 
        | lotsofpulp wrote:
        | > You can just have your official address be wherever and
        | so long as the tax benefits make sense financially you'll
        | make more money with a fake address in a state with no
        | income tax while mostly living somewhere else.
        | 
        | Do you not expect governments to use their powers to
        | issue subpoenas to banks or get location history from
        | mobile networks or license plate readers to figure out
        | this fraud if their tax revenues suffer?
        | 
        | A few years ago, Connecticut had Newegg send them a list
        | of all purchases shipped to the state, and then mailed
        | everyone a tax bill with penalties for failing to pay use
        | tax. The onus was on the recipients to prove they already
        | paid the use tax.
 
        | ericmay wrote:
        | > _Do you not expect governments to use their powers to
        | issue subpoenas to banks or get location history from
        | mobile networks or license plate readers to figure out
        | this fraud if their tax revenues suffer?_
        | 
        | Well let's not be so hasty to call this fraud. I don't
        | know the legal details but lots of individuals and
        | corporations do things for financial/tax reasons that
        | undermine the spirit of law and we don't call it fraud.
        | Also things can change. I think there is a more broad
        | discussion to have here on taxes and such. Like why am I
        | paying more in taxes than Buffet (contrived example)?
        | Isn't _that_ fraud?
        | 
        | But I think the underlying thing to noodle on is what if
        | a lot of people do it and just ignore the government? Or
        | how will the government know if you're paid in BTC from
        | an overseas company? That's where I think property taxes
        | (and probably sales taxes) come into play because the
        | police or tax authority can show up at the door and seize
        | the property.
        | 
        | And in the case of San Francisco PO box let's say I buy a
        | 2 bedroom house and then it costs whatever and I say ok I
        | rent it out to 15 people with 15 bunk beds and rent it
        | out for whatever + something so I profit (hell maybe it's
        | even a co-op) and then you just tell your company that's
        | your address and where you reside but you drive around in
        | a van full-time or just 1 month in SF, spend 8 months in
        | Oklahoma and 3 months in New York or whatever.
        | 
        | From SF/CA perspective you are living and paying taxes
        | there, but the point is that your company pays you the
        | _higher wage_ while not living there (and taxes are
        | deducted and soforth) but you 're saving by getting the
        | higher wage without the cost of living (again this would
        | be a financial calculation to see if it's worth it and
        | all that so I don't want to argue details at the moment
        | b/c idk). In a sense you're tricking your company because
        | they have this policy of "if this is where you live and
        | pay taxes then here's your paycheck" but the actual
        | living part doesn't need to be done where you "live".
        | 
        | Another example is living in Texas or Florida where
        | there's no income tax. Set up a PO box, say that's your
        | address, and there ya go. (Over-simplifying it a bit).
        | 
        |  _No doubt_ in my mind that schemes like this are
        | occuring. Question is what happens when everybody does
        | it? And what does the world look like when every _person_
        | has access to the equivalent of a tax haven and is
        | instead choosing where to live based on other factors?
        | 
        | A couple things:
        | 
        | > _why can 't we just regulate #of people in a house._
        | 
        | Well, tell that to the families of service workers who
        | can't afford rent. What's the right number of people per
        | address? Etc.
        | 
        | > _The onus was on the recipients to prove they already
        | paid the use tax. "_
        | 
        | Sure but if you live somewhere else you can just decline.
        | What will Connecticut do when 50,000 people living all
        | over the world just don't pay the tax? What will the U.S.
        | do if there are millions? It seems like it's hard enough
        | to go after corporations and they have big legal entities
        | and property in the U.S. to seize and litigate over.
        | Hell, maybe you get enough people doing it and law firms
        | start representing people with medium net worths and so
        | now every time you go after someone it costs so much
        | money you go bankrupt over the tax. The problem for the
        | governments is ability to enforce, which is why I think
        | long-term everything rests on enforcement of property
        | taxes. And you'll pay property tax because you want
        | roads, police, etc. and if you don't pay the tax then
        | they can block you from your property. Probably in-person
        | sales taxes as well because you can also enforce those
        | decently enough.
        | 
        | The scenario is like a lion trying to crush ants. It's
        | probably not effective.
        | 
        | Also please don't take this as an anti-anything
        | statement. I'm just trying to think through and predict
        | future outcomes and just have some fun with scenarios :)
        | I pay all of my taxes, and probably pay too much even...
 
        | lotsofpulp wrote:
        | >Well let's not be so hasty to call this fraud.
        | 
        | I am going to refer to it as fraud, because that is the
        | usual way the word is used in the context of the legal
        | consequences one opens themselves up to making
        | intentionally false claims about your residence in order
        | to evade taxes. The law does not require anyone to pay
        | taxes on unrealized gains of stocks, so no, it is not
        | fraud if Buffett does not pay tax on unrealized gains of
        | stocks.
        | 
        | >A couple things: > why can't we just regulate #of people
        | in a house.
        | 
        | I never wrote this, so I am not sure who you are
        | responding to.
        | 
        | >It seems like it's hard enough to go after corporations
        | 
        | It is not hard if they are evading taxes by committing
        | clear fraud with no plausible deniability, such as
        | claiming they were physically in one place when in
        | reality they were in another place. The news articles you
        | see are for cases where there is a lot of gray area in
        | the law.
        | 
        | >The problem for the governments is ability to enforce
        | 
        | It is called freezing bank accounts. It is where much of
        | the power of the US comes from, and many times why
        | opposing entities who do not trust each other choose to
        | do business in the US.
 
        | ericmay wrote:
        | > I am going to refer to it as fraud, because that is the
        | usual way the word is used in the context of the legal
        | consequences one opens themselves up to making
        | intentionally false claims about your residence in order
        | to evade taxes.
        | 
        | > The law does not require anyone to pay taxes on
        | unrealized gains of stocks, so no, it is not fraud if
        | Buffett does not pay tax on unrealized gains of stocks.
        | 
        | You're not violating the technical aspect of the law
        | anymore than Buffet would be. Can you tell me the proper
        | amount of time someone must live somewhere in order for
        | them to truly live there? Pass a law? Those won't work.
        | Already people are doing this - what do you think people
        | who are living in vans do? They claim residence
        | somewhere, maybe their parent's house and then they just
        | live in the van or maybe they have some other place they
        | stay. People do this with Florida to evade New York City
        | taxes, etc.
        | 
        | > I never wrote this, so I am not sure who you are
        | responding to.
        | 
        | Just pre-empting a response. Long story short the first
        | answer many have is legislation but it is too burdensome
        | to address any actual issues.
        | 
        | > It is not hard if they are evading taxes by committing
        | clear fraud with no plausible deniability, such as
        | claiming they were physically in one place when in
        | reality they were in another place. The news articles you
        | see are for cases where there is a lot of gray area in
        | the law.
        | 
        | I think you're operating in the current model but not
        | thinking about what can and is likely to happen in the
        | future. The U.S. already can't go after many people who
        | are outright breaking the law. Once this reaches a
        | critical mass it's basically like trying to stop people
        | from pirating songs. It's just not going to work. The
        | lion and ant thing is really great here to help
        | visualize.
        | 
        | Also, who is to say where you really live? Ok maybe you
        | _do_ live with 14 other people in bunkbeds in San
        | Francisco. Is (insert company) going to fly /drive/walk
        | someone out there and show up and check on you? It's
        | impossible to enforce. So you can definitely draw a Bay
        | Area salary and effectively live somewhere else. You can
        | even do it in other countries. Plenty of digital nomads.
        | Have you ever heard of one being prosecuted?
        | 
        | > It is called freezing bank accounts. It is where much
        | of the power of the US comes from, and many times why
        | opposing entities who do not trust each other choose to
        | do business in the US.
        | 
        | The dysfunction and instability of the stability of the
        | U.S. democracy is eroding power like this, for better or
        | worse. You can't freeze a Bitcoin address, etc.
 
    | wbsss4412 wrote:
    | I think on the whole you make a very good point, but don't
    | underestimate the impact of time zones & differences in
    | language & culture.
    | 
    | Communication may not be geographically limited anymore, but
    | there are still barriers to overcome.
 
  | bko wrote:
  | > while your competitor says I can live anywhere and remote in
  | 
  | I think most companies still consider your location when
  | determining your pay. Facebook does for instance, even going as
  | far as tracking your IP to make sure you're being honest. If
  | you choose to move to a lower cost city, they'll adjust your
  | wage. Not sure about the other way around.
  | 
  | That'll probably eventually change, but it could be a useful
  | indicator. The median employee that chooses to live in X may be
  | more productive that the median employee that chooses to live
  | in Y. But that's yet to be seen
 
    | Dyac wrote:
    | Any Facebook employee that wished to would surely find it
    | trivial to use a VPS or something to mask their true
    | location.
 
      | credit_guy wrote:
      | Technology is not always the solution. If your employer
      | asks you to affirm something, and you do that, and then
      | cheat (because, let's say, cheating is technologically
      | trivial), then you take a huge risk. A lot of people will
      | not take that risk. It's enough to make example of 1 or 2
      | people who are caught, and the rest will fall in line in no
      | time.
 
        | netizen-936824 wrote:
        | Is my opinion, the company is cheating the employee by
        | paying them less for the same work just because they live
        | somewhere else.
 
        | jkljkljkl1 wrote:
        | No one forces employees to accept the terms offered
        | 
        | edit: it's not cheating because the game is still of
        | negotiation until it's in agreement, if you break an
        | agreement, I see that as a cheat. No one made you accept
        | the job or the pay.
 
        | netizen-936824 wrote:
        | 'Nobody forced them into slavery, why didn't they just go
        | somewhere else?'
 
        | xyzzyz wrote:
        | People actually were forced into slavery, and actually
        | are not forced to work for Facebook.
        | 
        | Do you often exploit slaves as a rhetorical tool?
 
        | HideousKojima wrote:
        | Slavery, by its very definition, involves force. From
        | _Merriam-Webster 's_ dictionary:
        | 
        | Someone who is legally owned by another person and is
        | forced to work for that person without pay
 
        | netizen-936824 wrote:
        | That's the point I was trying to make. Generally
        | employees do not actually have much of a choice, if any.
        | Especially if they have families to provide for so the
        | distinction is rather moot
 
        | HideousKojima wrote:
        | Employees can find another job. Or they can choose to
        | have no job, and potentially starve to death etc. But the
        | latter is the default of the human condition, and has
        | little to do with the whims of corporations.
 
        | jkljkljkl1 wrote:
        | Employees have numerous options? Slaves cant just get a
        | new master, it was criminal to escape?
 
        | heavyset_go wrote:
        | Slavery isn't just chattel slavery, it comes in many
        | forms, including wage slavery.
        | 
        | The abolitionist and former slave Frederick Douglass had
        | this to say on the subject[1]:
        | 
        | > _[E]xperience demonstrates that there may be a slavery
        | of wages only a little less galling and crushing in its
        | effects than chattel slavery, and that this slavery of
        | wages must go down with the other_
        | 
        | From Wikipedia[1]:
        | 
        | > _Douglass went on to speak about these conditions as
        | arising from the unequal bargaining power between the
        | ownership /capitalist class and the non-ownership/laborer
        | class within a compulsory monetary market: "No more
        | crafty and effective devise for defrauding the southern
        | laborers could be adopted than the one that substitutes
        | orders upon shopkeepers for currency in payment of wages.
        | It has the merit of a show of honesty, while it puts the
        | laborer completely at the mercy of the land-owner and the
        | shopkeeper"_
        | 
        | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery#History
 
        | jkljkljkl1 wrote:
        | Working at FB isn't wage slavery, though, is it? If they
        | can work there, cant they go get a similar job?
 
      | tenebrisalietum wrote:
      | Facebook probably has really good data on IP geolocation,
      | probably much much better than anyone, both through data
      | users willingly provide and data from attackers they are
      | certain to be fending off constantly. They'll know you're
      | on a VPS.
 
      | enra wrote:
      | You and the company still needs to know/decide which locale
      | you get taxed in and which regulation to follow.
      | 
      | Even in California, SF has different payroll taxes and
      | regulation than other cities in the area. Massachusetts
      | requires employers to open a unemployment account in state.
      | If the employee moves to a state the employer doesn't have
      | a employees previously, you need to register in the state
      | and it might mean you have to now pay sales taxes on
      | revenue in the state.
      | 
      | So unless you become an independent contractor and deal
      | with this things yourself, the employer needs to know where
      | you live most of the tax year.
 
        | kgxkgxkhxoh wrote:
        | More and more remote companies use PEOs. No need to
        | incorporate in 50 states, you just pay someone else to.
 
        | truffdog wrote:
        | I worked at a company that switched to a PEO, people
        | seemed weirdly outraged.
 
        | enra wrote:
        | We use it too, but doesn't change the fact the the
        | employer needs to tell the PEO where the employee is
        | located. PEO also have limits, like MA example, the
        | company still needs to open the unemployment accounts
        | directly with the state. Sales tax is another thing that
        | you have to do directly.
        | 
        | My point was that main reason companies need to know
        | where the employee is compliance, employment law, taxes
        | and potentially IP protection. While the employer
        | wouldn't care about the location because of pay scale,
        | they still need to know for other reasons.
        | 
        | Until we can all live in some United Kingdom of the
        | Internet, the unfortunate fact is that local laws apply
        | to companies and employees when the employee resides in
        | the jurisdiction.
 
      | sopooneo wrote:
      | I believe Facebook could catch them if it wanted.
 
      | inherently_juxt wrote:
      | Don't you have to give them your legal address when you
      | start working for them?
 
      | selectodude wrote:
      | Playing games with your employer probably isn't the best
      | idea if you're looking for a long term relationship with
      | them.
 
      | numpad0 wrote:
      | I wouldn't be so confident as to think Facebook won't catch
      | me lying for years.
 
    | 88913527 wrote:
    | Practically, what does this look like? There's $3M beautiful
    | coastal homes in my area, and a few miles inland, you can get
    | what might be called a 'starter home' for $900k. Is my wage
    | going to be based on the extremely expensive coastal area, or
    | the marked up, but still comparatively affordable inland
    | area? It's all the same 'location' if we're talking at the
    | county level.
 
      | dsizzle wrote:
      | I would think they use a metro-area scheme similar to what
      | the government uses for their employees
      | https://www.federalpay.org/gs/locality
      | 
      | Because, I mean, waterfront property has a premium
      | everywhere, and even in the same exact "starter home"
      | location I'm sure you could teardown and fit a $3M home.
      | Those choices aren't determined by the metro area.
 
    | heavyset_go wrote:
    | > _I think most companies still consider your location when
    | determining your pay. Facebook does for instance, even going
    | as far as tracking your IP to make sure you 're being honest.
    | If you choose to move to a lower cost city, they'll adjust
    | your wage. Not sure about the other way around._
    | 
    | Truthfully, I don't see this working out in the long run.
    | Companies like Facebook are making desperate grabs to keep
    | control over how work is done and how it is compensated, but
    | I believe market forces will kill efforts like ZIP code based
    | compensation.
    | 
    | In reality, if you're top tier talent, you can command top
    | tier compensation no matter what your ZIP code is. Facebook's
    | strategy relies on every other company colluding with them to
    | suppress compensation based on locality.
 
      | PragmaticPulp wrote:
      | > Truthfully, I don't see this working out in the long run.
      | Companies like Facebook are making desperate grabs to keep
      | control over how work is done and how it is compensated,
      | but I believe market forces will kill efforts like ZIP code
      | based compensation.
      | 
      | I think you're right, but I don't think the end game is
      | that everyone gets FAANG-level salaries everywhere.
      | 
      | When companies realize that they can hire people for a
      | fraction of SF Bay Area salaries while still paying them
      | 20-30% more than their local salaries, the overall
      | compensation structure will slide downward toward that
      | number.
      | 
      | Then the next step is when they realize they can hire
      | foreign people in similar timezones at another lower step
      | on the compensation ladder (while still paying more than
      | their local jobs would offer). The compensation then slides
      | further down toward this average.
      | 
      | > In reality, if you're top tier talent, you can command
      | top tier compensation no matter what your ZIP code is.
      | 
      | Works in theory, not as much in practice. There's still
      | value to having people collaborate in person (I say this as
      | someone who has primarily worked remote long before COVID).
      | Companies paying top dollar have a lot of leverage to get
      | employees to move and work in-person still.
 
    | inherently_juxt wrote:
    | If I were looking for work and I were a top tier candidate, I
    | would not let companies play games by determining pay based
    | on my location. I'd work with a company that pays me well no
    | matter where I choose to live. After all, where I live should
    | only concern them if there's some kind of tax implication.
    | 
    | Top tier candidates aren't stupid, and ones that would
    | willingly subject themselves to that are probably just
    | looking for a year or two stint to bolster their resumes.
    | Either that or they aren't as smart as they make themselves
    | out to be.
 
    | mabbo wrote:
    | I think some companies might do that. I think they'll wind up
    | losing money as a result.
    | 
    | If you're willing to pay more for identical work because your
    | employee chose to live somewhere more expensive, you're
    | encouraging your employees to live in the most expensive
    | places.
    | 
    | On the other hand, if you offer a fair wage for the work done
    | regardless of location, your employees get better _value_ by
    | living somewhere inexpensive, which lowers the required
    | compensation for the same employee.
    | 
    | I think Facebook is simply creating more problems for
    | themselves by bothering with this.
 
      | bko wrote:
      | > If you're willing to pay more for identical work because
      | your employee chose to live somewhere more expensive,
      | you're encouraging your employees to live in the most
      | expensive places.
      | 
      | I think the salary adjustments aren't so extreme that
      | you're actually indifferent from living in an expensive
      | place. Also, most employees aren't unattached 20 year olds.
      | I choose to live in a high cost area because my family is
      | here and this is where I grew up.
      | 
      | > On the other hand, if you offer a fair wage for the work
      | done regardless of location, your employees get better
      | value by living somewhere inexpensive, which lowers the
      | required compensation for the same employee.
      | 
      | Would you be okay if the 'fair wage' was based on a global
      | developer workforce? For instance, median programmer salary
      | for the UK is ~$41k while the US is $74k, not to mention
      | salaries in developing countries. Everyone assumes that
      | fair consistent salaries will just take inflated San
      | Fransisco levels and apply them globally when in reality,
      | its more likely that we readjust all salaries based on
      | lowest cost of living.
 
      | tshaddox wrote:
      | If the cost of living adjustment were "perfect" then it
      | wouldn't encourage employees to live in any particular
      | place, right? Presumably the whole point is to give each
      | employee the same "effective compensation" for their
      | particular place of residence. Of course, it's not so easy
      | to agree on what the ideal method of cost of living
      | adjustment would be.
 
        | indecisive_user wrote:
        | The thing is that even if the cost of living adjustment
        | was perfect, that still incentivizes living in a high
        | cost of living area.
        | 
        | It's much easier to move from an expensive city to an
        | inexpensive city than vice versa since your savings will
        | go much further in the inexpensive city.
 
        | hansvm wrote:
        | A "perfect" CoL adjustment can't exist. If it's fairly
        | applied across distinct individuals then it won't be
        | perfect for some of them, and if it's applied
        | consistently to a fixed individual that person has enough
        | tweakable parameters to warp the situation to their
        | advantage and actually prefer one location over another.
        | E.g.:
        | 
        | (1) Bob is optimizing long-term savings, and Joe is
        | optimizing purchasing power for nearby activities like
        | bars and restaurants. After subtracting other comparable
        | expenses, any salary surplus strategy which is a
        | "perfect" cross-city CoL adjustment for Bob will when
        | applied to Joe cause him to prefer a cheaper CoL location
        | because his dollars will go further. Supposing the
        | employer doesn't have power to discriminate based on such
        | preferences, no fair CoL adjustment is perfect for both
        | individuals.
        | 
        | (2) Bob is still optimizing long-term savings. MegaCorp
        | chose a "perfect" CoL adjustment based on Bob's preferred
        | standard of living, but the multiplicative nature of
        | price increases in a high CoL city means that Bob can
        | save a ton of money with a mild decrease in his standard
        | of living. He's incentivized to live somewhere more
        | expensive because doing so will maximize his potential
        | savings with minimal impact elsewhere in his life. If the
        | employer isn't discriminating based on what's paid for
        | rent and other expenses, the CoL adjustment is gameable.
 
        | vincnetas wrote:
        | Compensation should be adjusted to value created not
        | expenses incurred.
 
      | erik_seaberg wrote:
      | Most of tech either isn't remote or hasn't been for very
      | long, so strong candidates with large scale prod experience
      | are still concentrated in markets where these skills are
      | most valued and attainable. If you want those candidates,
      | you have to compete with offers from local big tech.
 
  | jollybean wrote:
  | "you'd better be paying me extra to cover my increased rent"
  | 
  | I have some sorry news for Americans thinking this way on this
  | one: you just outsourced yourselves.
  | 
  | There are people 2x as smart and who will work 2x as hard for
  | 1/2 the salary among remaining 7 Billion people on this planet
  | and if the bank can hire them instead of you, eventually they
  | will.
  | 
  | In some aspects, relationships do matter, so those have face-
  | to-face types of interactions will be obviously harder to
  | displace.
  | 
  | The US saw a giant outsourcing of manufacturing, and now that
  | US Megacorps are globalized and not locally owned, they don't
  | have any reason to care about local talent, the same will start
  | to happen in services.
  | 
  | I do however think that communicating matters a lot, and people
  | will just find themselves back at the office.
  | 
  | I don't think people realize how quickly this can happen.
  | 
  | Now that we can work 'remote' - everyone is thinking about all
  | the projects they can do for x% the cost, they're looking to
  | trim the budget, and there's a pile of solid applications from
  | Canada, Taiwan, Poland, Brazil, Spain on their desks.
 
    | heavyset_go wrote:
    | > _There are people 2x as smart and who will work 2x as hard
    | for 1 /2 the salary among remaining 7 Billion people on this
    | planet and if the bank can hire them instead of you,
    | eventually they will._
    | 
    | I've worked with remote developers from Eastern Europe and
    | Southeast Asia in US companies, and talent in those areas can
    | command SV-level compensation.
    | 
    | Truth is, if you can compete with domestic US talent, you can
    | command US-level compensation, either through immigration or
    | the "outsourcing" you're trying to spook people with.
    | 
    | If the work being done doesn't require talent that commands
    | US-level compensation, then that work was already outsourced
    | 20 to 30+ years ago.
 
    | halfmatthalfcat wrote:
    | In every post about remote work, this argument always gets
    | trotted out. The easiest retort is "if it were that
    | advantageous for companies, it would have happened already."
    | 
    | Outsourcing has been around for decades now and the
    | overwhelming evidence is that it only gets you so far. "You
    | get what you pay for."
    | 
    | Sure there's probably some offshore/nearshore firms that hire
    | great developers but the lions share of them are low-skilled,
    | associate-level developers that are usually paraded around as
    | senior/architects. I say this as someone whose worked in a
    | large consulting firm and had to work with numerous
    | offshore/nearshore teams.
 
    | butMyside wrote:
    | If you think they can just write off millions of real people
    | you're deluded.
    | 
    | Only 5% of the US population hunts.
    | 
    | Until society as is collapses, we're reliant on this
    | logistics system. The powers that be know that.
    | 
    | Workers have all the power. There's just a 24/7 media blitz
    | saying otherwise.
    | 
    | Look at Linux, Godot, Blender, Jupyter, etc... I was
    | deploying containers as BSD jails in 2005; k8s isn't new...
    | political corruption obliging us to policing of agency to
    | serve aristocrats is the reason software companies exist, not
    | to produce software. We can do that as a species just fine.
 
    | csa wrote:
    | > I have some sorry news for Americans thinking this way on
    | this one: you just outsourced yourselves.
    | 
    | > There are people 2x as smart and who will work 2x as hard
    | for 1/2 the salary among remaining 7 Billion people on this
    | planet and if the bank can hire them instead of you,
    | eventually they will.
    | 
    | > In some aspects, relationships do matter, so those have
    | face-to-face types of interactions will be obviously harder
    | to displace.
    | 
    | I have some sorry news for non-Americans who think most of
    | the high-paying American jobs (especially at banks) have
    | anything to do with being smart or working hard or getting
    | paid half as much.
    | 
    | Those personal, face-to-face relationships referred to matter
    | a lot. As humans, they will always matter.
    | 
    | The main way that remote will impact workers is by allowing
    | people (mostly Americans or folks who could live/work here
    | via a visa) who would already be naturally good fits for the
    | job to live and work in a different place, but probably close
    | enough to travel to meetings and clients as necessary (with a
    | lot of necessary).
    | 
    | Back office work may be sent abroad or (more likely)
    | contracted out, but the core of the businesses that involve
    | trust and/or personal relationships will be collocated for
    | many many decades to come.
 
    | sokoloff wrote:
    | The context you trimmed off your quoted line completely
    | changes the meaning of what you quoted.
    | 
    | It was "Simply put: if you want me to be in the city from 9-6
    | every day, while your competitor says I can live anywhere and
    | remote in,"
    | 
    | Companies requiring employees to be in the city 9-6 aren't
    | off-shoring and probably aren't out-sourcing that work.
 
    | DrBazza wrote:
    | Well, I worked for "megabank" back in the 00s and they tried
    | to outsource to India. It failed miserably, and cost more
    | than it saved. Time zones didn't work. Language problems.
    | Lack of communication.
    | 
    | There's a reason London and New York work well together. Time
    | zones and language. And a relatively short plane hop.
 
    | krageon wrote:
    | You responded to something the author did not write using a
    | quote taken entirely out of context. While the text of your
    | message is fair and probably true (although outsourcing comes
    | with chunky quality issues that frankly have not been solved
    | yet), it is not at all topical.
 
      | jollybean wrote:
      | I disagree that it was out of context either of the
      | comment, or in the issue at large.
      | 
      | It doesn't matter that in this comment, the particular
      | context was ostensibly 'move to the city to work in the
      | office then get paid more'.
      | 
      | It's irrelevant - excessive demands in whatever form will
      | be acquiesced by hiring better talent, elsewhere.
      | 
      | American workers making any kinds of special demands are
      | going to get outsourced.
      | 
      | The tone of the article (and others is): "American Workers
      | Leverage Over Big Corps" just like in this article: "Wall
      | Street _Grudgingly_ etc. ". We saw the same with Apple
      | yesterday.
      | 
      | In reality, the articles should be: "American Corps.
      | looking overseas to diversity talent". Because that's
      | what's about to happen. Anyone who thinks that these
      | companies have any loyalty to their local nations, founding
      | staff or culture, (and this applies broadly to the modern
      | world) is mistaken.
 
        | hallway_monitor wrote:
        | It is possible to find companies that indeed do have
        | loyalty. Personally, I have long ago resolved not to work
        | for companies that outsource (offshore, same thing)
        | engineering. It seems there may be a resurgence here in
        | America of people willing to put their money where their
        | mouth is: Buy local, hire local, keep the money here.
 
        | krageon wrote:
        | > I disagree that it was out of context [...] of the
        | comment
        | 
        | It is not about your opinion, you are quite simply not
        | responding to the posted comment. Because charitable
        | reading of _your_ comment required it, I have read the
        | original comment that you claim to speak of again.
        | 
        | That comment says:
        | 
        | - Remote work can be done for a lower salary, because you
        | can live anywhere
        | 
        | - If you demand that I come to the office, you should pay
        | for the difference
        | 
        | You have responded to these points by saying that if you
        | want more money, cheaper workers can be found "elsewhere"
        | (i.e. abroad, so remote). This is not topical, because
        | you address a claim that was never made.
 
    | yodsanklai wrote:
    | > There are people 2x as smart and who will work 2x as hard
    | for 1/2 the salary among remaining 7 Billion people on this
    | planet and if the bank can hire them instead of you,
    | eventually they will.
    | 
    | I think the bank can and does hire them already. In big tech
    | companies, a lot of employees come from developing countries
    | and they're paid the same market rate as anyone else (and
    | companies pay for their relocation).
 
      | jollybean wrote:
      | Moving staff from China or Poland to the US is a non-
      | trivial exercise with all sorts of limitations, and FYI,
      | that definitely lowers the local market rate.
      | 
      | The 'True Shift To Remote' is a big game changer because
      | institutionally, people at the office had a kind of
      | existential value proposition: "We are Here!" - but that
      | prop is distinctly diminished if they don't think they have
      | to be.
      | 
      | BigCorps are making the shift.
      | 
      | It will be interesting to see it play out.
 
    | dymk wrote:
    | Having worked for years with overseas contractors, I'm really
    | not too concerned about my job security
 
      | amf12 wrote:
      | The problem with overseas contractors is - you get what you
      | pay for. There are still excellent contractors out there
      | who charge more, but still less than what employees get
      | paid here. The second problem is discoverability. It is
      | difficult to find those excellent contractors from all the
      | not-so-good ones out there.
 
        | [deleted]
 
      | jollybean wrote:
      | So being a 'contractor' and 'not connected' is a problem.
      | 
      | But once they have the PM, designers, architect and devs.
      | 'on staff' and all 'over there' - then _you_ are the  'not
      | connected' contractor.
      | 
      | Moreover 'they' are getting better across the board.
      | 
      | Japan made crap until they made the best cars in the world.
      | 
      | China made crap but now they have the top 5G gear and all
      | of the patents, and would wipe out a big chunk of Western
      | companies were it not for 'security' and other issues.
      | 
      | Americans are fairly instantly replaceable with Canadians,
      | Aussies, Brits, and almost as easily replaceable with
      | French, Italian and Germans etc.
      | 
      | 'Remote Work' is like an 'unlimited, free H1B' program.
      | 
      | Many jobs are safe, but many are not.
 
      | 62951413 wrote:
      | In typical SFBA companies I meet mostly token Americans. So
      | there's a huge foreign workforce with many years of local
      | experience, a non-trivial proportion with already with
      | citizenship. With the current trends in American politics
      | I'd expect a large number of them to be open to going back
      | home for only $100K or so. I would. Living 10-11 time zones
      | from CA is a big deal though.
 
| lekanwang wrote:
| I'm finding with the teams I'm working with that the junior
| employees are the ones most impacted by not working from an
| office, but they often don't realize what they're missing -- the
| less formal forms of mentorship, stronger community, interacting
| with more people that's not on their team and in their role,
| overhearing context, the ability to have a 3-min quick chat with
| a senior person without a scheduled meeting, and developing that
| stronger sense of "what good looks like." I'm really concerned
| that we're going to have a two-tiered system where a bunch of
| people early in their careers are going to feel stuck in a few
| years and not even realize why.
 
  | dv_dt wrote:
  | This seems like it would be taken care of fine by formalizing
  | some remote training, mentorship, and pair programming
  | activities. Something that better work environments already
  | think about, remote or not. Not sure why this would be some
  | sort of unsolvable problem.
  | 
  | Edit: also a remote culture of hopping onto a one-on-one voice,
  | vid, and/or screenshare helps too.
 
  | activitypea wrote:
  | Any ideas how we could fix this?
 
  | dsizzle wrote:
  | In my hybrid office, the juniors are also mostly the ones going
  | into the office, so maybe they've appreciated your point.
  | 
  | I also observe that they are also the ones hanging out outside
  | the office, so I would guess this is part of it too. Seniors
  | tend to compartmentalize "work friends" vs friend-friends.
 
  | getYeGone wrote:
  | As a junior employee (1 year experience, entirely remote),
  | you've pretty much hit the nail on the head. I've been having a
  | miserable time working remote for all the reasons you've
  | mentioned. It doesn't help that my team seems to really lean
  | into independent work. The biggest thing that I wish I had was
  | more opportunities to learn from senior devs.
  | 
  | Now that I feel like I have enough experience to find a new
  | job, I will be looking for a workplace with a strong emphasis
  | on in-person work & collaboration.
 
  | bamboozled wrote:
  | This is true, so much so we just don't hire juniors because we
  | haven't figured out how we'd manage, we're fully remote. If We
  | did hire juniors I'd probably want them co-located near me
  | somehow.
  | 
  | Ultimately I think people will work more in offices again for
  | this reason and for the reason that even the company I work
  | for, which has always been remote first has a large group of
  | people who live in the same city, they meet in person more
  | often and seem to call much more of the shots and receive
  | promotions more than others.
 
| guenthert wrote:
| How well do those, now remote working, bankers understand
| computer security? How well do those who are not 'best in class'?
| How high do they prioritize it? That will be the limit IT can
| strive for.
| 
| Happy hacking!
 
| bob331 wrote:
| Barclays lost half of my team including me because they wouldn't
| go remote. Their loss I got a 50% pay rise
 
| chadash wrote:
| While I do think that attitudes towards remote work have
| fundamentally changed, it'll be interesting to see how things
| shake out over the next 5-10 years. I suspect that as people
| start to go into the office more, there will be pressure to do so
| for your career to advance, in many fields. If your boss's boss
| works in the office, who is more likely to get a promotion, the
| person that works from home or the person who goes in and eats
| lunch with them once a week? In an ideal world, the answer would
| be "the one who does better work", but we don't live an ideal
| world.
 
  | krageon wrote:
  | You can have lunch with someone once a week and still work from
  | home. These kinds of issues are not related, it just requires a
  | different attitude and approach to networking within your own
  | company. No matter what, if you are more social you will make
  | more money. It is not required to be in the office to be
  | perceived well by your peers.
 
    | sokoloff wrote:
    | You're totally right, of course, but there's a massive power
    | in changing from one default to another. With remote working,
    | the overwhelming default is not "I'll have a casual lunch
    | with my boss' boss a couple times a month." where a 50-person
    | company with everyone on-site, you're likely to eat with your
    | boss' boss a couple times a week in the cafe.
 
  | time_to_smile wrote:
  | > as people start to go into the office more, there will be
  | pressure to do so for your career to advance
  | 
  | China's "lying flat" movement is already starting to take a
  | hold in the West, and I think as the reality of climate
  | catastrophe and other systemic breakdowns continue to remain
  | visible in the post-pandemic world, there will be an
  | increasingly large number of people that have absolutely zero
  | interest in "career advance".
  | 
  | I wouldn't be surprised if everything you say happens for the
  | subset that is still clinging to the fantasy that career can
  | create meaning. However I think this group will represent an
  | increasingly small number of workers, especially in the new
  | generation arriving to the work for now.
 
    | Ancalagon wrote:
    | I think that all depends on how much longer people give money
    | real value.
    | 
    | Edit: And I'm not insinuating people would instead give
    | something like crypto real value. More along the lines that
    | as these economic systems fall apart, the abstractions they
    | were built upon will mean less and less until a house is a
    | house and farmland is farmland and no amount of tokens or
    | gold will buy that from somebody else.
 
    | downrightmike wrote:
    | Modern day advancement is usually done when you hop to a new
    | job anyways.
 
  | sokoloff wrote:
  | In some cases, those lunches will lead to doing better work.
  | Partly from having better, more full picture of the pressures
  | your grand-boss is facing, from having direct opportunities to
  | ask questions or get guidance, and partly (a minor part
  | probably) from a willingness to give a little bit extra at a
  | critical moment to someone that you have a more personal
  | relationship with.
 
  | MrPatan wrote:
  | What's a "promotion"? Is it like quitting and getting a nicer
  | job in another company?
 
| cm2187 wrote:
| The problem is that if everyone doesn't come back in the office
| you just end up spending your time on zoom in an office desk
| which negates the whole point. Working in a large bank in europe
| where we observed the same, between a third and half of the staff
| decline to come back
 
| Animats wrote:
| _Wall Street banks posted record profit and revenue during the
| pandemic, as government stimulus supported consumers stuck at
| home and companies sought to do deals, proving to bankers and
| traders that they have little need to work out of the office the
| way they used to. The attendance numbers are low. The financial
| industry employs 332,100 people in New York City. In October,
| only 27 percent of those people came in daily._
| 
| That says it doesn't make economic sense to bring people back to
| the office.
| 
| The executives pushing for that may be the ones on the way out.
 
  | dillondoyle wrote:
  | Economic sense for the big companies, but probably not for
  | cities and local businesses.
 
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >She often woke up at 4:30 a.m. to drive from her home in New
| Jersey, catch a bus into Manhattan, hop on the subway, squeeze in
| a workout and get to Jefferies' trading floor by 7:30 a.m. Work
| dinners ran late into the night, and redeye flights to London
| were common.
| 
| >For Ms. Batchelor, Jefferies's new policy means coming in to the
| office three days a week. Although she plans to travel to
| meetings when necessary, Ms. Batchelor said she was grateful to
| spend more time with her children and cut back on her long
| commute. "I didn't know what I was missing," she said.
| 
| Sometimes I wonder if journalists compete to get the most eye
| rolling quotes. As if anyone would believe this woman with 3
| children was not fully aware of the tradeoffs they were making in
| exchange for the higher pay.
 
  | protastus wrote:
  | > As if anyone would believe this woman with 3 children was not
  | fully aware of the tradeoffs they were making in exchange for
  | the higher pay.
  | 
  | I believe her. Life doesn't have an open enrollment period
  | every year where you're presented multiple career and lifestyle
  | options, and asked to choose one. Instead, one generally
  | converges into a local optimum and breaking out can involve
  | significant energy and risk.
  | 
  | From the perspective of remote work, the pandemic helped a lot
  | of people break out of their local optimum.
 
  | onion2k wrote:
  | _As if anyone would believe this person was not fully aware of
  | the tradeoffs they were making in exchange for the higher pay._
  | 
  | In my experience working with highly motivated, highly paid
  | people they often _aren 't_ particularly self-aware or
  | introspective. In their mind it's not a tradeoff; they usually
  | believe that every job in their industry is like theirs. I
  | suspect this is due to the fact that they've worked long hours
  | and said "Yes" to every request from the beginning of their
  | careers. They genuinely don't understand that things could be
  | different.
  | 
  | This is why so many businesses are struggling with remote
  | working. They honestly don't get that people can work
  | differently.
 
    | mschuster91 wrote:
    | > I suspect this is due to the fact that they've worked long
    | hours and said "Yes" to every request from the beginning of
    | their careers.
    | 
    | Also, "say yes to and do everything your boss/the police says
    | to you" was ingrained into children for centuries.
    | 
    | The cost of that obedience propaganda, however, never showed
    | up until modern day cutthroat capitalism.
 
    | lotsofpulp wrote:
    | >they usually believe that every job in their industry is
    | like theirs.
    | 
    | It was, for the woman in the article. But no one forces them
    | to be in that industry, other than their desire to earn high
    | wages.
 
      | coralreef wrote:
      | And no one forced her to take a break and take conscious
      | perspective of how we live our lives.
      | 
      | This is a common experience: we all take things for granted
      | or assume that things have to be done a certain way, simply
      | because that's the way we've been doing it for so long.
 
      | onion2k wrote:
      | _no one forces them to be in that industry, other than
      | their desire to earn high wages_
      | 
      | Changing career later in life is a risky thing to do,
      | especially if you don't have much in the way of
      | transferable skills. Wanting to avoid poverty isn't quite
      | the same as a "desire to earn high wages". People might
      | know they'd happy on low- or mid-level wages but fearful of
      | ending up with no wages. That's a reasonable concern.
 
        | saiya-jin wrote:
        | People who work in Manhattan and fly often to London
        | aren't in category of ending in poverty, more like having
        | less paid (but still above average) and less stimulating
        | job.
        | 
        | Of course if one has so messed up life priorities that
        | job and life satisfaction coming from it is their #1
        | concern, way above raising their own kids, then its
        | another of those sad stories later.
        | 
        | People are fearful of many things, usually not in very
        | rational or smart way. One thing about being a proper
        | adult (and a good parent) is to understand which fears
        | are real and address them, and which are just some self-
        | illusions because folks can't get their mind straight and
        | sort out themselves and their lives (for the lack of
        | better words).
 
      | throwvirtever wrote:
      | > But no one forces them to be in that industry, other than
      | their desire to earn high wages.
      | 
      | High wages are definitely a factor but being competitive
      | and feeling energized by trades paying off count as well.
      | It's a combination of high reward, betting excitement, and
      | the pleasure of crushing your competition in a context
      | where score is easily kept (in dollars).
      | 
      | If those are the things you enjoy, it's difficult to find
      | all that in other industries.
 
  | smoe wrote:
  | Not that I disagree with the point on journalists behavior, I
  | think while people are to a degree aware of the tradeoffs they
  | are making initially, over time they normalize everything and
  | get basically Stockholm syndromed and peer pressured into their
  | situation.
  | 
  | Early in my career I met a manager type guy in his late 30s
  | that prided himself of only having taken a week of vacation in
  | 4 years and was fully convinced that those kind of things are a
  | pre-requisite of success for everyone. He got a lot more
  | relaxed about life a couple years later after divorce and
  | bankruptcy, having to start many things from scratch.
  | 
  | So I do buy that people can have a revelation about changing
  | lifestyle, even if initially it was a conscious decision to
  | prioritize career over family.
 
  | acdha wrote:
  | I don't think that's a fair summation: it's really common for
  | people go with what's familiar without critically examining it
  | and both economics and psychology are rife with studies showing
  | how people make decisions less than purely rationally. Some of
  | the most famous examples are related to that quote above:
  | people buy larger houses thinking about the times they'll use
  | extra amenities while ignoring how infrequently they do so or
  | how much time they're spending every day commuting to where
  | they could afford that wish list, or downplaying how much time
  | they spend commuting because they want to think they have a 45
  | minute commute rather than an hour and are thus "running late"
  | almost every day, etc.
  | 
  | Even very smart people do this kind of thing -- I'm thinking of
  | someone I knew who has a math Ph.D. but chronically misjudged
  | their bank account -- because they aren't approaching it as a
  | rigorous analytical problem but are just running along on
  | habit, what their peers are doing, and often the stories they
  | tell about how it'll get better once they're further along in
  | their career. If you've been telling yourself that the long
  | hours will get better once you have experience, then that
  | promotion, then at the next job, ... it's not hard to just keep
  | doing what you've been doing, especially if you're well paid
  | enough to say it's worth it because you'll retire early.
 
  | toss1 wrote:
  | >>Sometimes I wonder if journalists compete to get the most eye
  | rolling quotes.
  | 
  | They definitely select the most eye-catching/rolling quotes out
  | of an interview, been there, done that, been astonished at the
  | way the article turned out.
  | 
  | That said, however, this is NOT unusual. When I worked at IBM
  | in Manhattan, my manager lived in Poughipse, and woke up at
  | 4:30 every morning to catch the train, slept on the way in, and
  | was in the office before I was, and I lived about 40 blocks
  | away. And he most definitely did NOT make the big banking
  | salary and bonuses.
  | 
  | A lot of people want the suburban quality of life for their
  | kids, and were willing to sacrifice a lot for that. Now, seeing
  | that it is unnecessary, they are pushing back. Which is a damn
  | good thing.
 
  | snarf21 wrote:
  | Exactly, click bait nonsense. The thing is that before
  | companies could claim "work won't get done if you aren't in the
  | office". Now that that has been proven false, the are
  | grudgingly trying to keep their employees. Remote work is the
  | new carrot just like healthcare was in WWII.
 
  | Frost1x wrote:
  | Intentional selection bias and cherry picking is a real problem
  | in media and other domains. Waiting to hear all the pieces you
  | want to hear and then weaving them together to create the story
  | you want in others' voices. It makes things seem more
  | legitimate than they are because it is a set of real data, it
  | just happens to be a heavily manipulated and carefully chosen
  | set.
  | 
  | It sounds innocent at first because you're not creating false
  | data directly, but you are falsifying the representation of the
  | data which is just as bad if not worse.
 
| snicker7 wrote:
| I work at a hedge fund. Despite a recent return-to-work mandate,
| literally no one in my team is in the office. Our job is super
| stressful and emotionally taxing. Not having wearing to pants
| makes it somewhat bearable.
 
| MrPatan wrote:
| I'm waiting for all the studies reinvestigating the height salary
| and career premium in the age of remote working.
 
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