re: The Dark Downside Of The Work-From-Home Trend

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Korkstand

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I think your post is right on the money, and the cost-of-living thing is overblown anyway.

A lot of people have debt. That debt doesn't shrink if you move to Hattiesburg or grow if you move to Palo Alto.

Many consumer goods just cost what they cost. A Corvette costs pretty much the same amount in both Hattiesburg and Palo Alto. It's not all about the mortgage payment.

Retirement even falls into that same category. Sure, you might be living in Palo Alto and I might be living in Hattiesburg, but maybe we're both trying to pile up enough money to retire in Lake Havasu City.

Also this thread reminds me of the guy who outsourced his own programming job to China. He was getting paid about $300k, and he paid some Chinese dude $50k to do all his work. He always got good quarterly reviews.

And they fired this genius!

US Software Developer Caught Outsourcing His Job to China

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"a typical 'work day'" for the employee looked like the following:

9:00 a.m. – Arrive and surf Reddit for a couple of hours. Watch cat videos

11:30 a.m. – Take lunch

1:00 p.m. – EBay time.

2:00 – ish p.m. - Facebook updates – LinkedIn

4:30 p.m. – End of day update e-mail to management.

5:00 p.m. – Go home

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The "best part" of the story is that "for the last several years in a row he received excellent remarks" in his performance review, Valentine wrote in the blog.

"His code was clean, well written, and submitted in a timely fashion. Quarter after quarter, his performance review noted him as the best developer in the building."

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A lot of people have debt. That debt doesn't shrink if you move to Hattiesburg or grow if you move to Palo Alto.

Many consumer goods just cost what they cost. A Corvette costs pretty much the same amount in both Hattiesburg and Palo Alto. It's not all about the mortgage payment.

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The median home cost in Palo Alto is $2.9 million. It’s $150k in Hattiesburg.

Using two different online cost of living calculators, a $175k salary in San Francisco metro would require a $74-83k salary in Hattiesburg to maintain the same standard of living. Neither of these calculators let me select Palo Alto, specifically, as an option. However, a third calculator that did let me select Palo Alto says that a $75k salary in Hattiesberg would require $517k in Palo Alto to maintain the same standard of living, primarily due to housing cost.

Let’s use the San Francisco metro numbers since they are more conservative and at least I could find a backup source. That means that if you make $175k, move from the Bay Area to Hattiesberg, maintain the same standard of living, and don’t take a pay cut, you have an additional $100k in disposable income.

That goes a long way toward paying down debt or retiring.

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revolutionize many industries and organizations.

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How so?

I disagree. I guess we'll see. Revolution doesn't drag the slow-to-adapt to the finish line. The gas engine didn't concern it else with survival of the horse trader. This is a wake up call for the analog hangers on.

You guys are assuming that WFH labor is going to demand the same salaries, I disagree. Usually flexibility is a benefit, and therefore many people will be able to request WFH for a lower salary. It doesn’t have to be substantial.

It’s not only cost of living, it’s the commute and being able to choose where you live.

The whole “top talent” is an ignorant argument. The amount of talent that is not replaceable especially in a WFH scenario is very small.

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People talk about Teams Meetings and how great they are. They are great for internal meetings, short ones. For in depth meetings, meetings with clients, nothing will ever replace or come close to face to face.

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Agreed. When we bring on a new client, we always go onsite for at least a week on in person meetings. We sometimes schedule a follow up week a couple months later. After that, usually teams meetings are fine.

We also always have an onsite liaison that works for us but is "stationed" at the client. That person's sole job is to manage the client relationship, and keep a clear and open line of communication between the two parties.

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I suppose that's only fair

Those salaries are based on the local market and COL.

A software developer needs a much higher salary to live comfortably in Seattle than Hattiesburg.

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I may have been out of the corporate world to long. If you are paid to do a job and you do that job to satisfaction, why in the hell would it matter where you live as far as compensation. Seems like socialism to me.

"You do the job as good or better than employee X but you dont need as much to live so you get less" Sounds fricked up to me

Read an interview with the CEO of Southwest from last month. He predicts early 2022 for their business to completely bounce back to 2019 levels. But they’re in a different position than other airlines.

He expects business travel to fundamentally change as an aspect of their business and for fares to begin to truly float down to Southwest levels across the rest of the majors. Not going away. But will take much longer for that rebound to occur. Though to me he’s not someone whose got a finger on the pulse of that segment of the airline travel market as SW doesn’t cater to a lot of biz travel compared to the other majors.

Very interesting interview.