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

Just keep "residence" at the higher cost location and travel in a camper to the most desired locations

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"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

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some 12 year old in China is emphatically agreeing with you right now

also you have no idea what socialism is

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As I said before, I think the shift to WFH will ultimately level wages across the country, but something that hasn't been touched on is the fact that the employee has leverage too.

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I could see an even larger disparity happening also. I don’t know what will happen and it will vary by career.

But for example, nurses and doctors sometimes are paid more to work in rural areas. The demand is low for Doctors in big cities but high for rural doctors so you can make more working in a rural setting. My only point is, there’s no normal.

But let’s say a Silicon Valley job normally pays $200k but offers $150k to work remote. I could see some situations where the $150k is much more favorable and therefore that $200k job now has to be $250k to get people into the office.

VMware is living on their name and install base and Dell ownership. They’re not innovating much any longer, so I’m not surprised they would make moves like this to boost EFO.

Every company that outsources it shite to India is met almost instantly with customer service / quality related issues. INCLUDING MY OWN.

I posted that article on the travel board. Yes, it was an interesting interview.

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A $200k employee who moves from that area to a lower-COL part of the country can easily take a $50k+ pay cut,

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There is something else to consider. What is the company saving with you working remotely? Let’s say that the company is leasing a large six-story office building in a high rent area like Silicon Valley. If they have everyone go remote, they can vacate that space at the end of their lease. Will those cost savings that the employee is providing them by doing their work from home be considered. It’s a wash if you ask me. But, the corporations won’t talk about this.

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You're making my point for me. Say I have $80,000 in student loan debt. The fact that I can get a house for $150,000 in Hattiesburg doesn't really help me if salaries there are scaled down to match those supposed cost-of-living numbers. My $80,000 debt (and the $750,000 or so I need to retire) are constants.

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I think you’re missing my point. You’re right, if your salary is scaled down to match the cost of living in Hattiesburg, you’re no better off in terms of paying down that student loan debt or saving for retirement. But you’re also not any worse off. It’s a wash. That’s the entire point.

Now, you might say “then why would I bother to move from Palo Alto to Hattiesburg?” That would be a good question, and everybody has their own reasons. For many people, the decision to move from the Bay Area to a lower-COL area will be financially-driven. If you take away that financial incentive, they might just decide to stay put.

This is where the company has to decide on its priorities. If the company really wants to reap some cost savings by encouraging people to work remotely, they might incentivize it by meeting in the middle. So they pay you more than the cost of living adjustment in Hattiesburg, but less than the going rate in Silicon Valley. Maybe this gives the employee an additional $25k towards paying down debt, retirement, or bar tabs while also saving the company $25k in operating cost. Win-win.

If the company decides they would rather keep people close to the office than overpay for the labor markets in remote areas, they won’t budge at all. Ultimately the market will sort itself out as each company decides what they are willing to pay employees in various markets.

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My mortgage is a variable, but it's only a fraction of my real expenses. Cost-of-living calculators have a huge blind spot with respect to this.

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This is simply not true in places like the Bay Area. Your mortgage may be a fraction of your real expenses, because you live in a low-COL area. Housing costs in the San Francisco metro area are 5x higher than most places in Mississippi. Housing accounts for a much larger portion of the average worker’s expenses in that area, which - again - is the point.

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I don't understand why people can't figure this out. There a billion Indians, you don't think some of them are as qualified as the average American? Wfh will end or lead to outsourcing no in between..

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I don't understand why you can't figure out that data integrity is very important in some fields, and they don't want protected information to be accessed outside of the country

I work for a consulting firm and all of our work is done remotely, in our contracts with clients it is stated that we will not perform any work in countries outside of the US.

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Why would they staff onsite in that scenario? If the job can be done remotely just pay everyone who does that job within the same range (say 150-200k), and it's up to them where they live. Why would you pay someone more to work onsite, if they can perform the same work offsite? Obviously you will want some roles onsite, but I don't see the point in paying a role more to be onsite, if they can perform the same work offsite.

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I think you would see this come into play more for certain roles that may require an on-site presence, but still compete with other remote roles for personnel. In other words, someone might have the right skill set to do either “Job A” or “Job B”. Both jobs paid $200k to be on-site pre-pandemic. Now, Job A can be done remotely for $150k, but Job B still requires an on-site presence. This could potentially mean Job B has to pay more to compete with the WFH advantages of Job A.

You could say the same thing about managerial positions as well. Once people move to remote WFH, it might take a significant pay bump to get them back into the office.