Working From Home

[viper37]

And a hundred years ago you could beat your wife to death with a broomstick. I don't really care what the law says.

Really?  Quebec is fucking weird.

One hundred years ago, Zoupa's ancestors were living in France.  1924 France was a weird place.

[crazy canuck]

Sure, but you also brought up changing diapers and doing errands.

Yup. And what I'm saying is that doing occasional errands is thought to be fine, whether you're WFH or WFO. And if you take 15 minutes to change a diaper or 15 minutes to go grab a coffee across the way, both are fine.

Because conversely, sometimes the work greatly benefits from people deciding to put in some extra hours to meet a deadline or to unblock someone or something critical - meaning the employer is looking for flexibility from the employee. In my experience, that works best long term when it's a two-way street.

The concept of judging people only on their deliverables makes good sense for people who are contractors.  Contractors do not owe a legal duty to work set hours, or in the case of salaried people, to devote all of their "time and energy" -  that is the phrase that comes from the cases - to their work during working hours.

The fact that employees seem to be want to be treated like contractors in terms of flexibility but also get all the benefit of being an employee is legally problematic.

Thank you for the legal insight

If things break down, it's good to know what the legal baseline is.

One note though - you seem to assume the flexibility is driven by employee demand. It is not really, it is applied by the employer based on what appears to provide the best results for us in our business. That we legally could be much stricter is good to know, I suppose, but isn't super relevant.

You seem to be framing the conversation in terms of who is entitled to what and guarding against one side taking advantage of the other. For us, if we're engaging with our employees in that framework that's already a failure state.

Nope I'm not assuming the basis upon which flexibility is given.

I think you might be misunderstanding the point I've been trying to make.  It is perfectly fine, and I would argue good business for some employers to provide flexibility.  My firm certainly does it.  my assistant works from home 2 to 3 days a week and I find that her work is unaffected.

The point I am trying to make is that employees cannot determine that flexibility for themselves.  Employers must first agree to it.  If employers don't agree to it, then that is where the angst over work from home comes from.  For employers, who demand a workday with only the the minimums required by the employment, standards, act, employees who decide on their own, that they are going to have flexible workday, or in fact, in the eyes of the law, committing time theft.

The second point I've been trying to make is that the employers that are in that position are ones that have work, which requires employees to work a full workday.  Many of the people here work in a very different environment.

That is why I always object here to broad generalizations that employers that don't allow work from home are misguided or evil.  For a lot of employers, it really doesn't make any sense to allow employees to do it.

[Iormlund]

In my experience employers who are sticklers for time "served" at one's desk inevitably breed employees who are sticklers for leaving right on time, whether the company is on fire or not.

[crazy canuck]

In my experience employers who are sticklers for time "served" at one's desk inevitably breed employees who are sticklers for leaving right on time, whether the company is on fire or not.

There is a couple of retorts to that. You haven't spent much time in an actual workforce. If you haven't noticed that people do actually leave on time.  You also haven't spent much time in a unionized workforce where it's mandatory to leave on time.  And you haven't spent much time in a workforce heavily regulated with strict overtime rules where it is. Also mandatory to leave on time.


A lot of people here, working in the tech related to industry worker protections are few or nonexistent and I think that is what is impacting much of the discussion in this thread.

[Syt]

https://www.yourtango.com/career/study-reveals-remote-workers-lose-22k-from-paychecks-staying-home

Study Reveals How Remote Workers Lose $22,000 Of Their Paychecks Each Year By Staying Home
There are definite trade-offs to going back to the office.
By Alexandra Blogier
Written on Apr 08, 2024

Working from home has provided major benefits for employees' work-life balance. Remote workers save time and money by not having to commute. They can eat lunch in their kitchen instead of going out and throw a laundry load in if needed. There's an overall sense of simplicity and peace of mind that comes with remote work.

Yet, many companies have issued return-to-office mandates, forcing workers to go back to an antiquated way of working, one they thought had gone by the wayside.

While working from home offers a lot of flexibility, the decision to stay remote can cost people a significant chunk of their income.

A study revealed that remote workers lose $22,000 of their paychecks each year.

Data collected by ZipRecruiter showed how salaries have shifted since 2023, according to whether a worker is remote or in-office.

In 2023, the average in-office salary advertised in job postings was $59,085. A year later, American companies are offering higher paychecks to people willing to come to the office, advertising an average of $82,037 for in-person positions, a 33% increase in income.

Data from 2024 shows that, on average, fully remote workers are paid $75,327.

Some employees prefer working on a hybrid model, going into the office a few days a week, yet data shows that their income also takes a hit for that decision: A hybrid worker's average wage is $59,992, which is about $22,000 lower than someone who has an in-person role.

Workers who've moved from fully remote work to being in-office full-time got a 29.2% pay bump.

Employers are offering more money to in-office workers as a way to compensate for the loss of flexibility that comes from giving up remote work.

The chief economist at ZipRecruiter, Julia Pollak, offered her take on the reasons behind such drastic changes in pay.

"Employers who cannot compete on flexibility will have to compete more aggressively on pay," Pollak stated.

Because employees would rather stick with remote work, bosses have to sweeten the deal to get them back in the office.

"The conclusion is that people demand higher pay increases for fully in-office jobs," Pollak said.

Workers have placed a premium on the flexibility that working from home provides, while employers seem to be stuck in an outdated mindset that people are more productive when they're physically in an office.

"Among some employers, there can be a perception that remote workers are less productive," Pollak said, adding that many bosses want people back in the office because they're "psychologically and financially invested in their corporate real estate."

There seems to be an ever-widening gap between what employers want versus what their employees want. It's not surprising that most workers want to avoid the office, especially since they've seen how beneficial working from home can be.

Offering an increase in pay is one way to smooth over workers' discontent at being required to go into the office, though one has to wonder if the money is worth the trade-off for the ease that remote work provides.

[Josquius]

Weird framing there. Surely its the people moving back to in office getting a pay rise rather than the people working from home losing?

I have to question the assumptions being made here too. If you switch from remote in city A to in office in city A then fair enough - but one of the big advantages of remote work is being able to live in different, often much cheaper, places.
From switching to 100% remote my income has doubled- southern rates, northern living.

[Tamas]

Yeah clickbait title. Well done to those able to demand more money for commuting into the office. They will need it for travel costs. 

[Threviel]

I just switched job to an employment where I'll have the opportunity to work from home a bit less than 50%. It's a soft policy and not something outlined in the contract, but I have no reason to suspect any shenanigans.

As an embedded developer there's plenty of jobs, but they are mostly located in the big city (Gothenburg) an hour away, more locally there are very few employers and my new one is 35 min away instead of 45 min. I interviewed for a few places and most of them seem to have a 49% work from home policy. In practice I interpret it to mean that I can do whatever I want, but I need to be present when presence is needed so to speak.

With Covid I had hoped that work from home would take over and that it would mean that big city wages could be had for me in the countryside. In practice it rather seems that work from home has increased and countryside employers have taken to it, most notably in my field Husqvarna (lawn mowers and stuff) that seems to employ all over Sweden with full work from home, which is something of a rarity in the embedded world. It also seems that wages have gone down to countryside levels in the cities rather than the other way around.

So some new opportunities, but not as good as could have been hoped for.

[DGuller]

If the study is described accurately in that article, then it doesn't sound like a high quality study.  No controls for anything, just calculating the averages.  Then again, the tone of that article doesn't make it sound like a high quality article, so maybe the study is more nuanced than what is described.