A colleague bought a house 6 hours from the office.

BarringGaffner

BarringGaffner

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(*Above is not his actual house)

We've been working from home without issue since March. My colleague thinks that we'll always be able to WFH moving forward, but it seems very shortsighted to me especially when it comes to purchasing a house.

Has anyone else moved out of the city during COVID?

Do you think WFH will become a permanent option or will companies want us to return to the office as soon as possible?

I'm also wondering if WFH does become permanent, will companies try to reduce pay based on home location? Companies open offices in expensive cities because there is a talent pool there, but I am wondering how this all shifts moving forward.
 
WFH will be permanent because it's a huge cost-savings for the companies, too. Make your own employees pay for their parking, their toiler, their electricity, their internet? heck yeah! It's also in line with the de-centralization of everything. Internet means you don't have to live in the big city with high rent.

Megacities will drain out (it's already in progress and I've brought it up before). COVID only made the inevitable more obvious to the normies.
 
nush said:
I believe you can claim that back from the government depending on what country you live. You could also use it as leverage to get a pay rise as well I suppose.
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Both of these are true. Companies can also reap those benefits by moving to more remote areas to get the cheaper expenses. Big cities aren't as relevant when you can connect to people's home offices from around the world at the click of a button. Suddenly the benefit of seeing that person at an extremely expensive New York City office has been eliminated by COVID. People were forced to make do, and everyone is realizing what IT professionals realized awhile ago: working from home produces the same "good enough / cha bu duo" quality of work that an office does.
 
DESTROYA said:
Unfortunately that doesn't work in most lines of work ( WFH ) unless it's some type of office job.
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Plumbers and steelworkers don't congregate in skyrises, if that's what you're getting at. WFH is going to affect cities most because the type of work done in cities can be done "good enough" over the internet, in a lot of cases.
 
I think WFH is here to stay. Some companies will try to take it back, but they'll risk losing talent to other places that offer it and seek the best people regardless of location.

As for reducing pay, I think that will vary by company and location. Some big city companies that have been paying super high wages to get talent to move to the Bay Area, NYC etc. may decide to make more positions remote since they can pay talent that lives in lower cost of living areas less.

But for other companies not located in crazy expensive areas they may have to pay more as now their local employees will be getting remote job offers that will likely pay them more than they got being in a smaller city/town without many prospects since they weren't willing to move for work.

Personally I'm all for it. I won't be able to to stay fully work from home as I'm a professor and will have in-person classes again in the future. Would have this semester if not having a medical reason to get mine moved online again. But I always worked from home 1 or 2 days a week, and I'll likely up that to 3 or 4 days a week even once things are back to normal. Saves time and money on commuting (even if only 6 miles and 15-20ish minutes) and I get more done being home than in the office with people bugging me. Most of my work is solitary anyway other than some work with grad students. When I collaborate on research it's usually with colleagues at other univeristies rather than my own anyway. My wife's job is fully work from home now, other than probably some meetings after this. That was planned before Covid though as it just didn't make sense for her small company to keep leasing office space when the work can all be done remotely and most meetings were at agencies around the city rather than in their office suite anyway.
 
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DunDunDunpachi said:
Plumbers and steelworkers don't congregate in skyrises, if that's what you're getting at. WFH is going to affect cities most because the type of work done in cities can be done "good enough" over the internet, in a lot of cases.
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More like the food service industry but I do get your point.
 
Can't put the toothpaste back in the tube on this one. Those boomer managers finally realize that yes, that meeting could have been an email. Maybe this could also lead to a 4 day work week, but i'm not optimistic.
 
Why would do they reduce pay? It's about the quality of work you deliver, not the geographical location of your house that determines your added value to a company.

I have an office job that had 1 day a week WFH before corona. I've been working from home 100% since March, there's no way I'm going back to the office fulltime, wether it's this job or a next one. If any, this crisis has proven that the stigma that's on WFH is bullshit. Things get done, exceedingly beyond expectations even.

Teams/Skype has made real life meetings obsolete.
 
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SJRB said:
Why would do they reduce pay? It's about the quality of work you deliver, not the geographical location of your house that determines your added value to a company.

I have an office job that had 1 day a week WFH before corona. I've been working from home 100% since March, there's no way I'm going back to the office fulltime, wether it's this job or a next one. If any, this crisis has proven that the stigma that's on WFH is bullshit. Things get done, exceedingly beyond expectations even.

Teams/Skype has made real life meetings obsolete.
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Capitalism
 
My soft goal is to make my business "wireless" enough for me to be able to run it from a mountainside many hours from major cities.. it's always been that, regardless of COVID-19
 
precedent has already been set

www.forbes.com

Twitter, Square Announce Work From Home Forever Option: What Are The Risks?

As companies contemplate sweeping new work from home policies, they should carefully consider the very real potential risks as well.
www.forbes.com www.forbes.com
www.vox.com

Facebook is the latest major tech company to let people work from home forever

The social media giant is letting its employees request to permanently work from home.
www.vox.com www.vox.com

MS has announced the same. the tech job market is ultra competitive right now, and not allowing WFH when your competitor is can be seen in the same light as a lower salary

obviously does not apply to all jobs, but its like a snowball rolling down a hill. employees will be in the office a few times a month within the next 5 years
 
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SJRB said:
Why would do they reduce pay? It's about the quality of work you deliver, not the geographical location of your house that determines your added value to a company.

I have an office job that had 1 day a week WFH before corona. I've been working from home 100% since March, there's no way I'm going back to the office fulltime, wether it's this job or a next one. If any, this crisis has proven that the stigma that's on WFH is bullshit. Things get done, exceedingly beyond expectations even.

Teams/Skype has made real life meetings obsolete.
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I could easily see companies saying 'well we aren't paying LA rates now that you're in Ohio'. companies already do pay different rates across different offices across the country, this would be just a post COVID version of that.

True that meetings no longer need to be in person.

I work in film and the major concern was always security. Surprisingly there have been no leaks whatsoever. But there is a general feeling that one major leak from a disgruntled could cause studios to demand we go back to working from a secure office as soon as possible. This is another reason why buying a house assuming I will never have to return to the office seems a bit unwise.
 
BarringGaffner said:
This is another reason why buying a house assuming I will never have to return to the office seems a bit unwise.
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Well that just depends on the line of work of course. If one is in a position where there's 1) a decent chance of having to go back to working in the office AND 2) low prospects for easily finding a WFH job elsewhere if that happened then it doesn't make sense to buy a house far away from the current job.

I think a lot of people are just going to be willing to tell their current employer to fuck off if they take WFH away as they're confident they'll find something else. I'm guessing your co-worker falls into that camp. Thinks they'll be able to keep WFH at the current job, and if not they're fine taking their chances elsewhere and were unhappy living wherever and willing to GTFO regardless of that risk.

Wish I had that freedom in my job as living in/near a big city with the higher cost of living has lost a lot of it's luster as I've gotten older and just want to stay home away from people and enjoy my games and other hobbies when not working. But hard to give of the security and not having to work all that hard for a good income that comes with being a professor with tenure at a research univeristy and not a lot of jobs in my field in lower cost areas I'd want to live. Also hard to move from one tenured position into another one if you are super produtive post-tenure and I definitely haven't been.
 
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Myself I don't like working from home - ruins separation between home and work. I do live pretty close (15-20 minutes usually). If it took me 1.5 hours I probably would feel differently.
 
Durask said:
Myself I don't like working from home - ruins separation between home and work.
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I worked remotely and "Being off work" just felt like actively not checking my Emails at the weekend. Something that I'd normally do to check in over a weekend if I was working in an office.
 
Durask said:
Myself I don't like working from home - ruins separation between home and work. I do live pretty close (15-20 minutes usually). If it took me 1.5 hours I probably would feel differently.
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My biggest problem with WFH is that it makes it harder to socialize.
 
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Besides security, what is to stop companies from hiring people from another country? Pushing WFH actually seems like a bad idea if that happens
 
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SJRB said:
Why would do they reduce pay? It's about the quality of work you deliver, not the geographical location of your house that determines your added value to a company.

I have an office job that had 1 day a week WFH before corona. I've been working from home 100% since March, there's no way I'm going back to the office fulltime, wether it's this job or a next one. If any, this crisis has proven that the stigma that's on WFH is bullshit. Things get done, exceedingly beyond expectations even.

Teams/Skype has made real life meetings obsolete.
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They'll reduce pay because their pay is not only on industry standard but on cost of living. My friend was telling me their company had a town hall about the state of things and if people were to move out of state expect payroll adjustments based on their new area. When an offer is presented to a candidate it is not only based on the industry but also on the cost of living in the area.
 
Mista K said:
Besides security, what is to stop companies from hiring people from another country? Pushing WFH actually seems like a bad idea if that happens
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In my industry? Taxes and other hiring laws. Gov't want you to look for local skilled hires first and you have to prove that. Visas can be an additional expense as well. Visas would no longer be necessary but I think if you're employing in another country then that country would want income tax.

In the film industry it is heavily subsidized because the people that work in it are younger and waste all their money in the local economy buying shit.
 
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The one of few good things about the pandemic was that it finally convinced some employers that people can be equally (or even more) productive when working from home instead of the office. Obviously this won't apply to all types of jobs, but I still think many people will remain working that way permanently with both sides being happy about it. So if you're sure that your employer is happy with your current situation I don't see a reason why not to invest in living in a more remote location.
 
a city has its appeal, especially for the younger crowd. when it is shut down, it has a different feel and people I've spoken to see it isolating (can't socialise, go restaurant, gym, cinema, museums, etc).

some people have returned to family outside cities and covid has shown that office work can be done remotely. i think human interaction is important and some people have struggled a lot more than others. i don't miss being elbowed during my daily commute.

having open green space, especially for children, is good for mental health. it's highlighted some positives and raised lot of questions around being physically present vs actual productivity.
 
If I could I'd almost never got back to the office. Been WFH full time for 10 months now and have never missed the office in that time.
 
One of my coworkers bought a house in mid 2020 and it was quite a ways out of town. He used to live 5 minutes from the office and now it is more like 45 minutes. He is assuming he will be able to WFH at least 2 days a week if we ever go back to the office. I would love to live 30 minutes or more out of town, but I would worry that at some point if management gets tired of WFH that they may require being in the office 5 days a week. I hate sitting in traffic and can barely stand a 10 minute commute. Unless my company rolls out some sort of permenent WFH solution that allows anybody to WFH 100%, I will not commit to WFH or move to a small town with lots of space.
 
What little remote learning we did made me happy that my district has been in person this entire school year. The kids shut down when they work from home, since there is nothing stopping them from firing up a game console during class. Then there are the students that complete fall away and we lose contact with them. Last year, when the state required remote learning, I felt more like a debt collector than a teacher. I was hardly able to get a hold of some students, and when I did, their parents would tell me that they turned everything in and it must've gotten lost in transit.
I really hope we never do that again.
 
SJRB said:
Why would do they reduce pay?
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Why wouldn't they? Companies don't tend to overpay people out of kindness of heart, if they can get away with cheaper pay.

And it's happening already. Facebook, for example, has introduced the option for permanent WFH now, but reduce your pay if you do so from some cheap location.

On a bigger scale, pretty much any company ever has been doing this forever. My industry tends to pay about twice as much in New York compared to London, because cost of living is a fair bit higher over there.
Same thing goes for outsourcing, which has already affected millions of jobs. Do you really think if a job is outsourced from, say, the US or Europe to India, they'll pay the local Indian person 100% of their continental salaries if they turn out to be equally productive?
 
Why is everyone always so radical? The future will be a mix of both, with systems more adapted to integrate wfm.
 
I think your colleague gives less of a shit about the work than they do than their long term life plans. Either WFH is available long term at your company, or he/she has a year to save money before having to find a new job. At that time, remote work will be widely available, and they will be in a place they actually want to live.

There are few times you have this freedom without securing the work first. Makes a lot of sense.
 
Anyone with a traditional office job working from home since covid who thinks they will shut down the office and allow everyone to work from home, either works in a really small company who is already on the fence working from home, has a job he can do from anywhere and will just quit if called back and find a company who allows WFH, or is shortsighted.

My office has been adjusting the layout of the office the whole time and the second they green light coming back, it'll be on a rotational basis as things are spaced out.

Anyone wanting to WFH permanently would have to beg to be on a never-come-in list which I doubt they will approve.

Working from home is shit half the time, as doing work over conference call isnt as effective as in person, and if you require working on the company servers for SAP or ERP reports or public drives, it takes way longer to do VPNing in, compared to hooking up your laptop at the office where everything is super fast directly connect to the company intranet.

Not all office jobs can be done from home either. Some office staff at my work have gone in the whole time. For example, any role involving lots of paper work or requiring lots of printing or receiving photocopying/faxing isn't going to have boxes of invoices sent to their home (AR, AP and Purchasing). Nor are they going to be using a home Epson printer to churn out pages of shit every day.
 
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Durien said:
They'll reduce pay because their pay is not only on industry standard but on cost of living. My friend was telling me their company had a town hall about the state of things and if people were to move out of state expect payroll adjustments based on their new area. When an offer is presented to a candidate it is not only based on the industry but also on the cost of living in the area.
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I think it will balance out. Companies will try to pay people less if they move to cheaper areas and want to keep working with them.

But at the same time, there will be more competition for top talent as more jobs go remote. Lots of people aren't willing to be nomadic and constantly move around for better paying jobs. Many more will be willing to job hop between different remote jobs for better pay. So where as now companies in X city just have to compete with other companies in that city as most employees aren't going to move their families for a raise (unless it's a quality of life changing amount) now their employees can get remote job offers with raises from companies anywhere in the world that they have to compete with.

Will be bad news for lazier and underskilled employees as they'll be more easily replaced than ever, but good news for hard workers who keep their skills updated and marketable as they can fish for better offers anywhere without having to move.
 
Durien said:
They'll reduce pay because their pay is not only on industry standard but on cost of living. My friend was telling me their company had a town hall about the state of things and if people were to move out of state expect payroll adjustments based on their new area. When an offer is presented to a candidate it is not only based on the industry but also on the cost of living in the area.
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Perhaps newly hired people being asked to work from home will be offered a gimped starting salary based on location, but for existing people it is illegal to just cut people's pay because they feel like moving.
 
I still go in and it's done wonders for traffic in Northern Virginia. I do occasionally WFH but I'd much rather go in and get my day done with and be done with it when I get home. I feel like working from home will just lead to companies taking advantage of your time when you're supposed to be off.
 
Frito_Pendejo said:
I still go in and it's done wonders for traffic in Northern Virginia. I do occasionally WFH but I'd much rather go in and get my day done with and be done with it when I get home. I feel like working from home will just lead to companies taking advantage of your time when you're supposed to be off.
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No more commute s great WFH, but I'm tired of sitting at home and would rather drive sometimes and see coworkers and enjoy going out to lunch with them. Most people don't even show themselves on video chat so all you do is listen to them.

You can tell WFH has adjusted people's work schedules. Mine too. During the normal work hours I might skip out early or start half hour later. Nobody complains. As long as you do your work and be on time for meetings nobody tracks to see if you're there at 9 am.

But that means you play catch up at odd times. So myself and others will be doing work and answering emails at random times or after dinner when we get around to working again. Everyone is couped at home (depending where you live but in my area is major lockdown so there's nothing to do except go to Walmart or buy groceries or get take out), so people may inclined to just do work as here's nothing else to do at 8 pm.

For example, I'm going to do some work now or after dinner while I watch evening hockey.
 
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