Changes that will be sticky & changes that will snap back post-pandemic

[Too Tall]

I've been one of 'em! Had a bogus unemployment benefits application and Discover card application made with my info. Thankfully all my paranoid ID theft protections did their job.


Yep, my partner has an acquaintance who does concierge pet services as a side gig. She's struggling to keep up with demand.
How much to have a real pro come and lube my chain with NFS the right way?

If you have to ask ;) Actually I'll be perfectly content with a modest round of Époisses de Bourgogne

[snotrockets]

Offsetting the cost to provide a laptop, technology like VPN software and a monthly 'stipend' to compensate for a person to use their own internet service against the costs to maintain a facility the savings is overwhelming.

That stipend doesn't really cover the costs of WFH: what happens here, and the reason businesses would stick to WFH, is that just like W-1099 instead of W-2, it allows them to offset a lot of the cost of employing people to the employed workers rather than paying it themselves. IOW the time honored tradition of employers f*cking workers. I like the shorter commute of WFH, I don't like that I have to pay out of pocket for it.

Agreed. I work in technology and my company went full time remote in a very short period of time (days). Though there are some scenarios where being in the office would be better, the pros of remote work (flexibility, work-life balance, cost savings you mention, environmental, etc.) outweigh the cons (mostly just not giving someone a firm handshake, if that's your style). I'm sure I'll eventually be back in an office for a meeting, but I don't see myself permanently going back to work in a shared workspace ever again. I certainly wouldn't take a job where that was the expectation. I've felt this way from a personal point of view as an employee for a long time. But this situation has started to bring my company around to the same points of view and in my role as a leader, I'm more convinced than ever that my team can be as successful, or more, working remotely than they were coming into the office.

Another hidden cost (and productivity boost): workers working from home are doing it for longer hours than from office. Zoom meetings takes longer, and are much more taxing. 9-5 is also dying, and not for a 9-3.

[Moke]

My intent was with a two hour commute each day. Every 18-19 years you spend a year in the car. If you were working at home and need to get in 8 hours of billable a day for your 40 hours. You used 40 hours of your week. Add a typical 10 hours a week driving and you spend 50 hours doing 40 hours a week. My neph writes a lot of code and sometimes works 12 or more hours when he is on a roll and some days at the office are not all that productive, but he is there. He thinks life would be much better and way more productive if he could work 40-50 hours from home a week instead of driving the extra ten for free.

My life was way different. I rode my bike less than 5 min to work. Was on the clock when I got there and if I stayed late it was OT and after 12 hours Double time. As soon as I punched out it was done. Unless i was on call for 15% wages call in or not. Call in was time and a half. 2nd call double time. I liked wages vs management positions. When I was management I worked 50-60 hours a week based on a 40 hour pay scale. Most of us hourly workers made more on call, OT and DT than our boss. Being on emergency call in the OR you sort of earn every penny they give you as no emergency surgery call was ever routine or easy.

[beeatnik]

In the cultural and personal health realm. The anti-vaxxer, anti vaccination (not sure what the Kennedy Kid's preferred nomenclature is) movement will gain more traction and become a mainstream ideology.

My mom fought cancer for 20 years. She had two recurrences and 5 major surgeries or resections along with about 3 years of chemo; 10 day inpatient chemo, yo! After her first remission, I remember optimistically sharing her positive prognosis with a friend who was about to start med school. Her response was not what I expected. This Dave Matthews-loving, yoga-actuating, new paradigm-seeking friend accused me of conspiring with the medical establishment to kill my mother with barbaric and profit-driven chemotherapy. Fast forward 10 years and my best friend is riddled with cancer. His therapeutic response or modality? Two months of a fucking fruit only diet. Quakery becomes mainstream. The fucked up part is that if a vaccine were introduced in 3 months, I wouldn't allow my 4 year old to be vaccinated (and she has every single one required for a 4 year old).

[snotrockets]

It's also worth noting that candidate pools and, conversely, company pools get much bigger when people are essentially full-time remote. Even when my office was operating normally pre-COVID I started including remote candidates for all open positions and it's been great having a broader market to recruit in.

I wonder what this will do to tech salaries. The reason bay area tech salaries are what they are is that a big part of the compensation is what they have to pay to not switch jobs (notice how they jumped once the antitrust litigation forced the tech employers to cancel their illegal anti-poaching agreements). Previously, if you were remote, the pool of possible employers was smaller, so that part of the compensation could've been lower. If everything remains remote, I wonder what it'll do to that.

[Matthew Strongin]

I wonder what this will do to tech salaries. The reason bay area tech salaries are what they are is that a big part of the compensation is what they have to pay to not switch jobs (notice how they jumped once the antitrust litigation forced the tech employers to cancel their illegal anti-poaching agreements). Previously, if you were remote, the pool of possible employers was smaller, so that part of the compensation could've been lower. If everything remains remote, I wonder what it'll do to that.

Great question. I think it will take some time to shake out and we may find a hybrid model develop where employees are still connected with a "hub" and it's up to them to decide how far away from that hub they want to live with salaries based on that locale. Or maybe there will be a leveling out of salaries and a shift towards focusing on other, non-monetary benefits like bigger home office stipends. I have or have had employees in multiple hot tech markets like the bay area and have never found that those very high relative salaries stopped people from jumping around. Opportunities for growth, advancement, exciting work, and more, sure. But once all the companies in the market pay high salaries, it doesn't matter anymore for retention.

[Matthew Strongin]

That stipend doesn't really cover the costs of WFH: what happens here, and the reason businesses would stick to WFH, is that just like W-1099 instead of W-2, it allows them to offset a lot of the cost of employing people to the employed workers rather than paying it themselves. IOW the time honored tradition of employers f*cking workers. I like the shorter commute of WFH, I don't like that I have to pay out of pocket for it.




Another hidden cost (and productivity boost): workers working from home are doing it for longer hours than from office. Zoom meetings takes longer, and are much more taxing. 9-5 is also dying, and not for a 9-3.

On your first point, I don't disagree, but think there are a few aspects of this that are specific to the company and its respective culture. I've worked partially remote for years (at least 2-3 days a week) and I'm responsible for a team that spans the globe, so my typical "9-5" is more like 4-5, 8-12, 1-6, 8-9. And I'm pretty much on-call in the gaps so some days it's 4a-9p. The same would be true if I went to an actual office, except that I'd never have time to ride, eat lunch with my kid, or get anything done around the house. So I don't work longer on my days at home, I just have time to take care of non-work things that also matter to me throughout the day. That flexibility during the week really makes a positive difference, especially with a wife who works odd hours and isn't around most weekends. As a company, we've been evolving into this work-style for many years and focus on getting tasks done instead of specific hours worked. Yes, that means we all work more than 40 hours, but I've also never worked for a company that didn't expect more than 40, regardless of working from home or the office.

On your second point, I couldn't agree more. Video meetings are much more taxing and I'm hoping the next evolution of this change is to recognize that not everything that we currently do in meetings needs to be done live. There are better collaboration tools for some time of work and meetings, especially video meetings, should be used more sparingly. That'll take some time, though. I hope.

[Tom]

I write this now working full time from home and I informed my boss that I do not intend to return to the office when the company announces the schedule. My team are all contractors, two are in town and one already is WFH full time officially before Covid. Of the other seven, one's in Virginia and the other five are in India. I have two peers and my boss that would be going to the office and I told them that if we need an in person meeting they can come over to my house and we can sit on the back porch, its enclosed and I have strong wifi.

I got up last night at 2am to kick off a test that would most closely approximate the conditions when we do a cutover early Saturday morning, and at 5:30 sitting and drinking my morning coffee I decided I needed to get upstairs and get work done. If I went for a ride, and it is an absolutely gorgeous morning, my head would be right where it is right now and I would not enjoy the ride. I rarely get out for a ride later in the day when I do this, I'll be here until 5 or so when I need to get dinner because my mother in law's coming over. One nice thing about working from home is you can stick stuff in a marinade or set the dough to rise or dry rub something ahead of the cooking time and it opens up your weekday menu choices.

I think for a lot of us that are lucky enough to be in the laptop set that can work from home the hours are immaterial, its the work that needs to get done that's important. The thing is that yes the company gets more hours and more work out of me then when I have to go to the office but I do not mind the tradeoff. I can get personal items done when I work how ever much and when I need to. Like today, I'm taking the No. 22 over to Dave Pitts' house (Pro Cycling Services) for its first overhaul after not quite two years of abuse. It'll be nice to have that one for later in October when I can throw it on the car and head over to southern Vt. or western Mass. and disappear into the woods.

The hard part is not letting yourself get sucked in because really there's never no more work to do. But you do have to hit deadlines. It is easier to hit them when you aren't driving back and forth wasting time doing that.

[Bingissimo]

That stipend doesn't really cover the costs of WFH: what happens here, and the reason businesses would stick to WFH, is that just like W-1099 instead of W-2, it allows them to offset a lot of the cost of employing people to the employed workers rather than paying it themselves.

I'm in Canada so the W-1099 vs W-2 doesn't apply and each jurisdiction will have its own rules. My wife is a sales rep and her company requires her to have an office-in-home (OiH) setup. They provide a T2202 and the missus can write off a proportion of all house expenses for OiH based on the ratio of sq footage of that office to the total of in the house but the catch to all this she earns commission income. I do not, so I will not get a T2202. So far all I've had to do is move an office chair into my dining room. I may move my desk up from the basement.

The commute is shorter, as my Liverpool Nana used to say I only have to "climb the wooden hill to bedfordshire". There is beer in the 'employee' fridge. That's a bonus.

To the question above about employers expecting you to give back some of that 'commute time' to them unpaid let's do the math. 1 hour a day is 5 hours a week is 250 hours a year (50 weeks worked, 2 weeks vaca if they let you have it). That's 6 weeks 10 hours unpaid per year. If you work the typical 30 years for pension to vest (I'm basing this on how governments calculate pension entitlement for their employees in Canada) you will have worked an additional 7500 hours over your working life. That is an additional 3.75 years unpaid. Remember too that technology was going to make us more efficient and productive? It has, but this increase in productivity has not seen a commensurate increase in wages, and when overlaid on the increase in unpaid OT it looks more like a decrease in real wages.

[defspace]

In the cultural and personal health realm. The anti-vaxxer, anti vaccination (not sure what the Kennedy Kid's preferred nomenclature is) movement will gain more traction and become a mainstream ideology.

My mom fought cancer for 20 years. She had two recurrences and 5 major surgeries or resections along with about 3 years of chemo; 10 day inpatient chemo, yo! After her first remission, I remember optimistically sharing her positive prognosis with a friend who was about to start med school. Her response was not what I expected. This Dave Matthews-loving, yoga-actuating, new paradigm-seeking friend accused me of conspiring with the medical establishment to kill my mother with barbaric and profit-driven chemotherapy. Fast forward 10 years and my best friend is riddled with cancer. His therapeutic response or modality? Two months of a fucking fruit only diet. Quakery becomes mainstream. The fucked up part is that if a vaccine were introduced in 3 months, I wouldn't allow my 4 year old to be vaccinated (and she has every single one required for a 4 year old).

You're clearly not into the anti-vaxxing thing, so why would you not vaccinate your child? You admit it's fucked up so I'm just curious to know what the thought is that leads you to engage in the same behavior that you don't believe in. I wonder if many other people are thinking similarly.

[snotrockets]

Great question. I think it will take some time to shake out and we may find a hybrid model develop where employees are still connected with a "hub" and it's up to them to decide how far away from that hub they want to live with salaries based on that locale. Or maybe there will be a leveling out of salaries and a shift towards focusing on other, non-monetary benefits like bigger home office stipends. I have or have had employees in multiple hot tech markets like the bay area and have never found that those very high relative salaries stopped people from jumping around. Opportunities for growth, advancement, exciting work, and more, sure. But once all the companies in the market pay high salaries, it doesn't matter anymore for retention.

(Caveat lector: this is about technical roles. I'm not sure how this works for others)

In the end, it is a cost issue. I want to like my work, but I also want to be compensated for it: after all, it is a job. No GP or C-level is going to the office for the excitement, they're in it for the paycheck. Why should ICs and middle managers be any different?

A common "secret" among many of the top tech professionals I've spoken to is that they're in it for the money (for context, I work on PaaS infrastructure software. A lot of ops work, but luckily not in SRE role; those folks have it worse). We talk about excitement because we're expected to, as it became a cultural norm, beneficial to employers who use it as an excuse to pay less. But I'm just as excited by having the $s to raise a family in the Bay Area as I am by writing software.

As raises in pay and leveling are stacked for most if not all FAANG-like employees, the easiest way to get that raise is not by getting their manager to create a promo package, but to switch employers. That move comes with a cost: the interview process is broken and requires quite some time and effort. As long as my employer puts my salary and what unpleasantness comes with the role above the cost of switching, I won't. So paychecks rise to an equilibrium. You can play a bit with the perks, but in the end, those are also matched, because most employees are smart enough to realize that perks aren't generosity, just a way for companies to hide some compensation in a different spreadsheet row, which is sometimes easier to get in the internal politics between those guarding the coffers and those needing the hires.

Right now, tech workers outside the SFBA has the cost of switching higher - that's one of the reasons I moved here: had I remained in Tel Aviv, or if I moved to Portland or Seattle, I had a much smaller pool of employers and roles to choose from. And all three are tech hubs: it'd be even worse if I'd move to say, Raleigh.

[snotrockets]

I'm in Canada so the W-1099 vs W-2 doesn't apply and each jurisdiction will have its own rules. My wife is a sales rep and her company requires her to have an office-in-home (OiH) setup. They provide a T2202 and the missus can write off a proportion of all house expenses for OiH based on the ratio of sq footage of that office to the total of in the house but the catch to all this she earns commission income. I do not, so I will not get a T2202. So far all I've had to do is move an office chair into my dining room. I may move my desk up from the basement.

I'm wondering how much I could write off for my home office setup, now that our offices are closed and won't reopen before next year at the very least. Though I'm a firm believer in having all income above board, because those I know how to plan for. Planning for tax deductions is a job I'd rather not have.

If you work the typical 30 years for pension to vest

Most of people my age (and younger) won't have pensions; even if there is a plan in place, it would be underfunded without a radical change.

It has, but this increase in productivity has not seen a commensurate increase in wages, and when overlaid on the increase in unpaid OT it looks more like a decrease in real wages.

That's the thing, right? Money rarely trickles down. Only up.

[Bingissimo]

I'm wondering how much I could write off for my home office setup, now that our offices are closed and won't reopen before next year at the very least. Though I'm a firm believer in having all income above board, because those I know how to plan for. Planning for tax deductions is a job I'd rather not have.

For our place: Office size 12X12 = 144 sq ft. House = 2600 sq. proportion 144/2600=0.06

The rest is easy. You're not planning as you have to pay these things anyway, just apply the proportion at year end/tax time to come up with #s to claim. Remember though to claim any stipend received in offset.

electricity $1400 0.06 $84.00
water/sewer $1920 0.06 $115.20
natural gas $1092 0.06 $65.52
prop tax $4600 0.06 $276.00
maintenance $200 0.06 $12.00
TOTAL $552.72

[Christian Fox]

Sticky: It's already happening, but city living will lose its appeal for those that can afford to move out. Who wants to be locked down in a city ever again? You can't underestimate the appeal/freedom of a backyard with a swing set. Big employers will follow the educated workforce out of the cities.

[snotrockets]

Sticky: It's already happening, but city living will lose its appeal for those that can afford to move out. Who wants to be locked down in a city ever again? You can't underestimate the appeal/freedom of a backyard with a swing set. Big employers will follow the educated workforce out of the cities.

I'd rather commute for work than commute for fun; and I assume the fun that happens in buildings (shows, restaurants, etc.) will come back in a few years time, and for that I'd rather stay in a city.

[caleb]

Sticky: It's already happening, but city living will lose its appeal for those that can afford to move out. Who wants to be locked down in a city ever again? You can't underestimate the appeal/freedom of a backyard with a swing set. Big employers will follow the educated workforce out of the cities.

I'm curious about the demographic changes, and certainly lots of people have said cities will empty out.

But cities are always emptying out and being refilled. Since WWII at least, there's been a flow of parents out of urban centers into suburban and rural areas. That's not new. Maybe it's accelerating at this exact moment, but is the increase really adding to the total number who would have moved eventually? Is the pandemic more a nudge in the direction people were already headed than some storm that heads them off in a totally new direction?

Here in Minnesota, plenty of people have moved to their lake cabins. Some plan to stay indefinitely. Like all the retirees who make similar plans, I expect that most won't last. In July it seems like a brilliant idea, but spending February with a long snowy driveway and a town without a real grocery store after all of your peer group has headed home gets old.

Maybe some people really will change their lifestyles forever over this, but I'm skeptical that it's going to be a major demographic shift.

[Bob Ross]

You're clearly not into the anti-vaxxing thing, so why would you not vaccinate your child? You admit it's fucked up so I'm just curious to know what the thought is that leads you to engage in the same behavior that you don't believe in.

Maybe I'm way off base here, but I read beeatnik's comment "if a vaccine were introduced in 3 months, I wouldn't allow my 4 year old to be vaccinated" to be taking issue with the absurdly quick-to-market 3 month timeline rather than an anti-vaccination posture. I know if anybody announced "We've discovered a cure, come and get it!" tomorrow I would not be the first person lining up, and I would be extremely skeptical of any trial results that did not appear full vetted & peer-reviewed...which, in only 3 months, would be impossible.

[Matthew Strongin]

(Caveat lector: this is about technical roles. I'm not sure how this works for others)

In the end, it is a cost issue. I want to like my work, but I also want to be compensated for it: after all, it is a job. No GP or C-level is going to the office for the excitement, they're in it for the paycheck. Why should ICs and middle managers be any different?

A common "secret" among many of the top tech professionals I've spoken to is that they're in it for the money (for context, I work on PaaS infrastructure software. A lot of ops work, but luckily not in SRE role; those folks have it worse). We talk about excitement because we're expected to, as it became a cultural norm, beneficial to employers who use it as an excuse to pay less. But I'm just as excited by having the $s to raise a family in the Bay Area as I am by writing software.

As raises in pay and leveling are stacked for most if not all FAANG-like employees, the easiest way to get that raise is not by getting their manager to create a promo package, but to switch employers. That move comes with a cost: the interview process is broken and requires quite some time and effort. As long as my employer puts my salary and what unpleasantness comes with the role above the cost of switching, I won't. So paychecks rise to an equilibrium. You can play a bit with the perks, but in the end, those are also matched, because most employees are smart enough to realize that perks aren't generosity, just a way for companies to hide some compensation in a different spreadsheet row, which is sometimes easier to get in the internal politics between those guarding the coffers and those needing the hires.

Right now, tech workers outside the SFBA has the cost of switching higher - that's one of the reasons I moved here: had I remained in Tel Aviv, or if I moved to Portland or Seattle, I had a much smaller pool of employers and roles to choose from. And all three are tech hubs: it'd be even worse if I'd move to say, Raleigh.

All good points. On your last point, that's the situation where I'm curious if we'll see a change. More acceptance of full time remote that opens up jobs in those tech hubs to candidates who live outside those bubbles. I'm also curious about the implications of that. How many tech folks in SFBA are there because they love it vs. because that's where the highest density of jobs are located. And if they could live somewhere else but keep those jobs, would they. Would their employers be ok with that. What would it do to wages. I'm not sure.

[beeatnik]

Maybe I'm way off base here, but I read beeatnik's comment "if a vaccine were introduced in 3 months, I wouldn't allow my 4 year old to be vaccinated" to be taking issue with the absurdly quick-to-market 3 month timeline rather than an anti-vaccination posture. I know if anybody announced "We've discovered a cure, come and get it!" tomorrow I would not be the first person lining up, and I would be extremely skeptical of any trial results that did not appear full vetted & peer-reviewed...which, in only 3 months, would be impossible.

This.

[snotrockets]

All good points. On your last point, that's the situation where I'm curious if we'll see a change. More acceptance of full time remote that opens up jobs in those tech hubs to candidates who live outside those bubbles. I'm also curious about the implications of that. How many tech folks in SFBA are there because they love it vs. because that's where the highest density of jobs are located. And if they could live somewhere else but keep those jobs, would they. Would their employers be ok with that. What would it do to wages. I'm not sure.

I was thinking about it myself: would I move? That means upsetting current ties; my daughter like her school (or at least, liked it, before CA and the district fucked up and shut down schools without giving the teachers enough guidance and preparation for distance learning), my partner likes the dojo she is part of here. Would the savings from moving somewhere else would be worth it? What happens in 2-5 years down the road?

Most of the stories about the SF exodus forgets to look at the other side of the bay: a lot of the exodus is to Oakland and the East Bay; slightly bigger apartments and lower rents, while still close by.