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Discussion on: Facebook and more big tech companies are going to lean into distributed work. What is going to suck about this?

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ferricoxide profile image
Thomas H Jones II

Well, if/when broadband actually meaningfully penetrates the deep suburbs and rural areas, means you can work anywhere. Two consequences of that are:

  • Potentially leads to hollowing-out of urban areas since workers no longer need to be physically-proximal to their employer(s)
  • Potentially leads to yet more population-sprawl (as part of that hollowing-out of urban areas)
  • If you bought a house in an urban area that hollows-out and did so near the top of the market, your investment-value is potentially going to be greatly reduced ...potentially to the point of going under water
  • And while you can potentially take your urban salary with you to the suburbs:
    • Employers might start trying to scale your salary to match your local cost of living
    • If you can work from anywhere, then it makes offshoring to much cheaper workers that much easier to do — particularly if your skill-set isn't exceptional (since you've demonstrated to employers that "anyone anywhere" can do the job
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anpams profile image
anpams • Edited

"Employers might start trying to scale your salary to match your local cost of living"
I really hate this, on a superficial levels seems like something fair and whatnot, but employers are not paying living expenses to their employees -usually-, they are paying for a service, if that service is valued 4k/month it can't be now reduced to 1k because you're moving to India.
The same way if I want to buy for example, a hosting service, clothes, a switch, is going to cost me the same no matter where I'm living.
What would be the next, if the person owns the house where they're living, cutting off the salary a bit more because they don't have to pay renting/mortgage?

The is fair to everyone because blabla seems like sugarcoating the fact that the company is going to save money at the cost of the workers.

Someone mentioned -I'm not sure if it was you- that a base salary with extra compensation for expenses, i.e. rent, would work and I'd see that as fairer solution to the workers.

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ferricoxide profile image
Thomas H Jones II

It's generally seemed to me that entities that try to make the argument that something is "fairn" are typically trying to give themselves cover for shitty actions by using an emotionally-loaded term.