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Discussion on: Pay cut to work remotely - Fair deal?‍

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itsasine profile image
ItsASine (Kayla)

My company addressed concerns of us being full COVID remote and taking on additional business expenses by saying to come into the office if you don't want to pay for office things and electricity.

So I got a new job for more pay, where I can factor the salary negotiations into my remote work costs.

The entire (now much smaller) engineering department was to be fully remote and cubicles were taken over to move to hoteling and removing half of them for distancing, so it's not like we even could reasonably work from the office if we were comfortable doing so. And most people aren't.

I've bought a bunch of things to make fake walls in my apartment to give me an "office" and improve my desk equipment, but I'm fine taking on that as I game and can use this stuff elsewhere. But I don't commute, so no savings there, and my electric bill is practically double. I already had good internet (again, gaming) but I know people who are trying to do this on their ancient connections because there's no better option without doubling it.

I was very easily taking a pay downgrade if I were to continue to work remotely as they intend for engineers due to taking on business costs and to be told that my paycheck would be reduced as well would just be insulting.

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hrishikesh1990 profile image
hrishikesh1990

Thanks for sharing this Kayla. Your previous company made a choice to force their costs onto engineers and eventually ended up losing you. I am quite sure lot of other companies would learn this the hard way. It's going to be tough for them to retain people & get work done with a pay downgrade.