Ask HN: How to negotiate continuing to work remotely?
Hi HN. Like many of you I am working remotely due to COVID.
I want to continue working remotely, but my job wants me in the office next month.
How would you negotiate this with your employer?
Have any of you already had this conversation? How did it go?
289 comments
[ 4.8 ms ] story [ 300 ms ] threadOn an individual level, JP Morgan will not let even their top employees wfh just because it will weaken their stance.
If you cannot even talk about your work environment, that must be quite the dystopian workplace. Most decent places I've worked, that is one of the most common topics when talking to your boss. Maybe those talks don't go anywhere, but if it is a taboo topic, it might be better to work elsewhere.
In a software org, employees who don't code are always against Work From Home. Especially Middle Managers. If the top management is not pro remote work, there is less hope.
This is what I would say if I worked at a place which actually wanted people to come back to the office.
Edit: It's a moot point because the management are the ones driving the "safety above all, stay in your houses" strategy.
If you require your employees to be vaccinated as a condition of employment (i.e., for work-related reasons), then any adverse reaction to the COVID-19 vaccine is work-related.
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/osha-s-new-guidance-rec...
Isn't life insurance a standard part of employment benefits?
So, yes, they will be.
A 5 million dollar life insurance is a "key person" policy... if it's some important to the business that I be on site during a health emergency, they can keep half of the max 10 million and my family can get the rest.
That's a pretty crappy life insurance policy. I wouldn't want my wife having to recreate an independent life on a runway of just 100k.
I'm not a big shot, but I'm set up so that if I die my wife won't have to worry about work for a very long time. These policies probably aren't as expensive as you think they are.
I think inflation is gonna bite a lotta people in the near future
That's bonkers - a £10 million policy was quoted to me at £4.5k a year.
[0] https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/table4c6.html
I mean you can just go on a price comparison site right now for yourself and see that this isn't even remotely the price quoted for multiple providers and a wide range of levels of cover - nothing is even remotely close to even 16k.
People often get these expensive plans because they can treat it as a retirement fund, and can borrow against it at any time with no penalties, etc. With term life your premiums are wasted if you cancel at 65. With whole life, you get back your premiums, and their growth (you may be able to control the investment vehicle as well).
From my perspective term makes more sense. I will have a net worth over $1m in 20 years and that’s more than enough for my family to survive on. The insurance is mainly for my family in case something happens to me in the near term.
eg is hybrid something you would be willing to do? Your boss? Your employer?
You're pretty junior, however, so I'm not sure you really have a strong position if you can't come to an agreement.
The best negotiating tactic is a job offer, though you don't need to threaten. just be prepared for them to say ok.
For myself, I have enough buffer and leads that I am confident I can get somewhere fully remote or at least closer to home before the savings get uncomfortably low, and so that's my red line now - one way or another, I'm not doing the two-hour commute again, it's simply not worth it; I'd rather take a pay cut to keep the life I've become used to over lockdown.
YMMV, but IMO if you're not prepared to move on and your boss senses this, the negotiation will end right there.
However, don't reveal things like "youre willing to compromise on salary to work from home". I've made a lot of concessions when I really want something, and thinking back, I didn't need to in many cases. In fact, ask for a raise in the same conversation. Be mentally prepared to ask for more, because you have done a lot more this year working from home than you have working in the office.
It’s simply the case not everyone wants to screw you down on cost. Don’t assume they will. If you have every purchased a Mac when a pc is cheaper (or similar buying the brand when generic is cheaper) or paid more for the pizza from the restaurant you love, you’ll know what I mean.
In fact if the pizza place says “sorry delivery only due to COVID so pizzas are half price” I’d think “huh... what’s wrong with their pizza?”
1. Are you / your team demonstrably as / more productive working remotely, compared to going into the office?
2. Does your company have a difficult time finding / retaining talent due to their policy against WFH?
Best of luck.
Just have a conversation with your manager "It's important to me that I can work remotely. What can you do?" If he/she says "Nothing, you have to come into the office" find another job.
2. you seem a capable developer (i checked your personal website).
i would approach the relevant contact at the company and ask if you are needed at the office 100% or if there is room for another arrangement, perhaps coming in for key meetings or a few times a month.
if not, i would highly recommend looking for a job that supports you working as you’d like to work. if you can, take some holiday to look for and apply to job openings that allow remote work.
you are working in one of the best paid professions, there should be little need for you to stay and work somewhere that doesn’t support you working the best way for you.
trust your gut.
happy to help if i can.
Really? Doing that? Webshit?
WHY do they want you to work on premise? Wanting your presence is just a means to an end. There could be many reasons, like:
* They think it's easier to control how much somebody works if it's on premise
* it might be easier to manage
* it might be inertia
* they think it's more efficient
* somebody is trying to exert control, or demonstrate to a higher-up that they can do so
... and so on. You should first try to understand where they are coming from, and then you can try to argue your case, framing it in a way that they can get most of their underlying motivation.
Also, it helps to know in advance what you are willing to give up and what not (are you willing to walk away if you don't reach an agreement? what compromises would be acceptable to you?)
It would be really helpful to have some insight into what is driving the move back to the office from people on HN.
I've posted about one of the reasons that some employers are itching to get their employers back in the office here[1].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27011439
I'm kinda being facetious, but everyone is a couple of clicks away at the moment; whilst when we were in the office and video chat wasn't normalised then it would be a case of 'walk for a few minutes, find a meeting room (due to open plan offices) then chat and then a couple more minutes walking back to your own desk space' for lots of daily interactions.
I prefer the later (in a large part for the exercise, change of scenery, chance for incidental meeting of people in the corridors, etc.), but the former seems like we're more together in some ways.
I guess if anyone is wfh then we're "closer" if everyone is wfh (or behaving as if they were).
Here's another viewpoint: sure, the company may be "giving something up" letting you WFH. But, there are also positives for you and them in terms of productivity, health, etc. Clarify that it's a change, but change happens, and that the positives will outweigh the negatives.
Once you have clarity about why they want you in the office, then you can begin to work out how you can craft a deal.
For a while my team was all in Malaysia, so I did 2pm-10pm.
Hell for the right contract I'd work as far east as texas, mon-fri 10am-6pm for them, tues-sat 5am-1pm for me.
No one asks me to do this, but it just makes life easier, and clients like knowing that I'm working normal hours and will pick up the phone.
Put another way: if they won’t do a remote workforce for a 66% discount, why would they go for it at a smaller discount?
I've worked remotely for several employers and clients, and they all seem to hire domestically. A few had stories about their experiences with hiring foreign remote workers, and they came to to the conclusions that doing so isn't always worth the labor discounts versus just hiring domestically.
I don't think remote work is the issue here for workers in the US, because the same employers have no problem underpaying visa workers who live in the US that can't complain because getting fired means being deported.
That being said, I expect some discount to come with the challenge of differing time zones. Also depending on which country you are working with, speaking fluently and clearly is a huge factor too. India and the US have a vast range of low to extremely high talented people with varying communication skills. You get what you pay for (not an India thing)
I feel like if the only reason you're hiring in the US is because you think there's a 3x productivity boost meeting in person... I mean, to me it's pretty obvious that in-person development does not bring that substantial of a gain. So maybe there are other questions you should be asking if you're in that position.
Abandoning the position of an employee entirely, just speaking as a bystander, I feel like an employer asking that question off the cuff has probably not thought very deeply about their company makeup and hiring processes if they think that sharing an office is the only reason not to outsource development. And I don't mean that to be dismissive, if you're right and you could be outsourcing development, but you're paying 3x more to develop something in-house... maybe you should think more about how your company is structured. Why are you developing your software in-house in the first place?
I've heard manager-types make this argument before, and it's just very alien to me that someone would think the single biggest difference between hiring locally and hiring outside of the US is whether or not the worker sits at a specific desk. Having worked in both a local and an multi-national office, I consider them to be two very different styles of organization, each with their own pros and cons. If you think adapting to an international development team just boils down to using Slack more, I suspect you're in for a shock.
If you're a large multinational with offices all over the world and the accounting and HR staff to manage that kind of setup, then that might be an option - but even those hire domestic US workers for a lot of remote/wfh roles.
The company I work has hired a lot of personnel based in India over the last several years. While some of the hires are reasonably competent, many of them need a lot of hand holding to get through tasks that most locally hired people would not.
In other words, they don't seem to be getting up to speed in a reasonable period of time based on past experience hiring new university graduates with no prior professional experience. That, in turn, increases costs because they're not accomplishing nearly as much in the time alloted.
I've done this specifically to "anchor" my position. I've heard that others are saying "2-3 days at home" which seems foolish since that will be instantly whittled down to 2 days, and then fridays only, and then fridays only unless there is a big project (and there will always be a big project).
If we ever get to a serious "why aren't you coming back" then we can discuss the reasons:
1. I dont like the commute and you dont like it when i am late
2. I'm working more hours since I'm not taking an hour lunch each day. I'm also not watching the clock trying to beat the evening rush. (you should have the numbers to back this up)
3. "butts in seats" is dumb. You aren't dumb and I'm not done. We accomplished everything we set out to do in the last year with 0 butts in seat
4. The office has a ton of non-work related distractions. While I do enjoy the social aspects, I have a distraction free environment here which has allowed me to focus on some larger tasks such as completing project x and y.
5. Customers are never at our site. The only visitors we have are paper salesmen and dental hygienists (see #4) and i am tired of telling them, politely, to go fuck themselves
Unfortunately if they make employment conditional on in office you have to be willing to walk away. They might counter but you should be ready to leave if it gets to this point.
Good Luck
Quit.
In my case, I started the conversation very early, almost a year in advance. "I just married someone who might make me move." Even though we didn't dwell on the discussion, the fact that I brought it up regularly made sure that it wasn't a surprise when I announced that, "I am moving and will need to work remotely."
If you've already discussed how much you like working remotely with your manager, then it shouldn't come as a surprise that you're asking to remain remote.
In your case, maybe consider stating that you will be in the office day a week? Then, when "life happens," just don't show up for 2-3 weeks and see what happens.
When I moved, my employer set up an office for me with a group that I was physically close to. I showed up once a week, then due to a bad winter, I just didn't go in for 6 weeks. No one noticed. (Heck, no one noticed when I was there.) Then, the office situation changed and I asked to be remote full time.
If you get a firm "no," then everything depends on how much leverage you have. If there is some major project due in the near future, point out that the job market is very healthy for remote employees and imply that you might quit without finishing your project. See if you can get some kind of severance package or retention bonus if you stay through the project as a remote employee. Otherwise, just quit when you have a new job.
If you're going to work remotely, work somewhere that's already set up to handle that and where everyone gets it, otherwise you're doomed to a career of being given the annoying jobs that don't require much collaboration because people don't understand how to make that work if you can't sit round a table.
I'm very stubborn on it, because to me it's very easy. Home vs Office is a very hot and polarized topic. It's easy enough to please both type of workers, at least in IT. If C-level management is incapable of compromising on this, then that's not my problem, fortunately.
As far as I know, that's if you're fired without cause. Who do you think the state contacts to find out why you were let go? Be careful going down that route.
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/unemployment-benefit...
Like anything, it depends
Still as I said, either way I'm prepared to get fired with or without case.
1. Have value - the market is hot, you have 1-2 years+ at your job and know the codebase. Replacing you would cost them a good amount, they'd have to train a new person, etc.
2. Have respect - they know you get the job done and stick to your word.
3. Truly don't give a f*k - have savings and know that you could get another job in a few months if you needed to.
If you have those, I seriously don't know how you can fail. Unless it's like a 300k+/year hedge fund job where they want everybody there for the culture etc.
This is the key. Companies that don't understand this soon will understand it later.
But then I also read a news article about how my company was giving up 3 floors in their Asia HQ, which ended up being close to US$ 1 million a month. So money is definitely involved as well.