As a counterexample, my company pays us 3€ per day that we WFH in order to compensate for using personal resources. They are also paying for necessary equipment such as office chair, monitor, etc.

Than again I presume almost everyone in this thread is speaking about American companies, not that it doesn't happen elsewhere, but generally these (as you put it, "sane") company stories tend to be in the US.

This is a great point, particularly considering here in the US we've lost the ability to claim deductions on a home office if we're a company employee, as of 2018.

I've worked remotely for a long time, and have accepted the reality of increased electric bills, but I'm sure this was a surprise to some.

There may be exceptions in hot climates with AC, but I strongly suspect that the far bigger cost for people is now those who need an additional room for work rather than those with a somewhat higher utility bill or footing the cost of a new desk chair.

Continual draw for external monitors and PCs adds up. Anecdotal, but I know quite a few devs in this area had a pretty easy time fitting a desk into their master bedroom when needed.

Some companies don’t want attrition, particularly considering that there is a “shortage of qualified engineers” which is a political way of saying the software industry is underpaid already.

> there is a "shortage of qualified engineers"

Do we still believe this is true? I mean, if that were true, then why Google (probably the IT company in need of the most talented engineers out there) is thinking about applying a measure that will scare away their most talented engineers? It doesn't hold.

If there were a "shortage of qualified engineers", Google would have already said "all of our engineers can work from home if they want to. The ones who want to work from our offices can do so as well". I mean, that's the best strategy to keep and attract the best of the best, isn't it?

> Do we still believe this is true?

No, hence the rest of the sentence:

> which is a political way of saying the software industry is underpaid already

To be clear, it's FAANG who are saying there is a shortage of qualified engineers in their campaign to procure more foreign labor, but really this means they don't want to have to pay domestic engineers what they're worth (they want more H1-B visas to increase the supply and thus decrease the unit cost of engineers--with the nice bonus that H1-B holders are more easily abused because the employer has the power to effectively have these holders deported).

> is thinking about applying a measure that will scare away their most talented engineers? It doesn't hold.

A couple of possibilities:

1. Google is fallible

2. Google may be exceptional in the software industry (e.g., they may be okay with some attrition because they're playing a longer game than others in the industry, or perhaps because they already pay top-tier salaries and don't believe attrition will affect them)

Because whoever is imposing the salary reduction is not the person who will suffer the consequences of the company not having good engineers. They're likely high fiving due to meeting their KPI.

there's still shitton of skilled people that are interested in working for Google

This might be a good heuristic if we were talking about a factory job, but this is a job at a tech company. Competition for talent is pretty fierce, a good enough reason not to cut someone's salary is that it's likely they can go elsewhere and make what they're making now, plus a signing bonus.

Less the costs of transferring jobs.

The industry has done everything in its power to try and retain people through disincentives (interview processes, on boarding process, expectations of often absurd spinup to productivity times, etc.) while not focusing on the incentives (increased pay, more time off, better work life balance, etc.). All of this, acting as sort of collusion agreement proxy to reduce poaching across the industry, makes it less attractive to jump ship and businesses know that.

Spending the time to update my resume, market it a bit, deal with a mixture of mostly sweatshops with some reasonable employers mixed in, and a few actual good employers hiring processes (recruiter spam, LC gauntlets, full day technical interviews) and often employers expecting you to clairvoyantly know their idiosyncrasies (internal infrastructure, business processes, pre-existing code bases and dozens of arbitrary dependencies they chose and worked with for years)--all of which businesses pretend aren't costs and externalize on employees, makes it less attractive.

Let's add in the mix of normal/traditional job switches: meeting and meshing with new coworkers, changing your commute which may not be insignificant, overhead of switching and moving your benefits packages around, delays for building/taking time off, new uncertainties/risks about stability, etc. and suddenly, that sign-on bonus with the near same package doesn't look so attractive.

Anymore, for me to even consider jumping ship I'd need a pretty hefty sign-on bonus just to deal with the rest that will turn into lost personal time and stress. I really need a significant TC bump and hopefully, better work/life balance and/or a combination of my current employer TC degrading due to increased demand, hours, stress, stagnant growth, etc. otherwise, industry has created so many disincentive barriers that I'll stay where I am.

Maybe it's not as tiresome/costly for some, but it certainly is for me.

I used to believe the tech industry was better than other industries.

> Competition for talent is pretty fierce, a good enough reason not to cut someone's salary is that it's likely they can go elsewhere and make what they're making now, plus a signing bonus

I really hope that scenario will happen. IT companies tend to repeat what Google, Amazon, and other tech giants do; so I expect most IT companies will follow Google regarding the topic we are discussing here. I hope am wrong.

Pissing off your employees and finding excuses to cut salary is what a "sane" company does? Sounds short sighted at best.

It's quoted ("sane"). I meant: most successful companies maximize for profit, they usually don't care about employees. So the context here is "sane: from an economic point of view".

> Sounds short sighted at best.

I would say so, but history says otherwise (e.g., Amazon)