If that means that you want to only apply for remote positions, that’s certainly your choice; I don’t blame you in the least for it, but expecting a company to pay you as a result of where you chose to live seems unlikely to happen, to put it mildly.
I don't have a clear cut way to interpret this interaction either in the past or going forward (everyone's motivations are different). But now physical location factors into the calculation on both sides differently than it did in the past. In the past "travel time to sit at a desk in a specific location" was always completely assumed to be a burden incurred solely by the employee (it had been the government who made allowances for pre-tax commuter costs in some cases). That is no longer the case.
When it comes down to it, getting paid for 8 hours of company time but 2 of them being travel time and 6 being productive is getting paid 33% more. The negotiation may be less directly about money: rather than "I want more money for that 40 hours" it could be "I'll work 32 hours for that money"
None of that is remotely* a concern of my company, though…
* pun was accidental, but pleasing enough to leave it in there.
The closest homes to work are $1.15MM and $1.5MM. I’m not sure if the CEO is paid enough in cash to qualify for one of these homes on salary alone.
Obviously yes? You realize that most people mortgage their homes? A 1.5M, 30 year mortgage at today's rates (3.1%) translates to $76,863/year which seems pretty doable for a CEO (unless you're the garage startup type).
1. most employers will pay the same regardless of where I live, and my job security will be the same as before.
2. most employers will pay a bit less if I work remotely, but that's worth it to me since I can pay less for rent and have a higher quality of life. And yes, my job security will be the same as before.
It shocks me that people are not considering the following scenario:
3. most employers will realize that a person living 100 miles away represents the same value to my company as one that lives 5,000 miles away. The latter, of course, is far cheaper, more motivated, and far less likely to cause any problems since they also have far fewer protections. And no, they are not any less talented.
So far, the pandemic has been all about the workforce side of the story. We're about to find out what the employer side of the story looks like. I personally don't mind a future where everyone in this world get equal access to job opportunities, but I don't think that most people advocating for remote work are quite as aware of the long-term ramifications on the US workforce.
It hasn't happened.
Why? Probably because knowledge work is not at all zero sum. It grows with knowledge workers. So India's knowledge workers got jobs on top of existing ones.
Assuming the same happens now for rural America then it might be a net positive and might even revive some of the dying regions.
> It hasn't happened.
We think it hasn't happened. And yet, the likelihood of talking to a CX rep from a Fortune 500 company who is based in the US is very low. Did that somehow help the US-based CX reps?
Perhaps you're thinking that it will be different with knowledge workers. Consider the well-publicized fact that a lot of Boeing software is written in India. How many other corporations are following suit behind the scenes?
Historically, both employers and employees have incongruent and hazy understanding and a polite agreement as to how this kind of time gets accounted for (how much it is and who is accountable/responsible for it), especially in salaried positions/knowledge workers. That's probably going to change. If anything, the work-from-wherever trend will help people get a better understanding of and draw the line between work-time and personal-time, productive time and non-productive time, total compensation, and what, exactly, they are being compensated for, and how this time is grokked and tracked.