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? |
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.
Best of luck.
1. If you negotiate, the questions is what can you give to get something. The only thing you have is your work, so the negotiation can be simplified to "you work there or not" from your side and "all office, part office or all wfh" from their side. If you want "all wfh" then you have little to negotiate, if you want part time office and part time wfh you can negotiate the proportions.
2. What worked for me and a few colleagues: I am officially working partly from the office for almost 15 years. That "partly" is the key word and very subjective: in the winters I used to go to the office a few days per month, in the summer (easier commute, 30 min instead of 1-2 hours each way) a few days per week, the rest of the year was somewhere in between. In the past few years (more than one) I go to the office only when I need to be there, not when HR wants me there. My team is globally distributed, so it makes sense in my case. At the same time, I have a couple of colleagues working remote for many years, one is hundreds of kilometers away and one is one country border away; they are officially working from the office, but they are not physically needed there and nobody is looking for them, their immediate teams are also globally distributed. If this is not applicable for you, you cannot use this method.
Most companies will not allow full wfh for different reasons, some are very valid and reasonable, so the best option may be to work partly from the office and negotiate that part. I think most companies will agree 1-2 days wfh and for some people they will accept more, depending on the specifics of the work these people do and the value for this company these people bring. These are the 2 points you can use in your favor.
Your mileage may vary with these conversations.
That may have required me to do some extra. I am taking up meetings and emergencies outside my time zone working hours, I am helping the team to work better remotely and I invested extra in good video and audio setup.
If you’re working for a company where remote work is a negotiation, I say it’s a good sign that you should seek greener pastures.
Ask for feedback on your performance while working remotely. Also you can provide evidence that you are working & performing well.
Clearly you want to still work for this company, point that out.
Ask yourself what your career path is at this company, is there a difference between your expectations at this place and theirs? Will this be affected by your presence in the office?
Do not put salary and benefits discussions on the table yourself, leave that up to the company.
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.
1. routinely and mostly work with people in other states. 2. continue to perform as good if not better at home. 3. my home-office setup is as good if not better than in-office.
I let him know I have zero interest in returning to commuting 30-40 minutes each way to call another state.
I'd start the conversation as soon as possible. highlight the benefits for the company. highlight that you've honored his/her trust and represented the team well.
Like www.demandstar.com... the uh.. the company I work for. :)
He goes through some very powerful negotiating techniques and strategies.
If you are short on time, try a summary like this. It will help you will be better equipped for your negotiation when the time comes.
Organize with your coworkers who feel the same way as you do about returning to the office, and negotiate as a group.
It also helps to have an offer from a company that can meet your needs if your current employer won't.
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.
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.
You as an individual have very little power. You don't know the intricacies of employment law. You aren't a trained negotiator.
A Trade Union has a bunch of lawyers and negotiators who work for you.
Join a union. Convince your colleagues to join. Use collective bargaining to negotiate with your employer.
For what it's worth, I worked for a company where most software engineers were unionized. The union accomplished almost nothing on behalf of employees besides taking a chunk of their pay check and otherwise complicating situations that people are able to work out themselves.
Not everyone is in as fortunate position as you. Not everyone wants to change employer. You are, to your employer, another cog. If you got hit by a bus, or suddenly resigned - the business would carry on without you.
But if lots of you are unhappy - that's where the power is.
If you don't think employment lawyers are advantageous - why does your business have so many of them?
To counter your annecdata, I've worked in several heavily unionised offices. The union has charged very little and has consistently helped us make improvements which were initially resisted by management.
When you applied for the job , did it say "REMOTE"? If no, then there is no entitlement to anything. You have to agree what company says.
If you not happy then you can find a new job that says "REMOTE".
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
I recognize my good fortune. However, on a site called "Hacker News," I'm going to assume that most people here work in technology and have roughly similar leverage to what I have or have had in the past. If your employer doesn't treat you well and you work in software development, IT or a related field, you should leave because there are employers out there that will treat you decently. None of us are entitled to one specific job.
Unions make sense in some situations. Evidently people in the technology sector have been able to work this specific question out without them.
I did have another offer in hand but didn’t mention that.
Personally I’d like to go back to office. But I do understand why many people may not want to.
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.
It is true that lots of companies are embracing wfh or hybrid model right now, so if in TS shoes I would just changed the job and called it a day.
This is what I would say if I worked at a place which actually wanted people to come back to the office.
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.
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...
Edit: It's a moot point because the management are the ones driving the "safety above all, stay in your houses" strategy.
- Do you have a designated space that is adequate and safe for work?
- Do you have an ergonomic setup including an ergonomic chair and desk?
- Do you have reliable / high speed internet connectivity?
- Do you have a proper microphone setup? (and camera if required)?
- Will you commit to be responsive via instant messaging or another communication solution during office hours?
- Will you comply with good practices regarding the handling and disposal of confidential or sensitive information?
If you can answer yes to all of that, I would have no problems with you becoming a remote employee.
These questions are extremely patronizing.
First, it makes it clear that the stuff in the list becomes your own responsibility when you WFH.
Second, the annoyance of a one-time routine checklist you can cover in 3 minutes is infinitely better than any of those things going wrong.
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm not joking either. I tried negotiating this (pre-covid), only to get a "final offer" of a measly couple of remote days etc. Being on the spectrum, I took their word at face value, found another job that does 100% remote, and put in my resignation. Surprisingly that "absolutely final" position wasn't that final anymore, and they'd've rather had me remote than not at all. Had the new job not been a lot better substance-wise, the whole exercise would have been total waste of time.
Of course you'll want to dictate from a position where you can follow your ultimatum if need be.
The nearing end of Covid is where people like us can - indeed must - make a stand against the returning suffocating madness of boring commutes, noisy open plan offices, incessant context switches; against sacrificing one's creativity, flow and personal space to placate the emotional instincts and biases of the excessively social who rarely do the heavy lifting in our sector.
Stay determined and keep up the good work.
I don't think that is why you made a suboptimal choice; I think that's why you incorrectly think you made a suboptimal choice.
They might regret losing you, but that doesn't mean that good things would have happened if you tried to apply leverage before.
The act of trying to force someone to do something, whether by (implied) threat, logic, emotional manipulation, or whatever, can mortally wound a relationship making getting a concession you want moot.
As you say, the new job was "a lot better substance-wise", so it's a good thing you didn't try to hold their feet to the fire.
1. The underlying problem was still there — the management did not value your work to have a thoughtful policy that worked for both you and your employer. Rather than working with you, they chose an adversarial approach.
2. If you had gone back, they now know you can leave, so they will be looking to replace you as soon as they can, possibly even have you train their replacement.
3. Some independent contracting work for continuity may be appropriate if you care about the team and they had treated you well.
4. It is easier to get hired while you still have a job than while you do not.
Precisely.
If you want to keep somebody on your team, you don't play this kind of game. These sort of zero-sum take-all-the-marbles negotiations are reserved for when you don't care at all about any future relationship (which should be very close to "never").
Yes, so, present the initiative not just or even primarily in terms of your own preferences, but in terms that highlight the benefits to your employer.
How would working remotely make your contribution more valuable and more flexible to your team and your org?
Sell that first. There's no risk. Even if it doesn't work first time, if you present it as part of an open discussion about their interests, needs, and pre-conceptions you'll learn something from their response.
If you feel that being on the spectrum limits your ability to see things from their point of view, depersonalise it by getting some help from a friend to divine your employer's perspective, and then take that view and treat it as an intellectual exercise for you to optimise a scenario. You're good at that.
There's no reason for it, but ego, and emotionalism on both sides. Saying:
"I'm at a point where remote matters to me quite a bit, and I won't sacrifice pay for it. If you can't do it, I'll start applying with those who will, but I thought I owed you the honest truth."
It doesn't need to be emotionally driven. Just honest truth.
And I get that, as you say, bizarrely negative consequences can follow.
Me? I respect the truth. I can work with it. I want to hear it.
Many don't.
Yet, maybe this is an additional indicator of employer value, and potential toxicity?
They're not just boring, they're dangerous and expensive, especially if you're commuting by car. Commutes are responsible for a 9.91% drop in hourly wages[1].
Using the media commute time, a commuter might spend close to 10 days per year just commuting, and in some cases it's closer to two full weeks[1]:
> In the area with the longest average commute (New York-Newark-Jersey City), commuters are spending an average of 13 days, 2 hours, and 26 minutes driving to and from work. That means that 14 vacation days a year are barely covering the time it takes to get to work every day. So in addition to dropping the average wage from $34.71 per hour to $30.15 per hour, in order to get 14 days of hanging with their family on a beach, New York commuters must be willing to spend nearly as much time sitting in a car.
If you're already in place and have proven that you're good at what you do, this is the way to go.
"I wanted to let you know that I'll be staying remote from here on out. This last year has been a huge improvement in quality of life for me, and honestly I couldn't imagine working out of an office again. I'd love to stay with you guys (this is a great team), so let me know if that's an option. If not, I'm sure I can wind down my projects by next month."
Good developers are hard to find, and the market right now is on fire, so you're a lot more valuable to them then they are to you.
Even back when that was less the case than today, this was my standard method of negotiating things like long leaves of absence and shortened work weeks. I've written about it previously:
https://www.expatsoftware.com/articles/2007/02/two-weeks-vac...
I'd leave out the last sentence, it doesn't add anything and just makes the threat to quit more in your face thus confrontational.
Also instead of finishing with "so let me know if that's an option." I'd go more like "so let me know what options we can explore to make this happen." The first one is a take it or leave it, the second says you're flexible on details as long as you get to be remote.
The point is that you communicate that you are very interested in staying, love the team and willing to work with management to find any reasonable solution to make this work. If you make it an ultimatum the more likely response is "Sad to see you go, ok bye."
As much as I think this is true, somehow experience tells me the other way around: valuable employees leaving company X doesn't make company X sweat. Company X just hires more... and there is always someone who can be hired. A couple of months later, everything is alright again and once realized that that valuable employee was just another cog in the machine.
Really? I thought the market was saturated. I've read many horror stories of people sending hundreds of applications out that lead to a few interviews that lead to zero offers.
Everything is a negotiation. You have only limited power over your employer.
If you think you can "dictate", you don't understand the relationship you have.
If what you think "dictating" works, that is because it really is a negotiation and your employer decided they will meet your demands.
"Dictating" may get you a label attached, that you are hard to negotiate with, fussy, capricious, etc.
Don't do it. It is much better to sound reasonable because it has much better chance to be met with reasonable answer.
So not everything is a negotiation. Sometimes it's just offer and decission.
However, I'm not sure it is the way to go for employment contracts where you have an ongoing relationship with the other party.
Whenever someone on my team has approached me to say they have a better offer but they'll stay if I can match the terms I've always recommended they take the offer even if I'd be sad to lose them. Keeping someone on the team who is unhappy enough to go through the hiring process and find a new role is a short term fix at best.
And although some companies make their hiring process like pulling teeth, there are plenty of employers where you only need a single day off work.
And don't all managers try to keep an eye on employees' frustration levels? If you don't, you should; it's kinda important for retention. If you only learn people are unhappy when it's too late, how are you going to know to take corrective action?
Of course, there will always be some people who get offers it's pointless to match - if I develop business software, and a guy who's always wanted to be a game developer gets a job offer from Valve, maybe he should take it :)
You can't necessarily infer "is unhappy here" from "has an offer from another firm".
It seems pfp did it right by first making their requirements well known and then putting themselves in a good negotiation position.
Or they may have not been lying but just reacting to circumstances. They can’t give everyone everything needed to make everyone stay if the threaten to leave but they can do it for the one who does actually threaten to leave.
As a team lead I don’t believe in convincing someone to stay if they took an offer. Their heart and soul has left the building!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_alternative_to_a_negotiat...
Today I learned.
"Sorry, but I'm currently not accepting in-office work. If my employment is contingent on new in-office policies, I'm afraid I'll be tendering my resignation."
I completely agree, but for most people it requires them to have something to fall back on. Which can be extremely hard to establish in our current economic climate, since it prioritizes businesses over people.
The logical position is to treat your (and every) employer as an aggressively exploitative entity, that wouldn’t hesitate for a microsecond to cut you loose.
Build contacts, develop your network, plan your career, and most importantly, actually work consciously towards having absolutely no loyalty, empathy or compassion for any employer... that will still be a more generous position than how any employer will view you (unless they are actively breaching their fiduciary duties).
I would take that advise with a massive grain of salt. I know someone that was working for a company that wasn't exactly working with state of the art tech. He pretty much dictated how he wanted to work there: iMac instead of a really weird PC setup, modern tooling instead of C++ which he really disliked. He went totally megalomanic, negotiated even different working hours, went with Taxi to work and 2 years later he had some kind of burn out and had to pause working for a year. In his own words, he wasn't able to program anymore. I think he completely lost it.
That said, there are plenty of places offering long-term remote. Why would you work for a place that you need to force to give you the treatment that another place would be happy to give you? Probably with the job change it's even possible to get a little extra salary.
Absolutely this. The market for talent is going to be incredibly hot in the coming months. You should have no problems finding remote work.
Every situation is different, but I wouldn't use it as an ultimatum. If you see cockroaches in the kitchen, then there's probably rats. If your leadership doesn't have the maturity to look past their dogma and continue a successful experiment, what other bad decisions are they making at your expense?
This comes a privileged position. There many, many developers who don't have that kind of sway with employers. The most likely option is, if you threaten to leave, employers will just say, "OK. Go ahead." And easily find a replacement.
I've been in this position a couple times with pay raises... and to be honest once this happens the job is more or less dead for me anyway.
To only pay me what I asked because I'm leaving absolutely obliterates my trust.
I have no way of knowing if this has resulted in better salary increases over the years than if I had played it differently but it certainly feels better than working for people who I feel are cheating and lying to me.
If you really want to stay, you can still look for another offer with the conditions you want, and use it to point out that the company is being unreasonable in its demands and that market conditions for labour have shifted, and actually they are putting themselves in a bad position trying to enforce their preferences against prevailing conditions.
(IMO most people shouldn't go more than a few years without checking the job market and getting an offer, even without intent to switch jobs.)
Also - it's wrong and arrogant to make the claim that there is universal disdain for office work. You can have your view, that's fine, but don't assume that it's consistent with the views of others.
Start with, "I'd like to be converted to full remote, what's the process for that?" The answer is probably "I don't know but I don't think it would fly." Insist that your manager ask up the chain for an official answer.
If the answer is "nope", next say: "I'm not comfortable returning to the office for health reasons. Will I be fired?" This is two-pronged:
a) it introduces private healthcare decisions, a legally fraught topic they do not want to deal with. Is it legal to fire someone for refusing to return to the office despite health concerns? Probably, but no one knows for sure and your employer does not want to be the test case. (If they ask, "what health concerns?" remind them that's private. Don't invent a fictitious medically-fragile aunt.)
b) It may force them to confront the fact that they will lose people over this. They very likely think of wfh as a perk, something they can decide by fiat without consequence. If no one quits over it, that's exactly what it will be.
If they stick to their guns, it's time to look for another job I suppose. If they have some explanation for why wfh is bad ("productivity is down, look at this graph", or "the value of hallway conversations" or whatever) I wouldn't bother arguing unless it's a small enough company that you can argue with the person who made the decision.
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?”
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].
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.
I have a Mark2 at work. It's really amazing, the software for it is great, and I plan to fly some parts made with it in a lunar mission!
The carbon fibre demo keychain part always blows people away when I invite them to try and break it. For those that don't know, markforged makes a 3d printer that can embed a continuous carbon fibre strand into each print layer, making for very stiff and strong parts.
Thanks.
I'd like to add that there is a big difference between "most of the company is in-office with some remote workers" and "company is fully distributed including leadership" - with the former, it's not necessarily a positive work environment being the remote person when everyone else is talking to each other in the conference room (or in the hallway).
In other words, even if you do negotiate an exception to your employer's return-to-office policy, it's likely not a good career move.
There are plenty of companies out there who have transitioned to remote-first, and the technical skill-set is still highly prized. Take advantage!
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.
So:
1. Start with doing recon. Ask your manager how has remote been? What does his boss think? How has the company done overall? What's been frustrating? Knowing the pain points means you can later find concessions that are cheap to you but vital to them.
2. Get a fulky remote job offer from someone else. Doesn't have to be a job you love but needs to be a real option. Now you have leverage.
3. Now you are ready to begin the process - "if I wanted to stay fully remote, what would we do to make that work?"
4. When you meet resistance, try to make a small concession along one of the pain points you identified earlier ("I'm happy to commit to the same office hours as everyone else Tues-Thurs", "I've identified a reasonable meeting wall setup for my house", "I will come in 1 week a month to make sure we all stay bonded as a team"). Make sure it's something you dont mind conceding and it addresses their hottest pain point.
5. Always remain upbeat, and amicable during negotiations. This is a team effort to accomplish the goal of keeping you happy and productive at this company.
6. Dont mention the other job offer unless you really need to, or if they are dragging their feet. "I really want to remain here and work remotely, but this other fully remote job offer expires soon."
On 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.
By the way, I’ve started asking recruiters on Linkedin if the role they are reaching out to me for is remote. I’m not looking for a job but I bet if enough people start doing that there’ll be a shift :)
I've worked from home ever since, rejecting numerous jobs of twice my salary ....as quite simply i don't want 4 extra hours of travel each day.
I was lucky to have a bit of negotiating sway due to our company having just been acquired and me reporting to the new CEO who was keen to keep me on board. So I could probably have negotiated remote-only as a permanent thing, but I actually chose to quit the business last year and become a freelance consultant, working for my old employer under a contract instead (which they were happy with as opposed to losing me altogether).
So now I run my own business, choose my own work environment and tools (I have setup an awesome home office during lock down which is a pleasure to spend time in!) and contract for my old employer while building up some other clients too.
For me, I’ve spent over half my career self-employed and I wanted to get back to this anyway, but for what it’s worth, if you want to fully dictate your work environment (location, tools, hours etc) you can’t beat being freelance!
I appreciate this is not the advice you were looking for - just my personal experience in case it prompts any ideas.
To more directly answer your question, just ask! One thing I’ve learnt over the years is that we often want things but are too afraid to ask. Even if you think you know what the answer will be, ask anyway. See what discussion there is to be had.
The other thing I’d say is if you can negotiate 1-2 days remote (if they force you to a compromise) take it, because you can grow those 2 days into more from there if you can prove you’re productive in those days at home.
It’s much easier to go fully remote if you’re already partly remote, so don’t look at it as a binary thing.
BTW I’ve been on the other side of this too, helping one of my direct reports transition to fully remote. I was on board with it already but I had to “sell” the concept to my bosses in turn, but we made it happen.
Good luck!
- Make it clear that work remote is a requirement for you
- Consider things that may make your manger's life easier, as they may need to argue up the chain on your behalf. Draw upon any positive performance reviews, performance metrics. Consider whether you'd be willing to fly in for one week per quarter. Point to any existing permanently remote coworkers as examples / precedents.
- Talk to as many people in your direct management chain as possible (without going around people of course).
- Be prepared to leave.
Being challenged, CEO decided to give everyone 12 wfh days per year. After asking why exactly "12", he argued that this were the average days people requested in the last 2 years before pandemic. That's just ridiculous.
Yet, I'm still at the company, because I don't think that now is a good time to look for a new job without substantial savings. But alea iacta est, I guess.
Also, it doesn't make sense to negotiate in private, even if I managed to get something negotiated: We are working in a team, and the team needs to be able to handle somebody who is working remotely. It's pretty hard to not let people behind if you aren't trained at wfh.
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.
This is the key. Companies that don't understand this soon will understand it later.
I recommend a book on negotiation called "Never Split the Difference". It's written by a former FBI hostage negotiator, it's filled with interesting stories and good advice.
Some negotiation books seem like a "bag of tricks" which only work if the other person doesn't know the tricks, not this book, this book is filled with advice that would work even if both parties are using the negotiation techniques described in the book.
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
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?
Quit.
If you do mention the offer after being refused your ultimatum, do not expect your job to be secure. You’ll be a marked man as you’ve demonstrated that you’re willing to walk away. Unless they counter with a substantial enough pay bump and you have equally substantial faith in them upholding the agreement for the long term (unlikely), walk.
Here are some more ideas to consider. Source: 18+ years of experience as an engineer, manager, and director.
The theme is make your manager's life easy and he/she will do whatever they can to help you out.
Depending upon the size of your company, your manager may have more or less discretion with WFH. Whatever you do, don't put him/her into a corner with an all or nothing demand. Be clear with what you want, but be willing to negotiate how it happens.
If you've consistently delivered in the past, you have a tremendous amount of leverage. Believe me, the last thing a manager will want to do is lose one of his/her top engineers especially given this job market. Make sure they know you have options and you're willing to exercise them, but you really want to stay put.
Be patient, but hold a hard line. Most managers are inundated with bureaucracy which means almost nothing moves fast. Don't be surprised if your request gets pushed down the stack due to the latest fire that needs attention. Keep offering up options that make their life easier. I know, I know, this is about you not them, but trust me on this one. Make whatever solution you want easy for them. HR says no? Talk to HR, find the loop hole (private healthcare decision sounds perfect).
Alright, this one may be a bit more out there. Reader discretion advised. Just do it. Don't come back in the office. Don't make a lot of noise about it, make sure your productivity stays up, and have numbers to back it up. If your manager catches heat, do whatever is necessary to relieve him or her then go back to WFH.
Can you give some examples of what offers like that could be?
I also like the Seinfeld-esque advice of just staying at home, although I really wouldn’t have the guts to go through on that.
Wouldn’t simply not showing up give them a “bureocratic obligation” to fire you for disobedience?
I used to be a lawyer (though was never a labor/employment lawyer) and am having a hard time coming up with reasons it would be illegal to fire someone who refuses to come into the office for unspecified medical reasons.
It seems like you've thought about this quite a bit — what would the reasoning be? Employees have lots of protections, some of them related to medical conditions. For example, employees can get access to FML under the appropriate circumstances. But my understanding (having claimed such benefits for my family when babies were born) is that some sort of proof is required to establish eligibility.
Are there other benefits or protections that would not require this? Or is there a 'protected class' designation that could be claimed? For the record, I have no dog in this fight — I work for myself and don't have employees, so this doesn't affect me personally. I'm just curious what the arguments are for employees who want to remain remote.
I have not, no, this is just guesswork, but the reasoning is how much of an unknown quantity the covid risk still is. If Bob's doctor says it's not safe for Bob to return to the office because Bob's wife had a pulmonary embolism two years ago, who's to say the doctor is wrong? If Bob's psychologist says he has PTSD and the only way he can work safely is from his couch, how can you argue that allowing him to wfh isn't a "reasonable accommodation", after he's done it for a year and gotten a good annual review?
But again, I'm talking out my butt on this. My point was not that medical necessity is a convincing case, just that conjuring up the specter of medical necessity might change things if they were only loosely committed. And I don't think this is duplicitous: I think a very likely outcome for a lot of big corporations will be a "mandatory" return to the office which, in practice, is so riddled with exemptions that everyone who wants to wfh is allowed to.
Justification is the money the company will save on office space and equipment and utilities and snacks when you're working from home.
And then graciously "settle" for maintaining your current wage, having forestalled any talk of lower/location-based pay for remote workers.
On the other hand, if a good manager doesn't care if you quit, it also says a lot. There are developers I was so relieved just quit. It wasn't worth it keeping them.
Although some may see the extra leverage they now have because losing multiple people at once is far worse than losing a single person.
I don't think anybody needs to make anything up in the midst of worldwide pandemic. This past year is a blockbuster example of why somebody could reasonably be concerned.
Weaponizing (perhaps too aggressive a word) private health decisions feels weird to me. The OP didn't mention any health concerns, so I'm assuming you're suggesting he just hide behind fictitious ones?
Your advice is probably useful and could potentially get him what he desires, but it still feels off to me. It feels especially off because I've seen people use the same approach so they can avoid wearing masks in public.
I don't think "I'm not comfortable returning to the office for health reasons" implies any medical condition beyond being afraid to get covid. Which ought to be reason enough, if there's no particular downside to allowing OP to continue working remotely. And if there is a downside, it'd be good if OP and their employer discussed it.
But that's to ignore that
* Not all ages or people have been vaccinated
* Other disease such as flu or cold
* Commute related health
* Even ergonomics of a home office
I completely disagree with the strategy if you aren’t vulnerable to the virus. Negotiate remote on its merits without throwing something emotive in there for your personal gain.
If you did this to me I would want you gone. Making disingenuous arguments shows a total lack of morality.
Why would I want to hire someone who is willing to lie to get what they want?
They are still going to expect you back at some point so this may result in just kicking the can down the road.
Instead, if you’re good enough, find somewhere where this isn’t an issue. That way you can work however is best for you without literally asking your boss if you’re going to be fired. Sheesh.
If there are places that are amenable to what you want, quit wasting your time going against the grain and just move on. Even if you got them to agree, it will constantly be an issue. They will always act like they’re doing you a favor and continually remind how weird it is that you work remote.
Just leave all this behind, it isn’t worth it. There are places where they just don’t care about this, it just won’t be an issue.
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.
More importantly, BATNA gives you confidence in your asks. Many people simply don't negotiate at all. Trying to negotiate salary and conditions in the absence of a BATNA requires a level of social skill and confidence that many people simply don't have.
If you your image is already of a bright immature developer (basically a prodigy grownup child) and you hold a lot of value for the company, then it might be useful to do something like that just to make the point that you really mean it, if they did not feel you are going to go through with your threat.
On the other hand if the image of myself that I try to create is that of a rational person that aims at finding solutions to problems, that wants to take more responsibility for bigger problems for the company, doing something like that could potentially be very damaging.
There is many ways to make the threat believable. First is not making threats that you are not willing and prepared to go through. If you have a history of mentioning on multiple occasion that you are going to leave the company then your next threat is not really believable because the only difference between it and previous attempts is in your mind.
Second, I am prepared. Having facts and being prepared for the discussion is immediate indication to the other person that you are serious enough to put some effort. Never go to a discussion like that on a whim, just after a stimulus that triggered you.
Third, I reduce this to just business. Business is language your managers talk and understand on daily basis. I explain that I have obligation to the family and there is only so much I can do to stay at the company if I have other, better paid options. I don't complain at the company, I don't try to create false image of accomplishment that somebody can see through. Instead I put it logically so they understand I have logically arrived at conclusion they also agree with that there is absolutely no way for me to stay unless they concede at least something. That this is just business and I have no ill thoughts or intentions, that as much as possible I would like to remain at the company but it is the logic that compels me to change job.
If I wanted to stay working remotely but my company did not I would try to do following:
1. Set up the meeting in advance and give advance of the topic that I want to broach. This gives them time to prepare but also makes it less useful for them to say they need to think about it after we have finished the meeting.
2. I would come prepared with arguments to show that working remotely was not detrimental to my productivity and in fact I was more productive because I was able to manage my time better.
3. I would empathize with why they would want to bring people back to the office, but then point out that even though not every person is, I am grown up, reasonable person and I don't need handholding to manage my time and keep pulse on my productivity.
4. I would say that my family is so happy with me working remotely that now this becomes a requirement so much, that if I can't meet that requirement with my current company I will have to start looking around for a job that will suit me. No hard feelings, but I am pressed by outside factors.
5. I would point out there is a new market for remote work and I am more than capable of finding a new job that will be paying reasonably for remote position.
6. I would ask that if they have some specific concerns about me doing my work remotely when the rest of the team does not, they bring it up to me and I trust we can reasonably discuss and find some solutions and we can delay my decision to leave the company until such time they decide that it is not working for them.
The outcome is still the same (they agree or not) but now they know they are talking to a reasonable person they can solve future problems with. Because I am not unpredictable and unreasonable it pays more to invest a little bit in the relationship.
You absolutely can infer that if the person has come to you saying they're considering taking the offer. People don't consider offers from other companies unless there's a reason why they might want to leave where they are now.
Some people think an offer is leverage they can use to improve their current role, but really it's a signal that the person is already half out of the door and the company should say goodbye and start recruiting a replacement.
I'm curious about the reasoning behind this opinion. As someone outside of the US (UK), I've interviewed a few people who were unemployed at the time but with a good level of experience and track record. People deciding to take some time off to do their own thing has never bothered me, if they can afford it then I think everyone deserves a sabbatical option.
I don’t know how it is in the UK. Here in the US, a hiring manager sees a gap in the resume and asks about that. This has been a problem for say, women who exited the workforce to take care of their kids and then attempt to reenter it. I suppose, even if there is no negative mark, if you have a stack of 30 or 40 resumes, you start using “relevant recent experience” as a way to filter down to the people you want to interview.
There is also a tendency for agism, worse in some industries or disciplines than in others — maybe some kind of cult of youth thing going on. (I have found that development teams favor younger developers, even for senior developers, while ops and devops tend to favor a slightly older crowd).
There is a great article explaining how a software developer can get better negotiating position that can potentially bypass that resume gap: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2012/01/23/salary-negotiation/
... but only because you can do this with software development, not necessarily with anything else.
That'll also make you more relaxed during interviews (if you do bad/ask for too much the stakes are lower)
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).
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.
In any negotiated situation, both sides can usually give a bit more until they reach their limit. Maybe the employee could offer an extra few hours of focussed work and the employer can offer an extra 5% salary. That’s where the negotiation lands.
That can flex on either side as leverage and options move, but it’s just business.
The alternative is to nail everyone to the wall in every negotiation but that doesn’t seem constructive long term.
You're suggesting negotiating with a hard sell, but the benefit should already be obvious to a good employer: your employee is asking for this, because they deeply want it, and it's essentially no problem to give it to them. Making the effort to ask is already a hard sell.
An employer saying 'no' thinks they have the power in this situation, and is choosing to express that power over an issue which primarily affects their employee's happiness.
Hard sell or not, it's time to quit.
In a theoretical world, everything would be obvious to everyone. The real world is not like that, because different people see things differently, because they have different vantage points, different interests, and different constraints. Most importantly, they have different pre-conceptions, because they have different experiences.
Selling a proposition that makes sense to both parties is not about exerting will over someone. It's the opposite. It's about searching for ways to do things differently that results in mutual benefit.
Traditionally, employers in all industries have conceived of their role as commanding and monitoring employees to ensure they do work, which, they tacitly assume the employee wants to shirk. It is the role of an enforcer, and it is based on a simplistic paradigm that's now officially out of date.
In 2021, the pandemic has shed new light on that relationship.
With no choice but to work from home, and with new tools such as Zoom and Teams, workplaces in all industries have found new ways to do things, and changed their conceptions about what works and what doesn't work.
The first thing people noticed is that some people are more productive working from home, and experience greater satisfaction. They are able to balance their roles as homemakers, family members, employees and change agents better because they can slice time more effectively.
They regain all the hours lost to commuting.
They gain some of the hours lost to unnecessary interruptions from colleagues.
For responsible employees who don't shirk work, the reasons for productivity gain aren't difficult to explain. What percentage of employees is that? It was already more than 0, and it's only growing higher with better tools and more knowledge of remote work experiences.
The next thing organisations learned is that not all employees had the same experiences. Introverts welcomed the isolation. Extroverts felt diminished in the absence of the energy they gained from interactions with colleagues.
The longer the pandemic went on, the more we learned. Institutional learning is still occurring because it takes at least a year for some metrics to even be accumulated and derived. The impact on the bottom line of the change in real estate requirement e.g. CBD towers will be profound, but it hasn't even been calculated yet, let alone analysed by accountants and executives.
What ftf meetings are necessary, and what meetings, virtual and ftf, are a waste of time? We started to learn that only when ftf meetings were impossible for an extended period.
Sure - but this doesn't change what I said.
You're saying that an employee is obligated to sell this (what they are currently already doing for employment) to their employer. But... the employer has already proven that they value this work, paid at that rate.
Surely, instead, the employer ought to sell coming back to the office to the employee. The employer can't depend on this being the default any more.
> Many don't.
We're not negotiating with you, we're negotiating with an average boss picked out of the "many" pile.
I get that this causes issues for many.
That is what people say when they have options and can dictate terms. It only gets emotional when one party does not have the clear upper hand and so tries to “feel” the other party out to see what they will yield.
So my "no reason for it" was stated with this in mind.
As an employer, I'd like to know. Other employers seem to be vindictive, which I find bizarre. Worse, enough employers act this way, that they poison the pool.
Then these same employers act surprised, and wonder why they get little warning when an employee leaves.
Silly.
The truly good employers are a rarity.
They don't, especially those who know they can find someone who's eager to jump in and work for less pay.
Will the company fold if you leave it?
I have personally been in this situation and even then I have negotiated because the owners were only able to put so much money and above that they would prefer to just cut their losses and dissolve the company.
> If you can leave the next day there's no much room for the employer to negotiate anything.
No, you just decided to give them your terms and allow the company to only approve or deny them. You take away their ability to negotiate with you in response to your demands but you did not take their ability to make their own decision. You did not dictate anything.
You would dictate if you had actual power over the company.
You are not really a dictator if they can refuse your offer, are you?
I'm just saying that statement "everything is a negotiation" is not true. Because if you refuse to participate in any bargaining then there's no negotiation. Just a statement (from one side) and decision (from the other).
I see you are mostly opposed to the word dictate because you understand it as employee dictating what company will do. And he's obviously not capable of that.
The word dictate used by OP was about dictating the terms of decision they have to make, not dictating what the decision should be.
I am not native English speaker, but the dictionaries are rather precise that authority is a necessary ingredient of being able to dictate something.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/dictate
"to give orders, or tell someone exactly what they must do, with total authority"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dictate
"to issue as an order; to impose, pronounce, or specify authoritatively"
If you don't have authority over the company you can still think you are dictating, but that's not how the company views it.
The company view is "are you too much of a problem for the benefit of keeping you?" not "John said it so we must do it because he has authority around here".
"Give me remote or I walk."
Versus,
"I found this great role at this other company, and the work they do satisfies me on a deep personal level. However, it's not remote, and if you let me stay remote, my present position would be way better. What do you feel would be right?"
I recommend everyone read Getting to Yes.
What you should actually do is politely request that you be allowed to work remotely, as you "realized that you are not looking forward to spending a significant chunk of your day commuting, and have realized that remote work is much better for your mental health". This is still a polite request, but fairly clear that you'll probably start looking for another job if they deny.
I think you're right. It's just a matter of how long it takes for the change to filter through to different industries and different levels of management.
How long does change take?
It depends on the org. Small businesses see the impact straight away. Their capacity to react appropriately depends on their resources. No small company could have developed their own effective videoconferencing tools, but any small company could adopt the technology once it existed in 2020, and many did. Many failed. It depends on industry category, and individuals.
For large orgs, it's difficult to see anything clearly in under 2 years, because the metrics have to be accumulated from regions, deciphered by the accounts department (using out of date filters), and then interpreted by the C suite (using out of date compensation metrics).
The fact that different individuals respond differently to workplace changes makes it even more convoluted to sort out the gains from the costs in this situation, and reconfigure executive information systems and management practices.
I'm no expert, but I'm reasonably sure you can't get 'reasonable accommodations' of much substance for a secret medical condition.
The crux of the issue, then, is whether the cost to OP's employer to allow OP to wfh is negligible or not. And I am assuming OP's position would be that their performance last year proves the cost is negligible, not that they demand an accommodation despite the cost.
There may be some broader context where this framework also applies, but absent that there wouldn't be a 'hook' to get it to apply to COVID-related WFH.
I'm not a lawyer, or a manager, but I'm not quite convinced. I think OP should have that conversation with their doctor first. Claiming to need WFH to be safe is sounds related to some anti-Covid vaccination arguments. If the company cares about safety they are probably going to take reopening safely seriously, if they don't take Covid seriously they won't like accepting the initial request.
Though the eeoc does say having any WFH program makes it more likely it could be a reasonable accommodation. And I think my employer is already thinking about accommodations when reopening. Getting WFH might be a good possibility if their doctor agrees it's needed. https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/guidance/work-hometelework-reasona...
There is a bit of nuance here. As someone else mentioned, he is not saying he is literally dictating what decision the employer must make, he is dictating his own terms.
In fact, you conveniently left out a definition that doesn't fit your argument from the pages you linked:
> to influence something or make it necessary
Example (from the Cambridge URL that you linked): "He shouldn't be allowed to dictate all the terms and conditions - it's supposed to be a democratic decision."
That's exactly what OP is doing. Dictating the terms and conditions. Influencing what "must be done". Giving them an ultimatum, by dictating his conditions. He is "dictating" in this case, because he does have total authority on his own actions. If they do not cede, he will leave.
It's kind of a semantic argument, and moot at that, but even the resources you linked support OP's usage of the word dictate.
And in the winter... It's just torture on the body.
The people I don't want to live among are the kind that have a lot of money and not a lot of problems.
I get along better with street pharmacists than I do with doctors and lawyers.