There was a viral video of some PMs working from a pool. On one hand, it doesn't really matter where you work from as long as you get your work done. But on the other hand, I find it hard to believe that someone can have focus in an environment like that. It might be unpopular opinion online, but I think its entirely reasonable to put some restrictions on where you can work from home, if only to allay the feelings of colleagues. Ideally everyone would have a work environment where there is a set standardized output of X that needs to be produced by each employee in which case how it gets done is irrelevant. But in modern work environment, there is a level of trust and autonomy employees are granted. There are dark patterns people can use to minimize the amount of work you're doing without drawing too much attention. And sure, you can think cynically that you should do the minimum amount of work required, because your employer will pay you the minimum amount they have to. But that just sounds overly adversarial and could create a toxic environment and resentment amount colleagues. Not to mention its terrible for you in the long run.
I would be a little worried about somebody working from inside the pool (laptop may get dunked).
By the pool -- seems like a bit of a fuzzy thing. I can definitely imagine working from a deck could be quite relaxing which could help with focus. And some decks happen to have pools built in. I can't imagine a good manager would micromanage, like, distance to the pool or something like that.
We've accepted programmers working from coffee shops for ages, and that environment seems much more distracting.
I dunno. In the end, the metric that matters is, does the work get done? If you can get it done by the pool, fair enough, right?
What do you mean by "an environment like that"? It was just them outside by a pool...it's not like they were at a Vegas pool party... Different kinds of people work well in various environments.
I sit outside and work all the time, often by the pool. It's actually very relaxing and I can get a lot done when I have my headphones in... Sure, sometimes it gets distracting...and that's when I go back to my desk.
I don't post on HN often. Should I have modify the title to be less clickbaitey or be true to the post? I thought about changing it to give more context.
In this case the title was linkbait so it would be correct to change it. When changing it, the goal is to represent the article accurately and neutrally (i.e. not putting a spin on it, which would be editorializing). The best way to do this is to find a representative phrase from the article itself which has those qualities—if you can find one.
I took a quick look at that Reddit post and couldn't find one. That might be a sign that this article is too sensationalistic/shallow to make a good HN submission.
While the story itself is amusing, I actually focused on the thread where they've discussed tax implications that the company may bourne due to working in another city/state. I'm not familiar with US tax law, is this really true that income taxes can vary even between cities? I understand that it varies between states, but surely it doesn't extend that there are differences between two cities in the same state?
Sometimes the tax is fine-grained enough to be certain blocks, not just within state or city limits. For example, Portland, Oregon has an income tax (with mandatory employer withholding) for employees working in the downtown district, to fund public transit:
> Sometimes the tax is fine-grained enough to be certain blocks, not just within state or city limits. For example, Portland, Oregon has an income tax (with mandatory employer withholding) for employees working in the downtown district, to fund public transit
And now it's much more clearer why there is a tax software cartel in the US. If an accountant can barely remember that, an ordinary people would definitely not get this.
Yes, some US cities have additional income taxes beyond what you pay to the state. New York City, for example, has a city income tax, as does Yonkers, NY.
At one of my prior firms, pre-pandemic, they fired a remote worker because she moved from one state to another. We thought this was insane because she was one of our best employees and the workflow wouldn't change since she was already remote. The company's logic was that they didn't have any employees in her new state, and they didn't want to take on the additional tax, legal and administrative burden and risks of expanding into that new state.
American/Californian checking in here. IANAL and not an accountant. That said: I find it a highly dubious claim that there are differences in individual income taxes between cities. I've lived across the US and I've never even heard of that. Different sales tax, sure, but not income tax.
Employer taxes on the other hand.... who knows?! There very well might be local ordinances that cities levy on employers based of the number of employees or some such thing. Maybe, I have no idea - but the point is: income taxes no, employer taxes, maybe. Would be interested if anyone else knows more?
Edit: City taxes are the reason that "The Strip" in Las Vegas is technically not in Las Vegas. What we think of as Vegas is really in "unincorporated Clark county". I'm sure employees all pay the same State and Federal income tax, but the business don't pay city taxes. I don't know how much that's based off their business location vs. their employees location.
There are about 170 cities in the US where individual residents pay federal income tax, AND state income tax, AND ALSO local municipal income tax. Usually they use the 'taxable income' line item from your federal 1040, and charge you a percentage of that. Baltimore and NYC charge about 3% of your 1040. https://taxfoundation.org/city-income-taxes/ You may be referring to city business profits tax, sales, or property tax, but that's unrelated.
There are certainly differences. Most cities have no income tax at all. Some do. I personally had never lived in a city or county with an income tax until I moved to my present location ~12 years ago.
Learned the hard way that being an employer in the U.S. is basically opting in to being an extension of a social surveillance/control mechanism in the sense that it incurs/induces an elevated level of control over how you can conduct your life.
The larger you get the more control you are accountable to implement. Basically anything that would be shrugged off by the average citizen as either B.S. or "none of your damned business" is basically shoehorned into being handled by employers. Up to and including surveilling the physical location of H-1B workers.
My eyes were opened wide once I started to look into how the modern corporation is utilized in the U.S.
That was my first thought as soon as I saw the domain. "'Can't make this shit up?' How many times a day does that exact thing happen on reddit?" (And then everyone in the store applauded as soon as I vocalized my thoughts.)
This probably is the smarter move to be honest. It'd be nice if you could admit your flaws and everyone else would say "it's okay we're flawed too we understand" and we can all move on.
But in reality if you admit you made a mistake, some people would use that as a weapon against you, and everyone else would decide not to get involved in defending your flaws because it's too much trouble.
Or instead you can double down and some people will get annoyed, but you haven't created a vulnerability and you get to keep soldiering on.
I really wish we lived in the first scenario, but honestly most people aren't actually willing to behave in that way. So by default we end up with the second scenario.
And the more bad decisions they make, the less wealthy they become and vice versa.
It's almost as if this self-correcting dynamic had something to do with efficient resource allocation and general prosperity; but what do I know, I'm but a simple backyard furnace operator.
Except they don't became any less wealthy because of this. Their products might become crappier, but again, in most cases this doesn't matter because the people making decisions about buying products are not the people using them. That's why most enterprise software is so terrible, btw.
It is the popular fad to be ignorant of the rampant mismanagement that is always prevalent in Communist countries. People should read the books written by people who defected from the Soviet Union to get an idea of just how bad it can get. “The Liberators: my life in the Soviet Army” by Viktor Suvorov is a good one. And it can be read online: <https://archive.org/details/liberatorsmylife0000suvo>
“Not capitalist” does not mean “communist”. There are plenty other systems out there. And even for what many folks call communism you’ll find examples of much better efficiency - China for example has been developing at speed never seen in nominally capitalist countries.
Senior executive thought fake beach background in video meeting means employee wasn't at home. Enacts new policy employees can only work from home.