Info please - work from home option

Bokeh

Can anyone point me in direction of salary for those who work from home on occasion? Boss and I are negotiating stage after a review. I'm looking for the option to work from home a few days a month since the cost of gas is up, and the commute is 50 miles r/t each day.

His response is that might be an option BUT if so raise will be less. His thinking is those with this option do not get paid as much, because it is not beneficial to the company.

So anything I can use to show a trend that it should not matter if working from home 1-2 days a month when it comes to salary would be much appreciated.

ptilsen

His thinking is deeply flawed. WFH allows one more time to work due to less commuting, and generally requires the use of ones' own resources.

At my last job, I would WFH on days when I had more than nine hours of work to somehow do in an ~eight-hour day.

Put it this way: The money spent on gas is easily replaced in value from you working an extra 30-60 minutes alone. If anything, he should pay you more to work from home.

Now some value can be lost from not being at the office, but in most cases in this field I think it is outweighed by the extra value provided from fewer office distractions and less commute time.

The other argument is he needs to be competitive. A lot of firms in the Twin Cities let IT people work from home. At my current job, I pretty much can work from home whenever I need to or whenever my team isn't in the office. I'm still expected to generally come to the office, but it's highly flexible, which provides value to both parties. Other jobs I interviewed for nine months ago has similar flexibility. One even allowed employees to work from anywhere after a couple years of service.

If you just want to humor him, I could see justifying subtracting the money you'll save on gas, which is what, $10 to $30 a month?

Bokeh

Well he did say he is old fashioned and needs to get with the times. We only have two positions that have the capability to work from home - his and mine, and he does it at least 2-3 days a month. So it is a trust issue.

I did get one slight perk - if the weather is bad I do have the option of going to one of our smaller offices which is a lot closer to home, and working out of there till the weather subsides. So at this point I will take what I can get, and see what their new compensation plan is next week.

paul78

BTW - besides what ptilsen mentioned - work from home is generally an expense savings to most companies. We have lots of remote workers all over the world. By not having the extra seat in an office, that's an expense reduction to us. We have actually been closing some smaller offices and converting those employees into work from home. I have a relative who works for a company that is just closed a few buildings and converted all those employees to permanent remote workers as well.

Ivanjam

@ptilsen @paul78 - what kind of work is done from home? I can understand that software writing can be done at home but is server or network administration done from home? I am not yet working in IT so I am not familiar with industry practices.

paul78

@ivanjam - it largely depends on the organization structure and maturity - but there really is no limitation other than face-to-face collaboration and roles that are involved in facilities engineering (i.e. rack and stack). A lot of our server and network engineers work from home. We have storage engineers that remote as well.

As far as work-from-home versus full-time remote versus onsite employee, there generally a good mix for any company where there's still economic efficiency without sacrificing productivity. Usually, these type of working arrangements only work well with very large enterprises where roles scale well and are segregated by specialty.

NotHackingYou

I don't see why a WFH situation should result in a lower pay rate. Productivity is productivity.

Tooms

I've done at a place I used to work. I just asked for me to work 1 day a week from home at my discretion. Salary never came into quesiton. Ultimately depending on your line of work - being at the office has no bearing on output. The company will actually end up getting more output from you on those days as well as increased morale.

On the surface, the time you used to be driving would be more hours you could be working. His subjective opinion that its less beneficial to the company is flawed.

ptilsen

The only kind of IT work that can't be done from home is that which requires physical access to equipment for troubleshooting or configuration. If you're doing the grunt work of first-time config, HW break/fix, or racking for any equipment, obviously WFH is not going to be an option. If what you primarily do is configure, install, write, or fix software or configure/fix network configurations, then there's no reason you can't WFH at least some days.

jmritenour

Generally speaking, my most productive days are my WFH days. Yeah, I do miss out on the team interaction, but I can get so much more done without being distracted by daily office interactions. I also usually start work earlier, and end work later - since I don't have my hour+ commute to deal with, I can put in more actual work time, and still be "home" earlier.

Mike-Mike

I have never had a work from home job... but I have used the internet to visit message boards... and I have it on good authority from numerous posters that you can make upwards of 500 to 600 dollars a day right from your computer at home...

mmmmmmhhhhhmmmmm

gunbunnysoulja

I work from home full time, and when I transferred to this position, I kept my same pay rate, and follow the same company raise guidelines (last review I got the company max, again).

pinkydapimp

Keep in mind that while you can do most things from home one of the things you miss is networking o

pinkydapimp

Keep in mind that while you can do most things from home one of the things you miss is networking opportunities with coworkers. You don't get that visibility at home that you may in the office which could impact your chances to get promoted or have other opportunities come your way.

Bokeh

Still no word on company decision. They were too busy this week to discuss it. I was not looking for full time WFH, just the option for 1-2 days a month if necessary. All my research as well as discussion here is the same thing - WFH should not result in lower raise. Still waiting.