# Working very remotely from home **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [October 24, 2020, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/working-very-remotely-from-home/923778 "2020-10-24T17:24:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![teelabrown](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/teelabrown/32/8412_2.png) [@teelabrown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/teelabrown)\ **Post date:** [October 24, 2020, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/working-very-remotely-from-home/923778/1 "2020-10-24T17:24:40Z")
I’m just rambling out loud, and typing out my thoughts on this as they occur, as it’s a new concept to me and I’m trying to get my thoughts organized. My husband started working from home a few weeks before the whole pandemic descended. His company encourages people to stay home to work now, and seems to be coming around to the idea that this is going to be a permanent thing for any employee who wants it. Myself, I’ve been working from home since mid-March, but my company opines that we’ll be back in the office, at least some of us some of the time, starting early next year. Like a lot of people, we’ve realized that if he’s never going in to the office, then what’s to keep us from moving somewhere else a lot cheaper in a different state? We could sell our house here and realize a big enough gain that we could pay all cash for a new home elsewhere and I could stop working and maybe we could make a go of it on his paycheck alone for a few years. There’s that variable. But we’ve heard that though companies may allow this, they may make you take a salary cut so that your salary is more in line with the new location. If we did this, I’d have to retire from my job. But I’m close enough to retirement that I could start to draw on my 401(k) and other IRAs, though of course I’d be making far less. This would, however, probably put off my needing to draw on social security until I’m full retirement age. Any thoughts on this? Has anyone else made this kind of a move? ---
**Author:** ![kferr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/71e660/32.png) [@kferr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kferr)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/working-very-remotely-from-home/923778/2 "2020-10-26T16:15:51Z")
I’ve been working from home for 6 years and have often thought about doing this. I live in Southeast England where house prices are very high. I could move to the North or Scotland and get a house for half to two thirds the price of mine. It’s mostly intertia that’s kept me from doing it. ---
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/working-very-remotely-from-home/923778/3 "2020-10-26T16:28:42Z")
It’s a reasonable thought. But think about other variables like if your husband’s job is lost, then you may be either forced back to work or trying to find a 100% telecommute job at some point (one or both of you), or having to find something locally, wherever you end up. I agree is it a likely scenario where most work that can be done via telecommute will be done that way for at least the next 10 years, and commercial offices will likely be very lightly inhabited over that time. In my area (Sacramento) housing costs (renting and buying) are rising as a steady wave of SF Bay Area refugees head east, due to cost of living. Many have bypassed this city and are landing in the mountains east of here at Lake Tahoe. It will be interesting to see how they manage their first winter. ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 4:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/working-very-remotely-from-home/923778/4 "2020-10-26T16:39:39Z")
> [@teelabrown](#): > > …never going in to the office, then what’s to keep us from moving somewhere else a lot cheaper in a different state? Foremost on our minds. Trouble is deciding where to move to that will best suit our lifestyle needs/wants. ---
**Author:** ![teelabrown](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/teelabrown/32/8412_2.png) [@teelabrown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/teelabrown)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/working-very-remotely-from-home/923778/5 "2020-10-26T20:50:34Z")
What triggered all of this is that a co-worker of my husband is doing this very thing. He wants to move to Bend, Oregon and to continue to work remotely. The HR department of his employer says that’s fine, his immediate boss says fine, and the grandboss says it’s fine. And oh, by the way, HR will be in contact to discuss a salary revision. [Here’s](https://insights.dice.com/2020/09/15/these-tech-companies-want-pay-cuts-for-remote-workers/) an article discussing this very subject. I imagine if he moved to within commuting distance of Portland, his salary would not be revised downward as much. ---
**Author:** ![Sunny\_Daze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunny_daze/32/438_2.png) [@Sunny\_Daze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunny_Daze)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/working-very-remotely-from-home/923778/6 "2020-10-26T21:00:15Z")
I have done this, although it was several years ago. We moved from Oregon to Missouri. In Missouri I worked entirely remotely, without a salary adjustment. It worked really well, although I had to travel more often to deal with items that weren’t located in Missouri. I don’t expect that’s a requirement now. If possible, I would say not to draw from your retirement as long as you can. More money later is worth a few years of penny-pinching. YMMV. Suggestions for looking for where to move, keeping the salary adjustment in mind: look for areas that have a salary base that is comparable, where you can find a suburb or commute town that will meet your cost of living requirements. That way, HR can (should) pull comparables for salary on the metro area and hopefully you won’t see as much of a hit in salary. In Oregon, for example, you could establish yourself in the “Portland area” for salaries, yet easily live out of the city. I would suggest making a list of nice-to-haves and must-haves and start doing some research based on those. You could even share your lists here and ask for input. Examples would be weather, access to healthcare, schools, access to the beach, mountains, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Oredigger77](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/oredigger77/32/3181_2.png) [@Oredigger77](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oredigger77)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2020, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/working-very-remotely-from-home/923778/7 "2020-10-26T21:12:29Z")
I’ve worked remotely for the last 7 years and it has allowed my wife and I to follow her wherever she wants to work. I’m not sure that we would go 100% remote as a family since new employers seem to be reluctant to pay for moving expenses and you could easily be stuck in a location without job prospects. I’ve found some places have really poor internet as the only option and that makes working remotely hard. I spent two weeks working out of Winnemucca, NV while we were looking into moving there and the internet that came with the apartment (in theory the best in the town) was so slow I couldn’t video conference so I was stuck with emails and phone calls. A place in Golden, CO we lived in for a year was too far from the broadband terminal so we had to pay for cable internet in order to be able to work from home. Make sure that wherever you evaluate you do a bunch of looking into the internet options to make sure they will work for your demands. Or if the power goes out frequently you may need a generator to make sure you have uninterrupted internet. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2020, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/working-very-remotely-from-home/923778/8 "2020-10-27T00:27:42Z")
> [@Oredigger77](#): > > I’ve found some places have really poor internet as the only option and that makes working remotely hard. Starlink will fix this in a year or so. 100+ megabits/s and latency similar to terrestrial internet (much, much less than traditional satellite internet). The more rural, the better. ---
**Author:** ![Oredigger77](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/oredigger77/32/3181_2.png) [@Oredigger77](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oredigger77)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2020, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/working-very-remotely-from-home/923778/9 "2020-10-27T01:52:33Z")
I’m certainly interested in Starlink, I’m not sure I’d bet my career on it in year one though. I’d probably watch it for a least 5 years before moving to the middle of nowhere. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2020, 2:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/working-very-remotely-from-home/923778/10 "2020-10-27T02:03:09Z")
I wouldn’t bet my career on it until it’s up and running in the places you care about, but when it is, you won’t have to wait 5 years to be sure it’s sticking around. If it succeeds and reaches full deployment, a _lot_ of people and organizations are going to become dependent on it very quickly, and it won’t be allowed to fail. The US military, for one. Even in its limited state, the current beta users say it’s completely game changing. ---
**Author:** ![teelabrown](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/teelabrown/32/8412_2.png) [@teelabrown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/teelabrown)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2020, 12:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/working-very-remotely-from-home/923778/11 "2020-10-27T12:35:12Z")
Taking up the salary cut idea again - what if my husband and his co-worker went halves on a crummy small studio apartment near their employer, and established that as their new “home”. The houses that each would buy in Oregon they would pass off as their “vacation homes” for the next couple of years (both are due to retire in two years or so). They’d each stay in the local studio occasionally to keep up the pretext that they were living there, but for the most part live in their Oregon homes. Pretty clever, eh? Only it has probably been thought of a thousand times before by cleverer heads than mine. Nevertheless, tell me why this is a bad idea and wouldn’t work. ---
**Author:** ![wguy123](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wguy123/32/3161_2.png) [@wguy123](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wguy123)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2020, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/working-very-remotely-from-home/923778/12 "2020-10-27T18:24:25Z")
Houses are selling like hotcakes in Spokane, WA, and according to news reports, a lot of that is due to folks moving out of the Seattle region now that they can work remotely. It seems like this might be true across the border in Coeur d’Alene where they are paving over farmland at growing rates: > **[With new 4,500-unit development coming, can Kootenai County harness growth...](https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2020/oct/18/with-new-4500-unit-development-coming-can-kootenai/)** > > As the Kootenai County, its cities and its towns prepare for a wave of growth that could mean more 300,000 people by 2040, area officials and private developers are implementing and considering new approaches to manage the expected changes. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2020, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/working-very-remotely-from-home/923778/13 "2020-10-28T03:40:24Z")
> [@teelabrown](#): > > But we’ve heard that though companies may allow this, they may make you take a salary cut so that your salary is more in line with the new location. > [@Sunny\_Daze](#): > > Suggestions for looking for where to move, keeping the salary adjustment in mind… How the hell can your company cut your salary just because you move somewhere cheaper? And people here are acting like it’s totally understandable?!? I mean, in our town, a house 10 miles west of downtown is half the price, and a lot of young families do that. I can’t imagine the hit a company’s reputation would take (and probably lawsuits\*) if they docked workers for that. \*I mean, they hired you at a particular salary, right? ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2020, 3:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/working-very-remotely-from-home/923778/14 "2020-10-28T03:47:47Z")
> [@digs](#): > > I mean, in our town, a house 10 miles west of downtown is half the price, and a lot of young families do that. I can’t imagine the hit a company’s reputation would take (and probably lawsuits\*) if they docked workers for that. No one (that I’m aware of) cuts salary at that granularity. You pretty much have to move states for cuts to kick in. They base it on average cost of living for that region. My company used to not cut salary, but freeze raises until it reached the adjusted CoL value. I think they switched to doing straight cuts now, though. Most people are hired to work at a specific location. If you want to work remotely, or in a different time zone, then it’s reasonable for them to pay a different amount. After all, they pay you more if you move to a high CoL area (assuming they have a presence there). ---
**Author:** ![Sunny\_Daze](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunny_daze/32/438_2.png) [@Sunny\_Daze](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunny_Daze)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2020, 3:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/working-very-remotely-from-home/923778/15 "2020-10-28T03:52:35Z")
I’m not saying it’s understandable. I’m confirming that it happens with some companies. I think it’s bullshit. ---
**Author:** ![Caldazar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/8e8cbc/32.png) [@Caldazar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Caldazar)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2020, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/working-very-remotely-from-home/923778/16 "2020-10-28T04:12:20Z")
I had a coworker who did something similar. He was working in-office in a high cost-of-living area and wanted to move out-of-state to a lower-cost area and work remotely. His manager agreed that he was sufficiently valuable and granted the request. Company made rumblings about reducing his salary, but ultimately he got to keep his rate of pay. The company had a distributed workforce anyway, so managers were already used to managing employees that were not in the same physical location as they were. I also made this transition (in-office in the same high cost-of-living area to an out-of-state lower cost area), but I did it purely to follow my spouse who landed a job in a different state. I offered to resign, but my boss decided he wanted to keep me, so they let me move and allowed me to keep my job working purely remotely. Some brief notes: 1. Is there someplace with a lower cost of living that you’d actually like to live? 2. If you move, you potentially weaken ties with current friends and family you may be used to seeing; are you comfortable with this? 3. Is your management and/or your husband’s management comfortable with potentially working across time zones? 4. Does your employer and/or your husband’s employer already have a out-of-state/national/global presence? If not, managing things like state/local tax withholding and medical benefits may be more trouble that they’re willing to go through. ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2020, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/working-very-remotely-from-home/923778/17 "2020-10-28T04:12:50Z")
> [@digs](#): > > How the hell can your company cut your salary just because you move somewhere cheaper? And people here are acting like it’s totally understandable?!? We had a thread that discussed this a few months ago. I was just as dumbfounded as you. I’m not sure how to find the thread; it may have talked about Amazon in particular. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2020, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/working-very-remotely-from-home/923778/18 "2020-10-28T04:13:17Z")
> [@Dr.Strangelove](#): > > If you want to work remotely, or in a different time zone, then it’s reasonable for them to pay a different amount. But this isn’t a case of “We’re transferring you to our Bumblefark, Montana branch. Oh, and you’re getting a pay cut, too. But maybe you’ll do well and we’ll move you to our Urbometro City office with a bump in pay.” This is you working for the same branch of the same company, and just moving. This concept’s just really foreign to me… Y’know, I don’t even know where half of my coworkers live, but I bet our cost-of-livings are drastically different. And we get paid the same. (I do know one manager moved to the family farm that her parents paid off, and grows almost all her own food. Her cost-of-living is a third of anyone else’s, but she sure as hell wouldn’t let anyone cut her pay because of that). ---
**Author:** ![needscoffee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/needscoffee/32/1076_2.png) [@needscoffee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/needscoffee)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2020, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/working-very-remotely-from-home/923778/19 "2020-10-28T04:22:08Z")
Starting about [here](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-people-rather-make-a-living-or-make-a-fortune/915927/56), there was a discussion about this very thing. > [@Would people rather make a living or make a fortune?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-people-rather-make-a-living-or-make-a-fortune/915927/56): > > In the context of transportable incomes we have some recent news from those ever-innovative highly paid Silicon Valley folks. As part of the response to COVID, Google, FaceBook, et al, have instituted much wider work-from-home programs with strong statements that management intends this to be a permanent feature of their corporate landscape. Which immediately led to lots of talk amongst the employees that if this is permanent they’ll likely to move to cheaper Idaho, Nevada, etc., and live like… ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2020, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/working-very-remotely-from-home/923778/20 "2020-10-28T04:49:13Z")
> [@digs](#): > > This concept’s just really foreign to me… Y’know, I don’t even know where half of my coworkers live, but I bet our cost-of-livings are drastically different. And we get paid the same. I guess my experience is different. I live in the CA Bay Area where the CoL is high. Several people in our group have moved to Portland and Austin (but stayed in the group). CoL is lower there, and at least traditionally it was thought that remote workers were less productive. Even if there’s a branch office there, the fact that they’ve split from the main group makes them worth less. So they get pay cuts. Seems pretty logical to me, and most of them come out ahead anyway due to the low housing costs. Ultimately it comes down to what you can negotiate as an employee, though. And I think the everyone-working-from-home effect may be causing employers to reevaluate certain assumptions. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/working-very-remotely-from-home/923778.md?page=2)