Apple, Amazon, Google, FB, MS employees say NO to $30K raise in exchange for quitting remote work 💵‍

In a recent poll on Blind, an anonymous social networking & career app for employees at top companies, 64% individuals said that they would forego a substantial $30K raise if they were asked to quit working remotely!

The survey has over 3000 responses from employees of companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Apple, Salesforce etc.

The scenario presented is simple.

You have 2 choices:

1) Take a $30K raise & get back to working in-office

OR

2) Continue working remotely.

Which one would you pick?

Employees across companies overwhelmingly chose the latter option because they are more happy working remotely with no commutes & no living in crowded cities. Plus more work done and more time for yourself & family.

Not just that, the money you save by not commuting and moving away from crowded cities is much higher than $30K a year.

So it all makes sense.

But is it really good news that people are ready to trade-off a raise for working remotely?

It's exciting to know that people who have tried out remote working for the first time and that too amidst a pandemic are liking it so much. It clearly shows that remote working is the superior & modern way of working. Not just by logic but based on unbiased data & experiences.

However, I really don't understand these trade-offs in terms of pay. When you ask your employees to work remotely, why offer a pay cut? This has been happening quite often now, just some weeks ago I’d written about a tech company offering 100% remote work in exchange for a 15% pay cut.

Companies are saving much more in terms of rent, bills and getting more work done each day. It's already a win-win.

By not giving remote employees a raise, promotion or by asking them to take a pay cut, companies are just creating different classes of employees within the organization.

Of course you might argue saying that this is just a hypothetical poll which isn't connected to what companies are doing in the real world. But that's not true. 

Ever since the pandemic-induced remote work began, companies like VMWare, Facebook, Stripe etc. went public saying that they will cut pay for employees that decide to relocate to work remotely permanently.

In the short run, employees may take you up on the offer of remote working in exchange for pay cut. However, it's detrimental to the company's culture in the long run and could cause a serious, large-scale problem in terms of retention.