[myalphabet]

Indeed, this has always rubbed me the wrong way. As another commenter mentioned, there are supply & demand issues at play. However, even considering that, there is still a widely held attitude amongst companies that you should feel grateful that they are "letting you" work remote, and that it is a benefit, and that remote working is something that will be offered to you in lieu of the salary you are owed.

In fact, it should be the opposite. Companies are saving money by not having to spend money on office space and overhead. Why then should I not be getting a higher salary?

[wool_gather]

> Companies are saving money by not having to spend money on office space and overhead.

Well, in a lot of cases they likely already have office space that they're already paying for for all the non-remote folks, and the increased cost of having you there too is negligible. It only becomes an opportunity for savings when they have enough remoters that they've actually foregone space -- avoided an expansion or downsized.

[StavrosK]

This sounds like the "well they've already killed the cow" argument for eating meat. Conversely, by your logic, if you're the new hire that is the one person too much for the current office and they have to move to one twice as big for twice the price, they should pay you the entire price of the office to work remotely instead.

What they do for one person doesn't matter, the point is that if everyone were remote they wouldn't need to pay for the space.

[millstone]

That's right, it's bimodal. Be all on-site or all-remote. Every exception incurs a cost.

The worst cases are the 90%/10% splits. I have seen the one remote join the meeting from his hot tub (fucker). I have been the one remote fighting with the VC while the rest of the team patiently humors me. The one exception drags the rest of the team down.

[lowercased]

I'm in a weird middle-ground.

~40 software/dev folks. Around 18 are 'remote'. There is a primary office, and most of the 'remote' are within driving distance, and we're expected to be onsite (or available to be onsite) 1 day per week - collaboration/f2f/etc. And it works for most of those 18 - they work together on some teams, and most of their colleagues are also at the main office. My 'team' is me and another guy, but we work on independent projects, and everyone we deal with is in other states - not drivable. It's hard to get support from anyone internal - they're mostly on a couple of large teams. Even when we get together f2f, no one understands the particulars of the projects we're on, so there's not as much value as for most of the rest of the teams.

I enjoy most of the setup, but it's still a bit challenging being the 'exception' at times.