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Should Remote Workers Be Paid Less?

Dr Stuart Woolley
CodeX
Published in
5 min readJan 7, 2025

The correct answer is obvious, unless you’re a middle-manager.

“Image generated using xAI’s Grok 2”

It still bothers me, as a long time player in the Grand Game of Software Engineering that the debate concerning the whole idea of remote work is still continuing, even after everything that’s happened since the pandemic brought the practice firmly into focus.

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I consider commuting to be something that’s been purely accepted out of habit, freely accepted as a way for an employee to burn their own personal time, and money, on just getting to a workplace before they can even begin to do their job.

This may have been acceptable when people worked closer to their homes, a very long time ago, but as the economy has grown and businesses have become increasingly specialised, the time and money spent commuting has grown substantially where, often, a significant proportion of a worker’s take home pay and free time during the week is spent travelling.

Additionally, in modern times, employees were commonly expected to move closer to a company’s location — with the employer paying a relocation fee, but that was where the contribution ended as very few, if any, employers pay their employee’s commuting costs.

With the more widespread adoption of remote working, initially forced, as said, into the…

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Dr Stuart Woolley
Dr Stuart Woolley

Written by Dr Stuart Woolley

Worries about the future. Way too involved with software. Likes coffee, maths, and . Would prefer to be in academia. SpaceX, X, and Overwatch fan.

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