It seems like not too long ago Google was the subject of controversy when it became the first big tech company to mandate vaccination for its employees and now it appears that they are in the spotlight again for introducing a new pay calculator to deduct the salaries of employees working from home.
Now, before you start accusing Google of hypocrisy and how they were encouraging work-from-home routines just a while ago, it seems like the new policy is not targeted at all employees who work from home. The new internal pay calculator is used to explain potential pay cuts which would mostly affect suburban area employees. According to the new calculator, employees who commuted for an hour and reached Google’s Manhattan offices from nearby areas such as Stamford, Connecticut would see a 15% decrease in their salaries if they continued to work from home. A 5% and 10% penalty difference is also applied to commuters living in Boston and San Francisco areas. These estimates are from screenshots of the tool seen by Reuters. By comparison, people who live within New York City’s five boroughs and have opted to permanently work from home would not see any slash in their salaries at all. That’s not all, it seems like Google is warning its employees who move even further away from the company’s offices that they would see a harsher pay-cut of up to 25%. “Our compensation packages have always been determined by location, and we always pay at the top of the local market based on where an employee works from,” a Google spokesperson commented.
Google isn’t the only one who has decided to take this drastic step and reduce employee’s salaries. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn have all also warned their employees of slashed pay cuts if they leave expensive cities such as NYC and San Francisco and decide to work from home. Meanwhile, some companies like Reddit and Zillow have assured their workers that they would receive the same salaries regardless of where they live.
