Ask Slashdot: Would You Take a Pay Cut To Telecommute?

coondoggie writes "IT pros want to telecommute — so much so that more than one-third of those surveyed by Dice.com said they would take a pay cut for the chance to work full time from home. In a survey conducted by the careers site, 35% of technology professionals said they would sacrifice up to 10% of their salaries for full-time telecommuting. The average tech pro was paid $79,384 last year, according to Dice's annual salary survey, which means a 10% pay cut is equivalent to $7,900 on average."

Comments

Not Me

[Greenisus]

I work for Rackspace full time from home, and I'm paid the same as I would be at the office. Whether I work from home or not is ultimately irrelevant, because the most important variable of all is loving your job. I work where I do because it is a truly amazing place to work.

That said, volunteering a pay cut is risky business. Your salary is a gauge of how much your company values you, so you should try to get as much as you possibly can.

A few things to keep in mind:

1. If you telecommute, it's also cheaper for the employer (less electricity, water, bandwidth, etc)
2. If you take a pay cut, any time you get a raise it's going to be less than it could have been, since most companies do raises as a percentage of your current salary
3. The downside of working exclusively from home is that it's easier to not get noticed. If you're not getting much face time with your peers, you better be doing some amazing work

Re:Yes

[aminorex]

my experience has been that telecommuters fall into 3 categories: 20% are bums, and need to be fired. 5% are typical workers who like the flexibility. 75% are insanely ambitious and should be paid more, not less, because the time saved commuting goes directly into productivity, plus they never have to stop working, so they put in way more than full days.