Vermont Wants To Pay Companies To Let Employees Work Remotely (fastcompany.com)

A proposal for an act in the Vermont legislature is actively trying to give grants to small companies to employ remote workers. From a report: Under the terms of S-0094, a $10,000 micro-grant will be given to a business that will "establish or enhance a facility that attracts small companies or remote workers, or both, including generator and maker spaces, co-working spaces, remote work hubs, and innovation spaces, with special emphasis on facilities that promote colocation of nonprofit, for-profit, and government entities."

Comments

uh, what

[Anonymous Coward]

how do you establish a facility that promotes remote work? isnâ(TM)t not being in a space exactly the essence of it

Re: uh, what

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

It's a co-working space. Essentially a coffee shop with a conference room, only with more outlets and different (often better) coffee. Also, the people in the coffee shop, er, co-working space pay rent and there's quieter music (and hopefully no frappe machine).

Re: uh, what

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy. Lets say you have 500 employee company. Suppose those 500 people currently commute into the downtown area. If 50 of your employees live in a remote suburb, where they currently commute 60 minutes each way, building a small satellite office in the suburb would promote remote work and potentially give those 50 employees 90-120 minutes each day.

Re: uh, what

[Anonymous Coward]

Naw, they don't need outlets. Just lots of gasping when you say your laptop has run out of charge. Like this: "GASP! You should have bought an Apple!" (Or vise versa if they have an Apple.) Also, no ethernet outlets whatsoever. Because wifi is supposed to magically work 100% of the time without fail.

Re: uh, what

[Anonymous Coward]

don't forget to mention no walk-in interruptions from PHB's with stupid questions e.g. how do I send my wiener pix to hot chix from my cell (example only) and other pointless interruptions to your workflow.

There are startups that recently acquired available floorspace from brick-and-mortar stores Lord & Taylor, or Macy's floorspace that are now places named LiquidSpace, WeWork (if you use your /. search-fu skills you'd find the recent articles)

Re: uh, what

[dgatwood]

Yeah, this is not at all what we need. Encouraging small businesses is fine, but it does nothing about the very real problem that so many businesses still expect workers to be physically present most or all of the time. What this will do is pay someone to build a work area designed for a small business, and afterwards, that small business will then require people to work out of that small office, resulting in exactly zero changes to telecommuting behavior/support.

What we need is an actual tax break for businesses that let people telecommute, to the tune of an annual $30,000 per worker credit if an employee works remotely (defined as "anywhere other than in an office with 5 or more people, subject to the additional requirement that the location must be chosen by the employee, without the employer setting any limitations on that location beyond what is reasonable to ensure the protection of trade secrets and employee safety") for at least 48 weeks out of the year, or a $5,000 per worker credit for workers who are remote for at least 50% of work days, available to any business with at least 300 employees.

Those numbers are sort of arbitrary, but I think they're in the right order of magnitude. After all, the per-employee facilities cost in the Bay Area (about $6,000 per year) is clearly not enough to convince businesses to change the way they do things, so it would have to be a lot more than that to force businesses to either adopt telecommuting or explain to their stockholders why they are passing up free money.

Re: uh, what

[dgatwood]

Their options are to either spend $X for the space in downtown or spend ~$X for the space elsewhere, and the only difference is the grant to fund construction, which almost certainly won't cover the construction costs. No business will take advantage of this to let employees work closer to home. If businesses were interested in spreading out, they would have already done so. A few thousand dollars of seed money won't change that equation meaningfully, because a small, one-time grant can't balance out the ongoing pain of having some of your workers in a different location.

Instead, these grants will be used by people who were already going to build small offices. They'll take the free money to do what they were going to do anyway, and the only people who will benefit are the co-working space companies that refurbish the buildings.

And this is why government bureaucrats who have never worked in any business for a day in their lives should not try to come up with creative ways to solve businesses' problems. They'll fall victim to special interests and fail to solve the problem. Every. Time.

Re: uh, what

[Anonymous Coward]

The expenses that allow employees to work remotely is bigger than most people think. I recently worked on a VDI project where we had proposed a XenDesktop/Citrix environment to allow for ~1000 users to work remotely. Between infrastructure needed, licensing, etc. we ended up asking for $1.5mil. That didn't even count the infrastructure we already had in place or installation/mgmt (in-house.) In my estimation, those $10k grants will barely dent the cost to reliably implement a WFH solution for any company bigger than ~100 people

Re:uh, what

[RhettLivingston]

I worked several years at a software company whose 180 or so engineers mostly worked from home. The main office contained a number of high tech conference rooms of varying sizes with the largest one able to hold around 50 people at a time. There were also a few small offices available for those that just needed to get away from home for a few days to concentrate on something. Most teams would meet about once a week in one of the conference rooms.

The conference rooms all had WiFi projectors that we could share from our laptops, high-end teleconference systems, smartboards, and a few computers.

This setup allowed us to have the best of both worlds. We worked about 80-90% at home and the rest at the office. We only drove about one day a week so we saved hugely on vehicle wear and tear also. The office was much smaller than would have been necessary if everyone worked there, so the company saved a lot of overhead which was generously reflected in our salaries and in the overhead rates we charged to the customer.

Co-working spaces just take this concept and make a separate business out of it.

Re: uh, what

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe you should design a more realistic setup. XenDesktop for 1000 users wouldn't be anywhere near that expensive unless you need GPU acceleration cause they are all in Autocad everyday.

We did a VDI with XenDesktop for 6000 users, mostly call center operators, they had 300 people in Peru over a 3meg circuit. Easily handled with about 30 servers and a couple decent SANS for redundancy. You could do it for 500k. Then you don't need to pay for an Office that is enormous along with all the power and maintenance that comes with it.

Then there is the fact that you could host your entire infrastructure in the cloud and then its OpEx which is much easier for people to swallow even if over the course of three years it ends up being more expensive.

Re: uh, what

[Ostracus]

Malls actually would benefit from this. Think of it as a sort of mini-city. In fact the mall in downtown Indianapolis would benefit mostly because of it's great location. The one's on the east side would benefit, but that's mainly because of the expressway. It also has a lot of warehouses left over from the economic downturn that could be converted.

Re: uh, what

[Anonymous Coward]

they had 300 people in Peru over a 3meg circuit. Easily handled with about 30 servers...

VDI with XenDesktop really demands about 100 kbps per user. So really you'd need 10 times that much bandwidth - 3 mb/s, try 30 mb/s!!

Unless of course you ment 3 Megabytes per second (24 mb/s)?

Re: uh, what

[PrimaryConsult]

Here is the cynical reason why companies wouldn't opt for that - there is already a mechanism for aggregating 50 people in a suburb all going to the same place - a commuter bus. If the bus has wifi there's a good chance that companies are getting free work out of that 90-120 minutes of commuting time anyway, because bus rides are boring.

Re: uh, what

[Anonymous Coward]

Hopefully there's no music. Want to listen to noise? Bring headphones.

Re: uh, what

[Anonymous Coward]

Naw, they don't need outlets. Just lots of gasping when you say your laptop has run out of charge. Like this: "GASP! You should have bought an Apple!" (Or vise versa if they have an Apple.) Also, no ethernet outlets whatsoever. Because wifi is supposed to magically work 100% of the time without fail.

Done right, WIFI can get close to 100% availability -- I have a network jack at my desk, but haven't plugged in for over 2 years, since the Wifi just works and I can walk anywhere in the facility and expect a good Wifi connection.

Re: uh, what

[apoc.famine]

So in your world the cost of buildings downtown is the same as in the suburbs? That's an interesting world, and not very similar to the one I live in.

Re: uh, what

[hackertourist]

The advantage of working remotely is that you don't have to sit in a fucking open-plan office.

Re: uh, what

[dgatwood]

For housing, the prices get a lot cheaper the farther out you go. For commercial real estate, the difference is smaller, because if the market is heavy enough to command high prices, there are businesses ready to snap up the limited commercial real estate quickly, even in the suburbs. (Remember, there tends to be a smaller percentage of commercial real estate in the suburbs; that's what makes it suburbs.) The larger the metro area, the farther out you have to go before the cost difference becomes meaningful.

Also, larger buildings are generally cheaper than smaller ones, which means having four satellite offices can be more expensive than a single, central office, even if the price of land is much lower in the suburbs, because you can build a single building that's 4x as high. Also, smaller offices often require an admin, security guard, etc., all of which disproportionately add to the ongoing operations costs associated with the extra locations.

So if a business wants to be in the city center for prestige, it would take a BIG difference in cost to matter. If they don't, they will likely move their entire operation farther out into the suburbs, rather than host a few employees in multiple locations. Either way, the point remains that the difference in building costs obviously isn't enough to offset the perceived costs of spreading out, or else they would have already spread out, and a $10,000 one-time credit is unlikely to change that equation.

Re: uh, what

[aaarrrgggh]

Specific to my understanding of Vermont, there area large number of towns that don’t have high speed (residential) internet. This basically creates an opportunity to stimulate these areas and bolster the local economies. Smart move in my book.

The big name co-working companies are a different animal. Their price structure (at least for private offices) is pretty hard for me to understand the value proposition unless your staffing levels have huge swings.

Re: uh, what

[Anonymous Coward]

?? Two years is your best anecdote? I haven't had a wifi problem in my house in over a decade with 15 regular users.

Re: uh, what

[Bert64]

If you have users working from home, you can downsize your expensive downtown office and make significant savings that way. The idea isn't to build your own facilities all over the place, its to have shared facilities where people can go to do their remote work which are close to where they live for those who for whatever reason can't work from their home.

Re: uh, what

[Bert64]

The reason the value of property decreases as you get further out is because workplaces are centralised and people want to minimise the amount of time they waste travelling. If workplaces were more distributed, people would have more freedom to decide where they wanted to live, instead of being forced to choose between cramped and expensive city apartment or long arduous commutes.

Re:uh, what

[Bert64]

Yes, that's the whole point that people seem to be missing..
They're not advocating that a single company open branch offices all over the place for their staff.
They're advocating remote work, while also promoting shared working spaces where multiple employees from different companies can go and have a decent working environment without having to waste a long time travelling.

Working from home doesn't suit everyone for various reasons... Some people don't have the space (although this is often because of their commute forcing them to have a smaller more expensive place to live), some can't concentrate at home, some like the daily social aspect of meeting colleagues...

I hated travelling 1.5hrs each way per day to a central location, it was a colossal waste of my time and money, but i would happily do a 5-10 minute walk.

Sudden Outbreak of Common Sense

[TheFakeTimCook]

That is an idea who's time has very much come!

Bravo, Vermont!!!

Re:Sudden Outbreak of Common Sense

[Anonymous Coward]

Great idea! Here's my plan:

Take the $10k.
Go to the Vermont legislature
Lobby for a change in status for employees tele-commuting, from salaried exempt workers to a new category that pays even less because they don't have travel expenses
Get some real money from a bank
Open a butt-load of rural Starbucks with some sort of cubicle farms attached.

Any takers?

Re:Sudden Outbreak of Common Sense

[Bert64]

It's not only the travel expenses, but the location expenses... There are lots of very cheap places to live, which are cheap because they are far from most workplaces which makes commuting impractical. Anywhere that's within daily commute distance of major cities is much more expensive.
Many people would happily accept a lower salary if it also meant significantly lower costs for them, resulting in a higher overall standard of living.

Happy Friday From The Golden Girls

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you for being a friend
Traveled down the road and back again
Your heart is true, you're a pal and a cosmonaut.

And if you threw a party
Invited everyone you ever knew
You would see the biggest gift would be from me
And the card attached would say, thank you for being a friend.

Re:Happy Friday From The Golden Girls

[Immerman]

Haven't seen you around in a while, welcome back! I'm afraid you'll be disappointed though - the trolling has degenerated tho the point that your brand of cheerful irrelevance now barely even qualifies. Thanks for brightening up the place though!

Re:Happy Friday From The Golden Girls

[Darinbob]

Yeah, we tease him a lot
Cause we got him on the spot
Welcome back

Welcome back, welcome back
Welcome back, welcome back
Welcome back

I'll work there, remotely from California

[jfdavis668]

Love visiting Vermont, but the weather is better elsewhere.

Re:I'll work there, remotely from California

[Anonymous Coward]

Good luck. It'll be Vishnu from India working remotely, not you.

Re:I'll work there, remotely from California

[Anonymous Coward]

This guy gets it. Once a company builds around remote work, we will begin a race to the bottom. You will need to be connected 24/7 for a chance to keep your job over a foreigner thrilled with 15k a year.

Re:I'll work there, remotely from California

[wired_parrot]

And this is the problem with remote working. Any job that can be done remotely at home can just as easily be done remotely anywhere. Which means the job can be easily outsourced to India or any other low cost country. A remote working job means you're competing with workers around the work, and that is never good for job security.

Re:I'll work there, remotely from California

[TooManyNames]

Why do you think this wouldn't already be the case? Do you really think a one-time, $10,000 grant intended to promote remote work is going to tip a company over into outsourcing? If it does, that's not a company to work for anyway, because it's not going to be around a long time if a minor, one-time grant trumps cost analysis of workers over an extended time.

Companies who'd benefit from outsourcing are going to pursue outsourcing (if they aren't already doing so) regardless of this proposal. Really, outsourcing is a red herring, with respect to the proposed grant. The intent behind this proposal is pretty clear: reduce unnecessary commutes by providing at least a little bit of an incentive for businesses to re-examine the status quo. Businesses will still need to consider whether enabling remote work is feasible or not, but if it is, this will at least provide a carrot to get the business moving.

Re:I'll work there, remotely from California

[Anonymous Coward]

The state without water in 10 years? Have fun with that.

Re:I'll work there, remotely from California

[apoc.famine]

I sort-of agree, but also disagree.

My job requires three general things: 1) I'm an expert in my field, 2) I understand the legal landscape in my field, and 3) I can pull these two things together and communicate processes, policies, and paths forward to the rest of the people in my business.

While someone in another country could possibly pull these skills together, #3 becomes a lot harder if you're not fluent in English, but if even if you are and you're not fluent in the "office speak" of that business. What abbreviations are used, what acronyms which people understand and which don't, etc. I was in a meeting the other day when someone burst out laughing. When we all looked at them, they said, "I just pictured someone from another organization walking through the door and listening to us, and I realized that what we're talking about would be utterly incomprehensible to them."

If someone in another country is fully fluent in English, they still need the knowledge base, and that's not always going to be easy to acquire. And even if they have the English fluency and the knowledge, being able to communicate in a way that everyone understands is not always trivial.

Re:I'll work there, remotely from California

[apoc.famine]

You're doing it backwards.

A friend of mine actually does live in Vermont, and has a silicon valley job. The cost of living where he is is under half that of silicon valley, and he's making about three times the pay of similar regional jobs. If you'd take the beach over the 6x cost of living differential, you're really making a mistake. Because you can work remotely from anywhere, and that 6x of money buys a lot of beach time, which you don't even need to spend vacation time to use.

Re:I'll work there, remotely from California

[Anonymous Coward]

It all adds up friendo. The jobs are leaving.

Re: I'll work there, remotely from California

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention the high cost of living , crazy tax rates, and impending total economic meltdown of the public pension system. Go to Florida instead.

Re:I'll work there, remotely from California

[TooManyNames]

You say this as though companies would never have though of outsourcing if it wasn't for this one particular grant. Do you really think a one-time, $10,000 grant will suddenly cause a company to say, "Fuck! We've been ignoring India all this time! Let's get on that outsourcing bandwagon!"?

Companies who'd benefit from outsourcing would already, and will continue to, benefit from outsourcing regardless of this proposed grant. Instead of promoting outsourcing, this grant will pretty clearly provide an incentive for a company to ponder, "Hmm. Do I really need Jeff to come in at 9:30 to mess around with spreadsheets, or could he just do that at his home (and earlier)?".

If you want to object to this grant on the basis of business incentives, it's that "and earlier" part that should concern you: companies aren't going to take the grant and say, "Yay outsourcing!", they're going to take the grant and say "Yay always-on employees!" I mean, companies already say that to an extent, but there is still a bit of a cultural norm that says office-time is company time, and home-time is me time. If you remove the office, though, that norm necessarily diminishes. You may get added convenience as an employee, but that convenience will come with the expectation that you're ready to do work whenever.

The proposed grant will certainly have its costs, but outsourcing is really more of a red herring in this context. Given the benefits that this proposal intends to incentivize (less traffic congestion, road maintenance, fuel requirements for the state; less office costs, more flexible employee availability, broader regional employee accessibility for the company; less commuting, more work flexibility, more family time for the employee... and the list goes on), it seems that Vermont is, as another user put it, embracing a "sudden outbreak of common sense."

Re:I'll work there, remotely from California

[Anonymous Coward]

I would love to know for what company... Vermonter here looking for new work and beating my head into the desk trying to find a remote company not based here who pays halfway decent ;-)

Re:I'll work there, remotely from California

[TooManyNames]

You sure about that, friendo?

Re:I'll work there, remotely from California

[apoc.famine]

there is still a bit of a cultural norm that says office-time is company time, and home-time is me time. If you remove the office, though, that norm necessarily diminishes.

I know a couple of people who work from home, and both have made one room an office and separated it from the rest of the house. When they're "at work" they're in the office. When they leave the office, they are no longer at work.

If you can't look your supervisors in the eye and lay down expectations for a reasonable work/life balance, you're not going to get one either in the office or working from home. It's about setting clear boundaries, and if your company won't respect them, find a new one. Or make sure that they are paying you enough to make up for it.

Re:I'll work there, remotely from California

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right, things never change, there will always be tons of well paying remote jobs.

Re:I'll work there, remotely from California

[TooManyNames]

Of course things change and, in the future, may change for the worst (or may not). I don't know how they'll change, and neither do you. I wasn't challenging you about what will happen in the future, though, I was challenging you about the way things "are," which is what you stated. Very clearly, the present state of affairs contradicts your claim. The jobs "are" not leaving.

You're just wrong, friendo.

Re:I'll work there, remotely from California

[Kjella]

While someone in another country could possibly pull these skills together, #3 becomes a lot harder if you're not fluent in English, but if even if you are and you're not fluent in the "office speak" of that business.

I think this is more a case of "everybody thinks they're special". Almost every sector, every business develops their own lingo. If I say TDD, do you know what I mean? Probably, but only because most of us are developers. If you were in procurement, you'd instantly know what a RFQ was. If you are an MBA (you know that one right?) you'd know what EBIDTA is. And that's just the general terms, in this company XYZ means something in particular. As a total outsider, you'd not understand shit and that's completely normal. But if you explain to them the specific terms, you don't get that much "free" by being a native. Some of course, but an ounce of specific knowledge is often worth a pound of general knowledge. It's more who you talk to, if you pay peanuts you get monkeys...

How much will they pay

[Anonymous Coward]

for creimer to work on the Moon? I'd chip in a few hundred!

Re:How much will they pay

[Anonymous Coward]

You shouldn't be dissing I.T. closet cleaners. They often volunteer to do jobs that everyone else spent years avoiding. For example, creimer cleared out a 600-sqft storage closet that no one had seen the floor in eight years. He did that in between tickets over a six week period. He also finished deploying 750 PCs and 1,500 monitors ahead of schedule, ending his 12-month contract after nine months.

Re:How much will they pay

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow! Every RANDOM AC knows everything about creimer! Amazing! Chris, I mean total stranger that I've never heard of before, you're so amazing you're a household word!

" storage closet that no one had seen the floor in eight years."

Nice crammar, BTW, total stranger that totally isn't creimer.

Re:How much will they pay

[Anonymous Coward]

That's funny coming from an AC with a pastebin of creimer's old comments.

How are the neighbors's goats and kids?

Collusion.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Colocation of nonprofit, for-profit, and government entities."

Sounds like someones setting up a kickback scheme for democrat lobbyists.

Re:Collusion.

[Anonymous Coward]

why? because it benefits workers and **SMALL** businesses and isn't a billion-dollar handout to a megacorp like verizon or at&t or comcast? fuck off.

and btw.. vermont's governor is a republican, voted-in the same election cycle as your president dipshit. this *proposal* won't become a reality without his signature.

Re: Collusion.

[Anonymous Coward]

You're kind of a sap if you think party affiliation actually matters.

Re:Collusion.

[Anonymous Coward]

Its cute you think there's a difference between democrats and republicans.

and sad.

The time is ripe for another idea

[Anonymous Coward]

who's means who is.

Bad headline

[Anonymous Coward]

TFA's headline doesn't fit the content. There is no encouragement in this article for businesses to let people work remotely. There is incentive to create new businesses that are either maker spaces or working space for people who have already been allowed to work remotely, presuming those people don't want to work out of their home for whatever reason.

Bad headline

[Anonymous Coward]

The headline and the blurb don't match up at all. The grant isn't to let employees work remotely, it's to provide a place where remote employees can sit while they work for someone else (or do several other things).

This is backwards

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm remote employee that brings in a big cities salary in a small town. I frequent many companies in town and I try to avoid box stores. Pay the large big cities companies to employee remote workers in your small towns. $10K per year per employee would probably see 3x or 4x returns.

Sudden outbreak of taxation is theft

[Anonymous Coward]

Vermont wants to steal from taxpayers and make them subsidize what it thinks is a good business idea, despite the fact that most politicians are totally-incompetent at business and anything that isn't political spin.

Re:Sudden outbreak of taxation is theft

[Anonymous Coward]

Shut the fuck up, Donny. You're out of your element.

uh, what-Impossible!

[Ostracus]

Three meg?! Shhhh! Don't let the "addicted to video" broadband people hear you say that. They still thing anything less than the FCC definition is blasphemy.

Re:Trump will work from Leavenworth, Kansas

[Anonymous Coward]

I love drinking liberal tears periodically. Peace on the Korean peninsula, best economy since Richard Nixon, ISIS defeated, China agreeing to shrink the trade deficit, Russia collusion story falling apart, and liberals are still imaging the person responsible in jail. I love it! Delicious, salty tears.

and why hire someone in vermont?

[Karmashock]

The error of the physical place which is the state of Vermont paying for companies to DE-LOCALIZE their workforce is that they might succeed... and then why hire someone from Vermont at all?

once the state has bootstrapped by de-localization effort... why hire someone from Vermont at all... you could hire someone from canada or anywhere.

Governments should be very careful when they involve themselves in social engineering ventures. Its very frequently more sophisticated and complex in its ramifications than the C or even D student bureaucrats can handle.

We're getting into the philosopher king territory here when it comes to such things. And the overwhelming majority of dabblers in it are incompetent to the task. Even if intellectually they could handle it they rob themselves of even that chance typically by not taking the issue seriously. We require educations and certifications for people to engineer bridges or tinker around with the health of ONE person in a medical field... but what training or certification is required for government officials to use the power of the state of social engineer?

None.

Imagine a bridge built by a man with no training that took the task not seriously at all... imagine a man performing a surgery with no training that took the task not seriously at all.

That is what happens when the government messes around with these things. Sure, every so often you get a brilliant novice but such are far and few between. The vast majority are Vogons doing stupid destructive Vogon things.

Re:and why hire someone in vermont?

[Green Mountain Bot]

The error of the physical place which is the state of Vermont paying for companies to DE-LOCALIZE their workforce is that they might succeed...

Sounds like someone who has no idea what Vermont, its people, and its businesses are all about. There is no more de-localized state in the country, nor is there a state with such a large percentage of local businesses owned by people whose values are as important as their profits. If this can work anywhere, it's Vermont.

Re:and why hire someone in vermont?

[Karmashock]

sounds like someone that missed my point.

when I said de-localized... who was I suggesting would be taking these de-localized jobs?

That's where my taxes go !!

[ripvlan]

I understand it - they want to employ more people throughout the state. Smart people do live in remote locations - and the available rural "high-speed" internet options can be few and slow. There are several co-location places in Burlington ('da "big" city) - I know people who rent space. This plan sounds like encouraging a consolidation of resources to a single "office" and providing high-speed from there - rather than running wires to the home. I suppose this could help solve part of the "last mile" problem that Comcast has been trying to sue their way out of (after taking lots of money from the state).

But $400,000 more a year? Around here we're getting tax fatigue in the form of Property "School Equalization Fairness" Tax. We also have income and sales tax. Each year the Property tax has increased because school budgets keep going up. Sure out of ~$4 billion total budget may $400k isn't much. A typical single-family home has a $5,000 property tax bill. McMansions run in the $7,000 range. It's based on home value.

Something needs to be done to grow workers,technology and wages in areas outside the big centers. A least this one is a grant form and not a "soft tax" like the solar industry wanted (they wanted to enact a renewable energy tax on all fossil fuel bills - and send it directly to them as revenue). So -- will $400,000 investment bring in more than that in taxes? Or it doesn't matter because some small company can grow and wages increase for those few people?

Build it and they will come?!

Re:That's where my taxes go !!

[Green Mountain Bot]

Around here we're getting tax fatigue in the form of Property "School Equalization Fairness" Tax.

Otherwise known as the "Our schools are consistently in the top ten in the nation because we fund all of our schools and not just the ones in rich towns" tax.

Re:That's where my taxes go !!

[aaarrrgggh]

Yeah, specific to Vermont it seems like a great plan to help rural communities without high speed residential internet.

Working remotely with crap internet is a painful experience.

I Think They're Confused

[ZeldorBlat]

I work remotely so that I can work from home, not so I can commute to an office that happens to be remote from the company's office.

Re:I Think They're Confused

[DaMattster]

I work remotely so that I can work from home, not so I can commute to an office that happens to be remote from the company's office.

Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head. How is this different than "going to work?"

Re:I Think They're Confused

[Bert64]

Depends on the individual...
The idea of going to a shared workspace which is close to where you live instead of an office which is far away will appeal to some.

I don't mind going to an office occasionally, what i dislike is the discomfort and timewasting of travel, if i could walk 10 mins to a nearby office i would go there often by choice but as it stands a 1.5hr each way commute in great discomfort on a crowded train means i work from home 99% of the time.

Some people don't like working from home, they don't like working alone, don't have proper facilities/space at home, or they cant concentrate due to distractions. Most of these people would benefit from a shorter travel time.

Being able to live further away from the city is also a benefit, properties are bigger and cheaper.

Come again?

[Anonymous Coward]

including generator and maker spaces, co-working spaces, remote work hubs, and innovation spaces

What the fuck is this casserole of nonsense? I'm pretty sure half the words are made up.

A Vermonter's Perspective

[Topwiz]

The people in the state legislature are pretty clueless about most things. Our Lt. Gov. is a farmer with a pony tail that almost reaches his ass.

In per-capita spending on our public colleges, we come in dead last. And they wonder why all the kids move away.

I work from home for a company in Virginia. Some of the benefits of working from home is that I can wear pajamas all day and take a short nap in the afternoon if I want. I can't do either of those if I have to drive into town to work from a office that I share with other people who all work for a different company.

Re:A Vermonter's Perspective

[DaMattster]

The people in the state legislature are pretty clueless about most things. Our Lt. Gov. is a farmer with a pony tail that almost reaches his ass.

In per-capita spending on our public colleges, we come in dead last. And they wonder why all the kids move away.

I work from home for a company in Virginia. Some of the benefits of working from home is that I can wear pajamas all day and take a short nap in the afternoon if I want. I can't do either of those if I have to drive into town to work from a office that I share with other people who all work for a different company.

Pennsylvania's state legislature ain't much better! In fact I'd argue that it's worse.

Difficult for some jobs...

[pubwvj]

This is going to be difficult on our farm... I realize some of you think you're farmers because you iFarm and play other farming games but real farming requires a physical presence for now. Same for our on-farm butcher shop - someone's got to do all those dexterous manual tasks. Possibility for when we have telepresence robots... but then who needs a human at that point. :)

Re:Difficult for some jobs...

[Bert64]

People who work on farms can generally afford to live near a farm and get to work easily and quickly without stress, many people cannot afford to live near the business district of a major city and are faced with a long commute down congested routes with thousands of other commuters travelling to the same area at the same time.
Commuting time and cost of property within commuting distance are both significant problems for most office workers, and most office work these days is done on computer and doesn't need to be in any specific location.

New Hampshire applauds this jobs program

[Nonesuch]

New Hampshire (Vermont's zero-state-income tax next door neighbor), heartily appreciates this program to encourage VT companies to hire NH employees (still close enough to come in a few times a month for team-building) and to encourage current employees of VT companies who only live in-state because they need to be in the office every day to consider moving a bit East for an instant pay raise.

Sudden Outbreak of Offshoring

[Anonymous Coward]

Any job that can be done remotely can be done from Bangladesh for 1/5 of your salary.

Welcome to unemployment.