谷歌在美多地员工4月重返办公室

谷歌在美多地员工4月重返办公室

3/03/2022

谷歌公司通知其旧金山湾区等美国多地员工，在4月起重返办公室。

据《华尔街日报》报道，谷歌周三（3月2日）通报，从4月4日开始，公司在美多地员工每星期将至少回办公室工作几天。

谷歌全球福利副总裁约翰·凯西在给员工的信中说，大多数员工每周将有大约三天在办公室工作，另两天可自行选择工作地点。

美国有线电视新闻网（CNN）报道，谷歌说，这一变化将适用于“谷歌的旧金山湾区和美国其他办公地点”，员工在哪三天进办公室将取决于其团队的产品和职能。凯西在信中说，员工可自愿增加每星期在办公室工作的天数，某些员工可能“因为工作性质”需要每星期超过三天到办公室工作。

谷歌将要求在办公室工作的员工接种冠病疫苗，经批准的特殊情况除外。另外，公司不会要求完全接种疫苗的员工在办公室戴口罩。

美国全国广播公司商业频道（CNBC）报道，谷歌还将重新开放咖啡馆、食堂、按摩和班车等设施或服务。

凯西说，谷歌在全球的15万6500名全职员工中，近1万4000人已转移到新地点或完全远程工作，大约占申请总数的85%。他说，员工可根据自身需要申请推迟返回办公室。

两年前在冠病疫情刚暴发时，谷歌是率先采取完全远程办公模式的美国大公司之一。随着德尔塔和奥密克戎等变异毒株的出现，包括谷歌在内的多家美国大公司数次推迟重返办公室的时间。

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谷歌开放固定居家上班砍薪最高达25%

文 / 潘万莉

8/12/2021

（早报讯）许多公司因应冠病防疫需要，采用居家办公，但美国网络搜寻引擎龙头谷歌公司，却对于选择居家工作的员工减薪，幅度最高达25%。

根据谷歌公司6月推出的工作地点薪资计算工具，一名通常从邻县通勤到谷歌西雅图办公室上班的员工，如果选择固定在家工作，薪水会减少10%；这名员工原本考虑要调整为居家办公，后来决定继续通勤两小时到办公室上班，因为减薪的幅度相当于他最近升迁所获得的加薪水准，“我不是辛苦工作争取到升迁，然后来减薪的。”

这是矽谷许多科技公司都在实验的一项作法，面簿、推特也会减少搬到居住成本较低地区的员工薪水。

谷歌发言人说：“我们的薪酬方案一向依地点而定，我们根据员工在哪工作给予当地市场最高行情”，各州、各城市之间会有所不同。

根据谷歌的薪资计算器，住在康涅狄格州斯坦福的员工，原本搭火车通勤一小时到纽约市上班，若改成居家上班，就会减薪15%，但是同一办公室、住在纽约市的同事，若选择固定在家工作，薪水则完全不会减少。访问谷歌员工得知，若舍弃旧金山，改在同州居住成本不相上下的地方工作，如太浩湖，薪水最高会被大砍25%。

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2 out of 3 Americans say they would take a pay cut to work remotely full time

By Sarah Jackson

8/05/2021

A video producer works from his at-home studio to conduct remote interviews with talent on April 19, 2020 in Franklin Square, New York.
Eric Stringer/Getty Images

2 out of 3 Americans would take a pay cut to be able to work remotely full-time, a survey found.
More than 50% would give up Amazon, Netflix, or social media for a year to be able to work remotely.
More than one-third would give up the right to ever vote again in exchange for fully remote work.

Americans are desperate to continue working remotely well beyond the pandemic.

To work from home full-time, they’d be willing to make some serious sacrifices, according to a recent survey from insurance company Breeze. The survey included 1,000 American adults who were either employed at a job — or looking for one — that could be performed completely remotely.

Of the respondents, 65% said they’d be willing to take a 5% pay cut in order to have the option to work remotely full-time. Some remained unfazed with the prospect of an even larger pay cut, with one in seven saying they’d give up 25% of their salaries to be able to work from home forever.

On average, around 45% would trade some kind of insurance benefits, such as vision, dental, or health insurance, for full-time remote work.

The surveyed Americans also said they’d be willing to clock more time at work if they could do it from home.

Fifty-three percent of them said they’d put in an extra 10 hours every week at the office if the office was their home. Nearly half of them said they’d concede 25% of their paid time off in exchange for a full-time remote work option. One in seven said they’d give up all of their PTO for remote work.

Some even showed willingness to give up some technology and even their voting rights to be able to work fully remotely.

Breeze found that just over half of the surveyed people would be willing to go without Netflix, Amazon, or social media for the next year to work from home full-time. More than one-third said they’d give up their right to vote in all future local and national elections for the rest of their lives to gain the option of working remotely forever.

Other things respondents said they’d trade for full-time remote work include 401ks, paid parental leave, mental health benefits, fitness benefits, and student loan repayment assistance benefits, according to the survey.

When evaluating the data by age demographics, Breeze had some notable takeaways.

Overall, Gen X was often the most likely generation to sacrifice pay, benefits, or PTO for the ability to work fully remotely, the survey found. Baby Boomers were the least likely generation to trade benefits and perks for remote work. Millennials were least likely to sacrifice life insurance benefits. Gen Z was least likely to give up mental health benefits, Netflix, or social media but most likely to give up the right to vote.

The survey’s findings come as big companies push back their return-to-office plans as the Delta variant continues to spread across the country. Apple has moved its slated return date from September to October. Google recently did the same. Lyft and DoorDash have pushed their office return dates to 2022.

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Workers, with new perspectives and job options, are quitting in record numbers

By SYDNEY EMBER | THE NEW YORK TIMES

6/21/2021

At some point early this year, Justin Hoffman concluded that he was being underpaid.

The marketing director at an orthopedic practice in Findlay, Ohio, Hoffman was making $42,000 a year — about $13,000 less, by his count, than people were making in similar jobs elsewhere.

But when he asked for a raise in March, he was given only a small bump in pay.

“That was kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back,” he said.

So after some careful thinking, Hoffman, 28, did what he had long ached to do: He quit. His last day was June 4.

Hoffman is among millions of workers who have voluntarily left their jobs recently, one of the most striking elements of the newly blazing-hot job market. According to the Labor Department, nearly 4 million people quit their jobs in April, the most on record, pushing the rate to 2.7% of those employed.

The rate was particularly high in the leisure and hospitality industry, where competition for workers has been especially fierce. But the number of those quitting registered across the board.

Economists believe that one reason more workers are quitting is simply a backlog: By some estimates, more than 5 million fewer people quit last year than would otherwise be expected, as some workers, riding out the labor market’s convulsions, stuck with jobs they may have wanted to leave anyway. (And the millions of involuntary job losses during the pandemic surely accounted for some of the reduction in quitting.) Now that the economy is regaining its footing, workers may suddenly be feeling more emboldened to heed their impulses.

But another factor may be the speed with which the economy has reawakened. As the pandemic has receded and the great reopening has swept across the country, businesses that had gone into hibernation or curtailed their workforce during the pandemic have raced to hire employees to meet the surging demand.

At the same time, many people remain reluctant to return to work because of lingering fears of the virus, child care or elder care challenges, still-generous unemployment benefits, low wages or other reasons.

The result has been an explosion of job openings, despite a relatively high unemployment rate, as businesses struggle to recruit and retain employees — a dynamic that has placed power more firmly in workers’ hands. With employers offering higher wages to attract candidates, many workers — especially in low-wage positions in restaurants and hotels — are leaving their jobs and jumping to ones that pay even slightly more.

Justin Hoffman, a marketing director at an orthopedic practice, in Findlay, Ohio, said he probably would have quit his job eventually but the pandemic hastened his decision. (Maddie McGarvey/The New York Times)

“There’s a lot of churn in low-wage jobs where people don’t really have a career progression,” said Julia Pollak, a labor economist at ZipRecruiter. “If you find a job that offers just marginally more, there’s no cost to you in switching.”

More than 740,000 workers quit jobs in leisure and hospitality in April, the Labor Department said, for a rate of 5.3%. A vast majority were in accommodation and food service.

The pandemic has driven workers to quit for other reasons as well. With fewer opportunities for spending, some people were able to save money and pay down their debts, giving them a cushion to leave jobs with which they were dissatisfied. Other workers, disinclined to give up remote work, are abandoning jobs that are no longer affording them as much flexibility.

For Hoffman, the decision to leave his job was the culmination of months of perceived injustices, which he said he was able to evaluate more clearly because of the pandemic.

As coronavirus cases swelled in the fall, he asked to work from home because of the risk he feared he posed to his sister, whose immune system is compromised. His request was denied, he said, crystallizing his sense that he was not respected or valued.

Over the past year, with the pandemic limiting his social interactions, he began to network over Twitter with other people in marketing. That was how he determined that he was being significantly underpaid.

Hoffman, who is now looking for work, said he probably would have quit eventually. But the pandemic, he said, hastened his decision.

“I think that if the pandemic hadn’t happened, then things wouldn’t have turned out this way,” he said. “It didn’t just change my perspective on my compensation, but I think it’s changed a lot about my understanding of the relationship between employers and employees.”

On a more philosophical level, the constant threat of illness, more time with family members, leisure time that gave way to new passions — all may have prompted some workers to reassess how they want to spend their time. Burned out, some people have left their jobs for once-in-a-lifetime experiences, like traveling the world. Others have seen an opportunity to shift careers or branch out on their own.

Startups surged during the pandemic, particularly in Black communities, as stimulus checks and unemployment benefits helped seed entrepreneurs’ dreams and bolster their confidence.

“The pandemic, for a lot of people, was really stressful and caused a lot of uncertainty, so I think what a lot of people did was reflect on their lives,” said Anthony Klotz, an associate professor of management at Texas A&M University who studies employee resignations.

Klotz said people were accustomed to work being at the center of their lives and identities — a reality that may have shifted during the pandemic.

“In general, we want a life of contentment and a life that has purpose,” he said. “And I think for many people, they’ve discovered that contentment and purpose for them may lie outside of work.”

That was the case for Matt Gisin, 24, who gave notice at his job as a graphic designer at a health and wellness company this month. During the pandemic, he was able to work remotely, and without a commute, he had more time for hobbies like CrossFit and video game streaming.

“I got very adjusted to all of this time and all of this freedom,” he said.

But slowly, his company began requiring employees to come back into the office — first for two days a week, then three, then four. With so many people commuting to work in their cars, his trip from his home in Mamaroneck, New York, to the middle of Long Island could stretch to two hours each way, leaving him little time for his pastimes.

“I wasn’t happy anymore,” he said. “I was finding happiness in a lot of outside activities, so I took this kind of leap to leave.”

He now hopes to find a job in the video game industry.

Economists expect the elevated level of quitting to continue for some time as the pandemic eases and the economy rebalances.

“I would be surprised if this ended before the summer ended,” said Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist for the hiring site Glassdoor. But he also said there was an “expiration date”: A high number of workers quitting will contribute to a labor shortage, eventually forcing employers to raise wages and provide other incentives, which will help lure workers back and reestablish economic equilibrium.

In the meantime, he said, workers — especially those with low wages — will continue to gain leverage over employers.

“The longer these shortages persist, the more bargaining power you put into the hands of very low-skilled workers,” he said. “There is some evidence that employers are moving in response, and that’s unusual.”

c.2021 The New York Times Company

Source: https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation-world/ct-aud-nw-nyt-job-market-workers-quitting-20210620-4qjzz6jyjzbetefqnynsy742lm-story.html

Californians are headed to Texas. Why more people are moving to Lone Star State

Home prices are a big driver for tens of thousands of Californians to pack up and head to Texas, researchers say.

By Jeff Ehling

4/17/2021

More Californians are moving to Texas

The data proves Californians are leaving the Golden State and buying homes in the Lone Star State. See why and how many have moved here.

Californians are headed to Texas.

Researchers at Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research in Houston, Texas say home prices are a big driver.

It’s causing tens of thousands of Californians to seek out new places to live in the Lone Star State.

When Bill Fulton was recently asked by business leaders if Golden State residents were really coming to Texas in large numbers, he went to work to find the answer.

As the director of the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University, Fulton analyzed the numbers.

He found, on average, about 35,000 to 40,000 Texans move to California every year, but recently a noticeable number of people are doing just the opposite.

In 2018 and 2019, about 80,000 people a year made the move from California to Texas.

The Kinder Institute found as housing prices go up in California, there is a steady migration to Texas.

It has a real-world impact on housing prices in the Lone Star State and those who were born and raised there when they try to find an affordable place to live.

“The consequences it does have is the people who already live in Texas who maybe do not have a lot of home equity and are not used to those California home prices, they may have a more difficult time buying a house, at least the house they want to buy in the place they want to buy,” said Fulton

That means lower income families may have to move further away from the city center to find affordable housing, making their commutes longer and more expensive.

As for whether or not those moving Californians could turn Texas blue, researchers say there doesn’t seem to be enough migration to make that happen on its own.

Source: https://abc7news.com/californians-move-to-texas-why-are-more-people-moving-rice-university-kinder-institute-for-urban-research/10488205/

Why is EVERYONE Leaving CALIFORNIA?
Jun 9, 2020

Texas becoming increasingly popular for Californians | KVUE
Dec 3, 2020

Is a Housing Market Crash Possible in 2021?

By Mark Mathis

4/15/2021

With the real estate market experiencing surging prices, scant inventories and a backlog of new home construction, many consumers are wondering if what’s gone up must come back down—in other words, are we headed for another housing market crash? Let’s take a closer look.

Think Back to the Great Recession

The unforeseen housing market crash 15 years ago ignited a worldwide recession. Fueled by low interest rates, loose mortgage-lending standards and the nation’s unshakeable faith in homeownership, home values rose at record rates year-after-year. When the housing bubble burst, roughly nine million families lost their homes to foreclosure or short sale between 2006 and 2014. Housing values plunged 30% or more, homeowners lost a collective $7 trillion and it took nearly a decade for most markets to recover. Even today, several real estate markets have not fully recovered.

With the robust market activity we’ve seen lately, could there be a market crash in the near future? The short answer is “not likely.” Today’s market book cannot be sustained completely, but a crash as serious as the one from 15 years ago is unlikely because of a few important factors.

Factor No. 1: More Stringent Lending Standards

Loose mortgage lending practices ultimately brought down some of the nation’s largest banks and mortgage companies. The fallout forced Congress and federal regulators to make significant adjustments that have fundamentally changed how mortgage lending is regulated.

Since then, standards have been raised and the process of obtaining a mortgage is now more transparent. The “anyone can get one” loans of the past are illegal; now borrowers undergo stricter income, credit and asset checks. An entirely new regulatory agency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, was created to enforce this new regulatory framework. Lenders who do not comply with these standards may face heavy penalties.

As a result, the housing finance marketplace is now more robust and safer than it was 15 years ago. Any dip in the housing market will be cushioned by these stricter regulations.

Factor No. 2: Pandemic Mortgage Forbearance

When the housing market crashed in 2007, the influx of foreclosures pumped housing supply into areas with falling prices and weak labor markets, while also preventing recently foreclosed borrowers from re-entering the market as buyers. According to the Federal Reserve, foreclosures during a time of high unemployment could depress prices, plunging homeowners across the country deeper into negative equity.

However, in the pandemic era, the effects of mass unemployment bear little resemblance to the Great Recession, thanks in large part to forbearance programs that have allowed homeowners to postpone their monthly mortgage payments without suffering penalties.

As of early March 2021, 2.6 million homeowners’ mortgages were in such forbearance plans. As the pandemic economy has slowly recovered, many homeowners have resumed their employment, and thus their home payments. According to CoreLogic, by the end of 2020, overall mortgage delinquencies declined 5.8% due to the forbearance program. The share of mortgages 60 to 89 days past due declined to 0.5%, lower than 0.6% in December 2019.

Housing Market Crash

It’s worth noting that serious delinquencies—defined as 90 days or more past due, including loans in foreclosure—increased when owners who owed large amounts left forbearance. By year end 2020, the serious delinquency rate was 3.9%, up from 1.2% in December 2019.

Factor No. 3: Most Homeowner’s Cushion—Equity

Equity is the difference between the current market value of your home and the amount you owe on it. In other words, it’s the portion of your home’s value that you actually own. Equity can be an incentive to stay in your home longer; if prices rise—something we’ve seen almost universally across the country in recent months—your equity increases, too.

Why does this matter? Simply put, higher levels of equity cushion homeowners from default when home values fall.

Over the past decade, American homeowners have enjoyed housing stability and growth, building up large home equity reserves. In the third quarter of 2020, the average family with a mortgage had $194,000 in home equity, and the average homeowner gained approximately $26,300 in equity over the course of the year. In contrast, 2009 saw nearly a quarter of the nation’s mortgaged homes valued for less than the amount their owners actually owed on those mortgages.

Factor No. 4: Price Growth Will Slow Down, but Continue

The sales boom followed the outbreak of the COVID-19 and surprised many real estate economists. Like most other business sectors, real estate was expected (if not required in many locations) to lock down. But by mid-April, sales were soaring as buyers, many of them millennials, took advantage of record-low mortgage interest rates. Through the remainder of 2020, rates remained below 3%, and existing home sales reached their highest level in 14 years.

A Moving Target

While no one can say for sure what will happen with the real estate sector, most experts are confident that we’ll experience a market dip, but certainly not a crash. In the meantime, there’s plenty of work available for motivated real estate professionals. Find out how Homes.c om can help you connect with the current market of active buyers and sellers here!

Source: https://rismedia.com/2021/03/25/housing-market-crash-possible-2021/

Flat-Fee MLS Listing Service in Northern VA

**Neighborhood Specialist (McLean, Falls Church, Vienna)** |
**Helping For Sale by Owner (FSBO) & For Rent by Owner (FRBO)**

DIY Landlord – Renting out Properties Safer and Quicker!

By David Chen

4/15/2021

Q. We purchased our first home some years ago, and are about to move to another home. We are considering to keep our first home as an income property. We heard of the free ads on CRAIGSLIST and zillow.com, but some landlord friends told us it could be a challenge to find qualified tenants through CRAIGSLIST and zillow.com. Is there any way to rent our property out quicker and safer with minimum cost? We are the kind of persons who would like to try things ourselves, and have some spare time.

A. You may have already done the initial research and have figured out the range of monthly rent of your property.

If the monthly rent is low such as $1600.00 or below, you may want to do it through CRAIGSLIST, https://postlets.com/, zillow.com, or similar web sites. The renters interested in the low-priced rentals may not go to the Realtors community for assistance.

If the monthly rent is $1600.00 or above, you may want to consider listing your rental on brightmls.com for the Realtors community to market it for you.

Bright MLS is made up of nine forward thinking MLSs (43 Associations) in the Mid-Atlantic region who put aside their differences and came together with a shared vision to help solve MLS market overlap and empower everyone to get more out of the MLS. Bright will serve parts of 6 states plus Washington, D.C. encompassing 85,000 real estate professionals who serve over 20 million consumers and facilitate approximately 250,000 transactions a year that are valued at more than $70 billion.

Dozens of public real estate websites (such as: zillow.com, redfin.com, brightmlshomes.com, etc.) pull data from brightmls.com through syndication. In a few hours, your listing will show up on dozens of websites and will get the maximum exposure. It is a lot quicker and safer finding qualified tenants than doing it through CRAIGSLIST and zillow.com. You may talk with a Realtor for assistance. Please be aware some Realtors take rental jobs, some don’t.

Over the years I have helped some landlords in the community renting their properties out with very low cost. A popular arrangement is to help the landlords ‘DIY’, which has been working well for those experienced landlords.

The good side of ‘DIY’ is that the landlords can ‘screen’ the potential tenants from the very beginning, have 100% control of the whole process, and enjoy the feeling of “on top of things”.

If you prefer minimum service, I can help you ‘DIY’:

1. I provide CMA, list your rental on brightmls.com, put a realtor’s lockbox at the front door if needed, provide the access log (if needed), support you through the whole process.

I charge a flat fee for the minimum service.

2. If you would like me to prepare the lease or review the lease, there is another reasonable flat fee. This service is optional.

3. You answer phone calls, work with the tenant (if the tenant doesn’t have an agent) or the tenant’s agent, run credit check, verify employment, check references, etc.. You pay the tenant’s agent (if there is one) directly on the move-in date – usually 25% of first-month rent.

If you need full-service, the commission is first-month rent – which includes the commission to be paid to the tenant’s agent.

If you need any customized service (between minimum service and full-service), we can work out an agreement.

Some information:

CMA stands for Comparable (some called Competitive) Market Analysis, that will help you determine the market value of your property for sale or for rent.

I use Sentry-key lockbox. Any Realtor with membership of NVAR (Northern Virginia Association of Realtors) or any other VA Realtors association can access and show the property.

The access log tells when the agents enter the property and their contact info. which can help you follow up with the agents.

If you like the DIY experience, I would recommend you to use the minimum service.

Please feel free to reach me if you need any assistance.
—
David Chen
Realtor (Licensed in VA) | Neighborhood Specialist (McLean, Falls Church, Vienna)
Libra Realty, LLC
dchenj@gmail.com
703-395-5406

WeChat ID: dchenj2015

Last update: 4/15/2021

Websites that will show your flat fee mls listings

4/15/2021

Almost all real estate websites that offer the ability to search brokerage listings use a data feed from the MLS called Internet Data Exchange (IDX) to pull in listing data. Depending on the number of sites tapping into your MLS, your listing could appear on hundreds of websites. We do not control the content of any of the websites listed below. updated periodically & subject to change at any time Here are some examples of national websites by area that pull listings from the MLS:

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