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☆ 'Zoom rooms' and hideaway offices show how remote work is changing the way we design new homes
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-11 | by ( Stephanie Stacey | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +7 min

Family homes with two offices and "Zoom rooms" with camera-ready lighting are popular. The real-estate site Zillow told Insider offices were mentioned in 11.5%% of all listings in February 2023, up 4.5% from February 2022. Amanda Pendleton, Zillow's home-trends expert, told Insider a home office was no longer a "nice-to-have luxury." "When people don't have enough space or cash for two full-sized offices, they're replacing rooms," Hester said. She told Insider Veev's homes had LED strips around the edge of the ceiling to make even lighting that works well on camera.

☆ Almost 30,000 Amazon employees have signed an internal petition to fight the company's return-to-office mandate. Read the full copy here.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-10 | by ( Eugene Kim | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +15 min

New mandate requires most office workers to come into the office at least 3 times a week starting in May. About 3 weeks since the announcement of the new policy, more than 29,200 Amazon employees have signed an internal petition opposing the mandate. Roughly 30,000 Amazon employees have joined that Slack channel, which was created shortly after the RTO announcement. In the petition, Amazon employees added internal data supporting continued remote work and dozens of comments explaining why they oppose the change. A 2013 Stanford University study of Chinese workers found that remote workers are 13% more productive than their in-office counterparts.

☆ Companies want to know how many people are back in the office. They're using water coolers to find out.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-08 | by ( Aidan Pollard | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Bevi, a Boston startup, makes high-tech water coolers that collect usage data. Some investors and hedge funds are using this data to track America's return to office trends, Bloomberg reported. Bevi, a Boston-based startup that sells high-tech water coolers, collects data about how much water its machines dispense over time. When Bevi's usage data rose from 28% to 44% between January 2021 and 2022, office occupancy data collected by securities firm Kastle Systems rose in tandem. The companies hope to gain insight into office trends, as remote work continues to solidify itself as a standard.

The judge said that more than 600 of the 7,000 proposed class members were reimbursed $66.49 on average for home internet expenses, and some were reimbursed in full. Williams' motion for class certification was denied without prejudice, meaning he can file a renewed motion later on. Craig Ackermann, a lawyer for Williams, said he plans to file a new motion excluding the 619 workers who received reimbursements from the proposed class. He has accused Amazon of violating a California law requiring employers to reimburse workers for reasonable work-related expenses. Some of those cases have settled, with businesses agreeing to give remote workers stipends of up to $83 per month to cover home office expenses.

☆ I teach remote workers how to maintain boundaries. This is one thing I get clients to do each day.
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-04 | by ( Stephanie Stacey | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

Ali Pruitt suffered burnout working an office job, but found remote work was no instant fix. She now makes her living teaching other remote workers how to build a work-life balance. Now I earn my living teaching remote workers how to unplug at the end of the workday. Commuting used to mark the end of the workday, but remote workers need to set their own lines now. Remote work gave me a chance to healDespite its challenges, I'm still passionate about remote work.

☆ The unraveling of fintech darling Vise
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-03 | by ( Stephanie Palazzolo | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +28 min

It was April, and more than two dozen salespeople who worked for the fintech startup Vise had been ordered to a multiday off-site at the W Hoboken hotel in New Jersey to share exhaustive reports on their performance. Even salespeople at bigger, established, top-tier investment-management firms typically wouldn't close $250 million in a year, multiple sales employees said. (K-means clustering is an unsupervised machine-learning algorithm often referred to as a form of AI, Vise's founders said). (Vise's founders disputed this, saying the company received updated financial data only once a day for its portfolio-construction engine.) And to address its "leaky funnel" of overestimating prospective sales, Vise was to stop outreach to new clients while it onboards and upsells to existing clients, the document said.

☆ Amazon's RTO backlash, Google's desk-sharing: Big companies clash with employees over the future of work
▼ + stars: | 2023-03-02 | by ( Cindy Perman | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +11 min

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy announced recently that employees would be expected to return to the office three days a week in the spring. In less than a week, 14,000 employees had joined the Slack channel and a petition started circulating, demanding the company retract the policy. General Motors, Starbucks, Apple and Twitter are among other big companies that have started calling employees back to the office. Employees resist RTO mandatesEmployers are doing their best to really sell RTO, marketing it to employees using words like collaboration, socialization and free snacks. Employees are a lot happier if they work from home one or two days a week so that boosts recruitment and retention.

☆ South Carolina state senator proposes a bill that would require new residents to pay $500 to move there
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-27 | by ( Grace Dean | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

A South Carolina state senator proposed a bill that would ask relocators to pay $500 to move there. New residents would pay $250 to register their vehicle and $250 for a new driver's license. Most states, including South Carolina, require newcomers from different states to get a new license upon arrival. It costs $25 to get a driver's license in South Carolina, which typically lasts for eight years. The bill doesn't aim to deter migration to South Carolina, Goldfinch told the committee.

☆ Your work's favorite happy hour spot wants you to come back to the office. Here's how remote work is costing big-city restaurants and bars billions.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-24 | by ( Aidan Pollard | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +2 min

Restaurants and bars in big cities are reducing hours and closing as remote work cuts in on weekday traffic, CNBC reported. The problem extends to smaller cities as well, like Baton Rouge. Hybrid and remote work is costing big cities billions in lost revenue, and restaurants and bars are bearing much of the brunt. Restaurants in Baton Rouge are offering customers deals like $15 three-course, dine-in lunches, WAFB reported. "It will have pros and cons," Jake Polansky, Baton Rouge Area Chamber's economic and policy researcher, told WAFB.

☆ Comerica Bank's chief economist breaks down why home prices will continue their slide through most of 2023 — and shares why California's biggest markets will see some of the country's largest price de
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-23 | by ( William Edwards | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

Housing prices around the US will see declines in the high single-digits, says Bill Adams. Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area in California face unique challenges, he said. That downward trend will continue into the fourth quarter this year, Adams said, and peak-to-trough prices declines will end up being in the high single-digits. According to Kiplinger, Los Angeles, Orange County, San Francisco, and Oakland are all in the top 11 most expensive cities in the US. According to S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller data, home prices in Los Angeles are down 7.5% from their peak, and prices in San Francisco are down 14.2%.

☆ US mortgage rates rise for the third week in a row
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-23 | by ( Anna Bahney | ) edition.cnn.com time to read: +4 min

Washington CNN —Mortgage rates shot up for the third-straight week, as inflation concerns make rates more volatile. The average mortgage rate is based on mortgage applications that Freddie Mac receives from thousands of lenders across the country. Inflation concerns remainThe mortgage rate for a 30-year, fixed-rate loan continued to climb as the 10-year Treasury yield has surged. When Treasury yields go up, so do mortgage rates; when they go down, mortgage rates tend to follow. “This decline may be due to a combination of multiple factors such as high housing prices, high mortgage rates, and the recent wave of tech layoffs on the West Coast,” said Xu.

☆ Portugal is shutting down its popular 'golden visa' program. Here are two ways you can still get a residence permit (for less money).
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-21 | by ( Hannah Towey | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Portugal is shutting down its "golden visa" scheme as part of its efforts to fight the housing crisis. But the nation's more popular — and less expensive — alternatives to the golden visa scheme are still attracting hundreds of remote workers and entrepreneurs to its shores. In late October, Portugal launched a "digital nomad visa" that allows remote workers from non-EU countries to live and work in Portugal for up to five years. Portugal approved 200 digital nomad visas in the program's first three months, according to data from the Ministry of Affairs. Before the digital nomad visa was introduced, remote workers and entrepreneurs used the popular D7 visa (also known as the passive income visa) to receive local residency status.

☆ A typical home in Vail, Colorado, is over $1 million, leaving workers with few living options. 4 people take us inside their housing crisis as home prices in tourist towns across the country spike.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-20 | by ( Robert Davis | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +12 min

Vail is among the most expensive Colorado housing markets, with a median home price over $1 million. Weibel's struggle to find affordable housing in Vail speaks to similar issues playing out in other ski towns like Jackson, Wyoming, and Park City, Utah. In her spare time, Weibel works part time as a babysitter, a summer-school tutor, and a ski instructor at Vail Resorts. Getty ImagesSam Stevens, 25, has seen firsthand how Vail's expensive housing market is straining the town's budget for important infrastructure projects. He eventually moved in with one of his friends in Eagle-Vail, about 8 miles west of the Vail Ski Resort.

☆ Billionaire Grant Cardone says he and other real estate investors will 'save the day' and prevent a home price crash
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-20 | by ( Alcynna Lloyd | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

High home prices and mortgage rates have sparked a downturn in US real estate. Grant Cardone, a billionaire real estate manager, says investors will prevent that from happening. While the housing slump is escalating this year, there's a brighter future ahead, billionaire real estate fund manager Grant Cardone told Benzinga, as published by Yahoo Finance. As the real estate market softens, strategists at Goldman Sachs projected various markets, including Austin and Phoenix, will likely see peak-to-trough home declines of more than 25%. Single family homes may be a new frontier for the billionaire known for authoring books such as How to create wealth investing in real estate.

☆ 'Digital nomads' can now live in Spain with their families — if they earn enough
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-19 | by ( Chris Dwyer | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +5 min

The so-called "digital nomad" visa is open to a wide variety of remote workers and has already attracted considerable interest. U.S. Google searches for "digital nomad visa Spain" spiked by 66% in late January, according to digital marketing specialists Semrush. Fernando Angulo (pictured here in Colombia) said he's lived in many countries as a "digital nomad," including Russia, Argentina and India. Source: Zach BoyetteZach Boyette, co-founder of the digital marketing agency Galactic Fed, called Spain's digital nomad visa a "game changer." Boyette, a longtime digital nomad, said the visa allows digital nomads to "spend a longer time in Europe," he said.

☆ Get paid up to $10,000 to move? That's great for remote workers, but economists say it's not a good investment for the cities footing the bill
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-19 | by ( Robert Davis | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +13 min

The more than 2,000 people who received Tulsa Remote grants have a median income of more than $85,000. For starters, he found the income generated by recipients of the Tulsa Remote program was just a sliver of the $80 billion the 468,000-plus workers in the Tulsa metro area generated in 2021. A Brookings Institution analysis of the Tulsa Remote program published in September found that the program was generally effective at bringing high-skilled labor to the area. He compared the impact of the incentive program to the opening of a Honda manufacturing plant in Greensburg in 2007. A previous audit from Hoffer's office in 2019 identified two major flaws in the Think Vermont program.

☆ A 27-year-old real-estate investor who rehabbed 7 Austin properties last year is now targeting San Antonio, where homes can cost less than $100,000. Here are 3 reasons it's the next big investor hot s
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-18 | by ( Aj Latrace | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

San Antonio. You can buy homes for relatively cheap"A lot of people have overlooked San Antonio," Crenshaw said. January data from Redfin pegs the median home price in San Antonio at $255,000, which is less than half of Austin's $530,000. San Antonio — the fastest-growing large city in the nation between 2020 and 2021, gaining nearly 14,000 people, per census data — remains attractive to newcomers. Relocators get affordability in San Antonio, Crenshaw said, without sacrificing exciting nightlife and other big-city attractions such as museums and professional sports teams like the NBA's Spurs.

☆ Billionaire investor Marc Andreessen warns remote work is 'not a good life' for young workers
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-14 | by ( Grace Kay | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Marc Andreessen said remote work has "detonated" the role of office relationships in people's lives. The billionaire said during a summit that young remote workers are "cut off from everything." It's not the first time Andreessen has addressed the rise of remote work. Last year, he said remote work could cause an "earthquake" in how we live. In 2021, he said in a blog post that remote work was "a consequence of the internet that's maybe even more important than the internet."

☆ Juggling Time Zones for Work? These Tools Can Help
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-12 | by ( Nicole Nguyen | ) www.wsj.com time to read: 1 min

There’s one skill all remote workers, workcation-ers, frequent travelers and, frankly, anyone with co-workers in other states or countries must have: the ability to navigate multiple time zones. It’s one I exercise daily. My editor is in New York. I am constantly asking myself: What time is it for them right now? Will this midnight message get lost in their morning deluge?

Where to live is a very personal decision. But with some degree of remote work seemingly here to stay, The Wall Street Journal set out to put data and analysis behind how to identify great places to live if you have the option to work from home. We started out by commissioning a custom survey, with Ipsos conducting a nationwide poll of 1,050 adults in the U.S. in August 2022. This poll allowed us to identify the top 10 factors people said they cared most about in a remote-work location and to weight them accordingly in our ranking. Our unique ranking highlights places you may not have thought to put at the top of your list, but that fit the criteria people say they care about the most when it comes to a great place to work remotely.

When people think of great places to work remotely, what usually comes to mind is some resort-worthy locale like a beach in Hawaii or North Carolina, or a cabin in the Rockies. But what about Springfield, Mo.

☆ Hybrid workers earn more than remote and in-person workers, according to new research—here's why
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-10 | by ( Morgan Smith | ) www.cnbc.com time to read: +3 min

Hybrid workers who spend one to four days in the office a week earn more than people with fully remote or in-person jobs, according to recent data from WFH Research. The research, conducted by Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Shelby Buckman, and Steven J. Davis, found that hybrid workers make at least $80,000 per year on average. For remote jobs, companies can source candidates from places that have a lower cost of living, whether it's a different state or a different country altogether, reducing their hiring costs and, in turn, remote workers' earnings, Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter, points out. People in remote jobs are also more willing to take a pay cut in exchange for better work-life balance, Pollak says. Citing workers' willingness to sacrifice higher pay for greater flexibility, Barrero expects the pay gap between remote and in-person workers to shrink in the coming months — but hybrid workers will continue to earn the most.

☆ Cities in Tennessee are constantly getting named the best places to move. Are they?
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-09 | by ( Jordan Pandy | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +3 min

Tennessee cities like Chattanooga and Knoxville often show up on lists of the best places to live. Even smaller Tennessee cities have experienced an influx in movers. Even Nashville dwellers are turning their back on city life and spreading out in smaller Tennessee towns like Clarksville, Pleasant View, and Ashland City, according to Frate. "In 2017 my average sales price was in the $180,000s," Frate said. "Now my average sales price is in the low to mid $300,000s."

☆ Hate your commute? It might actually be good for your mental health, scientists say.
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-07 | by ( Marianne Guenot | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +4 min

The commute is often seen as a chore, but the pandemic showed it can be good for your mental health. You need protected time to mentally switch gears after work to prevent burnout, two experts said. This happens on two fronts, the researchers said: psychological detachment and psychological recovery. In an unpublished study, the researchers asked 80 university employees to discuss situations when they were able to mentally switch off. Remote workers, who don't tend to have a commute, can also learn to switch off by creating a fake commute for themselves.

☆ Spain launched its long-awaited 'digital nomad visa' — here's who qualifies and how to apply
▼ + stars: | 2023-02-06 | by ( Hannah Towey | ) www.businessinsider.com time to read: +5 min

The Spanish government has officially approved a new digital nomad visa for remote workers. How Spain's visa for remote workers compares to Portugal's digital nomad visa:Portugal's digital nomad visa has a slightly higher minimum income requirement than Spain's. Cavan Images/Getty ImagesSpain's digital nomad visa is very similar to its neighbor Portugal's, which was released back in November. In order to qualify for Portugal's digital nomad visa, remote workers must make at least four times its minimum wage to apply. Spain's Startup Act and digital nomad visa saw support from both sides of the political spectrum.

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