This increased productivity isn’t always rewarded, however. Compared with those who work full-time in an office, bosses are less likely to promote or monetarily reward those who work from home. The 2015 travel-agency study found that people who worked from home liked their job more, but weren’t promoted as much. A more recent study of 405 tech-company employees found that remote workers received as many promotions as in-office workers, but that their salaries grew at a slower rate. And the more people telecommuted, the greater the hit to their salaries.
These studies suggest that workers are taxed either way: They pay more to live near their office, which is typically in an expensive city center, or they save money by living in and working from the exurbs, and thus don’t get as many raises. Remote workers deviate from what researchers call the “work-devotion schema,” an idea in American work culture that “reflects deep cultural assumptions about work that call for intensive allegiance and undivided attention to work and the expectation that employees will minimize time spent on personal and family demands or else risk career penalties,” according to the authors of the tech-worker study.
Remote workers might also be penalized because bosses make positive snap judgments about people who work in the office.
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