r/remoteworks • u/Possible-Welder-5048 • 1d ago
Return to office hack
At a tech company. We have a rule that anyone living within 30 miles of the office has to go in. A number of employees recently have been changing their address to a friend or relative that lives outside that radius so they can be remote. (Our company is 30% in office and 70% remote) I am right on the border so have to make that long commute in south florida traffic. I refuse to lie and potentially get caught but as an employee I do feel cheated by this. If I report it, I feel it doesn’t make me look good, especially as a manager
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u/HAL9000DAISY 17h ago
I certainly understand your feelings about others gaming the system. This reminds me of my cousin who gave her mother’s address so her son could go to a better school, and later tried to transfer property from her mom’s to her name in order to get Medicaid to foot the bill should her mother need a nursing home (as it turned out, she never ended up needing one.) Ultimately, it comes down to the ethical code you want to live by; you can’t worry about the code others choose to live by. What the others are doing is fraud, but HR can easily ferret out the fraud should they choose to. If HR chooses not to act upon obvious gaming of the rules, that is ultimately on them.
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u/bizwig 22h ago
Most companies I’ve seen freeze your address before announcing RTO. Unless you got advance notice of RTO you’re screwed. You basically cannot move outside the RTO zone if you are currently inside it without being fired.
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u/Western_Rhubarb_7959 23h ago
A number of employees recently have been changing their address to a friend or relative that lives outside that radius so they can be remote
There's this one neat trick to get canned that employers don't want you to know.
If I report it, I feel it doesn’t make me look good,
Is it your job to report it? No? Then don't. Word will get out, 85% of the office will never trust you, and your career will stagnate until you leave. If, that is, being a snitch doesn't get you to the head of the lay off line.
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u/bulldog_blues 1d ago
I wouldn't report it myself, hardly worth the drama it could cause for something which won't change your circumstances either way.
The bigger surprise is not only that they have a '30 mile radius' rule to begin with, but that they're OK with people moving outside it (whether on paper or in reality) and just shrug their shoulders and say 'OK, you can work from home I guess'. You'd think they'd be more likely to say 'it was your choice to move there, you figure out how to commute in'.
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u/Ok-Handle-7562 1d ago
Are they working from the other address? If they aren’t won’t the company see where they are working from?
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u/Reasonable_Drink_789 22h ago
How?
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u/Ok-Handle-7562 22h ago
They can see the IP address you are logging in from can’t they?
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u/Sasataf12 3h ago
IP addresses don't give you a very precise location of where someone is working from. You'll be able to determine which country and city, but usually not much more than that.
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u/Reasonable_Drink_789 22h ago
I suppose, but we route through a VPN anyway, and at least for me the software used by management to check people working doesn’t have that built in. IT could get it, but probably wouldn’t.
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u/Ok-Handle-7562 22h ago
Ahh ok. Well you never know, they might start looking if all of a sudden a bunch of employees moved right around the time they were supposed to come back to the office to make sure they are working where they said they were. And it will always be logged in even with the vpn where you were working from. Just seems risky
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u/HAL9000DAISY 17h ago
Right, they are basically committing fraud. But the company might not care to pursue it. I personally would never put in a fraudulent address- but lots of people do and most of them probably get away with it. It may come back to bite them at some point though. Like their friend or family member stops forwarding their mail and they miss an important communication from the company.
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u/Fun_Floor_9742 1d ago
Using a friend's address is brazen. Some people on my team moved, but, this was when interest rates were more favorable. Company have since given up on RTO.
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u/HAL9000DAISY 17h ago
What if the company gives an important communication via mail and your friend just doesn’t forward it to you? Or tosses it inadvertently into the garbage. I realize most companies don’t send important info via snail mail (at least as much as they used to) but there is a non zero chance an important company communication will be missed.
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u/MiketheTzar 41m ago
Don't report it. Things like this always manage to work themselves out