When Her Job Announced A Return To Office, A Machine Learning Engineer Took A Big Pay Cut To Stay Remote

The offers and details on this page may have updated or changed since the time of publication. See our article on Business Insider for current information.

Paid non-client promotion: Affiliate links for the products on this page are from partners that compensate us (see our advertiser disclosure with our list of partners for more details). However, our opinions are our own. See how we rate investing products to write unbiased product reviews.

Kit Pulliam

• When Eliana Vornov's job announced a return to office, she chose to take a worse-paying remote job.
• While the salary was similar to her previous role, her bonus and stock grants were much worse.
• The switch spurred her to reconsider her financial situation and become more active in managing it.

Eliana Vornov, a senior machine learning engineer based out of Washington, D.C., didn't expect to enjoy working remotely when she started working from home during the COVID pandemic.

"I was a little apprehensive about it," says Vornov. "I do value the in-person energy of working with your team."

But her feelings changed as she continued to work remotely. When her old employer joined the list of companies requiring a return to the office, she decided to leave her company of eight years and look for a remote position, taking a financial hit in the process.

She doesn't regret making the decision, even with the financial drawbacks. Here's what changed financially when she changed jobs to continue working remotely.

She saved hours spent commuting

The biggest financial bonus to staying remote is the time and money she has saved from not having to commute.

"Before COVID, I was commuting a little over an hour each way, every day, and that's just the way it was. That's what you do, that's life as a professional," says Vornov. "But getting that time back has been incredible."

Vornov doesn't own a car, so her commute involved walking or bussing to a metro stop and riding the metro for 45 minutes, assuming she didn't experience delays.

Each day, she had to pay around $14 in fares to go to and from her office. If she had been paid for her commute, she would have made an extra $215 each day — that's over $50,000 of unpaid travel time a year, not including fare costs.

"I didn't truly understand what the commute was taking from my life," says Vornov.

Now, she has to go into the office around once a month, and her office is much closer — around 15 minutes by bus or 25 minutes walking. Depending on what transit method she uses, it costs her anywhere from $0 to $4.

She also has a better 401(k) match from her current company; it offers a 7% match, which is much more than what her previous company offered.

Her income dropped when she switched jobs

Vornov's salary didn't change much when switching jobs; there was a $5,000 difference between the two, which didn't make a huge difference in total compensation. Where she lost the most money was in her bonus and stock options.

"That was really where the big difference came in," Vornov says. "A lot of compensation came from stock grants, and a lot of my compensation as a senior-level employee came from the bonus."

Her previous year-end bonus was targeted at 15% of her salary; now, it's only 5%. And her current company doesn't offer equity at all.

"In that way, I think it's about a $60,000 dollar cut," says Vornov.

She also pays a $136 a month gym membership now, when she used to use the free gym at her old company.

While not a monetary loss, one of her biggest downsides to switching jobs was losing days off. Previously, she had around 30 to 35 days off a year; now, she only gets 20.

How her approach to finances has shifted

Vornov's day-to-day financial situation hasn't shifted much since she switched jobs. But changing jobs helped her realize she needed to be a more active participant in her finances and savings goals.

"I realized I could have made smarter decisions around the equity portion of my compensation," says Vornov. "I don't have that anymore, but it was kind of a signal that there's some more advanced things I could probably use some help on."

Now, she works with a fee-only fiduciary CFP® professional to ensure her finances are where she wants them to be. With the financial planner's help, she's shifted how she approaches saving for retirement and a new home.

She had already been maxing out her 401(k) each year. She has now also increased how much she auto-transfers to her brokerage account from $1,000 a month to $3,000 a month.

"I realized I had money sitting in my checking account, and when I noticed there was a lot in there, I would do a bulk transfer," says Vornov. "Instead of doing that, I sat down and figured out, here's how much is regularly in there, because it's going to end up in that account eventually anyway."

She's also shifted her approach to saving up for a new house. She's now investing the money she plans to use for a down payment in a mutual fund.

"The money is going into a money market fund right now," says Vornov. "Kind of a balance between a higher return rate than most of the high-yield savings accounts, but also not risking money I think I might want access to in the sort-of near future."

She's planning on saving for this goal for a while to reduce the financial strain of her eventual mortgage.

"D.C. is obviously an extremely expensive market, and to put down 20% on something I would like would still leave me with a monthly payment that I would not want to have to manage if I got laid off or if something happened. So I'm saving for, perhaps, more than I would need to to get approved for a loan, but to get something I would be comfortable carrying for 30 years."

She's also saving more in her emergency fund — not due to switching jobs, but due to the current landscape of tech company layoffs.

"There's a lot going on in the tech job market right now," she says. "We've seen big waves of layoffs from a lot of companies, and that has impressed on me how important it is to have money you can get to if something happens."

Don't know where to start? Consider a financial advisor. 

Finding a financial advisor doesn't have to be hard. SmartAsset's free tool matches you with up to three fiduciary financial advisors who serve your area in minutes. Each advisor has been vetted by SmartAsset and is held to a fiduciary standard to act in your best interests. Start your search now.