8 ms·

The sky-high cost of returning to the office

97 points by rustoo 5y ago

taylodl 5y ago
Pack a lunch they say. My floor has 80 people working on it and features a kitchenette having two microwaves and a single small apartment-sized refrigerator. I work downtown (well, used to - now I work from home) and lunch is going to typically set you back $15, $10 if you're being super budget-conscious. That was pre-pandemic, I don't even know what it's like now with the recent hikes in food costs. Parking was company-subsidized so was only $60 per month. I had a 30 minute commute each way (10 minute drive in non-rush hour traffic - I live reasonably close to downtown, but "rush hour" is a 3 hour block in the morning and another 3 hour block in the afternoon). In my situation, if you're frugal, going back to the office will cost $250 per month - and I haven't even factored in gasoline yet. For that I get to "enjoy" a 1 hour commute and sit in an open floor plan office where everybody is wearing headphones and collaborating via IM. I don't want to go back to that, much less pay to go back to that!
- taylodl 5y ago
  And I forgot to mention something - my productivity and my team's productivity have soared! I don't know why everybody else on my team is so much more productive but I know why I am: I play my guitar while thinking through something. For some reason playing music leads to insights I otherwise wouldn't have had. I keep my guitar within arm's reach of my desk and pick it up and play for a couple minutes every so often throughout the day. Try doing that at the office! Oh wait, one guy tried. One of our best developers brought his guitar to the office because he said it helped him think. He did what I'm now doing (he was my inspiration actually!) and was soon asked to leave his guitar at home. They didn't give two shits what it did to help his productivity. No one on the team complained either because they always wore headphones. Seems as though a busybody walking by the team space thought somebody playing guitar at work wasn't "professional." All management said was they had received "complaints." Yeah, screw that.
  - hiq 5y ago
    Are you looking for a fully remote job then?
    - taylodl 5y ago
      I mostly am fully remote now. My team is meeting in-person one to two times per month. Honestly I see that dwindling to one or two times per quarter throughout the remainder of this year. The biggest change for me is pre-pandemic I would never have considered fully remote work. Now I would.
    - zamalek 5y ago
      There's the kicker. We're going to be seeing how much people actually value remote work. Will you take the $300k "in-office culture" Amazon job, or the $200k fully-remote job. I'm firmly in the remote work camp, you couldn't pay me enough to commute. It would not only ruin my day, but I would be part of the traffic congestion problem (for people who are causally required to be at their worksite).
      - hiq 5y ago
        Yes exactly. I'm fine with any company policy as long as it doesn't change every month. Then it's just one more criterion to select the offer you prefer, depending on your preferences.
      - silicon2401 5y ago
        I'm in the same boat. Pay me half of what a typical Google engineer makes and I'll still join, as long as I can be permanently remote. You'd have to pay me more to commute and another huge bump to compensate for being in an office.
      - _fat_santa 5y ago
        I still feel like alot of people are going to value WFH even if it means making less. I've only recently experienced this, but there comes a point where you start to value time over extra money. For the longest time I always chased the job that paid the most, all else be damned. But as I've made more and more, the amount of extra $$ required for me to move has only gone up. Recently turned down several offers from companies that offered an extra $25k on my salary but required a drug test (I live in Colorado, I'll let that speak for itself) and in-office work. Each time I've asked myself whether the extra cash would be worth giving up the lifestyle that I currently have, a fairly easy going job where I have plenty of time to peruse outdoor activities. The answer has so far been a consistent NO. I'd rather make $200k and be happy than make $300k and be miserable.
- silicon2401 5y ago
  I will never go back to an office in my life if I can do anything about it. Everything you described was a miserable part of every day of my working life before the pandemic. The most insulting part is the money: if you work 40h/wk and have a 30m commute, that's probably another 30m each way to change and pack, so at least 1h of extra time per day, for a total of 2h/day (IF you're lucky and your commute is ONLY 30m each way. imagine the people commuting 1-2h each way, like I once did). For 5 days in the office, 2h/day adds up to 10h/week, or an extra 25% of time spent on work. I doubt any company is going to offer you a 25% pay raise to compensate for the extra 25% of time that working in the office really costs you, let alone pay you on top of that 25% to compensate for the added miseries and discomfort of being in an office.
  - bluefirebrand 5y ago
    Plus the cost of commuting itself, be it a monthly transit pass or the cost of a vehicle, maintenance, wear and tear, fuel, insurance, parking etc. So it's a massive cost to workers. Paying to work.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      Of course, there's also the counterargument that WFH means you're paying to provision your own office space. To be fair, that argument mostly applies only if people don't have the option to come into an office. Otherwise, they're forced into paying to buy/rent a suitable workplace, pay any incremental utilities, etc. For people with houses, it's mostly not a big deal but if someone lives in a small studio it may be. Early on in the pandemic, this is what a fair number of people were complaining about.
      - BlargMcLarg 5y ago
        This begs the question how effective remote work would be if society actually catered to it, rather than catering to mass transit to the city. Most arguments rely on the status quo of western society as a whole, and many still rely on the pandemic situation.
- madamelic 5y ago
  Another note about remote vs in-person, and this is super inhumane, remote has far less of a loss of productivity. No tidal waves of sickness, no "train was late, we can start the meeting in 15 minutes" ripples through schedules, no commute, shorter lunch breaks on average, more integration with someone's life (eg: only working at their peak productivity, producing the best work). Not to mention how big of a benefit it would be if they split a portion of the former office rent between all employees as monthly or quarterly "office stipend". I balked when I found out dingy offices I worked in were costing about $1k / person / month. Remote work in my opinion is a no-duh for everyone. Let's see capitalism truly at work for once; if your business can't adapt, it should die.
  - paulcole 5y ago
    > Remote work in my opinion is a no-duh for everyone. If this is your take either you haven’t thought about it enough or you’re so pro-remote work you don’t care to think about it enough.
    - AlexandrB 5y ago
      Feel free to lay out the counterarguments in your comment. Otherwise this is just a "nuh-uh, you're wrong". After working remote for 3 years (I was lucky to start a remote job several months before the pandemic started), it certainly hasn't been without an adjustment period or some challenges but I would not want to go back to a "in the office 5 days a week" position. I could see coming in one day a week for sprint planning or some more collaborative tasks (meeting). I suspect that day would be a write-off for any "productive" coding/design tasks.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        The challenge is that even one day/week frequency places fairly significant constraints on where you can live. It gives you some more flexibility; a "super commute" one day a week is probably fine. I couldn't/wouldn't do the 90 minute commute into the nearest major city (either by car or train) daily on an ongoing basis but I'd be fine doing it once a week. If the company would pay for it, you could potentially even fly in now and then. People would also need to sync on the schedule. But it's certainly doable in some circumstances.
- beezle 5y ago
  To be fair, unless you were hired as remote only then the salary you had negotiated before factored these work related costs into your total real compensation. Back in the not so distant day when most were office dwellers, when considering competing offers the cost and time of the commute were always a factor, sometimes large. Changes in the nature of work (office vs remote) as a result of the pandemic will take a little while to sort themselves out in terms of employee compensation, but that should give many people a lot of opportunities at new and different jobs too.
  - judge2020 5y ago
    Do you happen to work in HR? I'm a little skeptical a compensation department or personnel would specifically factor in things like cost-to-commute and lunches in their offers pre-2020, just because the collective job market at the time already forced the compensation floor a bit higher to account for those costs.
- segmondy 5y ago
  Excuses. If money is a problem, pack lunch. You can eat cold food and won't die. You can pack sandwiches. You can use a food warmer to keep your food warm. Eat breakfast before you leave, eat lunch at work, have some snacks in your bag. Your main cost will be transportation. Outside of that, wear the same old cloths as much as possible, do your own laundry if you have a washing machine. You will trade time for money. You will have to spend time cooking, packing lunch, washing cloths and ironing. That's a small price to pay if money is tight.
bamgotem 5y ago
Dinosaurs note that the economy existed a certain way before the pandemic and so now it has to exist like that again so the same people keep the same jobs and the profits flow to the same people. They're not capable of imagining change to evolve with the situation. People gained small parts of their lives back working from home and don't want to give it up.
- nisegami 5y ago
  It's not that they're incapable of imagining change. They're just terrified of what they imagine.
  - tnel77 5y ago
    This. There will be massive consequences for those holding commercial real estate if companies stop paying those insane rents. Also, cities will suffer (at least in the short-term) if property taxes drop from those properties losing value. They are definitely afraid of remote work and the changes it will bring.
    - BlargMcLarg 5y ago
      I doubt cities will suffer that much. Yes, companies and company rents are a huge part, but we don't exactly have a lack of people who want to live in the city as is. It also depends on the location and site: most offices I see available here cost far less than the equivalent room/apartment. Also creates a lot of jobs for builders and the likes to modify these offices.
- briffle 5y ago
  I think its much less dinosaurs, and much more people who have a very large, vested interest in office real estate. Everything from people that own the building, and want to show that its worth the money they spent, to business magazines that get heavy advertising dollars from companies that own and lease large office buildings in major metro centers.
hn_version_0023 5y ago
Here’s my sentiment regarding the return to the office: if our collective employers want this, then they can foot the bill for it. The entire commute, including all the transportation costs (car, insurance fuel, etc), as well as lunches, wardrobe requirements, and so on. I care not one whit about making upper to middle management feel better about themselves and their useless parasitic lifestyle. Pony up and pay for it or don’t; a great many of us don’t want to live lives dedicated to corporations or profits.
- djtriptych 5y ago
  I mostly agree. The commute (NYC) often leaves me feeling tired and irritable (train delays, standing for 45 min on a packed train etc). If the company footed an Uber bill, or heavily subsidized at say $500/mo, it's a whole different story. I can definitely take a car in three times a week.
  - deleted 5y ago
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- coffeedan 5y ago
  If I took a job with the expectation that I would, at least some day, set foot in an office, then I think it's unreasonable to ask them to foot the bill for my commute, lunches, etc.
- Ekaros 5y ago
  And if they don't require to it is entirely reasonable for them to offer wages in lines of cheapest places to live in the world right?
  - AlexandrB 5y ago
    Sure, if they want to spend the rest of the company's (limited) lifespan trying to recruit new talent. I think working from home during the pandemic made the externalities and costs of working "at the office" very concrete for a lot of workers and there's no putting that genie back in the bottle.
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madamelic 5y ago
The older generation is going to learn the easy way or the hard way that "privatize the profits, socialize the costs" is no longer accepted as the norm. This situation would be different if almost every company, public and private, wasn't shouting from the rooftops about record profits year after year while employees look in their pocketbooks at proverbial lint. It isn't just working remotely, it will also be fair distribution of profits through either direct profit-sharing or larger salaries because I have a feeling a few hyper profitable companies will break the seal on full employee ownership or other absurdly good comp for more than just engineers. Others will have to match to keep up like you are seeing now with just remote work.
- teh_klev 5y ago
  > The older generation I'm genuinely curious as to what you consider is "The older generation".
- mpalmer 5y ago
  What data can you cite that suggests executives in the "younger generation" don't act exactly the same way given the same incentives?
BlargMcLarg 5y ago
What's missing is the cognitive dissonance most companies present. They claim to "care about people", "care about the environment", etc. You don't care about people when they clearly perform their best work offline and they want to work offline, then push them back into the office (goes vice versa as well). You don't care about society when you push office workers to come in during rush hour because you don't give them enough money to live near the city, while trying to squeeze any tax benefit out which could make the city more habitable. It's not just the office workers; the people who can't WFH also spend more time in traffic. You don't care about the ecology when you continue to push people to drive, one of the largest sources of emissions individuals can fight against when given the chance. Yes, the individual suffers. But these guys always try to sell it as if coming to the office does society some great favor. It doesn't.
- dominotw 5y ago
  > They claim to "care about people", "care about the environment", etc. yes but no one believes this. so what does that matter.
  - prewett 5y ago
    Some of us don't like dealing with liars / propogandists / BSers, and think that you should mean what you say.
  - throwaway0a5e 5y ago
    >so what does that matter. What it matters is that as part of claiming to care about the environment they get rid of the paper towels in the break room. As part of claiming to care about safety they annoy everyone with stupid blanket policies that just cause everyone to break the rules. As part of caring about mental health they involve HR in things that would be better without HR involved.
- ActorNightly 5y ago
  > they clearly perform their best work offline and they want to work offline, Be careful with this. My biggest concern is that the younger generation is perpetually online, and being in person in the office interacting with other people is the only way they stayed somewhat grounded to reality. While short term effects may be positive improved morale boost for more people, long term effects are unknown. We have already seen what the online world does to people, and WFH is not going to make this any better.
ghaff 5y ago
The financial situation is more complicated if you're comparing a group that no longer has the option of commuting into an office even if they'd be fine with that and a group being forced to commute into an office who don't want to. The former may have--or have had--significant home upgrade costs to make working from home more palatable. But, yeah, the latter is going to be in the hundreds of dollars a month for many (most?) people. If I drove the 20 miles or so into my suburban office and bought a cheap cafeteria lunch that would be in the maybe $400 dollars a month range. If I commuted into our office in the city either by train or car and ate out at least some days, you're getting closer to $1K per month.
- madeofpalk 5y ago
  Yeah, I think that's fair. I live with myself, and in 2020 i deliberately moved to a two bedroom to use one as my office, expecting more remote work. It's definitely an additional cost I have! I much prefer this though. It's worth it, and I save in other ways (both financial and otherwise).
dominotw 5y ago
manager class in a my friends circle is relived that covid is declared over so they can finally force ppl to office.
- swearwolf 5y ago
  I see people say things like this on here, and I don’t get it. I’m a manager, I know a lot of other managers, and none of us want to go back to the office nor force anyone else to.
  - dsq 5y ago
    It's probably more the propertied class leaning on the board who in turn lean on senior management. "Do you want the board to approve that x million dollar bonus this year or not? We need rents back up."
  - hn_version_0023 5y ago
    Not all of you are sociopaths. But I would recommend looking around and seeing who is in your organization. Because they’re not helping anyone but themselves.
  - dominotw 5y ago
    this push isn't coming for low level employees so its obviously coming from management level.
    - filoeleven 5y ago
      Right. The parent poster’s comment might be due to how they interpreted your use of “managers” in your original post. “Management” as you used here, to me at least, more directly implies “upper management.” My immediate managers are all for remote work too: upper management are the ones pushing for a return to the office.
  - rjbwork 5y ago
    You might be that rare breed of manager that knows how to manage their subordinates without micromanaging people and gets a sense of accomplishment out of seeing your organization of your reports resulting in tasks being completed rather than lording over a sea of butts in seats. If so, kudos.
dcolkitt 5y ago
It's astounding to me how so few companies provide free food, or even free beverages. It's an insanely high ROI. The cost for catered lunch and breakfast and a stocked pantry is maybe $30 per day per person. The all-in cost for a typical high-skilled knowledge worker is at least $200k/year. If it gets employees spending 20 more minutes a day at their desk it's already paid for itself. That's basically the time it takes to leave the office for nearby takeout lunch or coffee shop. Let alone employees are more likely to come in earlier, because they can skip breakfast at home. And less likely to duck out earlier because they're hungry. And this is even before we get into the huge impact it has on employee morale and recruiting.
- boplicity 5y ago
  > If it gets employees spending 20 more minutes a day at their desk it's already paid for itself. Does more time at the desk, for a $200k employee, result in more revenue for a company? I'm not sure the answer is yes. Personally, as someone who is their own boss, if I don't leave my desk and go outside, my productivity suffers a lot. I make worse choices and waste more time.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    When I worked in a city in an office that didn't have a cafeteria, lunch was often a great time to go out, take a walk, get a meal in Chinatown or wherever, etc. To be honest, I don't think I'd really have thanked my employer for some likely mediocre catered meal.
- klenwell 5y ago
  Even Montgomery Burns -- Montgomery Burns! -- recognized this 30 years ago: "Let the fools have their tartar sauce." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X25rP4rTw3A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X25rP4rTw3A
  - kcplate 5y ago
    Sigh….Montgomery Burns and Darth Vader were always my influences back in my managing people days.
Traster 5y ago
Commuting is very expensive, and obvious it's going to be a shock after we've been working from home for the last couple of years but there's one thing that really pushes things over the top for me. I live in a suburb outside of London and take the train to work. My commute costs me £28.60 for the train and £4.80 for the tube if I buy a ticket daily. Or I can buy a flexible season ticket - 8 days over a month £200. Or £25 for the train and £4.80 for the tube. Or I can buy an annual ticket for £4080 + 4.80 for the tube. So here's the cost: * 1 day a week in the office: £1603.20 annually -33.4 per day for one day per week * 2 day a week in the office: £2860.80 annually -26.2 per day for an extra day per week * 3 day a week in the office: £4291.20 annually -29.8 per day for an extra day per week * 4 day a week in the office: £5001.60 annually -14.8 per day for an extra day per week * 4 day a week in the office: £5232.00 annually -4.8 per day for an extra day per week The pricing is just stupid. The "season" tickets only provide any significant discount when you're traveling into work 4+ days a week. If you're travelling in 60% of the time, you're paying 80% of the price. 20% of the time? 30% of the cost. It's nonsensical.
- ghaff 5y ago
  I don't think that's too unusual. Back when I sometimes commuted into an urban office by train, even with a tax benefit, the all you can eat pass didn't make any sense for taking the train maybe a couple days a week on average. And the 10-pack pass gave a pretty modest discount to what is (now) about $25/day plus the $4 parking at the commuter rail station.
  - Traster 5y ago
    The ridiculous thing is that with these prices, I physically struggle to board a train if I get on on a Tuesday, but I'll get a set with a spare seat to put my backpack on if I get on a train on Friday. Yet it's an identical timetable and price.
everyone 5y ago
It seems to me that capitalism is based on the broken windows fallacy. Capitalists want pointless things to happen (eg. commuting, buying coffee / new clothes) because this is good for "the economy". In the real world these things are a pointless waste of precious resources and damage to our planet that we will never get back.
- deterministic 5y ago
  Capitalism is a powerful tool. And like any other tool how we use the tool makes a big difference. In other words, it is our values that dictate what the outcome of Capitalism is. Not Capitalism itself. Don’t blame the tool. Blame the people using the tool.
- prewett 5y ago
  Flip this around: if a crisis suddenly demanded that we stop using our computers and go back to using paper, there'd be a lot of software developers and tech companies agitating a return to computers when the crisis abated. And there are pluses to having people together in an office, as well as minuses. Google famously built its office to facilitate idea exchange like a university campus, for instance.
  - everyone 5y ago
    I think u may have replied to wrong comment.
  - mlboss 5y ago
    That is not a correct way at looking at things. Commute solves a problem: It allows people to work together. You can live separately but work together if all the teammates can meet together at a place. But with digital communication you don't need to commute. You can collaborate without being together. In last two years we demonstrated that being in office is not needed. Software solves a different problem. It allows you to process data at a faster pace. You can never do that with paper. There is no other technology that can take software's place.
t_mann 5y ago
"Mother nature does not like working from home" Really? So mother nature doesn't care about the carbon output from commuting? The reasons for going back to the office are becoming more esoteric by the day. From 'serendipitous encounters' to 'save your downtown Pret's".
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  Once you understand "Mother nature" means "owners of commercial real estate", it makes perfect sense. And no, they don't care about the carbon output of commuting.
sufiyan 5y ago
As someone from India, this is far more acceptable than the alternative. Folks around my age just got married before or during the pandemic and as most of us had moved back home (people travel to Bangalore to work although there are decent options in other places). However the strife that I see on a regular basis between my wife and my mother is itself enough to want me to leave and just get back to work. Add a kid to this and it is just a circus at home. I’m sure although I’ll spend a lot on relocating, it is worth it for the simple reason that it is lesser mental tension to keep people away from each other.
- routerl 5y ago
  Rent yourself a workspace. There, your problem is solved. "My home life sucks" is not a reason to send everyone back to the office.
zackmorris 5y ago
Funny how everyone talks about taxes being a brake on the economy when nearly the entirety of our earnings and time fly out the window for inconsequentials like.. commuting
aimor 5y ago
LLNL released the 2021 Estimated US Energy Consumption last week. The US is ~70% of the way back to pre-pandemic travel. https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/ https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/ 2021: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/2022-04/Energy_2021_United-States_0.png https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/2022-04/E... 2020: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/Energy_2020_United-States.png https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/Energy_20... 2018: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/Energy_2018_United-States.png https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/Energy_20...

97 points by rustoo 5y ago

Pack a lunch they say. My floor has 80 people working on it and features a kitchenette having two microwaves and a single small apartment-sized refrigerator. I work downtown (well, used to - now I work from home) and lunch is going to typically set you back $15, $10 if you're being super budget-conscious. That was pre-pandemic, I don't even know what it's like now with the recent hikes in food costs. Parking was company-subsidized so was only $60 per month. I had a 30 minute commute each way (10 minute drive in non-rush hour traffic - I live reasonably close to downtown, but "rush hour" is a 3 hour block in the morning and another 3 hour block in the afternoon). In my situation, if you're frugal, going back to the office will cost $250 per month - and I haven't even factored in gasoline yet. For that I get to "enjoy" a 1 hour commute and sit in an open floor plan office where everybody is wearing headphones and collaborating via IM. I don't want to go back to that, much less pay to go back to that!

taylodl 5y ago
And I forgot to mention something - my productivity and my team's productivity have soared! I don't know why everybody else on my team is so much more productive but I know why I am: I play my guitar while thinking through something. For some reason playing music leads to insights I otherwise wouldn't have had. I keep my guitar within arm's reach of my desk and pick it up and play for a couple minutes every so often throughout the day. Try doing that at the office! Oh wait, one guy tried. One of our best developers brought his guitar to the office because he said it helped him think. He did what I'm now doing (he was my inspiration actually!) and was soon asked to leave his guitar at home. They didn't give two shits what it did to help his productivity. No one on the team complained either because they always wore headphones. Seems as though a busybody walking by the team space thought somebody playing guitar at work wasn't "professional." All management said was they had received "complaints." Yeah, screw that.
- hiq 5y ago
  Are you looking for a fully remote job then?
  - taylodl 5y ago
    I mostly am fully remote now. My team is meeting in-person one to two times per month. Honestly I see that dwindling to one or two times per quarter throughout the remainder of this year. The biggest change for me is pre-pandemic I would never have considered fully remote work. Now I would.
  - zamalek 5y ago
    There's the kicker. We're going to be seeing how much people actually value remote work. Will you take the $300k "in-office culture" Amazon job, or the $200k fully-remote job. I'm firmly in the remote work camp, you couldn't pay me enough to commute. It would not only ruin my day, but I would be part of the traffic congestion problem (for people who are causally required to be at their worksite).
    - hiq 5y ago
      Yes exactly. I'm fine with any company policy as long as it doesn't change every month. Then it's just one more criterion to select the offer you prefer, depending on your preferences.
    - silicon2401 5y ago
      I'm in the same boat. Pay me half of what a typical Google engineer makes and I'll still join, as long as I can be permanently remote. You'd have to pay me more to commute and another huge bump to compensate for being in an office.
    - _fat_santa 5y ago
      I still feel like alot of people are going to value WFH even if it means making less. I've only recently experienced this, but there comes a point where you start to value time over extra money. For the longest time I always chased the job that paid the most, all else be damned. But as I've made more and more, the amount of extra $$ required for me to move has only gone up. Recently turned down several offers from companies that offered an extra $25k on my salary but required a drug test (I live in Colorado, I'll let that speak for itself) and in-office work. Each time I've asked myself whether the extra cash would be worth giving up the lifestyle that I currently have, a fairly easy going job where I have plenty of time to peruse outdoor activities. The answer has so far been a consistent NO. I'd rather make $200k and be happy than make $300k and be miserable.
silicon2401 5y ago
I will never go back to an office in my life if I can do anything about it. Everything you described was a miserable part of every day of my working life before the pandemic. The most insulting part is the money: if you work 40h/wk and have a 30m commute, that's probably another 30m each way to change and pack, so at least 1h of extra time per day, for a total of 2h/day (IF you're lucky and your commute is ONLY 30m each way. imagine the people commuting 1-2h each way, like I once did). For 5 days in the office, 2h/day adds up to 10h/week, or an extra 25% of time spent on work. I doubt any company is going to offer you a 25% pay raise to compensate for the extra 25% of time that working in the office really costs you, let alone pay you on top of that 25% to compensate for the added miseries and discomfort of being in an office.
- bluefirebrand 5y ago
  Plus the cost of commuting itself, be it a monthly transit pass or the cost of a vehicle, maintenance, wear and tear, fuel, insurance, parking etc. So it's a massive cost to workers. Paying to work.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    Of course, there's also the counterargument that WFH means you're paying to provision your own office space. To be fair, that argument mostly applies only if people don't have the option to come into an office. Otherwise, they're forced into paying to buy/rent a suitable workplace, pay any incremental utilities, etc. For people with houses, it's mostly not a big deal but if someone lives in a small studio it may be. Early on in the pandemic, this is what a fair number of people were complaining about.
    - BlargMcLarg 5y ago
      This begs the question how effective remote work would be if society actually catered to it, rather than catering to mass transit to the city. Most arguments rely on the status quo of western society as a whole, and many still rely on the pandemic situation.
madamelic 5y ago
Another note about remote vs in-person, and this is super inhumane, remote has far less of a loss of productivity. No tidal waves of sickness, no "train was late, we can start the meeting in 15 minutes" ripples through schedules, no commute, shorter lunch breaks on average, more integration with someone's life (eg: only working at their peak productivity, producing the best work). Not to mention how big of a benefit it would be if they split a portion of the former office rent between all employees as monthly or quarterly "office stipend". I balked when I found out dingy offices I worked in were costing about $1k / person / month. Remote work in my opinion is a no-duh for everyone. Let's see capitalism truly at work for once; if your business can't adapt, it should die.
- paulcole 5y ago
  > Remote work in my opinion is a no-duh for everyone. If this is your take either you haven’t thought about it enough or you’re so pro-remote work you don’t care to think about it enough.
  - AlexandrB 5y ago
    Feel free to lay out the counterarguments in your comment. Otherwise this is just a "nuh-uh, you're wrong". After working remote for 3 years (I was lucky to start a remote job several months before the pandemic started), it certainly hasn't been without an adjustment period or some challenges but I would not want to go back to a "in the office 5 days a week" position. I could see coming in one day a week for sprint planning or some more collaborative tasks (meeting). I suspect that day would be a write-off for any "productive" coding/design tasks.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      The challenge is that even one day/week frequency places fairly significant constraints on where you can live. It gives you some more flexibility; a "super commute" one day a week is probably fine. I couldn't/wouldn't do the 90 minute commute into the nearest major city (either by car or train) daily on an ongoing basis but I'd be fine doing it once a week. If the company would pay for it, you could potentially even fly in now and then. People would also need to sync on the schedule. But it's certainly doable in some circumstances.
beezle 5y ago
To be fair, unless you were hired as remote only then the salary you had negotiated before factored these work related costs into your total real compensation. Back in the not so distant day when most were office dwellers, when considering competing offers the cost and time of the commute were always a factor, sometimes large. Changes in the nature of work (office vs remote) as a result of the pandemic will take a little while to sort themselves out in terms of employee compensation, but that should give many people a lot of opportunities at new and different jobs too.
- judge2020 5y ago
  Do you happen to work in HR? I'm a little skeptical a compensation department or personnel would specifically factor in things like cost-to-commute and lunches in their offers pre-2020, just because the collective job market at the time already forced the compensation floor a bit higher to account for those costs.
segmondy 5y ago
Excuses. If money is a problem, pack lunch. You can eat cold food and won't die. You can pack sandwiches. You can use a food warmer to keep your food warm. Eat breakfast before you leave, eat lunch at work, have some snacks in your bag. Your main cost will be transportation. Outside of that, wear the same old cloths as much as possible, do your own laundry if you have a washing machine. You will trade time for money. You will have to spend time cooking, packing lunch, washing cloths and ironing. That's a small price to pay if money is tight.

bamgotem 5y ago

Dinosaurs note that the economy existed a certain way before the pandemic and so now it has to exist like that again so the same people keep the same jobs and the profits flow to the same people. They're not capable of imagining change to evolve with the situation. People gained small parts of their lives back working from home and don't want to give it up.

nisegami 5y ago
It's not that they're incapable of imagining change. They're just terrified of what they imagine.
- tnel77 5y ago
  This. There will be massive consequences for those holding commercial real estate if companies stop paying those insane rents. Also, cities will suffer (at least in the short-term) if property taxes drop from those properties losing value. They are definitely afraid of remote work and the changes it will bring.
  - BlargMcLarg 5y ago
    I doubt cities will suffer that much. Yes, companies and company rents are a huge part, but we don't exactly have a lack of people who want to live in the city as is. It also depends on the location and site: most offices I see available here cost far less than the equivalent room/apartment. Also creates a lot of jobs for builders and the likes to modify these offices.
briffle 5y ago
I think its much less dinosaurs, and much more people who have a very large, vested interest in office real estate. Everything from people that own the building, and want to show that its worth the money they spent, to business magazines that get heavy advertising dollars from companies that own and lease large office buildings in major metro centers.

hn_version_0023 5y ago

Here’s my sentiment regarding the return to the office: if our collective employers want this, then they can foot the bill for it. The entire commute, including all the transportation costs (car, insurance fuel, etc), as well as lunches, wardrobe requirements, and so on. I care not one whit about making upper to middle management feel better about themselves and their useless parasitic lifestyle. Pony up and pay for it or don’t; a great many of us don’t want to live lives dedicated to corporations or profits.

djtriptych 5y ago
I mostly agree. The commute (NYC) often leaves me feeling tired and irritable (train delays, standing for 45 min on a packed train etc). If the company footed an Uber bill, or heavily subsidized at say $500/mo, it's a whole different story. I can definitely take a car in three times a week.
- deleted 5y ago
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coffeedan 5y ago
If I took a job with the expectation that I would, at least some day, set foot in an office, then I think it's unreasonable to ask them to foot the bill for my commute, lunches, etc.
Ekaros 5y ago
And if they don't require to it is entirely reasonable for them to offer wages in lines of cheapest places to live in the world right?
- AlexandrB 5y ago
  Sure, if they want to spend the rest of the company's (limited) lifespan trying to recruit new talent. I think working from home during the pandemic made the externalities and costs of working "at the office" very concrete for a lot of workers and there's no putting that genie back in the bottle.

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madamelic 5y ago

The older generation is going to learn the easy way or the hard way that "privatize the profits, socialize the costs" is no longer accepted as the norm. This situation would be different if almost every company, public and private, wasn't shouting from the rooftops about record profits year after year while employees look in their pocketbooks at proverbial lint. It isn't just working remotely, it will also be fair distribution of profits through either direct profit-sharing or larger salaries because I have a feeling a few hyper profitable companies will break the seal on full employee ownership or other absurdly good comp for more than just engineers. Others will have to match to keep up like you are seeing now with just remote work.

teh_klev 5y ago
> The older generation I'm genuinely curious as to what you consider is "The older generation".
mpalmer 5y ago
What data can you cite that suggests executives in the "younger generation" don't act exactly the same way given the same incentives?

BlargMcLarg 5y ago

What's missing is the cognitive dissonance most companies present. They claim to "care about people", "care about the environment", etc. You don't care about people when they clearly perform their best work offline and they want to work offline, then push them back into the office (goes vice versa as well). You don't care about society when you push office workers to come in during rush hour because you don't give them enough money to live near the city, while trying to squeeze any tax benefit out which could make the city more habitable. It's not just the office workers; the people who can't WFH also spend more time in traffic. You don't care about the ecology when you continue to push people to drive, one of the largest sources of emissions individuals can fight against when given the chance. Yes, the individual suffers. But these guys always try to sell it as if coming to the office does society some great favor. It doesn't.

dominotw 5y ago
> They claim to "care about people", "care about the environment", etc. yes but no one believes this. so what does that matter.
- prewett 5y ago
  Some of us don't like dealing with liars / propogandists / BSers, and think that you should mean what you say.
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago
  >so what does that matter. What it matters is that as part of claiming to care about the environment they get rid of the paper towels in the break room. As part of claiming to care about safety they annoy everyone with stupid blanket policies that just cause everyone to break the rules. As part of caring about mental health they involve HR in things that would be better without HR involved.
ActorNightly 5y ago
> they clearly perform their best work offline and they want to work offline, Be careful with this. My biggest concern is that the younger generation is perpetually online, and being in person in the office interacting with other people is the only way they stayed somewhat grounded to reality. While short term effects may be positive improved morale boost for more people, long term effects are unknown. We have already seen what the online world does to people, and WFH is not going to make this any better.

ghaff 5y ago

The financial situation is more complicated if you're comparing a group that no longer has the option of commuting into an office even if they'd be fine with that and a group being forced to commute into an office who don't want to. The former may have--or have had--significant home upgrade costs to make working from home more palatable. But, yeah, the latter is going to be in the hundreds of dollars a month for many (most?) people. If I drove the 20 miles or so into my suburban office and bought a cheap cafeteria lunch that would be in the maybe $400 dollars a month range. If I commuted into our office in the city either by train or car and ate out at least some days, you're getting closer to $1K per month.

madeofpalk 5y ago
Yeah, I think that's fair. I live with myself, and in 2020 i deliberately moved to a two bedroom to use one as my office, expecting more remote work. It's definitely an additional cost I have! I much prefer this though. It's worth it, and I save in other ways (both financial and otherwise).

dominotw 5y ago

manager class in a my friends circle is relived that covid is declared over so they can finally force ppl to office.

swearwolf 5y ago
I see people say things like this on here, and I don’t get it. I’m a manager, I know a lot of other managers, and none of us want to go back to the office nor force anyone else to.
- dsq 5y ago
  It's probably more the propertied class leaning on the board who in turn lean on senior management. "Do you want the board to approve that x million dollar bonus this year or not? We need rents back up."
- hn_version_0023 5y ago
  Not all of you are sociopaths. But I would recommend looking around and seeing who is in your organization. Because they’re not helping anyone but themselves.
- dominotw 5y ago
  this push isn't coming for low level employees so its obviously coming from management level.
  - filoeleven 5y ago
    Right. The parent poster’s comment might be due to how they interpreted your use of “managers” in your original post. “Management” as you used here, to me at least, more directly implies “upper management.” My immediate managers are all for remote work too: upper management are the ones pushing for a return to the office.
- rjbwork 5y ago
  You might be that rare breed of manager that knows how to manage their subordinates without micromanaging people and gets a sense of accomplishment out of seeing your organization of your reports resulting in tasks being completed rather than lording over a sea of butts in seats. If so, kudos.

dcolkitt 5y ago

It's astounding to me how so few companies provide free food, or even free beverages. It's an insanely high ROI. The cost for catered lunch and breakfast and a stocked pantry is maybe $30 per day per person. The all-in cost for a typical high-skilled knowledge worker is at least $200k/year. If it gets employees spending 20 more minutes a day at their desk it's already paid for itself. That's basically the time it takes to leave the office for nearby takeout lunch or coffee shop. Let alone employees are more likely to come in earlier, because they can skip breakfast at home. And less likely to duck out earlier because they're hungry. And this is even before we get into the huge impact it has on employee morale and recruiting.

boplicity 5y ago
> If it gets employees spending 20 more minutes a day at their desk it's already paid for itself. Does more time at the desk, for a $200k employee, result in more revenue for a company? I'm not sure the answer is yes. Personally, as someone who is their own boss, if I don't leave my desk and go outside, my productivity suffers a lot. I make worse choices and waste more time.
- ghaff 5y ago
  When I worked in a city in an office that didn't have a cafeteria, lunch was often a great time to go out, take a walk, get a meal in Chinatown or wherever, etc. To be honest, I don't think I'd really have thanked my employer for some likely mediocre catered meal.
klenwell 5y ago
Even Montgomery Burns -- Montgomery Burns! -- recognized this 30 years ago: "Let the fools have their tartar sauce." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X25rP4rTw3A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X25rP4rTw3A
- kcplate 5y ago
  Sigh….Montgomery Burns and Darth Vader were always my influences back in my managing people days.

Traster 5y ago

Commuting is very expensive, and obvious it's going to be a shock after we've been working from home for the last couple of years but there's one thing that really pushes things over the top for me. I live in a suburb outside of London and take the train to work. My commute costs me £28.60 for the train and £4.80 for the tube if I buy a ticket daily. Or I can buy a flexible season ticket - 8 days over a month £200. Or £25 for the train and £4.80 for the tube. Or I can buy an annual ticket for £4080 + 4.80 for the tube. So here's the cost: * 1 day a week in the office: £1603.20 annually -33.4 per day for one day per week * 2 day a week in the office: £2860.80 annually -26.2 per day for an extra day per week * 3 day a week in the office: £4291.20 annually -29.8 per day for an extra day per week * 4 day a week in the office: £5001.60 annually -14.8 per day for an extra day per week * 4 day a week in the office: £5232.00 annually -4.8 per day for an extra day per week The pricing is just stupid. The "season" tickets only provide any significant discount when you're traveling into work 4+ days a week. If you're travelling in 60% of the time, you're paying 80% of the price. 20% of the time? 30% of the cost. It's nonsensical.

ghaff 5y ago
I don't think that's too unusual. Back when I sometimes commuted into an urban office by train, even with a tax benefit, the all you can eat pass didn't make any sense for taking the train maybe a couple days a week on average. And the 10-pack pass gave a pretty modest discount to what is (now) about $25/day plus the $4 parking at the commuter rail station.
- Traster 5y ago
  The ridiculous thing is that with these prices, I physically struggle to board a train if I get on on a Tuesday, but I'll get a set with a spare seat to put my backpack on if I get on a train on Friday. Yet it's an identical timetable and price.

everyone 5y ago

It seems to me that capitalism is based on the broken windows fallacy. Capitalists want pointless things to happen (eg. commuting, buying coffee / new clothes) because this is good for "the economy". In the real world these things are a pointless waste of precious resources and damage to our planet that we will never get back.

deterministic 5y ago
Capitalism is a powerful tool. And like any other tool how we use the tool makes a big difference. In other words, it is our values that dictate what the outcome of Capitalism is. Not Capitalism itself. Don’t blame the tool. Blame the people using the tool.
prewett 5y ago
Flip this around: if a crisis suddenly demanded that we stop using our computers and go back to using paper, there'd be a lot of software developers and tech companies agitating a return to computers when the crisis abated. And there are pluses to having people together in an office, as well as minuses. Google famously built its office to facilitate idea exchange like a university campus, for instance.
- everyone 5y ago
  I think u may have replied to wrong comment.
- mlboss 5y ago
  That is not a correct way at looking at things. Commute solves a problem: It allows people to work together. You can live separately but work together if all the teammates can meet together at a place. But with digital communication you don't need to commute. You can collaborate without being together. In last two years we demonstrated that being in office is not needed. Software solves a different problem. It allows you to process data at a faster pace. You can never do that with paper. There is no other technology that can take software's place.

t_mann 5y ago

"Mother nature does not like working from home" Really? So mother nature doesn't care about the carbon output from commuting? The reasons for going back to the office are becoming more esoteric by the day. From 'serendipitous encounters' to 'save your downtown Pret's".

AlexandrB 5y ago
Once you understand "Mother nature" means "owners of commercial real estate", it makes perfect sense. And no, they don't care about the carbon output of commuting.

sufiyan 5y ago

As someone from India, this is far more acceptable than the alternative. Folks around my age just got married before or during the pandemic and as most of us had moved back home (people travel to Bangalore to work although there are decent options in other places). However the strife that I see on a regular basis between my wife and my mother is itself enough to want me to leave and just get back to work. Add a kid to this and it is just a circus at home. I’m sure although I’ll spend a lot on relocating, it is worth it for the simple reason that it is lesser mental tension to keep people away from each other.

routerl 5y ago
Rent yourself a workspace. There, your problem is solved. "My home life sucks" is not a reason to send everyone back to the office.

zackmorris 5y ago

Funny how everyone talks about taxes being a brake on the economy when nearly the entirety of our earnings and time fly out the window for inconsequentials like.. commuting

aimor 5y ago

LLNL released the 2021 Estimated US Energy Consumption last week. The US is ~70% of the way back to pre-pandemic travel. https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/ https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/ 2021: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/2022-04/Energy_2021_United-States_0.png https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/2022-04/E... 2020: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/Energy_2020_United-States.png https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/Energy_20... 2018: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/Energy_2018_United-States.png https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/Energy_20...