7 ms·

Amazon Engineer Sues for Work from Home Costs

32 points by aaronchall 4y ago

motive 4y ago
My understanding is that California’s language is pretty unambiguous that businesses are responsible for all work expenses. I think on the legal merits the engineer may ultimately prevail, but I just don’t see how this is a battle worth fighting considering the massive savings that work from home already provides. It’s likely a lawsuit like this could also damage one’s long-term career prospects. It will be interesting to see whether the courts see a difference between incremental expenses vs things the employee was already purchasing (e.g. internet vs electricity)
- treis 4y ago
  The bigger cost would be a rent equivalent on a home office. That's probably low five figures annually. But I don't agree with the overall conclusion. Ultimately the cost of an employee boils down to one number. If they have to pay 15k for home office rent then salary will just be 15k less.
  - motive 4y ago
    I agree with you generally but there’s also the question of whether an expense is reasonable. Should you be expected to put a desk in your bedroom and have that be sufficient? I live in New York and have an extra bedroom for my office, should my employer be forced to pay for that instead?
    - treis 4y ago
      Yeah, it's one of those laws that superficially makes sense but tends to not work in the real world. A California specialty. Probably better to put an upper salary bound on it. Stops the abuse of minimum wage workers while avoiding most of the silliness.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > If they have to pay 15k for home office rent then salary will just be 15k less. I mean, if you assume a monopsony where market clearing prices are set by demand alone, with no supply side effect, sure.
    - treis 4y ago
      Not really. If the market clearing price was X before there's no reason it will change from X. The compensation will just in the form of Y rent + (X - Y) salary
- jacknews 4y ago
  > My best bet? The Amazon engineer will win. > And then he and every other California employee will lose. Here's why. Exactly as you say, it's not a battle worth fighting, the employee is a fool, or a tool.
- paxys 4y ago
  Yeah whether the employee is right or not I really don't see the logic in a senior engineer suing their employer for $50/mo in costs. In the absolute best case, this will become a class action lawsuit. All ~4000 employees will get a couple thousand dollars as reimbursement. Lawyers will make a few million. Amazon will find the money from under some couch cushion. And then they will allocate a portion of everyone's salary to "WFH expenses" to be in the clear legally. Meanwhile the plaintiff's name will be all over the news and their future job prospects will take a huge hit.
- dehrmann 4y ago
  At what point is California liable because it effectively prohibited companies from using their existing office space?
kodah 4y ago
I'm not sure I agree with the article. I'm not even sure that I get corporate logic at this point. Offices cost money, much more money than configuring an enterprise for remote work. There's always that minor percentage of employees who cannot develop successful patterns to work from home. As the pandemic showed, these folks are the minority today. Under this paradigm, as long as remote work costs less than a building then remote work should be attractive to a company. Yet, many companies are chasing hybrid models even though that direction causes a good bit of attrition as well (people want the whole thing). My personal hypothesis is that companies are doing an organized, long term pull out of offices, but are resisting doing it all at once because they'd impact each other's commercial property values. This confusing state we're in is purposeful.
- dbsmith83 4y ago
  > My personal hypothesis is that companies are doing an organized, long term pull out of offices, but are resisting doing it all at once because they'd impact each other's commercial property values. This confusing state we're in is purposeful. I doubt it, because most companies rent their space and they wouldn't care about the impact to the building. I think your premise is flawed: > There's always that minor percentage of employees who cannot develop successful patterns to work from home. As the pandemic showed, these folks are the minority today. Sure, maybe most people can develop 'successful patterns', but that doesn't mean that most people are most productive at home (in the eyes of company heads). The term 'successful patterns' is relative given the situation, and right now that means doing the best we can given the circumstances.
  - candiddevmike 4y ago
    For a lot of companies, they rent from another LLC under the owner's control that owns the building, letting the owner pocket the rent/charge whatever they want for it while building a commercial real estate business.
  - al_borland 4y ago
    Most of the stories we here about pushing people back to work are really large companies with pretty significant investments in their campus. They aren't the smaller places that rent a bit of office space. Of course, I assume those leases are long, so they may still be locked in, even if they don't own them. An empty building, or even a partially filled building, still costs a lot of money to keep. Having that expense when they aren't using it and can't see the value must drive the finance guys nuts. So if the company is paying for a space for an employee in the office, and they are playing for their expenses at home, the cost of that employee's workspace just doubled.
philliphaydon 4y ago
In australia you can claim things like internet or computer and such at home if it’s used for work. Used to claim back half my internet costs every year.
- mrweasel 4y ago
  I’m pretty surprised that places like Amazon doesn’t pay for home internet. My current employeer it the first in a long time that doesn’t pay my internet bill. Electricity can be deducted on my taxes, but I need a seperate meter if I want to do that.
  - al_borland 4y ago
    My company used to pay for anyone who did on-call work, but they stopped because the internet got to the point of being ubiquitous. People would still have a decent internet connection with or without the job. I did actually read one of the recent corporate policies and they will pay up to $30/month toward home internet, but only for those who are full time WFH (not related to COVID). I haven't bothered to do it. It's a lot of hassle for $30.
- dvtrn 4y ago
  I live in a US state with similar laws, and it's constantly a conversation of "do I need to remind you of state law?" when I'm asked to explain an expense report for an $80 monthly phone bill. That conversation often evolves sometimes in to one of two separate discussions: "then give me a work phone" or "then hire an overnight crew".
- sofixa 4y ago
  The law is same here in France. If it's used for work purposes, the employer should cover it at least at 50%. In a similar vein, commute costs ( by public transit) and food at lunch are covered at 50% or more, because they're making you come into an officr. Of course with remote work those no longer apply.
mmastrac 4y ago
It does raise the question of why large companies _aren't_ responsible for paying for commuting costs. We've obviously never done it that way, but is there a reason that we couldn't?
- rdtsc 4y ago
  The answer I heard is because part of the initial salary negotiations the employer/employee should have already factored that in. However, it could make sense that if they initially worked from home, then had to start commuting, the company should pay for gas, car maintenance, tolls, public transportation, etc. Then, the same goes in reverse, if the worker agreed to the salary working from the office, when forced to work from home, they could make a case of the company having to pay for monitors, a desk, electricity, a faster internet, etc.
- esoterica 4y ago
  That means people with cheaper commutes get paid less than people with more expensive commutes. Why would you do that? You’re effectively rewarding people for living further from work and driving less fuel efficient vehicles, which both makes no business sense and is terrible for the environment.
  - dijit 4y ago
    I think the business doesn't really care where you live. I have made decisions to live close to my offices, not just for commute but because I consider myself responsible to go in when things break and spending 1.5hrs commuting won't do that. When I priced it up when I lived in London it came out to be about the same cost to live closer to the office than to commute even with public transport (which is not horrendously expensive) -- assuming I paid myself what my boss would pay me for my time commuting.
    - toxik 4y ago
      > I think the business doesn't really care where you live. I know Palantir at least have explicit bonuses for living within some distance of the office. It can’t be that uncommon.
daenz 4y ago
The article makes 2 main points: 1) that this lawsuit will cause companies to take WFH away. and 2) It's extremely difficult to bill things like fractional electricity and internet usage. The first is a flimsy premise because companies simply don't have the power to take WFH away and I think they know that. If they did, they would. But the collectivization for WFH, brought by lockdowns, is far too powerful. So powerful, in fact, that it's a hiring advantage for your competitors if you attempt to bar WFH. The second point is just lazy. Billing for fractional usage is not impossible nor difficult, and you can bet if a company was billing a customer for fractional usage, they would have it down to an exact science. In fact, the resistance on this point shows the weakness of their position from the first point. I do have some sympathy for the people who like to go to an office and interact with people face to face. But we've been operating with their preference as the default for a long time, so they can learn to adapt now.
- Jcampuzano2 4y ago
  I used to be one of those people who liked to interact with people face to face. I still do enjoy going to a dedicated space that isn't home and has people to interact with, but I traded going to the office every day with getting a WeWork. I've seen a bunch of well-known companies now that have office space in WeWork's or similar co-working spaces in lieu of having their own office and wonder if this is a decent alternative to forcing a return to office. It also opened up traveling a bit more since I can go to any location and have reliable internet/space for taking calls. My own company actually did this and got rid of their San Francisco office and instead renting an office in a WeWork in the area and giving San Francisco area employees a membership.
- amykhar 4y ago
  My company solved it by giving everybody a flat rate every month. We can use it for internet or getting a better office chair, or whatever we see fit. Seems fair.
  - 908B64B197 4y ago
    That's the simplest, most effective option. And probably the cheapest too.
tibbydudeza 4y ago
It is possible - my home office is on a separate circuit (own DB board) and I have a electricity consumption monitor on it. I remember when we went WFH and I was so cheesed over the disruptions in Teams meeting when colleagues used those shitty $10 Chinese made earbuds - asked management to at least supply everybody with a Plantronics headset so we don't waste time. I was told - we are professionals (we need to buy our own shit) - end of story
- paxys 4y ago
  > I was told - we are professionals (we need to buy our own shit) - end of story Which is funny because "professionals" in every other field will absolutely bill you for cost of materials/equipment for a job.
- Symbiote 4y ago
  My employer purchased whatever was needed from desks, office chairs, monitors, keyboards, mice to headsets. We also completely ran out of "old" stuff, in the junk room, where people didn't want a new screen/keyboard but one exactly (exactly) like the one they had in the office. We didn't try anything for heating and electricity though. How much do you actually use, if your use is normal office type stuff?
- dehrmann 4y ago
  What about HVAC? My laptop and monitor probably add up to 100W. That's maybe $2 of electric per month? My added HVAC bill from being at home is much more, and I'm not sure how to split the bill for it.
  - tibbydudeza 4y ago
    Using about 190W - i6700 desktop - Dell Optiplex Mini and HPE mini server (Gen 10) Don't use HVAC during winter - only during summer but it sits on another circuit.
    - dehrmann 4y ago
      > HPE mini server Is this personal or for work?
dixie_land 4y ago
What’s also ridiculous is that IRS still doesn’t allow employees to deduct WFH expenses after the pandemic making it mainstream.
spfzero 4y ago
With the time commitment required to pursue this legal challenge, you could get a second WFH job.
kkfx 4y ago
Honestly we surely need to discuss WFH in laws terms, in the sense of "I worker provide a room, empty, accessible for inspection, the company provide furniture etc, I'm responsible to keep it safe and closed etc" or "I, worker, provide a room, well equipped, and the company pay me a fee for my work and room usage". But that's not a thing to be discussed in court. It's a thing to be publicly discussed in political terms to arrive at a CLEAR and defined norm for WFH. In some country such norms already exists but are a bit old, meant for another tech era, in some others do not exists at all. For instance in Italy there are two norms, the ancient clear but hard, a new one opaque and obscene. The first is for "teleworking", it MANDATE an empty room, inspectable by a public body responsible for safety at work, locked, furnished by the company, with dedicated services provided by the company etc. The second is "smart working" witch essentially state that workers and companies agree a kind of place-less, by-target works no one surveil, the company just provide a craptop and a crapphone and all are f** and happy. Clearly both norms are not good at all. For instance we need to separate time-defined jobs (like call centers, banking, ...) to potentially async ones (like development) and so regulate them accordingly. We need to define "a home workspace" but without exaggerations like the Italian "telelavoro" laws etc. To do so discussing is mandatory, and courts are not a good place to discuss and negotiate...
stevenalowe 4y ago
Deduct home office expenses or get reimbursed, perhaps it should be a choice
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
hiyer 4y ago
This is absurd and greedy of the employee. Surely the cost of internet and electricity would be a drop in the ocean compared to an Amazon engineer's salary. As an aside, here in India, most companies do reimburse internet charges. But then broadband internet is quite cheap here - my 300Mbps connection only costs me around $25/month.

32 points by aaronchall 4y ago

My understanding is that California’s language is pretty unambiguous that businesses are responsible for all work expenses. I think on the legal merits the engineer may ultimately prevail, but I just don’t see how this is a battle worth fighting considering the massive savings that work from home already provides. It’s likely a lawsuit like this could also damage one’s long-term career prospects. It will be interesting to see whether the courts see a difference between incremental expenses vs things the employee was already purchasing (e.g. internet vs electricity)

treis 4y ago
The bigger cost would be a rent equivalent on a home office. That's probably low five figures annually. But I don't agree with the overall conclusion. Ultimately the cost of an employee boils down to one number. If they have to pay 15k for home office rent then salary will just be 15k less.
- motive 4y ago
  I agree with you generally but there’s also the question of whether an expense is reasonable. Should you be expected to put a desk in your bedroom and have that be sufficient? I live in New York and have an extra bedroom for my office, should my employer be forced to pay for that instead?
  - treis 4y ago
    Yeah, it's one of those laws that superficially makes sense but tends to not work in the real world. A California specialty. Probably better to put an upper salary bound on it. Stops the abuse of minimum wage workers while avoiding most of the silliness.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > If they have to pay 15k for home office rent then salary will just be 15k less. I mean, if you assume a monopsony where market clearing prices are set by demand alone, with no supply side effect, sure.
  - treis 4y ago
    Not really. If the market clearing price was X before there's no reason it will change from X. The compensation will just in the form of Y rent + (X - Y) salary
jacknews 4y ago
> My best bet? The Amazon engineer will win. > And then he and every other California employee will lose. Here's why. Exactly as you say, it's not a battle worth fighting, the employee is a fool, or a tool.
paxys 4y ago
Yeah whether the employee is right or not I really don't see the logic in a senior engineer suing their employer for $50/mo in costs. In the absolute best case, this will become a class action lawsuit. All ~4000 employees will get a couple thousand dollars as reimbursement. Lawyers will make a few million. Amazon will find the money from under some couch cushion. And then they will allocate a portion of everyone's salary to "WFH expenses" to be in the clear legally. Meanwhile the plaintiff's name will be all over the news and their future job prospects will take a huge hit.
dehrmann 4y ago
At what point is California liable because it effectively prohibited companies from using their existing office space?

kodah 4y ago

I'm not sure I agree with the article. I'm not even sure that I get corporate logic at this point. Offices cost money, much more money than configuring an enterprise for remote work. There's always that minor percentage of employees who cannot develop successful patterns to work from home. As the pandemic showed, these folks are the minority today. Under this paradigm, as long as remote work costs less than a building then remote work should be attractive to a company. Yet, many companies are chasing hybrid models even though that direction causes a good bit of attrition as well (people want the whole thing). My personal hypothesis is that companies are doing an organized, long term pull out of offices, but are resisting doing it all at once because they'd impact each other's commercial property values. This confusing state we're in is purposeful.

dbsmith83 4y ago
> My personal hypothesis is that companies are doing an organized, long term pull out of offices, but are resisting doing it all at once because they'd impact each other's commercial property values. This confusing state we're in is purposeful. I doubt it, because most companies rent their space and they wouldn't care about the impact to the building. I think your premise is flawed: > There's always that minor percentage of employees who cannot develop successful patterns to work from home. As the pandemic showed, these folks are the minority today. Sure, maybe most people can develop 'successful patterns', but that doesn't mean that most people are most productive at home (in the eyes of company heads). The term 'successful patterns' is relative given the situation, and right now that means doing the best we can given the circumstances.
- candiddevmike 4y ago
  For a lot of companies, they rent from another LLC under the owner's control that owns the building, letting the owner pocket the rent/charge whatever they want for it while building a commercial real estate business.
- al_borland 4y ago
  Most of the stories we here about pushing people back to work are really large companies with pretty significant investments in their campus. They aren't the smaller places that rent a bit of office space. Of course, I assume those leases are long, so they may still be locked in, even if they don't own them. An empty building, or even a partially filled building, still costs a lot of money to keep. Having that expense when they aren't using it and can't see the value must drive the finance guys nuts. So if the company is paying for a space for an employee in the office, and they are playing for their expenses at home, the cost of that employee's workspace just doubled.

philliphaydon 4y ago

In australia you can claim things like internet or computer and such at home if it’s used for work. Used to claim back half my internet costs every year.

mrweasel 4y ago
I’m pretty surprised that places like Amazon doesn’t pay for home internet. My current employeer it the first in a long time that doesn’t pay my internet bill. Electricity can be deducted on my taxes, but I need a seperate meter if I want to do that.
- al_borland 4y ago
  My company used to pay for anyone who did on-call work, but they stopped because the internet got to the point of being ubiquitous. People would still have a decent internet connection with or without the job. I did actually read one of the recent corporate policies and they will pay up to $30/month toward home internet, but only for those who are full time WFH (not related to COVID). I haven't bothered to do it. It's a lot of hassle for $30.
dvtrn 4y ago
I live in a US state with similar laws, and it's constantly a conversation of "do I need to remind you of state law?" when I'm asked to explain an expense report for an $80 monthly phone bill. That conversation often evolves sometimes in to one of two separate discussions: "then give me a work phone" or "then hire an overnight crew".
sofixa 4y ago
The law is same here in France. If it's used for work purposes, the employer should cover it at least at 50%. In a similar vein, commute costs ( by public transit) and food at lunch are covered at 50% or more, because they're making you come into an officr. Of course with remote work those no longer apply.

mmastrac 4y ago

It does raise the question of why large companies _aren't_ responsible for paying for commuting costs. We've obviously never done it that way, but is there a reason that we couldn't?

rdtsc 4y ago
The answer I heard is because part of the initial salary negotiations the employer/employee should have already factored that in. However, it could make sense that if they initially worked from home, then had to start commuting, the company should pay for gas, car maintenance, tolls, public transportation, etc. Then, the same goes in reverse, if the worker agreed to the salary working from the office, when forced to work from home, they could make a case of the company having to pay for monitors, a desk, electricity, a faster internet, etc.
esoterica 4y ago
That means people with cheaper commutes get paid less than people with more expensive commutes. Why would you do that? You’re effectively rewarding people for living further from work and driving less fuel efficient vehicles, which both makes no business sense and is terrible for the environment.
- dijit 4y ago
  I think the business doesn't really care where you live. I have made decisions to live close to my offices, not just for commute but because I consider myself responsible to go in when things break and spending 1.5hrs commuting won't do that. When I priced it up when I lived in London it came out to be about the same cost to live closer to the office than to commute even with public transport (which is not horrendously expensive) -- assuming I paid myself what my boss would pay me for my time commuting.
  - toxik 4y ago
    > I think the business doesn't really care where you live. I know Palantir at least have explicit bonuses for living within some distance of the office. It can’t be that uncommon.

daenz 4y ago

The article makes 2 main points: 1) that this lawsuit will cause companies to take WFH away. and 2) It's extremely difficult to bill things like fractional electricity and internet usage. The first is a flimsy premise because companies simply don't have the power to take WFH away and I think they know that. If they did, they would. But the collectivization for WFH, brought by lockdowns, is far too powerful. So powerful, in fact, that it's a hiring advantage for your competitors if you attempt to bar WFH. The second point is just lazy. Billing for fractional usage is not impossible nor difficult, and you can bet if a company was billing a customer for fractional usage, they would have it down to an exact science. In fact, the resistance on this point shows the weakness of their position from the first point. I do have some sympathy for the people who like to go to an office and interact with people face to face. But we've been operating with their preference as the default for a long time, so they can learn to adapt now.

Jcampuzano2 4y ago
I used to be one of those people who liked to interact with people face to face. I still do enjoy going to a dedicated space that isn't home and has people to interact with, but I traded going to the office every day with getting a WeWork. I've seen a bunch of well-known companies now that have office space in WeWork's or similar co-working spaces in lieu of having their own office and wonder if this is a decent alternative to forcing a return to office. It also opened up traveling a bit more since I can go to any location and have reliable internet/space for taking calls. My own company actually did this and got rid of their San Francisco office and instead renting an office in a WeWork in the area and giving San Francisco area employees a membership.
amykhar 4y ago
My company solved it by giving everybody a flat rate every month. We can use it for internet or getting a better office chair, or whatever we see fit. Seems fair.
- 908B64B197 4y ago
  That's the simplest, most effective option. And probably the cheapest too.

tibbydudeza 4y ago

It is possible - my home office is on a separate circuit (own DB board) and I have a electricity consumption monitor on it. I remember when we went WFH and I was so cheesed over the disruptions in Teams meeting when colleagues used those shitty $10 Chinese made earbuds - asked management to at least supply everybody with a Plantronics headset so we don't waste time. I was told - we are professionals (we need to buy our own shit) - end of story

paxys 4y ago
> I was told - we are professionals (we need to buy our own shit) - end of story Which is funny because "professionals" in every other field will absolutely bill you for cost of materials/equipment for a job.
Symbiote 4y ago
My employer purchased whatever was needed from desks, office chairs, monitors, keyboards, mice to headsets. We also completely ran out of "old" stuff, in the junk room, where people didn't want a new screen/keyboard but one exactly (exactly) like the one they had in the office. We didn't try anything for heating and electricity though. How much do you actually use, if your use is normal office type stuff?
dehrmann 4y ago
What about HVAC? My laptop and monitor probably add up to 100W. That's maybe $2 of electric per month? My added HVAC bill from being at home is much more, and I'm not sure how to split the bill for it.
- tibbydudeza 4y ago
  Using about 190W - i6700 desktop - Dell Optiplex Mini and HPE mini server (Gen 10) Don't use HVAC during winter - only during summer but it sits on another circuit.
  - dehrmann 4y ago
    > HPE mini server Is this personal or for work?

dixie_land 4y ago

What’s also ridiculous is that IRS still doesn’t allow employees to deduct WFH expenses after the pandemic making it mainstream.

spfzero 4y ago

With the time commitment required to pursue this legal challenge, you could get a second WFH job.

kkfx 4y ago

Honestly we surely need to discuss WFH in laws terms, in the sense of "I worker provide a room, empty, accessible for inspection, the company provide furniture etc, I'm responsible to keep it safe and closed etc" or "I, worker, provide a room, well equipped, and the company pay me a fee for my work and room usage". But that's not a thing to be discussed in court. It's a thing to be publicly discussed in political terms to arrive at a CLEAR and defined norm for WFH. In some country such norms already exists but are a bit old, meant for another tech era, in some others do not exists at all. For instance in Italy there are two norms, the ancient clear but hard, a new one opaque and obscene. The first is for "teleworking", it MANDATE an empty room, inspectable by a public body responsible for safety at work, locked, furnished by the company, with dedicated services provided by the company etc. The second is "smart working" witch essentially state that workers and companies agree a kind of place-less, by-target works no one surveil, the company just provide a craptop and a crapphone and all are f** and happy. Clearly both norms are not good at all. For instance we need to separate time-defined jobs (like call centers, banking, ...) to potentially async ones (like development) and so regulate them accordingly. We need to define "a home workspace" but without exaggerations like the Italian "telelavoro" laws etc. To do so discussing is mandatory, and courts are not a good place to discuss and negotiate...

stevenalowe 4y ago

Deduct home office expenses or get reimbursed, perhaps it should be a choice

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

hiyer 4y ago

This is absurd and greedy of the employee. Surely the cost of internet and electricity would be a drop in the ocean compared to an Amazon engineer's salary. As an aside, here in India, most companies do reimburse internet charges. But then broadband internet is quite cheap here - my 300Mbps connection only costs me around $25/month.