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> This doesn't mean they have different expenses. They are still general living expenses. Those don’t go away based on employment or not, at home or not. They

> This doesn't mean they have different expenses. They are still general living expenses. Those don’t go away based on employment or not, at home or not. They could decrease/increase some, but you can’t assume the whole amount is tied to employment only. Besides, if you don’t like your living expenses…quit or move. > If you're e.g. a tech company… What if you are not? what if you are a bank, a hospital, a factory, an insurance company, a processing center? You cannot make the assumption that every organization can just close “some” offices and leave others open. What about the HR and morale impact when 75% of your employees cannot work remote, but your SWEs can? Is it worth the office/desk footprint savings for leadership to create an elite group with a special benefits that pisses for every other person at the org? Probably not… > That two hours a day your employees were wasting in traffic? They're salaried employees, that's 10 hours a week they're not working. Now you are back to dealing with an individual impact here. If they are a salaried employee, the amount of work required for completion in a given week doesn’t change whether a commute is 10 hours or 10 minutes. That’s time the employee is investing by choosing to live where they live and work for the employer they work for. I have been on a salary for nearly 40 years…my employers have never expected me to work 168 hours a week. The expectation was an average of 40.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago
> They are still general living expenses. Those don’t go away based on employment or not, at home or not. They could decrease/increase some, but you can’t assume the whole amount is tied to employment only. That wasn't the assumption. The assumption was that the difference was $2500/mo. Real estate in the heart of the downtown is significantly more expensive. > Besides, if you don’t like your living expenses…quit or move. At which point we're back to the efficient market hypothesis. If you live downtown, your rent is $2500/mo higher than if you live an hour away, but if you live an hour away you spend $2500/mo in time and commuting costs to get to the office. But if you work from home then you live an hour away from the office, never go there and have no commuting expense, so you're ahead by $2500/mo and the company would have to compensate you for refusing to allow that. > What if you are not? Then you probably still have the same structure where the facilities that require in-person work are separate from the corporate offices: > what if you are a bank, a hospital, a factory, an insurance company, a processing center? A company is not a factory etc., a company has factories, or bank branches, or warehouses, or medical facilities. These facilities are generally already separate facilities from the offices where SWEs and other administrative staff work, because those facilities have different geographic requirements. Bank branches or medical facilities have to be near customers or patients. Warehouses or factories will be in places with cheap real estate or industrial zoning. Offices have traditionally been in cities. > What about the HR and morale impact when 75% of your employees cannot work remote, but your SWEs can? This is a really dim view of people. Nurses and factory workers know perfectly well why they can't work from home. Why would they resent that someone else can when their job doesn't have the same requirements? Do they get mad at park rangers because their job allows them to spend time in the outdoors? They might even notice that it's to their advantage because it gets 25% of the cars off the road so there isn't so much traffic during their commute, and stops them from being in competition with SWEs for the housing within reasonable distance of where they work. > If they are a salaried employee, the amount of work required for completion in a given week doesn’t change whether a commute is 10 hours or 10 minutes. You might expect that bosses would get away with giving you more work when you have more time, or that the quality of any given work might be influenced by how much time someone has available to spend on it. And nobody says you're working 168 hours a week, but a lot of people do more than 40, when they have the time. > That’s time the employee is investing by choosing to live where they live and work for the employer they work for. It's time the employee is being cost by being forced to commute into the office, which time would be available for other things in the alternative.
- kcplate 2y ago
  Honestly, you have a really strange way of looking at all this in my opinion. You seem to believe that your employer should compensate you not just for the time you are working for them, but also the time you are not. At no point in my life have I ever seen that expectation from anyone else. You also seem to have really limited experience with organizations that have in office work. My guess is your career started relatively recently (<5 years). Perhaps all you have known is remote—that would track with the strange perspectives you have posted on this thread.
  - AnthonyMouse 2y ago
    > You seem to believe that your employer should compensate you not just for the time you are working for them, but also the time you are not. They have to compensate you for the relative difference in value between working for them and working for someone else. If another company allows WFH and you don't, and that costs the employee $30,000/year to not have, what do you expect them to do when the employer offering WFH offers the same salary? Or even $10,000 less? And what will you have to do in response?
    - kcplate 2y ago
      > They have to compensate you for the relative difference in value between working for them and working for someone else. No. They only have to offer enough compensation and benefits to attract enough people into the roles they need filled. > what do you expect them to do when the employer offering WFH offers the same salary? Does it matter what another company does if the other company can still fill the role without offering WFH? Your whole premise seems to hinge on this concept that a company offering an in office position can’t effectively fill the opportunities they are offering. That’s not the case in 2025 (at least in the US). Specifically with tech jobs every opening whether WFH or in office generates hundreds of applicants. Some people might prefer WFH, others might prefer in office, but if RTO is the trend, WFH opportunities will start decreasing and will fill up fast. My guess is that given the option between unemployment and employment in an office anyone and everyone who needs an income will opt for the latter and will not sit around stubbornly waiting for a WFH opportunity like a petulant child that has to eat their broccoli before they are allowed to get up from the dinner table.

AnthonyMouse 2y ago

> They are still general living expenses. Those don’t go away based on employment or not, at home or not. They could decrease/increase some, but you can’t assume the whole amount is tied to employment only. That wasn't the assumption. The assumption was that the difference was $2500/mo. Real estate in the heart of the downtown is significantly more expensive. > Besides, if you don’t like your living expenses…quit or move. At which point we're back to the efficient market hypothesis. If you live downtown, your rent is $2500/mo higher than if you live an hour away, but if you live an hour away you spend $2500/mo in time and commuting costs to get to the office. But if you work from home then you live an hour away from the office, never go there and have no commuting expense, so you're ahead by $2500/mo and the company would have to compensate you for refusing to allow that. > What if you are not? Then you probably still have the same structure where the facilities that require in-person work are separate from the corporate offices: > what if you are a bank, a hospital, a factory, an insurance company, a processing center? A company is not a factory etc., a company has factories, or bank branches, or warehouses, or medical facilities. These facilities are generally already separate facilities from the offices where SWEs and other administrative staff work, because those facilities have different geographic requirements. Bank branches or medical facilities have to be near customers or patients. Warehouses or factories will be in places with cheap real estate or industrial zoning. Offices have traditionally been in cities. > What about the HR and morale impact when 75% of your employees cannot work remote, but your SWEs can? This is a really dim view of people. Nurses and factory workers know perfectly well why they can't work from home. Why would they resent that someone else can when their job doesn't have the same requirements? Do they get mad at park rangers because their job allows them to spend time in the outdoors? They might even notice that it's to their advantage because it gets 25% of the cars off the road so there isn't so much traffic during their commute, and stops them from being in competition with SWEs for the housing within reasonable distance of where they work. > If they are a salaried employee, the amount of work required for completion in a given week doesn’t change whether a commute is 10 hours or 10 minutes. You might expect that bosses would get away with giving you more work when you have more time, or that the quality of any given work might be influenced by how much time someone has available to spend on it. And nobody says you're working 168 hours a week, but a lot of people do more than 40, when they have the time. > That’s time the employee is investing by choosing to live where they live and work for the employer they work for. It's time the employee is being cost by being forced to commute into the office, which time would be available for other things in the alternative.

kcplate 2y ago
Honestly, you have a really strange way of looking at all this in my opinion. You seem to believe that your employer should compensate you not just for the time you are working for them, but also the time you are not. At no point in my life have I ever seen that expectation from anyone else. You also seem to have really limited experience with organizations that have in office work. My guess is your career started relatively recently (<5 years). Perhaps all you have known is remote—that would track with the strange perspectives you have posted on this thread.
- AnthonyMouse 2y ago
  > You seem to believe that your employer should compensate you not just for the time you are working for them, but also the time you are not. They have to compensate you for the relative difference in value between working for them and working for someone else. If another company allows WFH and you don't, and that costs the employee $30,000/year to not have, what do you expect them to do when the employer offering WFH offers the same salary? Or even $10,000 less? And what will you have to do in response?
  - kcplate 2y ago
    > They have to compensate you for the relative difference in value between working for them and working for someone else. No. They only have to offer enough compensation and benefits to attract enough people into the roles they need filled. > what do you expect them to do when the employer offering WFH offers the same salary? Does it matter what another company does if the other company can still fill the role without offering WFH? Your whole premise seems to hinge on this concept that a company offering an in office position can’t effectively fill the opportunities they are offering. That’s not the case in 2025 (at least in the US). Specifically with tech jobs every opening whether WFH or in office generates hundreds of applicants. Some people might prefer WFH, others might prefer in office, but if RTO is the trend, WFH opportunities will start decreasing and will fill up fast. My guess is that given the option between unemployment and employment in an office anyone and everyone who needs an income will opt for the latter and will not sit around stubbornly waiting for a WFH opportunity like a petulant child that has to eat their broccoli before they are allowed to get up from the dinner table.