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Comment by chewbacha | Hacker News Reader

Many would for sure like a private office!

But, there are big advantages of remote work over private offices:

1. Lower cost to the company. Private offices are expensive to build and maintain.

2. Less commute time to the employee. Private offices still require commuting which impacts the environment and the employees personal time.

3. Job flexibility. Home workers have (or will have) more options for employment.

4. No relocation expenses. Relocating an employee costs a few thousand dollars, hiring them and letting them stay put is cheaper.

5. Maintain ties to community.

6. Distribute income geographically. Offices concentrate incomes into a small geographic area. The effect is compounded by global companies as the worlds revenue streams feed into a single area. Think about how inflation and costs are out of hand in Silicon Valley.

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#6 might be the only real chance the US has of having less divisive politics. Moving the upper middle class and wealthy out of cities could change the game entirely by making the political extremes less concentrated geographically.

rural broadband would need to be improved for this to work in general.

I'm extremely hopeful for Starlink and similar services. <100ms ping rural internet would change the game in a lot of significant ways.

5G may help to at least some degree. Most people don't need Gigabit or anything like that. But it's nice to have a better alternative to satellite and (sometimes) hotspots which are your only options if you can't get broadband today.

There are disadvantages too, though:

- Accountants/lawyers are also expensive to employ, and remote workers that live in N different states will require accountants/lawyers that are experts in tax/employment laws of said N states.

- Requires much higher quality of team communication and coordination (of requirements, workload, work scope, expectations, etc), which can be hard to achieve.

> 1. Lower cost to the company. Private offices are expensive to build and maintain.

You're just pushing that cost to the employee. Are you paying them the amount saved, to furnish their own private offices? Or are you just penalizing the worker to save a buck?

> 3. Job flexibility. Home workers have (or will have) more options for employment.

I have not seen this. Most companies still don't offer remote work.

> 4. No relocation expenses. Relocating an employee costs a few thousand dollars, hiring them and letting them stay put is cheaper.

Again, maybe it's different now, but I've worked at several tech companies, and never been offered "relocation expenses".

> 5. Maintain ties to community.

What does this mean? The company? The worker? It seems like the company not employing local workers, and the worker not leaving their house, would be worse for community all around.

> What does this mean? The company? The worker? It seems like the company not employing local workers, and the worker not leaving their house, would be worse for community all around.

No, like an actual community. Like people who live near each other and don't necessarily share a corporate brand but take care of each other and share memories and build traditions. People naturally have communities based on place, so getting hired and forced to move for that job disrupts communities. It's better for the everyone's social and psychological well-being to stay put.

> 1. Lower cost -> You're just pushing that cost to the employee.

This one does seem to be a relatively common thing, at least in recent job posts I've seen. I can imagine it's not all that common if you take a step back, but quite a few companies have given what I consider very generous monthly stipends for use in personal offices or (co-)workspace expenses.

I agree with the rest.

If you're actually working from home as opposed to a co-working space, home office expenses are usually easily offset by commuting expenses, lunches, even clothes that you incur by going into an office.

I mostly work from home and incremental work-related expenses are pretty small. Maybe I buy some computer gear I wouldn't have if I worked at home less. But the expenses are pretty much trivial relative to commuting.

> 5. Maintain ties to community. What does this mean?

I have gotten to know my neighbours from nearby houses much better after starting to work remotely, because I spend much more time on the nearby park.

This just goes to show you how path dependent things are. I have been given an equipment budget for home office (not to mention the cost savings of no commute), and I have also had relocation expenses covered for multiple moves, including international.

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