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Comment by checker659 | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, I think this experiment is going to backfire. People are going to hate WFH/Remote work coming out of this it seems.

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If it results in

1. Workers (that previously hadn't been remote) realizing that it has good parts and bad parts, that paying an extra 10%+ in rent/mortgage in order to get a proper home office can be the cost of working from home (and then the costs of utilities for a now non-empty home). That doesn't mean it's bad, just that it has pluses and minuses.

2. Companies realizing that people working from home _does_ have benefits, and it's _not_ just people sitting around in their PJs being unproductive.

Then I think we've gained something. It's not a backfire, so much as a better understanding that everything has tradeoffs.

Your first point is the part I'd like most to change with this.

I live in an apartment with three other people. It's fine when we're all coming in and out and spend all day at work.

But now that 3/4 of us are at home, and confined to our rooms it's getting annoying. There's no good public space, and none of us share any interests.

I live and work in a single room, and I wish so much I could move to somewhere with more space. If I were full time work from home there's no reason I'd need to live with other people. The only reason my rent is so high is because I live near a city which I have to do to work. I suspect this is true for other people as well, and if we saw a greater amount of full time remote people would spread out a little.

I saw this in a company I worked at previously. When I joined they had just moved their headquarters from the West Coast to the Midwest and gave employees the option to WFH or freedom to come into office still at new location. Within a year it was a pretty even split on A) staying where they were and working remote B) moving to be in the suburbs around the new location C) moving further out from the city but staying on the West Coast D) leaving the company

>paying an extra 10%+ in rent/mortgage

Where a one-bedroom is $4000, a two-bedroom is going to be $6500, not $4400.

Obviously a cheaper metro will have lower prices, but is the relative premium for an extra room also so dramatically lower?

I was playing it safe and assuming a family adding one more room to a multi-room house. The 10% is on the low side. Where I live, it's an extra $100,000 between a 3 bedroom house and a 4 bedroom (or adding a bonus room), and then bump that up another $50,000 for the total cost after mortgage interest, utilities, etc. But nobody (that goes into an office) seems to want to believe it costs $150,000 to work from home (but then you save some on commute costs, so there's that). My manager actually made a comment about how it must be nice to save money by working from home (commute costs). I laughed.

Add TWO rooms to that house. It sounds like you live in an area with inexpensive housing. Folks who rent face an entirely different economic reality.

I live in the suburbs of a larger northeast city, so not inexpensive, but not city-apartment levels, either. Going from 3 bedroom to 4 bedroom seems to raise the asking price around 90k (from 450k to 540k). Admittedly, that includes houses of all ages/conditions/size/etc.

yes ... $4000 US Dollars for a one bedroom is literal crazy talk. Obviously, people are willing and able to pay those prices right now because they have to live specifically there to get those specific jobs. But if they could work remote, they could live anywhere their heart desires ... closer to family, closer to friends, closer to nature, closer to a local music scene, closer to the beach ... whatever their heart desires.

Obviously many people have laid down roots in those extremely high cost of living areas at this point so just moving can be tough, but we need to spread out man, cause $4000 a month for a tin can just ain't a good life.

Even if the absolute numbers are lower, I would still expect to see a premium of closer to 60% for an additional bedroom.

At least on the east coast outside of actually being located in the hard urban part of the city, from what I've seen 1 and 2 bedroom apartments only end up being marginally different in price. For example, one of the places I was looking at had 1 bedroom apartments for around 1400-1500USD per month while their 2 bedroom apartments only increased in price to 1600-1800USD depending on whether you wanted a bit more square footage or 2 bath instead of 1 bath. Likewise 3 bedroom just notched up another 200USD and so on.

Yeah this sounds about right. This is the way it should be. I mean, hell, even that is a bit pricey TBH ... rent prices are generally out of control and need to come down. People have to be able to live without cramming into places with roommates like sardines.

Interesting interaction: the lower the marginal cost of an additional bedroom, the more of a splurge it is to have your own place.

this place im looking at is within walking distance of main street in a nice little town, just outside of a major metropolitan area(think 30-45 min drive), includes water & gas, and the the complex is on the water. Because of that I'd say the place was a steal.

Otherwise though I'd generally agree. Rent is getting crazy in the US.

That doesn't matter since WFH isn't popular right now. If 0.01% of people work remotely and then suddenly everyone ends up doing WFH then it is unlikely that more than 99.99% of people are going to hate WFH. So lets be pessimistic and say 99% of people end up hating WFH and only 1% like it. That's still a 100 fold increase in people who will do WFH.

> People are going to hate WFH/Remote work coming out of this it seems.

The question is, what are they going to do? There are two options... demand better tooling (I'm actually surprised about Microsoft Teams!) or go back to office and put up with everything related to a multi-hour commute - infection risk in public transport, gas/insurance costs, endless traffic jams, hours lost each day that can be spent with partner/s and children instead, or simply with sleep...

> or go back to office and put up with everything related to a multi-hour commute - infection risk in public transport, gas/insurance costs, endless traffic jams, hours lost each day that can be spent with partner/s and children instead, or simply with sleep

This one unfortunately (because, choice inertia)

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