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Comment by the_watcher | Hacker News Reader

I disagree that this is a likely outcome. For many people, this is a worst of both worlds - still requires all the costs of living within commuting distance of your employer (particularly for SFBA and NYC) and likely shrinks the average size/perks of the office you commute to. Partial remote doesn't seem to solve any problem in a way that is any better than the status quo.

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I agree. I would quit. This basically forces employees to get another room as an office. If my employers pays for it, fine. But if they don’t, it’s bs that I’ll have to continue to work from my living room because we don’t have a dedicated office space. It’s driving both me and my SO crazy because we want separate spaces to do our work but we are in a studio/open 1-bedroom.

I prefer working from home, but I also totally agree with you. Especially since they got rid of the uncompensated business expense deductions for individuals in the tax code, they're really just outsourcing the expense of maintaining an office.

However, I fully believe I can build a home office that's better (for me) than most employers can, at a fraction of the budget. It's a more efficient solution than a centralized office, but it's coming out of my pocket and not theirs, so it hurts me more.

Of course, your direct complaint seems to be the square footage, not the hardware (desks, etc). That's a tougher one to solve for, because larger square footage is opex instead of capex, and it'll be more challenging to get your employer to part with opex dollars.

It's interesting that adding square footage is opex for businesses (leased commercial real estate) but often capex for individuals (purchased residential real estate). And then the capex is mortgage-financed back into a monthly payment that is effectively opex....

(Yes, there are larger apartments, but they are somewhat rare. Maybe this will change!)

it's only capex if you own the home! :)

In NYC, 2/3 of households rent, according to a 2017 government survey: https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/nychvs.html.

Not to take away anything from your point: it is an interesting thought experiment. For people who have an intuitive understanding of opex v capex, it's also a very convincing argument for owning your apartment (since your mortage "feels" like opex, but is actually capex, and it's always better to spend capex dollars).

This is especially true in markets like NYC, where you might never reasonably expect to pay off your mortage (since it's a coop, or the principle is 10+ years of untaxed salary).

trying to learn from your comment,

Would it matter the interest/equity proportions of the mortgage payments? Also what about the other costs associated with owning the real estate (taxes, maintenance)?

In a word, yes, but oftentimes the factors you mention either break-even between renting and owning, or tilt the table in favor of owning, on a long enough time horizon. This is especially true if you're a high-income employee with a lot to gain from itemized deductions.

Interest in most loans is front-loaded (i.e. your payments are mostly "interest" rather than equity in the earlier parts of the loan), and you can write off payments towards mortgage interest on your taxes in the US. So, while interest is technically opex, the government currently allows you to treat it as capex, tax-wise, because they want to subsidize home ownership. If you aren't in a top income bracket, this won't affect you much.

Other costs are tricky because, in competitive markets at least, taxes and maintenance cost are usually priced into your rent, so you're usually paying them whether or not you own your home.

The big difference is that when you own the home, the taxes and maintenance costs arrive all-at-once (when your home floods, or the boiler falls apart), rather than amortized over years of residency. That's why mortgages are almost always "cheaper" per-month than rentals: rentals price these costs in, mortgages do not. If you have a good chunk of liquid savings and can afford good insurance, exposing yourself to occasional all-at-once payments are not very risky.

Also, you can eventually and typically write off big expenses (if you rent out part of your home, or sell it later and keep good records). https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/what-home-improvemen...

I just thought it was funny that you said in a different post you hate your job and are already looking for a new one [1]

I don't think your problem with quitting has anything to do with WFH policies.

[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23157538

The statement was regardless of employer. As long as I pay high rents in the Bay Area, no way am I working remotely anywhere near 50%+.

I assume that allowing permanent WFH is different from forcing permanent WFH.

But the point was more about forcing people to WFH most days and then having to come into the office some others. It would be the worst option for people in HCOL areas because it forces most of the office expenses onto the employees. (And the cost is ridiculously high per capita for employees)

I still don't think it's about forcing anything. I think a lot of companies will start to give the option to have employees come in 1 or 2 days a week, but there is no need to force that. Tons of people will take advantage of it for the reduction in commute alone, and thus the company will still need considerably less real estate.

still requires all the costs of living within commuting distance

If you don't have to go in everyday, the possible commuting distance increases massively. Before the virus, I worked from home and my commute was 160km twice per week by high speed train.

The average American spends 4.3 hours per week commuting. If you go into the office every day, that gives you a 26.1 minute commute radius. If you go into the office twice a week, now your commute radius extends out to an hour.

Take a map around the office where you work. Look at the kinds of home prices you can find an hour out. See how much closer you can be to nature or other particular amenities that matter to you. Would you like to have those with zero total change to your commute time?

Sounds pretty nice to me.

1 hour doesn't get you that far in terms of home prices in SF/NYC

It's absolutely huge in Austin. There is a very high correlation between distance from downtown and housing prices because our traffic is so abysmal and our public transportation is a joke. Price for "equivalent" houses 5 mins from downtown vs. 35 mins from downtown is 2x minimum.

Yet, many workers prefer it. For example, my team is 18 persons fully in-office and 4 fully remote (I'm one of the latter). We've been all fully remote for two months now, and today the manager asked: what do you think about making this permanent? And all the 18 colleagues agreed that their preferred solution would be partial remote.

People like their socialization at work. Many also like living in the city anyway (granted, most of my colleagues are young and childless). And outside of extreme cases like SF, a tech salary is enough to rent a decent apartment.

I live in Portland, though; people live here because they love Portland, not because of the tech scene.

This is already a pretty common situation for many companies (in NYC). A 1 hour+ commute to be more tolerable if you only have to do it twice a week. Fully remote companies, you might see your coworkers in person once a year. That's a big leap for a lot of places to accept.

Yeah I just took a WFH job and if I HAD to be near one city that would really limit my flexibility and is a huge negative. My company does bi-yearly get-togethers, or did.

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