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Comment by kjakm | Hacker News Reader

>> I of course miss the meals and snacks.

I'm not trying to be facetious - you seriously can't provide your own meals and snacks working from home?

>> Many people who work at these companies live in big cities where they don't have huge amounts of space and it's not conducive to being productivity, particularly if you live with other people, if you can't get some form of separation.

Do you live in that space because it's close to your office? Ok, so now you're remote you can live anywhere. If there was no pandemic you could work from a library, or café or dozens of other places. You could move around each day. Or you could move to a cheaper location and have a nice home office.

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Food is the classic economy of scale.

Yes, I can prepare my own lunch. But it takes about 24 hours to make a vat of delicious homemade ramen that will feed 500 people. Do you know how long it takes to make a single serving of that same ramen? ...About 24 hours.

Likewise, an office with 100 people can easily have a whole variety of fresh fruit and produce to spontaneously choose and snack from and most will get eaten before any goes to waste. When I buy produce, I have to get exactly what I'm going to eat which means my weekly trip locks me into exactly one set of produce that I'm stuck with.

The set of foods that scale down efficiently is a very small subset of the set of foods that I like to eat.

Also, pragmatically, the free food was a perk of the job that I factored into the compensation package when I took the job. Losing access to the free food is effectively the same as taking a pay cut or giving up a couple of vacation days. Given the state of the economy, I think this is actually a reasonable way for the business to save money right now, and I'm much rather give up lunches than see layoffs happen, but the compensation package has shrunk.

Also, there is real value in not having to come up with new food to eat.

> Losing access to the free food is effectively the same as taking a pay cut

Except now you have the choice of living anywhere you think the cost of living makes sense for you, which more than makes up for this.

> a reasonable way for the business to save money right now

And so is not having to worry about office space, leases, parking, security, and the cost of logistics of running an office. WFH has the ability both save companies money and put more money in workers pockets.

Do you have any examples of major companies that are remote that aren't scaling their remote pay with the COL where the employee is located? Every single instance I've seen of companies announcing "we support remote" has had in small print "we will not pay you SV salaries if you live in the mid-west", so the cost-of-living argument doesn't really win anything as your pay scales with it.

My understanding, is that even with COL adjustment most people are actually saving just as much money after expenses as they did on the SV salary. Granted it's just anecdotal (and mostly from HN).

> > Losing access to the free food is effectively the same as taking a pay cut

> Except now you have the choice of living anywhere you think the cost of living makes sense for you, which more than makes up for this.

We were able to basically just put one car in storage. Car insurance, gas and parking alone are saving me like $650/mo. That alone would be enough for me to go buy a fresh fruit platter every workday to pick through and throw the leftovers out and still come out ahead.

> I'm not trying to be facetious - you seriously can't provide your own meals and snacks working from home?

Of course I can but I just don't want to. This isn't about being cheap or lazy (although I'm guilty of both to varying degrees). The biggest benefit of having a catered office is the lack of having to make a decision about what to eat. I'll just eat what they're serving that day.

I'm a big believer in decision fatigue [1]. Don't make me make decisions about things I don't care about and what I have for lunch is one of those. For years I worked in offices where I either had to bring in my own lunch (never gonna happen) or I had to go out and buy it. I'm fine with the cost of it. I'm not fine with choosing where to go and what to order when I get there. I'll end up finding something I like and just getting it every day until I get sick of it because that's let cognitive load than having something different every day.

That's why I like a catered office.

> Or you could move to a cheaper location and have a nice home office.

I live in NYC because I want to live in NYC. I chose the job because it's in NYC where I wanted to live. On a side note, I think this is the fundamental difference with the Bay Area. hardly anyone wants to live in the Bay Area. They want to work for [Google|FB|Apple|...] and to do that they need to live in the Bay Area. Most other places people have decided they want to live there and then look for work options.

So yeah, I could buy a big house Georgia but... why would I want to?

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-fr...

>They want to work for [Google|FB|Apple|...] and to do that they need to live in the Bay Area.

This doesn't check out. All of those companies have large offices elsewhere. I agree with your take that you work in NYC because you want to live in NYC so that's where you work but your bias is showing that you can't consider that people feel similarly about the Bay Area.

As one data point, I chose San Francisco when I had the guaranteed option to work for the same exact company with proportional pay (stupid high relatively speaking) in my hometown. People with options move where their quality of life is maximized -- that's the beauty of having options.

In my experience it's been extremely competitive to get a spot in the non Bay Area offices within FAANG. The New York and Seattle offices are generally highly sought after, and there are typically many, many less teams operating outside the Bay Area. You don't exactly get to choose, especially coming into a more junior position.

I think it's a pure numbers game. Smaller offices will have fewer open positions so there will be relatively more flow to the big offices and HQ. There also needs to be critical mass for a team to develop in a new location so you can't just be the first person on a team for a product that's centered somewhere else unless you're a very senior person. It's a bit less flexible and expansion tends to happen in waves.

> I live in NYC because I want to live in NYC.

It doesn't make NYC sound very appealing if working from your home in NYC is hellish.

Working from my home in the Bay is actually quite nice. The best part is getting an hour of my day back because I don't have to commute to work. That 1 hour commute probably added more stress to my day than any other hour.

I love my home in SF and have been deeply enjoying the COVID-induced work from home life. Many people don't invest in making their home comfortable and enjoyable to be in and it shows when it comes to these types of conversations.

True, but it also is the case that younger folk/non-devs are more likely to live in smaller spaces with housemates.

Speaking personally, I made some optimizations, but there's only so much that can be done with the fixed amount of space that I share with others.

This is a bad take. SF didn't have any tech industry before the last decade, and yet still had the second highest population density. Majority of people live in SF and Bay Area, because they want to live there

> So yeah, I could buy a big house Georgia but... why would I want to?

Because living in a big city with lot of options for food (and maybe other enjoyable and interesting things) give you decision fatigue?

So you don’t want remote first to become popular because you’re not capable of making decisions and want the company to make them for you?

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Also, can you please not post in the flamewar style to HN generally? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23261569 is another example. We're not here to cross-examine each other or make each other look bad. We're here for curious conversation and to learn.

Take it easy. He brings up a valid point about decision fatigue and the reason why these perks became popular. It's not that people making $100,000s can't make these decisions or that they can't afford paying for lunch -- it's just an extra thing that they don't have to worry about when working in a centralized location. I think it's a weak argument for preventing remote work but it is a valid one.

Agreed and will further observe that cletus isn't even trying to prevent remote work. At most they're saying that it's not something they're interested in doing permanently.

> I'm not trying to be facetious - you seriously can't provide your own meals and snacks working from home?

for me, at least, it's about the contact with other people and the talk during the lunch break. face to face human contact. i honestly can not comprehend how can people wish to be isolated... but maybe it's something different with me.

> it's about the contact with other people and the talk during the lunch break. face to face human contact. i honestly can not comprehend how can people wish to be isolated... but maybe it's something different with me.

Between meetings and misc. things that come up I had human contact all day. Lunch was the one time I could have to myself.

I’ve seen this take a lot but it’s missing a really important point. We’re discussing the trend towards WFH. If it continues suddenly your partner/housemates/friends will all be WFH and you can have lunch or work with them as opposed to the people who happen to be employed with you.

WFH != isolation

I think it depends if you're extroverted or introverted. For introverts being bombarded with endless phsyical contact on a daily basis is draining. Add a nasty commute to that and well, you come home dead beat after work.

> you seriously can't provide your own meals and snacks working from home?

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

When I get up from my desk and walk to the kitchen, I have to open the fridge and decide what to eat. In contrast, when I was visiting on-site at the office, each day's lunch was pre-planned by someone other than me, made by someone other than me, and all I needed to do was walk up and add food to a plate. Not having to expend much thinking on food was such a luxury, even if it didn't also have the benefit of chatting with coworkers.

you’re assuming that people can work in libraries, cafes and other places. these places are barely ever conducive to jobs that might require you to hop on a call at a moments notice (which is far more common when in remote) or handle sensitive data.

moving to a cheaper location also usually means giving up a lot of things that urban life comes with as well. you cant expect that everyone is going to be happy with that decision

> or handle sensitive data

I think most companies already have workers who do work from home, even if they're not remote friendly. So most corporations already have secure email / vpn / firewalls etc etc if data security is crucial. As for tech companies, don't we all push commits from home every now and then? it's already been happening for years.

I'm a pretty big foodie and love going to restaurants and trying new things.

That said, I've had catered lunches at Google when visiting friends, and that's way better than eating gum restaurants every day.

The decision fatigue is real. But also, there are relatively few options that are genuinely good in the area, especially if you're trying to eat somewhat healthy. You get very bored after a while. Lunches provided by an in house chef are very good, tend to be healthier, and more interesting. I think - like I said, I mostly ate a meal here and there.

(and if we're comparing to cooking at home, obviously that incurs greater time cost)

Not OP. I've been providing my own meals and snacks working from home (like I'd imagine most people are?), but the free food at work is usually better/more expensive than I'm willing to make for myself for any given lunch, and I'm not big on spending money on snacks. The free food + the social interaction + the increased productivity I get from being in an office all make working in an office most of the time way better.

I can easily eat $1000 worth of KIND bars in a year, if they're free!

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