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Comment by Shivetya | Hacker News Reader

I am more that willing to take on those costs to work from home forever because I get the freedom of no commute which not only incurs an obvious cost but puts me at risk each day.

I also find my costs reduced because now I am no longer eating out for lunch, let alone because I felt pressure to do so daily.

However there are companies that are overly proud of their head quarters and other real estate and are going to be loathe to give it up; this includes elite addresses and locations

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Many people in big tech hubs don't pay for lunch. Work provides it. Now, they all have to pay for lunch that they weren't paying for before because the office is closed. Sometimes this isn't just lunch - but up to 3 meals a day. Same is true with transit. They took a company bus or work paid for public transit.

Now, people who were living in spaces where they didn't have a dedicated office space are dying for one. (like myself) And, unfortunately, the competition for homes with more bedrooms has skyrocketed. I'm looking at paying $2000 more a month just so I can get a couple more bedrooms for office work! Moving away for a year or more isn't a real option either.

If tech companies don’t adjust for cost of living and you move you can save money on housing and get more space.

Isn’t that the point though? If the worker has to move in order to get more space, the worker is bearing the costs (literal and opportunity).

Fringe benefits should always be expected to be transient (meals, commute transportation), and it isn’t wise to include them in total comp calculations (as they’re easier to do away with than your comp).

>Fringe benefits should always be expected to be transient (meals, commute transportation), and it isn’t wise to include them in total comp calculations (as they’re easier to do away with than your comp).

Yet places like Google would argue for them as part of their TC. The companies that tend to offer these benefits don't usually get rid of them until they're going out of business...

It’s your job as an employee to not drink the kool aid and to properly value benefits provided, regardless of how they’re marketed. Cash is king, everything else is window dressing.

Sure but it is not just the $ sum but also $/h and $/sweat and tear. Having eg. parking lots even if you arrive at 10 aclock is also a big deal.

No one is drinking any KoolAid. I care about the fact that I don't have to go through the cognitive load of figuring out every meal. This is a benefit I personally experience and so I factor it in my analysis. I don't care how my employer reports it in their taxes or balance sheet.

Also, cash is king but companies can offer benefits at scale that will be much harder to access for me as an individual.

Mostly healthcare in the US. And a few other things that are tax-advantaged by being benefits from an employer (like 401(k) matching). I'm not sure that I can think of much else, other than negotiated travel and other discounts--which I don't really consider "benefits"--that are harder for me to access as an individual.

Nobody in the management of a company like Google would ever breathe a word about meals and transportation being part of comp, because if they are part of comp then they need to pay taxes on them. The two companies where I worked that had expensive on-campus meals both had systematic approaches devised by corporate lawyers to make sure that meals did not appear to be compensation.

If my time's worth $50 an hour, it'd have to be a damn good free lunch or a damn short commute for the free-lunch-for-unpaid-commute trade to be a good deal.

But unless you're actually paid per hour...

I mean - I'm not really arguing that you should commute just for a free lunch. If anything - I was making a bigger argument in regards to the office space part. I'm fine with the lunches at home right now. (I can only blame myself for the poor lunch options on any given day) The $2,000/month that I'm looking at spending just to have office space is a bit of a bigger deal, imo...

Don't forget the huge benefit of lunch just being there.

I spend a lot more time dealing with food now (cooking, cleanup, groceries) than I spent on my commute. I could go to a restaurant, but if I don't want to eat the same thing every day, getting there and back and waiting for the food is going to take more time than my commute, especially if I do it for more than lunch.

Even purely from a time perspective, free-lunch-for-unpaid-commute is an EXCELLENT deal in my case. I can totally see that being different if your commute is longer than 30 minutes.

I kinda agree, except that I actually like cooking.

Even still, I've been working later (7pm approx) as I've started with a company based out of California (I'm in Ireland), which sucks for eating food.

Slow cookers/crockpots are kinda ace, you can dump all the ingredients into it in the morning, and have a meal when you finish work. As a bonus, the smell of the food is nice in the afternoons.

There has long been a debate if these free means actually count as a form of reimbursement (and are therefore taxable).

https://www.wsj.com/articles/silicon-valley-cafeterias-whet-...

https://www.businessinsider.com/irs-and-free-food-at-tech-co...

Or you can move somewhere where the cost of living is 80% lower...and still work remote.

Until you have to go back to the office whenever that is... And say goodbye to all of your friends/family.

How many people who work for BigTech have family there and didn’t relocate?

Of the Americans I know - quite a few. Of the foreigners - obviously quite a bit less.

Beyond that - friends can also be more important than family. I know plenty of people who won't move because all their friends are where they currently live - and they're fine with not being close to their family.

I have a hard time relating to your comment.

Why do you need a couple more bedrooms?

Can split a bedroom as an office with the other person in your house.

If you have kids you can pair them up in the same bedroom with bunk beds.

You could spend the money on a Murphy bed that folds up and turns into a desk.

I have co-workers who even work from their dining room table for the time being.

Moving is always an option every excuse you have just follow up with, "and...?".

A dedicated personal office is very nice if you full-time work from home. It's much nicer than working out of a bedroom, especially if the bedroom isn't that big.

I pay $2150 a month for a 5 bedroom 3100 square foot 4 year old house in the burbs of a major metropolitan area and work for $BigTech remotely. I wouldn’t trade the arbitrage opportunity for anything.

> I pay $2150 a month for a 5 bedroom 3100 square foot 4 year old house in the burbs of a major metropolitan area and work for $BigTech remotely. I wouldn’t trade the arbitrage opportunity for anything.

Congrats, you don't live in silicon valley. Woohoo. Your life is not everyone's nor is it representative of what everyone can get.

My employer will only keep people who will show up at the office. If I found employers regularly paying $400k+ for remote - I'd consider it... But I don't see them often.

Well, most people aren’t making $400K at $BigTech either according to levels.fyi

I had two choices when I could see myself topping out locally as a bog standard enterprise dev - either I could go the r/cscareerquestions route and “grind leetCode” so I could reverse a binary tree on the whiteboard, and move to high cost of living area or I could focus on gaining experience so I could be an overpriced “digital transformation consultant” somewhere where most of the jobs are remote with travel.

Right when I was about to pull the trigger and start applying for local companies, Covid hit, the local market dried up and I got an email from an Amazon recruiter.

I thought I might as well try. I can answer the “tell me about a time when...” questions with the best of them and I had the relevant experience.

and do you also get the $BigTech 400K/year salary? that would be sweet.

Do I get the $400K salary? I’m not at the $400K salary level but neither are most people who work for $BigTech. The salary bands for the AWS consultants/solution architects/engagement managers are the same as the equivalent SDE roles. I would think the same holds true for GCP and Azure.

I can tell you according to levels.fyi that my salary is the same for my level as someone living in Seattle. I also know an SA living in MiddleOfNowhere Nebraska who is making the same for his level as someone in Seattle.

This is a good reply. At 400k a year, expenses really cease to matter. But at 180k a year, there is a difference between Seattle and Nebraska.

More like $210K -$250K for an L5.

Edit:

Would I move to the west coast for $225K compared to what I could makes locally? Heck no, $400K, maybe. At this point in life, even my local pre-Covid salary was “enough” for us to comfortably meet our short and long term goals.

The extra $70K-$80K basically just gave us enough to tell my wife don’t worry about going back to work surrounded by Covid when school starts back and the rest is going straight to long term goals - save more for retirement, pay off the house faster, etc.

Doubling our income wouldn’t make any lifestyle differences. What are we going to do travel in a post Covid world? Buy a larger house for three people and within a few years 2?

Thanks for the data :) For me, extra savings would just go towards automating more things in my life. All of the things that are broken or malperformant in my house could be resolved with a few phone calls. If I still have money left over after that, then it would probably be invested to generate more secure and reliable income. If I only have 500k in the bank, I feel weary about putting half in dividend stocks that might not pan out like I hoped. But if I have 2 milliom in the bank, then $200,000 in dividend stocks feels like child's play in terms of risk :)

That brings up another interesting and off topic aside.

I made plenty of $bad_life_decisions until 12 years ago. So early retirement is out of the question. But that’s okay, I’ve never hated my career, my previous jobs at times definitely.

But, with a paid off house, the amount of savings I should be able to amass in 20 years by the time I’m 65, and hopefully social security is still a thing. With today’s rules, your spouse can either collect their social security or half of yours while you are both still living. We could easily live off of an (inflation adjusted) $4500 SS + the hopeful retirement savings.

I doubt if I spend $5/day eating lunch at home.

And it's really not the norm for companies to pay for meals or commuting.

But, yes, if you want to continue living in an expensive urban area, the cost of an extra room is significant. I do consider myself fortunate that I live in a semi-rural area and have a dedicated office. I know a number of people who are fleeing city apartments to more rural areas.

This is a very localized issue. Most people (I included) do not get even free lunch at work and there is no free transit to office either.

Both are cheaper than average (I think the buss is 1/2 the normal ticket price and the lunch is 2/3 of normal "take out" price) but certainly not free.

Everyone is also thinking this the wrong way around. People are thinking "how would this fit my current lifestyle" instead of "if this is the new normal, how would I change my lifestyle and would it be better over all".

I don't live in a big city even now, my commute is about 20minutes each way with a car. As it currently stands if I can stay working completely remotely I probably will and I will be selling my apartment and looking for a house in a more rural area. Something larger than my current apartment so I could have an actual office (in an ideal world there would be a separate building that would act as office / workshop). Currently I'm struggling with no dedicated office space, but that is because being 100% remote wasn't an option.

I get that many people have grown to expect free lunches and whatever from their work, but in over all work force thous people are in tiny margin group and while it sure would be sad if they lose the privilege, but needs of the many and so on.

I am shocked there are people who get 3 square meals a day all paid for by their job

I'm apalled that there are adults getting 3 free meals and are upset that they now have to get those meals themselves

And why would you pay $2000 for a "couple more" bedrooms? You're telling me you can't put an L-desk in your living room? This thread just has ridiculous scenarios upon ridiculous scenarios, like the guy who would need to take a "40k pay cut" to get a home gym and a 3D printer.

I live in a small (400-sqft) 1-bedroom that has no internal doors. It was never rented as a WFH space. If you and your partner are both on calls a lot of the day - it's kinda hard to do them if you have to talk over one another. It used to be you had 8-hours of separation a day. Now, you don't have any. More bedrooms would provide some of that.

Some people like having living rooms without office furniture jammed into them - go figure. Most people I know would have to get rid of some furniture in order to fit a desk nicely into their living room.

> I'm apalled that there are adults getting 3 free meals and are upset that they now have to get those meals themselves

The 3 meals a day thing just sounds like gatekeeping. "You must not be a real adult because you want food that's included in your benefits instead of having to labor over it like the rest of us who don't have such benefits!" (Or you have to pay for those meals to be delivered - which is very costly on an individual scale)

What if you can't go get your oil changed now? Should I say, "I'm appalled that there are adults getting oil changes at service centers and are upset that they now have to get those oil changes done themselves"

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