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Comment by tgsovlerkhgsel | Hacker News Reader

This works great if you have a huge and well-equipped home. I could set up my place to be both a home and an office, but it wouldn't be cheap (for starters, I'd want to rent something bigger). Considering taxes, this would be equivalent to at least a 20k pay cut due to costs being offloaded on me.

I totally see why employers love that.

Additionally, FAANG and startup tech offices often serve as more than an office - they tend to have a lot of shared amenities that are just not practical to have at home. I don't use a 3D printer often enough to own one, but there is one in the office. Gym? Office, and it has more than a pull-up bar. Post office? Office. Inbound packages? Post office. In the office. Grocery shopping? Happens much less often if you eat out. In the office. Why would I want to eat out of my own fridge and pantry (and have to prepare the food myself) when I can grab tasty food prepared by people who actually know what they're doing?

The benefit isn't just that the stuff is free; the benefit is that it's all right there. It's an incredible time saver.

This is going to be a huge benefits cut for tech employees, and a massive cost-cutting measure for tech employers.

If the office is just an office with no amenities, and you have a sucky commute, then I can see why WfH would be attractive.

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Having worked in the FAANG / startup offices you describe, they always felt like they were designed to appeal to someone in their early 20s who was irritated that they didn’t have the benefits of living at home with parents who take care of “adult” responsibilities. Instead of calling it immaturity, we tech folks give it a more digestible name and call it “time optimization”. Some of us like the autonomy of maintaining our lives without some parent-like figure - you know, actually growing up? It was funny - when I worked there and described the benefits, one of my non-tech friends just stared at me and said - “so... they give you that so you never leave work? That sounds miserable.” Changed my outlook forever on the benefits.

Looking down on this might help you feel superior, but I always view this "you should grow up and swallow" tone as a bit backwards. Among the current 70+ year old generation around here it is common to think people are lazy for using dishwashers and washing machines, and doing it the good manual time consuming way builds character. Not really common nowadays but 20 years ago you heard it all the time.

Why rail against people using convenience and amenity as if it's some kind of character flaw?...

False equivalence. Having a washing machine benefits you, using the amenities under discussion benefits the corporate scumbags.

Using a washing machine benefits the corporate scumbags of the household appliance company. Benefits are not mutually exclusive.

I'd also argue that the only nefarious benefit is possibly keeping you stuck in the office. The employee being happy, healthy and with more time on their hands is a benefit to both the employee and company, and a much larger boon to the employee.

I don't mean to put words in OP's mouth, they may think exactly as you've described, but I think the issue is less of a character flaw and more about being sort of trapped at work.

If part of your identity is your workplace, perhaps that's fine? That can be hard for people to understand when they don't integrate their work into their identity though, and that could be the distaste.

And I agree with the spirit of your post, I believe. I think it's important for people to find their own methods for establishing an identity, but more importantly to teach everyone to recognize and respect alternative methods without trying to rail against them as you say.

They framed their argument like enjoying those perks was a symbol of immaturity, which is what sets the condescending tone.

I love having a good cafeteria for breakfast and lunch. Going out to eat is such a massive time sink and you really should eat with your coworkers where possible. On-site gyms are the same, if I'm already going to the gym after work, why make a special trip?

It doesn't mean that you're stuck at work the entire time. In fact, I'd argue that it can reduce your time at the office, if used right. Use your breaks to run some errands that you'd normally do after work. Schedule your workout for 3:00-4:00 if you have a meeting that runs a little later. Etc.

You can be a fully functioning adult and still enjoy those benefits.

The immaturity is not realizing that the tech company is reinventing the company store of the past. the salary and these cheap perks (compared to more salary) still net out to a win for the company. if it wasn't, they wouldn't do it. and that time you spend washing clothes at home can also be spent talking to other ppl at home, watching tv, reading a book...not working.

also, quite frankly as someone who has had a life that spans restaurant cooking and FANNG employment, that food will never be as good for you as food you make for yourself/ someone makes for you at hom.

My dishwasher doesn't work well, and after thinking about it, since I don't have a lot of dishes, I have been doing them manually for a few years.

It has not really enhanced any aspect of my character. If anything I tend to get paper plates more often because I don't want to do the dishes sometimes.

That actually wasn’t what he was railing against though, he was saying that it was manipulative of the employers to provide all these services with the intention to keep their employees at their desks for as many hours of the day as they could, rather than fostering a degree of work life balance.

> “adult” responsibilities

as though these "responsibilities" are worthy of spending time. If it was possible, eating out and not having to chores (of washing dishes etc) is a good luxury.

> they give you that so you never leave work?

yes, this is why, but if you understand what the trade off is, and decide that it's better, then it's not miserable. And if you also happen to enjoy the work, it's a win-win.

Sounds to me that people who does not enjoy such benefits are just getting sour grapes.

I previously held a job at a tech company with nice amenities, including optional dinner. Dinner didn't start until 6:30, and they stopped serving breakfast at 9:30, so if I wanted three free meals I was at the office for at least 10 hours a day. Sounds bad, right?

Guess what – I was also free to go run an errand in the middle of the day, leave at 5 to go to a fitness class and come back for dinner, or just leave whenever and not come back. Many days I'd work from home until 11:30 or so, and then go in for lunch. Some days I'd work from home entirely.

You can call me an infantile corporate slave all you want, but I knew what was going from day one (that the food policies are designed in the company's self-interest was obvious and not, to me, repugnant) and perfectly capable of taking care of myself when I need to, thank you very much.

Since I left that job, I've cooked for myself and my partner quite regularly. Shopping, cooking, cleaning, etc is an incredible time suck, and most of it much less fun than the extra 2 hours I spent at the office (half that eating, and the other half maybe working or maybe not). It does feel nice to be in control of my life this way, but if I were to go back to employment I'd absolutely desire the perks I had at the previous job.

The benefits rapidly lose their value once you have kids. Free breakfast / dinner? Who is picking the kids up and cooking for them?

Onsite laundry? Have fun dragging the whole family’s dirty clothes around. Also, if you have room for kids, you probably also have room for a laundry machine.

On the other hand, kids take a ton of time, so losing time to a commute is brutal. You lose many hours of being able to think at home without someone constantly interrupting you. If the commute time is spent driving to an open plan office, it is doubly useless. Can I just work from my car or a coffee shop or something? There’s a reason most big tech companies saw their productivity skyrocket during the lockdown.

Also, there’s much more cleaning, cooking, etc to be done. With work from home, I can turn off my laptop, and read a paper and change the laundry without dozens of interruptions.

If I need to come into the office, screw the perks. Give me an office with opaque walls and a functional door.

Part time WFH and/or a real office are going to be at the top of my list of amenities the next time I look for a job.

Just a minor correction: data I saw indicated productivity rose overall but was cut in half for parents. Of course, I attribute this to lack of childcare, which will return at some point.

I'm curious – if you lived in an area where a dedicated home office room would be prohibitively expensive, would you want a single-person office in a Regus or WeWork for yourself, close to where you live?

What I want is that if you work from home, you get a stipend to your wage equivalent to the cost they would normally spend on your office space.

I did a quick google which said that in SF, office space is $80 / sq. foot, I presume per month? Assuming you need idk, 15 - 30 sq. foot per employee (not even counting shared spaces), that's $1200 - $2400 / month to be added to your wage, plus a bit for expenses like desks, coffee or lunch that are normally offered by the employer.

I read another post or article that made the statement that if you work from home, you should be earning enough to have a bigger house with dedicated office space. Of course, working remotely would also mean you can move around the state or country where housing prices are lower.

For me, I bought a two bedroom house a few years ago; it works for me, I have my desk set up in my bedroom, quite comfortable but I would still like a dedicated work / hobby space, so if this work from home keeps up, long-term I'm looking at moving back to where I grew up in the north part of the country (NL), where houses are bigger and cheaper than they are over here.

Your employer passing their savings onto you is not how the labor market works.

Absolutely true, but it's worth mentioning that it does free up capital. That could go straight to a CxO's bonus, but also to larger budgets for Project X/Y/Z.

Not having to commute is also a big time saver, and that one is just on you, the worker. The Mr Money Mustache blog calculated that every mile you cut off your commute saves you like ~700-800 bucks a year.

https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/10/06/the-true-cost-of-...

Or that capital could be returned to the people whose labor earned in the first place.

And now you actually CAN move due to a new future work from home freedom.

Rents are $$ per sq/ft per year. But that includes hallways, bathrooms, etc. So the per-person space is probably higher.

Data point: we once rented 800 sqm and fitted in the order of 60 people. This was not as crammed as typical SF startup space (it was in Europe and a large corporation), we had groups of 6 and in between meeting rooms, bathrooms, pantry etc. So that‘s more in the order of 130 sq ft per employee. According to your numbers that would translate to $10k/employee

One of the key benefits of WFH is that people can leave the city where rent is expensive and find a bigger flat for cheaper outside the city limits. In my opinion the ability to have more time to spend with my family and friends outweighs any benefits of having a chef or gym at the office. On another note cooking is one of the most valuable life skills I learned to late, I recommend taking it up, not only does it help with living healthy but it's also a good way to relax and take your mind off things or spend time with your significant other :)

And your employer will know which location you work with and use it in salary negotiation with you.

Hmmm, could I "retaliate" by getting a PO Box or mail-forwarding service based in SF or NYC while actually living in a cabin in WV?

They are benefiting from this just as much as you are. Remind your employer that he's also saving money by not having to pay for an expensive office space in the city center and all the things that go with it like hiring cleaning services or building staff. Any equipment you use to work on should be either reimbursed by him or factored into your salary as well (monitor, laptop, internet connection, office chair, desk, etc). There are a lot of bargaining chips, just depends on how you present them.

How would you convince someone like say FB about the benefits? There is no room for negotiation.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/facebook-employees-may-fac....

I guess perspective matters, in my opinion an average engineer working at Facebook should be able to afford his own house in a nice neighborhood and be able to provide for his/her family so that they live well. If that's not the case then maybe engineers ought to start forming unions or demand profit sharing from companies.

The more employers willing to hire remote workers, the less this argument works.

Still, I already make 1/2 as much as I could make living in Boston, living 90 miles north of it. That is "local market" salary though for a job that is ostensibly on-site (partial remote / now fully remote due to COVID).

> Additionally, FAANG and startup tech offices often serve as more than an office - they tend to have a lot of shared amenities that are just not practical to have at home. I don't use a 3D printer often enough to own one, but there is one in the office. Gym? Office, and it has more than a pull-up bar. Post office? Office. Inbound packages? Post office. In the office. Grocery shopping? Happens much less often if you eat out. In the office. Why would I want to eat out of my own fridge and pantry (and have to prepare the food myself) when I can grab tasty food prepared by people who actually know what they're doing?

I definitely get why people want these sort of perks, and I don't want to invalidate their appreciation of them.

In reality, it's unusual to find a company with all of those things at once. For starters, I bought gym equipment for my home because I hate the experience of most gyms. If I can get my workout from home, an office gym is just adding a middle-man. In my experience, not all companies are happy when you use their address for your various Amazon orders. Eating out all the time costs way more than eating at home. Besides, there's nothing stopping WFH'ers from eating out if they wanted.

Again, I'm not trying to diss the lifestyle of the kind of work environment you're describing. It's just not what I prefer.

Huge and well-equipped? Why? I work at my dining table. It’s still better than going to the office. Also your office had a 3D printer and gym... you must realise your office is absurdly better than most people’s offices. Most people just have an open plan space full of irritating other people and maybe a pingpong table.

> I work at my dining table.

I assume you don't behave a family. Right?

Also: There are clear health benefits when having a "proper" chair and a table in right height (maybe even changeable, someone can stand for a while) for a place where you're spending large parts of the day.

Also in my personal experience from working from home for 10 years, having a clear separation between "work" and "private" is essential for a good work-life-balance. Otherwise it's too easy to do that one more thing and check that one idea all the time instead of calling it a day and doing something else.

For a while - especially while young - a dining table works. But for a permanent setup it's not the right way.

> having a clear separation between "work" and "private" is essential for a good work-life-balance. Otherwise it's too easy to do that one more thing and check that one idea all the time instead of calling it a day and doing something else.

This has been one of the hardest parts about the switch to WFH for me. I enjoy listening to podcasts/YouTube videos related to what I'm doing at work whilst doing mundane take around the house and I've been increasingly finding myself hearing something that triggers an idea which leads me to jumping back on "real quick" whole it's still fresh in my head.

I only realized over the last few weeks just how burnt out this was making me. I noticed my kids (which I split time with their mother one week on one week off) constantly having to ask later and later into the evening if "I was still working or not".

Since making that realization, I've committed to working specific hours during the week when I have my kids, only getting on outside those hours for actual emergencies. I give myself a little more wiggle room during the weeks I don't have the kids but I'm making a conscious effort to evaluate what I'm doing in those extra hours and whether or not it's something that could be done when I "get in the office" the next day.

Since starting this, I've found myself and my kids being much happier during our weeks together. During the weeks I don't have them, with the extra time I've gained my shutting work down, I've started doing more things I enjoy outside of work again. Going for walks at a local park to play some PoGo, going out at night to do some star gazing with the binoculars I bought and never used because I was always exhausted. I really wish I'd have started this a long time ago.

I've had a coworker in a similar situation once WFH started. He told me that he just has trouble turning it off at night. I have trouble understanding this perspective because no matter how much you work there is always going to be more, and no matter how much you do you're still getting paid the same salary.

My take on this, is if you want to keep working, after you've met your obligation to the company, why not just work on your own stuff? If you work on something that's "yours", there's a possibility of being able to earn more based on how much effort you put in.

> no matter how much you work there is always going to be more, and no matter how much you do you're still getting paid the same salary.

There can be two factors at work:

- intrinsic motivation: you care about a problem and are curious and have some drive to solve it. By not having an environment that pulls you out (i.e. colleagues leaving the office) one can get lost in it

- fear of being rated as unproductive: when not in the office, you might have the fear that your manage might think you are lazy or somebody else might outperform you or whatever and you want to be able to show results. That's the main thing you have to show. In an office scenario you would also have your presence "oh he did something" in WFH focus on result is higher.

One thing I try (sometimes with more , sometimes with less consequence) to do is if I receive a message late or see late commits or such i tell my engineer "you are working too long hours" to remind them that they don't have to work long and it's good to call it a day ...

so your home is where you sleep and the rest of your life is in the office?

If your commute is short, say sub 10-15min, enjoying such amenities would not be mutually exclusive to a good work life balance.

Even if your commute is longer - being in the office doesn't mean working. If you live alone, coming home at 23:00 and going straight to bed doesn't have to mean poor work-life-balance.

Imagine coming in at 9, having breakfast, working three hours, lunch from 12:30-13:00, working 5 hours, dinner, then spending the evening in the maker space until you need to go home.

That is a poor work life balance. If you are alone then I understand it can be hard coming home to an empty house. I would suggest trying to live with roommates or going out on more dates, anything to build up your personal life outside the office. What happens if you get fired? Where is your personal life at then?

These hobbies can be done at home or somewhere else, but yes, it's a risk. Not everyone needs daily non-work social interaction every day, some people are perfectly happy with not seeing friends outside of the weekend. This is especially common in tech.

What do people do who have families?

Married, no kids here. Youngish tech prof (28) working for one of the companies represented in the FAANG acronym.

We have all the amenities the OP talked about and more available in the office and I’d still rather work from home. Not to mention being full time remote for almost 2 years allows me to live wherever I want, which can be substantially cheaper than the major city my home office is technically in.

His other primary argument was related to not being able to have work life balance when your work is in your home, and this is all dependent on the person. Your work space still needs to be a space you only go in while working. That way there is still separation between life and work, and your SO / family knows that if you are in there you are working.

If you are taking calls in bed, or coding on the couch then of course you have no separation you’re bringing stress and work to your place of relaxation.

Remote work is only going to become more prominent as time goes on (IMO) so people are going to have to figure it out. It took me a year before I truly started being as productive as I could possibly be from home, and I complete 40-50 hours of “work” that I would do in an office, in about 15 hours spread out throughout my week from home.

The 25 hours I get back are put into side work / projects and family.

I also don’t have commute time and save a boat load of money not eating out at restaurants in a city every day.

> Your work space still needs to be a space you only go in while working.

That's not universal. I love the ability to work on the sofa, in the garden, etc working from home.

I actually have an office space but I rarely use it. It's become my gadget/VR/storage room.

> spending the evening in the maker space until you need to go home

that's the definition of single-minded sadness.

life is so much more. heck, even having a SO that doesn't work for your same employer makes the point invalid. imagine having other more important duties, like having to take care of your parents in their old age or your kids.

what you're describing only works well if you're in your ealy twenties and have not much in your life besides work.

Don't understand either, there me and the missus and the boy in a 2 bed flat, my PC and dual 27" monitors lives in the corner of the living room (facing in since the screens act as a barrier) - we are tight for space but working at home wouldn't be an issue for me at all, in fact it's something I want actively.

At a Facebook office I saw many people bringing their other half + kids to the office for dinner.

I know all the arguments of "it's to make you stay longer" but having the option of a free, zero-effort, healthy & balanced food option available to my family is a very useful perk in my eyes.

As a family, a healthy zero-effort meal is going to set you back £40-80 in London (£10-20 per head). Even on a FAANG salary, doing that regularly on your own earnings is a little frivolous.

Learn to cook, guaranteed you will have healthier meals then any chef will make you with ingredients that you chose and with a low overall cost and to be honest it doesn't take much effort to do once you get a good routine going.

I fully agree and grew up in the kitchen so know a thing or two about cooking. I am time poor however and juggle many activities (including exercising 10+ hours a week)

To cook you need a well stocked pantry and you need to buy fresh ingredients. Then cooking itself takes time - prep work + cooking time. Afterwards you have washing up.

All of that takes time and effort. It's nice to have the option to get back that time and energy 1-2 days a week.

One of the best things about working from home is you can go stick something in the oven or slow cooker long before dinner to amortize that cooking time. But that doesn't solve meal planning and inventory management of your kitchen.

It's nice to be able to turn up at a canteen and know there will be 8+ varieties of fresh veg and 2 meat options and a fish option without fail. I also rate the canteen over a restaurant in some ways as the incentives are slightly different. A restaurant wants you to come back as much as possible so has incentives to make food "tasty" aka jack the food with sugar, butter, oil, msg. A canteen generally just tries to not to make too much of a loss.

> Learn to cook

I full support and advocate for this - however, eating out is often an experience vs just having a nice meal. I love cooking, but occasionally a nice meal out is preferable. In the absence of that, my bank balance has grown, but my desire to do more cooking of the sort I'd get out has diminished.

I do love cooking, but to replicate some of the experiences you'd get out, you do have to spend a lot more. Obviously you can cook a lot more home-friendly meals, but when you start doing anything especially interesting there's a large increase in cost as you pick up specific little ingredients to do a nice meal at home once in a while.

> At a Facebook office I saw many people bringing their other half + kids to the office for dinner.

is it the norm os is that an exception? I mean: is there a rule that explicitly allows bringing in SO and kids?

Otherwise it's just a rule everybody's breaking and no one bothered to fix YET.

That's exaggerating a bit (e.g. I'm still home on weekends and evenings, meet friends, and there are places that are neither home nor the office), but is not entirely wrong, especially during work days.

Keep in mind that "in the office" doesn't mean "at my desk" or "working". People who don't have such a nice office would spend some of the already scarce time e.g. first getting to and from a gym/maker space, and I'd much rather spend that time working on some hobby project. I'm certainly in company-owned buildings quite a bit longer than 40 hours, but I don't work longer, so I do feel like my work-life-balance is pretty good.

(And if you start arguing about mindset/being "at work", then surely being "at work" 24/7 because work is now at home would be worse).

These office amenities were a major argument in hiring, and a company that didn't have them would have to pay me a lot more. All the amenities being near a place where I am, with low-friction access, is one of the key benefits that's hard to replicate.

Maybe if I lived in a large complex with many like-minded people there'd be a way to set up shared spaces like that, but I haven't heard of any place like that, and it's hard due to access and trust issues.

that is one the of the amazing things about living in or close to downtown. the apartment is good for private uninterrupted rest. entertainment can be outsourced or abstracted away from the 'home' - stand-up shows, musicals, theatre, dining, parties, all things that would be less fun if you did them at home anyway.

sounds more like a free hotel than any typical office . it's hard to empathize with the pain of extremely privileged office workers

>This works great if you have a huge and well-equipped home

With no experience of SV tech lifestyles, I would have imagined that with sky-high property values, amenities should be relatively cheap and therefore plentiful. Why wouldn't all homes be "well equipped" when the cost pales in comparison to the property itself? If a shack costs a million dollars, isn't the cost of appliances, furniture, carpet, paint, etc. negligible?

Also, I don't see why you have to have a "huge" home to have a washing machine. I've had one in places ranging from about 800-1300 sq. ft.

You sound like someone who needs to "grow up". Most of you at FAANG's are like overgrown children, who think that they are living their best lives in this infantilized environment.

That's a bit much.

FB has valet parking for employees, are you going for a black tie event everyday of the week, but in a hoodie?

Sounds like a nice perk. What does that have to do with needing to "grow up"?

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