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Comment by WalterGR | Hacker News Reader

I haven’t read all 63 pages, but I’m surprised that the abstract doesn’t mention:

All the $$$ that businesses get to save by eliminating or reducing office real estate, including $$$ saved by pushing some of those costs onto employees.

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"All the $$$ that businesses get to save"

This. And not just on office space - all the perks: snacks, on-site gym/child care/etc. Not to mention janitorial/security staff, utilities. I think now companies have tried WFH/Remote, they'll remain open to it in the future.

Very few companies have on-site gyms, snacks and child care. These are competitive advantages, and as long as top-tier SWEs are a sellers market, these businesses will have no choice but to spend money to attract talent.

The cost of those things is a drop in the ocean compared to salaries anyway.

>>Very few companies have on-site gyms, snacks and child care.

I'm not seeing your point here? it IS still a sellers market, and companies do pay for those things. So its still a savings for them. As for a 'drop in the bucket', I've seen companies try to save money by buying cheaper pens. So I'm sure cheaper rents, utilities, perks, etc. will be considered...

edit: grammar

What I mean is that WFH employees will still demand perks, just of a different nature (maybe higher salaries). As long as the market dynamics we have today stick, employers will still be spending money on perks.

Just as employers can now access remote employees anywhere in the world, employees can access any company hiring remote.

oh yeah - WFH is not gonna do anything about say signing bonuses or stock options. I just think it has enough cost savings potential that companies will be open to it going forward.

I especially like the "employees can access any company.." part, as it gives me a lot more options. Up till this now, it was basically only SV companies and small startups that were open to it.. So I'm looking forward to being able to cast a wider net next time I need to look for work.

Generally companies are replacing office perks with WFH perks, like furniture stipends or paying for employee's individual gym memberships.

Lets stipulate perks cost the same either way, since you don't think companies will come out ahead on perks..

They still save on janitorial, security, utilities, rent, etc.

So I fail to see how companies don't save money. And from what I've seen, companies will consider anything that saves them money...

There a people here that have never had even one of those perks because it's pretty rare outside of let's say SV?

It’s arguable whether those are actual savings or not. Those things are all corporate benefits that cost much less for a company to provide once than for each employee to provide for themselves separately. So employees will eventually start demanding compensation for those things, or else there’s inefficiency in the job market that will eventually be erased.

Hopefully we can get some legislation to correct for this. It seems like the sort of thing the labor market should balance out eventually, but... the labor market is pretty irrational all over the place, so I wouldn't trust it.

TBH, I don't think companies will fight it - its still cheaper to give an employee a budget and let them kit out a home office then to pay for cubicles, desks, etc. Office furniture is dam expensive! Oh! can't forget conference rooms! Those tables ain't cheap either.

I think you're right, but I get the feeling that companies will still come out ahead in the end — and employees will be stuck with some amount of loss.

Perhaps...I agree companies will come out ahead - they always do :-P But I'm hopeful there's room for employees to come ut ahead as well.

Although it might be badly incentivized

If they give the employee a budget, it is a wage, and they have to pay social security fees on it (?). If they buy stuff for the company office, it is an expense and tax deducible.

This is already being talked about in Europe. It'll probably end in some sort of bonus for the employee as they use their own computer powered by their home power supply and in most cases they have to buy extra stuff.

Exactly. Suddenly you’re paying for a place to work. You’re likely giving up space in your own home (for at least part of the day) without any compensation.

I have saved an absolute fortune not having to go to the office and having my own kitchen for lunch.

What costs?

Even people who work from an office still usually have a home study or office for doing their bills or whatever. Do you mean electricity costs to run your laptop? What does that add up to?

The main argument--and really the only significant one--is that people choosing to live in dense cities near an urban employer suddenly need a bigger place which is $$$. But I don't actually expect many employers to not have an urban office (assuming they have one currently) for those who want to come in--albeit maybe in a hoteled type of arrangement. But eliminating routine commutes is a big win for most people who choose to take advantage of it.

I live in the UK - very few places in London will have the space for a separate home office + space for family. It will get incredibly expensive if we all need to buy more space (and I'm not having my office setup in my living room forever).

Maybe the employees will be able to buy/lease space in (now emptied out) office buildings!

But you don't need to live in London anymore, due to work from home? So that's not a problem.

So instead of agreeing that there are extra costs to the employees working from home, you argue that they should move to a cheaper city in order to afford a home office. That's definitely... an option. But consider that this is a tradeoff, given that people choose to live in big cities for other reasons than being close to work

Work was the reason most people moved to london in the first place

Even among high-earning tech people, the number of workspaces actually suitable for working from home (without destroying their health) was shockingly small.

Many, many people will come out of this with their backs ruined from being hunched over a laptop with no external screen for 8 hours a day.

I’m grateful that my office let us take our fancy chairs and big monitors home for the duration, and expense certain stuff like standing desk converters.

My home desk already has my desktop computer and my files. I don't want to split the desk space and drawers with work stuff. That's my space.

Maybe you do a different work to me... but what 'stuff' is there? Like most people I just work at a computer that'd be there anyway.

I may be a less usual case on this forum, but I really like printed references. The walls of my cube at the office had cheat sheets pinned up (boilerplate code I need once a blue moon, lookup tables for codes, a map with county names and FIPS codes). I've written notes on most of them. On the shelves, I'd have reference books. On the file drawers, pages of notes and printed journal articles (with more notes).

Having written this, I see this could be an impetus to get better at taking notes with software. But some remote jobs and people really benefit from keeping physical things close by.

What costs?

* Heating and cooling

* Buying furniture and furnishings that are missing, or to replace worn out or unsuitable for full time work e.g. lights, computer chairs, headphones, monitors

* General office consumables, e.g. coffee, milk, pens, paper

The Australian Tax Office reckons (for tax purposes) this costs around 80 cents (AUD) per hour, or AU$1,500 per year.

Also, most people don't have a separate study or spare room they can use as a home office [1].

[1] https://news.stanford.edu/2020/06/29/snapshot-new-working-ho...

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