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Comment by alibarber | Hacker News Reader

Whilst all this work from home is nice and lovely and whatever, for me I still struggle to overlook this cynical fact:

I had a space dedicated to work in that my employer paid for. Now I must make a part of my house that space and foot the bill.

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On the other hand my home workspace is an actual office, and not some nightmarish open space where my desk was 7th in a row of 8. So the space dedicated to work in that my employer paid for actually sucks and they can have it back.

This! It seems to me the primary “productivity gains” are only due to the hell of open office designs and that these gains would not exist if offices were laid out in a more humane way with cubicles or offices for people to work in. So everyone got excited to lose all the benefits of working in an office (in-person communication versus Zoom!) only because of fictional productivity gains. What we really need is the pendulum to swing back to offices closer to 2000 versus this travesty we found in the late 201x’s.

Congrats on your setup. I am struggling to get a similar workspace myself, but I constraint by money, space and family situations.

This. I've been working remotely for almost a year now and I'm not looking forward to being back in the office. I don't spent 3 hours a day on the road, I don't have to see and hear my coworkers and don't want to sit at my desk. My employer may rent another place 5 times smaller, whatever. I'm here at home enjoying my loneliness and I've never felt better about my job.

This is good - but I unfortunately don't have the space, time or money to dedicate to building an office at home - any more than I have to build a gym or pool.

I’m willing to foot that bill in exchange for getting rid of my two hour round trip commute. It probably evens out with the savings on fuel or ticket costs. It doesn’t even factor in the stress of commuting and being on time into the office.

The luxury of able to wake up and just walk into your “office” in your pajamas is priceless to me.

This is a good example of somewhere the two parties can work together. Give a tax break to companies that reimburse you for part of your mortgage/rent/utilities for your home office, and give a tax break to the employee so they don't have to count it as income.

You can kind of do this already, but making it explicit would help everyone, and since it's both pro-business and pro-employee, it appeals to both sides of the aisle.

> I had a space dedicated to work in that my employer paid for. Now I must make a part of my house that space and foot the bill.

And equipment. I have so far forked out $1000s and there is deductions or rebates where I live for any of it. I have to pay full VAT (25%) unless I can somehow get through the bureaucracy of fortune 500 company to get them to pay for it, in which case I have to find space in my 40 m² apartment for both my stuff and things from employer.

It is seriously messed up and the fault mainly lies with how governments are implementing lockdowns.

Why wouldn't they pay (at least up to) the same amount of money to you so that you can create your own space?

The amount of rent paid per employee has been driven down over the decades as the square foot space dedicated per employee has driven down. Give employees those savings and it would amount to converting an already used space (a closet) in your home to some pale representation of what you had in the office. Certainly would not justify adding on to the employee’s house, and not everyone has spare space they bought or rent that they magically don’t need for personal use anymore.

Rent per square foot in the city center where my company's office is located is at least ten times rent per square foot on a house like mine in the suburb I live in. The rent per square foot for a desk in a serviced office near where I live is about halfway between the two.

In fact the rent on a small three bedroom house in my neighbourhood and the rent per employee for office space where I work are comparable.

I think you would be surprised to what the ratio of office square foot to employee headcount looks like. Most modern offices are designed to 150-250 sf per employee including circulating space, common meeting rooms, kitchens, and washrooms.

Also, if what you say is correct, that office space is 10x suburban housing rent, that is most certainly an anomaly unique to your city. That would mean a high end market, like NY or SF with $100-$150 per square foot rents would have housing stock renting for $10-15 per square foot (these are annual numbers). That is not the case in any market I have ever encountered.

My city is unusual, fair. But 5x ratio would be far from unusual. One could easily find an apartment in Staten Island (not even a suburb, not very far from the city center) for less than 1/5 Manhattan office rent per sq ft.

I'm not sure of your point about sq ft per employee. 10 times 150 sq ft seems like quite a nice three bed.

5 times the office space per employee is going to be huge, especially given that most people already have kitchens and bathrooms.

Don't forget to claim tax on the portion of your house that is being used for work.

I don’t understand - don’t people already have home offices for at least doing their bills and things?

What year is it?

It's 2021. Maybe if you had a calendar in your office you'd know?

Do people not ever need to sit down to manage any of their finances, personal life, or organisations they volunteer in in 2021? Do you do everything from your phone on your sofa? Where do you keep physical books and things? Do you never need to focus and write?

I do it in my kitchen or living room - for a couple of hours a week at most.

If I had a room that I could devote to something that I barely spend any time doing I would have made it into something more fun - like a workshop, or home-gym, or sauna, or whatever. I'll use it how I please - and my employer can keep on paying for somewhere for me to work.

It's probably a better indicator for class divide these days than the classic 'bookshelf'.

But.. bills? As in receiving letters to find out how much I'm supposed to pay and then somehow manually paying them? No, I'm young enough that I've never had to operate like that, but I can barely remember my parents doing so either, certainly not in the last 20 years. Your profile indicates also UK - don't you just pay by DD?

(edit: hang on a second.. my sarcasm detector might be starting to experience a slight tingle.. were you joking?)

> But.. bills? As in receiving letters to find out how much I'm supposed to pay and then somehow manually paying them?

No obviously not literally 'paying a bill'. I mean managing your personal life. Investments, preparing data for your accountant, budgeting, that kind of thing. Do you not have any hobbies that involve managing things or focused reading and writing? Any volunteering that involves managing an organisation and people? The need to take non-work calls to organise things? What room do you do these things in? Do you not have a desk and chair somewhere?

Yes I do, I wasn't disagreeing with you. I just thought 'bills and stuff' was amusing and not the first use that would come to my mind.

So yes I already had and used that space for 'personal stuff', (well actually I mostly worked from home anyway there too) but I do understand there's still an argument that it's nice to have a physical divide between work (employed work) and other. I definitely sit there working longer (or going back to work later) than intended sometimes.

When I want to be doing something else, but work's still on my mind or have some sudden realisation, and all work stuff is right there too so it's too easy to 'just quickly' do.

I don't know, there's no perfect answer, sometimes it really is quick and I'd rather get it done and off my mind (easily, because again, it's all right there) than it be harder or tomorrow.

This is a dangerous line of thinking and eventually most young people who think this way will get burned. So you have everything setup as autopay, and then you have no idea what you’re spending on anything. And then there are incorrect or fraudulent charges on your account and you never notice them, or maybe you do but you can’t dispute it because you didn’t notice them for past 6 months and since you paid them previously, the bank closes your dispute because you previously paid them which shows that you accept the charges. Or some service you use starts slowly increasing the price/fees and you never notice, so you never call to complain about it, and then companies start getting away with doing this all the time when they decide they want more money.

There’s a reason people sit down, review bills and their accounts, and actively keep track of things, and it’s not because they are just old and doing things the old way. It’s because if you are not really paying attention, companies will try to screw you. And no, having some central system that shows you pretty graphs of your spending doesn’t help with this either unless you are really spending time studying the report at least every few weeks.

In the UK, you can use one of the challenger banks like Starling or Monzo. They not only show you "pretty graphs", but give you spending notifications and keep track of your direct debits, standing orders etc. So I don't see a reason to do this all manually yourself, which can also be error prone.

> doing their bills and things

Like bills do require a full office in 2021. I pay all my bills by pressing a button on my smartphone. And that's because I like to review them, I could pay them automatically if I really want to.

Do you not have any personal arrangements more complex than 'pressing a button'? Investments? Correspondence with people? Reviewing agreements and portfolios? Do not you do things like budget? What about hobbies that require desk-work and making calls? Volunteering and work with charities? What room do you do these things in?

All those things don't require an office. You can do all that from a sofa... Come on...

I want to have a garage where I can build projects and do stuff that is not looking at a computer.

I just, don't want to have an office in my home. If I need an office for work then someone else can pay for it. I have no desire to own a computer with Linux, but I need one for my work. Guess who paid for it? Not me. And sure yes - I do life admin on my computer on the kitchen table when things are quiet - but I don't spend 40 hours a week doing that.

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