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Comment by varispeed | Hacker News Reader

Companies that require employees to work from home, should pay them extra compensation for use of their property as their office. Probably they should be paying a comparable market rate to what would be the cost of renting an office space for that employee on the market. I get that many employees find it very cool that they can WFH and just that fact makes them happy, but they forgetting that this way companies exploit them. You are essentially sacrificing part of your home for the company you work for and you don't ask to be compensated for that?

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That’s ridiculous. WFH is huge benefit to employees. Are you also going to charge employers for the time it takes you to cash a bonus check?

Let’s not get overly greedy.

companies are not people, so why are you advocating for them? we should extract as much money from our employers as possible.

If you have equity as part of your comp for the company you work for you may disagree with this.

There's also a reasonableness part to any business relationship. The extreme entitlement of demanding work pay for your home because you're able to WFH during a pandemic just comes across as obnoxious.

It's like the employee that complains, "sushi again?!" in the free lunch cafeteria. Not everything is a zero sum game, your relationship with your employer doesn't need to be adversarial.

no, it doesn't need to be adversarial and that's not how I see it.

companies are merely a tool for extracting wealth. it's not a family. it has no emotions. it doesn't care about you, because it's a tool. so leverage it accordingly.

this doesn't mean you have to be nasty with people or unpleasant in any way.

Wealth can be created - the best companies create wealth and everyone gets a share. In that environment being petty over things like demanding a company pay for your WFH office just comes across poorly (imo).

I wouldn't want to work with someone going on about that. I personally find it tedious to work with colleagues that complain about things like that.

Good companies do care about their employees, because doing so enables the company to retain good people.

Companies are like functions, and the input is labor. Some are hyper-optimized functions that multiply the labor a million-fold. Others are bloated functions with hideous time complexity, barely producing enough value to justify their existence.

But what they all share is an absolute reliance on labor. No labor in, no value out.

People care about their employees and co-workers; companies cannot.

It's hard enough to WFH as it is (pandemic aside). I was surprised how rare and competitive fully-remote work was when I was looking for a job two years ago, especially once you try to be even a little selective in the work you'll be doing.

Making it more unpalatable to companies just removes the option entirely and we're stuck with the status quo.

I value my time so much that I've taken decreased pay to work fully remotely without Zoom meetings. Freedom is part of my compensation and not something you can buy retroactively.

Trying to squeeze some bonus fees from employers for a little justice boner does nothing for me.

> Trying to squeeze some bonus fees from employers for a little justice boner does nothing for me.

cool, good for you. I'm happy to take the money while you sleep easier at night.

> Let’s not get overly greedy.

Or maybe have some dignity? How simply demanding a payment for use of your property is greedy? I don't understand this logic.

There's a huge difference between petty hourly charges and WFH accommodations.

If I'm WFH forever, I need a larger living space with an office. It's been horrible the past year posting up in my kitchen, with the family running around the entire time. And since many companies are doing the 1-2 day in office hybrid model, it's not like I can just up and move to a cheaper area.

If I could offload a portion of my utility bills, property taxes and so on onto my employer, proportionate to how much time I spend WFH I would be a very happy camper.

In Australia you can claim some home office expenses as tax deductions[1]. Is there a similar system in the US?

[1] https://www.ato.gov.au/individuals/income-and-deductions/ded...

this deduction was eliminated in the Trump tax cuts of 2018

If my company forces me to WFH part-time while still coming to the office a couple of days a week, sure. If they let me go full time WFH I'll just move to a cheaper market and pocket the difference. Yes, they might adjust my salary, but that's a different issue.

> but they forgetting that this way companies exploit them

You forgetting one of the ways people are exploited is the commute time and associated costs that are not compensated for now, a few square feet of office space in the home is nothing compared to the lost time.

I agree that the workers should be compensated for commute time as well. I tried best I could to make use of that time - finding routes with a little changes as possible, getting some good tech books, a small laptop to practice things but after a while this is not sustainable. Even meditation is quite difficult in a full carriage.

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