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Comment by mullingitover | Hacker News Reader

> The real estate costs don't go away, they just are paid for by the worker instead of the employer.

I'm not sure how many tech workers didn't already have some kind of desktop computing arrangement at home but I have to imagine it's a miniscule number.

> I've never heard of a business offering a stipend or remote assistance subsidy of any sort to their workers to cover any of this, from whatever great savings are reaped from saving on real estate costs.

My company does, I'm sure it's become pretty standard lately.

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Software engineer here who before the pandemic had a setup on the sofa or kitchen table. That’s fine for doing a few hours work in the evening. It starts to get ergonomically painful as a full time setup. It’s also annoying sharing a room with my partner who needs to be in meetings all day while I’m trying to write code.

IIRC it used to be that to claim a write off on dedicated work space at home you had to claim you had a 10'x10' dedicated work env... but I may be not recalling that correctly.

> I'm not sure how many tech workers didn't already have some kind of desktop computing arrangement at home but I have to imagine it's a miniscule number.

I thought the same as you, and then I saw a lot of people at work not have home setups, either because of space or other reasons. It was surprisingly common!

Concentration of jobs without adequate increase in housing leads to that extra room for an office being exorbitantly priced. Then again, if you can rely on wfh, why concentrate to that degree?

> already have some kind of desktop computing arrangement at home

Sure, but it's your personal desktop computing arrangement -- not the company's.

With WFH, the company is effectively renting that space from you so you can work in it, but you're charging them $0.

This is the definition if a win-win then, because I would take a pay cut to keep working from home (not planning to mention this in salary negotiations). I definitely don't feel like I'm being exploited by saving my company a few bucks and saving irreplaceable moments of my life that I'd waste commuting. The lack of commute is the real kicker, driving to work costs me money, and it's a life-endangering activity.

> saving my company a few bucks and saving irreplaceable moments of my life that I'd waste commuting.

I bet if you actually considered the commute as part of your paid time to calculate an hourly rate, a lot of people probably come ahead when switching to wfh despite "renting their space" or whatever.

Depends on how you commuted to work. If you biked to work you just lost your cardio gym membership baked into your day.

This is it. I actually took a small pay cut this year to work for a company that is guaranteed remote friendly.

The peace of mind knowing that these guys already had remote engineers before the pandemic and a good workflow, and having a job that is officially and permanently remote is absolutely worth a few thousand bucks to me.

I was dreading going back to the office, even if only a day or two a week.

Counting the commute I would have otherwise been going back to with my previous company that was super excited to get asses back in seats, I'm probably actually getting paid more per hour of my time dedicated to work activities.

I always looked at the commute cost as a balance out, TBH. The distractions on the bus made study on the bus difficult and I wouldn't work on there because I was loathe to be one of the people edging out another with a laptop on a full bus. granted, other places may have better transport than the Seattle area (ours is pretty notorious), but most is pretty crowded and not suited for work or leisure. I count those commute hours as personal cost hours, to me and the environment. It was an hour in and an hour out (on a really good day), and I'm like 20 miles from the city center.

Were you making more than $0 off that space before? Not everything is zero-sum.

No, but presumably they got some living utility out of that space previously that is now devoted to work. Maybe you can finally take up mountain biking now that you don't have to make space for a desk you don't use after 5pm on friday and can fit the equipment.

The person I replied to was explicitly talking about people who already have a desktop computer setup at home. I guess for a few of them that desktop might be used by a partner or children during the day, but in the vast majority of cases it would sit idle.

> I'm not sure how many tech workers didn't already have some kind of desktop computing arrangement at home but I have to imagine it's a miniscule number.

Once again, in SV/NYC/etc very few due to real estate costs. Most of my peers who aren't married have room mates.

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