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Comment by jlawer | Hacker News Reader

Data set seems off as the sampling heavily biases to Tech, Law and consulting and away from Retail, Logistics and Primary Industries all of which are a higher proportion of the Australian workforce. Additionally companies such as Coles and Woolworths (Supermarket chains) are listed as 100% Remote, where as this is only going to be for a small proportion of their workforce.

The change is happening, and I work for an energy company where they literally do not have the office space for 100% of staff to be back in the office (currently target 50%). So the change is happening, but I don’t think its as far along as this data states. I can say from a recruitment perspective there are many candidates who want a significant pay bump to go back to 100% office.

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I could see demanding more. Being in an open office bullpen and commuting are both wastes of my time, on balance.

If they're willing to freely waste my time, then they must also be willing to freely waste their payroll budget. May as well demand more, as I'll clearly value the money more than my employer.

Also, quality of life matters. I want an office with a closable, opaque door and adequate ventilation. I'll provide it for free, or my employer can. If I don't have it, then I want hazard pay.

> I'll provide it for free, or my employer can

Might be anecdotal data, but from what I have seen, the amount of people that are working from home with proper equipment and dedicated space is really small. People work with their residential internet connection, which sometimes works well, and sometimes doesn't. They work on their kitchen counter on the 13" laptop screen on a hard stool. They work while their children are watching TV or doming homework in the same room on wednesday afternoon. They work while the maid is doing the vacuum cleaning. I could go on, but you get the idea.

If the offices where half as bad as those working conditions, there (rightfully) would be an uproar among the worker explaining how unproductive they are because of the bad conditions. But somehow all these problem magically have no effect anymore when they happen at home.

So business choose to provide a free place with premium computer screens so you can juggle all these windows, ergonomic chairs so your back won't hurt, both quiet and more social places depending on your mood, fiber internet connection with mesh wifi and redundant connection so your call don't look like a 3 FPS 640x480 GIF . And they'll ask that employees spend at least a bit of time in those.

Other than my home internet sucking, all of the things you mention are worse at the office.

I pay daycare to keep the kids in a separate location. Good luck trying that with coworkers.

We were a partially remote team pre-pandemic, but there aren't enough meeting rooms / phonebooths in the office buildings. I'd miss an hour or so of meetings / work per week trying to find a meeting space for a zoom call. My home internet craps out of a meeting about once a month. It's clearly superior than the in-office situation, with triple redundant 10-9s internet, but no chairs.

My 30 year old, $100 office chair is better for my back than the uber expensive and stylish chair that I lifted from the office. The expensive chair broke mid pandemic, fwiw.

I work in a gilded crown jewels office building, so it's not a budget issue. It's a facilities / management failure, but pointing that out is forbidden.

It has been like that in most of the companies I've worked in. The only exceptions were office buildings that hadn't been "upgraded" yet.

There is an uproar among the employees!

It is always ignored because the decision makers would have to admit complete incompetence before listening to feedback.

Industry-wide, the vast majority of employees are saying they'd prefer renting / buying a home office on their own dime (and would even take $10K's in pay cuts, on average for permission to do it!)

However, industry-wide, management still thinks cube farms are providing positive value.

>My home internet craps out of a meeting about once a month.

In all seriousness, look into Ethernet (over Cat6, not powerline). We went from multiple disruptive dropouts a day to almost zero just by moving away from WiFi.

powerline / homeplug is solid. if you have problems, ensure that any power-saving mode is disabled on all homeplug adapters.

>powerline / homeplug is solid

I think this is one of those "YMMV" things. For us, in an 60-ish year-old 4br house, we'd get occasional drop-outs, as well as relatively poor (~25MBps) performance.

For my BIL, in a newer house with his Xbox and the router on the same circuit, it's rock solid.

Yeah, I loved my Power line in my last rental accomodation, but it's way less effective in the house we bought, as the wiring is older. I may just end up running Ethernet cables.

Yep, depends on the quality of the wiring and how many other noisy things are on the circuit

I've had great several hundred meg connections fall on their face when the microwave was turned on

All my coworkers have better rigs at home. I have a motorized sit/stand desk, aeron chair, climate control, ultra wide monitor, mechanical keyboard etc. Decade of back pain has completely vanished since working from home.

All of the things you listed are extremely privileged.

Conservative estimates:

    $x00 standing desk
    $1000+ chair
    $xx000+ climate control
    $x00+ ultra wide monitor
    $100 mechanical keybord

Not surprising you want to work from home.

The vast majority of people, even in the tech industry, do not have these privileges, so the scale is not nearly weighted as much in favor of home work.

> All of the things you listed are extremely privileged... The vast majority of people, even in the tech industry, do not have these privileges.

This is so deliberately myopic as to make me question whether your argument is in good faith.

A "$xx000+ climate control" is something _literally anyone who's employed_ would have as a furnace (or, slightly less commonly, as a/c, but still very prevalent[1]) and is not a unique expense to WFH. The perk is being able to set it where I want (vs. my employer setting it for me), not simply "having it." And if a $100 mechanical keyboard is a truly unobtainable indulgence for budget reasons, surely a $100 car repair to facilitate commuting to the office is, too.

[1]: https://paylesspower.com/blog/air-conditioning-statistics/

As an Australian tech worker, that list certainly doesn't seem that privileged. Excluding the Aeron, none of those would be surprising for any of my colleagues - and a few do have Aerons (all have decent chairs).

We spend a lot of time at our desk and so spending a few thousand dollars to create a comfortable workspace is far from exorbitant.

"They work on their kitchen counter on the 13" laptop screen on a hard stool... They work while the maid is doing the vacuum cleaning."

Thats not the case for any of 20 friends and coleaguea I know.

Every colleague I know (not counting interns, etc) has a equal or better setup than what we get in the office, from display to office chair.

I can understand how this was an issue early in the pandemic, when change was sudden. I can also understand how this could be an issue for some junior staff, who aren't paid enough to rent a home with enough space. However if we are talking well-paid bracket, working from home is cheaper than commuting, dining, etc. Especially if they can afford a maid.

It is fundamentally idiotic and wastefull to move millions of people every day into the office and then back out, through traffic jams, wasting resources, causing pollution and deaths through accidents. So much for capitalism being efficient.

Even for the junior ones, rule of thumb is that employees cost 2x their salaries on average.

Other than taxes, most of that is mostly fixed cost (desk, insurance, hr paper shuffling).

Companies could pay junior staff significantly more if they eliminated facilitates costs and in-office perks for those employees.

I'd wager that upgrading from an N bedroom to an N+1 bedroom apartment would be much cheaper than providing an office for the vast majority of junior employees.

> Companies could pay junior staff significantly more if they eliminated facilitates costs and in-office perks for those employees.

Those number seem weird to me. In my company, the office space amounts to roughly 10 to 15% of the wage cost. IE: if we completely cut offices, and replaced it with absolutely nothing, we could only afford to offer a one time 10% salary bump across the board. This is less that the average yearly salary bump we have offered on average over the past 5 years.

This means that we could give a one year "leap" in salaires if we moved to fully remote, forever, assuming that fully remote has absolutely 0 cost (which is not true).

> I'd wager that upgrading from an N bedroom to an N+1 bedroom apartment would be much cheaper than providing an office for the vast majority of junior employees

You are saying that you think it's more expensive to have an office space able to accommodate 50 workers, rather than paying for the difference in rent between an N bedroom and an N+1 bedroom for 50 families ? Again, this does not really match my perception of the real estate market.

> 15%... This is less that the average yearly salary bump we have offered on average over the past 5 years.

Where do you work wgere salaries grow exponentially? Certainly jot the case for most dev jobs in uk

You can't put a price tag on how nice it is never having to poop next to your coworkers or how nice it is dressing up in whatever makes you feel great (presuming minimal video chat presence, which is even then just the torso).

I could be on dialup and it wouldn't be any slower, the VPN is utterly atrocious.

Office space is a waste of money, and has massive over supply right now.

With petrol surging and public transport easily hitting A$12 a return trip, plus the associated time, it's easy to see why.

Curious to know where you get that $12 figure from.

Different market, but Zone2-1 (a perfectly common commute) is £5.80 return = AU$10.18 in London.

Considering Zone2 is aspirational for many, not to mention those who'd rather live in the home counties (i.e. 'suburbs' I suppose) and get a certainly much more expensive train in (and then the tube) I don't find $12 questionable at all. But markets do differ! Interested to hear if that really is outrageous sounding in Australia.

Hah. East SF Bay to South Bay is $38 for one day, or $320 per month (Berkeley to San Jose on Amtrak).

Also, it takes 1.5 hours on the train each way. This is only 42 miles platform to platform. Also, no public transit syncs with the train on either end.

Not at all outrageous. I live in Melbourne, zone 1, and paid AUD$9.20 return yesterday.

In Stockholm a 70km distance by train is about 1h20m, 8.5 USD for two trips in one day or 100 USD per month. On the old commuter trains that makes about 18 stops.

For me that’s right on the money. $6 each way for me to visit the city on the train. I’m at the end of the line though, but not super far out of the city.

>Retail, Logistics and Primary Industries all of which are a higher proportion of the Australian workforce

Ah, yes, the main portion of workers-from-home.

Santos, Shell, Woodside, Super Retail Group, AACo are all large companies with massive back office operations which aren’t listed.

The fact they may have many more non-office workers doesn’t mean they don’t have large offices

Back office operations != retail

No, but if you read the original article, it describes the policies by companies. Obviously a company has many different type of roles, however when you describe office workers, comparatively there are a significant proportion who work for organizations in industries that are not represented. Retail companies have huge office staff to organize new products, marketing, purchasing, logistics and finance. Should they not count because the company also runs a supermarket or boutique?

I was simply saying that the figures may be overrepresented. The original title when I posted heavily focused on the 7.2% of companies who say they will force 100% in office. That number seems very low to me and looking through the data I noticed that the sample doesn't represent many of the largest employers in the country. The new title rectifies that.

Note these numbers are specifically about returning to the office so it's expected numbers for workplaces like supermarkets and such will differ wildly from looking at where a typical employee in these sectors will be as the vast majority are not office workers.

The companies behind the supermarkets have large back office complexes. The size of the back office tends to be proportional to the turnover of the companies. I’m Australia retail and primary industries make a substantial proportion of that.

I don't think there's anything particularly insightful in including the data of traditional retail workers. There's no scenario where they would be working from home, so it's the same as not including them.

I agree. For us, Sydney area equipment engineering company there are many that plan to go to the office for one or two days. Our leaders support this.

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