The sky-high cost of returning to the office
bbc.com
bbc.com
In my situation, if you're frugal, going back to the office will cost $250 per month - and I haven't even factored in gasoline yet. For that I get to "enjoy" a 1 hour commute and sit in an open floor plan office where everybody is wearing headphones and collaborating via IM.
I don't want to go back to that, much less pay to go back to that!
Oh wait, one guy tried. One of our best developers brought his guitar to the office because he said it helped him think. He did what I'm now doing (he was my inspiration actually!) and was soon asked to leave his guitar at home. They didn't give two shits what it did to help his productivity. No one on the team complained either because they always wore headphones. Seems as though a busybody walking by the team space thought somebody playing guitar at work wasn't "professional." All management said was they had received "complaints."
Yeah, screw that.
I'm firmly in the remote work camp, you couldn't pay me enough to commute. It would not only ruin my day, but I would be part of the traffic congestion problem (for people who are causally required to be at their worksite).
For the longest time I always chased the job that paid the most, all else be damned. But as I've made more and more, the amount of extra $$ required for me to move has only gone up.
Recently turned down several offers from companies that offered an extra $25k on my salary but required a drug test (I live in Colorado, I'll let that speak for itself) and in-office work. Each time I've asked myself whether the extra cash would be worth giving up the lifestyle that I currently have, a fairly easy going job where I have plenty of time to peruse outdoor activities. The answer has so far been a consistent NO.
I'd rather make $200k and be happy than make $300k and be miserable.
Long story short, they refused to pee in cups, went to AMD and the result was either the Athlon XP or AMD 64. Either way, it was one of the generations that blindsided Intel, and led to lots of anticompetitive behavior.
The story isnt about them smoking pot, or whatever. It's about treating employees with respect.
I suspect mandatory return to office will create a few dozen of these stories.
I make way less than $200k, so yes please. Show me the 200k fully remote full stack web developer job.
Only problem is it has to be open to hiring me living in Canada.
The biggest change for me is pre-pandemic I would never have considered fully remote work. Now I would.
That would drive me insane. Headphones or not. But I totally get it! Working remote means I get to do all kinds of things that would probably annoy someone in an office, but help me think or concentrate.
that always means from other managers
So it's a massive cost to workers. Paying to work.
It's hard to predict how things will play out. My guess is that there will be more remote and 3/4 days a week in office than there was before. But probably not the sort of radical transformation some people were predicting/hoping for. (To be fair, most surveys I saw, all along, suggested that 3 days or so in office was going to be the most common mode.)
I view this as just the opposite side of the coin of being forced to live physically near where you work, so you can come into the office. Remote gives you more freedom here, though.
I think part of the reason people choose to live in overpriced studio apartments is to live closer to their workplaces.
The pandemic was an unusual circumstance for forced remote work. Normally people would have a lot more options for where they choose to do that work, be it at a cafe or coworking space or at a library or wherever else.
As for utilities, Canada at least is providing tax breaks for people working from home to help cover internet, electricity, etc. I've never gotten a commute subsidy from my government.
I still ride my bike through there, but not nearly every day like I used to.
No tidal waves of sickness, no "train was late, we can start the meeting in 15 minutes" ripples through schedules, no commute, shorter lunch breaks on average, more integration with someone's life (eg: only working at their peak productivity, producing the best work).
Not to mention how big of a benefit it would be if they split a portion of the former office rent between all employees as monthly or quarterly "office stipend". I balked when I found out dingy offices I worked in were costing about $1k / person / month.
Remote work in my opinion is a no-duh for everyone.
Let's see capitalism truly at work for once; if your business can't adapt, it should die.
If this is your take either you haven’t thought about it enough or you’re so pro-remote work you don’t care to think about it enough.
After working remote for 3 years (I was lucky to start a remote job several months before the pandemic started), it certainly hasn't been without an adjustment period or some challenges but I would not want to go back to a "in the office 5 days a week" position. I could see coming in one day a week for sprint planning or some more collaborative tasks (meeting). I suspect that day would be a write-off for any "productive" coding/design tasks.
People would also need to sync on the schedule. But it's certainly doable in some circumstances.
2. I enjoy physically separating my home life and my work life.
3. I don’t care about being that productive. It’s just work. I prefer to do it in an office.
4. I prefer speaking to people face to face in person.
And no. The right choice for “companies” is not to be WFH-flexible. The right choice for a company is the right choice for that company. If everyone there prefers office work, don’t be WFH-flexible.
And those companies may care more about selecting for people who don’t want to WFH. They’ll be attractive to people who don’t want to work with people who want to WFH.
Personally, I’ll never work a remote job again.
Back in the not so distant day when most were office dwellers, when considering competing offers the cost and time of the commute were always a factor, sometimes large.
Changes in the nature of work (office vs remote) as a result of the pandemic will take a little while to sort themselves out in terms of employee compensation, but that should give many people a lot of opportunities at new and different jobs too.
You don't care about people when they clearly perform their best work offline and they want to work offline, then push them back into the office (goes vice versa as well).
You don't care about society when you push office workers to come in during rush hour because you don't give them enough money to live near the city, while trying to squeeze any tax benefit out which could make the city more habitable. It's not just the office workers; the people who can't WFH also spend more time in traffic.
You don't care about the ecology when you continue to push people to drive, one of the largest sources of emissions individuals can fight against when given the chance.
Yes, the individual suffers. But these guys always try to sell it as if coming to the office does society some great favor. It doesn't.
yes but no one believes this. so what does that matter.
What it matters is that as part of claiming to care about the environment they get rid of the paper towels in the break room. As part of claiming to care about safety they annoy everyone with stupid blanket policies that just cause everyone to break the rules. As part of caring about mental health they involve HR in things that would be better without HR involved.
Be careful with this.
My biggest concern is that the younger generation is perpetually online, and being in person in the office interacting with other people is the only way they stayed somewhat grounded to reality. While short term effects may be positive improved morale boost for more people, long term effects are unknown. We have already seen what the online world does to people, and WFH is not going to make this any better.
Besides, there are various problems with this. It isn't just the younger generation. A lot of younger people do resonate far better with people online than the senior who was spared several current-day problems that the younger generations now face. Finally, creating yet another dependency with the office seems like a bad idea when so many have already shown to end up extremely poorly. Teach people to interact in person outside the office instead of having companies act like an adult daycare.
The cost for catered lunch and breakfast and a stocked pantry is maybe $30 per day per person. The all-in cost for a typical high-skilled knowledge worker is at least $200k/year. If it gets employees spending 20 more minutes a day at their desk it's already paid for itself.
That's basically the time it takes to leave the office for nearby takeout lunch or coffee shop. Let alone employees are more likely to come in earlier, because they can skip breakfast at home. And less likely to duck out earlier because they're hungry. And this is even before we get into the huge impact it has on employee morale and recruiting.
Does more time at the desk, for a $200k employee, result in more revenue for a company? I'm not sure the answer is yes.
Personally, as someone who is their own boss, if I don't leave my desk and go outside, my productivity suffers a lot. I make worse choices and waste more time.
0: https://www.uber.com/us/en/business/solutions/eats/overview/
There will be massive consequences for those holding commercial real estate if companies stop paying those insane rents. Also, cities will suffer (at least in the short-term) if property taxes drop from those properties losing value. They are definitely afraid of remote work and the changes it will bring.
This situation would be different if almost every company, public and private, wasn't shouting from the rooftops about record profits year after year while employees look in their pocketbooks at proverbial lint.
It isn't just working remotely, it will also be fair distribution of profits through either direct profit-sharing or larger salaries because I have a feeling a few hyper profitable companies will break the seal on full employee ownership or other absurdly good comp for more than just engineers. Others will have to match to keep up like you are seeing now with just remote work.
I'm genuinely curious as to what you consider is "The older generation".
I care not one whit about making upper to middle management feel better about themselves and their useless parasitic lifestyle. Pony up and pay for it or don’t; a great many of us don’t want to live lives dedicated to corporations or profits.
If the company footed an Uber bill, or heavily subsidized at say $500/mo, it's a whole different story. I can definitely take a car in three times a week.
I think working from home during the pandemic made the externalities and costs of working "at the office" very concrete for a lot of workers and there's no putting that genie back in the bottle.
My commute costs me £28.60 for the train and £4.80 for the tube if I buy a ticket daily.
Or I can buy a flexible season ticket - 8 days over a month £200. Or £25 for the train and £4.80 for the tube.
Or I can buy an annual ticket for £4080 + 4.80 for the tube.
So here's the cost:
* 1 day a week in the office: £1603.20 annually -33.4 per day for one day per week
* 2 day a week in the office: £2860.80 annually -26.2 per day for an extra day per week
* 3 day a week in the office: £4291.20 annually -29.8 per day for an extra day per week
* 4 day a week in the office: £5001.60 annually -14.8 per day for an extra day per week
* 4 day a week in the office: £5232.00 annually -4.8 per day for an extra day per week
The pricing is just stupid. The "season" tickets only provide any significant discount when you're traveling into work 4+ days a week. If you're travelling in 60% of the time, you're paying 80% of the price. 20% of the time? 30% of the cost. It's nonsensical.
"My home life sucks" is not a reason to send everyone back to the office.
Really? So mother nature doesn't care about the carbon output from commuting? The reasons for going back to the office are becoming more esoteric by the day. From 'serendipitous encounters' to 'save your downtown Pret's".
2021: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/2022-04/E...
2020: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/Energy_20...
2018: https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/sites/flowcharts/files/Energy_20...
The former may have--or have had--significant home upgrade costs to make working from home more palatable.
But, yeah, the latter is going to be in the hundreds of dollars a month for many (most?) people. If I drove the 20 miles or so into my suburban office and bought a cheap cafeteria lunch that would be in the maybe $400 dollars a month range. If I commuted into our office in the city either by train or car and ate out at least some days, you're getting closer to $1K per month.
Because they’re not helping anyone but themselves.
My immediate managers are all for remote work too: upper management are the ones pushing for a return to the office.
If so, kudos.
But with digital communication you don't need to commute. You can collaborate without being together. In last two years we demonstrated that being in office is not needed.
Software solves a different problem. It allows you to process data at a faster pace. You can never do that with paper. There is no other technology that can take software's place.