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Comment by post_break | Hacker News Reader

The time theft of traffic, costs of fuel and wear and tear on your car, the cost of lunch if you don't pack a lunch. It all adds up when having to go back to the office. I hate that we had to return to the office because it was like getting a big pay cut. Even the 3 day a week thing, it's like what's the point? We can work from home obviously, what more does going in 3 times a week accomplish other than punish you, showing you how much it sucks to go to the office. All it really feels like is punishment forcing you to be under some managers thumb.

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> The time theft of traffic, costs of fuel and wear and tear on your car, the cost of lunch if you don't pack a lunch.

I'm all for remote work but calling it "time theft" feels a bit weird.

You knew these things were a requirement when you signed your contract, right? If you didn't want these things then why didn't you either made a point of them in contract negotiations or simply went to a company that allowed remote work from the start?

It's a deliberate turn of the typical management canard that workers constantly commit "time theft" by not being on-task for the entirety of an eight-hour day.

Coming over from Paris where I took a bus to work for 30-40 minutes on some days, I thought it would be more of the same, but a bit longer. Turns out that both highways through silicon valley are bumpier in places than Paris cobblestone, and that if you combine the variance in bus times, the walk from my place to bus stop, and the walk from bus stop to the office, it doubled my overall commute time. I didn't know how tired I would be at the end of each day when I signed the contract, was incredibly happy with the end of the commute when the pandemic started, and am glad to be back in Europe now.

It’s time theft if you put in 40 hours of work a week while at home but then you’re told to do 8 hours a week of commuting and by the way you still have to do 40 hours of work. I think “time theft” sums it up nicely. You had something and then it was taken away.

It feels just as weird as calling things daylight robbery, i.e. not at all.

> You knew these things were a requirement when you signed your contract, right

This is not entirely fair. Pre-pandemic, remote work was much more difficult to find.

True, but in this example, the pandemic provided an effective increase in pay to the employee while catering less for the needs of the employer. From an employer's perspective, the fair thing would be to either have the employee end their temporary privileges when the pandemic is over (i.e. return to the office), or "meet in the middle" and propose a salary cut to the employee.

I'm not saying this is how employers should react, but I found the arguments presented here just really one-sided and wanted to show where such a line of arguments lead.

I think reality is a bit more complex; the employer can turn this into an upside as well by saving expenses for office space, and possibly benefitting from the increased productivity of people who are more productive at home. And I think it's reasonable that employees ask their employers to look into these upsides.

Not impossible, so pre-pandemic it was too hard to prevent the egregious time theft you complain about?

Fair point for some people.

Something I don’t see on HN is how the ideal wfh works for people who can’t afford a study. What if you live with your parents and share with a sibling?

This might not be the case for established six figure programmers in the states. But there are lots of people with less money who might value having a separate space to work.

Might even be the silent majority outside of highly paid developers.

If only employers provided a space dedicated to working?

Correct, they can and should provide funds so that employees can rent out coworking spaces that are located near where they live, as opposed to commuting far to the physical office.

I like this idea. If I already have a home office, so I get paid this extra fund too? Or does my coworker only get it because he doesn’t have a home office?

Maybe everyone gets paid it because teams might want to use the WeWork for local in-person collaboration rather than meeting at HQ, if it's logistically easier. Some team members might have home offices but others do not.

They _do_ provide funds for this. Whether or not you use those funds to pay for a coworking space is your choice.

I'll just throw out there when I started developing all I had was one crappy laptop and headphones and the way I ended up working was by going to the Starbucks down the street getting a hot chocolate and a scone and going to town for hours at a time. Of course that wouldn't work as well for meetings but it was simpler times back then.

Although now I've got an idea to make coffee shops produce more revenue I'm realizing if the CEO of Starbucks is reading this give me a call.

Various coffee shops gain some extra revenue by selling wifi keys separately from the coffee

I realize this won't fly with many companies, but at a previous role I treated commute time (~1.5 hours/day) as work time. Not 8.5 hours work with commute on top of that.

Theft? Lol. Never get tired of hearing people making multiple 6 figures complain about their horrible life

We're all workers, and we should be supporting one another. Everyone has different concerns, but if you have a boss you have more in common with others who have bosses.

Worker solidarity raises us all up. Support workers in improving their workplaces rather than blowing them off for making slightly more.

Blindly offering solidarity with absurd claims makes everyone involved look petulant. Be careful who you cast your lot with.

Better to say, "I don't fully understand your concerns, but I support you" than be a crab in a bucket pulling all the other crabs down.

Someday you'll have concerns about your job and you'll wish tech workers stood by you on the picket lines.

I don't pretend to understand all the grievances of nurses, concrete pourers, or railyard workers, but when they say "this is a problem for us" I'm there in support.

This may be true, but should we all strive to appear rational at all times? Maybe the most rational thing is for workers to always stick together.

WFH is not just an issue for those who are working in Apple. I work in a country where-in the combined commute time going back and forth to the office is 3 to 4 hours a day.

It doesn't make sense to go back to the office for five days a week when we've been working productively during the pandemic already for two years.

I don't make 6 figures lol. If I made 6 figures I'd pay someone to drive my ass to work and back.

It’s just a fact: Anyone who has an easier life than my own is petty, and anyone that has it harder should be grateful that their life isn’t worse!

(Sarcasm)

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