Working from home isn't a free company benefit | Hacker News Reader

Working from home isn't a free company benefit

bloomberg.com

10 pointscrhulls10 comments

Working isn't a free company benefit.

Did I miss the part in this article where it explains why working from home costs more? The company is not paying me any more for my internet connectivity, my homeowners insurance, my mortgage, my taxes, or my utilities. I also don't get a cleaning staff. The fact that the executives feel lonely in largely unoccupied office space the company continues to needlessly hold onto isn't the work-from-home employees' fault.

> The fact that the executives feel lonely in largely unoccupied office space the company continues to needlessly hold onto isn't the work-from-home employees' fault.

This is seriously the most shallow reason to justify returning back to the office, and the sadly ironic thing is it's rather compelling; I still think it's more that the corporate and large Real Estate owning class has too much investment tied to their real estate portfolio and it's suffering, such that in order to maintain these inflated prices they've benefited from they need to force people back to the office to justify have an office. Rent seeking has to end somewhere and commercial RE is a good place to start.

Furthermore, I hope they see the follow of labour participation flailing as a KPI in their quarterly reports since they love those so much: no cares about the corner office or the exclusive parking spot. Those are relics that only ever mattered to a few people, who now feel lonely, most people just want to earn a living that allows them to do want they really want to do in life, which is not spend it with a bunch of strangers they can barely stand under the best of circumstances on a project they barely care about.

If all things are equal, and the productivity hasn't suffered then their is no excuse for remote first to not be standard for roles that can do so.

You'd still have a home and the associated costs if you didn't have to work from home. Utilities might be a bit higher with you home all the time but otherwise those are static costs.

My company just closed our local office and forced everyone to work from home permanently. I rent a room and do not have a dedicated office space to make WFH comfortable. In order to make remote work viable, I will have to find a new rental and spend an extra $800 per month for an office. These are extra costs the company has forced on me.

Wework is one of the more costly hot desk options; and can be had for less than $800 a month. You should also recommend your employer consider services like this.

I have asked about these options, and I am pushing for something; but the company was recently acquired by PE so they are tight with every dollar.

I mean that's not a forced cost, that's a cost you've chosen to burden yourself with. I've done WFH in a rented room before and I made it work. It wasn't a life of luxury but I didn't feel particularly cramped. I was already living in that room and already had a computer desk set up.

Worst case scenario you're always free to find another employer. I'd be willing to take an effective $800 pay cut for work from home (if I didn't have it already, that is). But I suppose you prefer to be in the office, and that's fine.

Did you plan on living in that room forever? If it was too small for you to comfortably work from home in I imagine you'd have been moving out sometime soon anyway. At worst the job just made you take on that additional expense a bit earlier than you'd have preferred.

I prefer to have some separation between my home life and work life. It isn't about the amount of space, but being able to achieve that mental separation for my own mental health. Previously that was achieved by having a company provided office space that I commuted to.

The company decided unilaterally that they no longer want to provide that space and are now altering our existing deal to force that cost on to me.

I would still have some of those costs. My point, however, is that the company does not pay any more for them because I work from home.

I’m not sure I fully agree with the headline’s assumption. Companies make out like a bandit on this when it comes to the fixed office space they no longer have to lease.

Anyways, these sorts of things take time to fully bake into the business model and create second and third order effects. What will really make the difference is if we have some data on companies that are (or are not) succeeding in a mostly or fully remote setting (and additionally whether companies that have aggressively pushed for remote developers in cheaper locales are pulling ahead)

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