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Comment by thegrim22 | Hacker News Reader

To be fair, the evidence provided for why not to return to office also contains no data or numbers and is based purely on anecdotal personal opinions and feelings.

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WFH has no commute. That is a fact. We can argue if that is good or bad.

I think it is better to have no commute, since it is unpaid, and pollutes.

To me, an unpaid, let‘s say 1h, commute is worse on principle, and requires a strong case before accepting. WFH is better by default based on this principle.

There's no evidence to provide if that's the preferred way to work, which we know because we've had a ton of internal surveys about it. People prefer working remotely, that part, at least for AWS, is not up for debate.

i will return to office 100% of the time the day companies start to pay for commute time. they are making me spend my own time going to the office, so they should pay me for it.

Are you paid by the hour? What would it mean for your job to “pay for commute time”?

I can get 5h of work time with a commute or 7h without due to family reasons. Mandating the office means I quit because the final 3h of wfh after 2h commute turn my life into hell.

I'm salaried, but this could fit with another idea which is in the air at the moment - a reduced working week.

I have been WFH since before the pandemic, but technically there is an office I could commute to. It would take me about an hour each way. If I did that Monday to Thursday, that's 8 hours - so four 10-hour days if commuting was part of my "on the clock" time. If my employer told me I had the option to make Friday a weekend day in exchange for commuting Monday to Thursday, I would strongly consider it and think of it as a reasonable compromise.

I would have less convenient and more expensive days for the working week, but more time off. They get 8 fewer hours of me in front of a keyboard, but do get the supposed benefits of office-based employees.

Heh. That's not a solid argument, though.

A full time employee is paid for 40h per week. So using commonly available tools we can determine the average commute time and in many countries travel time is considered work time.

So on paper but generally rarely enforced, you should be able to subtract your commute time from the 40h and end up with actual work time.

Everything on top being overtime and should be paid according to rates mandated legally.

Except for a handful of companies and state employees, I've never seen overtime being paid, though.

> A full time employee is paid for 40h per week.

That’s not true, at least in the US. The amount of hours I work weekly has never been tracked at any company big or small.

You’re not paid for 40 hours a week, you’re paid to keep up with the general standard of your peers. 40 hours is a very vague estimate of the time required to do so.

In Europe, contracts generally specify a number of hours per week. For instance in Austria, my contract says 38.5h/week - this is what people usually think of here when they say "full time".

We have a time tracking system and overtime is either paid (not in my company, alas) or you can take it as free time.

The US is an outlier for the developed world.

We are talking about a US company.

With hundreds of thousands of employees outside the US.

You'd work a 2h shorter day, get there later/leave earlier than currently or than that you'd be working in your home office if it was a remote job.

I like driving; maybe I should then look for jobs about 150 miles away.

Agreed.

There are studies around this topic. My issue is that, they are never cited when these decisions are announced.

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