Hour during rush hour or hour as measured by Google Maps without traffic data?
So they're basically asking people to spend 40 hours a month, unpaid, in their car going to and from work with no compensation?
With regards to hybrid jobs: you can get a job closer to home, but there is a reason why house prices are more expensive in tech hubs and why wages are lower where housing is cheaper. So you can either have cheaper housing but lower income, higher income but higher house prices, or have both but pay the penalty with you time (ie longer commutes).
This is how it’s always been and why fully remote jobs have been a great life hack. But you can’t really complain about having to spend you own time commuting should you have a hybrid role.
Having experienced the full-time WFH during covid, I believe many feel that the extra time not spent on commuting can be better used for life. Why bother with extra commute when it does not bring you anything?
In the past for the paid workforce WFH has not been possible. You had to physically be present to perform the labor. In these modern times with computers and internet, we now have the ability to communicate and even perform most tasks related to the job when being in a completely different place than my coworkers.
Companies only get the benefits of people being in the office (more interaction, more control), but not the penalties (unpaid commute time).
Norms should move with the zeitgeist, in the spirit of the time and age we live in. Why stay stuck in the way of working from 50 years ago?
You’re free to challenge the norms. I just don’t agree with the arguments made on this occasion and had listed other reasons why beyond just social norms. Ie you’re already being compensated by choosing to live in a bigger yet cheaper property then you’d have afforded if you wanted to live closer to work.
Ultimately there is always going to be a trade off but that’s your choice not your employers.
You're literally just making up an imaginary scenario of people moving just because they can WFH and then acting like that's "compensation" built into WFH.
This isn’t a weird new concept I’m throwing out there either. It’s a well discussed topic. So much so that I could name several TV shows that feature this as a plot point.
* More office space required * Need to pay workers to be within reasonable distance of the office
There are penalties to WFH as well:
* Additional living space required for WFH
Of course, there is a trend to people choosing to relocate to cheaper areas once the requirement to live near a (n expensive) city office is lifted. As such, this would often provide ample space for a WFH office.
I do about 95% of my work on my recliner with a laptop and a lap desk. No additional living space required. Occasionally I'll go in the computer room with the dual monitors when I feel I need them for something, but that's certainly not required.
“How it’s always been” is a lousy reason to keep doing something if there’s a better way.
The pandemic forced employers to allow WFH so they could keep the money spigots flowing. We learned that it isn’t really necessary to burn additional fossil fuels and contribute to pollution and donate commute time for free.
It’s entirely logical that workers are complaining about a unnecessary constraint that costs them time, money & restricts where they can live.
Just because something has been done for a long time doesn't mean it's fair or right.
The standard work week was once 12-14 hours a day, 6 days a week. Things change.
> But you can’t really complain about having to spend you own time commuting should you have a hybrid role.
Of course you can. You can complain about anything, and sometimes with very good reasons.
Ultimately employers are free to demand that employees RTO with no travel time compensation if they want, but it's silly to say this is something the employees can't complain about.
How would travel time compensation work in this situation? Why would companies not discriminate implicitly or explicitly against employees who live further away?
I work from home the vast majority of the time currently with very occasional visits to the office. The office for me is 15 minutes away. I would never accept a job that required a greater than 20-minute single direction commute, so travel time compensation is not on my radar of things to worry about.
Apologies for the confusion
Sure there is time savings in not commuting, but there are also time savings in face-to-face interactions, team spirit etc.
Instead of cooking some food and eat alone at home you can eat and discuss with colleagues or friends who work in the same area.
Instead of commuting people waste their time on social media, news and other junk before, during and after work. A commute via bus, train, subway, bicycle can often be productive or even relaxing versus taking the car. It's an often needed break between work-time and free-time. It's hard to make that break when working form home.
You seem to be extending your own experience as if it applies to everyone equally, but it doesn't.
I find commutes neither productive nor relaxing. I do not need a break between work-time and free-time, I have an office space at home to provide that compartmentalization.
Wfh = internet addict?
Counter example
I end my work, get ready and head to the gym 10min later and 1h later im free
Meanwhile when commuting Id barely get to the home
Appeal to tradition is one of the weakest arguments anyone can make.
You already get compensated by having both a higher paid job and living in a bigger property in a cheaper yet desirable neighbourhood. And more to the point, your employer didn’t choose where you live, you chose that yourself.
If you were commuting to different site(s) than the one listed as your “base” location then it would be a different story. But most businesses already compensate you for that. They just don’t pay for you travelling between home and your base location because that was the expectation you agreed to when you took the job.
I’m not saying changing policy against your employees wishes is a good thing but if your acceptance of a job is predicated on the condition of being fully remote then you’d want to be damn sure that is written into your contract. And if it is, then your employer cannot change those terms without issuing you a new contract.
Also I know plenty of people who haven’t changed jobs in the last 3 years.
I knew your employment laws were lax but all the conversations I’ve read on here have suggested that US employees still had contracts.
Would have been nice if you read more than just the opening sentence before announcing that it was unconvincing…but each to their own I guess
Because it is.
People used to write code on paper, later transfer that to punched cards, submit that for execution and wait days for results.
If you were asked to do something similar today (write code on paper and not have your own computer) you’d take it as crazy and offensive too.
I’m still yet to hear one single reason why it is “offensive” to have to pay for your own travel into work. I’ve given plenty of reasons why I don’t see an issue with it but nobody has given any reasons why it’s offensive beyond simply saying that it is so.
How does such a compensation work fairly when someone people pay the premium to live closer? What’s stopping you from working on the train and counting that towards your working hours? Etc. what’s stopping you from getting a job closer to home?
There’s so many flaws to your argument and the only point you make that cannot be refuted is your sense of entitlement. So it’s not surprising I’m unconvinced.
But we might just have to agree to disagree on this topic. I suspect this is more a question of perceived morality than it is something tangible that can be proved.
Laws and agreements?
You’re supposed to guard company data, you can’t just open your laptop in the middle of anything and let everybody on the train take a look at your code or any other company data.
Also, you’re assuming that the train is not crowded enough that you can sit comfortably…
Slavery was also the norm, until we, as a society, figured out that maybe... it shouldn't be?
I simply do not get people who defend idiocy by claiming that it has always been the norm?
You call it “idiocy” yet literally nobody has been able to put into words why it is so.
The real idiocy here is how one sided the discussion has been. The supporters, like yourself, simply say “it should be like this because I say so”. Whereas the opposition, such as myself, have detailed a number of reasons why, such as cheaper housing vs regional wages.
If it were really as clear cut as you claim, I wouldn’t be reading through a page of meaningless straw man arguments like I am right now.
- No commute saves workers you an hour or two every day and benefits the company by loosening traffic for those that do WFO
- Hours saved by not having to prep in the morning/commute benefits the company by making workers more well rested, late less often
- If you have kids you no longer need to hire someone to watch them and can spend a bit more time with them
- Don't have to interface with people that can give you diseases, benefiting both your health and your company by keeping you from taking sick leave
Some of these are so obvious that they feel self evident which is why I think people are not mentioning them outright (it would be redundant)
You’re acting like an idiot?!
> I don’t need to prove it to you or anyone.
You’re the one engaging in the conversation. If you don’t want to explain your point of view then why bother posting in the first place?
> I don’t consider employment offers that don’t align with me along this axis. I have plenty of options that do.
You have plenty of job offers where your employer pays for your commute?
I’ve been in the industry for several decades and the only time I’ve ever known this happen is when someone has site visits, which isn’t the scope of our conversation here. So I think you’re either misunderstanding the conversation here or just posting BS.
Given the shitty wages most people are on, how some people walk for 2 hours a day, every day, to get to and from work because they can’t afford a car…and then we have this thread. It just feels like there’s a real disconnect from reality going on right now.
Incorrect, it is a reasonable and deserved level of entitlement. When you spend hours of your life for someone else's benefit you are morally entitled to be compensated it.
> Given the shitty wages most people are on, how some people walk for 2 hours a day, every day, to get to and from work because they can’t afford a car…and then we have this thread. It just feels like there’s a real disconnect from reality going on right now.
Crab mentality. Multiple shitty things exist of different scales and all of them should be fixed. Everyone should be paid for commute time AND no one should have to walk two hours or have a low wage job. Calling out the wrongness of the former does not mean we are okay with the latter. The subject matter of thread happened to be about the former.
I’ve given reasons why I don’t believe the a company owes you. Yet no one has given reasons why they believe a company should.
Since work from anywhere showed that a lot of work can be done remotely, if a company wants someone to work on premises it is obvious that they have to pay for the extra time and effort spent.
So if I take the tube to see a show, then work should pay for that as well? I’m not working while sat on the tube any more than I’m working while on the way to the theatre.
And if people do decide to work on the train, then they can count that towards their working hours so there isn’t an issue.
If you’re not working on the train, then it clearly isn’t work time any more than that lunch break which companies also don’t pay you for.
Also what about people who have chosen to pay more for a property that is closer to the office? Should they be excluded from this subsidy? Effectively penalising them for not having a long commute? How is that fair on them?
> Since work from anywhere showed that a lot of work can be done remotely, if a company wants someone to work on premises it is obvious that they have to pay for the extra time and effort spent
The ironic thing was during COVID some people were complaining that their home expenses had gone up due to working from home and thus insisted they should be compensated for that too. The British government even issued tax credits to help such individuals.
But certain management types feel great knowing that their drones are being good little drones.
In the end this has always been about manager/owner power, not about getting work done or doing the right thing by your employees.
There are exactly zero ways you can force those people from their homes back to city apartments. Their kids go to school in the new city, their SOs might have in-person jobs there, they have a huge yard and better quality of living. Some of them theoretically work under an hour away from their current job.
If companies force WFH, they will just quit and find a new remote-only job.
Cool, and I'll apply for the now open position as I have great train access to the city.
I doubt Dell have adjusted their pay to accommodate that.
How? Most people can barely make rent as it is, the problem is that almost everywhere the large employers are in the city centers and people can't reasonably move close to there.