That means if you want me in the office, I will leave my house at 9AM, if you want me to be close to the office, then increase my pay and I will move closer.
This is would have a bunch of perverse outcomes you probably haven’t considered. Employers would immediately start to consider the commute times of candidates before hiring them. Longer commute times is a feature of cheaper housing, so that would correlate to employers discriminating against candidates of lower socioeconomic standing. Which would in turn correlate to discrimination against the ethnic groups that are over represented in those lower socioeconomic groups.
It’s basically only a good idea if you’re trying to intentionally constrain social mobility.
Now do college degrees.
This already happens, and AFAIK it's not a protected class. "Hmm, they'd be driving an hour each direction, are they likely to stick around?"
That's already a thing in Australia.
> Longer commute times is a feature of cheaper housing, so that would correlate to employers discriminating against candidates of lower socioeconomic standing.
The current system already does that also. Poorer people are traveling more for work, but they aren't getting compensated for the commute time.
(I don't actually want to do this, but when writing government policies, you have to consider that some people will be aggressively adversarial if it suits them.)
I think a strong case can be made for this. For those of us lucky enough to be able to negotiate salaries, we absolutely should be pricing that time into the rates we're negotiating for.
Bigger picture, I've always thought it was insane that we talk about "40 hour workweeks" as if they exist. Realistically, the time it takes me to commute is part of my workday. If my commute takes an hour each way, then I'm working a 50 hour workweek.
I have certainly worked with more than one person at my workplace who started when they lived locally, but eventually moved to the big city over an hour away, while retaining their employment with the business even after settling into their new home. Them suddenly working 2+ fewer hours each day would be a significant change to their employment.
If the time is set in stone at the time of first hire, then I guess you're incentivized to move as far away as possible that still allows you to be hired, and then on your second day move in next door?
So now you need a tribunal to verify the claims, and what do they go on? With respect to a parallel thread, do the people with the right machining equipment in their garage get to do their manufacturing job at home? If I have a kitchen, can't the Uber Eats driver pick up the food at my place?
Or is the law only carved out for senior web developers specifically?
EDIT: To be clear. I mean "forcing people to do anything different". Going into the office was normal for almost everyone.
Since always? Until Covid, there was no choice. People did it because they had to. Covid just reminded people that there is another way to live and how much quality of life they're actually sacrificing for their job.
That said, there's no question that I personally am much more productive at home vs in the office. Offices seem designed to interfere with productivity.
But, all that said, why does it matter either way? I am a human being. I do not exist to ensure that my employer is operating with the greatest productivity possible.
You literally do if you are employed by someone. You expect money from them in exchange for productive work. You are free to start your own business if you want to be however-productive you feel like that day.
For head-down productivity, sure, you can be better at home. But that's not the entire picture, is it?
In-person collaboration is always better than remote messaging/video calling. It just is, and probably always will be.
It's very disingenuous to pretend remote collaboration is anywhere near as effective as in-person collaboration.
No. You're paid to deliver productive work, not to ensure you're working on the greatest productivity possible at all times. That's a fool's errand, eventually bringing you guilt when you can't perform at that level due to life's twists and turns, turning into a burnout when you aren't able to keep your productivity at 100% but keep trying (and failing). If you are employed by someone there's an expectation of doing your job, delivering value, not of chasing the greatest productivity possible. You are a person, not a fucking machine. Balance is needed to be constantly productive, to be able to be creative.
> In-person collaboration is always better than remote messaging/video calling. It just is, and probably always will be.
> It's very disingenuous to pretend remote collaboration is anywhere near as effective as in-person collaboration.
It is very myopic to state platitudes without any data to support your main argument, based on some "it just is". It might be for you and your colleagues, it might not be that important for a lot of people/processes that adapted to not be in-person.
Stop trying to force others to live how you think people should live, you do you, let others decide what's best for them.
Extremes edges of the space of possibility aren't that interesting, but if you want greater compensation, you probably do want to find ways to deliver greater value for your company (and make sure they know about it).
It's very hard for a company to continue paying out greater compensation to employees than the value delivered by those employees.
Your horizon for "always" is myopic.