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Comment by oxfordmale | Hacker News Reader

I live outside London in the UK, and the cost of travelling in daily is around $7500/year taking into account train and parking costs. Most software engineer will be in the 40% tax bracket for the top end of their salary. That means a company need to pay an additional $12500 to just break even.

If you do live in London, you will reduce your travel costs but your rent goes up. I don't have figures for this, but I expect it will work out roughly the same.

That is not even taking into account the costs of extended child care,etc.

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I've been making similar calculations, but I include the travel time. An hour or so each way adds about 25% to the remuneration I expect. Given that the time is effectively fallow time that the company will receive zero benefit from, but would be available to me for reading, I can come down to 20%.

However, having to travel in to the office at all, even one day a week, would mean I still have to live within travel distance; this is a massive and expensive inconvenience. Not sure quite how to price that in.

The thing is, if you’re not within commuting distance, why would the company pay you London rates and not standard UK rates :)

Why wouldn't they pay me a higher rate? They'll pay me the least they can to get my services; where I live makes no difference to them. I'm sure that if they can get away with "we'll pay you less because you live far away" they will; it's up to me (us) to put a stop to that nonsense.

That works if you have upper hand in negotiations. In case they have 50 applicants for the job, and 5 pretty good then this can easily be a showstopper. Which is fine if you have 4 other negotiations happening in parallel, or possess a unique skill they desperately want (many think they do, most don't).

Its trivial for company to understand the relationships with location and pay in given country, when you come to an interview these rules are probably already sort of set in stone.

Ask HN about geo-adjusted pay:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36981745

Why is that nonsense?

The non sense is the fallacy.

Like most fallacies they sound in the right but they are deprived of true sense.

Your personal cost cannot be a determinant of your compensation. Get into a huge dept or whatever and see whether your employer adjust your comp due to your particularly high must expenses or lunatic lifestyle.

What does make sense is what the market says is true. Even when it isn't. Back then location was a predictor of a delta in compensation and that's exactly because there was no other way than to go to the office, hence be nearby.

Behind the fallacy is simply that they want to pick from the global pool of talent thanks to remote work, and want to use the location facfor to also lower the wage burden as they are at it.

There is a job market, i agree we should all put a stop to the non sense and if all goes well we can also start to ask ourselves why certain individuals are able to move to a limited number of locations in the world, other individuals having about the same profile only able to move to a more limited number of locations, and among those some only able to move to an even more limited number of places.

While political reasons also involved it doesn't make them ethically justifyable. A defence for more remote work and compensation not tied to location of the worker moves the needle towards the more justice direction.

The nonsense is the idea that they are paying based on your location due to your presumed costs. That is the nice way of saying they are paying you what they think you will accept because they think you are in a region where you do not have better options.

If you rejected the offer, and they wanted you, then the location based pay would magically change.

>> I live outside London in the UK, and the cost of travelling in daily is around $7500/year taking into account train and parking costs. Most software engineer will be in the 40% tax bracket for the top end of their salary. That means a company need to pay an additional $12500 to just break even.

The cost of lunch in Midtown Manhattan is now $15 to $20. People often say, "why not pack your own lunch" and others remind them they just took NJTransit-->PATH-->Subway1-->Subway2 with standing room only so carrying lunch is impractical.

Different segments of the population have different concerns. For the elderly and frail, it is their joint health and the difficulty of transportation without seating. For some, the $12500 cost is huge. For parents, it can be time with children.

I'd say the cost of commuting FOR ME is losing 40% of 50% of my free time with children. By the time I get home at 7:30pm or 8pm, their bedtime is approaching.

I'm currently on a 2/3 WFH/RTO schedule and it is a nice balance, especially after 20yrs or 5x schedules.

You must eat some giant lunches.

Does this account for the 32 full awake days spent on the commute ( or 65 work days in equivalent)?

260 work days in a year X 2 hours daily commute / 16 awake hours in a day = 32 full days per year.

No it's just the money part. Taking a rush hour train to and from work in London adds 10 crappy hours to your week, and chances are you won't have a space to open your laptop either.

If you add those 10 hours the benefits of WFH become very very real.

It also doesn't take into account space and flexibility needs for a family. It's only equivalent for the least demanding individuals: single, relavitely young people. If you want to raise a family, London is easily 500% more expensive than the suburbs (because you need 3-4 bedrooms), and the transport costs are just total loss, since they don't allow you to travel (... together with your family, unless you pay a lot more)

I took a glance and it seems that your employer could pay for the ticket and then they don't pay income tax, or they can reimburse you for the ticket, but then they must pay income tax. Kind of a strange system. Would you be responsible for the income tax if they bought the ticket for you?

Not saying I believe you should work on site or remotely, just got curious about transit reimbursement rules in the UK.

At most the company can give you an interest free loan to cover the annual season ticket.

That's a shame, we had tax-free transit and commuter rail benefits when I lived in Chicago. There's probably some cap, but every tax free benefit is income at your highest tax bracket. Apparently it's now $265/month for the train, with another $265/month for station parking.

> $7500/year taking into account train and parking costs.

Does that estimate also include hours spent commuting or just fares/car expenses?

A season ticket from Harlow to London - a 40 minute train ride - costs £4982.40/year (i.e. $6,351/year) if you're travelling 5+ days per week.

And that only gets you between national rail stations - it doesn't include the underground, or busses, or parking. They don't even guarantee you a seat.

That’s how much it costs to get a season train ticket and parking at the station.

Oof.

How can normal people afford this?

It is a lot, but if you break it down it’s £400 a month or around £20 a day. Most London based jobs will have that premium baked in.

The choice people have is to move closer, and pay twice as much for a house of the same quality. So it doesn’t look too bad from that angle either.

Generally though, I think the London commuter isn’t getting a great deal. 40%+ tax, high house price, high commuting costs, long hours door to door, childcare potentially. You need to be earning deep into six figures to feel well off whilst living this lifestyle.

With difficulty.

The alternative is to move closer to London, and then you can take the money you've saved on train tickets and spend it on higher rent.

They can’t. The UK has been in a major cost of living crisis for years. This past winter even the middle class had to make compromises with their energy use to keep costs under control.

That’s the cost of productivity. /s

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