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Comment by Terr_ | Hacker News Reader

I think it is illuminating to consider how these debates would go very differently if employers where the ones whose budgets paid for all the hours/fuel spent in office commutes, and clearly showed that change with RTO.

There's no inherent reason commute costs are usually borne by employees, it's just tradition--and perhaps what is/isn't an appealing alternate-compensation expense under tax-code.

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Think about this one for a minute - if companies paid for this type of stuff, they would expect to have a say on exactly where you live. Not "you need to be within driving distance of the office" but more like "you need to rent next door to the office". Yes, there are very good reasons the cost of commuting is left in employee hands to decide.

That seems a bit slippery-slope, compare: "Think about this one for a minute - if companies paid for health insurance, they would expect to have a say in exactly what you eat..."

Companies are already indirectly paying via increased wages due to a smaller supply of possible hires, the difference is that it's harder for them to see and agree when an office+commute is inefficient. (Or at least, inefficient when ignoring hard-to-measure things like executive prestige or investor-relations or local tax breaks.)

Companies paying for health insurance is silly as well. We should get rid of it rather than compounding the problem with employer-provided commute. /shudders

They would not be providing the commute directly, it's simply an explicit part of the compensation package rather than an implicit one.

I’m pretty sure employers are paying a lot more for workers to be in office than for them to work from home. The commute would be a tiny fraction of the electricity office space and other costs they pay for workers to be in office.

I think paying for a car + insurance + gas is pretty substantial.

Hmm, just to prime the pump with some quick napkin-math... If it's an average of 200 ft²/employee [0] and $45/ft²/month [1] that gives a cost $108k/employee/year.

In comparison, lets imagine someone already making $80k/yr, a 40-mile heavy-traffic roundtrip commute taking 2 hours (1.25x time) and adds $10 in daily gas... That's about +22.5k in costs.

So yes, in direct math it's probably not as big, but having a physical office probably satisfies other hard-to-quantify priorities of corporate executives, such as personal prestige, sense of control, and how things look to investors.

[0] https://blog.naiop.org/2018/05/top-trends-and-metrics-to-wat...

[1] https://www.commercialcafe.com/office-market-trends/us/wa/se...

This doesn't add up to me. The priorities of corporate executives are to please the board of directors. BoD priorities are to please shareholders/investors. Shareholders/investors are pleased by growth/profits. That is, the investors care not about "how things look" but instead how they actually are, as in quarterly reports, share price, etc.

If employees are happier and more efficient working from home, it satisfies the priorities of all the above parties. If RTO makes people unhappy and either less productive OR makes them not want to work for that employer, it goes against the incentives and priorities of all the above parties.

> This doesn't add up to me.

I agree, I added a correction because I think it's off by a factor of 12 due to month-vs-year price quotes.

CORRECTION: That figure from [1] doesn't actually specify the time period, but other sources [3] imply it is per year rather than per month. This means I overstated the cost of office-space by a factor of 12, and it should probably be more like $9k/employee/year.

That also means the office-rent cost is significantly less than if the employer began paying for employee commutes.

[3] https://www.squarefoot.com/leasopedia/dollars-cents-much-cos...

That’s $45/sqft per year, not per month. A 20,000 sqft office tower floor does not generate $10.8M a year in rents.

All CRE listed as price per square foot are per year prices.

>I think it is illuminating to consider how these debates would go very differently if employers where the ones whose budgets paid for all the hours/fuel spent in office commutes

A significant number of employers do allocate budget and incur expenses for employee commuter benefits. And unclaimed commuter benefits results in cost savings for the employer, I'm not really sure I understand the point being made here.

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