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Sure, I'll live the farthest from the office in that case!

I mean I would have liked this too but it isn't realistic beyond what some companies have already been doing for years before covid, which is to pay for monthly public transit passes or towards the cost of it.

On the flipside it would mean companies limiting who is allowed to be in an office if that became mandatory. You live more than 15 min from the office? Sorry, WFH for you!

Factory job that absolutely can't be done WFH? You better come live in our communal housing where you have 5 min walk time to work or you are not getting that job!

They’d need to find a system that doesn’t encourage long commutes. If drive time counts toward the 40, an extreme case may try to live 4 hours from work. Drive in, have lunch, drive home.

People with short commutes would end up picking up the slack for those with long commutes, which could create some tension in the workplace. Why should those who are actually in the office working get compensated at the same rate as someone doing 20% less due to their shorter in-office work day?

I think you could simply set basic productivity goals and they would fail to meet those if they never worked.

If commuting is going to be compensated, then the compensation needs to be flat. If it costs more to employ people with longer commutes, those candidates will invariably be discriminated against in regards to hiring/firing, and the candidates most effected will invariably be lower income, as longer commutes is such a common feature of lower cost housing. It would become an anti-social-mobility mechanism if not done right.

Requiring large US employers to compensate on-site office workers in full for their commuting costs would be one way of discouraging long commutes, as laid out by the IRS' Publication 463 ( https://www.irs.gov/publications/p463 ). If they want employees in the office so badly, let them assume the full cost of transportation & food/beverages.

That would only be a starting point, though. Because as others have already pointed out, employers still aren't compensating on-site employees for the time they spend commuting -OR- the time wasted preparing for the commute. The average one-way commute time in the US is just under 30 minutes. But in order to get to work at 9:00am, I used to have to wake up at 7:30am. That's an extra 1.5hrs per day, on top of the 1hrs spent commuting.

Finally, there's the human cost associated with working in the office. I didn't have time to help my kid get ready for school; he had to take the bus, which (yep) costs more money than if I could just drive him. When I got home, I usually missed dinner with my wife & kid. And I'd rarely have time to take care of all the daily chores: laundry, dishes, grocery shopping. Which means that once the weekend finally does arrive, I have to spend my free time working to take care of those remaining chores.

Now that I work from home, I can roll out of bed, drive my son to school, shower, get coffee, & show up to work at 9:00am every day. I can attend non-participant meetings while also doing laundry or dishes, while wearing a wireless headset. My cat spends part of his days in my office, which makes the work days feel less like work. I can grab a late lunch, pickup my son from school, & be home in same time it'd normally take me to get lunch downtown. I can make my own lunch at home, too, which is usually healthier & costs way less than eating near the office. When I'm done at work, I can actually have dinner with my family now. And when the week is over, I can actually spend most of my free time doing stuff I want to do, besides chores.

Honestly, I'm not convinced that employers could ever fairly compensate workers for what it costs us to commute. But forcing them to pay some of that price, instead of placing the majority of that burden on workers' shoulders, would be a start.

> But in order to get to work at 9:00am, I used to have to wake up at 7:30am. That's an extra 1.5hrs per day, on top of the 1hrs spent commuting.

What preparation do you need for the commute that you wouldn't need working from home?

Any why do those preparations need 1 whole hour? When I'm in a rush, it takes me about 10 minutes from getting out of bed to being out the door.

Working from home, you can wear clothes that are less polished and professional. (Depending on the needs of the day, you might not even need to take a shower and get properly dressed at all!)

You can pop back down to the kitchen at 9:15 and grab a breakfast to bring back to your seat.

You can hear the dog barking to get back in right from your desk, rather than having to wait for them to be done, then put them in the crate, before you go.

You know that the route to your desk won't have a random delay of 0-20 minutes, so you have to leave early just to guarantee arriving on time.

You know that there won't be a line at the coffee.

Even ignoring all those little improvements, there's a big difference between "the maximum speed I can get from bed to door in an emergency" and "the speed I am comfortable moving to get ready to go every morning of every workday."

To me the solution is clear: if a job requires in person attendance, compensate the worker for one additional hour per shift for commute. This still provides some compensation without needing to discriminate based on commute distance, and also not requiring businesses to pay more when the employee has the choice but prefers an office.

Or quit docking people for lunch time. That's kind of ridiculous and disrespectful anyway. 100% robber Baron factory rules.

Even if my commute is only 15 minutes, I save probably 10 hours a week working from home because I can toss in the laundry while I work, walk the dog during a non-participatory meeting, load the dishwasher while I wait for a file to copy, etc. The amount of time I free up is absolutely insane. I can actually just be after work rather than doing chores.

Forgive the bluntness but this is like suggesting that garbage men should be compensated over software engineers for having a nastier job.

You get what you negotiate, not what you sacrifice. If you feel you should be paid extra for going to the office (I agree), demand so!

A recurring aspect of any injustice or inequality in the world is the folks affected by it are told to fix when they're almost always powerless to do so. If we can all agree that it's not fair for folks to commute unpaid, why is it fair to have the burden on them to "negotiate better"?

Software engineers are very often empowered to do so—and those few years of people switching jobs for better ones is what it looks like.

> garbage men should be compensated over software engineers for having a nastier job

Honestly, I have always felt that this would be true in any reasonable society. I'm a software engineer and I frequently think about what an absurd power structure we manage to maintain, in which those of us fortunate enough to sit at desks can keep the lower classes oppressed in this way. It seems very unstable to me.

Hum, it's not unstable at all.

I do agree that there's something wrong. But the reason it's structured this way is exactly because it's stable. It is what you get by letting people settle with minimum interference.

Sigh. I think you're right.

What scale to we measure stability on? How long has it been this way? Our current modus vivendi in the United States has existed for what, 80 years? 100 at most? 5 generations at the outside, and arguably far less.

The pattern persists beyond and before the US, though.

garbage handlers are not oppressed

having less money than others doesn't make you oppressed

Deeper than this, when I was a teen, guys tried to convince me to take the sanitation department test. Because it was such an awesome job (in their estimation) and so easy to get!

The differentiation between the collars is largely complexity and scope. Solving problems for a worldwide audience is possible in software but a garbage collector helps a region of town.

Wages are completely eclipsed by wealth, a far more significant differentiator.

What's stopping you being a garbage man?

How does that follow?

"We treat these people poorly" isn't synonymous with, "Gee, I'd really like to be treated poorly."

I think you have it backwards.

By staying home and giving up my office, I am taking on the cost burden of the work facilities (office space, internet, etc). These were previously paid by the employer and are now paid by me. I should be compensated.

I might save money by not commuting, but that expense has NOT been transferred to my employer -- it's GONE. I saved that money and nobody has to pay for my commute now.

In both cases there is an uncompensated expense by the employee. Either it’s time commuting or it’s the office space. The main disagreement here is which should be valued more. In practice the massive rise in people voluntary working from home strongly implies most people value the commute time more than the lost office space. Arguably they should both be compensated, although HN consists primarily of salaried workers well above any minimum wage so that compensation is likely to come at the expense of cash/equity comp anyway.

Yeah, a nice home office setup is an expense, especially if you live near (or, especially, in) a major city. But, for most people, commute is a net negative even if it means having a sub-optimal setup at home. And at most companies, people still have the option of commuting even if it may be a poorer experience than pre-Covid.

> commuting ... may be a poorer experience than pre-Covid

Curious, what do you mean? I was WFH from 2006 to 2021, and I feel like the commute improved a bit over that time with the new vehicles and navigation apps, but otherwise not much changed, so maybe I miss something that was better immediately pre-pandemic?

It takes me often longer drive into Boston either in the morning or in the evening as it ever did. GPS doesn't really help. I know where I'm going and the patterns are pretty predictable.

(Re-reading, offices are also poorer experiences for many people post-Covid given that a lot of people aren't there.)

> In both cases there is an uncompensated expense by the employee.

In both cases the employee factors in those expenses into the active rate they charge. If pay generally remained the same when moving to the home (and in cases when returning to the office), it seems the cost is generally deemed equivalent.

This is yet another example of the fallacy of assuming that The Almighty Market will perfectly set all costs.

Most employees do not have the luxury and privilege to be able to demand a raise any time they feel like they deserve one, and actually get it—either directly, from their current employer, or indirectly, by changing jobs.

Yes, this includes tech employees. Remember, we don't all work within the Silicon Valley bubble.

It seems you're confusing individuals with the general labour market. In aggregate, the workforce will adjust. The aggregate employee isn't going to put themselves in a money losing situation just to have a job. An individual might, but nobody is talking about individuals (except you).

No; that only works if the labor market, in aggregate, resembles an ideal free market.

It does not. There are far too many constraints on people's employment and the information they have for it to be amenable to "free market theory".

There is no mention or implication of there being a free market. Start a new thread if that is a subject you are interested in. Nobody in this thread is.

Tax deduction for home-office space?

https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/how-small-business-owners-can-d...

That only works for self employed.

Yeah, and your employer can save costs and dramatically reduce their office lease footprint.

I think in general less people going to the office is better for those who have to go to the office as well. Less density of population, less competition for housing, less congestion on roads. The more offices that are in place, the more housing prices go up, the more congestion etc.

I actually failed to understand this argument. Historically no body has a problem with this and it is always considered to be the employee’s responsibility (to commute to work.) Or is this not true?

If we think less about the asymmetry between employers and employees, and think they are 2 parties entering into an agreement, the employee also has to contribute something to their work. They are bringing in their expertise and availability, how that is achieved is a matter of agreement. If the agreement said your availability to be in the office is up to you, then you are free to optimize on your side how to optimally achieve this.

I have seen people choose to live far away in better condition, trading for longer commute time, and vice versa. Why should it not be your responsibility? Ie if employer pay for commute time and possibly cost, then the incentive for me is to live as far away as possible.