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Re:Why Do We Still Commute? by sokoloff on Friday November 03, 2017 @09:28AM (#15619007)
In the end, setting aside the distortions caused by minimum wage laws, companies pay for the value they receive from their employees. How you want to apportion that value (hours, widgets, hours [including commuting hours], flexible work arrangements, paid time off, company holidays, etc) doesn't matter much.

As an employer, I'm indifferent between paying someone $50/hour for an 8-hour work day, or $40/hr for an 8-hour workday plus 2 hours of paid commuting.

Re:Why Do We Still Commute? by humanrebar on Friday November 03, 2017 @09:42AM (#15619122)
But you would also be incentivized to locate your office in a more commutable location. In some cases, a slightly higher rent would even make sense to offset the costs of paying people to commute.
Re:Why Do We Still Commute? by sokoloff on Friday November 03, 2017 @12:47PM (#15620520)
Maybe. (In fact, we already care quite a bit about commuting time and ease because we want to retain our developers in a very competitive employment market.)

I think it's more likely that the interview process would just have another step to suss out how much commuting time I'd be paying you for, and then figuring out how to divide up your day rate of $400 (higher in reality, of course) across the buckets. So Laura Long Commute gets $40/hr * 10 hrs/day and Sally Short Commute gets $50/hr * 8 hours/day.

Re:Why Do We Still Commute? by humanrebar on Friday November 03, 2017 @04:43PM (#15622072)
> So Laura Long Commute gets $40/hr * 10 hrs/day and Sally Short Commute gets $50/hr * 8 hours/day.

You'd have to be careful about that. Employers might end up, in data, showing a negative impact against some protected class (married people, certain races) if they weigh hiring or compensation decisions based on proximity to the office.

It's my understanding that current jurisprudence doesn't require proof of intention to discriminate, just evidence of disparate impact. Single and married people live in different neighborhoods. Different races do as well, depending on the city. Non-heterosexual people tend to cluster in certain neighborhoods, too, for that matter. If a class action suit can show that married people are paid 10% less than single people for equivalent roles, it could be problematic.

Re:Why Do We Still Commute? by sokoloff on Saturday November 04, 2017 @07:38AM (#15624599)
Which is all the more reason to make the job the job and the responsibility of getting to the job not [a paid part of] the job.
Re:Why Do We Still Commute? by computerphage on Friday November 03, 2017 @09:47AM (#15619165)
Not to mention distortions from everything else