However, I fully believe I can build a home office that's better (for me) than most employers can, at a fraction of the budget. It's a more efficient solution than a centralized office, but it's coming out of my pocket and not theirs, so it hurts me more.
Of course, your direct complaint seems to be the square footage, not the hardware (desks, etc). That's a tougher one to solve for, because larger square footage is opex instead of capex, and it'll be more challenging to get your employer to part with opex dollars.
(Yes, there are larger apartments, but they are somewhat rare. Maybe this will change!)
In NYC, 2/3 of households rent, according to a 2017 government survey: https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/nychvs.html.
Not to take away anything from your point: it is an interesting thought experiment. For people who have an intuitive understanding of opex v capex, it's also a very convincing argument for owning your apartment (since your mortage "feels" like opex, but is actually capex, and it's always better to spend capex dollars).
This is especially true in markets like NYC, where you might never reasonably expect to pay off your mortage (since it's a coop, or the principle is 10+ years of untaxed salary).
Would it matter the interest/equity proportions of the mortgage payments? Also what about the other costs associated with owning the real estate (taxes, maintenance)?
Interest in most loans is front-loaded (i.e. your payments are mostly "interest" rather than equity in the earlier parts of the loan), and you can write off payments towards mortgage interest on your taxes in the US. So, while interest is technically opex, the government currently allows you to treat it as capex, tax-wise, because they want to subsidize home ownership. If you aren't in a top income bracket, this won't affect you much.
Other costs are tricky because, in competitive markets at least, taxes and maintenance cost are usually priced into your rent, so you're usually paying them whether or not you own your home.
The big difference is that when you own the home, the taxes and maintenance costs arrive all-at-once (when your home floods, or the boiler falls apart), rather than amortized over years of residency. That's why mortgages are almost always "cheaper" per-month than rentals: rentals price these costs in, mortgages do not. If you have a good chunk of liquid savings and can afford good insurance, exposing yourself to occasional all-at-once payments are not very risky.
Also, you can eventually and typically write off big expenses (if you rent out part of your home, or sell it later and keep good records). https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/what-home-improvemen...
I don't think your problem with quitting has anything to do with WFH policies.
If you don't have to go in everyday, the possible commuting distance increases massively. Before the virus, I worked from home and my commute was 160km twice per week by high speed train.
Take a map around the office where you work. Look at the kinds of home prices you can find an hour out. See how much closer you can be to nature or other particular amenities that matter to you. Would you like to have those with zero total change to your commute time?
Sounds pretty nice to me.
People like their socialization at work. Many also like living in the city anyway (granted, most of my colleagues are young and childless). And outside of extreme cases like SF, a tech salary is enough to rent a decent apartment.
I don't feel like the current scenario is indicative of a well structured WFH setup, even though we've been doing it for 2 months now.
In short I hope companies don't use this interlude to evaluate WFH productivity, because I think it isn't the best representative.
My day is basically split up into maybe 20m at a time where I can do something before being distracted.
I end up working during the night to catch up (just got done), but this is unsustainable long term.
I don't think you know what you're asking for :)
My wife and I both work full time with a 3yo at home, so rather than put him in front of a screen we work in shifts - one of us does 6:30 ᴀ.ᴍ. to 12:30, then we switch until 6:30. It's really tough.
Best investment I have ever made.
I imagine a thoughtful approach to “everybody WFH” would include a coworking space credit if needed, a stipend to equip one’s home office if needed, etc.
“My home is too small / distracting / I like to be near people” => coworking space
“I don’t have an ergo chair / etc” => stipend
Fun times :-)
The ability to hash things out verbally is a great escape hatch, but it has turned into a crutch. I hope universal WFH will push people to work to a standard where it can be the exception instead of the norm.
> Kids at home yelling at each other, other coworkers distracted
In my experience, working at home isn't much different from working at work. If you don't have a private office with a door, it's going to be very challenging to focus regardless of whether you're sharing space with your coworkers or your family. Long ago I worked in a cube farm that had the depressing gray regularity of a low-effort DOOM wod, and I'm not sure that wasn't better for productivity than the attractive, high-end open plan offices I've worked in since then.
In a couple of years, my wife and I will be living in a different house, and we will both have private offices, cost be damned. I've decided mine can be as small as 10'x6', as long as it has a door and a window.
We still manage to work with the same productivity in my company but we already had some experience with WFH.
The problem is going to be when performance is evaluated -- no matter how much leeway has been given now, I will be compared in some respect to my coworkers who have been able to manage this transition better, who haven't had a turbulent home life, etc. etc.
This is giving me the stressies.
I think it's very important to realize that if we are or are not productive WFH, there will be others who feel the opposite.
Working from home doesn't work for everyone, or it doesn't work in every case. Maybe it can be further optimized to work better for most cases, but currently it's not.
* Speaking as someone who recently started a new job two weeks before the government SIP for the Bay Area and has had to mostly virtual on-board and ramp-up. It has not been an easy experience. Maybe it's the on-boarding/ramp-up for my team that's not optimized, or maybe it's not easy simply because I'm not already a full-time remote worker already. Some people who enjoy WFH and get remote jobs probably don't have the issues I've had, and that's okay too. But I think it's unrealistic to expect everyone joining a new company during this situation to be properly productive through it and potentially WFH indefinitely. For my company in particular they've already mentioned we'll get to WFH for this through the end of the year.
The former opens up more options, but it only opens up a tiny percentage of the options that the latter creates.
Having a 1 day a week office would I think help people move away from high cost areas. If I only had to do it once a week a multi-hour or even flying to the office once a week wouldn't be bad (assuming that we return to our previous status quo with air travel.)
That said, I'm notably introverted and happy as a clam during quarantine, more or less, so I'm probably not representative of the country as a whole. Of people currently working remote, I think we'll see about 20% of people who won't want to go back into offices. For my own selfish purposes I'm really hoping for a paradigm shift towards more remote work, but I accept it doesn't work well for some people.
I don't think flying weekly to an office scales up as well as you think it might.
I sort of had this setup before covid: the company I work for does consulting and my coworkers and I will often be at client's offices. When we write our contracts we make sure to always designate Friday as the day where all employees come back to the 'home base' for meetings, catch-ups, socializing, etc. It works quite well, and we'd always look forward to Friday's because of it.
If I could continue to WFH 3-4 days a week and then go into the office on Thursday/Friday, that would be great.
This is the best of both worlds for a company.
I think this is the right balance.
I don't think this will happen because of people are worried about virus transmission, but instead because most people like working from home and we've proven we can be just as productive when we're out of the office.
That said, I'm one of the few people who like going into an office. There are fewer distractions and better food options. :)