Commute time is a big thing here.

People who have a 2 hour (one way) commute from hell from their massive house are super happy about this situation (shocking, I know).

People who live in a small studio apartment 10 minutes from the office see it differently.

What I expect this to result in is employers increasingly forcing people to WFH (either outright, or by making the offices horribly unattractive through hot-desking, increased density, etc.), pushing the cost of an office onto employees.

Even if a company "generously" gives you a $1000 allowance, that barely covers what high quality office furniture would cost, and in exchange, you pay a lot of tiny things that don't seem to be worth mentioning individually but add up to a massive cost when you take them all together over years:

- the real estate

- HVAC

- utilities (increased water usage, electricity for the office equipment & HVAC)

- maintenance for all of that (money and time)

- cleaning (if your employer asked you to come in unpaid after hours to vacuum the office and scrub the office toilets, everyone would consider them crazy, and yet this is effectively what will happen with WFH)

Not to speak of all the amenities and perks employers often provide, like cafeterias (often subsidized or even free). And not only will you end up paying the businesses' business expenses, you'll often do so (at least in part) with your post-tax money, i.e. depending on your tax rate, each dollar spent may be equivalent to e.g. $1.6 in lost income.

Really, there are only 2 costs that matter.

On the one side you have the commute--both in time and money.

On the other side is whether the place you'd be living in otherwise is suitable for long-term WFH or if you have to spend more money for another bedroom or whatever.

So, if you already have a dedicated office in an exurban house (as I do), not commuting--which I rarely did anyway--is a cost savings. As someone who has mostly worked remotely for years, all the other stuff is pretty trivial even given the occasional significant purchase (I had to replace my very old office chair).

I already have to clean my house and/or have it done. And the delta in utilities, etc. is trivial.

ADDED: Companies sometimes have covered co-working spaces. Though I suspect this will become less common.

To me the mental cost matters. For me, I'm mentally better off when I hang out with people physically than when I sit at home isolated chatting on slack. For you that might be different.

So I'd happily pay the commute cost if I have to for my mental well being. If you don't need that that's fine. You can stay home.

I have a gut feeling (so no data) that for many projects a core group of physically together people will out perform a group of remote workers of the same size "All other things being equal" (which they never are).

I come from games, having designers/artists/programmers able to look over each others shoulders and "riff" off each other's ideas is invaluable. But I know there are other kinds of work that don't need as much interaction so YMMV

I find some degree of commute itself necessary for my mental health. The act of traveling itself flips a mental switch. Just being home all day, I basically have to go out and pick up a coffee or something in the morning just to simulate that feeling.

This must be learned, commuting is definitely not something I would say was good for my mental health.

Heh, all these comments are very much "to each their own" but ya, holy heck did I ever HATE my commute. It wasn't even that long, but it was depressing. I didn't even realize how filled with dread I was every night before going to bed and every day around 4pm or so realizing I'd be faced with getting myself home. This situation is heaven for me (not saying I'm happy about why we're in this situation, to be clear).

Of course, I live alone in a decent-sized apartment outside of downtown. I also work at an XP shop (I actually much prefer remote pairing) and I'd probably feel differently if I had to work alone all day every day.

> For me, I'm mentally better off when I hang out with people physically than when I sit at home isolated chatting on slack. For you that might be different.

But in a way, this is not a balanced relationship. Sure, you'd want to interact with people like you who are excited about being together, so that's the preferred state anyway, but if most of your colleagues are of the 2nd sort, then you put the effort of going in the office to no reward. You could connect with people outside your immediate sphere, but team cohesion isn't helped by that and you might start disliking working there. So in a way you get some bubbles forming - those who prefer virtual interaction and those who prefer face-to-face.

This will probably be a big factor for career progression - is your manager leaning towards WFH or office-work? If you're on the other side, you might get left behind. Not that there aren't plenty of such possible discrepancies already out there

My exp is the exact opposite. I find being able to avoid the people I don't ever want to talk to a much better mental health boost.

The people I want to talk to are usually busy doing actual work so we usually catch up at lunch or after work. I also have the personal numbers of those people. All the people that have time to talk during the work day I'd rather not talk to. I know this is basically an insult for that I'm sorry but I suspect you are one of those people. The awkward guy with no friends that comes to the office for his social interaction fix.

Riffing ideas is not helpful sorry but its just your awkward way of socializing. Has anyone really ever said oh ok I'll just trash this work and start over after "riffing"? No they just go "haha" and continue doing whatever they were doing.

The delta in utilities, in a place like Texas, during the summer months, is certainly not trivial. Relative to a tech workers salary, sure, a hundred bucks per month isn’t that much, but it’s costing me a lot more to keep my house cool through 100F days all summer long than it would if I let the thermostat go to 80F during the workday.

Not to mention the flipside. Living in Minnesota, I have to use my furnace all day when I work from home for many months out of the year. Natural gas isn't cheap, yet an electric heater would probably even be more expensive on my electric bill.

Does everyone in the living space leave for the day? At my place someone is always home most of everyday anyway.

I live alone, so if I were going to an office, yeah

How much was the commute costing you though?

But I do not have an extra office in a dedicated bedroom. I live in central Tokyo.

The delta in house price for ‘extra bedroom’ in the place I live is around $250,000.

There is just no way my company is going to even consider reimbursing me for that.

But if you're WFH, you don't need to live in central Tokyo, you can live anywhere. You'd probably save money by gaining an extra bedroom and moving out of central Tokyo, no?

Anywhere where you:

- Have reasonable fast internet.

- (Affordable) Hospitals/Police/Firewatch in reasonable distance

- Are not to far away from the companies office as you likely still have to go to the office from time to time.

EDIT: Most people don't live in Tokyo or cities with similar expensive housings. The cost of moving away from cities is often much bigger then "just" longer transit times from home to work.

If WFH was guarantee, I'd have enough money to take a helicopter down to NYC twice a month instead of paying taxes/rent/mortgage/higher cost of food/MTA/LIRR/etc.

While living in a house with too many bedrooms. And if you want to talk about environmental impact, the air is cleaner the water is blue again and maybe we start paying baristas 100k a year for the inconvenience of having to live in the city instead of software engineers that can fckoff and do this from the moon.

The obvious is slapping everyone in the face. And if you are in commercial real estate, best wishes in 2021.

>Are not to far away from the companies office as you likely still have to go to the office from time to time.

The length of a "tolerable commute" increases disproportionately as the frequency of said commute declines. If I have to commute every day, anything over 30 minutes is pretty tiring. If I have to commute twice a week, driving 2+ hours is fine. If I have to commute once a month, I'd be willing to live on the other side of the country and fly in.

Thinking long term, housing is expensive because of mandatory office going, so removing the pressure from that side should in theory affect prices

It already is. I live in a semi-rural area that's lovely, but the commute is a hassle (there's a ferry to downtown, if you can walk/bus from there it's ok, but long, if you have to drive from there, you have to fight for limited car spaces on the ferry, and traffic is awful around downtown, etc; and friday afternoons its hard to get a car on the ferry because of weekend trips). This summer a lot of people have moved from the other side of the ferry, because they can WFH (for now) and would prefer more space right now. Real estate prices are up and inventory is down. Of course, if they need to be in the office 4 or 5 days a week, they will likely move back.

In addition, you're being forced to adjust your personal lifestyle because of the office space your employer is choosing not to provide. Perhaps it would be cheaper to live in a farm house in the middle of nowhere, but what if you want to live in central Tokyo? Perhaps it's the American in me, but doesn't everyone deserve the right to pursue happiness, even if it's in the form of the city in which you live?

If other people flee the cities in favor of cheaper housing elsewhere, then real estate prices should decrease in places like Tokyo making it easer to live there for the people who want to.

Sure, you might want to live in central Tokyo, Manhattan, SF, etc. And it would be nice to be able to do so. But also Aspen, Nantucket, Carmel-by-the-Sea, Myrtle Beach, etc. Absent a business purpose, why should the former be subsidized over the latter.

What you say is true, of course.

But then this is the trade: he goes from a cheap, tiny place in Tokyo, spends most of his time at the office or out and about, gets to enjoy a world-class city

to: living somewhere that isn't Tokyo, where he can afford a space large enough to have an office, and is home all the time, and doesn't get to enjoy a world-class city.

Not a win, I'm guessing. And this is coming from someone in his third year of remote work who lives a mile out of a village of about 3,000 people. It's not everyone's cup of tea.

I didn't move to Tokyo to live outside of Tokyo.

That was my point. If you live in a central part of a major city because it's convenient for work and you want to live there, having to WFH indefinitely is probably going to be costly compared to being able to easily go into an office (unless your company will pay for a co-working space). You're right that they won't pay for a larger apartment.

There is also a social and mental cost.

For example for some one where anxiety acts in a way which hinders him to proper handle thinks like making food or cleaning having a clean office with a Mensa giving out reasonable good food for a reasonable price is a massive difference. It can make the difference between overcoming it and complexity succumbing to it to a degree where you at some point end up homeless on the streets....

Sure just one example. But you can make many such examples. Often less extreme.

But however I look at it it always boils down to people being good of (housing, mental health, social net and high sallery (==more affordable office equipment)) profiting from it but people which are not (small dark apartment, mental health problems, abusive partners, social isolation, not much money) paying the price for it. And sure in the praxis you will find anything in-between.

> allready have a dedicated office in an exurban house

In my experience (Germany/Berlin) this normally only applies for people which earn above average and even then it not so common for people only earning slightly above average. The best/most common thing you find with people earning slightly above average is a room which is intended for children but they either don't yet have any or they already moved out so it was turned into a office room.

Also most office at home room I have seen where just suitable for one person, so if both partner need to do home offices it gets space-wise tight.

I don't like the idea that telecommuting benefits only the ones who can afford it.

Living hours from your workplace because you can't afford to be closer is not privileged. Wanting to cook at home because it's cheaper than restaurants it's not privileged. Wanting to Save the costs of gas or public transportation isn't either.

There are good arguments for and against but it's kinda bad to assume.

Good points. It is also not that easy to just upgrade from a 2 bedroom apartment to a 4 bedroom one to accommodate a couple where both parties needs to work from home. Who is paying that extra rent? Certainly not the employer.

The keywords in what you said is “to me.”

For some reason, passionate work from home workers assume everyone likes what they like and everyone has the same situation as them.

I prefer going to the office. It’s not a moral failing, it’s just what I like. I think people should be free to do what they like.

Those minor costs can still add up. Depending on your setup and location you could easily be spending 30+c/h on electricity when working from home. Extra cooling, lighting, possibly multiple PC’s etc. At ~2,000 hours a year you’re talking an extra ~600$/per year after tax.

On the other hand it’s also much cheaper to cook at home.

PS: My preference is to live close enough to walk to the office, but that doesn’t really scale well.

I've been working for home for about four years now. One of the biggest unexpected benefits has been the ability to do asynchronous household tasks. Placing a load of clothes in the washing machine takes very little time, same goes for putting them in the dryer. The time for those machines to do their work is time I'm working for my employer. When I would go into an office, those tasks would consume a large part of evenings or a day on the weekend. Same goes for cooking if you make things that are mostly hands off. Half an hour before lunch I can throw previously prepped ingredients into the Instant Pot and air fryer which will make lunch ready right as I start my lunch hour. Of course sometimes I'm in a meeting and can't even get to the kitchen to start those tasks but being flexible is part of the deal. On those days, I eat lunch half an hour later, which still isn't much trouble.

A couple years ago, I had to move bare metal servers to my home to continue my job working at a VR technology startup, who had just decided to forgo their offices.

I took on an extra $150-$200 in power expenses per month, and it was absolutely treacherous trying to get reimbursed for this. The company never considered the costs they were funneling into the employees - apparently - until people started to complain.

I fear most people were put into similar situations - perhaps not fiscally, but in a procedural sense - during this most recent mass WFH migration.

> I took on an extra $150-$200 in power expenses per month, and it was absolutely treacherous trying to get reimbursed for this

Well, fuck that... if it's company hardware and there's no reimbursement, power gets cut to that rack at 5PM local time.

Just wire it into a light switch. If the switch gets flipped... shame.

"I don't know what to do. I guess if you wanted to send an electrician out to install a new circuit with its own meter, things might be more reliable."

> send an electrician

I think OP needed an electrician onsite anyway, as $200/month would be somewhat over 2500 watts continuous 24x7 which would require in the US at minimum two dedicated 15 amp circuits. That's a serious enough amount of heat to require the attentions of a HVAC guy also.

I ran some small clusters at home for learning purposes and maybe $400 per year was pretty minimal compared to the cost of tuition, cost of the hardware, etc.

If your electricity is 10 cents per kWh it would be that much.

Since they said NYC we can bump that to 21 cents and then $150-$200 becomes 980-1300 watts, or 8-11 amps. That's something most people could plug in to their bedroom or living room circuit without a sweat.

Is there a resource online one can use to figure out what the cost per kWh will be for their power usage in a particular area?

I am fascinated by how people know these figures seemingly off the top of their heads. :)

I was beginning to suspect this, as well. But I of course was nowhere near prepared to handle this responsibility on my own. I live in a 2BR 4th-floor walk-up apartment in Brooklyn, NY, constructed 1913.

The rack consisted of a dual-processor Xeon 1U with a Tesla GPU, two 4U hard drive racks, and a UPS unit.

In MA ($0.195/kWh), that’s only about 1400W, or 12A which is supportable on a single 15A circuit.

That would double my power expenses per month. Who knows if my circuits would even handle it. ADDED: My internet would also not be reliable enough for servers that other people were depending on.

That's a big difference from my laptop being plugged in at home for 8 hours a day rather than in an office.

In a warm climate/season it could cost you even more. Not only are you paying for the servers' electricity, but you're also going to want extra air conditioning to remove the waste heat.

Yeah I live in a country that literally worships efficiency and cost cutting. Fancy offices have been extinct for a long time. Thanks to technology people can work anywhere and they're expected to.

I don’t think utilities are expensive enough to compare to the explicit costs of commuting by car (fuel, wear and tear, insurance) and the implicit costs of commuting (increased morbidity/mortality risk from driving, opportunity cost of time needed to be allocated to commuting).

Especially if the house isn’t completely empty when you’re at work.

Again this heavily depends on your situation.

I live a 20 min walk from my office. I have £0 commuting costs.

On the other hand I live in an old city with little new built housing. My flat is over 100 years old with massive ceilings, electric heating and no way to way to improve the insulation. Heating it just in the evenings for 5 hours costs about £50 a month, heating it while I work will likely cost £70-100 extra in top.

It’s not a zero cost: it’s 40 minutes of time.

I run there, which is time I still spend at home. And I enjoy the walk home as I live in a beautiful city. I normally go walking throughout the day for longer than that anyway.

Yes, I love being able to walk/bike to work, but that’s not life for 95%+ of people in the US (nor England from what I know).

Walking/biking gives you agency that public transit/cars don’t. It feels much freer.

Biking in Tokyo is less freeing than public transportation because of the added time finding a place to lock up the bike. I bought a bike thinking I'd use it but it turns out it's actually much less free since if I take it I'm stuck with it the entire day where as without it I can easily visit the other side of the city on a whim via public transportation. The same would be true in Singapore, Hong Kong, Paris, Berlin, many other places with good public transportation.

You should look at getting a folding bike. I got a Brompton recently, using a company cycle-to-work scheme and it's been brilliant. I can cycle 3-4 miles in 20 mins to my favourite coffee shop, fold up my bike in 20 seconds and stash it under my table.

It might be a net positive if they enjoy the walk more than 40 minutes of other activity.

WFH doesn't mean they can't walk for 40 minutes though.

But in the context of office vs home, if the OP is basically saying "I like my free commute" then you have to remove cost & time from the "pro" list for WFH.

I used to like reading on the train as time for myself but it didn't balance out the other stress & cost of commuting.

If Transport for London said that trains would be free at the point of use & actually put on enough service that most people got a seat I'd definitely consider the office more favourably again

Not to mention the infrastructure / tax costs! New interstate lanes to sate population growth don't build themselves.

The more regular commuters we can take off the road, the better.

Some of my transit activist friends are upset over the potential of work from home to harm demand for transit service, which for some populations are used for more than commuting to work. Also if more people end up moving out of city centers because they're no longer constrained by a commute, that further erodes the demand for public transportation.

Commuting for a lot of us in the suburbs: long distance train passes, gas, parking, wear on the car, and increased insurance premiums for the mileage dwarf anything you're talking about. I'm saving over $500 after tax dollars a month by WfH. And that's before the buying lunch near the office, occasional Uber when trains were down, parking tickets...

Based on not traveling, a $50/month delta between me not being in the house at all vs. being there full-time is actually about right. But then I don't live with someone. But simply not being in the house for 10 hours a day doesn't affect things much. Admittedly I use AC minimally.

That said, I'd be happy to concede that working at home costs me $1K/yr. in costs I wouldn't have were I to go into an office every day. But that has costs like commuting (for most people) too.

Yeah, my stay at home costs are not zero, but just being able to scale back to one car (dropping one insurance payment), cancel parking downtown and stop burning so much gas is already a $700/mo saving.

Add in some of the other costs of the “downtown lifestyle” (lunch and coffee; skipped and brewed at home for pennies now) and I’m saving like $15k/yr post tax.

Just on insurance, parking, gas, lunches and coffee I’m saving enough to buy a brand new Aeron chair every month, give or take.

And if this turns permanent, there are a lot of other changes I can make to save even more money and increase my quality of life.

I’d say $1k/yr sounds about right for the extra expenses I’ll incur. That’s not even on my radar with all the other money this saves me and the opportunity it creates.

Savings also add up, so everyone's balance will land somewhere different depending on their lifestyle. Commute has a cost, buying lunch has a cost, less sleep has a cost, wearing shoes more often has a cost, etc...

(I expect another one of the "surprising industry suffering from covid" articles at some point about lack of footwear sales)

Personally, usually most of the 3-4 commute hours per day I can spend in productive work so the time factor isn't a big issue. But cost wise I have literally saved thousands of dollars not commuting the last six months - probably to the equivalence of a 15% pre-tax pay rise.

Same here. Just on the really obvious and direct expenses, I got around a 15% raise out of this. There are a lot of other expenses that have gone way down as well and the other expenses that have increased have been... basically line noise. An extra $10 on coffee a month compared to $1200+ in savings isn’t even worth looking at.

And this is still when it’s unknown whether I’ll need to go back to an office full time at some point. If this turns into even 60-80% remote long term, I can start looking at things like selling the second car, moving a little further out instead of paying a premium for a “short” 1 hour commute, etc.

And that’s all without even discussing the time. The extra several hours a day I have to spend with my wife/child/dogs and doing things I love instead of sitting in gridlock are invaluable.

Not everyone employed had these benefits to start with. What pains me is seeing tech employees complain about lost perks while the rest of the population is really suffering. How comfortable do we need to be to lose the sense of reality?

It’s part of the entire package of compensation for working at a company. If my employer cuts my pay by $30,000 and says, “you’re still making more than most the population”, I’m going to leave and go somewhere that pays me more?

Is this privilege? Of course. A lot of people don’t have the luxury to go get a better job if their pay gets cut. But how does me foregoing that privilege help them?

I have no idea what the point of your comment is. Are you just wanting people to feel bad because they don’t like that WFH made their life a little worse?

Edit: The parent comment was edited after I started writing my comment. Said something about GP’s comment being a privileged one, amongst other things. Just for some context about where I’m coming from with my comment.

> Not everyone employed had these benefits to start with.

The key points I'm talking about are "some form of office" and I believe most people who can WFH had that. Even people who don't work in offices usually have a workplace, i.e. the utilities issue applies to them as well.

Less privileged workers will be hit harder by this, because a couple hundred bucks for all the bullet points I listed each month is not a huge deal to a tech worker, but potentially a massive deal for someone who makes less.

The additional perks are a tiny part of it, and subsidized (not free) cafeterias aren't uncommon even outside of tech in Germany. This will affect all office workers, not just tech.

> massive cost when you take them all together over years

I believe this is the very definition of penny wise, pound foolish. If the cost of providing an office is seriously noticeable against the (comfortable) labor of your people your company has much bigger problems than "business expenses".

The real estate is not a cost if you have an office setup at home anyway. As a computer programmer, why would I not? Cleaning and maintenance of that office is just part of what I do.

Almost any commute is going to outweigh those factors.

I live in a 2 bedroom 900 square foot condo with a toddler. The kitchen table acted as my “desk” before COVID, usually in a pinch if I really had to. Currently I have half of our bedroom stuffed with a desk so I can work full time during the day.

Not everybody’s situation is the same. I really liked my situation before COVID. I had a 10 minute walk to work, a large public park across the street where the city maintained the “yard”, and I saw my daughter for hours most evenings. Many co-workers who lived further out barely saw their kids during the week.

Obviously, COVID has caused a lot of people who love urban living to take a hard look at it. Living in a city loses its appeal when all the amenities are closed/gone, but the real estate “is not a cost” is not true for everybody. An extra bedroom where I live would have been hundreds of thousands more. We elected not to spend the money because, well, I had a desk at the office and we were only going to have one kid.

> Obviously, COVID has caused a lot of people who love urban living to take a hard look at it. Living in a city loses its appeal when all the amenities are closed/gone

I still don't really understand this attitude. Sure, if you're only living in a particular city to be close to your office, it makes sense to re-evaluate when your office is now your home. But if you like living in a city because of those urban amenities... they're not gone forever. They're already starting to reopen, cautiously, to some extent, and I expect things will be back mostly to normal early/mid next year (minus, unfortunately, businesses that did/will not survive the shutdown). It seems pretty short-sighted to leave a place you otherwise love because of conditions that are temporary.

People in general are notorious for their short term thinking. I’m not re-evaluating personally, even though a good chunk of those amenities are gone and it remains to be seen what will replace them. However, people I know are “fleeing”. At the height of the lockdowns, many people with kids freaked out a bit as the services that serviced the homeless, addicted, and those with mental health problems closed, essentially dumping them on the street where they took over public parks. Even though things are going back to normal, the damage was done in these people’s heads and they’re heading for the suburbs.

I’m not sure how things may change long term. (God I hope) in 5 years a new wave of people who didn’t live here during the pandemic will replace them. I suspect that even if people work from home full time on a more permanent basis, the cul-de-sac bedroom community suburbs will become even more isolating as people spend all their time there, not just for the quiet evenings and weekends.

We’ll see, I guess.

That's far from the case for everybody. Extra heating is looking like it'll cost me another £80-100 over winter whereas I have no commuting costs atm.

That's barely the cost of a couple of cups of take-out coffee a week for the cold months, which I'd be far more likely to buy when at work.

£100 is trivial if you're getting paid £100,000

If you're making £12,000 a year though? That £100 might be your entire budget for Christmas presents.

That £100 might be your entire budget for groceries. There's a real economic class difference that I think a lot of people aren't seeing here.

Speak for yourself, I have good coffee at the office. Hell I spend way more on coffee now just to go sit somewhere that's not my main room.

> I have good coffee at the office

Then in my experience you're an outlier! I've never worked in an office with anything other than the worst bilge available for free....

I think both big house 2 hours away and small studio 10 minutes away would both be happy about WFH. This means small studio 10 minutes away can move out of his small studio that he lives in only because its 10 minutes away.

EDIT: Not to say that studio 10 minutes from work might enjoy other aspects of his living situation but if his main constraint of "must be 10 minutes from work" is lifted, that gives him much more flexibility.

Moving isn't easy if your have a mortgage plus I don't particularly want to move.

Even if I did I got a great deal on my flat and I'd have to move right out the the edge of town or to a very rough neighborhood to afford an additional room for the same price.

Lastly you're ignoring that some of us genuinely like being in an office. I like the physical separation between work and home, I like seeing folk day to day and I like discussing things and working together in person.

On the other side, those people you want to see in person all the time might not be enjoying that.

Well tough luck for them because I am the boss :)

The implicit assumption is that small studio 10 minutes away wants to work in a city center and therefore "making" them move to bigger digs somewhere further out is a downgrade. Which may or may not be true.

In any case having WFH gives them the option, as I said they could have lots of OTHER reasons they want to live there, but removing that constraint provides an additional degree of freedom.

So let’s give a tax cut to WFH people. Next, if you cost the employer less money, that means they are more profitable which means RSUs should become more valuable. Or, at the very least, ask for a pay raise. If your productivity is the same or greater, that shouldn’t be too hard. If you are replaceable by a cheaper worker, then that’s more of a statement i of your value rather than company economics. You can also move to a much cheaper area with much lower taxes. If my offices in Silicon Valley weren’t reopening in January, I’d already be living in Reno.

“Free” food isn’t free. “Amenities” aren’t free either.

Saving on the commute however, that’s a substantial savings in your time. Even if you have your commute subsidized, you aren’t likely being paid for your commute time. Getting back an hour or more per day is more valuable to me than a ping pong table or free coffee.

For those that live five minutes from the office — now you can move and save a pile of money in the process.

> For those that live five minutes from the office — now you can move and save a pile of money in the process.

No thanks, I like my kids to be able to walk from school to home.

I'd like a view of the ocean from my home office window, however I don't want it enough to pay market rates for it. You may feel otherwise and are free to spend your money as you wish.

Yeah, I agree. I miss my old routine too. I even have a dedicated office of sorts, and working from home is comfortable and convenient to me. But... I miss the commute. The bus I used to take wasn't particularly uncrowded, but I always managed to get a seat (thanks to having a particularly early schedule) and I used to take the opportunity to read (since each trip took about 40-45 minutes, that's about 1h30m of reading a day), and from time to time I would just put my book down and look at the window, which I always found relaxing even if it's the very same trip everyday. These trips, especially the one in the morning, were about the most quiet moments of my day (although headphones are a necessity, for sure). Reading at home is just not the same, after so many years of having that schedule.

On the other hand, I don't particularly miss the office. Sure, it's nice to have breakfast with my workmates from time to time, but I can live without it.

Just another data point, but I absolutely don’t miss my 2.5hrs round trip commute. I spend on average 1 hr more working, and run the other hour. And still get an extra 30mins family time. Win-win-win situation. No, I don’t miss going to the office.

A sibling semi-facetiously suggests taking a bus ride out and back, which obviously isn't a great idea during a global pandemic, but... I think it's a pretty good idea otherwise?

Or you could just walk (or bus, when it's safer to do so) to a park, sit on a bench, and read for a half hour? Or maybe even the full hour and a half, so you get some uninterrupted reading in, and you can pick whether you do that in the morning, or in the evening? Or, hell, do half in the morning and half in the evening as you do now, just without the pressure to get somewhere.

I keep hearing how some people (mostly those who don't have to drive themselves) like their commute, and are sad they don't have one anymore, and may not even after COVID restrictions are lifted, but... you've been given that time back to do whatever you want with it. How is that not in every way better than a commute, even one you currently enjoy?

I'm being facetious but also maybe not: why don't you take a 40min bus trip around the neighbourhood and return home before you start your WFH schedule?

It's just not the same... but I sometimes have fantasised a bit about doing it (and other variants, like taking trains).

Anyway I'd rather not use public transport right now. I don't think it's safe.

Or just take a short walk.

I think that's why people go to cafe to read. There's a certain ambiance they've come to expect and appreciate. Maybe what you really need (when it's feasible) is a cafe, or even just a bus with an hourly route you can sit in for a while to get out and appreciate that feeling?

I think a big part is just being somewhere different. Most days I spend at my desk but some days are more about researching and I go sit outside with my laptop (stopped because fires). I'd happily go to a coffee shop if it weren't for the pandemic. It is nice to just have a new scenery and change things up a little.

I should also mention I don't mind commutes that are: walk to bart, read, get off bart, walk to work, work, reverse. I DO mind commutes that are: drive for an hour, sit in traffic, avoid that asshole trying to cut into my lane, and listen to podcasts. (I like podcasts, it is the driving part that is frustrating) It is substantially more stressful.

Could you not get on a bus anyway? or sit in a park?

The locale is not important.

The important thing is that it's time that is literally impossible to re-allocate to either housework or work-work.

Any makeshift substitute won't have that property, and you'll be pressured to skip it in order to do more housework or more work-work.

I disagree. It's just a matter of habit. I spend 30 min doing some language learning exercises every day and have broken my "streak" maybe 10 times over 2 years. Missing out on 10 days is insignificant. There have been weeks where I felt like I should quit. Reading a book sounds relaxing compared to that.

People need to adapt. Just because you can't seem to figure out how to read a book now or listen to pod casts because you only did those things when forced to commute, isn't a good argument against WFH.

I didn't read their post as an argument against WFH, just that they happened to like their routine. I happened to bike to work, about 10mi per day. I rarely get on my bike now, sure I could, but I liked the routine and it really helped me get exercise. Like the OP I'm not saying everyone should do that, just that it worked for me. If I had to commute 2hr in traffic by car I would absolutely prefer WFH.

Sometimes I do a “fake commute” by foot, walking around 15 min outside from my kitchen to my home office. The days I don’t want, I just walk into the home office. Sometimes I take this walk at the lunch break, or after work. I can accomplish errands sometimes.

So it is all about habits and freedom. Turns out freedom is not that easy to manage. Artists and self employed people have to be able to manage such things themselves (think writing an album at home), and it’s interesting to see that many people are struggling with that.

If the air wasn't toxic I usually try to go for a couple walks with the dog around my place in the Oakland hills. Its pretty nice area to wander around. Some steep stairs provide some opportunity for a bit more strenuous exercise which is nice.

Oh right, keep safe then! Hope the situation gets better soon.

Exactly. As I said, I'm comfortable working from home and I see the advantages, it's just that the commute happens to be one of the pre-pandemic things that I miss. It's definitely something subjective, and in fact I would say that the trend of increasing remote work is generally beneficial.

This is an uncharitable, mean spirited take on the comment you’re responding to and you should feel bad for having submitted it. Please take a moment to draw upon empathy before posting in the future.

This is incorrectly being downvoted. The parent absolutely has a point, given GP's choice of words ("you can't seem to figure out how to read a book now...")

When I’m home my family wants to talk, watch TV or do so many other things not conducive to deep focus. On the train I can put on some music, and generally only be interrupted about once per hour.

And it’s not like there’s really any places to get deep focus anymore. The parks and plazas are filled with air pollution, cafes are takeout only and libraries are closed.

Genuinely confused about the parks and plazas comment. Is this a specific regional air pollution concern or related to covid?

I thought that overall air pollution was way down, and covid dispersion outdoors was a minor concern. Where I'm at, I avoid indoor space maximally, but outdoors I am comfortable with 6 ft and a mask.

I wouldn’t think the commuting air is much better than in a park. Outside beats inside in most scenarios, doesn’t it?

I think the biggest mistake people not used to WFH make is they drop too much of their routine. Of course I am not talking about the commute but I refer to simple events from taking a shower each morning to dressing for work. All these rituals are important and should only be discarded where its not viable.

I even make sure to my favorite fast food breakfast once a week and coffee twice a week. Fortunately for me that is but a ten minute drive one way to the closest place to fill that requirement but it fulfills the ritual.

One item to remember to add in to that time and money savings of your commute, you safety and security has gone up as well

In some places there clearly is a push towards "back to the office" for everyone. Which is quite different from "you can come back to the office if that works better for you". E.g. our offices are pretty empty (and thus safer to be in), but available to those that want them, whereas I see customers where there is clear pressure to be in the office if at all possible.

Exactly, I have a 1 bdrm apartment (in law) that I share with my wife. We alternate working at a desk in the living area, at the dining table or a folding table set up in the bedroom. I used to commute 20min by bike in the SF East Bay. I very infrequently go in when I need to do something in the lab (biotech company, not everything can be done remotely).

When I found this place I never intended for it to for it to be full time wfh space for 2 people.

If I knew I'd only go to the office once a month I could live in Minden, NV or something.

Yeah but then you'd have to live in Minden, NV. From a guy who grew up in Gardnerville, NV, it's sure as hell not a place I'd ever move to - if you're looking for the nature and tax break of Nevada outside Tahoe or Incline is probably much nicer.

Is Gardnerville bad though? Never been there but the town seems to have really cheap land, some beautiful ranch properties, reasonable proximity to Tahoe/skiing, and zero income tax. I know culture is not measured in $/sq.ft but as a Californian paying out the nose in taxes for nothing, it seems to be a pretty decent location.

My dad used to have a house there - other than the Basque food I can’t imagine why I’d go back

Where should I go for good basque food? I went to the hotel beside the train station in Winnemucca when I was driving through and it was interesting but didn't feel particularly authentic. Maybe that is authentic Basque-American food...

J.T. Basque Bar; but now that I punch the address in the house actually had a Minden address (well north of both towns). Minden itself is just big box strip mall territory.

Yeah, J.T. had okay food but there's not much going on, almost everyone I went to highschool with is still there doing min wage jobs at one of the fast food places or few stores that Walmart hasn't put out of business. Also, doesn't apply to everyone (obviously) but my experience was probably quite different because I'm part black - select experiences include being called N*gger while walking around town repeatedly, almost being run off the road by a guy with a confederate flag covering the back window of his truck, and having rocks thrown at me by schoolmates. To be clear, I'm not one of those people who care that much about "microagressions" and think I generally have pretty thick skin, but there were some situations where I felt physically unsafe because of my skin color. Also, if you have kids, they are not going to get a good education. Graduation rates were awful, I personally knew 2-3 kids in my class who committed suicide... Beautiful place from the outside and nice views with lots of space, tough place to live in reality.

I like the sagebrush and the wide open spaces. Lived in Eastern WA for a few years. Haven't really been out to Carson valley area much just seems appealing. Also, not sure I want to deal with shoveling tons of snow at Tahoe after 20+ years in Canada and the Midwest.

Might need to reconsider Minden though https://twitter.com/markpmeredith/status/1304932801649623040

So? Ideally nobody would force you to stay at home, just like nobody would force your colleague to go to the office. Different people have different preferences, why not (try to) satisfy them all?

One of the problems of remote work is that it’s kind of an all or nothing thing for your team. If some people are in the office and some people work from home, inevitably (in my experience) a lot of small decisions get made in the office without consulting the remote workers. And that creates a divide - the people in the office end up with more power and authority than the remote folks.

Some teams fight this with some strict rules - eg insisting conversations between people sitting next to each other happen over slack. But I think it will usually work better in the long run if either everyone is in the office or basically everyone is remote.

I understand what you're saying but only with respect to global remote hires. I've seen the same attempts to fight it. But with local hires and optional wfh you just let that sort of problem work itself out. If the by-choice wfh person feels like they are left out its on them to do something about it. Its a personal problem not a team problem.

“You’re welcome to work from home, so long as you’re happy being systematically forgotten about in team decisions and passed over for promotions.”

Yeah, that’d definitely work itself out; but it’s not what I would describe as a remote friendly workplace.

I can't tell what you're arguing. An employee makes a daily conscious decision to wfh and is then upset about any consequences of doing so? Is this person an adult?

I think it’s ridiculous to accept those sort of downsides for remote workers. Working remotely doesn’t have to be a second class citizen to working from the office. It takes work to set up, but it can work great.

This is not ideal. Ideal is everyone at home or everyone in the office. Half half leads to people being left out.

I was forced to WFH, same as most of my colleagues. Most who keep going to work don't really have much choice (apart from resigning for which ain't the best time now). What are you talking about?

> Ideally

You missed a key word in the parent post.

_Ideally_ people wouldn't be forced into multiple hour long commutes either, but that has been the reality for many before this year.

Comparing being "forced" to commute hours (in a house that you chose to live in when you took the job) is a bit disingenuous to being actually forced by a pandemic to not go into an office.

Im happy for all the people that can live happily hours outside of urban areas but the insistence that remote work is uniformly better for all people is just so exhausting. I for one, will be glad when it ends and will continue to prioritize companies that keep most of their work force in office; bringing work into my living space has been terrible for my mental health (anecdotally this sentiment has been shared among other single young people i know in the city).

> the insistence that remote work is uniformly better for all people is just so exhausting

The insistence that we need to force everyone back into the office makes me quite upset.

> His wife looks after kids who are at school most of the day again

This is the real story.

Suppose you're a company that pays someone a really handsome salary. It's a man. Do you want him in the office, where he is guaranteed to spend 0 hours taking care of kids, or at home, where it's not guaranteed?

Don't pin this on the wife. Do you think she'd rather he drive 2 hours a day and not take care of the kids, and get paid $400k/yr, or nothing, because whatever he's doing is actually very competitive and there will always someone else gunning for that job, so this obsequious rehash of the "well just work part time" idea that exclusively programmers engage in does not apply? So there is no actual option, part time take care of the kids?

> Do you want him in the office, where he is guaranteed to spend 0 hours taking care of kids

Almost all of the casual conversations with my kids are more interesting than the casual conversations with my coworkers.

The puzzle of the rare effective and profitable office conversation is kinda like the rare and effective advertisement; we simply accept that 99% of it is useless and force enormous amounts of engagement to promote those casual successful interactions.

> Do you want him in the office, where he is guaranteed to spend 0 hours taking care of kids, or at home, where it's not guaranteed?

I want him wherever he feels he’s more productive. If that means he plays around with his kids 2 hours a day then more power to him.

Just 20 minutes one way adds up to 20 working days per year. That's 4 weeks of unpaid labor!

People are unhappy about extra money spent on Air Conditioning or an extra office chair but the most are happy to carry the opportunity cost of commute. :(

I have a 5 minute commute.

I make it 30 min by walking through a park to have a coffee in the morning and unwind before going home in the afternoon.

Definitely this. My employer is allowing for this flexibility / lifestyle choice by having offices for those who prefer to work from an office, as well as for those times when it would be easier to get together to collaborate. They’re still working through the details, but I think it’s a good balance.

As someone with a comfortable WFH situation, and a 1h commute, I’ll definitely be staying at home most of the time once offices re-open - and maybe even consider moving a bit further out for a bit more space.

I'm not sure. I think it's still too early for people to be comfortable going to open offices.

My company officially allowed on-site work again several weeks ago in NYC. I have one close colleague that tried it, and he was the only on in the office. I know several colleagues in small apartments that were not fans of not being in the office that have not returned yet.

Sure, more space at home makes it easier to drag this to the long term, but even people inconvenienced at home have found solutions for 180 days now, and aren't (at least with my company) jumping to come back.

The most important thing is choice. Some people are better off telecommuting and some people prefer the office. Forcing someone to use the environment that's worse for them will make them unhappy.