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.
Well, fuck that... if it's company hardware and there's no reimbursement, power gets cut to that rack at 5PM local time.
"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."
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.
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.
I am fascinated by how people know these figures seemingly off the top of their heads. :)
The rack consisted of a dual-processor Xeon 1U with a Tesla GPU, two 4U hard drive racks, and a UPS unit.
That's a big difference from my laptop being plugged in at home for 8 hours a day rather than in an office.
Especially if the house isn’t completely empty when you’re at work.
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.
Walking/biking gives you agency that public transit/cars don’t. It feels much freer.
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
The more regular commuters we can take off the road, the better.
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.
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.
(I expect another one of the "surprising industry suffering from covid" articles at some point about lack of footwear sales)
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.