But what if you turn that around? If you are currently remote but considering an offer from a place that's in-office, wouldn't you want a higher wage to compensate you for the extra hassle of commuting? That's extra free time you're never getting back.

There are people who prefer to work in an office, and some who have that preference even if it puts them on a train for an hour or two a day. As long as we don't get legislation to force employers one way or another, I'd expect employees to self-select into those who like being around others all day, and those who prefer to work in a private office. It's a serendipitous solution we've been presented to all those open plan offices that a certain set hate: you can have your own private office with a view, but you'll pay for it yourself.

But shouldn't the employees that require extra subsidies (office space, commuting reimbursement, office utilities/supplies) receive the same overall compensation as those working from home with lower expense to the company? It seems to me that if being in the office is an optional preference for some, they should carry the cost of it.

Yes, that was my poorly-explained point: given that some people prefer to add the cost and time of commuting (possibly in order to rub elbows or attend happy hour), and others prefer to add the cost of a home office (possibly in order to retain focus or make lunch for the family), the costs might turn out similarly, and therefore I hope that remote working doesn't result in systematically lower salaries for those who prefer it.

I'll make whichever argument gets me the most money in a salary negotiation.

Which is short sighted if you value your time at all. Spending an hour more a day commuting is directly decreasing the value of your life.

You miss my point, then. If I have to spend that extra hour, I will argue that it needs to be compensated. If I get to WFH, I may argue that I'm paying for dedicated office space at home and that the value of my work is the same here as in the office.

I cycle into my office every day, 1h round-trip. It certainly increases my quality of life and I'm glad I had the choice (not requirement) to return

If you didn't have to commute, you'd have an extra hour per day to cycle wherever you wanted instead of having to specifically bike that path. Hell you could still bike that path if that's what you like. In the absolute best case scenario, commuting is breakeven, but realistically you are objectively worse off for it.

Except that’s not how it often works. sometimes one needs a little motivation to keep up a routine.

That is not the purpose of a commute, nor is a commute required to accomplish that goal. Think of all the other routines you maintain just fine without having to worry about getting fired from your job if you don't want to one day. If this was really the thing you wanted to do most, you'd find the motivation on your own just as you do with all the other things. If you need to be forced to do something, even if you derive some benefit, it's still not what you want. If I chase you with a machete, you may derive some benefit from being highly motivated to run, but that doesn't mean you should be thanking me.

Life is full of objectively bad things that nevertheless have a silver lining. It's good to look on the bright side when faced with problems you can not change, but it's important not to be fooled into thinking that these things aren't problems, especially when they are within your power to fix. That's how people wind up justifying all sorts of terrible situations like abusive relationships and terrible jobs.

Sure but I don't need a commute to enforce a routine for me. And yours is a very specific example, you bike to work, which means you 1. Like biking, and 2. Your workplace is close enough to your house to allow you to bike. I for example like to weight lift and I live quite far from work. I keep a routine for myself which a commute would not be conducive to.

When this came up before, I was reminded of this video:

https://youtu.be/vMed1qceJ_Q

I love using a bike to get around and do all of my daily activities. But I hate just riding around in circles for no purpose other than exercise or getting out of the house.

it increases the value of my life and many others. Stay home pretty please, I am sure you will be very successful by switching jobs every few months!

Should I get a higher wage for living in a more expensive area in the city?

My wage is related to the work I do. How I choose to spend my money is a personal decision.

Your wage is related to how much other people are willing to get paid to do the same job.

Your wage should also be related to how much work you have to put in. I would expect more money if I was going to work 10 hours a day than 8. And I consider commuting time similar to work time. So, given two otherwise equal job offers, one of which requires a 2 hour commute and one which requires no commute, for me the decision is an extremely easy one to prefer the latter. Effectively, the latter is paying me much more per hour of labor.

Never underestimate the gap between what people say they will do and what they'll actually do.

If you poll employees about literally any topic where one answer benefits them and the other answer doesn't, people are going to respond with a preference for the answer that benefits them.

But in the real world, they still have to go out and find that better job that pays more and doesn't factor their location into cost of living. They're out there, but there far more rare than these articles suggest.

Your compensation could change because of market forces, modern salaries are a product of supply and demand. Previously both supply and demand for high paying jobs was restricted to relatively small geographic areas. Now that remote working is in the supply can move out of high cost areas. However, the converse is also true, the demand can reach people who were not previously eligible. Some of those people would be happy with a significantly lower compensation package.

So to summarize, your compensation could decrease because there are now a lot more people competing for your job. Or it could increase because there are a lot more companies competing for your services.

> If my work is bringing in $X in revenue whether I'm sitting in a chair in an office building you're leasing or at home, I don't see why my share of that should be any less.

This is a common but fundamental misunderstanding of what determines your salary. Your salary is determined by the market, with the tacit assumption that the total revenue generated by your employment will exceed the total cost of your salary & other costs over the course of your career.

And yet that cost goes down when employers don’t pay for your office space…

And my cost goes up when I pay for my own office space.

But you don't have a commute and can do stuff at home during work.

So? That doesn't net me money during salary negotiation.

If it means that some actually-a-dog2 realizes that they prefer it enough to work for 5% less, then you need to compete with that.

Let's say you get paid $100/hr for 8 hours per day of work, or $800/day. Now let's say you have to commute an hour round trip to and from work. Since you need to commute to get paid, it takes you 9 hours to earn that $800. Thus your real hourly wage is $88.89/hr. The person who doesn't need to commute works no harder, but it only takes them 8 hours to earn the same wage. They effectively have an 11% higher wage than the commuter, all else being equal. They could work for $95/hr, making them the more attractive option for the employer, while still being better off than the commuter.

> This is a common but fundamental misunderstanding of what determines your salary. Your salary is determined by the market...

Location based adjustments are replacing this misunderstanding with a different misunderstanding which is roughly "The market rate for the position is determined by where *the employee* lives, not by the many others elsewhere that would be qualified by the job"

I'm on the other side of the coin. I view the associated costs of working in an office as built into my salary. For example, if I go to an office, I suddenly now have to buy gas/repairs for my car, I have to buy office clothes, and I have suddenly lost days per year to commutes. If I work from home, I see myself as freed from those costs.

Put another way, I see my salary as the sum of the cost of the work that I do PLUS the costs associated with me getting the job done. Working from home is simply more economical (and my work/life balance is significantly improved).

In a free market where remote jobs are more desirable than in-office jobs, then eventually, the in-office jobs have to start paying a premium in salary to attract those who would rather want a remote job instead. It isn't "how much is your labor worth?" but rather "how much more do we have to pay someone to come into the office everyday?"

Of course, given your preferences, it doesn't sound like they would have to pay you more to come in the office vs. working at home as long as they pay you what you think you are worth. That is, whether the job is remote or not doesn't affect your pay requirements. If enough people feel the same, then there won't be a pay discrepancy between remote and in-office jobs.

> Put another way, if I'm worth $Y to you sitting in an office, and I can accomplish the same work at home, from anywhere, just as effectively, why should I get paid any less?

The problem is there are likely very competent engineers living in low cost of living areas who would gladly bid lower than your high "city salary" to maintain their preferred way of life.

Given two comparable candidates, the company will go with the one with the lower salary demands.

> The problem is there are likely very competent engineers living in low cost of living areas who would gladly bid lower than your high "city salary" to maintain their preferred way of life.

And there always have been. There’s always been a pool of labor either in the Midwest or Ukraine that companies could call on. Maybe trying to hire top talent while playing arbitrage on salaries either isn’t that easy, or isn’t worth the (relatively) small amount saved?

You haven't calculated the cost of living yet. If I need to be in an office, I have to live within x minutes of that office and any travel has to be on the weekends or paid time off.

This leads to the phenomenon of cities, where a million shmucks try to do the same thing at the same times and drive up their own real estate prices in the process.

Contrast this with moving to a holiday home or holiday destination, probably with a vastly lower cost of living, or going away for a "weekend" but during odd days and missing all the traffic. Sounds amazing to me.

Aha. Interesting. So you're saying an Indian engineer should earn the same salary as a Californian engineer if they're both bringing in the same revenue?

Interesting.

But it won't happen.

Or... you're not suggesting Indian engineers are worse, are you? Because that would be kinda racist.

On the other hand, someone living anywhere in India on the same salary (per contract) as someone living anywhere in the US is earning a higher net paycheque because CoL in India is lower.

Oh my! What should we do to resolve this?

Indian engineers in India did tend to be worse on average than American engineers of any ethnicity when I did a lot of hiring about 10 years ago. As far as I could figure out, the main reason for this was the large number of Indian technical schools with very outdated curriculae and low standards for matriculation, along with a rote learning style. Engineers from these schools needed to have every little detail meticulously specified to get anything done correctly. Pair that with frequently mediocre english, and you have a recipe for disaster.

That's kinda racist. You can't possibly be saying that there's no way there exists an Indian engineer that can compete hand-in-hand with a Silicon Valley engineer on an intellectual level (connections is a different thing).

So this being the case. Why does the Indian still earn less than the Silicon Valley peep?

Please tell me how saying Indian engineers trained in India are worse on average than Indian engineers trained in the United States is racist. Maybe you should also share your special definition of racism, I'm sure it'll be an entertaining read.

You didn't answer my question.

Let's suppose such Indian engineer who lives in India and has the exact same skills as a Google California engineer (including English fluency) exists.

Why does he earn less than the Californian one? Because his Indian colleagues are not as good as him?

On the flipside, I'm sure you'd agree there are incompetent Californians, yet they earn more than highly skilled Indians.

Tell me how exactly that isn't racist.

> Put another way, if I'm worth $Y to you sitting in an office, and I can accomplish the same work at home, from anywhere, just as effectively, why should I get paid any less?

There is something called Win-Win situation. Now you may call it management mumbo-jumbo. But what I see happening is if I save, say 15 hours of weekly commute and getting ready for work etc, I would be willing to take a cut that would seem reasonable based on my money/leisure need. If I keep looking at company's benefit and not mine (or maybe I have none) then of course pay cut seems insulting.

Office perks like almost free meals and stuff are fair game but wage differences are not going to fly assuming they want the same quality of labor remote.

There might be faster career progression for in office people though, and that will be a harder and longer thing to quantify.