What I fear is the company wants to collect data on said usage as a solution to reimburse you accurately. Which means you send your employer usage data. Another world I don't want to live in.

> I do have some sympathy for the people who like to go to an office and interact with people face to face.

I think we're arriving at a compromise with hybrid work. Also, regarding gas commute costs, my employer still gives me a public transit card making bus and train usage free. I'm willing to make the trade for more home utility costs to avoid commute costs, even if I'm lucky enough to be able to use public transportation.

And I think if they do it right they can have it avoid some tax, also. But I’m not an expert in that area.

I'm guessing the desire is for it to come out of the company's profits, so investors pay.

Is there a free lunch to be had?

Electricity metering is a solved problem, simply put all the office receptacles and lights on a single circuit and use a CT (current transformer) and a 120v submeter [0] to record energy usage. Landlords use these for tenant energy monitoring and billing in commercial real estate.

[0] https://www.leviton.com/en/products/1n120-1d

Honeywell even makes a 25A model under the name Emon Dmon: https://prod-edam.honeywell.com/content/dam/honeywell-edam/h...

IMO though full remote is not without serious downsides for the workers as well. Globalized market with localized salaries and alienation being just two of them. Being in my third year of fully remote I can testify to the second one.

I'm really surprised that a company like Amazon can't figure this out.

I work for a stupendously technologically backward company, and even it covers WFH internet costs up to $80/month.

This just seems like laziness of the management, and not any actual problem.

I've seen a bunch of well-known companies now that have office space in WeWork's or similar co-working spaces in lieu of having their own office and wonder if this is a decent alternative to forcing a return to office. It also opened up traveling a bit more since I can go to any location and have reliable internet/space for taking calls.

My own company actually did this and got rid of their San Francisco office and instead renting an office in a WeWork in the area and giving San Francisco area employees a membership.

> The first is a flimsy premise because companies simply don't have the power to take WFH away and I think they know that.

If you view this from the position of power dynamics, reality is the issuer of paychecks will eventually win, especially because they will be driven by fear of lawsuits like this. This isn't the first time people got ran out of the office: back when 9/11 happened, everyone went remote, loved it, and then had to go back. Yes, tech wasn't as good, but we had WebEx (slow internet, though), instant messaging (better than slack & friends) and email.

> So powerful, in fact, that it's a hiring advantage for your competitors if you attempt to bar WFH.

I'm not so sure this is the case. For a lot of people, there was not a salary adjustment when COVID set them free of the office. A lot of people moved to lower cost areas... and kept their salary. Eventually, salaries will normalize to local prevailing wage, plus or minus for the job title and positioning of the job (i.e. we are a better employer and have better pay and benefits) and companies will use a round of layoffs to adjust this. It makes no sense to pay a developer SV salary if they are in Modoc, Indiana or moved to Estonia now.

> Billing for fractional usage is not impossible nor difficult, and you can bet if a company was billing a customer for fractional usage, they would have it down to an exact science.

The point the article is making is that employees suing over de minimus costs is really bad for workers. The energy star tag on my monitor and laptop say I can power both for $28 per year. The guy in the article is suing over $50-$100/month. Seems like there's a lot to argue about... so there is substantial risk. It will cost the employer $18k-$50k to deal with the lawsuit.

Right now Amazon and Google have to compete with a startup that is offering a competitive salary and fully remote positions. Can the startup survive if employees start billing them for the cost of their home office?

Not recommending tax fraud, but as a practical matter, these are non-issues.

The onboarding was terrible for the local govt. Mostly focused on legal aspects-they expected me to have office communication skills off the bat and they offered little for training with mobile techs that I was hired to do (I just did one or two projects and they assumed I already had full experience). The office politics were dreadful. Lots of meetings where things were not decided and often missing people that could answer questions. When you reach out by email, they just visit you by your desk, ask clarifying questions and explain things verbally, often referring to a site that I have to manually type in.

The large tech company had a terrific 3 month onboarding process and I was slowly eased by senior members into taking on the more repetitive work. I learned more about the company in two weeks then I did for my 6 months for that govt. If there is a question, I can reach out by email and setup an inpromptu google meet-links and commands to use are shared in the chat and easily used and tested. Decisions were made and I am building connections in the industry with people in and outside of work that do not work in my area.

As a counterpoint to your anecdote, I also just started a new job remotely at a company where they invested time and effort into their onboarding experience and it was miles better at preparing me for my role than when I onboarded at my previous two companies in person.