That would effectively mean increasing salary of the current employees that choose to go to the office by 20%. Alternatively, that'd mean reducing salary of current employees that choose not to.
Either way, that seems like a horribly inefficient way to deal with the problem. Most companies choose much more subtle approaches, such as:
0) Stop hiring remote -> build a new workforce that does not expect remote conditions
1) Mandate RTO (just like Meta, Amazon, Google, Apple, and others did)
2) Start putting people who do not respect RTO on PIP, or on some other bullshit process that'll threaten to fire those that do not conform while giving you, the company, enough time to replace them with new hires.
3) Slowly and silently follow through 2) until remote is a thing for <10-15% of the workforce.
This gives the company a number of advantages, such as:
1) Not appearing evil
2) Not dealing with disruptions caused by mass employee exit
Companies that really want RTO don't have to do it in a "big bang" way. Such companies would rather do it silently while telling you how they value your opinions on what the future workplace policy should be.
They'll get away with it IIF point 0 is possible. I hope it is not, but who knows.
They'll never stop hiring remote. Remote workers will simply become second class citizens at a company with fewer benefits for the same work. Most people, including myself, will happily sacrifice beer coolers and ping pong for the privilege of never having to deal with an office again.
I do feel bad for people who are coming into the office. I hope those fun events and food are worth the gas money, increased risk, and reduced health going into the office entails.
Reduced health, of course, because of driving. You can also consider most employers aren't going to stock a full kitchen so you're probably eating more fast food and garbage snacks. You're more sedentary because you typically can't walk out of the office for a quick trip to the gym, etc. Oh, also, your sleep is probably worse because you have to be up 2 hours early to get ready for work and drive.
In some ranges it's the leading cause, although overdose deaths sometimes win out. It's kind of absurd that this isn't brought up in articles about remote work. Newspapers run articles about gun violence every day despite it being wwaaaayyyy less likely than dying in an automobile accident, but the far greater danger of commuting is almost never discussed.
And for most people, if you can reasonably walk to work, you're probably going to be exposed to all sorts of particulates from the roadway you're likely walking along. Exhaust fumes, rubber particulates..etc, none are exactly health-boosters.
If the reason to not go into the office is to not risk some accident out in the world, then you might as well also not go to stores, out to restaurants, or movies or shows. You shouldn't even go to a park, and certainly never travel just for fun. Just stay in your house at all times.
That sounds like a horrible way to live to me. There are other reasons to prefer WFH, but fear of the world shouldn't be one of them, IMO.
Fallacy 1: I can work from home; I can't see a movie on the big screen or visit a park from home. Your analogy has improper premises.
Fallacy 2: Many offices, work locations, and entire cities are not walkable and have poor transit. This is your first straw man argument.
Fallacy 3: The activities you listed are presumed to be more enjoyable than driving into work, so the cost benefit risk profile for traveling to them is different.
Fallacy 4: Most driving to work is done simultaneously with others aka in much heavier traffic, significantly increasing the risk of commuting vs other driving.
Fallacy 5: Work driving will occur much more frequently and over typically much longer periods of time than the events you listed. As your risk of accidents rise proportionally to time on the road, these again are not equally weighted.
In short: nobody with a driving-only commute who does not want to RTO is also saying they don't want to go to parks or restaurants or travel. This is your second straw man.
Please bring logical arguments and not straw men.
>Most driving to work is done simultaneously with others aka in much heavier traffic, significantly increasing the risk of commuting vs other driving.
In most major US cities, there honestly isn't much difference anymore. There's always too much traffic, even at the slowest parts of the day.
I'm not afraid of the world. When I am not paid commensurate to the risk I won't take it. If they paid me for the transit time in from home to the office and back I'd be worth $50-60k more. It gets worse with pagerduty. You're on-call and can't take an hour to get home lest there be an incident to need to respond to. So now you're stuck at the office until late at night doing unpaid labor. Driving home tired is a lot of fun too, aint it!
The "drive to work" situation is not only dangerous it's outright wage theft. Why should I want to collaborate.
Anyway, nice strawman.
Do you need to be paid to go to the grocery store or is everything Insta carted to you because you care about your health more than finances?
It's just such a werid argument to make. It is more convinent, but let's not act like the act of getting outside (an act our industry is stigmatized against) is endangering our health.
I just want fellow passionate coworkers to talk to. I slightly prefer in-office, but if the company is too far and the pay is good it's not the worst sacrifice to make.
My location is most important: nothing short of some crazy $500k salary is gonna get me moving into Silicon Valley. Even then, I'm lucky to own land; that much STILL isn't getting me a house out there.
Or you can try copying Google and Apple. Without having a $1B half-empty campus that is currently pretty pleasant to work at, because it is not crowded. The results will be very predictable.
There are lawsuits now because 2 weeks before RTO ultimatum, a employee union was formed so a lot of people think that RTO ultimatum was a Unfair Labour Practice or a union busting move.
The move was so boneheaded and uncomprehensible that a lot of people suspect that the CEO simply wanted to destroy the union even if that takes sinks the company.
Oh, now you have to take hotel seating instead of your own desk and setup, where you have to take whatever equipment is available.
Pay me 20% more and give me a dedicated desk, and I'll go into the office.
A dedicated *office*.
I neither want to see, hear, or smell the guy at the open-plan desk next to me eat his lunch at his desk.
Because I'm sure as hell not doing it for my benefit ...
Those trade-offs are best made by the employee, not the employer. Everyone's preferences and family situations are different.
why just a desk though? i want a dedicated office.
That implies that other employers could have offered lower salaries if they had allowed remote work - and thus that they are paying a premium for getting/keeping people in the office, no?
Another reason it's not worth trying is that the conclusion might be already evident - many top-skilled people are leaving their jobs and taking a pay cut to work in companies that respect their work-life balance. A pay differentiation will not make the best employees self-neglect.
I think the pandemic reset a lot of things, made a lot of us look at the bigger picture. Certainly not everyone, but some people probably thought they wouldn't be proud of their lives if they died of Covid when all they've achieved after school, college and uni was wage-slaving in an open office, sandwiched in between two rounds of commute each day.
Many employees avoided the expense of moving during Covid. Unless employers want to pay these new found expenses… people won’t go back to the office. I’m sure there is a good chunk of staff who are insulated from this reality due to home ownership and seniority - but that won’t last long when people realize market rates for junior staff have risen to that of tenured staff.
- People like me value their work/life balance and satisfaction with the job. I could easily be making 2x what I do now but I'd hate every single second of my job. My old boss taught me "Work is 1/2 of your waking day so you better enjoy it".
- I'm currently working remote for a german company for their average salary. The italian average salary for a developer is around half that. So realistically unless I moved to Germany working remote would still be the most profitable option.
A more accurate wording might be "once you stop imposing a hardship" ... it's hard to convince people to let you re-impose it (for free).
Also, with the office attendance being part of performance review in some companies [1], how do you think the compensation will look for a WFH individual after a couple of review cycles?
1. https://arstechnica.com/google/2023/06/google-makes-office-a...
If employers really wanted employees to abandon remote work, that would be obviously visible as a significant difference in remuneration.
If some employer is paying on-site workers 20% more than the exact same work for the same company remotely, then I'll believe that they truly want people to be on-site; but if not, then those are just empty words, not real preferences.
On the other hand, I do see employees choosing a lower-paid role/employer just to ensure remote work, so that preference seems genuine.