I mean that's the thing. At the end of the day not WFH is at least another 2 hours of your day dedicated to work things.

That's an absolutely massive chunk of time.

Hardly "at least" two hours a day. The average one-way commute in the United States is under a half hour; the state with the longest average commute (New York) is at 33 minutes.

https://www.census.gov/topics/employment/commuting/guidance/...

Being able to take a few minutes out of the workday here and there to attend to minor home duties (laundry, pets, deliveries, etc.) is a pretty significant extra perk on top of the time savings of avoiding the commute.

Yes and you do these things during the day and not during the time when everyone else is home from work. I go shopping at various times, but when I go to the stores during the "return from work" rush hour right after common work end times, it's way more busy, queues are longer, etc. WFH is the best.

You're missing the parts that aren't the commute.

Depends. I can also axe showering, changing clothes, make breakfast during standup, do laundry during my lunch, be there for packages rather than visiting a depot, etc.

A tremendous amount of time is saved just by being home.

I love that I can workout on my lunch while wfh and not be peer pressured to sit at some overpriced mediocre cafe with coworkers like in the office. Also not having all the constant office junk food and sweets in my face is awesome.

I used to commute a 30-40 minutes in the morning from S. Austin to midtown. The reverse route could easily take 2+ hours. I finally quit taking the freeway and started going a thru-town route. Then it took 3 hours, but one hour was spent eating dinner. It sucked and I could easily have written the same software at home (and also avoided marketing people randomly popping in to ask about a feature because they didn't want to speak to my manager (who actively shielded us when he could)).

God only knows how long that route takes now, but guaranteed the suck level has not gone down.

I live in the fastest growing area of the fastest growing big city in the county. Traffic is the only reason I refuse to go back to an office. It can take 45 minutes to reach the freeway 5 miles from the house and then most of the mega corps are 45-60 miles from this location.

While the data you cite is correct, this seems to include the entire working population. I'd be willing to bet that the average office worker has a much longer commute than the average worker.

For example, I suspect the average waiter or retail working isn't going to favor a far away location over something close to them. They all probably offer similar compensation and work environments. However, a white collar worker is more likely to take a faraway job if it pays well.

I still have to get up, get ready for work, and then head in.

I can do that to the amount I need to in about 15 minutes WFH, but it takes much longer if I'm going into the office.

I wouldn't give all 2 hours to work, but you're not wrong.

That’s more personal time, not work time. It’s not like they’re subtracting your commute from the time you have your butt in the seat, and most savvy employees aren’t going to spend an extra 2 hours working at home.

if i use personal time for work commute, i count that as time wasted.

Right, your time wasted, not your employers.

exactly, and i don't give my time for free other than to friends and family

Ever since RTO I bill my time commuting to/from the office. I can WFH and did so for years. So they can pay for it or fuck off.

also who even gets promoted internally and in what way? usually it is meager salary gain for a lot of new responsibilities

99% of time if you want to get promoted or get a pay rise you apply somewhere else if you want your pay to match your responsibilities.

In a certain big database company attempts at such moves for anyone whose position didn't involve huge political sway (let's say the kind of positions directly making decisions on direction of company at global scale) was met with HQ announcing that they are going to remotely track badge reader data and apply "firing with cause" for consistently skirting RTO to both employee and managers...

I am not an oracle, but I know people who work at similar companies, with similar decrees, and the Important People just ignore this and I assume the SVP's administrative assistant (who holds the REAL day-to-day power at most companies) just makes the problem go away.

well, yeah, the actual Very Important People can. Generally those who can probably tell a VP to "go fsck yourself" in more colourful language and expect no real consequences.