Working from home isn't a free company benefit

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2022-07-07/working-from-home-isn-t-a-free-company-benefit

by crhulls • 4 years ago

10 10 4 years ago

nulbyte2• 4 years ago

Working isn't a free company benefit.

Did I miss the part in this article where it explains why working from home costs more? The company is not paying me any more for my internet connectivity, my homeowners insurance, my mortgage, my taxes, or my utilities. I also don't get a cleaning staff. The fact that the executives feel lonely in largely unoccupied office space the company continues to needlessly hold onto isn't the work-from-home employees' fault.

CodeSgt2• 4 years ago

You'd still have a home and the associated costs if you didn't have to work from home. Utilities might be a bit higher with you home all the time but otherwise those are static costs.

mattchamb3• 4 years ago

My company just closed our local office and forced everyone to work from home permanently. I rent a room and do not have a dedicated office space to make WFH comfortable. In order to make remote work viable, I will have to find a new rental and spend an extra $800 per month for an office. These are extra costs the company has forced on me.

nulbyte2• 4 years ago

I would still have some of those costs. My point, however, is that the company does not pay any more for them because I work from home.

Melting_Harps• 4 years ago

The fact that the executives feel lonely in largely unoccupied office space the company continues to needlessly hold onto isn't the work-from-home employees' fault.

This is seriously the most shallow reason to justify returning back to the office, and the sadly ironic thing is it's rather compelling; I still think it's more that the corporate and large Real Estate owning class has too much investment tied to their real estate portfolio and it's suffering, such that in order to maintain these inflated prices they've benefited from they need to force people back to the office to justify have an office. Rent seeking has to end somewhere and commercial RE is a good place to start.

Furthermore, I hope they see the follow of labour participation flailing as a KPI in their quarterly reports since they love those so much: no cares about the corner office or the exclusive parking spot. Those are relics that only ever mattered to a few people, who now feel lonely, most people just want to earn a living that allows them to do want they really want to do in life, which is not spend it with a bunch of strangers they can barely stand under the best of circumstances on a project they barely care about.

If all things are equal, and the productivity hasn't suffered then their is no excuse for remote first to not be standard for roles that can do so.

master_crab• 4 years ago

I’m not sure I fully agree with the headline’s assumption. Companies make out like a bandit on this when it comes to the fixed office space they no longer have to lease.

Anyways, these sorts of things take time to fully bake into the business model and create second and third order effects. What will really make the difference is if we have some data on companies that are (or are not) succeeding in a mostly or fully remote setting (and additionally whether companies that have aggressively pushed for remote developers in cheaper locales are pulling ahead)

Working from home isn't a free company benefit

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