This is sort of a trash take to be honest. If I work from home on a home computer then yes I'm using personal stuff to replicate the stuff my boss would have bought if I were in an office, but that's a sunk cost. I was going to own a computer anyway. It's only transferring a burden onto me if I didn't already own a computer. AND me working from home means I don't need gas for the commute, nor the time for commute, nor in some cases even a car. Your analysis lacks an understanding of opportunity cost.
I think this is one of those cases where some costs are offloaded onto me but other ones I no longer have to pay - commuting, and the overall rigid structure of office life. To some extent I think open plan offices made this happen. But I really think for the vast majority of people it's worth the tradeoff...you can structure your time in a way that makes sense instead of one that LOOKS like you're working to your bosses or whoever.
Commuting is that bad, and being in the office is a mixed bag - there's a certain panopticon feeling to modern offices that is really oppressive. I've worked from home for ten years and even when I'm at a client office I find it less productive - however I'm with you on the human connection aspect and make sure I have plenty of time with both old and new people outside of work, and spend a lot of time with my coworkers when I do travel to them. It's absurd that people think there's no tradeoff, and I think people are really getting worse at social interaction.
Remote work has been a godsend for me for two reasons. We have young children, and if one is sick they can stay home with me with less disruption compared to the old days of losing a full day of work.
Also since our children are now established in school and daycare, we are loathe to move. Remote work opens up a national job market for me that pays better than the local market.
And yeah, commuting is really bad especially when you have to make pitstops at daycare and school.
"Imagine if the boss had come to them and said, in generic terms, “there’s an expense that we’ve happily paid for longer than you’ve been employed here, but now we’re going to shift that cost directly onto your shoulders, to the extent that your total effective compensation has taken a major hit.”
Nobody is necessarily thinking on this level, because the perceived freedom gained from working from home (or hybrid) feels like such a massive concession compared to the old way. It's less about the hard economic truth and more about no longer being forced to be at a particular location for a particular period of time every day.
Commuting really is that bad, unreliable, and also expensive. Lots of commuters were sitting on trains knowing that their children were eating breakfast without them. Plus the cost of having a home office means that you actually have an office instead of being in an open plan cattle pen. I take the point about a reduction in human contact but I've worked in a bunch of offices for years at a time and I'm not still in contact with anyone I met there. Working from home might make the alienation more obvious but it was there already.
Feel like a lot of people are just working from home without having upgraded property or the need to make any changes? That's my anecdotal experience and that of my friends.
I work hard and enjoy my job. My work is mapped and visible at all stages to my boss or the rest of my team. Yet sometimes pieces of work get stuck despite me doing all I can with other bits of the organisation to expedite them.
The single greatest benefit of working from home is that when this happens I can just do something else, read or cook or clean my flat or whatever.
My office is near my home and I go in very occasionally, I do miss seeing people sometimes and it can be isolating being at home. But most visits to the office I find there's an hour of my life wasted having to sit upright under unpleasant office lighting pretending I'm busy, or reading the papers as if I'm working, and that's even true in an organisation with an incredibly relaxed culture.
I'm single and don't have kids, but I suspect for others it's all the above plus the flexibility to look after family or not always be at your desk. It's a radical shift in what work is, making it about what you do and the quality of that, not where you are. For some that's very appealing. For others, less so.
Whenever I've proposed that always working from home might have some negative consequences to people and society people lose their shit. They get incredibly defensive and tell me why they love working from home. It's annoying because I agree that there should be a lot more opportunity to do work at home, and it's not like I don't know about the benefits of WFH because everyone yells at me about them.
I think it really is a case by case basis. I worked from home most of the pandemic and the isolation began to really wear on me and I was extremely lonely. Now I'm back in the office more and the forced social interaction does make me feel better and I even was able to make a friend or two. I have a hard time getting comfortable around I know I just need to be forced to interact with people or I'd be a hermit.
Sometimes things can be win-win. In purely financial terms, the employer has stopped paying your office expense, but you've stopped paying your commuting expense. It's a rare person whose commuting expenses are less than thousands a year, plus substantially more than that in terms of time.
Now I'm still concerned about the remote work future. But I don't think that in all cases a benefit for an employer must be a cost for an employee.
I think capitalism will solve this in that it will allow people to be less concentrated around expensive metro areas, repopulating smaller cities and suburban and rural areas, offsetting costs.
There's an initial increase in demand for housing that drives the cost of everything up because everyone wants the same thing all at once, but the market should be able to address the demand.
I think the real division is between those with families and those without.
Working remotely is a huge win if you have a family, especially with young children, which is a zero sum game in terms of time.
Very nice to save time from not commuting and do tasks around the house in downtime instead of wasting time in an office.
For younger people, older people, and single people I think there is a loss in socializing, face to face mentorship, and being out the house. I think it would be gross and weird, for example, to be a 25 year old in the house all day.
Hopefully there will be social and cultural developments that will offset the losers in this equation who may be more socially isolated as a result.
I've been working remotely for over 6 years so I have thoughts on this.
Yes, commuting really is that bad--in an economic time sense alone I would be throwing away 10 hours of my life a week if I had to commute. I have a dog so my heating and cooling costs would be the same regardless. I never increased my housing costs because I wanted more room to work. I already had a desk and chair. My company pays for my office supplies.
In exchange for a slightly higher electric bill, I get a lot of benefits. No commute (as noted above). I'm here all my day for my dog. I save money by not having to buy lunch and I get to eat a wider variety of home-cooked foods than I could ever pack (omelettes don't travel well.) I can throw a load of laundry in. Also, I don't spend 8 hours a day in an unpleasant overly bright too cold or too hot office where I constantly have to deal with noise, interruptions, and a general feeling of being a zoo animal on display.
Perhaps most importantly, I'm more inclined to go out after work and be social or engage in volunteer activities, etc. because I'm not super drained from being out all day and commuting.
You're vastly overstating the financial effects of remote work and vastly understating the quality-of-life benefits.
I wouldn't worry too much about workers "absorbing the extra cost". When our company examined everything, we found that our actual productivity plummeted compared to when people were coming into the offices at least 3 times a week. So much so, that the move (during the height of C19 lockdowns) was to hire even more, less productive, workers just to try and keep up, and productivity still was way below normal, with an enormous amount of cost added to the company.
Far from absorbing cost, people were giving themselves a generous raise by working far, few real hours compared to before. Most workers are not on Zoom calls 8+ hours a day. Even in well established tech companies (like mine), there were, and still are, so many ways to game the remote work system to work even less than the most dogged slackers could get away with in an actual office. There is a reason a whole lot of remote workers didn't want to go back to the office, and it had nothing to do with being afraid of catching C19.
Perverse incentives will, as ever, yield perverse results. It's just human nature.
I think the work-from-home excitement is over. I think companies want people back. There is still a deep level of distrust from management that people working from home might not be working every available second of the day. Better to have them back in the office, where they can be observed.
I don't think most people perceive a bigger living space as a business expense. More space to work also means more space for yourself, family, and friends - that theoretical 12k investment betters you, not just your employer. Add on top the colossal aggregate time saved by not commuting and remote work is a pretty damn good deal.
I agree that we have become more and more isolated from one another, and that's too bad.
However, I think that the analysis of the additional costs to the employee for remote work is missing the accounting of the benefits:
1. Reduced or no commuting costs - for me, back when I worked in an office, I had a 45 minute commute each way - over 7 hours a week. Not to mention the wear and tear on my car.
2. For a lot of people, moving from a cramped apartment in a city to a house with a yard in the suburbs or a small town is a wash. And all the benefits of upgrading to a new, bigger space go to the whole family, not just the employee.
3. Because I've always traveled for work, I've never had an employer that didn't provide me with everything I needed to work away from an office. And, in the old days, they would pay my Internet bill.
I started working remotely in 2018 (before the pandemic), and my family life, my mental health, and my physical health have all dramatically improved.
Now, I'm not saying my situation is the same as anyone else. I've worked for companies doing a lot of technical work all over the world. We are all used to working with teams spread out across the country. The companies already had a lot of infrastructure in place to go full remote.
I imagine that employees of companies doing remote work for the first time are experiencing a huge variety of approaches, and a lot of those are not going to be anywhere near as good as my experience.
I used to commute an hour each way daily. I would gladly have given that up although I did listen to a great many audio books.
This is sort of a trash take to be honest. If I work from home on a home computer then yes I'm using personal stuff to replicate the stuff my boss would have bought if I were in an office, but that's a sunk cost. I was going to own a computer anyway. It's only transferring a burden onto me if I didn't already own a computer. AND me working from home means I don't need gas for the commute, nor the time for commute, nor in some cases even a car. Your analysis lacks an understanding of opportunity cost.
I think this is one of those cases where some costs are offloaded onto me but other ones I no longer have to pay - commuting, and the overall rigid structure of office life. To some extent I think open plan offices made this happen. But I really think for the vast majority of people it's worth the tradeoff...you can structure your time in a way that makes sense instead of one that LOOKS like you're working to your bosses or whoever.
Commuting is that bad, and being in the office is a mixed bag - there's a certain panopticon feeling to modern offices that is really oppressive. I've worked from home for ten years and even when I'm at a client office I find it less productive - however I'm with you on the human connection aspect and make sure I have plenty of time with both old and new people outside of work, and spend a lot of time with my coworkers when I do travel to them. It's absurd that people think there's no tradeoff, and I think people are really getting worse at social interaction.
Remote work has been a godsend for me for two reasons. We have young children, and if one is sick they can stay home with me with less disruption compared to the old days of losing a full day of work.
Also since our children are now established in school and daycare, we are loathe to move. Remote work opens up a national job market for me that pays better than the local market.
And yeah, commuting is really bad especially when you have to make pitstops at daycare and school.
"Imagine if the boss had come to them and said, in generic terms, “there’s an expense that we’ve happily paid for longer than you’ve been employed here, but now we’re going to shift that cost directly onto your shoulders, to the extent that your total effective compensation has taken a major hit.”
Nobody is necessarily thinking on this level, because the perceived freedom gained from working from home (or hybrid) feels like such a massive concession compared to the old way. It's less about the hard economic truth and more about no longer being forced to be at a particular location for a particular period of time every day.
Commuting really is that bad, unreliable, and also expensive. Lots of commuters were sitting on trains knowing that their children were eating breakfast without them. Plus the cost of having a home office means that you actually have an office instead of being in an open plan cattle pen. I take the point about a reduction in human contact but I've worked in a bunch of offices for years at a time and I'm not still in contact with anyone I met there. Working from home might make the alienation more obvious but it was there already.
Feel like a lot of people are just working from home without having upgraded property or the need to make any changes? That's my anecdotal experience and that of my friends.
I work hard and enjoy my job. My work is mapped and visible at all stages to my boss or the rest of my team. Yet sometimes pieces of work get stuck despite me doing all I can with other bits of the organisation to expedite them.
The single greatest benefit of working from home is that when this happens I can just do something else, read or cook or clean my flat or whatever.
My office is near my home and I go in very occasionally, I do miss seeing people sometimes and it can be isolating being at home. But most visits to the office I find there's an hour of my life wasted having to sit upright under unpleasant office lighting pretending I'm busy, or reading the papers as if I'm working, and that's even true in an organisation with an incredibly relaxed culture.
I'm single and don't have kids, but I suspect for others it's all the above plus the flexibility to look after family or not always be at your desk. It's a radical shift in what work is, making it about what you do and the quality of that, not where you are. For some that's very appealing. For others, less so.
Whenever I've proposed that always working from home might have some negative consequences to people and society people lose their shit. They get incredibly defensive and tell me why they love working from home. It's annoying because I agree that there should be a lot more opportunity to do work at home, and it's not like I don't know about the benefits of WFH because everyone yells at me about them.
I think it really is a case by case basis. I worked from home most of the pandemic and the isolation began to really wear on me and I was extremely lonely. Now I'm back in the office more and the forced social interaction does make me feel better and I even was able to make a friend or two. I have a hard time getting comfortable around I know I just need to be forced to interact with people or I'd be a hermit.
Sometimes things can be win-win. In purely financial terms, the employer has stopped paying your office expense, but you've stopped paying your commuting expense. It's a rare person whose commuting expenses are less than thousands a year, plus substantially more than that in terms of time.
Now I'm still concerned about the remote work future. But I don't think that in all cases a benefit for an employer must be a cost for an employee.
Eh I dunno I don't really buy it.
I think capitalism will solve this in that it will allow people to be less concentrated around expensive metro areas, repopulating smaller cities and suburban and rural areas, offsetting costs.
There's an initial increase in demand for housing that drives the cost of everything up because everyone wants the same thing all at once, but the market should be able to address the demand.
I think the real division is between those with families and those without.
Working remotely is a huge win if you have a family, especially with young children, which is a zero sum game in terms of time.
Very nice to save time from not commuting and do tasks around the house in downtime instead of wasting time in an office.
For younger people, older people, and single people I think there is a loss in socializing, face to face mentorship, and being out the house. I think it would be gross and weird, for example, to be a 25 year old in the house all day.
Hopefully there will be social and cultural developments that will offset the losers in this equation who may be more socially isolated as a result.
I've been working remotely for over 6 years so I have thoughts on this.
Yes, commuting really is that bad--in an economic time sense alone I would be throwing away 10 hours of my life a week if I had to commute. I have a dog so my heating and cooling costs would be the same regardless. I never increased my housing costs because I wanted more room to work. I already had a desk and chair. My company pays for my office supplies.
In exchange for a slightly higher electric bill, I get a lot of benefits. No commute (as noted above). I'm here all my day for my dog. I save money by not having to buy lunch and I get to eat a wider variety of home-cooked foods than I could ever pack (omelettes don't travel well.) I can throw a load of laundry in. Also, I don't spend 8 hours a day in an unpleasant overly bright too cold or too hot office where I constantly have to deal with noise, interruptions, and a general feeling of being a zoo animal on display.
Perhaps most importantly, I'm more inclined to go out after work and be social or engage in volunteer activities, etc. because I'm not super drained from being out all day and commuting.
You're vastly overstating the financial effects of remote work and vastly understating the quality-of-life benefits.
I wouldn't worry too much about workers "absorbing the extra cost". When our company examined everything, we found that our actual productivity plummeted compared to when people were coming into the offices at least 3 times a week. So much so, that the move (during the height of C19 lockdowns) was to hire even more, less productive, workers just to try and keep up, and productivity still was way below normal, with an enormous amount of cost added to the company.
Far from absorbing cost, people were giving themselves a generous raise by working far, few real hours compared to before. Most workers are not on Zoom calls 8+ hours a day. Even in well established tech companies (like mine), there were, and still are, so many ways to game the remote work system to work even less than the most dogged slackers could get away with in an actual office. There is a reason a whole lot of remote workers didn't want to go back to the office, and it had nothing to do with being afraid of catching C19.
Perverse incentives will, as ever, yield perverse results. It's just human nature.
I think the work-from-home excitement is over. I think companies want people back. There is still a deep level of distrust from management that people working from home might not be working every available second of the day. Better to have them back in the office, where they can be observed.
I don't think most people perceive a bigger living space as a business expense. More space to work also means more space for yourself, family, and friends - that theoretical 12k investment betters you, not just your employer. Add on top the colossal aggregate time saved by not commuting and remote work is a pretty damn good deal.
I agree that we have become more and more isolated from one another, and that's too bad.
However, I think that the analysis of the additional costs to the employee for remote work is missing the accounting of the benefits:
1. Reduced or no commuting costs - for me, back when I worked in an office, I had a 45 minute commute each way - over 7 hours a week. Not to mention the wear and tear on my car.
2. For a lot of people, moving from a cramped apartment in a city to a house with a yard in the suburbs or a small town is a wash. And all the benefits of upgrading to a new, bigger space go to the whole family, not just the employee.
3. Because I've always traveled for work, I've never had an employer that didn't provide me with everything I needed to work away from an office. And, in the old days, they would pay my Internet bill.
I started working remotely in 2018 (before the pandemic), and my family life, my mental health, and my physical health have all dramatically improved.
Now, I'm not saying my situation is the same as anyone else. I've worked for companies doing a lot of technical work all over the world. We are all used to working with teams spread out across the country. The companies already had a lot of infrastructure in place to go full remote.
I imagine that employees of companies doing remote work for the first time are experiencing a huge variety of approaches, and a lot of those are not going to be anywhere near as good as my experience.