cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/1125686
Archived version: https://archive.ph/vL1mC
Archived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20230806071111/https://www.businessinsider.com/employees-work-from-home-benefits-as-good-as-raise-2023-8
At least. If you work an 8 hour day, a 0.5 hour commute each way adds an extra 12.5% to work time commitment each day, and it’s considered unpaid time.
Yep, the IRS estimates that it is $0.655/mi in wear and tear on one’s car via the 2023 Mileage Rate.
That depends a LOT on the car.
A small suzuki would be a hell of a lot cheaper than a BMW 7 series… (not in the price tag, but… running costs)
- You might need to buy additional food
- Wear and tear of work attire
- Might need to pay extra for someone to watch pet/child
Also there are additional costs of time
- Extra time shaving or similar (if you know you are staying home some things can be delayed a bit)
- Possibly extra time to prepare food
- Traffic/weather delays
- Extra effort for small things easily manage while at home e.g accepting deliveries, watching pets or opening for maintenance workers
That’s of the top of my head, so 1 hour lost per day is a low estimate.
I couldn’t believe how much more time it felt like I had in the day just cutting out the short work commute. You don’t really realize the extent of how much time you waste going into work until it’s gone. Even a short commute adds up quick when you include all the time to get ready in the morning and decompress at night. Plus all the extra maintenance on a daily driver and gas… Companies making people go into the office when it’s not even necessary are just power hungry morons. That’s all there is to it.
Yup. I have meetings at 8AM. If I had to do them in the office, I’ll have to be up at 6AM to get ready and leave to be able to get to the office in time. If I do it at home, I wake up at 7:50, which gives me almost 2 hours of extra sleep.
If I leave the office at 5PM, I’ll get home around 6PM. At home, I can log off as soon as the clock strikes 5, and now I have an extra hour of time to do whatever.
That adds up to around 3 hours a day that I save from not commuting to an office.
And for many, half an hour primping in order to be seen in public. I guess if you’re still in vid convos that somewhat still applies, but for others, now you can lay around in your underwear and stink and still get work done.
My wife was talking about this recently. She used to wake up at 5:30AM everyday, take a shower, blowdry her hair and style it, put on makeup, and prep her lunch by 7AM. Then she’d set out on her 1.5 hour commute to the office.
Once we started working from home, all of that extra time went to sleeping well and relaxing.
The traveling time I’m saving by working from home, is directly reinvested into having a walk with the lady and the dogs, including sitting on a bench in the sunshine including a coffee, and if the mood is right, we’re staying for my first meeting at 10:00, …
Money can’t buy this, …
I went from commuting 1-3 hours a day to zero commute. It is unbelievable how much of a quality of life improvement it is.
I am grateful I worked in a couple offices before switching to fully remote for my next few jobs, because it showed me how much better remote working is for me.
It’s not just the commute even, my “morning routine” is maybe 10 minutes if I’m not going into the office, 30+ if I am. Need to make myself “presentable”, pack some food, make a to go coffee. When I’m able to just snack and make coffee during downtime waiting for replies etc at the office it’s so much easier, I get another hour of sleep if I need it…
People don’t like offices and are more productive when they’re happy. Who knew?
Honestly. It’s about more than money.
If your boss says you must return to the office, after 3 years of WFH. At best, it shows that they do not value or respect you, and are just making an arbitrary decision in a bid to sell more stocks.
At worst, there might be some insidious reason to make employees physically available. Maybe they are getting a kickback somehow, or selling data that they can only get when you are there, or maybe they are just horny and want to seduce you sexually.
A remote worker is often happier, more productive, and cost less to employ even if they are paid the same as an on-site worker. Offices do not have to provide parking, seating, HVAC, power, wifi, and will even have less physical security vectors.
If some people prefer to go into an office, then it should be optional. Not a hybrid model where they force you to come a certain number of days a week.
At the end of the day unless you are on some kind of probation or evaluation period WFH should be the default when ever possible.
Control is another thing. I can’t tell you the amount of execs I’ve heard say “they’re losing control of their company” or “I don’t feel I have the same control over my people”. It’s crazy that they think that. What do they think the past 3 years have been when they’ve gotten record profits “oh, but our profits would be even better if we had people back in the office”. Sadly no amount of data will override the entrepreneurial “it could always be more” what if that they throw out.
I’m working in IT and as my last team lead hasn’t had any technical knowledge in my area, and he didn’t had to for his job, he wouldn’t even be able to control what I’m doing, …
He couldn’t control whether you’re doing your work properly, but he can control that you "pretend* to be controlled by him.
It’s never about making you a better worker, it’s just about the illusion of control.
Think about it, when was the last time you had an interaction with your superior that actually had anything to do with your actual job? It’s all just a huge charade.
Yeah, but there will also come a tone when the technical lead is being managed by someone with less technical experience than them.
At that point, it is less about telling them what to do and more about making sure they stay productive on tasks and projects that are important to the company.
The last part is important because a lot of the work management does at that level is supposed to be catching all the shit from other departments and setting goals, which does not look like technical work.
Any executive who has “lost control” of their business by allowing their employees to work from home is no more than the ring master of a runaway circus that they never actually controlled to begin with.
I’ve had the unfortunate displeasure of working for at least one company that made a full time job of keeping their employees under their thumb and I can say this much: the more you micromanage your workforce, the better your workforce becomes at professional time wasting. By that I mean finding creative ways to look very busy while achieving nothing of benefit to the organization.
But then again, much of the corporate world runs on incompetence so poor business decisions based on some executives feelings, rather than statistics, aren’t exactly rare.
Control sounds insidious, but there are a lot of ways in which being physically present plays into your psychology and manipulates you into working harder/later/ect. Thinking back to the last time I was in an office, usually when someone was fired/they announced layoffs, the anxiety in the space was palpable. You ended up working later voluntarily just because you were afraid of not being seen at your desk and they’d fire you next.
WFH allows me to be more rational with my employer. They can’t scare me into working harder, and I’m not at all attached to the “office culture” if it suits me better to leave. I think a lot of the “soft power” of the employer-employee relationship comes from physical proximity, which is why you have middle managers not involved with the bottom line profitability rooting for BTO.
I’m on my second probationary period entirely WFH, you shouldn’t be required to work in the office unless the job physically requires it. Return to office is very often a big power grab by shitty management that don’t know how to measure outcomes properly and instead prefer to micromanage. It is one of the biggest red flags.
Commuting is also a nightmare. Thats 1-2 hours a day of slog to get to an arbitrary location to do a job that I could do at home. Combine this with school drop offs and pick ups and the ability to do life admin during the week instead of cramming it all on a Saturday with everyone else like pre COVID and WFH is a winner.
I love those benefits. I would be extremely upset if I had to go back to the office. I’m more comfortable at home and I’m able to help my wife care for my son who is special needs. I save on gas and wear and tear on my car. The fact that I can listen to my music while just wearing shorts and a t-shirt was a game changer. IMO people in general suck and it’s nice not to have to interact with them face to face on a daily basis. Some of my coworkers say they miss being in the office. I think they’re nuts.
7 hours a week and I didn’t even have that bad of a drive.
$50 in gas. $50 in food minimum. That’s happiness lost + costs increased.
I had 2 offers and one was not only a 15k bump vs the other, but the lower one was in the office 2 days a week. That was a pretty easy decision
It’s not a perk. Don’t reinforce their framing
I have not read the article yet but the headline saying “equivalent to an 8% raise” does not just have to mean some kind of soft value. I have to drive 50 km each way to my office. I am much more likely to eat out while at work ( or to hit a drive-thru on the way home ). Given the price of gas where I live, going to the office probably costs me $50 a day more than staying home. That is $50 after tax so you can simplistically double that in terms of salary that it consumes. If I have two jobs to choose from, from a purely financial stand-point, my current job and a fully remote one that pays me $100 less per day are equivalent in terms of the value they bring to my family.
Crap. I have been a “want to be in the office some of the time” guy but making me actually type this out has made me question that. I think I need to start shopping my CV.
