if you work from home you need extra space which you don't need otherwise. the winners are those that are able to make use of that extra space outside of work.
i have an office at home that is not used outdide work. if i didn't work at home i could save money with a smaller apartment. seems only fair that my company pays that difference
As an employee the cost of working from home is GARGANTUAN. I already life where I want to, don't force me to move to a more expensive place so that I have space for an office at home. I don't need to move for any office, as all offices in my local city (1+ mil) are easily reachable by bike or subway within 30 minutes.
If you don't have a separate office, then odds are you have a sub-optimal work environment. So you're not considering "if you can save money working from home" but rather "if you can save money by working from a worse work environment". Which I guess is a valid argument, it's just somewhat orthogonal to the question of whether or not working from home saves money.
> only a desk of space wasted
There is a lot more to a dedicated, optimal work environment than "only a desk of space". Plus the fact that a LOT of people live in places that don't have an extra "desk of space". Approximately half the places I've worked couldn't give up a desk's worth of space without it being in everyone's way.
So instead of agreeing that there are extra costs to the employees working from home, you argue that they should move to a cheaper city in order to afford a home office. That's definitely... an option. But consider that this is a tradeoff, given that people choose to live in big cities for other reasons than being close to work
My company probably spends millions to rent it's office. It also has a kitchen with a lot of free food and coffee available. So, they'd probably save a lot of money to have a smaller office with fewer people in it, and I'd spend more money on coffee if I worked from home. There are certainly pros and cons for both, and costs associated with those things.
But wouldn't companies also save money by using smaller offices (and maybe by cutting the micro managers who control employees in an office environment)? What you are saying is that companies are capitalizing on the preference rather than any real cost of working from home?
It only seems fair that employees also make financial sacrifices when working from home, considering that the employer is also sacrificing a lot of expenses related to providing office space for the employee, and since productivity has been shown to grow when working from home, which means the employer suddenly has to do a lot more to keep track of all the increased profits. /S
you save a lot of money on office space if you let people work at home; and usually you can save on salary, too- many people will work for less money if you let them stay at home.
This is what I've been doing, more out of necessity than anything else, Office space would cost more than what I'm paying people, and it's much easier to find people in my price range if I don't mind that they live a few timezones away.
Also, because the employee is at home now they can allocate that office space and resources to someone else. They are saving on individuals working from home! They should be compensating for office equipment at home.
Why even provide office space to folks? Just let them work from home and you save a lot!
I always felt this was the fatal flaw in WeWork’s model. Once telecommuter culture has been established, companies realize they can just make their employees pay for their office space and deduct it.
For most things where you benefit from “going in to the office”, the benefit is reliant on having a set of people in the same place. If everyone is all over the country, what is the point of office space in the first place?
Let the people who can work from home work from home. The money saved on office space can be used to increase wages for the people working in warehouses and doing deliveries
Don't forget that, in working from home, you do want to have an office; its just a home office. For a lot of people, that means paying more for a home with an office room. Overall, working from home doesn't save money, it saves time (which is, at least to me, worth more than the extra money is costs to work from home).
I actually make the argument that you should pay me more if I work from home.
If you aren't going to be paying for a workspace, a lab environment, electricity, etc. for me to do my job, I'll be the one paying for those things, so give me more money to pay for it.
If you're not going to pay for an office for me to use, pay me enough to afford a larger home with a dedicated office space.
As someone who prefers private offices to cubicles and cubicles to open offices, I prefer working from home purely because it’s the only way to balance the business’s unwillingness to pay for private offices with my unwillingness to work in an open bullpen.
For many people the separation between home and work has real value and for many people (particularly younger people with roommates in smaller apartments) their homes don’t have a dedicated workspace with a desk.
The WeWorK I go to has nicer furniture, Internet, and lighting than my home. It is in no way logical for me to work out of my apartment.
Many people, especially more recent generations, would happily choose the studio apartment downtown over living in the suburbs even if they worked from home all the time. In my remote job, I personally see the requirement to have more space for a home office as a burden rather than a benefit.
No, but if many people are working from home (and socializing the costs of office space), then the company has less incentive to keep an office around at all, leaving people who prefer working from an office out of luck.
This is just based on my own experience, but I wonder if the preference for working from home is really more a preference to not have to be in a company office. I worked from home for months and then ended up getting my own office space, a beautiful light- and plant-filled private space of my own. Close enough to my home to walk to work (25 mins), but downtown, where’s there’s lots of restaurants and amenities. I love it and I much prefer it to working from home now. I know it’s a huge privilege, but I wonder if companies offered to pay a portion of people’s office rent, if a lot of WFH folks would work out of their own offices.
As someone in my early twenties, I don’t live with my family and don’t own a house. The assumption made by a lot of work from home proponents is that all workers have a great home office space, which just isn’t the reality. I do have a desk in my bedroom, and I can take my laptop to a library, so I can work remotely. But I when job hunting I definitely prefer companies that have created quality in-office space.
You made a comment elsewhere that working remotely gives you access to a bigger talent pool. While this is a big advantage, people who prefer in-person work do exist.
i have an office at home that is not used outdide work. if i didn't work at home i could save money with a smaller apartment. seems only fair that my company pays that difference
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