But you would also be incentivized to locate your office in a more commutable location. In some cases, a slightly higher rent would even make sense to offset the costs of paying people to commute.
You do it because it's worth it. The fully loaded cost of an employee that doesn't need an office space is more than made up for with a $1k or so budget. Getting someone out of a physical office saves the company thousands a year in many places.
Additionally, you want your employees to have a comfortable environment as it makes them more productive. If you're going to make your company a distributed company than you need to take some of the savings from not operating large offices and invest it in the remote experience.
New companies also rent office space but at a certain point they buy/build their own. Should we say 'Why some companies say office rental is a waste of money'?
This 1000x. Having an office space might make you feel like a "real company", but then again so will turning a profit. Having your own custom office space can be very expensive, especially if it's tricked out with all the stereotypical Silicon Valley amenities. The funny part is, most people don't care about those and would prefer to work remotely.
So, you're paying more money to make things worse for employees.
Additionally, if you're all in the relative area of a city and really need to meet there are often coworking spaces you can use.
Because when you have a wide-scale every-company experiment like this it immediately squashes any counter argument like “well our company is different because $silly_reason.”
For me having an office available is nice for when I need a change of scenery but I think it would genuinely be cheaper for our company to just pay for daily passes at a coworking space than the rent for our building.
It's not just the office space. The commute is very costly as well. Employees add the commute and all the other annoyances to their salary requirements. It's good for the employer and employee to "keep the money on the field" aka maximizing the time happily making value for the customer.
I can get some co-working spaces that look infinitely better than the office I was going to for $480/mo. For a dedicated desk with locking storage, etc.
I'm saving at least $400/mo just on parking and gas right now.
Even if my employer wouldn't reimburse anything (never asked), I'd eat the $80/mo to save myself 2-3 hours a day commuting.
Sometimes companies do buy offices. But very often they don't, either because they don't want to or can't afford to. Sometimes they buy offices, then rent out space to other companies. Sometimes they sign long term leases, but then change their plans and sublease to others. It's not at all clear to me what people are arguing for here. Companies rent office space because they've judged it the best use of their resources. They aren't being victimized by some landlord class, they're making resource allocation choices.
That might be true in some cases but there's an entire industry built around renting open-plan workspaces to solo founders and freelancers who freely choose to spend an extra $5000 per year and an hour's commute time each day because they feel an "office environment" surrounded by other busy professionals focuses their mind better than the serene quiet of their bedside desk. Many of them are developers.
I don't understand why people do this. I'm paying $1000/month to own a 2 bedroom house with a huge garden. I built my own office at the end of the garden, which I can guarantee you is several times bigger and more comfortable than a work cube. I work remotely for a major US software company. (My commute is 1 minute if I'm carrying a cup of tea, slightly shorter if not).
My employer happens to have an office that's ~25mi outside their main HQ in the city. They love it because the cost per body of this office space is much lower and those of us who can take advantage of it love it because it reduces our commute times.
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