alt Hacker NewsWell on the employee side it’s more complicated than you think. You have gas, yes, and then mileage on your car. And then working in an office means you have to take more time off to deal with mundane things like “the plumber is coming today”. And then 30 minutes of commute is 1 hour a day, which lowers your effective wage. And then of course there’s various other costs like food being more difficult and expensive, higher risk of serious bodily harm or death due to automobile use, and the biggest one: COL. living close to work can easily double your COL for no real gain.
Depending on the city, you could easily be looking at a 100% cost rise in rent, a few thousand on car maintenance and gasoline depending on your car a year, a few thousand on food, about ~12% reduction in wage, and a few days of lost PTO.
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I guess if you consider your commute as purely work time then it starts making more sense. Maybe I’m unusual in that I don’t loathe my commute and see the time as 100% personal time.
> biggest one: COL. living close to work can easily double your COL for no real gain
This is I think where hybrid (with weekly attendance) really makes more sense in theory than in practice, ending up as worst of both worlds depending.
With in-office you pay a premium for location that is good for commuting.
With remote you can choose a cheaper location without the commute constraint (maybe 50% off), somewhat offset by needing more space to setup a proper home office (add back 10-20%).
With hybrid you still need to be close enough that 2 days/week of commuting is tolerable and ALSO need space for a home office.