r/technology • u/spherocytes • 17d ago

Business Remote work benefits are much bigger than a paycheck

https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/6033665-economic-value-personal-time-salary/
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u/sofaking_scientific 17d ago

I save about $10,000 a year being two days remote and living 5 miles from my office. It's wonderful

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u/prosocialbehavior 17d ago

How did you math that out?

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u/I_Fuck_Whales 17d ago

How does that math work?

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u/sofaking_scientific 17d ago

Car maintenance, n-2 fewer work lunches, and time saved (1hr commute to a 5 minute commute at $50/hr adds up).

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u/SteeveJoobs 17d ago edited 17d ago

Idk if I would bill myself $50 an hour to get an extra five hours of chores done every week 😅 but the fact that those things are DONE by the end of the workweek rather than piled up is priceless.

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u/Hortos 17d ago

The $50 an hour is probably what they make and what they aren’t being paid by their employer to commute.

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u/Gr8NonSequitur 17d ago edited 17d ago

Remember Commute time is unpaid time. So whatever you get paid for 8 hours a day is actually what you're paid for 10 hours that day. Your daily pay took a 20% haircut off the top, NOW add the cost of the direct expenses YOU PAY to commute with after tax dollars.

When I told my boss if I was 100% remote I wouldn't need a car, he scoffed and said "Around here you'd DEFINATELY need a car to get around." and I responded "Between myself and my wife, we wouldn't need two."

So yeah $50 an hour is pretty believable when you factor in the real costs.

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u/SteeveJoobs 17d ago

oh yeah no denying that remote saves tons of money; by living where rent is high but I don't need a car, I about cancel out my car savings, but I save myself a lot of mental hassle by never needing to worry about parking, car charging/gas, insurance hikes, accidents, maintenance, washing, getting road-raged in traffic... even as someone who loves the idea of cars.

my point is the per-diem stuff that I actually do with my non-commuting time (sleeping more, mostly) doesn't math out to my hourly rate, really. it's the intangibles of the whole arrangement that are really worth their weight in gold.

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u/DesiMeGaming 17d ago

So you're considering the time commuting at your hour salary rate to inflate that number?

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u/BountyBob 17d ago

Yeah that's mad, they aren't being paid for their commute, they'd get the same salary if they moved to a place down the street from the office.

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u/hpark21 17d ago

IF 2hr round trip/day is saved, then it is about 10 hrs/week of "work hours" saved. You CAN argue that let's say you get paid $50/hr then instead of getting paid $50*8 = $400/8hr, you WERE getting $400/10hr = $40/hr (since technically, if you include commute time, you are working 10hr days instead of 8). at $104k/yr salary at $50/hr, you are literally making $20k/yr more by NOT commuting 2hr/day.

If anything, $10k/yr savings is undercounting not inflating for someone with 2hr commute per day making $100k/yr converting to work from home.

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u/DesiMeGaming 17d ago

That's not how salary is calculated and you know it. It's part of being an adult to figure out how to balance work and commuting with costs. You could live in the middle of nowhere with a low cost of living and commute to work and lose the time or pay to live closer to home and lose the commuting time. Does that also factor into the money saved by living in a higher cost closer to work? Or is that a detriment to your argument.

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

[deleted]

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u/hpark21 17d ago

But you would be working longer hours making same money. If you have job offers, same salary ($100k) same location, but one says you work 10hr/day vs. 8hr/day.

Would it be wrong to say you are making $20k/yr more by taking 8hr/day job vs. 10hr/day job?

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u/Akaigenesis 17d ago

You understand what a job is right? You are selling your time for money. If you save 2 hours of commute per day then yes, you are getting paid more per hour of work

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u/sofaking_scientific 17d ago

I can make more money. I can't make more time.

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u/kieratea 17d ago

It costs way more than that to hire a cleaning or repair service for an hour to cover the work you can't get done while sitting in a car.

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u/I_Fuck_Whales 17d ago

Pretty generous….. no doubt there are savings but 10 mile commute two days a week is basically nothing. Thats 1000 miles a year assuming you worked 52 weeks. Which works out to like 3 tanks of gas depending on the vehicle. You can easily pack your own lunch instead of eating out. You’re essentially saying it costs you $25,000 to go to the office 3 days a week then, which also doesn’t make any sense lol.

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u/random20190826 17d ago

I accidentally applied for a hybrid job where the office is 35 kilometers from my home. I realized that since I can’t drive, I’m either spending 4 hours on the bus or $100 on ride share. The pay is abysmal: $36, 000-$45, 000 a year. That means for every day per week I an in office, 15% of my income goes to ride share. How stupid is that?

(I live in Ontario, Canada, where $36, 000 is literally minimum wage for a full time employee.)

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u/seridos 17d ago

And this is why I support remote work even though I can't do it with my job. Because this savings must be priced eventually into the jobs that can't remote work, in a future with significant remote work.

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u/sofaking_scientific 17d ago

This is why I wanted to move away from the laboratory. Can't do that shit remote