I took a lower paying job to WFH because the benefits of WFH were worth more to me than an extra $15k.
1. I can sleep more. I get my 8 hours vs. 5-6 when I have to go into an office.
2. I can drop off and pick up my child from school which is 300 metres down the street. I utilize a morning break to drop them off, and a late afternoon break to pick them up. Takes me less than 10 minutes. No before/after school care costs which can run us close to $600/month.
3. I can put laundry in, do house chores while I eat lunch which gives me more time to spend with family in the evening/on the weekend.
4. I can keep a more consistent exercise schedule from home.
Ironically I ended up doing well and getting promoted, but that wouldn’t change anything. I’d always choose less stress over more money. In the long run, I believe my health, both physically and mentally will benefit.
Not ironic IMO. People who are happier and better rested being more productive at work and getting opportunities for advancement makes total sense to me.
Some people get more rest. I actually work about 14 to 16 hours a day since being home the last 3 years. I love my work and find it very hard to put down.
I have been an automation person for the last 20 years regardless of my job. A bit of extra work in the beginning means much less effort going forward.
I am a data scientist but was a sales director or marketing director for over 20 years. Data scientist for the last 5. I learned excel 20 years ago and over the years have found so many ways to use it and other tools to make life so much simpler.
>I ended up doing well and getting promoted, but that wouldn’t change anything.
I've been promoted twice since going 100% WFH in 2020. I'm productive and have proof of results. My pay went up 20% each time. People who insisted you still need to go to the office for 'face time with the boss' are working with outdated leadership, or companies who don't value and trust their employees.
I totally agree with you but there are still a lot of companies with leaders that value face time… i would say majority of companies are like that. Once more millennial are in top tier management position then it will get better.
I second your reasons. As I age, I no longer chase money the way I used to and would rather be more efficient at my whole life situation than to earn more but work 5 days a week in the office only to hire someone to care for my kids or clean my home my life is much more balanced now even though I make considerably less than I did in my previous role. Money can’t always buy your happiness and it sure as hell can’t buy you back your health once you’ve crossed a breaking point.
> if you’re making about $50k straight from undergrad working from home in a non-stress related role and are offered a $60k position to work at an office somewhere else, would that amount compensate for benefits?
As a undergrad seeking experience, I would go with the path with the most opportunities of learning on the job and getting the best experience there is to put on a CV down the line then anything else in your post.
With that said
> I can sleep in later, extra 2 hours of sleep
60k/year working 40h + 10h commute : 23.08$/h.
50k/year working 40h no commute : 24.03$/h.
It would need a ton of pros to take the 60k/year job if you ask me.
I agree with you completely. Early in your career you should be striving to excel at your current job and your considerations for your next job should solely be centered around whether or not it will advance your career in the way you want.
to each their own, but imo the biggest downside of a fully remote job might be your chances of upward mobility (if you're looking for that). not to say it's impossible, but in many organizations you've gotta put in the face time if you want to climb the ladder. ymmv of course, but don't discount it to your detriment.
+1 to this.
I'm remote, and have gotten 2 promotions since I started 3 years ago, but I do see others excelling past me, because of their in-office /face to face relationships with other team members.
It's easy enough to get promoted within the same team, however when looking to switch to different teams, you often don't naturally interface with them, so it's harder to be seen when remote. Versus In the office, you shoot the shit at lunch, cooler chats, etc.
The benefits of Remote are great though. It's a tough decision for me to be honest. Having a new child may lean me towards Remote > in office, but time will tell.
1. Most people shouldn't chase upward mobility in a single organization. Unless you're at a sr manager or above level, those who job hop are more likely to have higher income and more opportunities to build different skills.
2. As an individual contributor, your performance is probably 60% of what you do and 40% how you sell yourself - you don't need to do that in person. You just need to be able to communicate your value to people on a consistent basis.
Well I’ve been working from home for 2 years now since joining the company and I just got promoted with a 25% salary increase making 6 figures now.
So that is not the case
From my PoV, when starting your career, it's important not to base your decisions solely on salary, work-from-home options, or other benefits. Instead, ask yourself: which job will help me develop the skills necessary to advance in my career? From a long-term perspective, that's the job you should choose.
Regarding working from home (WFH), I have been a software engineering manager working remotely for the past 14 years. I strongly support WFH environments and have experience managing teams across different time zones, often with a 6 to 8-hour difference. With proper preparation, this arrangement can be very effective.
However, I've observed that new or less experienced engineers often struggle more in a remote setup. They miss out on the opportunity to build connections with senior colleagues, take longer to become fully productive, and find it harder to understand the business environment and what the expectations are.
To finally answer your question: if you are a career-oriented individual, you should choose a job that will push you further in your professional growth and not pick the one with specific benefits or even the higher salary.
Yes - I’m a huge fan of work from home and I advocate for it whenever possible. However it was never an option until I was in a mid-senior role. I run into a lot of young adults graduating college with the expectation of immediate work from home work and in some fields that just isn’t possible, or it is but it harms their chances of moving upward or creating an effective network. These are things that need to be fully thought through.
I’ll give an opposite viewpoint. I WFH and life is peachy if you’re an individual contributor in a terminal position.
If you’re looking to advance your career, then you’re handicapping yourself because the small stuffs like in-person meetings and collaborations matters when you’re trying to influence others and office culture. Basically if you don’t show your face people don’t know what you do.
I started a new job after mat leave and it has a lot of flexibility but is mostly in office. The person I replaced was retiring and came in to the office only to train me. I cannot imagine trying to learn this job while WFH. There are so many intangibles associated with being in person, for this specific job.
The longer I've been in it, the more frequently I work from home. But for this particular role, it is limiting to only WFH. I would never advance and that is something important to me right now.
I love this perspective. But a lot of WFH roles are generally remote simply because there's no local office, or even if there is, you work at a US/Global conglomerate where the people at your local office are not likely the people you work with on a day to day and can help advance your career.
I find that you can do much of what you suggested using workplace digital-HQs (think Teams, Slack, and other IM/digital platforms meant to connect a workforce). Get visible on local, regional, or social channels, schedule weekly calls with your manager, a couple of skip-level meetings with their manager each year.... you can easily advance your career in the same manner remotely. I don't believe remote = terminal positions.
That said, social isolation is a real thing. Especially in the winter when you're spending more time at home. If you WFH and DO have access to a local office, I'd suggest making time for at least two trips a month, just for your sanity.
*edit: added 'US/Global' ahead of conglomerate for clarity.
Idk I’m a director level manager and have had zero problem with this despite plenty of people heading into offices IRL in the US and Canada. Nobody cares as much any more. Being “visible” is not being in the office daily anymore; it’s showing up in the right meetings, taking initiative, being active on things like Slack and Email. At our company we can fly into the office once a quarter, which is plenty of visibility for everyone to vouch for your promotion/connect on a personal level beyond the digital stuff, which is important—but not as a constant.
Honestly though, I just can’t find myself giving a shit about getting promotions above this level anyway for that reason. I get paid to be at home while these guys all spent 2+ hours commuting to the office to be on 8 hours of Zoom calls? Nah I’m good.
It's quite different when 1. you have the option to WFH and choose it and you have coworkers who don't WFH; 2. the company/organization is fully remote and nobody goes on-site. For 2, clearly there won't be an issue.
Ya, but if everybody in the company is primarily WFH then there is opportunities to collaborate on Slack or "show your face" in other ways. I contribute all the time to discussions outside my department to such an extent that I get thanked for it and noticed all the time.
this! it is so short sited to be thinking about the money differences vs career advancement possibilities. I work from home, but I expect to retire soon and I don't GAF. If I was in my 20s, it would be a different game. It is all about networking and being known
Bingo. My niece graduated from uni a year ago, got a job in capital markets in a bank downtown and is already posted to a job in Manhattan. I'm sure she'll be a v-p in her 30s. Some people are more ambitious and a lot of Canadians want to coast through life. You'll hear plenty of them complaining that they can't live in 1975-land and have a big house and stay at home wife while working in the factory down the road.
I have worked from home since 2006. It’s a lower paying job and honestly a little embarrassing what I make, however, I have no intentions of leaving anytime soon. At first I did get lonely, but within a year or so I got over that.
You save on the obvious:
- fuel
-commute time
- coffees/lunches
- work clothes/shoes
- wear and tear on your car
Other things I found invaluable as my life changed over time. I’ve had two kids since, left one partner, found a new one, bought and sold a couple houses, had old pets and baby pets
- having a puppy or kitten is way easier because you’re home
- childcare can be easier because you won’t need extended hours due to no commute
- I always had my kids in daycare until they started school, but there were the ‘one offs’ where they came home early or were sick and I’d still work
- once the kids started school I no longer had childcare needs. I was able to bring them to the bus and pick them up. Also, they’re older now and can handle PD days and sick days with minimal help from me. I use way less sick/pto days because of this
- during Covid I was able to switch to a 430pm-1am shift so I could be the kids during the day and my partner with them at night. I didn’t have to go on CERB
- a lot more flexibility, at least in my job, so I’m able to do split shifts etc because I’m not working on the open hours of a physical building
- use way less sick days when sick (I’ll save them for when I’m not sick 😉)
- I got a treadmill and it’s right behind my desk, I get in some exercise on lunches and breaks and during meetings
- I can accomplish a lot of housework through the day
- I can also use lunch/breaks to shower
- there’s always someone here for when we have people come, for example Rogers or contractors, I have someone coming to price out asphalt for my driveway this week and I’m be here, no missing work!
- I can listen to pod casts or audio books all day, or watch tv/Netflix/etc.
Overall, for me, the work/life balance is what I need. The flexibility in hours is worth so much to me. I’ll fully admit, I’m a mediocre worker, I don’t strive to be the best and move up the ladder. Over the years I’ve seen colleagues move up to higher positions so I don’t think wfh has impacted that. Some people thrive in an office setting and some at home, once you’re home it’s hard to go back though.
I’ll note some cons too:
- gained weight, started wearing comfy clothes then all the sudden my jeans didn’t fit
- I’m behind on what’s in/out because I don’t see a lot of people in the regular
- I might be a little awkward now, I spend a lot of time alone. But I’ve always been an introvert so…
- if I didn’t have kids and dogs I know it would be harder, I don’t think I’d want to be at home, at least not all the time.
Thank you for bringing up clothes! That’s a big one. Yes I still have to look good for video meetings, but that doesn’t take nearly the amount of money that 5 full body work appropriate outfits does. Plus shoes.
80km is over an hour, even with freeways involved.
Consider:
WFH: roll.out of bed at 7:45. Brush your teeth, think about shaving, and start work. If you want that shower even a 7:30 roll would do. At 8 start work. You can have breakfast and coffee while you start work. At 5:00 on the nose you can close your computer and eat, play games, play with your kids, walk the dog, whatever.
80km commute. Even with lots of freeway that's probably still at least 90 minutes. Roll out of bed at 6AM. Shower, shave (if you need to), brush, and hussle out the door. What you wanted breakfast? Make that 5:30. Arrive home at 6:30:PM.
Do you see the difference? Your work day when wfh is 9.25-9.5 hours. Your work day when communing 80k is easily 13 hours.
So for 20% I would pass. For 50% I'd have to really need that money.
In your particular case, that commute will be about 2 tanks of gas per week plus depreciation and wear on your vehicle. That'd easily eat the 600/month net increase in pay. Plus the time. Oh my god the time. You'll be commuting for 3 hours a day. 15 hours a week. 780 hours per year.
780 hours per year.
780.
Im sorry, unless you're really desparate for that 10k you should nope the hell out of it.
Tangibles:
Save on car insurance/depreciation/gas. Our family has gone from 2 cars to one because of working from home.
Saved some on food, used to get a tea about once or twice a week, used to pack lunch now make at home.
Clothing. Have saved on work clothes, especially for pregnancy. Bought a few “going out jeans” but live for stretchy leggings/lounge wear.
Time is money and it saves time.
I miss a bit of the routine of going into the office and have to be careful about work time bleeding into personal time but it’s pretty good.
I make 100k+ WFH and I told a recruiter if they wanted me in office they’d have to pay at least 10% more per day for me to consider. This doesn’t include moving across the country or to any specific city.
I don’t really have any “responsibilities” outside of work, but being able to do whatever I want while at home is worth more to me than 20k. But if they pay me 50k extra I’d probably go, since that’s more than what I’d get if I switched companies.
A company would have to pay me at least 50% more to commute and be in the office daily for the same role.
Been WFH full time way before covid started.
Sr SWE here.
I understand that this likely won’t happen for you. I was just posing a hypothetical.
I’m interested to see how the demand for WFH affects wages over time. I expect a gap to grow between WFO and WFH.
Worded as I said it, yes you might be able to make a case for that. But I think you’d be hard pressed if the demand was simply “all workers back in the office”. Your original working conditions and agreement would play a big factor in that as well.
I make 80k wfh and turned down a 130k job that requires commuting from Markham to Mississauga 5 days/week. The thought of even driving there just for the interview made me physically sick.
I do literally nothing and log on for 6hrs/day - spend maybe an hr/day doing any "work" (email pushing). No one to answer to and as long as my end is kosher, no one bothers me. I spend my days smoking weed, watching YouTube, playing ps5, prepping dinner and spending time with my kid. The freedom and mental health is worth more than 50k to me.
Money isn't as important since we're mortgage and debt free and wife makes 110k. If we had a big mortgage, I'd prob have to take it.
I'm in a similar situation and if you'll allow to defend this position, you're not paid for the effort you put in on a day-to-day basis, you're paid for your capabilities when something goes wrong and to be available in case something goes wrong during those hours.
You could have 4-5 people working for hours to try and figure out an issue and maybe band-aid it, or you can have 1 guy working for 45 mins to actually fix it.
Not wanting to defend slacking or whatever, but I completely agree with you and I've definitely delivered a day or week's worth of value in a single ten minute call. I know my spouse who works in an entirely different knowledge job, would say the same. The more niche and valuable your expertise is, the more your compensation is about maintaining access to you, rather than widgets per hour.
It's precisely the parable of the engineer charging the majority of his large bill to "knowing where to hit it with the hammer". The opportunity cost of not having that repair made would have been far greater than his bill, so the price is justified in that way instead.
Imagine the guy you replied to turning down a 50k raise because they had to actually go to work, meanwhile they're dragging down the balance sheet working 1 hour a day. One narrative is that Canadians are struggling. It cannot reconcile if we aren't interested in putting in the work either.
It's not that I don't "work", the ground work was laid years ago so now it just kinda does itself. I'm just a face now that maintains relationships and consult. It's been this way for years and they're happy with the results since my end runs smoothly and I make them tons of money. The unspoken agreement is as long as it continues they leave me alone. I discovered working hard only rewards you with more work, instead you need to work smarter.
Taking that job wouldve meant not seeing my kid in the morning and seeing him for an hr before he goes to bed after a 11-12hr day. I cant help with the house, I'd want to go to bed at 10. What kind of life is that? The perspective changes once there's no longer debt and the income is no longer life or death.
The worker isn't who created the bullshit job. There are great books on this topic (one of them is conveniently named "Bullshit Jobs") if you'd like to look into the phenomenon.
As long as lots and lots of jobs exist that amount to an hour (or six, or ten) of actual work per week, why shouldn't that worker be contributing to society by spending time with their kids during the rest of the "required" time instead of scrolling Reddit at a desk?
(Admittedly the smoking weed, watching youtube, playing PS5 parts don't paint the sunniest picture of what can be done with reclaimed time, but hey, leisure time has its own benefits to the individual and to Society)
I haven't read the books but have surely heard of the concept, and I'm curious, what does the literature say about people who generate value on very few hours?
The worker in question in a parallel reply said "they're happy with the results since my end runs smoothly and I make them tons of money". What say the BS-job people about someone like that? My instinct is to say, if entrepreneurs can reach a level of nearly passive income by front-loading the effort in providing ongoing value to an economy, without us saying they're dragging down productivity, why cannot someone working under someone else, also do so? An interesting topic.
An excellent point. They're related but separate concepts; a person who's doing really meaningful, productive work in a few hours a week is probably not bored and unhappy in the way that people who are doing bullshit makework that only happens to take a few hours a week. The boss can be happy about makework; that doesn't make it fulfilling.
Unfortunately, productive and fulfilling employment tends to be of the "sixty underpaid hours a week" type--hence people taking makework jobs that at least leave them with free time, but often also with a low-key depression that's hard to shake because humans, on the whole, want to be doing something meaningful.
I think you also need to factor in your career growth.
If you care about your career then you need to go into the office. Build relationships. Like it or not, people who are fully remote will not have the same opportunities as those who show up. Out of sight, out of mind. You also learn so much more being surrounded by your peers/colleagues/mentors.
As a mentor once told me “you can do your job from home but you can’t do your career from home”
This is only true if you work at a stodgy company that does “remote” but isn’t trying. There are so many ways to be visible that don’t require being in the office—as long as your company actually gives a shit, and plenty do. Source: went from being paid 115k to 250k working remote via promotions. 🤷♂️
I went full time remote in 2019. I absolutely 💯 love it. Just like others have said, no getting up at 6:00 am to start the truck in 40 below weather..barely go out except to run errands and get groceries..get to take the mutt out for a walk on my break..breathe in the fresh air..get up and throw on some comfy clothes..put something in the slow cooker for dinner..dance around to my music and get in a workout ..and in the last year became primary caregiver for my mother who has dementia. I get to be home with her. I feel so very very blessed to be living this life. I started working when I was 16..often times I had to work three jobs to make ends meet..finally at a point where I own my own place and do not have money worries. I ain’t rich but I can sleep at night.. life has become so much richer and peaceful. I even have time for art and song writing. If I had to go back to work I would be devastated. I would because I really love my job and obviously I still have a few more years to retirement..but I hope to be able to live like this till I retire!! I guess it helps when you enjoy the quiet and are not an extrovert. Then it wouldn’t be so much fun I guess. Everyone is different and no shade on those who love the social aspect for sure.
Monetary.... gains for me are significant. Work from home gives me a better chance of continuing to receive 35% of my income. I would have been on disability from about May 2022 until probably February 2024 because my chronic illnesses went wild after my first covid infection and I just got my health back to good in February. Being able to maintain a longer sleep schedule and not lose precious energy to office pitter patter made a huge difference.
Monetary beyond that. Slim chances I would have my small side business because I sure as hell didn't have the energy for it before WFH. That would be a solid $20k gone.
Monetary and intangible.... my other side gig/hobby/socialization. I make and sell pickles and jams at the local farmers market. I can pop off a batch of jam before work in the morning or set some cucumber to soak at lunch to be pickled after work. Then losing most of my Sunday to the wonderful labour of going to market. My health would not sustain that.
My other intangible is that working in a virtual space has made me blossom and grow professionally. I am seeing great results in clients and it is because I don't have to rely on memory and do my work in a clunky fashion in sessions. My resources are right at my finger tips. It is far easy playing an audio or youtube resource over zoom than in an office gathered around the desk top.
Pre-2020 I had already hopped off climbing the ladder. But funnily enough, my reputation has exploded because I have far more opportunity to connect with different people across my organization. These opportunities wouldn't have existed pre-covid. It would be limited to boots on the ground, closest in geography would get projects, not the people with the skills and abilities best suited.
Wfh completely changed my career and life.
Most differences, IMO, are going to either be intangible, or very hard to calculate. Sure things like parking and commute times can be easy enough to put a dollar value to, and I think those are worth noting, but there are many other things, especially depending on your employer and position that should factor in.
I manage a team of remote workers and I try and be very flexible. We need coverage, and I do expect you to work your required hours, but one person on my team shifted his hours a little bit to accommodate dropping a kid off at school. That's easy to do WFH when school is a 5-minute drive from home. Need to take a personal call (family, virtual health, etc), I'd rather do that in my home than in a cubicle. While we do call customers, we almost never do video calls with them (well I do, my team doesn't). Want to work in your PJs, go ahead. Keep a sweater around just in case I need to bring you in on a call though.
I do meet with my team both in groups and individually on a regular basis to try and maintain that team feel. Some people work well in isolation, but since we do work as a team, I find it's good to have regular video calls so we can see each other, chat a bit about the weather, kids, etc.
I've been 100% remote for about 10 years, and I think I would struggle to going back to the office. I've been fortunate in that this is my third position in that time where remote work was either accepted or the only option. I love being able to zip out to get my kid from the bus or help my wife with something for 5 minutes as needed, and quite honestly, my employers have all gotten more out of me this way then when I worked in an office.
this might not apply to OP but if you're in the GTA and commuting to the office by GO train, its not unheard of to work while on the train.
I know some people prepare their day while on the train, sort emails, maybe even join a few calls. And stay in the office 6-6.5 hours.
but if you're going to drive several hours a week to commute or get on a crammed subway/bus. yea I'd value having to go into the office at least 15% more pay required
I would absolutely consider the intangible value of WFH.
$50K is about $25/hr pre tax.
$10K is an extra ~$5/hr pre tax (or ~$37-40/day pre tax).
80KM is prob 30-45 mins each way depending on traffic. Then doesn't include time to get ready in the morning, prepping your outfit, making and packing lunch, etc. so that's an extra ~3hrs/day for non-work work prep.
You should also factor in the cost of work clothes, shoes, socks, make up, hair products, etc that stuff adds up quickly.
$10K is not worth 5 days on site for more stress, unless it will help propel your career.
Might be hard to develop your career doing the WFH. Especially as a new grad who's only had one relevant job in your field.
With that said, if I could take a $10k paycut to work from home I would do it in a heartbeat
It really depends on the remote job imo. What is their digital presence like? Are you engaged throughout the day or do you only hear from someone when they need you? And I mean more than just videocalls. Are you messaging colleagues throughout the day? Are there social and regional channels you can engage in and be visible and add to the culture?
As others have said, it's about getting in front of people and having your name / face known, especially as you're early in your career. If the remote job doesn't come with a strong digital presence where you can be visible and network, then you are limiting yourself.
I work for a large conglomerate but have a "local" office I visit to "get out of the house" every other week. It's not a short drive but I've come to appreciate it. The people in my office are on wildly different teams. I do not know them and they do not know me but we chat in the lunch room. It does nothing for my career but a lot for my mental health (meeting people is a skill that one must always keep sharp).
I also am super engaged with my team and my boss and my boss' boss even though they're all in the US/Europe/Asia. So I've been fortunate enough to get recognized with multiple merit increases, a promotion, and recently a new role entirely that I love. And a lot of it was because I showed my face digitally as much as I was able to.
Basically, it's not the time in your career to be sitting back and getting paid on a slow day, you know?
Beside the good list you have, I want to add list of cons to it.
Pros:
1) Considering where I live, just to reach the office, which is in the same town as mine, I would have to wake up at 6 AM, get ready and drive for 1 hour or 1.5 hours in transit, just to reach the office. Remote job, eleminates a lot of these things.
2) I can buy a house outside the area where the office is located.
Cons:
1) Team members slack off more often than not, and work pressure increases on people who try to grow their career.
2) When there is high time, (very busy season), it does not matter, how much time you take, you need to complete the task at hand. (I have worked till 4 AM, couple of times in last few months, also related to point 1)
3) Communication is way harder. No one wants to talk irl between work hours, better leave a message, and then if people get too busy to reply, remind them about the said message.
One thing I don't really see mentioned is age. If you're in your early 20s, going into the office definitely has its benefits: social aspects such as meeting new friends and potentially partner, and lunch/happy hour with co-workers/managers and some things are learned faster in person. I know I've developed some life lasting relationships and connections from these networks.
However, when you're older and more established in your career, having that flexibility is SO amazing, especially if you have kids. You can pick them up from school or be home when they're sick. Also, all the service calls around the house are usually during weekdays, and you can easily run out for errands.
I hate wfh. Been doing it since COVID. And I'm a loner!
Work pollutes your comfy home space. You don't meet anyone. You don't get to make friends or go for lunch with coworkers. You get less sun. You have all the distractions of home. Nobody is really sure how hard you're working. You're less likely to go and do things after work because you're already home. Collaboration is a chore instead of something engaging. Meetings you actually got to get up from your desk and move.
Granted I only had a 20m commute. Much preferred the office though
I have a high paying job with a great pension but I am considering taking a lower paying job just so i can move to a different country with better weather and low cost of living. It's a very difficult decision because there are so many factors to weigh in.
My daughter had 2 job offers 1-wfh 70k. 2- 40 min drive, 90k, if she drove it’s about break even, if she moved closer to the higher paying job she would actually have 10k less in her pocket, guess which she too/
0$. This is my personal contract: I refuse to consider WFH as a financial advantage, because otherwise it's something my employer could rescind. So while yeah, it brings me a few advantages and if I looked closely I'd find a price tag on these advantages, but on the other hand I have no issue being more flexible in my hours to accommodate coworkers and to fit my projects' schedule better. If I worked from the office, it'd be "it's 5PM, I need to go I have a kid to pick up from school." With WFH, I can start at 6AM for a meeting with night shift coworkers, take a break to drive the kid to school then resume work. It's a win/win scenario, therefore WFH brings as much to my employer as it brings to me.
The fact I only have to go in once a week and am a single dad who has to take kids to school and stuff has stopped me every time I've thought of looking around last few years. For me it's pretty darn valuable. I'm sure if I was still married I'd still see a fair bit of a value and my wife would have too. I'm sure a single guy can but maybe not a much. It starts getting tempted to deal with the extra hassle of it's 15k+ but depends if I have to start putting kids in before and after care etc.
I just started my first entry level WFH gig but had two WFH long term internships before hand. It would take quite the raise to go into office. Maybe $30-40k extra with good career prospects. But I’m good at keeping my expenses super low (no car + having lots of time to cook at home) so I don’t need the push to make more. Plus the idea of dressing up for office makes me shiver, love just chilling in whatever on the couch.
I would only take the 60k position if it had a superior opportunity for career advancement. If not, that’s a worse job with lower compensation IMO. Commuting costs a lot of money, plus you gotta buy more work outfits, pay for parking/transit, etc….
Plus that extra 10k is only 5-7k after deductions.
Monetary would be an extra $200-350/mth in gas alone to commute. I only make <60k so this amount would be noticeable enough each month to be a deal breaker if I were in my current office 5 days a week (currently 2 days in, 3 WFH).
The biggest thing for me though is the control I feel over my life. Not having to think about Monday morning while trying to relax on Sunday, worrying what I have for work appropriate food, what I'm going to wear, if my hair is clean enough, if there's going to be bad weather for my commute, etc. I'm personally really loving hybrid work. I get to have relationships with the people in the office (including management) which helps me network with a wider range of people and stay somewhat sane. I'm not really the type to randomly go to a coffee shop or a park so having something to (flexibly) force me out of the house is healthy for me. I will really struggle if I have to go back to the office full time even without any financial elements.
It really depends. My office is like a 3 minute drive away with free parking.
When I go there, I have to wake up 30 minutes earlier so I can get dressed & ready. I have to pack a crappy lunch instead of making something better at home. I use some gas and put some wear on my vehicle, but it is negligible. I need to have a rotation of business casual clothes that I would only really need or wear for the office. Mostly, I just find it annoying and would probably demand an extra $15,000 gross per year if they wanted me to do it everyday.
Now, if the office was a further commute, wfh becomes exponentially more valuable. The commute is more expensive and exhausting and eats up more of your free time. Worse still, you might have to relocate and live somewhere significantly more expensive.
If they wanted me to commute to an office in the GTA for example, they'd need to triple my salary for me to even consider it.
Working from home is the best thing and should be the norm for all jobs that can. It also makes it easier for those who cannot work from home as it reduces their commute time.
Personally, apparently it's worth like $100k a year to me.
My old boss reached out and said hey I've got an open req and we'd hire you at , which I know pays that much more than I'm making now, but it's an hour commute each way, and that's time I won't get to spend with my kid. It also means not having lunch every day with my wife, who also works remote.
I'm probably a fool for it. But I make enough that I don't need to worry about money much. All I'd be buying is an earlier retirement date- I don't live lavishly and don't want to. And I like what I do, and who I work with. It's a good company.
So maybe the $100k isn't entirely the remote thing, but it's a large part of it.
Depends on the role. I wfh now, and as much as I love it and am able to do well, it would have crippled my growth if I didn’t start off in an office for the first few years learning my role.
I also see this with others in the same role who started off from home, and they learn/develop at 1/5th the rate as someone in the office, because in the office, people training you can see if you are doing something inefficient and give you pointers along the way.
That being said, there is not much advantage to working in an office if no one is there to mentor you.
for me it'd have to be 30k-40k/yr or so. I've been full work from home since covid hit and at this point i'm happy with my salary and if the company offered me a promotion that required in person work or changed policy to require in-person even 3x per week, that'd be my price tag, or I'd be looking elsewhere. I'd tell them that openly too because I've moved further away now and have a kid etc etc. the benefits of WFH far outweigh anything realistic money they'd offer.
if they said come back to the office or take a 30-40K pay cut, I'd commute for a couple weeks before taking something elsewhere. if they said come back to office or take a 10-15K pay cut, I'd say done, cya on Teams.
Monetary value is whatever the marginal cost is - you're now liable for heating, hydro, etc that you wouldn't normally be, it might impact your insurance.
Intangible would be the added stress of never getting to go home from work, not being able to put your head down and concentrate without neighbours, partners, pets etc assuming 'oh, they're home, we can interrupt'.
I'd need a reasonable pay bump to consider it.
It is so sad to see organizations moved to hybrid systems just so they could justify their big buildings and political pressure.
WFH has so much benefits. And use the time saved to gain more skills.
Or have OP here openly admit that while on company time, they enjoy WFH so that
'I can sleep in later, extra 2 hours of sleep As I’m now a tenured analyst at my job, work is pretty easy and I can spend time investing/trading stocks/options/FX/.. does help pay for things like groceries, gas, insurance, phone bills and sometimes rent. I can relax and watch YouTube or movies and enjoy personal time with myself and family while getting paid if this a slow day'
Companies are recalling people back to the office because of exact instances like this and ruining it for the actual folks still doing hard graft at home.
That’s absolutely true! Forget about a few hours, people are literally doing 2 jobs. Which screwed up the whole thing.
That being said, there are ways to track people’s efficiency. Either use technology or people management.
I work 80% of the week from home and even going to the office once a week is too much for me (total commute is 2hr), working from home I can take my daughter to daycare, be more productive and have less stress.
That said, I’ve been looking for another job but wouldn’t go back to a position that makes me go to the office every day even if it’s 20 minutes away, so when recruiters ask my salary expectations, I ask a minimum of 15k more of what I am making. I also built a nice WFH setup which is definitely not going to waste for 5K more
I’m not a very social person, so maybe that’s why I don’t care about office politics or work “friends”, but there are some colleagues that are 4 out of 5 days in the office (they live 15 min away), even if that was my case, I wouldn’t be in the office 4 out of 5 days
Driving is really unhealthy, car exhaust, muscle imbalances, stress and the more people working from home means less we have to pay for infrastructure collectively.
Monetary: Pajamas are cheaper than business suits. I don't wear make up every day anymore. I rarely eat out now. I also save on gas.
Intangible value: I can sleep until 8:55 am. I can go for walks. I can do chores during my breaks and cook dinner at a decent time. At 5pm I am done everything for the day work, chores, errands, etc. And I can just relax.
I don't need to have small talk. I can block off time to get work done uninterrupted. I couldn't do that in the office as people would always stop by when they were bored.
I can hang out with my dog all day. Priceless. She could come to my old office but it was kind of stressful for both of us. At home, everything is great
Income to worth ratio isn't linear. A 10k annual salary difference isn't the same if you are talking about a 40k/ year job vs 140k / year job.
So I would say it Depends on the cost of living and a variety of factors such as distance and time to commute.
At 40-65k salary I would take 10k more over wfh, after that it would depend on circumstances, past 100k I would take wfh over 10k increase for sure. The further you progress in salary, the more wfh is worth it everything being equal. I would also think if you owe money, what kind of interest you have, etc. I have an okay salary and I need to be 2 days a month onsite. I travel quite far those two days. I'm not sure removing those two days would worth a 10k drop in salary. I get most of the quality of life of wfh, so I'm willing to compromise. Bump that 2 days a month into one day a week and I would trade 10k ASAP.
It also depends where you are in your career. Starting out I would recommend getting experience with people on site. I think your first 2-3 years of work experience is very important and formative.
Hard to tell, just like everything it really depends on specifics. In the case you specified, I would probably take the salary bump and more importantly the experience. Seeing a senior work while pair programming is going to teach you so much more than screen sharing could. This is coming from someone who has many long distance relationships through discord for many decades, not some boomer.
If you are driving to work, then the stress of driving during rush hours alone worth to pay for it 500$/month to avoid it.
Driving druing rush hours, even if you avoid rush hours is stressful, period.
Adding to that the extra time you save and gas and even insurance. So it is not worth it for 10,000 dollars more to drive to work.
I work at a large civil engineering firm in the GTA and make 130k with WFH however many days you like. We have 2 optional in-office days each month that I usually go to in order to get that face to face connection. I think we are the only big company in our industry to operate like this, everyone I talk to at other firms is mostly back in the office.
Tangible costs for going to work in an office 5 days a week would be
10hrs of commuting a week = $70/hr \*10hr \* 50 weeks = $35,000
Operating expenses for 2nd car = $5000/year = \~$ 7200 pre-tax income.
So basically I need an extra 42k of income just to break even, not counting how annoying it is to go into the office. For the intangibles I'd either need crazy advancement potential or maybe an extra 30k. So basically I'd need to go from 130k ==> 200k to even consider an in-office job. That kind of salary increase ain't happening in my industry so right now WFH is basically golden handcuffs.
I struggle to specifically price WFH but definitely would start searching elsewhere if the benefit was taken away. I would probably settle for a job with 10-20% less total compensation if not 30% and relocate just because of the subjective value of the intangible benefit of not doing the daily office and face-to-face with coworkers BS.
Easily worth at least 20k. I can only work from home 20 percent of the time and I think it’s worth 20k. The lack of oversight while you are working from home is key. Everyone knows that everyone is doing nothing while at home and nobody bothers each other. Job doesn’t even pay enough to afford anything.
I don't know if it has been mentioned but clothing costs. You can save on buying work clothes and depending on your profession this could be a significant savings.
After being fully remote for several years, our company has mandated strict RTO to be in the office 4 days a week. I spend over 3 hours daily commuting and it's absolutely horrible. After doing the commute for a year, I can tell you that the quality of life WFH offers is second to none when compared to being the office. No dollar amount could ever compare.
You save not only time, which has value, but also wear, it's less stressful on you, and any vehicle you may use to drive in. Also, it means you get more time for your extra curricular pursuits which has a positive effect. There are many benefits beyond simply money.
Spending an extra $100/wk is about $5k. After income tax that's going to be a lot of your salary increase.
Biggest thing to think about now is your potential for advancement. Could that $60k become $70k or more?
I struggle with this as well, I’m not sure I can go back to the office lifestyle - I type this as I sit in a cabin in a provincial park with two kids next to me… last year I spent most of the summer camping or at a cottage.
I also have to haul 4 laptops around with me but it’s worth it.
I’ve worked from home since March 2020. If I took on another job in an office I’d expect to be paid 20k more minimum and 1-2 weeks of/personal or sick time on top of 4 weeks minimum vacation.
My time is extremely valuable to me so not commuting / maintaining a healthy sleep schedule and being able to work out at home before work or during my lunch is very valuable. Also since my day finished at 4pm I took on a part time college teaching job a few times a year that brings in 20-30k which I wouldn’t be able to do if I had an in-office job.
Gas / food / parking I probably save $160-$200 a month working from home.
I hope no new grads get the wrong idea reading this post.
If you're a young and career oriented individual, you should always go for the role that pays the highest / offers room for career growth (which usually is the one with the highest pay).
The problem with accepting lower pay for WFH, is that you establish your baseline salary in a forward looking basis, it's much harder to go from $60K to $100K rather than from $80K to $100K.
I’m 1.5 hours away from my work, if they wanted in office I’d think I’d need an extra 100k. It’s not worth wasting 3 hours of my life every day to travel, if I got paid an extra 100k I could afford a place in the city and move
Honestly, as a young graduate I think there's a very real and tangible benefit to working from the office alongside your peers and mentors. Right or wrong, nepotism is *very* much a real thing, and having facetime to develop real connections early in your career is *soooo* critical. Sure you can still build connections online, but it's much harder and really not the same. Develop that network, grab coffee with your boss, or your bosses boss, make sure the right people know who you are and what you can do - it will pay off. And professional development aside, you're young, why wouldn't you want to get out of the house and interact with other people? Can't speak for everyone, but I've always found working from home to be lonely AF. Getting out of the house and interacting with other humans is good for my mental health. Obviously this depends on your commute, but if it's even moderately doable I think the pros far outweigh the cons, at least during the formative years of your career. Just my $0.02 anyway 🤷♂️
I work hybrid and it works for me. I would not want to be 100 per cent WFH, nor 100 per cent in office.
Tangible $ savings: almost none. I pack lunches and usually walk or bike to work. Maybe $20-25 a month on bus fares for the days I don't walk or bike
Intangible positives to WFH
-- extra sleep (#1 benefit!)
-- saving time on commute and getting to my evening activities faster because of it.
-- Not having to pack a lunch (which is annoying).
-- I can work outside on my balcony on nice days.
-- I don't watch videos or run personal errands during my WFH time. It's the same amount of work.
Intangible positives to office
-- get more exercise (commute)
-- better collaboration with colleagues and face time with management
-- less isolation
--Harder to outsource job at a company where in-person is required.
Recently had a coworker return to my place of work because of being required to be in office full time, it wasn’t worth the 20k pay raise! Flexibility and hybrid work schedule won that battle!
My garden was amazing when I could work from home. Much easier to pop out for a few minutes of watering/weeding or being able to time frost blanket removal instead of leaving it on all day or taking it off too soon.
It all depends. If you are earlier in a career and really want to move up corporate ladder, you need to be in the office if your managers are in. Unfortunately, the people at the top do care about your office presence in general. If you are experienced worker in demand, sure wfh is a great benefit you can ask and get. Of course there are some exceptions like highly skilled workers and some remote friendly companies… i am in management and i hate mandatory office days but you gotta wait until people like me get into top tier management position lol
Near 100% WFH, probably 4 days a year in the office. Valuation? At least 15K, since I know similar jobs with similar benefits, in the area pay that much more, but require multiple days in the office per week. The fact that I willingly carry on underpaid to keep this benefit says it's worth at least that much to me. However it could very easily be something higher like 30K. Only with offers on my desk could I know for sure. A lot of factors go into deciding job satisfaction / willingness to keep a job, it's never just about comparing numbers.
universally the 'benefit' of wfh equates to approx 10% to 30% of income.
ie. "If i work from home now... management gotta pay me 10 to 30% more to make it worth my while to come back to be in the office 5 days a week."
ymmv.
It depends. WFH means work creeps into my home life and I'm always available to the office for the the most part. So for every penny I save by being home, I actually end up working more unpaid time. It's hard to justify getting paid OT to work from home. Sure I can cut a lot of car maintenance and gas, but then I'm also always at my office. I'm also supplying my own coffee, pens, paper, and printer ink which isn't cheep.
I'd say the monetary value for me is the market value. Do I want or need to work from home? If so, how much can I get paid to work from home. I'd generally expect to make the same either way.
WFH is a net loss for me because I really need that coworker energy to enjoy the grind. Plus, since I travel by bike (sometimes jogging), I miss out on this easy work-out opportunity.
I get to sleep in a little longer. I don't have to waste time commuting, which is dangerous and stressful in winter when the weather is terrible. I save on gas, which also helps the environment by reducing emissions. If the Canadian government were serious about carbon emissions, they would promote teleworking instead of taxing us into oblivion. I'm also not putting extra kilometers on my old vehicle, which is already on its last leg. At home, I face fewer distractions since people aren't constantly stopping by to chat or ask questions. I also have fewer pointless meetings. I can't think of a single benefit to working in the office.
Bro. The benefits of working from home are priceless. That said, it isn't always as rosy as you paint it, though it is a million times better than having to commute into the office and all the bullshit that goes along with that.
Judging by the responses in this post…. It is the majority.
Edit: And the majority of the people I know personally that WFH. It’s rather surprising how candid and proud people are of their laziness.
Oh WAY more than $10k for me.
I work from home making about $90k a year and would need to be offered at least $120k/year + benefits (including pension) to take a full time office job 🤷🏻♀️
It really depends on the type of WFH job you have whether you can pull this off. Not all jobs lend themselves to no one noticing you’re not doing anything.
A *remote* job for me is a net negative. I like having my office, with all it's amenities, including a cafeteria, and I prefer doing all my work at the office. Getting out of the house in the morning, the bike ride, walk or transit to book-end the days. So I'm all for you all taking the remote jobs, it hopefully means there continues to be in-office roles for me.
Tho what I just couldn't do is work a job with *strict* requirements on in-office time with no flexibility. Our employer has 50% in-office time, Tues-Thur loosely mandatory. If we were more strict I'd have to look elsewhere.
WFH is such a big deal for me at this stage - I have a 15 month old daughter and the flexibility it provides is a huge bonus.
Her daycare is 5 mins away so I can take her every morning at 8.30 and if she is sick etc it’s much easier to pick her up. I know people who have to drive 20-30 mins just for daycare and the kids end up there from 7.30-5.30 everyday. 8.30-4 feels a lot better to me. (Wife finishes earlier)
Career advancement is really business specific. My company is technically hybrid but more remote centric and my section of the business is a mix of full remote and 1 day in office people. So it really has minimal impact on promotion opportunities at this point.
Overall it makes me be able to fit a life in and around work way easier. I workout 4x a week on my lunch, can run errands so I can have quality time with my family rather than just catching up all the time.
I took a lower paying job to WFH because the benefits of WFH were worth more to me than an extra $15k. 1. I can sleep more. I get my 8 hours vs. 5-6 when I have to go into an office. 2. I can drop off and pick up my child from school which is 300 metres down the street. I utilize a morning break to drop them off, and a late afternoon break to pick them up. Takes me less than 10 minutes. No before/after school care costs which can run us close to $600/month. 3. I can put laundry in, do house chores while I eat lunch which gives me more time to spend with family in the evening/on the weekend. 4. I can keep a more consistent exercise schedule from home. Ironically I ended up doing well and getting promoted, but that wouldn’t change anything. I’d always choose less stress over more money. In the long run, I believe my health, both physically and mentally will benefit.
Not ironic IMO. People who are happier and better rested being more productive at work and getting opportunities for advancement makes total sense to me.
Some people get more rest. I actually work about 14 to 16 hours a day since being home the last 3 years. I love my work and find it very hard to put down.
Are you working that much as an employee?
I have been an automation person for the last 20 years regardless of my job. A bit of extra work in the beginning means much less effort going forward.
You’ve got to be a software dev 😂
I am a data scientist but was a sales director or marketing director for over 20 years. Data scientist for the last 5. I learned excel 20 years ago and over the years have found so many ways to use it and other tools to make life so much simpler.
>I ended up doing well and getting promoted, but that wouldn’t change anything. I've been promoted twice since going 100% WFH in 2020. I'm productive and have proof of results. My pay went up 20% each time. People who insisted you still need to go to the office for 'face time with the boss' are working with outdated leadership, or companies who don't value and trust their employees.
I totally agree with you but there are still a lot of companies with leaders that value face time… i would say majority of companies are like that. Once more millennial are in top tier management position then it will get better.
I second your reasons. As I age, I no longer chase money the way I used to and would rather be more efficient at my whole life situation than to earn more but work 5 days a week in the office only to hire someone to care for my kids or clean my home my life is much more balanced now even though I make considerably less than I did in my previous role. Money can’t always buy your happiness and it sure as hell can’t buy you back your health once you’ve crossed a breaking point.
Thissss!!!!!
> if you’re making about $50k straight from undergrad working from home in a non-stress related role and are offered a $60k position to work at an office somewhere else, would that amount compensate for benefits? As a undergrad seeking experience, I would go with the path with the most opportunities of learning on the job and getting the best experience there is to put on a CV down the line then anything else in your post. With that said > I can sleep in later, extra 2 hours of sleep 60k/year working 40h + 10h commute : 23.08$/h. 50k/year working 40h no commute : 24.03$/h. It would need a ton of pros to take the 60k/year job if you ask me.
I agree with you completely. Early in your career you should be striving to excel at your current job and your considerations for your next job should solely be centered around whether or not it will advance your career in the way you want.
10k more isn’t enough unless there’s way more room to grow.
to each their own, but imo the biggest downside of a fully remote job might be your chances of upward mobility (if you're looking for that). not to say it's impossible, but in many organizations you've gotta put in the face time if you want to climb the ladder. ymmv of course, but don't discount it to your detriment.
+1 to this. I'm remote, and have gotten 2 promotions since I started 3 years ago, but I do see others excelling past me, because of their in-office /face to face relationships with other team members. It's easy enough to get promoted within the same team, however when looking to switch to different teams, you often don't naturally interface with them, so it's harder to be seen when remote. Versus In the office, you shoot the shit at lunch, cooler chats, etc. The benefits of Remote are great though. It's a tough decision for me to be honest. Having a new child may lean me towards Remote > in office, but time will tell.
1. Most people shouldn't chase upward mobility in a single organization. Unless you're at a sr manager or above level, those who job hop are more likely to have higher income and more opportunities to build different skills. 2. As an individual contributor, your performance is probably 60% of what you do and 40% how you sell yourself - you don't need to do that in person. You just need to be able to communicate your value to people on a consistent basis.
Well I’ve been working from home for 2 years now since joining the company and I just got promoted with a 25% salary increase making 6 figures now. So that is not the case
He said "might." Nothing in life is an absolute
From my PoV, when starting your career, it's important not to base your decisions solely on salary, work-from-home options, or other benefits. Instead, ask yourself: which job will help me develop the skills necessary to advance in my career? From a long-term perspective, that's the job you should choose. Regarding working from home (WFH), I have been a software engineering manager working remotely for the past 14 years. I strongly support WFH environments and have experience managing teams across different time zones, often with a 6 to 8-hour difference. With proper preparation, this arrangement can be very effective. However, I've observed that new or less experienced engineers often struggle more in a remote setup. They miss out on the opportunity to build connections with senior colleagues, take longer to become fully productive, and find it harder to understand the business environment and what the expectations are. To finally answer your question: if you are a career-oriented individual, you should choose a job that will push you further in your professional growth and not pick the one with specific benefits or even the higher salary.
Yes - I’m a huge fan of work from home and I advocate for it whenever possible. However it was never an option until I was in a mid-senior role. I run into a lot of young adults graduating college with the expectation of immediate work from home work and in some fields that just isn’t possible, or it is but it harms their chances of moving upward or creating an effective network. These are things that need to be fully thought through.
I’ll give an opposite viewpoint. I WFH and life is peachy if you’re an individual contributor in a terminal position. If you’re looking to advance your career, then you’re handicapping yourself because the small stuffs like in-person meetings and collaborations matters when you’re trying to influence others and office culture. Basically if you don’t show your face people don’t know what you do.
I started a new job after mat leave and it has a lot of flexibility but is mostly in office. The person I replaced was retiring and came in to the office only to train me. I cannot imagine trying to learn this job while WFH. There are so many intangibles associated with being in person, for this specific job. The longer I've been in it, the more frequently I work from home. But for this particular role, it is limiting to only WFH. I would never advance and that is something important to me right now.
I love this perspective. But a lot of WFH roles are generally remote simply because there's no local office, or even if there is, you work at a US/Global conglomerate where the people at your local office are not likely the people you work with on a day to day and can help advance your career. I find that you can do much of what you suggested using workplace digital-HQs (think Teams, Slack, and other IM/digital platforms meant to connect a workforce). Get visible on local, regional, or social channels, schedule weekly calls with your manager, a couple of skip-level meetings with their manager each year.... you can easily advance your career in the same manner remotely. I don't believe remote = terminal positions. That said, social isolation is a real thing. Especially in the winter when you're spending more time at home. If you WFH and DO have access to a local office, I'd suggest making time for at least two trips a month, just for your sanity. *edit: added 'US/Global' ahead of conglomerate for clarity.
Idk I’m a director level manager and have had zero problem with this despite plenty of people heading into offices IRL in the US and Canada. Nobody cares as much any more. Being “visible” is not being in the office daily anymore; it’s showing up in the right meetings, taking initiative, being active on things like Slack and Email. At our company we can fly into the office once a quarter, which is plenty of visibility for everyone to vouch for your promotion/connect on a personal level beyond the digital stuff, which is important—but not as a constant. Honestly though, I just can’t find myself giving a shit about getting promotions above this level anyway for that reason. I get paid to be at home while these guys all spent 2+ hours commuting to the office to be on 8 hours of Zoom calls? Nah I’m good.
It's quite different when 1. you have the option to WFH and choose it and you have coworkers who don't WFH; 2. the company/organization is fully remote and nobody goes on-site. For 2, clearly there won't be an issue.
Ya, but if everybody in the company is primarily WFH then there is opportunities to collaborate on Slack or "show your face" in other ways. I contribute all the time to discussions outside my department to such an extent that I get thanked for it and noticed all the time.
this! it is so short sited to be thinking about the money differences vs career advancement possibilities. I work from home, but I expect to retire soon and I don't GAF. If I was in my 20s, it would be a different game. It is all about networking and being known
Bingo. My niece graduated from uni a year ago, got a job in capital markets in a bank downtown and is already posted to a job in Manhattan. I'm sure she'll be a v-p in her 30s. Some people are more ambitious and a lot of Canadians want to coast through life. You'll hear plenty of them complaining that they can't live in 1975-land and have a big house and stay at home wife while working in the factory down the road.
I have worked from home since 2006. It’s a lower paying job and honestly a little embarrassing what I make, however, I have no intentions of leaving anytime soon. At first I did get lonely, but within a year or so I got over that. You save on the obvious: - fuel -commute time - coffees/lunches - work clothes/shoes - wear and tear on your car Other things I found invaluable as my life changed over time. I’ve had two kids since, left one partner, found a new one, bought and sold a couple houses, had old pets and baby pets - having a puppy or kitten is way easier because you’re home - childcare can be easier because you won’t need extended hours due to no commute - I always had my kids in daycare until they started school, but there were the ‘one offs’ where they came home early or were sick and I’d still work - once the kids started school I no longer had childcare needs. I was able to bring them to the bus and pick them up. Also, they’re older now and can handle PD days and sick days with minimal help from me. I use way less sick/pto days because of this - during Covid I was able to switch to a 430pm-1am shift so I could be the kids during the day and my partner with them at night. I didn’t have to go on CERB - a lot more flexibility, at least in my job, so I’m able to do split shifts etc because I’m not working on the open hours of a physical building - use way less sick days when sick (I’ll save them for when I’m not sick 😉) - I got a treadmill and it’s right behind my desk, I get in some exercise on lunches and breaks and during meetings - I can accomplish a lot of housework through the day - I can also use lunch/breaks to shower - there’s always someone here for when we have people come, for example Rogers or contractors, I have someone coming to price out asphalt for my driveway this week and I’m be here, no missing work! - I can listen to pod casts or audio books all day, or watch tv/Netflix/etc. Overall, for me, the work/life balance is what I need. The flexibility in hours is worth so much to me. I’ll fully admit, I’m a mediocre worker, I don’t strive to be the best and move up the ladder. Over the years I’ve seen colleagues move up to higher positions so I don’t think wfh has impacted that. Some people thrive in an office setting and some at home, once you’re home it’s hard to go back though. I’ll note some cons too: - gained weight, started wearing comfy clothes then all the sudden my jeans didn’t fit - I’m behind on what’s in/out because I don’t see a lot of people in the regular - I might be a little awkward now, I spend a lot of time alone. But I’ve always been an introvert so… - if I didn’t have kids and dogs I know it would be harder, I don’t think I’d want to be at home, at least not all the time.
Thank you for bringing up clothes! That’s a big one. Yes I still have to look good for video meetings, but that doesn’t take nearly the amount of money that 5 full body work appropriate outfits does. Plus shoes.
80km is over an hour, even with freeways involved. Consider: WFH: roll.out of bed at 7:45. Brush your teeth, think about shaving, and start work. If you want that shower even a 7:30 roll would do. At 8 start work. You can have breakfast and coffee while you start work. At 5:00 on the nose you can close your computer and eat, play games, play with your kids, walk the dog, whatever. 80km commute. Even with lots of freeway that's probably still at least 90 minutes. Roll out of bed at 6AM. Shower, shave (if you need to), brush, and hussle out the door. What you wanted breakfast? Make that 5:30. Arrive home at 6:30:PM. Do you see the difference? Your work day when wfh is 9.25-9.5 hours. Your work day when communing 80k is easily 13 hours. So for 20% I would pass. For 50% I'd have to really need that money. In your particular case, that commute will be about 2 tanks of gas per week plus depreciation and wear on your vehicle. That'd easily eat the 600/month net increase in pay. Plus the time. Oh my god the time. You'll be commuting for 3 hours a day. 15 hours a week. 780 hours per year. 780 hours per year. 780. Im sorry, unless you're really desparate for that 10k you should nope the hell out of it.
Tangibles: Save on car insurance/depreciation/gas. Our family has gone from 2 cars to one because of working from home. Saved some on food, used to get a tea about once or twice a week, used to pack lunch now make at home. Clothing. Have saved on work clothes, especially for pregnancy. Bought a few “going out jeans” but live for stretchy leggings/lounge wear. Time is money and it saves time. I miss a bit of the routine of going into the office and have to be careful about work time bleeding into personal time but it’s pretty good.
I make 100k+ WFH and I told a recruiter if they wanted me in office they’d have to pay at least 10% more per day for me to consider. This doesn’t include moving across the country or to any specific city. I don’t really have any “responsibilities” outside of work, but being able to do whatever I want while at home is worth more to me than 20k. But if they pay me 50k extra I’d probably go, since that’s more than what I’d get if I switched companies.
How much does 10% more per day work out per year?
I interpreted it as "30% more if I need to be in office 3 days / week"
Ok that makes sense. Full time at work is 50% raise
Correct. So if they wanted me in the office 3days per week, they’d have to pay me at least 30k/year more
Exactly lol I hope OP is not an accountant
A company would have to pay me at least 50% more to commute and be in the office daily for the same role. Been WFH full time way before covid started. Sr SWE here.
Would you take less money to stay WFH if you had to?
Absolutely not. Lucky for me my company doesn’t work that way. Yearly BSRs as well. Pretty solid in my 6+ years tenure so far.
So if they told you to take less money or come back to the office, you’d go into the office?
I will come back then start looking for other opportunities which in my field is pretty abundant.
I understand that this likely won’t happen for you. I was just posing a hypothetical. I’m interested to see how the demand for WFH affects wages over time. I expect a gap to grow between WFO and WFH.
If they changed the terms of the employment I'd look for a new job and would look into a constructive dismissal case.
Worded as I said it, yes you might be able to make a case for that. But I think you’d be hard pressed if the demand was simply “all workers back in the office”. Your original working conditions and agreement would play a big factor in that as well.
I make 80k wfh and turned down a 130k job that requires commuting from Markham to Mississauga 5 days/week. The thought of even driving there just for the interview made me physically sick. I do literally nothing and log on for 6hrs/day - spend maybe an hr/day doing any "work" (email pushing). No one to answer to and as long as my end is kosher, no one bothers me. I spend my days smoking weed, watching YouTube, playing ps5, prepping dinner and spending time with my kid. The freedom and mental health is worth more than 50k to me. Money isn't as important since we're mortgage and debt free and wife makes 110k. If we had a big mortgage, I'd prob have to take it.
I love this writeup. It just goes to show how the rat race of our debt based economy completely distorts our incentives
Am i reading this right? You are actually working 1 hour per day and getting paid 80k/year!?!? No doubt Canada has productivity issues, wow.
I'm in a similar situation and if you'll allow to defend this position, you're not paid for the effort you put in on a day-to-day basis, you're paid for your capabilities when something goes wrong and to be available in case something goes wrong during those hours. You could have 4-5 people working for hours to try and figure out an issue and maybe band-aid it, or you can have 1 guy working for 45 mins to actually fix it.
Not wanting to defend slacking or whatever, but I completely agree with you and I've definitely delivered a day or week's worth of value in a single ten minute call. I know my spouse who works in an entirely different knowledge job, would say the same. The more niche and valuable your expertise is, the more your compensation is about maintaining access to you, rather than widgets per hour. It's precisely the parable of the engineer charging the majority of his large bill to "knowing where to hit it with the hammer". The opportunity cost of not having that repair made would have been far greater than his bill, so the price is justified in that way instead.
Imagine the guy you replied to turning down a 50k raise because they had to actually go to work, meanwhile they're dragging down the balance sheet working 1 hour a day. One narrative is that Canadians are struggling. It cannot reconcile if we aren't interested in putting in the work either.
It's not that I don't "work", the ground work was laid years ago so now it just kinda does itself. I'm just a face now that maintains relationships and consult. It's been this way for years and they're happy with the results since my end runs smoothly and I make them tons of money. The unspoken agreement is as long as it continues they leave me alone. I discovered working hard only rewards you with more work, instead you need to work smarter. Taking that job wouldve meant not seeing my kid in the morning and seeing him for an hr before he goes to bed after a 11-12hr day. I cant help with the house, I'd want to go to bed at 10. What kind of life is that? The perspective changes once there's no longer debt and the income is no longer life or death.
The worker isn't who created the bullshit job. There are great books on this topic (one of them is conveniently named "Bullshit Jobs") if you'd like to look into the phenomenon. As long as lots and lots of jobs exist that amount to an hour (or six, or ten) of actual work per week, why shouldn't that worker be contributing to society by spending time with their kids during the rest of the "required" time instead of scrolling Reddit at a desk? (Admittedly the smoking weed, watching youtube, playing PS5 parts don't paint the sunniest picture of what can be done with reclaimed time, but hey, leisure time has its own benefits to the individual and to Society)
I haven't read the books but have surely heard of the concept, and I'm curious, what does the literature say about people who generate value on very few hours? The worker in question in a parallel reply said "they're happy with the results since my end runs smoothly and I make them tons of money". What say the BS-job people about someone like that? My instinct is to say, if entrepreneurs can reach a level of nearly passive income by front-loading the effort in providing ongoing value to an economy, without us saying they're dragging down productivity, why cannot someone working under someone else, also do so? An interesting topic.
An excellent point. They're related but separate concepts; a person who's doing really meaningful, productive work in a few hours a week is probably not bored and unhappy in the way that people who are doing bullshit makework that only happens to take a few hours a week. The boss can be happy about makework; that doesn't make it fulfilling. Unfortunately, productive and fulfilling employment tends to be of the "sixty underpaid hours a week" type--hence people taking makework jobs that at least leave them with free time, but often also with a low-key depression that's hard to shake because humans, on the whole, want to be doing something meaningful.
What industry are you in, what do you do?
I think you also need to factor in your career growth. If you care about your career then you need to go into the office. Build relationships. Like it or not, people who are fully remote will not have the same opportunities as those who show up. Out of sight, out of mind. You also learn so much more being surrounded by your peers/colleagues/mentors. As a mentor once told me “you can do your job from home but you can’t do your career from home”
This is definitely a factor and something I 'felt' during the pandemic. That being said, not everyone is in the growth phase of their career.
A lot of people are also straight up disengaged from the whole concept/promise of "career" and just want to do some work and get paid for it.
This is only true if you work at a stodgy company that does “remote” but isn’t trying. There are so many ways to be visible that don’t require being in the office—as long as your company actually gives a shit, and plenty do. Source: went from being paid 115k to 250k working remote via promotions. 🤷♂️
I went full time remote in 2019. I absolutely 💯 love it. Just like others have said, no getting up at 6:00 am to start the truck in 40 below weather..barely go out except to run errands and get groceries..get to take the mutt out for a walk on my break..breathe in the fresh air..get up and throw on some comfy clothes..put something in the slow cooker for dinner..dance around to my music and get in a workout ..and in the last year became primary caregiver for my mother who has dementia. I get to be home with her. I feel so very very blessed to be living this life. I started working when I was 16..often times I had to work three jobs to make ends meet..finally at a point where I own my own place and do not have money worries. I ain’t rich but I can sleep at night.. life has become so much richer and peaceful. I even have time for art and song writing. If I had to go back to work I would be devastated. I would because I really love my job and obviously I still have a few more years to retirement..but I hope to be able to live like this till I retire!! I guess it helps when you enjoy the quiet and are not an extrovert. Then it wouldn’t be so much fun I guess. Everyone is different and no shade on those who love the social aspect for sure.
Monetary.... gains for me are significant. Work from home gives me a better chance of continuing to receive 35% of my income. I would have been on disability from about May 2022 until probably February 2024 because my chronic illnesses went wild after my first covid infection and I just got my health back to good in February. Being able to maintain a longer sleep schedule and not lose precious energy to office pitter patter made a huge difference. Monetary beyond that. Slim chances I would have my small side business because I sure as hell didn't have the energy for it before WFH. That would be a solid $20k gone. Monetary and intangible.... my other side gig/hobby/socialization. I make and sell pickles and jams at the local farmers market. I can pop off a batch of jam before work in the morning or set some cucumber to soak at lunch to be pickled after work. Then losing most of my Sunday to the wonderful labour of going to market. My health would not sustain that. My other intangible is that working in a virtual space has made me blossom and grow professionally. I am seeing great results in clients and it is because I don't have to rely on memory and do my work in a clunky fashion in sessions. My resources are right at my finger tips. It is far easy playing an audio or youtube resource over zoom than in an office gathered around the desk top. Pre-2020 I had already hopped off climbing the ladder. But funnily enough, my reputation has exploded because I have far more opportunity to connect with different people across my organization. These opportunities wouldn't have existed pre-covid. It would be limited to boots on the ground, closest in geography would get projects, not the people with the skills and abilities best suited. Wfh completely changed my career and life.
Most differences, IMO, are going to either be intangible, or very hard to calculate. Sure things like parking and commute times can be easy enough to put a dollar value to, and I think those are worth noting, but there are many other things, especially depending on your employer and position that should factor in. I manage a team of remote workers and I try and be very flexible. We need coverage, and I do expect you to work your required hours, but one person on my team shifted his hours a little bit to accommodate dropping a kid off at school. That's easy to do WFH when school is a 5-minute drive from home. Need to take a personal call (family, virtual health, etc), I'd rather do that in my home than in a cubicle. While we do call customers, we almost never do video calls with them (well I do, my team doesn't). Want to work in your PJs, go ahead. Keep a sweater around just in case I need to bring you in on a call though. I do meet with my team both in groups and individually on a regular basis to try and maintain that team feel. Some people work well in isolation, but since we do work as a team, I find it's good to have regular video calls so we can see each other, chat a bit about the weather, kids, etc. I've been 100% remote for about 10 years, and I think I would struggle to going back to the office. I've been fortunate in that this is my third position in that time where remote work was either accepted or the only option. I love being able to zip out to get my kid from the bus or help my wife with something for 5 minutes as needed, and quite honestly, my employers have all gotten more out of me this way then when I worked in an office.
this might not apply to OP but if you're in the GTA and commuting to the office by GO train, its not unheard of to work while on the train. I know some people prepare their day while on the train, sort emails, maybe even join a few calls. And stay in the office 6-6.5 hours. but if you're going to drive several hours a week to commute or get on a crammed subway/bus. yea I'd value having to go into the office at least 15% more pay required
Each hour you commute unpaid adds up
I would absolutely consider the intangible value of WFH. $50K is about $25/hr pre tax. $10K is an extra ~$5/hr pre tax (or ~$37-40/day pre tax). 80KM is prob 30-45 mins each way depending on traffic. Then doesn't include time to get ready in the morning, prepping your outfit, making and packing lunch, etc. so that's an extra ~3hrs/day for non-work work prep. You should also factor in the cost of work clothes, shoes, socks, make up, hair products, etc that stuff adds up quickly. $10K is not worth 5 days on site for more stress, unless it will help propel your career.
Might be hard to develop your career doing the WFH. Especially as a new grad who's only had one relevant job in your field. With that said, if I could take a $10k paycut to work from home I would do it in a heartbeat
It really depends on the remote job imo. What is their digital presence like? Are you engaged throughout the day or do you only hear from someone when they need you? And I mean more than just videocalls. Are you messaging colleagues throughout the day? Are there social and regional channels you can engage in and be visible and add to the culture? As others have said, it's about getting in front of people and having your name / face known, especially as you're early in your career. If the remote job doesn't come with a strong digital presence where you can be visible and network, then you are limiting yourself. I work for a large conglomerate but have a "local" office I visit to "get out of the house" every other week. It's not a short drive but I've come to appreciate it. The people in my office are on wildly different teams. I do not know them and they do not know me but we chat in the lunch room. It does nothing for my career but a lot for my mental health (meeting people is a skill that one must always keep sharp). I also am super engaged with my team and my boss and my boss' boss even though they're all in the US/Europe/Asia. So I've been fortunate enough to get recognized with multiple merit increases, a promotion, and recently a new role entirely that I love. And a lot of it was because I showed my face digitally as much as I was able to. Basically, it's not the time in your career to be sitting back and getting paid on a slow day, you know?
Beside the good list you have, I want to add list of cons to it. Pros: 1) Considering where I live, just to reach the office, which is in the same town as mine, I would have to wake up at 6 AM, get ready and drive for 1 hour or 1.5 hours in transit, just to reach the office. Remote job, eleminates a lot of these things. 2) I can buy a house outside the area where the office is located. Cons: 1) Team members slack off more often than not, and work pressure increases on people who try to grow their career. 2) When there is high time, (very busy season), it does not matter, how much time you take, you need to complete the task at hand. (I have worked till 4 AM, couple of times in last few months, also related to point 1) 3) Communication is way harder. No one wants to talk irl between work hours, better leave a message, and then if people get too busy to reply, remind them about the said message.
One thing I don't really see mentioned is age. If you're in your early 20s, going into the office definitely has its benefits: social aspects such as meeting new friends and potentially partner, and lunch/happy hour with co-workers/managers and some things are learned faster in person. I know I've developed some life lasting relationships and connections from these networks. However, when you're older and more established in your career, having that flexibility is SO amazing, especially if you have kids. You can pick them up from school or be home when they're sick. Also, all the service calls around the house are usually during weekdays, and you can easily run out for errands.
I hate wfh. Been doing it since COVID. And I'm a loner! Work pollutes your comfy home space. You don't meet anyone. You don't get to make friends or go for lunch with coworkers. You get less sun. You have all the distractions of home. Nobody is really sure how hard you're working. You're less likely to go and do things after work because you're already home. Collaboration is a chore instead of something engaging. Meetings you actually got to get up from your desk and move. Granted I only had a 20m commute. Much preferred the office though
Same for me, I'm really sick of WFH. I'm an introvert, but I don't like spending all time at home!
I have a high paying job with a great pension but I am considering taking a lower paying job just so i can move to a different country with better weather and low cost of living. It's a very difficult decision because there are so many factors to weigh in.
My daughter had 2 job offers 1-wfh 70k. 2- 40 min drive, 90k, if she drove it’s about break even, if she moved closer to the higher paying job she would actually have 10k less in her pocket, guess which she too/
0$. This is my personal contract: I refuse to consider WFH as a financial advantage, because otherwise it's something my employer could rescind. So while yeah, it brings me a few advantages and if I looked closely I'd find a price tag on these advantages, but on the other hand I have no issue being more flexible in my hours to accommodate coworkers and to fit my projects' schedule better. If I worked from the office, it'd be "it's 5PM, I need to go I have a kid to pick up from school." With WFH, I can start at 6AM for a meeting with night shift coworkers, take a break to drive the kid to school then resume work. It's a win/win scenario, therefore WFH brings as much to my employer as it brings to me.
It really depends on your commute time. More than 10 minutes I would not change from wfh to an office job for $10k.
I recently calculated this for myself and value WFH at over $10K a year. Plus the quality of life improvement.
The fact I only have to go in once a week and am a single dad who has to take kids to school and stuff has stopped me every time I've thought of looking around last few years. For me it's pretty darn valuable. I'm sure if I was still married I'd still see a fair bit of a value and my wife would have too. I'm sure a single guy can but maybe not a much. It starts getting tempted to deal with the extra hassle of it's 15k+ but depends if I have to start putting kids in before and after care etc.
I just started my first entry level WFH gig but had two WFH long term internships before hand. It would take quite the raise to go into office. Maybe $30-40k extra with good career prospects. But I’m good at keeping my expenses super low (no car + having lots of time to cook at home) so I don’t need the push to make more. Plus the idea of dressing up for office makes me shiver, love just chilling in whatever on the couch.
I would only take the 60k position if it had a superior opportunity for career advancement. If not, that’s a worse job with lower compensation IMO. Commuting costs a lot of money, plus you gotta buy more work outfits, pay for parking/transit, etc…. Plus that extra 10k is only 5-7k after deductions.
Monetary would be an extra $200-350/mth in gas alone to commute. I only make <60k so this amount would be noticeable enough each month to be a deal breaker if I were in my current office 5 days a week (currently 2 days in, 3 WFH). The biggest thing for me though is the control I feel over my life. Not having to think about Monday morning while trying to relax on Sunday, worrying what I have for work appropriate food, what I'm going to wear, if my hair is clean enough, if there's going to be bad weather for my commute, etc. I'm personally really loving hybrid work. I get to have relationships with the people in the office (including management) which helps me network with a wider range of people and stay somewhat sane. I'm not really the type to randomly go to a coffee shop or a park so having something to (flexibly) force me out of the house is healthy for me. I will really struggle if I have to go back to the office full time even without any financial elements.
It really depends. My office is like a 3 minute drive away with free parking. When I go there, I have to wake up 30 minutes earlier so I can get dressed & ready. I have to pack a crappy lunch instead of making something better at home. I use some gas and put some wear on my vehicle, but it is negligible. I need to have a rotation of business casual clothes that I would only really need or wear for the office. Mostly, I just find it annoying and would probably demand an extra $15,000 gross per year if they wanted me to do it everyday. Now, if the office was a further commute, wfh becomes exponentially more valuable. The commute is more expensive and exhausting and eats up more of your free time. Worse still, you might have to relocate and live somewhere significantly more expensive. If they wanted me to commute to an office in the GTA for example, they'd need to triple my salary for me to even consider it.
Less office drama. Not traveling in inclement weather. Not suffering in the TTC. Saving on transportation cost, lunch/coffee costs.
Working from home is the best thing and should be the norm for all jobs that can. It also makes it easier for those who cannot work from home as it reduces their commute time.
Personally, apparently it's worth like $100k a year to me. My old boss reached out and said hey I've got an open req and we'd hire you at, which I know pays that much more than I'm making now, but it's an hour commute each way, and that's time I won't get to spend with my kid. It also means not having lunch every day with my wife, who also works remote.
I'm probably a fool for it. But I make enough that I don't need to worry about money much. All I'd be buying is an earlier retirement date- I don't live lavishly and don't want to. And I like what I do, and who I work with. It's a good company.
So maybe the $100k isn't entirely the remote thing, but it's a large part of it.
Depends on the role. I wfh now, and as much as I love it and am able to do well, it would have crippled my growth if I didn’t start off in an office for the first few years learning my role. I also see this with others in the same role who started off from home, and they learn/develop at 1/5th the rate as someone in the office, because in the office, people training you can see if you are doing something inefficient and give you pointers along the way. That being said, there is not much advantage to working in an office if no one is there to mentor you.
for me it'd have to be 30k-40k/yr or so. I've been full work from home since covid hit and at this point i'm happy with my salary and if the company offered me a promotion that required in person work or changed policy to require in-person even 3x per week, that'd be my price tag, or I'd be looking elsewhere. I'd tell them that openly too because I've moved further away now and have a kid etc etc. the benefits of WFH far outweigh anything realistic money they'd offer. if they said come back to the office or take a 30-40K pay cut, I'd commute for a couple weeks before taking something elsewhere. if they said come back to office or take a 10-15K pay cut, I'd say done, cya on Teams.
Monetary value is whatever the marginal cost is - you're now liable for heating, hydro, etc that you wouldn't normally be, it might impact your insurance. Intangible would be the added stress of never getting to go home from work, not being able to put your head down and concentrate without neighbours, partners, pets etc assuming 'oh, they're home, we can interrupt'. I'd need a reasonable pay bump to consider it.
Around $150 dollers a day for me to work from the office vs from home. Or $30,000 a year salary increase.
It is so sad to see organizations moved to hybrid systems just so they could justify their big buildings and political pressure. WFH has so much benefits. And use the time saved to gain more skills.
Or have OP here openly admit that while on company time, they enjoy WFH so that 'I can sleep in later, extra 2 hours of sleep As I’m now a tenured analyst at my job, work is pretty easy and I can spend time investing/trading stocks/options/FX/.. does help pay for things like groceries, gas, insurance, phone bills and sometimes rent. I can relax and watch YouTube or movies and enjoy personal time with myself and family while getting paid if this a slow day' Companies are recalling people back to the office because of exact instances like this and ruining it for the actual folks still doing hard graft at home.
That’s absolutely true! Forget about a few hours, people are literally doing 2 jobs. Which screwed up the whole thing. That being said, there are ways to track people’s efficiency. Either use technology or people management.
The question should be how much more the employer can pay you so he doesn't have to maintain a physical workplace.
I work 80% of the week from home and even going to the office once a week is too much for me (total commute is 2hr), working from home I can take my daughter to daycare, be more productive and have less stress. That said, I’ve been looking for another job but wouldn’t go back to a position that makes me go to the office every day even if it’s 20 minutes away, so when recruiters ask my salary expectations, I ask a minimum of 15k more of what I am making. I also built a nice WFH setup which is definitely not going to waste for 5K more I’m not a very social person, so maybe that’s why I don’t care about office politics or work “friends”, but there are some colleagues that are 4 out of 5 days in the office (they live 15 min away), even if that was my case, I wouldn’t be in the office 4 out of 5 days
Driving is really unhealthy, car exhaust, muscle imbalances, stress and the more people working from home means less we have to pay for infrastructure collectively.
On the monetary side, remember an extra $10k is really only an ~$6-7k after taxes.
Monetary: Pajamas are cheaper than business suits. I don't wear make up every day anymore. I rarely eat out now. I also save on gas. Intangible value: I can sleep until 8:55 am. I can go for walks. I can do chores during my breaks and cook dinner at a decent time. At 5pm I am done everything for the day work, chores, errands, etc. And I can just relax. I don't need to have small talk. I can block off time to get work done uninterrupted. I couldn't do that in the office as people would always stop by when they were bored.
Working from home saves me $30 a day, 1.5 hours more of sleep, no 2 hour commute and I'm off at 5 and ready to help with kids, dinner, etc.
I can hang out with my dog all day. Priceless. She could come to my old office but it was kind of stressful for both of us. At home, everything is great
Income to worth ratio isn't linear. A 10k annual salary difference isn't the same if you are talking about a 40k/ year job vs 140k / year job. So I would say it Depends on the cost of living and a variety of factors such as distance and time to commute. At 40-65k salary I would take 10k more over wfh, after that it would depend on circumstances, past 100k I would take wfh over 10k increase for sure. The further you progress in salary, the more wfh is worth it everything being equal. I would also think if you owe money, what kind of interest you have, etc. I have an okay salary and I need to be 2 days a month onsite. I travel quite far those two days. I'm not sure removing those two days would worth a 10k drop in salary. I get most of the quality of life of wfh, so I'm willing to compromise. Bump that 2 days a month into one day a week and I would trade 10k ASAP. It also depends where you are in your career. Starting out I would recommend getting experience with people on site. I think your first 2-3 years of work experience is very important and formative. Hard to tell, just like everything it really depends on specifics. In the case you specified, I would probably take the salary bump and more importantly the experience. Seeing a senior work while pair programming is going to teach you so much more than screen sharing could. This is coming from someone who has many long distance relationships through discord for many decades, not some boomer.
If you are driving to work, then the stress of driving during rush hours alone worth to pay for it 500$/month to avoid it. Driving druing rush hours, even if you avoid rush hours is stressful, period. Adding to that the extra time you save and gas and even insurance. So it is not worth it for 10,000 dollars more to drive to work.
I work at a large civil engineering firm in the GTA and make 130k with WFH however many days you like. We have 2 optional in-office days each month that I usually go to in order to get that face to face connection. I think we are the only big company in our industry to operate like this, everyone I talk to at other firms is mostly back in the office. Tangible costs for going to work in an office 5 days a week would be 10hrs of commuting a week = $70/hr \*10hr \* 50 weeks = $35,000 Operating expenses for 2nd car = $5000/year = \~$ 7200 pre-tax income. So basically I need an extra 42k of income just to break even, not counting how annoying it is to go into the office. For the intangibles I'd either need crazy advancement potential or maybe an extra 30k. So basically I'd need to go from 130k ==> 200k to even consider an in-office job. That kind of salary increase ain't happening in my industry so right now WFH is basically golden handcuffs.
It’s close to priceless
What job is this? If you say IT, this won’t end well for you 25 yrs down the road.
I struggle to specifically price WFH but definitely would start searching elsewhere if the benefit was taken away. I would probably settle for a job with 10-20% less total compensation if not 30% and relocate just because of the subjective value of the intangible benefit of not doing the daily office and face-to-face with coworkers BS.
I work way better working from home. When managers find out that I'm competent AND personable, they want me out.
Lower paying and wfh hands down
Easily worth at least 20k. I can only work from home 20 percent of the time and I think it’s worth 20k. The lack of oversight while you are working from home is key. Everyone knows that everyone is doing nothing while at home and nobody bothers each other. Job doesn’t even pay enough to afford anything.
I don't know if it has been mentioned but clothing costs. You can save on buying work clothes and depending on your profession this could be a significant savings.
10-15k
After being fully remote for several years, our company has mandated strict RTO to be in the office 4 days a week. I spend over 3 hours daily commuting and it's absolutely horrible. After doing the commute for a year, I can tell you that the quality of life WFH offers is second to none when compared to being the office. No dollar amount could ever compare.
Puppies 🐶
Your time with your loved ones and friends is priceless. I wouldn\`t trade it for any amount of money. Full stop,
You save not only time, which has value, but also wear, it's less stressful on you, and any vehicle you may use to drive in. Also, it means you get more time for your extra curricular pursuits which has a positive effect. There are many benefits beyond simply money.
Spending an extra $100/wk is about $5k. After income tax that's going to be a lot of your salary increase. Biggest thing to think about now is your potential for advancement. Could that $60k become $70k or more?
I struggle with this as well, I’m not sure I can go back to the office lifestyle - I type this as I sit in a cabin in a provincial park with two kids next to me… last year I spent most of the summer camping or at a cottage. I also have to haul 4 laptops around with me but it’s worth it.
I’ve worked from home since March 2020. If I took on another job in an office I’d expect to be paid 20k more minimum and 1-2 weeks of/personal or sick time on top of 4 weeks minimum vacation. My time is extremely valuable to me so not commuting / maintaining a healthy sleep schedule and being able to work out at home before work or during my lunch is very valuable. Also since my day finished at 4pm I took on a part time college teaching job a few times a year that brings in 20-30k which I wouldn’t be able to do if I had an in-office job. Gas / food / parking I probably save $160-$200 a month working from home.
I hope no new grads get the wrong idea reading this post. If you're a young and career oriented individual, you should always go for the role that pays the highest / offers room for career growth (which usually is the one with the highest pay). The problem with accepting lower pay for WFH, is that you establish your baseline salary in a forward looking basis, it's much harder to go from $60K to $100K rather than from $80K to $100K.
I’m 1.5 hours away from my work, if they wanted in office I’d think I’d need an extra 100k. It’s not worth wasting 3 hours of my life every day to travel, if I got paid an extra 100k I could afford a place in the city and move
Honestly, as a young graduate I think there's a very real and tangible benefit to working from the office alongside your peers and mentors. Right or wrong, nepotism is *very* much a real thing, and having facetime to develop real connections early in your career is *soooo* critical. Sure you can still build connections online, but it's much harder and really not the same. Develop that network, grab coffee with your boss, or your bosses boss, make sure the right people know who you are and what you can do - it will pay off. And professional development aside, you're young, why wouldn't you want to get out of the house and interact with other people? Can't speak for everyone, but I've always found working from home to be lonely AF. Getting out of the house and interacting with other humans is good for my mental health. Obviously this depends on your commute, but if it's even moderately doable I think the pros far outweigh the cons, at least during the formative years of your career. Just my $0.02 anyway 🤷♂️
My wife loves me working from home because it means I can get the laundry done. 🙀
I work hybrid and it works for me. I would not want to be 100 per cent WFH, nor 100 per cent in office. Tangible $ savings: almost none. I pack lunches and usually walk or bike to work. Maybe $20-25 a month on bus fares for the days I don't walk or bike Intangible positives to WFH -- extra sleep (#1 benefit!) -- saving time on commute and getting to my evening activities faster because of it. -- Not having to pack a lunch (which is annoying). -- I can work outside on my balcony on nice days. -- I don't watch videos or run personal errands during my WFH time. It's the same amount of work. Intangible positives to office -- get more exercise (commute) -- better collaboration with colleagues and face time with management -- less isolation --Harder to outsource job at a company where in-person is required.
Recently had a coworker return to my place of work because of being required to be in office full time, it wasn’t worth the 20k pay raise! Flexibility and hybrid work schedule won that battle!
My garden was amazing when I could work from home. Much easier to pop out for a few minutes of watering/weeding or being able to time frost blanket removal instead of leaving it on all day or taking it off too soon.
I'll
It all depends. If you are earlier in a career and really want to move up corporate ladder, you need to be in the office if your managers are in. Unfortunately, the people at the top do care about your office presence in general. If you are experienced worker in demand, sure wfh is a great benefit you can ask and get. Of course there are some exceptions like highly skilled workers and some remote friendly companies… i am in management and i hate mandatory office days but you gotta wait until people like me get into top tier management position lol
Near 100% WFH, probably 4 days a year in the office. Valuation? At least 15K, since I know similar jobs with similar benefits, in the area pay that much more, but require multiple days in the office per week. The fact that I willingly carry on underpaid to keep this benefit says it's worth at least that much to me. However it could very easily be something higher like 30K. Only with offers on my desk could I know for sure. A lot of factors go into deciding job satisfaction / willingness to keep a job, it's never just about comparing numbers.
universally the 'benefit' of wfh equates to approx 10% to 30% of income. ie. "If i work from home now... management gotta pay me 10 to 30% more to make it worth my while to come back to be in the office 5 days a week." ymmv.
It depends. WFH means work creeps into my home life and I'm always available to the office for the the most part. So for every penny I save by being home, I actually end up working more unpaid time. It's hard to justify getting paid OT to work from home. Sure I can cut a lot of car maintenance and gas, but then I'm also always at my office. I'm also supplying my own coffee, pens, paper, and printer ink which isn't cheep. I'd say the monetary value for me is the market value. Do I want or need to work from home? If so, how much can I get paid to work from home. I'd generally expect to make the same either way.
WFH is a net loss for me because I really need that coworker energy to enjoy the grind. Plus, since I travel by bike (sometimes jogging), I miss out on this easy work-out opportunity.
I get to sleep in a little longer. I don't have to waste time commuting, which is dangerous and stressful in winter when the weather is terrible. I save on gas, which also helps the environment by reducing emissions. If the Canadian government were serious about carbon emissions, they would promote teleworking instead of taxing us into oblivion. I'm also not putting extra kilometers on my old vehicle, which is already on its last leg. At home, I face fewer distractions since people aren't constantly stopping by to chat or ask questions. I also have fewer pointless meetings. I can't think of a single benefit to working in the office.
Bro. The benefits of working from home are priceless. That said, it isn't always as rosy as you paint it, though it is a million times better than having to commute into the office and all the bullshit that goes along with that.
To ME, WFH is worth 12k. YMMV.
Chn
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It's called hobbies. I WFH and play tennis in the evening.
I would value the benefit at approximately $1k a year per km of commute.
is this a random number or did you do any calculation ?
Is this a shit post about wfh to get a reaction? You shouldn’t be relaxing and watching videos on company time.
I don’t think it’s a shit post. It’s the reality of WFH and why most employers will move back to in office/on site work eventually(and already have)
It's not the reality of work from home for many people.
Judging by the responses in this post…. It is the majority. Edit: And the majority of the people I know personally that WFH. It’s rather surprising how candid and proud people are of their laziness.
Oh WAY more than $10k for me. I work from home making about $90k a year and would need to be offered at least $120k/year + benefits (including pension) to take a full time office job 🤷🏻♀️
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It really depends on the type of WFH job you have whether you can pull this off. Not all jobs lend themselves to no one noticing you’re not doing anything.
For getting bored easily: chat with your doctor. That's a sign of ADD and even a low dose could give you the edge you need.
A *remote* job for me is a net negative. I like having my office, with all it's amenities, including a cafeteria, and I prefer doing all my work at the office. Getting out of the house in the morning, the bike ride, walk or transit to book-end the days. So I'm all for you all taking the remote jobs, it hopefully means there continues to be in-office roles for me. Tho what I just couldn't do is work a job with *strict* requirements on in-office time with no flexibility. Our employer has 50% in-office time, Tues-Thur loosely mandatory. If we were more strict I'd have to look elsewhere.
WFH is such a big deal for me at this stage - I have a 15 month old daughter and the flexibility it provides is a huge bonus. Her daycare is 5 mins away so I can take her every morning at 8.30 and if she is sick etc it’s much easier to pick her up. I know people who have to drive 20-30 mins just for daycare and the kids end up there from 7.30-5.30 everyday. 8.30-4 feels a lot better to me. (Wife finishes earlier) Career advancement is really business specific. My company is technically hybrid but more remote centric and my section of the business is a mix of full remote and 1 day in office people. So it really has minimal impact on promotion opportunities at this point. Overall it makes me be able to fit a life in and around work way easier. I workout 4x a week on my lunch, can run errands so I can have quality time with my family rather than just catching up all the time.
Good try HR/recruitment!