what is the dollar value of working from home? i just taught a "systems architect" how to do his job. he probably makes at least $20K more than me. would i trade my current work-from-home situation for another $20K if it meant long commutes etc.? i'm not so sure.

not $20k, definitely

i’ve thought about that a lot lately, though, but i think its hard to base it solely on the dollar difference (remote vs. commute)

but i would likely say yes if i were given the option to make $20k less but be 100% remote if that were an option today

kinda surprising. $20K is a lot of money. not having thought much about this before i'm a little shocked to think about just how valuable work-from-home is to me. don't tell my boss!

probably makes more sense to talk in percentages

"solely on the dollar difference" - sure, but in our economy everytging translates into money (quantification).

@jrotenberg what do you mean?

$20k varies from 200% of the yearly salary in some parts of asia to 5% in SF

i mean “what percentage pay reduction would you take to work 100% remotely (if you don’t currently)”

@dm3 exactly

btw, that’s why it’s harder to compete on a full-remote job (given other comparable qualities)

@dm3 sure, adjust for regional differences. i'm in chicago where $20K is a lot of dough, but it's poverty level if that's all you have.

ok i see you want to generalize across economies, good.

sorry, i'm prone to forget how international slack is. my bad.

so let's say 20-30%

but i'd put like this: what % pay increase would it take to get you to give up your work-from-home gig? i think that's a different question.

probably, yeah

also need to factor in what the remote situation is like

i.e. remote first company or not

For me, WFH means having no commute and not needing to run a second car — aside from anything else — so commuting translates to a work day that is 2-4 hours longer per day, so an extra 25-50% of my time overall, as well as car payments/depreciation/etc so maybe $500-1k/month for that (depending on commute distance)… So, yeah, $20k/year isn’t very much compensation for all that additional time and car/travel costs.

(San Francisco Bay Area)

In other parts of the country (or the world) commutes can be shorter and/or public transit might be an option instead of a car.

SF has good public transit (for America) but I’d either still need a car to get to/from public transit, need to rely on my partner to ferry me back and forth reliably, or use buses etc which would add substantial time to the commute (just to/from BART).

In England, for one of my jobs, I could walk to/from work so the benefit of WFH would have been minimal. Other jobs in England… some would have been nigh-impossible by public transit others would have been easy (but expensive), so there are a lot of trade-offs.

BART is decent but its still an hour door to door from the east bay to downtown sf

Yup, I did Castro Valley -> Adobe in San Francisco -> Castro Valley yesterday. Drive two miles, BART 30 minutes, walk 20 minutes… and then in reverse a few hours later. Two hours of commuting and $10+ for a three hour meeting! Luckily I was back home before that train got stuck in the Trans-Bay Tube otherwise it would have been several hours more.