> Unlike some other companies’ approaches, Dell seems to be asking workers who live within an hour’s commute to work from the office for three days per week, rather than specific job roles.
Hour during rush hour or hour as measured by Google Maps without traffic data?
So they're basically asking people to spend 40 hours a month, unpaid, in their car going to and from work with no compensation?
You say this like it’s a new and offensive idea when in fact this has been the norm for as long as paid workforce has been concept.
With regards to hybrid jobs: you can get a job closer to home, but there is a reason why house prices are more expensive in tech hubs and why wages are lower where housing is cheaper. So you can either have cheaper housing but lower income, higher income but higher house prices, or have both but pay the penalty with you time (ie longer commutes).
This is how it’s always been and why fully remote jobs have been a great life hack. But you can’t really complain about having to spend you own time commuting should you have a hybrid role.
You say this like norms are not meant to be challenged. That fully remote jobs are a life hack, which shouldn't be normal (i.e. hack).
Having experienced the full-time WFH during covid, I believe many feel that the extra time not spent on commuting can be better used for life. Why bother with extra commute when it does not bring you anything?
In the past for the paid workforce WFH has not been possible. You had to physically be present to perform the labor. In these modern times with computers and internet, we now have the ability to communicate and even perform most tasks related to the job when being in a completely different place than my coworkers.
Companies only get the benefits of people being in the office (more interaction, more control), but not the penalties (unpaid commute time).
Norms should move with the zeitgeist, in the spirit of the time and age we live in. Why stay stuck in the way of working from 50 years ago?
> You say this like norms are not meant to be challenged.
You’re free to challenge the norms. I just don’t agree with the arguments made on this occasion and had listed other reasons why beyond just social norms. Ie you’re already being compensated by choosing to live in a bigger yet cheaper property then you’d have afforded if you wanted to live closer to work.
Ultimately there is always going to be a trade off but that’s your choice not your employers.
WFH is completely independent from the idea of moving to a suburb to afford a bigger house.
You're literally just making up an imaginary scenario of people moving just because they can WFH and then acting like that's "compensation" built into WFH.
We aren’t talking about WFH though. We are taking about people with long commute times being compensated for their efforts. And the exact reason people move out of the city, and thus have a longer commute, is precisely to buy something bigger somewhere quieter.
This isn’t a weird new concept I’m throwing out there either. It’s a well discussed topic. So much so that I could name several TV shows that feature this as a plot point.
Of course, there is a trend to people choosing to relocate to cheaper areas once the requirement to live near a (n expensive) city office is lifted. As such, this would often provide ample space for a WFH office.
I do about 95% of my work on my recliner with a laptop and a lap desk. No additional living space required. Occasionally I'll go in the computer room with the dual monitors when I feel I need them for something, but that's certainly not required.
Yes, they can complain - and should. We all should. If there’s no real reason to commute, if the actual work doesn’t require it, then we should push back on this.
“How it’s always been” is a lousy reason to keep doing something if there’s a better way.
The pandemic forced employers to allow WFH so they could keep the money spigots flowing. We learned that it isn’t really necessary to burn additional fossil fuels and contribute to pollution and donate commute time for free.
It’s entirely logical that workers are complaining about a unnecessary constraint that costs them time, money & restricts where they can live.
> this has been the norm for as long as paid workforce has been concept.
Just because something has been done for a long time doesn't mean it's fair or right.
The standard work week was once 12-14 hours a day, 6 days a week. Things change.
> But you can’t really complain about having to spend you own time commuting should you have a hybrid role.
Of course you can. You can complain about anything, and sometimes with very good reasons.
Ultimately employers are free to demand that employees RTO with no travel time compensation if they want, but it's silly to say this is something the employees can't complain about.
So one person buys/rents an expensive house just to be closer to the office and not have to commute. Somebody else makes the decision to live 1.5 hours away to save money.
How would travel time compensation work in this situation? Why would companies not discriminate implicitly or explicitly against employees who live further away?
I am not advocating for travel time compensation; I am advocating for the right to complain in general.
I work from home the vast majority of the time currently with very occasional visits to the office. The office for me is 15 minutes away. I would never accept a job that required a greater than 20-minute single direction commute, so travel time compensation is not on my radar of things to worry about.
Maybe there’s a language barrier here because “can’t really complain” is British slang for “it’s a bit silly to moan about” rather than “I forbid you from speaking about such a subject”.
At the end of the day, someone has to pay for it. Higher and higher salaries, more and more perks and benefits, less and less hours put into work.
Sure there is time savings in not commuting, but there are also time savings in face-to-face interactions, team spirit etc.
Instead of cooking some food and eat alone at home you can eat and discuss with colleagues or friends who work in the same area.
Instead of commuting people waste their time on social media, news and other junk before, during and after work. A commute via bus, train, subway, bicycle can often be productive or even relaxing versus taking the car. It's an often needed break between work-time and free-time. It's hard to make that break when working form home.
> Instead of commuting people waste their time on social media, news and other junk before, during and after work. A commute via bus, train, subway, bicycle can often be productive or even relaxing versus taking the car. It's an often needed break between work-time and free-time. It's hard to make that break when working form home.
You seem to be extending your own experience as if it applies to everyone equally, but it doesn't.
I find commutes neither productive nor relaxing. I do not need a break between work-time and free-time, I have an office space at home to provide that compartmentalization.
I spent a decade working in an office park with no restaurants and only over priced cafeterias with low quality food. Everyone brought their lunch and usually ate in their office while on conference calls. My employer was responsible for the selection and hiring of the cafeteria management company.
I made more points than just an appeal to tradition. Let me reiterate:
You already get compensated by having both a higher paid job and living in a bigger property in a cheaper yet desirable neighbourhood. And more to the point, your employer didn’t choose where you live, you chose that yourself.
If you were commuting to different site(s) than the one listed as your “base” location then it would be a different story. But most businesses already compensate you for that. They just don’t pay for you travelling between home and your base location because that was the expectation you agreed to when you took the job.
Was the agreement WFH though? Was it actually written into their contract? Or was this just something they informally agreed to while it was difficult to hire staff?
I’m not saying changing policy against your employees wishes is a good thing but if your acceptance of a job is predicated on the condition of being fully remote then you’d want to be damn sure that is written into your contract. And if it is, then your employer cannot change those terms without issuing you a new contract.
Also I know plenty of people who haven’t changed jobs in the last 3 years.
People like yourself have been fixated on that one sentence because it’s easy to dismiss and ignored the other points I raised.
I’m still yet to hear one single reason why it is “offensive” to have to pay for your own travel into work. I’ve given plenty of reasons why I don’t see an issue with it but nobody has given any reasons why it’s offensive beyond simply saying that it is so.
Here's an answer: because it's time from our life, stress, cost, and physical risk that we are taking for someone else's benefit that we am not compensated for. That is highly and inherently offensive, which is why most users aren't bothering to engage you on it. People aren't going to spend their time arguing over something that is self-evident; if the other person can't see it that's their problem, not ours. Horse, water, drink, etc.
I think most people aren’t nothing to engage because they’re, and your, point of view is completely unrealistic, overly simplistic and clearly not ever going to work in the real world. So instead you have to make emotional pleas, ignore counter arguments because “isn’t it obvious…” and generally pull all the usual shades debate tactics that one does when they know they can’t win an argument on merit alone.
How does such a compensation work fairly when someone people pay the premium to live closer? What’s stopping you from working on the train and counting that towards your working hours? Etc. what’s stopping you from getting a job closer to home?
There’s so many flaws to your argument and the only point you make that cannot be refuted is your sense of entitlement. So it’s not surprising I’m unconvinced.
But we might just have to agree to disagree on this topic. I suspect this is more a question of perceived morality than it is something tangible that can be proved.
> What’s stopping you from working on the train and counting that towards your working hours?
Laws and agreements?
You’re supposed to guard company data, you can’t just open your laptop in the middle of anything and let everybody on the train take a look at your code or any other company data.
Also, you’re assuming that the train is not crowded enough that you can sit comfortably…
I do take your point but on the trains I commute on, it’s really common to see people with a laptop open and worked. I do this myself on occasions too. So it’s certainly possible for some commutes even if it’s not a universal truth.
Sorry for the quality of this comment. Ironically I was typing this on my phone while on my commute home (train, not driving) and my phones autocorrect must have gone into overdrive. Too late to edit it now though.
You’ve fallen into the same trap as many others by refuting the easy claim that bad things should change yet don’t address the real question of why you feel entitled to this change.
You call it “idiocy” yet literally nobody has been able to put into words why it is so.
The real idiocy here is how one sided the discussion has been. The supporters, like yourself, simply say “it should be like this because I say so”. Whereas the opposition, such as myself, have detailed a number of reasons why, such as cheaper housing vs regional wages.
If it were really as clear cut as you claim, I wouldn’t be reading through a page of meaningless straw man arguments like I am right now.
We aren’t talking about WFH vs working in the office. We are talking about the argument made that companies should reimburse employees for any time spent commuting.
It is idiocy in my opinion and I am acting accordingly. I don’t need to prove it to you or anyone. I don’t consider employment offers that don’t align with me along this axis. I have plenty of options that do.
> It is idiocy in my opinion and I am acting accordingly
You’re acting like an idiot?!
> I don’t need to prove it to you or anyone.
You’re the one engaging in the conversation. If you don’t want to explain your point of view then why bother posting in the first place?
> I don’t consider employment offers that don’t align with me along this axis. I have plenty of options that do.
You have plenty of job offers where your employer pays for your commute?
I’ve been in the industry for several decades and the only time I’ve ever known this happen is when someone has site visits, which isn’t the scope of our conversation here. So I think you’re either misunderstanding the conversation here or just posting BS.
There's a lot of evidence of internalized capitalism on this site, but I'm happy to see a variety of opinions for and against remote coming out in the comments
I’m definitely one of the bigger socialises on here (probably because I’m European). I just don’t believe that a company owes you for your commute time. I feel that it pushing entitlement a little too far.
Given the shitty wages most people are on, how some people walk for 2 hours a day, every day, to get to and from work because they can’t afford a car…and then we have this thread. It just feels like there’s a real disconnect from reality going on right now.
> I’m definitely one of the bigger socialises on here (probably because I’m European). I just don’t believe that a company owes you for your commute time. I feel that it pushing entitlement a little too far.
Incorrect, it is a reasonable and deserved level of entitlement. When you spend hours of your life for someone else's benefit you are morally entitled to be compensated it.
> Given the shitty wages most people are on, how some people walk for 2 hours a day, every day, to get to and from work because they can’t afford a car…and then we have this thread. It just feels like there’s a real disconnect from reality going on right now.
Crab mentality. Multiple shitty things exist of different scales and all of them should be fixed. Everyone should be paid for commute time AND no one should have to walk two hours or have a low wage job. Calling out the wrongness of the former does not mean we are okay with the latter. The subject matter of thread happened to be about the former.
Because commute time is work time. Plain and simple. There are very few unemployed people that take the tube for 1 hour in the morning and in the evening just for the sake of it.
Since work from anywhere showed that a lot of work can be done remotely, if a company wants someone to work on premises it is obvious that they have to pay for the extra time and effort spent.
> Because commute time is work time. Plain and simple. There are very few unemployed people that take the tube for 1 hour in the morning and in the evening just for the sake of it.
So if I take the tube to see a show, then work should pay for that as well? I’m not working while sat on the tube any more than I’m working while on the way to the theatre.
And if people do decide to work on the train, then they can count that towards their working hours so there isn’t an issue.
If you’re not working on the train, then it clearly isn’t work time any more than that lunch break which companies also don’t pay you for.
Also what about people who have chosen to pay more for a property that is closer to the office? Should they be excluded from this subsidy? Effectively penalising them for not having a long commute? How is that fair on them?
> Since work from anywhere showed that a lot of work can be done remotely, if a company wants someone to work on premises it is obvious that they have to pay for the extra time and effort spent
The ironic thing was during COVID some people were complaining that their home expenses had gone up due to working from home and thus insisted they should be compensated for that too. The British government even issued tax credits to help such individuals.
It wastes time. It wastes fuel. WFH actually does work: there is this new fangled thingy called the internets that is a series of tubes which distributes things oh so magically.
But certain management types feel great knowing that their drones are being good little drones.
I didn’t see them lowering salaries when WFH was implemented in the first place so I don’t think that they should raise salaries when removing it. A few people I know had WFH written into their contracts so I guess they would be able to renegotiate or keep home working.
In the end this has always been about manager/owner power, not about getting work done or doing the right thing by your employees.
I remember at least proposals from companies like Facebook talking about lowering salaries for people moving to lower cost of living areas. Not sure how broadly it was implemented.
The real bind is fitting travel around family life that changed since 2020, kids going to different schools and spouse changing jobs means work life balance is shared differently for most people. I can see the issue going beyond pay, people can't be into places at once, but you can put the hours in when remote spread over the day.
I know multiple people first hand who moved away from their expensive homes to cheaper and bigger ones during the pandemic when WFH became a standard.
There are exactly zero ways you can force those people from their homes back to city apartments. Their kids go to school in the new city, their SOs might have in-person jobs there, they have a huge yard and better quality of living. Some of them theoretically work under an hour away from their current job.
If companies force WFH, they will just quit and find a new remote-only job.
Dell is in Round Rock which has precisely zero train options besides the model railway exhibition each December, so unless you’re one of the Borrowers, you’re talking crap.
Round Rock is near where a lot of those large and cheap houses are in the first place. The people in small and expensive apartments downtown moved near Round Rock or Cedar Park during the pandemic.
> You are free to live closer if you want to work there
How? Most people can barely make rent as it is, the problem is that almost everywhere the large employers are in the city centers and people can't reasonably move close to there.
Hour during rush hour or hour as measured by Google Maps without traffic data?
So they're basically asking people to spend 40 hours a month, unpaid, in their car going to and from work with no compensation?