[joeax]

I've been working remote for 8 years and so my commute is 0 mins. But in my experience companies that allow remote work have caught on to this commute time==money dynamic and have adjusted their offered compensation accordingly. More than once have I had or heard the conversation that "well, you have the perk of no commute + living in a lower cost area, so based on that the compensation target for you is X - Y", where Y is $10-20k less.

The question I wrestle with: is it fair?

1. For living in a lower cost area, no. If I live in SF I benefit/pay a premium for living in a nicer area. That should have nothing to do with compensation (unless they are located in SF and need me close by).

2. For not having a commute, maybe. I think it is fair for a company to pay a premium to have someone onsite. But that premium should be the same whether I walk 5 mins to work or drive 50 miles.

[DoingIsLearning]

I think it's a mistake to frame this with respect to 'fairness'.

If you were another company instead of an individual you would not be having this discussion with your employer.

Would they try to bring the price of IT equipment down, with the argument of a shorter delivery route, if they were doing business with a retail business close by their office?

For HR the best outcome is to get the best people possible for the lowest price possible.

The best outcome for you as an employee is to get the maximum compensation + benefits + bonuses for the least amount of your time/effort.

For the archetype factory employee, their value grows linearly with time spent working. For a knowledge worker the output of a small team of 10/20 people could generate orders of magnitude more, the time spent is not relevant what matters is the value adding output.

So if you want to think in terms of fairness don't frame it in terms of the 40 hours a week, frame it in terms of the profit generated or money saved as a direct result of your output.

[BeetleB]

> frame it in terms of the profit generated or money saved as a direct result of your output.

As I pointed out here[1] this is hard to do and no company does this. If you can find a way to quantify your value to the company, that's great. 90+% of the cases I've seen where people do it, they're making wild assumptions that no employer would buy, though.

> Would they try to bring the price of IT equipment down, with the argument of a shorter delivery route, if they were doing business with a retail business close by their office?

No, but they would bring the price down if they could buy it cheaper from a competitor. If you live in a low COL area, they could try to argue that they can find other employees in your area for whom they could pay less than what you demand, and those people would still get paid more than the average in that area.

There's a reason outsourced employees in other countries don't get paid as much as they do in the US. Do not expect that you can change that dynamic easily.

Of course, if you can demonstrate that it'll be hard for them to find a remote worker with your (perhaps rare) skills, then your argument would be more appealing to them.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21685035

[TeMPOraL]

> "well, you have the perk of no commute (...)"

I guess my belief that employers should pay for commute time of their employees wouldn't fly with them.

[magduf]

Why should employers pay for that? It's the employee's choice where they live, not the company's. If the company bought some company housing and had employees live there, then your idea would make sense. But why should someone who chooses to live 2 hours away get paid more than someone who lives 5 minutes away?

However, I think there are some good arguments to be made about where the employers choose to locate their offices.