4 ms·

My "first-order costs only" spreadsheet put RTO at like twenty grand a year. I had no idea. I started playing around with the idea of how much it costs to hav

My "first-order costs only" spreadsheet put RTO at like twenty grand a year. I had no idea. I started playing around with the idea of how much it costs to have a job based on location and it was interesting to see how different variables changed the final wage and how that played out against a map of the city.

DiggyJohnson 28d ago
$20k for the company to facilitate your workspace or $20k of net cost to you the employee to comply with RTO? If the latter and assuming a reasonable commute (15-35 minutes) one way how did you arrive at that number?
- preg_match 28d ago
  Well on the employee side it’s more complicated than you think. You have gas, yes, and then mileage on your car. And then working in an office means you have to take more time off to deal with mundane things like “the plumber is coming today”. And then 30 minutes of commute is 1 hour a day, which lowers your effective wage. And then of course there’s various other costs like food being more difficult and expensive, higher risk of serious bodily harm or death due to automobile use, and the biggest one: COL. living close to work can easily double your COL for no real gain. Depending on the city, you could easily be looking at a 100% cost rise in rent, a few thousand on car maintenance and gasoline depending on your car a year, a few thousand on food, about ~12% reduction in wage, and a few days of lost PTO.
  - DiggyJohnson 28d ago
    I guess if you consider your commute as purely work time then it starts making more sense. Maybe I’m unusual in that I don’t loathe my commute and see the time as 100% personal time.
    - preg_match 28d ago
      The way I view it is that personal time means time id spend if work didn’t exist. If work didn’t exist, I wouldn’t commute. So, to me, it’s work time. Yes it’s “easier” (sometimes) than working, but it’s still time I dedicate to work. Its entire purpose exists because work exists. I used to have a really gnarly commute (1.5 hours one way, so 3 hours total, 3.5-4 if there was an accident). The level to which it affected my finances is one thing, but it absolutely demolished my quality of life. I couldn’t socialize, sleep, or even cook for myself due to the exhaustion. And spending minimum of 12 hours a day sitting destroyed my body and mental health. Not to mention traffic is not peaceful, it’s stressful. You have to constantly be “on” and paying attention. Even a single second of distraction can be an accident.
      - DiggyJohnson 23d ago
        I just wish I could have this discussion without finding out that the interlocutor has a top 2% percentile commute distance.
      - account42 27d ago
        I generally agree that commute should count as work time more often than not but its complicated when you can take advantage of the commute to get other things done near your work site or along the route. E.g. if you commonly stop to get groceries half way from work to your home then perhaps you would have needed to spend time for that trip anyway. But that's more of an excuse for a 30 minute or less commute, not for over an hour.
        preg_match 27d ago
        I absolutely think employee's would try to game it if companies paid out commute time. Some companies do pay out travel time, which is a similar concept. I think you just have to accept some amount of gaming, that's life. On the employee side, the solution is to ALWAYS factor in your commute time. A job that pays 20,000 dollars more a year can easily not be worth it if the commute is insane. If you have to double your rent to make it work, it's probably not worth it. I factor in commute like I factor in other benefits, like health insurance and PTO. My salary can't necessarily replace those, so they implicitly have a higher value than money alone. It would take a really nice salary to override them. And I think that's why we see absurd salaries in places like Seattle. They know employee's are doing this calculus, they can't afford to pay 100,000 like you can in, say, Texas.
  - steveBK123 27d ago
    > biggest one: COL. living close to work can easily double your COL for no real gain This is I think where hybrid (with weekly attendance) really makes more sense in theory than in practice, ending up as worst of both worlds depending. With in-office you pay a premium for location that is good for commuting. With remote you can choose a cheaper location without the commute constraint (maybe 50% off), somewhat offset by needing more space to setup a proper home office (add back 10-20%). With hybrid you still need to be close enough that 2 days/week of commuting is tolerable and ALSO need space for a home office.
- gopher_space 27d ago
  The first step is nailing down the numbers that everyone understands and agrees with. I start with the stated wage on a job description and attempt to calculate the value of any additional benefits to arrive at the hourly rate a potential employer thinks my time is worth. Vehicle cost is similarly straightforward since wear and mileage calculators are standardized and you're already budgeting for parking if you need to. However. Once you collect a handful of data points the rest of the process is entirely personal. For example, a one-hour commute each way sounds terrible unless that's the only time in the day you have to yourself, but if the traffic is never smooth or you need to switch trains three times it might be a wash. The key point is to determine if a specific activity is solely work-related and if I get anything else out of it, and then apply the dollar value this potential employer sets on my time as above. Now take a look at your food situation. Do you and your partner meal prep every Sunday without fail? Do you start your day at the Starbucks drive thru? Now take a look at your responsibilities. Do you have children? Do you have pets? Now take a look at your wardrobe. The list goes on and it's all situational. The interesting part of the project was seeing how much home location + commute options + work location affect net pay by just dragging a few markers around a map of the city. I was adding average residential rent by location last time I touched this and felt like the project was turning into a map of the de facto minimum wage in my area. To answer your question this was $20k net to me, mainly from maintaining a vehicle, eating out of the house, and keeping up my in-office appearance.

DiggyJohnson 28d ago

$20k for the company to facilitate your workspace or $20k of net cost to you the employee to comply with RTO? If the latter and assuming a reasonable commute (15-35 minutes) one way how did you arrive at that number?

preg_match 28d ago
Well on the employee side it’s more complicated than you think. You have gas, yes, and then mileage on your car. And then working in an office means you have to take more time off to deal with mundane things like “the plumber is coming today”. And then 30 minutes of commute is 1 hour a day, which lowers your effective wage. And then of course there’s various other costs like food being more difficult and expensive, higher risk of serious bodily harm or death due to automobile use, and the biggest one: COL. living close to work can easily double your COL for no real gain. Depending on the city, you could easily be looking at a 100% cost rise in rent, a few thousand on car maintenance and gasoline depending on your car a year, a few thousand on food, about ~12% reduction in wage, and a few days of lost PTO.
- DiggyJohnson 28d ago
  I guess if you consider your commute as purely work time then it starts making more sense. Maybe I’m unusual in that I don’t loathe my commute and see the time as 100% personal time.
  - preg_match 28d ago
    The way I view it is that personal time means time id spend if work didn’t exist. If work didn’t exist, I wouldn’t commute. So, to me, it’s work time. Yes it’s “easier” (sometimes) than working, but it’s still time I dedicate to work. Its entire purpose exists because work exists. I used to have a really gnarly commute (1.5 hours one way, so 3 hours total, 3.5-4 if there was an accident). The level to which it affected my finances is one thing, but it absolutely demolished my quality of life. I couldn’t socialize, sleep, or even cook for myself due to the exhaustion. And spending minimum of 12 hours a day sitting destroyed my body and mental health. Not to mention traffic is not peaceful, it’s stressful. You have to constantly be “on” and paying attention. Even a single second of distraction can be an accident.
    - DiggyJohnson 23d ago
      I just wish I could have this discussion without finding out that the interlocutor has a top 2% percentile commute distance.
    - account42 27d ago
      I generally agree that commute should count as work time more often than not but its complicated when you can take advantage of the commute to get other things done near your work site or along the route. E.g. if you commonly stop to get groceries half way from work to your home then perhaps you would have needed to spend time for that trip anyway. But that's more of an excuse for a 30 minute or less commute, not for over an hour.
      - preg_match 27d ago
        I absolutely think employee's would try to game it if companies paid out commute time. Some companies do pay out travel time, which is a similar concept. I think you just have to accept some amount of gaming, that's life. On the employee side, the solution is to ALWAYS factor in your commute time. A job that pays 20,000 dollars more a year can easily not be worth it if the commute is insane. If you have to double your rent to make it work, it's probably not worth it. I factor in commute like I factor in other benefits, like health insurance and PTO. My salary can't necessarily replace those, so they implicitly have a higher value than money alone. It would take a really nice salary to override them. And I think that's why we see absurd salaries in places like Seattle. They know employee's are doing this calculus, they can't afford to pay 100,000 like you can in, say, Texas.
- steveBK123 27d ago
  > biggest one: COL. living close to work can easily double your COL for no real gain This is I think where hybrid (with weekly attendance) really makes more sense in theory than in practice, ending up as worst of both worlds depending. With in-office you pay a premium for location that is good for commuting. With remote you can choose a cheaper location without the commute constraint (maybe 50% off), somewhat offset by needing more space to setup a proper home office (add back 10-20%). With hybrid you still need to be close enough that 2 days/week of commuting is tolerable and ALSO need space for a home office.
gopher_space 27d ago
The first step is nailing down the numbers that everyone understands and agrees with. I start with the stated wage on a job description and attempt to calculate the value of any additional benefits to arrive at the hourly rate a potential employer thinks my time is worth. Vehicle cost is similarly straightforward since wear and mileage calculators are standardized and you're already budgeting for parking if you need to. However. Once you collect a handful of data points the rest of the process is entirely personal. For example, a one-hour commute each way sounds terrible unless that's the only time in the day you have to yourself, but if the traffic is never smooth or you need to switch trains three times it might be a wash. The key point is to determine if a specific activity is solely work-related and if I get anything else out of it, and then apply the dollar value this potential employer sets on my time as above. Now take a look at your food situation. Do you and your partner meal prep every Sunday without fail? Do you start your day at the Starbucks drive thru? Now take a look at your responsibilities. Do you have children? Do you have pets? Now take a look at your wardrobe. The list goes on and it's all situational. The interesting part of the project was seeing how much home location + commute options + work location affect net pay by just dragging a few markers around a map of the city. I was adding average residential rent by location last time I touched this and felt like the project was turning into a map of the de facto minimum wage in my area. To answer your question this was $20k net to me, mainly from maintaining a vehicle, eating out of the house, and keeping up my in-office appearance.