Given the obvious zero-commute-cost, how else have any of you HNers measured this benefit?
$140/day * 200 days per year = $28k.
The way it can be seriously beneficial is you can live/move to somewhere really cheap and still get paid big-city rates.
I knew a guy living on his own small ranch in the middle of nowhere making $150k/year. Living far better than the guy making $300k/year in Manhattan.
The value is increased freedom. The OP has to decide what value that has to him - assigning it an arbitrary number based on what a person earns per hour is silly.
Your second point was much more valid -- if you can live in a much more inexpensive way, that's a benefit you can put an actual # on.
What a ranch and Manhattan can offer, and cannot offer, are so vastly different that another $200K in salary (above basic needs) is the least of it.
If I were offered a 50% pay increase that required I commute an hour each way and spend all day in an office, I wouldn't take it.
I've actually had better, and more productive, interaction with distant/remote colleagues, in particular as a member of a "senior" team. People knew what they were about and were no nonsense and largely "post-ego" -- whatever did the job, and pointing out errors received a "thanks" rather than a bunch of defensive politics.
Plus, real conversations could happen -- because they weren't constantly being interrupted or joined in by passersby and those with an idle moment.
So... The value's more than commute time and gas money. But it's also personally defined.
(You can argue about resultant productivity and the bottom line for the business, but almost no business seems to measure this nor act on in in a substantive manner. Therefore, it is "delegated" to the role of a personal choice, if there's any choice at all.)
One concern: Is there a career path for you? Whether defined by the company, or by you personally.
I will be working from home, and the pay will be roughly the same - but I wanted to see how others valued the working from home.
* Getting to actually see your kid: priceless.
If you're out of the house 7am - 7pm, all you're going to see of your kid are asleep (cute but boring) or awake (go back to sleep!). If that's what you've got to do, that's what you've got to do, but if there's an alternative that's pretty cool.
Whereas if you're only gone 9 'til 5, you've got a couple of little windows there where you actually get to have fun with them. Plus lunch.
The downside is that it is pretty easy to get distracted. You'll need to set up some kind of office environment, and work out how to make it work for you.
Good luck!
I find it decidedly suboptimal that our society insulates young people from work until their late teens or early 20's, then expects them to suddenly and magically become good workers. Raising my kid around my work is a huge plus, in terms of his preparation for life, his understanding why mommy works even though it takes time away from him, and increasing the time we get to spend together.
There are other benefits to working from home that are harder to measure:
* I cook more when I work from home because I can stick something in my oven during the work day and have it ready at dinner time, rather than getting take out or buying heat-and-eat foods during the week. This saves big bucks on food, and also improves our health.
* My son gets a better education when I work from home because I am there to see when he's struggling with something, and can work with his teachers to fix it (as opposed to delegating homework time to a nanny or daycare).
* I don't have to take off of work to let a plumber in, to care for my son when he's home sick from school, and so on.
* I don't take off when I'm sick, unless I'm falling-down can't-think-right sick -- there's no worry about infecting my coworkers, not being close enough to a restroom, how I'm going to drive home if I get worse while at work, etc..
* I save a lot of time I might have spent commuting, which can be spent instead on my family, a side project, recreation, whatever.
* I'll never lose 1-2 days of productivity to an allergy attack because Joe Blow from marketing who's a pack-a-day smoker keeps popping by my office reeking of the stuff.
All else being equal, I'd take a job with 20% lower pay in order to work from home full time -- assuming, of course, it isn't one of those companies where telecommuters are second-class citizens. Other related benefits (such as being able to build my work schedule around my life to some degree) could knock it down a bit further.
I see money simply as a tool to help me do things that matter -- money, in and of itself, or as a matter of score keeping, isn't important to me.
I took the one 12 miles away, partly to avoid losing my bike commute. I figured losing 90 minutes per day of forced exercise would be bad for my health. (Of course if I'd taken the telecommute gig I still could have gone for a bike ride every day -- but would I have done it, when the weather was bad?)
I won't take a job that requires a car commute. (Unless it's the only thing I can find, which seems incredibly unlikely.)