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Comment by kitsunesoba | Hacker News Reader

As a guy, now that I've been working remotely for a few years I don't plan on taking a role that involves going into an office on the regular unless there's a massive comp jump involved. The time, money, and sanity that gets spent on commuting 5 days a week is undervalued to a stunning degree and regardless of line of work, should be compensated.

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There is also the reduction in pollution/carbon and overall savings. Letting a building of 500+ people wfh even one day a week takes an average of 100 cars per day off daily commute routes. During covid I remember going outside and just being surprised at how clear the sky was. I know that that kind of reduction is not economically feasible but I do feel guilty sometimes driving into work knowing that it is entirely unnecessary. I work for a government agency and most, if not all of our meetings are over Teams anyway because we are spread out all over the downtown area.

Yes. Not to mention the range factor. If I were to look at onsite roles, I'd be limited to offices in a certain distance of my house, and then once I'm there I'd only be able to hire people in the same driving or public transit distance who either prefer in person who can't get a remote offer.

Moving for a computer-bound job, especially if you have a house/family/etc., seems laughable in 2023.

No matter how hard the commercial real estate interests lobby for butts in seats, those are hard facts to overcome.

Remote hiring can be a real ace in the hole for startups through midsize companies if leveraged correctly. They have access to high quality talent that FAANGs which insist on WFO likely never will, at least until pigs start flying and the CoL of areas surrounding FAANGs become more reasonable.

Well, certainly full remote as a perk gives them access to some pool of talent at a lot lower price tag than large in-person tech companies have to pay.

It depends. It's not that uncommon for remote-only companies to offer location-agnostic compensation with tech hub city comp being used as the baseline.

I can't prove it but I strongly suspect that top-tier Silicon Valley compensation for remote startups isn't the norm. I know if I were running one I would absolutely consider using benefits like remote work to lower my compensation packages if I could.

I don't run a company either, but I suspect it boils down to how serious one is about not only attracting but retaining talent.

The flipside of having access to a vastly wider pool of talent is that the talent has access to a vastly wider pool of employers. As such undercompensated employees already know of or will quickly discover their value and are likely to move to greener pastures when the opportunity inevitably presents itself.

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