1y ago

What would get you "back to the office"?

There are a lot of news articles about "back to the office", but they recirculate the same bad ideas. Let's provide some new ideas for the media to circulate. It may also have the effect of making the office less terrible.

I would like my work computer to do Windows updates lightning quick in the office. It currently takes weeks, in or out of the office. Stopping in for a day makes no difference, so there is no point. Now, if there was a point, I would go in.

What would get you in the office?

258 comments

Honestly, a much much higher salary. There are lots of things I'm going to have to deal with if I were to go back to the office; namely heavy traffic, transportation expenses, added stress, clothes (I mean, I'd have to use office-appropriate clothes whereas nowadays I have to be presentable only when I have meetings), food, waking up and preparing earlier than usual (sometimes up to 3 hours earlier!) and getting home late which gives me less free time, etc.
They're going to have to offer a really lucrative salary for me to even consider returning to the office.
- A higher salary would be of help to cover additional expeses related to coming to the office.
  However, we also need a nice office to come to that needs to be as comfy as the one home.
  
  You know what? I never even thought about that. I agree 100%. That's gonna be a tall order for companies, though. I mean, different people probably have different requirements to be comfortable.
- Yep. This is the answer.
  And by much higher, I mean on the order of 100% raise as in double my current salary. Even then it’s be a hard decision.
- Some quick maths suggest that the average citizen in Western countries spends an hour commuting a day. Which is 260 hours a year for a 5 day a week job, or about a month's worth of 8 hour days.
  So, in addition to all that other pointless crap you mentioned, add on enough salary to bring you one month closer to retirement every year.
- I currently have a pretty nice salary as a senior engineer. I make waaaay more than the average and I work remotely. But even then... I still wonder what it'll take. Because right now, there are positions that double/triples that AND is remote.
  Like a job that's 200k remote versus 250k in-office? Pretty easy to pick.
- Adding onto this, the ability to choose to not come in and/or come and go as needed. In 5 years I haven’t had my kids in day care and it’s important for me to be able to take them to school and pick them up.

Nothing. Quality of life of working from home cannot be replicated. Or the office would have to be in my street, which is pretty unrealistic
- Nothing for me also.
  The flexibility to do things when you have a few minutes (like breaks) is worth a lot to me, it makes me more productive and less stressed about time management.
  Plus I have cats and no other humans here so it’s a quiet, comfortable, loving environment, and no job can provide that for me.
  
  Plus I have cats and no other humans here so it’s a quiet, comfortable, loving environment, and no job can provide that for me.
  Looks like someone just needs some more team bonding activities and pizza parties with their team! Nothing builds a loving environment like a strong team!
- I used to work in an office which was doen the street once. It still sucked.
  
  It does not solve every other issue that work environment can bring, that's for sure
- Or the office would have to be in my street,
  Could become a road sweeper?
- How about a raise?
  
  I was talking to my wife the other day, my company would have to basically double my salary to get me to go into the office. Work life balance during WFH is actually balanced, I actually like my job and the company I'm at, I like the people I work with, I'm more productive and less distracted at home, I get to spend time with my daughter and take care of her, there's really no downside to WFH for employees that want to WFH.
  Working in the office? In addition to the normal costs (clothes, food, transportation, etc), losing 2-3 hours per day commuting, paying for childcare or having my wife not work, getting a second car or my wife not having a way to get to work or take our daughter to appointments, and plenty of other inconveniences and big changes.
  Working in an office is an outdated concept for most office jobs now. 100% of my job can and is done remote, even if I had colleagues in my office, a quick teams call or message is just as easy as pulling them away from their work with a question in person. It would take a very very large raise to get me to go into an office, and I would likely be looking for a remote job asap using that newly inflated salary.
  
  It would have to be a massive raise. At least double my current salary. Nothing else would have me even consider it.

Absolutely nothing. No amount of money or threats or “perks”. I work in software and my entire career has been built on flexible, mostly-remote work; particularly creating & leading remote, geographically distributed teams. I get the best talent no matter where they are, and use tools like Slack to work seamlessly in real-time and asynchronously across many disparate time zones. This wasn’t some new thing for me when COVID hit, this is how I’ve operated for more than 20 years.
I don’t mind going places for specific purposes: visiting clients, classified/sensitive discussions that can’t be transmitted, on-site work (like installations, research, etc), or team-building events like lunches, dinners, etc… but under no circumstances will I waste my time commuting to some specific ”office” daily just because. I am an efficiency expert and I will not tolerate having my time or my teams time wasted by incompetent, out-of-touch multi-millionaires that don’t realize the 80s ended 30 years ago.
- I agree 1,000%. I have been remote for the last five-ish years; I can count the amount of times I've actually needed to go into an office on one hand. At home I have: a giant ultrawide monitor; a quiet, private, office; gigabit internet; dog. How would I be more productive commuting to an office to listen to sales people banging gongs and ringing bells all day while I work in a cubicle on a single 19" monitor? All my teammates are in other cities and states, my code is checked into GitHub and mostly deployed to IaaS - and even our "on-prem" infrastructure is in another state.
- Preach it brother. I'm also in software and I started looking for a new job the minute I got the email calling us 100% back to the office. Fuck you Alan and your milion dollar office
- preach!

Absolutely nothing. I don’t think even money could do it for me at this point. Aside from all the obvious reasons to hate commuting and then sitting for 8 hours doing maybe 2 hours of work, I have never been healthier.
I have chronic migraines. Well, I used to(?). I haven’t had a single bad migraine in years. Yeah, I’ve still had a couple in the last few years, but they didn’t put functioning at a complete standstill. I wasn’t stuck in bed, hoping for death. The lack of artificial light is a big deal. The not having to stress myself out by commuting, then being stuck there is also another
On top of that, I eat 1000% better, easier. I can exercise instead of commuting. There’s literally no benefit to working in an office for me, but it has a metric fuckton of drawbacks.
- sitting for 8 hours doing maybe 2 hours of work
  This is funny, and something I've thought about and talked about with coworkers a lot. When I first started permanent WFH at the beginning of COVID, I used to feel really guilty about doing random chores and stuff around the house during the workday. I felt like I always had to be "on" trying to busy myself or whatever, even if there wasn't really work to do.
  Over time as we have done a partial return to office and I realized I do even less work on the days we go in, I have done a lot of reflection on the way we used to work when we were 100% in the office pre-covid. My conclusion is that on any given day most people were doing between 1-4 hours of actual work, and the rest of the time was spent wandering around, bullshitting, taking walks, browsing the Internet, etc. And everyone thought that was just fine. But a solid half of most days was literally wasted doing nothing productive at all.
  So these days I have shifted my attitude to one that is focused on getting my assigned work done, and being somewhat flexible on meeting times and when I can accomplish things. In return I don't feel guilty if I need to mow the lawn or do some laundry during the day. I have a smartphone and I get notifications. If there is something urgent I'll drop what I'm doing to handle it. If it can wait, I finish up then take care of it. It's greatly helped my sanity and I think it's improved my work, too. We do go to the office once a week or so but I honestly plan to get almost nothing accomplished on those days and consider it a bonus if we do get work done.
  
  I typed out a long reply, and idk where it went but the highlights are
  I saw the bullshit of it back in the 90s when I started working. I had MANY arguments with my boomer mother about it. Of course her opinion was shut up, put my head down, and do whatever they say, to keep my job. My opinion was fuck that fire me.
  I have never had a job (for someone else) where I couldn’t 100% complete it, accurately in 2 hours a day, max. Often less.
  I’m self employed now, and I have never been healthier, happier, or more mentally stable. I have two chronic conditions, that can be/are debilitating, which have never been better controlled. I know I can’t be alone on that.
  WFH is 100% better for everyone, and those that WANT to go back to the office, should work that out with their employer. WFH has shown to improve ever metric on the workers lives, and not to mention the reduction in pollution and road congestion.
- How about a raise?
  
  Read my second sentence. I literally couldn’t have spoon fed it to you any more.
  
  Why do you have such a hard on for people going back to the office?

A couple of things:
commute time counts as work time
no open plan landscape office
no 'clean desk' policy but the ability to personalise your workplace
dishwasher and general kitchen stuff not being a 'shared responsibility' but someone's job.
office being in a nice neighborhood with fun things to do after work or during lunch
My employer spent the past ~10 years de-personalising our offices, and now they wonder why people don't like to hang out in their sterile 'clean' building.
- Ha the shared kitchen responsibilities is such a good call.
  Damn we were putting up with so much bullshit in the office

32 hr work week, a dedicated office with a door and all my Mac peripherals, a big pay increase, and benefits to cover child care.

The office being within a 30 second walk of my home
- Also no one else being there.
  Also being in my home.
  Also getting to work in pants.
  So I guess nothing, then 👌

Free or affordable, clean, safe public transit that takes me no more than 20 minutes from the time I set foot out my front door to setting foot in the office, and a team/company that doesn't care if I decide to work the day remotely for any reason whatsoever. I also like the other guy's comment about the workplace being a nice, inviting place to be since my cube is barren and probably 20+ years old.
Also the rest of y'all need to stay home when you get sick instead of bringing that shit into the office.
- Nothing pisses me off more than hearing some dude hacking up his lungs just across the hallway.
  I'll call in sick a few days later just because, and say there must be something going around. At least it will get me a few days away from the Sickies so I can potentially avoid getting it.
- I can't believe it's been so many years and there still aren't any laws regarding working in the office while sick. For office jobs it just makes zero sense, in this age they can all easily work from home more or less as seen during covid, isn't worth it not to have a plague of common colds every damn winter?
  
  For real, I have not gotten sick since I started working from home. I did get COVID once going to a company sponsored event with 1000 people, but I call that "going into the office". Other than that, it's been pretty nice being healthy every day
- Some cubicle farms are just sad. Coffee stains from 20 years ago, along with old fart smells.
  I love staying at home when I am "too sick for the commute, but not so sick to answer a couple emails."
- Careful what you wish for regarding cubicles. I would kill for a cubicle in our office. When companies implement these modern collaboration space ideas, it's all about hotel desks, movable workstations, short or no dividers and open air spaces.
  Having a cubicle to myself was fucking awesome. Now there is no privacy, no space to call my own, no place to simply have a phone conversation without everyone within 50 feet of me hearing every word.

Compensation for the time and cost of commuting back and forth, paid meal, free coffee and snacks, and additional sick days from using public transport and ultimately catching more sicknesses.
And even then, it doesn't give me back the extra time I can spend with my kids.
- How about 4 day work week? Would you be ok to go back to the office then?
  
  That would help, but just that single incentive would be a no for me.
  
  As in WFH 1 day per week, or same salary but only 4 days of working? In either case, no. The main people pushing for mandatory in-office is landlords who are freaking out because their office space is no longer in demand, and shitty managers with the mentality of "if I can't see you working, then you're not working." There are also those awful people who want to go back into the office because they miss the drama and messing with people and distracting people while they work

As a minimum? Pay me for the commute. I'm only doing it because of management so they should compensate me.
- I'd settle for a 4 day week of 8 hour days

A valid reason for a start.

Paid commute (time and expenses) and free lunch.
- I would go one further and say commute time paid at 1.5 rates, cause of the hours it needs to be done
  
  And the hazard! Cars are super dangerous, and odds are good that if you're commuting, there are some nearby, even if you're doing bus, train, or bike.

An immense raise, free mass transit to the office and a free hot lunch every day would be the beginning of negotiations
- Yeah I'm not even sure that'd do it for me. Like theoretically if they paid me $1M/y I'd do it, but then only until I earned enough to work at a better job or retire and just make FOSS shit

50% raise
Private 12x15 office
Free pot gummies (for Fridays, of course;)
Free transportation to/from office
Every day is Bring Your Dogs To Work Day
- Commute is part of working hours (with a reasonable limit)
  
  If they expect you to commute to the office every day, then you clock in when you leave your house, and clock out when you get home (assuming you're not stopping between to do personal errands).

62% more pay
- Oddly specific
- 1 million dollars every time I have to be on the highway so 2 miles per day hahaha
- And if you were in one of those companies pushing hard to get people back in the office, what pay cut would you be willing to take to make your job fully remote? (I swear I'm not in HR! )
  
  I've taken 3 pay cuts so far. Had 3 pay increases since covid forced wfh and each time it's been less than inflation. I haven't pushed for more because I've been left alone and am one of the last employees here still 100% wfh.
  I'm on salary, I already had somewhat flexible hours when I was in the office, had to start at a specific time but could leave when the bulk of my work was done and then would log on from from at the end of the day and tidy up anything that came in after I left. It wasn't uncommon for me to only be in the office for 3-4 hours on a typical day and my commute was 45mins to an hour, so time wise I now I spend ~50% less time at work.

Paid commute and a separate room.
- Ah yeah, I wrote that it should be within 10 minutes of my flat + seperate room but yeah paid commute (frome my home door back to my home door within 8 hours) would also be OK. I could try to work remotelly if I'm on a train or just listen to a podcast.

Money
- A hell of a lot of it.

Nice try, Susan from HR!
- Given "lots more money" is prevalent in the responses, I hope Susan in HR is reading this.

Double my salary and we'll talk. Include my travel time in my working hours or I'll do it anyway.
But also I took a fully remote position to not have to deal with the return to office stuff so realistically nothing would get me back to an office.
- Exactly what I came to say

They'd have to pay for quite a few things...
Housing near the office (I'm literally in another country lol)
Uber rides to/from
Food at the office
- Why Uber rides as opposed to, say, having the office (and your home) in a good location such that you can efficiently use public transit? IMO that's the ideal. Having to use a car is wasteful.
  
  Uber has an option for electric cars, so it could be less wasteful.
  Public transit in the American region of my company's HQ is known to be horrible and borderline non functional.

No. I went remote 11 years ago. I have no intention of going back to an office ever again.

If my whole team was based out of the same office and we coordinated the days we were there to have in person meetings. I don't see any reason to be 100% in the office, though 1-2 days a week in this scenario would be nice.
My team is spread out all over the place, so it makes no sense to go to the office just to be on WebEx the whole time anyways.
- I'm in this boat too. Being at the office feels so fucking pointless. One other guy on my team in my city, but I haven't seen him in months since when I'm there he's not and vice versa. It's so silly.

If the commute was considered part of working hours, and i am able to commute outside of rush hours for a clear benefit in productivity.
For example: start work at 9, commute to work at 10, be at the office for useful meetings or other collaborative work, return home at 2, and finish up work for the day.

3x base salary at least. No-thought commute, so maybe provide transportation for me. I currently live what is about 1.5hrs away each way now and there isn't a public transportation option.
Commute time should count towards my "8 hour work day". No distracting desk drive bys. Provided breakfast and lunch or an optional lunch stipend or whatever to cover if I go somewhere near the office.
Not sounding great for the company? It isn't meant to. It would be nearly impossible to get me to go back to the office, as it should be.
I'm not being unreasonable. I am at least twice as productive since working from home and even simple internal reports can prove that. I'm also 2-3x happier and less stressed, nothing can really replace that.
- My doc asked me to buy a thing that graphs my blood pressure. I happened to be using it before and after I quit my increasingly toxic RTO job and landed a tricky interview with a job with 'remote except where legally required' in its union contract.
  The graphing is neat. It goes steadily up, up, up, up and then goes back down starting on the day I quit.

A shit-tonne more money. Like, more than the extra time spent travelling to and from work worth of salary.
- Honestly, you are paid by the hour, so why not travel hours?
  
  Worked for a guy back in the early 2010s that paid for travel to the work site, was pretty rad
  
  That brings some weird factors into play. If I'm slightly more qualified to work a job than another candidate, but I live across town and the next best guy lives down the street, it'll be hard to justify choosing me over a factor unrelated to my performance.
  Also, what if I move way into the country or the next major city over? (I live in Denver, and it's not uncommon for people to commute from Colorado Springs). If that adds 2+ hours of daily round trip commuting to my day over something that was 100% my choice, it's not really fair to the employer either. I'm not a "think about the businesses" type normally, but that is kinda BS for someone to make a decision that increases someone else's costs (or decreases their output) by 25%

An office in my city and within 10-15 minutes walking distance.

Include my commute time in my 7 hours of work a day. I’m not driving out of my own love of it, I’m driving because you’re requiring me to be in the office so it should count as time on your clock, not mine.
Also pay for my parking at work, and my petrol to get there and back.

A few things that would help:
A 4 day work week with both ends of the day brought in to maybe 10-4 (sorry didnt mean 10-3). Things like going to the bank require me to either run during my lunch break or do it on a day off. 4x10-4 means i have a day and edges of days to do tasks i can't do on the weekend.
Unlimited PTO. If my tasks are done and I'm paid a salary there is no reason i need to sit around doing nothing. If more work is expected then I'd expect more compensation.
And lastly mandatory cost of living connected to inflation every year. My last job started during the pandemic. In 2 years the effective inflation rate was 15% and yet i was only given 3% over that time while getting good marks on my reviews. That means in that time i was paid a crazy amount less my last day than my first. I dont care about the actual number of dollars I'm paid but I'd like to buy the same number of eggs mext year as this year if I'm expected to do the same amount of work. This shouldn't be thought of as a bonus, but rather keeping my level of compensation matched woth my level of expectations for my job.
- What job do you have that 4x10-3 would be a reasonable option? Coming from someone who works 5x6a-6p (though this week it's been more like 6a-8p) those hours seem like a fairytale.
  
  Given that they also talk about finishing their work with nothing to do, I'm guessing they work one of those jobs that doesn't actually need so many employees but has to have them or are held back by the lowest performers.
  The idea of "completing all my tasks" is a silly one to me, since my product has an endless stream of work where we can't do all the things we want to do. If I managed to finish all the things I personally planned to do, that would mean nothing as that's just my personal plan and there's a virtually endless backlog. This has been the case for every job I've had as a software engineer.
  Most employers I think pay for time, anyway, not tasks. Even when salaried, it's a salary intended based on time you'd generally work. And if this wasn't the case, many people (myself included) would be penalized for delays.
  
  I'm a lead software developer. Finally working a place where we do reasonable schedules with a good amount of padding for problems popping up.
  If i wasnt in pointless meetings and focused on actual productive time thats about what most of my team does and we hit all our schedules.
  When i worked at Samsung they were doing 4 day weeks and no one was doing 8hr days
  
  That's more like part-time honestly, doesn't make any sense. But your hours are intense. I did that 50/60 hours a week years ago, I'll never do that again. I'm at 35 now and considering asking for a 4 day 32 hours schedule next year. And I WFH full time. I'm done organizing my life around work.
  
  For a lot of office jobs, fewer hours in the workplace means less opportunities for useless meetings that could be emails and useless emails that could have not been sent

Nothing. I would need to be compensated for my commute and honestly I would need a driver so I could work on the commute. And the salary I would need to justify working in an office I'm just not worth.
So any company willing to meet me here clearly has bad management so I don't want to work for them anyway.

Time. Can't spend 3 hours a day commuting to work.

Short answer: Nothing
Long answer: Actually, nothing
Before the pandemic, I was already remote working because all I did was connect my computer to servers in a warehouse 20 kilometers away from the office I had to be at.
Now, every person in my department is literally hundreds of kilometers away from each other, and we MUST go to each office to do the same things we could do staying at home. I lose 3 hours daily (waking up early, preparing meals, going to the office, and returning...) because of this nonsense.
Also, the building I have to go to doesn't belong to my employer. The contract ends this year and, instead of sending us home again, my employer has rented another building that's FARTHER than the current one. We're pretty sure this is just money laundering or the building belongs to a friend.
People are leaving for remote jobs, and our bosses are still wondering why.
- Agh, people I've talked to seem so reticent to understand that even outside the commute time I'm giving up my time to my employer. I don't want to wake up at 5 to rush out the door to sit in traffic until 7:30 and do the same on the way home then still have to spend my own "free" time meal prepping and doing house chores that I can hopefully cram in before I have to go to bed and do it all again tomorrow.
  All of that is no longer "my" time because I would definitely be spending it differently if it weren't for the expectations imposed on me by my employer. Try to tell people that and they look at me like I've sprouted a third eye

To bring another opinion to all the other comments, each week I'm trying to go into the office more often than I already do (2-3/5 times per week currently) which I feel is not much, but after reading some comments, you guys must think I'm a maniac already lol.
Now why would someone do that? First, I got a new job like half a year ago and I absolutely love it. First of all, my current commute time is around 25 minutes, door to door, in clean public transportation. Second, we got free water, Softdrinks, Coffee, Snacks, even fruits and cereal in the office. So no matter what I need to energize, it's there. At home, I usually don't. Or I do, but still, it's better to have 'free' you know?
Also, I love my colleagues. They're very young on average, incredibly skilled and highly intelligent. Also from many different countries. It's always fun talking to them and getting different insights on all kinds of things. We also usually take smaller breaks to play table tennis or table football.
Home office is great too, for days I really need to focus or have a lot of meetings. Or have private appointments, deliveries, or whatever. I can also take Homeoffice whenever I want and no one cares at all.
But still, it gets boring and lonely. Being in the office is great for my social factor and currently feels more like going to see friends, rather than working.
- See you're very clearly a textbook introvert so on-site work around people feels rewarding to you.
  I also like going to the office to socialise. But I absolutely don't plan on getting any of my actual work done on those days.
  If I wanted to work, I would stay home.
  
  See you're very clearly a textbook introvert
  Wtf how could you tell, it's 100% correct

Teleporter. (I hate commutes.)
- And one that is safe on the environment.

More money
A very short commute (like 10-15 minutes walking max)
A shorter working day, like 6 hours.

Nothing. I refuse to go back.

They are offering me a 40% raise to be in a 50/50 system and I'm considering taking it so... Apparently, that.

I moved during the pandemic when we were all remote. But let's pretend I went back to the office near where I used to live.
I would expect it to be an inviting, colorful environment. Put effort into decorating . Give me an office with windows, and a door. Not a gray cube and off-white walls that feels like I'm going to die in it. Other incentives like a guaranteed parking spot would be fantastic. Maybe provide lunch. I think Google at least used to provide a great office environment.
I would also want more money because transportation is very expensive now. And it takes time. That's less time with my kids and to handle chores properly. Often cost saving chores.
- inviting, colorful environment. Put effort into decorating . Give me an office with windows, and a door.
  Very true. The work office would need to at least match my home office.
  more money
  Hiring help to handle the extra I have gotten used to doing would be important.

A gun held to my head?

As a small business owner: nothing. My employees have been extremely productive being able to work from home. We already drive more than the average job. Driving to the office just watses time and money for everyone. We use our office now for storage more than anything else.

Reliable, fast and comfortable public transport.
Private room or at least a semi private room so that I can get work done without disturbances.
Increased salary to compensate for my lost time due to commuting.

Literally nothing. If my remote request is rejected, I'm quitting with nothing else lined up. If I can't find remote work, I'll retire.

This is a question about my past. What made me go back to the office was having not one but two little kids at home. The office is a much more quiet space.
The commute does not bother me much, it’s 12 minutes by bike, half the trip trough forest.
- This is me except I have 15 minutes and half is through fields. Biking to and from work are often the highlights of my day.
  I'm hoping to be home more often now that both the kids start preschool after the summer though.
- This is really it. I've been working remote since well before 2020. If my office were 12 minutes away by bike I'd be there every day. Having an entirely separate space dedicated for work is great, actually! Especially if your team is all there too.
  But when I first went remote it was 90 minutes by car, and half my team were in other countries. Going remote gave me 15 hours per week of my life back. There's nothing you can do to convince me to give that up again.

Enough money that I can retire in six months. So idk, like, call it a cool $4M/yr and I'm yours in office for 6 months. Otherwise I guess MAYBE my same salary at somewhere walking distance where I only have to work 3 or 4 days a week at 8 hour days.
My mental health is just so much better working from home. The upside would have to be enough to balance that and realistically nobody is actually going to do that.

My commute was, at best, 30 minutes each way driving myself. Public transportation would easily double that time and could easily be even worse.
Compensate me for that time at my full rate of pay or higher plus IRS mileage and I will START thinking about it.
My work environment also matters. Open floor plans suck ass and kill productivity. Pony up the money and give everyone offices with doors that close. My productivity at home is much higher because I am not sitting on a busy aisle across from a noisy meeting room.
I do miss being around people, I feel more isolated doing wfh. But the tradeoffs are pretty dismal against going back to the office.

200k min salary (I'm currently paid 5 figures)
4 hour workdays
4 day workweek
And this is the single most important piece
let me go home when I'm done with my work

What would get me into the office? Physical force.

As everyone else is saying it'd take a significant bump in pay that not only offsets my incurred daily commute expenses but also gives me a meaningful weekly take home increase.
Plus I work better by myself at home where I can control my daily interruptions vs having to put up with annoying coworkers in-person who could just walk into my office whenever they wanted so I feel like going back to an office would impact the quality of my produced work.

Everyday, a blowjob, a nice glass of whisky, and a good cigar. A nice desk, made with oak or something.
Also shit tons of money.
And the ability to show up at 10 and leave at 3.
Still interested?
- Cocobolo desk

More money. I’d do anything for the right price.
- What's your price? Mine is probably $750k base. I'm 100% serious.
  
  50% base increase would pique my interest but double is more likely to get me to accept

Commute as part of working hours.
Reliable public transit, with the monthly pass paid by work.
Salary increase of at least 15%.
I feel all of these are relatively realistic and achievable by my workplace except for reliable public transit which is out of their hands. Thankfully they're still remote first though there have been a few indications that this might change.

I'll have to go with "a shitload more money." An extra 1.5 hours added to the workday in commute, less time with family, less healthy lunches, less freedom, etc. means it would take a large monetary incentive for it to even be a possibility. Twice my current salary, at least.

258 comments

let me go home when I'm done with my work