It’s possible that some companies will pay significantly more to keep all of their employees in office all of the time. But they’ll be paying 2-3 times: higher TCO, more expensive real-estate, and more scope for the (fortunately few) “I’m have people skills damnit” careerist middle managers without technical chops (higher payroll and worse mechanism design).
The A16Z model sounds about right to me: flex work with low real-estate burden, spend some of the savings on frequent, family friendly off sites.
I know this is controversial, just like, my opinion man.
You can pay as much as you want but after a certain threshold having the possibility to work from home is paying for itself in many ways. No stress from commuting, more flexibility and more focus.
> You can pay as much as you want but after a certain threshold
I'm curious if there is a multiplier a company could pay you personally to convince you to endure the commuting stress and inflexibility of an in-person office?
I.e. would you go back to a commute for 1.2x, 1.5x, 2x, or 3x your current salary?
Just answering for myself, but no, absolutely not. Especially not while the office remains an open floor plan with no noise isolation.
I hate commuting, I hate shitty office lunches and interruptions totally ruin my focus. The things that people like about the office (long lunches with coworkers, spontaneous events, fun conversations) are literally my bane.
You raise an excellent point: I hope the shift to remote forces in-person companies to make their offices more attractive for workers (i.e. not open offices) to compete for the shrinking pool of people willing to work in-person.
But for the sake of argument imagine the least-bad in-person office you've worked at, and a company able to pay up to high six figures. Are you saying there's does not exist a salary in that range that would convince you to return?
The utility of money decreases as you have more of it.
The first $100k a year is huge. The second $100k a year is useful. By the time you're at 300k, 400k, the utility is very low unless you just really enjoy collecting sports cars.
I have a nice home. It is 25 years old, but I do a lot of work on it myself. I have a nice enough vehicle that is reliable. I can afford whatever books I want, to go hiking wherever, and whatever I want at the grocery store.
Why would I give up a work environment I like, with great food and no commute, where I can have it quiet as a mouse, just to make more money that wouldn't make a difference to my life?
> The utility of money decreases as you have more of it.
I think this is an important point. Especially for well-paid professions I'm betting that most companies cannot afford to pay high enough salaries to get skilled developers to work in person and they'll either make do with early-career folks or realize being in-person isn't actually as critical as they thought.
> Why would I give up a work environment I like ... just to make more money that wouldn't make a difference to my life?
For someone without the nasty habit of consumerism the only thing that comes to mind would be the ability to "retire" early and work on whatever projects or organizations light your fancy. (Teaching, non-profit work, hiking the Appalachian Trail, local government, home improvements, open source...)
Not trying to convince anyone, mind you, just answering your question why someone might do that. I worked with some folks who retired in their early thirties after a few 18-month stints with overtime+hazard pay. Not my cup of tea, but they seem to enjoy working on their motorcycles.
You know what.. at three times the salary, I can rationalize a lot of corporate idiocy. There is indeed a number, but between hour commute and higher prices on everything, WFH is ideal ( and some employers muse they can lower those salaries ).
All I can say is, good luck. Bar a heavy economic disaster ( its possible ), it looks the odds favor WFH crowd now.
> some employers muse they can lower those salaries
That seems reasonable given their much larger labor pool of remote workers. They'll probably couch it as paying a premium to attract and retain in-person workers but its the same end-result as lowering salaries for remote workers.
To me the bigger question is not how many developers will be working full remote vs hybrid vs in-person, but what the salary differences will end up being.
My guess is that if the salary premium required for in-person workers ends up being ~2x or more, most companies will decide that going remote is feasible after all.
On the other hand, if the salary premium employees demand ends up only being, say ~1.3x, then many companies will just bite the bullet and pay it.
First nobody is going to pay me 3x for the same job in an office so this kind of question hardly makes sense. However even in reality it would be possible to get 1.5x which is already a strecth i dont think i would forego the convenience of working from home.
The question was to get a better sense of the range of how people value the benefit of working remotely. If some folks are only willing to come back into the office for 3x (say high-six figures for US devs) that's helpful information regardless of whether the local labor market actually ends up requiring in-person employers to pay that much.
My experience so far has been that the average multiplier is smaller, closer to ~1.2x for many software engineers. I suspect many companies would be willing and able to pay 1.5x for in-person developers but I think you're right that significantly fewer would be willing or able to pay 2x or 3x.
The A16Z model sounds about right to me: flex work with low real-estate burden, spend some of the savings on frequent, family friendly off sites.
I know this is controversial, just like, my opinion man.