Yea commute + kid is the key motivation for WFH for me. My Bay Area commute is 4+ hours per day, depending on traffic. This means in order to guarantee I can be at work for my first 8AM meeting, I need to wake up around 5AM and leave the house at 5:30. My day is over at around 5PM (thankfully I don't work for a workaholic culture start-up), but this still means I'm home by 7:30-8PM most days. I'm basically driving 50% of the time I spend at work, and don't get to see my kid at all besides weekends. It really sucks.

COVID-19 has been a huge quality of life boost for me.

My father traveled for work a few months at a time. It wasn't the best for any of us, especially my mother. Consider the cost of those lost years. Even if you can retire early it's a season you'll never be able to share with them.

Why do you live 2 hours away?

Expensive housing

Property prices, I assume?

Obviously! I would love to live closer to work, if I could afford it. I can maybe afford a tent in Fremont and a shoebox in Palo Alto. Nothing in the South Bay or Peninsula in my price range screams "quality of life".

This is exactly the way I feel.

After working at home for ~13 months now, it will be very hard for me to go back to the office. I have young kids at home and getting to spend extra time with them every day is a huge gift, on top of having no commute. There are some negatives, but I feel just as productive and more engaged.

Great for you! I feel exactly the opposite, I feel trapped in my house, super-ecstatic that the kids are finally in school now and can't wait for the office to open.

Do you think you'll enjoy the office as much if (for simplicity sake) 50% of the people enjoy working from home so much they do not want to return? From my discussions with colleagues much more than 50% hopes to work from home 3+ days a week once this all is over.

Not the O.P., but speaking from experience, yes, a thousand times yes.

Here in Sydney, Australia, both office and WFH are available at my work. I'll have anywhere between 0% and 90% of my team in the office depending on the day or week.

In my experience, even being the only one in the office is a thousand times better than WFH.

Whether teammates are WFH affects me less than whether I'm WFH.

As a parent my workday has shifted to be 8 am to 6:30 pm and lots of people complain about that kind of shift, but I see that as a plus.

I used to be out of the house from 7:30 am to ~6:30 pm depending on commute, so it wasn't like that my time anyway. Now I'm working a slightly longer day, because during it I'm taking an hour to make my kids lunch, an hour to interact with them in the afternoon, some random downtime here and there when they pop their heads in, etc.

As schools reopen my plan is to basically just to set my core working hours to the schoolday which is going to be at 8:15 am to 3:30 pm and then I'll log a bit more in the evening if needed. We normally have the kids do some reading before bed to start winding them down and I can easily sit there with my laptop while the kids read. so many of the other parents I've seen struggle are the ones that rigidly stick to 9 to 5 vs a concept of "I should do about ~8 hours of work today". Those are the ones that really seem the most vocal about wanting the office back. Which honestly if that is what they want, that's fine. They can be the office crew and have the commute, pay for childcare, etc. I'm not looking to get back on that grind though.

I do feel bad for parents were both parents are constantly on Zoom. We're lucky in that we were able to rig it so all my meetings at AM meetings and my spouse has PM meeting, so we can have an on call parent most of the time. For families were both parents work sales, this probably sucks. Although I've seen some people in sales do enterprising things like setup little pods of rotating babysitting so they can just not schedule calls during their day to watch all the kids in the pod (do their reports or whatever).

I think going forward two things I'll advocate for at work is flexibility during summer hours and for parents with kids too young to be handed a Redwall novel and told to read quietly for a bit. Both are forms of investing your employees as short term thing for long term benefit since after all eventually the children get older (or you at least end up with a more mature child that can do tier 0 support duties and escalate to mom or dad when needed).

> Sure my kids will occasionally pop their heads in the door to say hello. I guess that's an occasional distraction, which has some small productivity cost.

Surely not a bigger productivity cost than a coworker doing the same thing, though.

I would even say a less, my kids will often have a specific ask 'can I watch some TV' where I can reply 'yes/no/later/that's really good/bad' and then its done. A co-worker will sometimes not even have a specific ask, but are instead looking for some idle chat.

> commuting

Assuming you're driving yourself, this is universally a productivity killer. You risking a huge amount of frustrating and angering situations while your workers are commuting to a central location. I'd put good money on a lot of lost productivity to commute.

Then there's the people who have to commute, due to functionally in-person jobs (artisans, doctors, baristas, etc.). Optional commuters going to the office for their "social fix" are doing so at the expense of forced commuters. Work should be work and social should be social; if you want a social experience during work hours then have a social lunch in your neighborhood.

We could just let people do whatever they wanted.

It is unclear why, having complained about being forced to work from the office, the set of employees happy to work from now think imposing their preferences on everybody else is supposed to be better for everyone.

There is one good reason: if most of your team works at the office, and you're working from home, it's difficult to make sure that you're not left out of discussions.

Agreed. I can’t focus when my toddler is running around screaming. I love her; but I miss my office.

In fact I simply miss the ritual of leaving my home and returning every day. I’ve been doing this for a few years, though.

Long dog walks have helped.

That’s a point I agree on. But my understanding is that most of the companies that are re opening offices are insisting that employees eventually come back. Is Google/Apple/JP Morgan letting people stay full WFH?

it isn't the employees imposing their preferences, it's the managers.

Even when talking about the negative effects of commuting on you and your kids, you frame it in terms of the productivity impact on your employer. Man, talk about Stockholm syndrome.

Productivity is not the end all be all. It's ok to look out for yourself.

I have two very young children, one of whom was born during 2020. I can tell you that raising kids that young, with both parents trying to WFH, and the lack of any support of any kind at all thanks to Covid restrictions, was a soul-crushing experience that I do not ever want to repeat. I do appreciate that my experience is a little unique, though.

> You know what hurts productivity more? The soul-crushing experience of missing out on watching your kids grow up because you're spending all day in an office or commuting.

Yes!

And I'm renting a small office near the house for pandemic purposes to have a quiet space to work. But being two minutes away instead of an hour away is night and day. I can be home and back multiple times a day, in same time than it took to walk to the snack dispenser at the office.

The secret you learn is that many people that like work a lot, actually fundamentally don't like their home lives, whether that be their spouses or their children.

How old are your kids and what are they doing all day?

This. My daughter is a month old now and while that does require me to chop my day into pieces so that I can take care of her, I can't imagine being out for 10h a day.

I couldn't agree with you more!

A) There's only so much housing near campus buildings.

B) Prices can become extreme near campus buildings because landlords know they can charge exorbitant prices and still find a tenant.

C) Moving to a more expensive place impacts you _and_ the rest of your family via shared rent, utilities, etc..

D) Your significant other, if you have one, may not work at the same company. So you may end up shortchanging your spouse and taking time away from them and their lives?

> Prices can become extreme near campus buildings because landlords know they can charge exorbitant prices and still find a tenant.

I'm not advocating for living literally right next to campus. But to say you can't compete is disingenuous. The whole reason Mountain View is so expensive is because there are so many engineers from Google who can afford it.

> Google pays enough for people to do that.

No they don't.

Go look up house prices right around campus on Trulia. I would say it's shocking, but disgusting is a more apt feeling.

Senior eng makes $400k+ TC. You're rarely buying a house alone. Most eng at FAANG end up marrying others who are similar. Easy to see $600k+ TC.

You can buy a home nearby. Sunnyvale has homes for $2m or less and you can afford it at $600K household. Very reasonable commute.

If you want 3000+ sqft and 5-bath homes then yeah, you're out of luck. Hit executive level or startup riches for that one.

To act like Google doesn't pay enough to afford a home in Bay Area though is BS. The whole reason the area is so expensive is because FAANG pays so damn much to keep pulling in more talent. (It's a cycle)

Also - you could rent. Most eng I meet at FAANG have no interest in ownership out of principal. They just want investment potential. Renting is frequently very good. Only reason you'd buy is for leverage but you won't get good leverage here in SFBA because you have to do all cash offer. So, just invest in market instead.

You're living in a dream world if you think $600K household is the norm in Silicon valley, even for FAANG employees. We are talking about a small percentage of employees (1. those with FAANG spouses) out of a small percentage of employees (2. top leveled, say Google L6+) out of a small percentage of employees (3. engineers) out of a small percentage of companies (4. FAANG). The rest of us, who are not 1 AND 2 AND 3 AND 4, schlep away at normal compensations and there's no way we're buying $2M homes.

> You're living in a dream world if you think $600K household is the norm in Silicon valley, even for FAANG employees.

For married couples above 30 with one high TC earner - it's extremely common. You're not marrying a barista in SF if you work at FAANG. I haven't met anyone who is married, above 30, who also works at FAANG, the spouse can legally work in the country, and the household income is below $500K. I know that seems like a lot of qualifiers but basically a married couple that both have working abilities - if one is at FAANG, the other is likely at FAANG or similar (or a doctor or a lawyer or an executive or whatever - very common).

I'd have to really stretch to find anyone who I've met with high TC that isn't also married to another with high TC (besides SAHM/SAHD - where the one earner is usually an exec, so homes are still not too expensive for them).

I'm not talking about non-FAANG employees btw. If you work somewhere that doesn't pay well - then ok. You have to suffer like every other American does. I'm saying that if you work at FAANG - it's a bullshit excuse to commute an hour each way. (I mean - FFS - a lot of them have shuttles where you can clock in on even if you do live further away) It's a choice at that point. They pay you a lot so you can be close to their campus. High earners typically marry high earners. It's financial suicide to do otherwise. (Bye-bye 1/3 of your income for 18 years when you inevitably get divorced)

> I haven't met anyone who is married, above 30, who also works at FAANG, the spouse can legally work in the country, and the household income is below $500K.

You may have a very limited circle of folks you talk to and are willing to share such details with you. Myself and a number of close friends do not have a $500k TC household as married couples. Not even close.

> It's financial suicide to do otherwise. (Bye-bye 1/3 of your income for 18 years when you inevitably get divorced)

Maybe I misunderstood you but you're saying you should marry someone who earns similarly to you because of the inevitable divorce? I'm not sure I follow, you're advocating to marry for the financial prospects first because marriages end in divorce?

And you’re at FAANG? If you have 10+ YOE, there is no reason you shouldn’t be ~70% of the way there as a single earner.

I’ve seen enough people have their marriages end and have insanely high and long term alimony payments even after the other partner has moved on and pseudo-married someone else. (But hasn’t legally married them because then they don’t get their alimony) Until marriage is treated like a business contract where consequences are agreed to before signing, it’s a terrible idea to marry someone in a lopsided financial situation unless you don’t care about any kind of risk. You’d never be able to get/afford insurance for such an incredibly risky venture.

Half of that TC goes to taxes, then there is childcare, rent, etc while saving. The home is doable but you’re not going to have a competitive offer unless you’ve been saving for a few years assuming you have no debt.

The point is.. going into work is a waste of time most of the time. That’s why a lot of companies are doing flex schedules now.

> Senior eng makes $400k+ TC.

This is not true. Maybe people are confusing principal with senior?

That or you're counting multi-year stock grants in the current year.

Senior engineers at Google/Facebook (L5) make at minimum $300K, and with stock appreciation / refreshers $500K+ is not uncommon. Netflix is also well known for paying essentially all of their engineers at least $400K.

Principal engineers (L8) at Google/Facebook make around $1M a year, and $1.5-2M is not unheard of.

I have a lot of difficulty believing any of these numbers.

Source: spouse is management level at G of FAANG. Those numbers don't match up with reality in general. For a few edge cases, sure. Not for most people.

As mentioned in several other places on this thread, you can check out levels.fyi (https://www.levels.fyi/company/Google/salaries/Software-Engi...) to see... nearly 500 reported TCs for Senior SWEs at Google. Median is indeed ~350k/yr. 320-380k seems to be the standard "initial offer" range for HCOL areas. These numbers don't include stock growth, stacked refreshers, or the new front-loaded 40/28/20/12 vesting schedule.

I also have multiple friends that work at Google, and can confirm that their numbers fall squarely into the bands described on levels.fyi. (In fact, they're often taking home considerably more, due to the aforementioned stock growth and stacked refreshers.)

Several possibilities:

1) your spouse is not in the engineering management track and isn't familiar with the payscale

2) your spouse works in an office with a lower payscale due to regional considerations (though this wouldn't make the numbers look realistic even in "LCOL" US offices, so it'd need to be international)

3) there's some misunderstanding about levels or something else. That Principal Engineers (L8 - three levels above Senior) make 900k-1M out of the gate isn't really disputed; they tend to make a bit more at Facebook, even.

Also, Google has an internal spreadsheet where employees document their own compensation, which, according to the same friends, corresponds pretty well to the levels.fyi numbers.

Is levels.fyi inaccurate?

Those golden cages at the FAANG companies are getting brighter, last time I had looked at their engineers' compensation they were around the 200-300k mark, and that was seen as high (around 2015-2016, even though I could be mistaken by a year or two). I guess monopoly power does indeed pay.

Levels.FYI for L5 (senior SWE) shows median annual at 350. Levels.FYI lags behind because they keep around old data. Principal at G is at 992k median.

> Senior eng makes $400k+ TC.

Good thing Google only employs senior engineers... <image>eyerollsmiley-x1000.gif</image>

> The whole reason the area is so expensive is because FAANG pays so damn much to keep pulling in more talent.

No it isn't. That isn't the reason at all. The reason is a bunch of literal rent-seeking wealthy old people who fight new housing projects at every possible turn so they can sell their house for $2 million, or die and leave it to their kids, who will then sell it for $2 million.

> Most eng I meet at FAANG have no interest in ownership out of principal.

Press X to doubt.

Even without a commute, the point still stands. Young kids are usually in bed by around 7, that’s enough time to eat and take a bath, maybe read a story and that’s it.

Maybe the standard work environment has been wrong and should be changed and WFH is the way to do it.

You could also afford to set fire to a stack of $100 bills. That does not mean you find it a sensible thing to do.

You could also afford a straw man. Does not mean you find it sensible thing to say.

Or you're just spoiled.

I'm blessed. But the idea of civilizational progress is to get everyone at that level, as a baseline.

Someone want to tell this commenter how expensive daycare is?

Nah, obviously everyone who works in IT makes 500k a year, has a spouse who earns the same, and can afford 1 mil houses 5 minutes from where they work. At least from what they say.

If you’re at FAANG, you can - that is the point. I’ve only spoken of FAANG so far. Check levels. A $1mil home is cheap for a FAANG employee.

I don't think he said he works at Google.