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points by azov 3 days ago | 0 comments

There should be a hefty tax on corporations insisting on having people in the office for jobs that can be done remotely. Maybe frame it as a tax break for companies that avoid stressing public infrastructure and wasting resources for dubious reasons.

[–] EPWN3D 3 days ago

RTO mandates should just be treated as a constructive dismissal and make you eligible for unemployment benefits -- not to mention raising the employer's unemployment insurance rate.

[–] gamblor956 3 days ago

It already is treated as a constructive dismissal for employees for which remote work was a defined benefit or condition of the job (this is assumed if the employee works outside of the metropolitan area of the company). This has been discussed to death outside of the tech community for almost 6 years.

[–] bradknowles 3 days ago

Yeah. When I was hired by AWS, I was told that I would always be remote. And then RTO happened.

Fortunately, I was able to exit to a new job elsewhere before I got hit by the requirement to be co-located with my management, which would have forced me to pay for my own move from Austin, TX to the Washington, DC area. Not to mention the expense of having to also move my wife there, our whole household, etc….

[–] the_real_cher 3 days ago

AMEN!

[–] asdff 3 days ago

This is a world that incentivizes asses in seats to prop up the value of real estate. Why kill a golden goose out of altruism? This isn't that world. The greedy rule here.

[–] tamimio 3 days ago

Except, it’s the government and in its interests to bring back the status quo. More people commuting means they have to live in high taxes area, from mortgages of residential and commercial properties, or rent, or goods and local businesses, all the way to not needing to build infrastructure in rural areas. Plus, banks were crying during the wfh for those reasons. Wfh brings the power back to employees or people, while the old 9-5 (which was invented by fords factories and never meant for offices) keep the status of wealthy getting wealthier and the employees getting more miserable.

[–] nitwit005 3 days ago

The people working remotely are often still in a city, just a different city. Now they're back to commuting and simply adding to transit maintenance and congestion.

[–] syshyk 3 days ago

Would be a mess to enforce/decide what counts.

As much as I hate large corpos, this would be just ridiculous.

[–] zdragnar 3 days ago

How else will we convince everyone they have to live in a tiny box in a mega city without eliminating remote work?

[–] mistrial9 3 days ago

economic signals would be useful, not sure if that is the only route however

[–] gucci-on-fleek 3 days ago

Isn't there already a natural "tax" of the cost of office space?