Spent a lot of the first part of the day finishing last weekend's
project - the switching of the office and the bedroom. Got the
closets finished up and everything in the right place, more or
less. It felt good to finish that up and get everything arranged.
Later on in the evening, I decided to find out just how far away
the new Red Hat office is here in Boston from where I live. It
turns out to be a long drive. On the way out there, I took the
long way around: 53 miles. In heavy traffic that might actually
be the best route, which is kind of scary. It's an hour. On the
way back, I took a route through the city and cut it down to 35
miles, or about 45 minutes. But that particular route will be
hell if there's any traffic at all. I was doing it late at night
on a sunday, which isn't representative of how long it will take
during a "normal" day. Plus, when we got out there I realized
that I had bogus directions so I didn't get to see the actual
office. I was in the area though so I'm pretty sure the range is
more or less correct.
It's so sad that they decided not to keep the old ArsDigita office
since it was about half a block from the Central T stop up in
Cambridge. That would have been a quick hop right up the Red Line
for me and it was located right in Central square which has tons
of shops, restaurants and other good places to visit. Kind of
like the Toronto office that I left just last year which was in a
wonderful location.
I've been thinking hard about the false economy of moving an
office like that out to the suburbs. For those of us who live in
the city and can take advantage of the public transportation
that's here, it's a real win. I figure for those that are out in
the suburbs, they have to commute anyway so for them it's a sunk
cost.
Let's break it down. If I have to drive an average of 40 miles a
day, each direction to and from the office, at about $0.30 a mile
that breaks out to quite a hefty chunk of change: about $160 a
week, or $8000 per year.
That cost is definitely post-tax. Let's assume that that extra
$8000 per employee has to be paid by the employer, plus taxes
(explicitly or implicitly, it doesn't matter - they end up paying
anyway.) That probably comes out to about $12,000 per year per
employee. Assuming a 30 person office, and half have to commute
from the city to the suburbs, 15 * $12,000 per year comes out to
about $180,000. Now we're talking real money.
Now, let's talk about the cost in terms of productivity. This is
hard to determine, but let's take a shot at it.
If I have to spend two hours in a car commuting to and from work,
this means that I'm not going to be working as much. However,
offset from the time spent on the train, about half that, means
that you lose about a full hour every day in commute time. Plus,
if someone has to drive back and forth they are going to be much
less productive when they get there and back. This is the truth
for me and just about everyone else I've talked to about it. The
longer the commute, the more concentration it requires and the
more it takes out of you. The train requires none of this
concentration and you can emerge quite refreshed. It's also
useful time since you can read or do something else since someone
else is doing the driving.
So, let's say that you're about 15% less productive at work
because of the drive itself plus 15% less productive because of
actual time lost in the car. That's about 30% less productive.
That number might seem high, but it seems reasonable when you
break it down.
If a person is making an average of $50,000/year and they are 30%
less productive, that means that the employer needs to get 30%
more people to do the same amount of work. This means that for
each person employed, it will cost an extra $15,000 for the
employer. Using that same 15 number above, this means that they
will end up spending an extra $225,000 per year for moving out
to suburbs.
$225,000 + $180,000 = $405,000
I wonder how much they are saving on rental costs?
