Is Working From Home A Perk?
Managers think it is, employees know that it isn’t.
A short opinion piece of the worthlessness of notional perks offered by “modern” businesses and how remote working is again being targeted for harassment, this time framed as a kind of perk in lieu of rightful monetary compensation.
A perk is commonly defined to be something that’s available in addition to your basic rate of pay, a bonus almost, a positive addition even, when performing your normal job of work.
For software engineers this may be something as benign, and often tasteless, as free coffee, snacks, or fruit in an office environment.
Never mind the fact that you’d have to go and get the milk yourself as the stuff in the office fridge is always well past its sell-by date, you’d never eat the dry and dusty snacks supplied even after a zombie apocalypse, or even that you haven’t actually encountered a piece of fruit in the wild since you were at school never mind eaten one¹.
But I, as usual, digress with extreme cynicism gained from experience.
Other irrelevant perks may be discounted gym membership (something else you probably haven’t seen since you were at school), free online course access (that benefit the business, taken on your own time), or tie ins to insurance or pension “suppliers” that offer…
