[motive]

My understanding is that California’s language is pretty unambiguous that businesses are responsible for all work expenses. I think on the legal merits the engineer may ultimately prevail, but I just don’t see how this is a battle worth fighting considering the massive savings that work from home already provides. It’s likely a lawsuit like this could also damage one’s long-term career prospects.

It will be interesting to see whether the courts see a difference between incremental expenses vs things the employee was already purchasing (e.g. internet vs electricity)

[paxys]

Yeah whether the employee is right or not I really don't see the logic in a senior engineer suing their employer for $50/mo in costs.

In the absolute best case, this will become a class action lawsuit. All ~4000 employees will get a couple thousand dollars as reimbursement. Lawyers will make a few million. Amazon will find the money from under some couch cushion. And then they will allocate a portion of everyone's salary to "WFH expenses" to be in the clear legally. Meanwhile the plaintiff's name will be all over the news and their future job prospects will take a huge hit.

[treis]

The bigger cost would be a rent equivalent on a home office. That's probably low five figures annually.

But I don't agree with the overall conclusion. Ultimately the cost of an employee boils down to one number. If they have to pay 15k for home office rent then salary will just be 15k less.

[motive]

I agree with you generally but there’s also the question of whether an expense is reasonable. Should you be expected to put a desk in your bedroom and have that be sufficient? I live in New York and have an extra bedroom for my office, should my employer be forced to pay for that instead?

[treis]

Yeah, it's one of those laws that superficially makes sense but tends to not work in the real world. A California specialty.

Probably better to put an upper salary bound on it. Stops the abuse of minimum wage workers while avoiding most of the silliness.

[dragonwriter]

> If they have to pay 15k for home office rent then salary will just be 15k less.

I mean, if you assume a monopsony where market clearing prices are set by demand alone, with no supply side effect, sure.

[treis]

Not really. If the market clearing price was X before there's no reason it will change from X. The compensation will just in the form of Y rent + (X - Y) salary

[jacknews]

  > My best bet? The Amazon engineer will win.
  > And then he and every other California employee will lose. Here's why.

Exactly as you say, it's not a battle worth fighting, the employee is a fool, or a tool.

[dehrmann]

At what point is California liable because it effectively prohibited companies from using their existing office space?