> I've been commuting like 3h / day before WFH and I don't want to go back unless you pay me at least 2.5x

I don't think this is even that crazy either. I do WFH but if I were to goto the office in NYC, here's what that 9-6 work schedule would look like when you're dependent on a train:

- Wake up at 6am, eat breakfast, get cleaned up, prepare for the day
- 6:50am, drive to the train station
- Catch the 7:10am train to NYC which arrives at 8:30am
- Walk 15 minutes to the office
- Work until 6pm (no private offices, segments of open floors with desks and monitors to plug in a laptop)
- Walk 15 minutes back to the train station
- The next available train back is 6:40pm which arrives at 8pm
- Drive home from the train station to be home around 8:10pm to 8:15pm

Here's the direct costs associated with that:

- $268 a month for 20 train trips (a business week) with a discount applied
- $150 for 10 lunches (I'm trying to average out things like a slice of pizza sometimes or something nicer and maybe you bring lunch half the time)
- $200 for 10 dinners (half the time you eat near the train station while waiting because the idea of cooking after getting home is too tiring)
- $15 a month in gas (kind of rounding here based on miles per gallon, etc. but this is close)

That's an extra $633 a month and the food budget is likely way lower than it would realistically be. It also assumes you never once take an Uber or the subway while in the city. Realistically this could easily be $900 a month not even accounting for wanting to do fun and cool things after work since you're already out there.

That's 6:50am to 8:10pm end to end (~13.5 hours) and you still need to handle dinner half the time. You also pretty much have to get up around 6am every day so you can't do too much at night. You're lucky if you manage to get dinner and fall asleep while watching a movie.

Compare that to working from home:

- Wake up anytime before 8:45am to give you some time to get ready
- Do whatever you want between 6am to 9pm if you wake up early
- Work until 6pm (my own private office or anywhere within reason)
- Do whatever you want until you decide to fall asleep

Your food budget is fully up to you. You can do optimized meal prepping to your heart's desire or eat out every day.

Pants are optional at any point during the work day. I say that as a joke but also kind of serious. Your work environment may require wearing pants even if it's 90f / 32c with 70% humidity.

There's also a huge amount of flexibility in the sense that maybe you have something to do between 2pm and 4pm like a doctor's appointment. You can still work around those hours when doing WFH and maybe eat lunch at your desk and put an extra hour in the evening to make it for it. Or maybe your job is ok with you just taking that 2 hours to do your thing and don't worry about it. That's not really an option when you have a long commute. You have to take the full day off.

So now you go back to the person I'm replying to who says they would need 2.5x to go back. That's not all that crazy. Your work day goes from 9 hours to 13.5 hours which is already 50% more. You can't just add 50% to your salary because you're going to get taxed on that, and all of that will be taxed at the highest bracket you're in. Your life transforms from "work with a decent amount of personal time" to "I can't really do anything except work and commute". That's priceless in value or at least requires a substantial increase to consider it given what you're giving up.