Ask HN: Convincing Your Employer to Relocate
The job is engaging, meaningful, and the company is successful. Yet all of the non-owners, including myself, constantly gripe about the commute times (101 can be awful). The commute into the office can ruin your day. You could be excited for the day's itinerary, have a bad travel experience, and arrive with little to no motivation. You consciously know your productivity is diminished. You dread the drive (or public transit) home. Your negativity, even if you try to hide it, is evident and contagious.
Your bosses sympathize so much as to allow you to work in accordance with off-rush hours (arrive 10/11am leave 6/7pm), but this just hurts your ability to socialize normally during the week. They try to compromise with work-from-home Fridays, which 50% of the time become a rescinded privilege due to the necessity of face-to-face interactions.
The team comes together and suggests a move to a "middle ground" that does not impact the owners' commute time but drastically reduces the totality of employee commute times.
The owners are hesitant because they believe that proximity to clients (SV proper) is crucial in terms of business development and contract procurement, despite nearly all interactions being made over phone and email.
HN community, we implore you, what hard evidence can we provide to business owners that the success of their business is directly related to the happiness of their employees? What arguments can we make to convince the owners that their business does not rely on an office in the same general zip code as their perspective employees?