7 ms·

>The only job for me is in Seattle or Bellevue or Redmond, an hour-long commute I don't mean to belittle your situation but..an hour seems like fantastic commu

>The only job for me is in Seattle or Bellevue or Redmond, an hour-long commute I don't mean to belittle your situation but..an hour seems like fantastic commuting time. Most people I work with take an hour to an hour and a half to get to work. Up until our office moved there was two guys that had a 2 hour trip into work every day. Most people I know would kill to have an hour commute.

obj-g 10y ago
Have to agree with you -- jeez, it used to take me 2 hours to get home and it was just from one side of Phoenix to the other using freeways. Currently, I live in Barcelona, and it takes me about 45 minutes when you add up walking to the metro, taking the metro, etc.
eru 10y ago
What are people putting up with such crazy commutes? Where do you live? Why don't people just move closer, or change jobs?
- blakeyrat 10y ago
  You obviously don't live in the Seattle area. You can't move closer, because real estate is literally twice as expensive as where you currently live, and you can't change jobs because all the jobs are in the same places with the crummy commutes. About the only factor you can optimize is picking jobs that are along mass transit routes.
  - drzaiusapelord 10y ago
    Uh, I think you're being very dismissive here. There are many rational reasons for urban business. Being able to get rental real estate for your business. In the suburbs you now need a loan, credit, collateral, 30% down, etc to build your own building as there generally isn't a rash of empty floors on skyscrapers like cities do. Being able to have face to face meetings frequently with your investors, board members, and bankers and other people who hold your pursestrings. Being able to find investors in the first place. Picture two similar business plans. One by a group in the far out suburbs and one nearby. As an investor, which one would you lean towards, especially if you expect yourself to do any hands on work or attend board meetings? Being able to get to the airport and mass transportation hubs quickly. Being able to wine and dine investors and customers in places that will impress them. Being able to court youngsters and urban professionals who want a city life and won't even interview in the suburbs. (Hi! This is me and almost everyone I know.) Being near urban universities for the above reasons and job fairs. Being near your competitors to help you poach their staff. Being able to work with a local government that understands business needs and not being subjected to a 'board of elders' of out of touch 70 year old suburban retirees who will bikeshed the shit out of any proposal of yours and NIMBY you to death. Being able to quickly expand by taking more office space instead of, you guessed it, building another fucking building. Being able to order 1gb fiber and have in here in 30 days as opposed to 360 days in the suburbs and that's on top of paying tens of thousands of dollars for that last mile to your office, which they will need to dig up just for you. ...and yes, maybe some perks of city life as you mention. Work life should have pleasant parts and it helps attract talent.
  - eru 10y ago
    I am living and working in Central London. Thank you. Why can't you move? If real estate is twice as expensive, just pick a place half the size? Don't you value your own time---wasted in commuting---at any positive dollar figure at all? If you spend an hour commuting each way for 21 days a month, that's 52 hours a month extra that you spend on `work', even if your employer doesn't gain anything from it.
    - antisthenes 10y ago
      Because, for whatever reason, he likes owning a house. Which is doublespeak for him feeling entitled to live in a huge and inefficient property for no reason other than him liking it.
      - Slaul 10y ago
        How is it wrong for him to want to live in a house because he likes it?
        AdrianB1 10y ago
        He is not. He is wrong when he wants the government to force companies to bring jobs to his front door ("influencing companies", if you like smooth talk). It is his choice to live in a good place OR next to a good job. It is not government's problem in any case.
      - gph 10y ago
        That's not really doublespeak. And it doesn't have to be less efficient to own a house. Can't put solar panels on my apartment roof. Can't plant much of a garden to localize some of my consumption. If you were really eco-conscious you could probably get more gains out of owning your own house. Especially since most houses have already been built, whereas most of the new construction I see in my city (Baltimore) is going towards mixed-use condos/apartment towers for all the trendy folks wanting to live downtown. If they really cared about the environment and efficiency they'd be fixing-up the thousands of run-down homes.
  - SilasX 10y ago
    This is why I've suggested economic measuring well-being with the metric "discretionary income per hour lost to work" (DIPHLoW). discretionary income: income minus taxes and base housing costs hour lost to work: time at work plus time commuting or otherwise stuff you wouldn't otherwise have to do That metric captures dynamics like "yeah there are jobs, but with much higher cost of living, so it cancels out the DIPHLoW" and "yeah you can live where it's cheaper but you have to commute an extra 90 minutes, which eliminates the impact on DIPHLow".
    - eru 10y ago
      That's a good concept. Can you come up with a sexier name? (Or am I not getting a pun here?)
      - SilasX 10y ago
        Heh, that's the best I can come up with; just aimed for it being pronounceable (diff-flow). No pun intended, except maybe that it's the "difference" you keep that "flows" to stuff you can actually enjoy? Edit: Also thought of "discretionary income per UnFree hour" (DIPUPH) ... not sexy either though.
        abledon 10y ago
        (DIPHLoW). sounds like Diplo, one of the most popular musical artists on the global top 50 (https://twitter.com/diplo https://twitter.com/diplo).... so I think the abbreviation already 'fits' into popular cultures vocabulary of pronunciation, it just has to now tie in a new meaning to the word instead of 'Hugely Successful DJ'
    - eru 10y ago
      Thinking some more about, it would also make sense to look at some isotonic function of disposable income and disposable hours left (after work, commute, etc). This is to capture that increasing working hours from 8h to 24h a day even when pay would be more than tripled, would leave you with a very sad life. (Shadow) price of time would be a good one, too? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_price https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_price) In some sense, that's the same as marginal cost of your time, expressed in dollars or some `utils' or `hedons'. Then you can say, eg taking a longer commute for a cheaper house would value my time at 30 hedons per hour---but spending time with my daughter is worth at least 50 hedons per hour. So it would be bad trade-off.
blakeyrat 10y ago
Yeah, but... doesn't that suck for everybody? Commuting time is wasted. (Maybe on public transit, if it's not so crowded you can pull out a laptop, you can get a bit of work done.) It's American productivity going straight into the toilet. But you're also kind of missing the point of my post, focusing on one small tree and forgetting there's a whole forest out there. Whether it's an hour, or an hour and a half, or 45 minutes isn't the point-- the point is we should optimizing it as close to zero as possible.
- kbenson 10y ago
  > Yeah, but... doesn't that suck for everybody? Yes. > Commuting time is wasted. Commuting time is a reserved time, which makes it less useful because it's inflexible, but it isn't necessarily wasted. I have quite a few podcasts I listen to, and there's some I'm interested in listening to more than all but the most interesting TV shows on. I have a short commute, just 20 minutes or so each way, and I only do it three times a week, but I find myself happy to run errands after work because it gives me more time when I can listen to the shows I want, as I'm at that point where they stack up faster than I can listen to them, and that's with me aggressively culling the ones I never seem to get to because there are so many I like slightly more so I never have time for them. Commuting can be a wasted time or you can try to use it for what it is, a block of time where you have limited options, and try to make the best of those options.
  - thebspatrol 10y ago
    Oh yeah, I love commuting listening to music and livestreams, but you can't assume everyone does. Public transit shouldn't be reserved for major east-coast cities and for poor people.
    - kbenson 10y ago
      > Oh yeah, I love commuting listening to music and livestreams, but you can't assume everyone does. I agree, but that's not all there is. There are audio books, serialized fiction, narrated short stories in every medium you can think of, extended learning, and I'm sure more I can't think of. Finding something to do in this time is less a problem of content and more a problem of knowing it exists. It of course doesn't negate that it does take time away you could choose to do something else, but it can make the time less onerous. > Public transit shouldn't be reserved for major east-coast cities and for poor people. Public transit doesn't change the equation all that much though. It means you need to be less actively involved in the process, so there's more available to you (visual mediums), but it's still time that is reserved for commuting. You aren't physically playing with your children during that time, or visiting with family. Quick access routes to economic hubs might easy associated problems somewhat (double digit percentages if you're lucky), but it doesn't actually change the equation that is at play here, which is that dense groups of people have many benefits, and living close to that is desirable, and we all know what happens when demand outstrips supply. The biggest gains you'll probably ever see in this area are likely to be had by putting less restrictions on an entirely different dimension of travel. Group your population up, not just out.
cdelsolar 10y ago
Yeah, it takes me about 1:15-1:20 each way, but most of it is on public transportation and I can get work done / play Pokemon / read / relax. I don't want to pay $4K a month to live in SF.
- eru 10y ago
  Assuming you work 20 days a month, you are facing roughly 20 * 2 * 1.3 h = 52h of commute each way. As a general yard stick of how you implicitely value your time: $4k / 52h <= $77 Now, your current place probably costs money too, and your commute won't be cut to zero. You can plug in the numbers yourself: ($4k - current rent) / (52h - commute from apartment in SF) =: implicit value of one of your hours. I hope you are making more than 77 dollar an hour as a programmer (?) in SF. (Yes, I know, taxes complicate the picture. But only by at most a multiplier of 2.)
  - vecinu 10y ago
    I don't generally understand this train of thought. For employees that are full-time exempt (And most are), as long as you work a day, you are paid for 8 hours of work. Whether your commute takes 3 hours or 3 minutes, you are paid the exact same because you can't work an extra hour instead of commuting for that $77. Others folks that are on H-1Bs can't even work on side-hustles because of immigration law so what are they really missing out on?
    - SilasX 10y ago
      That's just a yardstick for how much it personally sucks (econ: "disutility") for you to go without that extra hour, estimated from your current pay. You could come up with a different value by deriving it a different way[1], but somehow you have to put a value on the time lost for purposes of comparison. The existence of this opportunity cost doesn't require that you literally be able to put in an extra hour for extra pay. [1] For example, you could go based on "how much would I pay for an extra hour to spend doing XYZ?"
    - madamelic 10y ago
m4x 10y ago
So his point is even more relevant
irrational 10y ago
Now you are making me feel bad for my 15 minute bike commute.
hyperpape 10y ago
Typical commute times are 30 or less. There are a few areas/jobs where that is not true, and it's a heavy cost for the people there. I've read the above several places, but anecdotally, I live in Raleigh (technically Garner) commute 25-30 minutes to work, and have one of the longer commutes of people I work with.

obj-g 10y ago

Have to agree with you -- jeez, it used to take me 2 hours to get home and it was just from one side of Phoenix to the other using freeways. Currently, I live in Barcelona, and it takes me about 45 minutes when you add up walking to the metro, taking the metro, etc.

eru 10y ago

What are people putting up with such crazy commutes? Where do you live? Why don't people just move closer, or change jobs?

blakeyrat 10y ago
You obviously don't live in the Seattle area. You can't move closer, because real estate is literally twice as expensive as where you currently live, and you can't change jobs because all the jobs are in the same places with the crummy commutes. About the only factor you can optimize is picking jobs that are along mass transit routes.
- drzaiusapelord 10y ago
  Uh, I think you're being very dismissive here. There are many rational reasons for urban business. Being able to get rental real estate for your business. In the suburbs you now need a loan, credit, collateral, 30% down, etc to build your own building as there generally isn't a rash of empty floors on skyscrapers like cities do. Being able to have face to face meetings frequently with your investors, board members, and bankers and other people who hold your pursestrings. Being able to find investors in the first place. Picture two similar business plans. One by a group in the far out suburbs and one nearby. As an investor, which one would you lean towards, especially if you expect yourself to do any hands on work or attend board meetings? Being able to get to the airport and mass transportation hubs quickly. Being able to wine and dine investors and customers in places that will impress them. Being able to court youngsters and urban professionals who want a city life and won't even interview in the suburbs. (Hi! This is me and almost everyone I know.) Being near urban universities for the above reasons and job fairs. Being near your competitors to help you poach their staff. Being able to work with a local government that understands business needs and not being subjected to a 'board of elders' of out of touch 70 year old suburban retirees who will bikeshed the shit out of any proposal of yours and NIMBY you to death. Being able to quickly expand by taking more office space instead of, you guessed it, building another fucking building. Being able to order 1gb fiber and have in here in 30 days as opposed to 360 days in the suburbs and that's on top of paying tens of thousands of dollars for that last mile to your office, which they will need to dig up just for you. ...and yes, maybe some perks of city life as you mention. Work life should have pleasant parts and it helps attract talent.
- eru 10y ago
  I am living and working in Central London. Thank you. Why can't you move? If real estate is twice as expensive, just pick a place half the size? Don't you value your own time---wasted in commuting---at any positive dollar figure at all? If you spend an hour commuting each way for 21 days a month, that's 52 hours a month extra that you spend on `work', even if your employer doesn't gain anything from it.
  - antisthenes 10y ago
    Because, for whatever reason, he likes owning a house. Which is doublespeak for him feeling entitled to live in a huge and inefficient property for no reason other than him liking it.
    - Slaul 10y ago
      How is it wrong for him to want to live in a house because he likes it?
      - AdrianB1 10y ago
        He is not. He is wrong when he wants the government to force companies to bring jobs to his front door ("influencing companies", if you like smooth talk). It is his choice to live in a good place OR next to a good job. It is not government's problem in any case.
    - gph 10y ago
      That's not really doublespeak. And it doesn't have to be less efficient to own a house. Can't put solar panels on my apartment roof. Can't plant much of a garden to localize some of my consumption. If you were really eco-conscious you could probably get more gains out of owning your own house. Especially since most houses have already been built, whereas most of the new construction I see in my city (Baltimore) is going towards mixed-use condos/apartment towers for all the trendy folks wanting to live downtown. If they really cared about the environment and efficiency they'd be fixing-up the thousands of run-down homes.
- SilasX 10y ago
  This is why I've suggested economic measuring well-being with the metric "discretionary income per hour lost to work" (DIPHLoW). discretionary income: income minus taxes and base housing costs hour lost to work: time at work plus time commuting or otherwise stuff you wouldn't otherwise have to do That metric captures dynamics like "yeah there are jobs, but with much higher cost of living, so it cancels out the DIPHLoW" and "yeah you can live where it's cheaper but you have to commute an extra 90 minutes, which eliminates the impact on DIPHLow".
  - eru 10y ago
    That's a good concept. Can you come up with a sexier name? (Or am I not getting a pun here?)
    - SilasX 10y ago
      Heh, that's the best I can come up with; just aimed for it being pronounceable (diff-flow). No pun intended, except maybe that it's the "difference" you keep that "flows" to stuff you can actually enjoy? Edit: Also thought of "discretionary income per UnFree hour" (DIPUPH) ... not sexy either though.
      - abledon 10y ago
        (DIPHLoW). sounds like Diplo, one of the most popular musical artists on the global top 50 (https://twitter.com/diplo https://twitter.com/diplo).... so I think the abbreviation already 'fits' into popular cultures vocabulary of pronunciation, it just has to now tie in a new meaning to the word instead of 'Hugely Successful DJ'
  - eru 10y ago
    Thinking some more about, it would also make sense to look at some isotonic function of disposable income and disposable hours left (after work, commute, etc). This is to capture that increasing working hours from 8h to 24h a day even when pay would be more than tripled, would leave you with a very sad life. (Shadow) price of time would be a good one, too? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_price https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_price) In some sense, that's the same as marginal cost of your time, expressed in dollars or some `utils' or `hedons'. Then you can say, eg taking a longer commute for a cheaper house would value my time at 30 hedons per hour---but spending time with my daughter is worth at least 50 hedons per hour. So it would be bad trade-off.

blakeyrat 10y ago

Yeah, but... doesn't that suck for everybody? Commuting time is wasted. (Maybe on public transit, if it's not so crowded you can pull out a laptop, you can get a bit of work done.) It's American productivity going straight into the toilet. But you're also kind of missing the point of my post, focusing on one small tree and forgetting there's a whole forest out there. Whether it's an hour, or an hour and a half, or 45 minutes isn't the point-- the point is we should optimizing it as close to zero as possible.

kbenson 10y ago
> Yeah, but... doesn't that suck for everybody? Yes. > Commuting time is wasted. Commuting time is a reserved time, which makes it less useful because it's inflexible, but it isn't necessarily wasted. I have quite a few podcasts I listen to, and there's some I'm interested in listening to more than all but the most interesting TV shows on. I have a short commute, just 20 minutes or so each way, and I only do it three times a week, but I find myself happy to run errands after work because it gives me more time when I can listen to the shows I want, as I'm at that point where they stack up faster than I can listen to them, and that's with me aggressively culling the ones I never seem to get to because there are so many I like slightly more so I never have time for them. Commuting can be a wasted time or you can try to use it for what it is, a block of time where you have limited options, and try to make the best of those options.
- thebspatrol 10y ago
  Oh yeah, I love commuting listening to music and livestreams, but you can't assume everyone does. Public transit shouldn't be reserved for major east-coast cities and for poor people.
  - kbenson 10y ago
    > Oh yeah, I love commuting listening to music and livestreams, but you can't assume everyone does. I agree, but that's not all there is. There are audio books, serialized fiction, narrated short stories in every medium you can think of, extended learning, and I'm sure more I can't think of. Finding something to do in this time is less a problem of content and more a problem of knowing it exists. It of course doesn't negate that it does take time away you could choose to do something else, but it can make the time less onerous. > Public transit shouldn't be reserved for major east-coast cities and for poor people. Public transit doesn't change the equation all that much though. It means you need to be less actively involved in the process, so there's more available to you (visual mediums), but it's still time that is reserved for commuting. You aren't physically playing with your children during that time, or visiting with family. Quick access routes to economic hubs might easy associated problems somewhat (double digit percentages if you're lucky), but it doesn't actually change the equation that is at play here, which is that dense groups of people have many benefits, and living close to that is desirable, and we all know what happens when demand outstrips supply. The biggest gains you'll probably ever see in this area are likely to be had by putting less restrictions on an entirely different dimension of travel. Group your population up, not just out.

cdelsolar 10y ago

Yeah, it takes me about 1:15-1:20 each way, but most of it is on public transportation and I can get work done / play Pokemon / read / relax. I don't want to pay $4K a month to live in SF.

eru 10y ago
Assuming you work 20 days a month, you are facing roughly 20 * 2 * 1.3 h = 52h of commute each way. As a general yard stick of how you implicitely value your time: $4k / 52h <= $77 Now, your current place probably costs money too, and your commute won't be cut to zero. You can plug in the numbers yourself: ($4k - current rent) / (52h - commute from apartment in SF) =: implicit value of one of your hours. I hope you are making more than 77 dollar an hour as a programmer (?) in SF. (Yes, I know, taxes complicate the picture. But only by at most a multiplier of 2.)
- vecinu 10y ago
  I don't generally understand this train of thought. For employees that are full-time exempt (And most are), as long as you work a day, you are paid for 8 hours of work. Whether your commute takes 3 hours or 3 minutes, you are paid the exact same because you can't work an extra hour instead of commuting for that $77. Others folks that are on H-1Bs can't even work on side-hustles because of immigration law so what are they really missing out on?
  - SilasX 10y ago
    That's just a yardstick for how much it personally sucks (econ: "disutility") for you to go without that extra hour, estimated from your current pay. You could come up with a different value by deriving it a different way[1], but somehow you have to put a value on the time lost for purposes of comparison. The existence of this opportunity cost doesn't require that you literally be able to put in an extra hour for extra pay. [1] For example, you could go based on "how much would I pay for an extra hour to spend doing XYZ?"
  - madamelic 10y ago

m4x 10y ago

So his point is even more relevant

irrational 10y ago

Now you are making me feel bad for my 15 minute bike commute.

hyperpape 10y ago

Typical commute times are 30 or less. There are a few areas/jobs where that is not true, and it's a heavy cost for the people there. I've read the above several places, but anecdotally, I live in Raleigh (technically Garner) commute 25-30 minutes to work, and have one of the longer commutes of people I work with.