29 ms·

Why Do We Still Commute?

• fwsgonzo 9y ago
  I work from home as much as I can, but nothing trumps seeing your colleagues face to face. Text can also cause misunderstandings, and apparently no one likes video, at least in my company. I don't like video much either, though.
  • keganunderwood 9y ago
    We could still work from home and have time where we meet our coworkers? I read somewhere that gitlab is trying out something like this. I'd love to learn wrist they conclude from this experience.
    • maruhan2 9y ago
      I find it psychologically very different knowing that anyone can talk to you (and you can't ignore like if you were online) and see you. It forces me into a "work mode" psychology. Granted, I'm pretty bad at self-discipline
      • blunte 9y ago
        If you're highly creative, self-discipline is often at odds with the way you work/think. Unfortunately, many office drones are not creative and have no concept of this. Some expect developers and IT people to punch a clock and start typing code until close of business day.
    • blunte 9y ago
      At one company I worked for (that was mostly remote workers), people who lived within an hour of each other would periodically meet up for social or work reasons. We had one guy who had a nice house with a big dining room, and once a month we'd work from there in one room. Less work got done, but some things that otherwise might never have been done/resolved got handled. Plus it was "kind of" fun. So unless you're geographically too far from colleagues, there's no reason why you can't have meetups (and I would advocate for them... occasionally).
      • gerardflo 9y ago
        > but some things that otherwise might never have been done/resolved got handled This is a fallacy. If something really needs resolving, the setting is not relevant.
        • blunte 9y ago
          It may be fallacy to you because you haven't experienced it, but it has happened in my experience. Sometimes on person describes an annoyance they have, and one of the other people in the room feels motivated to resolve that issue. Or a couple of people start talking about something, and a third person has a new idea that improves thing. There are endless scenarios that can result in something happening that otherwise might never have happened without the meeting.
        • salvar 9y ago
          Is the setting never relevant? Or is this just your anecdotal experience?
    • sytse 9y ago
      It is working really well for us! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e56PbkJdmZ8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e56PbkJdmZ8 is a good introduction video
  • amorphid 9y ago
    One thing we, or at least I, haven't seen is the remote equivalent of a whiteboard. Or pen & paper.
    • coldtea 9y ago
      There are lots of such implementations (virtual whiteboard and/or pen and paper). Search for: "collaborating writing tool", "virtual whiteboard" etc. The latter are usually part of teleconference tools. Here's from an open source one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MNqiMEblgo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MNqiMEblgo
      • sidlls 9y ago
        None of the ones I've ever seen or used comes close to even approximating the in-person whiteboard experience.
        • amorphid 9y ago
          That has been my experience as well.
        • coldtea 9y ago
          Not even sure what that means. They let you write stuff (even with a pen, on a touch capable display) and have others see what you write (and even write/erase themselves). What else is missing? Standing in person before an actual whiteboard? Smelling the marker's ink? Maybe with the advent of cheap VR and smell-o-vision we'll get that too.
          • sidlls 9y ago
            Two things stick out as most problematic: "whiteboard" real estate and latency.
          • scaryclam 9y ago
            The writing part isn't really the main benefit of whiteboarding. Standing there, pointing at things and chatting about it is a really big part. Then there's the physical size. Quite often I find it much nicer to stand in front of a board and draw on a large scale. The current attempts at remote whiteboards are really not suitable replacements. VR would a giant help as body language, gesturing and physical size all become much easier to see. Of course, that would require quite a leap forward in VR to accomplish that level of avatar.
  • dingo_bat 9y ago
    I also hate video. Ugh. I don't know why I love face to face but hate video :/
    • mbrock 9y ago
      One really weird thing about video conferencing is that you're constantly exposed to a slightly delayed, pixelated, and poorly lit picture of your own face. That's a deeply abnormal situation. It's like talking to someone while sitting in front of a fun house mirror. Who would subject themselves to such a metaphysical nightmare? And that's just one of the little uncanny distortions that video conferencing brings. You might enjoy this excerpt from a novel, which predicts a bad future for video chat: http://declineofscarcity.com/?page_id=2527 http://declineofscarcity.com/?page_id=2527 Sample: > It turned out that there was something terribly stressful about visual telephone interfaces that hadn’t been stressful at all about voice-only interfaces. Videophone consumers seemed suddenly to realize that they’d been subject to an insidious but wholly marvelous delusion about conventional voice-only telephony. They’d never noticed it before, the delusion — it’s like it was so emotionally complex that it could be countenanced only in the context of its loss. Good old traditional audio-only phone conversations allowed you to presume that the person on the other end was paying complete attention to you while also permitting you not to have to pay anything even close to complete attention to her. And: > This sort of appearance-check was no more resistible than a mirror. But the experience proved almost universally horrifying. People were horrified at how their own faces appeared on a TP screen. It wasn’t just ‘Anchorman’s Bloat,’ that well-known impression of extra weight that video inflicts on the face. It was worse. Even with high-end TPs’ high-def viewer-screens, consumers perceived something essentially blurred and moist-looking about their phone-faces, a shiny pallid indefiniteness that struck them as not just unflattering but somehow evasive, furtive, untrustworthy, unlikable. In an early and ominous InterLace/G.T.E. focus-group survey that was all but ignored in a storm of entrepreneurial sci-fi-tech enthusiasm, almost 60% of respondents who received visual access to their own faces during videophonic calls specifically used the terms untrustworthy, unlikable, or hard to like in describing their own visage’s appearance, with a phenomenally ominous 71 % of senior-citizen respondents specifically comparing their video-faces to that of Richard Nixon during the Nixon-Kennedy debates of B.S. 1960.
    • 9y ago
  • gerardflo 9y ago
    You can have misunderstandings face to face. This is a matter of communication skills. Having entire conversation in text form also means you can easily make references and go back to it even weeks later, whereas with face to face conversation you don't have that luxury.
    • lovich 9y ago
      I like remote work, but the benefits of searchable text barely materialized for us. There were a few times we needed to find some piece of information, especially from colleagues who had moved on. However, any moderately discussed topic just generated too much text to be quickly search able. Wed usually get thousands of results for any search term and whoever was looking for the necessary information had to not just look at those results, but the context they were in, to get the info they wanted. One time it took the course of a day
    • tetromino_ 9y ago
      Face to face means seeing the other person's face. You have instantaneous feedback when their face shows signs of confusion, excitement, boredom, maybe unhappiness at your words. Misunderstandings can be cleared up immediately. Searchable conversation history is certainly extremely useful. But today, that's at the cost of needing to regularly go back and redo text discussions from 5 or 15 minutes ago because it becomes clear that we initially hadn't understood each other at all. So I dream of a Black Mirror style future with an indexed video archive of what my eyes had seen.
      • CaptSpify 9y ago
        > Face to face means seeing the other person's face. You have instantaneous feedback when their face shows signs of confusion, excitement, boredom, maybe unhappiness at your words. Misunderstandings can be cleared up immediately. In theory. But when you are dealing with a lot of "anti-social" people who have a hard time communicating verbally, or integrating socially, it usually has the opposite affect, ime.
      • wolco 9y ago
        Remember those requirement we talked about last month? Writing it down or having a log of conversation helps so much. When in person it is harder to take notes and be part of the converdation.
• pmontra 9y ago
  At least two forces: 1) Control from above in the hierarchy (the general wants to see the army) 2) Control from below especially in competitive setups (the troop wants to know what's going to happen) Then there is little like seeing people face to face to remind them you exists. This is good for business. I'm a freelancer now (about half of my career) and work mostly from home but I go meet customers in person almost every week or every month, depending on how much we work together (directly proportional.) Furthemore, face to face collaboration is very effective when in hurry.
• k__ 9y ago
  I work remote almost 100% and it'a pretty awesome. A Dev I work with has to commute through 50% of Germany every week. He only sees his kids on the weekend.
  • rejschaap 9y ago
    You make it sound like he doesn't have a choice in the matter, which is extremely unlikely and also very sad.
    • k__ 9y ago
      Maybe they just fear "being dad" I don't know
    • Swinx43 9y ago
      One needs to remember that there are many more factors at play. Sometimes the only place you can afford a decent size family home will be in an area with lower wages. Hence it can make economical sense to have to take a higher paying job that requires travel in order to afford to provide for your family. There are many factors at play in such decisions. "Having a choice" is something you do not always have depending on personal circumstances.
      • briandear 9y ago
        Agreed! .. perhaps they need to remain close to an elderly relative. Perhaps the schools in the work location are terrible. Perhaps you have a house that you aren't able to easily sell. Perhaps .... and on and on. We would be well served by demonstrating compassion for others -- it's not like a majority of people can simply jump on their fixie with their Manhattan Portage bag and just enjoy a 5 minute ride to a DUMBO loft office.
    • eptcyka 9y ago
      Do you not trust people to seek out and pick the optimal options for themselves?
      • 9y ago
• gbugniot 9y ago
  As a reminder, everyone doesn't work in front of a computer all day.
• dagw 9y ago
  Because 'we' prefer it? I like going into the office. The morning walk to the office with its clear demarcation between work and not work, the ritual of grabbing a coffee in the morning with some colleagues and catching up on what's happening in their projects even if they're not directly related to anything I'm working on, having a dedicated space and a dedicated computer that's just for work, all those little things and more makes working at the office far more productive for me.
  • Raf_ 9y ago
    You're certainly lucky to be able to walk to your office. Most people in my company need to drive at least 50 minutes to get to the office.
    • dagw 9y ago
      I actually take the bus to the office now, but get off ~3km before my stop so I can get a 30 minute walk in.
    • nofilter 9y ago
      I live in the city centre as well as work in the city centre. One of the benefits of living in a small capital city like Tallinn. I walk to and from work for about 20 minutes (total 40 minutes each day). The thing is, I would prefer this to be a bit longer because often times it's the only time I don't actually sit behind a screen. When I worked in Barcelona and lived there, I walked about 40 minutes to work and back, which was perfect.
      • lloeki 9y ago
        > The thing is, I would prefer this to be a bit longer because often times it's the only time I don't actually sit behind a screen. I lived 10 mins away on foot from my job. It was all fine and dandy for some time, but then things got seriously tense in the workplace and it meant the super short commute gave me no time to unwind. It ended up being mentally taxing to live so close to my workplace, even when I was not working since I ended up being near or walking in front basically anytime I got out. Nasty. Too long a commute and you're wasting so much time and energy in our life, but too close and it can have deleterious effects too.
• cupofjoakim 9y ago
  I think working from home works perfectly if you know exactly what to fill your workday with or if you're in a position where you can make decisions smoothly. If you're not sure what's expected of you or your team has poor communication, remote work seems to lead to some issues, such as being unsure if you're doing enough, feeling more guilty about slacking (even if a break is needed) and an increased amount of blockers if you can't get a hold of someone you need to talk to since you're not at the office.
  • Double_a_92 9y ago
    Exactly this!
  • briandear 9y ago
    Those issues exist even in a physical office.
    • rpazyaquian 9y ago
      I agree. Uncertainty and lack of prioritization and focus is independent of location.
• BjoernKW 9y ago
  I think that the 'importance of face-to-face interaction' argument is a helplessly contrived one, an attempt to avoid the elephant in the room. There are plenty of examples that show that working remotely without daily face-to-face interaction can work very well. What's markedly different about environments that successfully adopted remote work are aspects like: - a lack of cargo cult work organisation and office politics - an atmosphere of trust rather than petty control freaks who need to constantly keep an eye on their subordinates in order to know they're still 'working' - adapting to different forms of communication When people say that they can't communicate as well with someone who isn't in the same room that doesn't necessarily mean that a remote setup doesn't work. It could simply mean they're just lazy and not willing to adjust to a different kind of work environment. Working remotely requires the participants to be much more communicative because in such a setting communication for the most part doesn't just happen serendipitously, you have to work to make it happen.
  • majewsky 9y ago
    Another huge problem is the transition path from "everyone in the same office" to "everyone working remote". If you have 60% of your team sitting in the office, and 40% remote, you can be absolutely certain that those 40% will be out of touch on all those important decisions that just emerge during a watercooler conversation. (The watercooler also provides a way for different teams to get to know each other, even if they do not work with each other directly, thus forging bonds that might later turn out helpful.) With all that (plus what you said), most individual employees will prefer the office over remote access. So remote would only work if you moved everyone from the office to remote access at a single point in time.
    • switch007 9y ago
      I try those watercooler conversations: the rare occasion the bosses aren't avoiding the proles on purpose, they just quickly make their drink then make excuses to disappear. If you touch on an important topic, it's not taken seriously because you're not in a meeting room. Colleagues on the same level that hang out and discuss the latest new TV series seems that's good, but I don't think the bonds that builds are always strong.
• t0mislav 9y ago
  At the moment, I work 60% from home and 40% from the office, and this perfectly suits for me. However, more and more I hate 9 to 5 working hours, but that is another topic.
• have_faith 9y ago
  Has anyone studied if people outside of cushy tech jobs want to commute? particularly people with lower wages and things at home they would rather escape for 9 hours a day. Most people can't afford a home office too.
  • Tade0 9y ago
    A few of my friends(working in non-IT fields) have coworkers who do everything to stay as long as they can in the office because their home life is hell. Aside from them most of the people I asked about this would either want to have a very short(20 minutes max.) commute, or work from home, since it's usually the most comfortable environment for them. Nearly everybody I know who spends at least two hours daily in traffic would love to change that in any way possible - including switching to remote work.
    • gerardflo 9y ago
      > to stay as long as they can in the office because their home life is hell. This is pathetic. They have hell at home and instead of fixing it, they bring it to the office. My home life is awesome and I'd rather spend more time at home than in office full of miserable people. Sadly they are the loudest one and their moans are music to the ears of managers who are control freaks. Thankfully I decided never again work for a company that doesn't allow remote.
  • blunte 9y ago
    I wonder what is a "cushy tech job"... But regarding people who might want to avoid being home, that is a whole different problem that needs solving. Wanting escape should not be an argument for commuting.
    • rralian 9y ago
      > I wonder what is a "cushy tech job" Probably a job that is extremely well paid for knowledge work in technology and where workers are highly sought after so employers provide lots of perks.
• mruniverse 9y ago
  We have open offices because we need to be close. We have remote workers because we don't need them close.
  • blunte 9y ago
    Nope. Nope. We have open offices because some genius did the simple math and realized that you can cram more people into a smaller space if you remove the walls. Then somewhere along the way, some marketing guy came up with the spin, "It fosters communication!". Open office does indeed make people close in proximity, but it's not a necessity.
    • mruniverse 9y ago
      I think the open office started with Chiat/Day (ad/design firm). It was back when laptops were first introduced and it was seen as a cool way to work. People would get to be mobile, sit anywhere they want, etc. Found this: https://www.wired.com/1999/02/chiat-3 https://www.wired.com/1999/02/chiat-3
• bartq 9y ago
  Because technology shouldn't surpass real human interaction. Wanna world from Matrix movie?
  • blunte 9y ago
    Who's to say that we aren't living in such a world? :) And as with anything else in life, we must weigh the options. Face to face can indeed be better than remote. It can also be worse, because some people just irritate others by their presence and little behaviors. But more significantly, some of us do work which requires a good amount of thought - uninterrupted, quiet thought. Shared offices make this more difficult (compared to a quiet home office).
• smpetrey 9y ago
  God I miss working remotely.
• l_camacho84 9y ago
  We commute because of our growth dependency. This is just another example of simple solutions that cannot be truly implemented because it does not make money/jobs. We need to reflect what are the objectives of our acts. Right now we are consuming way to much resources in the name of progress! But progress to what? Soon enough we will face environmental changes that could be avoided if we such do less things, not more.
• thisisit 9y ago
  Because people have kids and working while your >1 to 2 years kid is playing is unbearable? /jk All jokes aside, as someone who loves remote and work from home to avoid Bangalore traffic, sometimes, not always it is good to meet some face to face. Sure this can be taken to an extreme too. My last job we had a manager who insisted on doing everything face to face which meant we were stuck in office beyond 8 hours. Then people started adjusting their schedule to accommodate those meetings, then there was barely 3 hours of actual work, 2 hours of prep and 3 hours of "face to face" meetings.
• philjohn 9y ago
  I work from home 1 or 2 days a week, and the rest of the time commute 55 miles each way (~1h10m). True, I probably get more done on the days I work from home as I don't have a commute, and there are fewer distractions, however, I find I can collaborate far more effectively when I'm in the office - instant messenger, email and video calls just don't cut it. Plus I have an amazing commute, mostly along British A roads through the countryside.
  • cjcmd11 9y ago
    This is what some of the comments are missing. Telecommuting doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing proposition. There are obvious advantages to being in the office; but I'd wager those advantages aren't quite as severe by cutting office time by 1-2 days a week. Plus, it allows workers to feel refreshed from dealing less with of the negative stresses of commuting.
• dsfyu404ed 9y ago
  To a lot of people 2hr/day commuting is less terrible than the trade-offs associated with living closer to the city.
  • gerardflo 9y ago
    2hr/day commute gives ~ 40hr a month of unpaid work commitment.
    • dsfyu404ed 9y ago
      It's not a work commitment. You're not working for your employer when you're commuting (unless you commute by train/bus and choose to do so). It's like a side gig where your compensation is you don't get bent over for rent, get the freedom that comes with owning a home and no longer have to put up with the downsides of living in an apartment.
  • PeterStuer 9y ago
    2 hours a day. You spend about 9 hours at the office, you sleep 8 hours (hopefully), household chores, including shopping food etc will take you an hour (probably more, but let's say). So this leaves you with 4 hours a day 'free'. Wokring from home would net you a massive 50% increase in 'free' time. Talk about QoL improbvement.
• jwl 9y ago
  While working from home can be nice and more productive if you have some well defined task that needs to be done, I still feel I need the daily social interaction with my coworkers. Slack and Skype is just not enough. I would get depressed if I worked alone from home every day.
  • PeterStuer 9y ago
    Or maybe if people didn't have to spend all that time in the commute and being depressed because of it they would actually have time and energy for a life outside of work and get your social fix their
• blunte 9y ago
  I am on my 10th year of working from home, and I still love it. Here's my personal list of pros and cons: PRO Work from anywhere with internet: In the last 45 days, I have worked from the Caribbean, from Spain, and from Ireland. Granted, these travel experiences aren't full vacations (and in fact sometimes were stressful when internet quality was not tops), but they sure beat my previous "open office" bullpen. Work when inspiration strikes: Sometimes my brain won't shut up the useless stuff, and other times it wants to really drive a useful project. When it's a good time, I usually can choose to work uninterrupted and make great progress. When it's not a good time, I can just go do chores around the house or go enjoy the weather. Answer fewer tech questions for other employees: If you're within earshot, less technical people will ask for help the instant they think they need it. But if it takes more effort for them to reach you, they will work a little harder to solve their own problem. Most of the time, they solve the problem (or realize there was no problem -- just a moment of confusion). This saves me SO much time and occasional frustration. Not commute: This one is kind of obvious, but not having to commute saves 1-2 hours a day. That's time for gym, coffee, reading news, etc. It's also so much less stress. When I drove in traffic to and from work, I would often arrive very frustrated. When I moved to Europe and had the luxury of riding a train(s) to work, life was better... except when trains would break or a surge of travelers would result in no seats available. CON Communication can be more difficult: I have found voice calls to be essential, at least compared to just txt and email. Text messages were the worst and most likely to result in annoyance or confusion. Emails are a bit better, but reply-hell is real. You definitely have to work a bit to find the right tools and methods for each of the people you need to work with; but once found, it works almost as good as face to face. Work is _always_ there: This has been the hardest for me. I always have more work to do than I can do, and now I can work any minute that someone else (partner) doesn't need me. This can get out of control if you're not careful. Some people are strict and disciplined about home working, but I like to stay flexible. Still, one must set some limits or reminders of reasonable behavior/expectations. Fewer jobs: Since most companies don't go for remote work, you have to decide what's more important - freedom, or a particular job. I choose freedom, and at this point I don't think I'll ever go back. Once you've tasted freedom, and once you've proven to yourself that you can work (well) alone and unsupervised, the thought of being back in a noisy office with people passing by behind you, potentially judging you if they don't see you with a code window open 99% of the time, is just untenable.
• bartedinburgh 9y ago
  I think it's connected with the rise of bullshit jobs. If your job is well defined, e.g. make an app or a website design, you can do it anywhere in the world. The app/design is your deliverable that anyone can see and judge. If your job is a poorly defined "management" or "product ownership", with no real deliverable, how can your work be judged? Your job turns into convincing other people that your job is useful. Work long hours, seem busy, attend meetings, leave the office late. An epitome of the corporate environment.
  • jpttsn 9y ago
    I think it's kind of a leap to assume the value is low just because it's hard to measure. This is in general a common, elusive mistake: "We can't measure it, so it must be zero." Better to be ridiculous and say it's worth between $100 and $10,000.
    • loup-vaillant 9y ago
      It's subtler than that. Because it is hard to measure, one has to make explicit effort to demonstrate value. This wastes time and energy that could have been used to increase the very value that needs to be demonstrated. Value is lower because of the consequences of being hard to measure. Then there are actual bullshit jobs, whose value is difficult to measure because they have no value to begin with.
      • duckmysick 9y ago
        > This wastes time and energy that could have been used to increase the very value that needs to be demonstrated. How do we know the value has been increased at all?
        • loup-vaillant 9y ago
          We don't.
    • dkarl 9y ago
• JulianMorrison 9y ago
  Managers. People working from home scare them. They might be slacking. They might be leaking. Heaven's sake, man, they might even be organizing a union!
  • jpttsn 9y ago
    If it weren't for the evil managers, we would all adopt to a 21st century lifestyle overnight, throwing out the stale routines of the backwards generation that raised us.
  • PeterStuer 9y ago
    Closer tot he truth: they are scared that the 'managing' is actually not realy needed and contributing all that much.
    • Torkgin 9y ago
      This makes me wonder, is it truly so? Every organization starts without managers and they are added later once the organization grows but if they are not really needed, why is every organization adding them?
      • PeterStuer 9y ago
        That is a realy good question. I don't know whether there is a clear answer. How come efficient passionate startups eventually end up as rent-seeking slothful bureaucratic mega-corporations. When does that 'start' to happen? It is not just 'cargo-cult' or 'enterprise-envy'. I think it goes deeper. My current feeling is that middle management is something that is naturally lurking in the wings, and expresses itself the moment the overhead can be carried. Caricatured: Bottom up there's people looking for a way to escape 'working at the coalface', and start the innate pecking order/ hierarchy battles. Top down there is the desire of the owner to create some distance, and in many cases also the latent idea that if some proficiencies could be isolated into a single specialist, the remaining 'resources' could be sourced cheaper. It self reinforces since as 'overhead' the middle management layer crates make-work to assert its existence. Furthermore, it asserts the 'company as a value funnel', since it is a model that disemancipates each individual making sure they can't easily venture out on their own. So the middle management pattern could be an expression waiting to happen as a result of natural forces, not as a result of direct 'needs' or 'efficiency' in value creation in its own right, but just for the sake of 'enterprise creation' itself.
• Chiba-City 9y ago
  Conversations around whiteboards between stakeholders creates value. Pair programming makes for lower defects and more reliable scheduling. Software is a design delivery operation. There was recent article on MS office space redesign to create more value. We are never typing approximations to futures like the proverbial monkeys. Productivity is not per-keystroke. I have been paid extra to kill projects that never should have started. Personal productivity is almost a misnomer.
  • r2dnb 9y ago
    While I have nothing against MBAs, this is a typical example of what people call MBAish / corporate BS and why managerial profiles have gained a bad reputation here. It looks smart on the surface but scrutiny exposes non-sense. >Conversations around whiteboards between stakeholders creates value. Why ? Are whiteboards magic ? >Pair programming makes for lower defects and more reliable scheduling Putting aside the fact that the benefits of pair programming as less consensual than what you seem to suggest, it can be done much more conveniently in a remote setup with a screenshare and a headset than by sharing a desk. >Software is a design delivery operation. So ? >There was recent article on MS office space redesign to create more value. Here we have the business case reference, always good to include one. The substantial remark is that once again this doesn't prove anything, the first reason being that "value" is extremely vague. >Productivity is not per-keystroke The art of looking like you are siding with the people you want to control while it is actually the opposite. If we go the bottom of the reasoning : value is not per keystroke, we therefore need to put employees in a room because their true value must be monitored to be appreciated. "Please understand, I really want to be able to appreciate your true value". Sounds a bit hypocrite to me. >Personal productivity is almost a misnomer One more slogan. >I have been paid extra to kill projects that never should have started. While I am the first to advocate careful planning and writing code last, as an entrepreneur, I consider it a crime to sabotage projects, because anyone who has ever created something, or started a project or a venture understands that creativity is almost Holy. Beyond the technical deliverables, projects trigger group (and market) dynamics and institutional learning that may be hard to reproduce later in time. For this reason, doers do not sabotage or kill projects, they rectify them. Sure there can be pure follies that need to be stopped ASAP to stop diverting valuable resources of the company, but my overall impression is that you have a more liberal approach to assessing what must be killed. I respect arguments from both sides, but this comment is really representative of the crap filling most companies.
• PeterStuer 9y ago
  It's the employer's call, and short term there are no obvious downsides there as all the effects are longer term (burnout, depression, quitting) and business is mostly blind to anything beyond 4 quarters. The 'productivity' thing is intangible as long as the business doesn't switch to a performance based model as opposed to a sociopolitical hierarchy. And their lies the rub, because a performance based system doesn't mesh very well with middle-management, which is the 'backbone' of our archetypal company model.
• mathgeek 9y ago
  I don't speak for anyone but myself, but I wouldn't give up the extra time that I get to spend with my young kids for all the productivity boosts in the world. No commute and being home for lunch is time that would be stolen by any company that doesn't allow remote work.
• dintech 9y ago
  Because where you live with your family is a better environment for them than a industrial estate car park.
• nunez 9y ago
  Why do we still commute? Because outside of the tech bubble, most jobs still require face to face communication and living close-by to the office in many cities is cost-prohibitive to many.
  • briandear 9y ago
    Most jobs don't require face to face outside of physical services such as the trades or cutting hair. And the jobs that do require face-to-face -- many of them definitely don't require an office. (i.e. insurance claims adjusting -- that's a field job, so there isn't really a "commute.") Selling insurance: not required. Customer service for the electrical company: nope. Most of that is on the phone. Logistics for a trucking company: also phone/computer based, no face to face (or rarely.) Medical claims processing -- never face to face Coordinating cable TV installation appointments: all phone or online based If you think about it almost ALL jobs can be done remotely. I agree that most jobs still require it, but that isn't because of the nature of the job, but the lack of vision from those particular industries. Most businesses seem to operate under 19th century ideals. I realize not everyone wants or can work from home; but I would advocate for a decentralized workplace -- remote working with perhaps small satellite offices scattered around the world -- offices that can simply pop-up at WeWork/etc. As employees in the area need/want. Obviously a hardware company like Apple actually needs a physical space for people to build things. Same for Boeing, Tesla, etc. But Facebook? Farmers Insurance? They don't sell anything physical.
    • pixl97 9y ago
      Almost all these jobs you've listed are on the list of things in the near future that won't require people (or at least as many). I called my electrical company with an outage, an automated system answered and I gave my customer number. They told me my meter could not be contacted. It then said other local meters could be contacted and it was likely a issue that just affected me, so they would send a truck. 20 minutes later the lineman/repair person gave me a call from their cell and asked a quick question about what my was going on. 10 minutes later they were there replacing the meter. If your job can be done remotely, your job can be done by a computer in 90% of the cases. Good luck fighting for those jobs in the future (especially when they get sent overseas for 1/5th the cost).
• peterwwillis 9y ago
  Things that happen when you're in the office: - spins around in chair, interrupts and asks coworker a question, workshops ideas for 15 minutes, comes up with solution, makes a meeting - boss comes over and tells workers there's some issue going on he's going to go deal with and he'll be available via cell only - when SCRUM ends, conversation continues in person, things get decided - walk into boss's office and make tentative strategy plans - discuss current issues, decide to rework something, meet with another team, make plans, start working on it Sometimes you can just walk around, bug people, and get shit done. It's very efficient. But all of these things also involve communication which isn't relayed to remote workers. People either forget you, or including you in the conversation is a hassle, so they don't. You feel like the unwanted stepchild, constantly pinging people to get some kind of feedback and never seeming to reach them until much later. It's really inefficent.
  • megaman22 9y ago
    These things are as infuriating when I am in the office and left out of the loop as when I'm working remote. More so, really, because the purported benefits of dragging myself in there aren't materializing to offset the suck. There's no excuse for piss-poor planning and communication. It's not that hard to send an email and get it on record. Also "Walking around, bugging people, and getting shit done" may be very effective _for you_. Meanwhile you've blazed a path of interruption and disruption amongst your colleagues in your wake.
  • PeterStuer 9y ago
    Sounds to me like you're a detriment to your entire office, callously leeching people's time.
    • salvar 9y ago
      This seems like an exceptionally cynical and judgemental view of a person based on what, a couple of sentences?
      • PeterStuer 9y ago
• throwaway7645 9y ago
  Blown away by how many people on here can walk to work. If you live in the South, most of our cities just aren't built that way. Most people have a 1/2 hour commute morning and night. Living downtown usually means ancient houses in an area I wouldn't consider very safe. Suburbs are terrible in other ways though.
  • Symbiote 9y ago
    The article was posted during the middle of the European working day.
    • throwaway7645 9y ago
      Good point, thank you!
• egl2019 9y ago
  Because we're Abel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abelian_group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abelian_group
• codingdave 9y ago
  I worked from home for five years, and just this week started back into a job where I commute to an office. I don't love the commute, but I also don't agree that working from home is a universally better answer for me on a personal level. Everyone knows the benefits of working from home, but there are downsides as well. Fixable downsides, but they exist nonetheless -- it is easy to become a hermit. Easy to over-work. Hard to draw the line between your work time and your personal time. Easy to get siloed into your current job, while not keeping up with the rest of the company and enabling career growth. Easy to let poor communication habits turn into real problems. And when your entire company works from home, as mine did, you develop a culture of acting like there is no better choice, and the benefits of your personal flexibility at home outweigh any problems at work... causing people to not fight very hard to fix problems, and to stay in those jobs longer than they should because of how comfortable the working situation is. Now, all of those things can be handled if you have personal discipline, good co-workers, and great leadership. But not all teams can truly claim those qualities. So I feel both working environments have their good and bad sides, and the choice of which situation to pursue is a question that needs to be answered with some solid contextual information about the team, the culture, and your personality to know which one is truly best for any specific individual at any specific job.
  • booleandilemma 9y ago
    I think a good solution to this is to just mix it up. At my place we have a policy of working from home on Fridays and coming in the rest of the week. We get to have a day of not commuting, working in our pajamas, and still have plenty of time to be physically present in the office. As an added benefit, the workweek feels shorter.
    • richardknop 9y ago
      This sounds pretty ideal. I think 1-2 days of remote work per weeks is ideal. Still leaves enough days in office to have the face to face contact with colleagues and communicate directly.
    • sh87 9y ago
      Indeed. Flexible hours should also be added in allowing people to decide with a fair degree of freedom the hours they want to work remotely and the hours they’d be better off at work. My commute times are worst during peak office hours i.e. 8-10am to and 5-7 pm from work. I would just choose to work from 7-10 from home, commute to work and drive back at about 3. That seems fairly balanced to me.
• azmauldin 9y ago
  Because management likes to be able to come by and see you in front of some IDE or whiteboard. That's the only reason that makes sense to me anymore...
• twoquestions 9y ago
  We commute because businesses can push off the cost of commuting to their employees. I'd personally be in favor of a "congestion tax" or somesuch for companies that force their employees to come in rather than work remotely. Commuting takes up energy and resources, and the congestion incurs costs on third parties (car accidents, higher gas prices, and the like). While it's debatable whether remote works for businesses that can work remotely, it imposes costs on the rest of us, especially those who can't do their jobs over an Internet connection, and those costs should be paid by those who willingly incur them, not whoever they can push them off to.
  • imgabe 9y ago
    I've thought about this in the past. What if companies had to pay for the time you spend commuting? They'd have an incentive to hire people as close as possible, and support local policies that make it easier to live closer to work. On the other hand, employees would have an incentive to try to stretch out their commute as much as possible, to get extra pay for time "not working". I don't know how rampant that would be. I like to think most people hate commuting enough that it wouldn't be worth it to make an extra $20 sitting in traffic when you could just be home faster, but who knows.
    • mrleinad 9y ago
      If the money goes to the government, then you don't have that problem.
    • sokoloff 9y ago
      In the end, setting aside the distortions caused by minimum wage laws, companies pay for the value they receive from their employees. How you want to apportion that value (hours, widgets, hours [including commuting hours], flexible work arrangements, paid time off, company holidays, etc) doesn't matter much. As an employer, I'm indifferent between paying someone $50/hour for an 8-hour work day, or $40/hr for an 8-hour workday plus 2 hours of paid commuting.
      • humanrebar 9y ago
• js8 9y ago
  In theory, both capital (money) and labor (people) can move freely around. Since capital is virtual, and labor real, it would make a perfect economic sense to move capital where it's needed instead of labor where it's needed. But in practice, it's the other way around. Capital is lazy and concentrates in places like SV. People have to commute or even migrate to get better working conditions.
• gedrap 9y ago
  Working from home is often touted as a solution to all problems but it's just not that simple, and many people who do actually work remotely will tell you that. Allowing remote work is not enough. It requires effort from both parties. The company needs to provide money for home office setup, and the employee needs to spend time and though setting one up, which might be tricky in places with insane real estate prices. Working from sofa is not really sustainable for long. Although work from home eliminates distractions such as constant movement of people (although this is not unique to working from home and same could be done with private offices), it opens a plethora of new distractions, be it running errands, playing with pets, or just goofing off instead of TV while keeping an eye on instant messenger. And the list goes on. But that's not the point. Sure, working from home has a lot of advantages and at the end of the day I am very glad that I made the switch. It's just not as simple as some might make it appear as.
• sethammons 9y ago
  > Studies have shown that teams who work together face-to-face, as opposed to via email, are more productive when doing complex tasks. Being physically close helps us bond, show emotions, problem solve, and spontaneously come up with ideas. I tend to work two days a week from home and commute a bit under two hours one way the other days. I agree with the above quote from the article. Usually, the complexity of my team's tasks are at a level where some face to face early in the week and some remote screen share + video call later in the week are sufficient. We are currently working through a complex bug and I have came into the office on the days I'd normally be remote. It helped. The connectivity of interpersonal relationships is easier to build in person, and so I subscribe to the notion that a minimal amount of time in the office is a good thing if you need a team that works great together. I feel that time varies on how well the team is bonded. With my last team, a day or two a week face to face would be good. With my brand new team where we are still forming and norming, more days all together makes sense.
• jordanmoconnor 9y ago
  I currently commute 45 minutes, but I do work on the side from home. I find the only time I can truly be productive at home is between 4 AM and 9 AM. When everybody (wife / kid) is up, it's hard to avoid distractions at home. If I worked remotely, I would do that 5 hour stint, make breakfast and play with the kids, then do a gym / coffee shop routine for 3 or so more hours to finish up work for the day.
• Melchizedek 9y ago
  Because needy extroverts want to socialize instead of working. Also, it's easier to leech off the people who are actually productive when you're in an office. And managers are afraid they'll appear superfluous when they can't walk around disturbing people all day.
• EGreg 9y ago
  Commuting contributes to the greenhouse gas problem, and USED to contribute to the CFC problem until an international agreement helped solve that. Hundreds of years ago, Mozart was said to have traveled more than the vast majority of his contemporaries. Today, the average person travels more miles than Mozart every day! To sit in a chair. Think of the waste in terms of energy. Not only has there been an explosion in population, but each person is expending more energy than ever on these things. And why? Because economics. For one, suburban sprawl happens because commercial areas get gentrified so people choose to live farther from their job. UBI would fix a lot of this, allowing local workers to live and work near their job.
• bitwize 9y ago
  Because it's part of your job. There is much, much more to your job than what's in the job description. For starters, you have to make your manager happy, so he can feel justified in continuing to pay you. Showing up at the office on time -- early in the morning -- is a form of virtue signalling. It's used as a proxy for self-discipline and reliability -- traits valued in an employee. Yeah, yeah, I know. "My deliverables should be the only proxy I need; as long as I'm getting my work done I should be able to work from anywhere." It's one of those subtle psychological things. It takes a long history -- longer than the average Hackernews's career at any one place -- of deliverables shipped on time and under budget before the manager will feel confident you're reliable enough to deliver guaranteed value when called upon to do so. Showing up on time increases their confidence in you and decreases the chance that they will wake up one morning and decide you no longer merit that generous tech-bubble paycheck. So cowboy up, set your alarm for 6 AM, and get to work early.
• jheriko 9y ago
  Why do we still commute? simple, naive answer, that ignores the context of the article: because to a very close approximation 0% of people on this planet work in an office at all, let alone an office where this is genuinely possible.
  • randomdata 9y ago
    To be fair, commuting to work is a fairly new concept. In history most people would work from home as their farm was also their home.
• Yaggo 9y ago
  I bought a house from countryside three years ago, 75 km from the city. A round-trip during rush hours take two hours. I'm allowed to have two remote days per week, and I don't really want more (maybe three?), because I miss the social interaction etc. too much. Even weirder, I also miss the lonely moment in behind the weel.
• return0 9y ago
  There is some value to commuting for work. I attribute it to hippocampal remaps when moving to the workplace, which helps you get into "work mode", associate your workplace with actually working and also give your "home" cells a rest. The solution to this would be "work centers" in every neighborhood where you can go to feel like working. I think some psychologists should do some research on the subject , remote work is only bound to become more common.
  • PeterStuer 9y ago
    There has been https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/commuting-takes-its-toll/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/commuting-takes-i... https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-mentally-strong-people-dont-do/201506/your-commute-could-be-killing-your-happiness https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/what-mentally-strong-pe... https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/urban-survival/201501/commuting-the-stress-doesnt-pay https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/urban-survival/201501/c... https://www.accessmagazine.org/fall-1992/commuter-stress/ https://www.accessmagazine.org/fall-1992/commuter-stress/
• mbrock 9y ago
  Seems to me that this has a pretty intimate relation to the question of the "nature of the firm." Why do we work in firms rather than as independent contractors making contracts with each other? Why do we gather in rooms every day instead of working independently and emailing each other with low frequency asynchronous requests? I don't really understand firms, to be honest... I suspect it has way more to do with instinctual tribalism than any other rationalization.
  • glifchits 9y ago
    That's a great point, and the nature of the firm is something worth thinking about especially in this context. However, the "firm" structure creates lots of efficiencies. Individual contracts are costly to enforce and having one type of contract (the employee contract) allows hiring to scale a lot better. Employees (and usually not contractors) are exclusive to an employer which is also desirable for employers. Employees also get benefits, which a lot of people like. There's also efficiencies gained by people working in the same room. Any type of creative work for example can benefit greatly from a quick in-person chat, or just bouncing a quick idea off of your colleagues. This is even true for some developers (myself included). Some types of work truly rely on communication between colleagues, and that would be really hindered by latency issues due to low frequency async communication. Coordination is also very important and much harder to do with async communication. Tribalism is an interesting lens, and maybe it started out that way, but the firm is certainly valuable.
    • mbrock 9y ago
      My intuition is that people like to start firms because they enjoy the feeling of being tribal leaders, and people like to participate in firms because of ordinary tribal hierarchical belonging... And the subtle near-mystical benefits to being in the same room, the "high bandwidth communication" of "body language" and all those things, all seem to me to have a great deal to do with the ancient structure of the primate dominance hierarchy! You notice when you bring up the topic of remote work in an organization that isn't fully remote already (i.e., isn't operated by introverted shamanic nomads) that it's totally not a decision about rational economic benefits. It seems to be much more about family, tribe, smelling each other's sweat, etc. Benefit calculations are tricky because you could find just as many benefits to working separately, although it might lead to you to think of work in a different way, a less tribal way. You don't argue that professors, poets, and carpenters need to huddle up in a boiler room to get their work done, because we know that some modes of working more require privacy, relaxation, autonomy, etc. I think tribalism is really powerful and like a core force in our evolutionary heritage. As it happens, I personally tend to inhabit the fringes of the tribe, and I do better work in a solitary or remote situation.
• CNJ7654 9y ago
  I would never give up commuting for remote work to be honest. Having a clear, single place where you 'work' is important. When you leave work, it can leave your mind completely until you come back. There's no finishing something up in the home office after dinner, no work calls or texts or emails. You just go home and relax.
• j_s 9y ago
  Some (especially those responsible for [young] children) semi-jokingly refer to returning to the office as their vacation from home life.
• baud147258 9y ago
  A few possible reasons: Because some can't work remotely (I'm one of those people). Because you work in a regulated industry and no content can transit through internet. Because the company think that it's easier to have cooperation when your colleagues are within walking distances Because the offices are in area with efficient public transportation and available housing Because it is harder to express yourself well in writing, compared to face-to-face
• jackschultz 9y ago
  I've been half torn on whether in office or work from wherever is better for me. Everyone has opinions and they all seem to differ. I like how the article had back to back paragraphs linking papers that claim one is better than the other. It'll be interesting for me coming up when I start a new job in a little over a week where I'm remote in a different city for three of the days, and then taking the hour and a half Amtrak down to where the company is based. When talking to the head of the group, the first thing I said is that I wouldn't be moving to where their office is. He was totally fine with that. I like working on things from random places, but I'm also more than familiar working in an office with others. We'll see how this goes.
• rco8786 9y ago
  Human contact is important, eos.
• nfriedly 9y ago
  I've been either remote or bicycling distance for most of the past 10 years, and I really don't think I could ever go back to a daily car commute. It just isn't worth it.
• mstaoru 9y ago
  I bike 45 min to Wework as a free exercise. Then there is free craft beer to flush the exercise down.
• duckmysick 9y ago
  I have a practical question about organizing remote jobs. How do you deal with the security aspects of working remotely - especially if the work deals with sensitive data or code? In a regular office setting everyone is connected to a same network that sits behind a firewall (or in extreme cases it's just an intranet with no outside access) with tightly controlled permissions. How can it be translated to a remote environment? What about creating new accounts and credentials? Do I just email a password and tell them to change it after? Do I attach ssh keys in some other email? What to do if someone breaks in someone's remote work space in their home? How do I handle repairs? I'm sure plenty of people already figured out the answer to the above questions. It's just not something that I've seen discussed often.
  • btbuildem 9y ago
    Usually connect via VPN to the corp network?
  • PeterStuer 9y ago
    Many people have a VPN with 2-Factor authentication, in some cases even then all work is done over remote desktop.
• ck425 9y ago
  Articles about home working often ignore the social aspects too. I enjoy working in the office for many reasons but top amongst them is the social interactions. Like many many engineers I was attracted to the role because I would work with other people like me, geeks and nerds (I realise there's a potential side critique about cultural homogeneity here). Being in the office is fun because I can make relatively obscure Cosmere or boardgame references and folk get them (not everyone but in normal society no one does). In that way it's relaxing, even if it's still a workplace.
  • lordCarbonFiber 9y ago
    I notice many of the biggest proponents of remote work are people with partners and/or a healthy social life. I won't begrudge them that, but, as someone with social anxiety, the structured routine of coming into the office offers a lot of benefits.
    • ck425 9y ago
      Hmm that's an interesting observation. I wonder if the average age at remote companies is higher and if a growing number of remote companies could counter act ageism in tech?
      • wolco 9y ago
        Remote is ideal for senior developers but more difficult for the novice who needs help.
• jamisteven 9y ago
  I imagine in the future employees will be given a stipend to use at places like WeWork etc... as the cost dynamic just wont workout for the amount of extra work they are getting out of people by them coming into a giant downtown office that costs millions every year to keep the lights on. Especially in areas like programming where solitude is necessary for creativity.
• cooervo 9y ago
  Offtopic: what an inproper font used for the title of the article, difficult to read.
• DeathRabbit 9y ago
  Anecdotal evidence: I'm a software architect/developer. The last three companies I've been with do not support remote work on a large scale because the IT Leadership did not want to fight against the managers of the departments who logistically _couldn't_ work from home. Anecdotal, but I doubt I'm the only one where this is true, the mentality of "if we all can't do it no one can".
• sh87 9y ago
  I see most work places tend to sway ‘remote heavy’ or ‘commute heavy’. Too much either way is clearly not working out. Like all efficient mechanisms, I think the key is to allow a certain degree of flexibility and handing it over to the employee to make what he/she can from it. Maybe a pilot program just to see how it fits into the company culture ?
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• danans 9y ago
  I think of the modern open plan office as a place optimized for collaboration, like a forum, rather than a place optimized for heads-down tasks. You can make it work a bit better for the latter (noise canceling headphones), but it isn't optimized for it. People still need to gather for a lot of collaborative work, even if it isn't every day. It helps us keep calibrated to our work environment, and we need better mass transit tech and systems to facilitate that. Working alone (possibly remotely) is probably more optimal for accomplishing things that can be done without casual information sharing, like implementing a solution to a well defined problem in a well understood domain. You can create a forum-like experience through communication technologies, but it is often suboptimal for the kind of interactions required vs in person communication. I don't know of many professional or technical jobs that don't involve both modes of operation, and we should be investing in systems and technologies that support both. However, even if communication tech improves enough to nullify the difference in value with meeting in person, people will want to work in person with others, because they are people. And even if transit tech nullifies the inconvenience of an office commute, people will still need solitary work space and time, because they are people.
• indigo0086 9y ago
  We're trained since the day we go to school to stay quiet, well behaved for the duration of X classroom. It's in our bones to arrive and stay seated. Very few can thrive naturally in a remote environment. We really need to stop feeding the education industry that was built on pumping out factory workers.
• Mankhool 9y ago
  I've always tried to live close to where I work, or to find a job close to where I want to live.
• mattbeckman 9y ago
  Only thing I wanted to comment on (as a remote worker now for 6 years or so) is that it's very hard for me to work more hours when, actually, I want to do so. In my dynamic (with young kids), any attempts to work later than 20 min past the predetermined closing time are often met with baby/kids being "let loose" on Dad. For the family, it's a plus. But sometimes ... holy shit I have stuff I need to finish. Finally, it is SO convenient for spouses when their partner works from home. SO convenient. E.g. child care/babysitters fall through guess who gets to not get work done. Overall, the ROI is pretty positive ... but I've been doing this a long time, and I do miss the office.
  • swendoog 9y ago
    You've been WFH for a long time so I'm sure you've already done this, but... Early on in my WFH career I had to make it VERY clear to my family (and friends) that when I'm working they need to consider it as being NO DIFFERENT from me being 30 minutes away in an office. I refuse to structure any part of our life around the belief that I am more available or more flexible. In practice, yes, I am more available and more flexible. So occasionally, I can do things like run an errand in the middle of the day. But my close group of family/friends understands that this is an exception to the rule. In general, they should consider my work as being no different from theirs.
• ilaksh 9y ago
  Answer: because the boss doesn't trust the employees to work unless he can see them working (or not) and they know he can see them. I think remote work will increase just because society will realize how much energy it wastes commuting. A 15 mile commute both ways uses the equivalent of the energy used by a house in day. If we get fusion then things will change, but for now it seems like this is one of the best untapped was to conserve energy. I anticipate that ways for the boss to watch remote workers like always on video conferencing or collaborative workspaces will also become more popular.
• shams93 9y ago
  Some tips from a software engineering work from home vet to successfully work remote. Work the same hours as your onsite counter parts, just having tools like slack and jira won't help if you're working outside the same time window during your day. You have to be transparent and give detailed information on your tickets. Always track your hours on tickets, and you need to be very careful about making sure your tickets are do-able within 1-2 days and you're closing tickets with equal or greater velocity than your onsite counterparts.
• swendoog 9y ago
  One aspect of remote work that I feel is often missing from this discussion is the impact on mental health. Some have alluded to it in posts here but unless you've worked from home for an extended period of time you can't really understand how strong of an impact isolation from your peers really can have. I believe that everyone's individual need for human interaction varies but we all require it on some level. We take for granted just how much of our social requirements are met by being in an office. Face-to-Face interactions aren't important because they're a better mechanism for developing product... They're important for the individual, because without them your "social brain" will effectively atrophy. Interacting with people on a daily basis is the only way to stay sharp when it comes to social interaction. Slack can't replace that, unfortunately.
• jokoon 9y ago
  Because both companies and citizens choose better place to work and have a house, at the cost of having to drive every day. The money you don't pay in rent, you pay in gas. Also because the state and government doesn't plan for such things, so the result is large cities with many offices and spread out houses. I guess gas money could be saved on a very large scale if the government would try to encourage citizens to switch houses... maybe with some sort of tax break or something...
• SippinLean 9y ago
  Very few of the comments here suggest that the commenter read any further than the title of this article. I can find two comments that mention VR.
• pasbesoin 9y ago
  Why don't we build high-speed transport for commuting, as opposed to long distance travel which, in the U.S., doesn't sell or even often fit well? In Chicago, electric train service used to run a lot faster. Not just within the city, but also within the greater Chicagoland area. Way back when, the service that's been supplanted by the Metra diesel trains used to be able to punch well above 60 MPH. And with smaller trains, it could get to that more rapidly and provide more frequent service. And the Green Line used to move. Lack of maintenance had it down to a fast crawl, in places, I understand, although some much-belated renovation may have improved that somewhat -- I'm not up-to-date. Bay Area housing prices are simply ridiculous. If the region is going to keep growing (so far, no stopping it), then put housing further out while providing fast access to the core(s). That would move a lot more people, and solve a lot more problems, than an LA - Frisco Hyperloop. But, we don't have real urban, metropolitan planning, here. And, "taxes are bad". So, we sit in our cars, and pay half our earnings to the ponzi scheme and rentiers. P.S. Once a robot can do everything currently requiring physical presence, your tele-presence, where still needed, is going to become a fungible commodity; no job security, there. P.P.S. Another major approach is a denser core. But NIMBY. A NYMBY I'm not entirely unsympathetic towards. If you don't solve noise and pollution, among other things, forgetaboutit. In my case, I would have been happy closer in in an apartment/condo, but the prospect of dealing with ever-noisier neighbors ruled that out. And wiping black "dust" (vehicle emissions soot, mostly) from my window sills. After years of allergies and whatnot, that stuff will kill you; more articles on this, every year.
• synicalx 9y ago
  This makes me wonder about how viable it would be to offer some sort of hireable desk-space in remote locations. I'm thinking just a simple office with sit/stand desks, comfy chairs, a kitchen, a bog, and 24/7 access. Takes not much to set up, you could run one out of just about any building, and you could offer it as a service to businesses for their remote and/or travelling staff. So say you're based in NYC, but you find a great hire who's 2 hours drive away. You could just add that person to your "subscription", flick them over an access card, and they can swipe themselves into the 'Desk as a Service' office just next door to their local Walmart. You know they've got a desk that meets all the zany OHS requirements, insurance is taken care of, internet/power are business grade, and if they fancy moving then that's no problem either. Personally, I hate the idea of working from home. I don't want anything work related in my house, and I like having face-to-face interactions with people rather than just being by myself 24/7. Working in a shared office addresses all that + makes the potential compliance/OHS/insurance issues of having someone work from home very easy to tick off.