41 ms·

'Talent Wants Transit': Companies Near Transportation Gaining the Upper Hand

• jarjoura 8y ago
  I currently live in SF and work in South Bay, but this is probably the last job I'll accept down there. Being able to walk to work, or at least jump on a short bus ride to work cannot be understated for quality of life.
  • avalys 8y ago
    I'm the opposite. I'm 31, live in the South Bay, and am so happy to jump in my car and spend 30 minutes driving to work, sipping coffee, thinking about the day ahead, and listening to news or music. On the way home, the commute is a chance to unwind and relax. I find San Francisco claustrophobic, and I can't think of a more miserable commute than walking to, waiting for, and riding public transportation in the rain or heat with a crowd of other people. I've turned down jobs in the city for that reason. I don't pay any more for the house I'm renting than a decent apartment would cost in the city, and I have a small yard and a quiet neighborhood to live in. I don't know how you city people do it.
    • kilbuz 8y ago
      > I don't know how you city people do it. We feel the same about you. :)
    • vinceguidry 8y ago
      My big city commute is a half hour walk. Best two parts of my day. If it's raining, I hop on the train.
      • fatnoah 8y ago
        I just moved out of the city and miss my 25 minute walk to work. I'd walk my son to school, which was 1/2 way to my office. Now, it's a 20-35 minute drive + 25-35 minute subway ride. :(
    • RandallBrown 8y ago
      Not sure about your commute, but the thing I hated about commuting in a car was the variability of it. I was commuting from Seattle to Bellevue, a distance of about 11 miles. On a really perfect day, it could take 15 minutes. On a normal day it would take between 30-60 minutes. On a bad day it could take up to 2 hours. There were enough bad days that I had to plan everything around that 2 hour commute. After switching to a job in the city, I knew the longest it would ever take me to get home was about an hour and 15 minutes, and that was if I walked.
      • burfog 8y ago
        You were supposed to switch to a house in Bellevue. That too would let you walk to work.
        • umeshunni 8y ago
          It wouldn't. Bellevue is too car centric for that to be true. Wide roads, infrequent crosswalsk, multiple freeways to walk over even for ~1 mile distances.
    • xvedejas 8y ago
      I live and work in SF and my commute is mostly walking, including past a park, which helps me wake up or wind down. I also ride a train for about 10 minutes each way and use the time to study foreign language (using apps like duolingo). I find car driving to be claustrophobic in comparison to being outdoors. I can't think of a more miserable commute than trying to be entirely attentive to driving in traffic when not awake yet. I've turned down jobs in the south bay / SoCal for that reason. I don't pay any more for the house I'm renting than a decent apartment would cost in the south bay, and I have a small yard and a quiet neighborhood to live in. (downtown is, after all, only a very small part of SF)
    • GordonS 8y ago
      You drink coffee while driving? Seems unwise.
      • maccard 8y ago
        Last time I drove at rush hour, I had enough time to have _made_ coffee while sitting in standstill traffic, nevermind drink it.
      • HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
        Where do you live that this is surprising? I see people putting on makeup and checking email while driving. Not while stopped in traffic, actually being in control of a rapidly moving vehicle.
        • ericd 8y ago
          Honestly, that kind of thing should lead to the loss of their license after one instance.
          • wcarron 8y ago
            I sympathize, but disagree. In CA, distracted driving is a moving violation, but does not have points on the license as a penalty. Going nuclear as a 1st response does not help. Increasing fines, mandatory driver education classes for violations, points on a license, and perhaps a lock box (akin to the ignition lock we install for DUI offenders) are, IMO, better measures to take. Repeated offenders should have their vehicle impounded and license suspended for increasing amounts of time per violation e.g. 1st offense - $250 fine + class, 2nd - $500 fine, 3rd - $1500 fine + impound + 1 month suspension, 4th - $2.5k fine + impound + 1yr suspension. 5th time should be 60 day jail sentence, car impounded, license permanently revoked, $5k fine
            • ericd 8y ago
              Is typing on your phone while moving at highway speeds much less dangerous than a DUI? A first DUI conviction in CA involves large fines, generally a 6 month license suspension, is a misdemeanor, and potentially up to 6 months in jail. A $250 fine plus class is a joke. The fine for accidentally running a red light in SV is double that. Driving and looking at your phone is not a joke, a car traveling at 70 mph is a lethal weapon that can easily kill entire families in an instant, and it should be treated with commensurate seriousness. I know a couple families that have almost been entirely wiped out due to other drivers, with the survivors left as paraplegics. I think serious penalties for what is seemingly very common might be a shock initially, but once people realize how serious it is, I imagine the infraction rate will drop rather rapidly. Drinking and driving used to be much more common than it is now.
    • rsynnott 8y ago
      I think to a large extent it's about personal preferences. I greatly prefer living in a (medium sized, ~1.5m people) city and being able to walk most places and take public transport to the remainder.
    • zjaffee 8y ago
      I think a lot of it relates to how extroverted/introverted a person is, or more so, how important being around other people is to them. Additionally, a lot of people have tons of anxiety around driving, and being in a city can completely get rid of that. I'd imagine self driving cars would return some of the interest back into the suburbs.
      • souprock 8y ago
        Yep, or to put it the other way: how important being safe from other people is to them. Additionally, a lot of people have tons of anxiety around strangers, and being in a vehicle can completely get rid of that. The same can probably be said for dependency. Some people want to feel that the government cares for them, while others want privacy and the feeling of accomplishment that comes from living with minimal outside help.
        • kaitai 8y ago
          This doesn't make sense to me. I like the independence that transit brings -- I can go anywhere in my city and not be lugging a huge and expensive personal asset around. I can drink and take transit, I can be tired and take transit, I can take transit in a snowstorm and be assured my chances of experiencing a snow-related mishap are lower. I feel safer in a train or on a bus than on the road, especially in the first snowstorm of the year. I'm a small woman, and I don't really have problems on transit. I feel safer on the train than in an Uber. A guy recently made a pass at me on transit late at night but we ended up chatting and he told me his cornbread dressing recipe. Very useful before Thanksgiving, though I didn't end up making it. I don't want to feel the government cares for me -- I want to know that my tax dollars go to something useful instead of something stupid. Highways don't make me feel like I have "minimal outside help". A bicycle sure does :) Walking does more so!
          • souprock 8y ago
            You don't control when the transit operates, where the transit goes, or what type of equipment is used. You have no ownership. You can do nothing if the line shuts down due to snow on the tracks. This is not independence. The car is fine in snow. There are numerous modern alternatives to the old-style heavy chains, which of course are still available.
    • woolvalley 8y ago
      I find car driving annoying, where the only thing I can stimulate my mind with is low value podcasts. I have to divert my attention to anxiety producing driving in a town where people don't give a fuck about turn indicators or other safe driving practices. In a train or an uber I can put on my noise cancelling headphones, sit, read and not have to focus on a road. If the train is full, I can still read standing up. It's like the standing desk :)
    • jiveturkey 8y ago
      > live in the South Bay, ... and spend 30 minutes driving to work so, you work locally in the south bay? there is no place north of the south bay within a 30 minute drive during commute times (which extend to 10:30 if you're talking about MTV)
      • deathanatos 8y ago
        The entire South Bay isn't a 30 minute commute. Where I live in the South Bay, Moutain View is quite often >45 minutes, sometimes 50+. The HOV lane is nowadays clogged w/ single occupant stickered electrics, or people cheating b/c it isn't enforced. The non-HOV lanes are worse.
    • deathanatos 8y ago
      > I've turned down jobs in the city for that reason. Not all of us, I feel, really have this luxury. Each time I've had a job change, the overwhelming majority of fish biting are in SF. Not all of my changes have been voluntary, and I've seen numerous people imply that switching too often is a huge flag. I'd love something in the South Bay, but I feel like it's mostly FAANG down here, and if you're looking for something smaller, and perhaps more meaningful… So I hop on the terrible public transit and keep looking for jobs — outside of CA, because the entire Bay Area is frankly never going to pull its collective head out of the ground and fix the housing crisis.
    • roflchoppa 8y ago
      What kind of car do you drive?
  • rconti 8y ago
    No shit, your quality of life is poor when you spend a minimum 1/8 of your waking day trying to get to and from work? You're framing it as a "man, suburbs suck" argument when it's more like "man, choosing a job really bloody far from home really sucks".
    • draw_down 8y ago
      Come on.
    • seizethecheese 8y ago
      Terrible traffic and extremely high housing costs with low housing density makes it very hard to live near work in Silicon Valley.
      • rconti 8y ago
        But I'm not sure living in San Francisco (the most expensive place) then commuting a very long way to somewhere that is actually cheaper to live is the obvious fix. But, as a homeowner, I get that it's not so easy to pack up and move every time your job changes addresses.
  • cleandreams 8y ago
    I commuted for 12 years from SF to HP in Cupertino. 1 hour each way. Finally I realized that was about one extra work week / month, just in the car. That put me off car commutes forever. I have mostly worked in SF since I left that job, I was even able to walk to work at 2 jobs. That is the best. Now I commute to the East Bay, but I'm able to do that on Bart. That is manageable. I mostly meditate which is good for me but otherwise would be hard to find time for.
    • i_am_nomad 8y ago
      If your home and work are right near BART stations, then that's really not bad. The killer is when you have to do "last mile" commuting, and the commute becomes multimodal. I'm doing that now and I absolutely hate it.
      • Doctor_Fegg 8y ago
        May not work in the Bay Area, but the London solution for that is a Brompton folding bike.
        • walshemj 8y ago
          Seconded if I was lured back to London id get a Brompton ideally on the tax efficient ride to work plan.
      • souprock 8y ago
        The killer is probably waiting at the BART stop. BART has this "last mile" problem partly due to negligent police.
    • DoubleCribble 8y ago
      Try the ferry. Once you get a whiff of sitting outside on the bay during a beautiful sunset commute, breathing in the urine odors of your typical BART car will never seem a viable alternative.
• newfocogi 8y ago
  I don't necessarily think "talent" wants transit. Something that matters to every job seeker is what "home" is going to look like, and being close to transit opens up more types of "home" to choose from. Some talent wants the pace of downtown while others want 4 bedroom houses with yards. Being near transit does a better job of providing both of those to candidates, thereby increasing the talent pool's size.
  • matchbok 8y ago
    Yup. More and more young people have no desire to own or drive cars every day. This will be a huge shift in the coming decades.
    • njarboe 8y ago
      Wonder how many young people can spend 45 minutes without looking at their smartphone and how much internet use/addiction is pushing this trend?
      • HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
        From my vantage point in an express bus on the freeway at rush hour, I can see into cars quite well. It's people of all ages staring at their phones while barreling down the interstate at 70mph. So no, I doubt being addicted to phones is driving Transit use!
      • bobthepanda 8y ago
        People have always found things to do on the train: https://mcnyblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/35mm_10292_030d.jpg https://mcnyblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/35mm_10292_030d...
      • zjaffee 8y ago
        I doubt it, the number of high schoolers getting their drivers license is by far the lowest it's been in a very long time.
        • 8y ago
• cromestant 8y ago
  why not just make work be a state more than a place.... Working from home has so many benefits, including reduction of costs to both employee and employer.
• gowld 8y ago
  This is only news because of the historical anomaly of California (Silicon Valley and Hollywood). Everywhere else, "talent" flocks to big cities with transit (NY, Chicago, Boston, DC, etc in the US; I'm sure it's simila rin other nations), as transit is is part of how a city grows, and population growth is codependent with economic growth and the network effects of "talent" industries that generate wealth.
  • rconti 8y ago
    Except the first example in the article was in Illinois.
    • moorhosj 8y ago
      Except it is about Chicago, not Illinois. Chicago's overall population has stagnated since 1990, but is now the most-educated big city in the country. This implies that "talent" is indeed flocking to Chicago while it sheds it's industrial past. "Combined with other data, the continuing tale-of-two-cities story suggests large numbers of lower-income African-Americans are fleeing Chicago while somewhat lesser numbers of better-educated and higher-earning whites, Asian-Americans and blacks are coming in. That's leaving the city better off in some ways than it was a decade ago, but smaller." https://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20171004/BLOGS02/171009951/chicago-census-data-show-shrinking-city-growing-wealthier-educated https://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20171004/BLOGS02/171...
  • amyjess 8y ago
    You haven't seen Texas. Dallas and Austin are absolutely booming with tech jobs, and we're about as non-transit-oriented as possible. And most of the tech growth is in the suburbs, not the cities.
  • deleted 8y ago
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• skybrian 8y ago
  Yay transit, but it seems like this trend tends to make housing more expensive as businesses move to the hearts of already-crowded cities and make rents even worse. Wouldn't it be better for a company to move its headquarters to a new transit stop that's in an outlying area?
  • analog31 8y ago
    In my view, how well this can work depends on the extent to which the outlying areas are connected to one another by transit. Case in point, I could move a business to a suburb of Chicago that's on the Metra, but then everybody has to live in that suburb (and their spouse has to find a job there), or in one of the other towns along the same Metra line. Or do a reverse commute. But meanwhile, the transit stops in the outlying areas already have sky high rents, but maybe not sky high.
  • bobthepanda 8y ago
    It makes land more expensive; if zoning allows housing doesn't have to be expensive. There may be a few years of lag because construction is not instantaneous, but supply can eventually catch up. Seattle has started seeing sustained rent drops after a housing boom (and then oversupply) coinciding with the Amazon boom.
• angmarsbane 8y ago
  Yes! When the Expo line opened in Los Angeles I restricted my job search to companies accessible via the line. I chose my next job because it was accessible via the Ballona Creek bike path and buses (though the 2 buses made a 20 min drive take an 1hr+). My current job is a shorter bus trip and a shorter bike ride. I'm not willing to drive 1-2 hrs one-way to work. I want time to be a part of my community, to have hobbies, to do more than drive, eat, sleep, work and to get that time I need a short commute. If a long commute limits my existence to drive, eat, half hour couch potato, and sleep than the job is not worth it.
  • burfog 8y ago
    What if the Expo line goes down? There could be a strike, a suicide on the tracks, some other sort of wreak, track maintenance, etc. Roads are highly redundant. You can route around almost anything. Also, why not move to the job? That is the huge win for shortening a commute.
    • matchbok 8y ago
      What if there is a crash on the highway? What if your car breaks down? What if have a medical emergency and cannot drive?
      • burfog 8y ago
        "Roads are highly redundant. You can route around almost anything." Crash on the highway: pick a different road Car breaks down: rent one (BTW, not scalable to a mass transit strike) Medical emergency and cannot drive: call for an ambulance
        • matchbok 8y ago
          Not sure where you live, but "pick a different road" doesn't really work for 99% of the country.
          • 8y ago
• rconti 8y ago
  The stats are sort of misleading. Of COURSE 97% of people drove to an office park in an Illinois suburb, because that was the only way to get there. OF COURSE almost every commutes to downtown Chicago by transit, because parking costs are insane. I'm not saying I'm not pro-transit; I am. Very much so. But these stats don't capture how many of the 97% hated commuting by car but had to, and how many of the 90% "non-automobile" commutes are being done by people grudgingly (or AFTER driving a car to a train station, paying for parking, waiting for a train, and wishing they had a nice big free parking lot at their destination).
  • sdenton4 8y ago
    As a human living on earth, I don't actually much care what the 97% or 90% actually think about their commutes. Using transit instead of single-occupant cars is a huge improvement from an environmental and economic standpoint.
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    • nostromo 8y ago
      You should care because the real way to get people to use transit is by making it better than the alternative.
      • jchanimal 8y ago
        Raising the price of gas helps too.
        • timr 8y ago
          Or from the other direction: not subsidizing automobile transportation. If we funneled as much money to mass transit as we do to vehicle infrastructure, there'd be no competition.
• jseliger 8y ago
  This is particularly interesting in light of the way Nashville just rejected transit: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/05/what-went-wrong-with-nashvilles-transit-plan/559436/ https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2018/05/what-went-wro...
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• baybal2 8y ago
  I'm very glad that issues of urban development are now getting more attention on HN. Urban development will be one of the biggest challenges of 21st century. This issue deserves both more money, and talent being directed to solving it. And Californian people, your issues are truly severe. I met Chinese people who ventured to SF and Silicon Valley, and called it an urban hell.
• ed_balls 8y ago
  and companies offering remote job gaining even bigger upper hand.
• squozzer 8y ago
  For me, transit not so important but a low-hassle commute is. If transit is the only way to achieve that, great. For example - When I first worked at my current job, it was a 45-90 min drive over interstate. A year later, I moved closer and now it's a 15-30 min drive over regular streets. Upsides: Lower commuting stress - even when my current drive home looks fubar, I can tolerate it long enough to either get home or find a pub and wait it out over a brew. Downsides: My housing costs tripled. My previous job was a 30-60 min drive, but later took a shuttle bus that had a stop right in front of my job. Upsides: After 30+ years of interstate commuting, taking my hand off the wheel for a couple of years was a godsend. Downsides: The bus stop was basically a street corner with no shade or rain protection, so waiting for the bus on some afternoons was a bit challenging.
• gok 8y ago
  "half of all newly created jobs are within a half mile of a CTA or Metra rail station" I'm kind of surprised it's only half actually...where is there Chicago office space more than half a mile from a Metra or CTA station?
  • moorhosj 8y ago
    It is the Chicago region, not just the city. Examples are; Oakbrook (where McDonald's moved from), Downtown Naperville, Schaumburg, Elk Grove Village, etc.
    • gok 8y ago
      Ah that makes more sense
• ReptileMan 8y ago
  Talent doesn't want transit. They want minimal commute or to minimally attend office at all.
  • rsynnott 8y ago
    I mean, that's very person-specific. I wouldn't take a job that was mostly work-at-home.
• baybal2 8y ago
  My advise for Californians: 1. Densify population centres. 2. Rehouse people from single family houses into highrise appartments. 3. Improve ground level infrastructure. 4. Transition to mixed development policy. 5. Abolish zoning in favour of universal sanitary codes.
  • CaptainCook 8y ago
    6. Stop moving to neighboring western states. I hear Kentucky is nice!
    • opportune 8y ago
      I'm from there, if you want to work in Kentucky as a non-remote tech worker your options are... limited, to say the least
  • briandear 8y ago
    > Rehouse people from single family houses into highrise appartments. Except many people find that high rises suck. What to let your little kids out front to ride their bikes? Go down the elevator, through a lobby, onto a very crowded sidewalk or the major road out front. In a house, I can have a backyard. Walking the dog doesn’t require 5 minutes of elevators and hallways. Kids can play outside. I am not opposed to high rises at all, but suggesting that people be “rehomed” is what I am objecting to. However else minariby arbitrary height restrictions would be a good start. Some people would like to live in greater density, but attempting a 40 story apartment in Mountain View would be by howls of protests from environmental groups. There is room for all sorts of housing to meet everyone’s lifestyle needs, the problem is that the regulation has become an albatross and it prevents a market response to increased demand. Try to build a mid rise in Palo Alto; people there would lose their minds.
    • baybal2 8y ago
      You have a wrong idea about highrise living, and in particular distinction in between main highrise classes. I classify three that are well recognised around: 1. Standalone towers with chic small apartments - those are more oriented towards bachelor living for upper working class. Think of them in a "starbucks vs a restaurant" comparison. 2. Apartment complexes - these are city block sized developments, with more or less fully managed amenities, some times including daycare, playgrounds, mini-strip malls. These do avail for family living. 3. Shitty box apartments - for everybody else, the cheapest option. > but attempting a 40 story apartment in Mountain View would be by howls of protests from environmental groups. I think 40 storey's will not do it in such expensive neighbourhood. It can be economically feasible with 50 storey with modern construction technology, and 60 if you can make it look "high-end" enough.
• btbuildem 8y ago
  "Talent wants transit" says transit salesman. OK. I don't want transit, I want a relatively short commute that doesn't kill my soul. Ideally not working from the office all the time, IDEALLY NOT WORKING EVERY DAY.
  • jgh 8y ago
    Ultimately this is probably the real solution: Less work, more remote.
    • sytse 8y ago
      Indeed, after getting next to transit the next step will be allowing more remote work, until companies are all remote.
      • helen___keller 8y ago
        Remote work is great and I agree it needs to become more culturally accepted, but almost every remote-only worker I talk to about it with has mixed feelings. The gist I get is that remote work has its ups and downs and usually their preferred ideal world would be having an office to go to but only 1-3 days a week, depending on the individual.
  • foxyv 8y ago
    Talent wants transit... for other people. So the roads aren't so crowded.
• helen___keller 8y ago
  >Rail and bus systems around the country have backlogs of repair and maintenance needs in the billions of dollars, and transit advocates say not only is more state and local funding needed for upgrades and to expand transit routes, but a big federal infrastructure investment is needed, too. Without it, they fear the nation's economic growth could suffer. But they note such funding may be hard to to get out of a federal administration that seems at times hostile to transit, and instead seems to want to invest more in highways. We have two big crises: people can't afford to live near jobs (with insufficient new housing being built in top cities), and transit infrastructure near jobs is crumbling, neglected, or nonexistent, depending on the city. Local municipalities don't want to build more housing because, in the grand scheme of things, a single municipality can't fix the housing crisis, but allowing new construction in inner-city neighborhoods or low-cost-but-desirably-located towns is a guaranteed path to gentrification, so most choose to opt out. Richer neighborhoods don't want new housing because it would damage their picture-perfect neighborhood character, affect their schools and infrastructure, etc. So, neighborhoods near the city stay frozen in place, save a few luxury developments at the prime locations in the city because these developments can bankroll getting past municipal blockades. The federal government can fix both of these by cooperating with states. Offer money earmarked for public transit to states that meet guidelines promoting large-scale (and, hopefully, equitable across rich & poor neighborhoods) upzoning efforts near their job centers. Subsidize transit-friendly dense developments on a large scale, instead of subsidizing suburbs as we have since WWII. The good & bad would probably be: -Good for the environment, as suburban sprawl is greatly damaging to the environment (and necessitates a car-centered lifestyle). -Good for companies that can more easily attract workers to their headquarters in cities. -Good for workers who wanted to live in the city but couldn't afford it, or workers who spend a large percentage of their budget on housing because they have a job in the city. -Good for government budget in the long run (probably) because the cost of infrastructure per capita is cheaper in city than in sprawl -Good for the economy in the long run? No one really knows on this one, but I would argue current trends show cities are going to be big on capitalizing on 21st century economic opportunities (hence why companies want to relocate near transit). -Bad for current suburban homeowners, one may expect suburban homes to decrease in price. -Good or bad, depending on location, for current urban property owners. Urban home prices will (by design) go down with this policy thanks to an influx of housing, but landowners may still make a big profit (for example, if you own a single family home or duplex near a transit line, and it gets upzoned, you could sell it at a premium to a developer who wants to build a midrise or highrise on the land. On the other hand if you own a condo in an existing highrise, it will probably go down in value with a glut of new housing on the market)
• pascalxus 8y ago
  Talent wants to not be homeless. Transportation and housing are thus very much intertwined. Most people would gladly move closer to work, given the opportunity, but it's usually just too expensive.
• scarejunba 8y ago
  I think what’s interesting is that there are people in the Bay who want to live in apartments and take transit to work and there are people who want to live in houses with gardens and stuff. The people in the latter group do not want to allow the people in the former group to have the experience they desire. But that’s because the people in the latter group do not want just to live in houses with gardens. They want to live in houses with gardens where their neighbours also have houses with gardens. So we have these big fights about property rights and whatnot when it’s just that the two aims are incompatible and the latter group wants the status quo (which is necessarily easier to adhere to)
  • twblalock 8y ago
    They aren't incompatible. The people who want houses with gardens just need to live further away from the transit stations than the people who want to live in apartments and take transit.
    • Brakenshire 8y ago
      London has recently mandated a minimum housing density for any development within walking distance of a train or tube station. Seems a good idea.
      • selectodude 8y ago
        Chicago keeps trying to encourage that and apparently that causes "gentrification". Everybody is going to get pissed off about something.
        • shanghaiaway 8y ago
          You know what really causes gentrification? Artists.
    • pessimizer 8y ago
      There's a perverse incentive in that, considering that the people who want houses with gardens have them already, and the developers are making a request to build apartments, i.e. if you destroy local public transportation, you will make it more expensive to build apartments in the neighborhood.
• dfxm12 8y ago
  I wonder if talent wants transit specifically, or if they just want an employment situation where they don't need to drive their car to work or be limited in where they must live. Telecommuting fits this as well, if the job allows for it.
  • xapata 8y ago
    I've been telecommuting for about 6 years. I'd prefer good transit and a nice office.
• AlaskaCasey 8y ago
  Cities should take this to heart and really invest in creating seamless public transit experiences or they'll get left behind in attracting large companies that can bring jobs to their areas.
• supergeek133 8y ago
  Is it transportation or just short commute/ease of commute? I live in Minneapolis, for awhile I used to work in the southern suburbs. On a good day the drive was 30 minutes during rush hour. On a bad day you were talking 1-2 hours. Now I live 10 minutes from work, and I can't imagine doing anything else. Even when I speak to recruiters I increase my salary ask and tell them it's for the commute. I get laughed at. Meanwhile I talk to people that live 45-60 minutes away just so they could "get more house for the money" and constantly complain about their time to get to work/get home. However, the earlier comment about job density is probably the most relevant thing I haven't thought of.
• dsimms 8y ago
  I sort of wanted them (NPR) to say "but how can you have a driveway moment on transit?". Listening to NPR is one of the very few redeeming features of driving to work.
  • dredmorbius 8y ago
    Podcasts.
• SketchySeaBeast 8y ago
  I recently moved from a job where it was a half hour car drive home to one that is a 15 minute public transit commute - counting from the "I'm leaving the office now" text to my wife to unlocking the front door. It's been a huge quality of life improvement for me.
  • helen___keller 8y ago
    I took an internship in college that was an hour car drive and swore off car commutes before even graduating. Now I do 45 minute door-to-door with transit and I’m quite happy. I can only imagine how great a 15 minute transit commute would be, unfortunately most places that close to downtown are expensive as heck in Boston.
• meesterdude 8y ago
  Transit? Talent wants remote.
• greatamerican 8y ago
  Have they tried paying more?
• AngryData 8y ago
  Travel time to and from work is unpaid hours required for work. If it takes people 45 minutes to work that is an hour and a half every day that they get nothing for that is not voluntary.
• pts_ 8y ago
  You know what else talent wants? Work from Home to actually use their talents instead of chit chatting.
• Fej 8y ago
  As a daily NJ Transit commuter... I'm very grateful to have easy access to one of the few commuter heavy rail systems in the country. I live in the suburbs and rail is so much nicer (and safer) than driving.