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> [...] long commutes in powerful cars? People in developed countries don't need that either. Commuting being a hard requirement for modern life in an industri

> [...] long commutes in powerful cars? People in developed countries don't need that either. Commuting being a hard requirement for modern life in an industrialised country is both a fallacy and perpetuated cargo cult. Most people working in offices today effectively wouldn't have to commute but they still do because employers require them to do so, basically because "that's the way it's always been". Doing away with lengthy commutes will be key to addressing many of today's problems, including climate change.

ryanmercer 7y ago
>Most people working in offices today effectively wouldn't have to commute but they still do because employers require them to do so, basically because "that's the way it's always been". A million times this. My entire office could do their job from home as even when we need something we have to email our team leads and CC our manager so I could be doing that at home, in comfortable clothes, not fighting 50-something men for access to 4 stalls and not fighting 100 something people for 2 microwaves. I mean, to be honest, getting 4-5 hours of my time back every week would actually a huge compensation... after you remove my vacation that's like 8 days a year of free time I'd get back. But alas, my employer would never hear of working from home. Likely because of the ages of the corporate leadership: Chairman & CEO is 75, President & COO got his first degree in 1987 so is 'young' at 54~, CFO & EVP is 66, CIO is 59, VP of ops is 58, Information Services EVP & CIO is 60... Good luck selling remote work to corporate leadership types that have 30-50 years of old-school corporation under their belts. I'm sure any cost savings would probably be kept by the company and not not passed on to employees but I'd save 20-25 minutes of commuting a day (plus the half hour every day I waste sitting at my desk off the clock because the tardy policy is terrible, accidents are frequent on the way in and logging in to your computer and getting the time keeping software open can take as long as 5 minutes) so once you remove my vacation weeks that would get me 8~ days of free time back which alone would be nice. Plus the reduced mileage/maintenance/fuel etc for my car. I wish I could find remote work so bad, or that my employer would adopt it.
- Tade0 7y ago
  I friend of mine always asked during job interviews how many bathrooms the office had. The reason for this was that he spent a considerable amount of time in an office, where there was one bathroom for somewhere around two hundred people. Madness.
  - dpifke 7y ago
    In the US, that would be illegal: https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1910/1910.141#1910.141(c)(1)(i) https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/19...
gpanders 7y ago
> Most people working in offices today effectively wouldn't have to commute but they still do because employers require them to do so, basically because "that's the way it's always been". It is not just the employers — I’ve worked with many people that think nothing of commuting an hour to work ONE WAY (in their pickup trucks and SUVs no less), even when living closer to work is a perfectly valid option (this is particularly true in the large Texas cities that have a huge amount of suburban sprawl).
- jodrellblank 7y ago
  I imagine there's a big difference between a 15 minute commute with a tiny car that doesn't have time to warm up and ends in a crowded parking lot, and an hour in a comfortable roomy Cheverolet Movie-Theater SUV with music playing and heated seats and no family or work or pedestrians and being in the biggest vehicle on the road. A big SUV is one of the most expensive, most luxurious, nicest things, nicest places to spend time that a lot of people will own - way more overall spent on that seat and its driver-supporting-surroundings than on any Lay-Z-Boy or Aeron chair.
  - BjoernKW 7y ago
    There's a difference but even driving just 30 minutes per day in a tiny car that otherwise just sits around doing nothing is still a tremendous waste when you could just not drive at all and work from anywhere.
    - jodrellblank 7y ago
      No, I mean, it's no surprise to me that people would enjoy an hour commute in a huge vehicle; not seeing it as "ugh an hour out of my day" but instead "yay an hour of luxury time and escape from life". Yes in many terms it's a "waste" but your suggestion of not driving and working from anywhere changes a morning from "get up think about home and family, escape to comfortable car for an hour think about anything, start working for customers" to "get up and think about family, immediately pressured to start working for customers". I'm trying to frame it as daily psychological experience, rather than cost of hydrocarbon burning. Driving is at least "a change is as good as a rest", and on low-traffic big roads, pretty low effort too; and if it's "forced upon you" by circumstance, well geez I just have to go sit down and listen to music for an hour while you're stressing out, what can you do, y'know, byeee. Driving as socially acceptable rest without accusations of laziness.
stjohnswarts 7y ago
So are you in favor of government telling people where to live and work? I've seriously heard your position many times but no one ever puts forward a solution to making it happen other than the government forcing people to do it. Sounds like a dictatorship to me. and no I don't think employers are all gonna just let people not "come in" to work.
- BjoernKW 7y ago
  No, that's not at all what I'm saying. I argue for people to change their inveterate, cargo cult ways of thinking about what constitutes work and the conditions required for it. We need a new mindset not new government policy. That change can't and must not be mandated but has to come from each and everyone of us.
dorgo 7y ago
The place I work allows to work one day a week from home. In my team of six only one person takes advantage of this policy (not I). The others don't - or only occasionlly. So, I don't really expect anything to change even if the policy was expanded to allow home office 5 days a week. That said, out of 100+ employees almost nobody drives by car to the office. It's public transport or bicycle.
- BjoernKW 7y ago
  > The place I work allows to work one day a week from home. In my team of six only one person takes advantage of this policy (not I). For me, the question in that case always is: Why is that? Often, presenteeism (or put less favourably: butts-in-seats) is used to paper over organisational inefficiencies. For instance, a common argument against remote work is that meetings, particularly informal ones, so-called water cooler talk, help with solving problems or interfacing between people, teams and departments. However, I'd argue that - more often than not - the situation that brought about the need to have these meetings in the first place really is to blame: If you need to have a lot of meetings in order to make progress chances are you don't have the appropriate processes and systems in place that help you with making decisions and have to fall back on lengthy in-person discussions for almost every issue that comes up. > That said, out of 100+ employees almost nobody drives by car to the office. It's public transport or bicycle. Let me guess: You're located in Amsterdam ;-)

ryanmercer 7y ago

>Most people working in offices today effectively wouldn't have to commute but they still do because employers require them to do so, basically because "that's the way it's always been". A million times this. My entire office could do their job from home as even when we need something we have to email our team leads and CC our manager so I could be doing that at home, in comfortable clothes, not fighting 50-something men for access to 4 stalls and not fighting 100 something people for 2 microwaves. I mean, to be honest, getting 4-5 hours of my time back every week would actually a huge compensation... after you remove my vacation that's like 8 days a year of free time I'd get back. But alas, my employer would never hear of working from home. Likely because of the ages of the corporate leadership: Chairman & CEO is 75, President & COO got his first degree in 1987 so is 'young' at 54~, CFO & EVP is 66, CIO is 59, VP of ops is 58, Information Services EVP & CIO is 60... Good luck selling remote work to corporate leadership types that have 30-50 years of old-school corporation under their belts. I'm sure any cost savings would probably be kept by the company and not not passed on to employees but I'd save 20-25 minutes of commuting a day (plus the half hour every day I waste sitting at my desk off the clock because the tardy policy is terrible, accidents are frequent on the way in and logging in to your computer and getting the time keeping software open can take as long as 5 minutes) so once you remove my vacation weeks that would get me 8~ days of free time back which alone would be nice. Plus the reduced mileage/maintenance/fuel etc for my car. I wish I could find remote work so bad, or that my employer would adopt it.

Tade0 7y ago
I friend of mine always asked during job interviews how many bathrooms the office had. The reason for this was that he spent a considerable amount of time in an office, where there was one bathroom for somewhere around two hundred people. Madness.
- dpifke 7y ago
  In the US, that would be illegal: https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/1910/1910.141#1910.141(c)(1)(i) https://www.osha.gov/laws-regs/regulations/standardnumber/19...

gpanders 7y ago

> Most people working in offices today effectively wouldn't have to commute but they still do because employers require them to do so, basically because "that's the way it's always been". It is not just the employers — I’ve worked with many people that think nothing of commuting an hour to work ONE WAY (in their pickup trucks and SUVs no less), even when living closer to work is a perfectly valid option (this is particularly true in the large Texas cities that have a huge amount of suburban sprawl).

jodrellblank 7y ago
I imagine there's a big difference between a 15 minute commute with a tiny car that doesn't have time to warm up and ends in a crowded parking lot, and an hour in a comfortable roomy Cheverolet Movie-Theater SUV with music playing and heated seats and no family or work or pedestrians and being in the biggest vehicle on the road. A big SUV is one of the most expensive, most luxurious, nicest things, nicest places to spend time that a lot of people will own - way more overall spent on that seat and its driver-supporting-surroundings than on any Lay-Z-Boy or Aeron chair.
- BjoernKW 7y ago
  There's a difference but even driving just 30 minutes per day in a tiny car that otherwise just sits around doing nothing is still a tremendous waste when you could just not drive at all and work from anywhere.
  - jodrellblank 7y ago
    No, I mean, it's no surprise to me that people would enjoy an hour commute in a huge vehicle; not seeing it as "ugh an hour out of my day" but instead "yay an hour of luxury time and escape from life". Yes in many terms it's a "waste" but your suggestion of not driving and working from anywhere changes a morning from "get up think about home and family, escape to comfortable car for an hour think about anything, start working for customers" to "get up and think about family, immediately pressured to start working for customers". I'm trying to frame it as daily psychological experience, rather than cost of hydrocarbon burning. Driving is at least "a change is as good as a rest", and on low-traffic big roads, pretty low effort too; and if it's "forced upon you" by circumstance, well geez I just have to go sit down and listen to music for an hour while you're stressing out, what can you do, y'know, byeee. Driving as socially acceptable rest without accusations of laziness.

stjohnswarts 7y ago

So are you in favor of government telling people where to live and work? I've seriously heard your position many times but no one ever puts forward a solution to making it happen other than the government forcing people to do it. Sounds like a dictatorship to me. and no I don't think employers are all gonna just let people not "come in" to work.

BjoernKW 7y ago
No, that's not at all what I'm saying. I argue for people to change their inveterate, cargo cult ways of thinking about what constitutes work and the conditions required for it. We need a new mindset not new government policy. That change can't and must not be mandated but has to come from each and everyone of us.

dorgo 7y ago

The place I work allows to work one day a week from home. In my team of six only one person takes advantage of this policy (not I). The others don't - or only occasionlly. So, I don't really expect anything to change even if the policy was expanded to allow home office 5 days a week. That said, out of 100+ employees almost nobody drives by car to the office. It's public transport or bicycle.

BjoernKW 7y ago
> The place I work allows to work one day a week from home. In my team of six only one person takes advantage of this policy (not I). For me, the question in that case always is: Why is that? Often, presenteeism (or put less favourably: butts-in-seats) is used to paper over organisational inefficiencies. For instance, a common argument against remote work is that meetings, particularly informal ones, so-called water cooler talk, help with solving problems or interfacing between people, teams and departments. However, I'd argue that - more often than not - the situation that brought about the need to have these meetings in the first place really is to blame: If you need to have a lot of meetings in order to make progress chances are you don't have the appropriate processes and systems in place that help you with making decisions and have to fall back on lengthy in-person discussions for almost every issue that comes up. > That said, out of 100+ employees almost nobody drives by car to the office. It's public transport or bicycle. Let me guess: You're located in Amsterdam ;-)