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This is something I have some experience with. I work from home most of the time, except for travel across the US one week a month. I was concerned about my car

This is something I have some experience with. I work from home most of the time, except for travel across the US one week a month. I was concerned about my carbon footprint, so I ran some numbers. The result I got was that I was about 8% worse than someone with an uncongested 10-mile (one way) daily commute in a typical compact car. That guy driving a Ford Compensator thirty miles each way at peak hours is way worse. Nonetheless, I wish my number could be reduced still further. The problem IMO is that too little work is truly remote. If the rest of your team is colocated somewhere else then you'll have to travel. If your team is spread all over but still relies on face to face meetings (e.g. planning sessions, "all hands" announcements, hackathons) then you'll still have to travel. If your job/role involves dealing with customers who aren't even slightly remote-friendly, you'll have to travel. If you're in or adjacent to academe, you'll have to travel to conferences. Most of these exceptions are not necessary. Unfortunately, most people and companies don't even try to avoid them. They just do what they've done, and the not-really-remote workers have to fly in.

gbrown 7y ago
> If you're in or adjacent to academe, you'll have to travel to conferences. I really think we should be working to change this - conferences are huge wastes of resources IMHO. I usually see a handful of inspiring talks, which could just as easily have been delivered as webinars (which would also allow asynchronous viewing, involving a wider potential audience). Then again, I'm antisocial and terrible at "networking", so those aspects of conferences don't really appeal to me.
- ghaff 7y ago
  >Then again, I'm antisocial and terrible at "networking", so those aspects of conferences don't really appeal to me. And, really, the "hallway track" is the value of going to conferences. For the most part, if someone just goes to a conference to sit in breakout sessions, they're probably better off just watching video of the sessions (if they were filmed) or a webinar version of the content.
  - notacoward 7y ago
    I love going to conferences, even though I'm an introvert - some would even say a misanthrope. I just need time to recharge afterward. But the fact that some people enjoy them is far outweighed by both the environmental harm and the exclusionary aspect of requiring such travel. We need to figure out how to replicate that energy and easy discovery of like-minded people online. Even as a 30+ year online native myself, I don't quite see it yet.
    - ghaff 7y ago
      Most people are social, even if they express it in different ways. Virtual events are fine, as are watching videos. (In fact, for bigger events, I'll often watch the keynotes from my hotel room rather than packing myself into a room with 10,000 of my closest friends so I can watch the distant speaker projected on the screen.) But it's a small subset of the experience of attending live.
    - gbrown 7y ago
      Well put - that's exactly how I feel.
- acollins1331 7y ago
  It's a huge problem that makes the hypocrisy argument palpable when thousands of climate scientists fly across the world every year for conferences on climate change. Teleconferences should be a thing for nearly everyone but the presenters, but it'll never happen because of prestige and elitism.
  - tharne 7y ago
    This hypocrisy is a reoccurring issue with most people who favor coercive political solutions to problems instead of voluntary and cooperative ones. When people make arguments like "taxes should be higher" or "air travel should be more expensive", they almost always mean "for other people". People need to eat their own cooking or they instantly lose all credibility, even when the facts are on their side.
    - icebraining 7y ago
      No, they mean "for all", rather than just for the patsies sacrificing themselves so that others can just consume more.
    - unionize 7y ago
      Taxes aren’t coercive (unless you’re a Galt’s Gulch Randian, I suppose), and I’m sorry, but would you rather deal with driving a more efficient car or millions of immigrants trying desperately to escape drought, war, and famine after it’s too late? If climate change really is the looming disaster it seems to be (and I personally think we’re fucked), then yeah, sorry, governments might have to do some things you find unpleasant. That’s the price we pay for unfettered consumption for generations. It might be time to pay the piper. Also, it’s really hard to live in the modern world without using fossil fuel-based comforts. You can criticize air travel and still travel to a climate conference. It doesn’t make climate change any less real. You can maybe argue that people are hypocrites, but so what? The ice caps don’t give a shit. And maybe that meeting of scientists in-person is what it takes to fix a really big global problem. Flying to Asia every year for a vacation definitely won’t do that, though.
      - 7y ago
mehrdadn 7y ago
> I work from home most of the time, except for travel across the US one week a month. The result I got was that I was about 8% worse than someone with an uncongested 10-mile (one way) daily commute in a typical compact car. Are you sure about that? I'm curious about your numbers. This is 12 round-trip flights across the US a year, right? And I assume they're always on full flights (peak efficiency)? From [1] (2013; maybe it's more efficient now), that's 2-3 tons of CO₂ per round-trip—so in your case, let's average and say about 25 tons/year. The EPA [2] says "A typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year." That means your flying (1 person) is costing 543% as much as driving (1 car)? It's unfortunately not apples-to-apples, so I'm curious what your calculation was. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/sunday-review/the-biggest-carbon-sin-air-travel.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/sunday-review/the-biggest... [2] https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-typical-passenger-vehicle https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t...
- icebraining 7y ago
  Those 2-3 tons are the "warming equivalent", based on some multiplier that they don't specific (see the correction at the end of the article). The actual CO2 emitted by the flight is much lower, less than 200kg/passenger (EDIT: per leg). The other estimates I've seen put flights as worse than cars, but not that bad.
  - mehrdadn 7y ago
    Oh wow, interesting. I was looking around and found another estimate that it's 1.4 tons (SFO/NYC round-trip). I guess this is better (365% vs. 543%), but still looking much worse than driving? [1] https://co2.myclimate.org/en/flight_calculators/new https://co2.myclimate.org/en/flight_calculators/new
    - notacoward 7y ago
      I got about 1.3 tons for BOS<->SEA. Close enough I guess. For cars, start with https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-typical-passenger-vehicle https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t... Look at the third answer down. The figures I cited earlier were based on about half that mileage per year, so that comes out to 2.3t. Lots of unit confusion here, but I think those both end up being metric tons and the daily commute is already worse than monthly air travel. Maybe that's all wrong, but the point I'm trying to focus on is that the need for regular long-distance travel severely erodes the environmental value of letting people work from home.
CodeCube 7y ago
The first step is to make "kinda remote" way more normalized and pervasive ... then we can work on "truly remote".
- notacoward 7y ago
  I'm OK with that, as long as we realize that in the short term "kinda remote" might actually be worse than status quo due to long-distance-travel requirements. We're discussing the numbers in another sub-thread to see how much.
defined 7y ago
> travel across the US one week a month That seems excessive. I work remote and only have to fly in once or twice a year for a few days at a time, maybe a week. Do you have an idea of why they don't go all the way and let you WFH on the same basis as I do?
- notacoward 7y ago
  I kind of alluded to this in the first couple of reasons why people have to travel. Some companies, including this one, just don't have remote-friendly work flows/habits. Too many hallway conversations with outcomes that are never recorded because nobody can bother. Too many people who allow in-person interruptions to take unqualified preference over response to remotes. Too many people mumbling and/or talking over each other in meetings, so the remote has trouble following or breaking in. Inadequate videoconference and VPN infrastructure making that worse. Too many high-level planning or review meetings that are explicitly in-person for no good reason at all. I could go on much longer. ;) The point is that accommodating remote workers requires significant cultural change, and people in mostly-colocated groups resist it. It's much easier for all-remote teams, somewhere in between for teams that are still mostly colocated but have already been "broken in" by someone like me. My last company was much better at this, though worse in other ways. Since there are only about five teams worldwide doing storage at the scale we are, and I want to keep doing that, it's a the "price of admission" and overall I think it's worthwhile. But it's still unnecessary and I'm still sad that it's not improving faster - for myself and others in similar situations.
  - defined 7y ago
    > Too many people mumbling and/or talking over each other in meetings, so the remote has trouble following or breaking in. Inadequate videoconference and VPN infrastructure making that worse. This, in spades. Thanks for taking the time to explain in more detail.
eikenberry 7y ago
> I work from home most of the time, except for travel across the US one week a month. I've worked full time remote for over 10 years for different companies and never had to fly that much. I've always flown once or maybe twice a year at most. I think this is more the norm, at least for software engineering and operations. > The problem IMO is that too little work is truly remote. You follow this with some specific examples, most of which would require travel even if you were in an office. I don't agree on those you list as requiring face-to-face meetings, they are all fully capable of being done remotely. IMO the only ones that require you on site are one where you physically interact with things/people.
- notacoward 7y ago
  > they are all fully capable of being done remotely. They certainly are, as long as others cooperate. Good for you if you've never been on a team where people resist and sabotage any such effort. I don't see any particular reason to believe your shorter experience is more representative than my longer one.
  - eikenberry 7y ago
    > your shorter experience I had assumed I had the longer experience as most people I've discussed it with have only worked a few years remotely and you didn't specify. I've only worked one job that was part-time remote where people weren't cooperative with it. But that was mostly the results of one manager who was generally bad, so I didn't take it as remote specific. The other 3 companies where I worked full time remote were all good experiences w/ no one sabotaging things. Solving the issue with one place with the bad manager was pretty simple though... I just found a new job where it wasn't an issue. Anymore I only apply to places that are either fully remote or advertise themselves as remote friendly with a remote-first culture and it hasn't been an issue.

gbrown 7y ago

> If you're in or adjacent to academe, you'll have to travel to conferences. I really think we should be working to change this - conferences are huge wastes of resources IMHO. I usually see a handful of inspiring talks, which could just as easily have been delivered as webinars (which would also allow asynchronous viewing, involving a wider potential audience). Then again, I'm antisocial and terrible at "networking", so those aspects of conferences don't really appeal to me.

ghaff 7y ago
>Then again, I'm antisocial and terrible at "networking", so those aspects of conferences don't really appeal to me. And, really, the "hallway track" is the value of going to conferences. For the most part, if someone just goes to a conference to sit in breakout sessions, they're probably better off just watching video of the sessions (if they were filmed) or a webinar version of the content.
- notacoward 7y ago
  I love going to conferences, even though I'm an introvert - some would even say a misanthrope. I just need time to recharge afterward. But the fact that some people enjoy them is far outweighed by both the environmental harm and the exclusionary aspect of requiring such travel. We need to figure out how to replicate that energy and easy discovery of like-minded people online. Even as a 30+ year online native myself, I don't quite see it yet.
  - ghaff 7y ago
    Most people are social, even if they express it in different ways. Virtual events are fine, as are watching videos. (In fact, for bigger events, I'll often watch the keynotes from my hotel room rather than packing myself into a room with 10,000 of my closest friends so I can watch the distant speaker projected on the screen.) But it's a small subset of the experience of attending live.
  - gbrown 7y ago
    Well put - that's exactly how I feel.
acollins1331 7y ago
It's a huge problem that makes the hypocrisy argument palpable when thousands of climate scientists fly across the world every year for conferences on climate change. Teleconferences should be a thing for nearly everyone but the presenters, but it'll never happen because of prestige and elitism.
- tharne 7y ago
  This hypocrisy is a reoccurring issue with most people who favor coercive political solutions to problems instead of voluntary and cooperative ones. When people make arguments like "taxes should be higher" or "air travel should be more expensive", they almost always mean "for other people". People need to eat their own cooking or they instantly lose all credibility, even when the facts are on their side.
  - icebraining 7y ago
    No, they mean "for all", rather than just for the patsies sacrificing themselves so that others can just consume more.
  - unionize 7y ago
    Taxes aren’t coercive (unless you’re a Galt’s Gulch Randian, I suppose), and I’m sorry, but would you rather deal with driving a more efficient car or millions of immigrants trying desperately to escape drought, war, and famine after it’s too late? If climate change really is the looming disaster it seems to be (and I personally think we’re fucked), then yeah, sorry, governments might have to do some things you find unpleasant. That’s the price we pay for unfettered consumption for generations. It might be time to pay the piper. Also, it’s really hard to live in the modern world without using fossil fuel-based comforts. You can criticize air travel and still travel to a climate conference. It doesn’t make climate change any less real. You can maybe argue that people are hypocrites, but so what? The ice caps don’t give a shit. And maybe that meeting of scientists in-person is what it takes to fix a really big global problem. Flying to Asia every year for a vacation definitely won’t do that, though.
    - 7y ago

mehrdadn 7y ago

> I work from home most of the time, except for travel across the US one week a month. The result I got was that I was about 8% worse than someone with an uncongested 10-mile (one way) daily commute in a typical compact car. Are you sure about that? I'm curious about your numbers. This is 12 round-trip flights across the US a year, right? And I assume they're always on full flights (peak efficiency)? From [1] (2013; maybe it's more efficient now), that's 2-3 tons of CO₂ per round-trip—so in your case, let's average and say about 25 tons/year. The EPA [2] says "A typical passenger vehicle emits about 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year." That means your flying (1 person) is costing 543% as much as driving (1 car)? It's unfortunately not apples-to-apples, so I'm curious what your calculation was. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/sunday-review/the-biggest-carbon-sin-air-travel.html https://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/sunday-review/the-biggest... [2] https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-typical-passenger-vehicle https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t...

icebraining 7y ago
Those 2-3 tons are the "warming equivalent", based on some multiplier that they don't specific (see the correction at the end of the article). The actual CO2 emitted by the flight is much lower, less than 200kg/passenger (EDIT: per leg). The other estimates I've seen put flights as worse than cars, but not that bad.
- mehrdadn 7y ago
  Oh wow, interesting. I was looking around and found another estimate that it's 1.4 tons (SFO/NYC round-trip). I guess this is better (365% vs. 543%), but still looking much worse than driving? [1] https://co2.myclimate.org/en/flight_calculators/new https://co2.myclimate.org/en/flight_calculators/new
  - notacoward 7y ago
    I got about 1.3 tons for BOS<->SEA. Close enough I guess. For cars, start with https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-typical-passenger-vehicle https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/greenhouse-gas-emissions-t... Look at the third answer down. The figures I cited earlier were based on about half that mileage per year, so that comes out to 2.3t. Lots of unit confusion here, but I think those both end up being metric tons and the daily commute is already worse than monthly air travel. Maybe that's all wrong, but the point I'm trying to focus on is that the need for regular long-distance travel severely erodes the environmental value of letting people work from home.

CodeCube 7y ago

The first step is to make "kinda remote" way more normalized and pervasive ... then we can work on "truly remote".

notacoward 7y ago
I'm OK with that, as long as we realize that in the short term "kinda remote" might actually be worse than status quo due to long-distance-travel requirements. We're discussing the numbers in another sub-thread to see how much.

defined 7y ago

> travel across the US one week a month That seems excessive. I work remote and only have to fly in once or twice a year for a few days at a time, maybe a week. Do you have an idea of why they don't go all the way and let you WFH on the same basis as I do?

notacoward 7y ago
I kind of alluded to this in the first couple of reasons why people have to travel. Some companies, including this one, just don't have remote-friendly work flows/habits. Too many hallway conversations with outcomes that are never recorded because nobody can bother. Too many people who allow in-person interruptions to take unqualified preference over response to remotes. Too many people mumbling and/or talking over each other in meetings, so the remote has trouble following or breaking in. Inadequate videoconference and VPN infrastructure making that worse. Too many high-level planning or review meetings that are explicitly in-person for no good reason at all. I could go on much longer. ;) The point is that accommodating remote workers requires significant cultural change, and people in mostly-colocated groups resist it. It's much easier for all-remote teams, somewhere in between for teams that are still mostly colocated but have already been "broken in" by someone like me. My last company was much better at this, though worse in other ways. Since there are only about five teams worldwide doing storage at the scale we are, and I want to keep doing that, it's a the "price of admission" and overall I think it's worthwhile. But it's still unnecessary and I'm still sad that it's not improving faster - for myself and others in similar situations.
- defined 7y ago
  > Too many people mumbling and/or talking over each other in meetings, so the remote has trouble following or breaking in. Inadequate videoconference and VPN infrastructure making that worse. This, in spades. Thanks for taking the time to explain in more detail.

eikenberry 7y ago

> I work from home most of the time, except for travel across the US one week a month. I've worked full time remote for over 10 years for different companies and never had to fly that much. I've always flown once or maybe twice a year at most. I think this is more the norm, at least for software engineering and operations. > The problem IMO is that too little work is truly remote. You follow this with some specific examples, most of which would require travel even if you were in an office. I don't agree on those you list as requiring face-to-face meetings, they are all fully capable of being done remotely. IMO the only ones that require you on site are one where you physically interact with things/people.

notacoward 7y ago
> they are all fully capable of being done remotely. They certainly are, as long as others cooperate. Good for you if you've never been on a team where people resist and sabotage any such effort. I don't see any particular reason to believe your shorter experience is more representative than my longer one.
- eikenberry 7y ago
  > your shorter experience I had assumed I had the longer experience as most people I've discussed it with have only worked a few years remotely and you didn't specify. I've only worked one job that was part-time remote where people weren't cooperative with it. But that was mostly the results of one manager who was generally bad, so I didn't take it as remote specific. The other 3 companies where I worked full time remote were all good experiences w/ no one sabotaging things. Solving the issue with one place with the bad manager was pretty simple though... I just found a new job where it wasn't an issue. Anymore I only apply to places that are either fully remote or advertise themselves as remote friendly with a remote-first culture and it hasn't been an issue.