15 ms·

My commute is 20 minutes on an uncrowded ferry, and my home office is a tiny desk in my daughter's bedroom while she works on the other side on school stuff. M

My commute is 20 minutes on an uncrowded ferry, and my home office is a tiny desk in my daughter's bedroom while she works on the other side on school stuff. My colleague has a massive house with a pool tennis court and so much space he has literally 3 never-used bedrooms. His wife looks after kids who are at school most of the day again. His commute is 2 hours each way. People are talking home vs office people are coming from very different comparisons.

sibmike 6y ago
Just 20 minutes one way adds up to 20 working days per year. That's 4 weeks of unpaid labor! People are unhappy about extra money spent on Air Conditioning or an extra office chair but the most are happy to carry the opportunity cost of commute. :(
- konjin 6y ago
  I have a 5 minute commute. I make it 30 min by walking through a park to have a coffee in the morning and unwind before going home in the afternoon.
tomp 6y ago
So? Ideally nobody would force you to stay at home, just like nobody would force your colleague to go to the office. Different people have different preferences, why not (try to) satisfy them all?
- saiya-jin 6y ago
  I was forced to WFH, same as most of my colleagues. Most who keep going to work don't really have much choice (apart from resigning for which ain't the best time now). What are you talking about?
  - de_Selby 6y ago
    > Ideally You missed a key word in the parent post. _Ideally_ people wouldn't be forced into multiple hour long commutes either, but that has been the reality for many before this year.
    - lordCarbonFiber 6y ago
      Comparing being "forced" to commute hours (in a house that you chose to live in when you took the job) is a bit disingenuous to being actually forced by a pandemic to not go into an office. Im happy for all the people that can live happily hours outside of urban areas but the insistence that remote work is uniformly better for all people is just so exhausting. I for one, will be glad when it ends and will continue to prioritize companies that keep most of their work force in office; bringing work into my living space has been terrible for my mental health (anecdotally this sentiment has been shared among other single young people i know in the city).
      - WWLink 6y ago
        > the insistence that remote work is uniformly better for all people is just so exhausting The insistence that we need to force everyone back into the office makes me quite upset.
- canofbars 6y ago
  This is not ideal. Ideal is everyone at home or everyone in the office. Half half leads to people being left out.
- josephg 6y ago
  One of the problems of remote work is that it’s kind of an all or nothing thing for your team. If some people are in the office and some people work from home, inevitably (in my experience) a lot of small decisions get made in the office without consulting the remote workers. And that creates a divide - the people in the office end up with more power and authority than the remote folks. Some teams fight this with some strict rules - eg insisting conversations between people sitting next to each other happen over slack. But I think it will usually work better in the long run if either everyone is in the office or basically everyone is remote.
  - mkhpalm 6y ago
    I understand what you're saying but only with respect to global remote hires. I've seen the same attempts to fight it. But with local hires and optional wfh you just let that sort of problem work itself out. If the by-choice wfh person feels like they are left out its on them to do something about it. Its a personal problem not a team problem.
    - josephg 6y ago
      “You’re welcome to work from home, so long as you’re happy being systematically forgotten about in team decisions and passed over for promotions.” Yeah, that’d definitely work itself out; but it’s not what I would describe as a remote friendly workplace.
      - warrenq 6y ago
        it's a choice you made. There are some inherent physical laws and human behaviors that you can't 'guideline' it away
      - mkhpalm 6y ago
        I can't tell what you're arguing. An employee makes a daily conscious decision to wfh and is then upset about any consequences of doing so? Is this person an adult?
gordaco 6y ago
Yeah, I agree. I miss my old routine too. I even have a dedicated office of sorts, and working from home is comfortable and convenient to me. But... I miss the commute. The bus I used to take wasn't particularly uncrowded, but I always managed to get a seat (thanks to having a particularly early schedule) and I used to take the opportunity to read (since each trip took about 40-45 minutes, that's about 1h30m of reading a day), and from time to time I would just put my book down and look at the window, which I always found relaxing even if it's the very same trip everyday. These trips, especially the one in the morning, were about the most quiet moments of my day (although headphones are a necessity, for sure). Reading at home is just not the same, after so many years of having that schedule. On the other hand, I don't particularly miss the office. Sure, it's nice to have breakfast with my workmates from time to time, but I can live without it.
- kbenson 6y ago
  I think that's why people go to cafe to read. There's a certain ambiance they've come to expect and appreciate. Maybe what you really need (when it's feasible) is a cafe, or even just a bus with an hourly route you can sit in for a while to get out and appreciate that feeling?
  - godelski 6y ago
    I think a big part is just being somewhere different. Most days I spend at my desk but some days are more about researching and I go sit outside with my laptop (stopped because fires). I'd happily go to a coffee shop if it weren't for the pandemic. It is nice to just have a new scenery and change things up a little. I should also mention I don't mind commutes that are: walk to bart, read, get off bart, walk to work, work, reverse. I DO mind commutes that are: drive for an hour, sit in traffic, avoid that asshole trying to cut into my lane, and listen to podcasts. (I like podcasts, it is the driving part that is frustrating) It is substantially more stressful.
- Balero 6y ago
  Could you not get on a bus anyway? or sit in a park?
tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago
Commute time is a big thing here. People who have a 2 hour (one way) commute from hell from their massive house are super happy about this situation (shocking, I know). People who live in a small studio apartment 10 minutes from the office see it differently. What I expect this to result in is employers increasingly forcing people to WFH (either outright, or by making the offices horribly unattractive through hot-desking, increased density, etc.), pushing the cost of an office onto employees. Even if a company "generously" gives you a $1000 allowance, that barely covers what high quality office furniture would cost, and in exchange, you pay a lot of tiny things that don't seem to be worth mentioning individually but add up to a massive cost when you take them all together over years: - the real estate - HVAC - utilities (increased water usage, electricity for the office equipment & HVAC) - maintenance for all of that (money and time) - cleaning (if your employer asked you to come in unpaid after hours to vacuum the office and scrub the office toilets, everyone would consider them crazy, and yet this is effectively what will happen with WFH) Not to speak of all the amenities and perks employers often provide, like cafeterias (often subsidized or even free). And not only will you end up paying the businesses' business expenses, you'll often do so (at least in part) with your post-tax money, i.e. depending on your tax rate, each dollar spent may be equivalent to e.g. $1.6 in lost income.
- ghaff 6y ago
  Really, there are only 2 costs that matter. On the one side you have the commute--both in time and money. On the other side is whether the place you'd be living in otherwise is suitable for long-term WFH or if you have to spend more money for another bedroom or whatever. So, if you already have a dedicated office in an exurban house (as I do), not commuting--which I rarely did anyway--is a cost savings. As someone who has mostly worked remotely for years, all the other stuff is pretty trivial even given the occasional significant purchase (I had to replace my very old office chair). I already have to clean my house and/or have it done. And the delta in utilities, etc. is trivial. ADDED: Companies sometimes have covered co-working spaces. Though I suspect this will become less common.
  - Retric 6y ago
    Those minor costs can still add up. Depending on your setup and location you could easily be spending 30+c/h on electricity when working from home. Extra cooling, lighting, possibly multiple PC’s etc. At ~2,000 hours a year you’re talking an extra ~600$/per year after tax. On the other hand it’s also much cheaper to cook at home. PS: My preference is to live close enough to walk to the office, but that doesn’t really scale well.
s0rce 6y ago
Exactly, I have a 1 bdrm apartment (in law) that I share with my wife. We alternate working at a desk in the living area, at the dining table or a folding table set up in the bedroom. I used to commute 20min by bike in the SF East Bay. I very infrequently go in when I need to do something in the lab (biotech company, not everything can be done remotely). When I found this place I never intended for it to for it to be full time wfh space for 2 people. If I knew I'd only go to the office once a month I could live in Minden, NV or something.
- atlasunshrugged 6y ago
  Yeah but then you'd have to live in Minden, NV. From a guy who grew up in Gardnerville, NV, it's sure as hell not a place I'd ever move to - if you're looking for the nature and tax break of Nevada outside Tahoe or Incline is probably much nicer.
  - ryandrake 6y ago
    Is Gardnerville bad though? Never been there but the town seems to have really cheap land, some beautiful ranch properties, reasonable proximity to Tahoe/skiing, and zero income tax. I know culture is not measured in $/sq.ft but as a Californian paying out the nose in taxes for nothing, it seems to be a pretty decent location.
    - selimthegrim 6y ago
      My dad used to have a house there - other than the Basque food I can’t imagine why I’d go back
      - s0rce 6y ago
        Where should I go for good basque food? I went to the hotel beside the train station in Winnemucca when I was driving through and it was interesting but didn't feel particularly authentic. Maybe that is authentic Basque-American food...
detaro 6y ago
In some places there clearly is a push towards "back to the office" for everyone. Which is quite different from "you can come back to the office if that works better for you". E.g. our offices are pretty empty (and thus safer to be in), but available to those that want them, whereas I see customers where there is clear pressure to be in the office if at all possible.
an_opabinia 6y ago
> His wife looks after kids who are at school most of the day again This is the real story. Suppose you're a company that pays someone a really handsome salary. It's a man. Do you want him in the office, where he is guaranteed to spend 0 hours taking care of kids, or at home, where it's not guaranteed? Don't pin this on the wife. Do you think she'd rather he drive 2 hours a day and not take care of the kids, and get paid $400k/yr, or nothing, because whatever he's doing is actually very competitive and there will always someone else gunning for that job, so this obsequious rehash of the "well just work part time" idea that exclusively programmers engage in does not apply? So there is no actual option, part time take care of the kids?
- Aeolun 6y ago
  > Do you want him in the office, where he is guaranteed to spend 0 hours taking care of kids, or at home, where it's not guaranteed? I want him wherever he feels he’s more productive. If that means he plays around with his kids 2 hours a day then more power to him.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- VLM 6y ago
  > Do you want him in the office, where he is guaranteed to spend 0 hours taking care of kids Almost all of the casual conversations with my kids are more interesting than the casual conversations with my coworkers. The puzzle of the rare effective and profitable office conversation is kinda like the rare and effective advertisement; we simply accept that 99% of it is useless and force enormous amounts of engagement to promote those casual successful interactions.
marcins 6y ago
Definitely this. My employer is allowing for this flexibility / lifestyle choice by having offices for those who prefer to work from an office, as well as for those times when it would be easier to get together to collaborate. They’re still working through the details, but I think it’s a good balance. As someone with a comfortable WFH situation, and a 1h commute, I’ll definitely be staying at home most of the time once offices re-open - and maybe even consider moving a bit further out for a bit more space.
swiley 6y ago
The most important thing is choice. Some people are better off telecommuting and some people prefer the office. Forcing someone to use the environment that's worse for them will make them unhappy.
Cd00d 6y ago
I'm not sure. I think it's still too early for people to be comfortable going to open offices. My company officially allowed on-site work again several weeks ago in NYC. I have one close colleague that tried it, and he was the only on in the office. I know several colleagues in small apartments that were not fans of not being in the office that have not returned yet. Sure, more space at home makes it easier to drag this to the long term, but even people inconvenienced at home have found solutions for 180 days now, and aren't (at least with my company) jumping to come back.

sibmike 6y ago

Just 20 minutes one way adds up to 20 working days per year. That's 4 weeks of unpaid labor! People are unhappy about extra money spent on Air Conditioning or an extra office chair but the most are happy to carry the opportunity cost of commute. :(

konjin 6y ago
I have a 5 minute commute. I make it 30 min by walking through a park to have a coffee in the morning and unwind before going home in the afternoon.

tomp 6y ago

So? Ideally nobody would force you to stay at home, just like nobody would force your colleague to go to the office. Different people have different preferences, why not (try to) satisfy them all?

saiya-jin 6y ago
I was forced to WFH, same as most of my colleagues. Most who keep going to work don't really have much choice (apart from resigning for which ain't the best time now). What are you talking about?
- de_Selby 6y ago
  > Ideally You missed a key word in the parent post. _Ideally_ people wouldn't be forced into multiple hour long commutes either, but that has been the reality for many before this year.
  - lordCarbonFiber 6y ago
    Comparing being "forced" to commute hours (in a house that you chose to live in when you took the job) is a bit disingenuous to being actually forced by a pandemic to not go into an office. Im happy for all the people that can live happily hours outside of urban areas but the insistence that remote work is uniformly better for all people is just so exhausting. I for one, will be glad when it ends and will continue to prioritize companies that keep most of their work force in office; bringing work into my living space has been terrible for my mental health (anecdotally this sentiment has been shared among other single young people i know in the city).
    - WWLink 6y ago
      > the insistence that remote work is uniformly better for all people is just so exhausting The insistence that we need to force everyone back into the office makes me quite upset.
canofbars 6y ago
This is not ideal. Ideal is everyone at home or everyone in the office. Half half leads to people being left out.
josephg 6y ago
One of the problems of remote work is that it’s kind of an all or nothing thing for your team. If some people are in the office and some people work from home, inevitably (in my experience) a lot of small decisions get made in the office without consulting the remote workers. And that creates a divide - the people in the office end up with more power and authority than the remote folks. Some teams fight this with some strict rules - eg insisting conversations between people sitting next to each other happen over slack. But I think it will usually work better in the long run if either everyone is in the office or basically everyone is remote.
- mkhpalm 6y ago
  I understand what you're saying but only with respect to global remote hires. I've seen the same attempts to fight it. But with local hires and optional wfh you just let that sort of problem work itself out. If the by-choice wfh person feels like they are left out its on them to do something about it. Its a personal problem not a team problem.
  - josephg 6y ago
    “You’re welcome to work from home, so long as you’re happy being systematically forgotten about in team decisions and passed over for promotions.” Yeah, that’d definitely work itself out; but it’s not what I would describe as a remote friendly workplace.
    - warrenq 6y ago
      it's a choice you made. There are some inherent physical laws and human behaviors that you can't 'guideline' it away
    - mkhpalm 6y ago
      I can't tell what you're arguing. An employee makes a daily conscious decision to wfh and is then upset about any consequences of doing so? Is this person an adult?

gordaco 6y ago

Yeah, I agree. I miss my old routine too. I even have a dedicated office of sorts, and working from home is comfortable and convenient to me. But... I miss the commute. The bus I used to take wasn't particularly uncrowded, but I always managed to get a seat (thanks to having a particularly early schedule) and I used to take the opportunity to read (since each trip took about 40-45 minutes, that's about 1h30m of reading a day), and from time to time I would just put my book down and look at the window, which I always found relaxing even if it's the very same trip everyday. These trips, especially the one in the morning, were about the most quiet moments of my day (although headphones are a necessity, for sure). Reading at home is just not the same, after so many years of having that schedule. On the other hand, I don't particularly miss the office. Sure, it's nice to have breakfast with my workmates from time to time, but I can live without it.

kbenson 6y ago
I think that's why people go to cafe to read. There's a certain ambiance they've come to expect and appreciate. Maybe what you really need (when it's feasible) is a cafe, or even just a bus with an hourly route you can sit in for a while to get out and appreciate that feeling?
- godelski 6y ago
  I think a big part is just being somewhere different. Most days I spend at my desk but some days are more about researching and I go sit outside with my laptop (stopped because fires). I'd happily go to a coffee shop if it weren't for the pandemic. It is nice to just have a new scenery and change things up a little. I should also mention I don't mind commutes that are: walk to bart, read, get off bart, walk to work, work, reverse. I DO mind commutes that are: drive for an hour, sit in traffic, avoid that asshole trying to cut into my lane, and listen to podcasts. (I like podcasts, it is the driving part that is frustrating) It is substantially more stressful.
Balero 6y ago
Could you not get on a bus anyway? or sit in a park?

tgsovlerkhgsel 6y ago

Commute time is a big thing here. People who have a 2 hour (one way) commute from hell from their massive house are super happy about this situation (shocking, I know). People who live in a small studio apartment 10 minutes from the office see it differently. What I expect this to result in is employers increasingly forcing people to WFH (either outright, or by making the offices horribly unattractive through hot-desking, increased density, etc.), pushing the cost of an office onto employees. Even if a company "generously" gives you a $1000 allowance, that barely covers what high quality office furniture would cost, and in exchange, you pay a lot of tiny things that don't seem to be worth mentioning individually but add up to a massive cost when you take them all together over years: - the real estate - HVAC - utilities (increased water usage, electricity for the office equipment & HVAC) - maintenance for all of that (money and time) - cleaning (if your employer asked you to come in unpaid after hours to vacuum the office and scrub the office toilets, everyone would consider them crazy, and yet this is effectively what will happen with WFH) Not to speak of all the amenities and perks employers often provide, like cafeterias (often subsidized or even free). And not only will you end up paying the businesses' business expenses, you'll often do so (at least in part) with your post-tax money, i.e. depending on your tax rate, each dollar spent may be equivalent to e.g. $1.6 in lost income.

ghaff 6y ago
Really, there are only 2 costs that matter. On the one side you have the commute--both in time and money. On the other side is whether the place you'd be living in otherwise is suitable for long-term WFH or if you have to spend more money for another bedroom or whatever. So, if you already have a dedicated office in an exurban house (as I do), not commuting--which I rarely did anyway--is a cost savings. As someone who has mostly worked remotely for years, all the other stuff is pretty trivial even given the occasional significant purchase (I had to replace my very old office chair). I already have to clean my house and/or have it done. And the delta in utilities, etc. is trivial. ADDED: Companies sometimes have covered co-working spaces. Though I suspect this will become less common.
- Retric 6y ago
  Those minor costs can still add up. Depending on your setup and location you could easily be spending 30+c/h on electricity when working from home. Extra cooling, lighting, possibly multiple PC’s etc. At ~2,000 hours a year you’re talking an extra ~600$/per year after tax. On the other hand it’s also much cheaper to cook at home. PS: My preference is to live close enough to walk to the office, but that doesn’t really scale well.

s0rce 6y ago

Exactly, I have a 1 bdrm apartment (in law) that I share with my wife. We alternate working at a desk in the living area, at the dining table or a folding table set up in the bedroom. I used to commute 20min by bike in the SF East Bay. I very infrequently go in when I need to do something in the lab (biotech company, not everything can be done remotely). When I found this place I never intended for it to for it to be full time wfh space for 2 people. If I knew I'd only go to the office once a month I could live in Minden, NV or something.

atlasunshrugged 6y ago
Yeah but then you'd have to live in Minden, NV. From a guy who grew up in Gardnerville, NV, it's sure as hell not a place I'd ever move to - if you're looking for the nature and tax break of Nevada outside Tahoe or Incline is probably much nicer.
- ryandrake 6y ago
  Is Gardnerville bad though? Never been there but the town seems to have really cheap land, some beautiful ranch properties, reasonable proximity to Tahoe/skiing, and zero income tax. I know culture is not measured in $/sq.ft but as a Californian paying out the nose in taxes for nothing, it seems to be a pretty decent location.
  - selimthegrim 6y ago
    My dad used to have a house there - other than the Basque food I can’t imagine why I’d go back
    - s0rce 6y ago
      Where should I go for good basque food? I went to the hotel beside the train station in Winnemucca when I was driving through and it was interesting but didn't feel particularly authentic. Maybe that is authentic Basque-American food...

detaro 6y ago

In some places there clearly is a push towards "back to the office" for everyone. Which is quite different from "you can come back to the office if that works better for you". E.g. our offices are pretty empty (and thus safer to be in), but available to those that want them, whereas I see customers where there is clear pressure to be in the office if at all possible.

an_opabinia 6y ago

> His wife looks after kids who are at school most of the day again This is the real story. Suppose you're a company that pays someone a really handsome salary. It's a man. Do you want him in the office, where he is guaranteed to spend 0 hours taking care of kids, or at home, where it's not guaranteed? Don't pin this on the wife. Do you think she'd rather he drive 2 hours a day and not take care of the kids, and get paid $400k/yr, or nothing, because whatever he's doing is actually very competitive and there will always someone else gunning for that job, so this obsequious rehash of the "well just work part time" idea that exclusively programmers engage in does not apply? So there is no actual option, part time take care of the kids?

Aeolun 6y ago
> Do you want him in the office, where he is guaranteed to spend 0 hours taking care of kids, or at home, where it's not guaranteed? I want him wherever he feels he’s more productive. If that means he plays around with his kids 2 hours a day then more power to him.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
VLM 6y ago
> Do you want him in the office, where he is guaranteed to spend 0 hours taking care of kids Almost all of the casual conversations with my kids are more interesting than the casual conversations with my coworkers. The puzzle of the rare effective and profitable office conversation is kinda like the rare and effective advertisement; we simply accept that 99% of it is useless and force enormous amounts of engagement to promote those casual successful interactions.

marcins 6y ago

Definitely this. My employer is allowing for this flexibility / lifestyle choice by having offices for those who prefer to work from an office, as well as for those times when it would be easier to get together to collaborate. They’re still working through the details, but I think it’s a good balance. As someone with a comfortable WFH situation, and a 1h commute, I’ll definitely be staying at home most of the time once offices re-open - and maybe even consider moving a bit further out for a bit more space.

swiley 6y ago

The most important thing is choice. Some people are better off telecommuting and some people prefer the office. Forcing someone to use the environment that's worse for them will make them unhappy.

Cd00d 6y ago

I'm not sure. I think it's still too early for people to be comfortable going to open offices. My company officially allowed on-site work again several weeks ago in NYC. I have one close colleague that tried it, and he was the only on in the office. I know several colleagues in small apartments that were not fans of not being in the office that have not returned yet. Sure, more space at home makes it easier to drag this to the long term, but even people inconvenienced at home have found solutions for 180 days now, and aren't (at least with my company) jumping to come back.