17 ms·

Its hard to come up with arguments for working from office when you can save 2 hours of commute. Time alone is huge. With that standard 8h work 8h personal tim

Its hard to come up with arguments for working from office when you can save 2 hours of commute. Time alone is huge. With that standard 8h work 8h personal time 8h sleep. Commute eats up 1/4 of your personal time.

martin_a 5y ago
> Time alone is huge. Don't forget that could also be more time with your loved ones, like your partner, your children or even your pets. That's a big deal for lots of people and very understandable. edit: It's also more time for _everything else_. Personally, I really enjoy cooking lunch and sitting on my balcony for half an hour, something I can't do when working from the office.
- spearo77 5y ago
  I parsed that quote differently.. the way I think they meant the phrase is– The factor of time itself is huge (no matter how you end up using it)
- pickle-wizard 5y ago
  The location flexibility is big too. I live in Austin, and my parents live in Kansas. I drove up to Kansas this past Saturday and will work from up here and drive back next Saturday. I've worked from home for a few years now, and before that I would have to take vacation time to go visit them.
  - RSHEPP 5y ago
    For real. My wife picked up travel nursing and it's been a huge life improvement. Just check the taxes in the states you are working in. I have 25 work days in Illinois without income taxes, but all states are different.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      There have been some efforts to rationalize this at the federal level but AFAIK they haven't gone anywhere. And some states seem to basically have zero thresholds for this and enforcement for business travel seems to be ratcheting up. Some people are probably going to find that they need to file more state tax returns.
    - enjo 5y ago
      This is gonna be the real challenge for the WFH movement. NYC is trying to get income taxes out of me because I worked for a NYC based company in 2020... even tho I never stepped foot in their state.
capableweb 5y ago
Obviously, people are different. Some people prefer to work from an office (like me) just because you get to spend time with people (I live alone). Me and my teammates also become more efficient when we work together in the same physical space than remotely (we've tried bunch of things like perpetual video calls, among other things). We all live in the same city, the longest commute in our team is ~30 minutes, but we all feel like it's worth it to go to the same physical space and work together instead. Unless you live outside big cities, I'm not sure if 2 hours of commute is that common (at least with my South West European perspective, maybe is different in the US/elsewhere?).
- softfalcon 5y ago
  I don’t live outside a big city. I live in a Canadian city of only 1 million people. Thanks to the incredibly bad city planning (which is common all across North America) and complete joke of local transit options (also common in NA), you regularly see folks with 45 minute to 2 hour commutes one way. Folks are losing as much as 4 hours out of their day even though they live in a small city that should be easier to commute but isn’t due to corruption and laziness of the city. To be clear, we’re not talking Seattle or Portland, we’re talking obscure cities like Ogden, Calgary, Edmonton, etc. North America is a massive turd compared to practically anything in Europe. Some of your far flung towns have better transit than some of our metropolises. tldr; it is drastically worse for commutes in any non-major American cities. You have no idea how good you have it in Europe.
- starfallg 5y ago
  Well for a one hour commute, you lose 2 hours of your day. That's massive and equals around 1/8 to 1/9 of your time awake depending on your sleeping habits.
  - capableweb 5y ago
    I guess the same can be said about doing laundry, sitting and watching the machine while it does its job would lose you an hour or two. Luckily both of these activities can be done while doing other things like reading/listening to audio books or catching up on other things.
EarthIsHome 5y ago
A 2-hour round trip commute is insane. Let's look at a 1-hour round trip commute assuming 240 working days per year. This means 240 hours gone in a year to your commute. That's 10 full whole days. A 2-hour round trip commute means 20 full whole days... almost a whole month gone. 3-hour round trip commute = 30 full days.. and so on.
- 0_____0 5y ago
  I know people who had 4-5 hour RT commutes in the Bay. (Tracy <-> SF) It's ludicrous, but I suppose it's a bit of a boiled frog scenario. People just got used to having to commute from further and further away as housing has gotten less affordable.
  - hnlmorg 5y ago
    If you're not having to drive then commutes can be easily optimised. You can read a book, chat to your commuter buddies on the train/boat/coach (in some instances over a beer so it's little different than being down the pub). I've even used my commuter time to catch up of pending PRs on open source projects I maintain. This obviously depends on your city / county / state having good public transport infrastructure but if the option is there and its practical then I'd take the train over driving to work any day of the week.
    - rcpt 5y ago
      Door-to-desk plus desk-to-door was 3 hours for me. Even with the google bus that was pretty rough.
      - ghaff 5y ago
        I had one of those--typically by train--for about 18 months though I didn't go in every day. I had to get up by about 6am to drive to the train station and it was just a big chunk of the day. I don't think I'd have found it sustainable over the long-term.
    - 5y ago
ojbyrne 5y ago
It does depend on the type of commute. If you walk or ride a bicycle to work that is at least somewhat personal time, and I personally enjoy the structure. If you use a train or bus or something similar and don’t have too much rigmarole around transferring etc, that also can be personal or work time or a combination. The only real lost time is driving, and even then some people enjoy podcasts etc.
- agonmon 5y ago
  In the Bay Area the train and bus system is a crammed, stressful experience where you have to worry about being robbed, harassed, or being annoyed by loud music, homeless _smells_, or inebriated people trying to smoke in a packed car. Regarding cars: don't forget the increase of risk of accident and death from driving, as well as the constant stress of avoiding collisions; I can barely retain podcasts while driving.
maccard 5y ago
> With that standard 8h work 8h personal time 8h sleep. Commute eats up 1/4 of your personal time. For people who chose to not prioritise living remotely near their workplace.
- bart_spoon 5y ago
  Often it isn't much of a choice at all. American cities are such that living near a workplace simply isn't feasible for many. It is common to be financially intractable, and American cities are actively hostile to families/children. So the people who get to "choose" to prioritize living near their workplace is generally restricted to relatively high-income earners who are single with roommates or perhaps are dual-income with no children. That's a relatively small slice of workers.
konschubert 5y ago
If you consider all the other chores you have to do in a day, saving 2 hours of commute will probably double your free time.
- Mountain_Skies 5y ago
  It saves me even more time than that because of tasks like laundry that are mostly hands off and waiting become easy to intersperse with my work. I can also throw one of my pre-prepped meals into the Instant Pot at 11am and have it ready when I start lunch at noon. Those who work at a desk all day should get up to move around at least once an hour anyway. These small tasks the start hands-off processes are a good way of making that happen.
Deinos 5y ago
Agreed, and the resources that a commute consumes (time, wear and tear on a vehicle, fuel, mental reserves either sitting in traffic or dealing with other people on public transportation, etc) are not considered in compensation... Your most valuable resource, time, which can be neither replenished nor its true quantity known, is being wasted for very little gain.
hnlmorg 5y ago
The commute isn't always dead time though. For me, the 3hr round trip was spent playing computer games on my Nintendo Switch, or reading a book, or just letting my mind wander while listening to music. All of these are activities I don't get time to do at home because of the thousand other commitments I have at home. You'd think working from home would give people more free time, but that's not always the case, for example if you have small children. Don't get me wrong, I love spending time with my family, but the commute was the only "me time" I had in a given day and I miss that dearly.
- zentiggr 5y ago
  The pre-WFH work 10-15 minutes away from home routine had, for me, the same hidden benefit. Now that I've been 100% WFH for 14 months, I've realized how easy it is to just get caught up even deeper in the assumption that "you're home, can you do _?" and wind up devoting more and more time to the house and projects and the pets and realize that the last time I was in a space by myself, at least briefly not 'monitoring' or 'on deck', was how many days/weeks ago? That time where I'm not on call every second to potentially deal with a pet or household or any other 'now' thing, is way more precious than I realized. I've survived with very little of it this past year.
  - Apocryphon 5y ago
    But this sounds like a personal boundaries matter that's helped by having a work commute, but not dependent upon it. Perhaps the commute could be replaced with a dedicated time for oneself for a walk, fitness, meditation, etc. That time shouldn't be (indirectly) provided by one's employer.
    - Freestyler_3 5y ago
      small ridiculous example: Boss my marriage is failing, can you give me more overtime so my wife will love me more.
      - hnlmorg 5y ago
agumonkey 5y ago
covid gave us a lot of data, and things are not as obvious as imagined, many people said they just couldn't operate at home, but it seems the majority was utterly happy
Zelphyr 5y ago
When interviewing with a company who demands commuting say, "I value my time as I'm sure you do. I will commute if required but I charge a premium for my commuting time. My rate is $x/hr and since I will be commuting 2 hours a day, 5 days a week, an estimated 48 weeks (accounting for holidays, vacation, sick, etc...) a year then I request you increase my salary by $x * 2 * 5 * 48." I say that partially in jest because, of course, no employer is going to increase your salary by $48K simply because you value your commuting time at $100/hr (a reasonable rate if you're in tech). Still, I think it's a useful way to gain a perspective on just how valuable one's time really is to them.
- j4yav 5y ago
  I have proposed doing it during work hours and got a positive response.
- Mauricebranagh 5y ago
  Why not in the UK jobs in London factor in the extra required for commute and housing costs. I reckoned that it would be £10k post tax just for the additional cost of commute (65 miles)
  - nly 5y ago
    Rail too. You can easily spend £3-5K/yr on a season ticket + another £2k/yr for tube travel, so once you factor back in tax you could easily be talking £10-15k of salary
apocalyptic0n3 5y ago
Personally, I'm looking forward to going back to the office. I am an extremely introverted person and during the pandemic, I've gone upwards of 5 months without saying another word to a person face-to-face. I personally prefer that and don't feel lonely or anything; I just don't need social interaction in my day-to-day life. But I know that in the long term, it's going to have negative consequences for me in terms of networking and just friendships in general. These are basic things that you need that I am completely incapable of achieving without it being forced upon me in an office environment. Yes, I hate driving. But I'll move closer to the office (which we're relocating to a much further location currently) and I'll get it to <20 minutes each way, which is acceptable. Just because you can't find arguments for it in your life doesn't mean others can't. I need that environment and if my job went remote-only, I'd quit without any hesitation just as employees are quitting after being asked to return to the office. We shouldn't go from one extreme (everyone has to be in an office) to the other (there is no office at all). We need to accept hybrid solutions where an office exists and maybe you're expected to be there once every week or two or something. We need to accept that some people work better remote and others work better in an office. We're trying to build the most efficient working environment for the team in general, not just one or two people one way or the other.
- antonzabirko 5y ago
  What sort of work do you do? Why don't they have any online meetings?
  - apocalyptic0n3 5y ago
    I'm a software engineer like 90% of HN. I have plenty of online meetings (I'm actually on a team call right now listening to someone discuss a solution to a problem). It doesn't fill the needs, though. Without the in-person and more frequent interaction, I can feel my social skills slipping even further. And I rarely interact with non-developers and non-managers now. It's not ideal for me. It 100% does not work and I need to go back to an office. I fear if I don't, my already-limited social abilities will zero out and I'll have to rebuild them. I now know I can go months without speaking to anyone and be okay with it; that itself is a problem in my mind that I need to address and an office environment fulfills those needs.
nly 5y ago
I consider my commute time part of work and deduct it from my contracted hours (8 to 6).
- bluefirebrand 5y ago
  That doesn't fly with most employers I've worked for.

martin_a 5y ago

> Time alone is huge. Don't forget that could also be more time with your loved ones, like your partner, your children or even your pets. That's a big deal for lots of people and very understandable. edit: It's also more time for _everything else_. Personally, I really enjoy cooking lunch and sitting on my balcony for half an hour, something I can't do when working from the office.

spearo77 5y ago
I parsed that quote differently.. the way I think they meant the phrase is– The factor of time itself is huge (no matter how you end up using it)
pickle-wizard 5y ago
The location flexibility is big too. I live in Austin, and my parents live in Kansas. I drove up to Kansas this past Saturday and will work from up here and drive back next Saturday. I've worked from home for a few years now, and before that I would have to take vacation time to go visit them.
- RSHEPP 5y ago
  For real. My wife picked up travel nursing and it's been a huge life improvement. Just check the taxes in the states you are working in. I have 25 work days in Illinois without income taxes, but all states are different.
  - ghaff 5y ago
    There have been some efforts to rationalize this at the federal level but AFAIK they haven't gone anywhere. And some states seem to basically have zero thresholds for this and enforcement for business travel seems to be ratcheting up. Some people are probably going to find that they need to file more state tax returns.
  - enjo 5y ago
    This is gonna be the real challenge for the WFH movement. NYC is trying to get income taxes out of me because I worked for a NYC based company in 2020... even tho I never stepped foot in their state.

capableweb 5y ago

Obviously, people are different. Some people prefer to work from an office (like me) just because you get to spend time with people (I live alone). Me and my teammates also become more efficient when we work together in the same physical space than remotely (we've tried bunch of things like perpetual video calls, among other things). We all live in the same city, the longest commute in our team is ~30 minutes, but we all feel like it's worth it to go to the same physical space and work together instead. Unless you live outside big cities, I'm not sure if 2 hours of commute is that common (at least with my South West European perspective, maybe is different in the US/elsewhere?).

softfalcon 5y ago
I don’t live outside a big city. I live in a Canadian city of only 1 million people. Thanks to the incredibly bad city planning (which is common all across North America) and complete joke of local transit options (also common in NA), you regularly see folks with 45 minute to 2 hour commutes one way. Folks are losing as much as 4 hours out of their day even though they live in a small city that should be easier to commute but isn’t due to corruption and laziness of the city. To be clear, we’re not talking Seattle or Portland, we’re talking obscure cities like Ogden, Calgary, Edmonton, etc. North America is a massive turd compared to practically anything in Europe. Some of your far flung towns have better transit than some of our metropolises. tldr; it is drastically worse for commutes in any non-major American cities. You have no idea how good you have it in Europe.
starfallg 5y ago
Well for a one hour commute, you lose 2 hours of your day. That's massive and equals around 1/8 to 1/9 of your time awake depending on your sleeping habits.
- capableweb 5y ago
  I guess the same can be said about doing laundry, sitting and watching the machine while it does its job would lose you an hour or two. Luckily both of these activities can be done while doing other things like reading/listening to audio books or catching up on other things.

EarthIsHome 5y ago

A 2-hour round trip commute is insane. Let's look at a 1-hour round trip commute assuming 240 working days per year. This means 240 hours gone in a year to your commute. That's 10 full whole days. A 2-hour round trip commute means 20 full whole days... almost a whole month gone. 3-hour round trip commute = 30 full days.. and so on.

0_____0 5y ago
I know people who had 4-5 hour RT commutes in the Bay. (Tracy <-> SF) It's ludicrous, but I suppose it's a bit of a boiled frog scenario. People just got used to having to commute from further and further away as housing has gotten less affordable.
- hnlmorg 5y ago
  If you're not having to drive then commutes can be easily optimised. You can read a book, chat to your commuter buddies on the train/boat/coach (in some instances over a beer so it's little different than being down the pub). I've even used my commuter time to catch up of pending PRs on open source projects I maintain. This obviously depends on your city / county / state having good public transport infrastructure but if the option is there and its practical then I'd take the train over driving to work any day of the week.
  - rcpt 5y ago
    Door-to-desk plus desk-to-door was 3 hours for me. Even with the google bus that was pretty rough.
    - ghaff 5y ago
      I had one of those--typically by train--for about 18 months though I didn't go in every day. I had to get up by about 6am to drive to the train station and it was just a big chunk of the day. I don't think I'd have found it sustainable over the long-term.
  - 5y ago

ojbyrne 5y ago

It does depend on the type of commute. If you walk or ride a bicycle to work that is at least somewhat personal time, and I personally enjoy the structure. If you use a train or bus or something similar and don’t have too much rigmarole around transferring etc, that also can be personal or work time or a combination. The only real lost time is driving, and even then some people enjoy podcasts etc.

agonmon 5y ago
In the Bay Area the train and bus system is a crammed, stressful experience where you have to worry about being robbed, harassed, or being annoyed by loud music, homeless _smells_, or inebriated people trying to smoke in a packed car. Regarding cars: don't forget the increase of risk of accident and death from driving, as well as the constant stress of avoiding collisions; I can barely retain podcasts while driving.

maccard 5y ago

> With that standard 8h work 8h personal time 8h sleep. Commute eats up 1/4 of your personal time. For people who chose to not prioritise living remotely near their workplace.

bart_spoon 5y ago
Often it isn't much of a choice at all. American cities are such that living near a workplace simply isn't feasible for many. It is common to be financially intractable, and American cities are actively hostile to families/children. So the people who get to "choose" to prioritize living near their workplace is generally restricted to relatively high-income earners who are single with roommates or perhaps are dual-income with no children. That's a relatively small slice of workers.

konschubert 5y ago

If you consider all the other chores you have to do in a day, saving 2 hours of commute will probably double your free time.

Mountain_Skies 5y ago
It saves me even more time than that because of tasks like laundry that are mostly hands off and waiting become easy to intersperse with my work. I can also throw one of my pre-prepped meals into the Instant Pot at 11am and have it ready when I start lunch at noon. Those who work at a desk all day should get up to move around at least once an hour anyway. These small tasks the start hands-off processes are a good way of making that happen.

Deinos 5y ago

Agreed, and the resources that a commute consumes (time, wear and tear on a vehicle, fuel, mental reserves either sitting in traffic or dealing with other people on public transportation, etc) are not considered in compensation... Your most valuable resource, time, which can be neither replenished nor its true quantity known, is being wasted for very little gain.

hnlmorg 5y ago

The commute isn't always dead time though. For me, the 3hr round trip was spent playing computer games on my Nintendo Switch, or reading a book, or just letting my mind wander while listening to music. All of these are activities I don't get time to do at home because of the thousand other commitments I have at home. You'd think working from home would give people more free time, but that's not always the case, for example if you have small children. Don't get me wrong, I love spending time with my family, but the commute was the only "me time" I had in a given day and I miss that dearly.

zentiggr 5y ago
The pre-WFH work 10-15 minutes away from home routine had, for me, the same hidden benefit. Now that I've been 100% WFH for 14 months, I've realized how easy it is to just get caught up even deeper in the assumption that "you're home, can you do _?" and wind up devoting more and more time to the house and projects and the pets and realize that the last time I was in a space by myself, at least briefly not 'monitoring' or 'on deck', was how many days/weeks ago? That time where I'm not on call every second to potentially deal with a pet or household or any other 'now' thing, is way more precious than I realized. I've survived with very little of it this past year.
- Apocryphon 5y ago
  But this sounds like a personal boundaries matter that's helped by having a work commute, but not dependent upon it. Perhaps the commute could be replaced with a dedicated time for oneself for a walk, fitness, meditation, etc. That time shouldn't be (indirectly) provided by one's employer.
  - Freestyler_3 5y ago
    small ridiculous example: Boss my marriage is failing, can you give me more overtime so my wife will love me more.
    - hnlmorg 5y ago

agumonkey 5y ago

covid gave us a lot of data, and things are not as obvious as imagined, many people said they just couldn't operate at home, but it seems the majority was utterly happy

Zelphyr 5y ago

When interviewing with a company who demands commuting say, "I value my time as I'm sure you do. I will commute if required but I charge a premium for my commuting time. My rate is $x/hr and since I will be commuting 2 hours a day, 5 days a week, an estimated 48 weeks (accounting for holidays, vacation, sick, etc...) a year then I request you increase my salary by $x * 2 * 5 * 48." I say that partially in jest because, of course, no employer is going to increase your salary by $48K simply because you value your commuting time at $100/hr (a reasonable rate if you're in tech). Still, I think it's a useful way to gain a perspective on just how valuable one's time really is to them.

j4yav 5y ago
I have proposed doing it during work hours and got a positive response.
Mauricebranagh 5y ago
Why not in the UK jobs in London factor in the extra required for commute and housing costs. I reckoned that it would be £10k post tax just for the additional cost of commute (65 miles)
- nly 5y ago
  Rail too. You can easily spend £3-5K/yr on a season ticket + another £2k/yr for tube travel, so once you factor back in tax you could easily be talking £10-15k of salary

apocalyptic0n3 5y ago

Personally, I'm looking forward to going back to the office. I am an extremely introverted person and during the pandemic, I've gone upwards of 5 months without saying another word to a person face-to-face. I personally prefer that and don't feel lonely or anything; I just don't need social interaction in my day-to-day life. But I know that in the long term, it's going to have negative consequences for me in terms of networking and just friendships in general. These are basic things that you need that I am completely incapable of achieving without it being forced upon me in an office environment. Yes, I hate driving. But I'll move closer to the office (which we're relocating to a much further location currently) and I'll get it to <20 minutes each way, which is acceptable. Just because you can't find arguments for it in your life doesn't mean others can't. I need that environment and if my job went remote-only, I'd quit without any hesitation just as employees are quitting after being asked to return to the office. We shouldn't go from one extreme (everyone has to be in an office) to the other (there is no office at all). We need to accept hybrid solutions where an office exists and maybe you're expected to be there once every week or two or something. We need to accept that some people work better remote and others work better in an office. We're trying to build the most efficient working environment for the team in general, not just one or two people one way or the other.

antonzabirko 5y ago
What sort of work do you do? Why don't they have any online meetings?
- apocalyptic0n3 5y ago
  I'm a software engineer like 90% of HN. I have plenty of online meetings (I'm actually on a team call right now listening to someone discuss a solution to a problem). It doesn't fill the needs, though. Without the in-person and more frequent interaction, I can feel my social skills slipping even further. And I rarely interact with non-developers and non-managers now. It's not ideal for me. It 100% does not work and I need to go back to an office. I fear if I don't, my already-limited social abilities will zero out and I'll have to rebuild them. I now know I can go months without speaking to anyone and be okay with it; that itself is a problem in my mind that I need to address and an office environment fulfills those needs.

nly 5y ago

I consider my commute time part of work and deduct it from my contracted hours (8 to 6).

bluefirebrand 5y ago
That doesn't fly with most employers I've worked for.