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I never understood why someone would live over an hour away from where they work. There's been numerous studies showing the number one cause of unhappiness/diss
by Vadoff 5y ago
I never understood why someone would live over an hour away from where they work. There's been numerous studies showing the number one cause of unhappiness/dissatisfaction at work is commute time, especially when it reaches over 40 minutes one way.
If you live in San Jose, getting to Apple would only be 15-20 minutes.
I once had a coworker who lived an hour and 40 minutes away, literally wasting almost 3.5 hours of their day.
- GuardianCaveman 5y agoWhy would people sacrifice time for a better home for their family? I guess love for their family?
- jeromegv 5y agoExcept they get less time with their family. And seeing the average size of a suburban home, is that amount of space needed to love your family or is that an ideal we feel we must have?
- prepend 5y agoThis isn’t a complicated scenario to research. My own story is pretty basic. I don’t work for Apple, but the housing near my org is very expensive. Schools aren’t very good. To find the first public schools and safe neighborhood combo, that was 45 minute commute. That was years ago and jobs changed but family is still in same house.
- Cyph0n 5y agoTwo common reasons: 1. Buying a house 2. Renting a better place
- spoonjim 5y agoIn the Bay Area houses are extremely hard to transact and jobs are very easy to change. You can’t keep moving around with your job.
- RangerScience 5y ago> I never understood why someone would live over an hour away from where they work. Lack of housing / housing affordable at your price point (even if it's high). I don't know the peninsula, but I doubt that 15 minute drive is a 15 minute commute, due to rush hour.
- danielsju6 5y agoIn no way would it take them 15-20 minutes to get to the office. Unless you worked off rush hour. I lived in Sunnyvale for a while. Hour of sitting in bumper to bumper traffic just to get to/from Mountain View on a shuttle.
- sneak 5y agoLiving down in SV is boring as hell for all the time you're not at work, and it's hard to get paid as much up in SF if you don't want the instability of startup life.
- geodel 5y agoWow, so you mean change home just like that to live near office. I am not at Apple or even in bay area etc and at a distance of just 9 mile on a straight stretch of road. But from home/office it takes 45-60 min during peak hours. One possible thing I should do is to permanently rent a room in Drury Inn near office, especially since they have great corporate discount for us.
- truncate 5y agoMy impression is people who live far here are either: (1) Ones with family who want rent/buy cheap and they'd live in east bay or somewhere much further south (e.g. Gilroy, South San Jose). Its understandable being its expensive here. (2) Young (and/or single) 20/30 something people who either dislike living in suburban environment, or just find it "uncool", or just need better social life. They are actually spending more time in commute + spending more money in rent. I live in San Jose, pretty close to work, but am considering going into category 2 (will use the company shuttles). But if things were perfect, I'm fine with a nice spacious suburban house and save those 3 hours.
- dredmorbius 5y agoApple is in Cupertino, one of the most expensive housing markets in the U.S. Numerous of the competing cities are in the immediate vicinity. "Cheap" housing is at best across the Bay. Commutes from Santa Cruz (itself small and not cheap), the East Bay, or Central Valley are not uncommon. Traffic is insane. Mean housing price is > $1,000,000. Median gross rent $3,335/mo. Population density is 5,418/mi^2 (compare SF at ~17,000, NYC at ~27k, and Guttenberg, NJ at ~57k/mi^2). California has had an utterly dysfunctional housing / work / transport policy for the past 50 years. Cupertino makes the state as a whole look sane. http://www.city-data.com/city/Cupertino-California.html http://www.city-data.com/city/Cupertino-California.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_b...
- decodebytes 5y ago> I never understood why someone would live over an hour away from where they work property prices.
- closeparen 5y ago- It's thrifty: houses further away are cheaper. - It's good for the kids: suburban schools perform better. - It's a sacrifice: a family man is supposed to prioritize his own comfort last. - It's accessible: we don't look at bankers or tech workers and say how great it is that they're doing so much for the families. That's just classism and privilege at work. Maybe, if we're feeling charitable, natural-born talent. But we, too, could deliver a better life to our families by driving longer hours. We just don't have the stomach for it. So we respect those who do. Of course no one cares what it's doing to the environment. That really ought to factor in the moral calculus. But right now super-commuting is just about the most virtuous thing an American middle-class adult can do.
- brnt 5y ago> a family man is supposed to prioritize his own comfort last. A family woman isnt?
- missedthecue 5y agoOften yes, but in different ways. Parents make sacrifices all the time.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- brailsafe 5y agoThis all depends on whether or not the 2 hours you're losing everyday with your hypothetical kids is sufficiently nullified by the (marginal)savings. Your kid's grade school academic performance is more important than effectively a full extra work week worth of availability for the family? Doesn't sound so virtuous.
- watwut 5y agoBut father/husband travelling that much have negative consequences for both wife and kids. If they live where worker travells over 2 hours a day and he does it, she cant work. And they dont spend time together either.
- dheera 5y ago> I never understood why someone would live over an hour away from where they work. A lot of people are married to someone who works in another part of the bay area. A lot of people buy houses and change jobs later. And then there are safety issues. I don't feel safe in San Jose.
- creamytaco 5y agoWhy don't you feel safe in SJ?
- dheera 5y agoUh, random dudes smelling like drugs yelling at me on the street? Some of them looking like they have mental issues? And then some yelling direct racial slurs at me? Homeless tents everywhere? Reports of assaults every few days?
- erik_seaberg 5y agoI’ve worked a year in downtown Palo Alto, five years in San Francisco, three years in Mountain View, a year in Walnut Creek (their branch office in San Francisco didn’t pan out), and four years in Palo Alto down by Los Altos. Each of these was at least twenty miles away from the next. Even for renters willing to move continually, it’s pretty easy to get stuck with a bad commute until your lease is up.
- dvfjsdhgfv 5y agoPersonally I love my commute time. I split my journey into two parts: bike and subway train. In the train I relax and I do what I want, usually I learn something new. On the bike I enjoy the surroundings; often I try new routes and explore new places. In this way commuting becomes pure pleasure, and especially the way back home lets me relax and basically forget about work stress.
- digital_voodoo 5y agoWholeheartedly seconding this. I've been hating commuting with passion for my 15+ years of work, and WFH then back to the office made it worse. I once visited an apartment complex almost facing my workplace. Going from my bedroom to my office would be around 5 minutes. Money was the only issue, otherwise I'd have made the move.
- grouphoot 5y agoI lived in San Jose and worked in Cupertino. 15-20 minute drive only on a weekend, or middle of the day. The morning/evening commute time average was 45 mins.