5 ms·

The two fronts of people shouting "Working at home" vs "I want the office" can be almost always summed up by how long the commute is: * Working at home: commut

by fosk 5y ago

The two fronts of people shouting "Working at home" vs "I want the office" can be almost always summed up by how long the commute is: * Working at home: commute longer than 30-45 minutes. * Working at office: commute shorter than 30-45 minutes. Like everything in life, people optimize for different things in life. Optimizing for a short commute is a choice that people can make if they want, likewise optimizing for a bigger home 60 minutes away. I still have to hear somebody who lives at a short walk to the office, wanting to work from home, because it really wouldn't make any sense at all. Remove the commute from the equation, and the office is superior in any possible way: socially, economically, mentally. Now if they were to move 60 minutes away, I would understand why they would want to work from home. It's all a function of commute, which in and by itself is a choice in our highly paid industry.

lostdog 5y ago
> Optimizing for a short commute is a choice that people can make if they want It's a choice until your office moves or your job changes (and you had to balance other priorities). Mostly I agree with you though--if getting to the office is painless, then working from the office is great--except if you need to concentrate on your work. Any task that needs focus will take 2-3x as long to accomplish in an open office.
WFHRenaissance 5y ago
I'll be the token "15 minute commuter who doesn't want to go back" person (20 minute walk, 15 minute train). It's not all a function of commute. AMA
- wccrawford 5y ago
  That's a 35 minute commute. All the travel time is included, not just the mechanized portion.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - WFHRenaissance 5y ago
    To clarify; 20 minute walk, or 5 minutes of waiting for a 10 minute train ride (we don't have reliable signaling in my city, so hard to get to the train JIT).
danaris 5y ago
You could just as easily say that the split is * Working at home: no kids * Working at office: kids or * Working at home: introvert * Working at office: extravert There are a lot of reasons to prefer one over the other, and dismissing it as being "obviously" based on one specific factor is unhelpful, and likely to leave you with a skewed view of the situation. Personally, I live 5 minutes' drive (or 25 minutes' walk) from my office (and on the other two divides, no kids, and distinctly introverted). I love working at home, because it means I get to eat lunch with my family every day, pet my cats when they come over to see me, and take care of random household chores that it's often a bit too much to always cram into the weekend. But I also love that I can go into the office easily any time it's helpful to do so—and I'm expecting to be walking to work again at least a day or two a week this fall. But while I'm unquestionably part of the tech world, with my everyday work being basically a full stack developer, I'm not "in your highly paid industry", and I think it's a lazy and self-centered shortcut to think of everyone who works in tech—or, worse, everyone who has a choice between working from home or working from the office—as being part of Silicon Valley culture or among the small fraction of Americans lucky enough to be making six figures. Look outside the techbro culture, look outside the cities, look outside the high-income bubble you're clearly stuck in, and you'll see a lot of people whose life experience and reasons for doing things look very different than what you're used to and expecting.
jfrunyon 5y ago
> Optimizing for a short commute is a choice that people can make if they want Uh, no. I can't afford to pay twice the rent I do so that I can cut my commute in half.

by fosk 5y ago

lostdog 5y ago

> Optimizing for a short commute is a choice that people can make if they want It's a choice until your office moves or your job changes (and you had to balance other priorities). Mostly I agree with you though--if getting to the office is painless, then working from the office is great--except if you need to concentrate on your work. Any task that needs focus will take 2-3x as long to accomplish in an open office.

WFHRenaissance 5y ago

I'll be the token "15 minute commuter who doesn't want to go back" person (20 minute walk, 15 minute train). It's not all a function of commute. AMA

wccrawford 5y ago
That's a 35 minute commute. All the travel time is included, not just the mechanized portion.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- WFHRenaissance 5y ago
  To clarify; 20 minute walk, or 5 minutes of waiting for a 10 minute train ride (we don't have reliable signaling in my city, so hard to get to the train JIT).

danaris 5y ago

You could just as easily say that the split is * Working at home: no kids * Working at office: kids or * Working at home: introvert * Working at office: extravert There are a lot of reasons to prefer one over the other, and dismissing it as being "obviously" based on one specific factor is unhelpful, and likely to leave you with a skewed view of the situation. Personally, I live 5 minutes' drive (or 25 minutes' walk) from my office (and on the other two divides, no kids, and distinctly introverted). I love working at home, because it means I get to eat lunch with my family every day, pet my cats when they come over to see me, and take care of random household chores that it's often a bit too much to always cram into the weekend. But I also love that I can go into the office easily any time it's helpful to do so—and I'm expecting to be walking to work again at least a day or two a week this fall. But while I'm unquestionably part of the tech world, with my everyday work being basically a full stack developer, I'm not "in your highly paid industry", and I think it's a lazy and self-centered shortcut to think of everyone who works in tech—or, worse, everyone who has a choice between working from home or working from the office—as being part of Silicon Valley culture or among the small fraction of Americans lucky enough to be making six figures. Look outside the techbro culture, look outside the cities, look outside the high-income bubble you're clearly stuck in, and you'll see a lot of people whose life experience and reasons for doing things look very different than what you're used to and expecting.

jfrunyon 5y ago

> Optimizing for a short commute is a choice that people can make if they want Uh, no. I can't afford to pay twice the rent I do so that I can cut my commute in half.