5 ms·

I'd come to the office on a daily basis if companies began subsidizing my commute. I used to spend nearly 2 hours every day sitting in traffic, uncompensated, t

I'd come to the office on a daily basis if companies began subsidizing my commute. I used to spend nearly 2 hours every day sitting in traffic, uncompensated, to get to/from the office. That's a _very_ large % of my life doing absolutely nothing of value to anyone, pumping emissions into the air.

decafninja 5y ago
This, though it's public transit for me. Absolute waste of 2-3+ hours every day commuting to and from Manhattan. Multiply that by the number of my fellow Manhattan commuters* and that is a gargantuan waste of collective time for everybody. * (I've observed the vast majority of people that work in Manhattan do not live in Manhattan)
- Larrikin 5y ago
  Are the passes not atleast tax subsidized? One of the perks I miss from the office was the commuter pass. In Tokyo it was provided from the company, you said what your home station was and where your work was, bought the pass at the station, and were reimbursed. Every single station in between was essentially free to go to and you got the discounted rates to other stations. It was pretty great when I worked in a Roppongi office my last year for going out on the weekends. In Chicago it's a benefit of being able to pay before taxes so there's a slight discount, not as great but the passes here open up the entire system. When you're commuting it makes no sense to not to have the pass, so all your errands and weekend travel is covered.
  - decafninja 5y ago
    Yup, the passes are tax subsidized. The subsidy doesn't make up for the sheer amount of misery those commuting hours cause though. I would gladly offer to work 4 additional hours per day if it meant I could avoid the commute.
davidgerard 5y ago
In the UK. My company's dropped a lot of our office space, because we have no use for it any more - we've done very well in 2020 and 2021 full-remote. But meetings have their place, and some teams do better in the office, that's fine. So we renovated the space as largely for meetings of various sizes. So when techies were called into our shiny new meetings-office (which is very nice, actually - happy to come in ... maybe every couple of months), they were immediately asking "so commute time is work time, right?" and "who's paying for my train ticket?" The UK has absolutely proven that work from home is just fine and companies can still do super-well. The big push over here for going back to the office is not from the companies - it's from commercial landlords, putting puff pieces in the newspapers. The actual companies can do arithmetic just fine, and realise that offices on the scale they were are just a losing proposition.
- decafninja 5y ago
  I don't think the UK is really any special - for better or for worse, in this regard. It's probably company or even industry specific regardless of country. My old company (bank) has a huge UK presence. They are adamantly anti-WFH whether you're in the US or UK or Asia, etc. My understanding is most banks and other financial services companies are likewise, and aren't a large number of UK SWEs working in finance?
  - bennyelv 5y ago
    I don’t think you can generalise like that. My experience in financial services from 2005-2013 (ish) was that in tech they were very progressive in terms of flexible working, remote first etc.
  - davidgerard 5y ago
    There isn't the same sort of office puff pieces in the UK press that the NYT has been running incessantly - mostly they're the sort of article that you read and think "did a commercial rental building write this". I'd be interested in how those banks are actually handling 2020-2021 here in practice, however anti-WFH they were previously.
codegeek 5y ago
Depends on when you got the job. If you took the job knowing the 2 hour commute, it is more on you and the company has no obligation to subsidize. If you took the job when commute was reasonable but they changed their office and commute time went up, then it is on the employer to make some adjustments for you.
- loco5niner 5y ago
  > If you took the job when commute was reasonable but they changed their office and commute time went up, then it is on the employer to make some adjustments for you. This is what happened to me, no adjustments.
cpursley 5y ago
I've told companies in the past when job hunting that I'll drive into the office, but it will be an extra $20k per year in salary. And thats probably not enough.

decafninja 5y ago

This, though it's public transit for me. Absolute waste of 2-3+ hours every day commuting to and from Manhattan. Multiply that by the number of my fellow Manhattan commuters* and that is a gargantuan waste of collective time for everybody. * (I've observed the vast majority of people that work in Manhattan do not live in Manhattan)

Larrikin 5y ago
Are the passes not atleast tax subsidized? One of the perks I miss from the office was the commuter pass. In Tokyo it was provided from the company, you said what your home station was and where your work was, bought the pass at the station, and were reimbursed. Every single station in between was essentially free to go to and you got the discounted rates to other stations. It was pretty great when I worked in a Roppongi office my last year for going out on the weekends. In Chicago it's a benefit of being able to pay before taxes so there's a slight discount, not as great but the passes here open up the entire system. When you're commuting it makes no sense to not to have the pass, so all your errands and weekend travel is covered.
- decafninja 5y ago
  Yup, the passes are tax subsidized. The subsidy doesn't make up for the sheer amount of misery those commuting hours cause though. I would gladly offer to work 4 additional hours per day if it meant I could avoid the commute.

davidgerard 5y ago

In the UK. My company's dropped a lot of our office space, because we have no use for it any more - we've done very well in 2020 and 2021 full-remote. But meetings have their place, and some teams do better in the office, that's fine. So we renovated the space as largely for meetings of various sizes. So when techies were called into our shiny new meetings-office (which is very nice, actually - happy to come in ... maybe every couple of months), they were immediately asking "so commute time is work time, right?" and "who's paying for my train ticket?" The UK has absolutely proven that work from home is just fine and companies can still do super-well. The big push over here for going back to the office is not from the companies - it's from commercial landlords, putting puff pieces in the newspapers. The actual companies can do arithmetic just fine, and realise that offices on the scale they were are just a losing proposition.

decafninja 5y ago
I don't think the UK is really any special - for better or for worse, in this regard. It's probably company or even industry specific regardless of country. My old company (bank) has a huge UK presence. They are adamantly anti-WFH whether you're in the US or UK or Asia, etc. My understanding is most banks and other financial services companies are likewise, and aren't a large number of UK SWEs working in finance?
- bennyelv 5y ago
  I don’t think you can generalise like that. My experience in financial services from 2005-2013 (ish) was that in tech they were very progressive in terms of flexible working, remote first etc.
- davidgerard 5y ago
  There isn't the same sort of office puff pieces in the UK press that the NYT has been running incessantly - mostly they're the sort of article that you read and think "did a commercial rental building write this". I'd be interested in how those banks are actually handling 2020-2021 here in practice, however anti-WFH they were previously.

codegeek 5y ago

Depends on when you got the job. If you took the job knowing the 2 hour commute, it is more on you and the company has no obligation to subsidize. If you took the job when commute was reasonable but they changed their office and commute time went up, then it is on the employer to make some adjustments for you.

loco5niner 5y ago
> If you took the job when commute was reasonable but they changed their office and commute time went up, then it is on the employer to make some adjustments for you. This is what happened to me, no adjustments.

cpursley 5y ago

I've told companies in the past when job hunting that I'll drive into the office, but it will be an extra $20k per year in salary. And thats probably not enough.