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I'm a Supercommuter. Here's What It's Like
- sentientslug 3y agohttps://archive.is/5BnOs https://archive.is/5BnOs
- jmercouris 3y agoThis is some next level masochism. They should allow people to just work remote.
- cooper_ganglia 3y agoOr just get a job nearer where you live, even if it’s worse, lol. No amount of money any job would be willing to pay me could make regular hotel-hopping worth it.
- riscy 3y agoI guess some people figure that if pilots can do it, they can too.
- spacecadet 3y agoSo they(WSJ) forced him to write a piece defending their need for butts in seats? comes off inhuman. Cant think of a logical reason to allow this other then absurd laziness and apathy from the WSJ leadership.
- post-it 3y ago> Entering my supercommuter era, I had visions of flying to New York on a weekday morning (8,500 points one way on American Airlines), spending the day meeting sources and filing stories Not everyone can or will meet with you on a Zoom call. Often, journalists need to go to their sources.
- spacecadet 3y agoThats not what this about. Go play with your blocks now.
- post-it 3y agoNot sure why you'd say that, bud. Hope the rest of your day is better.
- spacecadet 3y agoToo spicy for you? Im fine. Get mad more, lots to be mad at and fight for.
- SomeoneFromCA 3y agoI misread the title as "I'm a Supercomputer".
- trevoragilbert 3y agoI read “supercomputer” and was ready to hear the inner monologue of a machine. Didn’t get that but also wasn’t disappointed!
- smnrchrds 3y agoThat would be 10001000 10101000 on repeat.
- andy99 3y agoI just skimmed it, I'd say what makes this atypical is he's trying to do it on a budget. A "normal" supercommuter would be working as a consultant or something and have travel baked in to their pay, so they would not have to skimp in the same way. It's actually (unsurprisingly) pretty easy to commute if you don't worry about your budget. Buy a flight pass, find a regular hotel, and expense your meals. Maybe some people also enjoy playing budget traveller, I think that would make it unbearable.
- yterdy 3y agoI don't see how you've come to the conclusion that what you've described is normal and not an outlier (though perhaps common in a particular elite field).
- quartz 3y agoIsn't it the standard for basically the entire consulting industry? No consulting firm I've ever heard of is flying their people around (or feeding them) on their own dime when they're assigned to a project.
- BobaFloutist 3y agoEspecially since the company has to pay for it one way or another, so they might as well have it as a line item in their budget so they can control and expect the costs instead of just building it into salary.
- yterdy 3y agoI'm saying that I'm not convinced that consultants are appropriately representative of supercommuting as a practice.
- skywhopper 3y agoLots of friends of mine have worked as consultants where they get sent to distant cities for weeks or months at a time. Their lodging, meals, and travel back home every weekend were covered by their employers. At least once for someone straight out of college, so nothing particularly "elite" about his skills.
- swader999 3y agoI did something similar, moved rural in 2014, two hour drive away from contract gigs in big city. Rather than rent and then have to break lease on next contract or commute a long ways, I just did the van life thing for weeknights and had zero commute aside to and from home once a week. Then pandemic and haven't been back since with all the remote jobs.
- mettamage 3y agoThe issue I have with van life is cops knocking on my van. Any tips for that?
- swader999 3y agoDon't park residential. I haven't done it much since 2018 though. I assume there's a lot more awareness than a few years ago.
- yterdy 3y agoWhen I was briefly homeless and living out of my car, I didn't have any trouble parking at a highway rest stop for the night (where all the truckers did the same thing).
- Toutouxc 3y agoSome call it "supercommuter", some may call it "carbon tax can't come soon enough".
- Xcelerate 3y agoWell then be consistent and apply the carbon tax to all forms of powered transportation, not just air travel, so that way we can reverse the unnecessary RTO for jobs that don’t really need it.
- quickthrower2 3y agoDon't worry... this year fuel is gonna get expensive.
- skywhopper 3y agoSounds like a miserable life but he also seems like the kind of person who gets off on it. I do feel sorry for his family, though. I agree it's ridiculous for the WSJ to force folks to work from the office if it's not actually a requirement 5 days a week. I also wonder if they're properly accounting for state income taxes from this setup (he should owe state income tax to the state he's working from on any particular day). His boast about getting $2,000 in cash for accepting the offers to put off your flight till later reminded me of the time my family went to Hawaii over Christmas. We were flying from Honolulu back to Chicago in early January and the flight was severely oversold. Unfortunately there was a huge snowstorm predicted for 18 hours later in Chicago, promising 18+ inches of snow. So no one was taking the offers. They eventually got down to offering to rebook you for a flight the next day in exchange for a suite at the Waikiki Hilton overnight, $2,000 in cash, and an upgrade to first class for the rebooked flight. I was so tempted to accept the offer, but we really wanted to beat the snowstorm (as did everyone else of course).
- netsharc 3y agoEverybody preferred to be in the snowstorm rather than Hawaii? As Obelix said, "These humans are crazy!"[1] Yes, I get it, work, etc, commitments... is Obelix any more wrong? [1] https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/295/458/1a9.jpg https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/295/458/1a9...
- FredPret 3y agoObelix hasn't been stuck away from home for days to a week waiting for a storm to blow over
- skywhopper 3y agoWe preferred to get home before the snowstorm rather than arriving at the airport just after it.
- sjfjsjdjwvwvc 3y agoStrange as hell. No job is worth this - I would rather cleaning toilets in some shithole than spend all my time commuting
- bobthepanda 3y agoParticularly if that commute required going through TSA, sitting in an economy seat. Even with pre-check it sounds unpleasant. I have heard stories of people supercommuting via train, which at least is not totally dead time and is more comfortable.
- sjfjsjdjwvwvc 3y agoI commuted once per month by train (meaning I took the train once per month to work in office for a week) and it was fine - most of the time wifi works and it’s reasonably comfortable. It’s kinda bad if wifi doesn’t work and the train is super full. Doing that twice every day would also be torture, spending 8 hours in the train daily. I can’t fathom what would a human compel to do this.
- quartz 3y agoI knew an eng manager who lived in a flight focused community (each house had parking for an airplane!) like this one [1] way outside of town. They'd fly in each morning for their commute. I always thought that sounded like it would provide maximum flexibility since there are so many tiny airfields in the US you'd be hard pressed to work somewhere too far from one. Seemed pretty incredible overall... at the time I remember looking it up and the cost working out to a bit cheaper than bay area housing all-in, but I didn't really know how to calculate the airplane costs accurately. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/cameron-airpark-estates-california-neighborhood-designed-for-pilots-2021-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/cameron-airpark-estates-cali...
- monkeywork 3y agolook up the wet hourly rental cost for the plane youd be considering and use that as a guideline. rental costs (wet) will include allowances for maintence and fuel variability and be "over" enough to cover additional costs that yiu may not be able to avoid if your not at scale.
- ryandrake 3y agoPeople who fly light airplanes for commuting are not doing it to save on housing cost (homes in Cameron Park go for pretty close to what homes are going for on the outskirts of the Bay Area, think Gilroy or Livermore). And they are not doing it to save on airfare or transportation costs. Your cost per mile from somewhere like that to the Bay Area is going to be much greater than a typical car commute from East Bay. Airplane ownership typically measures cost per hour, and includes very large annual inspection and maintenance costs. You also would need to be instrument rated and remain current if you're planning on commuting every day rain or shine. A pretty significant investment.
- quartz 3y agoYeah I don't think they were doing it to save money. I think they just loved planes and also kind of hated driving & traffic, which from a place like Gilroy to the south bay tech campuses back then would have been absolutely brutal.
- karaterobot 3y agoI don't understand why he wouldn't just live in OH, save money for a house, and in the mean time commute to NYC for, let's say, one week a month. This seems cheaper and more pleasant, and easier to plan, and less physically exhausting, and more obvious. Does his work as a journalist require him to be physically located at the company, but on an irregular schedule? I'm trying to figure out the series of requirements and constraints that make this behavior seem like the best choice. Interesting article, but just not enough details in it for me to understand it to my admittedly naive satisfaction.
- kelnos 3y agoHe addresses this: > The Wall Street Journal requires office attendance at least three days a week Looks like WSJ has another dumb RTO policy that makes life miserable for everyone, likely without actually any real benefit to the company.
- karaterobot 3y agoMissed that, thanks.
- jasonpeacock 3y agoThey aren't alone - here's a college student who also commute by commercial flights to avoid high local rents: https://onemileatatime.com/news/college-student-flies-classes/ https://onemileatatime.com/news/college-student-flies-classe...
- philomath_mn 3y agoWhat a nightmare. This guy needs to get a remote job or at least move to someplace like Stamford
- ElevenLathe 3y ago"I'm a Supercommuter. Here's What It's Like" or "I'm Slowly Going Broke So I Can Live In An Apartment In Columbus, Ohio"
- kelnos 3y agoMore like "I'm slowly going broke because my employer has a crappy RTO policy and I don't want to get a different job".
- crims0n 3y agoI do this... work in NC, commute to DC each week. Grab a hotel a couple nights and drive back. I was a remote worker pre-pandemic then my company recently mandated RTO with no exceptions. Sucks but not going to find a higher paying job locally so I deal with it for now.
- mise_en_place 3y agoI had a family member do a similar commute, iirc it was from the Bay Area to NM. Luckily the real estate was a lot cheaper in NM, so he was able to lock down a month-to-month very cheaply there. He would live and commute near work in NM, then return home to his wife on the weekends. I'd imagine it was stressful in multiple ways.
- schappim 3y agoPfft Ohio to New York, that is playing on easy mode! After selling a business, I did this for a while between Sydney, Australia and Boulder Co. I did this craziness because we had a toddler, and newborn. The key to making this work was to just stay on Mountain Time when getting back to Sydney. Whilst it is an easy way to get airline status, I do not recommend it.
- jimt1234 3y agoYears ago I worked with a guy that was a flight attendant and a systems engineer. He lived in Phoenix, Arizona, woke up early every morning, worked the same flight to San Diego, California, then took a taxi (this was before Uber) from the airport to the office, worked his engineering job (government contract work; the hours were very predictable), then took a taxi back to the airport and worked a flight home to Phoenix. He said his day was usually about 12 hours, which isn't too bad. I always respected that way of 'supercommuting'.
- kelnos 3y ago> The Wall Street Journal requires office attendance at least three days a week This is the problem. WSJ needs to stop being dicks about this. What a waste of the author's money, time, and carbon footprint.