10 ms·

I would add one major change that the work from home experiment has achieved - its made the opportunity cost of the work commute clear. This is a time cost paid

I would add one major change that the work from home experiment has achieved - its made the opportunity cost of the work commute clear. This is a time cost paid for by the worker. As you stated, this is variable. If you have a short commute, or you like it, or you get some exercise - office is great. If you hate your commute, if its 3 hours in pollution and traffic - not so much. Earlier the position was that WFH was not possible. Now we know it is, and I hazard that this change isn't factored in job postings. Considering what an hour of time means in this era, its not a trivial cost. This means an hour which could be spent just unwinding, studying, on hobbies, procrastinating, whatever. If you have any drive, or strong interests, thats time you would want to spend on something other than a commute.

KptMarchewa 3y ago
Exactly. For me, there's nothing better than 15 minute walking commute.
mlrtime 3y ago
I definitely agree here. For most of my career I was fortunate enough to not have a "real" commute. at most a 20 min walk to the office. The worse commute is when it was raining or snowing. The problem becomes now my home is tied to my work place. If the company moves or I change companies, I have move or stress at a new commute. I did move once during a job change, and it didn't last long. Another compounding issue is that I like to stay at companies for a long time, 10 years. This is frequently becoming difficult for a number of reasons not entirely in my control. I wonder if others are in the same situation.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- jen20 3y ago
  I wouldn’t call 2.5% of the day (including night) nothing. 20 minutes is way past the upper bound of a daily commute I would consider reasonable!
  - j45 3y ago
    If you take a 1 hour commute (30 min each way) It’s waking time, not sleeping time, which is out of a 16 hour waking day. 5 hours a week makes about 20 hours a month roughly, which is about half an extra work week to live that you miss out on. Multiply that 30 minute commute each way by 12 months and it’s close to 260 hours a year. 160 hours a month of work so you get back about 1.6 working months to put into something else. I had a few minute commute for 10 years. It was an unfair advantage.
  - tomoyoirl 3y ago
    I wouldn’t call it nothing either. I’d call it “actually getting a decent amount of exercise,” something many struggle with.
    - jen20 3y ago
      That sounds like a self-discipline problem.
      - lumb63 3y ago
        What’s wrong with incorporating exercise into one’s lifestyle, without dedicated exercise time? It’s convenient and sustainable. Sure, it’s not as good as dedicated exercise time in terms of the adaptations one would get, but it’s much better than the adaptations they’d get on their couch.
        jen20 3y ago
        Nothing is wrong with that - it's the issue of attempting to impose it on others which is objectionable.
        justneedaname 3y ago
        point me to where they tried to "impose" this on others...
      - 3y ago
- wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
  I cant find a company that doesnt implode in less than a year. Edit: Subcontractor at bp. Opec crunch. entire floor fired. Hardware startup, unexpected giant bill overnight. Layoffs. Fullstack webshop, sales didnt land. Crypto finance gig, asset prices crashed, clients all went broke instantly. Sometimes thats just how it is.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
raxxorraxor 3y ago
I absolutely let my employer pay for my commute. Indirectly of course, but my income requirements are dependent on how much hours I have to put into work, which includes my overall time investment. Same with all other costs I have because of work. That said, time is important to me and I have a 5min commute, 20min if I walk. For that reason I do prefer the office. Better meals and better coffee and nice colleagues. If employers want to force people into offices, maybe pay them a bonus.
- bob88jg 3y ago
  It's not the financial cost of the time that's important it's the time itself - it's the requirement to completely go against my internal body clock to be at a location by a socially determined starting time - I start working at 10am usually - from home that means I can get up at 8.30 perhaps- to be in an office that means 6.30 am - I don't want to wake up at that time...
  - FireBeyond 3y ago
    Disclaimer: not saying regular exercise isn't important... There is a meme, or some "motivational" thing that floats around. "Exercise for an hour a day. It's less than 5% of your day - what's your excuse?" Uhh... because, if I factor in: - 8 hours for sleeping - 8 hours for working - 1.5-2 hours for commuting - 0.5-1 hour to get ready for work - 1 hour to prepare and eat dinner All of a sudden we are at 19-20 hours, and it's not less than 5% of my day, it's actually 25% of my day.
- jen20 3y ago
  Better coffee is definitely situational, especially if your employer buys over roasted beans.
  - raxxorraxor 3y ago
    I have good coffee at home but my boss is a fanatical addict that considers bad coffee a mortal sin.
vidarh 3y ago
During my last job change I gave concrete numbers to recruiters on what getting me into an office would cost. In the end I ended up working remote, which is what I preferred, which wasn't surprising given how much the commuting time was worth to me.
- hospitalJail 3y ago
  For me it was: >Company A is 2.5 hours of drive time >Company B is remote Pay is the same. lol I imagine that Company A will find some sucker, but instead of getting A+ workers that can realize company B> company A, they are going to get the leftover workers, their second choice. To be fair, leftover workers seem to stick around at a company for 10-20 years.
  - miroljub 3y ago
    Why call people suckers? Maybe they don't mind commuting? Maybe their commute is only 15 minutes, and not 2.5 hours? > To be fair, leftover workers seem to stick around at a company for 10-20 years. Even if they were "leftovers", their value to the company they know in and out after 10 to 20 years and their productivity skyrockets compared to the A+ rock stars that left the company after one year.
    - oneplane 3y ago
      I think they would be referred to as 'suckers' because they are spending time for their employer for which they are not compensated in that scenario (two options, both pay the same, but one requires you to sacrifice significant portions of your day for no compensation).
      - pigbearpig 3y ago
        Bill might like a long commute as much as Gladys likes to work from home. Hard to call Bill a sucker in that case.
        3y ago
bargle0 3y ago
IMO, an hour spent commuting is an hour stolen from one’s children.
- brvsft 3y ago
  I am starting to use coworking spaces now because WFH has something of a toll on my family, primarily because kids are loud, and it can be frustrating to work while your loud kid is screaming in the next room without enough of a sound barrier to prevent you from hearing it. I'm not angry at my child, but sometimes I get upset with my wife for not preventing this, or for telling me it's not that loud when it is impossible to escape the noise. (And when they're not being loud, they're being cute, and it's a tempting and easy distraction to go spend some time with them in the middle of a work day.) In this sort of dynamic, I see working at an office as a fairly healthy option. I know it's a bit of an outlier (SAH mother + WFH father), but I'm definitely more productive and less stressed out working from an office.
  - 2024throwaway 3y ago
    Noise cancelling head phones and some soft music cuts out any kid noise completely for me.
  - davely 3y ago
    I agree with this to an extent. Our kiddos are old enough to be in school. But if someone is home sick, I have to take the day off because it’s hard to get anything done. A reply to you mentioned noise-canceling headphones. That doesn’t work for me, because the kids want to engage and play with the parents when they’re at home. It’s not just a matter of noise. That said! I still agree with OP’s sentiment. I find that I’m much more relaxed without having to worry about the commute. More time to help the kids get ready and just enjoy the moment. More time to walk them to school. Before, I would be a ball of stress trying to get people out the door in the morning so I could catch one of only two buses that could take me across the bay to work. Same thing in the evenings. More time to pick them up, walk home, take serendipitous side adventures and help foster their curiosity. I love it.
PhoenixReborn 3y ago
Not just time cost, but also monetary cost. At least in tech, most jobs exist in a small set of metro areas where housing prices are incredibly high. Pushing for more remote work enables more flexibility in where people live / can ease some of the housing pressure on these congested metros.
- coffeebeqn 3y ago
  And the housing in those cities scales terribly when you have kids. What might’ve been doable with 1 or 2 people traps you into very high rent or mortgage (+ even worse commute) to have room for a family. I moved out of the west coast - which I really liked as a place - to be closer to family and to pay 1/3 to 1/2 for the housing
- scaryclam 3y ago
  This is one of the reasons I've stayed remote, in spite of being OK in an office environment (and sometimes preferring it). I'm moving out to a town 3 hours away, which is not really commutable into London. It's a better quality of life, and the housing options are much better. Selfishly, I don't much care about the housing pressure in London, but I do care about whether I can spend my downtime going places and doing things I enjoy, and remote working makes that MUCH easier.
bdw5204 3y ago
The solution to that problem is to count the travel time and any required breaks as part of work hours while also reimbursing all travel expenses. That would require employers to pay the full cost of unnecessary in-person work on both ends and would strongly disincentivize them from doing it. Employers reimbursing your travel expenses if they need you to travel to a conference on the other side of the country is already the norm so why shouldn't they reimburse your travel expenses if they want you to travel somewhere in the same geographic area?
- julianozen 3y ago
  I would argue this is implicitly paid in salary differences
- justneedaname 3y ago
  Not quite comparable though I would say, given that you know what you're signing up for when applying for a job. Travelling to a conference is a one-off whereas you'd be expecting to come to your job everyday (given the contract states this). You wouldn't accept a job in another country and turn round expecting them to pay for your flights, hotel etc. to be in the area during the work week
  - ralmidani 3y ago
    Aside from being compensated directly for daily commutes (on which we could reasonably disagree), there’s also an issue around liability: if someone crashes going to work and the other side wants to sue, should the company be liable, the employee, or both? Being “on-the-clock” makes it more likely the company would bear responsibility, as opposed to being “off-the clock”. Company cars seem to be less common now than they were even 10 years ago. A personal injury lawsuit could easily bankrupt a household, but is much less likely to bankrupt a mid-sized or large company.
- ralmidani 3y ago
  It makes perfect sense to you, and me, but unfortunately, in America at least, the upper hand is very much with employers. I could be semi-OK with non-reimbursement for salaried workers if daily travel was factored in, but for those on hourly wages it’s immoral to have commuting expenses (time __and__ money) eat significantly into wages. We actually deal with this nonsense in our household; my wife is hourly and between the commute, parking, and walking to/from her workplace she loses about 20-25% compared to the time she actually gets paid for. We also spend a lot on gas, and have been putting ridiculous miles on her daily driver. Not to mention physical fatigue and emotional stress; she talks about quitting at least once a week. All for a mediocre wage (I would have said it’s garbage if she was our sole earner - my compensation is about double hers and I WFH). Edit: also, I remember company cars being a thing not too long ago. I don’t hear about them as much as I used to.
nine_k 3y ago
BTW this is where commute by public transport shines. My 30 minutes to the office are my dedicated reading time, an hour a day. If instead I had to drive, that would be lost time, because paying enough attention to the book distracts enough from driving to add unnecessary risk.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  Shines where it can, doesn't work in most of the US. Public transit use: https://vividmaps.com/public-transportation-in-the-united-states/ https://vividmaps.com/public-transportation-in-the-united-st... https://vividmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/public-transit-united-states-1024x631.jpg https://vividmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/public-tran... Population density: https://www.axios.com/2023/10/28/americans-moving-map-2022-florida-texas https://www.axios.com/2023/10/28/americans-moving-map-2022-f... https://www.axios.com/2023/01/31/cities-pandemic-moving-trends https://www.axios.com/2023/01/31/cities-pandemic-moving-tren... https://www.axios.com/2023/09/14/where-america-stands https://www.axios.com/2023/09/14/where-america-stands
  - rcbdev 3y ago
    Thankfully the US is a major outlier in this aspect globally.
    - RestlessMind 3y ago
      You need to get out of your bubble. After having traveled to more than 60 countries on all the continents (except Antarctica), I can assure you that a majority of humans do not have good reliable public transport. It is a luxury that only some parts of the world have. Just as an example, right now I am in an Indian city where there is some minimal public transport but a majority of people need their own vehicle to commute for most of their journeys. And it is not an unusual scenario for India, which contains more population than Europe and North America combined.
      - hwillis 3y ago
steveBK123 3y ago
I've generally had a 30-40min commute most of my career, but also generally had a flexible enough start time that exact to the minute arrival at my desk was not performance impacting. Unfortunately a lot of things conflate over time as you become more senior to generally make your commute worse. For me - my last 2 roles have earlier required start time, with a hard start (morning meeting / standup / L3 support presence), company office locations got a little further, and trains got a little less reliable. Fortunately I am remote since COVID, but when I was going in / or have to go in now.. I need to bake in 45-60min depending on how much I'm willing to risk being late that day. For me I'd rather work 11-12 hours/day at home then go into office for 10 hours & spend 1.5-2 hours on the commute. Company is getting 10-20% more time out of me, and I at least save the money & "commute prep time".
- lacrimacida 3y ago
  > For me I'd rather work 11-12 hours/day at home then go into office How sustainable is to work 11-12 hours a day though? If we do 5 hours of intense work and the rest is spent in meetings or other overhead activities make 8 hours just enough to make it sustainable over long periods of time…
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    Let's put it this way. I'm expected to be readily accessible for 9-10 hours/day, and reachable for some hours outside of that. I have some operational responsibilities in the morning, maybe 1~3 hours of meetings and fully understood we get in far less than 5 hours of intense work. People are generally cool with me being totally away from desk for lunch. How I spend the time in between in terms of doing research/reading/etc is up to me. If I had to do this in an office setting it would suck to be stuck there when stuff does come up.
    - phillc73 3y ago
      > I'm expected to be readily accessible for 9-10 hours/day Why? Are you contracted for 45-50 hours per week? Or if contracted less, are you compensated for the additional hours? I'm contracted for 38.5 hours per week. That's 8.125 hours Monday to Thursday and 6.00 on Friday. If I work longer than this I am compensated with time off in lieu. I do have to log my time daily. Overall works great. I'm fairly paid and have a good lifestyle. I actually find it hard to imagine working 9-10 hours every day for any extended time period.
Spooky23 3y ago
It’s really more than that. I live in the city, my office is 7 minutes away most mornings. The transition time of arrival and departure is easily 30-45m daily, on my employers dime. I do 50% and it works for me. End of the day most of the problems associated with this issue are workplace and cultural issues that come to a head with remote/hybrid. The only novel dysfunctions with employees that I see (and I’m an exec with about 900) are people doing things like secretly moving away and abusing medical accommodation. There’s also an issue where people build their life around remote and are disappointed when they miss opportunities, but are unwilling to meet in the middle. End of the day. The lazy idiots are just as lazy, grinders grind, and smart people continue to be smart.
teaearlgraycold 3y ago
I just commute during work hours. My boss is fine with this and I'm in the office around 6.5 hours per day.
- intended 3y ago
  Which is perfect. If that time is counted as part of work, thats a good deal. That is ideally what it should change to.
  - malermeister 3y ago
    It still sucks. I want to be solving interesting problems during my work hours, not deal with traffic.
    - teaearlgraycold 3y ago
      Thankfully I take the train/bike (and I love biking quickly up the SF hills, absolutely smoking people using electric motors).
FalconSensei 3y ago
Not only the commute, but also lunch breaks. In US and Canada, lunch breaks are short, but back in Brazil I had a 1:30h lunch break, and then at another job, 1:12. But I'm at the office, can't go to bed, I'm at the company's computer so can't do anything I want, also it's in the office, so if watching some TV show or anime that has more graphic content, that might also be a no. So basically, waste of time.
j33zusjuice 3y ago
I get calls for jobs that would increase my TC by 100k, jobs I’m confident I could land, and I won’t interview for any of them. That’s how much WFH means to me.

KptMarchewa 3y ago

Exactly. For me, there's nothing better than 15 minute walking commute.

mlrtime 3y ago

I definitely agree here. For most of my career I was fortunate enough to not have a "real" commute. at most a 20 min walk to the office. The worse commute is when it was raining or snowing. The problem becomes now my home is tied to my work place. If the company moves or I change companies, I have move or stress at a new commute. I did move once during a job change, and it didn't last long. Another compounding issue is that I like to stay at companies for a long time, 10 years. This is frequently becoming difficult for a number of reasons not entirely in my control. I wonder if others are in the same situation.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
jen20 3y ago
I wouldn’t call 2.5% of the day (including night) nothing. 20 minutes is way past the upper bound of a daily commute I would consider reasonable!
- j45 3y ago
  If you take a 1 hour commute (30 min each way) It’s waking time, not sleeping time, which is out of a 16 hour waking day. 5 hours a week makes about 20 hours a month roughly, which is about half an extra work week to live that you miss out on. Multiply that 30 minute commute each way by 12 months and it’s close to 260 hours a year. 160 hours a month of work so you get back about 1.6 working months to put into something else. I had a few minute commute for 10 years. It was an unfair advantage.
- tomoyoirl 3y ago
  I wouldn’t call it nothing either. I’d call it “actually getting a decent amount of exercise,” something many struggle with.
  - jen20 3y ago
    That sounds like a self-discipline problem.
    - lumb63 3y ago
      What’s wrong with incorporating exercise into one’s lifestyle, without dedicated exercise time? It’s convenient and sustainable. Sure, it’s not as good as dedicated exercise time in terms of the adaptations one would get, but it’s much better than the adaptations they’d get on their couch.
      - jen20 3y ago
        Nothing is wrong with that - it's the issue of attempting to impose it on others which is objectionable.
        justneedaname 3y ago
        point me to where they tried to "impose" this on others...
    - 3y ago
wegfawefgawefg 3y ago
I cant find a company that doesnt implode in less than a year. Edit: Subcontractor at bp. Opec crunch. entire floor fired. Hardware startup, unexpected giant bill overnight. Layoffs. Fullstack webshop, sales didnt land. Crypto finance gig, asset prices crashed, clients all went broke instantly. Sometimes thats just how it is.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

raxxorraxor 3y ago

I absolutely let my employer pay for my commute. Indirectly of course, but my income requirements are dependent on how much hours I have to put into work, which includes my overall time investment. Same with all other costs I have because of work. That said, time is important to me and I have a 5min commute, 20min if I walk. For that reason I do prefer the office. Better meals and better coffee and nice colleagues. If employers want to force people into offices, maybe pay them a bonus.

bob88jg 3y ago
It's not the financial cost of the time that's important it's the time itself - it's the requirement to completely go against my internal body clock to be at a location by a socially determined starting time - I start working at 10am usually - from home that means I can get up at 8.30 perhaps- to be in an office that means 6.30 am - I don't want to wake up at that time...
- FireBeyond 3y ago
  Disclaimer: not saying regular exercise isn't important... There is a meme, or some "motivational" thing that floats around. "Exercise for an hour a day. It's less than 5% of your day - what's your excuse?" Uhh... because, if I factor in: - 8 hours for sleeping - 8 hours for working - 1.5-2 hours for commuting - 0.5-1 hour to get ready for work - 1 hour to prepare and eat dinner All of a sudden we are at 19-20 hours, and it's not less than 5% of my day, it's actually 25% of my day.
jen20 3y ago
Better coffee is definitely situational, especially if your employer buys over roasted beans.
- raxxorraxor 3y ago
  I have good coffee at home but my boss is a fanatical addict that considers bad coffee a mortal sin.

vidarh 3y ago

During my last job change I gave concrete numbers to recruiters on what getting me into an office would cost. In the end I ended up working remote, which is what I preferred, which wasn't surprising given how much the commuting time was worth to me.

hospitalJail 3y ago
For me it was: >Company A is 2.5 hours of drive time >Company B is remote Pay is the same. lol I imagine that Company A will find some sucker, but instead of getting A+ workers that can realize company B> company A, they are going to get the leftover workers, their second choice. To be fair, leftover workers seem to stick around at a company for 10-20 years.
- miroljub 3y ago
  Why call people suckers? Maybe they don't mind commuting? Maybe their commute is only 15 minutes, and not 2.5 hours? > To be fair, leftover workers seem to stick around at a company for 10-20 years. Even if they were "leftovers", their value to the company they know in and out after 10 to 20 years and their productivity skyrockets compared to the A+ rock stars that left the company after one year.
  - oneplane 3y ago
    I think they would be referred to as 'suckers' because they are spending time for their employer for which they are not compensated in that scenario (two options, both pay the same, but one requires you to sacrifice significant portions of your day for no compensation).
    - pigbearpig 3y ago
      Bill might like a long commute as much as Gladys likes to work from home. Hard to call Bill a sucker in that case.
      - 3y ago

bargle0 3y ago

IMO, an hour spent commuting is an hour stolen from one’s children.

brvsft 3y ago
I am starting to use coworking spaces now because WFH has something of a toll on my family, primarily because kids are loud, and it can be frustrating to work while your loud kid is screaming in the next room without enough of a sound barrier to prevent you from hearing it. I'm not angry at my child, but sometimes I get upset with my wife for not preventing this, or for telling me it's not that loud when it is impossible to escape the noise. (And when they're not being loud, they're being cute, and it's a tempting and easy distraction to go spend some time with them in the middle of a work day.) In this sort of dynamic, I see working at an office as a fairly healthy option. I know it's a bit of an outlier (SAH mother + WFH father), but I'm definitely more productive and less stressed out working from an office.
- 2024throwaway 3y ago
  Noise cancelling head phones and some soft music cuts out any kid noise completely for me.
- davely 3y ago
  I agree with this to an extent. Our kiddos are old enough to be in school. But if someone is home sick, I have to take the day off because it’s hard to get anything done. A reply to you mentioned noise-canceling headphones. That doesn’t work for me, because the kids want to engage and play with the parents when they’re at home. It’s not just a matter of noise. That said! I still agree with OP’s sentiment. I find that I’m much more relaxed without having to worry about the commute. More time to help the kids get ready and just enjoy the moment. More time to walk them to school. Before, I would be a ball of stress trying to get people out the door in the morning so I could catch one of only two buses that could take me across the bay to work. Same thing in the evenings. More time to pick them up, walk home, take serendipitous side adventures and help foster their curiosity. I love it.

PhoenixReborn 3y ago

Not just time cost, but also monetary cost. At least in tech, most jobs exist in a small set of metro areas where housing prices are incredibly high. Pushing for more remote work enables more flexibility in where people live / can ease some of the housing pressure on these congested metros.

coffeebeqn 3y ago
And the housing in those cities scales terribly when you have kids. What might’ve been doable with 1 or 2 people traps you into very high rent or mortgage (+ even worse commute) to have room for a family. I moved out of the west coast - which I really liked as a place - to be closer to family and to pay 1/3 to 1/2 for the housing
scaryclam 3y ago
This is one of the reasons I've stayed remote, in spite of being OK in an office environment (and sometimes preferring it). I'm moving out to a town 3 hours away, which is not really commutable into London. It's a better quality of life, and the housing options are much better. Selfishly, I don't much care about the housing pressure in London, but I do care about whether I can spend my downtime going places and doing things I enjoy, and remote working makes that MUCH easier.

bdw5204 3y ago

The solution to that problem is to count the travel time and any required breaks as part of work hours while also reimbursing all travel expenses. That would require employers to pay the full cost of unnecessary in-person work on both ends and would strongly disincentivize them from doing it. Employers reimbursing your travel expenses if they need you to travel to a conference on the other side of the country is already the norm so why shouldn't they reimburse your travel expenses if they want you to travel somewhere in the same geographic area?

julianozen 3y ago
I would argue this is implicitly paid in salary differences
justneedaname 3y ago
Not quite comparable though I would say, given that you know what you're signing up for when applying for a job. Travelling to a conference is a one-off whereas you'd be expecting to come to your job everyday (given the contract states this). You wouldn't accept a job in another country and turn round expecting them to pay for your flights, hotel etc. to be in the area during the work week
- ralmidani 3y ago
  Aside from being compensated directly for daily commutes (on which we could reasonably disagree), there’s also an issue around liability: if someone crashes going to work and the other side wants to sue, should the company be liable, the employee, or both? Being “on-the-clock” makes it more likely the company would bear responsibility, as opposed to being “off-the clock”. Company cars seem to be less common now than they were even 10 years ago. A personal injury lawsuit could easily bankrupt a household, but is much less likely to bankrupt a mid-sized or large company.
ralmidani 3y ago
It makes perfect sense to you, and me, but unfortunately, in America at least, the upper hand is very much with employers. I could be semi-OK with non-reimbursement for salaried workers if daily travel was factored in, but for those on hourly wages it’s immoral to have commuting expenses (time __and__ money) eat significantly into wages. We actually deal with this nonsense in our household; my wife is hourly and between the commute, parking, and walking to/from her workplace she loses about 20-25% compared to the time she actually gets paid for. We also spend a lot on gas, and have been putting ridiculous miles on her daily driver. Not to mention physical fatigue and emotional stress; she talks about quitting at least once a week. All for a mediocre wage (I would have said it’s garbage if she was our sole earner - my compensation is about double hers and I WFH). Edit: also, I remember company cars being a thing not too long ago. I don’t hear about them as much as I used to.

nine_k 3y ago

BTW this is where commute by public transport shines. My 30 minutes to the office are my dedicated reading time, an hour a day. If instead I had to drive, that would be lost time, because paying enough attention to the book distracts enough from driving to add unnecessary risk.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
Shines where it can, doesn't work in most of the US. Public transit use: https://vividmaps.com/public-transportation-in-the-united-states/ https://vividmaps.com/public-transportation-in-the-united-st... https://vividmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/public-transit-united-states-1024x631.jpg https://vividmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/public-tran... Population density: https://www.axios.com/2023/10/28/americans-moving-map-2022-florida-texas https://www.axios.com/2023/10/28/americans-moving-map-2022-f... https://www.axios.com/2023/01/31/cities-pandemic-moving-trends https://www.axios.com/2023/01/31/cities-pandemic-moving-tren... https://www.axios.com/2023/09/14/where-america-stands https://www.axios.com/2023/09/14/where-america-stands
- rcbdev 3y ago
  Thankfully the US is a major outlier in this aspect globally.
  - RestlessMind 3y ago
    You need to get out of your bubble. After having traveled to more than 60 countries on all the continents (except Antarctica), I can assure you that a majority of humans do not have good reliable public transport. It is a luxury that only some parts of the world have. Just as an example, right now I am in an Indian city where there is some minimal public transport but a majority of people need their own vehicle to commute for most of their journeys. And it is not an unusual scenario for India, which contains more population than Europe and North America combined.
    - hwillis 3y ago

steveBK123 3y ago

I've generally had a 30-40min commute most of my career, but also generally had a flexible enough start time that exact to the minute arrival at my desk was not performance impacting. Unfortunately a lot of things conflate over time as you become more senior to generally make your commute worse. For me - my last 2 roles have earlier required start time, with a hard start (morning meeting / standup / L3 support presence), company office locations got a little further, and trains got a little less reliable. Fortunately I am remote since COVID, but when I was going in / or have to go in now.. I need to bake in 45-60min depending on how much I'm willing to risk being late that day. For me I'd rather work 11-12 hours/day at home then go into office for 10 hours & spend 1.5-2 hours on the commute. Company is getting 10-20% more time out of me, and I at least save the money & "commute prep time".

lacrimacida 3y ago
> For me I'd rather work 11-12 hours/day at home then go into office How sustainable is to work 11-12 hours a day though? If we do 5 hours of intense work and the rest is spent in meetings or other overhead activities make 8 hours just enough to make it sustainable over long periods of time…
- steveBK123 3y ago
  Let's put it this way. I'm expected to be readily accessible for 9-10 hours/day, and reachable for some hours outside of that. I have some operational responsibilities in the morning, maybe 1~3 hours of meetings and fully understood we get in far less than 5 hours of intense work. People are generally cool with me being totally away from desk for lunch. How I spend the time in between in terms of doing research/reading/etc is up to me. If I had to do this in an office setting it would suck to be stuck there when stuff does come up.
  - phillc73 3y ago
    > I'm expected to be readily accessible for 9-10 hours/day Why? Are you contracted for 45-50 hours per week? Or if contracted less, are you compensated for the additional hours? I'm contracted for 38.5 hours per week. That's 8.125 hours Monday to Thursday and 6.00 on Friday. If I work longer than this I am compensated with time off in lieu. I do have to log my time daily. Overall works great. I'm fairly paid and have a good lifestyle. I actually find it hard to imagine working 9-10 hours every day for any extended time period.

Spooky23 3y ago

It’s really more than that. I live in the city, my office is 7 minutes away most mornings. The transition time of arrival and departure is easily 30-45m daily, on my employers dime. I do 50% and it works for me. End of the day most of the problems associated with this issue are workplace and cultural issues that come to a head with remote/hybrid. The only novel dysfunctions with employees that I see (and I’m an exec with about 900) are people doing things like secretly moving away and abusing medical accommodation. There’s also an issue where people build their life around remote and are disappointed when they miss opportunities, but are unwilling to meet in the middle. End of the day. The lazy idiots are just as lazy, grinders grind, and smart people continue to be smart.

teaearlgraycold 3y ago

I just commute during work hours. My boss is fine with this and I'm in the office around 6.5 hours per day.

intended 3y ago
Which is perfect. If that time is counted as part of work, thats a good deal. That is ideally what it should change to.
- malermeister 3y ago
  It still sucks. I want to be solving interesting problems during my work hours, not deal with traffic.
  - teaearlgraycold 3y ago
    Thankfully I take the train/bike (and I love biking quickly up the SF hills, absolutely smoking people using electric motors).

FalconSensei 3y ago

Not only the commute, but also lunch breaks. In US and Canada, lunch breaks are short, but back in Brazil I had a 1:30h lunch break, and then at another job, 1:12. But I'm at the office, can't go to bed, I'm at the company's computer so can't do anything I want, also it's in the office, so if watching some TV show or anime that has more graphic content, that might also be a no. So basically, waste of time.

j33zusjuice 3y ago

I get calls for jobs that would increase my TC by 100k, jobs I’m confident I could land, and I won’t interview for any of them. That’s how much WFH means to me.