6 ms·

Remote work eliminates commutes, is better for the environment and employees, and gives greater flexibility in housing options. I hope employers will embrace re

by cebert 2y ago

Remote work eliminates commutes, is better for the environment and employees, and gives greater flexibility in housing options. I hope employers will embrace remote work more once the baby boomer generation retires.

rightbyte 2y ago
Embrace it? Are there any stats on this? I didn't find any. In my experience there are a greater degree of remote workers among the older part of the work force.
advael 2y ago
I think a considerable amount of the anti-remote push is also on managers from GenX as well, and I think we've considerably obviated much of the incentive to retire for the top end of decision-makers since their fortunes are increasingly tied up in their investments anyway and the control they exert can be really abstract and thus not very difficult to keep up
throw0101c 2y ago
> I hope employers will embrace remote work more once the baby boomer generation retires. How does a janitor do remote work? A teacher? Restaurant workers? Hospital workers? > However, healthcare workers and others in similar professions often don’t have the ability to work remotely. In fact, Healthcare workers in New York have the worst commute times of any profession at 52 minutes on average. * https://jeremybney.medium.com/long-commutes-show-structural-inequality-in-cities-1b55f460f26a https://jeremybney.medium.com/long-commutes-show-structural-... If certain places are popular to live in, and the prices of residences gets priced up by high-income individuals, low- and mid-income people—who are often the (so-called) 'support workers' in those communities—are pushed out and often have long commutes to their jobs. Not everything can be done over Zoom or an SSH session.
- maven29 2y ago
  >Not everything can be done over Zoom or an SSH session. Agreed. However, if everyone who is capable to work remote will decide to do so, it would free up lane capacity for those who aren't able to. This would be akin to getting a free infrastructure upgrade for those who truly need it.
  - throw0101c 2y ago
    > Agreed. However, if everyone who is capable to work remote will decide to do so, it would free up lane capacity for those who aren't able to. Less traffic reduce stress, but you still have distance to deal. And that assumes you can drive, and you're not too poor or have some other factor which restricts your ability to own/operate a car. > But when one train recently stopped for a sick passenger, her commute expanded to a mind-boggling three hours and 15 minutes. She was late. To make up the lost time, she stayed longer with her patient instead of picking up her granddaughter from school. She had to enlist a neighbor to do that — for $35. * https://archive.ph/1a6y3 https://archive.ph/1a6y3 / https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/nyregion/health-care-worker-commutes.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/nyregion/health-care-work...
    - llamaimperative 2y ago
      It would also reduce land costs in urban centers. Edit: It would exert downward pressure on land costs. Obviously that can still be overcome by other factors.
      - throw0101c 2y ago
        > It would also reduce land costs in urban centers. That does not necessarily follow: some folks may prefer to live in an urban area (only) because they work in said urban area, and so want shorter commutes, but I'm sure plenty live in urban areas because (e.g.) like the amenities. As a sysadmin I can easily do remote work, but would still live in an urban centre. As per Jane Jacobs: people do not live in cities, they live in neighbourhoods. I think most folks who live in urban centres do so because they like the lifestyle first, and a shorter commute may be just a nice bonus. There are also lots of folks who 'reverse commute': live in the city and work in the suburbs. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_commute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_commute
        ghaff 2y ago
        That may be true of people just out of school but my experience over a fairly large number of years was that relatively few people lived in the city and commuted out to a suburban office park. For one thing, even reverse commutes can be pretty slow in a city with a lot of traffic. I rarely drive into the city for evening events partly for that reason.
- NeoTar 2y ago
  You definitely are not wrong, but remote work can also help the kind of individuals highlighted indirectly. Perhaps a simple example is through remote work meaning fewer commuters, and so less traffic, less crowded trains, etc. But also consider that schools and hospitals need to be near centers of population - if people are moving out of cities into smaller towns, then, over time, schools in those towns will need to grow, and those in the cities shrink, thus (one would hope) allowing teachers and hospital workers more affordable accomodation, close to their work too. But, on the other hand, roles for janitors and restaurant workers may be reduced (if people are WFH and not needing office cleaning, and going out for lunch).
- ta1243 2y ago
  > If certain places are popular to live in, and the prices of residences gets priced up by high-income individuals, low- and mid-income people—who are often the (so-called) 'support workers' in those communities—are pushed out and often have long commutes to their jobs. And thus wages should increase for "support workers", currently the lifestyles of those living in such high desireable areas are subsidised by those taking terrible commutes.
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago
  > How does a janitor do remote work? A teacher? Restaurant workers? Hospital workers? One thing about these workers is there is a limit on density, and in many cases a strong correlation with the number of people who live nearby. There are only so many janitors you need, even for a large office building. Same with health care workers. The number you need is a function of the number of beds the hospital has, its size, and how busy it is - which has a large correlation with how many people live around it. Same with cooks. How many cooks you need in an area is limited by restaurants and kitchen space and how many people are around. Not so with workers who could be remote. You can pack them in by the thousands and tens of thousands into cubicles in downtown skyscrapers. They in tern drive demand for cooks who have to come work downtown in an area they could not afford. If you make the people that could be remote, remote you reduce this pressure. No longer are you packing tens of thousands of people in a very small, expensive part of town. This reduces the number of cooks you need in the very dense expensive part of town. This reduces the cooks who have to commute to a part of town they could never afford to live in. In addition, with the reduced number of potentially remote workers who are paying extra to cut down their commute, you reduce the price pressure of housing. Remote work reduces density, lowers price pressure, and increases the correlation of work to where people actually live. So it benefits even the jobs that can’t be remote.
- 1970-01-01 2y ago
  >How does a janitor do remote work? A teacher? Restaurant workers? Hospital workers? Janitors and restaurant workers are good examples, however hospital workers can be hybrid; remote classrooms have been a real thing since the 21st century.
woodruffw 2y ago
I have nothing against remote work, but I don’t think it’s particularly eco-friendly in the US setting: the trend in the US has been increased suburbanization (and larger houses to accommodate home offices), both of which are probably worse on net for the environment that a single office building with central heating/cooling. Similarly: workers who move to the suburbs and drive to work only occasionally are still potentially driving more than they would be if they used mass transit in cities. This doesn’t necessarily apply to other countries with better land use patterns, of course.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  > workers who move to the suburbs and drive to work only occasionally are still potentially driving more than they would be if they used mass transit in cities. What?
  - CalRobert 2y ago
    I used to live in the middle of Dublin and ride a bike to work. Then I got a remote job and realized I could save a fortune by moving to a rural house an hour away. But when I _did_ need to go to Dublin, I was sometimes driving instead of riding a bike (though sometimes I took the train, but I was very careful to make this an option and my neighbours would usually drive to go to Dublin)
  - woodruffw 2y ago
    There’s a personal anecdote as a direct comment beneath my comment, as an example of this. To be clear: I’m not faulting people for this. But it’s an intuitive consequence of people moving their working space into their living space: having both means needing more room, which frequently means moving somewhere rural or suburban and driving more.
- bee_rider 2y ago
  The US trend to suburbia predates really widespread remote working, right? I wouldn’t blame remote work for it.
glimshe 2y ago
> better for the environment How can others not see it? I see a bunch of people, even on HN, pushing for lower emissions while rejecting remote work for whatever personal reason. I also see others wanting instead to force everybody into ultra high density living to avoid driving, while remote work cuts down on the biggest source of driving needs.
- okr 2y ago
  Ultra High Density Living is just the most eco-friendly way of living for the masses. Why would anyone think otherwise, if the same masses live abroad and spread out over vast land with their own infrastructure?
  - throw0101c 2y ago
    > Ultra High Density Living is just the most eco-friendly way of living for the masses. You do not need to go to "ultra high" density, à la Manhattan or Hong Kong. Once you get to densities of Paris, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Munich, Brussels—in the 50 people per hectare (20 per acre) range—there are diminishing returns: * https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter4/environmental-footprint-of-transportation/urban-density-energy-consumption/ https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter4/environment... I would not call any of those "ultra high" (though perhaps others would?).
    - sycamoretrees 2y ago
      Paris - the city itself - is actually surprisingly high density, almost as high as Manhattan if you do not include the two very large 'Bois' (woods) that are technically part of the city.
    - volfonibros 2y ago
      I don't know where they get that 50/Ha figure. Paris is more dense than Seoul, with just over 200 people per Ha, or ~20k/km². Figure would actually have been higher at the 1999 date of the cited source, too. The city is (slowly) losing people.
  - 2y ago
VoodooJuJu 2y ago
>Remote work eliminates commutes For a minority of the workforce. The majority of jobs, especially the most critical ones (infrastructure), cannot be done remotely.
- btbuildem 2y ago
  I wouldn't call office workers a minority - they make up more than half of american jobs [1]. Surely some proportion of these jobs require presence / face time, but even if you knock that number down to 40%, that's still a huge chunk. 1: https://www.dpeaflcio.org/factsheets/the-professional-and-technical-workforce-by-the-numbers https://www.dpeaflcio.org/factsheets/the-professional-and-te...
  - b112 2y ago
    That link doesn't validate your assertion, unless the stat is deeply hidden. I did see "professional", which has all sorts of categories, including "manager" and all sorts of sciences, etc. "Manager" can be someone managing a cleanup crew, a job site, scientists can be on boats, or in the woods, architects at construction sites, on and on. A Walmart has several managers, some of which have no office. A Burger King has a few managers.
paulcole 2y ago
> is better for the environment and employees It’s better for some employees. Some people get more done and have more fun working in an office with other people.
- Longhanks 2y ago
  Still, imho it is somewhat cruel that society has simply decided that extroverts can and should force introverts into socializing. "You need to attend this meeting in person because I insist" ist perfectly acceptable, while "you need to leave me alone because I insist" is considered rude, antisocial, "not a teamplayer" yadda yadda. > Some people get more done and have more fun working in an office with other people. It is not the job of employees to provide extroverts the ability to "have more fun".
  - paulcole 2y ago
    > Still, imho it is somewhat cruel that society has simply decided that extroverts can and should force introverts into socializing It's not more cruel than introverts forcing extroverts into not socializing. > It is not the job of employees to provide extroverts the ability to "have more fun". No, but if a company wants to retain employees who want to have fun at work they'll make decisions that lead to that. Having fun at work is no more a right than not having fun at work is a right.
    - Longhanks 2y ago
      > It's not more cruel than introverts forcing extroverts into not socializing. Well that's the point: Society has made it acceptible for extroverts to force introverts into socialising, but the other way round is somehow inacceptible. > Having fun at work is no more a right than not having fun at work is a right. Having or not having fun is no right in itself anyway. Companies that force introverts into situations they are uncomfortable with are eventually going to lose them. The extrovert's fun stops where it is actively harming the introverts. Undermining introverts' feelings by making them feel uncomfortable in order to have fun is harassment.
misja111 2y ago
> is better for the environment I'm not sure that is always the case. When everybody is in the office, you save on shared resources such as lighting, printing and heating. Also, a certain percentage of remote workers will take the car during the day anyway, to buy lunch or groceries.
- ssharp 2y ago
  I can't imagine an office full of people driving their gas vehicles 50+ miles per day creates less pollution than those people being at home. Lighting costs are extremely marginal these days, so really heating/AC would be the big driver. I know prices may not be a perfect corollary to pollution but people driving that much to work are pretty likely to spend more money fueling their vehicles than they are on electric + gas for their homes.
  - bombcar 2y ago
    The vast majority of people don’t stop all power consumption at home just because they’re not at home. Even modern thermostats like Nest don’t save as much as they claim, usually.
- AlexandrB 2y ago
  These saving are completely blown away later that night when the lighting has to stay on so the office is not pitch black and the heating has to stay on so the pipes don't freeze. In what world is heating and lighting another building more efficient than not doing that?
rbanffy 2y ago
I work on a remote-first organisation and have previously done so (in pre-COVID times) and there are wins and loses. You lose the serendipitous meetings in the office, and have to deliberately schedule what could have been done by dropping by someone's desk. You also lose the fancier coffee machine.

by cebert 2y ago

rightbyte 2y ago

Embrace it? Are there any stats on this? I didn't find any. In my experience there are a greater degree of remote workers among the older part of the work force.

advael 2y ago

I think a considerable amount of the anti-remote push is also on managers from GenX as well, and I think we've considerably obviated much of the incentive to retire for the top end of decision-makers since their fortunes are increasingly tied up in their investments anyway and the control they exert can be really abstract and thus not very difficult to keep up

throw0101c 2y ago

> I hope employers will embrace remote work more once the baby boomer generation retires. How does a janitor do remote work? A teacher? Restaurant workers? Hospital workers? > However, healthcare workers and others in similar professions often don’t have the ability to work remotely. In fact, Healthcare workers in New York have the worst commute times of any profession at 52 minutes on average. * https://jeremybney.medium.com/long-commutes-show-structural-inequality-in-cities-1b55f460f26a https://jeremybney.medium.com/long-commutes-show-structural-... If certain places are popular to live in, and the prices of residences gets priced up by high-income individuals, low- and mid-income people—who are often the (so-called) 'support workers' in those communities—are pushed out and often have long commutes to their jobs. Not everything can be done over Zoom or an SSH session.

maven29 2y ago
>Not everything can be done over Zoom or an SSH session. Agreed. However, if everyone who is capable to work remote will decide to do so, it would free up lane capacity for those who aren't able to. This would be akin to getting a free infrastructure upgrade for those who truly need it.
- throw0101c 2y ago
  > Agreed. However, if everyone who is capable to work remote will decide to do so, it would free up lane capacity for those who aren't able to. Less traffic reduce stress, but you still have distance to deal. And that assumes you can drive, and you're not too poor or have some other factor which restricts your ability to own/operate a car. > But when one train recently stopped for a sick passenger, her commute expanded to a mind-boggling three hours and 15 minutes. She was late. To make up the lost time, she stayed longer with her patient instead of picking up her granddaughter from school. She had to enlist a neighbor to do that — for $35. * https://archive.ph/1a6y3 https://archive.ph/1a6y3 / https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/nyregion/health-care-worker-commutes.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/31/nyregion/health-care-work...
  - llamaimperative 2y ago
    It would also reduce land costs in urban centers. Edit: It would exert downward pressure on land costs. Obviously that can still be overcome by other factors.
    - throw0101c 2y ago
      > It would also reduce land costs in urban centers. That does not necessarily follow: some folks may prefer to live in an urban area (only) because they work in said urban area, and so want shorter commutes, but I'm sure plenty live in urban areas because (e.g.) like the amenities. As a sysadmin I can easily do remote work, but would still live in an urban centre. As per Jane Jacobs: people do not live in cities, they live in neighbourhoods. I think most folks who live in urban centres do so because they like the lifestyle first, and a shorter commute may be just a nice bonus. There are also lots of folks who 'reverse commute': live in the city and work in the suburbs. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_commute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_commute
      - ghaff 2y ago
        That may be true of people just out of school but my experience over a fairly large number of years was that relatively few people lived in the city and commuted out to a suburban office park. For one thing, even reverse commutes can be pretty slow in a city with a lot of traffic. I rarely drive into the city for evening events partly for that reason.
NeoTar 2y ago
You definitely are not wrong, but remote work can also help the kind of individuals highlighted indirectly. Perhaps a simple example is through remote work meaning fewer commuters, and so less traffic, less crowded trains, etc. But also consider that schools and hospitals need to be near centers of population - if people are moving out of cities into smaller towns, then, over time, schools in those towns will need to grow, and those in the cities shrink, thus (one would hope) allowing teachers and hospital workers more affordable accomodation, close to their work too. But, on the other hand, roles for janitors and restaurant workers may be reduced (if people are WFH and not needing office cleaning, and going out for lunch).
ta1243 2y ago
> If certain places are popular to live in, and the prices of residences gets priced up by high-income individuals, low- and mid-income people—who are often the (so-called) 'support workers' in those communities—are pushed out and often have long commutes to their jobs. And thus wages should increase for "support workers", currently the lifestyles of those living in such high desireable areas are subsidised by those taking terrible commutes.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 2y ago
> How does a janitor do remote work? A teacher? Restaurant workers? Hospital workers? One thing about these workers is there is a limit on density, and in many cases a strong correlation with the number of people who live nearby. There are only so many janitors you need, even for a large office building. Same with health care workers. The number you need is a function of the number of beds the hospital has, its size, and how busy it is - which has a large correlation with how many people live around it. Same with cooks. How many cooks you need in an area is limited by restaurants and kitchen space and how many people are around. Not so with workers who could be remote. You can pack them in by the thousands and tens of thousands into cubicles in downtown skyscrapers. They in tern drive demand for cooks who have to come work downtown in an area they could not afford. If you make the people that could be remote, remote you reduce this pressure. No longer are you packing tens of thousands of people in a very small, expensive part of town. This reduces the number of cooks you need in the very dense expensive part of town. This reduces the cooks who have to commute to a part of town they could never afford to live in. In addition, with the reduced number of potentially remote workers who are paying extra to cut down their commute, you reduce the price pressure of housing. Remote work reduces density, lowers price pressure, and increases the correlation of work to where people actually live. So it benefits even the jobs that can’t be remote.
1970-01-01 2y ago
>How does a janitor do remote work? A teacher? Restaurant workers? Hospital workers? Janitors and restaurant workers are good examples, however hospital workers can be hybrid; remote classrooms have been a real thing since the 21st century.

woodruffw 2y ago

I have nothing against remote work, but I don’t think it’s particularly eco-friendly in the US setting: the trend in the US has been increased suburbanization (and larger houses to accommodate home offices), both of which are probably worse on net for the environment that a single office building with central heating/cooling. Similarly: workers who move to the suburbs and drive to work only occasionally are still potentially driving more than they would be if they used mass transit in cities. This doesn’t necessarily apply to other countries with better land use patterns, of course.

lotsofpulp 2y ago
> workers who move to the suburbs and drive to work only occasionally are still potentially driving more than they would be if they used mass transit in cities. What?
- CalRobert 2y ago
  I used to live in the middle of Dublin and ride a bike to work. Then I got a remote job and realized I could save a fortune by moving to a rural house an hour away. But when I _did_ need to go to Dublin, I was sometimes driving instead of riding a bike (though sometimes I took the train, but I was very careful to make this an option and my neighbours would usually drive to go to Dublin)
- woodruffw 2y ago
  There’s a personal anecdote as a direct comment beneath my comment, as an example of this. To be clear: I’m not faulting people for this. But it’s an intuitive consequence of people moving their working space into their living space: having both means needing more room, which frequently means moving somewhere rural or suburban and driving more.
bee_rider 2y ago
The US trend to suburbia predates really widespread remote working, right? I wouldn’t blame remote work for it.

glimshe 2y ago

> better for the environment How can others not see it? I see a bunch of people, even on HN, pushing for lower emissions while rejecting remote work for whatever personal reason. I also see others wanting instead to force everybody into ultra high density living to avoid driving, while remote work cuts down on the biggest source of driving needs.

okr 2y ago
Ultra High Density Living is just the most eco-friendly way of living for the masses. Why would anyone think otherwise, if the same masses live abroad and spread out over vast land with their own infrastructure?
- throw0101c 2y ago
  > Ultra High Density Living is just the most eco-friendly way of living for the masses. You do not need to go to "ultra high" density, à la Manhattan or Hong Kong. Once you get to densities of Paris, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Munich, Brussels—in the 50 people per hectare (20 per acre) range—there are diminishing returns: * https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter4/environmental-footprint-of-transportation/urban-density-energy-consumption/ https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter4/environment... I would not call any of those "ultra high" (though perhaps others would?).
  - sycamoretrees 2y ago
    Paris - the city itself - is actually surprisingly high density, almost as high as Manhattan if you do not include the two very large 'Bois' (woods) that are technically part of the city.
  - volfonibros 2y ago
    I don't know where they get that 50/Ha figure. Paris is more dense than Seoul, with just over 200 people per Ha, or ~20k/km². Figure would actually have been higher at the 1999 date of the cited source, too. The city is (slowly) losing people.
- 2y ago

VoodooJuJu 2y ago

>Remote work eliminates commutes For a minority of the workforce. The majority of jobs, especially the most critical ones (infrastructure), cannot be done remotely.

btbuildem 2y ago
I wouldn't call office workers a minority - they make up more than half of american jobs [1]. Surely some proportion of these jobs require presence / face time, but even if you knock that number down to 40%, that's still a huge chunk. 1: https://www.dpeaflcio.org/factsheets/the-professional-and-technical-workforce-by-the-numbers https://www.dpeaflcio.org/factsheets/the-professional-and-te...
- b112 2y ago
  That link doesn't validate your assertion, unless the stat is deeply hidden. I did see "professional", which has all sorts of categories, including "manager" and all sorts of sciences, etc. "Manager" can be someone managing a cleanup crew, a job site, scientists can be on boats, or in the woods, architects at construction sites, on and on. A Walmart has several managers, some of which have no office. A Burger King has a few managers.

paulcole 2y ago

> is better for the environment and employees It’s better for some employees. Some people get more done and have more fun working in an office with other people.

Longhanks 2y ago
Still, imho it is somewhat cruel that society has simply decided that extroverts can and should force introverts into socializing. "You need to attend this meeting in person because I insist" ist perfectly acceptable, while "you need to leave me alone because I insist" is considered rude, antisocial, "not a teamplayer" yadda yadda. > Some people get more done and have more fun working in an office with other people. It is not the job of employees to provide extroverts the ability to "have more fun".
- paulcole 2y ago
  > Still, imho it is somewhat cruel that society has simply decided that extroverts can and should force introverts into socializing It's not more cruel than introverts forcing extroverts into not socializing. > It is not the job of employees to provide extroverts the ability to "have more fun". No, but if a company wants to retain employees who want to have fun at work they'll make decisions that lead to that. Having fun at work is no more a right than not having fun at work is a right.
  - Longhanks 2y ago
    > It's not more cruel than introverts forcing extroverts into not socializing. Well that's the point: Society has made it acceptible for extroverts to force introverts into socialising, but the other way round is somehow inacceptible. > Having fun at work is no more a right than not having fun at work is a right. Having or not having fun is no right in itself anyway. Companies that force introverts into situations they are uncomfortable with are eventually going to lose them. The extrovert's fun stops where it is actively harming the introverts. Undermining introverts' feelings by making them feel uncomfortable in order to have fun is harassment.

misja111 2y ago

> is better for the environment I'm not sure that is always the case. When everybody is in the office, you save on shared resources such as lighting, printing and heating. Also, a certain percentage of remote workers will take the car during the day anyway, to buy lunch or groceries.

ssharp 2y ago
I can't imagine an office full of people driving their gas vehicles 50+ miles per day creates less pollution than those people being at home. Lighting costs are extremely marginal these days, so really heating/AC would be the big driver. I know prices may not be a perfect corollary to pollution but people driving that much to work are pretty likely to spend more money fueling their vehicles than they are on electric + gas for their homes.
- bombcar 2y ago
  The vast majority of people don’t stop all power consumption at home just because they’re not at home. Even modern thermostats like Nest don’t save as much as they claim, usually.
AlexandrB 2y ago
These saving are completely blown away later that night when the lighting has to stay on so the office is not pitch black and the heating has to stay on so the pipes don't freeze. In what world is heating and lighting another building more efficient than not doing that?

rbanffy 2y ago

I work on a remote-first organisation and have previously done so (in pre-COVID times) and there are wins and loses. You lose the serendipitous meetings in the office, and have to deliberately schedule what could have been done by dropping by someone's desk. You also lose the fancier coffee machine.