8 ms·

I've long said that WFH is an easy win climate change solution that costs nothing, is well loved by everyone who participates (except management). Turns out in

I've long said that WFH is an easy win climate change solution that costs nothing, is well loved by everyone who participates (except management). Turns out in times like this, it's also an energy security measure.

scottious 7mo ago
and if you're talking to somebody who doesn't care about climate change just substitute "climate change" with "traffic"
- bloppe 7mo ago
  In my experience, everybody cares about climate change. A lot of people just don't like the idea of caring about climate change. But ya, probably best to just call it "traffic" then, and they might be more receptive.
  - Waterluvian 7mo ago
    Yeah, I've always seen it as a hot potato issue. I think a lot of people who don't play ball on dealing with climate change aren't deniers, they just want the next guy to have to do the work. It's very, very hard to sell to anyone, "this is going to be incredibly costly and painful for you and you won't enjoy any of the benefits. Your grandkids might."
    - qwertygnu 7mo ago
      I think we saw during covid that we most certainly can see the benefits in our lifetime if we took it more seriously.
  - scottious 7mo ago
    Agreed. I care enough about it to sell my car, stop buying stuff I don't need, give up most meat, and live in a small energy efficient house. However I do know people who really do not care. They may say they care but their actions and voting record show that in fact they don't care (or don't want to make it a real priority). But those same people get very upset when they're stuck in traffic
  - mrguyorama 7mo ago
    Absolutely not. There are tens of millions of Americans who have jumped full speed onto the "It's not even happening" train, let alone the "It's actually a good thing because plants" or "It's not our fault" or "We can't fix it so we shouldn't try" or "It's too expensive to fix and I can't do long term math" trains. And this is a massive reversion too. In the mid 2000s republicans were openly advocating that we needed to do something about climate change and that it was a serious problem and then we opened the cash floodgates to American federal politics and would you look at that, oil companies have a lot of cash. Keep in mind that the real cost of transitioning is very likely to be less than what we spent on the stupid oil wars of the 2000s. We can literally afford it now, let alone if we hadn't burned all that cash bombing the desert because of oil politics. Oil companies themselves are fine to be "Energy" companies and invest in Solar and other renewables. They will be profitable just fine. Our country is tearing itself apart over a lie to ensure they remain more profitable.
    - Apocryphon 7mo ago
      In the mid-2000s there might've been individual Republicans concerned about climate change, but it was the Bush administration who opposed the Kyoto Protocol and pushed for adaptation to climate change on the basis of protecting the economy.
    - supertrope 7mo ago
      In 2008 McCain openly talked about greenhouse gas cap and trade. I think the driving force behind it was fear of peak oil. Secure your energy supply. With fracking supply concerns went away.
electrosphere 7mo ago
I'm introverted but very glad I have the option of working from the office and being among fellow staff, we also have a lunchtime exercise club once a week. It's much better for my mental health. In fact, I've added two days working outside of home instead of one because of the benefits. I think 3 days home/2 days office is the sweet spot.
- apercu 7mo ago
  I get that, and a lot of people like to be social with other people. But just because 10% (made up number) like it, there's no reason to force it on the rest of the workforce (not that you are). I encourage people who are remote but want human contact to rent a desk once a week at a co-working space. For me personally, I want to do my work as efficiently as possible, in as little time as possible, and then have my social time, which has very little in common with my work and/or colleagues. I might be an exception, but I get up very, very early and work almost right away, and I don't want to be on a roll and then have to pack up, get in the car at a terrible traffic time where (some) people are driving like animals, hunt for parking and then find a desk. That's a huge _tax_ on my productivity. But I don't expect or demand that the rest of the world do this. As a side comment, I would agree with you though, that 2 in the office is better than one. But I also had a very effective pattern around 10 years ago, where I spent 2 days in the office per month, and that worked really well for me (though those days were far, far less productive than my at home work days). Now, if the world adopted a 32 hour, 4-day work week I would probably be ok with the office 1 day a week.
- ray_v 7mo ago
  We've been slowly creeping back toward being fully RTO, and my mental health has been in what I can only describe as "steep decline". I don't know if I pin it all on RTO, but it sure isn't helping the situation. I love my job, but hate the in-office requirements - I'm a systems admin.
  - electrosphere 7mo ago
    Sorry to hear that. Being a sysadmin, I guess you're mainly interacting with systems rather than people and need to focus. They should exempt you from RTO except for the odd "all hands" meeting days. I'm a software engineer in a Product Engineering team and it's about 75% hands-on engineering, 25% Slack/Teams interaction and alignments between people. I find being in the office helps to make connections with other staff in other teams (eg. bumping into people while making coffee in staff kitchen etc). I think thats important from a career perspective.
hshdhdhj4444 7mo ago
Except driving in the U.S. following the pandemic was significantly higher than driving before the pandemic even though WFH was much higher. This claim might be true but it’s simply not showing up in the data which suggests that even if true, the effect is probably minor.
- scottious 7mo ago
  but then again, vehicle miles travelled per-capita has been mostly increasing in the US since as far back as 1975. There could be a lot of confounding factors. Like astronomical housing prices in urban areas forcing people live very far away and incur more VMT at a faster rate than WFH decreases VMT. I'm no expert here, I'm just spitballing.
- asdff 7mo ago
  Because people didn't go back to taking transit
- johnnyanmac 7mo ago
  I think the bigger point was that pandemic traffic immediately showed effects. Smog cleared up in Los Angeles in less than a month. But no, it won't ever be that level without major infrastructure change. Not all jobs can be wfh. We can get close by a major public transportation overhaul, but that will take decades (even without the inevitable pushback).
- royaltheartist 7mo ago
  WFH doesn't actually stop driving. They don't commute, but they do run errands and other stuff during the day. This can actually result in more traffic during high peak periods since it can cause congestion build up to start earlier
bluescrn 7mo ago
WFH was great to begin with, but as somebody living alone, the isolation starts to have an effect after a while when you're 'working alone' too And for many people WFH has other problems - if you're a dual-WFH couple in a small home, lack of home office space is a very real problem. (Although if WFH was a permanent thing, many people could choose less expensive places to live, and have more space) Still, anything to eliminate a miserable and environmentally wasteful commute.
- ericmcer 7mo ago
  I agree, 2 days a week in office is optimal. If they could coordinate which days to reduce traffic then... holy cow dream world.
- sixo 7mo ago
  I would love to have a coworking-space-on-every-block (or in every building) where all the WFHers can go to be around other people (just not the coworkers)
  - asdff 7mo ago
    Everyone is paying for wework to do what their branch library can probably do for them.
    - johnnyanmac 7mo ago
      Only issue is that my libraries close 5pm on weekends and 7pm on weekdays. Nothing for night owls.
      - 1718627440 7mo ago
        If there would be enough demand to pay for it, it would stay open longer.
        johnnyanmac 7mo ago
        Yeah, I was spoiled by my college town. Libraries open until 2AM, a 24 hour space for students. Even a few cafes downtown open 24 hours a day. Suburb life is mostly fine, but that's one thing I miss most. Gotta travel 20 miles to downtown for anything resembling night life.
Lammy 7mo ago
> is well loved by everyone who participates You don't speak for me :) I hate it.
- johnnyanmac 7mo ago
  Wfh is debatable, but what's not to love about 4 day work weeks? 8t gives you even more time to work on your own stuff if you still want to work.
  - Lammy 7mo ago
    I was only replying to the part about WFH. Four day weeks would be great.
palmotea 7mo ago
> is well loved by everyone who participates (except management). So? The only people who matter are shareholders and their proxies (management). To everyone else: you don't matter as much as you think you do, quit being selfish and be happy you get anything at all. The world doesn't revolve around you.
- wing-_-nuts 7mo ago
  Being against WFH because 'think of the shareholders' is certainly a take. The world might not revolve around me, but thankfully, I do get a vote in who I chose to work for, and I chose an employer that lets me work remote.
  - johnnyanmac 7mo ago
    I sure don't nowadays. My industry is in free fall.
vamos_davai 7mo ago
Don't forget about holders of commercial real estate debt and the owners of commercial real estate and restaurants who depend on foot traffic!
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]
darknavi 7mo ago
I know it's a meme on HN to say everyone likes WFH, but I (and many but not ICs around me) thrive more in person. I am 100% more effective in person where I can dev and my desk and bounce ideas off if team mates around me verbally. This can be recreated in a remote environment by having things like a team Discord that folks sit on, but it can feel forced at times (just like communiting to the office I suppose). My take might be heavily skewed though. I am in games and our environment is highly collaborative.
- cmrdporcupine 7mo ago
  I pretty much dislike WFH and for many of the reasons you mention and more, so took a local in-office job last year after being at home since COVID. I was excited to return to a more social environment until I found that "the office" itself was itself entirely problematic. Cheapass flatpack desks all rammed in together. No noise or sound proofing, giant sweatshop room. Sub-par monitors and equipment generally. Grumpy coworkers complaining constantly about the very conversations (both on-topic and off-topic/non-work) that I came in to have a chance to experience again. And half the staff was just WFH anyways, or remote, so the collaboration opportunities... diminished. I even saw this happening at Google before I left there, which had formerly been a ... luxury office. Packing people in like sardines, forcing people to "reserve" desks. Bad parking and/or transit situations. I get it when employers face financial or real estate crunches. But in the last 10-15 years (I've been working for 30) -- even pre-COVID -- I feel like some switch went off in tech industry leadership brains that is just outright disrespectful. Paying high salaries to engineers and then providing them with uncomfortable accommodations. Makes little sense to me. I'm back to WFH and the isolation that comes with it. In part because the office environment was actually not what I was hoping for. Because the industry ruined it.
  - coldpie 7mo ago
    > No noise or sound proofing, giant sweatshop room My kingdom for an office with a ceiling, lmao. The exposed ductwork cheap-ass offices are so awful.
    - 7mo ago
ragazzina 7mo ago
I love WFH but how is it a win climate change solution for anyone outside of the USA? If my office building WFH, instead of heating a building we need to heat 500 people homes all day. And most of the people commute by public transport.
- _kblcuk_ 7mo ago
  So 500 people leave for office and turn off the heating at their homes, even if there are other people (kids, elderly) or animals (cats, dogs, birds) living there?
  - ragazzina 7mo ago
    Kids are at school during office hours, I'm not sure about pets but they I don't think they care whether the house is 23° or 16° considering most of them go outside without any issue.
- Obscurity4340 7mo ago
  How is their commute relevant? If they are WFH, theres less people needing to commute. Thats less fuel or more efficient fuel economy for public transport to use
  - ragazzina 7mo ago
    Yes but we are offsetting their lack of commute (being public transport, a small impact anyway) with having to heat many more houses.
    - nuancebydefault 7mo ago
      Most energy goes into making up for the temperature delta. If you turn the heating down, the delta at either evening or morning goes up. Note, some people even think that would take even more energy in total per day, but that's not correct because a cooler house doesn't emit as much energy as a warmer one.
    - 7mo ago
lm28469 7mo ago
It's bad for the EcOnOmY, less wear and tear in cars, less jobs for mechanics, less gas consumed, less lunch bought in fast food chain, &c. The entire system is designed around making the numbers go up, not down
- supertrope 7mo ago
  In the end cars are just a means to an end. People want to minimize their transportation spending. People bought bigger houses or renovated. They upgraded their PCs and were more likely to subscribe to broadband and less likely to cancel. Empty office buildings are ever so slowly being converted to housing. Professional clothing purchases dipped and then rebounded.
- Schmerika 7mo ago
  Yep. The broken window fallacy and the tragedy of the commons*, darkening the future of basically every vertebrate on the planet. * A solved problem, btw.
iszomer 7mo ago
We may never know which sector of the economy you are in to believe WFH is a good idea unless you explicitly state it but given this is HN, I'm just going to make a lazy assumption for software dev or engineering. WFH sounds great in theory only if _everyone_ participates in it but is hardly the case in reality. For example: If you can sustainably and reliably source your daily necessities like having the ability to cook or maintain a decent home environment that support it, kudos. Thought the covid lockdowns showed us how fragile that system can be especially for those _essential people_ to be physically around to feed you or keep your shit running. As a side note: how do you feel about being snookered by your local government's policy under the pretext that _essential work_ just gives your employers the ability to maintain the same minimum wage labor cycle just so you can feel giddy about how good this idea is?
rdsubhas 7mo ago
> costs nothing 1. for other businesses and jobs though, people staying at home costs a lot. one can call it a polarizing option. 2. these kind of jobs are likely prime candidates for AI already.
jjav 7mo ago
> is well loved by everyone who participates (except management) Most of management hates it too. I manage a team where everyone is remote, yet I have to go to the office few days a week to sit on zoom, why? And up a level, my manager has an even longer commute and probably hates it more than I do. This stuff is pushed down by HR, most of management hates it.

scottious 7mo ago

and if you're talking to somebody who doesn't care about climate change just substitute "climate change" with "traffic"

bloppe 7mo ago
In my experience, everybody cares about climate change. A lot of people just don't like the idea of caring about climate change. But ya, probably best to just call it "traffic" then, and they might be more receptive.
- Waterluvian 7mo ago
  Yeah, I've always seen it as a hot potato issue. I think a lot of people who don't play ball on dealing with climate change aren't deniers, they just want the next guy to have to do the work. It's very, very hard to sell to anyone, "this is going to be incredibly costly and painful for you and you won't enjoy any of the benefits. Your grandkids might."
  - qwertygnu 7mo ago
    I think we saw during covid that we most certainly can see the benefits in our lifetime if we took it more seriously.
- scottious 7mo ago
  Agreed. I care enough about it to sell my car, stop buying stuff I don't need, give up most meat, and live in a small energy efficient house. However I do know people who really do not care. They may say they care but their actions and voting record show that in fact they don't care (or don't want to make it a real priority). But those same people get very upset when they're stuck in traffic
- mrguyorama 7mo ago
  Absolutely not. There are tens of millions of Americans who have jumped full speed onto the "It's not even happening" train, let alone the "It's actually a good thing because plants" or "It's not our fault" or "We can't fix it so we shouldn't try" or "It's too expensive to fix and I can't do long term math" trains. And this is a massive reversion too. In the mid 2000s republicans were openly advocating that we needed to do something about climate change and that it was a serious problem and then we opened the cash floodgates to American federal politics and would you look at that, oil companies have a lot of cash. Keep in mind that the real cost of transitioning is very likely to be less than what we spent on the stupid oil wars of the 2000s. We can literally afford it now, let alone if we hadn't burned all that cash bombing the desert because of oil politics. Oil companies themselves are fine to be "Energy" companies and invest in Solar and other renewables. They will be profitable just fine. Our country is tearing itself apart over a lie to ensure they remain more profitable.
  - Apocryphon 7mo ago
    In the mid-2000s there might've been individual Republicans concerned about climate change, but it was the Bush administration who opposed the Kyoto Protocol and pushed for adaptation to climate change on the basis of protecting the economy.
  - supertrope 7mo ago
    In 2008 McCain openly talked about greenhouse gas cap and trade. I think the driving force behind it was fear of peak oil. Secure your energy supply. With fracking supply concerns went away.

electrosphere 7mo ago

I'm introverted but very glad I have the option of working from the office and being among fellow staff, we also have a lunchtime exercise club once a week. It's much better for my mental health. In fact, I've added two days working outside of home instead of one because of the benefits. I think 3 days home/2 days office is the sweet spot.

apercu 7mo ago
I get that, and a lot of people like to be social with other people. But just because 10% (made up number) like it, there's no reason to force it on the rest of the workforce (not that you are). I encourage people who are remote but want human contact to rent a desk once a week at a co-working space. For me personally, I want to do my work as efficiently as possible, in as little time as possible, and then have my social time, which has very little in common with my work and/or colleagues. I might be an exception, but I get up very, very early and work almost right away, and I don't want to be on a roll and then have to pack up, get in the car at a terrible traffic time where (some) people are driving like animals, hunt for parking and then find a desk. That's a huge _tax_ on my productivity. But I don't expect or demand that the rest of the world do this. As a side comment, I would agree with you though, that 2 in the office is better than one. But I also had a very effective pattern around 10 years ago, where I spent 2 days in the office per month, and that worked really well for me (though those days were far, far less productive than my at home work days). Now, if the world adopted a 32 hour, 4-day work week I would probably be ok with the office 1 day a week.
ray_v 7mo ago
We've been slowly creeping back toward being fully RTO, and my mental health has been in what I can only describe as "steep decline". I don't know if I pin it all on RTO, but it sure isn't helping the situation. I love my job, but hate the in-office requirements - I'm a systems admin.
- electrosphere 7mo ago
  Sorry to hear that. Being a sysadmin, I guess you're mainly interacting with systems rather than people and need to focus. They should exempt you from RTO except for the odd "all hands" meeting days. I'm a software engineer in a Product Engineering team and it's about 75% hands-on engineering, 25% Slack/Teams interaction and alignments between people. I find being in the office helps to make connections with other staff in other teams (eg. bumping into people while making coffee in staff kitchen etc). I think thats important from a career perspective.

hshdhdhj4444 7mo ago

Except driving in the U.S. following the pandemic was significantly higher than driving before the pandemic even though WFH was much higher. This claim might be true but it’s simply not showing up in the data which suggests that even if true, the effect is probably minor.

scottious 7mo ago
but then again, vehicle miles travelled per-capita has been mostly increasing in the US since as far back as 1975. There could be a lot of confounding factors. Like astronomical housing prices in urban areas forcing people live very far away and incur more VMT at a faster rate than WFH decreases VMT. I'm no expert here, I'm just spitballing.
asdff 7mo ago
Because people didn't go back to taking transit
johnnyanmac 7mo ago
I think the bigger point was that pandemic traffic immediately showed effects. Smog cleared up in Los Angeles in less than a month. But no, it won't ever be that level without major infrastructure change. Not all jobs can be wfh. We can get close by a major public transportation overhaul, but that will take decades (even without the inevitable pushback).
royaltheartist 7mo ago
WFH doesn't actually stop driving. They don't commute, but they do run errands and other stuff during the day. This can actually result in more traffic during high peak periods since it can cause congestion build up to start earlier

bluescrn 7mo ago

WFH was great to begin with, but as somebody living alone, the isolation starts to have an effect after a while when you're 'working alone' too And for many people WFH has other problems - if you're a dual-WFH couple in a small home, lack of home office space is a very real problem. (Although if WFH was a permanent thing, many people could choose less expensive places to live, and have more space) Still, anything to eliminate a miserable and environmentally wasteful commute.

ericmcer 7mo ago
I agree, 2 days a week in office is optimal. If they could coordinate which days to reduce traffic then... holy cow dream world.
sixo 7mo ago
I would love to have a coworking-space-on-every-block (or in every building) where all the WFHers can go to be around other people (just not the coworkers)
- asdff 7mo ago
  Everyone is paying for wework to do what their branch library can probably do for them.
  - johnnyanmac 7mo ago
    Only issue is that my libraries close 5pm on weekends and 7pm on weekdays. Nothing for night owls.
    - 1718627440 7mo ago
      If there would be enough demand to pay for it, it would stay open longer.
      - johnnyanmac 7mo ago
        Yeah, I was spoiled by my college town. Libraries open until 2AM, a 24 hour space for students. Even a few cafes downtown open 24 hours a day. Suburb life is mostly fine, but that's one thing I miss most. Gotta travel 20 miles to downtown for anything resembling night life.

Lammy 7mo ago

> is well loved by everyone who participates You don't speak for me :) I hate it.

johnnyanmac 7mo ago
Wfh is debatable, but what's not to love about 4 day work weeks? 8t gives you even more time to work on your own stuff if you still want to work.
- Lammy 7mo ago
  I was only replying to the part about WFH. Four day weeks would be great.

palmotea 7mo ago

> is well loved by everyone who participates (except management). So? The only people who matter are shareholders and their proxies (management). To everyone else: you don't matter as much as you think you do, quit being selfish and be happy you get anything at all. The world doesn't revolve around you.

wing-_-nuts 7mo ago
Being against WFH because 'think of the shareholders' is certainly a take. The world might not revolve around me, but thankfully, I do get a vote in who I chose to work for, and I chose an employer that lets me work remote.
- johnnyanmac 7mo ago
  I sure don't nowadays. My industry is in free fall.

vamos_davai 7mo ago

Don't forget about holders of commercial real estate debt and the owners of commercial real estate and restaurants who depend on foot traffic!

deleted 7mo ago

[deleted]

darknavi 7mo ago

I know it's a meme on HN to say everyone likes WFH, but I (and many but not ICs around me) thrive more in person. I am 100% more effective in person where I can dev and my desk and bounce ideas off if team mates around me verbally. This can be recreated in a remote environment by having things like a team Discord that folks sit on, but it can feel forced at times (just like communiting to the office I suppose). My take might be heavily skewed though. I am in games and our environment is highly collaborative.

cmrdporcupine 7mo ago
I pretty much dislike WFH and for many of the reasons you mention and more, so took a local in-office job last year after being at home since COVID. I was excited to return to a more social environment until I found that "the office" itself was itself entirely problematic. Cheapass flatpack desks all rammed in together. No noise or sound proofing, giant sweatshop room. Sub-par monitors and equipment generally. Grumpy coworkers complaining constantly about the very conversations (both on-topic and off-topic/non-work) that I came in to have a chance to experience again. And half the staff was just WFH anyways, or remote, so the collaboration opportunities... diminished. I even saw this happening at Google before I left there, which had formerly been a ... luxury office. Packing people in like sardines, forcing people to "reserve" desks. Bad parking and/or transit situations. I get it when employers face financial or real estate crunches. But in the last 10-15 years (I've been working for 30) -- even pre-COVID -- I feel like some switch went off in tech industry leadership brains that is just outright disrespectful. Paying high salaries to engineers and then providing them with uncomfortable accommodations. Makes little sense to me. I'm back to WFH and the isolation that comes with it. In part because the office environment was actually not what I was hoping for. Because the industry ruined it.
- coldpie 7mo ago
  > No noise or sound proofing, giant sweatshop room My kingdom for an office with a ceiling, lmao. The exposed ductwork cheap-ass offices are so awful.
  - 7mo ago

ragazzina 7mo ago

I love WFH but how is it a win climate change solution for anyone outside of the USA? If my office building WFH, instead of heating a building we need to heat 500 people homes all day. And most of the people commute by public transport.

_kblcuk_ 7mo ago
So 500 people leave for office and turn off the heating at their homes, even if there are other people (kids, elderly) or animals (cats, dogs, birds) living there?
- ragazzina 7mo ago
  Kids are at school during office hours, I'm not sure about pets but they I don't think they care whether the house is 23° or 16° considering most of them go outside without any issue.
Obscurity4340 7mo ago
How is their commute relevant? If they are WFH, theres less people needing to commute. Thats less fuel or more efficient fuel economy for public transport to use
- ragazzina 7mo ago
  Yes but we are offsetting their lack of commute (being public transport, a small impact anyway) with having to heat many more houses.
  - nuancebydefault 7mo ago
    Most energy goes into making up for the temperature delta. If you turn the heating down, the delta at either evening or morning goes up. Note, some people even think that would take even more energy in total per day, but that's not correct because a cooler house doesn't emit as much energy as a warmer one.
  - 7mo ago

lm28469 7mo ago

It's bad for the EcOnOmY, less wear and tear in cars, less jobs for mechanics, less gas consumed, less lunch bought in fast food chain, &c. The entire system is designed around making the numbers go up, not down

supertrope 7mo ago
In the end cars are just a means to an end. People want to minimize their transportation spending. People bought bigger houses or renovated. They upgraded their PCs and were more likely to subscribe to broadband and less likely to cancel. Empty office buildings are ever so slowly being converted to housing. Professional clothing purchases dipped and then rebounded.
Schmerika 7mo ago
Yep. The broken window fallacy and the tragedy of the commons*, darkening the future of basically every vertebrate on the planet. * A solved problem, btw.

iszomer 7mo ago

We may never know which sector of the economy you are in to believe WFH is a good idea unless you explicitly state it but given this is HN, I'm just going to make a lazy assumption for software dev or engineering. WFH sounds great in theory only if _everyone_ participates in it but is hardly the case in reality. For example: If you can sustainably and reliably source your daily necessities like having the ability to cook or maintain a decent home environment that support it, kudos. Thought the covid lockdowns showed us how fragile that system can be especially for those _essential people_ to be physically around to feed you or keep your shit running. As a side note: how do you feel about being snookered by your local government's policy under the pretext that _essential work_ just gives your employers the ability to maintain the same minimum wage labor cycle just so you can feel giddy about how good this idea is?

rdsubhas 7mo ago

> costs nothing 1. for other businesses and jobs though, people staying at home costs a lot. one can call it a polarizing option. 2. these kind of jobs are likely prime candidates for AI already.

jjav 7mo ago

> is well loved by everyone who participates (except management) Most of management hates it too. I manage a team where everyone is remote, yet I have to go to the office few days a week to sit on zoom, why? And up a level, my manager has an even longer commute and probably hates it more than I do. This stuff is pushed down by HR, most of management hates it.