3 ms·

I've just timed it out for about 45 minutes in the car, and an hour and fifteen for the BART/shuttle combo. I also quite like podcasts, so am all right with hav

I've just timed it out for about 45 minutes in the car, and an hour and fifteen for the BART/shuttle combo. I also quite like podcasts, so am all right with having just my ears free while driving.

rdl 13y ago
Berkeley to Menlo Park is only 45 minutes if you leave at the correct time (before 6-7 and after 10am, and 1-3pm or >9pm), and there are no accidents or other delays. To get there with 95% odds, you often need to allow 70-80 minutes. I guess it depends on how bad being late is. Timing it to arrive at 0930 is actually really hard; I end up leaving around 0730 to be 99% certain of arriving on time. Sometimes it's an hour early, but sometimes only 15 minutes early.
- textminer 13y ago
  You've just broken my heart. My timing's basically based on two 9 AM drives that hit traffic/construction, but took no more than 45 minutes. I start tomorrow.
  - rdl 13y ago
    80 (i.e. along the shore in Berkeley) is really bad quite often, but you could possibly skip most of that. If you can avoid that, it's not too bad, although the 880 parts in Oakland (due to port/construction traffic) can be bad.
    - textminer 13y ago
      Actually live in Oakland near Emeryville. Not sure why I wrote Berkeley, except for misguided attempt at identity obfuscation. But used to live up in Contra Costa county, and the mornings I'd drive into SF-- boy howdy, 580/80 along the coast near University was an absolute disaster. I wonder if, as "Oakland becomes the new Mission", if we'll see more of the tech giants sending shuttles up to East Bay. I know Google has at least one going to West Oakland, but Facebook does not yet.
      - rdl 13y ago
        Yeah, I have a friend who worked at google who lives at the cannery lofts, and used the west Oakland Bart google shuttle a lot. I still would want my car in case I wanted to work late, or go somewhere other tha directly home. Another annoying thing about 880 is the trucks and general narrowness. It is technically 45mph but people do 70-80. I hadn't had an accident there, but it kind of sucks vs the rest of 880. You are aware that a lot of the Oakland/emeryville areas near 30th and such are pretty gangster, right? My friend had a loft there and I kept showing up at her buyer while the cops had the block shut down to serve a high risk warrant.
        textminer 13y ago
        Yes, a friend's motorcycle was severely damaged last week from someone trying to steal it. He was upstairs in our apartment eating dinner. Nine more months on the lease!
  - strlen 13y ago
    If you're starting at the same Menlo Park company that I work at, for the long term, you may want to consider taking BART down to Fremont and then arranging a ride in a carpool/van-pool over the Dumbarton bridge: there are tons of folks who live in Fremont/Newark/Union City and who wouldn't mind a +1 for carpool lane. Many of them also have kids so they tend to come a bit earlier than others (most folks come in between 9:45 and 10:45). Also, I've yet to have had a semi-recurring meeting schedule before 11 am (occasionally there are interviews earlier in the morning, however). That said, irrespective of where in Bay Area you live, Ryan is 100% right: the problem isn't the average commute time (which is very easy to keep under 45 minutes -- this is not LA!), it's the outliers. It's a lot like the JVM: good performance on average but then a Concurrent Mark and Sweep failure happens... Also, congratulations! I'm on the data/systems infrastructure as opposed to machine learning side (but folks move around quite a bit and a lot of teams do both ML and systems programming), but let me know if you've any questions.

I've just timed it out for about 45 minutes in the car, and an hour and fifteen for the BART/shuttle combo. I also quite like podcasts, so am all right with having just my ears free while driving.

rdl 13y ago

Berkeley to Menlo Park is only 45 minutes if you leave at the correct time (before 6-7 and after 10am, and 1-3pm or >9pm), and there are no accidents or other delays. To get there with 95% odds, you often need to allow 70-80 minutes. I guess it depends on how bad being late is. Timing it to arrive at 0930 is actually really hard; I end up leaving around 0730 to be 99% certain of arriving on time. Sometimes it's an hour early, but sometimes only 15 minutes early.

textminer 13y ago
You've just broken my heart. My timing's basically based on two 9 AM drives that hit traffic/construction, but took no more than 45 minutes. I start tomorrow.
- rdl 13y ago
  80 (i.e. along the shore in Berkeley) is really bad quite often, but you could possibly skip most of that. If you can avoid that, it's not too bad, although the 880 parts in Oakland (due to port/construction traffic) can be bad.
  - textminer 13y ago
    Actually live in Oakland near Emeryville. Not sure why I wrote Berkeley, except for misguided attempt at identity obfuscation. But used to live up in Contra Costa county, and the mornings I'd drive into SF-- boy howdy, 580/80 along the coast near University was an absolute disaster. I wonder if, as "Oakland becomes the new Mission", if we'll see more of the tech giants sending shuttles up to East Bay. I know Google has at least one going to West Oakland, but Facebook does not yet.
    - rdl 13y ago
      Yeah, I have a friend who worked at google who lives at the cannery lofts, and used the west Oakland Bart google shuttle a lot. I still would want my car in case I wanted to work late, or go somewhere other tha directly home. Another annoying thing about 880 is the trucks and general narrowness. It is technically 45mph but people do 70-80. I hadn't had an accident there, but it kind of sucks vs the rest of 880. You are aware that a lot of the Oakland/emeryville areas near 30th and such are pretty gangster, right? My friend had a loft there and I kept showing up at her buyer while the cops had the block shut down to serve a high risk warrant.
      - textminer 13y ago
        Yes, a friend's motorcycle was severely damaged last week from someone trying to steal it. He was upstairs in our apartment eating dinner. Nine more months on the lease!
- strlen 13y ago
  If you're starting at the same Menlo Park company that I work at, for the long term, you may want to consider taking BART down to Fremont and then arranging a ride in a carpool/van-pool over the Dumbarton bridge: there are tons of folks who live in Fremont/Newark/Union City and who wouldn't mind a +1 for carpool lane. Many of them also have kids so they tend to come a bit earlier than others (most folks come in between 9:45 and 10:45). Also, I've yet to have had a semi-recurring meeting schedule before 11 am (occasionally there are interviews earlier in the morning, however). That said, irrespective of where in Bay Area you live, Ryan is 100% right: the problem isn't the average commute time (which is very easy to keep under 45 minutes -- this is not LA!), it's the outliers. It's a lot like the JVM: good performance on average but then a Concurrent Mark and Sweep failure happens... Also, congratulations! I'm on the data/systems infrastructure as opposed to machine learning side (but folks move around quite a bit and a lot of teams do both ML and systems programming), but let me know if you've any questions.