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Comment by PopsiclePete | Hacker News Reader

So why do we keep commuting for jobs that don't really require our physical presence?

It was a long hard battle for me to be able to work from home, and yes, I sometimes do miss out on face-to-face interaction, but going to the office 2 instead of 5 days a week is still a huge win - I'm not in a car out there, making traffic worse for you. You're welcome.

Can we please solve the supposed "interaction" problem with some nice digital pens and white-boards and web cams and just .... work from anywhere?

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because in some cases, it's me that requires the physical presence - not the job. Working physically with the team is amazingly better for my productivity. Unfortunately, I have to take the jobs where they are. Since public transit is so bad, that's brutal commutes.

My company is 100% remote, but it is not without it's challenges. As you mention, the whiteboard is a big one. There isn't a good digital equivalent yet that isn't a fortune.

But not everyone wants to work remotely. I asked my friend, and he said he would never work at a remote company because, "I enjoy having face to face conversations with my coworkers about work."

This seems like the most logical solution. I think the issue is that the people who are impacted the most by these long commutes are workers who can't physically work remotely. The people who work for companies that could implement it, generally live close enough that the commute doesn't bother them in the first place.

I hate working from home. I'm a social being.

Me too - which is why I still go to the office - just not 5 days a week. If we could stagger people's schedules somehow - you go on Monday, I go on Tuesday - and do that on a massive scale - it should help traffic congestion quite a bit.

Or we could actually build some nice mass transit in this country. But now I'm just talking crazy.

The thing is we are not there yet. But this will eventually happen either by VR-like presence or just async style work (culture requiring less realtime interactions by design)

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