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Comment by awalton | Hacker News Reader

> If you could effectively triple your pay by "working" an extra 3 hours a day

6 hours a day - the commute is 3 hours both ways.

In other words, she works 9 hours a day, commutes 6 more, and then has 9 more hours to do with what she will, like sleeping (which normal folk like to do for 6-8 hours). So she has about an hour-three hours a day of actual non-work involved free time.

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Additionally unstated is the fact that she is in all probability using the weekend hours to informally catch up on the sleep deficit she's building up during the weekdays. Nor does it account for the unbooked health costs associated with such a lifestyle which will likely see her lose an additional N% off her total lifespan, and substitute some of that pay off into america's err... interesting... health system.

Which is a sinister part of the whole "buy a nice house far away & commute". The further from work, the less time you even get to spend at that nice house...

The benefits of that nice house (and the neighborhood, schools, etc.) are ostensibly more so for the benefit of the family than the long-commuting employee themselves -- whether misguided or accurate.

When one is single and (relatively) unattached, the calculus is different, as Silicon Valley neatly shows.

A faster train would help but everyone is upset about building the boondoggle.

Or more housing in LA? The sky's the limit for that. (OK, in practice NIMBYs are the limit.)

That would help too and robust telecommute options as well, although for some government office workers that may be more difficult.

The parent comment was referring not to Carolyn Cherry's 3 hour commute but Michael Perkins 80 minute commute.

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