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Comment by GianFabien | Hacker News Reader

Maybe you'd think differently if it was 2 hours commute each way in bumper to bumper traffic.

When reading on all these work-from-home discussions, it seems pretty clear that the commute is the main factor. If I had to commute to my office by car or (crowded) public transport for an hour or more, I would hate going there. I am lucky to have a 25 minutes commute by bicycle, so I don't mind that, and prefer the office amenities: a work space provided for me, clear separation from working and living space etc. Of course, there are other advantages in working from home such as more flexibility in terms of working and break hours. However, my impression remains that commute times and conditions outweigh all other (subjective) preferences for most people when arguing for or against working from home.

It seems to me that the pandemic and the practice of massively working at home has mostly raised this question: how had we accepted for such a long time that so many people go through a commute nightmare every single day of their work life? How can we establish working standards that require neither turning homes into offices nor going back to the commuting nightmare from "old normal"?

I work literally 10 minutes from my house. I would rather work from home. It's 5 traffic lights to the office. I can drive, waste fuel, clothes, time, insurance, tires, etc. Or I can work from home and do exactly the same shit I do in a box only from the comfort from my own home. And if I need to come in I'm 10 minutes away. Yet here I am, back in the office, and flex time is going away soon.

This is the other differentiator - quality of the office. Some people seem to not have an office that is anything other than a bunch of desks put near each other.

Even if you had a nice office, you might get looked at funny if you showed up every single day in your pajamas or some stained gym shorts (like I do now from home). Another big benefit is I can double time stuff. If someone is hosting a meeting and I'm merely in attendance rather than have to present something myself, I usually eat food, do laundry, garden, showering, or workout with the zoom meeting open. I'm still listening, I'm just actually doing something productive and useful to my life instead of sitting silently watching a power point in a dark room fighting the urge to fall asleep.

That also makes me wonder if Europe also has a ton of the workforce wanting to stay remote too? They have density and public transportation, while most of America is an abject disaster in that regard.

I would definitely quit a job that required a 2 hour commute. That doesn't mean I want to work from home, it means I want to work somewhere a sane distance away.

In the Bay Area a two hour commute (an hour each way) is only a 15 mile distance in morning/afternoon traffic

If you’re averaging 15mph, you may as well ride a bike and just get the exercise in. You’ll be very fit and well off doing 2 hours of cardio multiple times a week. I knew guys at some of my jobs who did these commutes - they were ecstatic about it. Favorite part of their day.

Why drive, at that point? Isn't it easier to use BART + a scooter?

Even that resulted in an hour each way for me pre-pandemic. Then you also need to factor in the exhaustion that comes with using Bart, especially in the evening.

Oh man, is that worse than driving? I'm in London, so I don't really know what it's like in SF. What's so exhausting about it?

I moved from London to Oakland several years ago. In London I would take a bus to work and then walk for 5 minutes to the office. Taking Bart is just not pleasant - the cars are packed, so you stand super close to other sweaty people for 45 min or so. I guess it's comparable to taking Underground during rush hour - same thing.

No Bart on the west side of the bay. You can to some extent use light rail If you are close enough to a station.

Man, that sucks. I didn't realise Bart was so sparse. Are there any plans to expand it, or add something like a subway? They must have the tax revenue. It seems absurd that they'd drive everyone toward increasing traffic given how wealthy the area is.

It's worth reading a bit about the history of BART. The Bay Area's NIMBY roots run deep. Initial plans would have included lines in the peninsula, with eventual connections all the way around the bay. Santa Clara County never joined, and that started a cascade of other counties dropping out which financially crippled the project and left only the scaled-back system in place today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_Area_Rapid_Transit#Origins...

My 15 mile commute has reached 45 minutes and withing the next couple years it will be 60 minutes. American cities have given up on public transportaion and infrastructrure and are crumbling under the weight of capitalism.

It’s capitalism’s fault that public transit isn’t popular? What?

Car companies may have dismantled some streetcar systems years ago, yes. However, we continue to build car focused communities largely because people want to live in big lots in suburbia. Density that can support transit is just not popular in the US.

What percentage of commuters have 2 hours bumper to bumper each way? That sounds like an outlier to me.

In my org of maybe 10-20k, the last time they did a commute survey, a few years before covid, the average commute was 40 minutes each way. So not 2 hours but 1.3 hours. This was the mean, not median so 2 hours of commuting is not a rare outlier in my experience.

This article [0] claims the national average is 26 minutes total, so I guess my org just has a rough time.

[0] https://bestmattress-brand.org/comatose-commuters/

2 hrs each way is 4 hrs per day.

Thanks, I misread as total time.

With the price of real estate these days, a two hour commute is not out of the ordinary.

I've had to commute an hour 30 before. If you're in an expensive city, like LA you're very likely to have this.

It's stressful, expensive and dangerous. I'm really hoping work from home becomes a permanent thing.

If you live in a car-centric city without walkable and bikeable streets nor great public transit and force car-dependence that is what you get.

There are plenty of non-car-centric expensive cities that one can travel across in less than an hour.

Employers don't put many jobs there. Even in NYC, very transit oriented, is do crowded and expensive that commutes are long, and often too crowded ("straphanging") and with transfers that don't let you get that time back for book/podcast.

Oh I'm in full agreement, this is one of the many reasons I left la.

Once I went to car free I got rid of about 25,000 in credit card debt in 6 months or so. Much of why so many Americans are so desperately poor has to do with car ownership. While it's possible to get Uncle Jimmy's Old Jeep running, most people just finance something. Once you make your car payment your insurance and gas, that's easily a third of your income. Compared to a $100 a month bus pass

Not in the US there isn't. And the ones there are are:

1. Expensive

2. Not particularly family friendly

So if you are a high earner with roommates or a partner and no children, you have options. For the remaining 90% of the workforce, it isn't particularly feasible.

Sorry, not in the US but I agree there isn't a single city in the US with great subways.

Same. I used to be impressed by cities like NYC, and then I moved to Japan for a few years and I realized that I'm not sure there is a city in the US that makes the top 5, or possibly top 10, best cities in the world. At least not in terms of livability.

People have over an hour commutes riding transit in nyc too. You only luck out if you manage to secure a job and an apartment along the same transit line, and that's rarely easy or cheap. Especially if you suddenly get a new job.

I think it depends on the age range of who you survey. When I was younger, a small apartment sufficed and I couldn't imagine a long commute. As I had children and started to prioritize 1. space (individual rooms for children) and 2. good school districts, something had to give -- you either pay exorbitant prices in the city for space+private school or you go to the suburbs.

Probably an outlier but I've had a 90 minute commute through some combination of car and transit in the past and an hour or so (so 2 hours per day) is very common, especially if you're commuting into a city from suburbs/exurbs.

Well, 2 hours bumper to bumper may seem too much but almost everyone I know spends at least one hour commuting every work day.

(Don't worry, I know that my only experience is not enough to make statistics, but check that out with your friends)

I think it's not that uncommon in the US

It's very uncommon in the US. It less uncommon in Silicon Valley...which is disproportionately represented on HN.

To be fair it's also a problem in some cities outside SV though (Austin, Atlanta, Seattle) but the overwhelming majority of Americans don't face this issue. Even Americans working in tech.

Again, the overwhelming majority of Americans don't face this issue to the degree being discussed here (1+ hour commutes)

https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/interactive/tr...

It's pretty uncommon except in some select areas like the Bay Area and california cities. I would not do a 2 hour one way drive to work and most people I know wouldn't, at least not for a long period of time.

This is completely common throughout the western world, if not the wider world too.

In the US maybe. Certainly not in Europe.

San Jose to Mountain View commute

That's reasonable, but the issue here clearly isn't the workplace; its the commute. They're sometimes, maybe even usually, intertwined. But we can't make sweeping decisions based on a subset of people who both (1) have long commutes, which (2) they hate. Tons of people have short commutes, and tons of people have long commutes which they actually quite enjoy, as it may be the only hour(s) during their workdays where they can remain totally disconnected from both work and home life.

Years ago, I commuted by walking 10 minutes. I loved that; get outside, stretch your legs, put some music on, if I forgot something at home it was just a jaunt away. Today, I commute about an hour each way by car. I love it too. It forces me to wake up early, which is something I enjoy but have problems doing naturally, creates a ton of time for podcasts, I've got my car right at the office if I need to run anywhere during lunch (versus, previously, it being 10-15 minutes away), and there's a delicious doughnut shop on the way in so I can sometimes stop and grab a morning snack for the team (or just me).

Maybe two hours each way is too long. But, you're also strawmanning. The average commute in the US is 27 minutes [1] (in 2019).

[1] https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2021/one-way-...

Commute length is a huge factor. But I also think commute type matters. When I lived in Chicago, my commute was a 1 hour train ride. I rather enjoyed it, I used that time to read and play video games.

That is why I added the part about having such a short commute.

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